Day: April 19, 2019

The art at Fantasy Faire 2019

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fantasy Faire 2019: 2D art at Fairelands Junction

SL photography is a popular subject – as any casual glance through Flickr with the search tags of “virtual worlds”, “SL” “Second Life” and similar will reveal. There are many styles and subject matter of SL photography to be sure, but it not unreasonable to say that fantasy art is one of the more popular fields of endeavour, be it through avatar studies or the recording of the many fantasy environments that have graced the platform over the years.

It’s therefore fitting that Fantasy Faire embraces this wellspring of individual creativity each year by offering Second Life photographers and artists the opportunity to display their work. And one again, Fantasy Faire 2019 offers two gallery spaces where art can be appreciated.

Fantasy Faire 2019: 2D art at Genesia

The first can be found at Fairelands Junction, and is itself in two parts: the image gallery, located in the ruined structure that houses the Fairelands portals, and the Worldlings display, located in the rock formation upon which the ruins sit. The second gallery can be found within the Genesia Arts and Performance region.

Forty 2D artists are presented within both the gallery spaces, and as with previous years, the focus for art is on avatars and fantasy, with the official blog noting:

The galleries focus on various fantasy avatars within Second Life, celebrating the freedom from the mundane, showing how in here you can be whatever you wish to be, your true self.

The focus continues to be variety in fantasy forms, inspiration in character creation and talent in photographic arts.

Fantasy Faire 2019: The Call of the Forest by Aleriah

A full list of the artists participating in the exhibition can be found in the link above, so I won’t repeat the list here. However, what I will say is that the art is remarkable for its richness of imagination and presentation. Many pieces are obviously influenced by popular fantasy genres – there are a number that clearly draw from the Likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin, for example. This isn’t a critique, as it is always interesting to see people put their own slant on popular fantasy; but for me the magic of many of the pieces is in their depiction of settings entirely born from the imaginations of their creators – such as with The Call of the Forest, by Aleriah (shown above).

The art at Genesia is displayed within yet another remarkable region setting by Haveit Neox & Lilia Artis, as the Art and Performance region at this years Faire. This stands as a work of art in of itself, and should be explored for its incredible creativity, both above and below the water, and the way it offers a link to past Fantasy Faires in its overall design.

Fantasy Faire: Genesia

The gallery space for Genesia sits on the outer path of the region, with art displayed on rock walls or held aloft by elephants and stork-like birds, the path leading the way around to the main performance area.

Meanwhile, the 3D Worldlings art can be found, as noted, in Faireland Junction. Described as the “Fairelands That Could Be”, the Worldings are seven realms-as-dioramas suggesting possible Fairelands as imagined by their creators: Kerryth Tarantal, Faust Steamer, Colemarie Soleil, Bonny Greenwood, Ameshin Yossarian, Bee Dumpling and Beryl.

Fantasy Faire 2019: Worlding by Faust Steamer

These dioramas – at least one of which is interactive – offer windows into the imaginations of the Fairelands (and region) creators behind them. Whether any of them might be expanded out to become a full Fairelands setting in the future is open to question; but I admit, I wouldn’t mind seeing Faust Steamer’s idea (above) fleshed out and given form!

Fantasy Faire 2019: Wrong Direction by Sugarfairy88

I often am prone to comment with these art exhibitions that when it comes to the 2D art – and allowing for the subject being that of fantasy avatars – it’s a shame that the net isn’t cast a little wider to more generally encompass fantasy settings in Second Life; there are, after all, a fair few. There is also as vast catalogue of images of past Fantasy Faires – so it would be nice to see some broader celebration of fantasy art that can be created within SL beyond a purely avatar focus.

Nevertheless, given how easily an art exhibition can be overlooked with so much else occurring at Fantasy Faire, I do very much recommend that anyone who enjoys Second Life art and photography stop by the galleries at Fairelands Junction and Genesia.

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Linux OS update to servers a cause of SL TP issues?

Posted on by Inara Pey

As we’re all (probably painfully) aware, the last few months have seen Second Life plague by region crossing issues, with users frequently disconnected (with teleports – being the most common form of region crossing – in particular being affected). One of the pains in dealing with these issues has been identifying the root cause – with most thinking being around it being a timing issue with communications between the region receiving and incoming avatar and the user’s viewer.

However, speaking at the Content Creation User Group meeting on Thursday, April 18th, Vir Linden indicated that the problem might be related to the server Linux operating system update the Lab recently rolled out.

That update – was initially deployed to a small cluster of regions on a release candidate channel called Cake, and it has been reported by those using Cake regions for testing in April, that it was those regions that first demonstrated the teleport issues – although at the time, they were thought to be local connection issues, rather than indicative of a deeper potential issue.

Commenting on the situation at the CCUG meeting, Vir said:

We’ve been having some issues on the simulator side where people tend to get disconnected during teleports … it’s been common enough that shows up as a significant blip on our stats … and that issue seems to have come along … basically when we upgraded the version of Linux that we’re using on our simulators. so we’ve had to do some roll-backs there, just to try to get that issue to go away.

[But] that pushes out the time-line for [deploying] all the things that are based on … the later version [of Linux] that we’re trying to update to … Hopefully we can get those out soon, but I can’t tell you anything about the time-line.

This might explain the scheduled maintenance witnessed on April 18th, with large number of regions going off-line and restarted. If this is the reason, whether it does see a reduction in the teleport issues with those regions rolled-back remains to be seen. But if data does indicate the region crossing issues have been reduced, then this can only be good news and potentially worth the disruption of the maintenance and restarts.

In the meantime, the audio of Vir’s comments is provided below.