Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, April 23rd, 2023
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: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th – NO CHANGE.
Fantasy Faire 2023: Giraphoria – a portion of the art gallery, with Sambeaubee in the background
The 15th Fantasy Faire in Second Life brings forth many things for lovers of fantasy and residents of Second Life to enjoy – entertainments, shopping, role-play, auctions, literary and film festivals – and, of course a celebration of the arts in Second Life. From 2D art through to live music performances, dance productions and theatrical presentations. As I’ve already previewed the event as a whole, together with the Literary and Film Festivals, for this article, I’ll be looking at the Arts regions within the Faire.
For 2023, the arts at Fantasy faire are located on two Full regions directly accessible from the party / DJ events region of Sipla, whilst also offering an gateway into (and under) the shopping region Isle of Aquarius. Together, the three regions – Sambeaubee, Giraphoria and Sipla – form an almost contiguous setting, with the landscaping a joint design by Gidgette Adagio (Sipla, Sambeaubee) and Lilia Artis and Haveit Neox (Sambeaubee, Giraphoria).
Fantasy Faire 2023: Sipla
All three regions have their own dedicated landing points, per the links in this article; however, I would recommend that when touring them, you consider starting at Sipla and then progressing onwards through Sambeaubee to Giraphoria.
Sipla sits as a ancient and magical garden; a place where tress stand guard around and upon rugged hills, aged steps offer paths up and down slopes to climb hillocks where aged arches and stone pavilions stand, and paved terraces sit within encroaching moss and grass. This is a place where aquamarine pools feed the lush ferns, grasses, plants and trees; pools themselves fed by waters which flow down in crystal curtains from islands floating in the sky, defying the demands of gravity.
Fantasy Faire 2023: Sipla – the Fairechylde
A haven of piece, Sipla is also the home of the Faire’s DJ parties and entertainment (so the media stream can be raucous!), with the nucleus of these events – the legendary Fairechylde – lying before the rocky curtain and hills at the region’s western extreme, the landing point for the region sitting just below her, the paths through the gardens flowing down from these highlands much as the waters fall from the islands above, pointing the way eastwards towards Sambeaubee.
For its part, Sambeaubee forms a coastal causeway, arcing around a shallow bay to the south and open waters to the north. The land along this broad causeway in more open and less rugged than is the case with Sipla, but the architecture of stone towers, tall arches and glass-topped pavilions continues, marking the way east.
Fantasy Faire 2023: Sambeaubee
Giraffes roam the grasslands here and feed from the tall trees, while the land is in part split in two by a long, tall curving wall interspersed with arches and paths leading down to the bay. This wall stands as a celebration of past Fantasy Faire events and the Quests which have formed a part of many of them, whilst the bay beyond features a trio of small islands watched over by a pair of boats and the Cheshire Cat as he lies within the branches of a floating tree. I confess to being uncertain as to the function (if any) of these islands, with their Asian-inspired towers and buildings, but I did note they offer seating, as do the boats circling two of them).
At its western end, Sambeaubee is home to a large, open-air ballroom space, mirrored in neighbouring Giraphoria, which will be the location for the Masked Ball events at the Faire, with the region also hosting the Silent Auction (yet to open at the time of writing) and some of the Jail and Bail events. Overlooks a deep gorge cutting into the landscape, the ballroom offers one of two routes into Giraphoria, the primary home of arts and visual / live music performances at the Faire.
Fantasy Faire 2023: Giraphoria
Here the land takes on something of a desert-like tone and a rugged, rocky look. Arms to the north and south are homes to, respectively, the second half of the ballroom and the arts display. Between them, they hold within their arms a further inlet, deep-cut and itself home to a large island. Reach via two bridges, this island in both the location of an impressive sculpture of giraffes raising themselves pyramid-like to the sky and surrounded by butterflies, and the access point to the seating area for liver performances which take place on a stage area which can be brought into being over the open waters, courtesy of a multi-scene rezzer.
Offered as a piece of art honouring the giraffes that wander both it and Sambeaubee and which continues the butterfly theme found within Sipla, Giraphoria may be for some the first hint that there is more to these regions that meets the eye. As well as being connected to the rest of the Fairelands by the two bridges leading down to it, the seat area for live performances also has a third ramp, one that dips down beneath the waters. It leads down to an underwater gallery overlooking a deep ravine the floor of which offers scattered glowing plants, whilst a narrow cleft offers a suggestion that there is more to be found in this underwater world – but how is it to be reached?
Fantasy Faire 2023: Giraphoria – a portion of the art galleryWell, one way is to simply walk through the balustrade of this raise balcony-alcove and drop down to the sea floor. Another – and my preferred route – is to return to Sipla, then find your way to the archway connecting the gardens there with the Isle of Aquarius. Whilst this tall arch leads down to path leading out over the water to the neighbouring region, a second tall arch sits at the water’s edge, looking out towards the walls of Isle of Aquarius – and this in fact a gateway to the underwater realms which extend out under the shops and precincts of Aquarius as they sit on the waters, and beck unto Sambeaubee and Giraphoria.
The path down to the sea floor is steep, but marked by further archways. Turn left as you reach it, and a path of lighter hue compared to the rest of the sea floor well lead you west towards a huge basalt formation and undersea sculpture. However, just before this formation, a second path branches away to the north and under a further stone arch. This is the entrance to the underwater walk.
Fantasy Faire: Sipla – the path to the underwater gardens
Here, set within a deep ravine, area gardens rich a corals, anemone, sea grass and more, where fish swim and play, while drowned gardens, sculptures and temples await discovery. Following the very edge of Sambeaubee, this path and its gardens eventually bring visitors to the bowl beneath the waters of Giraphoria, where further tunnels are home to art both framed and painted onto the rock, as they lead to the Octopus’ cave and gardens.
Richly diverse, home to much that makes Fantasy Faire special, and visually engaging in their own right, the Arts regions of the Fairelands should not be missed.
April 20th, 2023: the Starship combination of Ship 24 and Booster 7: (l) approaching Max Q, intact but with several engines shut-down; (r) tumbling as control is lost. Credit: SpaceX
Thursday, April 20th saw SpaceX attempt the first orbital flight test of their Starship / Super Heavy launch vehicle combination. As most reading this article likely already know, things did not go entirely well with the vehicle’s flight termination system (FLS) being used to destroy it just under four minutes into its ascent.
The flight was always going to be a risk; the Starship / Super Heavy programme has been an extraordinary public display of a rapid development cycle (some might say too rapid), with little in the way of comprehensive systems and integration testing to match that of the likes of NASA. In addition, and ahead of the launch attempt, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell went on record as stating the launch wasn’t a “focus” for the company; that lay in upping the production rate for starship vehicles and boosters – a rather surprising statement, all things considered, and one I’ll return to later.
Launch came at 13:33 UTC, after some two hours of propellant loading on both vehicles, and proceeded per the notes below:
T -00:02: 33
Engine ignition and hold on the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM) as trust builds.
T +00:04
Launch clamps release, and vehicle commences ascent, most likely with the failure of three Raptors, two forming a pair on the outer ring of engines, one within the steerable inner ring.
T +00:11
Ship 24 clears the launch tower.
T +00:15
Booster 7 clears the launch tower, first confirmation of three engine failures / shut-downs.
T +00:19
Vehicle exhibits diagonal vertical movement, potentially due to the off-centre thrust resulting from the failure of the two outer ring motors.
T +00:28
Visible flashes in exhaust plume followed by debris departing the base of the vehicle at high speed – thought to be one of the hydraulic pressure units (HPUs), used to gimbal the inner ring of Raptor motors and steer the vehicle.
T +00:40
Loss of 4th Raptor, the third for the outer ring.
T +01:01
Loss of 5th Raptor, the fourth for the outer ring, as vehicle enters Max-Q.
T+01:30
Vehicle exits Max-Q.
T +02:00
Vehicle starts to exhibit off-nominal exhaust plume.
T +02:23
In a split-screen view, vehicle is seen to start slewing in flight at the point it is expected to rotate, re-stabilise and allow the separation of Ship 24 from Booster 7.
T +02:46
Vehicle is clearly spinning / tumbling.
T +03:09
Ship 24 appears to start venting propellants (or possibly a reaction / attitude control thrusters firing).
T +03:12
Venting (or thruster exhaust plumes) visible on both Ship 24 and upper portion of Booster 7.
T +03:25
Vehicle now clearly caught in a flat spin, venting / thruster plumes still visible from the booster’s upper section and from Ship 24.
T +03:58
Flight termination system (FTS) automatically triggered. Vehicle is destroyed.
While the data is still being assessed, the most probable cause for the loss of vehicle is a combination of the loss of at least one of the HPUs and the loss (or partial loss) of two of the inner gimbaling motors, coupled with the off-centre thrust generated by the failure of two pairs of motors located in the same hemisphere of the outer ring of 20 engines leaving the vehicle unable to sufficiently compensate for the biased thrust, resulting in the start of the spin / tumble, which continued beyond the point of recovery, triggering the FTS.
Following the launch, social media was swamped with hails of the launch being either a “success” or a “failure” – with the former being based on statements by SpaceX that if the stack cleared the tower it would be a “successful flight”; hardly the highest of bars to clear for a vehicle intended to be “rapidly reusable”, and the latter based on the fact that the vehicle had to be destroyed – also hardly a fair assessment: rocket can fail – as evidenced earlier in the month by the loss of the smaller Terran-1 rocket on its maiden launch.
Two views of Booster 7, showing 6 failed Raptor motors (l), and what appear to be two more in the process of shutting down (r). Credit: SpaceX
Certainly, there was a lot of valuable data gathered on the performance of the Raptor engines – although not all of this was good. From images gathered, it appears a total of 8 Raptors failed either fully (6) or partially (2). That’s a potential loss of 25% of thrust; not something you’d want to see on a payload carrying mission. On the other hand, however, the uncontrolled spin / tumble showed the starship / booster combination was fully capable of passing through Max-Q and showed remarkable resilience in withstanding any break-up prior to the FTS being triggered.
In particular, the test proved – as many looking at the launch site objectively had long noted (including myself) – the Orbital Launch Mount (OLM), the so-called “stage zero” of the system, was far from up to snuff if it is to support multiple launches, thanks to the lack of any provisioning of a water deluge system or flame deflectors.
Both of these are essential elements within any high-thrust rocket launch system. Flame deflectors do pretty much what their name implies: deflect the heat and flame of engine exhausts away from the launch complex infrastructure and launch vehicle, working in concert with the water deluge system. This delivers hundreds of thousands of litres of water across the launch pad and under it, to both absorb sound to prevent it being reflected back up onto the vehicle as damage-inducing pressure waves, and to absorb the raw heat of the engine exhausts through flash vaporisation – seen as the white clouds of “smoke” erupting from the pads during SLS and former space shuttle launches.
NASA’s Pad 39B water deluge system delivers 1.8 million litres of water to the mobile launch platform when in place at the pad. This water takes the form of a geyser due to it exiting the top of the pipe which would normally connect to the underside of the mobile launch pad so the water is can be distributes to smaller outlets across the top of the platform to cover it in a sound-absorbing “blanket”. As the same time, water is also delivered to the spigots at the top of a flame deflector structure within the concrete flame trench. This water is flash-vaporised during a lunch by the heat and flame from the rockets engines, the deflector itself pushing the super-heated gases of the rocket’s exhausts and the steam along the trench and way from the vehicle and pad to prevent fire damage. Credit: NASA
On Wednesday, April 19th, Linden Lab announced the launch of BelliHub and New User Tutorial regions – a new location within the Linden Homes Continent, open to all, which is intended to – quoting from Patch Linden’s forum post – provide:
A place where they can go to find information regarding Bellisseria, meet up with residents living in Bellisseria and have all of their questions answered. BelliHub features:
Information: Links to pages with details on things like how to get a home, Premium membership, using the land tools, the Bellisseria covenant, etc.
Bellisseria Events Centre: where members of the Bellisseria Performers Group can mark their events on the calendar for all to see.
Demo Homes: Finally a place where residents can rez and walk around all of the currently released home themes and models.
Hangout: A games area for residents to hang out and interact.
The BelliHub and BelliDemo regions are a resource for everyone who wants to help prospective new Linden Home owners, or just hang out and discuss all things Bellisseria.
– Patch Linden, April 19th, 2023
BelliHub: Linden Homes demo area
I will admit to reading the place name as “Belli RUB” at first glance, hence the title of this piece – I just couldn’t resist; however, the write-up and the Destination Guide entry left me curious enough to hop along and take a look just as soon as Fantasy Faire and completing setting-up my new PC allowed.
Sitting as a part of the New User Experience (NUX), BelliHub shares elements first seen at the new Welcome Islands I explored back in July 2021 to provide a tutorial area for new users and an introduction to Premium subscriptions, Bellisseria and Linden Homes. In particular, the kiosk-style approach to information areas seen within the Welcome Islands is repeated here, together with the garden-like layout and footpaths meandering between the different locales. However – and while I have not been back to the Welcome Islands to see how things may have changed since 2021 (makes a note to try to do soon in the near future), there are improvements here over that layout as originally reported.
Signage, for example, is much improved and less in-yer-face, giving progress through the various areas a more relaxed feel. Outside of the initial tutorial area / landing point, people are invited to touch the various signs to receive information, rather than having it shouted at them by detailed signs which can feel a little overwhelming. And talking of prior Welcome / Learning Islands, those with particularly long memories might want to to give a gentle pat on the head to the parrot at the Communications area, as he once again offers a call back to the Orientation Islands of old (all we need now is the old ball-and-table – which I think I’ve said at least once before!).
BelliHub new user tutorialProgress is also assisted by the use of blue directional lines laid out along the footpaths, giving a needed sense of order to progress. In the 2021 version of the Welcome Islands, learning was a little more random as people could wander past kiosks without necessarily taking notice of them; here, the trails lead directly to the kiosks and through the areas to which they are linked, encouraging attention be paid to the information boards without any sense of being led by the nose.
Very good use is made of video media throughout as well – complete with auto-detect volumes which trigger videos when someone crosses them / stands on them (instructions are also provided on toggling video media manually in the viewer). The videos range from those produced specifically for the NUX (hi, Abnor!) to videos produced as a part of the Lab’s Second Life University series.
The path around the hub eventually reaches a gateway titled Bellisseria, after passing a Landmarks area where those who wish to do so can continue their explorations elsewhere in Second Life. The archway marks the end of the the “basic orientation” section of the hub, and the focus turns to the ideas of land holding – both Mainland and Private – and on Premium options, with links (including a globe of the Second Life world where those wishing to do so can upgrade to a Premium subscription (the globe itself a further link to the Welcome Islands).
BelliHub: Linden Homes demo area
Given the title on the arch of the gateway, it should come as no surprise that beyond it is a focus on All Things Bellisseria including an events area which includes the ability to book the various community centres for an event by Bellisseria residents (click on the name of any community centre to open the World Map to teleport to it). I’ll admit, reading one of the calendars, I was a little concerned that the last time Abnor Mole ate anything appears to have been April 13th…); and information on the Bellisseria Covenant and what is or is not allowed in the Bellisseria continent. Beyond this, the path ends at a Where Next? kiosk with a link to the Destination Guide and some further focus. Alongside of this end-point is a small dock where a sailboat can be rezzed for those wishing to take to the water: a nice touch.
North of the tutorials / information area and within a second region, and a looped path offering the chance to visit demos of the released Linden Home themes. Visitors can either walk the path or grab a bicycle from the rezzer at the start point and ride around the path. Again, in a nice touch, the house controllers for the demos are open to the public, allowing people to view the different styles of the various themes. Just keep in mind that if you use a bicycle from the rezzer and opt to hop off to look at a house, the bike will poof.
For those looking for a little socialising, BelliHub offers a number of seating areas, some of which also include the opportunity to play chess or draughts, whilst the beach adjoining the tutorial area also offers beach volleyball, 10-pin bowling and other activities.
BelliHub new user tutorial
Overall, the BelliHub is well designed and considered, presenting an engaging and interesting visit for established and curious established Second Life residents as well as those coming into SL who might be directed to it, whilst for those who have invested themselves in Bellisseria and its various communities, it offers a further opportunity to socialise and – possibly – meet and help incoming new users to Second Life.
The Stump Theatre , Fungalmire – home of the Fantasy Faire 2023 LitFest and FilmFest
Fantasy Faire 2023 is now open, and with it comes the Fantasy Faire Literary Festival (LitFest), now in its ninth year, and the Fantasy Faire Film Festival (FilmFest), returning for its third year at the Faire.
The LitFest
Centred on the Stump Theatre in Fungalmire the LitFest is a special place where the magic of the spoken word will weave tales of wonder, relate stories of great adventure and daring; where talks by authors, discussions, creative writing sessions and performances will all take place. In addition, literary hawks and writers will be encouraged to join daily LitFest tours of the Fairelands and afterwards compose pieces related to their travels.
This year, our theme is anthropomorphic fiction – that is, fiction in which animals displaying decidedly human traits form an important part of the narrative. Think of the likes of Aesop’s Fables or legends out of Africa and the orient, or the retelling of Hamlet through the likes of The Lion King, to evergreen favourites like The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh and Charlotte’s Web.
Guest Of Honour
Anne Louise Avery
The LitFest 2023 Guest of Honour is Anne Louise Avery, author of Reynard the Fox, the beautiful novel that draws upon medieval sources. Anne also creates Twitter vignettes that tell stories of a world where animal and humans live together.
Born in London to bohemian parents – her mother was a novelist and her father a journalist who worked with Ian Fleming and Graham Greene in Naval intelligence during the War – Avery received a First Class degree in art history at the School of African Studies (SOAS), University of London, one of the world’s leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She then held a fellowship at Brown, and studied Japanese at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, before becoming an art historian and writer.
In 2020, she published Reynaud the Fox, which takes William Caxton’s bestselling 1481 English translation of the Middle Dutch tale of a subversive, dashing, anarchic, aristocratic, witty fox from medieval East Flanders and weaves a new interpretation of the story, complete with innovative language and characterisation and themes of protest, resistance and duplicity fronted by a personable, anti-heroic fox making his way in a dangerous and cruel world.
Sunday, April 23rd
11:00 – An interview with Anne Louise Avery
LitFest Fairelands Tours
The popular Fantasy Faire LitFest Tours will once again be taking place, leaving daily from the LitFest home base in the Drifts of Anamnesis to explore the Fairelands and seeking the stories they have to tell as well as their special secret places and details. Stories can also be submitted for publication on the Fantasy Faire website, provided they are submitted within two days of each tour.
The Tours depart daily from Fungalmire, and at the time of writing, the tour schedule is as follows (all times SLT):
The Film Festival is returning for its third year at Fantasy Faire. Events will include: talks, discussions and retrospectives of the works of different machinimatographers, three film premieres, including the premiere of the third episode of the ongoing series, Harland Quinn and the Omega Hex. And don’t worry if you missed Episodes 1 or 2 – these will also be shown.
The Film Competition
2023 will see the second edition of the Fantasy Faire Film Festival Competition, complete with awarding of the Wafflies!
Open to all, the competition is based in the Fairelands, and comprises three categories, with the winner in each will receive a golden Wafflie statue.
Category 1 – 5-minute fiction
Tell a narrative story, set in the Fairelands
Category 2 – 5-minutes factual
This could be a documentary, a tour of a region, a special Faireland event and – if the creator is willing – perhaps a short interview.
Category 3 – 10-minute Livestream
Either edit a ten minute sequence from the livestream, or give a timeframe of 10 minutes from the longer livestream.
The LitFest and FilmFest Calendar
The calendar blow lists all of the LitFest and FilmFest events – click on any link for more details.
LitFest and Film Festival Highlights
All times below SLT.
Weekdays April 21-May 5
06:30
LitFest
The Milkwood Dash – a chance for you to spend 15 minutes writing your own prose or poetry based on a writer’s prompt, and then share what you have created with your fellow authors.
Friday April 21
11:00
FilmFest
Chantal Harvey and Saffia Widdershins explain what will be happening at the FilmFest
Sunday, April 23
11:00
LitFest
An interview with Anne Louise Avery at the Stump Theatre, Fungalmire.
Tuesday, April 25
11:00
FilmFest
An interview with Pryda: discussing her machinima work, some of which – the Future Shock series – has been featured in this blog.
Wednesday, April 26
11:00
FilmFest
An interview with machinima maker Teal.
Friday, April 28
10:00
FilmFest
An interview with Macguyver Mode, followed by the premiere of his new film.
Saturday, April 29
11:00
FilmFest
An interview with machinima maker Chantal Harvey.
Saturday, May 6
14:00
FilmFest
The Wafflies Awards
Saturday, May 6
17:00
LitFest
The Mythos of the Fairelands- Zander Greene and Aoife Lorefield are in conversation about the Mythos the underlies the Fairelands.
OCWA Experience The Ocean, February 2023 – blog post†
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, April 20th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT.
These meetings are for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work. They are usually chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
Notes:
These meetings are conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either to make comments / ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.
The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.
Additional note: unfortunately, my audio recording died whilst saving to disk, leaving me with just the first 10 minutes of audio from the meeting available for playback / summary. Given responses to questions in text are supplied in Voice, it is impossible to provide any reasonable summary beyond the point at which the recording save failed, so this is therefore a very foreshortened report, and not representative of the entire meeting.
Official Viewer Status
The Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.11.579629 on April 20th.
The rest of the official viewers remain as:
Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
Release channel cohorts:
Maintenance T(ranslation) RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579154, April 6th.
Maintenance S, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
Project viewers:
The PBR Materials / reflection probes project viewer, version 7.0.0.579401, April 10th.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
The Performance Floater / Auto FPS viewer looks set to become the next viewer to be promoted to de facto release status in the coming week.
glTF Materials and Reflection Probes
Project Summary
To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
It is currently to early to state how this might change when glTF support is expanded to include entire objects.
The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid): Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
The viewer is now very close to being promoted to Release Candidate status. Issues within the viewer build farm prevented it from getting fully cleared by QA, who are currently taking one more look at it.
It is believed that all the significant showstoppers thus far found have been dealt with (although more may show up as a result of it becoming available to a wider audience in RC).
The above should include the issue of objects in the camera’s view failing to render unless occlusion culling is disabled and the issues of some mesh items “exploding in the the viewer’s viewer both being fixed.
Ton mapping has been updated so there is no longer the ability to change / turn off tone mapping. This has been done in the name of “trying to keep things consistent” with older contents that has tone mapping built-in. This does lead to a few edge cases (such as not being able to get totally pitch black environments), but also fixes some issues around general exposure (e.g. preventing full bright objects changing brightness depending on camera distance).
It is likely that the work on exposures will eventually be fed into the snapshot tool, so photographers can adjust the exposure settings for them pictures.
There is still a collection of minor issues / bugs still to be resolved – such as getting parity some some of the current sky settings – which will be dealt with in RC as the viewer progresses.
Those who do find significant issues in using the viewer in RC are asked to report them via a BUG report ASAP.
When the view does go to RC, it is likely the server-side support will be deployed to one (Preflight) or possibly two (Preflight and Snack) small simulator RC channels to allow for testing on Agni (the Main grid). Details of the available regions will be published in my project summaries as and when available.
Future glTF Work
There is an internal (to LL) design document in development which is intended to set-out the next steps in the glTF work; however, this is not currently ready for public release.
Past indicators have been that it is possible the near-term work for glTF could include planar mirrors (with some controls around their use) and also glTF mesh uploads.
Next Meeting
Thursday, May 4th, 2023.
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 