Deploys for the week of 2020-06-08

[Mazidox Linden]

Second Life Server (No Roll):

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-06-01T21%3A26%3A43.543116.html

Second Life RC:

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/simulator/2020-06-05T19%3A36%3A41.543337.html

Wednesday 2020-06-10 07:00-11:30 PDT

On Region Restarts:
Regions will be restarted if they have been running for more than 10 days on Tuesday (Main Channel) and Wednesday (RCs) regardless of whether or not new code is being deployed, for the general health and well being of the Simulators. Nothing beats turning it off and then on again ... once in a while.

As always please plan events around these maintenance windows. However, if you are hosting an event on Tuesday or Wednesday when we're not deploying new code, you can restart your region ahead of time to avoid interruptions.

[Sayrah Parx]

Making chat ranges for whisper, say and shout inconsistent across SL will only make things worse.  People would not be able to trust local chat at all.  It would be better to have new message range types for estate, parcel and region chat, and allow people to decide if they want to listen to any of those new three and choose which of the six ranges to send on by default.  That way someone could send on estate, region or parcel,  but if a listener has those off then it would still check if they were in shout, say, or whisper range.

[Mazidox Linden]

That is exactly why these values are read-only for now. We need to get together new viewer code to make it clear to everyone exactly who and what will be able to hear you when you use various forms of local chat.

[Aishagain]

I know I'll be criticized for being negative but @Mazidox Linden this is a bit late.  Glad to have it but rather shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.

[Sayrah Parx]

You're right that the visibility in the viewer of who is in chat range, and what the chat ranges are, isn't going to be the issue.  The issue will be having to check and memorize the local chat thresholds every time you enter a new region.  That is what people will have to get into the habit of doing before anything else.  It will be a nightmare to have that as a constant concern, and it will make people hesitant to communicate in local chat.  I'm sure that's not the intention, so I hope you will reconsider making any of the chat ranges variable by region.  It would also be good to know what problem it's meant to solve or what the benefit is meant to be.  It certainly sounds like a good idea for making it easier to communicate, but the implementation will only make it more difficult to communicate consistently.  What most people would really like is the ability to chat across an entire parcel/region/estate horizontally, with the vertical limit being the normal whisper/say/shout limits.

[Odaks]

10 hours ago, Sayrah Parx said:

What most people would really like is the ability to chat across an entire parcel etc

I certainly don't want to hear chat from the other side of a region. I'm a great fan of using local chat; its awful when you arrive somewhere, find loads of people there but chat is silent because everyone is using IMs - the place seems creepily dead. However, if a group nearby are spouting a load of inane drivel in local chat, its easy to move just 20m away and get rid of them. If that doesn't work, the only solution will be to leave, and that's a shame.

Those parcel owners that do want to have local chat extended can always do it by use of a Chat Extender, readily available on the MP. (I understand that visitors should be advised about that.)

I'm hoping that setting Restrict Gestures and Object Sounds to This Parcel will still provided immunity from encroaching sounds too. Chat from an adjoining parcel or region might be totally inappropriate, for whatever reason.

I can see the use of region-wide chat for large performances etc., but for everyday chatting purposes? No thanks!

Maybe when I get to see the full details of this scheme I'll find that I have nothing to worry about. At the moment I only have an an outline of what this is.

[Aishagain]

Maybe I am being obtuse but surely the whole point of local chat is that it is...um...local?  I really do not see the value of sim-wide chat when there are perfectly good chat-extenders available on the MP.  In this and more I echo (locally) @Odaks.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Aishagain

[NeoBokrug Elytis]

So this discussion of chat distances being changed is getting a little pear shaped and spreading FUD.

IIRC -- it's only changeable by ESTATE OWNERS and only for channel zero.  There ARE use cases where having region wide, or multi-region wide chat is a benefit such as large events or venues.

I, personally won't be changing these values but I understand the need for them.

[MBeatrix]

2 hours ago, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

So this discussion of chat distances being changed is getting a little pear shaped and spreading FUD.

IIRC -- it's only changeable by ESTATE OWNERS and only for channel zero.  There ARE use cases where having region wide, or multi-region wide chat is a benefit such as large events or venues.

I, personally won't be changing these values but I understand the need for them.

I too do understand some owners may need that but it all feels like LL devs have nothing else to do... Why don't they get group chat working properly? 9 out of 10 times the chat of my venue's group fails, as of late...

[Sayrah Parx]

That's why any new larger ranges need to be on a new separate option that can be turned off, instead of creating the ability to change the current ranges.  It would be great to be able to turn off the shout and say range in the viewer as separate options too.  We don't want estates to come up with their own ranges for everything.  Instead there should be viewer options to hear within the current estate, region, parcel, shout, say and whisper ranges.  New options for estate, region and parcel should also obey vertical limits according to the viewer settings, i.e. max vertical range should be shout if people have shouts turned on.

[Odaks]

3 hours ago, NeoBokrug Elytis said:

So this discussion of chat distances being changed is getting a little pear shaped and spreading FUD.

I don't see any thing pear-shaped or FUD about full details not being apparent generally to all, but maybe I've completely missed an announcement about this and are trying to figure out what this might mean to residents generally.

The release notes state, "This release includes work in the simulators to eventually allow per-region values for Shout, Say, and Whisper distances. NOTE: Currently these values are read only, and can be accessed via the Sim Console." 

I note that it states "per-region". Now you are suggesting that this only applies "per-estate-regions"?  But isn't any collection of regions an "estate", private islands or mainland regions? Maybe I've got this all horribly wrong. Help me out with this someone - please!

[Sayrah Parx]

It means that the ranges for shout, say and whisper are getting turned into region settings like water level.  Settings like that normally aren't changed from the default on mainland, but could be changed to custom values on any private region by an owner/manager.  The ranges will probably stay at 100, 20 and 10 respectively on any mainland.  It would allow any private region to not be consistent with the ranges in the rest of SL, so you would have to check what the ranges are every time you TP into a private region.

[Odaks]

Ok, thanks @Sayrah Parx. It sounds like the facility to alter chat ranges will be provided as a feature for all regions, be they individual mainland regions, regions held as part of an estate or private islands, but will probably not be activated on mainland regions. Hopefully I have correctly got the scope of this now?

[Sayrah Parx]

That's correct, it would technically be possible to change anywhere, but mainland is controlled by the Linden governance team and the mainland region settings are almost never changed from the defaults.

[Miller Thor]

Linden only delivers the feature that I personally consider excellent, but cannot spare the user's thinking and take him out of responsibility for his actions. The real problem is, as in most cases, the user himself. If you handle it responsibly, it is an optimal way to avoid unwanted spam across the region. But if you stupidly set the settings so that they are completely unreal, you will notice it at the latest when no one comes to the region, because it is then against the visitors. One can only appeal to the region owners and their managers to use this new feature very responsibly and to reduce something rather than turn it up too far. That is, of course, like everything else associated with a learning process and those who are unwilling to learn will regret it at the latest if their region is only supplied with traffic by its own figures. What I would suggest, however, is that you also release this tool for parcels, so that individual parcels, e.g. a church that can adapt and the pastor doesn't have to shout to reach the people in the back row. Otherwise I see 3m for whispers, 10m for normal conversations and 40m for shouting, as completely sufficient. Not everyone has to listen when others are talking to each other and you can go to the person you want to talk to and do not need to disturb the surroundings.

@Odaks : I also like to use the local chat. Unfortunately, this untype of people from 3m distance to write to IM has expanded more and more. For example, I ignore such dand if he is not able to use the public chat, then he should visit me where the sun does not shine while sitting. Similarly, some colleagues complain that some people ignore open chat at all and don't even read and reply to a friendly greeting. But also those who believe "hear" them through walls, etc. are funny. Well, yes........... If you are too stupid, for example, to go to the store and ask the saleswoman and believe you get an answer through the wall, then you are to blame if you don't get an answer. It's obvious. We have discussed this topic within the team and we will then implement the values I mentioned above.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Miller Thor

[Odaks]

Thanks everyone for your explanations 🙂

[arabellajones]

On 6/11/2020 at 7:46 PM, Mazidox Linden said:

That is exactly why these values are read-only for now. We need to get together new viewer code to make it clear to everyone exactly who and what will be able to hear you when you use various forms of local chat.

I was thinking it might just possibly be testable for one of those 4-region stages at SL17B. One region for the performers with the long-range chat from there reaching into the other three. The viewer code wouldn't be vital if you put signs up. I don't think relying on any single channel for such events is entirely wise. I've seen events that were voice-only, and changes to the necessary software made that useless to me.

I doubt it'll matter this year, but relying on a single channel is always going to be a bit reckless.

 

[KT Kingsley]

@Mazidox Linden, the grid status update just posted refers to main channel rolls on Tuesday as a switch in the usual day for the Main Channel to roll. I think this may be a case of recycling the previous week's message when the main and RC channel rolls did actually switch days.