Tag: Server Updates

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 11th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, March 11th, 2025, the SLS Main channel was updated with the Carrot Cake update should be deployed to all RC channels. This includes:
  • A patch for issues found with the version of Carrot Cake already deployed to BlueSteel, together with a fixed for issues in trying to deploy some of the new benefits announced as a part of the “March Membership Madness” month.
  • Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
  • In addition, an update combining Carrot Cake and the WebRTC back-end was deployed to the Preflight RC channel.
• On Wednesday, March 12th, 2025, the remaining RC channels will be restarted without update.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: 7.1.12.13550888671, formerly the ForeverFPS, dated March 1, 2025, promoted March 5th – NEW.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
  • Water exclusion surfaces.
  • Water improvements.
• Project viewer: Second Life Project Lua Editor Alpha, version 7.1.12.13526902562, March 3rd, 2025 – NEW.
  • Will only work on Aditi, within the following regions: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].

Lua(u): Initial Aditi Deployment – Recap and Update

• An initial deployment of Luau support (which will eventually replace Mono as the back-end scripting language) is opening on Aditi (the beta grid) for user testing.
• The regions running Luau support are: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
  • These support both native Lua scripting and compiling LSL to Luau VM.
• A Luau-capable viewer is required.
  • This viewer will work on any region in SL, but will only compile scripts to Luau on the Aditi regions noted above.
• Discussion on Lua(u) is available through the scripting channel on the SL Discord server, for those with access.
• It was noted that the server support has some “sharp edges”. In addition:
  • Error reporting when compiling scripts from LSL to Luau is “quite spartan at the moment”, but will be improved “in the next update or two”.
  • If objects with compiled Luau script assets are rezzed in a non-Luau region, they won’t work.
• On the initial launch, LL constants hadn’t been exposed. Those should be available now.
  • Constants are in the global namespace now, with constant folding in the future to improve performance. Currently, there are no plans on moving them into a namespace.
• Rider Linden indicated that there has been a high volume of testing of the past week on the Luau regions on Aditi, generating high quality feedback from scripters.
• Signal Linden added that over the course of the last week, there has been some rapid development with bug fixes and features, with a new build nearly every day. Both he and Rider Linden passed on thanks to everyone who has been putting early work into testing the Lua work.

Luau Resources

• Lua FAQ – SL Wiki
• Second Life Luau Alpha – SL Wiki.
• Luau Example Scripts – SL Wiki.
• Luau Library – Luau.org
• Luau scripting demo – Luau.org
• Lua Gotchas, Footguns and Other Hazards – Roblox.

In Brief

Please refer to the the video for details on the following.

• The Durian Scone simulator update contains the new server certificate anchored by DigiCert. Monty Linden has a detailed post on the Technical forum. The Certificate supporting regions are Cloud Sandbox 1- on Aditi, and are open for testing.
• There was a general round of potential naming for the SL implementation of Lua/Luau. Ideas including: SLuau; SLua (“slew-ah”); Linden Lua(u) Language (LLL / L³).
• RegEx string functions: Rider Linden noted that he has most of the code written for some of the other RegEx things, and believes it would be mostly a matter of hooking the correct pieces together. However, work is currently focused on internal tooling, so he’s not at this point sure when he’ll be able to get back to the RegEx work. Some RegEx support can be found here.
• Leviathan Linden is hoping to port game_control back into the main SL Viewer and also to submit some patches for Cool VL Viewer when he has an opportunity to get back to that work. He also noted that for the official SL Viewer it depends on the Linux-build support getting back in place because game_control was using SDL2 for input acquisition, which was supplied by the Linux build work.
• A general conversation on the AI character tools, LSL, and opportunities.
• Linden Lab is attending the 2025 Game Developer Conference (March 17th-21st, 2025) in San Francisco to promote Second Life.

† 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, March 4th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, March 4th, 2025, the SLS Main channel was restarted without anu deployment.
• On Wednesday, March 5th, 2025, the Carrot Cake update should be deployed to all RC channels. This includes:
  • A patch for issues found with the version of Carrot Cake already deployed to BlueSteel, together with a fixed for issues in trying to deploy some of the new benefits announced as a part of the “March Membership Madness” month.
  • Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
• Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.13550888671, March 1, 2025 – Updated.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.

Lua(u): Initial Aditi Deployment

• An initial deployment of Luau support (which will eventually replace Mono as the back-end scripting language) is opening on Aditi (the beta grid) for user testing.
• The regions running Luau support are: [Luau Yardang], [Luau Tombolo], [Luau Mesa] and [Luau Tideland].
  • These support both native Lua scripting and compiling LSL to Luau VM.
• A Luau-capable viewer is required.
  • This viewer will work on any region in SL, but will only compile scripts to Luau on the Aditi regions noted above.
• A blog post will be “up soon”, and discussion on Lua(u) is available through the scripting channel on the SL Discord server, for those with access.
• It was noted that the server support has some “sharp edges”, with Signal Linden noting:

Incredibly sharp, we are expecting it to be trivial to crash regions. The goal is to experiment with what can be created with the language and how it compares to LSL

• Additional general notes:
  • Error reporting when compiling scripts from LSL to Luau is “quite spartan at the moment”, but will be improved “in the next update or two”.
  • If objects with compiled Luau script assets are rezzed in a non-Luau region, they won’t work.
• The above announcement dominated the meeting with specific questions on functions (what will be available, how Luau will handle existing LSL functions, etc.), with Signal Linden noting the plan at the moment is to have the full library of LSL functions available. Provision of new APIs is still TBD.
• Please refer to the video for details, and the resources below for specific information.

Luau Resources

• Lua FAQ – SL Wiki
• Second Life Luau Alpha – SL Wiki.
• Luau Example Scripts – SL Wiki.
• Luau Library – Luau.org
• Luau scripting demo – Luau.org
• Lua Gotchas, Footguns and Other Hazards – Roblox.

† 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, February 25th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, February 25th, 2025, the SLS Main channel was restarted without anu deployment.
• On Wednesday, February 26th, 2025, the Carrot Cake update should be deployed to the rest of the RC channels (having already been deployed to BlueSteel). This includes:
  • Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
  • Simulator support for the  increase to viewer Profile Picks (from 10 to 20) announced as a part of the Membership Mania promotions.

Future Deployments

• The next simulator update is to be called Durian Scones. The size and content of this update is still TBA. However, Monty Linden indicated it will carry updated SSL certificates – he will be publishing details here.
  • These will be Digicert-signed, not Linden-signed.
  • Protocols should mostly be compatible. But looking to a future with old stuff being deprecated.
  • The new certificates should fix the longstanding issue of llRequestSecureURL being untrusted.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
• Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No Change.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• Leviathan Linden is working on the issue of objects not rendering on logging-in. He describes his work as not yet having found a cause, but working on a new theory. This led to a discussion on whether the issue is within the viewer (e.g. caching errors, issues with objection occlusion calculations) or a simulator-side issue (e.g. Interest List transmission problems). This discussion is woven through most of the meeting.
• A discussion on improving the calculations used to determine the LI of Animesh objects, which also touched on the LI calculation formula being revisited as a whole “at some point”.
• Combined with the above was a discussion on optimising LOD / incentivising better LOD generation on the part of creators.
• A general discussion on gravity and changing it, revolving around this suggestion.  As Rider Linden noted, fiddling with SL’s gravity is both difficult and can have unforeseen outcomes.
• A general discussion on when Lua(u) will be surfacing (Rider Linden: “VERY VERY VERY VERY soon!”), with a reiteration that LSO is not going to be deprecated; however Mono will eventually be removed, with LSL compiling to Lua. This included a discussion on preserving data stored in script memory in transitioning away from Mono to Lua when it comes to in-world scripts that are running.

† 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, February 18th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, February 18th, 2025, the Banana Bread update was deployed to the SLS Main channel This update includes expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.
• On Wednesday, February 19th, 2025:
  • Carrot Cake should be deployed to the Bluesteel RC. This includes Monty Linden’s work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible).
  • The remaining RC channel will be restarted without any deployment.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
• Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025 – No Change.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• Leviathan Linden has been been working with another Lab developer to improve avatar loading. He believes they have been able to make a few improvements, particularly in improving near-to-far sorting for avatar loading, with those nearby loading the fastest.
  • He hopes that the work will surface in a viewer update in March.
  • This is seen as offering “small” improvements, as further work will be required on the simulator end so the server sorts avatar data at its end rather than just sending it, but this has yet to be done.
• Leviathan also noted that the packet loss / UDP data loss noted in the last SUG meeting appears to be a result of the viewer allowing the network socket buffer (the one managed by the OS) to overflow, which can happen when the viewer experiences a long frame. It can also affect avatar loading, so his fix for the issue is going into that work.
• Region crossings / Disconnects: More reports of issues, particularly around teleports and disconnects user Quinn Elara has been logging her experiences, which the Lab has been looking at (note: be aware if posting viewer log information to the Feedback Portal, as it can contain personal information).  This issue became a topic of conversation through a portion of the meeting.
  • The above slid into a conversation of using the BugSplat tool in the viewer for reporting data.

 

† 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, February 11th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, February 11th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
• On Wednesday, February 5th, 2025 the Banana Bread update should be deployed to the remaining RC channels, having been deployed to BlueSteel RC last week) This update includes expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.

Upcoming Deployments

• The simulator update to Banana Bread is called Carrot Cake.
• Development on this update has been “accelerated” such that an initial deployment to the BlueSteel RC in week #7 (commencing 17th, February 2025).
• This update should include llSetGroundTexture – this will allow a region owner/EM to set and adjust ground textures on a region, including some of the PBR features like rotation, offset and scale.
• Monty Linden indicated his work on EventQueueGet (a simulator Capability that delivers messages from a simulator to viewers over HTTP using a long-poll scheme. It is core functionality without which viewer/simulator coordination is impossible) is to be rolled into Carrot Cake. He further indicated that he plans to update the SL Wiki documents on EventQueueGet as time permits.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
• Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
• SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1.542 / 0.5.533 – Create / Delete accounts, fixes – February 4,  2025.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• llGetEnvironment (+ related functions) return inaccurate unit vectors for sun / moon position is still awaiting action.
• Requests were made for LSL  capabilities for manipulating the upcoming llGroundTexture.
• There was a report that the entire SLS Main Channel was restarted a second time during week #6. However, Rider Linden indicated that a number of regions were moved between servers, which prompted restarts, but there was no additional LL-lead restart of the entire channel.
• There are reports that there is a bug with llRezObjectWithParams: in using REZ_POZ with the local flag set TRUE, the rezzed object is positioned against in-world coordinates instead of rezzer local coordinates. So, for example, if the rezzer is aligned with world coordinates, the object arrives where expected, but if the rezzer is rotated, the object continues to arrive at the unrotated position. A bug report has been requested on this.
• Rider Linden noted that there is liable to be Lua server-side scripting engine news “soon”. This was followed by a general discussion on the project.
• Leviathan Linden has confirmed the viewer is dropping packets when it gets spikes of UDP data. He is going to try to provide a patch for viewers to prevent this, but also needs to look into the server behaviour to try to determine why and how the data spikes are happening. This sparked a discussion on UDP, packet loss and bandwidth which ran the most of the meeting.
• A request was made for the status of much-needed PBR-related LSL functions (plus easy PBR alpha-switching and PBR override permissions). The response was an agreement that they are needed, but not on an “immediate” queue for implementation.

† 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, February 4th, 2025 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 Pantera’s video of the meeting, which 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):
  • 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, February 4th, 2025, the simulators on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no update.
• On Wednesday, February 5th, 2025:
  • The Banana Bread update will be deployed to the BlueSteel channel. This include expansions to llGetObjectPermMask that let you get an object’s permission mask taking into account the permissions on its inventory, and that ability has been added to llGOD.
  • The remaining RC channels will be restarted, most likely without any deployment.

SL Viewer Updates

• Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, promoted December 20 – No Change.
• Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
  • Numerous crash and performance fixes.
• SL Mobile (Beta) version 2025.1.542 / 0.5.533 – Create / Delete accounts, fixes – February 4,  2025.

2K Bakes on Mesh is Live

2k BoM is now live! As of yesterday, we’ve switched over to the new bake service, and we’ll be posting a blog post soon!

– Pepper Linden

This deployment does not require a viewer update, and is grid-wide – more in the Lab’s official blog post (published February 6th). The update should also see faster bake times.

In Brief

Please refer to the video below for the following:

• There are reports of an uptick in packet loss in simulator – viewer exchanges (reportedly 20% on average), and some are reporting associated lag with local chat.
• Rider Linden is working on updates to llSetGroundTexture:
  • This will allow a region owner/EM to set and adjust ground textures on a region, including some of the PBR features like rotation, offset and scale.
  • This work should be surfacing in the next simulator update after Banana Bed – called Carrot Cake.
• Those who have tested ForeverFPS are reporting it offers an improve Linden Water appearance (fresnel reflection/refraction).
• A request for increased terrain resolution led to a discussion on overhauling the terrain system in various ways, during which Leviathan Linden offered some history about Second Life and Linden World:

The terrain layer currently uses lossy DCT compression … The reason it uses DCT is ancient history: in the beginning SL (or Linden World as we called it back then) was expected to be sending dynamic layer data (terrain, water, wind, clouds, moisture, and ???). For dynamic layers we thought we should be using more compact compression. So terrain was a “layer” and grouped with the others. Eventually all the other layers were dropped and we ended up with a single mostly static layer that is using the wrong compression scheme.

• The above was interwoven with a discussion on KVP data.
• Various discussion on Luau and scripting.
• A general discussion on region crossings.
• Questions were asked on the Havoc physics engine. Currently, the viewer-side sub-library is being updated to Havok 2022, the simulator is running 2012.1, with Leviathan Linden noting that Havok has tried to “encourage” LL to update on the server-side; however, no physics update is likely to occur in the next year.

† 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.