Day: August 29, 2025

Julana’s Spirit of Imago in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
IMAGOLand Galleries: Julana Allen – Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago

Mareea Farrasco is a multi-talents individual: artist, photographer, gallery owner and curator, and creator of her own public spaces at IMAGOLand, which is also home to her gallery spaces.

In all of these capacities, I’ve featured Mareea and her work in these pages on numerous occasions; but this one is special, featuring as it does a celebration of Mareea’s IMAGOLandas seen through the eyes of artist Julana Allen (Julana Teichmann).

IMAGOLand Galleries: Julana Allen – Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago

I was only recently introduced to Julana’s work thanks to her collaboration with Eta (etamae), Where the Flowers Are, which opened at he Elven Falls Art Collective at the start of August 2025 (see: Where the flowers are in Second Life), and it was a pleasure to see her celebration Mareea and IMAGOLand within Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago.

For those unfamiliar with IMAGOLand, the ground level of the region is maintained by Mareea as a public space , the face of which can change from time-to-time, but which always presents a sense of peace and serenity. Within her exhibition, Julana offers a personal and captivating look at IMAGOLand’s beauty as currently presented within the region. From trees turning to gold as the year turns to autumn; from horses grazing to art both free-standing and painted on walls, Julana uniquely captures the look and feel of the region.

IMAGOLand Galleries: Julana Allen – Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago

As I noted when writing about Where the Flowers Are, Julana has a gift for art and photography, and a talent for post-processing, something which can give her pieces a tactile sense. Here, this combination of vision, framing and post processing which brings a depth of life to each piece, making it not so much an image to be viewed, so much as experienced. This is further enhanced by the space in which the exhibition is mounted, which has been decorated by Julana in reflection of Mareea’s creativity.

A thoroughly magical celebration in art; and if you’ve not visited IMAGOLand of late, I recommend viewing Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago, and then dropping down to ground level and touring the region to experience it for yourself and appreciate the context of Julana’s work.

IMAGOLand Galleries: Julana Allen – Minimalista – The Spirit of Imago

SLurl Details

 

August 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, August 28th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting. These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed.

The meeting was recorded by Pantera, and her video is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks, as always to her in providing it.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At Campwich Forest.
  • 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.

Resources

Release Updates

[Video: 0:00-8:33]

Current Releases

Version: 2025.7.560 (Android) – July 23 / 0.1.557 (iOS) – July 22.

Updates

  • Work has been focused on the next release of Mobile, including pushing updates to the Alpha group of users (those who were part of testing from the start). Two Alpha group updates for the release have gone out so far, and a third is expected “shortly”.
  • A key aspect of the next release is improving overall stability, both in itself and how it deals with “shaky” Internet connections, etc.
    • Feedback from the Alpha testers is that this work is yielding performance improvements (e.g. faster frame rates, lower battery use) on Android, and it is hoped the same holds true for iOS.
  • Network connection stability has been a particular area of work for the last 2 months.
    • Unlike apps which can download data in advance, cache it and then call upon it, Second Life Mobile requires far more of a constant stream of data due to its dynamic nature, and so is far more susceptible to signal interruptions / conflicts with other apps for bandwidth use, etc.
    • Thus, the work has been to try to make the Mobile app far more robust in how it maintains network connectivity and continues to function through such interruptions, doing all that is required of it.
    • The work has taken time and effort to get through, but it is hoped that the majority of it is now complete, and the rest can b wrapped-up within the next month.
  • Work has also been put in to trying to resolve a number of known issues (e.g. streaming audio quality on iOS devices).
  • As such, while there will be new features in the next release, the overall focus of work for the present is on performance, stability and bug fixing.
  • Additionally, a couple of further issues have been identified with avatar rendering, and so effort will be put into addressing these.

Upcoming New Features

[Video: 8:33-14:57]

  • Achievements: giving “visual rewards” to users for moving around in the Mobile app and trying-out actions, etc.
    • Details vague, as the team did not wish to give “too much away and spoil the surprise”.
    • Achievements are currently and specifically aimed towards new users.
    • They triggered automatically in some manner on completing a basic task within the app, after which a new View option is unlocked in the menu, allowing users to see available achievements and the particular level they are “at” for an achievement.
  • Camera improvements (as noted in the July meeting):
    • Reset Camera button, which will be displayed when the two-finger swipe to detach the camera from the avatar is used.
    • Rotate around current camera position when the camera is detached from the avatar.
    • Zoom in and out from the current camera position when detached from the avatar.
    • First-person (Mouselook) view.

General Feedback / In Brief

[Video 14:57-End]

Please refer to the video for details on the following and other questions which may have had a simple “yes” or “in progress” reply.

  • Conflicts between pinch actions for zooming and the joystick control for movement:
    • The joystick event capture area covered a good portion of the lower left side of the screen. Because of this, pinch or swipes commencing / overlapping this area can trigger the joystick  and avatar movement.
    • As the joystick fades to transparency between uses, this can cause confusion for users, as they start a pinch / swipe action within the lower left corner of their device screen which appears “empty”, and accidentally trigger the joystick capture event, causing their avatar to move.
    • Because of this, the joystick function is to be changed so that it is always visible, in the hope that users will not commence gestures within its event capture area.
    • It is hoped that keeping the joystick visible at all times will also alleviate new users becoming confused as to how to move their avatar when the joystick is transparent.
    • This led to a discussion across the last 15 minutes of the meeting on ways to completely disable avatar movement when not required.
  • Alpha transparencies not rendering correctly:
    • Potentially due to a number of issues (the transparent texture not being fully JPG2000 conformant; the renderer not correctly recognising the alpha channel, etc.).
    • This is known about and is being looked at to try to resolve. In the interim further reports on the problem and where encountered are requested.
  • A request was made for feedback on any quality of life issues users experience (e.g. problems with changing outfits, UI issues, etc.), as these are likely to become more of a focus as the current work on performance / stability / network improvements comes to an end.
  • Feedback requested from Alpha testers with the upcoming update (anticipated for Friday, August 29th) include: network stability (particularly when the connection switches from wifi to cellular or vice-versa) – which results in noticeable issues (such as an inability of TP); general reports of unexpected with general use – quality of life, avatar loading, avatar movement issues, etc.

Date of Next Meeting