2023 SL SUG meetings week #51 summary

Nom Nom Café Library, November 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 19th 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • No scheduled deployments, just region restarts.

Viewer Updates

On Monday, December 18th, the Maintenance-W RC viewer (bug and crash fixes) updated to version 7.1.2.7213596294.

  • Release viewer: version 7.1.1.7039128750, formerly the Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer (displaying user-customized keybindings in chat), issued December 1, promoted December 14.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.2.7215179142 issued December 15 – numerous bug fixes and improvements.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 7.1.1.7088410646, December 7 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers Update

From Leviathan Linden:

I had a fresh working game_control viewer [on Github] on Wednesday [Dec 13]. There is an updated viewer that allows avatar control “Actions” to be translated into GameControl input. 
DaveP pointed out that game_control could be hijacked to supply midi input if the number of supported buttons was uncapped. Right now the game_control event is limited to 32 buttons because they are stored in a 32-bit mask. However, that would require button state to be represented in lists, which I had originally proposed, but received feedback saying scripters would prefer the bitwise masks –> much faster to process.

In Brief

  • Party week + No Change window, so not a lot discussed / little news.
  • Leviathan Linden has implemented llGetAspectRatio() for attachments, and is aiming to release it in the new year with the Gingerbread simulator update (likely mid-to-late January).
    • There are no parameters for the function, it just returns horizontal/vertical ratio float value if the scripted object is an attachment.
    • The item doesn’t need to be attached as HUD, any attachment point works.
  • The bug within the current Fall Colors simulator release (currently on all RC channels) which causes repetitive collision sounds has not been completely resolved. See BUG-234835 “Can hear Collisions “play” on RC channels”.
  • The first hour of the meeting focused on a general discussion on possible scripted updates for the SL camera (including whether or not some general camera improvements might be better handled viewer-side).
  • Please refer to the video below for the core meeting – which extended beyond the hour due to the live music; unfortunately, I had to depart for the physical world just after the first hour was up.

† 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 #50 summary

Subcutan Art Gallery: Japanese Garden (lower area) blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 12th 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • Tuesday, December 12th: the SLS Main channel was re-started without any simulator updates being deployed.
  • Wednesday, December 13th: the “Fall Colours” maintenance update should be expanded across all RC channels. This update includes llRezObjectWithParams, llIsFriend, but will not include the game controller updates.

Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, December 12th, the glTF PBR Materials Maintenance RC, version 7.1.1.7173980941, was issued. Among the updates / fixes included are:

  • Fix: BUG-234706 “[GLTF] [PBR] Performance unstable / massive performance loss compared to default release”.
  • Fix: BUG-234740 “[PBR] [Windows] Scaled/Offset Textures Quality Degrades at Short Distance”.
  • Fix: BUG-234632 “[PBR] – Regression – Lossless compression normal map upload via GLTF asset is broken”.
  • Fix: BUG-234740 “[PBR] [Windows] Scaled/Offset Textures Quality Degrades at Short Distance”.
  • Improvement: “SL-20611 Haze has no effect on local lights”.
  • Update: 17 new Materials available via the Library.
  • Please refer to the release notes for the full list of fixes / updates / known issues for this release.

Other viewers in the pipe remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.0.1.6894459864, the glTF / PBR Materials viewer, issued November 17, promoted November 28.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 7.1.1.7039128750, December 1.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 6.6.17.6935636398, issued November 21 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

From Leviathan Linden:

I’m trying to provide an updated viewer that allows for keyboard support: send game_control data even if you don’t have a game controller. I hope to have something available for download today, but just got the Mac version to build but it is missing some UI and I don’t know why yet.
What would be new in that game_control viewer are two things:
  1. The ability to map most avatar movement controls (e.g. push_forward, strafe_left, etc) that have keyboard bindings… to game_control axes and/or buttons.
  2. [A] small change where I negate the axis by default on the X-components of the joysticks on your controller. This to make it so that LEFT is in the positive direction [so] if you’ve already negated that channel in test scripts then you will need to remove your own negation.
What is NOT in the new viewer:
    • Remapping of controller inputs
    • Arbitrary keyboard mappings to game_control inputs — you can map the “Actions” of avatar movement/control that already have keyboard mappings… to game_control inputs.
    • Detection of odd game controller hardward — I still have a Thrustmaster HOTUS controller on order but it hasn’t arrived yet. I blame X-mas package traffic jams.

Combat Simulation

  • Rider Linden has published his outline document on improving SL’s combat capabilities, which can be found within the combat systems discussion thread on the forums, and is gaining good feedback on it.
  • This led to a general discussion on requirements / concerns over conflicts in trying to address multiple combat systems, managing Damage (and the potential for a “damage budget” / sliding scale of damage based on weaponry.
  • The new user group for combat systems should be starting up in the new year. For now, please refer to the meeting video for the general discussion, which starts around 18 minutes into the meeting and continues through until the end.

In Brief

  • Rider Linden continues to prove himself cool and hip – this week referencing Carl Reiner’s classic neo-noir mystery comedy film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. At least he didn’t get in T-R-U-B-I-L for doing so.

† 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 #49 summary

Castle Dracula, October 2023- blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, December 5th 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and 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):
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • Tuesday, December 5th: the SLS Main channel was re-started without any simulator updates being deployed.
  • Wednesday, December 6th: the “Fall Colours” maintenance update may be expanded across all RC channels from BlueSteel / Preflight. This update includes llRezObjectWithParams, llIsFriend, but will not include the game controller updates.
    • However, following its initial deployment in Week 48, “Fall Colours” was found to have bugs with collision sounds (e.g. transferring them across region boundaries and with being able to silence them), with the result that the sounds can be repeated multiple times (see: BUG-234757 “Repetitive Collision Sound?” and this forum thread). As a result, at the time of the meeting, LL were still discussing whether or not to consider these issues as “blockers” against the release being more widely deployed.
    • If the deployment to all RCs goes ahead in the next week or two, it will represent the last server deployment for 2023.

No Change Window

  • The end-of-year No change window for simulator and official viewer releases will come into effect on the week commencing Monday, December 18th, 2023 and will remain in place until Tuesday, December 2nd, 2024.
  • Linden Lab offices will be closed for all but emergency support from close of business Friday, December 22nd, 2023, and will re-open on January 2nd, 2024.

Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, December 5th, the Maintenance-W RC viewer updated to version 7.1.1.7088402585.

Other viewers in the pipe remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 7.0.1.6894459864, the glTF / PBR Materials viewer, issued November 17, promoted November 28.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 7.1.1.7039128750, December 1.
    • Maintenance X RC, version 6.6.17.6935636398, issued November 21 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • Leviathan Linden has previously considered the idea of changing the signature of the LSL event to provide per-channel info (input, value) rather than all of the controller state (buttons masks + all axes). However, he has discovered that such an event system would make it difficult to handle multi-modal input: e.g. some_button + axis_state.
  • This is because the state of each input would arrive in different events, and the order or arrival would matter, with Leviathan noting what he already has in place would likely win out in the end, negating any changes.
  • Currently, he is trying to make it possible to supply game_control input with keyboard input, but without having to completely rewrite the keyboard mapping and other related UI.
  • The Gingerbread maintenance branch with the prototype game_control feature has been redeployed to the Beta grid, and can be found on the following Aditi regions: Aegis Island, Blake Sea – Turnbuckle, Cloud Sandbox 1, Cloud Sandbox 2, Firestorm Aerodrome, Gothlauth, Hona Lee Puff, Jigglypuff, Laefeon, LR151, LR 152, Mauve, Moonberry, Morris, SG2, and Smithereens.
  • A point to note here is that the game controller work does not currently support 3dConnexion SpaceNavigator Mouse many of us use for things like flycamming, photography, filming, etc., but he is promised not to break support for the SpaceNav functionality.

In Brief

  • Combat Updates:
    • Rider Linden has published his outline document on improving SL’s combat capabilities, which can be found within the combat systems discussion thread on the forums. Feedback is requested from users engaging in combat games in SL.
    • This lead to a discussion on combat capabilities and needs throughout the rest of the meeting – please refer to the video below.
  • A question was asked on fog and distance hazing, this is something the graphics team hope to implement within the on-going glTF project – see: 2023 week #46: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR status & current release plan.
  • BUG-234598 “Avatar hit box rotating bug” has been accepted by LL, but is proving difficult to reproduce.

† 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 #48 summary

Witherwood Thicket, October 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 28th 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing it.

Apologies for the lateness of this summary, RL is not playing nice at the moment.

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.

Simulator Deployments

  • Tuesday, November 28th: support for PBR Materials was deployed to the SLS Main channel, making it grid-wide.
  • Wednesday, November 29th: the “Fall Colours” maintenance update should be deployed to the BlueSteel RC. This will include llRezObjectWithParams, llIsFriend, but will not include the game controller updates.
  • “Fall Colours” is liable to be the last simulator update for 2023.

Viewer Updates

The glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.1.6894459864, dated November 17th, was promoted to de facto release status on November 28th, in line with the grid-wide deployment of PBR Materials.

Other viewers in the pipe remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance X RC, version 6855926535, issued November 21 – usability improvements.
    • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6935642049, issued November 21 – My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history.
    • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 6.6.17.6935636398, November 21.
    • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, version 6.6.17.6898288582, November 20.
    • Emoji RC viewer, version 6.6.15.581551, August 31.
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • The code remains under internal review at the Lab, particularly around the UI elements needed to support it in the viewer.
  • Runitai Linden has suggested seeing if it is possible to support a system where the scripter can specify custom input names, which show up in the UI with a select-and-toggle method of mapping game device inputs to those channels, as Leviathan Linden explained at the meeting:
Suppose you were making some custom game with very custom input names (e.g. not “Strafe” and “Jump”), like a Twerking game and you wanted “Wiggle”, “Waggle”, and “Bop” to be the names of your inputs. The scripter would be able to call something like… llGameControlMappings([“Wiggle”, GAME_CONTROL_AXIS_0, “Waggle”, GAME_CONTROL_AXIS_3, “Bop”, GAME_CONTROL_BUTTON_2]); The viewer would then get that info and be able to provide custom UI for setting those input names to the various axes or buttons on whatever device you happen to be using.

– Leviathan Linden describing a proposed custom button names for games controllers

  • This led to an extended discussion on game controller, mapping buttons, options and approaches.
  • Leviathan also noted the current version of the back-end support for games controller will be made available on a simulator channel on Aditi (the Beta grid) later in the week.

In Brief

  • The straw man document Rider Linden has been putting together on combat system improvements is now being circulated within the Lab for comments and feedback. Expect more probably in the new year.
  • The above, together with BUG-233210 “Third Person View With Mouselook Functionality”, led to a discussion on camera positions, remote vehicle control, etc., which in turn led to a broad conversation on camera placement options and camera control.
  • Region Crossings: no major update from Monty, who has been out of the office.
  • A mixed discussion on frame rates (including confusion between server-side frame rates and client FPS performance), region crossings co-habiting regions which are adjoining one another as a defined group on the same simhost server, and much else that was mostly user-side in terms of input. Please refer to the video below.

† 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 #47 summary

Spark Project: Olympus, September 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 21st 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing it.

Apologies for the lateness of this summary, RL is not playing nice at the moment.

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.

Simulator Deployments

  • No scheduled deployments for the week, due to this being Thanksgiving week in the US, and so a No Change window is in force. Simhosts are being restarted, however.

Upcoming Simulator Deployments

  • The simulator support for glTF PBR Materials is expected to be deployed to the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, November 28th, making it grid-wide. Promotion of the glTF viewer is liable to occur in that week as well.
  • The “Fall Colours” maintenance update will likely go to RC on Wednesday, December 6th, so it can be grid-wide by Christmas. This update will not include Leviathan Linden’s work on game controller support.
  • The game controller work will now likely be included in the simulator update to follow “Fall Colours”, and which has been code-named “Gingerbread”. This will most likely be deployed in the first working week of January 2024, and will likely included the recent Feature Request to increase the available sensor counts (see: BUG-234648).

Viewer Updates

Four viewer updates at the start of the week:

  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), updated to version 6855926535, November 21.
  • Maintenance Y RC (My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from Landmark history), updated to version 6.6.17.6935642049, November 21.
  • Maintenance-W RC viewer, version 6.6.17.6935636398, November 21.
  • Maintenance V(ersatility) RC viewer, updated to version 6.6.17.6898288582, November 20.

Other viewers in the pipe remain as:

  • Release viewer: Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • Note the changes to code deployment changes outlined above. The work was pulled from “Fall Colours” to allow for further internal review of the code by the Lab.
  • Because of the need for further review, the code is not currently available on Aditi (the Beta grid). It is hoped the code will be re-deployed to some regions on Aditi in the week after US Thanksgiving.
  • It was noted by Signal Linden that it would be nice to have an official project viewer available when the code starts being deployed to the Main grid.

In Brief

  • Region Crossings:
    • Monty Linden is continuing to work on the updates for physical and TP region crossings, but was not available to respond to questions at this meeting.
    • However, it was suggested that, subject to his input, the update to the simulator code handling income teleports / regions crossings to a region might form a part of the “Gingerbread” simulator update.
  • A discussion on support for expanding regex support with Linkset Data keys to support case insensitive searches (see : BUG-233678) and for case insensitive regex support in general. This is being actively pondered upon within the Lab.
  • A further discussion on sensors and their potential uses, which also touched on the need for an “official” Area Search capability.
  • Please refer to the video for these, and other sundry mentions / discussions.

† 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 #46 summary

 Triple Sweet Café, September 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 14th 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 meeting is embedded at the end of this summary, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording the meeting and providing it.

Apologies for the lateness of this summary, RL is not playing nice at the moment.

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 for SLS Main channel, but the simhosts were restarted.
  • Wednesday, November 15th should have seen the deployment of the PBR Material simulator support to all RC channels.
    • Please remember: if you have anything that uses PBR materials and you rez that object (or wear it) on a non-PBR simulator,  the PBR Materials will be stripped from the object and forgotten.
  • There are currently internal discussions on whether or not to deploy the simulator support for PBR before or after US Thanksgiving.

Viewer Updates

Two new Maintenance viewers were issued on Tuesday, November 14th:

  • Maintenance X, version 6855926535, comprising viewer usability improvements.
  • Maintenance Y, version 6.6.17.6855930358, comprising improvements to the My Outfits folder (display thumbnails on hover) and to remove entries from landmark history

The rest of the official remain unchanged at the start of the week:

  • Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

Game Controllers

  • The simulator code for the game controller support is now in the “Fall Colours” simulator RC update, which is currently scheduled as the first simulator RC deployment in December.
  • The viewer code needs further work, including:  keyboard mapping to controller input channels; the ability to set the dead zone of various axes; support for “less common” controllers; additional UI to work alongside existing support options (e.g. SpaceNavigator).
    • In terms of the SpaceNavigator, the project will not include an update to support the latest 3dconnexion drivers, as it is felt this will break expected behaviour for the SpaceNav mouse in SL – the aim is to continue to support SpaceNav as is.
  • This work does not, as yet, include the ability to control avatar motion, although there was additional discussion around this.
  • Expansions to inputs have been filed in Feature Request BUG-234678.
  • There was also significant discussion on game controller / LSL interactions.
  • When available via the Alternate Viewers pages, the viewer will has a MacOS build as well. Meanwhile, documentation on the game controller work can be found on the SL wiki, and this includes Github link for downloading a pre-release version of the Windows viewer.

SL Combat

  • A further general discussion on updating SL’s support for combat gaming, most of which has been covered in recent SUG summaries here (e.g. adjusting the avatar bounding box and hit box when crouching  / seating (so the form allows for crawling under object, for example, and the latter makes for a small target).
  • Camera control options:
    • A new request was for a native means to set the camera to follow remote objects (e.g. RC vehicles) rather than having to relay on “janky” scripts to achieve the capability.
    • There were also requests for offsetting mouselook view (see VWR-28745 for an example of such a request).
    • Rider suggested updates to the camera control mechanism and positioning might be better suited to an update to scripted camera capabilities he is considering (but not anywhere close to being in a position to discuss in terms of what might / can / cannot be done).

In Brief

  • A lot of requests for updates to SL terrain, including updating the textures and improving the resolution (which should hopefully be covered by the PBR terrain support Cosmic Linden is developing, which should also reduce texture stretching as the heightmap is morphed); full terrain painting (not currently on the books); a general smoothing terrain deformations to make movement, etc., smoother.
  • Region Crossing: following the most recent pile-on tests, Monty Linden is working on some updated code, which he is trying to get onto Aditi (the Beta grid) on server channel DRTSIM-565, however there is a bug he needs to hammer on first.
  • Monty is also working on “an EventQueueGet thing”, which he hopes to get on to Aditi on DRTSIM-577.
  • Further requests for a means of masking Linden Water from the interiors of object – see BUG-227965 as a reference for this.
  • There was a request to be able to adjust the centre of mass for a linkset (e.g. a vehicle). While this can be done to some degree via prim cutting, it is not so possible with mesh; how it would be handled is unclear, but Leviathan Linden indicated he would kick some ideas around.
  • somewhat/ sort-of related to the above, a Feature Request has been filed to allow control of where a vehicle rotates from without having to do prim hackery – see BUG-234649, an update to SVC-6619). It was noted this could be useful for objects other than vehicles alone.

† 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.