Tag: Server Updates

2024 SL SUG meetings week #35 summary: Combat 2.0; Kindriod AI

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ai-mura, July 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 27th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, August 27th, the SLS Main channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, August 28th:
    • Simulators on the BlueSteel RC channel should receive the Picnic simulator update (which includes: llFindNotecardTextSync, llDerezObject, for the viewer side, group member lists can now be retrieved in a paginated manner).
      • Picnic also include the first of the region crossing improvements Monty Linden has been working on. These should see a) avatars already in a destination region getting better frame rates as others arrive in the region; b) crossing avatars with too many scripts will experience slower but smoother crossings.
      • Monty reminded people that region crossings involving vehicles are a more complicated issue and not part of this work.
    • The remaining simulator RC channels will be restarted without any new deployment / update.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.9.10515727195, formerly the Atlasaurus-WebRTC RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling, WebRTC) promoted August 26.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • None.

Combat 2 Updates

Rider Linden is proposing the following for respawn:

When death occurs, if a respawn location has been set the agent will be teleported to the specified location. If no respawn location is set, the region’s default death behaviour applies (for instance teleport home, or teleport to telehub). The agent’s respawn point survives region crossing and death teleports, but is cleared when the agent makes an inter-region teleport or logs out of Second Life. The following new functions have been added to LSL: llSetRespawnLocation(vector position, rotation facing); llSetRespawnLandmark(string inventory_name); llClearRespawn() and llHasRespawnSet(key agent_id)

He further indicated that he had looked at the above as not necessarily having to be tied to an Experience, they could be granted via a HUD, a regular permission request or an Experience, however questions were raised about managing unwanted scripted respawn being created by users and other potential complexities that may move these functions back towards being Experience based.

This led to a discussion on options and Combat, which ran through the majority of the meeting – please refer to the video below.

Kindroid AI NPCs & Companions

On Monday, August 26th, Linden Lab announced “the integration” of AI companions and NPCs using Kindroid (with the announcement causing some confusing in using both “experience” in generic terms and in reference to SL Experiences).

With Kindroid, you can create engaging and lively characters with lifelike memory, intelligence, and personalities that interact and engage in emotionally-deep and meaningful ways – and then bring them to life within our virtual world. Imagine crafting characters that add fun and engaging new narratives into your roleplaying adventures – or maybe you’ll create a companion that can serve as a language tutor or mentor – the possibilities are endless!
With its API, you can integrate Kindroid characters into your Second Life experience using LSL and scripting, just like other objects. Whether you’re looking to enhance social interactions or explore new storytelling possibilities, Kindroid offers an exciting new dimension for any Second Life adventure.

– From the LL announcement

The announcement provides detailed instructions on using LSL to link an Kindroid AI “chatbot” with objects in-world, with LL recommending the use of Animesh, and, for security purposes, the use of the Experience Key Value Pairs (KVP) database to ensure security of API keys.

I’m honestly not au fait enough with Kindroid or AI chat system (generative or otherwise) to pass considered opinion. However, given it is reported at after the initial free avatar, Kindroid requires a subscription (from USD $13.99) after the 3-day free trial and offers limited assurances on user data protection, then its hard not to raise an eyebrow. Anyway, the topic itself came up for discussion towards the end of the meeting. Please refer to the link to the announcement above and the the video below for more.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #34 summary and WebRTC Update

Posted on by Inara Pey
Luane’s World, July 2024 – blog post

Updated with Video: apologies to Pantera, did not see her at the meeting!

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 20th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end – my thanks to her for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, August 20th, the Summer Fun simulator release (which includes the Combat 2.0 updates and the new back-end Game Controller support, although the viewer-side elements of the latter have yet to make it into a formal project or RC viewer) was deployed to the SLS Main channel, making it grid-wide.
  • On Wednesday, August 21st, the simulator RC channels will be restarted without any new deployment / update.

SL Viewer Updates

It appears that all RC viewer except Atlasaurus (which now included the viewer-side WebRTC work) have been pulled to allow LL to focus on PBR / glTF issues per my CCUG meting summary of August 15th.

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Atlasaurus RC (Web RTC; PBR fixes; object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.10326512121, August 14.

WebRTC Update

On Tuesday, August 20th, Linden Lab issued an update on the WebRTC work.

Project Summary

  • Replacing Vivox for Voice in SL with WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”).
  • Benefits:
    • Move to a “defacto standard” for voice services, with features such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc., and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality
    • WebRTC can be supplied within the viewer using a library and wrapper, ending the need for any additional third-party plug-in for Voice like SLvoice.exe, as supplied by Vivox.
    • Opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.
  • Care is being taking to address potential security issues (e.g. preventing eavesdropping, exposing users’ IP address (by using an internal proxy server), etc.).
  • Feature requests for WebRTC made via the WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal are being evaluated and some are being actioned, together with issues being investigated.
  • LL will be looking to Linux devs to help give feedback on how well WebRTC is working on their Linux viewers.

Key Points from LL’s Update

  • As per my viewer notes above, the viewer-side WebRTC work has been combined with the Atlasaurus RC viewer.
  • There are (at the time of writing) four regions on the WebRTC “Pop Rocks” simulator channel: WebRTC Voice 1 – WebRTC Voice 2 – WebRTC Voice 3 and WebRTC Voice 4.
  • Some of the known issues include:
    • Conference/Group/P2P in WebRTC is not yet available on the WebRTC Voice regions.
    • An occasional popup regarding voice server incompatibility can appear. Restart voice if you see this.  To restart voice in the viewer:
      • Hover over the speaker icon in the upper right corner of the viewer.
      • Wait for the dialogue to appear.
      • Uncheck the voice checkbox and wait a few seconds.
      • Recheck the voice checkbox.
    • Selecting another voice device while in a group, conference, or peer-to-peer call may drop the call.
    • Voice morphing is not available in WebRTC-Voice enabled regions.  If voice morphing had been enabled via an older viewer, you will see a dialogue to let you know the implications of using voice:
Voice morphing notification. Via; Linden Lab
  • As voice morphing is currently tied to Vivox, those currently using it are advised to look at the “many excellent alternatives for voice morphing that have become available to the general public as technology has developed”. In addition an FAQ has been produced to help with questions about WebRTC and Voice Morphing.

In Brief

Map System Update

  • Pepper Linden provided an update on the work to improve the world map and map tile updates (see my week #29 summary for more on this):
We had several deploys related to maps, included among them were changes to fix region surrounds in map tiles, as well as a fix to our maps CDN — hopefully they’ve been acting better for you all. Stale tile pruning is still on hold, as there’s a few regions on the grid that weren’t generating their tile — we have a fix that we’re hoping to get out soon, and once that is out, we’ll finally be able to turn on stale tile pruning. 
Bumping the tile resolution is on the roadmap. The current maps is very limited in what it can render — we’ve discussed moving to a viewer-based bot that would be capable of rendering mesh, etc.
  • Pepper also noted that Maps should load a lot faster.

General

We have some decent tests, found ways to hit weird edge cases, and general improvements are to be had. Vehicles with riders are still hilariously bad. We’ll have to tackle that in subsequent projects. It’s just hard to fathom.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #33 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cloud Edge II, July 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 13th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • There will be no planned deployments for the week, but the channels will be restarted. LL have decided to hold-off deploying the Summer Fun / Combat 2 update to further channels for another week. Rider Linden described the reason thus:
As we rolled out further we encountered a product that had a scripting bug that caused it to misbehave on the new servers. We reached out to the creator and he’s fixed the issue and is issuing updates. We wanted to give him a chance to get those out all across the grid.

SL Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, August 13th, the WebRTC RC viewer updated to version 7.1.9.10325451220.

The rest of the current crop of viewers remains as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.10220184061, August 7.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

In Brief

Combat Partnership Reminder

  • With Combat 2.0 becoming available, Linden Lab has announced the Combat 2.0 Promotion Partnership Programme has been launched.
    • The intention behind the Promotion Partnership Programme this is to give those actively involved in combat activities in Second Life the “opportunity to help us spread the word across the grid about Combat 2.0 in Second Life”.
    • In particular, this will see some of the LL combat regions (e.g. Concord and Lexington) a facelift and use them to showcase Combat 2.0, with participants in the Programme asked to donate free-to-use combat items for use in the regions.
    • In addition, participants will have their regions / communities included in a Combat section of the Destination Guide. There may be other benefits for participants as well.
    • Those interested can sign-up via this Google form.

General

  • Recent bugs / requests under review / potentially to be pulled into upcoming simulator updates (e.g. BBG, which will follow Picnic):
  • Weird region crossing behaviour:
    • Various reports of a rare and intermittent vehicle region crossing oddity, in which the crossing goes wrong, unseating the rider- but rezzing a grey prim in the rider’s place as a par to of the vehicle’s linkset “created” by the rider. When unlinked, the prim slides around on the ground but has a rotation lock property on it that keeps it upright.
    • Some think this might be a very old bug that can replace the vehicle rider with an agent-sized cube, per [#BUG-3547] Sim Crossing Rezzes Objects Surrounding Individuals.
    •  It is unclear if any report has been filed recently against the problem, so if anyone encounters it, they are asked to raise a bug report with as much details as possible.
    • Leviathan Linden noted:
Avatars ARE prims, but with some meta data and a session that makes them special. The prim should have been deleted when the session was cleaned up or failed…. which suggests the session itself failed to be created on the far side of the region crossing.
  • There was a discussion on regex functions, based off of llRegex* functions, of which Rider Liden said:
I’ve just not had time to get to it yet. I think I have the code organized to a point right now where they wouldn’t be too much work to implement.
  • Please refer to the video below for further details 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #32 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Soulstone, July 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 6th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, August 6th 2024.
  • On Wednesday, August 7th:
    • The BlueSteel RC is to be restarted.
    • The remaining RC channels should receive the Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.

Upcoming Releases

  • The is an internal discussion going on at the Lab as to the next simulator update. This may either be Picnic or the back-end WebRTC updates – with the most likely order being Picnic first, then WebRTC.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.10084807842, July 26.
    • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

Game Controller

  • As a reminder – Summer Fun includes the Game Controller updates from Leviathan Linden, but these have yet to reach a former viewer release.
  • Also, and just as a FYI for those trying the pre-release game control viewer:
    • If the viewer is used on a simulator without the back-end support (e.g. any simulator on the SLS Main channel after toWednesday, August 7th, and Tuesday, August, 13th), the viewer will be logged out in what might look like a crash.
    • This generally only happens the the GameControl option is enabled, but has also been reported on occasion even with the option disabled.

In Brief

  • A general and (theoretical) means of cleaning-up the viewer codebase, and the potential risks in doing so (e.g. apparently “unused” code removed or capabilities thought as no longer relevant resulting in content breakage.
  • The above extended into the use of APIs in the viewer as well, with encouragement for those with ideas for APIs to file them as feature requests (such as this feature request).
  • Rider confirmed that the promised facelift for the LL combat regions will focus on Concord, Lexington and No Man’s Land.
  • It’s been noted that outdated map tiles are still appearing on the World Map despite recent updates – apparently, the final updates to the map server have yet to be deployed, hence the delays in updates some might witness.
  • Please refer to the video below for further details.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #31 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Magic Hour, July 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 30th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, July 30th 2024.
  • On Wednesday, July 24th:
    • The BlueSteel RC is due to (again) receive Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden. Hopefully this third attempt will see it stick.
    • The remaining RC channels will be restarted.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.10084807842, July 26.
    • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.

WebRTC Voice Update

Summary

  • Replacing the use of Vivox for Voice in SL with WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”).
  • Benefits:
    • WebRTC is something of a “defacto standard”, with features such as automatic echo cancellation, better noise cancellation and automatic gain control, etc., and offers much improved audio sampling rates for improved audio quality
    • WebRTC will be supplied within the viewer using a library and wrapper. This will mean no requirement to run a third-party voice plugin (SLvoice.exe, as supplied by Vivox) going forward.
    • The switch to WebRTC also opens the door to adding new features and capabilities to SL Voice, some of which have been long-requested.
    • Care is being taking to address potential security issues (e.g. preventing eavesdropping, exposing users’ IP address (by using an internal proxy server), etc.).
  • Feature requests for WebRTC made via the WebRTC board on the SL Feedback Portal are being evaluated and some are being actioned, together with issues being investigated.
  • LL will be looking to Linux devs to help give feedback on how well WebRTC is working on their Linux viewers.

Status

  • The plan remains to potentially make a switch-over to WebRTC on the back-end in August.
  • This is dependent upon third-party viewers picking up the WebRTC updates from LL and incorporating them.
  • During the transition period, viewers will connect to either Vivox or WebRTC voice, depending on the service available to them. As such most voice services should be uninterrupted.
  • HOWEVER, during the transitional period, there will be some short-term issues around peer-to-peer, Group and ad-hoc voice connections between those on regions running the two different voice services (Vivox and WebRTC).

In Brief

  • A further conversation on Lua(u), including supported data types and whether an integer type will be added to LL’s implementation. The answer may be no, going on the Lua FAQ.
  • There is a reported uptick in vehicle region crossing issues in the Blake Sea regions, but more than anecdotal reports are required (e.g. information such as timestamps, agents, and regions need to be properly reported which incidents occur.
  • Changes related to avatar teleports are due to be included in the Picnic simulator update, which should start deployment as Summer Fun reached the Main SLS channel (or shortly thereafter).
  • Monty Linden has some event-queue fixes to bring to life, and would like to get them up on Aditi as a pilot test for various viewers.
This is a re-writing of a fundamental service between viewer and server.  *Not* the LSL scripting event queue – communications event queue between viewers and simulators (we have lots of things called ‘event queue’).  [The] discussion is deep inside this [forum] topic for the interested.

– Monty Linden

  • Concern was raised over recent changes to llSensor doubling the number of objects returned, causing some scripts to receive more data than they are designed to manage, resulting in increased stack heap collisions.
    • It was requested that when fundamental changes are made to a function like this, they are used within a new function, rather than changing the existing function. This sparked a conversation on what a new llSensor function (“llSensorPlus” or whatever) might include / work.
    • It was further equested that if llSensor is being updated, news flags / filters are added (e.g. HAS_SIT_TARGET, TOUCH_EVENT, SOUND_EMITTER).
    • A Canny feature request on the latter was requested, with examples of how the flags might be used.

† 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.

2024 SL SUG meetings week #30 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
A Place Between the Rocks, June 2024 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 23rd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log. Pantera videoed the meeting, and the recording is embedded at the end of this piece – my thanks, as always, for her work.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Simulator Deployments

  • The SLS Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.
  • On Wednesday, July 24th:
    • The BlueSteel RC is due to (again) receive Summer Fun simulator update, which includes the initial Combat 2 updates from Rider Linden.
    • The remaining RC channels will be restarted.

SL Viewer Updates

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Atlasaurus RC (object take options; improved MOAP URL handling), version 7.1.9.9981869229, July 22.
    • WebRTC Voice RC, version 7.1.9.9688089989, July 1.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.9.9555137545, June 21.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.9.9469671545, June 14.
  • Project viewers:
    • None.

In Brief

  • Combat:
    • Rider Linden reminded people that Thursday, July 25th will be the final meeting of the Combat User Group, and will take the form of a combat session to take place on the Concord combat region (not Lexington, as previously indicated). Those wishing to participate and who have suitable Combat 2 weapons they are willing to share are asked to bring them to the meet-up.
    • Change defaults for health_regen_rate and damage_throttle has been implemented:
      • The damage throttle is now off by default, the the default for the throttle is 1 point/6 seconds.
    • In addition: post death invulnerable agents should no longer be able to inflict damage directly. However sitting will remove that invulnerability.
  • The discussion on possible issues with llGetMass(), wherein a objects mass will not remain constant if it is resized and its density changed (via llSetPhysicsMaterial) to compensate has resulted in a new feature request  – llOverrideMass(float new_mass) – being raised. This triggered a further discussion on mass / density calculations, specifically in reference to vehicles and passengers.
  • A general discussion on scripting, rezzing, updating object (/rezzer) contents.

 

† 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.