Day: June 5, 2019

JolieElle’s artistry in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Vision Of Beauty Art Complex: JolieElle Parfort

Currently on display at the Vision of Beauty Art Complex is an exhibition of art by -Jolie- (JolieElle Parfort). Spread across two levels of the gallery space, each connected to the other via a teleport system, this is a fabulous introduction to Jolie’s landscape paintings for those who may not have previously encountered her work.

Jolie describing her art as post-impressionism. This school of painting tends to be denoted through the use of heavy brush-strokes and an eschewing of impressionism’s accurate depiction of light, opting instead for the use of vivid and sometimes unnatural colours and tones, whilst often including a degree of geometric form and / or a distortion of form for visual effect.

Vision Of Beauty Art Complex: JolieElle Parfort

Much of this is very much present in Jolie’s work, as demonstrated in the selection she offers in this exhibition. Her flamingos strikingly bold in colour, which also saturates the vegetation behind them, for example (see above right), while geometry and the passage of strong, firm brush strokes are also clearly in evidence through several of the pieces.

So too are pieces that feel much closer to the work of the great impressionists. For example, Gulf Afternoon and Morning Rushes, which can both be seen in the banner image for this review each off a sense of light, motion and the passage of time which leans them towards impressionism, the heavy brushwork evidenced in the former notwithstanding. Similarly, other pieces such as Hurricane Frolic have about them a wonderfully subtle tone of abstract.

Vision Of Beauty Art Complex: JolieElle Parfort

Thus, to offer a single encompassing descriptive style to this exhibition is – to me – doing the pieces offered within it something of as disservice. While Jolie’s art may well have a focus on post-impressionism, it encompasses so much more, and quite marvellously so, with a depth and richness that is completely captivating to the eye.

This beauty is enhanced particularly by the rooftop setting for part of the exhibition. With its wooden deck and piers, and wind-rippled water, this part of the exhibition draws the visitor into the rooftop display – and I would suggest perhaps flicking you viewer over to a midnight setting as well as viewing them in the ambient daylight; this again brings forth their depth and richness quite marvellously.

SLurl Details

In case you missed it: SL Premium fees lock-in now available

Posted on by Inara Pey

On Wednesday, May 29th, Linden Lab announced a number of changes to Second Life fees and services (see Land Price Reductions, New  Premium Perks and Pricing Changes).

In particular – for the purposes of this article at least – that blog post indicated that from Monday, June 24th, Premium subscriptions will be increasing as follows:

  • Monthly subscriptions will be increasing from US $9.50 per month to US $11.99 . This is  representative of a 26.21% increase over the course of a year (from US $114 pa to US $143.88 pa).
  • Annual subscriptions will be increasing from US $72.00 per year to US $99.00. This is representative of an increase of 37.5% pa.
  • Quarterly subscriptions will be increased from US $22.50 to US $32.97. This is representative of a 46.53% increase over the course of a year (US $90 pa to US $131.88 pa).

Further it was also indicated that after June 24th, 2019:

  • The Quarterly subscription package will be withdrawn as an upgrade option from June 24th, 2019, although Premium members already using the plan will be able to continue with it.
  • The Monthly and Quarterly subscription plans will be subject to VAT for EU residents.

In order to try to sweeten these increases (the first to Premium subscriptions in a long time), the Lab indicated that from Monday, June 3rd through until Monday, June 24th, Premium users would be able to “lock in” their current billing rate for one more cycle.

In case you missed it – as the Lab opted to update their May 29th blog post rather than make a separate announcement – the lock-in offer is now available, as highlighted by the Lab at the top of the May 29th blog post:

UPDATE: The limited-time opportunity for existing Premium members to lock in their current rates for one more billing cycle, including extending an existing monthly to use the current full year rate by upgrading now to annual is now available on the premium page. Simply renew before June 24th to extend your current Membership at the same low rate. For example, monthly members will be billed at the lower rate for one more monthly billing cycle, while annual members may renew (or monthly users may upgrade to annual) early to add one more year to your existing Membership at the current lower rate.

This means, for example, that as a Premium member on the annual billing plan, I normally have to renew towards the end of the year. However, if I take advantage of this lock in offer, I will effectively gain my 2020 membership at the current $72.00 rate (albeit paid well in advance), rather than having to pay $99.00 when my renewal falls due at the end of 2019 – I’ll only see the increase when / if I renew towards the end of 2020.

Whether you take advantage of the lock in or not is down to your personal choice and circumstance. However, should you wish to do so:

  • Go to your Second Life dashboard at secondlife.com.
  • On the left, and below your account name, click Account to display the account options drop-down, then click on Premium Membership.
  • Scroll down to the Management Membership section.
  • The lock in option will be displayed against your current membership plan (the image below shows it against Annual, as that is the plan I have).
  • Click the radio button to the left of the lock in option to activate the Proceed to Cashier button.
  • Complete the billing requirements.
Activating your Premium account billing rate lock-in

2019 SL User Groups 23/1: Simulator User Group

Posted on by Inara Pey

Whimberly; Inara Pey, April 2019, on FlickrWhimberly – blog post

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, a deployment thread had yet to be posted (in fact, it’s not entirely clear what is happening with the weekly release threads). However:

  • There was no SLS (Main) channel deployment on Tuesday, June 4th, leaving it on server maintenance package #19 19.05.17.527341.
  • On Wednesday, June 5th, the Magnum and LeTigre RC channels should be updated to server maintenance package #19 19.05.24.527547, bringing them to parity with BlueSteel.

SL Viewer

There have been no LL viewer updates at the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current Release version 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22 – No Change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
  • Project viewers:
  • Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
  • Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.

In Brief

Script Processing Issues

As I’ve recently reported, there have been numerous reports of script run time issues, with some reporting that problems only started occurring following the roll-back on April 18th, 2019. BUG-226851 (and more recently BUG-227099) outlines some of the problems. Some regions experiencing the issue have been cloned to Aditi (the beta grid) where they are running fine, and the Lab is currently looking at script scheduling on Agni (the Main grid).

There is a forum thread on the impact of idle scripts (i.e. scripts that are scheduled, but waiting on an event) on full regions (primarily Mainland). In particular, the finding suggest that limiting in-world scripts to 1 per 10LI (2250 script for a Full region) might help pending improvements – although this falls woefully short of shopping-related regions.

Commenting on the situation, Simon Linden states:

We’re actively looking at script scheduling now and these odd cases are on the list to sort out. There hasn’t been a big magic fix yet but it’s getting attention.

Rider Linden added:

And, yes. Idle scripts are not really idle… they can drag down sim performance even if they are not actually doing anything. Right now llListen() is a major culprit (but I’m hoping we can clean that up in the near future) … [and] all idling is not equal. Some events are more expensive than others to wait on.

EEP Issues

As per my May 30th CCUG update, it’s been noted that a recent deployment has resulted in rendering issues for the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) – see BUG-227100 as an example.

The EEP RC viewer is due for an update, and it is hoped that these will include shader fixes that should correct the problems in that viewer. However, in terms of the simulator problems that are causing issues for those on non-EEP viewers, Rider Linden commented:

We have had some confusion on our end. When we were chasing the teleport bug a couple fixes were accidentally dropped from the simulator. We’ve been sorting those out as we find them.

Other Performance Impacts

  • It’s long been recognised that teleports – particularly teleports involving mesh-heavy avatars into a region can adverse affect performance (see BUG-8496).
    • Beq Janus has been looking at this, and can show – via a a comment posted to the above Jira, that the effect “ripples through” simulator stats, including hitting script stats.
    • She estimates that overall, the arrival of a mesh avatar in a region can take around 6 seconds to ripple through the region (and impacting users within the region).
    • It’s currently estimate by both Beq and Lou Netizen that female avatars carry on average 70 scripts, and mail avatars an average of 68 (see here for more).
  • Beq has also been investigate another performance impact – that of the viewer flooding the server with GroupProfileRequest at log-in due to persistent notifications see BUG-227094). She is currently working on a patch for contribution to LL to resolve this issue.