Atelier des Images – Gallery Gadot, February 2025: Raven Arcana: Ends and New Beginnings
Second Life photographer-artist Raven Arcana is, in my opinion, one of the most expressive artists exhibiting her work within the platform. I’ve covered her work – both individual exhibitions and as part of ensemble exhibitions – in these pages, and always appreciate the opportunity to see her work. This being the case, it was off to Atelier des Images – Gallery Gadot, operated and curated by Aurelie Gadot Costanza, to witness Raven’s latest work.
Ends and New Beginnings is a visual essay, richly expressive and poignant in the way the individual images can trigger responses and / or suggest a story in its own right whilst remaining part of the broader narrative Raven paints.
These poetic monochromatic Landscapes take you on a Journey, from the Ending to a new Beginning. Discover Landscapes that express Loss, Solitude or even Hope. You might find your own Story within them.
– Raven Arcana, Ends and New Beginnings
Atelier des Images – Gallery Gadot, February 2025: Raven Arcana: Ends and New Beginnings
As Raven notes, these are images intended to express emotions and feelings, something reflected in their evocative names as well as their depictions – Broken; Empty Places, Growth. Each has a single focus within the scene it presents, such as a fallen lighthouse or a tree, whilst bent, standing firm against the passage of time and wind as it edges towards maturity.
Combined with their monochromic nature, the titles of these pieces cause them to resonate with the observer and draw one in, encouraging both our emotions and our imaginations. Each has its own unique voice such that I’m not going to offer interpretations here; what they have to say even much depends on how we approach them: what we’re feeling; how life is affecting us at the point in time we visit; perhaps even encouraging a contemplation of things we would rather keep hidden, and in doing so offer catharsis.
Atelier des Images – Gallery Gadot, February 2025: Raven Arcana: Ends and New Beginnings
Catharsis might be a term applied to the broader story offered through the entire collection. In this, I would suggest following the exhibition from the right-side entrance as you face it. Bordered to the left by a quote on endings and beginnings by English poet Jennifer Birchall and At the End – a piece by Raven which, among a collection of expressive pieces, I found to be particularly powerful in its imagery.
From this entrance, one can progress around the exhibition from right through centre and then left, and in doing so, allow the individual voices present in the pieces work to become a choir, their voices reaching a crescendo as one arrives at Raven’s images New Beginnings and Tranquillity, together with New Beginning, a poem by American poet Colleen Courtney. This form a final verse – or chapter – of the story; one filled with the promise that, for all of us, there is the promise held within the opening quote from Birchall.
Atelier des Images – Gallery Gadot, February 2025: Raven Arcana: Ends and New Beginnings
In all, Ends and New Beginnings is a beautiful collection of work, its expressive depth certain to touch all who visit. And, should you wish to keep alive the memory of the entire exhibition, the entire collection has been put together in in-world book form by Raven, offered for sale alongside the individual prints.
On Friday January 17th, 2025, Linden Lab announced improvements to the financial and billing systems used by Second Life as provided by Tilia, the Lab’s trusted billing partner- see: Enhancing the Financial Experience in Second Life.
In the interests of clarity and first-hand reading, I’m not going to list everything in here; better than people read the Lab’s own post. However, the following points are worth highlighting:
All USD balances are now securely managed through Tilia Wallet, providing a centralized and compliant way to handle fiat currency transactions.
Whilst maintaining all current pay-out connections:
Pay-out transactions should now process faster through Tilia.
There will be an introduction of direct bank deposits for the receipt of pay-outs (exact implementation time frame for this still TBA at the time of the update)
Updates to the Second Life Marketplace, Cashier, and Account dashboards to make managing payments smoother and more intuitive.
Enhanced Security & Compliance: Tilia is a fully regulated financial institution, ensuring that all transactions are secure, fully tracked, and compliant with global financial regulations.
This upgrade also marks a significant step forward in enhancing the financial and billing experience for all residents, ensuring greater security, reliability, and flexibility. Tilia has managed payments, tax forms, and KYC processes for Second Life for a while now. With this upgrade, they now also handle all fiat currency transactions, including securely holding USD earnings in Tilia wallets and processing credits (pay-outs).
This upgrade also brings both familiar and new pay-out options, including PayPal, Skrill, and the newly added MassPay.
The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
Dates and times of meetings are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they are conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
Official Viewer Status
Default viewer: version 7.1.11.12363455226, formerly the ExtraFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, aesthetic improvements and UI optimisations), dated December 17, 2024, promoted December 20, 2024 – No Change.
Release Candidate: Forever FPS, version 7.1.12.12999043440, February 4, 2025.
The “not so great news”: it is not possible to get Linden Water to look exactly as it did “pre-PBR”.
The “great news” is that LL can get very close in terms of overall look.
Most of the old Fresnel reflection/refraction, together with some of the underwater fogging has been restored.
Some of the fixes for water are currently in the very latest Firestorm Beta (and will presumably be going into the official ForeverFPS RC, if not there already).
Feedback on the changes – with the caveat things cannot (per above) ever be 1:1 with “pre-PBR” water appearance – is regarded as very important in order for the Lab to judge how well the changes are working.
This work is not the end of water tweaks; Geenz is looking at restoring real-time water reflections once the performance impacts of doing so can be assessed.
This will involve the use class of Hero reflection probe (like mirrors), which means the mirror capability as a whole will need additional optimisation work, as any frame rate drops it might incur are currently deemed as “not acceptable” by the team.
In addition, Geenz is looking at improving reflections more generally via the automatic reflection probes, such as reducing the moiré effect of Screen Space Reflections (SSR) on water.
The above will hopefully be released either in a dedicated viewer to follow ForeverFPS, or rolled into the viewer(s) directly following ForeverFPS.
“Hide Water” – Water Exclusion Surfaces
Geenz Linden has been working to provide a means of excluding Linden Water from internal volumes such as boat hulls, and has arrived at a solution with the technical name Water Exclusion Surfaces (WES).
The capability will hopefully be surfacing in an update to the ForeverFPS RC viewer. When it does:
It will likely be an option setting within the Texture tab of the Build / Edit floater, the name of which is still TBD, but is currently being referred to as “Hide Water”, and will work with most prim and mesh shapes to which it is applied (see the limitations notes, below).
When used with boats and similar:
It will cull Linden Water and the associated subsurface fogging when looking down on the hull / surface from above.
If looked at from directly below, it will only cull the underwater plane, the fogging will be intact.
Water exclusion surfaces should work as well as / better than invisiprims (e.g. they won’t clash with worn alphas or cause shader issues, occlusion culling will work correctly, etc.
Limitations:
The capability will not provide volumetric water exclusion (e.g. “hiding” water from the inside of underwater buildings) – This is a “future looking thing”, which might be addressed in the future. It is intended for use in boats and similar.
It is not intended to replace all use cases associated with invisiprims, and should not be taken to be a “replacement” for the latter.
The capability will not work when incorporated in an attachment (the attachment will render, but the exclusion surface will be ignored and will not hide Water) or rigged mesh (the rigged mesh will likely be rendered black). This is by intent, to limit performance impacts. Also do not work on the system avatars.
There are some additional limits to ease performance impact (e.g. fogging will not get really dense when looking up through the water plane).
In Brief
Placing Linden Water on prims or mesh: not a capability currently being developed, but one that is subject to internal discussions at times.
It was again noted that many creators are still awaiting scripted support for PBR (e.g. PBR specific texture offset / UV coordinate manipulation).
This support is described as “still on the roadmap”, but may have had other priorities push it down the list of priorities.
The fact that creators are waiting on them will be taken back from the meeting for internal discussion.
Cosmic Linden’s PBR terrain painting work remains on hold due to her being engaged in other work. Work on glTF mesh import is much the same.
Geenz noted that following ForeverFPS there is a lot of additional render maintenance and similar work required on the viewer as well as additional / in progress feature sets, and all of this work needs to be prioritised.
Maxwell Graf recently posted a request to increase the polygon resolution for terrain – and asked about the potential technical / performance issue this might cause (if any), and whether it is something that might be selectable (e.g. if you want the higher polygon resolution then enable it on your region(s), if you don’t – then don’t!).
The short answer to this, there is no technical reasons as to why not – beyond testing and assessment for unforeseen impacts; although a) the request itself has yet to be officially responded to; b) the above doesn’t necessarily mean it will be acted upon.
However, it did led to LL requesting people with ideas for SL terrain to file feature requests for future consideration.
A further request was made for scenic backdrops to be available for regions (e.g. rendered options that can be rendered in place of the water and taking the form of a range of in-viewer selectable options – cityscape, forest, hills, mountains, etc., – so that actual mesh / sculpty based region surrounds do not have to be used.
This is something Sansar did reasonably well – including custom surrounds.
Feature requests via the feedback portal were asked for on this.
It was noted that SL lighting still needs to be updated – again not on the immediate roadmap, but under consideration; however, the hoped-for punctual lighting has been pushed back.
An issue with updating lighting (and things related, like how shadows function), is that the lighting system was developed at a time (early 2000s) where it had to be constrained. While things have developed to a point where those constraints may no longer be applicable, they are nevertheless heavily baked-in to SL, and will require considerable effect to unpick and replace.
Feedback through the feedback portal on what people would like to see with lighting / shadows was requested, in order to help the Lab further understand expectations, determine options and factor feedback into a more holistic approach to lighting in SL at some point in the future.
Screen Space Reflections (SSR): this is again something Geenz would like to get back to, but (again) would like feedback via the feedback portal on issues people have why they do / do not use SSR – particularly issues they have with SSR that are not related to Linden Water (e.g. on glossy surfaces), what they feel is needed, etc.
The general feedback on this was that SRR on other surfaces works reasonably well (if with random noise in places – which Geenz believes he has a handle on fixing in the future), and possibly increasing the angle at which it can be seen to take effect).
Tide Haven, February 2025 – click any image for full size
Update: Tide Haven has closed, so SLurl have been removed from this article.
I was one of a number of bloggers in receipt of a welcome invitation from Frank Atisso to visit his latest endeavour in Second Life: Tide Haven.
Frank is perhaps best known in SL as the originator of the Artsville, one of the foremost art galleries in Second Life, and which I routinely feature in these pages (and which he now runs with Vitoria Galli), and as both an artist in his own right, and as a Second Life DJ. However, Tide Haven sees him move into a new area of expression: that of region design; and as one would instantly expect, given Frank’s artistic eye, this Homestead region design resonates as a highly visual, richly ambient and engagingly photogenic location.
Tide Haven, February 2025
Forming a rugged ribbon of land mixing uplands and coastline runs of sand and rock, Tide Haven could be just about anywhere in the world. The main landmass curves in a open C-shape facing south, a broad bay caught within its arms offering something of a sheltered – if potentially hazardous to the unwary skipper – place for boats to seek harbour. At one time, it may even have been a place for fishing vessels to off-load some of their catch.
The latter is attested to by the comprehensive set of wharves, decks and wooden huts built out over the the water along the innermost sweep of the bay. Meanwhile, the hazardous nature of parts of the bay are witnessed by eddying whitecaps suggestive of dangerous shallows, and the wreck of a trawler stuck fast to the rocks in the midst of the bay’s waters, despite the presence of a lighthouse close by.
Tide Haven, February 2025
Just how many fishing boats still come to the island is difficult to judge; what might have been working buildings for the the fishing trade built along the wharf now appear to have been converted (or replaced) by vacation cabins, the piers and decks themselves, whilst a little careworn in places, more a waterfront boardwalk than a place of work. The fish drying on lines along a section of them perhaps speak to more casual offshore and on-shore angling – the latter also witnessed to by the presence of little fishing camps dotted around the coast – than any concerted effort at fishing, while the surfboards and rowing boats stacked up on one of the piers add to the more vacation-like use of the place.
The uplands to the island lie mostly to the north-east and north-west, the land between them dipping down to a point where the sea looks to have invaded in an attempt to cut through the main island. The result is a wetland rich in swamp moss and stunted foliage through which narrow boardwalks have been laid on wooden piles. These allow passage across the wetlands, passing by way of a sandbar on which sits a fishing shack offering kayaks for rent.
Tide Haven, February 2025
It is the two upland areas that actually help Frank’s inspiration for the setting, as he explained to me.
My starting point was the church on the hill [to the north-west]. It’s inspired by a real life location in New Zealand, the Church of the Good Shepherd, and the caves are inspired by the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. Then I sort-of stuck to the New Zealand theme using stuff from there, but I didn’t want to name it as New Zealand as such, because I’ve taken liberties to deviate in spots!
– Frank Atisso
Tide Haven, February 2025
The Church of the Good Shepherd is located on the southern shore of Lake Tekapo (Māori: Takapō) within New Zealand’s South Island. It sits on a headland created by the lake’s shoreline and the inflow to it of Tekapo River. The area around the lake is famous for its seasonal displays of lupins that bloom from around Mid November until the end of December. The sea of colours created by the lupins have – together with its dramatic and romantic views over the lake and towards the surrounding mountains – made the church one of the most photographed in the world, further elevating Lake Tekapo as a popular destination for domestic and international tourists.
However, despite the annual influx of tourists, the southern end of the lake bordering the town and church is a protected regional park, and the lake as a whole and its surroundings are a designated as the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, the largest dark-sky reserve in the southern hemisphere. This also marks the mountains around the lake as an important centre for astronomy, with a number of observatories located there, including the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA), atop Mount John, a place often involved in seeking and studying worlds beyond our own solar system.
Tide Haven, February 2025
Located on New Zealand’s North Island, the Waitomo (from the Māori for “water” and “hole” or “shaft”) Glowworm Caves, known for its population of a species of glowworm exclusive to New Zealand, and which is also home to albino ants, giant crickets and – in the bodies of water within the cave system – longfin eels. However, it is the glowworms which attract visitors because of the stunning light displays “30 million years in the making” they provide to those taking the carefully monitored tours through the caves. With romantic names like Pipe Organ, Banquet Chamber, Catacombs and Cathedral (where Dame Kiri Jeanette Claire Te Kanawa once sang!), these caves are regarded as one of the spectacles of the world.
Situated on a north-western plateau rich in flowers (including lupins!), Frank’s little chapel captures the spirit of Church of the Good Shepherd, including its rich photogenic nature. Meanwhile, off to the north-east, and under another rocky plateau, Frank’s homage to the Waitomo Glowworm Caves offers a small take on their uniqueness which can be reached on foot (and provides access to one of the setting’s lovely hideaway seating areas.
Tide Haven, February 2025
Throughout all of this is an attention to detail that brings Tide Haven to life, including very personal touches by Frank. There are multiple places to sit and pass the time, indoors and out, much to explore on foot and – most obviously – photograph. When visiting do take your time exploring to appreciate everything in full – and do be sure to both use the local Shared Environment and have local sounds enabled.
And with all that said, and leaving you with things to find and appreciate for yourself when visiting (like the coffee bar out on its own rocky outcrop!), I’ll close with thanks to Frank for the invitation, and by saying to you – in keeping with some of the region’s inspiration – nau mai haere mai ki Tide Haven!
Comparison (not overly great) between 2K BOM (l) and current maximum of 1K (r). Credit: Girl Crush (Zipper) via Linden Lab
Following Pepper Linden’s statement at the Tuesday, February 4th, 2025 Simulator User Group meeting that Second Life 2K Bakes on Mesh support is now grid-wide, Linden Lab posted an official announcement on Thursday, February 6th, 2025.
Residents, the wait is over! We’re thrilled to announce that as of February 3rd, 2025, 2K Bakes on Mesh (BOM) is now officially live!
After an exciting round of testing on Aditi, where many of you helped us refine this feature (thank you, beta testers!), we’re now rolling it out to the main grid. That means higher-resolution baked textures are here to take your avatars to the next level!
This is the service that allows compatible wearable textures – skins, clothing layers, tattoos – to be baked at up to 2048×2048 resolution, which should lead to them appearing crisper and sharper on avatars (system or mesh with Bakes on Mesh enabled), although the following should be noted:
Bakes will be to the highest texture resolution in the bake composition (e.g. if the highest resolution among the layers – skin, clothing, etc – is 512x512K, then the overall bake will be 512x512K overall; if the highest resolution is 1024x1024K, then the bake will be 1024x1024K; if just one texture is 2048×2048, then the entire bake will by 2048×2048).
The exception to this is eye textures: these will never be bakes any anything higher than 512x512K (so there is not need for creators to start producing 2048×2048 eyes).
This blog post include sample shots- one of which is included in this post – and people should read the official post for full details.
Feedback is requested via the feedback portal, or via the weekly Simulator User Group (SUG) meetings, held Tuesdays at 12:00 noon SLT at this location.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday February 5th, 2025. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.
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.
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.
As reported following the January meeting, the dashboard page (secondlife.com) received something of a refresh, utilising the new colour scheme, banner, etc., but not offering a choice of themes.
Featured News Blog feed: the Feature News blog widget on the default viewer log-in screen (“Linden News” on Firestorm) has been fixed to display correctly, the the Event screen on that splash screen has been enlarged.
The blog feed on the viewer splash screen has been fixed, and the Events listing increased in size
Second life web maps – fixes to several issues, and a basic refresh (change of colour to the teleport button); however, web maps still do not provide meaningful information on places highlighted, which has previously been noted as something the Web Team would like to address; nor does it search by region name.
A new “secret thing” which, at the time of the meeting, “could not be talked about”.
Marketplace
[Video: 13:37-18:51] A suggestion to allow people to “subscribe” to their favourite stores, allowing them to see a page for those stores listing all of the recent new items added to the stores.
However, this functionality already exists (albeit it with a limited display) using the Marketplace Favourites > Newest First; so rather than adding new functionality which effectively repeats what is there already, why not:
Refresh the existing page so it can display more than just 4 items per store – such as by using a left / right scrolling display a-la the Related Items section of the listing pages (and add an RSS feed based on the listing order selected via the drop-down options).
Surface this page better, so users are aware it exists and can access it quicker. , and perhaps make that page more accessible/visible and (if required) add an RSS feed to it which pushes information based on the selected drop-down?
[Video: 19:56-20:14] Marketplace: a request for an update on Marketplace Styles (aka “variants”) – e.g. allowing multiple colours of an item in a single listing – was made. This was functionality Reed Linden indicated would likely be deployed at that start of 2023, but which is (for whatever reason) still “not prioritised” for finishing / deployment.
[Video: 20:29-21:00] It is know that the keyword blocking on Ad Blocker (and similar tools) can actually block Marketplace listings.
[Video: 36:56 -38:17 ] Marketplace Shopping Events: having shopping event pages on the MP creators could register to join and on which have their nominated products listed. The pages could be set-up by creators on the MP for creators on the MP (like in-world shopping events), rather than jus LL-created events.
In Brief
It has been repeatedly noted across multiple meetings that the What’s Next pages (accessed via the menu bar at secondlife.com) are in need of update. This message has been repeatedly heard by LL, and noted as heard, such that updates to these pages should hopefully be deployed some time in the next month.
[26:35-36:30] A request from the web team for suggestions on what people would like to see added / improved. Suggestions included:
Making secondlife.com more dynamic (something I’ve directly discussed with Brett Linden and Philip Rosedale).
Making the websites feel more an extension to users’ in-world lives.
Web-based inventory management capability for carrying out basic inventory sorting tasks (moving items between folders, etc.).
Ability to respond to / send IMs from the web, rather than having to log-in via the viewer / SL Mobile.
Ability to carry out basic Group task: see notices, etc.
This discussion tipped into 3rd party tools such as browser extensions (such as Marketplace Enhancer – note: link does not indicate endorsement – for Firefox / Chrome / Edge) people use alongside of any SL web properties.
A request for some Last Name updates to include more “regular/international” names, rather than only rolling out updates based on a specific theme and / or holiday/event (e.g. as with the current crop of “Valentine’s Day” themed last names).
A suggestion for LL to promote resident-organised events celebrating notable days / holidays outside of those marked by the Lab as well (Christmas, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.), such as by a category in the Destination Guide.
Request for more genuinely international themes of Linden Homes (e.g. “Alpine”, “Victorian” and “Mediterranean” are all US-centric versions of such buildings, and not necessarily representation of their European equivalents).
Also with Linden Homes, the promise to make the Premium Plus ability to request specific locations for a home more streamlined, rather than relying on Support tickets, has also slipped down the priority list.
An informal discussion on the Web team – all are remotely based, rather than office-based, they do have occasional get-togethers in person (although the formal annual full-staff meet-ups the Lab used to have – as noted on more than one occasion during Ebbe Altberg’s time with the Lab – have not been held “in a while”), as well as regular in-world team meetings/meetings via Zoom (or similar).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 