Tag: Simulator User Group 2022

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 20th, 2022 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.

Note: this was a “Winter solstice Party” event, so not a lot to report. The core of any discussions in in the first hour of the video embedded below.

Server Deployments

• On Tuesday, December 20th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no deployment, leaving them on simulator version 576542
• On Wednesday, December 21st, the simhosts on the RC channels should be restarted without any deployment or change to the current release.

Early 2023 Simulator Updates

AS per the previous SUG meeting:

• I believe the RC deployment from week #50 (with 3-second sound loop support) was rolled back. If so, this is liable to be one of the first simulator updates for 2023 (targeted for January 11th, 2023), and / or possibly an update comprising a number of HTTP updates, including the accounting for custom HTTP headers (total space for headers will increase to 4k and the limit on the number of headers will be dropped).
• Also early 2023 LSL will be updated with new cryptographic signing utilities: llHMAC (per BUG-233005) and llSignRSA and llVerifyRSA (per BUG-233009). These should be useful for script to script and script to external web service communications. These may be included in the above release.
  • BUG-226463 “llRequestSecureURL() uses self-signed cert” is also “on the radar” but no target date for potential delivery / deployment.
• Further (unspecified) improvements will be coming to the Linkset Data (LSD) capabilities.

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects the current status of available official viewers at the start of the week:

• Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577220, December 16.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576737, November 28.
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577157, December 14.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

Refer to the video below for more information on the following:

• BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” has been filed and lead to further discussion on region crossings.
• LL is mulling an LSL call to allow the replacement of sub-strings in a string call (e.g. non-RegEx behaviour). If implemented, this might most likely be called either llStringReplace() or llReplaceSubString().
• The above lead to a more general discussion on LSL and LSL extensions / transpilers (helping to make LSD more accessible), etc.

 

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 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.

Server Deployments

This week will see all simhosts on all channels restarted, but no deployments.

The hoped-for RC release (which includes a fix for BUG-229301 “Maximum Memory allowable by scripts not being reset until teleport or relog”) has been delayed as a result of a fix being required for an odd crash which could cause some regions to crash on starting. This has now been resolved, but the fix needs to pass through a QA cycle before any release is made, so the deployment should now occur in week #50.

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

• Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – 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).
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576737, November 28.
  • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 5.
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576966, December 3 – this viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

Refer to the video below for more information on the following:

• There is a generic Puppetry-related discussion (Kinnect), but as there is a Puppetry meeting due on December 8th, so any updates will be covered in my summary of that meeting.
• There is a similar generic discussion on the complexities of the PBR Materials Project, which is covered in my CCUG updates.
• A discussion on potential LSD bugs / issues – no specifics from LL’s side, as Rider Linden (who runs the LSD project) was absent the meeting.

 

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 29th, 2022 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.

Server Deployments

This week will see all simhosts on all channels restarted, but no deployments.

There should be a new RC release available in Week #49 (commencing Monday, December 5th, 2022. This should include a fix for BUG-229301 “Maximum Memory allowable by scripts not being reset until teleport or relog”.

Available Official Viewers

On Monday, November 28th:

• The Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer was promoted to RC status with the release of version 6.6.8.576737.
• The Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer re-upped to version 6.6.8.576812.

The rest of the official viewer currently available official viewer remain as follows:

• Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

Refer to the video below for more information on the following:

• There has been a noticed uptick of objects failing to rez / render (see this forum thread). Whilst the issue has been around long enough to have been reported at least once (see: BUG-9439) and for workarounds such as ALT-zooming out  a long distance from a region and the using ESC to “jump” back to it, it is thought it issues might be related to the Interest List (simply put, the exchange of data between simulator and viewer as to what is in the region, what you should be able to see, how / when it is updated, etc). LL have noted the uptick  in issues, although no underpinning cause has been indicated, although there is an internal lean towards the Interest List theory.

I’m fairly certain that the current vanishing object issue is in the Interest List. I’m not sure what we changed that could have aggravated though. I’ve been seeing it pretty regularly for about a month now.

– Rider Linden

• • The discussion of this issue takes up the majority of the meeting, and touches other issues related to object rendering, / rezzing / re-rendering, and also includes views on improving the robustness of the Interest List as a whole – including a capability function (for which LL has requested a Feature Request Jira).
• There is some further discussion on combat in Second Life,  and the need for improved projectile systems and generally improving the current capabilities. This follows on from the last meeting, and involves this forum discussion.
• The final 10 minutes of the meeting touches on potential updates to the recently release Linkset Data (LSD)

 

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022 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.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a server deployment thread had yet to be published.

• On Tuesday, November 22nd, the Main SLS and Events channels were updated with the single fix designed to keep regions from running out of voice connections (BUG-229984 “Voice chat is not working” and BUG-7371 “Voice cannot connect”).
• On Wednesday, November 23rd, simhosts the RC channels will be restarted without any deployment.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

The run of simulator updates through to the new year will likely comprise:

• Link sounds will most likely the last roll of the year (this should behave exactly as though you had a script in the linked prim and called llPlaySound from that prim).
• llGetSimStats updates are liable to be the first update of 2023.
• llHTTPRequest updates (see below) will likely follow later in January 2023.
• LSDFindKeys sorting updates will most likely be fixed in the first simulator maintenance release for next year.

Available Official Viewers

No changes to any of the current batch of official viewers, leaving them as follows:

• Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1 – No change.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576431 on Monday, November 14.
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

In Brief

• BUG-232171 “Issue with regions becoming full, but still showing available prims” – this is been causing noticeable issues recently, with a lot of speculation that it may be a griefing vector. However, the important point with the issue is that LL know what the cause actually is, and will be addressing it.
  • BUG-229382 “Vehicles stopping dead at region borders” may be related to this issue.
  • BUG-BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” was also raised later in the meeting in relation to Mono concerns.
• Concerns have been raised about bout removing the LSO bytecode compiler (non-Mono), leaving only the Mono compiler (the run-time environment for LSO scripts would remain – it just wouldn’t be possible to compile new scripts via the LSO compiler or re-compile updated scripts using it).
  • These issues (apparently related to rapid rezzing of objects  and / or some vehicles the Mono control scripts behaving badly at region crossings) have not been the subject of any bug report(s) and so lack documented details. A Jira has been request.
• A core part of the meeting was given over to combat systems and providing improved means of projective operation (in part related to the Mono discussion above) – please refer to the video for details.
• BUG-37727 “Regex for LSL” may have a better chance of being implemented now that Regex is exposed to LSL via Linkset Data.
• With the implementation of LSD, an suggestion has been made to add publicly editable key-value pairs that could be set in the build window via object owners, and then accessed via scripts using an interface similar to Linkset Data. A  similar suggestion has also been made within the forums, however, that does not appear to be a feature request Jira for these ideas (at least at the time of writing this summary).
• BUG-232551 “We need significantly more RAM for scripts in non-attachments” was raised in discussion;  it has been accepted by the Lab, but no indication of when it it  might be actioned, or how.
• Rider Linden is playing some enhancements to LSL for 2023, including (but not limited to) allowing a response to an HTTP request with the contents of a notecard.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 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.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a server deployment thread had yet to be published.

• On Tuesday, November 15th, the Main SLS and Events channels were updated with simulator version 576376, making the new Linkset Data capability grid-wide.
• On Wednesday, November 16th, the simhosts on the RC channels should receive a new simulator update, this one containing a single fix designed to keep regions from running out of voice connections (BUG-229984 “Voice chat is not working” and BUG-7371 “Voice cannot connect”).

Linkset Data (LSD) – Brief Notes

• Linkset Data is a new collection of script functions and one optional event that reads and writes key-value-pairs to a small 64kb table of data that is part of a root object.
• It works similarly to Experience Key-Value store, but:
  • It does not require an underpinning experience – the data lives with the object that sends and receives the data.
  • Only scripts in the same linkset will be able to read the data written with this feature.
• Further information on LSD can be found in Linkset Data (LSD) – a new feature for Second Life by NeoBokrug Elytis  in this blog.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

The run of simulator updates through to the new year will likely comprise:

• Link sounds will most likely the last roll of the year (this should behave exactly as though you had a script in the linked prim and called llPlaySound from that prim).
• llGetSimStats updates are liable to be the first update of 2023.
• llHTTPRequest updates (see below) will likely follow later in January 2023.
• LSDFindKeys sorting updates will most likely be fixed in the first simulator maintenance release for next year.

Available Official Viewers

• The Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer updated to version 6.6.8.576431 on Monday, November 14th.

All other official viewer remain as follows:

• Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1.
• Release channel cohorts:
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • There are unconfirmed reports that GPUs are running noticeably hotter with this viewer than other viewer.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

llHTTPRequest Updates

Rider Linden is proposing changing the way we do accounting for CUSTOM_HEADERS.

• Currently, headers of no longer than 253 bytes each are allowed.
• Rider plans on changing this so that as many headers, each as long as is required, can be stored, to a maximum of 4096 bytes.
• This is in recognition that there are a number of applications that require security headers which can blow through that 256 byte limit.

In Brief

• BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – this is unlikely to be addressed until 2023, as the remaining simulator update slots for 2022 now have updates assigned to them.
• BUG-232918 “Adding Friend will make all other friends appear offline”  – this is newly reported bug, and should be kept in mind if experiencing issues with your Friends list.
• BUG-227303 “collisions makes a script stop running and revert its mono status” opened in 2019, was raised, but has yet to be deeply investigated by LL.
• The meeting included  a further discussion on LSDListKeys and LSDFindKeys (e.g. negative index support). Please refer to the video below for this and the rest of the meeting.

 

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 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.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a server deployment thread had yet to be published.

• On Tuesday, November 8th, the Main SLS and Events channels were restarted without any simulator update being deployed leaving them on simulator version 575585.
• On Wednesday, November 9th, simhosts on the RC channels will again updated with simulator release comprising the new Linkset Data capability (see below for more).
  • Whilst originally deployed on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022, this release had to be rolled by on Friday, November 4th, 2022. See BUG-232866 “Each parcel is using the Region’s environment instead of the Parcel’s environment settings”.

Available Official Viewers

No changes to the current set of official viewers at the start o the week, leaving the list as:

• Release viewer: version 6.6.7.576223 – MFA and TOS hotfix viewer – November 1.
• Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • VS  2022 RC viewer, version 6.6.8.576310, issued November 4 – utilises Visual Studio 2022 in the Windows build tool chain
  • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version  6.6.8.576321, November 3.
• Project viewers:
  • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.576331, issued on November 3.
    • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • There are unconfirmed reports that GPUs are running noticeably hotter with this viewer than other viewer.
  • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
  • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
  • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

Linkset Data (LSD)

• Linkset Data is a new collection of script functions and one optional event that reads and writes key-value-pairs to a small 64kb table of data that is part of a root object.
• It works similarly to Experience Key-Value store, but:
  • It does not require an underpinning experience – the data lives with the object that sends and receives the data.
  • Only scripts in the same linkset will be able to read the data written with this feature.
• Important Note for the initial deployment:
  • Like all scripts containing new LSL functions, scripts running LinksetData calls will only run on regions running version 2022-10-27.576126 or newer (so only the RC channels to start with).
  • However unlike some other functions if you move an object containing Linkset Data (or teleport wearing an object containing Linkset Data) from a region that supports the capability to a region that does not support it, all Linkset Data stored with the object will be lost, even if you go back to a region that supports the feature.
  • This limitation will no longer exist once the back-end support for the capability has been deployed to all regions on the Main grid.
• Further information on LSD can be found in Linkset Data (LSD) – a new feature for Second Life by NeoBokrug Elytis  in this blog.

In Brief

• BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – this is unlikely to be addressed until 2023, as the remaining simulator update slots for 2022 now have updates assigned to them.
• LL believe that they may have a fix for the Group chat issue of open Group chats appearing to freeze in their viewer tab, requiring the chat be closed and re-opened. The fix is being tested on Aditi.
• The meeting revolved around a discussion on LSDFindKeys and sorting – please refer to the video for details.
• llGetSimStats is getting “new fangs” (essentially everything from the Statistics floater is being added). The update is to be deployed in the New Year. Further information available in the meeting video.
• Extended chat ranges within regions: this is described as “still in the works”. Apparently, there have been concerns about privacy on the viewer side which mean that, until addressed, extended chat range will remain a Linden only function.