Day: August 28, 2026

Eta’s C a t c h in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Souland Gallery, August 2026 – Eta – C a t c h

Catch-22: the paradoxical situation a person cannot escape due to contradictory rules or limitations. It lies at the heart of Joseph Heller’s satirical novel of the same name (and which in fact spawned the term) – and currently, also at the heart of C a t c h, an installation by Eta (etamae) which opened in Second Life in late August 2026 at her space within Souland Gallery, operated by Julana Allen (Julana Teichmann).

For Eta, her paradox came in the form of the recent heatwave experienced by the UK (and much of Europe) and her need to be creative. The former was such that its heat and humidity resulted in lethargy and a sense that any expenditure of creative effort would be overpowering to achieve anything, whilst the need to create could only be accomplished by the expenditure of effort, mental and physical within the sapping lethargy of the heatwave, potentially resulting in nothing being achieved.

Souland Gallery, August 2026 – Eta – C a t c h
Within my skybox at Souland Gallery I have tried to convey my no win situation of the intense heat and humidity I felt at a moment in time. Those feelings of being unable to move, being stuck fast even if I was in a place I dearly wanted to be and had paid silly monies to get there.

– Eta

The result is an installation in which monochrome is used to great effect with white suggestive of heat and lethargy, and darker elements to hint at the need for coolness and respite from the heat.

Souland Gallery, August 2026 – Eta – C a t c h

Tall figures and groups of figures are rendered in white. gathered together in poses suggestive of melting or wilting, much as we feel in extreme instances of heat. Meanwhile, dark swirls suggest the vortices of cool air and grey forms on the walls suggest the longed-for cooling influence of fans and / or a longing clouds to come between us and the Sun and offer some respite to allow us to do more than just wilt.

A poem – c a t c h – accompanies the installation, summing up the feeling of being trapped by the heat, of seeing everything we want to do become lost and unimportant in the need to escape to simply be.

Souland Gallery, August 2026 – Eta – C a t c h

Visually engaging and making subtle use of PBR (the installation is best seen in a PBR capable viewer & using the local shared environment.

SLurl Details

 

 

2026 week #35: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Hippotropolis Campsite: venue for CCUG meetings
The following notes were taken from:

  • My chat log and audio recording  of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting of Thursday, August 27, 2026.
  • Please note that this is not a full transcript of the meeting but a summary of key topics.
Table of Contents

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 generally held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis and is held in a mix of Voice and text chat.
  • Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar.

Official Viewer Status

General Viewer Notes

  • 26.3, as the default viewer has a  “pretty good” low crash rate.
  • It is hoped that the 26.4 Lua Editor viewer with Linux support will be moving to beta/RC status “pretty soon” – a beta/RC version is currently with QA for testing.
    • The idea being to have this available as server-side Lua support is made available on the Main (Agni) grid.
    • LL is actively building Linux versions of all viewer (alpha/project and beta/RC) moving forward.
    • There is still some back-end work to complete for Linux support (e.g. updating the viewer download pages (main and Alternative, etc.), to reflect the availability of Linux and to have the relevant URLs, etc.).
  • Work has resumed on the Graphics Care Package (GCP) viewer, with the focus on bug fixes and cleaning-up regressions. This latter work includes clean-up issues around mirrors, with some long-standing mirror-related bugs also to be worked on.
    • There is further clean-up work to be done in general before a alpha/Project version of the GCP viewer appears with an official version number.
    • An alpha version of GCP will not mean it is feature complete; further updates, etc., will be made whilst it is soaking as a alpha/Project viewer, the release being to allow those who wish to to try the viewer and provide feedback.
  • One element under review with regards to inclusions in GCP (and Second Life as a whole) is materials Transmission.
    • One potential use for this would be to give any in-world surface the cosmetic appearance of water which could be “seen” as such through the appropriate scripting support  – e.g. volume detect, or this Feature Request to get the face details of an in-world object.
      • Note this is not about giving surfaces / prims the same properties as Linden Water – that is a far more complex ask.
    • Transmission had been promised in the past, but there are concerns over impact performance, so its inclusion in SL is still under internal review and testing. If the impact is too greater for many systems, it is unlikely to be implemented; if its impact can be moderated through the use of a toggle in the viewer, then it might be considered.

General Discussions

  • With regards to Linden Water:
    • We currently have water exclusions surfaces (objects which can “hide” areas of Linden Water when looking on it from above. This is useful for things like keeping Linden Water out of the hulls of boats, etc., when viewed from above, but if the camera moves below the surface, the visual effects of Linden Water (hazing, etc.) will still be apparent.
    • Given this, there has been a long-standing request for water exclusion volumes which would completely hide Linden Water howsoever the volume is viewed from within (above, below, etc.).
    • Whilst LL is aware of this, the development of water exclusion volumes is not currently being targeted.
  • The PBR “terrain painting” project Cosmic Linden was once working on, circa 2023/24 remains “on the shelf” for now.
    • This led to a general discussion as to what form this project would take if it were to be re-started (e.g. supporting permissions, limits to use (e.g. supported at parcel level, or limited to region level), etc.
    • However, as these discussion were mostly theoretical at this point, and it is unclear if current priorities, etc., would allow for the project to be dusted-off and restarted. As such, all such discussions were largely academic at this point.
  • There was a question on improving sound quality in SL (e.g. higher bitrate sampling, etc.). Currently, there is not work in the pipeline for this due to other priorities.
    • This led to a general discussion on sounds and Voice in SL – matters of attenuation, roll-off (or lack thereof), as well as general sound quality, all of which was user-led with little linden input / feedback.
  • Maxwell Graf demonstrated a viewer-side project he has been working on for functional water caustics using EEP lighting / settings together with a projector with a frame-based animation with a negative cut-out to shine the light through it (+ objects to create volume).
    • He noted that scaling the idea beyond anything like fish tank or pond could be problematic, although the process does not require any scripted update mechanism, it is purely based on the animation playback and interaction with the appropriate EEP lighting.

Next Meeting