Month: March 2015

A distillery for artists with Whiskey galore in March

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dathúil - Whiskey Monday: Recently
Dathúil – Whiskey Monday: Recently

Dathúil, meaning “colourful”, “lovely” or “beautiful” in Irish (also dhathúil), is the name of a new art gallery in Second Life, which opened at the start of March 2015. Run by Max Butoh, the gallery is located on his region of Floris, which is also home to the 1920s themed The Sable Club and the more adult-oriented The Chamber Society (the main venue for which is located well above the ground level of the region).

The gallery is imaginatively presented within the cavernous hall of an old distillery, complete with three great copper whiskey stills towards the back of the hall, and unused whiskey barrels stacked around the room or used as part of the furnishings. Together, these add a suitable additional ambience to the gallery.

Whiskey Monday: Recently - Dathúil
Whiskey Monday: Recently – Dathúil

Dathúil will feature the work of invited artists, with exhibitions currently looking set to be on a monthly basis. Featured for the gallery’s debut month is none other than Whiskey Monday, (appropriately enough in some respects given the gallery’s theme and her name), who offers visitors Recently, a collection of her more recent pieces.

Those familiar with Whiskey’s work will know that her photography is generally an evocative, provocative, intimate and fascinating mix of observation, questions of identity and of self, and semi-autobiographical thoughts and illustrations.  Her art grew as a natural exploration of her self-expression through mediums such as writing and social media, and as a result of her being inspired by Botgirl Questi, who has also pushed the envelope in the use of social media tools and digital media as a means of self-expression and exploration of identity and self.

Whiskey Monday: Recently - Dathúil
Whiskey Monday: Recently – Dathúil

What is on offer within Dathúil is a further illustration of Whiskey’s work through a marvellous series of images, all beautifully composed in such a way the the observer is immediately drawn into each and every piece, most likely experiencing a sense of self-identity with the subject matter underlying many of them. Several of the pieces on display include the props used in their creation, adding a subtle degree of additional depth to each them.

All of the pieces on display are available for sale, and Whiskey’s work can also be obtained in the physical world, via Fine Art America, where the individual items on offer can be purchased in a variety of formats, complete with world-wide shipping, and which really are all quite superb.

Dathúil - Whiskey Monday: Recently
Dathúil – Whiskey Monday: Recently

With Recently forming its debut exhibition and set to run through until the end of March 2015, and with work by Yannick Whoa due to be displayed through the month of April, Dathúil is already establishing itself as an art venue of choice. With an entire themed region built around to it also explore, why not pay a visit yourself (donations toward keeping the gallery and venue open always welcome!), and explore a corner of the 1920s as well as enjoying the art on display?

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Walking through The Shire

Posted on by Inara Pey

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

I first heard those words when lying in bed one evening whilst very little. They were read to me by the comforting voice of my father, and they opened the door to a world I’ve loved ever since, a place as rich and diverse as our own, filled with adventure, exotic peoples, terrible creatures, tales of heroics, love, devotion and darkness. A world called Middle Earth.

It’s a place familiar to many of us, not only thanks to the printed page, but also because it has been vividly brought to the silver screen by Peter Jackson’s six films. It’s a place often recreated in one form or another in Second Life, allowing us to share in Tolkien’s mythos and tales; And now we can even visit The Shire itself.

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr)

A full region landscaped and designed by Circinae (Chocolate Aftermath), The Shire is not intended to be a replica of Hobbiton or any other locale within the Shire’s borders featured in the books. Rather it takes its inspiration from a range of elements from Tolkien’s world: hobbit holes, houses for Big Folk and builds decorated with a slant towards the elvish.

The result is a beautifully landscaped realm, offering plenty of photo opportunities as one explores. Note that role-play appears to be encouraged, focusing on Tolkien, while encompassing medieval and rural Celtic fantasy as well. However, do please also keep in mind that many of the houses, hobbit holes and elven towers are available for rent, and so may well be private residences;  signs are generally posted outside those that are rented, requesting people respect the tenants’ privacy. Those who might be interesting in renting any of the available parcels can do so via the little rental centre towards the middle of the region, nestled between the Crumbling Crow tavern and the windmill.

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr)

Paths from the central village will help lead you around the region and down to the coastal areas and to the elven towers to the south-west. Facing this, in the south eat is a further wooded island in which sits The Gathering Stones, a place to meet and dance. Currently, these doesn’t appear to be a means by which this can be reached sans flying or teleporting, but as The Shire still appeared to be under construction when I visited, it might be that a boat rezzer has yet to be added – or I simply missed a more obvious route!

This is place where Big Folk and hobbits can mix easily, making it a sort of Bree-on-a-hill. The elven towers are slightly separate from the main village, but one would expect that anyway in Middle Earth; but that said the towers can be reached easily enough, and hobbit holes lay close by. I didn’t see any active role-play taking place while there,  but rather suspect that any which might occur is likely to be casual, and more about keeping in character with any tenants who may be about, rather than adhering to any set storyline.

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr The Shire (Flickr)

All told, The Shire is more than a pleasant visit – it is a joy to explore. I’m not sure what else is to be done prior to it being classified as “finished” (is any region ever truly “finished”, given how we can so easily tweak and change things to suit needs and wants?); but that shouldn’t stop you from hopping over there and seeing it today.

After all, if you have, like me, found J.R.R. Tolkien to be hobbit forming, you’ll probably feel quite at home in The Shire!

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Black Dragon 2.4.1.9: “volumetric lighting” and more

Posted on by Inara Pey

Blackdragon logoOn Tuesday, March 10th, NiranV Dean released version 2.4.1.9 of his Black Dragon viewer, which includes his recent work on volumetric lighting for Second Life, which I reported on at the start of March.

The update also includes a number of other fixes to some long standing rendering issues that Niran has been attempting to fix. Taken together, they are part of a larger update Niran has been planning, but as he comments in the release notes, he wanted to get these particular changes out to show people, and will save the rest for his upcoming version 2.4.2 release.

Graphics Memory Changes

The first of the changes Niran has made relates to the way in which graphics memory is used with textures. Generally, the viewer has one slider for setting a limit on the amount of texture memory, which encompasses everything you see in the viewer, including all of the UI elements.  The is generally set to 512 Mb by default.

Up until the 2.4.1.9 release, Black Dragon, like most viewers, offered a single slider for setting the amount of video memory which could be dedicated to texture processing by the viewer
Up until the 2.4.1.9 release, Black Dragon, like most viewers, offered a single slider for setting the amount of video memory which could be dedicated to texture processing by the viewer

With the 2.4.1.9 release of Black Dragon, Niran has split how graphics memory is used between “global” textures – which include all the UI elements, etc., and the graphics memory currently being used to render the current scene – what you are actually seeing in-world at any moment in time.

The idea here is to provide the scene textures with their own “pool” of graphics memory, so they are no longer competing for graphics memory with all the other textures obtained from the region and the viewer’s UI textures, and should thus result in fewer issues of visible textures being “thrashed” (e.g. constantly switching between blurry and clear as they are swapped into and out of memory due to lack of space).

With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 , Niran has attempted to "split" how video memory is used by the viewer into two adjustable "pools", one for global textures (which include UI elements), and one just for just the current scene textures
With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 , Niran has attempted to “split” how video memory is used by the viewer into two adjustable “pools”, one for global textures (which include UI elements), and one just for just the current scene textures

As I’m not a graphics or viewer rendering expert, I can offer no opinion on this approach. However, do note Niran’s recommendation to set texture memory to 512 Mb (the default upper limit for SL viewers, set several years ago to avoid OpenGL issues which might occur when setting large memory allocations) and the scene memory to 256 Mb.

Horizon and Other Rendering Fixes

One of the visual irritants in Second Life when running the view with the Advanced Lighting Model option (which Niran still refers to by its more technical name of “deferred rendering”), those living at altitude in-world (or flying at a few hundred metres above sea level), is the way in which the line of the horizon between “sky” and “sea” forms a concave curve across the screen, rather than a flat line as one might expect.

The familiar concave horizon line between "sky" and "water" seen when running the viewer in "deferred" mode (ALM enabled) ...
The familiar concave horizon line between “sky” and “water” seen when running the viewer in “deferred” mode (ALM enabled) …

With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9, Niran has addressed this, and a few other horizon-related rendering issues so that – and again when running the viewer with Preferences > Display > Deferred Rendering (ALM) enabled, the horizon now appears as a horizontal line, as shown in the two images shown here, taken from Rebeca Bashly’s When Life Gives You Apples … Run.

Images of all the horizon rendering adjustments Niran has made can be found in his blog post on the release, linked to at the top and end of this article.

Niran's revised horizon line between "sky" and "sea", seen in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 with deferred rendering (ALM) enabled
Niran’s revised horizon line between “sky” and “sea”, seen in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 with deferred rendering (ALM) enabled

Continue reading “Black Dragon 2.4.1.9: “volumetric lighting” and more” →

SL project news week 11/1: server, viewer, group chat

Posted on by Inara Pey

Armenelos, Calas Galadhon; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Armenelos, Calas Galadhon (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments Week 11

As always, please refer to the sever deployment thread for the latest updates and information.

  • There was no Main (SLS) channel deployment on Tuesday, March 10th
  • On Wednesday, March 11th, all three RC channels should receive the same new server maintenance package comprising “internal improvements for premium users”.

When asked during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, March 10th whether the “internal improvements for premium users” was related to the change to the in-world receipt of off-line IMs, as mentioned at the last SBUG meeting, Simon Linden could only say, “I’m not supposed to announce anything, so I can’t go into details … but one thing we’re looking at this year is ways to make premium accounts better. This may or may not do something like that eventually.”

SL Viewer Updates

A new Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.26.299610,was released on March 6th. This includes multiple fixes and improvements as listed on the release notes and download page.

The Experience Keys viewer updated to version 3.8.0.299338 on Monday, March 9th, maintaining parity with the current release viewer.

Experience Tools

Although the Experience Tools viewer has been updated (see above), there is still no news on when Experiences might be fully deployed. In order to help build interest in Experiences a suggestion has been put forward to enable Experiences to be rated in terms of the number of people actively joining them (see BUG-6911), which could be optionally shown (at the Experience creator’s discretion in things like search listings, allowing people to judge Experiences by their popularity.

The Lab has considered allowing users to rate Experience themselves in a future update – but as point out in the JIRA comments, such a system could be open to gaming, much like the old avatar popularity ratings. BUG-6911 has been imported by the Lab, but it is currently unclear if the idea will be carried forward.

Group Chat

As also noted in my last updates, recent changes to the group chat service have seen up to a 20% failure rate in delivered messages. Simon Linden spent a fair amount of time during week #10 stabilising things once more, and notes that the situation taught the Lab more about how things might fail. He currently has a set of updates which may further improve things, and these are liable to be tested at the next Server Beta User Group meeting.

Other Items

Names Vanishing from Ban Lists

There have been reports of avatars added to a region / estate ban list or have been previously muted suddenly dropped from the list without an action on the part of the list owner. This might be connected to the old issue of bans made using radar on some older versions of v1-style viewers (notably Phoenix) failing to “stick”, or it may be something else, such as a failure to correctly update a ban / mute list.

Commenting on the subject at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon said, “we’ve heard reports of that and have looked into it … if you ever can narrow down an instance of that happening, please note it in a JIRA … Our logs will record info about those changing but we have to know where and when to look

“I’m making wild guesses, but I think it would be either the viewer or the simulator making an update to the ban list, and somehow having bad data.   Perhaps an incomplete list gets into the picture, and using that as a basis for the update it drops people.   Our logs will show events like “MrNoisy was added” and “MrGoodBehaviour was removed” but finding the event is the missing part of the puzzle.

“If you have multiple regions in the estate, there’s another issue of having the changes sent out to all the regions.   We’ve seen failures there and I know it’s been worked on a few times (and suspected in some of these reports).”

So, if you do encounter a situation involving an apparent ban list failure, and can log the exact circumstances / details, please consider raising a bug report.

Firestorm TTT: clean install revisited

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoIn the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.

Given people did feel the first video did feel hurried, and that clean installs can be a necessary part of viewer life, the latest Tool Tip Tuesday video from Jessica might be referred to as “Clean installs: the Director’s Cut”.

With a running time a little under 13 minutes, the new video provides greater information and clearer instructions on:

  • Saving your chat and IM logs to a custom location on your PC
  • Using Firestorm’s backup capability to save and restore your viewer’s global and per-account settings
  • Performing a clean install.

The video both complements the original clean install video, and stands as an instructional guide in its own right, providing a lot more explanation and background. So, if you were confused by the speed of delivery in the original video, this revisit may well be for you!

Touring Tillicum Island

Posted on by Inara Pey

Tillicum Island; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Tillicum Island (Flickr) – click any image for full size

Tillicum Island has been designed specifically for photographers, and it shows. A full region, it is the work of Tinker Drew and her partner, Scott Yedmore, most of which is open to the public; a place where people can come and explore, take photographs and simply enjoy.

The landscape is a rich mix of sandy beach, wooded grasslands, rugged highlands and split by a deep gorge. Scattered across this landscape are a number of buildings, from a tall lighthouse standing atop a small headland in the north-west corner of the island, through to Scott’s and Tinker’s private home, located in the south-east corner. Central to these is a walled terrace, which forms the landing point for the region, gateways on two sides inviting visitors to start their explorations as birds chirp and sing from trees and benches, head cocked occasionally to watch human comings and goings.

Tillicum Island; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Tillicum Island (Flickr)

A path from one of the gateways offers passage out towards the tall finger of the lighthouse, branching before it reaches the natural stone bridge out to the headland, to offer a path onto the west-facing beach. An old brick and wood building sits back and slightly above the beach, offering visitors a place to sit either indoor our on the front terrace, while a sandy path lit by paper lanterns presents a walk out onto the low causeway that forms one arm of the channel which splits the land in two.

Leave the landing point terrace via the other gate, and there are a choice of possible exploratory routes, one of which will quickly take you up a set of steps to the back door of the building overlooking the beach, while another will take you up to the stone bridge spanning the rocky gorge splitting the land in two. Here, on the south side of the island sits Scott and Tinker’s private residence, as mentioned above; the one place on the island where there is a sign asking people to respect their privacy and not to trespass. This overlooks the rest of the headland, which open to the public as it falls away to the sea to the west, more steps leading down to a sandy bar, at the end of which sits a little wood-built bath house.

Tillicum Island; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Tillicum Island (Flickr) – click any image for full size

The southern highlands of the region offer a further terraced area, complete with an Edwardian folly and, for those who spot it, a way down into a small network of tunnels and caverns under the rocks. These can also be reached / left via a door overlooking further building on the north-east side of the island.

Opportunities for photographs exist right across the island, indoors and out, above ground and in the caverns. The landscaping is such that a wide variety of windlight settings can be used to great effect. With plenty of places to sit with friends or to spend time with someone close to you, Tillicum Island has a lot to offer visitors.

Tillicum Island; Inara Pey, March 2015, on Flickr Tillicum Island (Flickr)

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