Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week ending Sunday, July 17th, 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 6.6.1.572458 – formerly the Maintenance M(akgeolli) RC viewer, promoted June 29 – no change.
WillowWood, July 2022 – click any image for full size
WillowWood is the name given to a Full private region leveraging the additional Land Capacity bonus which is held by Doc Battitude. Largely open to the public, it features landscaping by Dandy Warhlol (Terry Fotherington) and at the time of my writing this, it was a feature location in the Editor’s Picks section of the Second Life Destination Guide.
The About Land description for the region sits slightly at odds with the design of the land – describing this region which is mindful of a wild coastal region somewhere in the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere as, “a once thriving town reduced to ruins and secluded happy places”. However, while there is little sign of any former conurbation within the region, there is absolutely no doubting its beauty and restfulness.
WillowWood, July 2022
The landing point sits toward the south-west of the region, and sits before a table of rock on the west coast which is home to a mansion-like private residence with oceans views directly to the south and west. Accessed via a single drive guarded by walls and gates that are clearly marked as Private Property, the mansion is the only no-go area with the setting; the rest is otherwise fully open to explorations, including the little café sitting a short walk from the landing point.
The rest of the land is cut through by little streams and creeks. These break it up such that the easiest way to find your way around its to follow the trails and paths to the little bridges that span the water, with the land as a whole given over to a rugged set of low undulations rich in trees and wild grass.
WillowWood, July 2022 – “Tunnel Vision”
Scattered throughout this landscape are signs of civilisation – but nothing that would denote anything like a town being close to hand anywhere. Instead, the coastal areas offer signs that the locals make a living fishing, with a slightly run-down wharf looking west from a southern headland, and little fishing cabins and a boathouse lying further around the southern coast, while away to the north lies the wreck of a coaster that came too close the region’s sandy shallows.
A sense of age is added to the setting thanks to the inclusion of a pair of ruins – the Ruined Chapel by Markus Inkpen (a personal favourite structure that naturally lends itself to modding), and the Studio Skye Temple Ruins by Alex Bader (which have tempted me a few times, although I have yet to purchase and fiddle with it). These sit across the region from one another, the latter overlooking the north-side beach, and together they give the region a sense that it once held significant religious meaning.
Throughout the setting are numerous places to sit and / or spend time awaiting discovery. These range of wooden gazebos located above streams and water holes, to benches sitting alongside the paths and trails, to places to relax on the beachy headland and along the waterways. In addition, there are multiple places to enjoy a dance or two, including within the chapel ruins and at a small outdoor events area tucked into the north-east corner of the region.
The overall lay of the land helps given the region a feeling of being much bigger than the usual 256 metres on a side, the paths meandering up and down the hills and between them, often leading to more little surprises and touches that bring the setting further to life. These range from dry stone walls to pieces of sculpture, and even a hint of what might once have been a World War fortification.
WillowWood, July 2022
Given this is a design by Dandy, you might expect my usual warning about performance (mesh + textures), but with WillowWood, I didn’t encounter any significant issues; even with Shadows enabled, my FPS remained in the mid-teens rather than dropping to single digits, whilst for general flycaming around with Shadows disabled, FPS was generally around the mid-to-upper 20s (I’m currently using Firestorm without any auto-tuning enabled, and (obviously) without the Lab’s own performance improvements), giving me a reasonably comfortable experience. Even so, you may find you need to make some adjustments to your viewer, as is oft the way with SL builds.
Finished with a subtle soundscape, perhaps with default environment settings a little on the dark side for some (I varied between it and using my “default” avatar-attached EEP settings for photos) WillowWood is an engaging, picturesque region design.
Where they are: the five subjects of the first five science images release by NASA for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). 1: the Carina Nebula; 2. the Southern Ring Nebula; 3. Stephan’s Quintet; 4. WASP-96b; 5. SMACS 0723. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Centre / STScIThe first series of science images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were released on July 12th, 2022 rightly grabbing the headlines around the world, revealing as they did elements of our universe and our own galaxy in stunning detail and offering a superb launch for the observatory’s science mission.
At the time of their release, NASA also confirmed that, thanks to the extreme accuracy achieved by the European Ariane 5 rocket in delivering the observatory into is transfer orbit which allowed JWST to establish itself in its L2 position halo orbit, 1.6 million km from Earth, sufficient propellants remained aboard the observatory for it to operate for around 20 years – double its original extended mission time.
The mission itself is broken into periods of 12 months apiece, with science institutions, universities, etc., from around the world able to submit papers outlying studies they like to carry out using JWST to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, USA which form the management and operational centre for both JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). As such, the initial images selected for release on July 12th represent study targets for JWST accepted for its first year of observational science – but they are not the only targets. Since formally commencing its science programme in June, JWST has already gathered around 40 terabytes of images and data, and following the high-profile release of the initial images, on July 14th, 2022, STScI started issuing raw images of other targets so far examined by the observatory, including images of objects without our own solar system.
Webb is designed to collect light across the entire red to mid-infrared spectrum – wavelengths of light that are blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, and while Hubble crosses from visible light into the near-infrared, JWST has a light collection area 5 times greater than that of HST. Taken together, these facts mean that JWST can reveal objects near and far with a lot more detail than we’ve ever been able to see them, and can also see much further out in the cosmos, allowing us to see the light of objects as they appeared close to the birth of the universe. Add this to the fact that the four science instruments on JWST can be combined to operate in a total of 17 different modes, and JWST is genuinely unparalleled in its capabilities.
The following is a brief summary of the images released on July 12th.
Carina Nebula
Lying some 7,600 light-years away and visible in southern hemisphere skies within the constellation Carina, this nebula (NGC 3372) is a familiar sight among astronomical photographs and studies. It is a massive birth-place of stars, with multiple young stellar groupings like Trumpler 14, and Trumpler 16.
The former, measuring just 6 light-years across (or roughly 1.5 times the distance between our Sun and the Alpha Centauri system) is just half a million years old – but it is home to around 2,000 young stars! Slightly older, Trumpler 16 is home to two of the most luminous stars in our galaxy: Eta Carinae and WR 25. These are two of the most luminous objects in our galaxy – while both are invisible to the naked eye on Earth, they are nevertheless several million times brighter than the Sun.
The “cosmic Cliffs” of NGC within the Carina Nebula, showing the blue “bowl” of hot stars that have pushed interstellar dust and gases into to a ring that resembles towering cliffs and mountains, and within which younger, new stars can be seen. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Centre / STScI
Neither of these stellar groups was the focus in the Carina Nebula image release on July 12th. This honour went to the “Cosmic Cliffs”, part of a nebula-within-a-nebula (NGC 3324). A ring of dust and debris, it has been formed by the young, super-hot, super-active blue-white stars at the centre of NGC3324 (seen at the top of the image above) generating a collective powerful radiative force that has pushed the remaining gases and dust left over from their formation outwards to a point where the pressure of their own radiation is matched by that of the surrounding larger nebula.
Normally invisible to the naked eye, the portion of the “Cosmic Cliffs” have been beautifully rendered using images from both the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) on JWST, which have been processed to produce a remarkable composite image that reveals never-before-seen details. Within this ring of material, compression and gravity are combining to create even younger stars, many revealed in this image for the first time – with some even showing protostellar jets of material shooting outwards from them. Images like this shed enormous light (so to speak!) on the process of star formation.
Southern Ring Nebula
Catalogued as NGC 3132, the Southern Ring Nebula stands in contrast to the Carina Nebula, being the home of a binary star system where one of the stars is in its death-throes.
The pairing sits in a tight mutual orbit, and the elder of the two stars has gone through a series of events where it has thrown off shells of gas and mass, which are being mutually “stirred” by the two stars as they continue to orbit one another, leading to a complex pattern of gases around both.
The Southern Ring Nebula as seen by JWST’s NIRCam (l) and MIRI (r). Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Centre / STScI
JWST imaged the nebula with both NIRCam (seen on the left, above) and MIRI (seen on the right), with the latter showing for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust, suggesting a more “recent” ejection of mass. The brighter star (visible in both images) is in an earlier stage of its stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.
Studies of phenomena like the Southern Cross Nebula is like watching a slow motion film of a star’s evolution towards the end of its life, each of the shells of gas and dust from outer to inner representing increasingly more recent events in its life, allowing astronomers gain insight in the life and death of stars, whilst studies of the gases released provide insight into how these delicate layers of gas and dust will dissipate into surrounding space.
Stephan’s Quintet
This is a visual grouping of five galaxies, four of which (called the Hickson Compact Group 92) are a genuine grouping of galaxies that are gradually being drawn together by gravity, and will all eventually merge. The fifth member of the quintet is the result of line-of-sight alignment, rather than an actual part of the group. It is possibly best known for its appearance in the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.
Imaged numerous times in the past, JWST nevertheless reveals the quintet in a new light via a mosaic image that represents Webb’s largest image to date, containing over 150 million pixels and comprising 1,000 individual pictures of the galactic group.
Stephan’s Quintet, comprising a close-knit group of four galaxies, two of which have already merged (centre right) to form NGC 7318. Also visible in the image are clouds of sat-forming dust and material, and the shockwave of the NGC 7318 merging rippling through NGC 7319. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Centre / STScI
The quartet of galaxies are some 280 million light-years from our own, and of particular note in this composite image is the details of gaseous clouds where star formation is going on; the clear view of the two galaxies in the group which have already collided (UGC 12099 and UGC 12100, now collectively classified as NGC 7318) – the lower right of the “three” close-packed galaxies in the central group – and the white shockwaves of that collision as they sweep towards the top right galaxy, NGC 7319.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, July 2022: Wicked Eiren – Body Language/The Invisible Woman
I’m going to open this piece with an apology to Dido Haas and – especially – to Wicked Eiren for coming to Body Language/The Invisible Woman relatively late in the day, the exhibition having opened at the end of June 2022.
Located in Dido’s Space within Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, this is a tremendously powerful selection of black-and-white art in the personal message it contains – although the images themselves, as can be seen by the banner image for this article – should be considered NSFW.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, July 2022: Wicked Eiren – Body Language/The Invisible Woman
In the physical world, Wicked suffers from Complex Chronic Disease, also known as Central Sensitivity Syndromes (CSS), a health condition that combines a wide range of symptoms and conditions from a number of recognised illnesses including (but certainly not limited to) Fibromyalgia (FM) and Myalgic encephalomyelitis, and which can be complicated by chronic viral conditions such as the vicious Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) and bacterial infections such as Mycoplasma pneumoniae, each of which can give rise to multiple health conditions.
Such are the complexities and symptoms involved – physical, mental and psychological – CCD / CSS conditions are extremely hard to recognise or even correctly diagnose as they manifest in so many ways, individually and collectively. A further complication with the conditions is that they are further exacerbated by the central nervous system repeatedly misfiring, amplifying the sensory symptoms and leading to CCD / CSS being referred to as “pain without cause”.
This latter point does not mean that for the sufferer, the pain and related fatigue and mental anguish do not exist; the symptoms are very real and very physical, and require a complex approach to diagnose and care.
Unfortunately, the fact that the symptoms do seem to be without underpinning, easy-to-understand causes can result in those who have not experienced the conditions to dismiss both symptoms and sufferer (“oh you look fine!” or whispered “X has this mental thing” or “it’s just attention-seeking”, and so on) . This in turn can lead to a highly negative internalising of the conditions and the symptoms on the part of the sufferer, causing further withdrawal from the world.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, July 2022: Wicked Eiren – Body Language/The Invisible Woman
Body Language/The Invisible Woman is a subtle but exceptionally powerful statement on Wicked’s life with CCD / CSS, with the pieces presented speaking to both reality and desire. The desire to be seen, to be able to look at oneself free from the tyranny of discomfort, pain, fatigue and mental sluggishness – to be seen – in Wicked’s case – as a woman – beautiful, free, whole, and desirable; the reality in the ever-present company of those symptoms that force her to stand aside or hide, exemplified by both the poses used (note the use of light and show, the placement of hand, the crook of finger or thumb, urn of head, direction of look – all intended to hide as much as reveal) and the subtle rash-like lines of her body.
In this, the use of nude images should not be mistaken as being simply gratuitous or for the sake of titillation. The conditions associated with CCD / CSS are not something those experiencing can merely weather and “get over” through time and medication; rather, they defined the person experiencing them – however unwillingly – as keenly as their skin, that is as ever-present and familiar as the shape and lines of their own face. As such, the use of nude images serves to emphasise all of this, underlining the manner in which CCD / CCS is as much a constant to life as is flesh itself.
Similarly, the use of black-and-white images is evocative of the manner in which life might appear to feel: washed of colour and vitality; a plain mix of light and dark that personifies the wish to retreat, to hide. It also most effectively underscores the central tenet to the exhibition, as does the intentional monochrome lighting and overall presentation of the hall itself a monochromatic finish of its own: that those who experience CCD / CSS so often encounter a two-dimensional response from others: they are seen, but not who they are, because their pain causes them to be denied true expression and/or to be cosseted, be it out of lack of understanding (the aforementioned “it’s all in her head”) or over-protective response (“you shouldn’t be doing that! Let ME take care of it!”) that can be as equally denying and born of a lack of understanding.
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, July 2022: Wicked Eiren – Body Language/The Invisible Woman
Remarkable and powerful, Body Language/The Invisible Woman is so deeply layer, there is much more I could say about it – but really, it is a collection of images that should be seen and allowed to speak for themselves, so I urge you to pay a visit before the exhibition closes, and let the pieces there speak to you directly – and be sure to taken the introductory note card from the board within the hall to learn more about Wicked and CCD.
My modified InVerse Nizza: re-textured throughout (bar the water of the pool!) at Isla Myvatn
As is my wont, I started getting the itch to fiddle around with another house design at Isla Myvatn. As regulars to these pages know, I tend to shunt my way between house designs roughly every 5-6 months, if for no other reason than the fact I enjoy kitbashing (as well as scratch building).
My recent choices have revolved around matching the house with the “split-level” design on my island home, with its low-lowing front lawns, gardens and boat moorings, and raised back garden and hills, the house sitting between the two with a two-storey front aspect and the upper floor opening on to the garden to the rear.
As a result, my two previous house choices came from Novocaine Islay’s InVerse brand, as they pretty much suited the lay of the land in terms of vertical dimensions and the minimal changes required to the land to get them both to “fit”. And after looking around, I happened to settle upon another InVerse house for this rebuild: the Nizza.
My Nizza house with, (inset) the original – note that I didn’t bother using the gazebo supplied with the house and seen in the foreground of the inset image. Also note the changes to the upper floor left-side room, and general re-texturing.
Featuring a roughly rectangular footprint of some 41.3 m by 13.85 m, including the large overhanging upper floor balconies, the house has a total of 6 rooms: a large living area accessed directly from the front doors, with linked dining area and kitchen opening off to one side with an angled frontage. Above the latter is a bedroom and adjoining bathroom; the bedroom and dining being linked by a spiral staircase. Above the lounge, and separated by a small upper floor hallway, is a smaller room with balcony access. The hall itself provides access to a roof deck and swimming pool via a second spiral stairway.
At L$449, the house represents very good value, including as it does 3 variants: an unfurnished version (with additional plants and lighting) at 118 LI; and two fully furnished versions at 253 LI, one of which has baked shadow textures and the other doesn’t, with all three coming with a gazebo and various plants and basic indoor / outdoor lighting. InVerse furnishing are passable if not outstanding, so for those looking for a “first house” with all the basic trimmings and who have at least 2048 sq m or land, the house represents pretty good value.
The Nizza living room as modified by myself with the fireplace divider and an added window to the side aspect, with the original (inset) showing the supplied finish and furniture and the window to the rear aspect, which I removed as it would effective be “underground” and below the level of my island’s back garden.
That said, InVerse build quality can be a mixed bag; texture choices can be a little off-putting, and this design in particular has some overly-glossy specular maps applied that result is some weird finishes to surfaces under various ambient lighting (e.g. stonework looking like it’s been coated in plastic). This wasn’t an issue for me, as I have a tendency to re-texture things, but if you have a fussy eye, then little niggles like these make taking a look at InVerse homes at their in-world store essential when considering them as a purchase if you are fussy-eyed like me.
A more obvious shortfall with this house for some (myself included) is that it has been designed with an “average” avatar height in mind. My avatar is far from oversized, but I did find that the arches linking several of the rooms were too low, as were the supplied lighting fittings. As such, I found it necessary to re-work the archways to eliminate the visual aspect of the top of my avatar’s head passing through the woodwork when passing “under” them, and to also replace the interior lighting with simple projected lighting.
The rear of the Nizza at Isla Myvatn: note the door to the garden I’ve added (just to the right of the garden statue), and further along the rear of the house, a spiral stairway linking the garden with the rooftop pool and deck.
Fitting the house into the existing Isla Myvatn landscape required a few adjustments to the garden space, but the changes to the house were relatively easy: the replacement of the rear windows and walls with blank walls on the lower floor, the addition of a rear door on the upper floor to access the garden (and which could be handily placed alongside the stairs to the rooftop area).
The interior spaces of the house are such that they offer a lot of internal space that can be used in a variety of ways – the furnished versions, for example, utilise the individual upper floor room as a house office, for example. For my part, I altered the position of the archway between the living room and dining area to create a little more space between it and the front doors to the house, and also added a fireplace room divider to the lounge to break things up a little and offer a little space for my (inevitable) baby grand and guitar.
A closer view of the rear of the house, showing the added back door serving the raised back garden and the spiral stairs to the pool, compared to the original (inset), showing the “wooden” mid-point I removed to add the new door serving the garden
Overall, the Nizza is a fair design. Perhaps not as polished as either the Tarzana (reviewed here) or Orlando (reviewed here), my two previous InVerse houses in that it does require a little more work by the fussy-eyed (like me!) to adjust the texturing and some of the (minor) issues with the design, but nonetheless a good starter house / unit suitable for kitbashing. Plus, it again seems pretty mealy-mouthed to complain about the house given the price! Even so, and to repeat myself – do be sure to see the house in-world before committing to buy it.
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022 – click any image for full size
Back in June time, Shawn Shakespeare passed me a landmark for a curious and engaging parcel called MarDayLine Pylons, home to a design by a group of individuals out of Japan led by 奈芙缇丝 (Subsequnce). Despite its small size – less than an eighth of a Full region (one with the private region LI bonus) – this is both a public / private environment, with the introductory notes (available on a sign board at the landing point) stating:
Welcome to Mardayline Pylons. We wish yo a pleasant stay here. The café, sofa fountain bar and onsen are at your convenience. Mardayline Pylons is a private community that is casual and friendly … Part of this area is residential for rent. Please do not enter or leave other people’s houses without permission.
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022
With a north-south orientation, with cloud-faced cliffs forming an eastern curtain and uplands bordering the southern end of the parcel, this is a place very much defined by water. It tumbles from the highlands in sheer or stepped falls, one of which has its waterflow directed down a covered nullah, to where a flooded street sits.
Quite what has happened – natural disaster or the result of global warming – is up to visitors to decide; however, the tumbledown state of the southern end of the parcel beneath the waterfalls suggests a sudden catastrophe having befallen a part of the town-like setting.
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022
It is along the flooded street, and sitting between it and the equally flooded tram tracks which run around two sides of the parcel, that the rental properties appear to sit, together with the local café. The onsen, sofa bar and other eateries meanwhile, all sit top the uplands, the route to them offered by way of an elevator rather than stepped climbs.
Small in size the parcel might be, but there are plenty of small details waiting to be found that help present it as a place idea for photography, and Subsequence notes that the parcel is open to rezzing for props etc., – but please make sure you clean up behind you should you make use of the opportunity.
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022
A simple, engaging setting that makes for an easy-going and please visit.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 