Thursday March 4th saw the opening of Stars by Cica Ghost. Occupying a Homestead region, Stars is once again an interactive setting that makes for fun exploration.
Caught under a blanket of starfish-like stars (make sure you have your viewer set to use the Shared Environment), the setting has something of a Steampunk feel to it in general appearance, incorporating many echoes of Cica’s past installations waiting for those who are familiar with her work.
Cica Ghost, Stars
The town is laid out in something of a grid, with the landing point pretty much at its centre. laid out around it are squares and road and assorted buildings, some of which stand as a frame for the setting, other of which can be entered into and explored, or offer places to sit and chat.
Some of these houses resemble the tall slender houses found in the likes of Burlap and Sunny Day, or echo the look of those seen within Bridge and Donkeys or seen painted in Rocks and Drawn Town. Among these are fish and seas creatures, some hanging from pipes or forming strange wheeled sculptures and vehicles or sitting at rooftop decoration; whilst very different in tone, these nevertheless tickle fond memories of Under the Sea, while echoes of places like Little Town and more also await discovery.
Cica Ghost, Stars
Which is not to say Stars is not a unique environment – it very much is; but these little touches, which include Cica’s stick man on his bicycle still fighting the wind and the rabbits from from Burlap forming a part of the town’s puppet theatre and the keys on the wall of the house interior, add depth to the setting that can be very personal to those who have followed Cica’s work.
This is a place that introduces new characters as well, notably in the form of the wheeled, tin hatted robots rolling back and forth on their single wheel, or offering music to dance to under the stars. And throughout the entire setting are places for visitors to dance or sit or ride (from swings to vehicles) and simply have fun together. And when exploring, do be sure to check the terrain covering – it offers some art of its own.
Cica Ghost, Stars
Rounded with a quote by Charles A. Beard (or Ralph Waldo Emerson, depending on your choice of attribution, together with Martin Luther King Jr., and others in a slightly altered form), Stars is another richly engaging place to explore – do be sure to have the local stream enabled when exploring! And should you find them as engaging as I did, Cica’s robots at their friends can be purchased from the store in one corner of the region.
The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021. These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar.
When reading these notes, please keep in mind:
This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
Similarly, and if included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, any audio comments related to that topic that might be included in these reports will be concatenated into a single audio extract.
Web Properties Updates
General post-Uplift work is continuing, much of it internal to the Lab. This means that it is likely to still be a while before new features and capabilities (including the Marketplace) start to be worked on again, although issues will continue to be addressed.
Name Changes: the next refresh of Last Name options will likely be in June 2021, around the time of the Second Life birthday. This should also see the list of last names put into alphabetical order.
As noted in my UG meeting summaries in week 8, the Land Store was re-enabled after encountering post-AWS transition issues. Further problems were encountered over the last weekend of February 2021, but is believed these have now been fully resolved.
A new link has been added to the secondlife.com home age + related pages. T-shirts and Gifts will take people directly to the Lab’s physical world merchandise store hosted by Red Bubble.
The new link to the SL / LL merchandise on Red Bubble can be found in the footer of secondlife.com and associated pages.
There have been non-user visible updates to the back-end of the communities services pages, and the World API has been updated to correct an issue with information being fed to the viewer splash screen.
Marketplace
A lot of work has been put into the Marketplace back-end systems.
This work includes:
Correcting the delivery delay issues that were being encountered.
Fixing a 404 error appearing on some pages.
Fixing a error with store managers being unable to open the correct management page.
Correcting the need for Support to clear Unavailable Item errors.
Updates to the French language pages.
Fixing an issue with new users being unable to log-in to the MP.
MP updates used to be published to the forums, but it has been suggested making them available more as release notes might be beneficial. This will be looked into.
BUG-230262 “Marketplace Website Bug/Error” causes people to be randomly logged-out of various web properties (notably the Marketplace). It is not clear if this is related to single sign-on confusion or a problem that is more generic or browser-specific.
It has been suggested that reviews on MP purchases be subject to a timed delay (e.g. you cannot leave a review for, say 24 or 48 hours following an MP purchase), to allow the purchaser time to contact the creator in the event of problems / confusion, etc., and act as a deterrent against bad reviews airing from simply misunderstandings, etc. The Lab have requested this be made as a formal feature request so that it can be properly reviewed / considered.
Single Sign-On
Single sign-on is now in place across many of the Lab’s web properties.
This means users with multiple accounts cannot have different accounts signed-on to these pages at the same time.
This should not be confused with Two-Factor Authentication (2 FA), which is still in development / discussion and no deployment date is currently available.
Premium Plus
Roll-out of Premium Plus was delayed in 2020 for a number of reasons, including the AWS migration work and the impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
The feature is currently being re-evaluated, including whether it should be rolled-out as originally planned.
In addition, further work may be required as a result of the migration work.
In short:
Work on the feature will be resumed in due course.
There is no identified date for when this might be, or when roll-out may commence.
Mobile Client
iOS Version:
Issues resulting from the last round of Apple Store testing (apparently related to how chat / communications are handled) have been addressed.
These fixes are currently subject to internal testing at the Lab. Providing this is successful, the app will be passed back to Apple for further testing at their end.
It is hoped the latter will occur towards the end of March 2021.
Android:
Development is still behind that of iOS.
However, the Lab now has devices to allow internal testing of the Android flavour of the app, although it will still be a while before anything becomes visible for users to test.
In Brief
User-created grid-wide experiences are still on the cards, but again, the capability is not being worked on at present, and there is no available time frame on when work will resume nor any indication of potential deployment.
Note: The art exhibition described in this article contains images that might be considered as sexually suggestive, with some also including female nudity.
I Want to Show You Something is the title of the latest exhibition mounted by Dido Haas at her Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, and once again it presents something that is unique to Second Life, whilst also marking the second time in the gallery’s history that art from the physical world has been place on exhibition.
A collaborative installation, I Want to Show You Something features the images of Dutch photographer Daantje Bons, presented through the use of projected images created by Venus Adored to give the illusion of 3D pieces embedded in the walls of the gallery.
Nitroglobus Gallery: I Have to Show You Something
For this reason, it is essential that visitors have their viewer’s Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) option enabled (Preferences → Graphics → ensure Advanced Lighting Model is checked), otherwise the art will not be rendered (note that, in difference to the instructions provided at the landing point, you do not need to have Shadows enabled to view the installation; however, I would suggest setting your time of day to Midnight).
Based in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Daantje Bons is a highly regarded photographer whose work is prominently featured in Dutch newspapers and magazines such asDe Volkskrant, NRC Handelsblad and LINDA, and internationally in the likes of VOGUE Italia, FRAME, Kurier and Huffington Post, as well as being displayed in galleries across Europe.
The playful subversiveness and pleasing aesthetics of Daantje Bons’ fine art photography draw the eye, but the inherent contradictions make these images resonate and linger in the mind.
– Meredith Greer, writer
Nitroglobus Gallery: I Have to Show You Something
Her style is perhaps best described as Contemporary Feminist, her approach that of presenting her own femininity or re-imagining femininity with a sense of provocative humour and a sexuality; their presentation and apparent contradictions intentional as a means of both capturing attention and encouraging the observer to think more deeply about the subject presented within each piece.
This is all plentifully evident with I Want to Show You Something, a selection of 14 primary images around the walls of the hall, with three “collage” style of image projections to be found in a floating ball and cube, and via a “well” projected onto the gallery’s floor. These are all pieces that may well cause some discomfiture with the more conservative mind and raise smile in the more salacious, simply because of their overt sexuality.
Bons’ images are surprising, funny and often risqué — like a guide to puberty mixed with an untrustworthy recipe book with a surrealist twist
– Priscilla Frank, Huffington Post
Nitroglobus Gallery: I Have to Show You Something
The latter takes multiple forms, some obvious (flowers over the female genitalia), a raspberry covering a nipple, a string of pearls held between lips and tongue; other are possibly more subtle: petals held between lips; a chilli sliced partially open … all resonate with the observer, even if one may feel that sense of discomfiture. But these are not just pieces to provoke; they are in many respects self-exploration – what does it mean to be a woman? How doe masculinity and femininity affect how we see / express our sense of self?
Rich in content, sometimes swaying towards double entendre I Want to show You Something is an exhibition that operates on two levels, and you can learn more about Daantje’s work through her website.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 2nd, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.
Server Deployments
Please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.
Tuesday, March 2nd saw a rolling restart of servers on the SLS Main channel as a refresh, but no deployment.
Wednesday, March 3rd should, if the notes are comments have been understood, see the following:
Server update 2021-02-17.556138 will be deployed to the Oranges RC channel (formerly part of the BlueSteel channel said).
“A couple more region tests” (per Rider Linden) planned for LeTigra and Magnum.
In addition, a fourth mini-RC channel, called Ferrari has been set-up.
Restarts are described as still having the kinks worked out within the new environment.
SL Viewer
On Tuesday, March 2nd, the Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.14.556088, dated February 22nd 2021, was promoted to de facto release viewer. Release viewer rolled back to version 6.4.13.555567 (Jelly Doll improvements) originally promoted February 17th.
The rest of the current pipelines remain as:
Release channel cohorts:
Love Me Render (LMR) 5 project viewer, version 6.4.14.556118, February, 23, 2021.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.553437, January 7, 2021.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
In Brief
“Good progress” continues to be made on fixing the Map tile update issue, including the map stitching when zooming out (which was seen as the last problem to be resolved), but there is still no date as to when a fix may be deployed.
An extensive discussion took place regarding a delay in scripts starting in rezzed objects which can be variable for reasons unknown – other than the fact the delay seems to be minimal when a region has been recently restarted, but grows in time to 2-3 seconds the longer the region is up. However, the delay does not appear to relate to the usage of the region or its complexity (scripted objects within it).
Some appear to believe the delay is related to changes made in 2019 to try to improve script performance in general (and thus can be “easily fixed”).
Others have suggested the issue could be the result of some for of throttle being triggered.
The problem is having something of a “knock-on” effect in that some users have taken to pre-rezzing items and having them in an alpha / transparent mode around their avatar until needed – which is impacting region performance further.
It’s hard to keep a good thing down – or so the saying goes – and such is the case of Elvion, the homestead region designed by Bo Zano (BoZanoNL). Having closed towards the end of September 2020 not long after making an initial return to Second Life (see Elvion’s return to Second Life), the region was missed by many. So the news that Bo has re-opened it at a new location and with a new layout, has been good news to many – including myself.
Admittedly, it took a few days for Caitlyn and I to get over and see it for ourselves (thanks to Miro and everyone who pointed towards it), but we started the week by wandering the region and found it to be – as ever – an engaging outdoor setting with a lot to appreciate.
Elvion, March 2021
From what was initially something of a fantasy setting in the form of an elven retreat (see: Elvion: an elven sanctuary in Second Life) sitting within a quarter region, the setting grew over the years to take up a full Homestead whilst also moving to offer more of a feel of the great outdoors rather than staying strictly wrapped in a fantasy theme.
This is very much reflected in the current iteration for the region. Bounded by high peaks along its southern side that feed a broad ribbon of water from falls that drop from their snowy uplands, the majority of the setting is given over to a low-lying landscape cut by a shallow stream.
Elvion, March 2021
The latter rises – quite literally as it rolls up-slope, suggesting there is perhaps still a hint of elven magic here – from the broader body of water to run diagonally across the grasslands before splitting to create a small island to the north and east that’s home to horses and a hammock.
There are only two structures on the island: a stone pavilion sitting among the trees and a large house with a touch of fantasy about it sitting on a rocky outcrop overlooking the grass and streams, and which is reached by stone steps. Comfortably, if lightly, furnished, it offers a quiet retreat for those wishing to relax indoors.
Elvion, March 2021
For the rest, the land sits as a haven for wildlife, some of it easy to find in the form of deer, stags and waterfowl, the rest might take a little finding – so do keep any eye out for Curly (not sure if the other Stooges are around or members of the Rat Pack, as once was the case; we didn’t come across them during our wanderings). Together with the domesticated animals, they present a rich of life across the region.
Caught under a grey sky and with mist creeping between some of the trees and over the water, this new Elvion carries with it the spirit of previous iterations whilst remaining somewhere new to explore. The latter can be done so on foot or via wearable horse – just be prepared for a lot of opportunities for photography to present themselves to you.
While viewer updates are always in process across the available TPVs and clients, I thought I’d take a brief delve into recent updates for a couple of those I tend to routinely follow – Kirsten’s Viewer and the Speedlight Browser / Android / iOS client.
Kirsten’s Viewer
Late February and early March have seen a burst of activity from KirstenLee Cinquetti, with three versions of the Kirsten’s Viewer being released in a rapid-fire succession, started with S23.6.1500 on February 23rd and running through S23.6.1525 (codenamed Valkyrie, dated February 27th) and then S23.6.1533 (also, I gather, Valkyrie, released on March 2nd).
Give it’s been getting close to a year since the last update (see Kirsten’s viewer: a return to active duty and Kirsten’s Viewer gains the client-side AO), these releases do not focus on new features so much on both catching-up with the Lab’s core code base (which appears to be currently still in progress) and a lot of under-the-hood house cleaning.
In particular, the code clean-up means that as from the S23 release, Kirsten’s Viewer discontinues support for Linux /Solaris/ OSX, and the viewer will be Windows-only. The reason for this is simple: time.
Why would I do such a thing? Its simply the realisation that keeping this thing maintained takes time, which is a rare commodity and focusing on a pure windows based solution without sifting through endless defines and endif’s not to mention the triple whammy cmake files or anything else for that matter makes life a heck of a lot simpler.
– KirstenLee on why Kirsten’s Viewer is now Windows-centric
A further benefit of this move, as Kirsten goes on to note, is that it also streamlines the Windows built process itself, through the integration of some of the build libraries into Visual Studio 2017 (now the core build tool for the Windows flavour of viewers), rather than relying on third-party libraries.
Given this focus, it appears the viewer has yet to get some of the more recent updates from the Lab, including:
Camera Presets (contributed to the Lab by open-source developer Jonathan Yap).
Mesh Uploader updates (contributed by open-source / Firestorm developer Beq Janus, with further modifications by the Lab).
Avatar “jelly doll” rendering improvements (via Vir Linden).
That said there are a couple of new additions to be found in preferences:
The return of the Midnight UI skin (Preferences → S23 Features → S23 UI Selection).
Kirsten’s S23 see the return of the purple “Midnight” UI skinning (viewer restart required)
The inclusion of the Controls Tab from the Lab’s Custom Key Mappings RC viewer, which allows users to assign specific key mappings to a range of viewer functions (Preferences Controls).
S23 incorporates the Lab’s custom key mapping options, which at the time of this review, were still at viewer release candidate status in the official viewer.
As noted, these recent releases are more along the lines of maintenance work and under-the-hood changes that are vital to the viewer’s longevity and future ease-of-update, rather than intending to present significant user-facing updates.
But that said, and with this work now completed, it hopefully won’t be too long before options such as the jelly doll updates and Camera Presets appear within Kirsten’s Viewer and it continued to recover greater parity with the Lab’s code base and releases.
Details on KirstenLee’s recent work on the viewer can be found on her blog, and the viewer can be downloaded here.
Speedlight
Speedlight, the browser / android / iOS client updated in mid-February, with updates for both Basic and Gold users.
Core updates (Basic and Gold):
Places search has been added.
Speedlight now includes the ability to search via region / parcel name (subject to location’s search listing)
SLURLs are now clickable with an ability to teleport.
Avatar maturity can be changed via the Settings → Maturity tab.
The Avatars page (dashboard) now displays the current location of your avatars.
The location of your avatar(s) is now listed on the Avatar dashboard page
3D World View Updates:
Walk auto-pilot: right-click or long touch on device screen at location to the walked to, then select Walk Here from the pop-up menu.
In-world object interaction (Touch): right-click or long touch object, and select Touch from the pop-up menu.
Revised interface for the world view, with improved rendering.
Gold 3D Word View Updates:
While in low-poly mode, touch any object to load a high LOD model.
Holding ALT+mouse will rotate camera around avatar (as with a viewer).
On-screen joystick can be turned on in 3D settings.
Stick avatars size adjusted to fit with real avatars in preparation for avatar rendering).
The core updates noted above further tune Speedlight’s ability to meet with many use-cases for those needing to access SL while away from a full viewer. As noted last time around, however, my personal view is that the 3D world view remains hit-and-miss – even on my PC using a browser, objects frequently fail to fully render and avatar movement can be unpredictable.
Whether this is just done to my being Basic / have a bad connection to the rendering pre-processing server, I’ve no idea; but if these issues are more endemic, then perhaps they might suggest that more more needs to be tweaked before full-scale avatar rendering is attempted.
In the meantime, Speedlight can be run via any browser via the Speedlight Website, or downloaded from either Google Play or the Apple Store (fee payble for the latter, with automatic Gold lifetime subscription).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 