Author: Inara Pey

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

2023 week #44: SL CCUG meeting summary: PBR

Posted on by Inara Pey
Shades of Autumn, September 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creators User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, November 2nd, 2023.

  • 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 viewer development work.
  • As a rule, these meetings are:
    • Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden, in accordance with the dates and times given in the the SL Public Calendar, which also includes the location for the meetings.
    • Conducted in a mix of voice and text..
    • 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.

Viewer Updates

The glTF / PBR RC viewer updated to version 7.0.1.6658224456 on November 2nd, bringing it into parity with the current release viewer and built via Github Actions.

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

  • Release viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, promoted October 25 (formerly the GHA RC viewer).
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:

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.
  • The overall goal for glTF as a whole is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • 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.
  • 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 viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page.

Further Resources

Status Update

Server-side deployment

  • The simulator code supporting PBR Materials was deployed to the BlueSteel and LeTigre simulator RC channels, making it “live” across some 3,000 simulators.
  • This has seen a number of additional bug reports filed, but currently nothing which has been seen as constituting a major blocker to further deployment.
  • At the time of the meeting, it was hoped that the PBR code could be deployed to all of the RC channels simhosts on Wednesday, November 8th, 2023. This is seen as the best way to test for additional cases of non-PBR content suffering breakage which may have thus far slipped through the net.
  • If things continue as planned, the aim is to have PBR support on the simhosts fully deployed “by Thanksgiving”.

Viewer Updates

  • The PBR viewer has been updated to build via the new Github Action process, marking it as up-to-date with the current release viewer (version 6.6.16.6566955269, October 25th, at the time of writing).
  • It is possible that one of the Maintenance RC viewers may be pushed to de facto release ahead of the PBR viewer in order to correct a statistics reporting issue.
    • At the time of the meeting, a final decision on this has yet to be made. However, if this proves to be the case, and if LL decide to maintain the 2-week minimum period between viewer promotions, this could mean the PBR viewer might not be released until after the simulator code is grid-wide.
  • The PBR viewer release is also dependent upon whether or not any remaining reported / open issues are considered serious enough to require fixing ahead of any promotion.
    • Currently, there is one blocker which is under investigation: if the PBR viewer is used, and then a swap is made to using a non-PBR viewer, then it is possible some objects may not show-up on logging in, and will never show up until object cache is cleared.
  • For those interested – this is the list of currently open issues for PBR.
  • The current PBR RC viewer replaces the term “Materials” in the Build / Edit floater Texture tab with Blinn-Phong. Whilst this is the technically correct term for the current implementation of materials support in SL and was seen as a means of differentiating between the current materials support and PBR, the switch to the term has been raised as potentially confusing to users not deeply versed in graphics  / rendering but who are familiar with using and applying current materials maps. As such, the use of an alternate term has been requested.

Tone Mapping and Full Bright Issues

  • A recently-reported issue is with tone mapping not applying correctly to Full Bright objects, resulting in darker colours / blacks being crushed and white highlights being blown out.
  • This has been highlighted in BUG-234506 and this forum thread, where it is reported as an issue facing content creators trying to produce advertising images for their products for use on in-world vendor boards, etc. However, the issue has the potential to affect SL photography in general, where snapshots are taken to be uploaded for display in-world as textures (e.g. as art, “family” snapshots, etc.).
  • The problem is the result of tone mapping being applied to such textures twice:
    • The first time as a result of tone mapping being enabled (and captured) when the snapshot is taken.
    • The second time as a result of the uploaded texture being rendered with tone mapping active in the viewer.
  • This is seen as “expected behaviour”, and the lighting model will not be changed for dealing with Full Bright (e.g. by making it a straight pixel pass-through).
  • This means the current work-around is to use the No Post Build menu option, thus:
    • Edit the object using Full Bright to open the Build  / Edit floater.
    • Go to menu bar → Build → Options and enable No Post – this will try off tone mapping and exposure, and will remain active as long as the Build / Edit floater is open.
    • Take the snapshot.
    • Close the Build / Edit floater.
  • As this workaround is seen as heavy-handed (and also not helpful to those taking photos who may need to disable tone mapping at times, but who are unfamiliar with the Build / Edit floater and Build menu), it has been requested to incorporate a toggle checkbox for No Post directly into the snapshot floater.
  • Runitai Linden has also proposed the addition of a HDRI export to the 360º Snapshot floater.

General Notes

  • The viewer performance issue on older versions of MacOS has been addressed, but it is not clear if the fixes work with Apple silicon SoC, pending further tests.
  • It is acknowledged that there will be a learning curve among all users where PBR is concerned due to the level of changes involved in the lighting model (e.g. objects with a specular map – even indoors – having a blue sheen to them, due to reflecting the ambient environment; an issue which can be fixed through the correct placement of reflection probes indoors).
    • Efforts are being made to ensure cases like this are being covered in the PBR documentation being put together by LL.
  • It was re-iterated that there will be follow-on glTF work following PBR materials (see the general roadmap, below), with it being noted that some would allow the implementation of hierarchical structures which could allow for options such as arbitrary pivot points in meshes, whilst adoption of the glTF specifications for animations could result expanded animation capabilities, etc.
  • A number of requests for new features (e.g. the ability to be able to simulate Linden water on surfaces via materials). These were noted as all having pre-requisites and potential limiters on them, so while they are not refused, mention of them here will be held over until LL have determined if and how they (and their pre-requisites) might fit into the overall roadmap.
  • Whilst concerns remain about Apple simply ceasing to support OpenGL, thus driving a potential need to switch the viewer away from using OpenGL to using Vulkan / MoltenVK, this is not seen as an immediate priority compared to moving ahead with further glTF work. Which is not to say LL won’t move the viewer to alternate graphics API as the glTF work progresses beyond scene import work (see below).

Likely Roadmap for glTF

  • Complete and deploy the current PBR materials work.
  • Resume work on real-time mirrors and terrain support for glTF materials. In brief, these comprise:
    • Mirrors: providing the means to have mirrors within scenes to reflect their immediate surroundings. These will leverage a “hero” reflection probe concept (512×512 resolution), with one such probe per scene being active for any given avatar, based on the avatar / camera distance from the mirror.
    • Terrain support: providing the means to apply glTF materials to terrain as a viewer-side effect to improve the appearance of the SL terrain. Note that this is not PBR terrain painting.
  • Alongside the mirrors / terrain work will be a period of PBR Materials maintenance work to fix reported bugs / those issues still open at the time of release.
  • Also start to develop a prototype for glTF scene import – with no overall time frame for the latter being indicated.
  • Once there is an initial prototype for glTF scene import, he Lab will proceed in much the same was as for PBR materials: an iterative development cycle which fully engages the user community / 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.

Subcutan – art and exploration in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Subcutan Art Gallery, November 2023 – Welcome Area; click any image for full size

Subcutan has relocated to here – see:

I have been watching the redevelopment of Subcutan Art Gallery, home of the work of Sophie de Saint Phalle (Perpetua1010) since around early August 2023, following the gallery’s move from its form home to region-straddling parcels on the tip of Satori. As such, and with things now appearing largely complete, I thought it high time to write about a setting which is far more than just a gallery space, offering as it does opportunities for exploration, photography, relaxing and having a little fun.

My first encounter with Sophie’s work was in 2021 when she was exhibiting at Mareea Farrasco’s IMAGOLand Gallery. Featuring a collection of her physical world watercolours reproduced for display in Second Life, The Art of Water and Colours immediately led me to visit her original Subcutan gallery and immerse myself in her work (see: The art of Sophie de Saint Phalle in Second Life). As an artist, Sophie considers herself an experimentalist, and her work reflects this covering as it does multiple genres and styles, from watercolours through abstract and digital art to caricatures and skilled studies of the human form, and encompassing etching and 3D sculptures. Her work is both engaging and exquisite, never failing to capture the eye – and often the heart.

Subcutan Art Gallery: Japanese Garden (upper area) and Atramentum Gallery

With the new Subcutan Art Gallery, Sophie has combined her artist’s eye with that of companion Dex (Dexter Kharg) to create an environment which both celebrates her art – including being able to re-visit installations such as Infinite, a marvellous celebration of indigenous Australian art (which I reviewed in February 2022), Cyborgs, a visual essay on a possible future for humanity (of which I wrote about here) and witness more of her studies of the human form – and to also immerse yourself in an setting which offers something of an east-meets-west fusion to offer a engaging opportunity for exploration and photography, as noted above. In this, a visit is not so much a visit to an art space so much as it is a delightful immersion into Sophie’s and Dex’s creative vision.

The campus – if I might refer to it that way – encompasses parts of two mainland coastal regions whilst just edging into a third. The first of these, Terric is home to Subcutan’s main landing point and welcome area. This presents a distinctly modern looks and feel and offers extensive public facilities: the welcome centre itself, occupying a purpose built structure by Dex and containing an office space and a large seating area of sofas supported by a self-service refreshments area whilst also presenting a mixed genre display of Sophie’s art, all of which is offered for sale. Outside of this is the landing point itself and the primary (Experience-driven, so be sure to accept any request it offers) teleport board.

Subcutan Art Gallery: welcome area lounge

Whilst the teleport board and its siblings around the location offer a quick way to hop around, with the exception of the board outside the main gallery, and which offers the only means to access all the gallery spaces, I’d recommend eschewing the teleports and let your feet do the walking when initially exploring, as there are elements of the location which might otherwise be missed – such as the Man Cave, a short walk between palm trees from the landing point. Occupying another custom build by Dex, this offers a games room and lounging area, complete with playable arcade games and table-top games, the latter including chess, backgammon and Mah-jong (the latter two being particular favourites of mine in the physical world, together with Carrom, despite the beating my nails have taken when getting a trifle over-enthusiastic when taking a shot!).

Above the welcome area and reached by three sets of stairs, is an outdoor events area with glass-floored dance area extending over the welcome area, swimming pool and open-air bar, the seating to which offers a view of the large aquarium below. This area also sits before what appears to be the private home of Sophie and Dex – so trespass is perhaps best avoided unless invited. Looking out to the north, this events area looks out of the Subcutan harbour area, the main wharf of which can be accessing from the landing point and leads by way of a wooden walkway at its western end (and passing by the stairway leading up to the main gallery) to the Japanese and Guest Harbours.

Subcutan Aret Gallery: Japanese Harbour by night

The Japanese waterfront area is an eclectic mix of false-front “businesses”, some of which have an adult lean to them (but only in appearance, not in content), whilst there is also a certain amount of humour on display (such as the “Safe Area” sign encouraging people to go swimming – as a shark circles the waters below, or the appropriately called “Small Shop”). Rich in neon lighting and lanterns, this is a little corner best seen at night; the waterfront can be a place for photography and offers the chance to try your hand at Japanese calligraphy.

Set above and back from the Japanese Harbour are the main gallery space and the Japanese Garden, again as noted above). The former comprises the Atramentum Gallery – a very neat play on words, given it is home to a richly engaging display of Sophie’s studies of the human form which are presenting in greyscale and on black mounts (complete with a black tiled footpath leading into the gallery). This entranceway is also home to a more extensive teleport board which allows visitors to partake of Sophie’s sky galleries, where as mentioned, her Infinite and Cyborgs installations can once again be appreciated, together with Red Impressions (an exhibition I witnessed on my very first visit to Subcutan, again as referenced above) and Yellow Expressions.

Subcutan Art Gallery: Japanese Garden (lower area)

The Japanese Garden, meanwhile, offers an extensive opportunity to wandering and sitting, taking photos and / or simply relaxing. Split over two levels linked by a stone stairway curling down from one corner of the upper level, the gardens have been built using Alex Bader’s superb Zen Garden Building set (another personal favourite!) whilst folding into it a number of elements not found in the kit – such as Buddha in his pavilion (and to whom respects can be presented in a traditional style). With its waterfall, ponds and placement of trees and cliffs, the lower level of the garden presents a quiet, contemplative retreat calmed by the gentle chimes of a heavy temple bell.

What is particularly engaging about the Subcutan campus / environment is the manner in which everything flows; there are no sharp juxtapositions which might present a sense of sharp edge as one explores; there is a compositional crafting which is both subtle and intrinsic to the setting.

Subcutan Art Gallery: Atramentum Gallery, November 2023

Take the welcome area and landing point for example. The manner in which Dex has crafted the buildings here such that they combine architectural elements (e.g. the use of angles and glass skylights / roof areas) so that they combine seamlessly with the third-party elements seen within the glass dance floor (a nice kitbash from one of Loz Hoyle’s Meshworx designs) and the house (by Ballack (Rodrigo Aubin) to present a modern / futurist feeling which the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright would probably appreciate. Similarly, the joining of a traditionally-joined Japanese garden with the sharp glass-and-concrete bulk of the gallery building is managed in such a way as to avoid any sense of sharp-edged divide; instead the former – through the use of ground cover from the Zen Garden set – appears to gently lap against the hard tile of the latter, like waves gently lapping the shore, allowing the two to flow together.

Then there is the use of elevation and elements from Colpo Wrexler’s designs. The latter help to both bring together the waterfront areas allowing for a natural transition from the landing area through the moorings at the harbour to the sense of jostling city life of the Japanese waterfront without the move from one through the others feeling in any way jarring, while the former ensures the more peaceful elements of the setting such as the gardens can be set apart from the hustle and lights and general “busy-ness” of the waterfront without any sense of the divide between them being artificially enforced.

Subcutan Art Gallery: Man Cave

All of which makes for a richly engaging visit, with the gallery standing as a superb means to immerse yourself in Sophie’s talent as an artist (I just hope we also get to see some / more or her caricature work as well, as it is brilliantly engaging!).

 SLurl Details

November 2023 SL Web User Group (WUG) meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 1st, 2023. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript.

No video this time, Pantera was unavailable, and the meeting was exclusively text chat.

Meeting Overview

  • The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
  • As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
    • On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
    • In both Voice and text.
    • At this location.
  • 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.

Updates Since the Last Meeting

  • Linden Homes Store:
    • There has been a high degree of feedback on the Linden Homes store since its launch (see: Looking at the New Linden Homes Store).
    • As a result of this, improvements and updates are being made to the store, and feedback is continuing to be reviewed.
  • Marketplace:
    • The Marketplace team have been looking into the case of some merchants changing their store name to include 5 stars to seem like their store rating is 5 stars. This is an ongoing investigation, but preliminary results indicate it is a small percentage of merchants, and a course of action has yet to be determined.
    • Marketplace search relevance is again being worked upon, primarily in response to feedback received, and updates will be forthcoming once they are ready.

Caspervend and the Marketplace

  • In September 2022, Linden Lab acquired CasperTech (see the official blog post and my own article, which includes a Lab Gab interview with Casper Warden for more), a family which includes the popular Caspervend system.
  • This meeting saw questions taken on how merchants use Caspervend, and capabilities within Caspervend they’d like to see incorporated in the MP. This drew a breadth of feedback including:
    • Caspervend’s use of graphs to present data relating to sales, deliveries, etc., being carried over to the MP and broadened.
    • A general expansion of MP stats (e.g. top selling products and sales over time).
    • Integration of Caspervend’s in-world selling tools with the MP to allow items viewed on Caspervend sales kiosks to be delivered via the MP.
  • This discussion broadened into more general requests for capabilities related to both Caspervend and the Marketplace both together and individually. These included:
    • Having items purchased via the MP or via dedicated Caspervend in-world servers (and other third-party vending solutions?) to be delivered to a folder within Inventory called “Purchased Items”, rather than “Received Items” or “Objects” – as *everything* users receive might be regarded as a “received item”.
    • Having the means to report broken links within MP so they might be fixed (e.g. by a store owner where the links in their MP listings refer to the former location of any in-world store they own, as they’ve forgotten to update following a move).

Dynamic Landmarks

  • Part of the discussion on Caspervend / the Marketplace raised the matter of dynamic landmarks.
  • This is a subject raised numerous times in the past – most notably by Toysoldier Thor under the term Virtual Landmarks (VLM), see:
    • Feature request SVC-8082 “Proposed Global Service for SL: VIRTUAL LANDMARKS & VLM Mapping Services”
    • The Virtual Landmarks forum thread.
    • My own article on the VLM concept.
    • The third-party attempt to address VLMs, developed by Darius Gothly (but now discontinued – illustrating the need for centralised support of such a system by LL).
  • The general idea for “dynamic landmarks” was referenced by Sytax Linden as a good idea, and the above points are being passed to him for reference (assuming they might be of interest).

In Brief

  • Holding the Web User Group more frequently is still being looked into.
  • Requests were made for the following:
    • Make the *entire* Destination Guide (+ things like the SL public calendar) directly viewable through the viewer(!).
    • Support for 360 snapshots within the Destination Guide.
    • Utilising different colours  counts on DG entries to denote scripted agents rather than active avatars.
    • Expanding parcel Search categories to match those in the Destination Guide in order to make public parcels more discoverable.
    • A public-facing document outlining what is being worked on, what feedback has been taken on-board, etc.,  so people are more generally aware of what is happening with web properties + updates.
    • More Search categories / filtering (web / viewer search) – e.g. “clothing”, “landscaping”, “Building”, etc.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 6th, 2023.

Judilynn India: fractured abstracts in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Third Eye Gallery, November 2023: JudiLynn India – Fractured

Currently open at the Third Eye Gallery, operated and curated by Jaz (Jessamine2108), is an exhibition of new works by JudiLynn India, entitled Fractured.

An abstract painter in the physical world, having studied graphics design at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, JudiLynn has been a part of Second Life since 2010 as both an artist and an engaged member of the broader Second Life community of users.

I’ve been drawing since I could hold a crayon. After the turn of the century, I decided to focus my creativity on acrylic and digital painting and have totally enjoyed the journey. My work embodies my spirit and personality. My goal is to allow you to experience the image with your own mind’s eye. My work is entirely intuitive. I get lost in the layering of texture and colour. Occasionally, I will include figurative work if my spirit is so presented with the composition.

– Judilynn, discussing her work

Third Eye Gallery, November 2023: JudiLynn India – Fractured

Working in a variety of mediums – digital, acrylic, wet paint, and so on, JudiLynn is perhaps most widely known as an abstract artist, although her overall portfolio is much broader than this – as can be witnessed by a visit to her on-line gallery and shop. With Fractured,  she presents 18 pieces with are predominantly abstract in nature, but which also fold within them hints, perhaps, of surrealism, pop/psychedelia, and touches of futurism/suprematism (in the use in some of geometrical forms and lines). Thus there is a richness of style and content to be found within Fractured, both in terms of individual pieces and as a collection of works as a whole.

Exactly how the pieces are perceived is entirely up to the individual viewing them; JudiLynn has refrained from offering an artist’s by-line to the collection, preferring people to experience the exhibition with an unbiased eye. As such, I am somewhat loathe to say too much in terms of my own perspective beyond very broad brushstrokes (no pun intended) such as those above.

Third Eye Gallery, November 2023: JudiLynn India – Fractured

What I will say however, is that the pieces within the collection might also been seen in terms of compositional / thematic groups. This is somewhat obvious through the manner in which they have been arranged (like by like), but it also helps to more readily discern those hints of style and approach found within specific pieces – such as with the quartet of Fractured 17 through Fracture 20, which present abstractions strongly suggestive of nature whilst folding within themselves hints of the pop/psychedelia genres thanks to their use of colour and mural-like flow.

However, and as noted, this is an collection very much about personal perceptions on viewing the art, so I’ll leave the rest to you to pay a visit to Fractured.

SLurl Details

Sitting in The Middle of Nowhere in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Middle of Nowhere, November 2023 – click any image for full size

Life in the physical world is just a little too hectic; with the house now approaching its 30th birthday (not that I’ve lived in it that long!) the decision was made earlier this year to start overhauling and updating parts of it. You know, the usual stuff: new kitchen and other rooms, interior alterations to make better use of space, bathroom updates, blah, blah, blah. Some – like the installation of a full solar / battery system – have gone well (aside from a few software teething troubles); others have not progressed quite so well, leading to much gnashing of teeth and trying very hard not to teach the cats too many Naughty Words (they are both approaching 15 months of age, so far too young for some of the more colourful metaphors which bless the English language!).

All of which means that there are times (quite a lot of them of late) where the urge to just get any from everything has been overwhelming. Fortunately for me – and anyone feeling the need to escape the day’s demands and just breathe in nature – Ari (Aridis Inaka) has provided an escape to – quite literally – The Middle of Nowhere.

The Middle of Nowhere, November 2023

Occupying a Homestead region, this is a setting where the simple pleasures of country walks, feeling tall grass brushing against fingertips as you wander and watching birds wheel overhead and horses roaming free, can be enjoyed. A place which, despite the surrounding sea, gives a sense of gently rolling prairielands only lightly touched by the hand of Man; a setting where (for those who wish) a gentle audio stream flows to further encourage muscles to unknot and thought processes to let go (and I’ll be honest, given it features the likes of Bear McCreary, Danny Elfman, Alexandre Desplat and legends such as Ennio Morricone and Michel Legrand, it really is worth a listen!).

The region’s About Land notes introduce the region as place of horses and sunsets and where light role-play is welcome. It is a description that fits, although there is much in terms of opportunities for photography, relaxation and contemplation that perhaps passes unmentioned. It’s also a place well suited to the quote from Frances Jane van Alstyne’s (aka Franny Crosby), On Hearing a Description of a Prairie Ari offers as a description for the region within her Profile:

Oh! could I see as thou hast seen,
   The garden of the west,
When Spring in all her loveliness
   Fair nature’s face has dressed.
The rolling prairie, vast and wild!
   It hath a charm for me—
Its tall grass waving to the breeze,
   Like billows on the sea.
The Middle of Nowhere, November 2023

It’s a fitting description because the American prairie can often been imagined as a vast ocean as the wind ripples the grasslands (and crops!) growing across them like waves caught in the breath of a sea breeze. More to the point here, perhaps, is that the metaphorical mixing of prairie and sea also helps region and surrounding waters flow together as a unified environment, rather than one simply being bounded on all sides by the other.

To offer a blow-by-blow tour of the region is perhaps an exercise in futility; its very nature – almost completely low-lying and carpeted in tall grasses – means that it offers most of its secrets to visitors from the moment they arrive. Points of interest are easily located, and the setting’s easy beauty sets the feet a-wandering with ease. The only real break in the gentle undulations of the land are to be found to the north, where a curtain of high cliffs rise from a westward and squat table of rock to border the region as they march to the east, the waters tumbling from them giving rise to a shallow channel which in part separates them from the rest of the landscape.

The Middle of Nowhere, November 2023

The grasslands are largely given over to the horses roaming them, although here and there the horizon is broken by a tree or by the blocky form of a wooden shack or cabin – or ruin thereof. The trees offer a mix of shade for visitors and horses and places to sit or swing. The shacks and cabins speak to the passage of human occupation, as little as it might have been, what appears to be the detritus of that life remaining within and without some of them – thus offering possible props and ideas for gentle role-play. To one side of the setting and atop a small knoll, sits an aging chapel, a small graveyard in the lee of the knoll. The chapel offers a sanctuary of remembrance to those wishing to avail themselves of it, whiles the open camp site a short walk away presents a place for fireside conviviality.

Simply formed, but clearly put together with an eye for detail (and a little whimsy, giving the wandering / dancing tree!), this is a region which can be easily enjoyed and photographed. If you are looking for a place to which you might escape the demands of life (physical or virtual) and simply gather your breath whilst recharging mental batteries, then you can do little better then dropping into The Middle of Nowhere.

The Middle of Nowhere, November 2023

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #44 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Grauland, August 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, October 31st Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and is not intended to be a full transcript. My thanks to Yuzuru Jewell for the meeting transcript – for once, clock changes caught me off-guard, and I missed the greater part of the meeting!

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 SLS Main channel, but the simhosts were restarted.
  • On Wednesday, November 1st the BlueSteel and LeTigre will receive the simulator support for PBR Materials.
    • Please remember: if you have anything that uses PBR materials and you rez that object (or wear it) on a non-PBR simulator,  the PBR Materials will be stripped from the object and forgotten.

Viewer Updates

No updates to viewers for the start of the week, leaving the official viewer pipelines as:

  • Github Actions (GHA) RC viewer, version 6.6.16.6566955269, issued October 20 (with major CEF update and number version numbering) and promoted on October 25.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Project viewers:

Games Controller Update

  • Leviathan Linden is having issues getting the viewer to build for Mac.
  • He hopes to have support for arbitrary controllers before this is shippable in the viewer, Which means some way to remap keys and axes.
  • The server-side code has been largely settled for any initial release, although there are some questions about whether some LSL constant names will be added for the various buttons and axes.
  • The documentation for the Game Controller SL event can be found with the SL wiki.
  • A projects viewer is available via Github actions, but per the above, simulator support is pending the Fall Colours RC release.
  • Pending main grid availability, the simulator support is available on Aditi (the Beta grid) within the following regions: Ahern, Cloud Sandbox 3, Cloud Sandbox 4, Mesh Sandbox 2, Sandbox Wanderton, Snark, and Tyl.

SL Combat

  • Rider Linden noted that LL will likely start a “Combat Committee” in early 2024 (presumably a new User Group meeting).
  • He will endeavour to put a strawman put together in terms of what might be addressed and the broad scope of changes which could be implemented ahead of any meetings. Currently, he is investigating the number of combat systems within SL.
  • However, what his is currently considering is an “on_damage() event, which he defines thus:
On damage-enabled regions that event would be called rather than the system simply applying damage. That would allow the combat system to make modifications to the damage (e.g. fire resistance, armour, etc) That event could then apply the damage to the avatar it was attached to. My goal for this project is to provide the tools to build combat systems. Not proscribe one to fit all situations.  
  • This idea received broadly positive feedback from the combat enthusiasts attending the meeting, with the caveat that the event must be able to report any damage source, to allow for moderation where there are differences of opinion over things like hits received.
  • Further suggestions for this idea and combat in general included:
    • on_damage(): the LL damage system should work as a “fallback”,  so people don’t require an attachment.
    • on_damage(): estates should be able to configure “minimum” and “maximum” damage hit limits to prevent people trying to game things via scripted means (e.g. using a scripted attachment to prevent taking any damage at all or weapons which “instakill” all the time).
    • A further request for a capability such as BUG-6707, “[Experience Tools] Feature Request – Parcel/region setting to allow/disallow non-experience scripts”, which  – for combat regions using SL Experiences – could do much to negate scripted means of trying to “cheat” per the above bullet point.
    • An update to the the rez with parameters event to allow those engaged in combat to be able to instantly swap weapons without having to attach all the weapons they might require ahead of entered a combat game.
    • Enabling region owners to set the response to “dying” in combat (/games in general) – such as a flag which allows the “dead” to be teleported to a specific location (e.g. a specific spawn point” or the region / parcel’s landing point), together with a “respawn cooldown” period (e.g. players being respawned receive no damage for a given period of time – preventing someone just taking up shop near a respawn point and picking people off as soon as they arrive).
    • A request for a capability such as BUG-233175 “llSetAgentParams: a way to customize certain agent attributes” – this would not only have general applications (e.g. those outlined in the Jira), it might potentially allow things like the avatar hitbox to resize in accordance with the avatar size.
  • Intermixed with this was a broader discussion both related to and separate from combat in SL, including scripted object collisions (raised specifically with issues of vehicle use and region crossings / striking banlines (e.g. see BUG227303), but which can also impact combat play in SL – e.g. by shutting down worn combat meters on region crossing).
  • As Rider noted, is is still putting together a strawman specification as to what might be considered as having potential to be addressed, scope of possible changes etc., doubtless with at least some of what was discussed in the meeting feeding into it, as he continues to visit combat regions and investigate the current systems in use, etc. As such, this will likely become a more focused discussion once any such “Combat User Group” is up and running.

In Brief

  • It has been noted that on the current PBR RC viewer, texture LOD has apparently changed, breaking the majority of on prim boards at a distance over 20m, and leaving the only way to get clear text on objects such as a sports scoring board is by using individual font character text per face rather than font map/atlas. This issue appears to be awaiting a Jira.

† 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.