Month: November 2012

Doing a Wilbur at Orville (it’s premium gift time again)

Posted on by Inara Pey

Ah well. Looks like I was wrong. Shucks!

LL have just launched their latest Premium gift today, Thursday 14th November. That something was due today wasn’t a surprise, as they’d slipped out advanced word last month by accident. However, at the time, I thought it might be something else other than the next Premium gift.

Turns out – it is, so ho-hum on my part.

I will say, with hand-on-heart, however, that I’m not actually surprised by the nature of the gift – a biplane. I say not surprised, as the prediction curve was pretty clear over the last three gifts: boat, railcar, car (dune buggy)  – so an aeroplane rounds-out the set. So what is the latest like?

Well, it looks like something out of the great days of barnstorming in the 1920s, when surplus WWI aircraft received a second lease of life. In fact, from what cursory research I did via the web, it looks like a cross between a Spad (beloved of American pilots) and the British SE5. Sort-of. Well, to me, at least.

Me and my latest premium gift

As with all premium gift vehicles, this one follows the usual standard – get in and use it, with touching it bringing up a menu to adjust things like the colour scheme, the flight sensitivity, the controls, etc. When you up in, instructions are displayed in chat, and follow the normal layout – PAGE UP/ DOWN for throttle increase / decrease, arrow keys for nose up / down, left / right (or you can use WASD and E & C for the throttle).

Seat-of-you-pants-flying

Handling-wise, and to be brutally honest, I have to admit that I found the plane something of a mess. As there is no HUD, decreasing or increasing the throttle produces a spew of channel spam in the viewer’s chat console, which is both annoying and distracting. Further, and while this may be down to the fact I use my own camera defaults (although I don’t know why if so, as I use the same defaults to fly my other aircraft), I found it impossible to achieve stable, level flight in this plane even with the throttle reasonably set: I was either constantly climbing or descending (generally the latter – it’s as if the plane is terribly nose-heavy). Obviously, some adjustment to trim is going to be required in an old kite, but this actually grated on me in both basic and advanced sensitivity settings.

“Contact!”

The plane is a single-seater, but that doesn’t prevent friends coming along for the ride – providing they are willing to hang on. Aerobatically, the plane is OK – I threw a couple of loops and rolled it a few times, although the aforementioned habit of it constantly wanting to get back on the ground meant that it was easy to over-compensate.

“If you iz flyin liek this then yu iz doin it rong”

As with the dune buggy offering, the plane “includes” the use of a premium-only airstrip at Orville. This has been stuck on the south side of the premium sandbox group  which includes Formonsa, Amoena, and others, and which appear to have gained two additional region splitting them: Limia and Arowana. As such, there should be a lot of flying space here – but for the fact that the runway is west- east facing, with no regions either to the left or right, which makes taking off and landing something of a pain, as there is no real opportunity for a lined-up descent on the latter or decent climb-out in the former. This was reflected in the fact that on my visit, there were a number of biplanes bouncing along the region edge…

Orville: “Mind the boundary”

The lack of flying space to the east and west may also reflect the fact that there were a fair few at the strip who were not flying their new LL gift plane, but were enjoying themselves dogfighting in Warbugs (one of which I just have to get – talk about cute!). These tiny little planes had no issue with the confined space.

Warbugs at Orville!

While at Orville, I confess I took time out not to fly the new plane, but to take the Stingray out on the water once more – I tell you, I’m hooked on this vehicle!

Overall, the latest premium gift is pretty predictable; transportation appears to have been the theme for 2012’s gifts as mentioned above. It’ll be somewhat interesting to see what the theme will be for 2013. As to the biplane itself – well, like the buggy before it, it’s OK, but hardly on a par with offerings which can be had for free on the Marketplace; however, if it serves to get people who have no previously tried flying to give it a go, then it can be said to have served a decent purpose.

For my part, however, I’ll stick with my Stingray. And go get me a little Warbug. Those things look FUN!

Leaving Orville by water – taking out the Stingray. Again.

Oh, and of course, this gift comes complete with the usual “50% (on your first quarter’s payment) discount” offer. For those who are curious as to general thoughts on premium, please feel free to check out my thoughts on the matter for those considering an upgrade.

Picasso in 3D – Guernica at LEA

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Tuesday 13th November, Lizzie Gudkov and London Junkers unveiled their submission for the LEA’s Full sim Art Series.

Guernica is a vivid reproduction of Picasso’s famous work, which has been beautifully reproduced in 3D within second Life in a manner which allows one to appreciate both as it was originally painted, or physically immerse oneself in the piece.

Commenting on the installation, London says:

In 1937 Spanish painter Pablo Picasso created one of the most important icons of the 20th century when he made the Guernica.
Painted in black and white, depicting the horrors of war, it is today as solid and modern as it was when it was first shown in the 1937 International Fair in Paris. 
The intention of re-creating this masterpiece in Second Life comes from the love for the original mural itself and what it represents. After a lot of thought and experimenting with external 3D software, a decision was made, this installation would be built primarily in prims, as an exercise of the possibilities that LEA has given us. With this piece, we would like to pay homage to Picasso and let visitors learn more from it.

The original was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain by German and Italian aircraft on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.

The installation can be seen at LEA 6 in-world, where it is displayed full in keeping with the original. On arrival, you’ll be requested to accept the local windlight settings, which allow the mural to be presented as with the original – in black and white.

Guernica

The arrival point allows you to view the piece pretty much as Picasso originally painted it: in two dimensions. However, step down from the viewing gallery and you can become fully immersed in the image, seeing it – and the horrific outcome of the event it portrays – in a very personal way.

Guernica

It can be said that Guernica saw the final end of any romanticism of war. While much of this had already been washed away in the terrors of The Great War of 1914-1918, war before Guernica was often removed and isolated from the lives of “ordinary” people. After Guernica, this would never again be the case – as the unfolding tragedy of the Second World War would illustrate just two years later.

Guernica

The artists of this recreation recommend visitors view it via Mouselook – and I do recommend the same; while moving and flying around it might be a little harder using Mouselook, the added depth of perspective obtained more than compensates.

For those not familiar with the work or its historical context and impact, I would also recommend a little background reading as well.

Guernica will remain open at LEA6 throughout the remainder of November 2012.

World map: vanishing region tiles

Posted on by Inara Pey

There have been ongoing issues with regions not rendering within the World map.  The precise reasons why this is the case is currently unclear; Andrew Linden has been trying to look into the matter since it was reported at the last of the Friday Simulator User Group meetings on the 9th November, but work on Interest Lists has kept him busy.

The problems appear to be twofold: tiles for some regions either entirely fail to generate in the World map, or their appearance is linked to the level of zoom being used.

The first issue is demonstrated with the region Sunny Point, which simply does not appear on the World map at all.

Sunny Point – failing to appear on the World map

With the second issue, Qie Niangao reports that strips of regions on the World map can effectively vanish at certain zoom levels (see JIRA SVC-8115), with some regions of the Zindra adult content apparently never having been drawn at some zoom levels of the Map.

Regions located close to Harshap demonstrate a part of the problem, in that they will appear in the map when zoomed fully in, but step out once on the zoom, and a strip of regions will vanish.

Regions near Harshap: visible when zoomed in…

While the issue has only recently come up for discussion at the Simulator UG meeting, the problem appears to have been persistent for a good while, and some have reported the map is missing strips of region tiles from as many as eight different locations.

Harshap: step out a level with zoom, and a strip of regions vanish, and are not re-rendered.

The World map is generated via a process which images regions from an altitude of around 350m (hence why builds above this altitude do not appear on the map). The information is then scaled for rendering at a number of levels to represent the different zoom levels within the World map floater. Currently, it appears is if the problem lies with the generation of these different zoom levels, at least as far as the “missing strips” issues is concerned. The data from the process is also used for generating map images at maps.secondlife.com, with the result that issues can also occur when viewing map segments there.

As it stands, the possible causes for the problem are still under investigation by LL personnel. However, anyone encountering problems with their region(s) failing to render properly on the World map should consider raising a bug report and /or attending the Tuesday Simulator UG meeting (the Friday meeting is now discontinued).

Regions absent from the World map, as imaged by MartinRJ Fayray for the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 13th November

SL projects week 46/1: server, projects and general news

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 46

Deployments for the week are progressing as planned.

Main Channel

The main channel received the code which had been running on the Magnum RC channel as well as some updates.

This now means that the server-side Group Services code to improve the loading and editing of very large groups (10K+ members) is active right across the main grid – see the section on Group Services below for further information.

This roll-out restored functionality within the Estate Tools which allows region physics to be put in a condition of limited functionality, which is sometimes useful in dealing with issues and problems within a region. The capability was disabled around the time of the mesh roll-out, and has now been restored with this release. This caused some minor inconvenience on some regions (at least one), where the option has been enabled at some point, with the result that following their restart, objects within the region(s) were not functioning correctly. However, this was corrected without major incident.

Main channel release notes.

Release Candidates

Wednesday 13th November will see all three Release Candidate channel receive the same update package, including the BUG-166 update, which means that linksets with bounding boxes larger than 64m (in any dimension) are prevented from being rezzed if doing so will cause the object to collide with an avatar excluding the object owner.

Release notes:  Magnum, BlueSteel, LeTirgre.

Week 47 Deployments and Christmas Run-up

There will be no server roll-outs in week 47 (week commencing Monday 19th November) due to the forthcoming Thanksgiving weekend in the United States. There will be deployments between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it currently looks as if these may be limited to a couple of weeks during that period according to Simon Linden (details on the likely number pending), and there will as usual be no releases over the Christmas / New Year period.

Interest List and Object Caching

Andrew Linden reports that the first phase of this work is drawing to a conclusion, and he is planning on having a possible demonstration of the capability on the beta (Aditi) grid on Thursday 15th November, most likely during the Bet Server User Group meeting.

The focus of this project is to optimise the data being sent to the viewer, information already cached on the viewer and the manner in which that data is used in order to ensure it is used more efficiently so that things rez both faster and in a more orderly manner than is currently the case.

Interest lists and object rezzing: initial srver code updates almost ready

Andrew reports that general performance on object rezzing should be improved, although the overall sorting element of the code (ensuring objects closer to an avatar’s camera position rez sooner than those further away) isn’t currently as rigorous as it could be. However, the server and viewer do now interact better, so less information is sent to the viewer relating to in-world items which are not visible within the current camera view for the viewer.

Commenting on demonstrating the capability when speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday 13th November, Andrew acknowledged that it may be difficult to achieve on Aditi, which is a relatively static environment (improvements will hopefully be more noticeable on regions where there is a lot of movement and activity); however, anyone interested in this work may want to try attending the Beta Server Group meeting on the 15th November, in case a demo is provided.

Currently, this represents the fist pass in Interest list improvements, and one which is liable to be heading to an RC channel in the near future – it does not require any specific viewer updates to work -, and Andrew expects to be building on this work in the future.

Group Services

As mentioned above, Baker Linden’s Group Services HTTP code is now available across the main grid. As there was some confusion evidenced on Plurk yesterday, here’s a quick re-cap on what this means:

  • The new code allows for improved loading of membership lists of very large groups, together with improved reliability in editing such groups (i.e. assigning roles, removing people, etc.), by the group moderators
  • The code requires a viewer update. At the time of writing, this is available with the official Second Life beta viewer (3.4.2.266708+), and the code will be filtering into the majority of popular TPVs as they update (and currently appears to be available in Zen (3.4.2.2+) and Niran’s Viewer (2.0.3.2262+) and Cool VL (1.26.4.38), all of which successfully loaded large group lists for me)
  • Until such time as the viewer-side code has been incorporated into TPVs, the “old” method of loading group lists into the viewer will still be available. However, viewers using the “old” method (a protocol referred to as UDP) will have group loading capped at 10K members. This means:
    • That for groups with 10K or fewer members, there will be no change regardless as to whether the viewer is using HTTP or UDP
    • But for groups large than 10K, viewers running the UDP code will be unable to load the group until such time as they have been updated to the new code
  • The code will not lead to any improvements in group chat reliability, and is not aimed at improving group chat.

Materials Processing and Avatar Baking

No news on either of these, beyond what has been previously reported in these pages. Materials processing has a test region on Aditi, but there is no timeline on when a project viewer is to be made available. For an overview of the initial capabilities for material processing, please see my project update here, and remember that the capabilities will be applicable to prims and mesh, but not directly to avatars or system layer clothing.

Avatar Baking is progressing, but without any significant update at this time, please refer to my last detailed update on this project for information.

Mesh Importer Fix

JIRA SH-3055 records a  problem with the official viewer’s mesh uploader which has been affecting people over the course of the year. The fix for this, released as a project viewer (3.4.2.266471, available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS) on November 5th, is still available for those experiencing uploader issues, although it is in the pipeline to be merged with the beta viewer now that crash issues seem to have been resolved. Bear in mind that – as Runitai states in his JIRA comment, the viewer is a pre-beat project version, and may include other bugs and problems. While reports on the JIRA seem to point to it being relatively stable, caution should still be taken if attempting to use it as a primary viewer.

Related Links

Marketplace listing categories and contest

Posted on by Inara Pey

Following the most recent Marketplace “update” forum post, the Commerce Team have launched a Second Life Marketplace categories contest.

The basic idea is to get merchants to give feedback on the proposed new Marketplace categories which are under consideration by LL and – by providing suggestions on one category in particular – have the chance of winning “L$2,489 (cost of a month long, frontpage Marketplace Product Listing Enhancement) or [sic] your efforts!”

Marketplace listing enhancements: feedback sought

Listing categories are, for the uninitiated, the selections under which merchants can have their products listed in the Marketplace. So, for example, as someone who built houses, I would list my work under the category Building Components > Structures > Residential Structures. The idea is to help quantify / filter products on the Marketplace (together with keywords) so that they can be more easily found (by a user using the Category option on the left of Marketplace pages and clicking down through the options to refine a list of displayed results in the main part of the page).

Merchants have long felt that many of the categories used within the Marketplace are too broad. For example, and keeping with the example above, “Residential Structures” covers a multitude of options: houses, mansions, skyhomes, skyboxes, castles, tropical (tiki) homes, cabins, and so on. These means that search results using the current categories can end up being bloated (there are just under 27K of items under the “Residential Structures” category alone…).

However, defining where and how the categories should be expanded is a problem in itself. Do it autocratically, and you’re bound to get your hand bitten off. Ergo, having a survey – while it is hardly likely to please everyone – is perhaps a preferable route by which to encourage feedback, refine what has already been put forward and so a degree of willingness to engage with customers (merchants) and take on-board their feedback and insight.

Really, the problem here  – as Ciaran Laval has pointed out – is one of perception. Coming on top of their refusal to engage directly with people and invite open discussion and discourse with their customers, the Commerce Team have effective said, thanks, but no thanks” which I’ve already commented upon) – the competition runs the risk of being seen as little more than an attempt to curry favour.

The really cynical might even see this as a sideways attempt to try to boost flagging listing enhancement revenues due to all the billing cock-ups in that department over the last 12 months by directly (and repeatedly) linking the cash prizes on offer with the idea of a monthly listing enhancement (see the quote from the blog post announcing the competition above, with the contest rules further pointing out, “Each winner will receive L$2,899 (the cost of a month long [sic], front page featured Product Listing Enhancement on the Marketplace)”, with the survey form itself outright (and confusingly) stating the prize actually is a month-long product listing enhancement (part 3 of the survey).

The prize as quoted in the Contest Survey (13th November 2012) – click to enlarge

Nevertheless, and quibbles aside, the call for feedback on the proposed listing enhancements – whether or not one enters the competition – should be heeded, particularly if, as a merchant, you’ve felt that they are currently too broad at present and need improvement. The contest itself is entirely optional – so if you have no interest in female skin categories, then simply ignore it and complete the first two parts of the survey.

It’s important to note as well that there is no limit as to the number of times anyone can complete the survey – so it is possible to post a response for each of the categories you use to list your products and services.

Related Links

Settling-in

Posted on by Inara Pey

So today I gave up the last 4096 sq m of private land I paid tier on. It was actually odd, turning-in the keys (so to speak), without having land “of my own” to go to.

The reason I’ve done so is explained elsewhere, but in short, I opted to re-up at Premium for another year and to make proper use of my Linden Home, which I’ve been using as my “primary” residence for the last couple of months & slowly getting used to it.

All moved in

Even so, cancelling rental on the last parcel of land was a little hard; for most of the nigh-on six years I’ve been back in SL, I’ve shared my land with a good friend – Kelly. We’ve alternated having our respective homes on the ground and in the air – with me being the airborne resident for most of the last year or so, and sometimes, when my holdings were larger, having our houses side-by-side on the ground, amidst shared gardens or beach. Seeing her go off to a new home in SL was a little like seeing a member of the family up stakes and move away to a new town. IM will doubtless become our version of the weekly long-distance ‘phone chats, and we’ll be picking out places in SL we can meet-up directly when a face-to-face chin-wag is needed…

Adjusting to living in the limited space of a Linden Home hasn’t actually been that bad; as I’ve commented in the past, the 117 prim allowance / land capacity provided with each house can allow rather a lot to be done with them – particularly if you shop right. What’s more some of the houses lend themselves to low-prim conversions and do actually exist in reasonable neighbourhoods. Or at least, I think the Tahoe range does…

The Aspen interior, as supplied

I opted for the Aspen in the Tahoe range. It’s one of the “long” versions of these A-framed houses, and the only one with the front door in one of the long walls, something I particularly wanted. After moving in, I did do a small amount of conversion – I installed a second vertical wall in the place so I had room to hang pictures and added a basic loft area at one end of the house to make space for a (never used) bedroom (do avatars dream of electric sheep?) – but other than that, didn’t really do that much with the place beyond slapping in some furniture.

After deciding to make the place my primary abode, I re-worked things a little, dividing the single room into two, and re-modelling the stairs and loft. This all came to a cost of nine prims (the magic of sculpts!), although it could have been less; I wanted a different floor in the “back” room, and a door separating it from the lounge.

At home – the Aspen remodelled

I’m particularly proud of the picture frames on the long wall and over the fireplace amount to just 2 prims and as well as allowing me to display 4 prints, they contain scripts which activate a warm level of lighting at dusk before turning it off again at dawn.

For the rest of the place, as mentioned, I went with Ample Clarity’s PrimPossible! items. which give me a plant, a lounge suite, tables (even books!), rug, piano, bed and upstairs sofa for the princely sum of five prims. Throw in an ornament or two, and that’s the place remodelled and furnished for just 20 prims – leaving me 97 still to play with, should I get extravagant.

The Patio

Another reason I like the Aspen is that it has a decent patio area, so there’s room for me to entertain outdoors and enjoy the late afternoon Sun. The railings on the patio are mine – but again only amount to 1 prim.The patio also comes in handy for rezzing purposes as well.

Linden Homes get heavily critiqued for being cookie-cutter packed into the available space; I know this because I’ve been one of those doing a lot of the critiquing. The truth is, I still do find much of the Linden Home regions to be something of an eyesore; hence why I say to anyone thinking of getting one to shop arround. Look at the different classes of build, their surroundings and the various styles of house offered in each class. But, the additional truth is that, pick wisely (and be prepared to bounce around a few houses), you can land a perfect comfortable place with surrounding that aren’t really that bad – although admittedly, Linden Lab could really do with updating the textures they use for – well, just about everything, actually.

Paddling upriver from ny “new” home

In my own case, I have a navigable river close to hand (OK, so I have to rez my boat at home and then “drive” it overland to the water – but it is all downhill) which allows for a little paddling around (or puttering, in the case of something larger), and a couple of regions away – reachable on foot or via water – there is an area of parkland to be enjoyed.

The parkland also lets me take my Neuspa for the occasional spin without annoying the neighbours. Again, being amphibious, it means I can use it to travel to the park by water well out of people’s way, and drive ashore for a little putter around without upsetting others with noise and the risk of being run over.

So, that’s me settled all Linden-y like in the Aspen. It’s only taken me a year to get there, and I’ve enjoyed myself doing a little more exploring in the local neighbourhood; after living on private islands for so long, being able to walk out my front door and simply go a-wanderin’ without having to resort to landmarks and teleports is a novel experience; I’m rather enjoying it.

Four wheels on my wagon – taking a break from wandering around my local Tahoe regions.