Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, October 29th, 2023
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer version 6.6.16.6566955269, formerly the Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version , issued October 20, promoted October 25 – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
glTF / PBR Materials viewer updated to version 7.0.0.582103 on October 24.
A volcanic eruption on Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons, as witnessed by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft during the multi-year mission of the same name exploration the system. Credit: NASA
We’re probably all familiar with the concept of some Moons within our solar system – notably Saturn’s Enceladus, and Jupiter’s Europa, Ganymede and Callisto – potentially being completely encompassed by a liquid water (or at least a slushy) ocean under their surfaces. But how about a moon being almost completely encompassed by an ocean of hot volcanic magma just a few kilometres under its surface?
That’s the proposal contained within a new paper written under the auspices of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and based on an analysis of data obtained by the Jovial Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission in reference to Io, the innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter.
Of course, we’ve long known that Io, a moon slightly larger than our own, is the most volcanic place in the solar system. More than 400 active volcanoes have been identified since we first witnessed one erupting in 1979, courtesy of NASA’s by Voyager 1 in 1979, and the Juno mission has imaged no fewer than 266 actively erupting during its periodic fly-bys of Io as it studies Jupiter and its moons. The overall driving force behind these volcanoes is tidal flexing deep within Io’s core and mantle, the results of the moon being in a constant state of flux thanks to the gravitational influences of (most particularly) Jupiter to one side and the three other Galilean satellites on the other.
The comparative sizes of the Moon and Io, together with that of Earth to scale. Credit: full Moon – Gregory H. Revera; true colour image of Io – NASA/JPL; Earth: NASA / Apollo 17
However, there has always been something of a question as to how these volcanoes might – or might not – be related and directly powered. Here on Earth, volcanism usually occurs as a result of decompression melting within the asthenosphere – the upper limits of the mantle directly under the lithosphere/crust comprising solid and partially-melted rock. This gives rise to magma, which is then forced upwards through the lithosphere as localised volcanic eruptions. This was long held to be the case with Io, with scientists believing its volcanoes, like the majority on Earth, were driven by the upwelling of individual magma flows.
But during the Galileo spacecraft’s observations of Io between 1995 and 2003, the data gave tantalising hints that Io’s volcanism could be the result of a somewhat different process, but it has taken the unique capabilities of the Juno spacecraft to confirm this to be the case. By gathering extensive thermal and infrared imaging of Io’s mantle, the JIRAM instrument has been able to put together a comprehensive view of the upper layers of Io’s mantle, revealing that far from being a layer mix of solid and partially melted rock, Io’s asthenospheric region is entirely molten in nature.
In other words, lying just below Io’s lithosphere (roughly 12-40 km thick) is a moon-girdling ocean of magma, some 50 km thick, with a mean temperature of some 1,200ºC, and which powers all of Io’s active volcanoes.
The structure of Io as likely confirmed by data obtained by the JIRAM instrument aboard the Juno spacecraft. Credit: Kelvinsong
This may not sound exciting in the scheme of things, but it further demonstrates the uniqueness and complexity to be found within the Jovian system.
A further example of this can be found with Io’s big brother, Ganymede. The third of the Galilean moons in terms of distance from Jupiter, Ganymede is not only the biggest of the Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter, it is the biggest and most massive natural satellite in the solar system. In fact, if it were orbiting the Sun rather than Jupiter, it would be classified as a planet, being even larger than Mercury.
Ganymede, like its smaller siblings around Jupiter – and the rocky planets of the inner solar system – is a complex place enjoying a complicated relationship with its parent; one which shares near-similarities with Earth’s relationship to the Sun.
Much has long been known about Ganymede as a result of observations made from Earth – such as via the Hubble Space Telescope – and by the various missions which have flown past or orbited Jupiter. These have helped us confirm that Ganymede has a sufficiently warm interior to support a global liquid water ocean beneath its crust, an ocean larger by volume than all of Earth’s combined.
The comparative sizes of the Moon and Io, together with that of Earth to scale. Credit: full Moon – Gregory H. Revera; true colour image of Ganymede – NASA/JPL; Earth: NASA / Apollo 17
We’ve also been able to (largely) confirm the presence of a tenuous atmosphere of oxygen and CO2, which seems to be particularly concentrated around the northern and southern latitudes, likely constrained by the interaction between Ganymede’s weak magnetic field and the far more powerful magnetic field generated by Jupiter – the predominant O2 content of the atmosphere is thought to be the result of water vapour escaping the moon’s interior being spilt by the radiation carried down over the poles by the magnetic field interaction.
It is this interaction between radiation, magnetic fields and the surface of Ganymede which have been part of the focus of a study made of the moon using instruments on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and which was recently published.
Ganymede’s surface is dominated by two types of terrain: bright, icy features with grooves, covering about two-thirds of Ganymede’s surface, and older, well-cratered and darker regions )on places scored by asteroid impacts of the moon’s more “recent” past, which could not be confused with the brighter terrain) . The two terrain types are not differentiated in terms of their location on Ganymede’s surface, they are instead intermingled, with the lighter terrain cutting swathes across the darker terrain.
Ganymede, showing its dominant types of terrain. The dark cratered regions, and the brighter, icy regions with grooved terrain. The white radial lines are the results of impacts with the moon and not directly related to the terrain types. Credit: NOAA
Some of these brighter swathes – notably those around the Polar Regions – carry strong evidence of water ice, which appears to have been exposed by (in the words of the study) “the combination of micro-meteoroid gardening, excavating the ice, and ion irradiation”.
In other words, over the millennia, dust and material has been caught within the interactions between the two magnetic fields, smashing into the moon’s surface to expose the underlying water ice, allowing it to be irradiated by plasma also carried by the inflowing magnetic field, causing some of it to escape as water vapour which has been either further irradiated and broken down (thus giving rise to the accumulation of the tenuous, O2-rich atmosphere near the surface), or re-accreting as easily-identified water ice on the surface rock.
Whilst the two magnetic fields interact around Ganymede’s poles and along the moon’s “trailing edge” as it orbits Jupiter in a very similar manner to the interaction between Earth’s magnetic field and that of the Sun over our own poles, the spectral properties seen along the moon’s ”leading edge” in its orbit suggest that there is a far more complex, and yet to be understood interaction taking place between the magnetic fields of planet and satellite. Solving this mystery might require time – and some assistance in the form of the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission launched in April 2023, and due to reach the Jovian system in 2031, where it will likely uncover more surprises about both Ganymede and Europa.
The following notes were taken from my chat log transcript and audio recording of the Third Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, October 27th, 2023. Afraid no video for this month, Pantera has a lot going on.
Meeting Overview
The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors to discuss general viewer development.
Open to all with an interest in viewer development.
Conducted in a mix of text and voice.
The notes herein are drawn from a mix of my own chat log and audio recording of the meeting, and are not intended to be a full transcript.
Viewer Updates
The Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269 was promoted to de facto release status on October 25th. This marks the first release viewer built using the Github Actions (indicated by the extended version number). This viewer also includes a significant update to the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling.
The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains as:
Release channel cohorts:
glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.582103, October 24.
Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582201, October 16.
Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582075, October 5.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
General Viewer Notes:
Upcoming official viewer can be viewed on the Github Actions build page, so what is coming down the line can be seen; however artefacts within the list are not publicly linked to downloadable items such as installers. This may change in the future.
The Emoji RC viewer is defined as being “in test”, with the other RC viewers in a maintenance cycle to gain parity with the new release viewer.
PBR Materials Update
The back-end support for PBR Materials is liable to be deployed to both the BlueSteel and LeTigre RC channels (so approx 3,000 regions) in week #44 (commencing Monday, October 30th), pending the code clearing QA.
Core work remains in “maintenance mode” with bug fixing and a focus on driving the project forward towards release.
It is believed the only significant blockers remaining are those of performance issues on the Mac version of the viewer – and LL are happy to take suggestions from TPV developers on how to get the Mac variant of OpenGL perform better.
One additional issue which had been reported was that of non-PBR enabled viewers appearing to suffer high pack losses on PBR regions (BUG-234550). However:
Investigations appear to have shown this as being a “sensor ghost” – the viewer reporting messages it receives but which are not in its message template (a would be the case with a non-PBR viewer receiving PBR specific messages) as a packet loss, which is not really accurate.
To deal with the specific issue with non-PBR viewers on PBR regions, and as an interim measure until the PBR viewer is the de facto release viewer, the updated message template for the PBR viewer is to be incorporated into the current RC viewers, together with a suppressor to prevent non-PBR viewer generating false packet loss updates. The code will then be available to all official “pre-PBR” viewers as they are updated with the RC code.
TPVs wishing also wishing to eliminate the false reporting of packet loss in their non-PBR viewer releases are encouraged to also pull the PBR viewer message template commit from Github and incorporate it in any upcoming pre-PBR updates they may have in the works.
Overall, and allowing for any list-minute issues + clearing the Mac viewer issues, the plan is to pretty much release PBR Materials on the basis of what is currently incorporated in the simulator code and the current RC viewer.
This means there will be a range of known issues within the release; however, it is believed that none of them will break any existing content on the Main grid, nor will any fixes for them which are introduced following the initial release.
One of the outcomes of the glTF / PBR project has been a closing of the “divide” between the simulator and viewer engineering teams, with people working on both sides as the PBR project has progressed. This will continue through further iterations of glTF support (e.g. through elements such as the Interest List, which is both viewer-side and simulator-side, and which is not currently geared towards optimal handling scene-wide updates, as will be required as additional aspects of the glTF specification are incorporated into SL).
In Brief
There was a general discussion on the internals of viewer development (general message handling, viewer asset throttling, location of “official” masters of things like the message template, the status of the Lab’s Libcurl implementation in light of recent libcurl security issues (in short: “stuck” on an earlier version, so not directly affected), HTTP2 vs. HTTP3 updates, etc.).
A general commentary on Windows 32-bit usage (not no longer officially supported) – with Firestorm stats reporting around 1.9% of their user base still appear to be running 32-bit windows – but the majority of this figure might be down to an Intel bug reporting 64-bit users running 32-bit.
A general discussion on the viewer + time-zones, providing a means to add the day of the week to the viewer log-in screen, rather than those in time zones other than California have to check the local day via the viewer clock tool-tip once logged-in.
In this, the fact that the time reported in the viewer is “PDT” (and/or PST? I’ve never actually noticed if the viewer reflects changes between PDT and PST notation) rather than “SLT” – which is the acronym everyone in SL understands – can also be a source of confusion. As can the fact that elsewhere within Second Life properties UTC (GMT) can be used.
during the discussion it was indicated that LL will likely try to be more consistent in referencing SLT rather than physical-world time zones.
Reference was made to a forum discussion on event message polling (particularly viewer side region start-up) which can have an impact (/unintended consequence) in terms of things like message execution. Monty Linden is involved in these discussions and in investigations, and improvements will be appearing in upcoming simulator releases.
The above led to a general conversation on reliable SL documentation sources (the broad answer in case of technical documentation being “the code”), and the historic reasons for public-facing documentation becoming fragmented (e.g. the old issue of SL wiki pages being repeatedly vandalised & so locked from editing by users who might otherwise be well-placed to update them), etc.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Castle Dracula, October 2023 – the Count visits my chambers – click any image for full size
Fate recently called upon me to travel to the Transylvanian town of Bistrița, and from there into the Inner Eastern Carpathian Mountains. It was no ordinary trip, for I was following the footsteps of cleric and solicitor Jonathan Harker, who had travelled there to complete business with a client from the region, only to seemingly disappear and causing much distress to his fiancée, Mina Murray.
Or at least, that is how the start of a visit to Castle Dracula: A Gothic Horror Experience might read when written as a journal entry by someone participating in its interactive adventure. The work of long-time resident and content creator, Wanders Nowhere (also famous for Prehistorica), this is an adventure reputedly “14 years in the making”.
How literal that might be, I’ll leave to others to cogitate upon; what I will say is, for anyone who is a fan of Gothic Horror and / or enjoys Bram Stoker’s classic novel, this is an Experience-led adventure which is engaging without being overly taxing, whilst offering a twist on the opening elements from the novel to offer a first-person narrative which takes Harker’s visit to Castle Dracula as the jumping off point for a related tale of an encounter with the Count.
Castle Dracula: approaching the castle entrance through the inner courtyard
The adventure begins within a welcome area, reached either via the SLurl above, or by taking the teleport portal from the main Prehistorica lading point. This area contains all the information visitors require in order to enjoy the experience – or participate is a second, also set within the Castle and entitled Carmilla: The Love of the Dead, which can be entered into on payment of L$200 and which offers special rewards for those completing it. I opted to save this for a later option, focusing solely on Castle Dracula.
Castle Dracula: a brief enCOUNTer…
I’m not going to trot through all of the info at the welcome area – it offers clear enough notes; suffice it to say you should accept the local shared environment and to have local sounds active. Whether or not you have Shadows enabled is a matter of choice; I actually found things a little too dark with them on.
Once all the notes have been read, the adventure can commence by stepping through the teleport portal to Castle Dracula; just be sure to Agree to the notes which will pop-up in a dialogue box when you attempt to do so, and also accept the local Experience – the latter will enable automatic teleports and also equip you with the necessary progress HUD.
Passing through the portal delivers you to the first of three locations – a train carriage as you sally forth from Bistrița to the village of Vesnic in the mountains, following the invitation of Harker’s mysterious client, Count Dracula. The carriage ride provides a narrative introduction to the adventure (s noted at the top of this article) and also introduces participants to the quest element of the story: locating 16 pages from Harker’s journal, which together might reveal his location – or fate.
To get participants started, the first page of the journal is located alongside the carriage doors, providing a visual reference of what should be sought when looking for additional pages. When touched, the journal will deliver its page on-screen, allowing it to be read, after which clicking on it will place it on the game HUD, which is also the repository for other papers and notes, etc., found when exploring. Any item in the HUD can be expanded again by clicking on it.
Stepping “out of” the carriage doors on arrival at Vesnic will deliver participants to the garlic-strewn interior of the local hostelry, amusingly called The Stake and Hammer. It is here that the second page of Harker’s journal might be obtained, sitting on a table between arrivals and the exit.
More garlic is to be found outside the tavern, notably in the form of wreaths guarding the doors to local homes and places of business, with great sacks of cloves placed – strategically? – around the square as well. Outside of the church and the tavern, there is not a lot to see here, but there is a horse-drawn carriage awaiting those wishing to reach the castle. Approaching it will bring a greeting from the driver, and sitting within it will start you on your way to your final destination, by way of a climb up through the mountains. Personal experience may vary here, but I found I needed to use the Camera floater and controls to get my camera out of the bottom of the carriage in order to see anything of the lands through which the ride passes – but I do use a custom camera preset rather than the SL default (and given the scale of things, Castle Dracula does seem to be built in expectation of oversized avatars using the SL default camera position).
Castle Dracula: creeping through the crypt
It is on your arrival that the fun begins. From being greeted by the Count himself through to attempting to find the remaining 14 pages of Harker’s journal, there is a lot to see and explore – and potentially touch for interactions. There are some very nice touches to be appreciated – such as the count himself, a phantom NPC which is perfectly animated. Through the castle’s many rooms are elements from the novel as well as from other Gothic horror influences (perhaps most notably Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus) to touches of Giger-like neo-Gothic, together with what might be taken as nodes to M.C. Esher and others.
After being shown to your room by a rather chatty Count, you are free to commence your explorations – where they may take you is down to the route you chose on starting, and the branches you take thereafter, so I’m not about to give a room-by-room account. However, entering major locations in the castle – the entrance hall, the library, the ballroom, the Gallery, the Midnight Garden and so on – will be recorded on the HUD map in the form of clickable points you can use to jump between rooms, if necessary. But do take note – these are not the only locations within the Castle; you will need to explore carefully, as some of those which are not recorded on the map may well contain elements of Harker’s journal.
Castle Dracula: “It’s ALIVE!” – the upper level of the extensive laboratory, which includes nods towards Mary Shelley’s great work within its lower floors
There is no reward to completing the quest per se outside of learning of Harker’s fate and the luxury of reading his journal entries – which follow most of the events found in the novel relating to his time at the case – in the correct order. However, finding all 16 pages will trigger the start of your own fate: will you be able to escape the Castle before the Count finds you (and without simply teleporting away!), or will you find yourself his next victim?
And even then; is it death that awaits you – or will you awaken in the hold of a ship bound for England (a hold in which you may well find yourself able to collect a few little mementos of your time at Castle Dracula before heading home)? Why not pay a visit and find out?
It’s been a goodly while since I’ve written about the The Peale Museum in Second Life; however, an invite from Eme Capalini offered an intriguing invitation to hop along and take a look at their latest exhibition, featuring a very unique artist by the name of Lee Boot.
ICYMI, September 2020 saw the opening of a new public experience in Second Life entitled Virtual Peale, a collaborative effort between Virtual Ability Inc., Linden Lab and – most importantly, The Peale Centre for Baltimore History and Architecture, located in the first purpose-built museum building in the United States (and today a US National Historic Landmark) the Peale Centre. This has, since 1814, been a centre for art, history, community and learning, and within Second Life, the Virtual Peale has continued this long tradition, offering exhibitions of art and learning, centred on an in-world reproduction of the physical World Peale Centre in Baltimore, USA. However, rather than wibble on about it here, please feel free to read more about the project within Baltimore’s Peale Centre in Second Life, a piece written to mark the opening of the centre in SL, and which I was graciously allowed to preview ahead of time.
The new exhibition – Abstracts & Artifacts – is fascinating on a number of levels. Encompassing both the physical world Peale Centre and virtual Peale, it marks the first major gallery-oriented exhibition of Lee Boot’s work for about two decades. It is deeply rooted in Boot’s background as an artist and a researcher – he is the Director of the Imaging Research Centre (IRC) within the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) – and is also innately (if tangentially) linked to The Peale’s unique history as a place of learning and education, something he touches upon in an introductory video to the exhibition and which I’ve taken the liberty of embedding here†.
Within Virtual Peale – and as is usual for the Centre – Abstracts and Artifacts is located in the “upper floor” gallery space. To reach it, either use the TP board close to the landing point or enter the Peale Building and take the stairs up to the upper floor and walk through the “doorway” to the exhibition area – you’ll be automatically teleported up to the exhibition space (where a door on the wall behind you on arrival will take you back down to the main building).
On arrival you will have the opportunity to view the introductory video, whilst a sign under it notes that there is a sequence to the exhibit visitors are asked as to follow, using the arrows on the floor. The first of these directs visitors back to an opening statement, framed as a question:
What if it were normal for artists to have careers working side-by-side, on equal footing, with other researchers and policymakers who determine how we improve education, or public health, or how we catalyse economic development in our communities?
– Abstracts & Artifacts, Virtual Peale, October 2023
This is a question of immediate intrigue in its scope and context – and one which might well have some throwing up their hands in horror at the idea of the “trendies” and “lefties” (or whatever) stirring the mix and exerting influence on matters of health and education. However, as the introduction goes on to note, there is a strong justification for considering the idea it represents:
It’s hard not to talk about culture and think about the arts. and artists make media which now, more than ever, are the central systems and currencies of our lives.
– Abstracts & Artifacts, Virtual Peale, October 2023
Virtual Peale, October 2023: Lee Boot – Abstracts and Artifacts
There are truths within the above statement that may have about them a certain dichotomy. All too often, we are used to considering the cultural and societal of art in a historical context: what it says about the generations who came before us, their outlook on life, the nature of their culture; how it might aid us in similarly understanding the nature and structure of civilisations which came well before our own, and to whom their surviving art is the one expression we can physically grasp in terms of offering a window into their times.
However, in looking back in time, it is important to note that throughout much of humanity’s history, both art and science were closely intertwined; it is only relatively recently that they have branched away from one another – and then largely as a result of artificial constructs modern society has opted – possibly to our detriment – to enforce (e.g. those in education being required to choice between the study paths of “the arts” and “the sciences”, with often limited opportunities to combine the two beyond a certain point). Further, art is ever-evolving, harnessing new means to present itself – to utilise the very capabilities wrought through “the sciences” to communicate, to enhance and enrich, to inform.
Virtual Peale, October 2023: Lee Boot – Abstracts and Artifacts
This is the trust of Lee Boot’s work; he has combined his Master of Fine Arts (painting) with the disciplined approach of research, evaluation and data interpretation / analysis, to develop and direct science-driven research enterprises. This has allowed him and his fellow researchers and students at URC to prototype and develop novel media and visualisation technologies specifically aimed at promoting awareness / understanding of a broad range of social issues: the aforementioned health/wellbeing, education and economics development through to the likes of social justice, democracy and climate change.
Twenty-five years ago, media artist Lee Boot stepped away from a promising artworld career to join scientists and others doing research to find ways to meet some of our most significant public challenges. For more than twenty-five years he has brought artist’s thinking into rooms where it is seldom seen. Literally and figuratively, he has coloured outside the lines, spilled paint on his colleagues, flipped the script and reframed conventional thinking to reimagine how we meet the challenges of our time and better ground our efforts in the cultures, experiences, and lives of the people they are intended to serve.
– Lee Boot biography
Within Abstracts & Artifacts the artist offers (in keeping with the title of the exhibition) pieces of abstract art, together with text elements which frame ideas as questions. The individual pieces of art partnered with the text elements might at first appear to be entirely random but each has a form and substance within it when studied, serving to illustrate and amplify the ideas posed within the written interrogative.
That the clarity of meaning may not spring forth at once should not be taken as a negative; the art is as much about altering perception as it is about illustrating an idea; ergo, it should engage the grey matter sitting between the ears, and may do so is so subtle a manner that repeated study of individual piece might well be required. In this, and as Boot notes in his video introduction, each section of the exhibition should not be considered as text + images, but as a visual interpretation of ideas drawn from a sketchbook used to formulate concepts and thinking.
Virtual Peale, October 2023: Lee Boot – Abstracts and Artifacts
Within the centre of the exhibition space is an area devoted to previous projects formulated by Lee and the URC, and it is worth taking the time to view these. Those elements taking the form of video screens (like the TVs within the main exhibition) can be touched to receive an introductory note card on each exhibition and a link to watch the video through a browser on Vimeo†.
All told, a genuinely engaging exhibition revealing the rarely-seen work of an artist-researcher at the forefront of disassembling the artificial barriers between art and science / research – my thanks to Eme for the invitation, and apologies for not making the opening. While visiting, do be sure to take in the ground level Peale Centre’s displays, both indoor and in the grounds.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 24th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript.
Server Deployments
No deployments for the week. However, all simhosts (SLS Main and RC) will be restarted.
Upcoming Deployments
The “fall Colours” simulator update is being held back due to a blocking bug which causes the viewer to hang. This requires both a viewer fix and an simulator fix, both of which are in progress. Despite the delay, the hope is to have this release to RC status before US Thanksgiving and grid-wide after Thanksgiving.
The simulator-side code for game controller support is also within the “Fall Colours” simulator update.
code will also be presented in initial work on updates to the SL damage system – specifically making damage a property of the object (e.g. a bullet), rather than being a script property (see the previous SUG meeting notes and this forum thread discussion) will now hopefully be available for testing on Aditi in week #42 and are being lined-up with the upcoming “Fall Colours” simulator update.
The rez_object_fail update planned for the upcoming “Fall Colours” simulator update is likely to slip back to a later simulator release.
The ability to turn an avatar invisible when they are sitting is being targeted for a simulator release following “Fall Colours”. This will help address issues such as allowing avatars to sit on small vehicles without them having to be deformed and folded up inside them to fit. This may additionally encompass the likes of feature requests BUG-232678 and/or BUG-233175.
Viewer Updates
No updates to viewers for the start of the week, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:
Release viewer, version 6.6.15.581961, promoted October 2 (formerly the Inventory Extensions Viewer).
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582093, October 6.
Maintenance W RC viewer, version 6.6.16.582075, October 5.
glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.581684, September 8.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
Games Controller Update
The documentation for the Game Controller SL event can be found with the SL wiki.
A projects viewer is available via Github actions, but per the above, simulator support is pending the Fall Colours RC release.
Pending main grid availability, the simulator support is available on Aditi (the Beta grid) within the following regions: Ahern, Cloud Sandbox 3, Cloud Sandbox 4, Mesh Sandbox 2, Sandbox Wanderton, Snark, and Tyl.
Currently, only 6 axes are supported on game controllers.
In Brief
A further discussion on combat and games in SL, updates to llDetectedDamage. This includes feature requests BUG-234583 “Detected Damage (combat updates)” and BUG-234584 “Detected Rezzer/Parent (combat updates)” and Linden damage. This also covering projectile rezzing, health regeneration, the ability to hve a Damage event trigger, rules enforcement (e.g. via scripts / experiences), etc.
The conversation spun out to touch other areas of interest to, but not reliant on gameplay in SL: the ability to crawl under objects, an actual crawl option within the locomotion graph, ideas such as feature request BUG-233175 “llSetAgentParams: a way to customize certain agent attributes”, whether or not the existing system for combat should be retained and enhanced or replaced – or a new system introduced with the old behaviours retained for those wishing to continue to use it.
Much of the discussion was speculative / requests, and it took up most of the meeting.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
