Day: August 22, 2023

2023 SL SUG meetings week #34 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Orcinus Isle, June 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday,  August 22nd 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.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Server Deployments

  • No deployments for the major simulator channels this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.
  • There may be a small deployment to the Snack channel (Yondercane), to test changes to the way avatar arrivals in a region are handled (see below).

Dog Days Roll-Back

  • On Wednesday, August 16th, the Blueteel RC channel was updated with update 581292 (“Dog Days”).
  • During testing, it was discovered the update was causing some worn attachments were being renamed “Object” when edited whilst attached while retaining the correct name when seen in Inventory / detached to Inventory.
  • However, if such an attachment was dropped in-world, it would be renamed “Object”. As this was deemed to not be optimal, the update was rolled back.
  • If all goes according to plan, an attempt to re-deploy the release will be made in week #35.

Viewer Updates

The glTF / PBR Materials viewer, updated to version 7.0.0.581368, on August 22nd. All other available official viewers remain as follows:

Note: the alternate viewer page also lists “Win32+MacOS<10.13 – 6.6.12.579987” as an RC viewer. However, the Win 32 + pre-Mac OS 10.13 was promoted to release status on July 5th, and viewer version 6.6.12.579987 points to the Maintenance S viewer, promoted to release status on May 16th.

Avatar Arrival Update and Other Simulator Work

This is a first pass at working to improve avatar arrivals (AA) in regions and reduce the amount of “freezing” may occur whilst the arrival is processed, with further work indicated in the future, Monty Linden described this part of the work thus:

AA is the first part of an effort to tune the simulator’s main processing loop. There are *many* causes of very long frames currently. One of the worst offenders is avatar attachment handoff and rezzing at region crossings and teleports. AA attempts to break up and time bound that process, particularly when multiple avatars are involved in a crossing, allowing the frame to complete more closely to the scheduled time. [The] goal is to improve interactivity and responsiveness to those *not* involved in the RC/TP at the expense of those crossing having their glorious collections of stuff attached a bit more slowly. This first pass includes some of that monolithic execution breakup and some tuning.

Monty went on to note that the AA update will only be deployed for testing / data gathering prior to being withdrawn rather than being expanded to additional channels, whilst he continues to work on the matter in the background and possibly expands the scope of the work to include things like better script optimisations and hand-offs during teleports / crossings, etc.

This led to an extended discussion on region crossings / teleports which extended across most of the meeting, with Rider Linden noting he’ll attempt to have a list of regions on the channel for the meeting next week (assuming the deployment goes ahead), so that interested parties can test both teleports into them and regions crossings between them. This in turn entered into better / alternate means of script scheduling / management (and refactoring the former to reduce some of the simulator load), together with options for improved attachment / messaging, etc., handling.

As an aside to this work, Monty indicated he is working on a diagram showing the simulator main processing loop which could be published for public consumption, once it has been cleaned-up.

Potential for Improving Vehicle Control Options

Rider Linden raised this towards the end of the meeting for discussion, thus:

We’ve been having some discussions internally about taking controls and expanding the number of keys available and perhaps even allowing analogue input for movement to the simulator. Leviathan and I would love to get some feedback on how people would use that and how you’d like to see something like that work.

To which Leviathan added:

I’ve solicited for input and have received a bunch of input and ideas. I think the first sub project in that direction will be to try to expose raw game controller input (joysticks and buttons) to LSL. With regards to keyboard controls, if you look at all of the feature requests over the years, ultimately people want access to just about ALL of the keys. I was worried about the ability to make a keylogger in SL, however Signal thinks that wouldn’t really be a problem.

The majority of the feedback was for capabilities to be added to enable a broader range or controllers rather than trying to expand keylogging capabilities exponentially, although keystroke capture and use appears to be more of a focus for Leviathan.

Please refer to the last 10-12 minutes of the video for this discussion.

† 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Reflections on art and geometry in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
ArtCare Gallery, August 2023: Scylla Rhiadra – Geometries of the Human

Currently open at Carelyna’s ARTCARE Gallery is Second Life is another exploration of the human condition through art by Scylla Rhiadra. Scylla is an artist who has a reputation for getting the grey squishy stuff located within the upper portion of our skulls firing on all cylinders – and for that very reason, I always enjoy spending time within her exhibitions, even if it does mean the four cylinders of my own little brain have to work overtime….

Geometries of the Human is a deftly layered collection of images, thoughts, quotes and themes which offer the visitor opportunities to consider the exhibition along several parallel – and overlapping – lines. The most visual of these themes / lines is the relationship between art and geometry – the latter being perhaps one of the most important (and certainly one of the oldest) branches of mathematics. It is one which has and does hold influence over many aspects of our lives, as Scylla points out in her introductory notes for the exhibition: it has applications in the majority of the sciences (including other branches of mathematics), in architecture, design, and – of course – art. Thanks to the Fibonacci sequence, it is also very present in the natural world.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2023: Scylla Rhiadra – Geometries of the Human

It is geometry which so often gives art its form. Perhaps the most obvious influences here are those of ratio and proportion – the former notably through the use of the Golden Ratio / Fibonacci sequence, the latter most famously embodied within da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which brilliantly brings together mathematics and anatomical science and combines them with art (both classicism, and naturalism). Both individually and jointly, ratio and proportion can do much to give a sense of depth and / or sense of balance which more readily give pieces that have an intrinsic  – if indefinable – appeal.

Geometry therefore helps gives structure to art – much as it does the worlds, the very cosmos, around us. However, the fact that it does can actually be a limitation, particularly through slavish adherence. The rule of thirds, for example, and clearly a geometrical imposition, is intended to offer a rule of thumb within the visual arts; yet all too often it is taken as an immutable rule, any violation of which lessens the finished work – potentially to the point where it should not be considered art. Whilst the first of these views might (to a point, again it depends on the artist’s overall goal) be seen as “true”, the latter most certainly is not.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2023: Scylla Rhiadra – Geometries of the Human

Thus, within the pieces – and their accompanying descriptions – Scylla presents an engaging exploration of the relationship of geometry and art which is both a celebration of the beauty their interaction can create, and a questioning of the enforced rigidity and limitations they can place on art through consideration of the aesthetics of geometry alone when composing an image, painting or drawing. This leads directly into a wider  context of the exhibition: a questioning of perspectives and – and this is purely my term, not Scylla’s – slavish adherence to doctrines.

At the end of the day, geometry is purely a tool or tool set – an undeniably useful one which has allowed humanity to evolve in terms of knowledge, technology, science and understanding. But like any tool or tool set, it is not all-encompassing; like much in science, it is far from static. Whilst it is perhaps the most widely recognised, Euclidean geometry is far from alone, and since the 1800s in particular, differential geometry (through the likes of the Theorema Egregium and Riemannian geometry), together with computational and discrete geometry, play key roles in our understanding of the cosmos and science (even general relativity is underpinned by non-Euclidean geometry), and can lend themselves to art. Ergo, allowing oneself to be constrained by a specific set of rules or concepts is perhaps not the best position to take.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2023: Scylla Rhiadra – Geometries of the Human

This is as fundamental a truth in life as it is in science (and art). We are not uniform creatures; each of us is more than shape or form or colour; we have folds and volume (depth). We might all be the result of the same biological processes, but none of us is mass produced; we are all truly unique. And it is in our differences to one another – however those differences might be manifested – that we are perhaps the most precious, because it is through the understanding – and acceptance – of what makes us different which can lead to the best understanding of one another.

For me, this is aptly stated within What Would You Be without Me?, together with the accompanying quote attributed to Dürer alongside it. Yes, an understanding of geometry and its attendant use of ratio and proportion clear enhance the artist’s work – but it is still the subject of that work which should be central to it. Without such a focus, the work is diminished, emptied; the use of geometry pointless. Similarly, if we are unwilling to accept others can have outlooks on life different to our own, and instead seek to ostracism and “other” them simply because of they are “different”,  then we diminish ourselves as well, becoming – if I might mangle Shakespeare here somewhat: a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2023: Scylla Rhiadra – Geometries of the Human

Having a belief system or guidelines is not a bad thing – again, without our understanding of geometry, the world we’ve created and our understanding of it and the cosmos in which it sits, would potentially be a very different place. But to quote Scylla – too strong a faith in anything is dangerous. It can blind us to the beauty of creativity and artistic freedoms – and rob us of understanding and wisdom that might be vital to our future existence.

As I noted towards the start of this piece Geometries of the Human is a deftly and deeply layered exhibition, one in which both art and the words accompanying it offer nuanced opportunities for reflection on ideas on life and expression great and small. In its viewing, it is not so much an exhibition which should been seem so much as absorbed – and it is obviously thoroughly recommended to anyone who appreciates art with a message (and a conscience).

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