Month: December 2012

A look back at my SL 2012

Posted on by Inara Pey

In many respects, 2012 has perhaps been my busiest year in SL. This is partly because of the way this blog has gained readership and popularity over the last couple of years, some of which went / goes far beyond anything I’d imagined. Articles-wise, it’s been something of a record with 620 published since January 1st; which given I hit 1000 on this blog this year, and it has been around in its current form since 2009, tends to say a lot (I’m just not sure what, exactly!).

Another reason is that I’ve been reconnecting with some of the things I used to find a lot of fun in SL, and have been fortunate enough to have been introduced to new pastimes. So in addition to my review of the SL year as seen through the pages of this blog, I hope people won’t mind if I’m a little self-indulgent in looking back at some of the things I’ve particularly enjoyed in SL over the year.

Getting back to old pastimes
Getting back to old pastimes

Skydiving was something I used to enjoy a lot in SL, having been a member of several clubs and participated in competitive and team jumps. However, it somehow got left behind at some point; no clear idea why, so it was good to go digging into my inventory and pulling out all the old kit and giving things a go again. I’ve yet to team-up with Ziki and Caliburn; maybe that’ll be something for early 2013…

Only a short step away from skydiving is flying. While I’ve fiddled around with things flight-wise in the past, I’d never seriously given it a go in its own right.

The
The MM Pitts S2C and a flyby of the Titanic as she steamed through Blake Sea (click to enlarge)

But then, I’d never really bothered to explore Blake Sea and its surroundings, either, until LL presented me with a sailboat and I succumbed to the call of the oceans (of which more anon). I wasn’t sure what to expect, flying-wise, so I initially opted for two freebie offerings from the Marketplace in order to wet my toes a little.

Since then, I’ve gathered a small collection of aircraft (including the brilliant little Warbugs – thank you, Lindall!), but have to admit the Terra Stingray from Steve “Cubey Terra” Cavers is my favourite. It is simply a joy to fly – and the fact that it can operate on and under water makes it as much fun to have as my KR Engineering “Fisher’s Menace” Neuspa. To anyone even remotely considering trying out flying, I cannot recommend the Terra Stingray highly enough.

Terra Stingray: great fun flying
Terra Stingray: great fun flying

I’ve had great fun flying all over the Blake Sea and the surrounding continents over the last few months; when wanted to simply get away from things and enjoy doing something in SL, flying offers a wonderful choice, particularly when you have a very capable aircraft around you like the Stingray, which may not be the fastest going, but which can certainly handle region crossings with aplomb.

Exploring Second Life has given me ample opportunity to try to improve / refining my snap taking techniques. I’m nowhere near the league which includes the likes of Honour Mcmillian, but I’ve tried to improve my snaps from the perspective of framing, windlight, etc, – particularly as I prefer not to post-process.

Calas Galadhon - Dimrill Dale
Calas Galadhon – Dimrill Dale: one of many places I’ve visited over the years and which now help me try to refine and improve my SL snapshot abilities

Continue reading “A look back at my SL 2012” →

Farewell, Scribbled Hearts

Posted on by Inara Pey

Update August 19th, 2013: Scribbled Hearts has returned to Second Life in its own region. Find out more in my review!

Ziki Questi alerted me to the fact that one of the most photogenic regions in SL will be closing its doors to visitors on December 27th.

Scribbled Hearts at Water Reserve has become a something of a place of renown among SL explorers and photographers for being a haven of peace, tranquility and beauty. It is somewhere I only recently discovered for myself late-on in 2012, and it became an instant favourite with me; a place I returned to a lot during Autumn / winter, and which I blogged about in October.

WR-27_001
Scribbled Hearts at Water Reserve

The reason for the closure is related to one of the people behind the region, Meme, having decided to take a break from Second Life. She announced the decision in a post to her Flickr feed, which reads:

Meme's note on the closure of Scribbed Hearts
Meme’s note on the closure of Scribbled Hearts

This was followed on December 24th with a further note stating Meme has decided to take a long-term, possibly indefinite, leave of absence from SL while she deals with rl issues – news which will come as a sad blow to many who have admired her work and enjoyed Scribbled Hearts, as well as to her friends in SL.

While the note above quotes December 27th as the closing date for the region, other than the landing zone, it is in fact effectively closed as of today. Those wishing to take a last look around at Scribbled Hearts in all its winter glory can still do so for now – but the clock is ticking, and some of the builds have already gone.

Scribbled Hearts at Water Reserve in winter
Scribbled Hearts at Water Reserve in winter

I’ve loved my all-to-brief acquaintance with Scribbled Hearts, and to Meme and all who have made it so memorable to so many, all I can do is add my thanks to an already long list of admirers.

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(view slideshow full-screen)

On reaching Dryland

Posted on by Inara Pey

A giant dried out lake, a parched and barren lakebed with hulks of old rusted ships, now resting on the dried cracked mud. A once desert island with decayed warehouse buildings which now holds a gallery. The surrounding landscape slowly being occupied by gypsies, carnies and tradespeople.

So reads the introduction to Dryland, a new installation by Anita Witt on her sim at Mado.

The look and feel of the build is inspired by the dried-out Aral Sea, lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which is regarded as one of the planet’s worst man-made ecological disasters. At one time the sea covered an area of 68,000 square kilometres (26,300 sq miles) and provided rich fishing grounds. Today it covers less that 10% of that area and is heavily polluted, after Soviet irrigation projects diverted the major rivers serving the inland sea in the 1960s.

Dryland (Mado)
Dryland (Mado)

Dryland is home to a range of exhibits and offers a hugely engaging and thought-provoking visit. To mark the opening of the installation, Anita invited four of SL top photographers – Melusina Parkin, Ziki Questi, Marlen Slazar and William Weaver – to present their images of her work in creating the landscape. As one might expect, Anita also exhibits her own work here as well.

Dryland (Mado)
Dryland (Mado)

Also within the region one can find Pallina60 Loon’s Whoops a Baby, an interactive artwork which takes fertility as its theme, and which first appeared at Burn2 2012. Tarek Atoui’s Un-Drum can also be experienced within the region, while a teleport offers visitors to view  another of Anita’s previous installations, The Weaver Project.

Opened in September 2012, and running through until November 2012, The Weaver Project featured six of William Weaver’s unique photographic builds, which were made available to invited SL photographers as the themes to produce portfolios of images. In all, 120 pictures were produced featuring the six builds; while the latter have since been taken down, The Weaver Project – Final Exhibition, all 120 images are presented for a final time for visitors to enjoy.

Dryland
Dryland (Mado)

Dryland is a beautifully minimalistic installation which brilliantly captures the magnificent  – and heartbreaking – desolation of the Aral Sea, which was once home to over 1500 islands scattered across its waters. There is a windlight preset for the region which offers plenty of scope for photography, although the region also offers lots of options for experimentation. Photography itself is welcomed, and there is an open invitation for people to  submit their work to the Dryland Flickr group.

On arrival, a notecard will be offered, which provides a comprehensive overview of the exhibitions on offer and the artists behind them; taking and reading a copy is more than worthwhile. After you have, however, whither you wander is entirely up to you – the exhibitions at ground level are scattered over the region to encourage exploration, and there are many little touches and details which make careful exploration worthwhile.

Dryland (Mado)
Dryland (Mado)

Part of the theme with Dryland – unlike the Aral Sea – is that it is becoming the home of travellers, traders and carnies. Why such people would choose to congregate here is open to the imagination – perhaps the lone body of water has made for a meeting point / resting place for those toiling across this unnamed desert, and the nearby rusting hulks of long-abandoned ships offered an ideal focal-point for people to gather on reaching the watering hole. Whatever the reason, the trailers and tents invite exploration – as do the hulks themselves, while the ruined bulk of what might have once been a government installation stands above the parched plain with almost proud indifference to its decrepit state…

Dryland (Mado)
Dryland (Mado)

As readers here know, I love evocative regions; those that seem to offer whispers of a tale to me are very attractive. Dryland does this at every turn, despite everything being “hidden in plain sight”. It’s a great piece of art in itself, and truly immersive environment for photography and, potentially, machinima (check with Anita first on the latter, however), and the concept of having art displayed as art within the piece and forming a part of the overall theme, is an inspired addition to the piece. Exploring Whoops a Baby and the cargo containers and tents around Un-Drum, one can almost imagine the carnies and traders sitting and standing in the shadows, waiting the opportunity to draw you in deeper…

Dryland (Mado)
Dryland (Mado)

Dryland makes an immersive and engaging visit; one in which it is well worth investing time to explore and appreciate – and, in the case of Whoops a Baby, be a part of.

Highly recommended

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CHUI: progressing towards mainstream release

Posted on by Inara Pey

I first took a look at the CHUI – the Communications Hub User Interface – project viewer on its announcement and release back in October. Since then, as noted in my SL project news updates it has gone through recent updates as it progresses towards readiness for mainstream release, quite possibly in the early part of 2013.

The past week has seen new updates to both the “release” version of the project viewer (December 22nd) and also to the “development” version of the viewer (December 24th). Both are available from the viewer download wiki page.

The “main” release – viewer 3.4.3.268591, was announced via a forum post, which highlighted the updates as:

  • Addition of notifications and notification preferences
  • Smaller Conversations and People windows with increased resizability
  • Adding more ways to get to certain functions. For example, we added a speak button to the Conversations window toolbar
  • Improved performance
  • Bug fixes and polish
The new "Speak" button in the confersations floater - available for IMs and open chat
The new “Speak” button in the conversations floater – available for IMs and open chat

The resized floaters is a good step forward, as is the greater control now available in resizing windows. There are still some elements missing from the conversations floater people my find convenient (or at least annoying because of their absence), in particular:

  • An ability to range IMs horizontally rather than vertically: many people prefer to have their IMs ranged horizontally, possible as a holdover from the “old” integrated conversations floaters which stretched back in 1.23.5. The problem here is that any move to incorporate this into the design would break with ergonomics of the “collapsible” nature of the current floater using the right / left pointing chevron buttons
  • The inclusion of a teleport button for the IM windows: this is altogether more useful, and it is hard to see why this was dropped from the redesign, given it is part of the current IM floater layout, and most likely a button which sees frequent use. OK, so teleports can still be achieved via the right-click context menu, but if convenience is the name of the game, it is hard to see why the teleport button has been ignored
The three compact views of the Conversations floater: one reason horizon IM tabs may not be incorporated
The three compact views of the Conversations floater: one reason horizon IM tabs may not be incorporated

Whither the Survey?

One thing still very much missing from the CHUI project is the promised user survey. When the project viewer was first launched in October, the Lab specifically asked people to try it out and consider a number of questions relating to it, noting that, “We’ll ask you to complete a survey in approximately one week to gather your thoughts on these questions.”

The survey has yet to appear. Whether this is because the feedback coming through the CHUI JIRA has been sufficient for the project team (and the amazing Whirly Fizzle has been generating an incredible amount of detailed and informative feeback!) is unclear.

Current Status

The precise status of the project is unclear, but it appears to be reaching a “feature complete” status – which again raises the question as to whether we ill see a survey on the project or not. Merging the project viewer to the 3.4.3 code base would appear to move it one step closer towards a viewer development  / beta viewer merge (both are now 3.4.4 code), but there are wider issues within the viewer still be rectified. For example, nothing happens at all when right clicking on any object contents – the usual context menu fails to appear. It’s therefore unlikely that the CHUI code will make an appearance in a development or beta viewer until such time as it has been confirmed problems like this have been identified and resolved.

In the meantime, and if you haven’t already done so and would like to, the CHUI JIRA remains open for comment, and the project viewer can be obtained from the SL Alternate Viewers wiki page (links below).

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2012: a year in review – Part 1

Posted on by Inara Pey

It’s that time of year again, the closure of 12 months of ups and downs, ins and outs and numerous other goings-on in the so-called metaverse and the galaxy therein with call Second Life. As with previous years, that means it’s time for me to take a look back over the last 12 months as seen through the pages of this blog.

First up: January through June. For those interested in July through to December, Part 2 of this review can be found here.

January

February

The magnificence of 13,000 well-ordered prims
Koelner Dom (G) – a 13,000-prim reproduction of Koln Cathedral and one of my February destinations

March

Please use the page numbers below to continue reading this article

Pages: 1 2

Viewer release summary 2012: week 51

Posted on by Inara Pey

This summary is published every Monday and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Viewer Round-up Page, a list of  all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware) and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy
  • By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
  • The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information as the week progresses
  • The Viewer Round-up Page also includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.  

Updates for the week ending: 23 December, 2012

  • SL Viewer updates:
      • Release version rolled to 3.4.3.268262 on December 18 – release notes
      • Beta version rolled to 3.4.4.268497 on December 20 – release notes
      • Development rolled to 3.4.5.268547 on December 21
      • The CHUI project viewer rolled to 3.4.3.268587 on December 22, which saw some updates to the CHUI UI and a move to the 3.4.3 viewer code (latest dev version now 3.4.3.268591 / Dec 24)
  • Dolphin rolled to 3.4.7.26856 on December 17 – core updates: primarily under-the-bonnet (/hood) fixes – release notes
  • Kokua rolled to 3.4.3.r2 on December 18
  • Zen Viewer rolled to 3.4.3.1 on December 20 (mis-labelled “20 November” on release notes page) – core updates: Large Group Servies update; removal of mesh deformer; removal of AudioEngine log spam; fixed Web Profile floater not showing when web profiles check box selected in Grid Manager; removed “>” Character from localhost loginuri in Grid Manager.
  • Cool VL updates – three versions for the time being, all updated on December 21:
    • Stable version rolled to 1.26.6.2
    • Legacy version Legacy (v2.6 renderer) rolled to 1.26.4.45
    • Experimental version rolled to 1.26.7.2
    • Release notes
  • Phoenix officially reaches end-of-line on December 31st – read more here
  • Libretto – removed from round-up page due to website being unavailable and client removed from the SL Third-party Viewer Directory.

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