Month: May 2020

Black and White and Travelling Heels in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun – Travelling Heels

Opening on May 9th are two new exhibitions at Club LA and Gallery, curated by Wintergeist, which between them offer unique studies and unusual views of Second Life.

With Black and White, located in the main gallery, The Friendly Otter offers an intriguing portfolio of some 15 black and white images that stand as a mix of avatar studies and landscapes. What is particularly captivating about them is not that they are monochrome – but the manner in which they are presented.

Club LA and Gallery: The Friendly Otter – Black and White

Each piece takes a specific subject  – avatar, landscape element, birds, etc., – and presents it in an almost ink wash style sans intruding surroundings or wider surroundings, on a pure white backdrop. The result is a series of pieces that are wonderfully minimalistic but with an incredible depth and richness of story.

These are genuinely graceful pieces that have every look of having been painted by hand, rather than originating with in-world photographs. Sadly, none are offered for sale, as all of them are highly collectable.

Club LA and Gallery: The Friendly Otter – Black and White

In introducing Travelling Heels in Second Life, WuWai Chun uses a variation of a famous quote about Ginger Rogers, the original version of which (from a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon) read:

Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.

It’s a more than apt quote for this exhibition – reached via teleport from the main gallery – which offers highly unique views of Second Life around, under and over high-heeled shoes.

On reading this, it might be tempting to simply say, “Oh, you mean this is an exhibition of photographs of shoes!” But that really is not the case; while a pair of shoes is featured in each, they are not in an of themselves “just” focused on the heels. A number present scenes captured from around Second Life in which the background demands the eye’s attention – a villa and pool, a dusty hill from (I would guess) Serene Footman’s Kolmannskuppe, the tide breaking over rocks – as much as the heels.

Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun – Travelling Heels

Mixed with there are artful pieces that capture the spirit of popular art from (roughly) the 1960s and 1970s, adding to the depth of this exhibition whilst offering some highly individual pieces that would be welcome in any home.

I mention this latter point because all of WuWai’s pieces in this exhibition are for sale – and she is giving 100% of all sales to Feed A Smile – so in making a purchase, you’re not only gaining a great piece of art, but also helping a very worthy cause.

Two extraordinary exhibitions that should not be missed.

Club LA and Gallery: WuWai Chun – Travelling Heels

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A tropical Lemon Bay in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lemon Bay, May 2020 – click any image for full size

We first visited Lemon Bay in April 2020, although it’s taken a while for me to get around to writing about it. A homestead region and group design by SilentChloe, Unso Choche and Mirias, it is a rugged, tropical setting intended to be a photogenic hangout.

When I say “rugged”, I mean the region is set as tall, rocky table of land forming a roughly L-shaped island, the upright of which runs roughly south-west to north-east. Flat-topped, the island has at some point in the past been sliced into three plateaus by the sea, two narrow channels lying between the three parts, one of which has been around for so long, it has become silted with sand, helping to form one of the island’s two beaches.

Lemon Bay, May 2020

The table of rock that is left between these two gorges forms the island’s landing point. Almost uniformly flat, it is connected to the remaining two arms of the island by wooden bridges, while a single deck extends away from the south side cliffs to offer a grand – if giddying – view out over the sea and the sands below, a waterfall tumbling from a slit in the rocks under the deck.

Cross the bridge to eastern side of the of island, and the way becomes more shaded thanks to palm trees and Samanea saman, as the path leads the way to a rickety house sitting on an outcrop of rock that looks like it might, in time, break away from the rest of the island and into the waters below – which might explain how the small island that sits just off the north-west side of the main island may have come into existence.

Lemon Bay, May 2020

Quite how you reach this small island is a matter of choice  – swim or fly. It offers a beach hangout-out for those wishing to gather around a camp fire, and a little fisherman’s hut.

Prior to reaching the steps leading down to the deserted old house, a separate flight offers access to another wooden deck – one again built over a waterfall. This provides a view cross to the south and west to the second, and largest, arm of the island. Reached via the second bridge from the landing point, if offers several points of exploration. Just across the bridge and to the left of it, a path winds down to the southern beach and a route to a rocky pool which could be an ideal retreat if presented with one or two animations to allow people to sit on the rocks around it or cool themselves in the water. As it is, flagstones extend out over the water whilst a little shaded canoe does offer places for people to enjoy.

Lemon Bay, May 2020

Should the way down to the first beach not be taken, the way is open for visitors to either walk up to the island’s Idyllic bar as it commands the best view and offers a shaded retreat from the sun. Or, if preferred, visitors can follow the path around and below the island’s crown to where a path and steps hewn from the rock offer the way down to the sweeping curve of the island’s largest beach. This offers several places to sit and enjoy the Sun individually or as a couple, while a little sign presents the opportunity to go swimming (another sign for swimming sits on the smaller, south-side beach as well). For those willing to wander further around the headland, there’s a cosy little hideaway awaiting discovery.

Rich with waterfowl and birds, with sudden bursts of rich colour from plants (and parrots!), Lemon Bay is a place offering every suggestion of escape and relaxation. Rounded out with a warm sound scape, the setting is ideal for photography and for catching quiet times away from home.

Lemon Bay, May 2020

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2020 Content Creation User Group week #19 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland, March 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, May 7th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

No further updates this week, leaving the current crop of in-flight viewers as:

  • Current Release version  version 6.4.1.540593, dated April 27th, promoted May 4th. Formerly the Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • 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:
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

CEF Viewer

The “special release” CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.1.541204, does contain the anticipated codec, etc., updates. However, it is classified as a “special” release at this point in time, as it includes some “short cuts” taken in the build process in order to get it out as a proof-of-concept for the Adult Swim event.

The recommendation is that TPVs should not adopt the code from this particular build, but to wait until a more formalised RC release of the CEF updates is made.

See: Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event: Introducing Live Video Streaming in SL (Linden Lab) and Adult Swim special streaming event in Second Life (this blog).

OpenGL Replacement

As has been noted in this blog and elsewhere, Apple is deprecating OpenGL. This has raised questions over the last several months about the future of graphic support in SL for OS X.

Currently, one of the routes under consideration is to undertake a complete switch-over (Windows and OS X) from OpenGL to using Vulkan.

  • This is not a final decision, it is just one option under consideration, albeit one that is getting a good degree of thought.
  • Numerous pros and cons have been identified with such a switch. However, more analysis is required before a decision is made – e.g. overall impact on shaders, etc.
  • Even with any shift there are crucial questions to be asked, including how might it impact users on older, lower-spec systems. To help determine this, an upcoming RC viewer from the Lab will have some additional data collection code that will check to see if systems have / can support Vulkan.
  • Vulkan could potentially streamline some of the alpha sorting issues seen with OpenGL, and might also provide some general performance improvements.
  • There is a temptation when running a major graphics overhaul to try to include additional work as well, leading to drawn-out projects (a-la EEP). To avoid this, were a move to Vulkan to be made, LL will likely go for a focused implementation of Vulkan support, with broader graphics / shader work positioned as future follow-on work.

Advanced Lighting Model

With regards to any graphics system update, it is possible that the requirement to run with the viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) always enabled might become universal. LL are aware that many people run the viewer with ALM disabled, and so are curious as to how much impact any decision to make it universal might have.

Part of the problem here is that people disable ALM for a variety of reasons. For example:

  • Those on metered / slow connections may disable it, to avoid having the additional load of downloading materials information (normal and specular maps).
  • Some disable ALM in the (not always accurate) belief that it carries a heavy performance hit, which is not necessarily true (e.g. enabling ALM on its own generally doesn’t place too much overhead on a system, but enabling ALM and shadows rendering does – so the trick is to turn of shadows via their own drop-down, rather than disabling ALM entirely).

In brief

  • The viewer’s bandwidth usage was raised  – notably the 3000 Kbps upper limit, and whether this was still valid in the era of fast connections people can access. Whether the limit is still valid or not is unclear (particularly how higher limits might stress the servers in terms of requests for information), however, it is seen as something the Lab could potentially look at.
  • Caching viewer: the upcoming viewer with updates to the cache is primarily focused on the VFS cache. If this is successful, it is possible the texture cache may be folded into the same structure.
  • Official Linux viewer: not news. The idea of the Lab providing (with third-party contribution support) a core Debian package & leaving the libraries to TPVs / self-compilers to determine based on the flavour of Linux they want to use is essentially at a standstill due to lack of resources.
  • Next meeting: Thursday, May 21, 13:00 SLT.

Personal impressions in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
A Dream of Asia

Discussing myself is something that doesn’t come particularly easy, especially when it comes to anything like self-advertising or my photography – which I regard as passable for blog illustrations, little more.

However, Sorcha Tyles recently asked me to consider an exhibition of my work at her gallery of Artful Expressions, which I admit to finding incredibly flattering  – if more than a little nerve-racking. However, in talking to Sorcha, I decided to take up her generous offer.

So, opening at Artful Expression on Friday, May 8th at 14:00 SLT is a small selection of my work entitled Impressions, which features images (some not previously seen) of my recent SL travels. Music is being provided by DJ Julz, and I hope you’ll join us for the opening – or hop along to the gallery and take a look while the exhibition is open through to the end of the month(ish).

Many, many thanks to Sorcha for the invite and encouragement, and for arranging the exhibition!

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A Fairelands Journey: Zodiac

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fantasy Faire 2020: Zodiac

We came to the coast once more early on the morning, and even as the Sun rose we could see its light glittering off the blue domes of our destination even before it fell across the seas beyond.

It was said that Zodiac had been founded by a company of Royales who departed the fair city of Magnificat many years ago. I had once visited Magnificat as a traveller riding alone, and the memory of that journey remained never far from my thoughts. As we left our mounts fed and watered on the outskirts of the city, so I was able to see a certain resemblance within these dome-topped halls and the spire-topped palaces of that ancient place. But more than that, this city brought to mind legends of the great temples and river of the Golden Delta, while the walls of water that fell straight and true down hand-made cliffs brought forth tales of the floating retreat of Sanctum, said to be held aloft on pillars of crystal waters.

Fantasy Faire 2020: Zodiac

I had heard that Zodiac was a place in which the mysteries of the heavens are venerated, and above the doorways of these tall houses glowing blue spheres glittered and turned with the patterns of the stars, marking out the heroes and gods of the past as they were said to look down from the night skies. Within the great hall of each of these houses, another glowing wheel of stars turned.

Yet these were not what held our attention, for as we came to the city’s waterfront, so we saw for the first time the great orb hanging effortlessly in the air over the city’s central channel. Sea blue in colour, it sat within great metal ribs, the golden powder of stars contained within it; and within that cloud, an entire world I could scarce recognise. As we looked upon this wondrous thing, so I perceived rivers of golden energy flowing outwards from the globe and into the buildings below.

Fantasy Faire 2020: Zodiac

“The energies of the heavens. Our blessing and our studies.” I turned towards the voice, and found a tall citizen of Zodiac standing close by, his long blue robes sparkling like the light flowing outwards from the sphere, his face fair and ageless, his eyes a bright, piercing blue. “They are what brought us to this place and raised this city. They give life and peace to all who come here.”

“It is magnificent,” I replied softly, “And bewitching; but how…”

“Does it remain so in the air?” He smiled, his face brightening with an inner light. “How else, but by the grace of the Guardians?”

“I thought the Guardians were but a myth!” I interrupted, and his eyes twinkled in the warmth of mirth.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” he replied. “It is true that they are now rarely seen here within the city; but they might yet be found for those with an open heart – such as you, who have travelled so far.” He bowed courteously, arms wide. “May I be your guide?”

Fantasy Faire 2020: Zodiac

And so we walked the paths of Zodiac, and its many parts were revealed, from stone gazebos where models of many worlds turned, to high terraces overlooking the waters below, where we could look on the energy-laced waters that fell outwards from the buildings around us, as boats passed down the channel and out to sea. Our host proved affable, yet mysterious; much of the history of Zodiac did we learn, but on some things he remained quiet, turning conversation away from the strange flow of energy from globe to building to water, while also turning away questions as to his place within the city.

So the day passed, with refreshments at a waterfront garden, and then a slow walk to our lodgings, where our mysterious guide bade us a fair evening, his cloak swirling about him in the lowering light of the evening Sun. I watched as he walked back into the city, towards that great sphere until just the sparkling mist if that blue robe glittered faintly. And as I looked, it seemed to me that glittering wafted upwards, climbing to the glowing blue sphere that now cast a soft blue glow over the city’s heart…

Fantasy Faire 2020: Zodiac

Zodiac, designed by Alia Baroque. Sponsored by Fallen Gods Inc, BamPu Legacies, and Bella Moda / ZED for MEN / MALified. Featuring stores by Astalianda & The Critter Corner, AtaMe,  *~by Nacht, !dM deviousMind, Fantasy China, HOUSE OF RFYRE, Illusions, Lacrime dell’anima & Faida & Velvet Whip, lassitude & ennui, MacMoragh an Gabha, NeverWish & A.D.D.Andel!, On A Lark & Artisan Fantasy, .:Soul:., The Stringer Mausoleum & [CIRCA] Living, VENGE and Wasabi.

Total raised by the end of the Faire’s fifteenth day: L$17,047,087 (US $68,188). Remember, you can still visit the Fairelands and appreciate their realms through until May 10th.

SLurls and Related Links

Fantasy Faire regions are rated Moderate.

Kirsten’s Viewer gains the client-side AO

Posted on by Inara Pey

On May 2nd, I wrote about the return of Kirsten’s Viewer and its return to active duty. In that review I noted that while what goes into a viewer is down to those who maintain it, it would be nice to see Kirsten’s adopt the client-side AO mechanism, as first seen in the Firestorm viewer.

Following that review, KirstenLee’s partner, Dawny Daviau let me know the AO system was being considered and then, just a couple of days later, she Tweeted that the viewer had been updated with the AO code.

Even as an inside joke, I was flattered that KirstenLee had responded so rapidly to both Dawny’s prompting and my comment.

Dawny’s Tweet

I understand from KirstenLee’s own comments that getting the AO code into the viewer wasn’t easy, what with the UI changes created by EEP – so kudos and thanks got to KirstenLee and Dawny for going ahead and integrating it. Given it did take a little crowbarring, it’s not surprising that the AO floater has a couple of minor of rough edges to it – but these do not prevent it from being used or cannot be easily fixed.

For those unfamiliar with the idea of a client-side AO, it allows the animations from an animation overrider system to run directly from the viewer without the need to wear a resource-gabbing scripted HUD. It takes a little setting-up, but once done, it’s easy to use – and has the further benefit of allowing you to use multiple AOs together without having to worry about swapping HUDS or including different outfit links to different HUDs.

Quick guide to the essentials of the client-side AO as included in Kirstens Viewer

The best place to get information on setting-up and using the client-side AO is via the Firestorm wiki. A couple of points should be noted here:

  • When first loaded, the AO floater may not display all of the AOs in its floater (e.g. all your stands might be listed, but none of your walks). If this happens, click the Reload button at the bottom of the AO floater to get them to list and run.
  • The UI scaling in the floater is a little off in this S23-1387 KV iteration, so it my need to be broadened to correctly display.

Neither of the above points impact the AO’s usability, and in my own tests, I had no issues with setting it up and using it.

Also note that the AO will create a folder called #Kirstens in your invention, which will contain a copy of the AO(s) you have selected for client-side use – do not delete this folder when using the capability!

As a long-time user of client-side AO capabilities (including loading it with more than one AO set), I’m clearly a fan of the capability. I like the freedom it gives, and the fact there’s no need to have screen real estate (however small) taken up by a HUD and, more particularly, the fact that texture RAM and script resources needn’t be taken up by the use of a HUD. So while this might be a “small” update, I think it to be worthwhile and – if you’re trying out Kirsten’s Viewer and haven’t used a viewer-side AO system, this is a good opportunity to try it out.

For those who do use the client-side AO, and might be looking to an alternative to (say) Firestorm for photography, the addition of the AO button and floater offers another reason for giving Kirsten’s Viewer a try out.

My thanks again to KirstenLee for responding to the request from Dawny and I!

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