Making Memories, June 2022 – click any image for full size
The last time I visited a region design by Claudia (claudia74a Orsini) was almost five years ago, when I explored ~Neive~, a charming Homestead design (see: Visiting ~Neive~ in Second Life). So when I received a landmark to visit her current design, it struck me as a place I should go and poke my nose into – and I’m glad I did.
Also occupying a Homestead region, Making Memories offers a setting of multiple parts that roll together to form a whole worthy of exploration.
Making Memories, June 2022To the south there’s a waterfront area with a paved footpath and road curling around the edge of the island, backed by promenades of brightly-coloured façades suggestive of a holiday town. West of this, and facing high off-region mountains across a water channel, sits a beach that flamingos have claimed as their own, backed in part by a small motel before cliffs rise from the grass and march northwards beyond the end of the sands.
These cliffs rise to form the island’s main peak, topped by a fortified tower / house that has a hint of medieval France about it. Rising above the surrounding trees, this house sits a little roughly on the hill’s crown and is fronted by a waterfall, all of which makes reaching it near-impossible – but visiting it is not the point; it sits as a backdrop to the setting’s east side landscaping.
Making Memories, June 2022
It is here, on the island’s lowlands, that there is the most to be found. A pastoral setting of farmhouses, meadows, a stream with a quaint bridge spanning it to carry the local (foot) traffic, and more, it is where both the landing point can be found and the attention to detail is the greatest, offering plenty of opportunities for photography.
A short walk from the landing point sits the main farmhouse: a large single-stories, singled room structure that has a balcony along two sides and a cosy, homely interior design ready to welcome visitors. South of this over the bridge sits a barn which has been converted into an equally cosy summer house. A games room / bar occupies its upper floor – although given one side is open to the elements, an excess of imbibing wine might be best avoided!
Making Memories, June 2022
Between and around the house and barn is much more to be appreciated, enjoyed and photographed: animals in the meadows, seating around a fountain, a romantic wishing well, tea for two next to an old ruin or a family meal out in the garden of the farmhouse, walks out over the waters of the coast or around the local pond – and that’s just for starters.
To the north of the island, sitting on a low shoulder of the western hills, is another house. Occupying its own grounds, it lies at the end of the main track and rises as a red-roofed curiosity. Unfurnished and a little rough around the edges, it is again more for backdrop than internal exploration, and it fulfils this role with ease, the wild garden before it again offering the opportunities for photography.
Making Memories, June 2022
Those who fancy a little activity can find it by grabbing duckie bumper boats from the rezzer and paddle around the water to the north, east and west side of the region. Those who prefer something a little quieter, there are at least a couple of hideaway hammock either hidden among the trees or out on a little island.
All told, a pleasing, easy-on-the-eye setting with plenty of photo opportunities. Those in need of props can join the local group for rezzing rights (L$49 joining fee) – but please remember to pick up your items when done!
An artist’s impression of MAVEN as it looks down on Mars’ Vallis Marineris. The NASA mission, which arrived in orbit in September 2014, is studying the Martian atmosphere
NASA’s MAVEN Mars orbiter has been in orbit around the planet since September 2014. For the majority of that time, and following science commissioning (Sept-November 2014), the spacecraft has been studying the Martian atmosphere, yielding valuable science. Except for the past three months, that is.
On February 22nd, 2022 – ironically the day Shannon Curry, appointed to take over the role of MAVEN’s Principal Investigator in August 2021, was making a three-hour presentation on the vehicle’s science findings at the conclusion of its latest 6-month mission extension – when Things Went Wrong.
We finally finished the presentation, I turn my ‘phone back on, and our project manager calls me immediately. I’m thinking, he’s calling me to be like, ‘Congratulations, you did it, you’re doing great!’ And he was, ‘Shannon, we’re in safe mode.’
– Shannon Curry
Shannon Curry was appointed to the role of Principal Investigator for NASA’s MAVEN mission in August 2021, and steered the project through its most serious issue between February and June 2022. Credit; via Wikipedia
Regulars to Space Sunday will know that “safe mode” is when a spacecraft has encountered a condition that exceeds its programmed parameters / expectations, causing it to shut down most of its non-essential systems and services and ‘phone home with a call of “I’m in a spot of trouble, folks!”
Safe modes are rarely easy to diagnose and resolve remotely, with MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission), the issue would prove to be almost catastrophic.
In order to both study Mars and communicate with Earth, MAVEN must periodically re-orient itself. Up until 2017, it did so by using one of two Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to calculate its position, attitude and rotation. However, from 2017 through until the end of 2021, MAVEN has been reliant on just one unit – IMU-2 – after IMU-1 experienced data issues.
By the start of 2022, IMU-2 was starting to show issues of its own, so a project was started to write new software to enable MAVEN to orient itself using the stars in what the mission team called “stellar mode”, a project that would take until late 2022 to complete. In the meantime, the vehicle was instructed to switch back to using IMU-1, with the power to the unit being periodically recycled to help with keeping it operating smoothly.
However, on February 22nd, 2022, with MAVEN oriented to communicate with Earth, a power recycle was started and IMU-1 crashed, and when IMU-2 automatically started, it had absolutely no idea of where it was, and MAVEN went into a loop of trying to restart IMU-1 after shutting down all science operations.
When it was clear IMU-2 was “lost”, and IMU-1 was not going to recover, risking MAVEN drifting out of communications alignment, the mission team took a desperate step: heartbeat termination.
That term is not just for dramatic effect: basically, it’s like ripping the cord out of the wall. We ordered the vehicle to shutdown and reboot its primary computer without switching to the back-up. When that failed, we had no choice but to then swap to the back-up and we’ve never been on that before.
– Shannon Curry.
Whilst the switch to the never-used back-up computer was a risk, it nevertheless allowed position data to be given to IMU-2 to ensure communications could be maintained with Earth. This allowed the mission team to accelerate the work on developing the “stellar mode” software.
On April 19th, the first version of the software was uplinked to MAVEN five months ahead of its due date. However, it could only be tested by shutting-down IMU-2. If the software failed, there was no guarantee either IMU would reboot, leaving MAVEN to drift out of its communications orientation within hours. Fortunately, the software demonstrated it could keep the vehicle correctly oriented, and the mission team were able to continue to refine the software and add the tasks required for MAVEN to use stellar mode for both communications and science operations.
In May, work had reached a point where the science instruments could each be brought out of safe mode and tested to ensure they had suffered no long-term damage. Then on May 28th, the order was given for MAVEN to fully transition all operations to use the stellar mode for navigation / orientation, allowing science operations to resume.
There will still be periods in MAVEN’s operations when it will have to rely on an IMU, but for now the mission team has brought the mission back from the brink of disaster, and are now focusing on ways in which the craft can better deal with possible data hiccups from the IMU systems.
Starship + Crew Dragon Update
Starship
The FAA report on the SpaceX starship facilities at Boca Chica, Texas, will now not be published until June 13th. In the meantime, it has been confirmed that the first orbital launch attempt will be undertaken by Ship 24 and Booster 7.
At the time of my last Starship update, Booster 7 had suffered a failure with a downcomer pipe, resulting in the booster being returned to the production facilities for examination, together with speculation that Booster 8 might replace it for the orbital launch attempt. However, repairs were made to Booster 7, enabling its return to the launch area.
Starship 24 undergoing liquid nitrogen cryogenic tests. A similar test at the end of May 2022 resulted in a header tank feed pipe failing, ejecting heat shield tiles from the underside of the vehicle. Credit: NASASpaceflight.com
At the end of Mays, Ship 24 was been rolled out to the test stands where cryogenic tests using liquid nitrogen commenced – only for a feed pipe connected to its LOX header tank to fail, throwing heat shield tiles off of the vehicle as the hull flexed. As a result, the pipe in question went through a rapid pipe redesign whilst on the test stand, with additional expansion joints being fitted to prevent any over-pressurisation.
With engines now being fitted to both ship and booster, and deliveries of liquid oxygen, liquid methane and liquid nitrogen being made to the tank farm, SpaceX appear confident the FAA report will give the green light for the orbital launch test – a test that will include a test deployment of Starlink satellites through the small payload slot.
This view exemplifies one of the issues SpaceX may still have with the Boca Chica launch facility. The orbital launch tower can be seen centre top; to the bottom left and in close proximity to the launch facilities, is the propellant and consumables tank farm, well within the blast radius should a starship / super heavy combination to explode at launch, the earth berm between tanks and launch stand notwithstanding. The horizontal tanks to the right of the upright tanks were installed after-the-fact in part to pre-empt concerns from the FAA on this matter. Credit: RGV Aerial photography
Even if this first flight test is a success (which is unlikely), it is perhaps important to note it is not a prototype test flight per se, but is rather an initial proof of concept. This is because the starship vehicle is far from its final configuration (Musk has announced first possible changes to the design). Nor is Ship 24 reflective of an “operational” starship: it has no means to carry the volume of payload promised (100-150 tonnes), the mechanism(s) required to support such a mass during launch, or the means to deploy it payload bay doors and their mechanisms. As such, there is a long way to go before starship reaches an actual prototype flight, with a lot more to prove. Even then, the realities of its promise are still highly questionable – something I hope to be looking at in a future Space Sunday.
Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner BloomUpdate, June 27th, 2022: Art Korner has Closed.
Say it with flowers is a banner line perhaps most recognisable from adverts for Interflora, the global flower delivery service. It is said to be a slogan crafted by ad man Patrick O’Keefe in 1917 on behalf of the Society of American Florists. It was a recognition of the fact that floriography – the means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers that has been a common practice across many cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe – had soared to new heights of popularity throughout Victorian Britain and the United States.
Most usually we associate the use of flowers as a means of shared communication of feelings. We give flowers as an expression of love / desire or as a means of communicating shared sympathy / commiseration / commemoration, or of a united joy / shared happiness, and so on.
However, such is the versatility of flowers that they can be used as a means of personal expression and narrative – and this is beautifully demonstrated in Inner Bloom, a remarkable exhibition of photography by Ms. Squeeeze (Squeeeze), which opened at Frank Atisso’s Art Korner on May 27th, 2022.
Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner Bloom
Comprising 17 images spread through a single exhibition hall carefully crafted into three individual areas, Inner Bloom uses flowers to communicate moods, stories and feelings that may be highly individual to the artist, but are richly recognisable to the observer.
Separated by phantom translucent walls, the three spaces making up the exhibition are marvellously graduated in their presentation, the first section offering pieces largely slanted toward monochrome with just soft hints of colour, progressing to images where the colour is more prominent, to those with a depth of colour that contrasts strongly with those in the first section.
At the same time, the style of the images grades through the three sections, from a heavy, but controlled use of shadow and silhouette through to backdrops that provide clarity of image and lighting that more readily reveals expressions, whilst shadow and tone are used to draw specific attention and focus.
Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner Bloom
By presenting the images in this manner, together with the changing colours of the flowers that form the “carpets” of the display areas, we are imbued with a sense of shifting moods and thoughts, and our imaginations are drawn to different narrative themes in progressing through the exhibition.
Evocative, rich in interpretation and artistic expression, Inner Bloom should be viewed using the supplied environment setting (World → Environment → Use Shared Environment), and with Advanced Lighting Model enabled.
SL Pride, the event celebrating diversity organised by and on behalf of Second Life’s LGBTQ+ community officially opened on Friday, June 3rd, 2022 and runs through until Sunday, June 12th, 2022.
With entertainment and activities throughout the event, 2022 is a special year for Second Pride, marking as it does the event’s 15th year.
You are … Unmovable, Unstoppable, Unbreakable
– Second Pride 2022 Theme
Second Pride, June 2022 – Stonewall Inn
Funds raised at this year’s even will benefit:
ILGA Europe: an independent, international non-governmental umbrella organisation bringing together over 600 organisations from 54 countries in Europe and Central Asia, and a part of the wider international ILGA organisation, ILGA-Europe is a driving force for political, legal and social change in Europe and Central Asia. Its vision is for a world where dignity, freedoms and full enjoyment of human rights are protected and ensured to everyone regardless of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS: is the philanthropic heart of Broadway, helping people across the United States receive life-saving medications, health care, nutritious meals, counselling and emergency financial assistance. It is one of America’s leading industry-based, non-profit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organisations, drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community. Since 1988 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has raised more than US $300 million for essential services for people living with HIV/AIDS, struggling with COVID-19 and facing other critical illnesses in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
Second Pride, June 2022
This year set across two regions, the event follows its popular metropolitan setting, with the core music entertainment centred within a city park adjacent to the landing points. A Second Life Experience is operating in the regions to assist with teleports, etc., and newcomers are invited to join it as they arrive at the landing points. Also at the landing point are a couple of large posters that will provide visitors with a list of key landmarks around the event regions.
As well as the main stage at the park, events will also take place at a beach stage alongside the fun fair, and also the Bijou Theatre, where a series of live special performances have been scheduled:
Saturday, June 4th, 15:00 SLT: Men In Motion.
Sunday, June 5th, 14:00 SLT: Alchemelic.
Saturday, June 11th, 12:00 noon SLT: Britney Spears: A Live Event.
Sunday, June 12th, 18:00 SLT: Britney Spears: A Live Event.
When you arrive at the Bijou, walk the red carpet to the doors and you’ll be TP’d directly to the theatre proper.
Second Pride, June 2022 – the Bijou Theatre
There is also a teleport HUD that has been “in beta” during the run-up to the event, and which I was able to use extensively without incident in preparing this piece, so hopefully that will be available via kiosk / vendor at the landing points soon as well. It provides a full list of places of interest across the two regions, making getting around even easier.
This year also brings back some traditional landmarks for Second Pride: the elevated train line; the Stonewall Inn, outside of which Black Lives Matter is supported; the art exhibitions; the community resource centre; the Gateway Experience for those unfamiliar with Second Life who are coming to the event directly from the Second Pride website; and more. And of course, there are plenty of opportunities to donate and to shop!
So, be sure to make time to visit SL Pride during the coming week, share in the entertainment, see the art, tour the region – and donate to the supported charities.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, June 2nd 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
This is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript.
Official Viewers Update
A new Maintenance RC viewer – Maintenance N, code-named Nomayo – version 6.6.1.572179 – was issued on June 1st. The viewer should offer improvements on media playback of web content, etc.
The rest of the official viewers remain as:
Release viewer: version 6.6.0.571939 – formerly the Performance Improvements viewer, dated May 25th – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
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.
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.
A reflection probe will be a sphere or cube (mesh, prim or sculpt) set within a scene with specific properties allowing it to create a cube map of all objects within its bounding box. Anything within that bounding box with a “reflective” (shiny) surface (with the possible exception of worn attachments) will then offer “reflections” based on that cube map.
Cube maps for probes are a purely viewer-side artefact, and are updated approx. once every 30 seconds at 60 fps, although this will “get smarter” in the future and be based on actual probe location (e.g. in or out of the current field of view, etc.).
So, think of probes as mapping where reflections should be coming from in a scene, not as a tool for deciding which object should be reflecting things.
The viewer will hopefully be able to handle up to 256 probes at any one time (the number of probes in a region can be unlimited), each with a (current) maximum effective draw distance of 64 m.
Probes will:
Be detected by the viewer on load, much like lights already are (reflection probes use a lot of the code originally developed for light state management), with revisions to prevent issues associated with lighting such as flickering.
Have an influence volume, an ambience setting (which overrides the environment ambience) and a “near clip” parameter to help control what is rendered into the cube map (e.g. so items close to the centre of the probe and which might otherwise dominate any generated reflections, are not rendered into the cube map).
Require “PBR enabled”, and when this is set, legacy objects using glossiness and / or environment shine will render the reflection generated by a cube map respectively in accordance with the degree of glossiness / the sky environment, as well as any objects using the upcoming PBR materials.
There are a lot of nuances with the above bullet point such that legacy content won’t simply “work” with reflection probes, some degree of adjustment on object glossiness / shine might be required.
Work independently of LOD.
Probes will not be designed for use as attachments.
In Brief
Custom pivot point work: currently awaiting simulator updates & will require viewer-side changes; the focus is slowly moving towards trying to move the latter part of the work forward “in the not too distant future”.
It was noted that the mesh optimiser (as in the current release viewer) still has issues that need to be addressed,
One such issue is when the LOD generator is implicitly asked to simplify a model, and it cannot hit a target without destroying UV seams, it will destroy the UV seams (whereas GLOD will delete triangles, leaving holes in models). This appears to be happening on models with a lot of UV islands, resulting in texels becoming visible when they should never be drawn.
LL acknowledges that neither the optimiser issue nor the GLOD issue are ideal.
Issues with the mesh uploader are requested via Jira with objects included, if possible.
In response to a question, LL currently have no plans to alter the LI calculations for Animesh, however, with the performance improvements (and given part of the LI “penalty” was to compensate for the performance hit of animating Animesh characters), there is a suggestion it should perhaps be re-visited, particularly given most at the meeting with an opinion felt the 15LI penalty was a “blocker” to developing Animesh content.
The above points led to a general discussion on LODs, decimation, Land Impact based on size, the ARCTan project (still something LL would “like to get back to”), the impacts of draw calls over poly counts, etc., but with no actionable points raised.
There is a fork in the texture rendering pipeline underdevelopment that should, once available, ensure that only the required texture resolution is loaded when it is required (e.g. so the tiny buttons and the little broach and the earring etc., on an avatar won’t all be displayed at 1024×1024 all the time, but the system will only ever download at use a 128×128 version of the textures used).
Work is also in progress to ensure the official viewer uses all available video memory. This will eventually see the VRAM slider in Preferences → Graphics vanish.
Note that this is available video memory – not necessarily the total on your system; obviously, running SL and multiple browser tabs and other windows will impact how much memory the viewer can actually access, leading to the potential of textures being uploaded.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022 – click any image for full size
Update: The Lost Gardens has closed and the region has changed hands. SLurls have therefore been removed from this piece.
It’s been a while since I last wrote about one of Vita Camino’s region designs, so when Shawn Shakespeare sent me a landmark to The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, I immediately added it to my list of places to visit, and finally got the opportunity to do so at the start of June.
Occupying a Full private region leveraging the additional Land Capacity bonus, the setting – as you might guess from the name – is Romanesque is nature. According to its About Land description, it is also a work in progress; so there may be a chance things might change between my writing this and you getting to visit for yourself. There are also some rental villas tucked away on the south and east side of the region, but these are well to one side (and below!) the public areas, minimising the risk of trespass.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022
No landing point was enforced at the time of my visit, so I’ve arbitrarily set a SLurl in this post which will land you on the west side of the region, amidst a busy little waterfront setting. This is not a place of commerce per se, but where local fishermen bring their catch to shore each day and dry and smoke them to provide the village behind with food and, possibly, to trade with the odd passing merchant – at least going by the barrels of wine (or oil)!
The village itself appears to be rather prosperous; the houses solidly built, with room for trading on the lower level and living space above complete with balconies. Their general condition and the well-kept roads might be down to the largesse of the local patrician, whose expansive dwelling occupies the backbone of the region, a rocky table of a hill that steps its way up from the surrounding coast in a series of terraces.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022
It is this part of the estate in which visitors will likely spend most of their time, offering as it does multiple places to sit and appreciate the setting – and to do so in typical Romanesque comfort, complete with fruits and wine set out under tile-roofed pavilions or trellis-topped gazebos. Broad, carefully laid steps offer routes upwards through the terraces – some of which have been created or given shape by the skill of stonemasons rather than by nature – with paths also enticing willing feet onwards.
Water abounds throughout the gardens, with falls tumbling from a rock face to a crystalline pool below, and multiple ponds and fountains to be found throughout. In addition, there are two large bathing pools, each occupying its own terrace but joined by a single stairway which also provides access to the villa’s bath house.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022
Similarly, great care has been taken to both preserve and to plant trees to provide shade and further ornamentation, while statues of deities and (doubtless) ancestors or great leaders keep watch over all that is happening in and around the gardens. And to further ensure blessings be upon the estate and the village below, two temples await worhsippers and offerings (one of which is admittedly just a façade).
The crowning glory for the setting, however, is on the broad flat top of the hill. Here sits a square terrace centred upon an ornamental pond. With pavilions, gazebos, loungers and chairs, fruit and wine, all shaded by the broad growth of mature trees and with columns standing to attention around the periphery, it at first looks “typically” Romanesque. But look again, and certain things might become apparent, initially appearing anachronistic given the overall theme for the setting.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022
Take, for example the fountained pond; it is home to both koi and to red-crowned crane from Asia, whilst paper lanterns of Chinese styling and stone lamps that carry a hint of Japan might also be spotted. Of course, indirect trade between Rome and China (via India) was known to have taken place; so it is possible crane and fish came via that route; however, when taken within the setting as a whole, lamps, lanterns, fish and crane present a unique west-east fusion within the terrace that just works.
Elsewhere in the setting are other unusual elements that give The Lost Gardens of Pompeii a little twists – such as the opportunity to sit and partake of fruit and wine within a portion of the lost city of Atlantis (and no, it’s not under the waters surrounding the setting – it is more unique than that, but you can find it for yourself!). Meanwhile, those looking for textures for their landscaping can also visit Vita’s store, located beyond the northern end of the waterfront village and tucked neatly into a building matching the rest of the décor.
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022
Light period role-play is apparently allowed – presumably free style and down to those who visit, rather than anything formalised – and period costume is encouraged but not required. Finished with a natural soundscape and, needless to say, highly photogenic, The Lost Gardens of Pompeii is well worth visiting and exploring.
SLurl Details
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii (Islas Ballestas, rated Adult)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 