Tag: Content Creation 2024

2024 week #7: SL CCUG & TPVD summaries + Lua(u) scripting; Jira Archive

Posted on by Inara Pey
Timeless Seasons, January 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, February 15th, 2024, and the chat log transcript and video of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, February 16h, 2024. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording the TPVD meeting and providing the video, which is embedded at the end of this article.

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • 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. This meeting is held once a month  the third or fourth Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • In regards to both meetings:
    • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
    • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
    • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
    • Are open to all with an interest in either content creation or viewer development.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of either meeting.

Official Viewers Status

[Video: 1:40-2:38]

  • On Thursday, February 15th, the Emoji viewer updated to version 7.1.3.7878383867.
  • On Wednesday February 14th, the Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.3.7721015131.

The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, February 9 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7701974306, January 31, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
  • Project viewers:

General Notes

  • While there has been a push to get the Emoji viewer promoted, it is currently not clear which RC viewer will be the next to go to de facto release status.
  • GlTF Materials bug fixes will likely be split between the current Main-2 glTF viewer and the Graphics Featurettes viewer (see below).

Lua (or Luau) Client-Side Scripting (Both Meetings)

TPVD – Video: 3:05-17:30]

On February 9th, 2024, Linden Lab slipped out a Tools & Technology blog post announcing they are experimenting with Lua (Portuguese for “Moon”  – hence the logo for the language),  a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed primarily for embedded use in applications, for client-side scripting capabilities.

At the TPVD meeting [4:44-5:12], it was qualified that LL is actually looking at Luau, a Lua VM implementation developed by Roblox. It is hoped that this will enable the code to be sandboxed from the rest of the operating system.

General Points

  • Among other potential uses, this is seen as a possible means of providing:
    • Better support for, and control of, scripted agents (including automated testing capabilities using such agents).
    • Providing a means of supporting custom UI extensions / plug-ins without having to resort to C++.
    • Adding custom displays to present exiting information in the viewer, etc.
    • At the TPVD meeting [9:28-10:06], Rider Linden noted the Luau code will not interact with LSL scripted HUDs, and should not be seen as a means of viewer-side scripting of LSL HUDs at this point.
  • The capability is not being seen as “replacing” anything, the focus is on extending capabilities and providing creators and general users with more tools they might want to use.
  • There is a  Github repository for the viewer – which is still experimental – which can be used on Aditi (the beta grid) by those interested in testing it.
  • The project is described as “very early stages”, and creators / coders should not “read too much into” the current state of the project.
    • What is in it is a basic proof-of concept implementation designed to see how feasible it might be to pursue providing a client-side scripting option. Commands within the code may change as the capability is being developed.
    • How the API(s) will work and how it will look is still a work in progress, and how Lua can be used / where limits might be applied, etc., is still subject to internal discussion at the Lab.
    • It has also not been decided if the Lua/Luau support will extend to the mobile viewer.

Discussion Points

  • Lua/Luau has been selected because it is a small, lightweight language which is not dependent on the user having to install anything else on their computer in order for it to work.
  • It was suggested at the TPVD meeting that the capability should include the ability to disable it, so that TPVs providing support for their users will not have to try to determine if an issue is part of the viewer code or the result of running a Luau script they are not familiar with.
  • There has already been considerable discussion on Lua (and client-side scripting) via the Second Life Feedback Portal, and concerns raised on issues of permissions, authorship and trust within an environment where script code can make the viewer do arbitrary (and hidden from view) things is undesirable.
    • These have been acknowledged as concerns which will need to be addressed as the work progresses.
    • Plus, it was noted that any use of Lua/Luau with user-generated content will be much further down the road than any initial implementation.

JIRA Archive and Move to Canny / Github (CCUG)

  • Thursday, February 15th, 2024 marked the official switch-over from Jira to Canny / Github.
  • The URLs for the Second Life Jira now automatically redirects to the Canny Second Life Bug Reports page.
  • Public bug reports (and feature requests) filed via Jira are mostly archived on Github.
    • Due to the different permissions environments within Jira and Github, there are some edge cases which have yet to be archived.
  • Note that any ticket that previously had restricted access e.g. (Linden Only / Originator + Lindens) is not part of this archive.
  • Please refer to the official blog post for more, if required.

Graphics / glTF (CCUG)

  • 2K textures are being looked at. LL is aware that care needs to be taken in consideration of things like memory footprint and performance (particularly for lower-end systems), so there is going to be further analysis before anything is likely to surface within a public viewer.
  • The “Graphics Featurettes” viewer is  approaching Project Viewer status, and includes:
    • Geenz Linden’s work on Mirrors, including his latest updates to the capability.
    • Cosmic Linden’s work on applying glTF materials to terrain.
    • Updates which will allow the glTF / PBR swatch boxes in the Build / Edit floater display previews of the materials being selected, rather than grey boxes.
    • The first series of additional glTF extensions – Index of Refraction.
    • Initial work on 2K textures support.
  • Mirrors: the focus has been on optimisations and performance improvements to try to raise viewer frame rates. Whilst there have been improvements, the work has yet to reach the desired FPS range. Further:
    • There are a range of bugs which need to be resolved.
    • Additional work is also required on the reflection probe selection code for Mirrors, as at times the wrong probe is selected, giving less-than-desirable results.
    • Further visual improvements need to be added to the code, particularly with mirror blending against other reflection probes in the scene.
    • The UX for mirrors still needed to be finalised via the viewer UI team.
  • glTF terrain texturing: the focus has been on bug fixing and improving usability.
  • The nightly builds version of the Featurette viewer is available on Github, but is not suitable for use as a primary viewer, and the capabilities are not supported on the Main grid. As such, this viewer should only be used by those wishing to test the capabilities.
    • When testing, note that in keeping with the “featurette” approach, the capabilities may be hidden behind debug setting flags.
  • The Rumpus Room 2048 region (and neighbours) on Aditi provides back-end support for the Featurettes viewer.

In Brief

  • The CCUG meeting had a lot of WIBNI‡ discussions around inventory and other ideas, some of which are on LL’s “sometime” list, others of which are not under current consideration. As such, these are ignored for the purposes of this summary, but will obviously be covered should they become active projects.

TPVD Meeting

  • It was requested that Emojis have an option to be completely disabled in a viewer, with it being pointed out that it could be potentially confusing for people with visual impairments, particularly in group chat rife with Emoji over-use. LL has no plans for this; some TPVs (Firestorm) are planning on providing such an option.
  • A request was made to provide some form of enforced notification that groups utilising bots to relay group chat outside of SL (e.g. to a Discord server) must disclose they are doing so.
    • The main reason for this is that disclosure of IMs without consent – and group chat is a form of IM exchange – is a violation of the SL TOS, and those joining a group chat might have no idea the conversation is being relayed elsewhere.
    • There are complications with this (what if someone other than the group owner insinuates a bot relay into the group chat? How is that regulated?). But this does not necessarily negate the idea of some form of requirement for those group owners who directly utilise such relay tools.
    • A Canny feedback submission was requested, so the issue could be put before the relevant eyes at the Lab (management and legal) for further discussion.

Next Meetings

† 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.

‡ WIBNI – “wouldn’t it be nice if…”

2024 week #5: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hillvale Beach, December 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, February 1st, 2024.

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Held in-world at the Hippotropolis Campsite, where it is chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the SL Public Calendar.
    • Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
    • Open to all with an interest in content creation.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Official Viewers Status

  • The Maintenance W RC viewer – bug and crash fixes – updated to version 7.1.3.7701974306 on January 31st, January 31, 2024.

The remaining official viewers stood unchanged from the start of the week at the time of the meeting:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453691714, January 22, 2024.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
  • Project viewers:

General Viewer Notes

  • The Emoji viewer is still on the path towards an RC update, and it is still hoped it will get promoted to de facto release status Soon™.

Graphics / glTF

  • The “glTF featurettes” work is progressing, with the viewer following the current glTF Maintenance-2 RC viewer set to include:
    • Geenz Linden’s work on Hero reflection probes and reflections / mirrors and Cosmic Linden’s work on applying glTF materials to terrain.
    • Updates which will allow the glTF / PBR swatch boxes in the Build / Edit floater display previews of the materials being selected, rather than grey boxes.
    • Possibly, the first series of additional glTF extensions – Index of Refraction.
    • These capabilities (together with 2K textures support – see below) will be sitting behind debug settings, and so a) will need to be enabled by those wishing to test them; b) should be understood to be incomplete features subject to update and change / possible breakage.
  • 2K Textures:
    • The Lab is starting to assess the potential to allow 2K textures within SL. Such support will require “careful assessment” in terms of VRAM footprint, the risk of out of memory crashes on older systems and the like.
    • Runitai Linden believes that if there are issues with the viewer attempting to load a full 2K texture even when it is very small (or very distant), then it is a case of making the viewer “smarter” it terms of how it handles and samples / loads textures.
    • Support for 2K textures is available for general testing on Aditi (the Beta grid) within the RumpusRoom 2048 region.
    • One identified win is seen as terrain texturing, as 2K terrain textures at the region level should not overly tax systems and eliminate the current issues of blurriness / low texel density.

Mirrors

  • Work has been continuing of late, with what is described as a “significant” increase in reflection quality, and is starting to look “correct” as well as working with PBR.
  • Further performance tuning is required, and the clipping is “off in a lot of circumstances”.
  • The focus is on presenting planar reflections (utilising a cub map generated by a “Hero” reflection probe which is selection on the basis of the avatar’s proximity to it), with Geenz Linden noting it has the potential to allow more “fancy things” down the road.
  • It was noted that the approach taken has to offer a balance between intended use (to create actual mirror surfaces) against unintended uses (such as using the mirror capability within a highly polished floor), rather than trying to enforce some nebulous rule of “this functionality is ONLY for mirrors”), as well as taking into the consideration that it needs to be relatively easy to use.

Terrain

  • Cosmic Linden has indicated that once the PBR shader, etc., is working for terrain as per her current project, consideration is being given to allowing the same terrain shader to in-world objects.
  • So, for example, a mesh tunnel might be created and placed in-world, and then the outer face of the model set to display whatever the surrounding terrain might be.

“Combat Committee”

A reminder that:

  • The first meeting of the “Combat Committee” User Group will be held on Thursday, February 8th, at 13:00 SLT, and so will be alternating with the Content Creation User Group.
  • The venue for the meetings will be:  Longfellow/142/255/30.
  • The initial format for the meetings will be text-only, but this may become a mix of voice / text according to attendees’ preferences.
  • Further details are available on the SL wiki, and the meeting is now on the SL Public Calendar.

Rider Linden acknowledged the fact that I (aka “someone”) had pointed out having two user group meetings with the same abbreviation (CCUG) alternating between the same time slot on the same weekday might be confusing for some (even if the meetings are in different locations), so the name for this meeting might be changing.

In Brief

  • The transition from Jira to Github Issues  / Canny is still in progress at LL and is taking up resources and time, hence the slow-down in some areas of work (such as RC viewer updates. As per previous reporting, the work is due to be completed by the end of February, when Jira will cease to be used.
    • The use of Canny remains a source of unhappiness among those who tend to raise bug reports, largely as a result of its limited functionality in some areas (such as no support for any other attachment type other than static images).
    • The Lab is continuing to work with the Canny development team to try to improve things.
  • As was noted in the previous CCUG meeting, the placing of incomplete features (such as the glTF terrain and mirrors functions mentioned above) behind debug settings is a part of a more general move to add features and capabilities to the viewer more iteratively, allowing individual capabilities to be added (and potentially tested on a limited basis by those interested), but only fully exposed to all users once they have been validated / have any required supporting functionality / capabilities available to them.
  • There was a general discussion on the viewer UI and how it tries to meet the needs of very different groups of users  – content creators and “general” users, and how it might be made more responsive to specific modes of use – if you are using the viewer to explore, take photos, play a game in-world, and carry out basic building / editing, etc., then the viewer can be run in a “generic” mode to do all of these things, but if precision tools are required for design and creation, then the viewer can be switched to a mode which provides more specialised options through floaters and menus.
  • The question was asked that if SL is to support the “entire” glTF specification, including animations, does this mean future support for custom skeletons, and if so what does that mean for the current animation marketplace (e.g. preventing confusion as to what will / will not run against different skeleton types).
    • Runitai Linden’s viewer was that if custom skeletons are to be supported, then it would require suitable tools which allow for animation / joint retargeting (e.g. animations made for the current Bento skeleton could be retargeted of any other given skeleton, and vice versa). However, whilst there are tools to achieve this, they would require investigation and assessment.
    • There are limitations on how far retargeting will go, however (and it will not be entirely devoid of creator intervention), so if custom skeletons were to be allowed in SL, it was noted that expectations could be in part managed by specifying with which actual skeleton(s) the offered animation / avatar, etc. has been designed to work.
  • Concern was raised as to the constraints which might be applied if SL has an open gateway to importing glTF meshes from external sources such as SketchFab, where the content may well look pretty but is hardly appropriate for real time game rendering, the view being the Land Impact alone is not going to be sufficient.
    • The view from the Lab is that there will be some form of weighting system at import, at least analogous to Land Impact, but better suited for the acceptance / rejection of content, and this will vary for different content types (e.g. glTF scenes might be assessed of number of nodes, how many bytes in the asset, how many instances of the asset, etc.).

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

2024 week #3: SL CCUG and TPVD meetings summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Blue NANA Land, December 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 18th, 2024, and the chat log transcript and video of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, January 19th, 2024. My thanks as always to Pantera for recording the TPVD meeting and providing the video, which is embedded at the end of this article.

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
  • 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.
    • This meeting is held once a month  the third or fourth Friday, at 13:00 SLT at the Hippotropolis Theatre.
  • In regards to both meetings:
    • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
    • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
    • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
    • Are open to all with an interest in either content creation or viewer development.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of either meeting.

Please note: my audio recording of the CCUG suffered a glitch in writing to disk. Whilst over an hour of audio was apparently recorded according to Audacity, only 22 minutes was actually saved to disk. As the meeting utilised voice, the loss of around half the audio means that response to questions and generally commentary from the Lab was lost. Therefore, these notes only reflect the section of the meeting which did save for playback.

Official Viewers Status

No updates through the week, leaving the current crop of official viewers as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.2.7215179142, formerly the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, issued December 15, promoted January 8, 2024 – numerous bug fixes and improvements – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance-2 RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7467259489, issued January 12, 2024.
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.3.7453541295, January 9, 2024 – bug and crash fixes.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

General Viewer Notes

  • The glTF Maintenance 2 viewer includes, among other things, less blue tint to improve the general environment appearance.
  • The Emojis viewer is finally on the path towards an RC update, and it is hoped that this will be the finally update for the viewer before it gets promoted to de facto release status.
  • There is concern that the viewer crash rate has been higher than usual over the last several releases, so it appears viewer-side engineering effort is to be put towards determining underlying causes and rectifying them in order to bring the rate back down.
  • Longer-term there will be further Inventory work, with additional flags being added to the viewer which will enable future additional Inventory-related functionality – but it is too early in the process to go into specifics.

Mac OS Requirements

  • The Mac OS requirements for the viewer are changing as a result of Apple ending security updates for OSX 11 and earlier.
  • Whilst Mac OS 11 will now be the minimum requirement (up from 10.3), the recommendation to Mac users running Mac OS 11 or earlier is to “explore macOS upgrade options as soon as possible” due to the resultant security concerns (via Soft Linden).

Graphics / glTF and Future Viewer Development Overall

  • Following the glTF Maintenance 2 RC, it is likely there will be a further graphics RC viewer which will combine:
    • Geenz Linden’s work on Hero reflection probes and reflections / mirrors.
    • Cosmic Linden’s work on applying glTF materials to terrain.
    • Updates which will allow the glTF / PBR swatch boxes in the Build / Edit floater display previews of the materials being selected, rather than grey boxes.
    • Possibly, the first series of additional glTF extensions – Index of Refraction, and also potentially testing support for 2K textures.
  • The idea is to try to move development within the viewer away from huge projects (like PBR Materials), which tend to take a lot of time to develop (1 to 2 years) and suffer a lot of visible feature creep. Instead, the idea is to tackle smaller components and build them out within successive RCs which come together to enable the kind of functionality sought be large scale projects.
  • It is hoped that by focusing on “featurettes”, smaller tranches of work can be more easily validated, that workflow with development and bug fixing can become a lot more linear, and individual elements of the work can be enabled as they are ready, or hidden behind debug flags until such time as functionality they are dependent upon is also ready.
  • Should this approach work with the next iteration of glTF capabilities as listed above, the approach will likely be applied to other viewer projects.
  • BUG-234728 “[PBR] Masked alpha gradient textures change with viewing angle” has been accepted as a known PBR issue, but there is no time frame on a potential fix.

RLV / RLVa Adoption

[TPVD Video 10:16-15:40 and 25:28-28:23]

  • Per a previous TPVD meeting summary, LL is interested in the potential to adopt RLV/a functionality into the official viewer.
  • Adoption has been a popular request from many users, as RLV is seen to have a lot of beneficial uses well beyond its original scope (as is the case the RLV-driven “Wardrobe” systems which allow outfits to be visually previewed and worn in just a couple of clicks), many of which either cannot be easily achieved in viewers without RLV support, or would require Experience-based scripting, which is not seen as ideal.
  • One problem is that RLV/RLVa is for many scripters, an “all or nothing” API, as it can touch on so many areas of the viewer, so that to be of value, the entire protocol would need to be implemented – which would be a major overhaul of the viewer.
  • As such, it was noted that RLV/RLVa implementation within the official viewer could be an ideal candidate for the “featurette” approach to viewer development noted above: discrete elements of the code implemented to a point where they can be validated, but placed behind flags so that they are disabled until such time as the overall implementation has reached a point where they can be jointly enabled.
  • The option to turn it off completely – as is currently the case in the majority of viewers running the RLV/a protocol – would be retained for those not wishing to use it.

In Brief

CCUG Meeting

  • Canny Feedback glTF Materials w/Bake Layers-as-Base Colour Turn White When Editing BOM Layer caused some surprise within the Lab, as applying glTF materials in the manner hadn’t been seen as expected behaviour, as is the fact that the layers display as expected outside of the appearance editor.
    • It was noted that most PBR-related Bakes on Mesh requests have been to allow the Bake Service to composite multiple PBR materials applied to different layers (e.g. being able to apply one materials set to skin, another to (say) shirt layer and another to (say) pants layer).
    • This is something LL would like to tackle, but it is seen as a significant overhaul of the Bake Service, and so is not currently on the roadmap for implementation.
  • There is a known issue with screen space reflections (SSR) on Linden Water which can make the latter appear to “glitch”. Brad Linden is still investigating this, but the solution might be tweaking to / replacement of the SSR algorithm so it “plays nicely” with Linden Water.
  • Object unpacking: a discussion on the potential to be able to unpack the contents of objects directly from Inventory, rather than having to rez them in-world first or for creators to supply them in a scripted HUD for unpacking.
    • A feature request for the reverse – Right-Click to Box In Inventory – has been accepted (which does not indicate it will be implemented in the immediate future).
    • In terms of unpacking / previewing contents of on item directly from Inventory, this is seen as a harder issue as once items are contained within another, they are effectively in the “inventory” of the containing item, rather than the account inventory, and the container’s inventory is only loaded by the simulator when it (or a copy thereof) is rezzed (or attached as a HUD) in-world.
    • Given the above, a new Inventory behaviour would be required which would simulate the object being rezzed in-world / attached as a HUD in order to trigger the simulator to load its contents. This was noted as something worth consideration even if only as a mental exercise at the moment, in order to determine how it might be handled.
    • This is the point at which my audio recording of the meeting truncated during saving, and so ends the summary notes for the CCUG meeting.

TPVD Meeting

  • [Video: 16:02-17:40] Avatar de-clouding: There have been multiple anecdotal reports of avatars taking longer to de-cloud when logging-in. The anecdotal responses at the meeting varied between no real difference and comments that AWS may have had issues over the holiday period resulting in packet loss (and thus longer load times), but this appears to have since been resolved.
  • [Video 19:20-25:09] a discussion on TPV development, licensing, open-sourcing code, what is and is not permissible, new viewers, etc. Please refer to the video for more.
  • General notes:
    • Planar alignment being broken in the Build / Edit floater is a known issue and due to be addressed.
    • There are no plans for LL to offer various “fallbacks” for PBR to “classic” (Blinn-Phong) materials to account for users currently not running PBR enabled versions of viewers, as PBR will be a part of all viewers as they update and move forward.
    • There are no plans to make SL available through platforms such as Steam (as once was the case), due to issues around content restrictions, monetisation methods, etc.
    • A discussion on Twitch not allowing SL streaming and whether LL should try to engage with them to support it. Given that there are other avenues for streaming, and Twitch is free to stand whatever barrier to use of its platform it likes, this would seem unlikely.

Next Meetings

† 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.

2024 week #1: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR and MP

Posted on by Inara Pey
Blue Finch Frosty Hollow, November 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, January 4th, 2024.

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the the SL Public Calendar, which also includes the location for the meetings.
    • Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
    • Open to all with an interest in content creation.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript.

Official Viewers Status

No updates through the week, leaving the current crop of official viewers as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, issued December 1, promoted December 14 – displaying user-customized keybindings in chat – NO CHANGE.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 7.1.2.7213596294, December 18 – bug and crash fixes.
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y RC, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

General Notes

  • It appears that the glTF PBR Materials maintenance RC viewer is being fast tracked for promotion to de facto release status. This could happen in the next few (working) days.
  • The Emojis viewer is currently held up due to some viewer library merging issues and some other unspecified issues. However, the hope at the Lab is that this will be the next viewer promotion after the glTF PBR maintenance release.

Client-Side Scripting

  • This has been the subject of some discussions at a number of recently User Group meetings and also internally at the Lab. Key areas of use for such a capability are seen by the Lab as:
    • Allowing viewer modifications to the UI.
    • Enabling client-side script testing.
    • Providing support for viewer-side functionality.
  • Those as the meeting saw the ability to use client-side scripting to generate HUDs (with the ability for the client scripts to trigger server-side supporting LSL events / functions); ability for custom menu generation for products, etc.
  • In terms of HUDs, it was suggested by Vir Linden that a more cohesive approach might be to provide support directly through the existing viewer UI and using commands native to the UI rather than part of an additional scripting capability to build / operate HUDs.
  • Note that this is not at present an active project, more the fact that discussions are going on about the potential for such a capability.

PBR Materials

  • Runitai Linden has been working to improve the look of the PBR EEP settings in light (no pun intended) of the significant negative user feedback concerning it.
  • Whilst it does have a large number of fixies and improvements, the glTF PBR maintenance viewer does not address all issues users have reported, and a further maintenance viewer for PBR is anticipated some time after the current update has been promoted.
  • A discussion was raised on the inability to have PBR materials on a object together with “classic” (Blinn-Phong) materials underlying them as a fall-back (as to get to the “classic” materials, the PBR must effectively be stripped from the object.
    • As the two approaches are essentially incompatible, an effective means of making this possible is not seen as easy / possible. The decision to separate them was also a conscious one on LL’s part, specifically because they did not want to burden creators with the idea that they must provide two sets of materials for their content in order for that content to “look good” under bot PBR viewers and non-PBR viewers (particularly as glTF / PBR is seen as the future of Second Life .
    • One suggestion was to perhaps used the PBR albedo texture as the defuse texture with “classic” materials. However, it was pointed out that again, PBR albedo textures are not the same as diffuse textures, so whilst it might work in some cases, it probably won’t work in all cases, and mileage on effectiveness subsequently vary.
    • Given that PBR is intended to be the way forward for the majority of SL, the preferred approach (from LL’s perspective) is that where a need to offer products with both Blinn-Phong (classic) materials and PBR materials, then produce two versions of the product.
  • A request was made to have more PDR assets added to the Library (notably PBR EEP settings). It was indicated that LL are looking to add more PBR content to the Library, which may well include additional sky settings.

Marketplace Discussion

  • As members of the Commerce Team were present at the meeting, there was a further discussion on how the MP is being gamed. This focused on how some sellers are exploiting the fact that items which are intended for gifting to others must have a Linden Dollar value against them in order for the “Add Item To Cart As Gift” button to be available.
    • The gaming involves placing the term “gift” and multiple product titled, then charging only L$1.00 for each item
    • This results in multiple items being sold in high volumes, helping to promote the seller(s) to the top of the Marketplace Best Selling Products listing.
    • Garfield Linden indicated he had some ideas to help address this, but needed to discuss them internally.
  • The above led to a wider discussion on Gifting through the Marketplace – such as clarifying the gifting process so people don’t end up using Buy Now in error, and sending an intended gift to themselves, and also on providing the means for creators to send copies of their own products as gifts through the MP (e.g. to bloggers for review purposes).

Next 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 gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.