Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week ending Sunday, May 15th, 2022
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: version version 6.5.5.571282, – formerly the MFA RC viewer, dated April 26, promoted Wednesday, May 4th – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Performance Improvements RC viewer version 6.6.0.571736, May 12.
Makgeolli Maintenance RC viewer (Maintenance M) viewer, version 6.5.6.571575, May 12.
Project viewers:
Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.
Tilheyra, May 2022 – click any image for full size
Tilheyra (the name being Icelandic for “belong”) is a Full region utilising the private region land capacity bonus to offer a mixed public / residential environment. Designed by T Lefevre (Teagan Lefevre) to showcase her TL Designs brand, it was brought to my attention by Shawn Shakespeare.
Whilst it may well have an Icelandic word for its name, it shouldn’t be inferred that this is in any way an Icelandic themed setting. Quite simply put, it isn’t; rather, it drawing on influences from across northern Europe to produce an engaging, picturesque environment – albeit one with the potential to give some a few viewer issues when visiting.
Tilheyra, May 2022
Given the public / private nature of the setting, effort has wisely been put into keeping the two somewhat separated: the major public elements of the region sit to the north on an island of their own, a broad channel separating them from the larger part of the region, wherein can be found the rental properties – together with some further, more rural public spaces -, with the two connected via a stone bridge.
The landing point sits at the western end of the public island, sitting alongside a small pond shaded by trees. A walled path passing under a glass roof points the way to where steps climb up to a paved terrace, the home of a garden café. Two sets of steps run down from this, one into the main street running the length of a small business district, the other down to a promenade running eastwards and directly above the channel separating the two islands.
Tilheyra, May 2022
There’s a lot to take in along this little township, with various businesses (including the local rental office) among the building façades. Most of the businesses are built around the three sides of a little square within its own pond. Meanwhile, the promenade offers a pleasant walk along the waterfront, complete with steps down to a small wharf and views across to the southern island.
The eastern end of the island is dominated by a café bar with a walled outdoor seating area sitting beyond the bar building (the café part fronts the promenade). This seating area in turn gives way to a rugged headland guarded by a pergola that makes for a cosy retreat for couples at one end, and a deck running down to the water on the other.
Tilheyra, May 2022
Across the bridge, the southern island is far more rural; grass bridleways replace paved roads. As noted, this island is home to the region’s rental homes (and what may be a couple of other private residences – these are without rental signs but sit inside their own parcels, so without actually trespassing, I was unable to tell), so exploring should be tempered by the need to avoid intruding on people’s privacy. However, there are some public spaces here as well.
Chief among the latter is a stone walk leading down to an over-the-water deck and, somewhat opposite it along one of the bridleways, the ruins of a old house, perhaps once a manor home for the local land-owner, but which now remains only as a few broken walls within which sits a gorgeous wild garden and retreat.
Tilheyra, May 2022
The problems I referred to at the top of this piece come down to the fact that this is a region that is texture heavy – and many of those textures appear to be high resolution. This can make rendering scenes somewhat painful for those on mid-to-low end systems; even with DD reduced from my usual 256 to 128m and with shadows disabled, I had both issues with slow texture loading and texture thrashing (textures swapping from sharp to blurred and back – the first time I’ve had this on a persistent basis for a while) on my 4Gb GTX 970 (hardly the most modern GPU, I know – but pretty middle-of-the road for SL). So, if you are on a less-capable system, do be prepared to make some viewer adjustments.
Nevertheless, Tilheyra offers an engaging visit, and plenty of opportunities for photography.
An image of the super-massive black hole (SMBH) at the centre of our galaxy, as released by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team, May 12th, 2022. Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO) / EHT
On Thursday May 12th, 2022, the consortium of global observatories that calls itself the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) announced it had successfully imaged the super massive black hole (SMBH) residing at the centre of our galaxy. It’s not the first time such a SMBH has been imaged – EHT captured the first direct look at one back in 2019, when it observed the black hole at the centre of the supergiantelliptical galaxyMessier 87 (M87*, pronounced “M87-Star”) 55 million light years away, but is still a remarkable feat.
Sitting at the centre of our galaxy and a “mere” 27,000 light years from Earth, Sagittarius A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A Star” or Sgr A*, and so-called because it lies within the constellation of Sagittarius close to the boundary with neighbouring of Scorpius when viewed from Earth) is some 51.8 million km in diameter and has an estimated mass equivalent to 4.154 million Suns.
A composite image showing three of the radio telescopes in the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Chile, aimed towards the heart of our galaxy and the location of Sgr A* (image inset). Note the fourth telescope in the background of the image is not aimed at the same point. Credit: ESO/José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org) / EHT
Because of its distance and size (in terms of SMBHs, it is actually fairly middling (M87*, by comparison has a mass somewhere between 3.5 and 6.6 billion Suns) and factors such as the volume of natural light and interstellar dust between Earth and Sqr A*, we cannot see it in the visible light spectrum.
However, we can detect the infra-red radiation from the space around it. This is important because black holes are surrounded by an accretion disk – material attracted by the gravity well of the black hole and which fall into an orbit around it just beyond the event horizon. This material is travelling as such massive speed, it creates high-energy radiation that can be detected.
Even so, gathering the necessary data to image an SMBH, even one as relatively close to Earth as Sgr A* or as incredibly huge as M87* (which is thousands of times bigger than Sgr A*) requires an extraordinary observation system. Enter the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).
This is actually a network of (currently) eleven independent radio telescopes around the world. It extends from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) in New Mexico, USA, down to the South Pole Telescope (SPT) located at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica; and from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Submillimeter Array, Hawaii to the Northern Extended Millimeter Array on the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps.
The EHT network of observatories. Credit: ESO / EHT via Wikipedia
Together, the telescopes work like this: as the Earth spins, the target object rises over the horizon for some of the telescopes, they all lock onto it with millimetre precision, and track it across the sky. As more telescopes in the network are able to join in, they do, while those passing beyond the point where they can see the target cease observations until the Earth’s rotation brings the object back into view.
This effectively turns Earth itself into a massive radio telescope using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), with all of the telescopes gathering an immense amount of data at resolutions far in excess of anything the individual telescopes could achieve. So much data, in fact, that the images of Sgr A* released by the EHT actually don’t do genuine justice.
This is because the total amount of image data gathered by EHT amounts to 3.5 petabytes (that’s equivalent to 100 million Tik Tok videos for the young ‘uns out there!). In order to produce images that could be easily transmitted over the Internet, this data had to be compressed and altered. In fact, the data volume was so huge, it was easier to remove the hard drives containing it and shipping them to the various centres around the world wanting to analyse the data, rather than trying to transmit the data between different locations!
The data were gathered over the course of multiple nights of observations performed by the telescopes in the network in 2017, and it has taken 5 years of analysis using a batch of super computers for the researchers to reach a consensus. This was in part due to the nature of Sgr A* itself. The EHT team had cut their teeth observing M87*, but in terms of imaging, Sqr A* is completely different, as EHT team member Chi-kwan Chan explains:
The gas in the vicinity of the black holes moves at the same speed – nearly as fast as light – around both Sgr A* and M87*. But where gas takes days to weeks to orbit the larger M87*, allowing us to gather consistent images over days. The material around the much smaller Sgr A* it completes an orbit in mere minutes. This means the brightness and pattern of the gas around Sgr A* were changing rapidly as we were trying to image it, so it was a bit like trying to take a clear picture of a puppy quickly chasing its tail.
– Chi-kwan Chan, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona
However, one thing did emerge as processing continued: despite being very different in almost every respect, both M87* and Sgr A* have produced images that are remarkably similar. That they do is seen as a further proof of Einstein’s theory of general relatively, with both accretion disks conforming to his predictions of what should be seen, despite the – no pun intended – massive differences in their nature.
And that’s the key factor in studies like this: they do much to help increase / confirm our understandings of the cosmos around us (or at least, reveal what we theorise to be the case is actually the case). With M87* and Sgr A*, the data gathered are allowing scientists to formulate and model a “library” of different simulated black holes. This library in turn enables researchers test the laws of physics under different domains and offer opportunities to better understand the formation, life and death of galaxies and the very nature of SMBHs themselves, which are believed to be the “powerhouses” of massive galaxies.
Despite being – quite literally – massively different and exhibiting very different natures, when imaged in the infra-red, M87* (55 million light years away at the heart of the M87 galaxy) and Sgr A* (27,000 light years away at the heart of our galaxy) produce remarkably similar images, both of which conform to Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Credit: ESO / EHT
One of the things the EHT observations of Sgr A* have confirmed is that it is actually quite “tame”. In contrast to the idea of the black hole “sucking in” any and all material straying too close to it, it does nothing of the sort – and this appears to be typical for black holes of all sizes.
If Sagittarius A* were a person, it would consume a single grain of rice every million years. Only a trickle of material is actually making it all the way to the black hole. Sagittarius A* is giving us a view into the much more standard state of black holes: quiet and quiescent. M87 was exciting because it was extraordinary in size and power. Sagittarius A* is exciting because it’s common.
– Michael Johnson, Harvard/Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics
Raglan Shire, Second Life’s Tiny community, has once again opened its doors to people from across the grid as participating artists and visitors are invited to the Raglan Shire Artwalk 2022.
This year, the the event runs from Sunday, May 15th, through until Sunday, June 19th, 2022. It offers an opportunity not just to appreciate a huge range of art from both the physical and digital worlds, but to also tour the Shire regions and enjoy the hospitality of the Raglan Shire community.
A non-juried exhibition, the Artwalk is open to any artist wishing to enter, and has minimal restrictions on the type of art displayed (one of the most important being all art is in keeping with the Shire’s maturity rating). All of this means that it offers one of the richest mixes of SL art displayed within a single location in Second Life, with 2D art is displayed along the hedgerows of the Shire’s pathways and tree platforms overhead and 3D art among the community’s parks.
Raglan Shire Artwalk 2022: Marcel Mosswood and Barry Richez
Each year attracts well over a hundred SL artist – and this year is no exception. The depth and range of art on display is guaranteed to keep visitors exploring the paths and walks around the through the hedgerows – and if walking proves a little much, there are always the Shire’s tours to ease the load on the feet.
Also, teleport boards are provided to help people find their way around the exhibition spaces. However, given this is an opportunity to visit and appreciate Raglan Shire, I do recommend exercising your pedal extremities and doing at least some of your exploration on foot – just keep in mind people do have their homes in the regions as well.
Given the number of artists involved, there isn’t a published list of participants, but anyone interested in the world of SL art is bound to recognise many of the names of the artists here. The Artwalk is also a marvellous way to see art from both our physical and digital worlds and for catch artists both familiar and new to your eye. Just don’t try to see it all at once; the Artwalk is open for a month, which gives plenty of time for browsing and appreciating the art without feeling overloaded.
Raglan Shire Artwalk: someone called “Pey” … 🙂
SLurl Details
All of the Raglan Shire Artwalk regions are rated General)
The following notes were taken from the video recording by Pantera (embedded at the end of this piece, my thanks to her as always for recording the meetings) of the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting on Friday, May 13th, 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and dates for them can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
Important: as from this meeting, the TPV Developer meeting has moved to a four-week schedule.
Please note that this is a summary of the key topics discussed during the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript of either. However, the video does provide a complete recording of the TPVD meeting, and timestamps to the relevant points within it are included in the notes below.
The Makgeolli Maintenance RC viewer (Maintenance M) viewer updated to version 6.5.6.571575.
The Performance Improvements RC viewer updated to version 6.6.0.571736.
On Tuesday, May 10th, the Performance Floater and Auto-FPS project viewer updated to version 6.5.4.571296.
The rest of the currently available official viewer versions remain as:
Release viewer: version version 6.5.5.571282 – formerly the MFA RC viewer, dated April 26, promoted Wednesday, May 4th – NEW.
Project viewers:
Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
The Performance Improvements RC viewer remains the next in line for promotion to de facto release status, the latest update to this viewer awaiting data on crash rates prior to potentially being promoted.
MFA Enforcement: the eventual plan with multi-factor authentication (MFA) is to “enforce” it for all users who have opted-in to using it so that when logging-in to SL on a viewer without MFA support, they will see a message requesting they either swap to using one with MFA support or disable MFA from their Second Life account dashboard.
It is not clear when such enforcement will commence. However, the official viewer, Catznip, Kokua and Cool VL are all known to support MFA, and an MFA version of Firestorm is in the works, so it is likely that the “enforcement” could come in the relatively near future.
There will be no change to logging into the viewer for users who have not opted to use MFA or who decided to disable it on their account.
https://viewer-login.agni.lindenlab.com/ is a URL referenced in the viewer log-in code, but is currently a redirect and not actually used. LL is therefore planning on removing it.
This work is currently focused on implementing a new materials asset type that will allow materials surfaces created utilising the PBR workflow to be imported to SL and then applied to their desired object face(s).
LL hopes that creators using PBR will also supply textures entries (e.g. a diffuse map + normal & specular maps (if required) + associated parameters as we know them today in the build floater) so that systems / clients that cannot / do not run the supporting PBR code can display these texture entries instead, rather than leaving objects with blank faces.
It has been suggested than any such use of “fallback” texture entries be an automated process, rather than something that has to be done manually by the creator.
Longer term, there will be some form of LSL support for this as well, although the extent of this has yet to be fully determined. However, it is liable to be along similar lines to texture application using LSL.
Once defined, the materials assets will be stored using the glTF 2.0 specification.
Reflection Probes / Environment Maps
A parallel piece of work is adding sport to SL for reflection probes to update the generation of the environment maps (because the current cube mapping used by SL is limited and would not work will with PBR).
The key point here is that the introduction of reflection probes + updated cube maps will work with both “PBR” and “legacy” content.
This work has been underway for the last couple of weeks, including input from some content creators / viewer developers.
“Outdoor” probes will likely be subject to automated placement, but with a hierarchy applied such that they don’t override probes placed inside structures.
General Notes
In terms of user testing, the approach to this work is similar to that taken with Mesh:
Testing will initially be carried out on Aditi (the beta grid) as things develop, allowing various “PBR” and “legacy” content to be uploaded and tested, well before anything is implemented on the main grid or made widely available to users through the viewer.
Content creators wishing to test content are strongly advised to join the Discord discussions and join in with testing from there.
glTF mesh objectuploads: this is on the roadmap of things the Lab would like to include in the initial project. However, depending on how work progresses and time frames imposed, it may not form a part of the initial work that is shipped and slip to being “tackled at some point”.
[Video 21:09-23:30] The simulator fixes for off-line Group and Friend invites failing to update following acceptance should be surfacing on the RC channels in week #20.
[Video 22:44-27:40] a discussion on rigged meshes and bounding boxes focused on a change that was made to overcome issues of people creating oversized bounding boxes for their rigged meshes in order to avoid providing LODs (and forcing the viewer to always render them at a performance impact) that was recently reverted.
Runitai Linden explained that the revision was actually the result of changes made within the Performance Improvements Viewer that clashed with the rigged mesh bounding box changes, and that there is still an open issue to ensure the rigged mesh bounding box is always an appropriate size.
This rolled into a broader discussion on the complexities of rigged mesh visual size, scaling, bounding boxes / LODs selection, impact of the animation system, etc.
[Video 28:04-End] The above leads into a discussion on LODs in general and the idea of auto-LODding content vs. (good and bad) custom LOD creation (and what constitutes “good” LOD modelling – e.g. basing on surface area or triangle count?), LOD / LI conflicts, and trying to strike an equitable balance such that LODs can be “properly” defined and used.
As this discussion covers a lot of ground, I refer those interested to the video.
RelayStock runs to Second Life from Friday, May 13th through Sunday, May 15th inclusive, once again bringing a weekend of Peace Love and Hope and great music as the 2022 to help raise funds for Relay For Life of Second Life and the world-wide work of the American Cancer Society (ACS).
Paying homage to the summer of 1969 and all that was Woodstock, RelayStock is hosted by the RFL team of SL Relay Rockers and brings together Relay teams from all across across Second Life for a celebration of the Relay season. Teams raise their banners above makeshift tents and old VW campers as they gather for the three days of music and fun – and we’re all invited!
15:00 – Biology Club
16:30 – DJ Scottland
18:00 – Quartz: LIVE
19:00 – DJ Corruptor Annamemnon
10:30 – DJ Melina Firehawk
12:00 Noon – DJ Stormy Dench
13:00 – Keeba & Tiny Maniacs: LIVE
14:00 – DJ Cynthia Farshore
15:30 – DJ Marius
17:00 – DJ Myst.Xi
18:30 – DJ Dulcinea
10:00 – DJ Primi
11:30 – DJ Caesey
13:00 – Max Kleene: LIVE
14::00 – Todd Rutth: LIVE
15:00 – DJ Kayla
17::00 – DJ Trader Whiplash
Bid Lindens (and Moles!) Bald
2022 marks the 6th year that the Lindens have joined in the fun at RelayStock through Bid a Linden Bald (BALB), a further way of raising funds by bidding to see a team of Lindens and Moles go bald (in-world!) for a month.
This year, BALB opens the the start of RelayStock and runs through until May 19th, when the losing team will face the scissors! 2022 see a total of five mixed teams of Lindens and Moles participating, and bidders again determine who lose their hair by making donations (aka “bidding”) to the kiosk(s) of the team (or teams!) they don’t want to see in-world with depilated domes.
RelayStock 2022: Bid a Linden Bald
The five teams from the Lab / LDPW participating this year comprise:
Team 2: Signal, Kreide, Mister Mole, Madori, Chipper, Obi, Cosmic, Simon
Team 3: Patch, Vanessa, Kady, CyndiB, Star Mole, Theresa, Whitney, Cammy
Team 4: Derrick, Sequoia, Jbo, Milli Mole, Frosty, Wendi, Kit
Team 5: Maximus Mole, Anna Mole, Vix, Volo, Spots, Dottie, Tommy
Last year the Linden and Mole teams combined to raise L$840,639, or US $3,361, raising the event’s all-time total to more than L$3.5 million.
RelayStock Linden Bears and Relay Rock Cows
This year, as well as making donations to the BALB team kiosks, people can also participate BALB by purchasing a Limited Edition RelayStock Linden Bear pack. Offered at L$250, each pack contains a pair of bears: one free standing and the other huggable. To obtain a pack, simply pay the vendor alongside the kiosk for the Linden / Mole BALB team you wish to support, and accept your bears!
Also available this year are the Relay Rocker Collectable Hero Cows. Offered at L$50 there are 6 to collect, or for L$150, you can get all 6 + a special bonus Hero Cow. Find their vendors (show below) on the hay bales a short walk along the track from the BALB area.
RelayStock 22: Relay Rocker Collectable Cows
So, let the spirit of the Age of Aquarius enter your life this weekend, don your kaftan (and galoshes!), put flowers in your hair and head on over to RelayStock for great music, great dancing, great fun – all in a good cause!
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 