The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
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, May 14th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deploy,
On Wednesday, May 15th:
The BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with the Spring Break Simulator update.
The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.
A small Snack channel has been set-up for WebRTC testing (sorry, no region name available).
SL Viewer Updates
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247 and dated May 8th, was promoted to release status on Monday, May 13th.
The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
Concern was raised over a quote of a comment by Runtai Linden I carried from the May 10th TPV Developer meeting; specifically:
Sometime between now and then, we’ll likely start making the LSL scripts that modify Blinn-Phong parameters modify their PBR equivalents, or do nothing when a PBR material is applied. So llSetColor, for example, would set the base colour, not the diffuse colour. That should make life a lot simpler for scripters going forward, as scripters have been giving us feedback that trying to do something simple like that with existing scripts is impossible as they have to do a check to see if a glTF material is applied, and if there is then use llSetPrimParams and if there isn’t, use llSetColor.
This caused concern at the SUG meeting, and so Brad Linden Offered the following:
So, not officially speaking for Runitai, but I think his most important concern is that SL is trying to move towards standards compliance. and for objects with GLTF content attached, the only standards compliant way to display it is to fully implement GLTF PBR exactly as the Khronos group specifies it. so if an object has PBR attached, then displaying anything else is a “MUST NOT” behaviour: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119#section-2.
Defining fallbacks for older viewers that have not implemented the spec, is potentially negotiable.
Any face that has a PBR material applied MUST be displayed using PBR
Brad also pointed to a Feedback request where there is further discussion towards the issue of “PBR llFunctions”, including colour .
The major source of concern raised on Runatai’s comment and Brad’s expansion is the belief that some SL users are unable to display PBR materials as they are too taxing on their systems; so if creators cannot offer a fallback position, they well leave SL due to the amount of content they cannot see correctly, couple with the view that maintaining the ability to keep llSetColor “as is” does not break with the glTF requirements, but allows those users to stay with SL until such time as they can upgrade their hardware.
The counter to this was that there are users still on SL who have hardware unable to correctly render mesh, and that LL are a) working hard to get PBR performance up to a level where the majority of user hardware can support it and b) they do not want to pressure creators into having to support two different content creation / rendering approaches / specifications.
Please refer to the video below for further comments on this issue, plus expect further discussions at upcoming Content Creatin meetings (see the SL public calendar for details of the latter).
In Brief
[Video: 28:52-46:00] A discussion on Key Frame Motion and on the impact of scaling on KFM + possible, including an idea from Rider for a llSetScaleLimited function, which would scale an object as specified – unless doing so hits a defined LI limit (e.g. “increase the object size to 5x5x5 or stop scaling if the LI exceeds 8”) – the idea being to prevent an animated object from exploding in LI on scaling. This also saw a further suggestion of having a universal timestamp (server and viewer) to better sync operations,
† 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 Thursday, May 9th, 2024 Governance User Group (GUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Governance User Group to a forum for the discussion of topics relating to safety and security in Second Life. Please note this does not include:
Direct discussion of filed Abuse Reports the outcome of investigations, or potential actions taken in abuse cases; this includes providing feedback on reports and / or addressing questions relating to hypothetical situations.
Matters related to copied or stolen content, DMCA or copyright issues / filings.
These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
Every second Thursday of the month, starting at 14:00 SLT.
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.
General Notes for May 9th Meeting
The Thursday May 9th, meeting was subject to a special discussion on changes to the Second Life Child Avatar Policy, as announced within an official blog post issued a few hours ahead of the meeting.
This meeting was entirely in text, and these notes are drawn from both Pantera’s video (embedded below), and copies of the chat transcripts forwarded to me be several attendees – my sincere thanks to all who did so.
No: this is not a full transcript of the meeting. However, I have tried to include all relevant comments made by Keira and Tommy Linden.
Tommy Linden provided an overview of the Governance Team and their responsibilities, primarily for those who may not be fully aware of the team’s role:
Handling Abuse Reports (and appeals).
Handling reports of fraud reports.
Account security (with a recommendation that users should use multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added account security).
Marketplace moderation and forum moderation.
Keira Linden then added:
Going forward with these monthly meetings we intend to increase Resident education as it pertains to account security, as well as being more transparent with the community on Abuse actions by publishing some meaningful data around abuse reports. We will also be regularly reviewing and updating trust and safety policies, procedures, and tools based on evolving threats.
What I mean by that [“meaningful data”], is that we intend to publish data pertaining to abuse issues as were able to.
It was further noted that LL is currently in the process now of evaluating several different products and systems to help with proactive moderation.
No specific details were made available, but it was indicated that the tools being considered “will help the team identify potential violations of the” Terms of Service or Community Standards.
This drew speculation that AI tool will be used and questions asked on real-time chat monitoring. Keira responded by stating (Video: 18:42):
We are not going to discuss the specifics around the tools at this time. As more decisions are made we may be able to offer more information. Right now, we are looking at a number of different tools that have different capabilities.
Tommy expanded on how the team approaches such investigations, starting with the initial Abuse Report (which needs to be correctly completed (please see my Abuse Report tutorial on this, to which he and other members of the Governance Team contributed for notes on completing ARs), and to which he added:
Each report is thoroughly investigated as we understands that there are always 3 sides to every story. While we always try to take an educational approach first when responding to reports, there are some issues that are so severe that it will result in a termination instead. We also want to clear up the misconception that the submitting of multiple reports from Residents, also known as AR parties, does not mean that action will be taken, or even be taken in a quicker timeline.
On the appeals process, he stated:
Appeals are thoroughly investigated by someone other than the initial agent in the investigation. This reviewer treats this as a new investigation and again looks at all the criteria available before making their decision. In addition, as part of the full review process, the appeal does get reviewed by a committee before a final decision is made. We don’t take action before completing our investigation, unless we need to hold an account temporarily for its own security. Action is only taken after an investigation is completed. Without disclosing how our internal tools work, we have taken every measure possible to remove any potential bias in every investigation.
Please also refer to the official General Discussion section of the official forums for multiple discussions on this topic, and specifically, this thread.
Meeting Discussion and Quotes
This limits of this discussion were set by Keira Linden at the opening on the meeting (Video 5:47):
We understand many of you have come here to potentially protest, or debate the changes we have made to our child avatar policy, and while we understand that not everyone agrees with the changes, we are not here today to debate the policy. That said, I am completely open to feedback. If you have feedback regarding the policy, we encourage you to submit a support ticket, or use our feedback portal.
General Notes
The primary forum thread on the subject is being read comprehensibly by Tommy Linden, and as a result, the FAQ is being updated to provide further information and clarification. As such, it should be seen as a living reference document.
New images have been added to the FAQ to illustrate what LL is looking for with regards to child avatars.
Male child avatar modesty layer example provided by Linden Lab
It was noted that there have been requests on the forums to have the [presumably the upper] back of the modesty layer for female avatars be optional, and Keira indicated that might be possible, but is currently subject to review and approval.
Whatever approach is used – (e.g. baked into the skin at creation or otherwise), the modesty layer cannot be intentionally removed / ignored (or, presumably, intentionally masked). Keira (video: 52:20 and 52:51):
Cannot be removed means just that. It cannot be removed by any means. If a new [skin] is applied then it will need to have the modesty layers.
In terms of how the modesty layers should work, Keira stated (video: 28:24):
The other concern in regards to the modesty layer is how it will impact existing content. To be clear, we are requiring skin sellers to have the areas shown in the images use a modesty layer on the skin files. However, for existing content, bake layers and alphas can be a viable temporary solution but we would STRONGLY encourage everyone to move to a more permanent solution.
Female child avatar modesty layer example provided by Linden Lab
Keira confirmed that modesty layers will be required by any avatar “presenting as under the age of 18”, and there will be a period of adjustment (video: 28:58-30:44 – comments concatenated here for ease of reading):
We understand there is some confusion regarding the age range that would be expected to follow the new policy, so we want to clarify that anyone presenting under the age of 18 will be required to follow the policy in regards to child avatars. Regarding enforcement of these new policies, I do know that there will be an adjustment period We fully intend to take an educate and inform approach to these issues, and not actively seeking to strong arm enforce these unless there is an egregious violation of the terms of service, such as sexualized age play.
General Comments / Concerns
In response to questions related to the use of furry avatars (e.g. will cubs her required to have modesty layers), anime characters (who can appear to be under 18 even when not), petite avatars, Keira Linden stated (video: 31:36-35:01) – comments from each concatenated for ease of reading):
I can assure that appearance alone is not the deciding factor in most cases, when we are looking at abuse reports.
As was mentioned before, we do have an appeals process that I believe allows for many evaluations of that appeal. If that proves to be insufficient, we will re-evaluate the process. There are some things that we cannot change, but when it comes to processes and policies I believe that those require frequent review and tweaking to keep up with current Internet trends and community use.
With Tommy further adding:
As someone who has worked on the Governance team for the past 12 years both as an agent and the leader of the team, I can say that we have very rarely taken action on just appearance alone, there has almost always been additional factors leading to action.
For those asking about clarification on age, regardless of your gender, whether or not you are a furry, or participating in the anime community, if you are presenting as under the age of 18, that is required to follow our policy regarding child avatars.
(video from 35:02 onwards): Various concerns and questions were raised, relating to (responses quoted, where given):
The use of non-human avatars, and the use of modesty layers.
The requirement for female babies to have a “bra” modesty layer potentially sexualising them.
Whether anyone in an under-5 avatar can requires the “bra” modesty cover when just the “panties” cover should suffice.
I hear you all on the modesty layer on infants, and is something I am willing to consider, but I can’t promise that any change will be made at this time.
Had the fact that by enforcing baked modestly layers in skins potentially “breaks” the baby / young child skin market (which is currently unisex).
Can the technical aspects of the modesty layer can be discussed in more detail between creators and the Lab.
I am open to discussing it further. Feel free to email me or send in a support ticket to my attention.
How is “presenting as” treated? Many have Profiles which present as children, but adopt adult avatars for certain aspects of their SL. Are they allowed to visit with friends who have homes on A-rated regions, or A-rated combat regions? If they have a Profile referencing being as a child and are reported for being child whilst visiting an A-rated region, how would the report be evaluated? What happens if someone as a child avatar inadvertently teleports to an A-rated region and gets reported?
Kiera (video: 43:38, 44:16 and 48:02 – concatenated into a single response for readability):
You can still go there just not as a child avatar If you are reported and you are in an adult avatar that is how we will evaluate the report. If a report is made we do look at the intent of the Resident. We can tell if someone popped into a region then immediately left.
Are adult bodies such as Maitreya allowed for teens (Maitreya has some geometry in the groin that cant be removed); does the need for child avatars to be “G-rated” mean they are unable to purchase / wear M-rated items (jewellery, hair, etc.)?
Questions passed as unanswered will hopefully be addressed through other means.
† 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.
Blue Finch Blossoms Hollow, April 2024 – blog post†
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 7th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
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
On Tuesday, May 7th, the Main SLS channel was updated with the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures 2K textures and mirrors).
Note that these updates require the use of the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer (available from the Alternate Viewers page), or a TPV that has merged with this code.
On Wednesday, May 8th, all RC channels will be re-started with no deployment or update.
SL Viewer Updates
The Maintenance C RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8820704257, was issued on Monday, May 6th.
The most notably update in this release is that resetting your avatar skeleton will now send the update to all viewers in your location, rather than people also having to reset your skeleton in their view as well.
The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:
Release viewer: 7.1.6.8745209917, formerly the Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), dated April 19 and promoted April 23 – No Change
Release channel cohorts:
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.6.8758996787, April 23.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
SL World Map Generator
Pepper Linden reported that a new version of the system responsible for world map tile generation has been deployed. This includes:
Fixes for issues where map tiles can become significantly out-of-date compared to the regions they represent.
A significant reduction in the time required for the daily regeneration of a complete map of the Main grid (down to 2 hours, from 11 hours).
Anyone noting any issues with the new map tile generation is asked to file a bug through the feedback portal.
This lead to a further general discussion on map and region crossings during the meeting.
In Brief
Leviathan Linden plans to have his Game Control event updates to be included in the Summer Fun simulator update (not Spring Break – which should be the next deployment – as originally hoped).
The meeting included further discussion on the SL Combat System updates + requests for additional work / options / capabilities. I’ll have an update on the SLCS work after the associated meeting (to be held on Thursday, May 9th).
Much of the the meeting formed a general discussion on a range of topics – PBR, region crossings, etc. 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.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
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
The Main channel was restarted on Tuesday, April 30th with no update.
On Wednesday, May 1st, the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures and mirrors) will be deployed to all RC channels.
Note that these updates require the use of the Graphics Featurettes RC viewer (available from the Alternate Viewers page), or a TPV that has merged with this code.
Note also that attempts to upload 2K textures on regions without the back-end support will result in an error message being displayed.
SL Viewer Updates
The Maintenance B RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8820696922, was issued on Monday, April 29th.
The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:
Release viewer: 7.1.6.8745209917, formerly the Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), dated April 19 and promoted April 23rd.
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.6.8758996787, April 23rd.
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3rd.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11, 2023.
In Brief
Monty Linden is reported to have noted improvements in region crossings during test – however, he is doubtful that this is the case and is leaning towards the belief his work in trying to improve things isn’t far enough along to be seeing the kind of improvements he has witnessed.
Monty further noted that the changes he is making to region crossings are about reducing impact on avatars already in the region as a result of another avatar physically entering it or arriving via teleport – they are not about improving matters for the avatar entering a region – although he is checking this behaviour for possible regressions as a result of his changes.
Those wishing to test Leviathan Linden’s new VEHICLE_FLAG_BLOCK_INTERFERENCE flag to optionally prevent attachments on passengers from pushing the vehicle around (so as to prevent cheating in racing, for example) can do so on the Aditi (Beta) grid regions Mauve and Jigglypuff.
Leviathan Linden hopes to update his Game Control regions on the beta grid (LeviathanLove and LeviathanLost) with the upcoming Spring Break simulator update, which contains the latest version of his Game Controller event.
The LL server team is now using Gitflow for tracking simulator releases, and it is hoped this might make it easier for providing a web page reporting on the different server update versions.
There were further comments on raising the current Mono script cap (64 Kb) and whether LL are going to do so. The reply was:
We have discussed increasing the memory cap but I don’t have anything to report on that at this time.
– Rider Linden
Rider added that in the meantime, he would like to have some way for a script to auto recover from a stack heap collision without the need for additional scripts monitoring and attempting to correct.
The problem here is that, potential causes of s S/H collision cannot necessarily be predicted (e.g. if a listen or an HTTP response comes in that is larger than your available memory then you are going to hit the S/H issue – and you can’t predict how much data is coming in), ergo, resolution tends to be re-active rather than via avoidance.
In order to help with the identification of S/H collisions, he suggested a llSetScriptFlags function where one of the flags was something like SCRIPT_FLAG_AUTO_RESET_STACKHEAP. This could help reduce reliance on having other script perform “heartbeat” operations on scripts that may trigger a stack heap collision.
The above lead to an extended discussion on scripting and script management through the latter portion of the meeting – please 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.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
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
The Main channels was restarted on Tuesday, April 23rd with no update.
On Wednesday, April 24th:
Bluesteel RC will be updated with the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures and mirrors), joining the Preflight channel.
The code currently contains a bug wherein the server can flood the viewer with too many updates to the “Material override” data. The fix for this failed to pass QA to be included in the Blues
Le Tigre and Magnum and any other RC channels will be restarted without any new deployment.
Upcoming Deployments
There are currently some bugs within the WebRTC voice support, and these caused the planned deployment of this to be delayed. See my Week #12 summary for an outline of WebRTC voice.
The above means the Spring Break RC update (which has a fix for the hovering-at-login issue) is being moved to next-in-line for deployment.
SL Viewer Updates
On Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024:
The Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history) version 7.1.6.8745209917 dated April 19th, was promoted to de facto release viewer.
The Maintenance X RC (usability improvements) updated to version 7.1.6.8758996787, on April 23rd.
The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
In Brief
Leviathan Linden has finished implementing the new VEHICLE_FLAG_BLOCK_INTERFERENCE which would allow vehicles to optionally prevent attachments on passengers from pushing the vehicle around (so as to prevent cheating in racing, for example).
This particularly targets llSetVelocity(), llApplyImpulse() and llPushObject() calls.
llMoveToTarget(), llSetForce() were also tested, but did not appear to work on the vehicle, so the code for blocking them in this circumsatances has been removed. However, if an exploit using them can be demonstrated, Leviathan is willing to add the code back into a simulator update.
Leviathan hopes to get the functionality in the Spring Break simulator update before that goes to internal QA pre-deployment testing.
The above lead to a lengthy discussion on n/card caching, and how best to define the cache (e.g. by n/card size, rather than the number of notecards) which segued into scripting and a viewer-side LSD editing interface(!).
It was indicated that an update to the Bake Service to support 2K textures is “in the plan” – but no indication of when the update might actually take place.
† 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, April 16th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
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
The Main and the majority of RC channels will all be restarted this week (Tuesday / Wednesday) with no updates deployed.
The exception to this is the Preflight RC channel which will be updated on Wednesday, April 17th, with the back-end support for the the glTF updates available in the Graphics Featurettes viewer (e.g. PBR terrain textures and mirrors.
Note that this deployment is for testing only.
Support for 2K texture will not be enabled simulator-side as a part of the initial deployment, as these are awaiting a couple of fixes to clear QA. Ergo, support for 2K textures within the preflight channel will be enabled later.
Upcoming Deployments
Back-end support for WebRTC Voice will be next to be deployed, and this will likely go to a Snack RC channel. See my Week #12 summary for an outline of WebRTC voice.
The upcoming Spring Break RC release (yet to go to RC) will have a fix for the hovering-at-login issue.
SL Viewer Updates
No updates to the official viewers currently in the pipeline, leaving them as:
Release viewer: version7.1.5.8443591509, formerly the Maintenance-W RC (bug and crash fixes), version and issued March 29th, promoted April 9th.
Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), version 7.1.6.8632452945, April 12.
Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.5.8472515256, April 3
Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.5.8443777128, April 2.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
In Brief
Teleports / region crossings: the question was asked as to which would have the greater performance impact: a avatar with 10 attachments, each of a single linked part in each, or an avatar with 1 attachments of 10 linked parts.
The reply from Monty Linden was that – outside of script considerations – the difference is liable to be negligible (scripts being the major performance hit in terms of region crossings / teleports).
A discussion on attachment point in general, including:
An increase to the maximum allowed attachments (38), primarily to help deal with issues as specified in this Feature Request, if providing a function as outlined in the Feature Request was not on the cards. However, it was felt by some that attachment counts should not be increased until the maximums for allowed worn prims / scripts are brought down to realistic figures and enforced.
A suggestion that a couple of attachment points by reserved specifically for Experiences.
A request for updates to the particle system to work with rigged attachments (removing the need unrigged particle prims). However, as the simulator does not track attachment points (which would be required for this to work), it was seen as not doable.
A request was made for LL to offer an LSL function so creators could clamp raycasts to the region edge in order to stop the end-points going off-region (/simulator) and causing errors.
Whilst seen as doable, it was felt that as raycasting should not have end points beyond a region’s boundaries, a better solution might be to identify and fix the underpinning bug that is allowing it.
Fixing the issue might also allow LL to implement the idea outlined in llVisualizeRay – A way to see Raycasts, but using llCastRay rather than adding a new LSL function.
Please refer to the video for:
A discussion on HTTP request throttling.
A discussion om script modules / libraries.
General thoughts on region crossings.
† 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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 