Long-term Second Life resident DimiVan Ludwig – Dimi to his friends – is a man of many talents: business owner, musician and photographer. As a business owner, he created and ran the Hummingbird Café between 2006 and 2011, and is also the owner of the Duval Pub. As a musician, he was a regular performer at both, and at venues across SL, including Menorca, the first live music venue in Second Life (2005) and recently re-created in-world.
As a photographer, DimiVan works both in the physical and digital worlds, and his work from both is currently the subject of an exhibition at the Kultivate Signature Gallery.
Kultivate Signature Gallery: DimiVan Ludwig
The introduction to the exhibition notes:
He calls himself a novice, but those who have seen his photographs would say otherwise. He frames his shots with the final product in mind, editing very little in post production. He uses his Nikon d3500 to shoot real life landscapes. In Second Life, he prefers to snap portraits utilising the features provided by LUMIPro.
On witnessing the pieces on display, I would have to agree to the first part of this statement: there is a natural framing to the pieces, whether avatar study, physical world portrait or landscape (from either realm), that presents the subject matter in singular depth that is a delight to witness and marks Dimi as having a natural eye for photography.
Kultivate Signature Gallery: DimiVan Ludwig
Presented across the three floors of the gallery space, there is also a certain thematic approach to way they have been laid out. On the lower floor, the focus is predominantly from Second Life, presenting on the one side avatar studies (although with a couple of portrait images from the physical world), and on the other Second Life landscapes. On the middle level are photos from the physical world, whilst the upper is reserved for Second Life images of a more intimate / adult nature and which should probably be regarded as NSFW.
I admit to being particularly drawn to the pictures on the mid-level. This is not to say I do not appreciate the SL photographs – I do. But there is such a depth and marvellously natural set to each of the images from the physical world, that they naturally draw the eye; in fact I’d go so far as to say that one in particular demonstrates that as well as having a flair for capturing the natural world, Dimi potentially has a keen eye for astronomical photography.
Kultivate Signature Gallery: DimiVan Ludwig
Another excellent exhibition for Kultivate, featuring a gifting artist.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 28th
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
Current Release viewer version 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Arrack Maintenance RC viewer, 6.4.5.544024, issued on June 24. This viewer uses Viewer Manager 2.0.538279 and contains logging to check for Vulkan graphics support in Windows systems.
Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544097, June 25. This viewer is built using VS 2017 / a recent version of Xcode, and Boost.Fiber. It contains no user-facing changes.
Starship SN7 rises briefly through a cloud of super-cold nitrogen gas after the base of the tank ruptured during a deliberate over-pressurisation teat, June 23rd. Credit: LabPadre
SpaceX has had a busy week. Following the loss of the Starship prototype SN4, the company has been pushing ahead with the construction of prototypes SN5 and SN6 – one of which is likely to complete the first flight tests for the vehicle.
These prototypes look a little odd to some, resembling little more than steel cylinders. This is because SpaceX is currently focused purely on the vertical ascent / decent capabilities of the vehicle, and for this they only need the section of the hull that contains the fuel tanks and the raptor motors. Experience in flying the smaller Starhopper vehicle demonstrated there is no need to include the vehicle’s upper sections or the dynamic flight surfaces – although these will be added as the test flights become more ambitious and broader in scope.
Starships SN5 and SN6 under construction at the SpaceX Boca Chica Midbay building: Credit: SpaceX
Also following the destruction of the SN4 prototype, the company started work on the SN7 vehicle. This caused some speculation as to where it might fit in the test vehicle series. Might it be the start of a prototype that does go on to include the said upper sections and flight surfaces? Was it being built in case SN5 or SN6 went the way of SN4 and SN3?
As it turned out, SN7 was constructed specifically for further tests on tank pressurisation. On June 15th, 2020 the tank, mounted on a test stand was filled with liquid nitrogen (used in testing because it mimics the super-cold temperatures of the propellants the tanks will eventually contain, and so exposes the tank to the same temperature stresses, but if the tank ruptures, it will not explode) to its maximum pressure. It resulted in a slight leak developing, which was repaired. Then, on June 23rd, the tank was once more filled with liquid nitrogen – but this time to a pressure well beyond it would have to face when in use during a launch.
With nitrogen gas still roiling on the ground, Zeus, the robot dog (arrowed) goes in to check the area around the wrecked SN7 tank. Credit: LabPadre
The results were spectacular: an initial rupture occurs in the lower half of the tank, instantly expand into a tear along its base seam that released the liquid nitrogen in such bulk and pressure that it instantly vaporised en masse, venting with a force that lifted tank and test stand sideways off the ground. Immediately after the incident, SpaceX deployed their newest team member, Zeus.
A robot “dog” developed by Boston Dynamics (which they generically call “Spot”), Zeus is being used by SpaceX to assess potentially hazardous situations around the Boca Chica test site – in this case, the ground conditions following exposure to so much liquid nitrogen that took time to completely boil off. In typical SpaceX humour, the company has even erected a large Snoopy-style dog house on the grounds that’s allegedly the robot dog’s home.
And aerial view: the remnants of SN7 can be seen on their side, the test stand attached. The grey area “below” it is the concrete base on which it stood. A second test stand sits “above” the wreck. Credit: RGV Aerial Photography
One of the reasons for taking the test beyond limits was to check the steel used in SN7’s construction. Earlier versions of the Starship prototypes had been built with 301 stainless steel, but the company has opted to switch to the stronger 304L, and the degree to which the tank stood up to the test is being seen as indicative that the 304L is structurally a better choice.
Also during the week, NASA announced that the Crew Dragon currently docked with the International Space Station will likely return to Earth at the start of August 2020, with its crew of Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley. Its return will pave the way for the first “operational” crew Dragon launch, which will carry astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker (commander) and Soichi Noguchi to the ISS at the end of August or early September.
Starship prototype SN5 being raised on to its test stand. In the foreground is the Spacehopper. Credit: BocaChicaGal
In a separate announcement, the agency further indicated that in a change to their requirements, they will in future allow SpaceX to make use of re-used Falcon 9 first stages in Crew Dragon launches. Previously, the agency had specified that each crewed mission must take place using a new Crew Dragon and new Falcon 9 launcher. The change came after a second Falcon 9 first stage successfully completed its fifth launch and landing.
In late 2008, the US Army made the headlines in a number of on-line periodicals such as Wired, when it announced the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) was opening a “recruitment island” in Second Life, hoping to tap into the “4 million” users of the platform (yes, this was the era of hype about SL) into signing-up through a mixture of promotion and tchotchkes.
While that announcement was met with sniggers by some of the press reporting on it, it actually masked the fact that the US military had been engaged in evaluating Second Life as a platform for modelling, simulation and training (MS&T) activities for more than a year.
This work was centred on a group of regions called MiLands – Military Lands – which at their height (2009-2010) were made up of around 30 regions, split between the four major branches of the US military: Air Force, Navy, Army and Marine Corps. Such was the US military presence, Linden Lab assigned Scott Linden to manage the regions and liaise with the US Department of Defense in its use of SL.
The MiLand Meeting Room, home of the MiLand Charter
Within those regions, Coalition Island, established (2009), was created to offer a public point of access to the US Military’s use of second Life. Today, it remains as a piece of Second Life’s early history – although it could in all honestly do with a little TLC as parts of it have not weathered the passage of time too well.
At its heart is a large pentagonal area – the symbolism here fairly obvious! On four of its sides, this presents photographs of each of the four military branches mentioned above Brownstone paths radiate each to lead to informational displays on how each branches was using SL – although both the Army and Air Force displays look more recruitment oriented, and the US Marine Corps is now conspicuous in its absence. The US Coastguard also gets a passing nod, with a small inshore patrol RHIB moored to one side of the island.
The fifth side of the pentagon comprises a broad set of steps once used for presentations (and now somewhat disconcertingly inhabited by three disembodied heads). At the top of these is the island’s former greeting / conference / meeting centre, the upper floor of which contains the Second Life US Military Coalition Charter, covering the aims and use of the former MiLands regions.
Coalition Island: the Team Orlando information display
Close to main conference centre is a display by Team Orlando, a collaborative alliance of U.S. military organisations working in modelling, simulation and training using a number of platforms including – back in 2009-2010 – Second Life.
While I was unaware of Team Orlando’s use of Second Life, thanks to Dr. Douglas Maxwell (Maccus McCullough in SL, and also the founder of he in-world group RL United States Military in SL), I had originally become aware of attempts by the US military to use Second Life as an MS&T platform, back in 2011.
As a civilian contractor, Dr. Maxwell was employed at the Navy’s Virtual Reality laboratories in Washington DC, and in 2008 he was asked to head-up the work in establishing a 12-region campus in Second Life to be used by the Navy Undersea Warfare Centre (NUWC) for training and simulations.
It is a computationally steerable persistent simulation. The capabilities in here are tremendous: in-situ scripting, terrain deformation in real-time, every object is composable, not static. We got the idea that if we could increase the fidelity of the physics in here, it could actually be very useful.
Dr. Douglas Maxwell discussing NUWC’s use of SL in 2008
Coalition Island: US Navy NAVSEA display for the Virtual Navy Undersea Warfare Centre (vNUWC)
Maxwell’s involvement with the military use of Second Life expanded in 2009 when he became the Science and Technology Manager at the US Army’s Simulations Training and Technology Centre (STTC), also looking to make use of Second Life. This came at a time when Linden Lab was engaged in the (ultimately ill-fated for a variety of reasons) development of the “standalone” (or perhaps more accurately, the “behind your firewall”) Second life Enterprise (SLE) product, and Maxwell and his team were steered towards SLE as a potential solution to their needs.
In fact, Maxwell’s team found SLE to be highly conducive to their work thanks to a greater freedom of control over the simulator software and capabilities than could be achieved with the “public” SL product. This allowed them to develop a number of feature-rich training simulations to help train troops in advance of their deployment to Afghanistan.
Nor was the STTC alone in the use of SLE – the US Navy invested in it, at one point filing a US government FBO request for the purchase of up to 70 SLE support licences for the product, worth in the region of an initial US $3.5 million, had it been approved.
Coalition Island: the US Air Force information display
But before that came to pass, Linden Lab opted to discontinue the development of Second Life Enterprise, thus ending US military interest in the product. For Douglas Maxwell and the STTC, this meant taking the lessons they had learnt and applying them to building a simulation environment using OpenSimulator (see: MOSES: the US Army’s OpenSim exercise).
Whether or not the ending of SLE development was also the cause of other branches of the US military stepping back from experimenting with Second Life, I cannot in all honestly say. Today, as far as I’m aware, the US military has little or no official involvement in Second Life. However, Coalition Island today stands window on a time, as short-lived in the scheme of things though it might have been, when Second Life was being looked at seriously as a platform for training and simulation, and so it remains as an integral part of the platform’s history.
It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.
Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe,’ declared the parson, brandishing a carving knife above a joint of roast beef, ‘would be doing the world at large a favour!’ It was a careless remark for a man of the cloth. And one which was to come back and haunt the clergyman just a few hours later – when the colonel was found shot dead in the clergyman’s study. But as Miss Marple soon discovers, the whole village seems to have had a motive to kill Colonel Protheroe.
Tea-Time with Miss Marple
Seanchai Library continues a 6-week run featuring Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple, starting with The Murder at the Vicarage, which marked her first appearance in print.
Monday, June 29th, 19:00: Spock’s World
Gyro Muggins reads Diane Duane’s take on a classic figure from science fiction.
In the 23rd Century…
On the planet Vulcan, a crisis of unprecedented proportion has caused the convocation of the planet’s ruling council, and led to Starfleet ordering the U.S.S. Enterprise to the planet in the hope that its first officer, and Vulcan’s most famous son, can help overcome the issues the planet faces.
As Commander Spock, his father, Sarek, and Captain James T. Kirk struggle to preserve Vulcan’s future, the planet’s innermost secrets are laid open, as is its people’s long climb to rise above their savage pre-history, merciless tribal warfare, medieval-like court intrigue to develop and adhere to o’thia, the ruling ethic of logic, and to reach out into space.
For Spock, the situation means he is torn between his duty to Starfleet and the unbreakable ties that bind him to Vulcan. Confronted by his own internal conflicts, he must quell them and prevent his world – and possibly the entire United Federation of Planets – from being ripped apart.
Tuesday, June 30th
12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym, Live in the Glen
Music, poetry, and stories in a popular weekly session at Ceiluradh Glen.
19:00: The Bridge of San Luis Rey
With Willow Moonfire.
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travellers into the gulf below.
Thus begins Thorton Wilder’s second, and 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Influenced in part by Wilder’s own conversations with his deeply religious father, and inspired by Prosper Mérimée’s one-act act play, Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement, Thorton described the novel as a means to pose the question, “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?”
The bridge of the novel’s title and opening is a fictional Inca rope bridge. Its collapse is witnessed by a Franciscan friar, himself about to cross over it. A deeply pious man, Brother Juniper finds his faith challenged by the tragedy, and as a result embarks upon a “mission” to prove that it was divine will rather than chance that led to the deaths of those who fell with the bridge.
Over the course of six years, he compiles a huge book on the lives of those who perished, much of it obtained through interviews with those who knew them, in an attempt to to show that the beginning and end of the lives of those lost in the tragedy might be a a window into the will of God, and that the beginning and end of every life is in accordance with God’s plan for the individual.
Thus, within his book, he records the lives of those killed, as presented in succeeding chapters of the novel, mapping all that led them to their fate. The novel itself weaves a story through time, from the opening tragedy, then back to the lives of those who perished, then forward to the book’s reception by the church, then back once more to the events that immediately followed the tragedy and before Brother Juniper embarked on his quest.
Through this, we not only witness the lives of those lost, but also Brother Juniper’s own fate as a result of his efforts – a fate itself foretold within his book, and which again leaves one pondering the question Wilder set in writing the novel: is there indeed direction in our lives beyond our own will – and if so, is it rooted in the divine, or humanity’s own attitudes of a given time?
Wednesday, July 1st, 19:00: The Phryne Fisher Mysteries
Corwyn Allen brings us stories about Kerry Greenwood’s Australian heroine of the 1920s, possibly made popular to a globe audience through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s series, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.
Phryne Fisher is rich, aristocratic and far too intelligent to be content as a flapper in the Jazz Age. She collects men, fast cars and designer dresses. she flies, dances, shoots and has a strong bohemian outlook on life. But no matter how delicious the distractions, Phryne never takes her eyes off her main goal in life: bringing down villains.
Thursday, July 2nd,
19:00: Kolchak: the Night Stalker Chronicles
Shandon Loring presents Barrens, an adventure by Chuck Dixon. Also in Kitely – grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).
21:00: Seanchai Late Night
Contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy with Finn Zeddmore, featuring stories from Escape Pod, Light Speed, and Clarkesworld and other sources.
As is undoubtedly obvious to regular readers, I’m a bit of a space fan – astronomy, space flight, science fiction – but I have to confess that until recently, I’d never actually written about the Spindrift Space Gallery in Second Life. In fact, until I was talking to Pooky Amsterdam about the special edition of The 1st Question event honouring Paradox Olbers (see: The 1st Question in Second Life (with Ebbe Altberg)), the gallery had completely fallen off my radar – so I thought it time I returned for another visit.
The gallery was established by Paradox in (I believe) 2007, and features the work of artists from the Intentional Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), including pieces by Kara Szathmáry, the IAAA’s Vice Prresident and CFO-Treasurer.
Spindrift Art Gallery
As the IAAA notes, art has always held a special place in the history of exploration. Artists often accompanied explorers on their journeys, providing paintings and sketches that would later enthral audience on their intrepid return. Some actually financed their own expeditions to “far-away” lands: south America, the Middle East, the Orient – specifically to paint those distant “worlds” and present them to patrons and audiences. In the 1870s, American artist Frederic Edwin Church perhaps became one of the first “space artists” of the modern era when he went to the Arctic regions to specifically paint the northern aurora as well as the icebergs of the Arctic Sea.
That tradition of art accompanying exploration has very much been a part of the space age. While artists cannot physically travel into the solar system or outer space, they can offer images of the Final Frontier, bringing us images of the fantastic – interplanetary space ships, future civilisations, alien worlds and so on, as well as realistic portrayals of the possibilities of planetary exploration, the worlds of our solar system and those we’ve detected around other stars but have yet to see through our own eyes or those of our robot emissaries. And of course, art has also given life to the imaginings of science fiction authors.
Spindrift Art Gallery: Rick Sternbach
All of this is reflected at the Spindrift Space Gallery. It features images by George Richard, Ron Miller, the inimitable Rick Sternbach, perhaps most famous for his work in connection with the Star Trek franchise from The Next Generation through Star Trek Voyager, in which his designs, images and conceptual art helped shape our view of the 24th century.
Also featured is the art of the aforementioned Kara Szathmáry, with a stunning series of pieces that reflect our unique relationship with the cosmos that has existed throughout history: stars that helped us navigate the oceans (Arrival), played a role in beliefs and cycles of life and even romance (Grandfather’s Spirit – Rolling Thunder, If Not for You), and that our voyages into space are, at their heart a very human undertaking: inspirational, emotional and, for families left behind, worrisome (In Pursuit of Paradise, Bon Voyage).
Spindrift Art Gallery: Kara Szathmáry
An exhibition of work by Steve Hobbs presents marvellous images of our solar system and explorations within it: Huygens descending through Titan’s atmosphere, Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft at asteroid 25143 Itokawa, Voyager 2 at Uranus and Neptune, the Russian Luna 16 sample return mission and more, as well as views of of the planets and moons of the solar system. Another panel provides a tribute to the writings of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, including a rather Robert Redford like interpretation of Alvin, the protagonist of Against the Fall of Night.
From science fiction to science fact by way of astronomy the Spindrift Space Gallery offer a unique, static exhibition of space art and a little slice of SL history.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 