Tag: TPVD meetings 2018

2018 SL UG updates #22/3: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Village of Ahiru; Inara Pey, May 2018, on FlickrVillage of Ahiru – blog post

The majority of following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 1st 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This was another short meeting, with about half of that covering SL projects, which are noted below. The rest of the meeting was more general conversation, and I’ll leave it to the video to cover them. As always, time stamps in the text below will jump you to the relevant points in the video.

Server Deployments

On Wednesday. May 30th, all three primary RC channels were updated to a new server maintenance package, 18#18.05.25.515749, comprising and internal fix (presumably for the unspecified bug which prompted the roll-back of #18.05.14.515432) and the simulator-side support for the updated Estate Management tools.

SL Viewer

[0:52-2:33] The Love Me Render viewer was updated to version 5.1.5.515811 on May 31st, and promoted to de facto release status.

All other viewers in the various pipelines remain unchanged from the start of the week:

  • Release channel cohort:
    • Pálinka Maintenance RC viewer, 5.1.5.515527, dated May 21.
  • 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.

It is likely all of the above will be updated as they are merged with the Love Me Render release.

360 Snapshot Viewer

[27:48-28:32]  The 360 snapshot project viewer has been on hold in part due to two reasons: the prime resource (Callum Linden) was assigned to another project; work on the viewer has been awaiting the development of an interface to allow direct uploads to Second Life Place Pages. In the meantime, the viewer code base is being maintained in parity with release versions of the viewer.

[28:57-29:34] There are also some graphics challenges that need to be addressed is trying to support the necessary high resolutions 360-degree images require couple with the low-end graphics systems many SL users have.

Upcoming Project Viewers

[2:34-3:07] The new project viewer with the updated Estate Management tools (ban list management, etc.) is expected “pretty soon”. This will work with the simulator-side Estate Management updates currently on the RC channels.

[5:26-5:42 and 7:20-8:35] Another upcoming project viewer has re-vamped texture caching. It’s hoped this will help with viewer performance. With it, users will be able to define a much larger overall cache size on their computer if they so wish. It is also hoped this work will include improvements to VRAM handling – although a problem here is that some systems incorrectly report the amount of VRAM they have available. Further, providing a recommended setting and assuming users will adhere to that recommendation doesn’t always work.

(There is also a text discussion on caching among games, etc.).

Viewer Camera Presets

[5:53-6:34] This is a contributed project from Jonathan Yap (who was responsible for developing and coding the graphics presets options in the viewer). It will allow users to define their own placements for the SL camera around their avatar (e.g. an over-the-should view, a view from overhead, etc.), which can then be saved and selected / used as required – see STORM-2145.

The work has been stalled awaiting a couple of new controls for manipulating the camera position being implemented. However, it is a project the Lab isn’t going to lose sight of, and it remains on the active project list.

Crash Reporting Changes

[18:18-21:04] The Lab is about to start experimenting with viewer crash reporting, removing the existing Breakpad based crash reporting tools and replacing it with BugSplat, a commercial service. If this works on a trial / experimental basis, the Lab will probably switch to using  BugSplat as their crash reporting mechanism.

Should this happen, TPVs using the current crash reporting mechanism may not want to merge the associated changes to use BugSplat, and continue to use the Brakpad mechanism (or introduce an alternative bug reporting solution of their own – such as Crashpad, regarded as the successor to Breakpad). Those wishing to use the BugSplat code will need their own subscription to the service and update the viewer code accordingly when using it in their own viewers.

From the Lab’s perspective is that dealing with crashes requires the maintenance and use of a lot of historical data which needs to be routinely searched, analysed, updated, etc., and a third-party company that specialises in this kind of work can probably do so and provide the necessary tools a lot better than the Lab can do on its own.

Project ARCTan

[4:24-5:22] This is the code-name for the project to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. As I’ve previously noted, the Lab is sensitive to the implications of doing this – particularly in the area of Land Impact, and will take steps to avoid disruption (e.g. through object returns) once the project reaches that point in time. (One area of potential impact is sculpties, which currently do not have their render cost accurately reflected in their land impact.)

The Lab has been gathering data as the first step in this work, and is “homing in” on better formulas, although Oz notes there is still a lot of work to be done and the project will be a “long, slow roll-out”. It’s likely that when a project viewer for this work appears (no time frame on this), it will include contributions for jelly dolling avatars with excessive texture use.

Land Auctions and Place Pages

[28:35-2855] The new auction system (users being able to auction their own land holdings will be run through the Second Life Place Pages. This has been a focus for recent work on Place Pages, which has delayed the development of the 360 snapshot viewer interface referenced above.

[30:27-31:47] The auction capability might even be made available (to some degree) in June 2018. This is likely to be just for Linden-owned land to start with, so the Lab can deal with issues without too much disruption / confusion, prior to the service being extended to users with land holdings.

The new user-to-user land auctions will be run through Second Life Place Pages, with Linden-run auctions starting the process off

As Ebbe Altberg has indicated, the plan will then likely to be to allow Mainland land holders auction their land directly to other Premium users, and then expand the ability from there.

The use of Place Pages for auctions means that those wishing to auction their land will need to create a place page for it.

Other Items In Brief

  • [11:32 and 13:30-13:40] Parcel Banning and Object Information: there appears to have been a recent change that means if an individual is banned from a region, they no longer receive information about objects on that parcel – see BUG-216294. This is regarded as expected behaviour. This includes a largely text-based conversation on options for de-rendering objects on other parcels, together with the idea about SL not being a place necessarily intended for isolated living, extending through to [18:10].
  • [22:23-22:47] “Social” tools in the viewer: it’s unlikely the Lab will make any changes to user profiles in the viewer any time soon; back-end work is being considered for group interfaces in the viewer, but this most likely won’t take place until after the cloud migration work has been completed.
  • Fun fact: Linden staff are subject to the same constraints in behaviour and activities when using ALT accounts as when using their official accounts. This means for example, a Linden staffer cannot participate in the upcoming user-to-user land auctions, and improper behaviour will be regarded in the same way as if they were using their official account.

2018 SL UG updates #19/2: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Maison de L’amitie: Salar de Uyuni – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 11th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.

This was another short meeting – around 30 minutes, with about half of that covering SL projects, which are noted below. The rest of the meeting was more general conversation, and I’ll leave it to the video to cover them. As always, time stamps in the text below will jump you to the relevant points in the video.

SL Viewer

There have been no updates to the current crop of official viewers during week #19. This leaves the pipelines as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27th, promoted April 13th – formerly the media update RC.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • 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. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes.

[1:53 -2:45] Currently, the Ouzo Maintenance RC has a slightly lower crash rate than the Love Me Render RC, and so at this point in time looks like the more likely of the two to gain promotion to de facto release status.

Forthcoming Updates

[2:46-3:28] There are a number of viewer-visible updates which will be surfacing in upcoming viewers in the near future. These include (and in no particular order):

  • Updates to the estate management tools for better management and update of ban lists, etc.
  • Changes to viewer texture caching.
  • Further SL Voice improvements.
  • [24:43-25:39] New capability for abuse reports to be called from the simulator by the viewer, rather than being hard-coded into the viewer. This work had some delays while the AR categories were translated into other languages for display by the viewer. However both the simulator and viewer updates are now progressing
  • [30:45-31:35] New capability for receiving off-line IMs to avoid loss of IMs on logging-in. This capability is also now in testing.

GDPR and the Viewer

[5:25-7:17] The Lab recently offered an initial blog post on the upcoming European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR – also see my blog post on the subject as well). Subject to further updates on the matter from the Lab, it would appear that the view being taken that data gathered by the viewer which is used in-world will not be subject to any requirements defined by the GDPR. A benefit the Lab has had in terms of GDPR compliance, is that the company has never viewed users’ personal data as a potential asset for revenue generation.

Other Items in Brief

  • [8:03-10:35] Texture Copying: There have been requests for the Lab to make texture copying “harder”. Given that texture data is held on a local computer, and UUIDs are trivial to capture, and the data they point to can also be obtained, this is no easy task. The Lab therefore finds itself caught between trying to offer better protection for textures and risking giving the impression they can prevent all texture copying, although they do look at ways to at least deter it.
  • [11:18-12:42 (mainly text chat) and 14:28-16:50 (with text chat)] Parcel Banning and Object Information: there appears to have been a recent change that means if an individual is banned from a region, they no longer receive information about objects on that parcel. The change, if made, may have been with good intent but is possibly having unwanted side effects. A JIRA is to be raised on the issue.
  • [12:43-14:20] BUG-216032: A recent back-end security change made to PRIM_MEDIA_CURRENT_URL reportedly broke a lot of content. Following initial complaints, the Lab offered to help those experiencing problems as a result of the change if they got in contact with the Lab. Some are reportedly still having issues, however, the Lab do not appear to have been contacted for assistance. so if assistance is required – contact Oz Linden.

2018 SL UG updates #17/4: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ruins of Deepmarsh; Inara Pey, March 2018, on FlickrRuins of Deepmarsh – blog post

The majority of these notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 27th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion.

Once again, this was a short meeting, but one with extended periods of silence; hence some of the gaps in the time stamps below. There’s also a conversation on the forthcoming Bid A Linden Bald event, as part of the Relay Rockers annual

SL Viewer

[0:07-0:36] The Love Me Render RC viewer updated to version 5.1.4.514788 on Wednesday, April 25th, 2018, and the Ouzo Maintenance RC updated to version 5.1.4.514802 on Friday, April 27th. Both of these RC viewers have had “significantly higher” crash rates than the default viewer, so the Lab will be watching to see what happens with the two updates, and with the crash rate for either is reduced as a result of their release.

Otherwise the viewer pipelines remain as:

  • Current Release version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27, promoted April 13 – formerly the media update RC.
  • 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.

[0:39-1:24] The 360 snapshot viewer remains “on hold”, receiving updates to maintain parity with release viewer, but otherwise not receiving any significant work on its key features at this point in time. Work will resume in the future as the specialist resources become available. Both the Animesh and Bakes on Mesh viewers are referred to in the meeting as being “close to coming over to Agni”, although this only hold true for the Animesh project viewer, as the Bakes On Mesh viewer should work on the Main grid already (albeit with the Bake Service’s current 512×512 texture support, as the support for 1024×1024 textures has yet to be deployed).

Viewer Texture Cache Work

[1:46-2:14] The Lab continues to work on the viewer texture cache, and it is hoped that the latest attempt will lead to a “big improvement” in how textures are handled. Currently this code is not available for public consumption, but the hope is that there will be a project viewer with the code available “pretty soon”.

Updated Estate Management Tools

[19:30-20:10] Work is again progressing on enhancing the Estate Management tools in the viewer (e.g. refining ban list management capabilities, etc.). It is hoped that a project viewer will be emerging in the next few weeks. The viewer updates themselves are largely done, and things are awaiting server-side support.

Environmental Enhancement Project (EEP)

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements, including:

  • The ability to define the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, water settings) at the parcel level.
  • New environment asset types (Sky, Water, Days – the latter comprising multiple Sky and Water) that can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others.
  • Scripted, experience-based environment functions, an extended day cycle and extended environmental parameters. This work involves both a viewer updates (with a project viewer coming soon) and server-side updates.

Current Status

[11:39-12:38] Rider Linden has been engaged in some other work for most of the past month, but is now largely back working on the project. It is now a focus for the Lab going forward, with the hope that Rider will not be diverted into other work at EEP’s expense. Some test regions for EEP are also being prepared on Aditi.

Other Items

Testing Viewer Options and the Shared Experience

[5:00-5:45] TPVs sometimes introduce features and options which might be considered as breaking the “shared experience”. The question was therefore asked if allowing people to test / play with new rendering options – as developed by a TPV rather than Linden Lab – might be considered as breaking the shared experience. Oz Linden offered a response which provided some guidance on similar kinds of updates:

I think the best I can give you in terms of a general answer is if it’s the sort of thing that’s going to cause a merchant to include a note card with a product that says, “to see this product correctly, you have to run this viewer with that option turned on”, that’s a sign you’re breaking the shared experience … On the other hand, if you want to experiment with something that you’re then going to contribute upstream [i.e. to the Lab for inclusion in the base viewer code (which is used by all TPVs)] that’s a different problem altogether.

Catznip Displacement Maps Experiements

The question itself was prompted by Kitty Barnett of Catznip, who is working on using displacement maps in the viewer, as well as some other normal mapping tweaks.

Displacement maps, currently being experimented with by Kitty Barnett, can add further depth to surfaces. For example: top left – a prim wall with a brick texture; top right: a prim wall with a texture and normal map applied, as we’re used to seeing in Second Life – some depth is added to the cement grouting between the bricks etc. Bottom centre: the same prim wall with the same texture added, but now using a displacement map: note the greater apparent depth between bricks and cement grouting, etc (highlighted). However, such a capability will have a Land Impact cost.

It would seem that if successful, this work will be contributed to Linden Lab for evaluation and consideration. It’s important to note that Catznip’s work is in the early stages, more work is required on level of detail impact / modelling / potential Land Impact costs, etc., for which Catznip may look to the Lab for assistance.

[6:26-6:46] In the meantime, Oz Linden reiterated that, quite aside of the Environmental Enhancement Project (EPP – see above), the Lab is working on a number of other environmental (render-side) improvements. Previous discussions on rendering improvements have indicated that Graham Linden is already working on a series of environment updates alongside the EEP work being carried out by Rider Linden, which appears to include support for Godrays, potential pre-baking of some environment effects, etc. It’s not clear from Oz’s comments whether he is referring to this work, or something further downstream.

Natty Linden’s Marketplace Job Ad

[16:37-17:00] Natty Linden posted a Marketplace listing for a job at Linden Lab. While offering a little fun, the listing has a serious edge: there is an open Marketplace web developer post at present. As such, Natty’s listing is a further way of reaching those already engaged in Second Life who may have the requisite skills sets, who live in the right location and who may be interested in joining the Lab (which frequently does employ Second Life users – as seen with the likes of Patch Linden, Xiola Linden, and Rider Linden, to name but three of the more well-known resident hires made by the Lab over the years, and who work in different areas within the SL team).

 

 

2018 SL UG updates #15/2: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Isle of May; Inara Pey, March 2018, on FlickrIsle of May – blog post

The majority of these notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 13th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion.

The meeting was reduced to under 15 minutes, with extended pauses marking a greater portion of it.

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates.

  • The Main (SLS) channel was not updated on Tuesday, April 9th, nor was there a restart.
  • BlueSteel, LeTigre and Magnum are all now on server maintenance package 18#18.03.29.513939 after Magnum was updated on Wednesday, April 11th.

SL Viewer

[0:05-1:32] The Media Update RC viewer, version 5.1.3.513644, dated March 27th, was promoted to de facto release status on Wednesday, April 11th. As a result, the remaining RC viewer were updated to parity on Friday April 13th, as follows:

The remainder of the SL viewer pipelines remain as:

  • 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.

[1:33-1:50] With regards to the 360 snapshot project viewer, this is being routinely updated internally by the Lab to keep pace with release viewer promotions. However, no actual work is being carried out on the 360 snapshot element at the moment. Work will resume in the future.

[1:58-2:29] A new Voice update RC is due in the future at some point, which fixes some issues from the last Voice release. However work on this is currently a “low priority”.

Off-Line and Abuse Reports Capabilities

[2:31-3:30] Two new capabilities are now grid-wide server-side:

  • A new abuse report cap which replaces the need for the viewer to have AR categories hard-coded into it.  Instead it will request the list of valid categories directly from the simulator.
  • A new IM cap is to overcome of off-line IMs failing to be delivered when a user logs in. This cap will allow the viewer to request off-line IMs, which the server will package and deliver to the viewer via HTTP, rather than sending off-lines en masse whether or not the viewer is ready.

Both of these caps require viewer-side updates in order to work. However, there is currently a bug impacting the viewer update for the new off-line IMs capability. In short, if you receive an off-line Friend request, there is no way to accept it with the new capability in place. The abuse report capability appears to be working correctly, so expect both to appear in a viewer update soon.

Friending can be fragile, and the Lab hope to make it more robust over time.

 

2018 SL UG updates #13/4: TPVD meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey

Cuivieenen; Inara Pey, February 2018, on FlickrCuivieenen – blog post

The majority of these notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 30th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion.

The meeting was reduced to under 15 minutes,with minor topics of discussion taking up the latter half. Please refer to the video for these.

Server Deployment Update

  • The Main (SLS) channel was updated on Tuesday, March 27th, to server release 18#18.03.14.513292, containing the new off-line IM and Abuse Report capabilities (see below).
  • The Magnum and LeTigre RC channels were updated on Wednesday, March 28th with server maintenance package 18#18.03.27.513831, containing internal fixes and the new off-line IM and Abuse Report capabilities (see below).
  • The BlueSteel RC was updated on Thursday, March 29th with server maintenance package 18#18.03.27.513838, comprising internal fixes.

SL Viewers

Viewer Pipeline

Note: At the time of the meeting, the viewer had just been approved for issue, but it wasn’t clear if it would be released before or after the Easter weekend. However, it was in fact issued after the meeting – see below.

[00:24-3:02] At the time of the meeting, the viewer pipelines were as follows:

  • Current Release version 5.1.2.512803, dated February 23, promoted March 1 – formerly the Nalewka Maintenance RC – No change
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • 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.

Off-Line and Abuse Reports Capabilities

[0:44-1:36] Two new capabilities are now grid-wide:

  • The new IM cap is to overcome of off-line IMs failing to be delivered when a user logs in. Currently, these are delivered via UDP, whether or not the viewer is ready to receive them. With the new capability (once grid-wide and implemented within the viewer), the viewer will request off-line IMs, which the server will package and deliver to the viewer via HTTP.
  • The new abuse report cap will replace the need for the viewer to have AR categories hard-coded into it. Once fully deployed, and a viewer update released, it will mean the view will request the current list of AR categories from the server when starting up, making the management of the list easier, and hopefully reducing the number of ARs filed under outdated categories.

However, both require further revision, and they require viewer-side updates as well. These should be appearing in the next Maintenance RC viewer issued by the Lab.

Bakes on Mesh Project Viewer

The Bakes on Mesh project viewer, version 5.1.3.513936, was released on Friday, March 30th after the TPV Developer meeting had concluded.

From the release notes (link above):

Bakes on Mesh is a new feature to allow system avatar baked textures to be shown on mesh attachments. Currently you will need a special project viewer to use it. Bakes on Mesh does not depend on simulator code, so it should work in all regions and all grids.

Basic features

  • Any face of a mesh object can be textured using one of the server baked textures.
  • The corresponding region of the system avatar is hidden if an attached mesh is using a baked texture.

Benefits

  • Avoid the need for appliers -> easier customization workflow
  • Avoid the need for onion avatars -> fewer meshes, fewer textures at display time
  • Avoid the need to sell full-perm meshes. You can customize any mesh you have modify permissions for simply by setting the flags and equipping the appropriate wearables.

Avatar wearables are baked into six different textures (BAKE_HEAD, BAKE_UPPER, BAKE_LOWER, BAKE_EYES, BAKE_SKIRT, BAKE_HAIR) by the baking service. You can now apply these textures to your avatar’s object attachments’ diffuse texture slot. Right click on the attachment, click edit and from the edit face menu select textures. Click the diffuse texture icon to open up the texture picker. The texture picker has an extra radio button mode called ‘bake’ for selecting server bakes. The ‘bake’ radio button mode has a drop-down for selecting BAKE_HEAD, BAKE_UPPER, BAKE_LOWER, BAKE_EYES, BAKE_SKIRT, BAKE_HAIR server bake textures. When an attachment is using a baked texture, the corresponding base mesh region of the system avatar is hidden.

If a mesh face is set to show a baked texture but is not attached to an avatar, you will see a default baked texture. If you are using an older viewer without bakes on mesh support, then faces set to show baked textures will also display as the default baked texture, and base mesh regions will not be hidden.

Known Issues

Detaching a mesh object that’s using BAKED_HAIR, does not make the base hair region visible. You have to log back in or teleport again. This will be fixed in next release.

A filter for Bakes on Mesh JIRAs has been created by Whirly Fizzle.

 

2018 SL UG updates #11/2: TPVD meeting with Ebbe Altberg

Posted on by Inara Pey

Realm Of Light; Inara Pey, February 2018, on Flickr Realm Of Light – blog post

Update: the 43-bit viewer KDU issues has been updated based on feedback from Ansariel Hiller.

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, March 16th 2018. A video of the TPVD meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. Time stamps in the text below will open the video in a new tab at the relevant point of discussion.

This meeting was somewhat extended  – lasting 1 hour 30 minutes – as a result of the presence of Ebbe Altberg, Linden Lab’s CEO, who commented on some of the item of discussion that came up at his session at VWBPE 2018 (see my notes and transcript here), as well as more broadly discussing Second Life and Sansar.

SL Viewers

[0:17-2:20] There have been no further updates to the current release, RC and project viewers in week #11, leaving the pipeline as follows:

  • Current Release version 5.1.2.512803, dated February 23, promoted March 1 – formerly the Nalewka Maintenance RC – No change
  • Release channel cohorts :
  • 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.

General Notes

  • The Media Update RC viewer is unlikely to be promoted to release status in the immediate future, as it has some Windows 7 update issues which need to be resolved.
  • The Love Me Render viewer is making good progress, although it also has the Windows 7 problem.
    • [7:30-8:30] This viewer also has a KDU issue which can cause the 32-bit version of the viewer to crash when uploading textures larger than 512×512. One workaround for this until fix is obtained – depending on how long that takes – is for an older version of KDU to be used for 32-bit viewer versions.
  • Despite the issues with it (see my update here), the 360-snapshot project viewer is not getting a lot of attention.
  • Animesh project viewer is getting close to a possible RC release and the Animesh project close to a move to the main grid.
  • The Bakes on Mesh viewer has cleared LL’s QA, so a Bakes on Mesh project viewer for use on Aditi should be appearing soon.

New Viewer Caps

[3:51-7:04] The lab is introducing two new viewer caps they’d like TPVs to adopt quickly:

  • One will be used when the viewer first logs-in to read all of the deferred IMs received while the user was off-line, which are being moved from UDP delivery to HTTP in an attempt to overcome issues of off-line IMs failing to show.
  • The second is to read the correct set of abuse report categories from the server, so only valid categories are displayed within the viewer, allowing users to more correctly file ARs, rather than using invalid categories held viewer-side.

 

General Discussion with Ebbe

Highlights only – refer to the video for the full discussion.

Economic Model

[9:20-14:35]

  • The Lab is looking to try to pivot the SL economic model away from a heavy reliance on land fees, and then in time hopefully reduce the cost of land.
  • This will see a shift from land to revenue generation through fees in other areas.
  • The Lab cannot simply drop land fees and raise fees elsewhere, the two have to be balanced, so while the Lab is hoping to “aggressively” tackle pivoting revenue generation, they will also be cautious in making changes.
    • The hope of reducing land fees can be seen in the reduction in Mainland fees.
    • [10:50 via Oz and Linden] The Mainland price reduction has already seen a significant uptick in interest for abandoned Mainland, with support being “overwhelmed” with requests.
  • There is currently nothing planned for Private region fees, simply because the Lab has to be cautious around revenue.
    • It might be a case of (a) fee increase(s) elsewhere first, followed after a time by consideration of what can be done with Private region fees.
    • It is however, something the Lab would like to do.
    • The steps must be measured not only to safeguard LL’s revenue stream, but also so as not to upset the SL economy.
    • For this reason, the Lab will take a little time to measure the Mainland restructuring before they make other changes, so that they can more accurately measure cause and effect between different types of change.
  • These ideas were also discussed that the VWBPE session with Ebbe – see my transcript notes (with audio from that session) for more.

Sansar

[15:39-18:36] A general overview of Sansar – which is still is  Creator Beta – including the drive this year to gain an audience for Sansar, plus improvements to the VR aspect of the platform. Most of this is covered in my weekly Sansar updates. For Ebbe in particular, the Sansar team is at a point where he feels comfortable pivoting attention away from that platform and back to Second Life, including spending more time in-world.

Sansar and SL

[18:38-22:09]

  • A re-iteration that Sansar was never intended to be a replacement for Second Life.
  • Both products now have completely separate teams working on them
    • At VWBPE 2018, Ebbe indicated that the core SL team – engineering, development, operations, support – is “close to” 100 in number.
  • There is an area of overlap between the two products, but there are also very clear differentiators.
  • Proof that Sansar isn’t a replacement for Sl is the level and speed with which LL has continued to invest in SL (overhauling the viewer and simulator build mechanisms, bringing more performance and stability to the platform) and to add new capabilities (Bento, Animesh, Bakes on Mesh, EEP, rendering enhancements, etc.).

Moving SL to the Cloud

[22:09-32:00]

  • Progress is being made.
  • Experimental regions have been run in the cloud, and they worked.
    • There are a lot of functional limitations that must be addressed before regions users can access can be run in the cloud.
    • The regions did achieve a reasonably high concurrency level (precise number not given).
  • Much of what SL does natively – dynamically spinning-up a new set  of inventory management servers or a new set of log-in services, etc. – is similar in nature to a lot of what cloud service providers do, so a lot of the back-end work involved in moving to the cloud is taking what the Lab have, and adapting it to run within the infrastructure of the cloud.
  • It is a massive engineering undertaking that will take time.
  • Once completed, it is hoped operating SL in the cloud will allow LL to offer benefits to users, which might potentially include:
    • Reduced costs for regions that are spun-down and stored to disk when no-one is using them, should this be explored for Second Life
    • Ability for simulators and services to be more geographically based (e.g. simulators used largely by an audience in South America could be hosted in facilities in South America)
    • Ability to potentially have a broader cross-section of land product based on server types, with a broader range of performance / pricing.
  • It is hoped that, for the most part, users won’t be aware of services being switched from the Lab’s dedicated infrastructure to running within a cloud infrastructure
    • Some non-user facing services are already running in the cloud.
    • The work will be done progressively, and not a “flipping of the switch” for “everything”.
    • There is not end-date for the work. The Lab is approaching it as aggressively as possible, but there are a lot of technical hurdles to be cleared along the way, some of which will only become apparent as attempt are made to shift things and put them into production via the cloud.
    • To deal with potential issues / hurdles, it is possible that further ahead, there is a simulator RC channel “in the cloud”, while others are still running on the Lab’s own infrastructure.
  • Also see Ebbe’s comments from VWBPE 2018.

Upcoming New User Experience

[1:01:23-1:07:11] The Product Team is doing a lot of work with the new user flow, and are getting close to where they can start experimenting with ideas.

Part of this work involves a themed learning island reached via a new user clicking a themed ad which takes them to a themed landing page on the SL website, where they can sign-up, obtain an avatar in keeping with the theme, and are delivered to a learning island that also follows the theme.

This approach will be tested alongside the current on-boarding routes.

Interesting tidbits:

  • The lab spent over a year building a “fairly sophisticated” tracking system to gather data on new users and see how they are doing, i order to try to learn more about on-boarding / retention.
  • The Lab’s data / testing suggests new user retention is no better in welcome areas with greeters, than for those without greeters.
  • A test the Lab carried out using a (non-public) browser-based means of accessing Second Life from sign-up (no need to download the viewer) also did not achieve better retention than the “traditional” sign-up and download route.

Other Items

  • [32:10-34:07] Mirrors in SL: the inevitable discussion – and no, mirrors aren’t in Sansar!
  • [34:08-37:08] SL and VR: re-cap of why the VR viewer was dropped from Second Life – unable to maintain the comfort-level VR frame rates (90 fps). Also segues into a discussion of the Sansar / SL Edit mode differences (also see Ebbe’s comments from VWBPE 2018).
    • [37:10-37:40] Sansar benefits to SL: Oz confirms that some of the rendering work with the atmospheric shaders to improve SL’s appearance is leveraging lessons learned with Sansar.
  • [38:35-43:50] Texture caching: the project to improve the viewer’s texture caching is still very active, and once completed, the Lab plain to look at other aspects of how the viewer caches data.
  • [44:17-47:09] Linux Viewer: no real change from my last update.
    • TPV have the same problem as LL re: Linux developers.
    • LL would like to see more from the Linux community get involved.
    • Suggestion is for Linux users to try running the Windows viewer under Wine.
  • [47:10-49:25] OpenGL and GPU/CPU divide: discussion on updating SL’s OpenGL version, which is already under consideration at the Lab. Broadens into a discussion of modifying SL’s rendering capabilities to make more use of more GPU shader capabilities for calculation (rather than being reliant on the CPU), and the risks (to users) this entails (as many SL users don’t use more modern hardware with GPUs capable of taking the load).
  • [51:58-59:58] Community Gateways: Discussion on the Community Gateway programme and attracting users. Includes mention of partners, Place Pages, etc. Ideas raised seen as something that could be put to the SL Marketing team under Brett Linden.
  • [1:12:52-1:14:14] Feature Requests: when filing a Feature Request JIRA, it is better to keep the request focused on a single idea which can be easily digested. Multiple ideas should be submitted via separate JIRAs so that meaning don’t become confused / the JIRA becomes to complicated to understand, etc. Multiple JIRAs around related ideas can also be related via identifier.