A new installation by Betty Tureaud opens on Friday January 24th in Southern Cross, and it’s an excellent example of depth perception.
Infinity Space comprises a huge, multi-hued horizontal space overlaid with two grids, one above the visitor’s head and one below their feet, all of which recedes infinitely into the distance no matter where you stand – or how far you walk.
While it sounds a simple idea, the execution is highly effective; some of the prims used in the installation are phantom extenders, so you can reach the edge of the region and still appear to keep on walking (albeit it with a slight bouncing off the region boundary), while the parallel lines of the grid stretch away in front of you forever converging without ever touching, enticing you to try to keep on following them. This optical effect can be enhanced by operating in Mouselook – which is really the best way to appreciate the build.
There is also a little band of floating pyramids circling around the build, offering visitors a ride which lifts the experience even more. Just click on one of the small poseballs scattered around the arrival point and you’ll be delivered, seated, to one of the moving pyramids. Once there, slip into Mouselook. The effect now borders on the hypnotic as the colours above and below the grid flow and change and the grid slowly appears to rotate, the axes interchanging. Riding in this way immediately put me in mind of part of astronaut Dave Bowman’s trip through the stargate in Kubrick’s seminal 2001: a Space Odyssey, such is the effect – at least in part.
The installation opens at 14:00 on Friday January 24th with a performance by Ultraviolet Alter.
Nikki Mathieson, who is chairing the 2014 RFL of SL event season has circulated a note card in-world outlining some more information on this year’s theme and providing the dates for some of the key events.
The is the tenth year in which the event will have been run in Second Life, and already some $110,000 USD has already been raised. The hope is that 2014 will be another record-breaking year.
There are some differences in the timetable this years, with one major event already rescheduled (the home and Garden Expo, which will take place in September, rather than the usual May), and some familiar activities will not be taking place in quite the way they have in the past.
Initial Event / Activity Dates
Note the following is not a complete list of all RFL of SL events taking place in 2014, just those for which dates are available.
February
Sunday 2nd: first 2014 broadcast for Relay Rap
Saturday February 8th: Team Registrations open and the Paint SL Purple event. If you’ve not already started forming your team, now is the time to do so, and more information on forming teams will be available soon
Team Convio Challenge: back for another year, this will occur in the first week of February (exact dates TBC), allowing teams to increase their fundraising totals using the convio tool
March
Saturday March 8th / Sunday March 9th: Kick-off weekend. The official RFL of SL 2014 season kick-off ceremony will take place on Saturday March 8th as a part of a weekend-long, multi-region, multi-team celebration
April
Friday April 4th – Sunday April 13th: 2014 Fashion for Life
May
Thursday May 1st – Sunday May 11th: Fantasy Faire 2014
Sunday May 4th – Saturday May 10th: The Halfway There Journey – a week-long series of team events across multiple regions to celebrate RFL of SL and the teams who fundraise
Sunday May 16th – Wednesday May 26th: Fiction for a Cure
Sunday July 6th – Sunday July 20th: Summer Breedables Fair
Saturday 19th – Sunday 20th July: Relay Weekend
August
Wrap-up party – dates TBC
September
The home and Garden Expo this year takes place in September
Tuesday September 16th – Sunday September 28th: 2014 SL Home and Garden Expo
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer
December
Friday December 5th – Monday December 15th: 2014 Xmas Expo and Breedables Fair.
Additional Notes
There will be no Teams ‘R’ Us events in the 2014 season. Instead, multi-team events will be held during the kick-off weekend and the Halfway There Journey week. There may also be opportunities for team-funding at the various major events within the season (FFL, Fantasy Faire, the SF Conventions, etc.). If so, details will be announced as these events approach.
Relay Rap / T1 Radio will again be the official broadcaster for the season, and can be found at T1radio.com. The first Relay Rap broadcast for 2014 will take place on February 2nd, as noted above. Those wishing to listen to broadcasts through the season can do so by adding T1’s stream (http://t1radio.serverroom.us:8242) to their land’s media settings or via their own media player.
Further updates to come as news is made available.
Update, October 9th, 2014: Linden Lab announced that development work on Patterns has been discontinued.
I’m not sure what has happened with the Patterns roadmap; when launched, the original idea was that the product would remain in a Genesis version for about a year prior to progressing to an official “version 1.0” release. However, here we are at the start of 2014, and Patterns is still apparently in Genesis mode with version 0.06 released on Monday January 20th, and the development team promising lots more to come as Patterns progresses.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing; a lot of what is going on appears to be as a direct result of user input, and the development team are refreshingly engaged with the Patterns community through blog posts, wiki updates, forum posts and live streams. Makes one long for the crazy, heady, communications-rich days of old in Second Life!
The 0.06 update further enhances the Substance Editor introduced at the end of 2013, and which I covered in brief at the start of January. As explained back then, the Substance Editor allows users to modify the existing surface and other substances (clay, copper, moonstone, etc.), and to create new substances for use in-game. The initial release included the ability to edit the diffuse (texture) normal (bumpiness) properties of substances. Version 0.06 adds the ability to edit and modify a number of additional substance properties:
Specular: the shininess of a substance – this uses a greyscale palette with white being the most shiny
Occlusion: – to map darker and lighter pixels resulting in a texture with an illusion of relief, and so allows the creation of hotspots and shadows on substances. The brick and bonestone substances are good examples of substances using occlusion maps
Illumination: defines the glow and light emission effect for materials, using the range of white (most illuminated) to black. The lava and moonstone substances are good examples of the use of illumination
Metal: affects the metallic quality of a substance. The default is black with white being the most metallic.
The updated substance Editor with the added tabs for specular, occlusion, illumination and metallic properties (right)
In addition, the Substance Editor gets an HD mode which doubles the texture resolution when using it, although the release notes indicate this makes using the Substance Editor performance intensive. It is also possible to define the total number of substances you include in a new Substance Pack.
The first part of a new video has been produced to explore the Substance Editor. This is described as “in-depth”, but I have to admit that this first part leaves something to be desired; the new properties in the Editor are glossed over with a “I’ll leave you guys to look these up…” Hopefully, there will be a more detailed look at them in the future as these series progresses, this is only an introduction, after all. However, given there has already been a far more detailed introduction to the Substance Editor already (albeit with only diffuse and normal maps), one has to wonder why the approach in that video was not followed, and a more informative piece produced to kick this new series off; as it is, the initial video is – frankly – disappointing and waffly.
First Person Camera Lock
The new first person camera lock option in Settings. also note the option for applying your own substance sets to a world (top)
Another new element introduced to Patterns is the ability to lock the camera into first person view (consider Mouselook in SL). This is activated via the Scene Settings options (ESC > Scene settings > Lock first person view).
As recently reported, in November, the Lab commenced e-mailing users meeting certain criteria to submit tax documentation to the Lab, which was subsequently expanded upon via a blog post on the matter.
In both the e-mail and blog post, reference was made to two IRS forms: W-9 (for U.S. residents) and Form W-8BEN (for non-U.S. residents), which must be completed and returned to Linden Lab within 30 days of any request for them being received in order to avoid having funds from accounts being withheld as stimplated by the US Internal Revenue Service (at the current rate of 28% of the gross amounts received).
With reference specifically to Form W-8BEN, concern has more recently be expressed at the fact it calls upon the person submitting it to provide either an Employer Identification Number (EIN) or an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), either of which must be obtained from the IRS. However, the EIN is not something everyone outside of the US may be in a position to obtain, while obtaining an ITIN can take from between four and six weeks (compared to the Lab’s stated requirement that the form and supporting documentation be submitted to them within 30 days of receipt of the request).
Confusion was further heightened when several people indicated that had supplied Form W-8BEN to the Lab without either an EIN or ITIN.
As a number of people contacted me on this matter, I dropped a line to Peter Gray, the Lab’s Director of Global Communications, asking of the Lab could provide further clarification as to whether Form W-8BEN must have either an EIN or an ITIN in order to be submitted to the Lab. He replied with the following:
Hi Inara,
The users whom we have asked to submit the W8-BEN need only complete the fields in Part I, #1-5 (which does not require an EIN nor an ITIN).
We regret the confusion this form has recently caused for some users. To help avoid this confusion moving forward, we’ve uploaded a new version of the form that allows users to complete only the necessary fields and will update the messages sent to users when this information is requested.
Best,
Peter
[My emphasis in the above.]
Hopefully, this will resolve any confusion where this particular matter is concerned.
Also, and purely as a point of reference:
Deirdre Young pointed me towards Kat Fetisov’s attempts to unravel W-8BEN, which have also been referred to by Ciaran Laval.
Kat’s circumstances, being what is effectively a UK-based Sole Trader, are such that she was able to get an EIN directly from the IRS, with the form-filling taking place over the ‘phone. Those who are in a similar situation as Kat may want to consider approaching the IRS to obtain an EIN for future reference. Should this be the case, please refer to Kat’s blog, where she has provided clear guidance on doing so based on her experience.
Isle of Mousai. is a recently opened music venue in Second Life; however, anyone visiting it who has been to Hesperia of Templemore (a place I’ve been to a number of times, but have yet to blog about) may well get an odd feeling of déjà vu. There is a certain something about the one that does put you in mind of the other, albeit perhaps in something of a subtle way; the design of the some of the stage areas, the use of statues, the presence of balloons and dirigibles floating overhead.
There’s nothing sinister in these similarities; rather they are clues that both Hesperia of Templemore and Isle of Mousai are the work of Luis Lockjaw. However, this should not to be taken to means they are clones of one another; far from it. Mousai very much has a look and feel which is unique and very different to that of Templemore. It’s not so urbanised in appearance, for one thing, and it has a broader spread of architectural styles, some of which give it a whimsical feel. And while the various styles are distinct, the overall design of the region, which includes the clever use of elevation by way of hills and small escarpments, allows them flow together via the footpaths, tracks and steps which connect them.
The primary aim of the region is to provide a venue – or venues – for live music and DJs; however, there is much here to attract the casual visitor, the explorer and those wishing to share a little space with friends. Take the little hilltop open-air theatre, for example, complete with a sheet hanging from a line as the screen; it offers a convivial spot to sit and chat with friends. Elsewhere there are little places to sit on your own or with a close friend, all of them charmingly presented to those wandering the paths and trails.
Colour plays an important role here as well, especially if you take the time to twiddle with your windlight defaults a little. If you do the results can be quite stunning whether you simply want to sit and enjoy them while exploring or if you’re into SL photography.
I will get around to blogging about Hesperia of Templemore; right now I’m waiting for the snow there to melt, as I’m pretty sure that many of those on the North American continent have had more than their fill of wintry scenes already. In the meantime, if you’ve not dropped into Isle of Mousai, do make a note in your diary to do so, it’s a visual treat!
Details on the scaling functions can be found by following the links, or by checking my week 2 projects update. All of these functions, including llLoadURL can be used in any current viewer.
There were two further updates included in the package, both of which require viewer-side updates which have yet to be released by the Lab. These are:
Preliminary support for custom default permissions on newly created objects – currently awaiting viewer-side support via STORM-68
Preliminary support for the viewer fetching the LSL syntax rules from the simulator, for up-to-date syntax highlighting in the script editor – currently awaiting viewer-side support via STORM-1831.
Release Candidate Channels, Wednesday January 22nd, 2014
All three RC channels should receive the same server maintenance project, which contains a single fix for a crash mode.
SL Viewer
As per my last report, the “Project Interesting” viewer appears to be running at a substantially reduced crash rate, and has seen the majority of issues resolved within it. If this continues through the current week, given the amount of time the viewer has been in the release channel as an RC, it could be a good candidate for promotion to the de facto release viewer in week 5 (week commencing Monday January 27th), assuming the Lab keeps to its plans of promoting a release candidate every two weeks.
the Fitted Mesh viewer is also a potential candidate for promotion. However, as there are currently two significant issues with this RC at present, any promotion of this candidate may well be delayed.
The two issues concerned are:
Certain non-rigged mesh invisible with ALM disabled -see FITMESH-20 – which has been confirmed by Marissa Linden and
worn mesh which is not rigged to the collision bones is seen to stretch away towards the 0,0,0 point of the region the avatar is standing in when using the Fitted Mesh viewer on systems with AMD graphics and with ALM turned off – see FITMESH-6 – which Oz Linden has confirmed the Lab is investigating.
The Fitmesh-6 issue, which affects how mesh garments not rigged to the collision bones can appear in the Fitted Mesh viewer running on systems using AMD graphics and with ALM disabled, is getting a further look at from the Lab
Other News
Snapshot Uploads to SL Feeds
As many are aware, the ability to upload snapshots to the profile feeds was broken for many before the Christmas / New Year holidays. While the functionality was restored for some who could not upload snaps was restored, many have remained unable to use the facility. However, speaking at the simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday January 21st, Simon Linden indicated that the Lab believe the issue has now been completely resolved for all users. I’ve not had time to test the upload myself due to RL issues, but those who have continued to experience problems my wish to try things out once more. If problems are still evident, please raise a JIRA.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 