On Friday, March 13th, 2020, Linden Lab opened applications for those wishing to exhibit at the upcoming 17th anniversary of Second Life.
SL17B will run from Friday, June 19th through until Friday, July 10th, with the core entertainments for the celebrations taking place between June 19th and Sunday, June 28th. This year the theme is vacations and road trips (or road trips and vacations as the Lab has previously referred to it – amounts to the same thing), with the official blog post announcing the opening of exhibitor applications reading in part:
In Second Life, you can explore the (virtual) world from the safety and comfort of your own home — and that’s why we’ve selected “vacations and road trips” as this year’s SL17B theme. Whether you teleport directly or travel to your favorite SL destinations by plane, train or automobile, we hope to see a wide variety of community exhibits and experiences that celebrate the spirit of Second Life escapism and travel.
However, in a change from previous years, those wishing to exhibit at SL17B are not being asked to tie their exhibit ideas just to the core theme of the event, as the blog post goes on to note:
A major change for exhibitors this year is the freedom to create an exhibit that reflects your own passions in Second Life. This means that while “vacations and road trips” is our official SL17B theme, exhibits will not be limited by it. We welcome a wider variety of topics this year, including exhibits that may serve as introductions to the varied and abundant communities throughout SL. We also are inviting original art installations and other personal projects that people want to share with the SL community at large.
Those who are interested in exhibiting in a 32x32m plot at SL17B are asked to both read the rules and policies and then complete and submit the official exhibitor application form before the end of Friday, May 22nd, 2020 (PST).
Music Fest
A reminder that applications for those interested at performing at the SL17B Music Fest, scheduled to take place over Friday 19th / Saturday 20th June 2020, can still apply to participate in auditions through until the end of Monday, May 18th 2020. The Lab is looking for at least a dozen performers, both veteran Second Life musicians and those new to the scene, with sets in the past running to 60 minutes per performance.
Auditions are to be held on a rolling basis held every other week at the the Bellisseria Fairgrounds, and as applications are received, performers will be asked to attend one of these auditions to perform. Every audition event will be open to the general public to attend as an audience, and details will be made available ahead of the first such audition via a Second Life blog post, with each audition session additionally advertised through the following in-world groups (both with open enrolment):
Second Life Birthday.
Bellisseria Citizens.
Those interested in auditioning for the Music Fest should be sure to complete the audition application form and submit it before the closing date.
Keep Up To Date and Early Access
Updates on SL17B preparations will be made via official blog posts and through the Second Life Birthday in-world group. In addition, and as indicated during the Lab Gab show featuring Patch Linden and the Moles, it is planned to offer members of that group early access to the SL17B grounds on Thursday, June 18th.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, March 15th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.3.7.535996, formerly the Yorsh Maintenance RC, dated February 7, promoted February 20 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Premium RC viewer updated to version 6.3.8.538264 on March 12th.
Apollo in Real Time. Credit: NASA2019 through 2022 mark the fiftieth anniversaries of the Apollo Moon landings, and I’ve previously covered the flights of Apollo 11 (in three parts: part 1, part 2 and part 3) and the flight of Apollo 12. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the only Apollo mission to take place in 1970, and perhaps the second most famous of them all: the flight of Apollo 13.
On Friday, March 13th, in the run-up to marking the 50th anniversary of that dramatic mission (which I’ll be covering nearer the time), NASA has released Apollo 13: The Third Lunar Landing Attempt, the third in its web-based Apollo in Real Time.
Developed and produced by NASA software engineer and historian Ben Feist, Apollo in Real Time is a series of in-depth on-line resources that allow people to relive Apollo missions 11, 17 and now 13 by presenting all of the space-to-ground and on board audio from the missions; all of the mission control film footage, news pool television transmissions and press conferences audio; and all of the flight photography synced to a timeline for each mission covering when every word was spoken, scene was filmed and image was taken. Together they represent the most complete records of the three missions.
Putting these sites together has been a labour of love and a technical challenge for Feist. While almost all of the original audio recordings for the missions had been archived, they had been made using a tape format for which only one playback machine remained, requiring they be re-recorded digitally.
Apollo 13 In Real Time showing (top l) the moment of engine ignition; (bottom l) mission milestone / transcript / commentary options; (r top) adjustable audio tracks for entire mission and current period; (bottom r) options for displaying additional information / images. Credit: NASA
For Apollo 13, however, there was a particular problem: the five most important tapes from the mission – those recording the events leading up to, during and immediately following the explosion that crippled both the Service and Command modules – were missing, having been removed to be used in the post-accident investigations. These took time to locate, and proved to be in as poor condition as the rest.
Fortunately, Feist was able to enlist the help of Jeremy Cooper, a software audio specialist, who wrote an algorithm that allowed the distortions in all of the tapes to be eliminated during the re-recording process, providing a complete, high-quality audio record of all three missions.
Most poignantly, perhaps with the Apollo 13 mission, are not the exchanges between mission team members or with mission control and the spacecraft (many of which run concurrently with one another, hence the sheer volume of audio available), but the recordings of telephone conversations between the wives of the astronauts aboard the stricken space craft, and astronaut Ken Mattingly (who had been due to fly the mission, before he was exposed to a risk of contracting German measles and was replaced by Jack Swigert) at mission control.
My kids aren’t up yet and they don’t even know what is going on. They went to sleep before all this came up last night. And I was wondering what I could tell them as far as… um, um, in other words, are we really pretty safe right now?
– Marilyn Lovell, wife of Apollo 13 commander James Lovell, on the phone to mission CapCom
Ken Mattingly in the early hours of April 14th, 1970, following the explosion aboard the
spacecraft.
These exchanges, filled with angst and concern, yet delivered in an eerie calmness, really bring home the situation faced by all involved in the unfolding situation.
Apollo 13 in Real Time includes photography by the crew. In these images, captured by Fred Haise, (l) the Lunar Module can be seen stowed in the upper section of the Saturn V S-IVB stage as Lovell guides the command and Service Module towards a docking with the round port in the top of the LM, ready to withdraw it from the spent stage. (r) The S-IVB stage as it drifts and diverges away from the mated CSM and LM post-extraction. The nozzles in the lower left corner are a group of attitude control thrusters on the LM. Credits: F. Haise / NASA
As well as recovering the audio from the missions, Feist and his team had to also painstakingly match it to footage recorded within Mission control throughout each mission – much of it without sound. All of this took considerable time and effort by Feist and his small team; in the case of Apollo 13, a total of eight months of continuous work went into putting together a complete history of the mission’s exact timeline of event from launch to splashdown.
Currently, you can join Apollo 13 in the moments leading up to launch or while it is “in progress.” However, from April 10th, and for the period of the mission from pre-flight through to recovery, you’ll be able to join in “right now” exactly to the hour in the mission, 50 years later and witness it unfolding.
Apollo 13 in Real Time: the Lunar module Aquarius, which served as the crew’s lifeboat (l) and the Command and Service Module (CSM), showing the area of the explosion and damage. Credit: NASA
Apollo 13 In Real Time, together with Apollo 11 and Apollo 17, provides a remarkable insight into these historic flights of exploration and discovery.
ESA Delays Rosalind Franklin’s Flight to Mars
RosalindFranklin, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover, together with its Russian-built lander, has had its July launch date pushed back by two years. The British-built rover, which has had far more than its fair share of woes over the 10+ years of its development (including having to be entirely re-designed after NASA welched on an agreement to launch the rover), will now not launch until the August / September 2022 opposition launch opportunity.
The primary reason for the launch delay is related to the mission’s complex parachute system intended to slow the combined lander / rover as they pass through the Martian atmosphere and to a soft landing on the planet’s surface.
In all, the mission utilises three parachute systems: a high-altitude pilot parachute, designed to steady the vehicles after entry into the Martian atmosphere; an initial “first stage” supersonic parachute, designed to act as a speed brake and slow the lander and rover to subsonic speeds; and finally a much larger “second stage” parachute designed to manage the descent through the atmosphere. As late as August 2019, both of these latter parachutes were failing test deployments in simulated Martian conditions.
The ExoMars parachute systems. Credit: ESA
With the assistance of expertise from NASA – who have the greatest experience in the use of parachute landing systems on Mars – the cause of the failures was eventually traced to the containment bags for the parachutes, which were damaging both on their deployment. This forced a complete redesign of the bags, which was due to be tested at a high-altitude test range in Oregon, USA this month to confirm their readiness for use. However, the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus strain means that the testing is not now possible. Nor is the testing the only aspect of the mission impacted by the virus: the primary control and management centre for the rover mission is located in Turn, Italy, and is under lock-down, severely hampering mission management and coordination work.
However, it was the inability to carry out the parachute deployment tests that prompted the decision to postpone the mission’s launch date.
We agreed together it’s better to go for success than just to go for launch at this time. Although we are close to launch readiness we cannot cut corners. Launching this year would mean sacrificing essential remaining tests. We want to make ourselves 100% sure of a successful mission. We cannot allow ourselves any margin of error. More verification activities will ensure a safe trip and the best scientific results on Mars.
– ESA Director General Jan Wörner, announcing the ExoMars mission delay
Currently open at both the Focus Photo Gallery and the Focus Artist In Residence (FAIR) galleries, operated by Focus Magazine and curated by AngelaThespian and PatrickofIreland are a set of exhibitions I enjoyed viewing over the weekend for their mix of subject and styles.
Having opened on March 6th, the exhibition that the Focus Photo Gallery, located on the upper floors of the Magazine’s main building, features the landscape photography of Charly Keating (ladycharis). Described as a “painter of thoughts; photographer of dreams” her work is just that: art that offers settings as they might appear in thoughts and dreams.
Focus Magazine: Charly Keating
Dark-toned, carefully post-processed to emphasise certain elements – clouds, Sun, sky as a whole, the fall of light on a wall, and so on, and composed with an eye for harmony and balance between foreground and background, these are pieces in which it is easy to become lost. Such is the beauty of each scene offered, that it is both simultaneously new and yet familiar, regardless of whether or not we recognise the actual location where the original image may have been captured. They are evocative of memories that appear to be ours whilst in truth remaining Charly’s own vision.
Rich in colour and content, evocative in presentation, this exhibition served as my first exposure to Charly’s work in-world, and I look forward to seeing more in the future.
Focus Magazine: Rachel Magic
The remaining four artists considered here have their work exhibited at the FAIR gallery, a short walk across the sky platform from the Focus offices.
On the ground floor, Rachel Magic (larisalyn) similarly use her studies of landscapes settings and self-portraits to tell a story. She does so through a broad palette of styles, from black and white through to colour, with some using tonal approaches to their finish, others leaning more to painted scenes than photographs. All have touches of detail that help to draw the observer into them and frame their own narrative around the picture.
Focus Magazine: Jason Westfield
Across the hall, Jason Westfield offers a series of avatar studies that again offers a range of styles and approaches, from self-portraits through to subtle female studies rendered in a number of finishes that tend to draw the eye to them, although I personally felt the most evocative of the pieces displayed are Mask and Hand. The latter in particular is beautiful in its apparent simplicity, and yet deeply nuanced in potential interpretation and artfully presented.
The upper floor of the FAIR building presents what might be considered a join exhibition by SL partners Vin Soulstar and Airi Soulstar (AiriTryst).
Focus Magazine: Vin Soulstar
Both exhibits again focus on avatar studies and between them revel the couple’s relationship and a couple and as photographers. As such, these exhibits stand as both complimentary and complementary halves of the same coin, so to speak.
Within each side of the floor where they are displayed, we’re offered insight into the individual styles used by Vin and Airi – colour, tone, lighting, post-processing, finish – which sets them apart as individual photographers. At the same time, we are given witness to the manner in which they view their work and lives as an SL couple, which draws their respective exhibitions together into a single whole.
Focus Magazine: Airi Soulstar
An engaging series of exhibitions, nicely brought together in a single place, the Focus Magazine and FAIR galleries are well worth a visit. Should you do so, don’t forget to also pay a visit to the Exploratorium of Art, located under the main platform, and accessed via the building at its southern end.
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 unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.
Sunday, March 15th: Celebrating and Dancing in the Green
13:00 – Celebrating the Green: stories read by Dubhna Rhiadra, Aoife Lorefield, Corwyn Allen, and Kayden Oconnell.
14:00 – Dancing the Green at the square outside Murphy’s Pub with Aoife Lorefield at 14:00 and Caledonia Skytower at 15:00.
Monday, March 16th 19:00: The Ugly Little Boy
Gyro Muggins reads a tale that started life as a short story by Isaac Asimov, and was later expanded into a full length novel by Asimov writing in collaboration with Robert Silverberg.
A 21st century time travel experiment results in a Neanderthal boy being pulled from his time. The intention is to study the boy and understand how his kind lived. However because of the potential for time paradoxes, the boy must be kept in a within a stasis module, a place physically separated from modern time; but he must still be cared for. So the company behind the experiment hires a children’s nurse, Edith Fellowes, to look after him.
Initially horrified by the child, Edith comes to forms a bond with him, discovering he is intelligent and capable of both learning and love. However, to Stasis – the company behind the experiment – the boy is little more than a commodity to be observed and with a story to be sold to the media. As such, he is only of value for as long as there is public interest in his story. When that fades, the company determines the child must be returned to his own time, his place to be taken by a subject from another era. But Edith knows that, thanks to all she has taught him, his own time is no longer a place he is equipped to survive within, and determines she must take action to protect him.
Released in 1952, John Ford’s The Quiet Man is regarded as a classic Irish-American romantic comedy / drama. Starring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara (and assorted members of their RL families!) and Barry Fitzgerald, it is a popular choice among critics and film-lovers.
The screenplay for the film was drawn in a large part from a short story of the same name originally published in 1933 in the Saturday Evening Post, and penned by Irish author, Maurice Welsh.
Together with a number of other short stories by Walsh, The Quiet Man was gathered into a single volume of his short stories, The Quiet Man and Other Stories, which dealt with many recurring characters living in rural Ireland of the 1920s, and set against the backdrop of the civil unrest which affected the country at that time, while examining the complexities and occasional intrigues of life, love and Irish traditions.
Join Caledonia Skytower as she reads Walsh’s original tale of The Quiet Man, Paddy Bawn Enright to Mark St. Patrick’s Day.
Wednesday, March 18th, 19:00: The Phantom Tollbooth
Finn Zeddmore reads Norton Juster’s fantasy adventure for younger readers.
For Milo, everything is a bore and all activities little more than a waste of time. Then one day he arrives home in his usual state of disinterest, only to find a package waiting for him. He has no idea where it has come from or who might have sent it, but is clearly intended for him, given the label. Opening it, he discovers a small tollbooth and a map of “the Lands Beyond,” illustrating the Kingdom of Wisdom.
Reading the limited instructions – that warn him to have a destination from the map in mind – and thinking the package to be some kind of game, he sets the tollbooth up, decides Dictionopolis should be his destination, and propels the accompanying little car through the tollbooth.
Immediately he finds himself driving an actual car through a city that is clearly not his own. Here he discovers he must remain focused, lest his thoughts wander, and his journey wanders as well; a lesson he only discovers when he does daydream and finds himself in the Doldrums.
Also as he travels and meets new friends, so he also realises something else: life is far from boring or dull; it actually offers much to be discovered.
Thursday, March 19th, 19:00: Liath Luachra: The Pursuit
Based on the Fionn legends.
Ireland, 189 A.D. Liath Luachra and her band of warriors rush to rescue the kidnapped wife of their employer. Facts are a bit hazy, the employer is unpleasant, but Liath and her men are barely surviving and need the job. As always with an O’Sullivan story, the landscape is almost a character in the tale.
With Shandon Loring, also in Kitely – grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).
Advanced Announcement – Seanchai Celebrates a Dozen
On Sunday, March 22nd, Seanchai Library will mark its 12th anniversary with an afternoon of festivities.
Sansar Studios Conference Stage – and example of a meeting / event space from early in Sansar’s public development
Introductory note: over the course of the last 24 months I’ve drafted a number of pieces on Sansar none of which, for a variety of reasons – including something of a lack of dedication on my part – never got to see the light of day. The following piece represents a synthesis of some of those views, in part borne from recent events in the physical world.
Back in the mists of time, and before Sansar gained its first users through the original Closed Alpha programme, there was talk that the platform would have support for third-party access controls built-in to it, so that a company or organisation or similar would be able to employ their own user authentication services as a “portal” for their users to access their Sansar experiences (or the “next generation platform” as it was still called at the time, the name not having been finally determined).
We’ve also heard in the past wishes to be able to connect your users with Second Life, where you can manage user access from places where you already do that within your institutions today, and support for third-party authentication and access control is something that we’re building-in to the foundation of the next generation platform [Sansar].
At the time – for me at least – this appeared to suggest that Sansar might have some form of support for white label offerings, that is, environments that are built and provided within Sansar’s cloud services, but due to branding, path of access, etc., appear to be a natural part of a customer’s own services and capabilities rather than being provided and operated by a third-party (Linden Lab).
A Sansar Studios conference room template design
It’s an idea I mentioned in a number of articles on the platform between 2015 and 2017, and would it have been the case, then potentially Linden Lab could have a powerful offering for companies and organisations that wanted to leverage VR in a “dedicated” (platform / environment manner), but didn’t necessarily have the in-house skills to do so.
By this I mean that, rather than have to hire-in staff versed 3D design and able to utilise engines such as Improbable, Unreal or Unity, etc., and have to place the burden of running the resultant environment(s) through their own IT department, or having to to find a design house and a suitable service provisioner, they could use Linden Lab’s “one stop shop”, capable of providing all the design expertise (via Sansar Studios) and the ability to provision and manage the environment(s), on pretty much a reasonably “fixed” price basis, and no significant additional overheads in terms of hardware costs, depreciation, engineering, etc.
Such a white label service would provide both clients and the Lab with assorted benefits. For the Lab, it means a business model that can be relatively easily marketed to almost any client, and offer a constant revenue stream (design of the required environments, providing any required custom avatar looks and the necessary API requirements; operating fees (potentially on a defined sliding scale depending on frequency of use, number of active instances, etc); the potential to offset the cost of developing specific Sansar capabilities which – under a contractual agreement – they can use / offer elsewhere in the platform; gaining brand names of users of the Sansar engine.
Information boards from the 2018 Swansea University VR / AR conference installation in Sansar
For customers it means the aforementioned ease of provisioning opportunities through assorted third-parities (design, implementation, operation) or need to hire-in specialist staff; they gain capabilities that are branded as their own with the ability to easily adapt / expand those capabilities according to their needs / the needs of their own clients, and for a controlled price; they also have the ability to turn services off without undue financial impact; no concerns over hardware purchase / lease / depreciation.
If such an approach had worked, then it’s not unfair to assume it might have helped with the platform’s ability to generate revenue whilst Linden Lab sought to grow the more public presence of Sansar with other audiences – creators, VR enthusiasts, gamers, and so on.
Admittedly, in writing this piece I’m making the assumption that LL didn’t tread this particular route of trying to promote Sansar as white label service; truth be told, they might have done and found it to be a dead end. However, there is evidence to suggest they didn’t get that far. Firstly because even by June 2015 Ebbe Altberg was indicating that the third-party authentication and direct access would arrive some time “later” in Sansar’s development path, whilst Product Meetings during the past year suggested it was still something LL would “like” to do, some time.
Meeting room access points (teleports) at the 2018 Swansea University VR / AR conference installation in Sansar
Today, with mounting fears about the latest coronavirus outbreak – Covid-19 – there is obviously a case for the use of virtual environments to handle certain use-cases, thus helping to avoid people from having to travel or gather in large groups where the risks of infection tend to climb. As I reported on March 13th, Linden Lab has just moved to make the use of Second Life more attractive to educational institutions and non-profits by lowering the fees for such regions and opening a micro-site dealing with using SL as a workspace.
But how much more inviting might a platform like Sansar be in this situation, particularly if it could be offered as such a white label service to entities specialising in organising events, conferences, etc., on behalf of others, or to companies that routinely need to organise and host their own staff / client events? Yes, there is something of a credibility hump in using virtual spaces – with or without the accompanying headsets, given Sansar can be accessed and enjoyed without the latter) – but that shouldn’t necessarily be a barrier to making the effort.
As it is, and as we know, Sansar currently sits in limbo; staff (including the team forming Sansar Studios) have been let go, and Linden Lab is seeking a “Plan B” for Sansar. So getting things moving forward once more would appear to be a little difficult given that most of the personnel involved with Sansar have (hopefully, for their own security) found a new home and income.
Nevertheless Sansar as a white label environment offers an interesting thought exercise.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 