Author: Inara Pey

Eclectic virtual world blogger with a focus on Second Life, VR, virtual environments and technology.

2023 week #29: SL CCUG meeting summary: Senra, glTF, etc.

Posted on by Inara Pey
LemonCliff, May 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, July 20th, 2023. 

  • The CCUG meeting is 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.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden.
    • Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
    • Held at 13:00 SLT on their respective days.
    • Are subject to the schedule set within the SL Public Calendar, which includes locations for both meetings (also included at the end of these reports).
    • Open to all with an interest in content creation.

Viewer Updates

  • The Maintenance U(pbeat) RC viewer, version 6.6.14.581101, was released on July 21st. Key changes in this viewer comprise:
    • Improvement parcel audio as the viewer leverages VLC for audio streams.
  • The Inventory Extensions viewer was promoted to RC status with version 6.6.14.581058, on July 20th.
    • A new option Show Ban Lines On Collision (toggled via World→Show) which will only show banline on a direct collision (foot or vehicle) rather than constantly visible when within camera range.
  • The Alternative Viewers page appears to have suffered a hiccup, listing version 6.6.12.579987 as the “Win32+MacOS<10.13” RC viewer.  However,
    • The Win 32  + Pre-MAC OS 10.3 viewer was promoted to release status on July 5th.
    • 6.6.12.579987  was the version umber assigned to the Maintenance S RC viewer (primarily translation updates), originally issued on May 11th, and promoted to de facto release status on May 16th.

The release and Project viewers currently in the pipeline remain unchanged:

    • Release viewer: 6.6.13.580918, formerly the Maintenance T RC viewer, promoted on July 14.
    • Project viewers:

Senra NUX Avatars

  • There was a stir in the week when the Senra brand of mesh avatars designed by LL (and primarily intended for new users as a part of the New User eXperience  – NUX) were made available through the system Library and then withdrawn.
  • This was apparently not an error on LL’s part, but rather the result of an issue with the avatars being noted, prompting their removal from the Library.
  • The removal did not prevent some users grabbing copies of the avatars + accessories (presumably by copying items from the Library to their inventory), which weren’t removed as a part of the “recall”.
  • The appearance of the bodies + accessories also sparked a fair degree of forum discussion, approximately starting towards the bottom of page 17 of this thread.
  • In reference to the thread, LL encourage those who did manage to retain the Senra bodies and are observing issues / have concerns to continue to record feedback there, as “all eyes” involved in the project are watching that thread.

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.
  • There is a general introduction / overview / guide to authoring PBR Materials available via the Second Life Wiki.
  • For a list of tools and libraries that support GLTF, see https://github.khronos.org/glTF-Project-Explorer/
  • Substance Painter is also used as a guiding principal for how PBR materials should look in Second Life.
  • Up to four texture maps are supported for PBR Materials: the base colour (which includes the alpha); normal; metallic / roughness; and emissive, each with independent scaling.
  • Given the additional texture load, work has been put into improving texture handling within the PBR viewer.
  • 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.
  • As a part of this work, PBR Materials will see the introduction of reflection probes which can be used to generate reflections (via cubemaps) on in-world surfaces. These will be a mix of automatically-place and manually place probes (with the ability to move either).
  • The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • As a result of the updates, SL’s ambient lighting will change (e.g. indoor spaces will appear darker, regardless of whether or not Shadow are enabled), and so there will be a period of adjustment for users (e.g. opting to install lighting in indoor spaces, choosing between the HDR lighting model of glTF or opting to set a sky ambient level).
  • The viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page.
  • The simulator code is now more widely available on the Main Grid, including some sandbox environments, but still in RC. Demonstration regions might be found at: Rumpus Room, Rumpus Room 2, Rumpus Room 3, Rumpus Room 4, Rumpus Room 5.
  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

Status

  • Many in the team have been out-of-office recently, and so work had slowed for a while.
  • The focus remains on bug fixing within both the viewer and the simulator code.

Double-Sides Materials Concerns

A request was made for LL to remove double-sided materials from the PBR work, due to the following concerns:

  • Inexperienced creators misunderstanding the capability (e.g. a content creator who makes a pendant with 500,000 triangles and applying materials to all of them, overriding backface culling), and:
  • Clothing creators who add additional tris along the edges of clothing (e.g. cuffs, lapels, collars, etc.), to given the illusion of an “inner” material instead utilising double-sided materials instead, leading to:
  • The potential of both of these leading to noticeable viewer performance impacts (e.g. due to doubling the amount of rasterising the viewer must perform).

In response Runitai Linden noted:

  •  Double-sided materials is a part of the glTF specification, and so will remain  within the PBR project, and so forms a part of the overall requirements for obtaining Khronos 3D commerce certification, which LL would like to achieve for Second Life, and for that reason will not be removed.
  • In terms of performance LL believe:
    • Double-sided materials generally do not get rasterised twice (e.g. if you are looking at the front face of a leaf with double-sided materials, the back face is not rasterised) – although there are some exceptions to this.
    • Double-sided materials are a “fill” hit, not a per triangle hit, so the performance hit decreases exponentially as the camera moves away from the object – so for actual double-sided objects, it is a performance win.
  • To help safeguard against accidental misuse, the option to apply double-sided materials must be explicitly enabled when uploading, even if the materials themselves have been created as double-sided (if the option is not explicitly set, then they will be uploaded as single-sided).
  •  The issue does admittedly have edge-cases, and there are issues around any implementations for double-sided materials (e.g. how do you penalise for incorrect use? Increased LI? But then – a) what about worn items (which are immune to LI), and b) how does the viewer differentiate between “correct” use of double-sided materials and an “incorrect” use, in order to avoid penalise good practices in error?
  • However, LL are not going to disable / artificially limit the use of double-sided materials due to the potential for misuse, either accidental or deliberate.

PBR Mirrors

  • This is a follow-on project to the PBR Materials, intended to provide a controlled method to enable planar mirrors in SL (i.e. flat surface mirrors which can reflect what is immediately around them, including avatars).
  • As per my previous CCUG update, the approach being taken is to use a “hero probe”.
    • This uses a materials flag added to a surface which allows it to be considered as a mirror face, based on the proximity of a camera to it.
    • When a camera is within the expected range, the flag will instruct the viewer to create a “hero probe”, rendering high resolution (512×512) reflections on the mirror surface until such time as the camera moves away.
    • It is an approach which allows for multiple mirrors within a scene, whilst minimising the performance impact to only one mirror per viewer.
  • The concept is now working in tests, and depending on performance, it is possible the viewer might be allowed to support up to two hero probes at a time: one for any nearby mirror surface, and the other for generating reflections on any nearby Linden Water.
  • It is hoped that a project viewer will be available for public testing of the idea will be available Soon™.

ARC  – Avatar Render Cost

  • Intended to be a means of calculating the overall cost of rendering individual avatars by the viewer, ARC has long been acknowledged as inaccurate.
  • Currently, the project to adjust both ARC calculations and the actual cost of rendering in-world objects to make them more reasonable – Project ARCTan – remains inactive.
  • The problem with such metrics like ARC is that they depend on a range of analyses which, when combined, do not necessarily result in an accurate reflection of real-world rendering very well.
  • However, those curious about the rendering cost can use:
    • World→Improve Graphic Speed→Your Avatar Complexity to seen the render impact (in ms, currently for the CPU, but with the PBR viewer, for the GPU) of their own attachments can have on own and other viewers.
    • World→Improve Graphic Speed→Avatars Nearby to see the rendering impact of other avatars within view.
    • Note that both will fluctuate do to the general “noise” of rendering, however, the generated figures are far more accurate in real terms than those for ARC.
    • Details of these capabilities – first deployed in Firestorm, and contributed to Linden Lab for inclusion in all viewers, can be found in this blog, here.
  • Questions were asked over the ability to see these figures displayed over avatars heads vs. having to go to a “specialised” menu, with some at the meeting pointing to the overhead display being preferable, because it it “there”. However, this overlooks the facts:
    • It could be received as “cluttering” the in-world view and reducing immersiveness.
    • If displayed as hover text, it could be easily disabled either by an dedicated UI setting or simply by exposing the debug to disable avatar-related hover text
    • Most particularly, any such display (even if added to name tags) would in fact adversely impact performance due the CPU / GPU cycles taken up by performing the calculations and then displaying them – with Runtai noting it can takes “several times longer” CPU time to calculate and display avatar render cost on the than it does to render the avatar.
  • The above led to a broader discussion on how to encourage better awareness of avatar impact on viewer performance (ARC shaming not being a positive approach to things), such as general education among users and having some form of “try before you buy” capability (if this were possible to implement) which would offer the ability to see the impact of wearing a specific attachment ahead of wearing it), or some form of inspection capability at upload which might encourage creators to go back and better optimise their avatar attachments.
    • One noted issue here is ensuring both sides of the equation have the tools to make more informed decisions: creators in terms of making their content more performant / efficient, and consumers to enable them to be able to better identify performant / efficient content. The latter is particularly important in its ability to drive market forces through users being able to naturally gravitate towards more efficient content.

Tags for Wearables

This was an idea mooted by the Lab in the meeting – not a project currently being worked upon.

  • A tag system which allows items with a certain tag to automatically replace another of the same tag type with a single click and without also replacing other items using the sane attachment point. For example, an item tagged as “hair” replaces the currently worn hair with a single click, but without also knocking off a hat also worn on the skull.
  • This was expanded upon by the idea of tags being used with demo items – the tag being used to perform tasks such as:
    • Only allowing the demo item to be worn within a certain location (e.g. the “dressing” area of the store).
    • Somehow records the item being worn prior to using the demo, o that it is automatically replaced when the demo item is removed.
  • The problem with the latter idea is that everyone uses demos differently, so assigning a single place at which a demo can be tried is a non-starter (do we really wany people trying demos at already busy events? What about items purchased via the MP or affiliate vendors, what location should be assigned to them? How is the creator to differentiate? Multiple versions of the same item for different points-of-sale? What about people who don’t have a home location by use sandboxes, but the demo tagged for use only within the avatar’s home location? Can this realistically even be done?).
  • An alternative suggestion for tags put forwards at the meeting was to have them as a part of the upload process, so creators could be reminded / encouraged to specific the desired attachment point via a tag list, so that users are not left with items defaulting to their avatar’s right hand.
  • There are a range of issues over any tag system, including:
    • a) How well the option would be used unless enforced; b) Even if enforced, how many content creators, would actually define the preferred attach point over just selecting the first one on the list?
    • The idea leans towards WEAR, rather than ADD – so will not necessarily overcome the confusion of new users who wish to ADD an item to their avatar, only to find it knocks something else off of their avatar.
    • How many tags should be in the system? “Hair”, “shirt”, “pants”, “gloves”, “shoes” are all straightforward – but what about shawls or shoulder wraps? should they be classified as a shirt or a collar, or have their own tag or individual tags? How are rings, earrings, pendants, etc., be classified / tagged?

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.

A liberating island in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Moksha, July 2023 – click any image for full size

In Hinduism, the Puruṣārtha are the four goals of life: moral values / righteousness (Dharma); love, psychological values (Kama);  economic values / prosperity (Artha) and spiritual values / liberation (Moksha), and it is the last of these concepts Effy Nova has used for the name of her public Homestead region.

It’s a place I was first alerted to Effy’s Moksha by Shawn Shakespeare (SkinnyNilla) back in May, but have only recently had the opportunity to give it due attention to write about. It takes the broadest meaning of the Hindu term, emancipation, enlightenment and liberation, free from its more religious connotations, to define her region as a place of blissful escape: a place where we can be freed from the worries and demands of daily life and simply relax and enjoy.

Moksha, July 2023

Set as a tropical island, Moksha blends within itself an interesting mix of ideas and themes. The region’s name, the presence of little elephants dressed as might be seen within the Indian sub-continent and a stone carved bust of Shiva, suggest this might be a small island retreat somewhere off the coast of India (or perhaps Sri Lanka); however, the presence of tuka huts in the shallows gives the setting a hint of the Philippines.

Not that there is necessarily a contradiction here; whilst in the minority, the Philippines does have a small Hindu population, while the market boats floating alongside the over-the-water boardwalks suggest both India and the Philippines, thus making the composition of the region an engaging mix of influences which sit well together.

Moksha, July 2023

In terms of its design, the setting might be seen as the remnants of a long-dead and flooded volcanic cone, the crater now given over to a semi-sheltered seawater lagoon, open to the broader ocean on one side, the southern an eastern flanks of the cone withstanding the erosion of sea and windswept salt air to remain as two fairly substantial islands. To the west and south, the crater perhaps hasn’t faired so well, the rock having been largely worn down to sand bars and sea-flattened rocks helping to protect the entrance to the lagoon – all with the exception of one stubborn thumb of rock pointing skywards.

It is on one of the sandbars that the region’s landing point is located. It sits in front of one of the boardwalks extending out over the waters of the lagoon, a footpath offering a route to the five tuka huts as they sit on their stilts over the calm waters as they sit towards the eastern end of the lagoon and the smaller of the two main islands.

Moksha, July 2023

The lagoonside foot of this island offers a further sandy beach; the volcanic rock rising behind it protecting it from the weather, the fertile soil of the steep slopes offering a richness in which monkeypod and palm trees can find growth. The ribbon of beach is home to a little gathering of beach-side business shacks offering food and refreshments, an over-the-water deck offering plenty of room to sit and eat / drink. In a further touch of Hindu influences, Ganesh is available within one of the shacks, which has been turned into an air-conditioned shrine.

The sandbar on which the landing point sits runs back to the largest of the islands as it forms a tall, steep-sided spine of rock. Once again the soil here is rich and deep enough to allow a good growth of palm, monkeypod and honey trees. A single gravel path runs up the slope from the beach to where a house sits among the trees  to overlook the bay. Built largely of bamboo, it is a place which looks as if it would feel as much at home in Bali as here.

Moksha, July 2023

Lying below this on the south side of the island is a smaller outcrop of rock sitting just off-shore and a small headland of sand reached via a gravel path running down from the bamboo house. With little boats moored in the channel between the large and small island, the southern headland is home to a quiet retreat where singles and couples can pass the time.

Life is given to the setting through the use of static NPCs. From a couple catching the sun on a diving raft through a mother putting a protective towel around her daughter after a swim,to people perusing the shrine and beach shacks, these characters help give a sense that this is a holiday retreat, some of them perhaps having been brought to the islands by the catamaran moored just off the western beach.

Moksha, July 2023

Engaging and photogenic – those requiring props can join the local group for rezzing rights – Moksha is an easy-on-the-eyes visit.

SLurl Details

  • Moksha (Simply Heaven, rated Moderate)

Journeying with The Spirits of the Forest in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
New Life Gallery, : Hermes Kondor – The Spirits of the Forest

July 15th saw the opening of The Spirits of the Forest, an exhibition of pieces by Hermes Kondor at the New Life Gallery within the campus of St. Elizabeth’s University.

As a photographer / artist, Hermes is constantly extending his range of approaches and techniques, with a number of his recent exhibitions focusing on the use of AI tools – largely Midjourney, I believe I’m correct in saying – and also on his macro compositional work featuring still life on the smallest of scales. It is for its richness, range and compositional quality that I’ve come to deeply admire and appreciate Hermes’ work, and it is always a pleasure to cover one of his exhibitions in these pages.

New Life Gallery, : Hermes Kondor – The Spirits of the Forest

Comprising 27 images split across the three levels of the gallery – all of which are connected via an elevator rather than stairs – The Spirits of the Forest represents a collection of his more recent explorations with the use of AI generated pieces combined with other digital photographic techniques to offer some marvellously expressive pieces on the theme of “hidden guardians” – spirits, sprites and minor deities once thought to inhabit and protect forests and woodlands.

Such beliefs  – and the worship of trees themselves –  was common among many cultures, east and west, and often linked with ideas of fertility, renewal / rebirth and the cycle of life. The link to fertility tended to lean many such spirits to be personified as female deities in most cultures, although there were male figures among them. Similarly, while most were considered benevolent and giving, some cultures did have more malevolent forest / tree spirits or at least have a number given to a more mischievous nature.

New Life Gallery, : Hermes Kondor – The Spirits of the Forest

Within The Spirits of the Forest, Hermes appears to draw inspiration from the more western traditions of female woodland spirits, stirring in a touch of  what might be fantasy elven leanings. How much of this is by design and how much is the result of the parameters given to his AI software is unclear, but the majority of spirits within the images appear to have strongly western European looks. Not that this is in any way a critique; the figures are not intended to be representative of specific tree deities, they are rather intended to springboard our imaginations into mental narratives on he nature of the spirits and trees featured within them – and possibly more besides.

For me, these deeply expressive images brought to mind a range of thoughts, from reflections on the nature of matriarchal religion and the argument put forward by Robert Graves that, within western European cultures, the multiple beliefs in female deities in all their forms – including those of the forest – are rooted in an ancient belief in a single “mother goddess” whom he called “The White Goddess”. mixed with this came reflections on how common artistic interpretations of the likes of Tolkien’s elves down the decades since the publication of Lord of the Rings may have played a role in how the AI tools producing the base images on which Hermes has built his finished pieces, all the way through to the sheer artistry of the displayed pieces and how each presents a world of mystical beauty which appears to sit just beyond our reach, but is nevertheless fully visible to the imagination.

New Life Gallery, : Hermes Kondor – The Spirits of the Forest

Given such a rich mix of reactions, it should come as no surprise that I thoroughly recommend The Spirits of the Forest as a very worthy visit, forming as it does an exhibition of deeply captivating images  all of which can be appreciated in their own right both as digital art and for their ability to offer a single-frame story, and which collectively can take the mind on a journey of expositional enquiry and thought.

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #29 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Luane’s Magical World, May 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 18th 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

  • On Tuesday, July 18th, 2023, all simhosts on the the SLS Main channel were restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, July 19th, 2023, the BlueSteel RC channel should be updated with a new simulator version, comprising:
    • llGetPrimitiveParams will be able to identify animesh.
    •  The estate ban limit gets raised to 750, and the number of estate managers to 20 – however, a viewer-side update is required for these changes to be visible.
    • Two new LSL functions for LSD llLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound.
    • Changes to UUID generation on certain items per my week 26 SUG meeting summary (e.g. textures, notecards, materials (particularly the upcoming PBR Materials)) to reduce the amount of duplication. These changes will not impact  UUIDs for objects rezzed in-world or made by the viewer.
    • Further work to correct some of the friends issues (as seen with BUG-232037 “Avatar Online / Offline Status Not Correctly Updating”). However, how effective these updates might be will not be fully understood until the update has been more widely tested through general use on Agni.

Viewer Updates

No updates at the start of the week, leaving the current official viewers in the pipeline as:

General Discussion

  • Core discussion points in the meeting:
    • [Video: 5:57 (start)] A general discussion on the new LSL / LSD functions and associated constants, which widens into a wider discussion on LSL / LSD.
    • [Video: 18:58 (start – overlapping with LSL / LSD discussion)] Discussion on larger regions vs. attempting to fix current region crossing issues. In short: larger regions would be a deep, fundamental change to SL (much of the simulator and viewer code is built on the assumption that regions are sized at 256x256m) which would likely not resolve the overall issue of region crossing events; ergo, the general consensus was towards trying to solve for crossing issues with the current region size. This led to a broader discussion on region sizing, user on-boarding, etc.
    • [Video: 21:22 (start – overlapping with the above)] Questions on throttling glTF overrides on animations (particularly in reference to puppetry).
  • In brief:
    • Confirmation that the ability to allow experiences to access the key-store from anywhere without land permission should be in the next simulator maintenance update.
    • The work to lighten the impact of avatars entering a region (in particular via teleport) impacting region / viewer responsiveness has yet to reach the main grid.

† 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.

An Evergreen visit in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Evergreen, July 2023 – click any image for full size

Elyjia Baxton sent me an invitation to tour her latest region design which recently opened to the public, and given her past work – often featured in this blog – I was delighted to accept as soon as time allowed.

Evergreen is a Full private region leveraging the land capacity bonus, and held by Karo Camorra (abella74). It has been designed as a public space by Ely to provide, in Karo’s words, a place where people can:

Chat with your friends in the town overlooking the beach, or enjoy a solitary or romantic stroll in the forest or follow the path along the river while taking advantage of the various places to relax in a calm and lush setting, and take some photos.

– Karo Camorra (abella74)

Evergreen, July 2023

The town and beach in question lie to the north-east of the region, the landing point sitting at the top of steps connecting the former with the latter. Extending into the south-eastern quarter of the region, the town is a small, but distinctly European-looking affair, the tall houses  – some with ground level business – are all façades, rather than furnished buildings. However, it offers numerous little places to sit and pass the time, while the steps and path leading down to the beach run between saplings and shrubs before reaching the warm sand. This is guarded by a tall tall wooden watchtower / radio shack, now converted into another cosy hideaway, under which the path runs, but accessed directly from the beach.

The beach also offers various places to sit and pass the time as it runs along the north coast to arrive at stone steps rising to the western side of the main island, passing by way of a raised wooden deck where an artist appears to have taken up shop. The beach is given a sense of popularity courtesy of a schooner apparently passing by in full career just off-region, and two Linden Endurance-class sailing boats moored in the shallows.

Evergreen, July 2023

Prior to reaching the beach, the gravel path almost branches to the left, passing alongside a low wall separating the little town from the land flowing down to the sands. With birch trees lining one side of it and saplings  the other, the latter also providing some shade to the wild growth of flowers sitting between the path and the beach. Narrowing as it reaches the western side of the town, the path meanders its way west, passing by a summer house, a cylindrical folly and a gravel pool, all of which offer places to sit, with the latter linking to a path pointing back eastwards to a gazebo and chaise lounge sit among the wildflowers and overlooking the beach.

As it reaches the summerhouse and folly, the westward-pointing path splits, a rougher trail continuing west to offer the way up to the region’s lighthouse as well as the means to reach what had likely once been a north-western headland.

Evergreen, July 2023

Now separated from the rest of the land by a narrow channel, this former headland has the feel of having been long since deserted; Nature is in command, what had once been a brick-and-wood greenhouse sits abandoned to her claim. This may have once have been a base of operations for the artist who has taken over the wooden deck mentioned above; if so, then perhaps advancing years had caused the artist to foreshorten the walk from town to studio, leaving the latter to its fate in favour of using the deck for their artistic expression.

The path to the western isle also branches prior to reaching the channel separating the headland from the bulk of the region. Pointing south, this passes by a very modern-looking pavilion built over the west coast before branching yet again, one arm looping back to the summer house and folly, the other continuing on through the trees and plants to a little cove cuddling a secluded shack and its dock within its shallow arms, a home for moored rowing boats and deckside rocking chairs.

Evergreen, July 2023

Inland from this shack, the land is split by a stream which descends in a series of low falls from the uplands on which the town sits, to finally turn south and fall into a broad pool which does much to help form the landscape of southern half of the region. In doing so, the stream gives form to a tongue of land running east from the edge of town, caught between the stream to one side and the drop down to the waters below on the other. It is home to a steel-framed conservatory, home to tropical plants within an otherwise temperate setting.

With the waters of the pool and the streams flowing outward from it, the southern side of the region is perhaps the most photogenic. Once again, paths meander around it, starting with the one descending from the town to the south-east. Here, streams flowing out from the pool cut the land into slices and give rise to very natural lowlands which are in equal part rocky, rich in plant life and with plenty of places to sit and pass the time – as well is in which to take photos.

Evergreen, July 2023

The south-eastern corner of the region is dominated by a wooden windmill overlooking the south coast. It is reached via a gravel path which curves south and west from the foot of the steps descending from the town and carried over the gorge of a stream by a covered bridge. After passing the furnished windmill, this path continues onwards to offer the best route of southern exploration.

Following it will take visitors past a pier extending out into a shallow bay (and the home of table-top games which can also be reached from a teleport station near the region’s landing point), and by more places to sit – a riverside covered picnic spot, another folly and an old bandstand – to cross another small stream before curling itself around the large pool mentioned above. It ends in at a little cottage on the east coast.

Evergreen, July 2023

All of which is a long-winded way of saying this is a region worthy of seeing first-hand; there is a lot to see and appreciate – more so than I’ve presented in the last 1,000+ words. Offered under a fairly neutral selection of environmental settings, Evergreen naturally lends itself to a broad range of EEP settings, with opportunities for photography large and small throughout.

Finished with a matching natural soundscape and given a sense of age through the scattered ruins and derelict building awaiting discovery and live via the presence of wild and domestic animal and the furnished cottages and cabins, Evergreen makes for a thoroughly engaging visit.

Evergreen, July 2023

SLurl Details

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #28

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, July 16th, 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,  version 6.6.13.580918, formerly the Maintenance T RC viewer, promoted July 14th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool Viewer Stable release updated to version 1.30.2.20 on July 15 – release notes.
  • Genesis viewer updated to version 1.7.880 on July 15 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links