On Tuesday, May 19th the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channel, comprising Internal server logging changes, back-end system bug fixes and a change to Reply-To e-mail addressing on snapshots. There were no RC deployments on Wednesday, May 20th.
SL Viewer
The Attachments Viewer RC (Project Big Bird) was updated to version 3.7.29.301943 on Thursday May 21st. As noted in part 1 of this week’s report, the initial RC release of this viewer had an elevated crash rate compared to the current release viewer, including a crash-on-exit bug, so this release will hopefully address those issues.
Group Chat
A fix for issues around BUG-9130, where some people were unable to see any posts in some or all of there group chats, including their own posts, while everyone else in the same group could see their posts, has started to be deployed across the chat servers, and should be completed on Friday, May 22nd.
“The chat servers got stuck with bad info about where the sender was, so the messages never reached them,” Simon Linden said at the Server Beta User Group meeting on Thursday, May 21st, reiterating an explanation given at a recent Simulator UG meeting. “And unfortunately it wouldn’t fix with relogging or even a chat server restart.”
“Loading…” Issue with Names in Group Chats
This is a viewer-side problem which causes avatar names to appear as “Loading” under certain circumstances in group chat (see BUG-3829 and STORM-2114). A contribution by Ansariel Hiller is currently with the Lab and is expected to be released as a part of the next Snowstorm contributions viewer, which is expected to appear soon.
Other Items
Region Restart Glitch
There has been something of a rise in reports of regions experiencing issues following recent following restarts – most noticeably caps failures. This is something the Lab is looking into, and Simon commented, “we have a suspicion that after rolls, as that server host starts up regions, it’s doing enough of them at about the same time that things get overloaded. It’s still a theory but makes some sense why we’d get cap failures like that.”
Friend and content creator Vivienne Daguerre tapped me about her new collaborative venture, Roxeter, located on her own region, bearing the same name and which is also still the home to her Black Rose brand.
“Roxeter is intended to be a place supporting and featuring SL artists and live musicians,” Vivienne informed me, “and in future we hope to add writers and theatre performances to the list.”
Having opened in March, Roxeter already offers a number of indoor and outdoor venues for music and live performances, and the theatre is currently under construction, with work progressing well.
The region itself has something of a New England feel to it, with the core venues built around a small town-like locale centred around two squares. The first of these features an open air café which offers something of a social hub, around which sit a small number of commercial properties, the Roxeter library, and the pub (which offers an indoor venue for music) with the black rose radio station and media centre right next door. Beyond these sits an open-air music venue flanked on the one side by a large events stage built out over a beach, and on the other by the theatre.
The second square, this one with a fountain as its central feature, can be found behind the library building, with the Roxeter Place for the Visual Arts facing the library facade across it. At the time of my visit, Roxeter Place featured small displays of works by Darkyn Dover and John (Johannes1977), both of whom I admire for their exceptional photography, and Altarn Damon Bach – whom I admit is a new name to me, but whose work is equally stunning.
Community is very much a part of Vivienne’s focus in Second Life, and this is reflected in the fact that not only offers venues to the arts and music communities, but uphill from the Roxeter Place for the Visual Arts still a number of private houses available for rent to interested parties (please keep in mind some are already occupied); there is a small realtor’s office down in the town offering details of the available lots. Finally, and as no town should be without one, just across a narrow stream sits the local church and manse. The latter is also a private residence, so again, do keep that in mind when visiting, although you might want to look around the church grounds for the entrance to the catacombs below!
From this description, you might think everything sounds a little cramped in the region. Well, not so; considerable time and effort has gone into developing Roxeter and its venues, so the entire region has a feeling of open spaces as well as having something of a small town look. Indeed, with the off-sim islands on one side and craggy peaks on the other, the entire effect is that of being in a coastal town as it looks out over the open sea.
A major aspect of Roxeter is that it is entirely non-profit: the region is paid for entire out of the revenue generated by Vivienne’s Black Rose store (which is located high overhead and can be reached by the teleport point inside the little Black Rose shop in the town), with the aim of the venues here being, as Vivienne described, to promote music and the arts in Second Life and provide a means by which artists, musicians, DJ’s the theatre groups can present their music and work.
Obviously, operating a group of venues like this takes time and effort, and Vivienne has brought together a team of talented individuals to help keep Roxeter moving forward. Freya Lovenkraft is managing the live entertainments, and has started a video series, Behind the SL Music, hosted at Roxeter’s Black Rose Radio, in which she interviews and chats to people from SL’s music industry. Her first interview, with Mason Thorne, is available for viewing.
Artist Shakti Adored curates the Roxeter Place for Visual Arts, while Ercila Robbins manages the library, which had a literary / knowledge focus. Filling out the current team is Trinity Taryn Ansome, who is Roxeter’s Second Life Arts, Music and Culture blogger.
All told, Roxeter is quite a superb undertaking with an already very impressive events calendar. There is also an in-world group to keep abreast of news and event notices, while all the latest from the region can also be found on the Roxeter web site.
If you’re looking for a new music / arts / theatre venue, then this is a place you should definitely make a point of visiting.
I’ve long admired and enjoyed the art and photography of both Nino Vichan and WuWai Chun. so given both currently have exhibitions being hosted at the Sabra Art Gallery, operated and curated by Kylie Sabra, I took the opportunity to hop over and tour both.
American Nobility, Nino’s exhibit, is a beautiful and powerful series of images of Native Americans, offering both a homage to their history and something of a reminder of their harsh treatment.
Walk through the two chambers displaying Nino’s work, and you’ll meet proud and dignified individuals, previously captured in images from a bygone era, and here given a new lease of life by Nino. Some you may recognise, such as Sitting Bull, in a familiar pose with his peace pipe in one hand. Other may not be so familiar, such as Running Rabbit, immortalised in a 1900 black-and-white postcard for the edification of “civilised” people. All have, however, been captured in images – mostly monochrome or sepia, and have here been given new life through Nino’s eyes and hands.
“This exhibition,” Nino states, “presents the contrast between the dignity and spirituality of the indigenous people of the North American continent and the genocide of these and other indigenous people throughout the world.”
All of these images are striking in their own way; but the all have one thing very much in common: the look in their eyes.
It is often said the the eyes are the windows of the soul; and in these images, Nino has powerfully captured this There is a deep dignity evident in the eyes of his subjects – very powerfully so. In fact, Nino told him it was the eyes of his subjects, as captured in images by others, which drew him to portray them himself.
Such is the life Nino has breathed into these images that it is almost impossible not to find yourself drawn to the eyes as well; there is very definitely a sense of nobility and wisdom to be found within them. I challenge anyone not to stand before his interpretation of Wife of Madoc Henry – Klamath (seen in the image headlining this article) and not be captivated by her eyes. And when you’ve done so, go back and look again at each of the paintings in turn.
And don’t be surprised if you hear the distant whisperings of the Great Spirit.
Places is WuWai Chun’s latest collection of images captured from around Second Life and presented in her own unique and utterly captivating style.
“There are many beautiful places in second life,” WuWai says. “Some of the places in the pictures no longer exist, others have changed. The pictures are an expression of my perspective and mood of the places. Just as art is in the eye of the beholder, the creations of the SL-builders can be perceived from a personal and own point of view. I did this with the help of the windlight settings in the Firestorm viewer as well as the possibilities of image processing.”
The result is a beautiful series of images that capture some famous (and perhaps not-so-famous) sites from within Second Life, offered in a remarkable range of styles and finishes – so much so, that one could be forgiven for thinking the exhibit features the work of more than one artist.
These are images that evoke strong feelings of wanting and longing – wanting to visit those we’ve not previously witnessed and are still available, and longing to see again those we have visited in the past, but which are now no more.
Proceeds from the sale of any copies of WuWai’s images will be donated to Feed A Smile, the in-world charity arm of Live and Learn in Kenya (LLK), making this exhibit doubly worthwhile visiting. And don’t forget you can also find WuWai’s work on her Flickr feed.
And while there, do please visit the other sections of the Sabra Art Gallery, all are very worthwhile seeing; and consider making a donation to help towards meeting on-going running costs.
There are times, no matter how you try, when the words you want to put into an article refuse to either run from fingers through keyboard to screen, or when on the screen, simply don’t want to order themselves in the way you’d like.
When this happens, you can really only do one of two things; wrestle with the words in the hope of getting them to submit and line-up the way you’d like – or go seek respite by doing something else entirely. For me, the latter generally involves a bath full of hot water and bubbles, music and a book (and perhaps a glass of wine on the side). Today however, I decided to find respite from my block by jumping into SL, albeit with no clear idea of where I Might go or what I might do. Fortunately, there are plenty of places in-world to captivate us and carry us far from the roubles of the physical world – and even the worries of what to do.
Places like Leico Arado’s region of France Portnawak, which has recently undergone one of its regular make-overs, and has been given the theme name of Terracotta.
The last time I visited, autumn was just settling-in for a stay; now it is the turn of a balmy, semi-tropical summer evening, the sun casting a golden glow across the sky and the sea from the west, the haze in the sky all but masking shadows on the ground (see the images that top and tail this article).
The region has been crafted into a west-facing island that is intriguing in its mix of tropical and deciduous flora; groups of palms standing amidst or close to trees from more temperate climates. Scattered around the landscape, which varies from low-lying sands and grass to rocky outcrops, can be found a number of houses and outbuildings, each with its own ambience and story.
One of the houses sits out on the water on stilts, reached by a meandering path of stones which forms something of a breakwater. Within the rough circle formed by the stones, fishing nets awaited attendance, marsh plants float idly and long grass marches out from the shore, claiming a large part of the watery enclosure. Motor boats apparently offer a means to shuffle back and forth between the shore and the house in place of walking; but be warned – the enclosed water is bounded by a number of submerged physical invisiprims which tend to interfere with navigation.
The house on stilts appears to be the lodge of a hunter / fisherman – at least going by the wall decor. The other houses also have a particular character of their own; the one on the coast closest to the stone path, for example, suggests a woman’s touch and the presence of children. Not far from this, behind steep sand dunes, sits what might be a den used by teenagers, sitting under the metal roof of an open-sided hut.
Quite what the stories are to these and the other places to be found on the island is up to you as the visitor to decide – and there’s more than enough scattered around each of them to get the imagination rolling with narratives. But, if dwelling on possible stories isn’t to your mindset, there are also plenty of places to simply sit and while away the time, either on your own or with a friend, while a climb up to the highest point on the island will bring you to a rather interesting little temple.
In its latest iteration, France Portnawak offers a curious juxtaposition of looks and styles which somehow simply works, with everything flowing together to present visitors with a chance to wander, wonder and simply relax.
On Tuesday, May 19th the Main (SLS) channel received the server maintenance package previously deployed to the three RC channel, comprising:
Internal server logging changes
Back-end system bug fixes
Reply-To email changed in postcard sends
As previously noted in these pages, the “reply-to email changed in postcard sends” relates to changing the way snapshots forwards to e-mail are handled. Until now, the Lab has substituted the user’s e-mail address in the “from” field of snapshots sent to e-mail, rather than displaying the “secondlife.com” address.
However, this added to issues of e-mail originating from “secondlife.com” being treated as spam by a/v software and ISPs. With the new format employed with this change, the sender’s e-mail address is given as the “reply to” address in the snapshot, and the “from” is “no-reply@secondlife.com”, thus avoiding the issue of LL looking like spammers who are forging invalid addresses.
There will be no RC deployment on Wednesday, May 20th.
SL Viewer
The week has not so far seen an RC viewer promoted to release status. If there is any promotion, it would most likely be the Layer Limits RC (currently version 3.7.29.301305). The Experience Tools RC viewer is still awaiting the completion of back-end work, while the Attachment Fixes RC (Project big Bird) currently has an elevated crash rate compared to the current release viewer, which includes a crash-on-exit bug, so further work is required on that RC.
CDN Provider Move
The Lab has been moving between CDN providers, and as a result, some people may have been experiencing particular texture / mesh / avatar rendering delays of late. Commenting on the process at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, May 19th, Oz Linden said:
We’ve just finished moving from one CDN provider to another, and it may take the caches a little while to catch up. We tried to do it gradually in a way that would be minimally disruptive, but when you’re dealing with as much data as we are, there are no perfect solutions.
One of the cases it is hoped the move will assist is with SL users in Florida (and neighbouring states) in the US who use Mediacom as their ISP, and who have found that there have been what appear to have been issues with Mediacom throttling the service at certain times of the day. Preliminary feedback from users so affected who have been involved in testing with the new CDN provider has been positive.
What Goes Through the CDN, And How
During the CDN conversation Oz reinterated the data that is currently delivered to the viewer through the CDN: textures, world map tiles, avatar baking data, and mesh data. In terms of in-world objects, two distinct operations are taking place:
Where an object is, how big it is, and so on, comes to the viewer via the simulator, together with the UUIDs fr the relevant objects / textures
The viewer then uses the UUIDs to fetch the mesh and texture data directly from the CDN.
As previously noted on these pages, this should mean faster loading of things like textures and mesh in-world, as the data is coming from a CDN node that is “local” relative to you, rather than coming to you from the Lab and through the simulator itself. However, experience is showing that for a small number of people, this isn’t always the case, and there can be situations where mesh and texture loading aren’t what might be expected. However, the Lab continues to try to improve things.
Second Life Network Architecture
Writing on the forums, noted SL photographer Jackson Redstar recently asked meshmaxconcurrentrequests – does anybody know the real setting? In the ensuing debate, Monty Linden offered an updated overview of the SL network architecture.
Monty Linden’s updated SL network diagram
To borrow from Monty’s explanation:
On the left, in red, are pieces of the viewer; on the right, in blue are simhost/simulators and other backend services; at the bottom (green) are new CDN services
Solid lines with arrowheads are communication paths, either UDP or TCP/HTTP; dashed lines are legacy communication paths that are now or soon will be deprecated, obsoleted and/or deleted
Sold ball-and-stick indicators (e.g. TextureFetchConcurrency) indicate a viewer debug setting and the communication path or paths that setting influences; dashed ball-and-stick indicators (e.g. MeshMaxConcurrentRequests) indicate obsolete debug settings.
Monty goes on to say:
Generally, things are moving in the direction of simplification and less resource conflict. The mesh and texture HTTP traffic, which is usually the greatest load, tends to part ways with the UDP traffic a few network hops after a user’s router or modem. Lacking TCP’s throttling mechanism, UDP often wins in a fight (give-or-take the efforts of fairness algorithms along the path). Allowing UDP to overrun the path between viewer and simulator does still degrade the experience and the bandwidth setting remains an effective tool for avoiding this problem.
Other settings should generally be left alone. A lot of bad advice was spread around in the community in an effort to work around throughput problems. We’re trying to undo that history and get back on track with more typical (albeit aggressive) HTTP patterns.
Viewer Caching
During the Simulator UG meeting, Oz repeated a call he originally made at a TPV Developer meeting recently, asking that if there is developer wishing to volunteer for a “deep dive” into viewer caching, he’d like to hear from them.
While interest list updates made key changes to how the viewer’s cache is used, there are numerous issues which appear to be viewer-side caching related, so a deep investigation into the code could go further towards improving things.
One long-standing issue, which is thought to be caching related, is If someone uses a texture rezzed in-world same texture for a group profile image or their avatar profile image or in a profile pick, the object will never fully load the texture.
So, if you’re a developer willing to looking into viewer-side caching, Oz would like to hear from you.
Now into its second year, the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality (SVVR) Conference opened on Monday, May 18th. Among the presentations and panel discussions that marked the day’s events was a 20 minute piece by Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg, intriguingly entitled The Future of VR is User Created.
Ebbe Altberg: address the 2015 SVVR audience on May 18th, 2015
The presentation can be found in this official SVVR video, starting at the 39:00 mark. It was also recorded by Ruthalas Menovich, whose video I have taken the liberty of embedding below. Timestamps in the summary that follows in this article refer to Ruthalas’ video.
Those who may have been hoping to gain more of an insight into the Lab’s Next Generation Platform (aka Project SANSAR) will perhaps be disappointed by this presentation. As the title suggests, it isn’t so much focused on the Lab’s NGP, but rather on user generated content (UGC).
Thus, it forms something of an exploration of the potential of UGC within VR environments, as seen through the focusing lens of Second Life, and what Second Life has taught the Lab about some of the potential constraints posed by both supporting UGC and Second Life itself, which the Lab are now seeking to address. In doing so, it also touches upon some of the broader challenges facing platform providers as well, particularly in areas such as the state of VR technology itself, issues of monetisation for users, etc.
I’ll likely have some comments of my own on SANSAR in an upcoming article. For now however, I’m restricting this piece to a summary of Mr. Altberg’s presentation, with timestamps to the relevant points in Ruthalas’ video for those wishing to listen to them in full.
00:31 – 02:28: Democratising Content
The premise here is that the power of VR will be in democratising content – making VR such that those who wish to can create and share content among friends and audiences; not just necessarily in having it fed to consumers by high-end organisations with considerable technical skills.
As a demonstration of this, he quotes Mark Zuckerberg, and points to the idea that just as self-expression is a natural part of our physical lives – how we decorate our homes, the clothes we wear, the interests we pursue – so too is it important for VR to allow us similar levels of self expression, such as through the freedom to create the environments we enjoy. In support of this view, he also points to the enormous popularity of sites on the Internet which today enable us to express ourselves through the content we crate, be it video, photography, the written word, or other mediums.
Mark Zuckerberg on VR’s potential, quoted by Ebbe Altberg at SVVR
02:28 – 14:30: UGC in Second Life and the challenges within SL
The focus moves on to Second Life and the challenges faced by anyone looking to enter the immersive VR environment with UGC.
Here he covers the rich diversity of user-generated content, which not only covers a huge range of interests and activities – social, educational, training, healthcare, business, entertainment, etc., and fulfils a massive variety of needs – homes, fashion, hobbies, landscaping, and so on -, but which is extraordinarily successful for both the company operating the platform and those providing the in-world content and services. In this he again cites the fact that in 2014, creators and providers redeemed some US $60 million from Second Life. The varying business models and their limitations – such as land – are mentioned.
The Lab’s work on making SL compatible with the Oculus Rift headset is touched upon, and a fair caveat is given on the aspect of performance. Ebbe notes that the work has to date really been more a useful tool for demonstrating to creators the difference between witnessing their creations on-screen and being immersed within them.
The InSilico RPG was mentioned to help illustrate the wide variety of SL UGC
The limiting factors of Second Life are also discussed. Again, the land revenue model and its limitations (including scalability) are mentioned, as are the limits of region concurrency numbers and the challenges of trying to hold really large-scale gatherings in-world. The fact that user-generated content can itself be a problem is also mentioned; that users don’t necessarily know how to properly optimise their content to be efficient in terms of rendering and running, so the Lab will need to find a way to optimise that content.
Broader challenges in presenting an environment which allows everything that Second Life already does are also touched upon – such as issues of compliance and control given what are collectively vary large amounts of money flowing through the platform (with a GDP of half a billion US $ a year) supported through a floating exchange used to convert real-world currency into game tokens and back again, in order to ensure money laundering, etc., isn’t an issue.
Ease of use is also touch upon; not just in terms of SL’s own notorious learning curve, but also in the fact that VR itself is still very much a fluid environment in terms of technology and the devices which might be used within it – controllers, headsets, peripherals, etc – It simply isn’t clear (outside of head mounted displayed themselves) as to exactly what will come into commonplace use and what, out of all that is being suggested, developed, trialled or hyped, will fall by the wayside.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 