Day: October 15, 2020

2020 CCUG meeting week #42 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
La Vie, September 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, October 15th 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.

There was a lot of general discussion about animation synchronisation, cloud uplift (the majority of which I’ve already reported in my SUG and TPVD meetings of late), etc., none of which should out as really reportable.

SL Viewers

Default Viewer

The Mesh Uploader viewer, version 6.4.10.549686, was promoted to de facto release status on Wednesday, October 14th. This viewer provides additional information on mesh models prior to upload, with contributions from Beq Janus from the Firestorm team and also revisions by the Lab’s viewer team. Cosmetic changes with this viewer include:

  • Upgrade to preview resolution to 1024×1024.
  • Scalable preview window.
  • Fixed display of colours in preview.
  • Adjustment of colours to better correlate to in world (yellow frame of mesh, blue tint physics).
  • Rearrange UI elements to give more space for the preview even when not scaled up.

Informational changes  in this viewer include two new boxes: cost breakdown and physics breakdown – these provide access to information that has always been available to the viewer form the upload costs update message but were not previously shown to the user.

Legacy Profiles

The Legacy Profiles viewer (version 6.3.2.530836 at the time of writing) has been stuck awaiting a web-side update, but as the web team are all focused on Uplift work, attempts are being made to work around the delay in order to get the viewer moving again.

Graphics

  • Work has resumed at looking towards a replacement for OpenGL, particularly as a result of Apple’s plans to deprecate all support for it on their systems.
    • Vulkan had been an option under examination, and additional logging was added to the viewer to help identify how many users are on systems capable of running it.
    • It now turns out that a rather high number of users (up to a 1/3 of all users) are running Second Life systems that do not have support for Vulkan (e.g. those 5+years old, and notably systems with Intel integrated graphics).
    • As a result other options are also being looked at, as is the potential for supporting people on older hardware separately to those using systems capable of running with more recent graphics APIs – although this is an option the Lab would approach with caution, due to the added complexities in maintenance.
  • In addition, the graphics team is looking to see if the viewer UI rendering can be divorced from other aspects of viewer rendering to see if any performance improvements can be obtained by keeping the two separate – currently, a lot of cycles are taken up in the drawing of things like UI panels and buttons.

Jellydoll / ARCTan

  • Vir has been working on some updates to the Project Jelly viewer (version 6.4.10.549690 at the time of writing).
  • This viewer is a series of performance improvements related to Jellydoll avatars, and the additional work should be appearing in an update to the project viewer soon. After that, Vir is hoping to completely re-focus on the ARCTan work, which will eventually fold-in the Jellydoll work as well.
  • Should he be able to switch back to ARCTan, the work will remain split between avatar rendering (to be tackled first), and then in-world object rendering to follow along at some point after.
  • The work on avatar rendering will initially be focused on the data gathering aspect and better refining the avatar complexity calculations, followed by UI work to deliver more meaningful and consistent information to users about the rendering impact of their own avatar and those around them.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, October 29th, 2020.

Cica’s Halloween in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Halloween by Cica Ghost

Cica is back with her October 2020 build, and given the time of year, she’s presenting Halloween. However, rather than going all dark and gloomy with things that go bump in the night and nasty things hiding in the shadows, she offers something very different: a homage to the the genius of a film-maker known for his unique style of fantasy / horror storytelling that’s mixed with Cica’s trademark lightness and whimsy.

That focus  of the homage is given away by the quote Cica offer with the installation:

Every day is Halloween isn’t it? For some of us.

– Tim Burton

And indeed, set out across the region is a series of little vignettes, many of which feature characters that may have popped out of the consciousness of Mr. Burton. They are all going about their business in this landscape of graveyards, pumpkin patches and strange little houses that appear to have grown, rather than having been built.

Halloween by Cica Ghost

Round-eyed and slender, these are characters who carry on their skull-like faces grins that appear genuinely happy as they go about their business, be it stroking a cat, pulling a pumpkin-filled cart, riding a swing, playing a piano or some other endeavour. Like many of Burton’s characters, while their appearance may be drawn from the ideas of horror, they carry a natural attractiveness that encourages us to wander among them.

However, they are not the only attraction here. There are lots of little touches that add depth to the setting: flowers that will cause you to consider the term “spider plant” in a new way, crows that watch over everything with mischievous look in their eyes, and footprints that magically creep across the ground whilst eyes stare out of some windows, suggesting menace whilst none appears.  And do keep watch for the rooftops that occasionally hinge upwards – they have a little surprise of their own.

There’s also interactive elements throughout the region waiting to be found as well, one of which carries a little touch of the macabre as it brings a whole new meaning to the words “dancing on a grave”, while for those who are taken by the folk occupying the region, a little shop offers the chance to purchase them, together with several of the other characters to be found at various points. And if the pumpkins in the patch take your fancy, they can be purchased directly from there.

Halloween by Cica Ghost

Finished in a semi-monochrome environment, Halloween is another Cica delight. So, if you fancy something a little more whimsical for your Halloween, be sure to pop over – it’ll be there for the rest of the month!

SLurl Details