March 2013 – Page 6 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Sleepy sheep and playing with Fire(storm)

Posted on March 16, 2013March 15, 2022 by Inara Pey

Update, March 15th: Mickey contacted me to let me know that after eight years and now retired, he has had to let Sheepville go, and he has downsized to a half Homestead. For further details, see: A Trip to Seagull Rock in Second Life.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to spend time using various pre-release versions of the upcoming Firestorm release over the last few weeks. I’m not about to launch into a pre-emptive review of the viewer here – that wouldn’t be fair on Jessica or the team; however, what I will say is that it is pretty fabulous. While there is more to be done before it is officially released, considering the state of play around a month ago, the team have pulled off one or two minor miracles.

One of the reasons I’ve been hungry to take Firestorm for a bit of a drive is because the snapshot tiling bug fix didn’t make it into the last release, so I’ve been limited to taking snaps at no greater than my screen’s resolution (1440×900) when using the viewer. The upcoming release does have the fix (albeit with the usual caveats in that the fix itself is not perfect), and I’m now in happy bunny land when it comes to taking snaps as I explore the wilds and not-so-wilds of Second Life.

I opted to try out higher-resolution snapping with a visit to Micky Woodget’s Sheepville , an open / residential homestead which is yet another treasure of Second Life.

Here, nestled amidst tall mountains and surrounded by water, is a tranquil village where the locals are quietly content with hanging out the washing, fishing from the end of a pier or sweeping the pavement. Birds, rabbits, duck, swans and deer can befound in the open spaces and on the waters of the lake and pond, and visitors are offered the opportunity to rent a log cabin for their home. All watched over by a little stone chapel high on a hill.

When visiting the region, one is free to roam along paths, climb hills, cross bridges, visit the chapel, enjoy a little fishing or simply sit be a campfire and watch the world go by. For the adventurous there are boats to row, balloon rides, gliding (in a vintage 1930s glider!) and hang gliding. For the photographer, there are scenes to be found at every turn or path and track, and Sheepville naturally leans itself to a wide variety of windlight settings.

Windlight is another reason I like using Firestorm. The choice of pre-sets from people across the grid is comprehensive – moreso with this upcoming release, which includes several of Vincent Nacon’s sky presets which give the windlight fiddlers even more to play with. I believe the release, once it is formally made, will include Vincent’s sky maps as well, for even greater depth, but I confess this is not something I’ve investigated.

Of course, the other thing which makes Firestorm attractive for photography is the inclusion of William Weaver’s fabulous Phototools floater. Having just about all the necessary settings available within the viewer which are suitable for machinima and photography is an absolute boon, particularly if, like me, you don’t go in for much in the way of post-processing. Phototools is obviously available right now in Firestorm, so if you’ve not tried the floater, you can.

If you do, Sheepville is an excellent place to try-out the floater. Just follow the paths and see what you discover and have a play with the settings. For those of a more romantic leaning, there is a little stone dance floor near the village, and a wooden gazebo out over the water on one side of the region which also offers dances; there are also numerous places to simply sit and hold hands and talk…

And if a visit does tire you out, drop into the village pub and refresh yourself with a drink or perhaps a plate of fish and chips – the landlord tells me the fish are all caught fresh and potatoes locally grown. If you’d prefer to eat outdoors, the bakery offers a range of breads and other goodies to help keep hunger at bay.

I’ve had remarkably few problems running the most recent pre-release version of Firestorm; while I haven’t explored all the options and updates by a long shot, I’ve enjoyed poking and prodding it and joining-in with a little bit of the testing.

Of course, my experience doesn’t mean the viewer is ready for release – and shouldn’t in any way be taken as suggesting it is. I’m not a member of the core Firestorm team, and they’re the people who know best. But considering a month ago I couldn’t actually start any of the pre-release versions without them crashing on me but I’ve recently been using the pre-release versions as my default viewer, it’s fair to say I’m looking forward to a formal release once it does come along.

And as to Sheepville – well, if you do opt to pay a visit, don’t be surprised if you find me admiring the view from the stone bridge, or sitting in a corner of the pub nibbling on a chip or three!

SL project updates: week 11 (2): Server, SSB testing and HTTP news

Posted on March 15, 2013August 22, 2013 by Inara Pey

Update Match 18th: The “mesh only” HTTP test regions, referred to as “coming soon” in the HTTP section of this report are now online on Aditi, and are called MeshTest2 (DRTSIM-203), MeshTest2A (DRTSIM-203A) and MeshTest2H (DRTSIM-203H), respectively. In addition, the sandbox areas (unrestricted access) are also now available as Sandbox HTTP (DRTSIM-203), Sandbox HTTP A (DRTSIM-203A) and Sandbox HTTP H (DRTSIM-203H).

Server Deployments

The planned deployments for the week went ahead as scheduled. Namely:

On Tuesday March 12th, the Second Life Server (SLS) Main channel received Baker Linden’s large (as in complex) object rezzing project, designed to improve region performance when rezzing large objects – release notes
On Wednesday March 13th, the BlueSteel and LeTigre Release Candidate (RC) channels received a server maintenance package, intended to fix a common crash mode – release notes
Also on Wednesday March 13th, the Magnum RC channel received an update to the server maintenance package deployed in week 10, with further improvements / fixes. These included the removal of the fix for VWR-786, which rather than correctly fixing the known issue (IMs to friends not respecting their privacy settings) resulted in all IMs to non friends returning the “User is not online” message, regardless as to whether the recipient was online or not. Release notes for the package are on the SL wiki. The Lab, according to Maestro Linden, is going to have to, “Go back to the drawing board,” to resolve this problem.

As I’ve mentioned in past reports, the aim of this “large object” rezzing project from Baker Linden is to improve how complex objects (those which have a lot of scripts and / or a large file size), with the focus of the work moving the parsing of object files onto a background thread in order to prevent the simulator being choked and performance spiking when such objects are rezzed. As such, the work applies to both in-world objects and attachments, with mesh potentially being a primary beneficiary of the changes. The thought is that the new code may also help frustrate griefers, as the simulator FPS should be better when multiple scripted objects are being rezzed.

SL Viewer

The SL beta and development viewer were both updated on March 14th. The beta viewer moved to release 3.5.0.271843, with updates primarily aimed at CHUI, as anticipated. The development viewer moved to release 3.5.1.271846, and remains broadly in sync with the beta version of the viewer.

Vivox Updates

Alongside the FMODex (sound system) updates which will be forthcoming after the formal release of CHUI as mentioned in part 1 of this report, Vivox (the SL Voice service) is also due to be updated to version 4.5. Like FMODex, this is unlikely to happen until after CHUI has reached a formal release., but once implemented, this should result in an improvement in Voice quality.

Mesh Deformer

There is still no news on this. Both the issues relating to avatar shapes and weighting are still awaiting internal resources at LL. As such, there is no timeline as to when any movement might be seen on this project.

Interest List – Issues and Further Updates

More interest list updates on Aditi and likely heading for a Release Candidate channel in week 12.

The following fixes, related to the interest list code, should be in an RC deployment in week 12 (week commencing Monday March 18th):

A fix issue where you ‘lose track’ of a vehicle after a region crossing
A fix for BUG-1795 (“Agent appears in incorrect position to other agents after being moved by a sim teleporter”), which should see an end to avatars still appearing in view after they have used a teleport system
A fix for the issue where object moving off-camera would suddenly ‘snap’ into place when you turned your camera so they were in your field-of-view. Whereas up until now, the new interest list code has not sent any updates for such objects, the fix to be deployed in week 12 will once again allow updates to be sent to the viewer, but at a much lower rate than before the interest list code was originally deployed.

The code with these updates is currently available for testing on two regions on Aditi: Solariam (rated: Adult) and Tischeriidae (rated: Moderate). This code also includes updates to improve object rendering (particularly with the viewer set to low bandwidths) and to object cacheing as well, as noted in the first part of this report, and those wishing to do so are encouraged to do so, although testing any improvements to vehicle regions crossings might be contingent upon being Adult verified.

Server-side Baking (SSB) Pile-on / Load Test

The second SSB pile-on load test took place on Aditi on Thursday March 14th, immediately following the Server Beta User Group meeting. The test was undertaken using the latest version of the Sunshine project viewer and appeared to be broadly satisfactory, involving both users and a fair few LL personnel – Nyx (x2, as he had his alt there), Simon, Maestro, Monty, Dan, Don, Log, and others. As with the original test, this took place on two regions – one running the current baking system, the other running the new service. Participants were asked to change outfits using the current service, so that the project team could get some baseline / comparison stats, before everyone moved over to the “new” service on the adjoining region.

Continue reading “SL project updates: week 11 (2): Server, SSB testing and HTTP news” →

LL offer discounted regions to educational and non-profit organisations on the QT

Posted on March 14, 2013April 19, 2015 by Inara Pey

Following my piece on the general status of Second Life, some of the comments revolved around educational discounts for regions – or rather, the ending of them in 2010. Many credit the abolishment of the discounts with the loss of hundreds (I’m not entirely convinced on the “thousands” element) of regions from the grid since that time.

It now appears that the Lab is quietly trying to reverse matters by extending a 50% discount to selected educational and non-profit organisations.

The news comes via Hamlet Au, with a natty little scoop on the offer he gained after being e-mailed on the matter. The originator of the e-mail informed Hamlet that he’d been offered a full region for $1,770 USD for a year or $3,540 USD for two years, for use by his organisation. The new prompted Hamlet to drop Peter Gray, LL’s spokesman, an e-mail on the matter. Hamlet comments:

“I’m not able to share numbers,” Gray e-mailed me, “but can confirm that we’ve extended this special offer to a targeted number of educational and non-profit institutions that have recently left Second Life.” The next question is how many institutions they’re offering this to, but there, he is mum. Furthermore, there’s no way for former sim owners of this variety to request this discount:

“There isn’t currently a way to apply for this; it’s a special offer we’re extending directly to some nonprofit and educational institutions as part of our customer win-back efforts,” as Gray puts it.

Deep Think East - one of the regions operated by the UK's Open University, one of the educational organisations which still operates within Second Life — Deep Think East – one of the regions operated by the UK’s Open University, one of the educational organisations which still operates within Second Life

While not privy to the exact arrangements specified in the offer, I assume that as one or two-year discounts are specified, the caveat to it is that the discount only applies to a full up-front payment of said fees.

Like Hamlet, I’m also a little dubious that the offer will be taken-up by everyone who has departed Second Life – although it is interesting to now that LL are apparently targeting organisations which have “recently left” SL, and therefore have yet to put down roots elsewhere. As Hamlet rightly points out, a lot of people got somewhat burnt when the Lab announced they were discontinuing discounts for educational bodies and non-profits, and there has been a good degree of bad feeling since. There’s also the fact that over the past couple of years OpenSim has become a more than credible – and potentially a lower-cost – solution for educational needs.

It is probable that the move might be seen is some quarters of one of “desperation” on LL’s part in order to reverse the decline in the number of privately-held regions. However, given the limited and closed nature of the offer, such views may not be entirely valid – Second Life isn’t anywhere close to balancing on the edge of disaster just yet – although it would be interesting to know what did prompt the move.

In the meantime Hamlet has requested the any organisations or individuals who have been in receipt of the offer drop an comment onto his post on the news.

With thanks to Hamlet Au.

Playing with Pixieviewer

Posted on March 14, 2013August 22, 2013 by Inara Pey

Thomas Buchauer has been working on developing a virtual world viewer-in-a-browser. The work is still very much in its alpha stages, but already shows sign of promise for those who are OpenSim-based.

Pixieviewer is available now as a special “first look” release, with access restricted to a special test grid called, appropriately enough, Pixiegrid. It is also in non-public testing with two OpenSim grids, and the aim appears to be to make it generally available as a browser-based means of access OpenSim environments at some point in the future. The viewer utilises HTML 5 (and so runs of Firefox, Chrome, etc.), and runs on any portable / mobile device capable of running WebGL.

PixieViewer: accessing OpenSim through a web browser — Pixieviewer: accessing OpenSim through a web browser

As an initial “first look” release, functionality is obviously limited – although already offering enough to get people playing with things and see the potential. Capabilities currently included in the viewer comprise chat, building both using primitive (“basic”) shapes and pre-set 3D models (mesh is supported although uploads are currently not enabled), and the ability to send content to a file suitable for 3D printing on your own (data exported as an STL file), or have the data sent to http://i.materialise.com, where you can preview and order 3D prints. Some basic object interaction is also possible as well – such as sitting on objects or clicking them to display pop-up with further information.

You’ll need to create a log-in account to the Pixiegrid in order to try-out the viewer, and you can do so directly through the viewer’s log-in page.

General Looks

The preview version loads fast – once you’ve registered an account, you can fire-up the viewer and are immediately delivered to the Pixiegrid preview area, where you can wander, try out various options (including the 3D printing), chat with others and explore what is already available.

Avatars come in default male and female forms and are non-customisable at present – although you might find your hair colour changes between log-ins; I’ve tended to find I’m either a blonde or a red-head when using the viewer. Movement – both avatar and camera – is fairly basic, but more than adequate for getting around and seeing things; those who have followed Lumiya’s development will be aware how rapidly things like this improved, so it’s reasonable to expect PixieViewer will add further refinements as time and the technology allows.

Continue reading “Playing with Pixieviewer” →

In sight at Insight

Posted on March 13, 2013August 15, 2013 by Inara Pey

Insight Forest is a region that’s bound to attract me – it is largely water, and I love paddling around in water, as many of the destinations featured in the blog demonstrate. It is also the home to a beautiful exhibition featuring works by some of SL’s top photographers, including Whiskey Monday – whose work i the reason I paid a visit over the weekend.

The other artists featured in the exhibition are Annushi, Sare Ethaniel, Jordan Giant, Kean Kelly, Amelie Knelstorm, Rodriguez Munro and Citta Wiskee, together with the exhibit’s curators, Maclane Mills and Kamelia Snowfield.

The exhibition space is beautiful in its simplicity: a grove of bare trees in ankle-deep water with the artists’ work framed and hanging from branches. A sign at the entrance to the exhibit offers an introduction to the works and artists, then it is down to you to walk down the short avenue of trees and then follow the directions to take a clockwise tour. Each artist is announced by a frame bearing their name, and touching the pictures reveals the name of each piece.

At the centre of the exhibit is a piece by Maclane Mills, which combines a moving image with sculpture to present a bird rising up from its nest to fly around a tree.

If I have any niggles at all with the exhibit, it is that the pictures themselves are a tad on the small side to be fully appreciated, and zooming in on them in-world doesn’t entirely do them justice. Also, the bounding boxes on the trees can be a tad close together such that you can find yourself bouncing off of them at times. But I stress: these are very minor niggles.

For those so-minded, there is a visitor’s book following close to the entrance / exit of the exhibition space, and comments are encouraged.

A short distance from the copse of trees is a little island, offering a quiet haven within a quiet haven and which is itself a work of art, featuring an LP player, a chair, some books and a short ladder.

All-in-all, this is a simple, uncluttered and graceful exhibition of art which is well-worth going and seeing. Yes, the pictures could potentially be larger in order to be fully appreciated, as I’ve mentioned – but on the other hand, they are of a scale that matches most avatars, and can thus give a feeling of really being within a unique, open-air gallery.

But rather than take my word for it, why don’t you go see for yourself?