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Updates from the week ending Sunday, April 11th
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
Release viewer: Custom Key Mappings RC viewer, version 6.4.17.557391, dated March 24th, promoted March 27th – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Eau de Vie Maintenance RC updated to version 6.4.18.557782, dated April 12th.
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer updated to version 6.4.18.557797, dated April 7th.
Hi Inara! I hope you’re well. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie Summer of 42, but I’ve created a new region based on the story. I hope you can make it by one day.
– Justice Vought
So came the invitation from Justice Vought, owner of Oxygen (see: Getting some :oxygen: in Second Life) and also the engaging Once Upon A Time, celebrating Second Life’s most famous residents, the Greenies, and Chocolate Factory, a homage to both Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder (1971), and 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp. Given this heritage, I hopped over to take a look as soon as time allowed.
For those unfamiliar with the 1971 film, it is a coming of age story written by screenwriter Herman Raucher, recalling the time when, as a teenager, he spent a summer vacation on Nantucket Island in 1942 and falls for a newly-married woman, Dorothy, whose husband has gone to England to fight in the war.
Summer of ’42
The film is noted for its haunting soundtrack by Michel Legrand and bitter-sweet story. It started as a means for Raucher to honour his childhood friend, Oscar Seltzer (“Oscy” in the film), who had been killed whilst serving as a medic during the Korean War. However, circumstance turned the story into a tale of the first adult experience of Raucher’s life.
The story uses a number of Nantucket locations – the town, the beach, the house where Dorothy shares for a short time with her husband before he departs for the war – and where Raucher most frequently sees her and has his final encounter with her (they would not have any contact for some thirty years after the – for Raucher – life-changing summer).
Summer of ’42
These aspects of the film are all engagingly interpreted by Justice within :Oxgyen: Summer of ’42, a homestead region directly adjoining :Oxygen: (you can cross between them via a wooden bridge, with the north side of :Oxygen: forming a backdrop to the landing point). Here, on the waterfront, stand the figures of two young boys – perhaps Hermie and Oscy from the film, possibly awaiting the arrival of their mutual friend Benjie.
From here, it is a short walk around to main street, with its post office, garage and movie theatre – which is showing Summer of ’42 alongside a film from the period of the film’s setting: Casablanca, and several other movies besides; some of which were actually made after 1942, such as It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), whilst others serve as neat little Easter eggs for Juctice’s work.
The street looks out over a wind-blown landscape with a smattering of trees, their backs bent against the wind that clearly passes over the setting. It’s a largely barren but photogenic view, dominated by a low hill on which a single wooden house stands, representing the house in which Dorothy lived and in and around which Hermie has his encounters with her. The house in turn looks down over a sweep of beach – perhaps the beach on which Oscy, Benjie and Hermie first saw Dorothy and her husband before the latter’s departure. The beach is again a photogenic setting.
Summer of ’42
However, it is inside the house that treasure is to be found, containing as it does touches that most directly draw on the the film’s poignant final scenes between Hermie and Dorothy.
These occur shortly after Dorothy has learned her husband has been killed in action and is dealing with her grief as Hermie arrives. These scenes are represented through the perfect use of props within the house – the record player, the table with ashtray and curling smoke, the mantelshelf photograph of a young US Army Air Corps pilot and another of his wife, sharing the space with a box brownie camera that may have been used to take one of them.
Summer of ’42
Most of all, there is the envelope, doubtless containing the telegram informing Dorothy of her husband’s death, complete with his service dog tags. Here, as can be found elsewhere on the island, are pointers to the film – a poster on the wall, and the soundtrack lying among a pile of records. A further nice touch is the book on the table with the letter, offering a reminder that as well as producing the film’s screenplay, Raucher also turned the story into a novel.
There are a few anachronisms to be found in the region – vehicles manufactured after 1942, references to films films of the 70s, etc. However, these do not ruin the atmosphere of the setting; some of them can be put down to the availability of period props, whilst others – as noted – offer nice little Easters eggs for the things that have influenced Justice in his region builds, and the builds themselves.
Summer of ’42
And of course, the bridge to :Oxygen: means that the keen explorer can extend their visit by touring there as well. However, I’ll save that for another time.
Mars 2020 mission Sol 46 (April 6th), 2021, a series of 62 images captured using the WATSON imager on the robot arm of the Perseverance rover were used to create this “selfie” of the rover “looking” at the camera, then back at the Ingenuity helicopter sitting on the ground some 4 metres away. Credit: NASA/JPL
NASA has delayed the first flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars after the vehicle detected an issue during one of its pre-flight tests.
For the past week, the agency has been preparing the little helicopter drone, part of the Mars 2020 mission, for the first of a series of 5 pre-planned test flights within Jezero Crater. It had been hoped the flight could take place on Sunday April 11th / Monday April 12th, 2021 (depending on where you are in the world); however it will now not take place until Wednesday, April 14th at the earliest.
After being dropped on the surface of Jezero Crater by the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (see my previous space Sunday report), Ingenuity successfully recharged its batteries using solar energy and survived its first night alone on Mars without incident. This was a major milestone for the project, as there were fears that if the batteries couldn’t be fully charged and generate sufficient heat, the extreme cold of the Martian night could freeze the vehicle’s electronics, and even crack the batteries themselves.
Since that first night, the helicopter has shown it can keep itself warm and the flight team has spent the week conducting a range of pre-flight checks, including unlocking Ingenuity’s pair of contra-rotating propellers and then testing them under power and at low speeds, then speeding up to higher speeds, including an attempt to reach the 2400 rpm required for take-off.
Part of testing Ingenuity included taking a low-resolution image via its downward-looking camera system while it was still sitting under the rover. April 3th, 2021 / Sol 42. Credit NASA/JPLAll of these tests were completed successfully, with the exception of the final full-speed test attempted on Friday, April 9th. This aborted during the phase when the command programme on Ingenuity was supposed to switch from “pre-flight” to “flight” mode, as will be required ahead of the actual flights. However, a guardian “watchdog” timer designed to oversee the correct execution of command sequences expired before the switch-over occurred, prompting Ingenuity to safely shut-down its motor and await further instructions from Earth.
Following a full evaluation of telemetry received following the curtailed test, the flight team were confident that no actual damage had occurred to the helicopter, stating the full spin-up test of the rotors would be postponed and the flight itself delayed until April 14th. They also indicated that assuming the first flight was completed without incident, the second flight will take place on Sunday, April 18th.
The rotor tests took place once Perseverance was well clear of the helicopter – the rover is gradually making its way to the look-out point where it will record Ingenuity’s flights. However, before it did so, engineers took the opportunity to use the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the rover’s robot arm to capture a series of 62 images that were stitched together to produce a picture of Perseverance apparently “looking” back at the helicopter using its mast cam imaging systems, and which can be seen at the top of this article.
Another image Perseverance took that recently caused excitement was one that appeared to show a “rainbow” arcing across the dusty Martian sky. Captured on April 4th (Sol 43), the image spread quickly across social media, as did the “rainbow” explanation.
Captured on April 4th (Sol 43), this image via the rear-facing Hazcam system on Perseverance caused excitement in the media, being described as a “rainbow”. However, it wasn’t any such thing, as NASA was forced to explain. Credit: NASA/JPL
The only problem being, rainbows are impossible on Mars, as NASA quickly stepped in to note through social media:
Many have asked: Is that a rainbow on Mars? No. Rainbows aren’t possible here. Rainbows are created by light reflected off of round water droplets, but there isn’t enough water here to condense, and it’s too cold for liquid water in the atmosphere.
Rather, the “rainbow” was the result of lens flare – light being scattered by the lens of the Hazcam (HAZard avoidance CAMera) that captured the image, to strike the imaging sensor in multiple places like an arc of machine-gun bullets. Such effects are prevented on the front-facing Hazcams (the ones most frequently used by the rover, as they are equipped with sunshades; however, similar shades were deemed superfluous on the rear-facing Hazcams, and so lens flares like this are actually quite common should the system be in use and the Sun happens to be in the right position.
It is a little over a year since Rose (RoseHanry) was last at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, operated and curated by Dido Haas (see: Rose’s Feelings at Nitroglobus) However, her return for April 2021 brings with it an exhibition that might be considered something of a thematic continuation of that last exhibition.
In her previous exhibition at the gallery Rose dealt with images intended to convey an emotional narrative – and with White Noise, her new exhibition at Nitroglobus, that narrative is very much continued, albeit it very much more sharply defined. Thus – and assuming she will allow me to express it in this way – where Feelings might be said to be the introduction to that narrative, White Noise, presented in a style that is entirely its own, offers something of a “second chapter” with its own nuance and focus.
Nitroglobus roof Gallery: White Noise
The central theme of this collection is that of dealing with life’s worries and problems – or more correctly, how we can become so obsessed with the issues of the week / day / hour / moment, we can’t actually see our way past them; we become blind to the world around us and thus, potentially to any means of resolving whatever those problems might be.
In reflection of this, the pieces Rose offers in White Noise comprise a set of avatar studies, each of them rendered as a drawing. Each one conveys a distinct mood or reaction or emotion that can be all to readily identified by anyone who has felt overwhelmed by an issue that could otherwise be handled by stepped back from it, collecting thoughts and then facing it, or who has become so focused on a worry / fear that they have forgotten there are those around them who are ready and willing to help, if only they could see this is so.
Nitroglobus roof Gallery: White Noise
The emotional content of these pieces lies not only from the poses and rendering used for each image, but also from the overall framing. There is no backdrop to any of the images, just a white void. Against this light, the avatar is in some of the images strongly defined, bringing to the fore the very physical reactions we can have when problems overwhelm us – such as anxiety (White Noise 02), vulnerability (White Noise 05), or fear (White Noise 09). In others, the avatar appears partially lost against the all-pervading whiteness, thus evoking the sense of being overwhelmed or lost.
But why “white noise” as a title? In many circumstances (certain work or learning environments, dealing with illnesses such as tinnitus or simply trying to block the noise of passenger, and so on) white noise is known to be highly beneficial. Yet the very fact that it does have the power to overcome other frequencies can be damaging / harmful: the absence of noise can leave us focused solely on the absence of noise, leaving us feeling cut off from the world and alone. Thus the title perfectly reflects the theme of this exhibition, with the uses of the brilliant white backdrop within each image further underscoring this idea and the overall theme for the exhibit.
Nitroglobus roof Gallery: White Noise
Officially opening at 12:00 noon on Monday, April 12th, White Noise is available for preview now, and will run through until early May.
One of the things I like doing in SL is messing around with houses and homes, kitbashing and modding – as I’ve often yabbered on about in these pages. This fiddling has also included those Linden Homes I’ve utilised, again as I’ve tended to record here as well, as a part of my general coverage of Linden Homes in general.
I currently have an over-the-water Stilt Home, to which I applied a modest amount of modding to produce something a little more individual. However, the release of the Chalet style of Linden Home with its open-plan variants of each house style got me thinking about doing something more extensive by way of mods, notably with the Tortuga style of Stilt Home, the single-floor, largely open-plan layout of which just cries out to be played with.
So, over the past couple of days I’ve been fiddling around with ideas and looking at what might be done with the design.
Now of course, given the time the Stilt Homes have been out and available, there are likely a lot of conversion / add-on / bolt-on kits for this Theme that can be had through the Marketplace – just as there are for the Houseboats, et al – and these can provide the easiest solution. But fiddling for yourself can result in something far more personal, particularly if, like me, you having a rezzing system such as Ydille’s Multi Scene Rezzer & Multi Scene Erazer Pro V5 (reviewed here) in which to store your layouts so you can swap back and forth between them whenever you wish.
For those unfamiliar with it, the Tortuga Stilt Home is a single-floor design, with a large primary room and single separate room to the front. That large room, split somewhat by a rectangular arch is simply ideal for modding. In fact, that’s where I started: putting in a “proper” dividing wall and door within the existing arch.
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However, rather than put in a solid wall, which would look odd given the wooden trim around the archway, I opted to put in two wood-framed windows and matching sliding door. To achieve this, I used the 2 x 6 windowsfrom the ER Sunroom Windows Mesh Multipane kit by Ecko Riven (EckoRiven). At L$200 full permissions, this is an excellent and flexible builder’s kit that I’ve used in a number of my own conversions and scratch-builds. These I rotated through 90° to stand them vertically, with a third offset to form the central sliding door for which I wrote a simple script – if you’re not up to doing so yourself, take a look on the Marketplace, there’s bound to be a script there that will work for you.
With the “window” sections linked, a simple room divider of this nature weighs-in at just 3LI. And as a side note, given the additional doors provided by LL for use with the Stilt Homes come in at 3 LI apiece, I opted to duplicate my “sliding door” and use it for the single additional room in the Tortuga, changing the “glass” texture on it for something more “frosted” as I use that room as a bathroom. So, for 1 LI more than a supplied Stilt Home door, I gained a room divider and two doors.
As I said, a simple solution, splitting the Tortuga along obvious lines to provide a large “main” room space and a “bedroom” space. But for me it was just the start – the “main” room still felt a little too big, so I opted to split that as well.
Again, this was most easily done by following the shape of the house. With it’s “stepped” design around the front door, it’s easy to put in additional walls to create a “vestibule” area between the front door and the rest of the house. So as not to have this feel too claustrophobic, I extended 2 solid walls part-way across the space, then created a rectangular archway in the same style of the one built-in to the house. This allowed me to again add elements from the ER Sunroom Windows kit to keep things feeling somewhat open between “vestibule” and main room, particularly as I didn’t add a door.
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With the divider mentioned above linked to the new wall sections, I’d taken what was effectively a 2-room house and split it into a 4-room space.
From here it was just a matter of adding wall décor and other bits to the basic layout to give a more homely feel. Things like rugs, pictures on the wall, light fittings, and so on – even the fireplace – were all carefully linked into the overall design, helping to reduce the overall LI (see the notes at the end of Modding a house in Second Life: tips and pointers for info on what to look for when linking items like this if you’re unfamiliar with the technique, and what to avoid).
With an exterior chimney added to the exterior and in line with the fireplace, I had a complete interior for the house at 42 LI, sans actual furniture and kitchen fittings, but including a lighting system that follows the parcel’s EEP Day Cycle. The completed space offers a vestibule (which I used as a “home office”), a large open-plane lounge / kitchen / dining space in the main room, and a good-sized bedroom space.
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Nor is this the only option.
For example, if you’d like to keep more of the open plan feel to the house and don’t mind having a smaller bedroom, you can put a divider across the smaller section at the back of the house, creating a bedroom space that still has access to the rear deck, thus leaving you with a through room, allowing you have a separate kitchen, if you prefer or whatever else takes your fancy (in My case, room for my baby grand piano!).
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You could even, if you wanted, split this part of the Tortuga two ways, to provide an additional room between the “bedroom” and “bathroom” (if that’s how you use them) – but to me, this felt again very claustrophobic and can can leave the camera on the wrong side of one of the added walls / dividers.
I’ve admittedly not looked at the other Stilt Home styles to see just how amenable their interiors are to a similar degree of customisation – but I doubt the Santiago really gives much scope given its interior design, whilst both the Lauderdale and Havana both off some room for fiddling in the larger ground from room found in each. I might get around to having a play at some point, but to be honest, I think the Tortuga really is the most flexible of the four styles for those who like playing with things.
June is fast approaching, and with it, the 18th anniversary of Second Life being open to the public – an event market by the Second Life Birthday celebrations.
The Birthday will this year run from Thursday, June 17th through until Thursday, July 1st. As I’ve previously reported, exhibitor applications opened on Friday, March 19th.
More recently, applications for volunteers to fill the roles of greeters, hosts, or stage crew for the entertainment were opened, and on Friday, April 9th, applications for those wishing to perform at the event also opened.
Are you a DJ who can spin up a great party set? You might be one of the grid’s amazing Dance companies, or perhaps you’re a Particle Performer! Whatever your medium, we would love to hear from you.
– from the official Second Life blog post call for performers.
The theme for this year’s celebrations is simply given as “Hidden Worlds”, with the Lab noting:
Your exhibit does not need to stay in theme. If you are inspired by the thought of the hidden worlds around you, show us! Or, share your Second Life passions with us. Your interests. Your communities. Your worlds! Every year we celebrate because of you, the amazing and creative Residents, who have chosen to call Second Life home. What has drawn you into this world and what keeps you here? This year at the eighteenth annual Second Life Birthday, show us what fuels your Second Life and inspires you. Let’s go exploring!
Those wishing to participate as performers, volunteers or exhibitors can find the relevant application forms and requirements / policies / guidelines at the end of the following links:
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 