Tag: Server Updates

2024 SL SUG meetings week #25 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hylia’s Lake, May 2024 – blog post †

Update: following the publication of this summary, Linden Lab announced changes to texture upload costs (mentioned at the end of this article). In short: the Lab will be reducing the cost of 2K texture uploads for Premium Plus and Lifetime Premium Plus accounts to L$0. See here for more.  

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  June 18th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, June 18th, the Main SLS channel was updated with the Spring Break simulator update (which has a fix for the hovering-at-login issue) .
  • On Wednesday, June 19th, the RC channels were restarted without any update.

Coming up as the next simulator update is Summer Fun, which is currently with the Lab’s QA team. Following that will be Picnic, which is still in the process of being put together.

SL Viewer Updates

No updates to the current official viewers, leaving the list as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.8.9375512768, formerly the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer dated June 5 and promoted June 10th – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.8.9130881608, June 10.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following and other topics discussed:

  • This week was a Summer Solstice party, so discussion was semi-limited.
  • As per my recent Combat User Group summary, Rider is looking at avatar rotation / aiming and improving llRotateAvatar, but as the former are controller viewer-side and the later in simulator-side, is making this is proving to be an issue.
  • Simon Linden is “working on chat”, but would not be drawn on specifics, other than “it should be more useful”.
  • The updates required to the Bake Service (and all associated services) to support 2K textures is still on the “to be done” list.
  • It was pointed out that the Lab’s Premium Memberships page still states Premium Plus levies no charges for any uploads (click Even More Benefits to view) – despite this not being the case for 2K textures
  • General discussions on camera offset and llGetCameraPos().

† 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 #24 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bella’s Lullaby, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  June 11th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, June 11th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment due to a bug in the Spring Break release.
  • On Wednesday, June 12th, all RC channels should be updated with the bug fixed version of Spring Break, if it clears QA.

SL Viewer Updates

The rest of the current official viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • The server team has recently switched over to Gitflow as their workflow. This may enable the team to provide very bleeding-edge simulator channels on Aditi (the Beta grid), where the curious can poke at code that is mostly untried and certainly untested.
  • For the current week, the server team is engaged on a bugsmash run: suspending work on their core projects and spending a week(ish) focusing on resolving bugs and smaller features for inclusion in a future simulator release. Further requests for simulator-side fixes were taken at the meeting.
  • Monty’s work on smoothly the impact of teleports into regions is starting on its way to being included in a simulator update – no time frame on when it will surface, however.
  • Leviathan Linden pointed out that there is a public github repository for the official “master message template”. This is the file which describes all of the “message” blocks that can be packed in the UDP SL protocol, both between the viewer and the server and also between the backend servers, and which can be used during local builds of the viewer. However, the  repository has been stale for 7 years, and he is now updating it with up-to-date information.
  • A discussion on avatar physics shapes, physics on avatar attachment (none), avatar physics shapes and hit boxes (the latter related to future Combat 2.0 work).
  • General discussions on features and options (not all of them simulator-related).

† 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 #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
A Place in the Sun, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 4th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, June 4th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, June 5th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be restarted.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update.

Upcoming Deployments

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.
  • A fix for the “flying on logging-in” issue.

Those wishing to test any of the above in advance of the deployment of Summer Fun (due some time in June), can do so in the region Riders Test Channel on Aditi (the Beta grid).

The July simulator update is to be called Picnics, but there is no information on what it might contain at present, other than EZ_PARAM_DIE_IF_NO_REZZER, and llDerezMyObject.

Bugsmash Work

  • Bugsmash is the term given to a dev team suspending work on their core projects and spending a week(ish) focusing on resolving bugs and smaller features for inclusion in a future simulator release.
  • In recognition of this, it was suggested that if there are specific, niggling bugs people want looked at, they raise them at this meeting and the Tuesday, June 11th meeting. There is no guarantee any specific issues will be addressed during the Bugsmash period, but having a list  – and update to bugs on Canny will help the Lab assess what might be examined / fixed.

SL Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, June 4th, the Materials Featurettes RC viewer updated to version 7.1.8.9357006492.

The rest of the current official viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A discussion on further LSL functions / updates.
  • Commentary about avatar animations states / syncing between viewers / the simulator in terms of updates being passed back and forth.
  • The batting of ideas around particles and the particle system.

† 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 #22 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mirai Melody, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 28th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, May 28, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, May 29th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update, after this had to be rolled back in week #20, and didn’t make the cut for week #21.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployment

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.

SL Viewer Updates

No official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipeline as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A further discussion on potential HTTP updates (such has the ability to read HTML).
  • A question on increasing the memory limit for scripts – in short, nothing in the works at present.
  • Both of the above sparked a general and overlapping discussion – please refer to the video below.
  • A request was made for a SL Combat 2.0 feature – the ability to teleport vehicles (which obviously could be used for other applications).
    • As Rider Linden pointed out, just one issue here is that regions (and parcels within them) can block object entry, and thus could cause teleports of vehicle at scale to go awry at times, as the teleport would have no way of knowing if vehicle entry is permitted at the destination location.
    • However, he requested the idea be submitted as a feature request so that it can be discussed internally.

† 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 #21 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Quiet, Alpha Auer, May 2024 - click any image for full size
Quiet, Alpha Auer, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 21st, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, May 21st, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, May 22nd:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update, after this had to be rolled back in week #20.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.

Upcoming Deployment

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.

SL Viewer Updates

No official viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipeline as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – 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).
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.8.9103842320, May 17.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • The feature request to prioritise 2K support for Bakes on mesh is gathering a lot of support.
    • This sparked discussion on VRAM being maxed out, and a reiteration that the viewer show only download textures at the resolution required to match their screen size (e.g. if the texture takes up 512×512 pixels – that’s the resolution downloaded and used), and only download and use the full 2K version when zoomed right in, then discarding higher resolutions and clearing VRAM on zooming out. This also lead to comments as to the overall effectiveness of this approach.
  • llSetContentType and setting it text/html:  a discussion on the restriction whereby if the requesting html viewer is not owned by the server object, or is not the built in html viewer, the sent content type is just “text”, and the implications of removing that restriction (e.g. to make media on a prim (MOAP) more generally usable).
  • Further discussion on the notecard cache change.
  • Monty Linden noted that the issue of the Friends list being unreliable in reporting people’s on/of-line status is being reported again (he referenced this report). He requested that anyone experiencing issues with on-line friends showing as off-line (or vie-versa) to please comment on the report.

 

† 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 #20 summary – updated

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lenixus Project ~ Chapter I : The Snail Princess, May 2024 – blog post †

Update: May 15th: The WebRTC test region is WebRTC Voice 1. Read more on WebRTC Voice in this official blog post.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 14th, 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 and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always 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, May 14th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deploy,
  • On Wednesday, May 15th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with the Spring Break Simulator update.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.
    • A small Snack channel has been set-up for WebRTC testing (sorry, no region name available).

SL Viewer Updates

  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247 and dated May 8th, was promoted to release status on Monday, May 13th.

The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

PBR Materials + Blinn-Phong Support

[Video: 7:45 and (discussion) 46:05-meeting end]

  • Concern was raised over a quote of a comment by Runtai Linden I carried from the May 10th TPV Developer meeting; specifically:
Sometime between now and then, we’ll likely start making the LSL scripts that modify Blinn-Phong parameters modify their PBR equivalents, or do nothing when a PBR material is applied. So llSetColor, for example, would set the base colour, not the diffuse colour. That should make life a lot simpler for scripters going forward, as scripters have been giving us feedback that trying to do something simple like that with existing scripts is impossible as they have to do a check to see if a glTF material is applied, and if there is then use llSetPrimParams and if there isn’t, use llSetColor.
  • This caused concern at the SUG meeting, and so Brad Linden Offered the following:
So, not officially speaking for Runitai, but I think his most important concern is that SL is trying to move towards standards compliance. and for objects with GLTF content attached, the only standards compliant way to display it is to fully implement GLTF PBR exactly as the Khronos group specifies it. so if an object has PBR attached, then displaying anything else is a “MUST NOT” behaviour: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119#section-2.
Defining fallbacks for older viewers that have not implemented the spec, is potentially negotiable.
Any face that has a PBR material applied MUST be displayed using PBR
  • Brad also pointed to a Feedback request where there is further discussion towards the issue of “PBR llFunctions”, including colour .
  • The major source of concern raised on Runatai’s comment and Brad’s expansion is the belief that some SL users are unable to display PBR materials as they are too taxing on their systems; so if creators cannot offer a fallback position, they well leave SL due to the amount of content they cannot see correctly, couple with the view that maintaining the ability to keep llSetColor “as is” does not break with the glTF requirements, but allows those users to stay with SL until such time as they can upgrade their hardware.
  • The counter to this was that there are users still on SL who have hardware unable to correctly render mesh, and that LL are a) working hard to get PBR performance up to a level where the majority of user hardware can support it and b) they do not want to pressure creators into having to support two different content creation / rendering approaches / specifications.
  • Please refer to the video below for further comments on this issue, plus expect further discussions at upcoming Content Creatin meetings (see the SL public calendar for details of the latter).

In Brief

  • [Video: 28:52-46:00] A discussion on Key Frame Motion and on the impact of scaling on KFM + possible, including an idea from Rider for a llSetScaleLimited function, which would scale an object as specified – unless doing so hits a defined LI limit (e.g. “increase the object size to 5x5x5 or stop scaling if the LI exceeds 8”) – the idea being to prevent an animated object from exploding in LI on scaling. This also saw a further suggestion of having a universal timestamp (server and viewer) to better sync operations,

† 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.