Month: May 2024

2024 week #20: SL CCUG summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Butterfly Effect, May 2024 – 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, May 16th, 2024.

Meeting Purpose

  • The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
  • In regards to meetings:
    • Dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.
    • Commence at 13:00 SLT on their respective dates.
    • Are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
    • Are open to all with an interest in content creation.
  • The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.

Official Viewers Status

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8and  promoted May 13 – NEW
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

Graphics / glTF

Featurettes Viewer – Recap

  • Support for:
    • Viewer-side setting of PBR materials for terrain.
    • 2K texture upload support.
    • Mirrors: using reflection probes to generate local static or dynamic (incl. avatar) reflections in real-time.
  • Both Geenz Linden (mirrors) and Cosmic Linden (PBR terrain) are engaged in follow-up work for both of these projects, which will hopefully appear in a future graphics featurette viewer – not the current version (e.g. allowing PBR materials on terrain to have custom repeats, offsets, rotation).
  • It terms of PBR terrain, it was noted:
    • Emissive is supported on terrain.
    • There is a issue with Mac systems (either emissive or normal may “fall off”).
    • As running all four PBR materials on terrain can put a load on the viewer, there are some automatic fallbacks for systems unable to handle the full load which mean some of the materials may not be applied
    • Those opting to use PBR for terrain, as the viewer capability gains adoption (and region owners enable it), there is not requirement to also provide textures for terrain (to allow for those on non-PBR viewers).

General Notes on glTF / PBR

  • As an extension to the last point above, it was further noted that as PBR gains adoption, there is no enforced requirement for creators to continue to provide fallbacks to handle “non-PBR” viewers.
    • This lead to a further statement (first made at the May 10th TPV Developer meeting) that creators building for SL21B are not required to provide Blinn-Phong materials fallbacks on their builds when using PBR.
    • The above can be taken as an informal view that viewers need to support PBR either fully or with a “beta” release by the time of SL21B (commencing Friday, June 21st, 2024).
  • One of the reasons Linden Water reflections are not as good under PBR is due to attempts to optimise the rendering load so that any potential frame rate hit is minimised for more users.
    • Geenz Linden is looking at improving them once more as a result of the work done for mirrors. This work, if successful won’t bring water reflections up to the standard of pre-PBR water reflections (updated every frame), but will offer an improvement over what is currently seen with PBR.
    • Water as a material has been requested and is something LL “is interested in”, but this is not part of the current glTF / PBR work.
  • LL believe that most users should not see a dramatic fall-off in viewer FPS as a result of PBR, such that their experience is heavily impacted.
  • There remains no current plan to support displacement maps.
  • As well as working on mirrors, Geenz Linden is now working on Index of Refraction (IOR) and transmission, both in line with the glTF 2.0 specification (e.g. allowing transparent surfaces that distort what is behind them, as can sometimes be seen in the physical world).

glTF Scene Import

  • Recap:
    • Runitai Linden is continuing to work on glTF scene import. This has reached a point where (on test viewers) it is now possible to preview a scene (tied to an in-world object) in-world.
    • The initial aim is to get to a point where scenes can be imported and seen, and nodes within them updated with both tools in the viewer and / or using LSL, and ensuring they stay in synch with the rest of the scene.
    • Scenes are liable to use the MSFT glTF extension for Level of Detail (LOD), as this allows LODs to be set per node within a scene, providing more intuitive / consistent LOD switching management (based on screen coverage).
    • There will be constraints placed on scene imports (e.g. will not be able to have a scene which exceeds the capacity of a region; scenes will not be able to span more than one region (so as to avoid issues with physics, etc.); and so on).
  • In terms of scene import / export, while it is still earlier days, Runitai noted again that:
    • The idea is to make the import / export a two-way street for creators so they can modify their scenes with relative ease by taking it back to Blender to fix issues that cannot be fixed in-world.
    • This will be subject to the permissions system to prevent the wholesale export of content added to a scene.
    • Scenes uploaded will have attributions appended by the asset service (we owns the asset, when it was uploaded, etc).

In Brief

  • PBR and Bakes on Mesh:
    • LL “keenly aware” this needs to be done, and is noting support for it coming via the Feedback Portal.
    • However – it is not currently a live project.
    • The discussion also again carried the caveat that updating the Bake Service to support 2K textures is only part of the issue: all SL wearable definitions all also need to be revised to be able to support 2K textures, as these are also currently limited in their resolution.
  • There was an extended discussion on content ripping from Second Life and copybotting (with the latter covering a number of flavours). In short:
    • The is the hoary old (but nevertheless true) acknowledgement that Second Life relies on local computer rendering; ergo, regardless of whether it is via a”copybot viewer” or not, content can be ripped from SL and used elsewhere by those determined to do so.
    • Insofar as content being ripped and re-sold in Second Life (or elsewhere) there is the DMCA process – and in terms of other platforms, it does not matter if they have a DMCA Portal or not – a formal identification of content being misused (with proof of ownership) can still be sent to them in order to initiate a take-down process.
    • There was discussion on why “obvious” copyright-infringing content in SL was not taken down (with the example of Chanel products being used). As I understand it (and IANAL), this is bound up with the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA, design to provide immunity to ISPs and website operators for copyright infringement committed by their users by providing them with a framework for taking action. Pro-actively removing content potentially circumvents this process, leaving the company open to possible legal action if mistakes are made (and / or for simply not pre-actively addressing all infringements, large and small).
  • There was also a discussion on animations under glTF. However, as this will be a future element of the glTF scene support project, so I’ll leave specifics until such time as the work starts and LL talk more directly as to what they are doing and when.
  • The latter part of the meeting included (an occasionally heated) discussion on the new Modesty Layers being proposed by Linden Lab (see: 2024 SL Governance meeting week #19: Child Avatar Policy). However, as this was somewhat entangled with matters of policy, and those directly involved in making the changes to said policy / overseeing changes were not available  / present at the meeting, ad what was suggested as to possible technical solutions was somewhat speculative, I would prefer to leave further reference out of this summary, and leave matters until those at Linden Lab responsible for the policy have more fully engaged directly with content creators.

Next Meeting

† 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.

VAI’s Mental Health Symposium 2024 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, Second Life

The 2023 Virtual Ability Inc., (VAI) Mental Health Symposium on Friday, May 17th, 2024, marking the internationally supported Mental Health Awareness Week (May 13th through 19th, 2024, inclusive). As such, it forms a part of a wide range of physical world and virtual world events framed around Mental Health Awareness Month, which has been throughout May observed in the United States since 1949.

2023 marks the 13th such symposium hosted by Virtual Ability Inc., and has the theme Our Youth, Our Elders, carrying a focus on the fact that children and the elderly face unique mental health challenges that are not well understood and often not adequately addressed.

The Symposium will take place in the virtual world of Second Life, at the Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability Island. Those from outside of Second Life wishing to attend can do so by creating a free Second Life account through Virtual Ability’s Sign-Up Portal, and then entering Second Life via Virtual Ability’s New Resident Orientation Course.

The schedule of speakers for the event can be found on the Virtual Ability Inc., website, and presentations commence at 07:30 SLT (US PDT) on the morning of Friday, May 17th, and run through to the concluding presentation, which starts at 14:30 SLT, with each session lasting approximately one hour. For ease of reference, a brief summary of the presentations is provided below – but do please check the complete schedule via the link above for the fullest information on speakers and talks.

  • 07:30 SLT: Dr. Esther Gachuri, PhD and Dr. Anne Wambugu, PhD, MAMFT, MA, Pan Africa Christian University (Nairobi, Kenya) – “Elderly Peoples’ Perception of Their Wellbeing in Selected Mainstream Churches in Kenya”.
  • 09:00 SLT: Dr. Folajinmi Oluwasina, PhD, FRSPH, University of Calgary (Canada) – “Invisible Struggles: Addressing Mental Health Among Black Youth in Canada”.
  • 10:30 SLT: Mr. Horta Reis da Silva, Lecturer in Nursing Education at King’s University, England – “Loneliness in Older Adults”.
  • 12:00 noon SLT: Dr. Valerie Hill, MLIS, PhD, director of the Community Virtual Library in the metaverse and co-coordinator of the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium, and Rose Hill, MLIS, CPC, SUDP-T, is a Certified Peer Counsellor with a focus in trauma and crisis counselling – “The Impact of Parasocial Relationships with AI on Mental Health”
  • 13:00 SLT: Jessica Simionato, MPH, BSp, La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) – “Intergenerational programs – bringing youth and elders together to enhance social connectedness”.
  • 14:30 SLT: Robert Walker, MS, COAPS, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, USA – “Older Adult Peer Support: Our Time Has Come”.
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, Second Life

For those unable to attend in-world, the symposium will be live streamed on You Tube.

About Virtual Ability

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation, chartered in the state of Colorado, USA.  It is a non-profit tax exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. This means that for US citizens, contributions made are deductible as a charitable donation for federal income tax purposes.

Virtual Ability hosts this annual Symposium to share information about mental health and mental disabilities with the general population. Within its cross-disability community, VAI has members who deal with a variety of mental health issues. So, not only is this an opportunity for VAI community members to learn more about topics related to mental health from experts they probably would not have a chance to meet otherwise, it allows the general public to attend a professional conference at no cost.

With thanks to Gentle Heron for the information.

Related links

Linden Lab announces venue for 1st Second Life community Round Table

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

Following recent announcements about efforts to improve communications and engage with the users, and to provide the opportunity to ask questions of members of the Lab’s senior leadership (see: Linden Lab: updates to policies and new initiatives on community relations (May 2nd, 2024) and Summary of Tilia acquisition Lab Gab + SL Round Table News (April 24, 2024)), on Thursday, May 16th, 2024, Linden Lab announced both the venue details for the the first Community Round Table and those from the Lab’s leadership team who will be attending.

You can read the full details in the official blog post: Community Roundtable on May 20 – Your Chance to Help Improve Second Life. However, and in brief:

In addition the the above, the post provides details on how users can engage with the Lab through the Feedback Portal and Support Portal, and by attending the regularly scheduled User Group meetings held in-world on a range of specific subject areas. For details on the latter, please refer to the SL wiki Official User Groups page, and for dates and times, please see the SL Public calendar†.

The official post concludes:

We understand that agreement on every idea or suggestion may not always be possible. However, we can assure you that your ideas and suggestions matter deeply to us, and those perspectives help shape our decisions. Your voice is valued in our ongoing journey together.
We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with each and every one of you in shaping a world that is not only enjoyable and prosperous but also vibrant and flourishing. Your presence here means the world to us, and your contributions are invaluable in making Second Life an exceptional place to belong. Thank you sincerely for sharing your time with us and for being an integral part of our journey towards creating something truly special together.

Again, please read the official blog post for all information on the meeting.

 

†While they are not officially representative of the Lab or these meetings, please note that I attempt to provide summaries of a number of user group session within these pages, and Patera Północy provides video recordings of the meetings she is able to attend via her You Tube channel).

The First Day … at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

Most of us have likely heard the expression “[Today / This] is the first day of the rest of your life” – but what exactly does it mean when we hear it / say it? What does it pertain to life and how we face it?

For most of us, the response to that question might well lean towards the promise that with each new day comes the opportunity to seize new opportunities, to put the past behind us and look forward to all the potential the future offers. For others, however, the expression might be seen as more a curse than an expression of hope, as Selen Minotaur explores in her exhibition The First Day, (subtitled of the rest of your life) which opened on May 13th, 2024 at Dido Haas’ Nitroglobus Roof gallery.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

The easiest way to describe the installation – which encompasses 2D and 3D elements an multimedia, is to refer to Selen’s own words:

“The first day of the rest of your life” usually refers to a new beginning, full of promise and hope. But what if that first day was actually a repeat of the previous days, or worse, a nightmare?
This exhibition speaks of the fears, beliefs and fantasies that invade us in the face of the unknown. And the courage it takes to overcome them, mobilize and move forward. Because no matter what anyone says, the first day of the rest of your life remains a mystery…

In terms of the images, this brings forth a series of richly layered pieces which, depending on your mood and perspective on visiting, might be interpreted in differing ways, both within the context of the the exhibition’s theme and in a manner which might also encapsulate different aspects of both it and how we opt to interpret the underpinning expression.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

Take The First Station, a marvellously layer image encapsulating ideas of trying to move forward in life whilst forever unable to leave what has come before as it seeks to pin us in place and blind our ability to see how we can move forward, instead making us look forever back at what has been rather than towards the freedom of what might be. Beautifully symbolised through the use of red colouring, the black and reaching out from between the rail sleepers, the tracks themselves and the eye in the mirror, the symbolic core of this piece is perfectly framed.

Then there is  First Sunrise. This is a piece which might be seen as one of those casting a wider net of potential interpretation. The promise of a new day, of open horizons and all the promise they hold – be they through the arrival of a new day which marks our decision to mark it as a new beginning, our “first sunrise”, so to speak, or the literal first sunrise of birth. At the same time, the Sun rises as a clock, the ever present reminder that life is finite; that no matter who or where we are, we are allotted a finite time. Do we allow it to dominate us, to cause us to live in fear of the every diminishing pile of minutes left to us? Or do we simply “live in the moment”? Where does the balance lay? Is life itself not a state of progress from the former to the latter?

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

There is more I could state here around the likes of the caged head, the face mask, and the 3d elements; in fact, I did start – but the reality is, The First Day should be experienced first hand and interpreted directly – and possibly over more than one visit. All I will say here is that I recommend viewing the images and sculptures first prior to viewing the video; in this way, ideas are neatly framed and the narrative then unfolds.

SLurl Details

2024 SL SUG meetings week #20 summary – updated

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lenixus Project ~ Chapter I : The Snail Princess, May 2024 – blog post †

Update: May 15th: The WebRTC test region is WebRTC Voice 1. Read more on WebRTC Voice in this official blog post.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing 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):
  • Meetings 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, May 14th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deploy,
  • On Wednesday, May 15th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with the Spring Break Simulator update.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.
    • A small Snack channel has been set-up for WebRTC testing (sorry, no region name available).

SL Viewer Updates

  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247 and dated May 8th, was promoted to release status on Monday, May 13th.

The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

PBR Materials + Blinn-Phong Support

[Video: 7:45 and (discussion) 46:05-meeting end]

  • Concern was raised over a quote of a comment by Runtai Linden I carried from the May 10th TPV Developer meeting; specifically:
Sometime between now and then, we’ll likely start making the LSL scripts that modify Blinn-Phong parameters modify their PBR equivalents, or do nothing when a PBR material is applied. So llSetColor, for example, would set the base colour, not the diffuse colour. That should make life a lot simpler for scripters going forward, as scripters have been giving us feedback that trying to do something simple like that with existing scripts is impossible as they have to do a check to see if a glTF material is applied, and if there is then use llSetPrimParams and if there isn’t, use llSetColor.
  • This caused concern at the SUG meeting, and so Brad Linden Offered the following:
So, not officially speaking for Runitai, but I think his most important concern is that SL is trying to move towards standards compliance. and for objects with GLTF content attached, the only standards compliant way to display it is to fully implement GLTF PBR exactly as the Khronos group specifies it. so if an object has PBR attached, then displaying anything else is a “MUST NOT” behaviour: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119#section-2.
Defining fallbacks for older viewers that have not implemented the spec, is potentially negotiable.
Any face that has a PBR material applied MUST be displayed using PBR
  • Brad also pointed to a Feedback request where there is further discussion towards the issue of “PBR llFunctions”, including colour .
  • The major source of concern raised on Runatai’s comment and Brad’s expansion is the belief that some SL users are unable to display PBR materials as they are too taxing on their systems; so if creators cannot offer a fallback position, they well leave SL due to the amount of content they cannot see correctly, couple with the view that maintaining the ability to keep llSetColor “as is” does not break with the glTF requirements, but allows those users to stay with SL until such time as they can upgrade their hardware.
  • The counter to this was that there are users still on SL who have hardware unable to correctly render mesh, and that LL are a) working hard to get PBR performance up to a level where the majority of user hardware can support it and b) they do not want to pressure creators into having to support two different content creation / rendering approaches / specifications.
  • Please refer to the video below for further comments on this issue, plus expect further discussions at upcoming Content Creatin meetings (see the SL public calendar for details of the latter).

In Brief

  • [Video: 28:52-46:00] A discussion on Key Frame Motion and on the impact of scaling on KFM + possible, including an idea from Rider for a llSetScaleLimited function, which would scale an object as specified – unless doing so hits a defined LI limit (e.g. “increase the object size to 5x5x5 or stop scaling if the LI exceeds 8”) – the idea being to prevent an animated object from exploding in LI on scaling. This also saw a further suggestion of having a universal timestamp (server and viewer) to better sync operations,

† 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.

Mirai Melody’s Japanese fusion in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mirai Melody, May 2024 – click any image for full size

Another year has passed, and so once again I decided to click my heels and make what is now an annual pilgrimage to Bambi’s (NorahBrent) Missing Melody. I did so because a little birdie informed me that she’d teamed up with Ethan Takeda to produce an interesting sky platform called Mirai Melody. However, the project didn’t start out with the intent to build a complete setting, as Ethan explains:

The inception of this street stemmed from Bambi and my initial vision to craft a backdrop for an editorial piece on NeoJapan for L’Homme Magazine April 2024. What began as a mere backdrop evolved into a captivating narrative, sparking discussions about creating a mini-sim. As ideas began to take shape, our conversations ignited a creative flurry, resulting in the birth of Mirai Melody.

– Ethan Takeda

Mirai Melody, May 2024

The setting comprises a single street “somewhere in [insert name here]” as the hoary old TV / film caption goes. Not there is anything hoary about Mirai Melody; rather the reverse, offering as it does an engaging fusion of “old” – a ramshackle environment in a city where the surrounding high-rises might well look down on disdainfully – but their very presence allows it to carry a life of its own; one edged in the bustle of local life and – going on the presence of certain individuals at the landing point – can have a frisson of danger associated with it.

The main street scene is packed with detail – I strongly recommend visiting using the shared environment and, if you can manage them, with shadows enabled. This will ensure you get the full impact of the setting. There are local sounds as well, but I admit I’m not sure they entirely worked for me although they certainly add depth to all the eateries along the way.

Mirai Melody, May 2024

This is a place rich in the tradition of the street market and what – going on the general friendliness evident throughout most of the street’s length – is likely a relatively close-knit community of small businesses support the local populace and possibly used to having tourists find their way through its length.

It is also a place which, as well as having a history to it, is very much of the present (or the future-present, so to speak). Holographic advertising is much in evidence, at one some are using “old school” mobile phones, other XR units which project information and data around them, and one of the sushi bars appears to have dropped in quite literally, given the thrusters located along its underside! Elsewhere, an apothecary’s shop offers a haven of peace, even if it does share the paved square in occupies with a noodle bar managed by mechanoid server that would look just as at home strolling across Mars!

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Away from the landing point and the paramilitary types loitering there (are they the local militia? Here to keep unwanteds out or to stop those here wandering into the city proper? I’ve no idea – you make up the story for yourself!). Fortunately, most of them appear to be preoccupied by the flickering holo dancers just to the side of the landing point, so slipping past them is not a problem – although their presence appears to be enough for one stall owner to feel the need to wear a sidearm and another to look as if she’d happily bop the snoz of anyone remarking unfavourably on the gifts on her stall!

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Further along the street things are a lot friendlier, as noted above, and visitors can mangle with the static NPCs, poke at the shops and stalls, slipping (literally in one case!) into a side-alley to find a book stall or through a doorway into a bar or a little old-style school.

For photographers, Mirai Melody is a delight, whilst the touches of detail and humour are bound to raise a smile. There might be an tendency to look at it quickly and think Bladerunner (as someone commented in local chat whilst I was hopping in and out), but I’d disagree. Whilst mixing an Oriental street scene with cyberpunk / futurist elements might have caused Ethan and Bambi to lean in that direction, they have wisely avoided the temptation and instead come up with something visually unique and engaging.

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Visit and enjoy it whilst it lasts!

SLurl Details