The new outdoor bath on the new level of the island, with the steps up to the house
It’s the start of a new month, so must be time to fiddle with house and home 🙂 .
Back in August, I wrote about re-arranging things at home to make use of some of the bits and bobs purchased for the Impressions installation at LEA 6. particular making use of the Fanatik Rocky Island. At that time I noted a minor niggle with the texturing of the rock, which suffers from blurred / stretched textures which become particularly noticeable if the rock is resized even a little. Due to its design, it doesn’t take too well to being re-textured, either.
While of itself a small niggle, this is the kind of thing which can easily grow into a nag once noticed. And that’s what happened when we moved things around to made space for the Skye Beach House. Something Had To Be Done.
The house, ramp and expanded beach, and new chapel ruins
So, it was off back to Fanatik to pick up their Cliff Cover Mountain set of rocks, which were used to replace the Rocky Island. This gave us some immediate benefits: more room for the house itself, an additional level in the design of the island, and a bigger beach area, which can still be reach via a rocky ramp from the house. Most importantly of all though, were the reclaimed LI gained; at 118LI, the Rocky Island can eat into a budget, and replacing it gave us over half the LI back.
The additional capacity has allowed us to add to the “old ruins” feel to the place. On the new middle part of the island, for example, we now have section of wall and a tower overlooking the waterfalls and offering a sheltered place for an outdoor rustic bath courtesy of Cory Edo. I’ve always loved the idea of outdoor baths and showers since my time in Sri Lanka, so sort-of replicating something of that in-world has been a delight.
The chapel – offering something a little different to broken walls for the ruins
to further add to the ruins, a medieval chapel has now been added to the lower section of the island, replacing one of the larger wall sections and a tower. At 26 LI, this partial mesh build is not heavy, but it is big; fortunately, it’s also Mod, so resizing and re-texturing it was simple enough; with a quick shearing away of unnecessary parts, the LI came down to 12 without losing any character, and it fitted it nicely. By rights, the windows should perhaps be turned inwards rather than looking out over the sea, but we’re happy with the look and the chapel makes for a nice snuggle, particularly as it is lit by one of CioTToLiNa Xue’s beautiful sculptures.
So, that’s it for another month – or possibly longer! We’re happy with the way things look now, so it’s unlikely too much will be changing in the future 🙂 .
Now open through until December 29th at The Living Room Gallery is an exhibition focusing on the work of Lexi Marshdevil and Particle Tom, known together as Sky Fire, and who are responsible for some of the most stunning particle shows in second Life.
On display are a series of images taken from the duo’s shows Legend of the White Rock and On Tour with Jed Luckless, which offer insight into the work of Sky Fire in the use of particle shows to both tell stories and provide an immersive visual experience to accompany live music events.
The storytelling element of Sky Fire’s work is very much evident in Legend if the White Rock, a tale of young love (albeit that of the son of a sea-god and the princess of a tribe of indians), which as Lexi explains proved inspirational:
Having grown up in White Rock, Canada, the Legend has always been an integral part of my life. Living near the beach, the Semiahmoo reservation, and hanging out at the famous white rock itself meant that it was a constant reminder of a wonderful story. As I happened to read the Legend again one night I realised how perfect the concept would fit into a beautiful particle show interpretation. The angst of young lovers, the Native American princess and her life amongst her tribe, her suitor, Neptune’s son, who lived beneath the ocean , and how love would set them free eventually to start a whole new world of their own, that would continue through time.
The images from On Tour with Jed Luckless obviously illustrate how music and particle shows can be combined to present a visual and aural extravaganza.
As a part of the exhibition, Jed Luckless will be singing at The Living Room in a 2-hour special mid-month musical event on Thursday, December 17th, starting at 17:00 SLT.
The Sky Fire exhibition will, as noted, run through until December 29th, when there will be a closing party featuring Boney Mosey, starting at 18:00 SLT. Those who have seen The Legend of the White Rock may wish to avail themselves of the opportunity to buy a copy of a book featuring images from the show.
Update, December 1st: Following my line to the Lab, the ToS was re-issued with Section 10.1 corrected to reference Section 11.5 instead of the incorrect Section 10.2, which had been removed with the original December 1st update. This article has been amended to reflect the update.
On Tuesday, December 1st, 2015, Linden Lab issued an updated Terms of Service (ToS) covering their Second Life and Blocksworld products – and for the first time, at least in recent updates, outline the specific changes which have occurred within the ToS, defining them as:
Removal of references to Desura (sold to Bad Juju Games in November 2014) and the Linden Dollar Authorised Reseller programme (discontinued as of August 2015)
Explicitly addressing the Lab’s intolerance of harassment of Linden Lab employees
Clarifying of the arbitration provision in accordance with applicable Californian law.
In addition, and in light of the formation of Tilia Inc., the Lab’s virtual currency subsidiary, the Terms of Service have been expressly expanded to define “the terms on which Linden Research, Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiaries (“Linden Lab”) offer you access to its interactive entertainment products and services.”
The alterations to reflect the fact the at the Linden Dollar Authorised Reseller programme is no more can seen in the massively foreshortened Section 4.7 of the revised Terms of Service, which once again make it clear that the only point of reference for the exchange of Linden Dollars for physical world currency may not occur anywhere outside of the LindeX, nor may Linden dollars be purchased other than via the LindeX.
The update to reflect the Lab’s intolerance of staff harassment can be found in a revision to Section 6.1. iv, to whit:
(iv) Post, display, or transmit Content (including any communication(s) with employees of Linden Lab) that is harmful, threatening or harassing, defamatory, libelous, false, inaccurate, misleading, or invades another person’s privacy; [my emphasis]
There has been speculation this relates to certain personal attacks directed towards Ebbe Altberg through the likes of Twitter. However, it would seem more likely (I would hope) that this section is intended to address similar attacks which have been made through the Lab’s own forums, etc., over which they have full jurisdiction.
Section 10 contains the changes to the arbitration process, with section 10.1 being greatly streamlined in content and focused directly on the requirements of the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”).
While I am not a lawyer – and so the following statement is purely speculative on my part – it would appear that included in these changes is an attempt to prevent class action suits from being bought against Linden Lab as a part of the arbitration process:
Should either you or Linden Lab elect to resolve the Dispute by way of binding arbitration, the arbitration shall proceed in accordance with the then-current Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association (“AAA”), except that in no event shall the arbitration proceed as a class or representative action. [my emphasis]
One error with these latter updates is that they still reference section 10.2, which has in fact been removed from the ToS as a part of the updates; something that has been raised with the Lab. Section 10.1 now correctly references Section 11.5.
A further change, not mentioned at the head of the ToS can be found in Section 4.1, where the final paragraph has been revised to read:
You may not sell, transfer or assign your Account or its contractual rights, licenses and obligations, to any third-party (including, for the avoidance of doubt, permitting another individual to access your Account) without the prior written consent of Linden Lab. [my emphasis]
This raises an interesting question around the subject of shared accounts – often used by groups where an account might be used by more than one person for administrative purposes, etc. While the sharing of account passwords has always been frowned upon, the revision to section 4.1 tends to suggest that these accounts could now be deemed as a violation of the ToS unless the Lab’s written consent is granted. I’ve written to the Lab on this point and am awaiting a reply.
Those hoping this update might see a further improvement to the wording in Section 2.3 relating to IP rights will be disappointed. The section is untouched and remains as much a mess of a word salad now as it did following the “clarification” of July 2014.
On Sunday, November 29th, NiranV Dean released Black Dragon 2.4.4.4 (or 4.0.0.36527, depending on your personal preference). This release incorporates three significant features from the Lab, as well as Niran’s own nips, tucks, tweaks and changes.
First among the changes inherited from the Lab is the latest update to the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) implementation which is intended to provide modern media support (HTML 5.0, WebGL).
Of possible greater interest to the vast majority of users is the addition of the Avatar Complexity rendering and the graphics presets, as found in the Lab’s Quick Graphics RC viewer. I’ve previously provided two overviews of these, in August and June of 2015, so what follows is a brief summary and examination of Niran’s implementation, starting with the graphics presets capability.
Graphics presets, a capability contributed by Jonathan Yap (see STORM-2082), allows users to create, save and use sets of viewer graphics options designed to meet a specific requirement, with the intent to help with viewer performance, and which can be used by any account logging-in to SL using the viewer on which the presets have been created.
This means, for example, you can create a sets specifically for indoor use, limiting your draw distance, reducing levels of detail for things like terrain and sky and water reflections and so, boost your system’s performance when visiting stores, etc., while having another preset with all the bells and whistles enabled for photography. Then with a couple of mouse clicks, you can swap between these and any others you create to meet your needs as you travel Second Life, all without the need to fiddle with settings or relog.
An issue with the official viewer’s implementation of graphics presets is that it requires the use of two rather clunky floaters which eat screen real estate. Niran avoids this by neatly integrating the core preset options (Save, Load and Delete presets) into the foot of the Display tab in Preferences. In doing so, he also makes creating a simple top-down flow through the Display tab options.
The new Graphic Presets Save and Load options can be found at the bottom of the Display tab in the Preferences floater. Simply add a name for the options you’ve set in the text box (arrowed) and click Save. To load a preset group when the floater is open on the Display tab, enter the name for the preset in the text box and click Load
This means that creating a new preset is simply a matter of running through the Display options, making sure those you want active are checked and those that you don’t need are unchecked, and that all relevant sliders are correctly adjusted. Then, when you’ve done so, enter a name for the preset group in the text box at the foot of the tab (arrowed above) and click the Save button – then repeat as required.
You can also load an establish preset group from here by typing the name into the text box and clicking Load. Any unwanted presets can be removed by entering the name and clicking the Delete button.
The Presets icon allow you to easily access your graphics presets
When it comes to swapping back and forth between preset groups, however, the quickest way to do so is via the Presets icon located in the top right of the viewer window. Hovering the mouse over this displays a list of all presets you’ve created; just click the name of the one you wish to activate.
This list also include a button which will open the Preferences floater at the display tab, allowing you to quickly set-up a new preset or modify and existing preset (just make your changes and save to an existing preset name to overwrite it).
As avatars can often be the single biggest impact on the viewer in terms of rendering, particularly in crowded places, Avatar Complexity has been introduced by the Lab as a mean by which those on lower specification systems can set a limit within their viewer for rendering particularly complex avatars (i.e. those with a lot of very high-resolution textures on them and their accessories, or using a lot of high-impact mesh and sculpt attachments etc). Any avatar exceeding this limit will then be rendered as a single, solid colour, vastly reducing the processing load on the user’s system. Because they are rendered as a solid colour, such avatars have been nicknamed ”Jelly Babies” after the sweet (candy) of the same name.
Within the official viewer, the control for Avatar Complexity is a single slider (Maximum Complexity) which controls avatar rendering. Within Black Dragon, Niran control is seemingly split between three sliders, Derender Objects > Kb, Derender Surfaces > m2, and Derender Avatars > AR. and some juggling between them may be required to achieve optimal results, if you play with all of them.
Avatar Complexity in Black Dragon
Avatar Complexity in the official viewer is still not perfected; this is reflected by the fact that avatars can often remain Jelly Babied even when Maximum Complexity is set to No Limit – you have to disable avatar imposters to get avatars stuck like this to render correctly (or relog). Black Dragon didn’t seem to exhibit this problem when I was fiddling with it,
Now open at MetaLES is the third instalment of Ux Hax and Romy Nayar’s 4-part series of scenes entitled Escenas / Scenes. Taken together, all four parts are apparently intended to tell a story, although they are not necessarily being presented in chronological sequence.
While I missed the first in the series, EL Tiempo / The Time, which ran from November 1st through to the 14th, I did catch the second element, Decisiones / Decisions, which I wrote about here. This has now been replaced by El Miedo /The Fear, which opened on November 28th, and will remain at MetaLES for the next two weeks. And like the first two in the series, it is an installation on a gigantic scale.
Central to the piece is a woman standing in a room. A tall clock sides to one side, a sideboard to the other alongside an open window. Behind her, the door to the room stands slightly ajar, almost beckoning. Towering over all of this is a truly enormous figure of a crouching man, arms wrapped in a straitjacket, while before the woman – who is arrayed in black – a baby’s crib fades repeatedly in and out of view.
The first thing which tends to spring to mind on seeing the main scene – the woman and crib in the room – is that it reflects the loss of an infant child; but what then of the looming figure of the straitjacketed man? What role does he play? The husband / father, perhaps, driven mad over the loss of the child? The cause of the baby’s death? Or something else entirely?
Both Decisiones / Decisions and EL Tiempo / The Time seemed to me to resonate with elements of the Major Arcana from the tarot – The Hermit appearing in EL Tiempo / The Time; with Justice, The Chariot and The Hanged Man in Decisiones / Decisions. Within El Miedo /The Fear there is what appears to be at least one reference to the tarot; supported in the woman’s cupped hands is a stone tower, perhaps representative of The Tower from the Major Arcana.
If this indeed the intended symbolism, it fits the broader part of the story: The Tower is associated with sudden, disruptive, and potentially destructive change – and what could be more destructive and disruptive than the death of an infant child? But there is potentially more here as well.
The Fool is another card from the Major Arcana, and is more archaically known as Le Mat or Il Matto, which as well as meaning “vagabond” – the usual depiction of The Fool in tarot decks -, can also mean “the madman.” Thus, it’s very hard not to see a degree of further symbolism linking this scene with the tarot through the (mad?) man in the straitjacket.
There are two other symbols event in the piece which also appear in the previous parts: time and the crow. Quite how they fit into things is unclear; but in EL Tiempo / The Time, the clock suggested the subject of death to me – and the wheel of fortune elements of Decisiones / Decisions focused around The Hanged Man may have carried similar connotations; so again, it might be a further thematic flow evident here as well, through the grandfather clock as it presides over the woman’s apparent mourning and the fading crib. The crow’s presence, as he stands upon a table might present a two-fold role: that of our narrator or communicator through the scenes, or possibly as The Trickster.
Once again, I offer no attempt to present a complete interpretation of the story – or even this particular scene. With one more piece still to appear in December, it would be presumptuous to offer commentary on the story as a whole, while the notes I give on this scene are more thoughts rather than any attempt at interpretation. If, like me you have been intrigued by the first two parts of Escenas / Scenes, then I do urge you to see Part III.
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 Current Viewer Releases 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. This page 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
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Project Azumarill (HTTP updates) RC viewer updated to version 3.8.7.308134 on November 25 – a complete replacement of the under the hood HTTP infrastructure within the viewer (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.4.4 on November 29th – core updates: incorporation of Lab’s Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) support and Quick Graphics updates (Avatar Complexity and graphics presets) – release notes
V1-style
Cool VL Viewer Stable version updated to 1.26.16.1) on November 28th – core updates: fixes and improvements (release notes).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 