Month: January 2023

A Lyrical visit in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lyric, January 2023 – click any image for the full size

An entry in the Editor’s Picks section of the Destination Guide for Lyric recently piqued my curiosity, although I found it a struggle when it came to blogging about – not because there is anything wrong with the setting; it is simply that I’m cautious about writing-up locations that might public spaces and rentals, as is the case here. However, the setting is photogenic, so I decided to take some photos and offer a brief write-up.

Lyric is inspired by the Caribbean Islands of St Vincent and the Grenadines, where the architecture of different eras meet the uniqueness of the Island’s natural landscape. It is composed of three regions streamed together to offer its residents and visitors an opportunity to sail between them. Come live, love, and play!

Lyric estate About Land

Lyric, January 2023 – click any image for the full size

This is in fact a couple of regions within a small estate. The first is a Full region utilising the land capacity bonus. Split between public spaces and rentals; it is joined on its eastern side by a Homestead region, both of which have been designed by Algernon (Algernon Bamaisin). A further point to note – as indicated at the landing point via local chat – is that Group membership (free to join) is required to use some of the sit points, etc., found throughout the public spaces.

Speaking of the landing point, it sits on the main road circumnavigating the region. Sitting on the west side of the setting, it lies between an advertising board that repeats the greeting found in the About Land description and the local harbour, with the latter offering the the colourful mix of architecture referenced in that description can be found in the form of shops to rent. Above and behind these sits a small town square dominated by a church and, to one side by a nightclub space offering open-air dancing.

Lyric, January 2023

It is here where private and public spaces overlap: the loungers and seating at the club space are restricted to group access, whilst the east side of the square is dominated by two rental homes, the path between them leading to more rentals – these in the form of beach cabins – below, while steps climb the southern highlands to the region, where more rentals are located, public paths winding through them.

Between the raised town square and the waterfront shops sits a narrow alley with a north-south orientation. Accessed where the road runs along the region’s west side, the alley is called, appropriately enough, Gloomy Alley, it is home to some of the seedier aspects which might be found in holiday / vacation spots.

Lyric, January 2023

To the east, a terrace with a large pool offers a view over the water to the Homestead region, on which more beach huts are arranged – although at the time of our visit, they did not appear to be for rent. Two smaller island lie off shore, again with seating set to Group. A rezzer down on the beach can provide boats to group members so that they can reach the eastern islands and land mass.

The latter forms long finger of land with the cabins to the south and a ribbon of sand to the north, home to a large pier. Beyond this lies a further full region which appeared to offer a mix of rental and private homes; however, whilst designed by Algernon, it appeared to be under a separate group ownership, so our explorations didn’t extend into it.

Lyric, January 2023

Open to a range of EEP settings which lend it to photography, Lyric presents an opportunity for gentle exploration and, perhaps for those looking for it, a home with a Caribbean vibe to it.

SLurl Details

2023 SL Puppetry project week #2 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, January 12th, 2023 Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).

Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.

Project Summary

General description of the project and its inception:

LL’s renewed interest in puppetry was primarily instigated by Philip joining LL as official advisor, and so it really was about streaming mocap. That is what Philip was interested in and why we started looking at it again. However since Puppetry’s announcement what I’ve been hearing from many SL Residents is: what they really want from “puppetry” is more physicality of the avatar in-world: picking up objects, holding hands, higher fidelity collisions. 
As a result, that is what I’ve been contemplating: how to improve the control and physicality of the the avatar. Can that be the new improved direction of the Puppetry project? How to do it?

Leviathan Linden

  • Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
    • Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
    • Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
  • This project is taking in a lot of additional ideas – animation standards, improving the current animation system, enabling truer avatar / avatar and avatar object interactions such that it is likely to evolve into a rolling development, with immediate targets for development / implementation as they are agreed upon, to be followed by future enhancements.
  • As such, much of what goes into the meetings at present is general discussion and recommendations for consideration, rather than confirmed lines o development.
  • There is a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).

Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions

  • For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
  • There is also a public facing Kanban board with public issues – those experiencing issues can also contact Wulf Linden.
  • Those wishing to submit code (plug-ins or other) or who wish to offer a specific feature that might be used with Puppetry should:

Further Information

Meeting Notes

LSL Integration

  • See: OPEN-375: “LSL Functions for reading avatar animation positions”.
  • Rider Linden is starting to look at LSL integration  – the first step being to make the simulator aware of what is actually animating.
  • Currently, the code he has developed lets the server know the position of an avatars attachment points; this sends details of 55 points (HUD points excepted). Attachment points have been selected over bones, as the simulator already has a solid concept of attachment points, and it avoids complications with rigged meshes “doing their own thing” with bone positions.
  • A concern with this is the number of updates being sent to the server for processing.
    • One idea is to refine the the code so that only the attachment points which change relative to the avatar centre (avatar frame/Local Position relative to the avatar) actually send information to the server, in order to reduce the number of updates being generated.
    • Another idea might be to only send updates every n frames, rather than every frame. This would reduce the fidelity of movement, but could still provide sufficient data while reducing the load on the simulator, particularly where multiple avatars in a region are using puppetry.
  • This issue is related to synchronising puppetry actions across multiple viewers as well; a long-standing issues, given that animation playback of animations is viewer-side, and not genuinely across viewers (the resync function found in some TPVs only does so locally).
  • All of the above lead to a discussions of ways and means to best allow LSL integration with animations and ensure a reasonable transmission of results together with decent synchronisation between the viewer and the simulator, whether by frame count or time stamp, in order to ensure predictability of results across multiple viewers. .
  • In addition, the discussion included the advantage in enhancing Second Life to support procedural animations as well as the current canned animations.
  • Rider is also looking into a script enhancement to register collisions.
  • There was some conflating of ideas during the discussion – immediate first steps in opening Puppetry to LSL, and more far reaching goals – setting position, registering collisions (per the above), defining better interpolation for positioning (e.g. as defined in the Khronos glTF specification), etc., which caused a degree of confusion.
  • However, the openness towards making Puppetry a good foundation for future enhancement (such as moving more to procedural-based animations, enabling SL to support “industry standard” animation workflows to encourage animators into the platform, etc., remains, together with (hopefully) enabling more realistic avatar / avatar and avatar / object interactions.
  • That said, Simon Linden did offer a not of caution to all discussing the work:
Not to pop the bubble, but every one please keep in mind all the stuff we’re talked about is experimental and really interesting. I have no idea what we can make into real features and what can work with crowds and all the other interesting problems to make it happen well – we’ll see what we all can do this year 🙂

– Simon Linden

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, January 26th, 2023, 13:00 SLT.

Cica’s Scribbled in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

My first memory of Cica Ghost’s art in Second Life came over a decade ago, when she secured a region grant from the former Linden Endowments for the Arts (LEA), and hosted Cica. It caught the eye and imagination of many, featuring two-dimensional stick figures, many of them animated, going about their lives within a 3D setting, with the little chap riding his bicycle in the face of a strong wind that becoming something of a motif for the build within blog posts about it.

Follow-up installations like Ghostville allowed various 2D characters draw by Cica to continue to appear in her 3D installations – and they still pop-up from time to time either directly (plants and flowers forming a part of an landscape) or indirectly (as drawing on walls) within Cica’s installations.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

Now, with her latest installation, Scribbled, which opened to the public on Thursday, January 12th, 2023, Cica again brings us a 2D world within a 3D space. Offered under the description Every day is a new day, this is an installation sitting on the 3D equivalent of a sheet of paper – and just as every day is a new day, so is every blank piece of paper an opportunity for the imagination to take flight, be it through drawings or through words.

Here, we are invited into the former (be sure to Use Shared Environment in your viewer (World → Environment), a crisp white setting suggestive of that sheet of paper on which Cica has “drawn” for us a series of vignettes. From 2D trees through aliens standing before their flying saucer to cows, elephants, cats and deer to monsters whose smiles reveal they are not intent on harm, this is a place where even the hills are given a deceptive two-dimensional edge.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

The order in which you encounter these little vignettes matters not – suffice it to say each has its own charm and some, due to the layout of the scene, may need a little additional exploration to be seen at their best. Also scattered among them are some 3D elements – houses and such – which, as the camera is moved, perform the illusion of appearing to morph into flat drawings before revealing their real depth once more – indeed, the overall positioning of all the elements in the setting present an immersive depth that reaches beyond the 2D form of the majority of the pieces.

This is also a setting with a little secret. Just as every day is a new day, is followed by a night, and should you find your way to it, Scribbled reminds visitors of this by transporting them from “day” to “night”. This is a place where the sky and ground are black, and the trees, animals and objects become white, giving visitors a sense of stepping into a photographic negative of the “outer” drawing. Cleverly, as well, the return trip from “night” to “day” delivers visitors to a different locale from that used to enter “night”, thus ensuring that a part of the setting that might have otherwise been easily missed or taken for granted, might be enjoyed.

Cica Ghost: Scribbled, January 2023

Of course, as with all of Cica’s installations there are opportunities for interaction awaiting discovery, from dances to sit spots to the chance to frame yourself in a “2D” picture frame located to one side of the setting, all of which further adds to the fun. And when wandering be sure to say hello to Cica; whilst she may not always be in Scribbled in person, she is always present in (2D) spirit!

As always, Scribbled is an engaging trip into the imagination with Cica, whose work never fails to raise a smile and the spirit, so when visiting do please consider also supporting her work through a purchase or a donation.

SLurl Details

  • Scribbled by Cica Ghost (Mysterious, rated Moderate)

A winter’s Aurelias in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Aurelias, January 2023 – click any image for full size

For those wanting to obtain a touch of small-town winter might want to visit Aurelias, a Full region private estate held by Gorgeous Aurelia, and primarily designed by Sparkle (Sparkely Sugar).

Covered in a blanket of snow at the time of my visit, and sitting under a blue sky suggestive of a crisp winter’s day, this is a place offering a sense of old-world Americana, centred on a small town square where town houses mix easily with small businesses. The square itself – at least at the time of my visit – was still dressed for the holiday season, with snowmen, present boxes and Santa’s sleigh watched over by his little helpers.

Welcome to Aurelias, a place for all seasons. As you stroll along our shoreline, watch the seasons change and be enchanted by the beautiful scenery. Our lovely town is glistening with holiday cheer and humming with activity.

Aurelias About Land description

Aurelias, January 2023

It is within the town square that visitors arrive – and will be offered a teleport HUD by which to travel around and which provides links to additional information, such as the Aurelias website. Whether you need the HUD or not is debatable; the region is easy to explore on foot, although the HUD does form a handy aide-mémoire as to whether or not all of the points of interest have been visited.

These latter include St. Aurelias Church, sitting on a hill above the town to the north-west; the Bumble Bee Café and gas station to the south-west the artists’ retreat of the Conservatory, the standing stones overlooking two corners of the coastline, and more.

Aurelias, January 2023

All of them are easily reached by following trails and footpaths through the snow, bridges large and small offering the means to cross the local stream. As a part of the seasonal feel, the region includes a skating rink – a destination not noted within the HUD’s list of teleport locations, whilst the farm that is listed within it appeared to be absent as I explored.

Whilst this is a winter setting, there are signs that things are started to thaw, that spring is not far down the road; three are turning green and the blanket of snow is here and there holed by grass, moss and flower poking their way through in a promise of warmer times to come.

Aurelias, January 2023

This promise of warmer days is liable to see the beach running along the west coast become a lot more popular than at the time of my visit. Cut by the mouth of the region’s stream, the beach runs from below a large (and public) mansion up to where the local church sits.

Following the beach past the church will cause visitors to climb a slope and around the north side of the region to one of those islands of green and colour bursts from the snow. Located at the end of one of the town’s roads, this presents a covered area of broken and uneven cobbles sitting above a waterfall, the townward side of which offers a horse rezzer for those who would prefer to explore on horseback.

Aurelias, January 2023

Continue along the northern coast to its eastern extent and you’ll find the Rainy Café, a place that switches from winter to a sense of being in a tropical location. The snow gives way to grass and gardens sheltered from any off-shore storms by a reefs overlooked by a tall lighthouse sitting just off the coast.

As the name suggests, the café sits within a gentle fall of rain, its interior offers a dry retreat, the terrace just outside protected by the wall-height windows that hinge around their upper ends, and the eaves of the roof above them – although the decks beyond the terrace might suffer from a soaking should the rain decide to move!

Aurelias, January 2023

A charming location with plenty of opportunities for photography, Aurelias makes for a charming, easy visit – and I look forward to returning later in the year as the seasons change.

SLurl Details

Guernica: a statement against war in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
London Junkers: Guernica – January 2023

The greater portion of humanity’s history can, unfortunately, be told in terms of conflict and war. Whether driven by territorial desires, religious zealotry, political expediency, or inherent ethnic / racial divides, wars large and small, tribal, national or international have pockmarked the stories of successive civilisations. With the 21st century just into its 23rd year, we have already witnessed some 27 significant conflicts and wars around the globe – roughly twice the number seen within the first two decades of the 20th century.

Little wonder then, that London Junkers has chosen as he latest installation – opening on Wednesday, January 11th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT – to bring back Guernica, his 3D reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s famous oil painting, regarded around the world by many through the years as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history.

For those unfamiliar with the painting, from mid-1936 through until late 1939, Spain was torn apart by a civil war between the then-Republican government (notably aided by Soviet Russia and by Mexico) and the Nationalists, lead by a group of generals who had failed to seize power in a coup d’état in mid-July 1936 and were aided by Fascist Germany and Italy.

London Junkers: Guernica – January 2023

As a part of that conflict, General Francisco Franco called upon the German Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria to bomb the small – but to the Basques, historically and culturally significant – town of Guernica. Ostensibly, the raid was to deny retreating Republican army use of the town’s bridge to cross the Oka River. However, the use of incendiary bombs later the later raids carried out by the German Condor Legion and which set the town ablaze, does suggest the the bombing was intended to break the spirit of the Basque army.

The attack levelled almost all of the town, with it and the strafing of roads and streets by fighters was seen as a war crime. On hearing about the raid at his home in Paris, Pablo Picasso was horrified. Already been commissioned by the Republican government to produce a painting for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition (and to raise funds for the Republican cause via exhibitions around the world), he decided to express his outrage at the murder of women and children – both of whom he saw as “the very perfection of mankind” – through a painting commemorating those lost.

London Junkers: Guernica – January 2023

In all, the painting – over 7.5 metres long and around 3.5 metres high – took Picasso 35 days to produce, and while it was the result of a commission by and for his nation’s Republican government, and he was himself an anti-fascist, and thus vehemently opposed to the likes of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini, he saw the painting as a means to express his overall abhorrence to the war and the effect the actions of both sides was having on his homeland.

The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? … In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death. 

– Pablo Picasso

Interpreting the painting tends to be subjective; while there is clear symbolism throughout, some of which is clear – such as the woman on the left mourning the loss of her babe-in-arms; the woman with arms upraised to the right, the lick of flames both above and below her, the fallen, dismembered soldier -, so to is there symbolism (or metaphor) which is harder to discern. The presence of the bull and horse, for example; both animals have enormous significance in Spanish culture, and would appear to have significance here – but Picasso himself warned against reading too much into their presence other than, perhaps, as symbols of his nation.

London Junkers: Guernica – January 2023

But that said, the overall horror and destruction, the pain, death and sorrow that surround war is all too clearly evident throughout the piece. As such, when visiting London’s installation, I strongly recommend viewing it from far enough back so you can see all of the piece in a single frame such that it might be viewed as the original. From here all the nuances of the piece can be seen, such as the way the horse’s nose, nostrils and teeth offer a stylised human skull, for example. By moving / camming close helps to bring individual pieces within London’s interpretation of Picasso’s work, allowing us to ponder their meaning.

This symbolism also extends to the landing point / event stage for the installation. Sharing the same black / white / greyscale tones as the painting, this area features two Junkers dive bombers (not actually used in the Guernica raid, but utterly symbolic of the terror of warfare), swooping down on the stage. Between them, a dove – the symbol of peace – sits trapped within a sphere, a symbolism which speaks for itself. Above this sits the trunk of a tree, representative of both the line of Gernikako Arbola, or [oak] Tree of Guernica – a central facet of the Biscayan people (and by extension, Basques as a whole); and the third tree in the series (1858-2004), which  miraculously survived the bombing of the town. Finally, two board on the stage provide, respectively, an introduction to the installation and London’s own indictment of war, in the form of a poem, might be read.

London Junkers: Guernica – January 2023

When writing about the original presentation of this installation in 2012, I noted it might be said that the bombing of Guernica washed away the last vestiges of the romanticism so often afforded war through word, verse and idealism. Sadly, it did not bring an end to war itself, as witnessed by the events that followed on the heels of the Spanish Civil War, and all the conflicts since, per the opening comments of this piece.

In this, and given all that is occurring within Ukraine in particular (and before it, Georgia), the return of Guernica to Second Life at this time helps reminds us that so long as we are driven by the need for power, for dominance (and dominion) over others and in elevating politics and / or religion above our fellow humans, the innocent will continue to suffer under the yoke of war.

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #2 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Le’eaf and Tinsel Café, Heterocera – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 10th, 2023 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, January 10th 2023, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were restarted with no deployment, leaving them on simulator version 576542.
  • On Wednesday, January 11th, 2023, the simhosts on the RC channels should see the deployment of the ability to to play 30-second sound clips and the new sound functions llLinkPlaySound, with llLinkStopSound llLinkAdjustSoundVolume and llLinkSoundRange which allow sounds in child prims of a linkset to be played without the need for a supporting script.

It is hoped that week #3 will see a deployment of an RC simulator update comprising custom HTTP headers (total space for headers will increase to 4k and the limit on the number of headers will be dropped), and new cryptographic signing utilities – potentially llHMAC (per BUG-233005) and llSignRSA and llVerifyRSA (per BUG-233009). These updates will be available for testing on the Juggly Puff region within Aditi (the beta grid) during the rest of week #2.

Available Official Viewers

This list reflects the current status of available official viewers at the start of 2023:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.8.576863 Monday, December 12, 2022 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance (Q)uality RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577418, January 4, 2023.
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS RC viewer, version 6.6.9.577251, January 4, 2023.
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.577157, December 14, 2022.
      • This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

In Brief

  • An update to Linkset Data to fix the sorting for LSDFindKeys is being targeted for a maintenance release in early February. Further LSD updates and fixes are being considered, but Rinder Linden would like to get this update out ASAP, rather than waiting to bundle it with other LSD updates.
  • BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – LL may have a fix available by earlier March.
  • BUG-233107 “Objects failing to render is happening more frequently of late” – is still believed to be an Interest List issue, although that code has not been directly touched in a while. One theory is the server is unsubscribing users from certain objects for reasons unknown (and which would impact entire linksets were the root to be unsubscribed). However, further investigation is required.
    • This issue leads to an extended discussion on passible causes and on the Interest List in general – please refer to the video below.