Month: August 2019

A touch of supernatural role-play in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Clifton Forge, August 2019 – click any image for full size

Clifton Forge is a half Full region offering “modern supernatural para role-playing,” featuring humans, witches, vampires, and werewolves.

Supported by its own website, the setting is distinctly urban, representing a small city nestled within a mountain environment. It is intended to offer a place where, “blissful everyday living masks a darker and more turbulent truth”, the website setting-up a place where normalcy forms a blanket over a range of strange activities which those interested in role-playing within the environment can then take-up:

All manner of depravity conceals itself behind a flawless veneer here; the Hotel’s façade is cracked by stories of staff suicides, the Church here asks for alms – but whether it intends to divert these funds to charitable causes or fill its own coffers is unknown. A harried city cop turns Sheriff in what some might see as a peaceful retirement plan, while others wonder why she has escaped to a more pastoral clime. Everyone has a secret – what is yours?

Clifton Forge, August 2019

Like many RP environments in Second Life, the official landing point sits in the sky over the parcel in the sumptuous setting of a grand hall. Here visitors can contact the Clifton Forge administrators, and follow browser links to the RP back-story, rules and apply to join the group to participate in local role-play. Those arriving at the landing point will also be asked to join the local Out Of Character (OCC) group prior to making a visit down to the city proper. The group is free to join and helps mark visitors as non-playing characters during a visit, and you can always leave it following a visit if you have no interest in remaining a member.

Taking the main teleport to group level will deliver visitors to the east side of the parcel, and a further teleport board ready to take people onwards to some of the principal points of interest in the city which might conceivably be leaping-off points for role-play opportunities. These include some typical locations for any city setting: the local church, the hotel, the medical centre, the police station, places to sit and eat or find entertainment, and so on. However, the setting is far better seen by exploring on foot or by using the local bicycles available from the rezzer located close by.

Clifton forge, august 2019

The town is split into two, with the portion that contains the landing point also offering the main square, the city hall, the emergency facilities, various businesses and paths to some of the local residencies (note that some or all of the latter are available for rent, so do be aware of the potential to trespass into someone’s home when exploring). The second of the city’s districts – reached via a single tunnel – is home to the church and the hotel, together with further local businesses, before giving way to a more rural setting, of rocky bluffs and woodlands in which sit shacks and cabins.

Given the city only occupies a half region, attempts have been made to make use of elevation in places – notably the woodland area mentioned above, and with some of the rental properties and the church. This, together with at least one underground parking area both adds literal depth to the setting as well as making role-play more interesting by providing a sense of greater space than had things been kept more-or-less on the one level across the parcel.

Clifton Forge, August 2019

When exploring, notes that there are NPCs dotted around. some of these – such as the bouncer outside of the Castle House – will provide note cards when touched, and these cards contain game play information and local rules (e.g. such as player being frisked and fully disarmed before entering an establishment).

One or two aspects of the setting look like they might still be under development – I noted a couple of floating pieces of vegetation in the sky above the town, and the ground around Castle House looks like it might be awaiting further landscaping. However, the setting is, overall, as it is presented in the description: an urban environment representative of a small city; one that is awaiting a cast of role-players.  If you’re into the supernatural and are looking for a role-play environment that offers in in a modern setting, might be interested in taking a look – just note that for the purposes of this article, I did adjust my windlight settings away from the local default.

Clifton Forge, August 2019

SLurl Details

Magical cars, Alien artefacts, tales of love and loss

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, August 18th

13:30: Tea Time with Jeeves

Just for summer, Seanchai Library takes a dive into the world of Reginald Jeeves, a well-educated, intelligent valets of indeterminate age who is employed by the amiable young man-about-town, Bertie Wooster, whom Jeeves routinely has to benignly rescue from the consequences of his idiocy.

Created by author, humorist, and lyricist (working with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern) Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (October 1881 – February 1975), Jeeves and Wooster are perhaps his most iconic characters, their adventures eventually growing to 35 short stories and 11 novels, the majority of which are first-person narrated from the perspective of Bertie Wooster.

This week comes the third part of The Inimitable Jeeves.

A semi-novel published in the UK and the United States in 1923, The Inimitable Jeeves brings together 11 previously published stories structured as “chapters” rather than appearing as individual stories, giving the volume the appearance of being a novel something initially enhanced in early editions, which split the first five and final story into two chapters apiece, giving the impression the book was 18 chapters long (later editions reversed this, each story being just a single chapter for 11 in total).

The stories also add to the novel-like feel, as they each focused variously on a small group of characters throughout including Bertie’s Aunt Agatha, his somewhat inept friend Bingo, and his cousins Claude and Eustace, brought together with Jeeves and Wooster in some familiar Wodehouse themes.

Join Da5id Abbot, Kayden Oconnell, and Caledonia Skytower as they read this delightful series at Ceiliuradh Glen.

18:00 Tilly and the Bookwanderers

Eleven year-old Tilly has lived above her grandparent’s bookshop ever since her mother disappeared shortly after she was born. Like the rest of her family, Tilly loves nothing more than to escape into the pages of her favourite stories.

One day Tilly realises that classic children’s characters are appearing in the shop through the magic of `book wandering’ – crossing over from the page into real life.

With the help of Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland. Tilly is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to her mother all those years ago, so she bravely steps into the unknown, unsure of what adventure lies ahead and what dangers she may face.

Join Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe to find out more!

Monday, August 19th 19:00: Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama

Gyro Muggins reads one of the greatest science fiction novels of human first contact with alien intelligence.

In 2131, a fast-moving object of extremely large size is detected beyond the orbit of Jupiter travelling on a course that will see it pass through the inner solar system to swing around the Sun, before heading out into space. An automated probe launched from Mars reveals the object to be a perfect cylinder, 50 km long and 20in diameter rotating regularly along its long axis and clearly artificial in nature.

The deep space survey vessel Endeavour, her crew untrained for first contact scenarios, is the only vessel that can intercept the cylinder as it uses the Sun’s gravity well to accelerate and bend its path onto a new trajectory. After a high-speed chase, the Endeavour reaches the cylinder – christened Rama by those who first identified it – and finds one of the end caps has curious triple chamber airlock systems within it. Through one of them, the crew gains access to the object.

What they find within stuns them: the cylinder is hollow, a 50x16km “tube” the inner surface of which forms a circular world of three parts:  a large plain, with six city-like groups of structures scattered around it, a central band of frozen water the crew call the Cylindrical Sea with a single long, thin island (which they dub “New York” due to its superficial similarity to Manhattan island). Beyond the sea lies a landscape of split into cubes and squares, dominated by a group of massive cones extending inward along the cylinder’s long axis from southern end cap.

Initially in darkness and frigid when the Endeavour’s crew enter, the cylinder gradually comes to life, revealing its strange alien nature, where everything appears to be done in triplicate (or multiples thereof). And then, as tensions among the human civilisations across the solar system rise, the “Ramans” appear.

Tuesday, August 20th 19:00: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

So, you think you know the story because of the film? Well, guess again! Disney’s famous 1968 film can best be described as being loosely based on the children’s story by Ian Flemming, the creator of James Bond.

Flemming’s last novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was published posthumously, and initially in three volumes, two months after his death in August 1964. He took his inspiration for the titular car from a series of post-War World I aero-engined racing cars called “Chitty Bang Bang”. They were built by Count Louis Zborowski at Higham Park, in Kent, England, and one of them, the “Higham Special” went on to take the land speed record in 1926 with a speed in excess of 170 mph, after it had been purchased by racing driver J.G. Parry-Thomas specifically for that purpose.

In the book, the car is a Paragon Panther, a powerful 1920s touring car that is restored by Commander Caractacus Pott. At first the car is just that – a powerful 4-seater tourer Pott uses to transport himself and his wife and children around. But then the car starts to exhibit a “personality” and abilities beyond those of any normal motor vehicle. Some of these will be familiar to those who have seen the film, but where the latter options to introduce jealous barons and a wicked Child Catcher, the book offers a more down-to-Earth but equally engaging series of adventures of Commander Pott and his family.

Join Caledonia Skytower to discover the real Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

Wednesday, August 21st: A Cyberpunk Summer

Short stories with Finn Zeddmore.

Thursday, August 22nd

19:00: The Blue Salt Road

An earthly nourris sits and sings
And aye she sings, “Ba lilly wean,
Little ken I my bairn’s father,
Far less the land that he staps in.

– Child Ballad, no. 113

So begins a stunning tale of love, loss and revenge, against a powerful backdrop of adventure on the high seas, and drama on the land. The Blue Salt Road balances passion and loss, love and violence and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless, wild young man.

Passion drew him to a new world, and trickery has kept him there – without his memories, separated from his own people. But as he finds his way in this dangerous new way of life, so he learns that his notions of home, and your people, might not be as fixed as he believed.

With Shandon Loring, also Also in Kitely – teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Contemporary sci-fi fantasy from on-line sources such as Lightspeed, Escape Pod, and Clarkesworld with Finn Zeddmore

Kokua: Admin changes and the 6.2.4 release

Posted on by Inara Pey

The Kokua team released Kokua 6.2.4 on Friday, August 16th, 2019, and with it come some changes to general administration of the viewer’s website and management tools.

In terms of the latter, and for ease on management going forward, a number of changes are in the works including:

  • The use of the Atlassian Confluence platform to provide:
    • A blog capability.
    • Release notes support.
    • A master download pages.
    • RSS feeds.
  • The use of Atlassian Jira (as used by Linden Lab and the likes of Firestorm) for bug reporting and tracking.

The switch-over is still a work-in-progress, so the existing blog, wiki and bug tracker remain in operation for the time being, however, relevant links for the new environment are given as:

While the switch-over is in progress, users are advised against linking to individual sub-pages within these sections, as pages may change as things are bedded-in. For this purposes of this blog, the new Kokua home page is referenced in the sidebar links (right, under Maintained Viewers) and within my Current Viewers Release Page and the weekly release summaries drawn from that.

Kokua 6.2.4

Kokua 6.2.4 brings the viewer to parity with the most recently Linden Lab viewer release (version 6.2.4.529638, formerly the Love Me Render RC viewer dated August 5th, promoted August 12th). In addition, it updates the RLV version to Marine Kelley’s RLV 2.9.26.2.

As has been customary with Kokua releases of late, the viewer is provided in three versions for each of the supported operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, all 64-bit):

  • Non-RLV – version 6.2.4.45881.
  • “Standard” RLV (can be enabled and disabled via a viewer restart) – version 6.2.4.45882.
  • “Full Time” RLV (RLV is active all the time) – also version 6.2.4.45882.

In addition to these updates, Kokua 6.2.4 includes a number of third-party additions, most notably from Firestorm, as noted in the sections below, and with due credit to the originators of the code updates.

Settings Backup

Sometimes when installing a new version of a viewer, there can be a recommendation to perform a “clean install” – removing all cached and settings files. This can make any viewer installation labour-intensive, as settings all need to be restored after the installation is complete.

The Settings Backup (Preferences > Backup) eases some of the pain by allowing users to back-up many of their global and account settings to a local hard drive. Once done, the back-up can then be restored to an updated version of Kokua (e.g. if a clean install has been required, or if some settings have become corrupted). Settings can also be backed-up at any time as changes are made.

The Kokua Settings Back-up option, courtesy of Firestorm

Settings can be backed-up to any location on a local drive, and users can select those settings they wish to back-up by unchecking / checking the available options. It is also possible to save settings on a per account basis. So if you have several accounts, each with different settings, you can back-up each of them separately – just make sure each back-up has a unique location.

Restoring previously backed-up files requires the viewer is restarted after the restore – and again, this is conveniently taken care of by the viewer allowing you to quickly log-out following a successful restore – although you’ll have to manually re-start the viewer once you’ve been logged out.

Sounds Output Device Selection

Preferences >Sound and Media includes a new drop-down allowing users to select their preferred output device for playing in-world sounds.

Sound output device selection, courtesy of Firestorm

When using it, note that:

  • Selecting Default will always select the first output device in the list.
  • If Default is selected but the previous device is no longer available, the viewer will automatically switch to the next available “default” device as defined by your operating system.
  • Manually selecting an output device from the drop-down  prevents the viewer from automatically switching to another device if the selected device is no longer available. Instead, the field will show “Unavailable Device” until such time as the nominated device is again available, or the drop-down is changed to Default or an alternate is manually selected.

Updated Debug Floater

Finally from Firestorm, Kokua 6.2.4 includes an improved debug settings floater with search and sanity checking of key values.

The improved Debug floater, courtesy of Firestorm

Other Updates of Note

Finally there are a number of fixes/improvements on the Kokua code base itself, notably fixing the pie menus so that the Hover Height command appears (i.e. was there but a mistake in the file concerned prevented it being shown). For details, please refer to the Kokua 6.2.4 release notes.

Feedback

Kokua 6.2.4 continues to maintain parity with the official viewer whilst also importing some additional updates from Firestorm that Kokua users will doubtless find useful and which are likely to help enhance Kokua as the go-to viewer for those who have used Firestorm , but who are looking for an alternative that offers reasonable familiarity.

Additional Links

Sansar Product Meetings week #33: feedback and Q & A

Posted on by Inara Pey

Who said you can’t dance in Sansar? The June Organic Light Show by Mario2 Helstein

The following notes were taken from my audio recording of the August 15th (week #33) Sansar Product Meeting, which formed a general feedback and Q&A session. Not all topics are covered, notably those that were as case of requests being noted rather than being given a detailed reply, or passed on answering as the subject specialists from the Lab were not in attendance for the meeting.

Note on meeting videos: the Sansar team have resumed posting videos of meetings to You Tube, which allows me to once again embed their recordings in these updates (although at the time of writing, the video for this particular meeting had yet to be uploaded –  I’ll update when the video is available). This means the notes for those meetings I was able to attend between May and August 2019 have now been updated with their video recordings.

Quest Update 3 – August 15th

A third Quest release update was made on August 15th, 2019, which included both quest and profile improvements.

Quest Updates

  • Further Quest panel tweaks – notable a progress bar that records the number of objectives within a quest that have been achieved.
  • Scripts should no longer crash when the Quest Objective Controller script receives an Objective Complete event message that is missing agent data.
  • Users should no longer be blocked on completing locked objectives from quests offered by a quest character.

Profile Updates

Profiles receive an overhaul with this update. The panel has been enlarged and includes two panels:

  • Profile: includes buttons to send a direct message to the user; gift them Sansar Dollars; send a friend request to them (if they are not a friend) or remove them as a friend (button toggles automatically depending on their relationship to you); report and block a user.
  • Creations: lists all of the user’s creations (if they have any). This includes Sansar Store items, published experiences and snapshot uploaded to their Sansar web profile. Clicking on any of these options will display the relevant part of the web profile or take you to the user’s Store page.
  • Bio: a field (editable by the user owning the profile) for writing biographical notes (via Socialise > Edit My Profile then clicking on the bio field in the profile panel). If a web profile has been written by a user, it will be displayed here and any updates made in this panel will also be appear in the web profile).

In addition, the profile picture for the user contains:

  • A mute / unmute button for voice chat.
  • What appears to be an initial pass at an achievement indicator surrounding the profile image.
The new Profile panel for Sansar users – click for full size, if required

Finally, profiles for other users can now be accessed by clicking on the user’s profile image in any the chat or the quest info panels.

Avatar 2.0 – Reminder

Pre-release Creator Programme now in progress.

  • Designed to allow creators who create avatars, avatar wearables, accessories, etc to have their content tested by the Lab ahead of the avatar support being added to the client.
    • The Lab may only initially be reviewing around 2-4 items per creator. Additional items submitted will only be reviewed once all creators making submissions have been seen.
    • Creators are obviously free to test their items in their own 3D editor of choice, if preferred, and wait until the launch of Avatar 2.0 to make any necessary adjustments.
  • The programme will be discontinued once Avatar 2.0 has been released, when creators will be able to test their items directly in the client.

Official Documentation

Avatar 2.0 and Marvelous Designer™ Clothing

  • A set of tools for Marvelous Designer™ will be released with Avatar 2.0.
  • These will allow creators and users to scale, translate and rotate their MD clothing assets to better fit avatar (so a user can take a human jacket and scale it to fit an orc avatar using the Avatar 2.0 skeleton, for example).

XP System

There has been a lot of discussion about the upcoming Experience Points (XP) system via Discord. The feedback tends to reflect what is already under discussion / in development within the Sansar team. As such, while open to making changes based on suggestions and ideas from the community, what is already being developed addresses most of the ideas thus far put forward.

Direct Teleport Links

A frequent request is to have the ability to direct users to a specific point within an experience when teleporting to it, rather than them being directed to a spawn point. With quests and linking experiences, this has taken on greater import (e.g. if you enter a building in a quest by being teleported to another experience representing the building interior, when leaving, you should be returned to the “door” into the building in the originating experience – not to the spawn point).

LL has asked for creators to give specific use-cases via Discord on how this might work. Should it be a spawn point that has to be specifically requested (e.g. via a script)? Is it something that could be specified via an X, Y, Z coordinates heading? Is it something that should be restricted at the experience level so only certain scripted objects can trigger the teleport (imagine a key for a door that the user must obtain)?

Current Development Focus

Mention is often made of a roadmap for Sansar development. As a part of this, some of the high-level items the Sansar team is looking at include:

  • Further updates to the quest system – tools, UI, adding in storylines, NPCs, building new quests, adding the rewards system, etc.
  • The upcoming Avatar 2.0 release and the build-out of that capability.
  • The upcoming XP system.
  • Extending the current LOD system (focused on avatars) to include textures as well to help further reduce the load on client graphics memory.  Eventually, the system will extend outward to include scene content as well.

General Q&A

  • Persistence: the Sansar devs have been discussing the various requests for persistence (e.g. script persistence) that have been received (use cases still welcome) and determining which use cases should work from those which may not work, and are in the midst of determining what capabilities might be provided in a first pass at persistence.
    • It’s noted that any work that may come out of this may not initially address all use cases, but the aim is to define what can be rolled out in a reasonable time frame that addresses as many achievable use cases as possible. This will then be extended as necessary.
  • Valve Index headset support: LL have a couple of the headsets on order and do want to provide support, but time frames for doing so still TBD.
  • Store related:
    • Can a bulk update button be provided for things like discounted item prices to make it easier to update multiple items during sale events organised by Sansar? Currently not on the roadmap, but under consideration as part of the overall drive to provide more Store features and abilities.
    • Is the ability to bundle items of the same type (e.g. multiple colour versions of the same shirt or dress) on the Store coming? Not currently on the roadmap, but is something the Lab wants to provide.
  • Avatar and avatar accessory related:
      • How soon will the ability to deform the full Avatar 2.0 skeleton using sliders be behind the initial release (facial deformation will be possible with the first release)? Potentially a while because a) the deformation system is seen as needing to be hooked into the licensing system; b) skin texturing support (including custom uploads and layering) is seen as being a higher priority, as it has no other dependences.
      • The hope is to have body deformation available within a year – possibly a lot sooner.
      • Lack of fully body deformation is already being seen by some creators as something that could result in users reacting negatively to avatar 2.0 simply because it will be seen to be limited in much the same way as the current avatar.
    • Can the tri count for hair / headgear be increased to allow for more complex hairstyle and hair with hats, etc? Increasing tri count limits for hair and other assets in being considered internally, but no specific details or time frame on what might happen currently available.
    • Will additional default options for things like hair be provided by LL? Yes.
      • In particular, the deployment of Avatar 2.0 will see all hairstyles and rigged accessories supplied by Linden Lab replaced with new items.
      • Some inventory / look Book options will be changing as well – such as how skin selection works, in part in readiness for supporting custom skin uploads from creators.
    • Will things like flexies be supported for hair, etc? No. However, in the future, it is hoped that accessories like hair can use their own skeletons to provide them with flexibility via animations.
  • Will it be possible to host events in experiences other than your own – e.g. in Sansar Studio experiences? That is a longer-term goal. For experiences by other creators, this may involve a mechanism by which the experience can be purchased or rented or borrowed.
    • There are updates that are required to the events system before this can be deployed.
    • As a short-term measure, if someone wants to host an event in a Sansar Studios experience / Lab-created experience, they should contact either Galileo or Lacie Linden to discuss their ideas / requirements.
    • If there are specific venues types that would be useful, suggestions should be made via Discord, and attempts will be made to furnish more experience templates that users can obtain and host events within.
    • This also feeds into a wider discussion on monetising quests and events, something the Lab is also discussing internally.
  • Can individual volume controls for users be better surfaced in the client? This is something the Sansar team want to look into.
  • Can UI scaling be added to the client to address issues of elements being too small to read on 4K monitors? Again, is something the Lab plans to address.
  • As a lot of Sansar seems to depend on building-out the licensing system, why can’t this just be a focus in itself? Because that’s not a practical way to work: projects such as Avatar 2.0 (and others) have their own unique hooks that have to be added into the licensing system, and these can really only be done as a part of their own projects, rather than some form of “licensing project”.

Life and moods at Vibes Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Vibes Gallery: Paola Mills

Vibes Gallery, curated by Eviana Robbiani, is currently home to an untitled exhibition featuring Sunset Theas, Paola Mills, Lyack Glenwalker, Megan Prumier, and Aurora Donner. Given some of the images involve nudity, it should perhaps be considered an exhibition that is NSFW.

Immediately inside the entrance to the gallery is a quartet of images by Sunset Theas that follow a theme of their own, perhaps best described as condensing the seven stages of life into four evocative monochrome images, entitled, Embryonic, Birth, Life and Death. As the titles imply, each captures a moment in time and life.

Vibes Gallery: Sunset Theas

The use of monochrome, soft focus and life and shadow serve to make each of these pieces an intriguing study that fully captures the essence of their titles. Take Embryonic, for example. The use of depth of field and the off-centre capture are so suggestive of an ultrasound scan, with just enough form and substance for us to understand what we are seeing.

And so the images progress: Birth using light and shadow and a huddled form that offers the idea of a babe is dark swaddling; Life offers a image of the full vitality of a person in their prime, the use of a mask preventing us from being drawn into studying the model, but considering that broader idea of life. Then depth, with it simple setting, soft focus and back view of a naked body without adornment of clothing or within the setting is simply glorious – if such a term can be used – in its presentation of the body’s emptiness in death.

Vibes Gallery: Megan Prumier

At the far end of the gallery space are four images by Megan Prumier that again offer a theme; this one using reflections in the form of overlaid images of the female body. Each displays a considered use of technique that makes the nudity within the images secondary to their narrative. Take Warm Shivers, for example; the marvellous placement of the image, one copy superimposed over the other wonderfully suggests both someone feeling the cold in their nudity whilst at the same time presenting the idea of receiving warm comfort from someone close.

Between these two groups lie another set of four images by Paola Mills, and two pairs of images by  Lyack Glenwalker and Aurora Donner. I admit to being unfamiliar with the latter two, but again, on the strength of the two images presented here, Lyack has a talent for producing images rich in narrative. Certainly, his images reflect the stories inherent in the four pieces offered by Paola, while Aurora’s pair of studies round-out the exhibition nicely.

Vibes Gallery: Lyack Glenwalker

SLurl Details

2019 SL User Groups 33/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

North Brother Island; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrNorth Brother Island, June 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, August 15th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Items Coming out of the SL Summit

  • LL might potentially be looking at a refresh of SL terrain texturing in the near future.
  • Pathfinding is recognised as a pain-point, but no resources are available within the Lab to tackle improvements / enhancements in the immediate future.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).

Current Status
  • The project has been on hold for some time, but due to be rebooted during the current quarter.
  • Emphasis will initially be on data gathering, as previously.
  • No decision has yet been made on whether or not the first pass of work (once the data has been gathered) will include avatar accountability (including a further pass with Animesh), or initially only focus on in-world objects.
  • The overall aim is that of encouragement – getting users to think and want to be on-board with the changes, as they can see the benefit.
  • This work will not reduce the maximum texture size (1024×1024 – and remembering that for Bakes on Mesh avatar texture sizes have actually been increased from a 512x512cap to 1024×1024). However, ARCTan might penalise for “improper” use of textures (e.g. multiple uses of unique 1024×1024 textures across object faces, no matter how small the faces might be).
  • There are a lot of ideas around ARCTan (e.g. finding a means to not encourage lowest LODs of near-zero triangles, not penalising people if they include valid LODs, etc). However, threading the need to find the right balance on how things should be handled is acknowledged as being difficult, and as such, do not expect ARCTan to start changing anything soon.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will now likely not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

  • The viewer should be updated shortly to bring it to parity with the most recent viewer release (version 6.2.4.529638, formerly the Love Me Render RC).
  • There are still issues on the rendering side affecting people on various graphics systems that need to be resolved, together with some remaining performance issues.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the Bake Service to support 1024×1024 textures, but does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

  • Still a number of bugs to be resolved, and Vir is now working on these as well as the Animesh follow-on (below). These include, but are not limited to:
    • Shadows are failing to render correctly.
    • Issues with some alpha settings.
  • Otherwise, most of the functionality is now believed to be in place.

Animesh Follow-On – Project Muscadine

  • DRTSIM-421 on Aditi (region Bakes on Mesh) now has the server-side code to support the new visual parameters LSL code.
  • Project viewer supporting the new LSL code should be out for use on Aditi in the next week.
    • This will provide the means to test the new LSL code functionality, but as with all project viewers, may not work 100% in all other areas.
    • May get enhanced with additional Animesh-related capabilities, although this is dependent on commitments with other projects, notably Bakes on Mesh and Project ARCTan.

General Discussion

Possible SL Wiki Deprecation?

  • For the last few years, the Lab has been moving information away from the SL wiki and into knowledge base articles.
  • During a recent Web User Group meeting, it was indicated that this trend will continue, and that the use of the SL wiki may be deprecated over time.
    • One of the reasons for this is the wiki software has some issues, and there are problems in opening the wiki for general management by users.
  • These changes will not result in the wiki immediately vanishing.
  • It’s not clear as to the best mechanism for getting outdated / incorrect knowledge base articles corrected – potentially the best way at the moment is to raise a bug report.

Documentation

The wiki situation prompted a broader discussion on documentation.

  • LL has been considering how to better provide documentation and demonstration videos for upcoming features and new capabilities.
  • It has also been suggested a Content Creation blog where notes on projects, best practices relating to them and for things like mesh design – LODs (including how to make efficient low LOD models rather than just tossing a low number of tri into the mix) – uploads, etc., and other content creation information could be posted.
  • It is acknowledged that there is a lot of expertise within the Lab and within the community for content creation, and none of it really resides within a single individual – therefore determining what should be documented, how it should be documented, etc., is not an easy matter.
    • A lot of the existing best practises for content and build has come from users / creators.
    • Given the status of the wiki, adding to this is currently difficult.
    • While creators have produced their own documentation, etc., it does come at a cost, and tends to focus n their own specifics. Leveraging this into a more general set of best practices and documentation library would take a lot of further time and effort.
    • As such, some sort of collaborative effort between creators and the Lab might be the way forward, although even organising this and ensuring a consensus of opinion may not be easy.
  • Another way to enhance documentation might be to submit new articles / updates to existing articles through a mechanism like the open source contribution agreement.

Mesh Uploader

Work is continuing on improving the mesh uploader – notably with the contributed updates from Beq Janus of the Firestorm team (see my Firestorm 6.0.1 review for details).

Further work could be done to improve feedback information given by the uploader, but this is currently seen as being more UI intensive, and outside the immediate scope of this updates.