Distant Edge, August 2020 – click any image for full size
Distant Edge is a Homestead region designed by Remuera Seetan as “a quiet and serene place where you can reconnect with nature”, and inspired by the rugged islands of northern latitudes – although which side of the Atlantic those islands might be is up to the visitor.
A rugged setting offering a sense of the magnificent desolation only nature can create, Distant Edge is also a place where music has helped to form it, be it through the pub / club nestling within the shoulders of the western hills, or through the presence on a lone piano overlooking a windswept southern shore.
Distant Edge, August 2020
The pub is by far the largest building on the island, although the high cliffs and peaks to the west keep this fact hidden from view from the rest of the island.
Instead, when first arriving on the deck of the landing point, sitting on the edge of the bay that cuts deeply into the island, at treated to views across the water to a cottage and windmill occupying the north-eastern headland, and of the lighthouse further along the southern headland.
Distant Edge, August 2020
Finding the pub is a matter of following a sandy path through the grass, or cheating and using the teleport board at the landing point – which means potentially missing a lot of what else the island has to offer. The latter includes the aforementioned piano within its netted pavilion, a cosy summer house, numerous places to relax on the beach or on the water or the shrine tucked away on the northern coast.
Some of the paths are marked by old railway sleepers set out across the ground while others, such as the path up to the highlands – also worth following – are far more natural in nature. The coastal areas offer a mix of beaches to walk, sloping hills and low-slung cliffs.
Distant Edge, August 2020
Reached by passing through a rocky arch, the pub offers a large deck for dancing, while the interior – a converted fish warehouse by the looks of things – offers alcohol, pool and a place to relax. Music is provided three nights a week, although I couldn’t find a schedule at the time of our visits.
Distant Edge is one of those places that doesn’t require a lot of description – it genuinely speaks for itself. Caught under a cloud-laden sky that in places is releasing rain, rounded out by a local sound scape, it offers a rewarding opportunity to explore and take photographs. Those who do take photos are welcome to submit them to the region’s Flickr group.
Yavanna’s pod tours have been a staple of the Mainland for exactly a decade, but automated operations are to be suspended
August 24th: Please see my further update on this subject.
YavaScript Pod tours have been a part of the Mainland in Second Life for a decade, but news is now circulating that on the very day of their 10th anniversary, the automated element of the service is to be suspended.
Notification of the suspension was given by the system’s creator, Yavanna Llanfair, via note card, which was circulated initially through the in-world Pod Riders group, before being more widely circulated within the Second Life community.It comes as a combination of factors, including an issue related to Yanvanna’s account, and her continued need to take time in recovering from being stricken by COVID-19.
Following the start of their operations in 2010, the pod tours grew to become a staple of the Mainland landscape, following the major road systems across Sansara, Heterocera, Jeogeot, Corsica, Mãebaleia/Satori and Nautilus. In addition, they’ve also become a familiar sight at the Second Life Birthday celebrations, and others have taken to running their own services using Yavanna’s system.
The announcement of the decision to suspend the Mainland automated service reads in full:
Dear pod riders,
Today is the 10th anniversary of the first road pod – “YavaScript Pod V5.0 (MCT)” – MCT standing for Monowai Constant Tour, which I put on the road in the morning of Saturday 21st August 2010. I have set that pod running again; it will run until it is swallowed by some random event (like a sim restart or a crash).
However, I am sorry to report that it is also the last day of the pods as we know them today. I have made the decision to suspend all services as of later today. The reason is as follows:
For the entirety of the running of the pod service, I have said I will only run the service where I considered I had the approval of the Lindens and the community. Whilst there have always been a few who would criticise (sometimes quite vocally), they have been a very small minority. And I have always felt that the Lindens have tacitly approved of them, though they would never say so directly. Certainly a number of moles have expressed their approval, and to them I am very grateful.
On 27th July, my account was suspended for 24 hours because of a pod crash in Mieum (on the Wellington Road). At least, that is what I traced it to, because the Linden who suspended me would not tell me of the reason – merely that the object was returned to me. I explained that it is impossible to avoid crashes in all circumstances. I raised a ticket to the LDPW asking them to let me know if this meant my pods were no longer welcome on the roads. I said that I would take anything other than a positive to be a negative. My ticket was closed without comment.
It would have been a shame for the pods to have fallen short of their 10th anniversary, and so I have continued the service until today. And for now, I will merely suspend all operations by flicking a switch on my server. This means that the road pods will still rez, but de-rez shortly after (within 5 minutes). Pods will also still be available from the pod stations by clicking on the rezzer. But this is not a sustainable situation, as the vast majority of people come to know about the pods by seeing them pass on the road, so without that, the service is far less likely to be sustainable in the longer term.
I announced back in June that I was stepping back, due to a long Covid-19 recovery. That recovery is still not complete; whilst I have made progress, I still have some issues, mostly neurological. And stress is therefore something I have to avoid at all costs. Therefore I am not willing at present to fight anyone on this. Maybe one day I will. If the Lindens wish to get in contact to ensure me that the pods are welcome again, I will of course re-instate them. But I suspect that is not likely to happen.
I will continue to support pod owners who run their own systems.
Thankyou to each and every pod rider for coming along on the journey with me. It has been exciting and a lot of fun. It isn’t necessarily over, but for now autonomous vehicles from the YavaScript stable will no longer be on the Second Life mainland roads.
– Yavanna Llanfair, via note card
Yavanna at the Yavascript Pod centre, Castell Yavana, Monowai
In terms of the suspension, pods can still be taken from the stations manually, but they will de-rez when the rider(s) alight off, rather than continuing on their own, and will no longer be seen travelling the roads on their own.
Commenting on the situation, Asadorable Delightful (Asadora Summers), one of those who passed Yvanna’s note card to me said:
The Pod Rider’s group has been busy most of today. We have all come to a decision as a group to express our memories/thoughts and feelings on how the pods have been an integral part of our virtual lives on Mainland. We are doing this in a positive way and would like for our memories to be shared.
Those with any enquiries regarding the service suspension, should do so via the Pod Riders group. If you have any memories about the pod tours you’d like to share, please contact Asadorable Delightful (Asadora Summers).
With thanks to Asadorable Delightful (Asadora Summers), and Holocluck Henly.
Update Saturday, August 23rd
The news of the suspension of the automated pod runs sparked speculation that there has been some form of change in policy at the Lab regarding Mainland vehicles / something else internal to the Lab. In response to such commentary, Patch Linden posted the following to a forum thread related to the news:
Howdy everyone!
I am potentially as confused as everyone else. But then again I’ve been out of town this week and I have some catching up to do. In any case while standing in the house of mouse, this did make it to my attention to look in to. While I’m digging in to find out what happened there are a few things I can assure everyone of:
We’ve made no policy changes surrounding automated vehicles on the Mainland.
We like the Yavapods system
We use it in Bellisseria as the “engine” for the ferry boats, with Yavanna’s permission of course
We keep having it back to SLB every year
These items do not seem like a recipe for a change in policy. Hopefully things will unfold and we’ll get to the bottom of this in a positive manner. I can’t really see any other way forward, and the team and I have no reason to not support or help Yavanna.
In terms of the order of events surrounding Yavanna’s account / support issue, Patch added:
This is where part of my confusion is. The LDPW and the Moles do not have a real ticket system. We sometimes receive JIRA’s for issues, but that’s not really a ticket and the Moles are not reachable directly through the support ticketing system. While I’m not here to dispute any of this, there also seems to be some real confusion on what or how this happened. If this took place in July, this is the first I’m becoming aware of it. There is no “fight city hall” here, again, we have no reason to do anything other than help with the system and the situation.
I’ll attempt to update this article or provide fresh input should more information / news be forthcoming.
Currently on display at Konect Art Gallery, operated and curated by Gonzalo Osuna (Jon Rain), head of Konecta Radio, are exhibitions by two artists, one of whom I’m a confirmed admirer – Sisi Biedermann – together with a Second Life photographer who is new to me: Dann Haefnir.
As I’ve noted in past reviews of Sisi’s work, she is one of the most engaging digital mixed-media artists in Second Life; her work is utterly unique and completely captivating, offering a richness of imagination, style and colour. Her subject matter tends to be wide-ranging, covering everything from the natural world through in-world settings to the fantastical and even touching on the abstract and the near-surreal.
Konect Art: Sisi Biedermann
For this exhibition, the focus is very much on nature and the natural world, with one or two motifs from classical art (take Reaching Out, for example that offers a hint of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in the form of the two hands within the flowers), and gentle hints of her love of northern islands such as the Faroes (see Wild Beach, with its surrounding of thistles).
What is particularly captivating about many of Sisi’s pieces is the manner in which she creates them: beautifully layered pieces that appear to start with an oil or watercolour, apparently carefully built up to give them a marvellous sense of texture that is genuinely tactile in its depth.
Konect Art: Dann Haefnir
On the ground floor, Dann Haefnir presents a ranging of landscape photographs, interspersed with plant studies. The former are largely from the physical world, although a couple originate in Second Life. All are images that are ideally composed and framed, and quite evocative in the settings they offer, causing the eye and heart to perhaps yearn to walk the rich forests, feel the sands under bare feet or witness what lies beyond the bend in the track.
As noted, this is my first encounter with Dann’s work, but on the strength of the pieces displayed at Konect Art, I look forward to witnessing more exhibitions of his work.
Konect Art: Dann Haefnir
I believe both of these exhibitions run through until the end of August, 2020.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, August 20th 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
Currently, the official viewers remain unchanged from the start of the week:
Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Mesh uploader RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544027, July 27.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.5.544028, June 30.
Project viewers:
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
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.
General Viewer Notes
The Legacy Profiles viewer has been further prevented from making progress due to additional web-side changes that need to be made to enable privacy settings (who can see your feed posts) to work correctly.
The Mesh Uploader has been integrated with further changes, and is currently being merged up to the current viewer release code base, after which it will go to QA. Providing it passes, it could be appearing as updated RC viewer in week #35. This viewer provides:
Additional information on meshes at upload, a-la those added to Firestorm (see: Firestorm 6.0.2: Animesh release, February 2019)
UI improvements to give better information on avatar rigging & related error messaging.
Improved error messaging overall.
It will also include various fixes (such as BUG-229032 “[Mesh Uploader] Use Joint Positions Option causes ‘Collapsed Joints/Bones’ for some Files”) that are currently being worked on.
Project Muscadine (Animesh Follow-On)
Project Summary
Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.
Current Status
Still officially on hold.
Will include shape sliders for Animesh – although it should be remembered body shapes and sliders are intended for humanoid avatars, not animals, etc.
Using the JIRA
Complaints were raised about the need to raise Jira bug reports for issues that are “raised in chat”. Simply put:
Describing an issue (often loosely) in chat – or Voice, which is often the medium for meetings – actually doesn’t mean the issue is captured and recorded. It also doesn’t necessarily mean the issue has been properly described, as those talking about it are not being encouraged to think about the issue in a structured manner or provide illustrations that can better help with understanding precisely where their problem lies.
The Jira system provides a means by which:
Information can be captured in a structured manner.
It can be illustrated.
It can be updated with further observations, feedback from others, etc.
It can be referenced, searched and cross-referenced, potentially helping other users understand a problem they are encountering and allowing the Lab to better understand the overall impact of an issue.
At the end of the day, issues reported by Jira stand a better chance of being fixed at some point that those just chatted about (which likely have a 0% chance).
An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering either in the viewer. 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).
As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:
Viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity.
Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.
The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.
Current Status
It now appears that Vir’s work in updating Jelly Dolls will now appear in the ARCTan viewer, when that eventually emerges, but may also (and possibly sooner) appear in a Maintenance RC viewer.
Overall, ARCTan has been held-up awaiting a fix for an Bake Service issue. Vir believes he now has that fix, and is waiting for it to be deployed to one of the Lab’s internal text grids so he can check to see if it works. Assuming it does work, the fix will be queued for deployment to the main grid and allow performance data gathering to resume.
Discussions are to resume regarding better UI elements to support information on complexity, etc., that users can understand and use.
In Brief
Animesh:
minimum default 15 Land Impact: it is apparently putting some creators off of trying to make Animesh items (notably breedables). It’s been suggested lowering this to 10 LI might help generate greater interest in Animesh creation. Right now, LL haven’t done enough analysis to determine how the figure might conceivably be changed, rather than just making an arbitrary adjustment.
Bakes on Mesh support: this has been discussed on a number of occasions. There are no plans to provide support for Animesh to use Bakes on Mesh in the foreseeable future, as it requires Animesh to be overhauled to have full inventory support, together with outfit support, and would also require a significant update to the Bake Service to recognise and support Animesh characters.
Date of next meeting: probably Thursday, September 3rd, 2020.
Broken, August 2020 – click any image for full size
Shawn Shakespeare recently indirectly reminded me that it has been a year since I last wrote about Natalia Corvale’s Broken, the homestead region she has long dedicated to anyone who has lost someone they loved, offering setting that are rich in natural beauty and offering places to escape the madness of the world.
For the current iteration, Natalia offers strands of previous themes to the region design, as well as offering something entirely new with a touch of south of the border, down Mexico way.
Broken, August 2020
Surrounded by the high sandstone mesas of an off-region surround, and ringed at it edge by a slightly broken circle of rocks and plateaus that, from ground level appear to blend with the surround, the majority of the region sits as flat grasslands, dried and risking a turn towards yellow under the Sun. Joshua and Junipers with a mix of cacti give a further sense that the region sits on the edge of an arid region – one perhaps just beyond the surrounding rocks and mesas – although it is kept from drying out completely courtesy of the rive that sluggishly cuts though it.
The landing point sits offset somewhat from its centre, sitting close to a little adobe village built around a fountained-topped plaza. painted in different colours from yellow to a dour brown.
Broken, August 2020
The little houses may only be shells, but this is intentional, as they are really there to provide places to sit – and such places are one of the familiar elements found within Natalia’s designs. The majority of this seating in on the roofs, although a courtyard between three of the houses offers ground-level seating, while tables and chairs on the stone slabs of the little square are set with tables and chairs, an a outdoor tequila bar to one side offers refreshments.
Just beyond the incomplete wall of the village and across the other side of the landing point, sits a little church. Flat-topped, it may still have a row of bells strung from a metal frame, but this chapel is unlikely to be a place of worship now. The pews have all long gone, and the old upright piano that may have once accompanied hymns is now left with only a rusting lamp and crates of empty, ageing beer bottles for company.
Broken, August 2020
Horses are another motif from past Broken designs, and they can again be found here, out on the grasslands, brazen drinking from the village fountain and even keeping watch from up on a high peak, a couple of chairs close by for those wishing to do the same.
Indeed, such is the lie of the land that those who have a wearable horse might be tempted to slip it on and take to the hoof to explore. This is something this iteration of Broken has in common with the the August 2019 version, and is a manner of exploration that I can again recommend this time around, offering as it does a way of discovering all the various seating points in the region in a manner entirely in keeping with the setting – although admittedly, there are a couple of seating areas not well suited to horseback access!
Broken, August 2020
As is always the case with Broken, this is another engaging design from Natalia, one worth spending time exploring and enjoying, although for photography, you might want to experiment with environment settings.
Cherished Melody: the waterside walk and Featured Artist gallery beyond, with one of the new studios just visible to the left
A week ago I wrote about one of the things that is keeping be busy – the consolidation work to unify the Phoenix Artists Collaboration (PAC) into a single location.
Well, a week is a long time in Second Life 🙂 , and it finally looks as if the major work is over and I’ll be getting back to more regularly scheduled blogging. The core of the building / landscaping is now done, and the work of transitioning artists from Holly Kai Park to Cherished Melody can shortly begin.
The view from the events space outside the PAC Gallery
It’s been an interesting project; with some 31 artists at Holly Kai Park, and 22 at Cherished Melody within an established setting, it was important we try to bring things together in a way the maintained the look and feel of what Audie had already established, whilst acknowledging we would also need to find space for at least one gallery for group exhibitions, and provide an events space for openings, etc.
Overall, and if I say so myself – and allowing for the fact a little bit of squeezing had to be carried out – thing seem to have turned out pretty well.
In all, Cherished Melody now has 52 indoor studios and two outdoor display areas for our 3D artists. In addition, we’ve actually managed to fit not one, but two gallery spaces into the location. One of these will be the PAC group gallery for exhibitions featuring group members, the second a Featured Artist / special exhibitions gallery (although the space can potentially be re-purposed to provide additional indoor / outdoor studio space, if that becomes a requirement). I’ve also bee able to work in a garden area for pop-up art displays by group members and their friends – although again, the current layout of this area is subject to revision, as it needs a little more brainstorming!
The revised Cherished Melody layout from the air
Most importantly, the work has allowed the water aspects of the setting to be maintained, particularly to the west, but also on the east side as well, with the two bodies of water connected through the water around the landing point that I hope adds to the sense of space within the setting. Admittedly, some of the new studios had to be places somewhat closer together – such is the nature of things – and this can be seen on the south side, where I took a courtyard design Audie used as my lead, but even in these spaces, incoming artists from Holly Kai Park should have a greater sense of space than their former home.
If you are a PAC member at Holly Kai Park, you’re welcome to hop over an take a look – but please, not we’re not quite ready for artists to start claiming spaces, so don’t lay down prims or anyone or start setting up just yet: we’ll let all of you know once we’re ready. Those who are curious about what’s been going on at Cherished Melody are also welcome to come have a look around.
The PAC Gallery, which has an open-air event space before it
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 