Tag: TPVD meetings 2018

2018 SL UG updates #36/2: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Bellefleurs; Inara Pey, August 2018, on FlickrBellefleurs – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, September 7th, 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This is another short TPV Developer meeting, with a lengthy discussion (roughly from 7:00 to 13:15) on the Estate Access Management project viewer, the majority of which is covered by my overview of that viewer, and so not repeated here. There are also some extended silences on the video.

SL Viewer

[0:58-7:00]

The Rakomelo Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.9.519298 on September 5th.  The remaining viewer pipelines remain as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.8.518593, dated August 14, promoted August 20. Formerly the SL Voice RC viewer – 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):
    • Animesh RC viewer, version 6.0.0.518949, August 24.
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518305, August 7. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Assorted Notes on the Viewer Pipeline

  • The Bugsplat RC viewer is still awaiting a further update (to bring it to parity with the release viewer), and this update will include some Mac improvements.
  • A second viewer with further round of rendering updates will be following on the heels of the current Love Me Render RC viewer.
  • EAM Project Viewer:
    • The next update to the EAM viewer may see it promoted to release candidate status.
    • This update will include the ability to set time-based bans on individuals (i.e. banning someone for a period of time, after which they are automatically unbanned).
  • The snapshot viewer is still awaiting internal resources at the Lab to be able to resume working on it.
  • Both the Bakes on Mesh and Environment Enhancement Projects continue to await the AIS update (see below for more).
    • The Bakes on Mesh project also requires both a simulator update (as does EEP) and an update to the Bake Service. These  will take place some time after the AIS update has been deployed,
    • [7:51-8:49] As a sidebar to the Bakes on Mesh and EEP work, it was found that the existing viewer code did not handle inventory assets types very well if it could not recognise them. This has now been corrected with one of the updates in the Rakomelo RC viewer, so viewers with this code, but which do not have the BOM and EEP code should handle the new asset types delivered by the simulator / CDN for these projects a lot more gracefully than has previously been the case with adding new asset types.
  • [6:16-7:00] The Animesh is now down to a small number of must-fix bugs before it can roll to release status; additional bugs have been tiraged and flagged as “fix later”. As noted in my most recent CCUG update, there will be a behavioural change to add a scale limit to the existing translation limit such that Animesh objects can’t become too large or too arbitrarily placed.

AIS Update

[4:00-4:34] As noted above, the AIS (Advanced Inventory System) update contains changes to support both the Bakes on Mesh project and the EEP project. However, it is primarily aimed at running the inventory services on a newer version of their operating system (the Lab is currently engaged in updating the operating system used across their servers, as noted by Simon Linden at the week #36 Simulator User Group meeting). This OS update is also one of the foundational requirements need to start moving more of the SL services to a cloud based infrastructure in the future.

The AIS update has now cleared the Lab’s QA testing, and is expected to be grid-wide in the next week or so.

ARCTan and Viewer Texture Caching

[13:30-14:40] ARCTan and the viewer texture caching updates have been on hold, the former because of the effort being put into the rendering updates in the Love Me Render RC viewer (and presumably its follow-up viewer) and the EEP project. Both ARCTan and the viewer texture caching project are expected to resume “real soon nowTM“.

In Brief

  • A reminder that the SL Voice .EXE in the current release viewer (5.1.8.518593) is incompatible with earlier versions of the viewer, and cannot be used with them.
  • There is also a report that viewer 5.1.8.518593 can disconnect voice when teleporting a lot more frequently that previous releases. This is to be the subject of the bug report.
  • A reminder that the fixes for ensuring off-line Group messages and Friend requests are correctly delivered at log-in by the new HTTP capability can be found in the Rakomelo RC viewer.
  • [21:27-22:10] There is still no confirmed date as to when the inventory UDP messaging will be turned off at the simulator end. All inventory messaging switched from UDP to HTTP earlier in 2018, and it had previously been indicated the UDP support would be switched off on the server end in late summer / autumn 2018.  This is in part due to the discovery the messaging system is being used by some “other things”, and this need to stop before UDP messaging can be disabled.

2018 SL UG updates #34/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ponto Cabana; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrPonto Cabana – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, August 24th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. The second half of the meeting is dominated by general discussions on the Environment Enhancement Project, which is covered via my CCUG updates, particularly the week #34 update, and so these aren’t repeated in the notes below – please refer to the notes in the link or watch the embedded video.

SL Viewer

[1:12-5:37]

The Voice viewer has had one bug filed against it following its promotion to release status, but this is considered “not too terribly serious”.

The Animesh RC viewer updated to version 6.0.0.518949 on August 24th,  in the wake of the promotion of the Voice RC viewer to de facto release status, bringing it to parity with the latter.

All other SL viewers in the various pipelines remain as per the start of the week:

  • Current Release version 5.1.8.518593, dated August 14, promoted August 20. Formerly the SL Voice RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518751, released on August 20.
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.8.518305, August 7. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Of these, the BugSplat viewer (previously reported as coming to the end of its run) is with QA following its merge up to the Voice viewer release, and so a new RC version should be appearing in week #35. At the time of the meeting, the Love Me Render RC viewer had yet to be merged up to the Voice viewer code base.

The Love Me Render viewer should also address the KDU issues previously noted, with a fix to prevent the OpenJPEG textures that create problems from being created. However, the Lab is still working with Kakadu to try to obtain a better fix for issues.

Week #35 should also see the release of a new maintenance RC viewer.

Estate Access Management Viewer

[6:55-7:38] Feedback on the new EAM project viewer hasn’t been as broad as the Lab had hoped (i.e. the viewer hasn’t been tested by many region holders); however, the feedback that has been obtained has been taken on-board by the Lab. Currently, it is anticipated this viewer should be proceeding to RC status relatively quickly.

There are discussions on the EAM viewer that take place around 14-20 minutes into the meeting, however most of this can be covered by reading my EAM viewer overview.

Bakes On Mesh

[4:24-5:20] The order of events to get Bakes on Mesh working on Aditi are:

  • AIS update to support the new asset types used by Bakes on Mesh (and the new assets to be used by the Environment Enhancement Project). This is now due to clear the Lab’s QA and start deployment – at the CCUG meeting, Vir suggested this could start to happen in week #35.
  • A simulator update to support the Bakes on Mesh messaging, etc.
  • The Bake Service update to support  the use of 1024×1024 textures. This is ready to go, but is dependent upon to the simulator update being deployed.

EEP / TCO / ARCTan

[7:56-8:41] The Environment Enhancement Project, the TCO (viewer texture caching project) and ARCTan project (re-aligning rendering costs) all involve Graham Linden. His priorities are currently:

  • EEP shader work  – see my week #34 CCUG summary for more.
  • TCO viewer caching work.
  • ARCTan – see my week #34 CCUG summary for more.

The TCO project will hopefully improve texture caching in the viewer (as well as allowing users with 64-bit operating systems to set larger caches than is currently possible) and also include improvements to texture handling in the renderer.

“Avatar Last Names” Project

[8:42-10:40] The project to re-implement avatar last names is progressing, but is still not ready for deployment. The current focus on the project is ensuring the all of the Second Life services, both visible and non-visible to users, will correctly handle and resolve name changes (e.g. everything from how an avatar’s name is displayed in their profile / in-world tab through their groups, to object / asset ownership to SL web properties like the Marketplace, forums, and so on).

Given this, there are no dates available on possible deployment of the capability or how things like user suggestions for last names will be managed. Nor has the cost for making a name change been determined.

Mac OpenGL Support  / Linux Viewer Builds

[34:23-35:40]

  • Nothing new to report on how the Lab is going to handle rendering on the Mac viewer following Apple’s decision to deprecate OpenGL support. Options are still to be investigated.
  • Work on the Linux 64-bit viewer is progressing as a background task. It is hoped that more positive news will be forthcoming towards the end of the year. However, any Linux build will have a degree of limited functionality, by virtue of the fact that Vivox has discontinued providing voice support for Linux on account of its low user numbers compared with other operating systems.

In Brief

[24:26-25:51] JIRA Update: the Second Life JIRA update is now scheduled for Wednesday, August 29th, 2018. During the update, the service will be unavailable for several hours. An official blog post should precede the update.

[26:15-27:27] Abuse Reports: a cap was introduced recently that loads Abuse Report categories from the server, rather than having them hard-coded in the viewer. However, some users remain on older viewers that ho not recognise the cap, and which have out-of-date categories stored within them. This causes  reports filed using the correct categories to be delayed in processing until then can be reviewed and correctly re-classified.  So far the Lab has opted not to block incoming ARs purely on the bases of them having an invalid category.

[31:35-33:15] Duplicate Calling Cards: some time ago there were improvements made to the viewer to handle the deletion of calling cards. However, duplication of cards can still be an issue for those who like to have them inventory. To help with this, the Lab’s support team is adding a function to their inventory fix transform that will also remove duplicated calling cards (and duplicated calling card folders).

2018 SL UG updates #30/3: TPV Developer meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Strawberry Lake; Inara Pey, July 2018, on FlickrStrawberry Lake – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 27th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a short meeting – 24  minutes on the video, which includes some lengthy silences.

My apologies for the tardiness in posting this – I wrote it up on Saturday, then got distracted by RL before posting and forgot about it!

SL Viewer

No updates during the week, leaving the viewer pipelines as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.6.516459 and dated June 15, promoted June 21 – formerly the Pálinka Maintenance Release Candidate – No Change
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • BugSplat RC viewer, version 5.1.7.518003, released July 20. This viewer is functionally identical to the current release viewer, but uses BugSplat for crash reporting, rather than the Lab’s own Breakpad based crash reporting tools.
    • Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.7.517594, on July 12.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

The Bugsplat viewer has some issues logged against it, notably BUG-225112 -[Bugsplat-RC] Bugsplat viewer appears to misreport viewer crashes as freezes & other assorted annoyances. This is being looked into.

Upcoming Projects

  • For Animesh Bakes on Mesh and EEP, please refer to my week #30 CCUG report.
    • In addition to the above notes, the Advanced Inventory System (AIS) is currently being updated, and this work is delaying both Bakes on Mesh and EEP, both of which make changes to the inventory system as well.
  • A viewer with the updated estate management tools is in the process of being polished, and should be appearing “pretty soon”.
  • Texture cache project viewer: this has been on hold recently while Graham Linden works on another project, however, he’ll be returning to it in the very near future.

Other Items

  • Noted in my CCUG summary, BUG-225157 “[RC BlueSteel 18.07.17.517953] Adjusting specular horizontal offset also adjusts specular vertical offset on BlueSteel regions only” should be getting both server-side a viewer updates to correct. These updates were with the Lab’s QA team at the time of TPVD meeting.
  • There are reports of a media issue arising from the Firestorm 5.1.7.55786 release (reviewed here), but the root cause appears to be with the Lab’s code – a JIRA is to be raised.
  • Group Notices: the new capability to use HTTP rather than UDP for receiving off-line notices when logging in had a couple of issues relating to group notices and friend requests. The fixes for this are both server-side and in the viewer, and should both see the light of day soon.
    • Note that the HTTP capability is only for received messages held while off-line. IMs, group notices, etc., sent while you are actually logged-in to Second Life are still delivered via UDP.

2018 SL UG updates #28/2: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Chouchou – Memento Mori – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, July 13th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. This was a short meeting – just over 30 minutes in length, but with some significant pauses throughout.

SL Viewer

The Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 5.1.7.517594, on July 12th. All other SL viewers in the various pipelines remain as for the start of the week:

  • Current Release version 5.1.6.516459 and dated June 15th, promoted June 21st – formerly the Pálinka Maintenance Release Candidate – No Change
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29th November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

Animesh

[0:44-2:20] Some bugs have surfaced in the server-side Animesh code which may delay the code from being deployed to the Main (SLS) channel in week #29 (commencing Monday, July 16th).

There is still some validation testing going on for the LOD / bounding box issue in Animesh viewer, but the viewer should be promoted to release candidate status “fairly soon”, possibly by the time the server-side code has been deployed grid-wide.

Bakes On Mesh

[2:21-2:38] A further update to the Bakes on Mesh project viewer is anticipated, possibly in week #29 (commencing Monday, July 16th). This will include several bug fixes.

Upcoming Project Viewers

Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP)

[3:01-3:40] A project viewer for EEP should be surfacing soon, but the functionality will not be available on the Main grid until the supporting back-end inventory updates have been deployed to Agni.

Texture Caching Updates

[3:44-4:21] A project viewer (the TCO viewer) with new texture caching capabilities is still anticipated as coming soonTM.

Estate Management Tools Updates

[4:45-5:27 and 21:59-23:31] A viewer supporting the updates to the estate management tools – improved ban lists, etc., had been held up while some issues around Friend requests and group invites are fixed (these issues are related to the recently introduced capability to deliver off-line IMs, etc., via HTTP rather than UDP, with group invites and friendship offers requiring more back-end updates in order to work correctly through the new capability). These issues have now been resolved, and both the server-side updates and the viewer changes are with the Lab’s QA team.

Last Names

[16:30-20:25] Still no date for roll out, but as these keep coming up:

  • There are no plans to re-introduce legacy last names (i.e. no Pey, Widdershin, Sideways, Munro, Fizzle, etc.).
    • [27:27 (text) and 28:18-28:25] However, a suggestion was put forward in the meeting to offer legacy names at a higher price than other last names, and Oz indicated this might be considered.
  • People will be able to suggest last name options (excluding legacy last names, per above).
  • There will be no change to Display Names, which will remain available as an option for those wishing to continue using them.
  • Changing your name will levy a real-world fee – the exact amount is still TBD.

A focus on the work for this is updating back-end services so they properly support / recognised changed names. Until this work is completed, the Last Names capability cannot be deployed.

In Brief

  • [5:43-6:36] Dynamic user interface (DUI): referred to at the recent Meet the Lindens sessions at SL15B, the ability to separate floater and panels out from the main viewer window is not being worked on at present, and so it is extremely unlikely anything on this will appear in 2018.
    • For a broader discussion on the idea and some of the Lab’s thinking on is – please refer to this section of my SL15B summaries.
  • [7:11-7:30] Multi-core graphic pipeline: raised at the meeting, this is not something the Lab is liable to tackle at the moment. A more important focus is how to handle Apple’s deprecation of OpenGL.
  • [9:29-9:45, with text comments to 11:43] BUG-225039: “with transparent texture and alpha masking at cut-off 1, the underlying colour shows through in small patches” – the Lab is actively investigating this.

 

2018 SL UG updates #26/3: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

San Monique; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrSan Monique – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 29th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

SL Viewer

No changes to see out the week, leaving the current pipelines as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.6.516459 and dated June 15th, promoted June 21st – formerly the Pálinka Maintenance Release Candidate – New
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Quinquina Maintenance RC viewer, version 5.1.7.516813, released on June 22nd.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17th, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8th, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

Week #27 Deployments

[2:53-3:29] Animesh is now on all the major release candidate server channels. However, due to the US 4th July holiday occurring mid-week in week #27 (commencing Monday, July 2nd, 2018), it will not be deployed to the Main (SLS) channel, as the Lab wish to avoid “high risk” deployments during the week.

Bugsplat Testing

[3:34-4:08] The Lab is about to start experimenting with viewer crash reporting using BugSplat, a commercial service.

As a part of this, a new release candidate viewer with code for using Bugsplat should be arriving in week #28 (commencing Monday, July 9th); aside from this, code, it will be functionally identical to the de facto release viewer. It will be used to evaluate whether or not to commit to a move to using Bugsplat over the current home-grown Breakpad crash reporting mechanism.

Environment Enhancement Project

[4:40-5:50] The EEP project viewer is seen as being “not too far away”. It is currently awaiting the deployment of the back-end inventory management changes, which are required to support the new EEP inventory assets. This includes a new inventory Settings folder, designed to contain windlight assets.  Please refer to my week #26 CCUG update for more on EEP as well.

[6:13-8:04] It’s not clear when the experience-based LSL support for EEP will be available – probably not during the initial deployment, but will become available as the project iterates. Also things will be set such that during testing, those on regions supporting the new EEP settings will see them; those on regions without the back-end support will see things as they are now (the “old style settings”).

Upcoming Changes

Monday, July 2nd, will see the introduction of the new private region prices, together with the increase in Linden Dollar purchase transaction fee see Linden Lab announces major SL private region pricing restructure for more.

[15:03-16:50] Also coming up is the new land auction system, which will allow users to auction their own Mainland.

The system is currently in the final stages of testing internally, and the current plan is for the Lab to wind-down auctions using the existing system by the end of week #27, then switch to the new system. Initially, only auctions of Linden held land will be available through the new system, but this will be expanded to include land held by users hopefully by the end of July 2018.

The new land auction system will be run through Place Pages, so those having Mainland they want to auction should consider creating a Place Page for it (if they haven’t already done so).

Other Items

  • [8:20-8:46] It appears that once Animesh, EEP, Bakes on Mesh, etc., are all deployed, the focus may be more on server-side updates and work (region crossings?). The easing of viewer-related projects should give TPVs some room to catch up with the Lab, if necessary, although bug fixes, etc., will still be appearing (via Maintenance RC releases).
    • [29:11-29:43] One of these projects will be ARCTan, the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs. However, this will remain a deliberately slow process.
  • [8:59-9:23] There are still two major open-source contributions to the viewer in development:
    • Camera presets, which will allow users to set and save their own preferred camera presets in the viewer see STORM-2145.
    • Porting of the poser feature from the Black Dragon TPV to the official viewer.
  • [9:32-12:40] As noted in my previous TPVD meeting summary,  there are concerns about unintended consequences of experiences when combined with tools such as avSitter (and / or RLV), and the potential for abuse. A JIRA was raised, but subsequently closed by the Lab. However, the matter is still under discussion internally, and may result in changes to how experiences work to address the issue.
  • The next get-together of everyone at the Lab who works on Second Life to discuss plans and options should be taking place towards the end of July.
  • [18:16-18:37]The latest official viewer sees the minimum object LOD raised from 0.0 to 1.0; this is unlikely to be reversed.
  • [19:00-20:05] The Lab currently has an update to Voice running internally. Vivox are due to deliver a new SLVoice.exe update “real soon”. When this happens, the test Voice viewer will likely move to a public project viewer, with the new SLVoice package.

 

2018 SL UG updates #24/3: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Woods Club; Inara Pey, June 2018, on FlickrWoods Club – blog post

The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 15th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

SL Viewer

  • The Pálinka  Maintenance RC updated to version 5.1.6.516459 on Friday, June 15th.
  • The Bakes on Mesh project viewer updated to version 5.1.6.516270 on Thursday, June 14th.

The rest of the current SL viewer pipelines remain as follows:

  • Current Release version 5.1.5.515811, dated May 31, promoted June 1 – formerly the Love Me Render Release Candidate – 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):
    • 32-bit Windows Unloop RC viewer, version 5.1.6.515965, dated June 5 – specifically for 32-bit Windows users caught in the 64-bit install loop (see here for more). Otherwise, the viewer is functionally identical to release version 5.1.5.515811.
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

[13:07-13:30] The 360 snapshot viewer has been stalled pending other work (such as support for uploading 360 images to Second life Place Pages) and for resources to work on it – but it has not been forgotten.

Upcoming Viewers

  • [4:15-4:36] Voice update: there should be a new Voice RC viewer arriving, hopefully in the next two weeks. This will contain a new SL voice updated from Vivox.
  • [5:56-6:26] Texture caching: a project viewer re-working texturing caching should be appearing soonTM. This viewer (and the work related to it) is currently on hold pending the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP). When it does appear, the Lab is confident it will make a noticeable improvement to viewer performance.

Animesh Mini-Update

Please refer to my CCUG meeting summary for more on the status of Animesh.

[0:24-2:46] The Lab is aiming to try to get Animesh deployed to a release candidate channel on Agni (the Man grid) during week #25 (week commencing Monday, June 18th, 2018). It is not 100% certain there will be a deployment but, according to Oz, if it does go ahead, it will likely be a part of the RC deployment to the BlueSteel channel. Region holders wishing to test Animesh can request their region be moved to the required RC via a support ticket.

Note that the viewer supporting Animesh will remain at project release status for the time being.

[38:28-42:40] discussion – voice and chat of the Animesh 90-degree rotation issue. Again, all see my CCUG meeting notes, linked to above.

Region Crossings

[4:42-5:50] Work on trying to improve region crossings on the simulator side of the equation is continuing. The messaging changes as a result of this work  are being ported to the SL viewer, and should appear in a future Maintenance branch of the viewer, although the messaging updates themselves are not expected to have any real effect on improving region crossings from a viewer perspective.

The simulator changes are being handled one at a time, and will be appearing in simulator RC updates over the course of the next few months.

In the meantime, and as reported in my Simulator User Group updates (see here for an example), user Joe Magarac (animats) has developed a viewer-side update to help correct some of the region crossing issues within the viewer, particularly in relation to “partial unsits”. His work is likely to be featured in the upcoming Firestorm release, and I’ll have more on that in my review of that release. It’s not clear if these changes have been contributed to the Lab (or if they would be accepted if they have).

Global Experiences

[14:58-17:45] There have been concerns that the roll-out of grid-wide experiences will mean automatic opt-in to such activities, rather than consented opt-in. This will not be the case: grid-wide will function the same as current region / parcel experiences – consent will need to be granted via a dialogue box. Only experiences developed by Linden Lab may have automatic opt-in, although none of the Lab’s experiences to date use this, and there are currently no plans to deploy any that do.

The only difference with grid-wide experiences and current experiences is that the land owner doesn’t have to explicitly allow grid-wide experiences (it will – I understand – instead be a case of land owners opting out of grid-wide experiences if they don’t want them on their land).

There has also been a request to make experience dialogues when requesting the ability to take control to be friendlier  / more informative on the grounds that people are scared of them.

[23:30-37:00] There is an extended discussion (mostly text) over unintended consequences of experiences when combined with tools such as avSitter (and / or RLV), and the potential for abuse. This includes a discussion on how to make it easier for users to discover what is acting on their avatar through the viewer UI (and the problems in trying to do so).

In Brief

  • [3:28-3:58] https move – work is progressing on moving all of the SL web services to https: – however, this work has been more of a background task of late while the web services team work on other projects. So, not time frames on when the various services still to be moved will do so.
  • [8:44-9:58] SL wiki edit rights / JIRA comments rights: because of issues with spam bots, etc., both the SL wiki and the SL JIRA has been locked from casual editing (wiki) / making comments on reports (JIRA).
    • If you have a valid need to edit SL wiki pages, submit a support ticket with a request for edit rights. All requests are reviewed and access granted on the outcome of said review.
    • If you have a valid reason to want to comment on SL JIRA reports, you should e-mail a request with your SL user name and why you are requesting access to letmein-at-lindenlab.com.
    • Note that the JIRA lock does not prevent people from raising JIRA bug reports and feature requests.
  • [22:48-23:28] The Read Off-Line Messages Capability: there have been a couple of issues in handling Friend and Group requests received while off-line. These are being addressed server-side, and it is hoped the code will be with QA in week #25 (commencing Monday, June 18th, 2018), and will hopefully be deployed shortly thereafter.