Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week ending Sunday, May 1st, 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 6.5.4.570575 – formerly the Lao-Lao Maintenance RC viewer, promoted Monday, April 18 – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Makgeolli Maintenance RC viewer (Maintenance M) viewer, version 6.5.5.570983, April 26.
Update, June 20th, 2022: Speaking at his Meet the Lindens session at SL19B, Patch Linden, VP of Land Operations, indicated that the fee for Event regions will remain at US $599 a month & no set-up fee. Summary notes with link to the video available here. However, the comments and thoughts originally offered towards the end of this piece remain unchanged, as they are historically relevant.
The number of avatars a region can support has often been a headache for those wishing to hold large-scale events – and something the Lab has long been aware of itself. Traditionally, to host a reasonably large number of avatars at a single event in comfort (e.g. 75+), it has often been necessarily to have two or four regions, with the stage space effectively straddling them.
However, during recent months, the Lab has been testing a new region type, capable of supporting relatively large numbers of avatars. This testing has included providing the new region product to a number of events in Second Life that have high numbers of avatars passing through them.
Most recently, when speaking at the VWBPE 2022¹, event, Patch Linden indicated that the new region type – called Event regions – were definitely on the product development roadmap.
On Monday, May 2nd, the Lab officially launched the Event region type via an official blog post, stating:
Have you ever dreamed of being able to hold large scale events in Second Life? Have you ever wished you could keep the lag monster at bay during large events? Perhaps you just want your scripts to all go vroom? Well wonder, wait and wish no more! Sporting the latest upgrades in grid technologies that have been enabled by our migration to the cloud, these regions have been tested running large events in real-world scenarios such as those really big monthly shopping events, and live performances! Our tests saw nearly 200 avatars successfully able to shop and party in these regions.
The post lists the capabilities / options that come with the new Event region product as:
A maximum avatar limit of 175 per Event region.
Up to 30,000 land impact.
While this region type will support up to 30,000 Land Impact, during testing, LL identified a few cases where exceeding 20,000 Land Impact will degrade performance with a large number of concurrent visitors.
Extended chat ranges upon request, allowing chat to travel further across the region.
RaaS: Rollbacks as a Service – Request to restore your region to a previous state as needed – some restrictions apply.
IaaS: Instancing as a Service – Request to have your region duplicated to another region.
White glove Concierge service.
Over 20% Improved script performance.
These new regions can be ordered by submitting a support ticket.
Pricing for these region types is somewhat surprising:
From now until June 6th, 2022, Event regions will be available at US $599 per month, with no set-up fee.
After June 6th, 2022, the fee will be:
US $999 for the first month (including a $100 set-up fee, which is slightly less than that for a Full region’s $120).
US $899 per month after the first 30 days.
I say “surprising” because while the initial “offer price” of US $599 does not sound entirely unreasonable given the added capabilities / support options, the $899 month tier most certainly does. Certainly, in terms of events, this latter price-point will likely place the cost of these regions well outside the budget of many events they might otherwise be well suited towards handling (e.g. a one-off weekend concert, for example).
Conversely, the US $599 price point, whilst high, is a lot more comfortable than US $899, and could encourage more widespread adoption of the new product across a range of potential uses over a much longer period of time among users (corporate partners, obviously, may not find the pricing an issue, if it encompasses them).
Even so, and in terms of pure events, I would have thought something along the lines of a pro-rata system based on the proposed length of use might have been more all-encompassing.
And turning to the capabilities and options offered with the new Event region product, there is one element in the bullet list that could do with further exposition: “Instancing as a Service” – as I enquired on the forum thread related to the announcement:
Does this genuinely mean simultaneous instancing, on an on-demand basis (e.g. I can simply request another instance of my event to be spun-up based on the demand I’m seeing – and request it is taken down when demand drops below the level where it is no longer required)?.
Is it limited to just the one instance (as the wording perhaps implies), or multiple instances?
Is instancing covered by the “original” region’s tier, or is a surcharge applicable? If so, how much?
Those with a similar interest in this aspect of the product should keep an eye on the thread for any official response.
In the meantime, complete information on the launch can be found in the official blog post.
On Monday, May 2nd, 2022, Linden Lab announced it has added two new leadership roles: those of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) – the first time that either role has been embodied within the company.
Interestingly, the news came not from the Lab (at the time of writing, the press release had yet to be officially posted) but via prnewswire.com. Both roles will embrace Second Life and Tilia, the Lab’s virtual economy payment processing platform.
Both roles will span across Linden’s full portfolio of businesses to support growth driven by the rapidly expanding consumer interest in metaverses and the technology platforms necessary to support them as well as other virtual worlds and marketplaces.
– Linden Research Inc.
Steven Feuling – Linden Lab’s new CMO
Taking on the role of CMO is Steven Feuling, a 30-year marketing veteran and former CEO. He has worked with and for some of the world’s best known brands including Microsoft, Bloomberg LLC, The Walt Disney Company, 20th Century Fox, E*Trade and General Motors, as well as several successful start-ups.
Having held senior roles with clients, agencies and media partners, most recently as President of MDC Partners’ Assembly, he offers a unique perspective to support both Second Life and Tilia. In his role as CMO, Feuling will oversee all marketing and communications efforts across the Lab’s portfolio.
Peter Capraro, joining the Lab as the new CISO, has spent nearly half of his career focused on financial services cybersecurity. Most recently, he was the deputy CISO at fintech start-up, Akoya, a spin-off from Fidelity Investments, and held security roles at Bank of America for 10 years.
Capraro’s wealth of experience within the cyber security space is seen as “instrumental” to the Lab’s information security and compliance initiatives, which span both Tilia and Second Life. In his role as CISO, he will serve as the strategic leader responsible for maintaining a corporate-wide information security programme to protect information assets, and ensure security for the company and it users.
Steven and Peter are filling critical roles for Linden Lab, as the virtual world landscape takes front stage again. Each of their respective expertise at both successful start-ups and world-renowned companies will have a tremendous impact on our leadership teams for both Second Life and Tilia.
– Brad Oberwager, Executive Chairman of Linden Research Inc
Love can be scary only because you realize you care about someone as much as you care about yourself. You open your hearth knowing that it could be broken, however being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure, joy and excitement, and make you feel that true bond and energy that is pulling you to belong to the other.
– from the introduction to Gravity at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2022
Over the years – as I recently noted in writing about the gallery’s 10th anniversary – Nitroglobus / Nitroglobus Roof Gallery has been the home to some of the most remarkable exhibitions of art I’ve witnessed in Second Life down the years; so much so that singling one out over the others is practically impossible. However, I have to say there is something very special to be found within Gravity, an exhibition of work by Lika Cameo that will be open throughout May 2022 at the gallery.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Lika Cameo, Gravity
An exploration of the nature of love, Gravity presents a series of images created by Lika that reflect, either individually or in groups of three, poems on the subject. The majority of the latter are by Celestial Demon, and are not what you might call “traditional” sonnets such as Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43. Rather, there are more deeply focused on specific emotions both light and dark that accompany out love for another.
The imagery created by Demon’s words is powerful; within the poems we can find obsession, freedom, contentment, happiness, need, desire, comfort … Along with them are three further poems on love. Two are by Pablo Neruda and the third is by Lika herself, and offer the aforementioned more traditional approach to expressing thoughts and reflections on the subject.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Lika Cameo, Gravity
Taken on their own, the poems offer considerable insight into the nature of love its push/pull / yin/yang nature it embodies.
Alongside of them, Lika’s art is literally poetry in images. As a mixed media artist, Lika has an extraordinary ability to offer expression and narrative through her pieces. Preferring to work in black-and-white / monochrome (there is one colour trio included in Gravity), she fully demonstrate this ability within this exhibition. There is a stunning richness of life and motion within every single piece on display, a richness that does more than reflect the emotions of the poems, it becomes a visual synonym for the emotions expressed within the poems.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery: Lika Cameo, Gravity
What is particularly stunning with Gravity is the mutualistic symbiosis between art and poetry. All of the pieces, whether singletons or trios, stand independent of the poems to which they have been paired, making this an exhibition that can be enjoyed purely as a visual immersion. Similarly, if one chooses to do so, the poems can be read and appreciated without reference to the images alongside time. When taken taken together, however, they mutually benefit one another and Gravity takes on a depth of life and meaning that captivates.
With this in mind, and while I could prattle on at length here about Gravity, I’m going to spare you and instead genuinely urge you to see the exhibition for yourself.
Debris Field From the Mars 2020 mission entry, descent and landing (EDL) systems as seen by the Ingenuity helicopter drone during its 26th flight on April 19th, 2022: to the left, the shattered backshell that helped protect rover and helicopter during entry in the Martian atmosphere. and to the right, the collapsed supersonic parachute that slowed the descent to subsonic speeds. Credit: NASA/JPL
Ingenuity, the Mars 2020 mission’s helicopter drone completed its 26th flight on April 19th, and it was something very special, as NASA revealed in a mission update published on April 27th.
As I reported in a recent Space Sunday article, the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance passed close to where its aeroshell – called the backshell – and the parachute used during the descent through the Martian atmosphere had landed after the rover and its rocket-powered skycrane had departed, and was able to image both from a distance at ground level. For its 26th flight, Ingenuity was tasked with flying over and around both backshell and parachute and taking a series of images.
Graphic showing the Mars 2000 EDL – entry decent and landing – and the use of the backshell and parachute. Credit: NASA/JPL
During the mission’s arrival on Mars in February 2021, both the aeroshell and the parachute performed vital roles. The former protected the rover and skycrane from the heat generated through the entry into Mars’ atmosphere and its supersonic descent, whilst the latter slowed that supersonic descent to subsonic speeds, allowing the rover and its rocket-propelled skycrane to drop free and fly clear.
Once separated, the backshell and parachute continued their descent and, in a very practical demonstration on why parachutes can only do so much in the tenuous atmosphere, reached the ground still travelling at an estimated 126 km/h. Hence while the conical backshell appears to have burst apart on impact.
The Mars 2020 mission backshell and supersonic parachute seen from Ingenuity as it traverses over the debris zone, April 19th, 2022. The black object, slight above centre on the left edge of the image is actually part of one of Ingenuity’s landing feet, not part of the backshell debris. This image has also been post-processed to give near-Earth normal lighting and colour definition. Credit: NASA/JPL
Imagining the backshell and parachute not only provides some stunning photographs, it also helps inform engineers on how well the hardware actually worked, and offer insights to help with upcoming missions – such as the Mars Sample Return mission, for which initial testing of elements of the EDL systems recently started.
Getting the images proved a fitting celebration for the first anniversary of Ingenuity’s maiden flight. Stating at 11:37 local time, with the Sun ideally placed to offer the best lighting, the 159-second flight saw the helicopter climb to a height of 8 metres before flying 192 metres to take its first image. It then moved diagonally across the debris zone, hovering to take a further nine images at pre-determined points. It then moved 75 metres clear of the debris field and landed, for a total flight distance of 360 metres, With the flight completed, Ingenuity had clocked up a total of 49 minutes flying time on Mars, with a total distance covered of 6.2 km.
A further view of the Mars 2020 mission backshell and supersonic parachute seen from Ingenuity on April 19th, 2022., seen under Mars daylight lighting. Credit: NASA/JPL
The images reveal the backshell survived its impact surprisingly well, and that its protective white covering also came through entry into the Martian atmosphere with very little heat scarring, while many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting it to the supersonic parachute are visible and appear intact.
Only around one-third of the 21.5 metre diameter parachute is visible, however. Whilst smothered in surface dust, the ‘chute appears completely undamaged by the supersonic airflow during inflation, and it is thought that only a third can be seen because of the way in which it collapsed onto itself after the backshell impacted.
Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown. But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.
– Ian Clark, Mars Sample Return Ascent Phase Lead
JWST Update
The James Webb Space Telescope has now completed all aspects of aligning the 18 segments of its massive primary mirror and is moving into the final phase of science instrument commissioning.
As I’ve previously reported in these pages, JWST, the most ambitious space telescope yet built, is located at the Earth-Sun L2 position, 1.5 million kilometres beyond the orbit of Earth relative to the Sun. In March the core work of aligning the 18 segments of the primary mirror was completed such that the telescope could capture crystal clear images in the infra-red directly through its optical systems.
However, and as I noted at the time, the process of commissioning the science instruments on the telescope would likely require further adjustments to ensure the everything is correctly aligned for science image processing. This work was the first formal step taken in the commissioning process for the science instrument suite once it had been powered up and had reached its required operating temperature range, and on April 28th, NASA confirm the month-long process of very fine final adjustments had been successfully completed, and the science team is now ready to move forward into the final phase of JWST’s commissioning: calibrating the instruments.
The optical performance of the telescope continues to be better than the engineering team’s most optimistic predictions. Webb’s mirrors are now directing fully focused light collected from space down into each instrument, and each instrument is successfully capturing images with the light being delivered to them. The image quality delivered to all instruments is “diffraction-limited,” meaning that the fineness of detail that can be seen is as good as physically possible given the size of the telescope. From this point forward the only changes to the mirrors will be very small, periodic adjustments to the primary mirror segment.
– NASA JWST press release, April 28th, 2022
This NASA image contains images from each of the major instruments on the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) to ensure the telescope’s mirrors are correctly aligned to allow all instruments to product perfect images. Credit: NASA/STScIThe completion of the alignment work came with the release of a set of images from each of the telescope’s science instruments, as shown above. These instruments are:
The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam): the primary imager covering the infra-red wavelength range 0.6 to 5 microns. It is capable of detecting light from the earliest stars and galaxies in the process of formation, star populations in nearby galaxies, the light from young stars in our own galaxy, and objects within the Kuiper Belt.
The Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec): primarily designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) NIRSpec will operate in tandem with NIRCam over the 0.6 to 5 micron wavelengths to reveal the physical properties of objects emitting light at those wavelengths.
The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI): also primarily the work ESA, MIRI has both a camera and a spectrograph operating in the 5 to 28 micron wavelengths – longer than our eyes see. As such, it will be able to “see” and reveal the properties of near and distant objects “invisible” to NIRCam and NIRSpec.
FGS/NIRISS: technically two instruments supplied by the Canadian Space Agency operating in the 0.8 to 5.0 micron wavelengths:
The Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS): allows Webb to point precisely, so that it can obtain high-quality images.
The Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument: designed for first light detection, exoplanet detection and characterisation, and exoplanet transit spectroscopy
The final work in calibrating these instruments is expected to take around a month to complete, and will also involve ordering the telescope to point to different deep space targets so that the amount of solar radiation striking its heat shield will vary, allowing the science team to confirm that the thermal stability for the instruments and mirrors is being maintained within the optimal operating temperatures.
A comparison in resolution power between the Spitzer infra-red telescope (2003-2020) and JWST (2022), using the same region of deep space. NASA/STScI /
As a part of the alignment exercises, JWST was directed to image an area of space that had been used for aligning / calibrating the mirrors and instruments used on the Spitzer Space Telescope (2003-2020). While a direct comparison between Spitzer (with a primary mission diameter of just 85 cm), and JWST (with a primary mirror diameter of 6.5 metres) is little on the “apples and pears” scale, putting the two commissioning images side-by-side does reveal just how much more of the universe JWST will be able to reveal to us.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 