Tag: Server Updates

2023 SL SUG meetings week #28 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Xanadu Forest, May 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  July 11th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • No deployments are planned for the week, but all simhost channels will be restated on the Tuesday and Wednesday slots.

Upcoming Updates

One (or more) upcoming simulator code updates will include:

  • A fix for the bug on the simulators running the recent LSD additions (llLinksetDataCountFound() & llLinksetDataDeleteFound()) being unable to save scripts.
  • The changes to UUID generation on certain items (e.g. textures, notecards, materials (particularly the upcoming PBR Materials)) to reduce the amount of duplication. These changes will not impact  UUIDs for objects rezzed in-world or made by the viewer. for further background, see my week 26 SUG meeting summary.

Viewer Updates

  • On Monday, July 10th, the Maintenance T RC viewer updated to version 6.6.13.580918.

The rest of the official viewer currently in the pipeline remains as:

  • Release viewer version 6.6.13.580794, formerly the Windows 32 + macOS pre-10.13 RC and dated June 30th and promoted on July 5.
  • 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 viewer, version 7.0.0.580782, June 30.
  • Project viewers:

PBR Materials

There continue to be a lot of questions as to when PBR will be deployed across the entire grid. In response to such questions at the SUG meeting, the following observations were made:

The server has to go through the full RC process still, once it is deemed ready for that. the messaging formats and api interfaces are expected to be stable, but if a showstopper bug is found that can change if needed to fix it.

– Brad Linden

I am about 80% confident the interface is complete and also about 80% confident that we have some server side changes to behaviour within the confines of the existing spec (things like: what can you do with reflection probes). Internally we’re answering questions like “can you kick a reflection probe like a soccer ball? Can you put a reflection probe as the root of your physical vehicle?”

– Maxidox Linden

It almost goes without saying that there are a lot of significant changes in the glTF server & viewer. It’s a case where it is much better to be safe than sorry.

– Rider Linden

In Brief

  • The Asset store is now standing at 2 petabytes.
  • BUG-233853 “Scripts failing to receive rapid touch_start events under LL viewer” had had been seen as fixed in The Maintenance T RC viewer. however, it has been reported the issue has still present, so the bug report has been re-opened.
  • Refer to the latter part of the video for:
    • A general discussion on bots.
    • A discussion on using estate_environment command to update EEP settings across an entire estate / the issues around updating Mainland on a continent-wide basis to overcome the current somewhat darker (than private regions) default environment (short form: it is hoped PBR with its updated environment settings will help matters).

† 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #26 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Ethereal City Estate – Ethereal City Noir, May 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  June 27th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 27th, the simulator release 580543 was deployed to the SLS Main channel, placing all of the simhosts across the grid on the same release. This release includes:
    • PATCH method now enabled through LSL HTTP for both send and receive.
    • HEAD method now allowed through llHTTPRequest.
    • Linkset Size has been increased from 54 to 64m to match maximum prim size.
    • llGetAgentInfo can now detect scripted agent status.
    • See this official blog post for more.
  • On Wednesday, June 28th, the PBR Materials simulator code, currently on a limited Main grid deployment (Preflight channel only, I believe), will be updated. All other RC channels will be restarted without any changes to their simulator versions.

Viewer Updates

The Second Life Project Inventory Extensions viewer, version 6.6.13.580656, was issued on June 26th – see my overview for more.

The remaining viewers in the pipeline are:

Changes to How Asset UUIDs are Assigned

Right now when assets ids are assigned it is simply generated. We’re going changing that a bit. We’re going to start trying to de-dupe new assets. So if you were to upload to identical pictures of Kevin Bacon they would both end up with the same asset ID.

– Rider Linden

  • This is a major change to be deployed in an upcoming simulator release.
  • It will apply to textures, notecards, scripts (possibly gestures).
  • UUIDs for rezzed objects will remain unique.
  • The change also will not affect any UUIDs the viewer makes
  • The reason for this change is the Firestorm Bridge – which saves the same LSL script when it is created.
  • Refer to the latter half of the video below for further details on the discussion.

In Brief

  • Teleports:
    • Some are reporting increases in teleport failures, possibly the result of a failure mode wherein the simulator from which an agent (avatar) is departing closes the connection with the receiving simulator before the teleport has completed.
    • BUG-234022 “Teleport just before to change state will prevent the change state to occur” has also been filed, relating to issues with large scripts within worn attachments failing to correctly update on teleport / logging-in.
  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” has seen some work put into it (currently with the Lab’s QA team) which many held ease the problem once it reaches a deployment status.
  • A general discussion on scripting issues – please refer to the video for 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #25 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Natthimmel – Göbekli Tepe. May 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 20th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • There was no deployment on the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, June 20th. However, the simhosts were restarted.
  • On Wednesday, June 21st, the RC release deployed to the BlueSteel channel will be deployed to the rest of the RC simhosts. This release includes:
    • The “bot detection” update (i.e. AGENT_AUTOMATED constant for llGetAgentInfo() – so only detects if that flag is set, not if an agent is a bot or not.
    • The second part of the LSD rezzing fix + lLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound, among other things.

Viewer Updates

No changes to the crop of official viewers for the start of the week, leaving the available list as:

In Brief

  • This was a solstice party week, so not a lot of technical discussion.
  • Depending on who was speaking, vehicle-based region crossings either appear to have improved for some reason, or at exactly the same.
  • There is a bug with the automated Map refresh / clearing which can result in regions removed from the grid being removed from the Map. Anyone noticing this is asked to raised a support ticket requesting the Map be updated.
  • The Lab is playing with an experimental capability for adding labelling to the Map – some of this was shown by Alexa Linden some time ago, but the experiments at the Lab are continuing, although it is not clear if any of this work will result in anything user-facing, as currently the overlay is effectively a replacement for the actual Map tile, hence why the examples below are on “empty” parts of the the Map.
The latest in LL’s experiments with Map overlays
  • llLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound are awaiting documentation, but are now integrated into the next maintenance simulator.
  • A semi-entertaining discussion on Babylon 5 and Star Trek – who would’ve said Rider Linden is a B5 fan?! All I’ll say is not Zathras – because no-one ever listens to Zathras. Zathras, however, probably did say so. Even if only to Zathras.‡.

† 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.

‡ No, I’m not going to explain that further. Watch Babylon 5 and find out. You won’t regret it 🙂 .

2023 SL SUG meetings week #24 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Burrow Wood: Road to Nowhere, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 13th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 13th:
    • The SLS Main channel servers were updated with a simulator release providing support for the new inventory thumbnails viewer capability soon to be forthcoming. See my recent TPVD meeting summaries for more on this capability. This project – or at least the simulator element – is apparently known as “Manicure” internally at the Lab!).
    • The Preflight RC channel was updated with simulator support for glTF PBR materials – see below for more on this deployment.
  • One Wednesday June14th, the BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with a maintenance release, which include:
    • The “bot detection” update (i.e. AGENT_AUTOMATED constant for llGetAgentInfo() – so only detects if that flag is set, not if an agent is a bot or not.
    • The second part of the LSD rezzing fix + lLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound, among other things.

glTF PBR Simulator Deployment

  • The Preflight channel is a small channel compromising the following controlled access regions: Preflight 0] though Preflight 8, Rumpus Room 1  through Rumpus Room 5 and Testylvania Sandbox.
  • Access to these regions must be requested – but will remain limited; the purpose of this deployment is for small-scale testing of the PBR materials support on the Main grid.
  • A larger, more public deployment of the simulator PBR support code will be forthcoming, so those who do not have access to the Preflight regions should consider waiting for that deployment.

Viewer Updates

No changes to the crop of official viewers for the start of the week, leaving the available list as:

In Brief

PBR Terrain Work

To re-iterate:

  • This work is in development, but is a follow-on to the current PBR Materials project, not a part of it.
  • It is primarily viewer-side changes, allowing the application of PBR materials instead of the current terrain textures. It is *not* PBR terrain painting.
  • Extensions to the project are being discussed internally at the Lab, but the real focus will be on this initial work for the time being, and further information can be found in this official blog post.
  • Discussions on the work are held at the content Creation User Group meetings – see my  meeting summaries or attend the meetings in person.
The PBR terrain project will allow PBR materials to be used on Second Life terrain in place of textures. Credit: Linden Lab

Inventory Thumbnails

  • This is primarily a viewer-side project which keeps coming up for discussion at the SUG meetings.
  • It will allow persistent thumbnail images with a maximum resolution of 256×256 to be produced, which can be stored within inventory with the items they represent  such that they display an image of an item to be displayed on Mouseover.
  • Testing is currently underway to limit the impact the inclusion of thumbnails may have on inventory load time, texture memory use.
  • The viewer is not yet ready for a project viewer release, but the Lab is working on a blog post to outline more of the intended functionality of this capability.

In General

  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” has further fixes in the works. No estimated time for deployment.
  • There is still upset circulating about the reduction in Linden Water reflections as a result of performance optimisations to help offset the impact of PBR rendering in the viewer. Currently, there are no plans to offer higher quality reflections in the future, but it is hoped that evolving work on screen space reflections will offset so of the loss of quality.  For discussions on this, please see my Content Creation User Group (CCUG) summaries or attend the meetings in person.
  • A general discussion on updating Linden trees / plants, re-introducing the “wind” to sway trees, how physics calculations and costs are made / arrived at (with the latter noted as potentially being for a future (e.g. not this year) internal discussion at the Lab, so outside of the scope of comment from the La at present).
  • It was noted that there is a further simulator update in development which is hoped will reduce the hit simulators take when handling avatars arriving in a region (and with a focus on better handling of attachments). No ETA on when this will see the light of day.
  • A further discussion on region crossings and vehicles, which also rolled into vehicles hitting ban walls and avatars being ejected / vehicle returned, and a means of preventing this by forewarning on an impending region / parcel with access control enabled. Please refer to the video for all of this.

† 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sunnmøre, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 6th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 6th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any user-facing changes. Those regions within the channel which still supported LSL XML-RPC functionality had that capability switched off.
  • On Wednesday, June 7th the RC channels should be updated with a simulator release providing support for the new inventory thumbnails viewer capability soon to be forthcoming. See my recent TPVD meeting summaries for more on this capability.
    • This project – or at least the simulator element – is apparently known as “Manicure” internally at the Lab!).

Viewer Updates

No changes to the crop of official viewers for the start of the week, leaving the list as:

In Brief

  • The long-requested Linkset Data (LSD) functions llLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound should be going to LL’s QA team for testing in the upcoming week, and so could be appearing in a maintenance simulator update Soon™. Although it will first go to Aditi for testing.
  • BUG-233832 “llCreateLink LSL function sleep time might be excessive” is due to be addressed in a simulator update due to go to RC in week 24.
  • BUG-202560 “Allow us to pass list data between links to vastly reduce script time” is currently under consideration. Rider Linden’s thinking is that, rather than send the 3 predefined int, string, and key data items, it would be possible to send an arbitrary list.
    • He also noted that at some point he “would love” to add JSON as a first class datatype. Ding so would vastly reduce the time spent parsing and the memory usage, as it would remove the need to keep playing with strings and substrings.
  • The latter pert of the meeting includes a discussion on sensors (and sensing avatars), which touches on BUG-233784 “Add sensor type LOW_SCRIPTED as an option”, and BUG-4329 “Feature Request: New sensor functions that are not bound to a prim’s position & rotation plus inclusion of an Owner filter”. Refer to the video below for 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.

2023 SL SUG meetings week #22 summary (and a LSL XML-RPC reminder)

Posted on by Inara Pey
Photo Café, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 30th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording 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):
  • They 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.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, May 30th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any user-facing changes.
  • On Wednesday, May 31st, a new RC update, providing back-end support for the new inventory thumbnails viewer capability soon to be forthcoming. See my recent TPVD meeting summaries for more on this capability.

Viewer Updates

  • The Emoji Project Viewer (😊😒🥱😬🤪🫣😲🐱🦄 – depending on your personal point of view!), version, 6.6.13.580279, was issued issued on May 30th.
    • This viewer enables the use of emojis in local chat and IM conversations, encoded as their corresponding unicode characters as well as via the use of the Windows (Win+. or Win+;) and MacOS (Ctrl-Cmd-space) emoji pickers (note any animated gifs displayed in these pickers are obviously not supported).
    • This capability comes as a code contribution from Kitty Barnett, who first implemented it within the Catznip viewer. As such other TPVs may already present their own support of the capability in some flavour (such as supporting / recognising input via an emoji picker).

The remaining list of available official viewers is as follows:

LSL XML-RPC Reminder

A reminder that, as per my March 23rd relaying of the news that LSL XML-RPC functionality will be permanently ended on Thursday, June 1st, when incoming LSL XML-RPC traffic on the remaining small channel of regions on Agni (the main grid) will be blocked. The reason for this is that  LSL XML-RPC has been deprecated since the introduction of HTTP-In back in 2009, and by the time the March announcement was made, had dwindled to just a few dozen per hour across the entire grid, making maintenance and support of the capability no longer beneficial to LL in term of time and resources, which could be put to better use in improving SL.

In Brief

  • The glTF PBR materials project is still awaiting a small RC simulator release to allow for broader testing on the main grid.
  • BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” is on LL’s “backlog” of issues to be resolved, down to the fact it has been proving difficult to reproduce consistently.
    • It was suggested at the meeting that looping around the regions forming the Jeogeot Gulf does consistently repo the issue (particularly when using vehicles with a lot of content / scripts), and this could be used for testing.
    • A discussion on region crossing flowed throughout the meeting, please refer to the video below.
  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – further work is in progress to try to address this issue, and will be targeted for an upcoming simulator release Soon™.
    • A temporary workaround LL is suggesting whilst this work in is progress is for people noting their Friends list is not display the correct status for their contacts to try teleporting to a an unoccupied region / region with relatively few avatars and then re-log from there.
  • Feature Request BUG-231702 “Allow scripts with PERMISSION_TRACK_CAMERA to detect FoV” was commented on, leading to a general discussion on the potential for greater LSL control of the viewer’s camera. Please refer to to the video below for details.
  • Blocking  / Muting:  it was pointed out that some people are using a new vector to harass people who have otherwise blocked them, by making a minimal L$1 payment to them through the viewer. It is not clear how widespread this is, and whilst a governance / viewer issue, requests were made during the meeting for LL to look into making blocking / muting more robust to prevent such edge-cases.

† 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.