Tag: Server Updates

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 2nd, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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

• No deployments for the week, but all channels will be restart per usual schedule.

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 among other things will include the following LSL functions:

• llFindNotecardText
• llFindNotecardTextSync)

SL Viewer Updates

The webRTC RC viewer updated to version 7.1.9.9688089989 on July 1st, 2024.

The rest of the current official viewers remain 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 7.1.9.9620320242, June 27.
  • 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.

Luau Projects

These note are related to the Product and Engineering Town Hall at SL21B,when it was announced Luau VM is to be implemented on the server-side, eventually replacing Mono VM.

• Signal Linden is putting together a technical FAQ about lua with has more detailed answers about “why lua and not [insert option]” and “how is lua faster than mono” etc.
• Pepper and Rider Linden confirmed part of the work planned will allow for shadow execution of scripts under the Luau and Mono VMs during testing, which will ensure that all output of functions are the same.
  • This shadowing will likely be only be visible to the Lab.
  • Once LL is convinced both behave the same, the switch to using the Luau VM. At that point, the anticipated memory and execution time improvements should become visible.
  • Finally LL will allow a switch to compile either LSL2 or Luau.
• Signal further indicated:
  • That with the switch to lauau on the back-end, code can be written in either LSL2 or Luau.
  • That both the current Lua client-side project and the announced luau back-end work, whilst separate projects will both leverage Luau, not Lau.
• Pepper Linden confirmed LSL functions will continue to be maintained, but using Lua will allow for the creation of versioned functions for Lua scripts, providing a more flexible means to update functions without the worry of breaking content.
• This discussion took up most of the meeting – please refer to the video for more.

In Brief

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

• Leviathan Linden is hoping to provide an updated GameControl viewer download. It will contain no additional capabilities, but will be updated to the current viewer development branch. However, GameControl will now be behind a single UI setting which will need to be set in order to see its UI.
• Monty Linden confirmed that the first batch of teleports / region crossings  work will now likely surface in the Picnics simulator update.

† 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.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  June 25th, 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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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

• No deployments for the week, but all channels will be restart per usual schedule.

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.
• 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 7.1.9.9604591078, June 21.
  • 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

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

• Leviathan Linden is putting the GameControl feature behind a debug settings option, and then rebasing that onto the viewer _develop_ branch. This will help ensure the functionality is available in future viewer updates, ready to be enabled when the corresponding simulator support has been deployed.
• A reported issue with llDetectedTouchPos is is the queue of issues the viewer team will be / are looking at.
• The functionality gap with llSetLinkAlpha() and PBR Materials, and which has workarounds on the wiki using llSetLinkPrimitiveParams() and PRIM_GLTF_BASE_COLOR, is due to be more properly resolved for when controlling larger linksets.
• Monty Linde noted that the first batch of teleports / region crossings  work is in line for the release after the Summer Fun simulator update – however, vehicles are not specifically part of this work.
  • This led to a general discussion on vehicular region crossings.
• A further discussion on the Combat project – this will be covered in the Combat Group update following the meeting on June 27th.
• A general discussion on getting world map tile information, focuses around the request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile.

† 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.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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:
  • WebRTC Voice project viewer, version 7.1.4.8947030231, May 8.

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.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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

• On Monday, June 10th:
  • The Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.8.9375512768 and dated June 5th, 2024, was updated to de facto release status, bringing with if 2K texture upload support, PBR terrain and PBR mirrors (see: Launching Mirrors, PBR Terrain and 2k Textures in Second Life!).
    • I currently have two blog posts related to this in preparation, which will be published in due course.
  • The Maintenance B RC was updated to version 7.1.8.9130881608.

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:
  • WebRTC Voice project viewer, version 7.1.4.8947030231, May 8.

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.

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):
  • Every Tuesday at 12:00 noon SLT.
  • In text (no Voice)
  • At this location.
• 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:
  • WebRTC Voice project viewer, version 7.1.4.8947030231, May 8.

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.