Monocle Man Gallery: Vanessa Jane – The Fading Year
Now open at the main gallery at Monocle Man, is an exhibition of Second Life landscape photographic art by Vanessa Jane (VanessaJane66). While Vanessa does not limit her photography SL landscapes, it is this aspect of her work that I particularly admire, so I appreciate any opportunity to view and potentially review her exhibitions.
Entitled The Fading Year, the exhibition at The Monocle Man features images of the latter half of the year, with the autumn months located in the lobby area of the gallery and continuing up the stairs to the smaller of the two exhibition rooms, while the main galleried hall is devoted to regions caught in the midst of winter.
Monocle Man Gallery: Vanessa Jane – The Fading Year
Thus we have fields of fall’s gold (to play slightly on words), streets where leaves skitter in the breeze across cobbles or are pinned to the surfaces of roads by the rain, and crops await their harvesting; all separated by a short step from foggy winter mornings, trails blankets by snow, trees dusted by frost and lodges overlooking frozen lakes.
Presented in a large format and available for sale, these are pieces perfectly capturing autumn and winter and all that might be considered romantic about them. Each piece is cropped and framed to near-perfection (with some simply sublime in their framing – like The Horse through the Trees), and very much suitable for hanging in any Second Life home. Some of the regions in which they were taken will likely be familiar to Second Life travellers, other perhaps less so; however, whether the location itself is recognised or not doesn’t really matter; just enjoy the beauty of each piece.
Monocle Man Gallery: Vanessa Jane – The Fading Year
November 16th, 2022: the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket lifts-off on its maiden flight, lifting an uncrewed Orion MPCV capsule on the Artemis 1 mission to test the latter on an extended flight to cislunar space and back to Earth. Credit: Joel Kowsky
NASA has announced the push-back of Project Artemis missions in the continuing efforts to return to the Moon with human missions, and with the announcement has come renewed calls for the cancellation of the Space Launch System rocket.
During a December 5th, 2024 briefing, NASA management confirmed that Artemis 2 – the mission to fly a crew of four around the Moon and return them to Earth – will now not occur until April 2026, slipping from the target launch month of September 2025. As a result, the first attempt at a crewed landing under the project – Artemis 3 – has been rescheduled for a mid-2027 launch.
The most significant reason for delaying the missions relates to issues with the primary heat shield on the Orion MPCV (multi-purpose crew vehicle). As I’ve reported in these pages, this heat shield suffered greater than expected wear and tear during the unscrewed test of Orion on a flight around the Moon in December 2022 – something first release to the public in detail in May 2024.
The Artemis 2 crew (l to r: Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Reid Wiseman) outside the Astronaut Crew Quarters inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building during an integrated ground systems test at Kennedy Space Centre, September 20th, 2023. Credit: Kim Shiflett
More recently, NASA has indicated that it has identified the root cause of the issues, with comments at that time appearing to suggest part of the solution might involve charges in the construction of the heat shield itself, particularly as the October 2024 update on the issues, Lori Glaze, acting deputy associate administrator, NASA Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate indicated that while NASA were confident about the cause, as the heat shield for this mission “is already built”, the agency was at that time unsure as to how best to protect the crew during the critical re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission.
For assorted reasons, the Orion capsule operates differently to the Apollo Command Module capsule. As it returns to Earth at a high velocity than Apollo, the Orion vehicle does not perform a single re-entry into the atmosphere as Apollo did; instead, it performs what is called “skip guidance”. This involved dipping briefly into the upper atmosphere and using it to reduce speed, prior to making a final re-entry.
The overall goal of this approach is to allow the Orion vehicle to experience somewhat lower temperatures (although still in the order of around 2,700oC) during its “proper” re-entry, than would otherwise be the case were it to simply slam into the atmosphere a-la Apollo and use the friction of that re-entry to slow itself.
A view of the heat shield used on the Orion vehicle during the Artemis 1 mission. The scoring and surface damage to the surface of the heat shield was expected as a part of the ablative process during atmospheric re-entry. However, the large areas of deeper pitting and cratering – called “char loss” – were not. Credit: NASA
However, following the investigations into the excessive pitting (called “char loss”) seen with the heat shield used with Orion on Artemis 1, was an unforeseen result of the skip guidance approach.
While the capsule was dipping in and out of the atmosphere as part of that planned skip entry, heat accumulated inside the heat shield outer layer, leading to gases forming and becoming trapped inside the heat shield. This caused internal pressure to build up and led to cracking and uneven shedding of that outer layer.
– NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy, December 5th, 2024
During the briefing, it was confirmed that no significant redesign of the heat shield is required to overcome this problem; rather the re-entry trajectory for all Artemis crewed missions must be altered in order to minimise the char loss seen with Artemis 1 (remembering that while severe, the damage done to the heat shield in that mission did not reach a point of threatening the overall integrity of the Orion capsule).
For Artemis 2, engineers will limit how long Orion spends in the temperature range in which the Artemis 1 heat shield phenomenon occurred by modifying how far Orion can fly between when it enters Earth atmosphere and lands.
– NASA Artemis FAQ, December 5th, 2024
While an adjustment to the mission parameters is not as drastic as having to build an updated version of the heat shield, it does still require significant computer modelling, updates to flight software on Orion and a re-training of the Artemis 2 crew so they are familiar with the new flight envelope, control protocol and dealing with any alarms / emergencies during the revised re-entry phases of the mission. Hence pushing back Artemis 2 until early-to-mid 2026.
While this does have a knock-on effect for Artemis 3, other factors have come into play which have also contributed to the delay in that mission; some of which many observing Artemis and the choices made (myself included) have long anticipated.
Whilst announced on December 5th, 2024, slippage of the Artemis 3 mission to land a crew of two on the surface of the Moon was seen as inevitable by many thanks to the slow development of the SpaceX HLS vehicle the sheer complexities of the launch system on which it depends. Credit: SpaceX
Chief among these is the fact that the SpaceX Human Landing System (HLS) vehicle – a modified SpaceX Starship just wasn’t going to be ready for use in 2026; in fact, there is much to suggest the vehicle will not be ready for any planned 2027 launch of Artemis 3, and that a more reasonable expectation for any Artemis 3 launch would be late 2028, earliest.
However, there are some other factors involved in the Artemis 3 delay; given the changing dynamics and plans for Artemis lunar missions, there is a requirement to make improvements to Orion’s on-board environmental systems. These will not take as long as getting the SpaceX Starship system to the point where it can properly carry out the roughly 12-16 launches required just to get the HLS vehicle to the Moon (leave alone actually construction and testing of the lunar landing vehicle ahead of and use by the crew), but they are a issue which need to be factored into the mission delays.
“Scrap SLS”
The December 5th Artemis announcement saw a further renewed expectation of, and calls for, the cancellation of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS).
The largest calls for this have come from the SpaceX fan community who frequently (and unfairly) compare the cost of SLS to that of the SpaceX Starship, although there have also been repeated concerns raised from within the US government, such as buy the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and NASA’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the overall cost of SLS is entirely unsustainable.
The core stage of the first SLS rocket to fly being moved between facilities at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in January 2020, as part of preparation for it to be loaded onto a shipping barge for transport to Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. Credit: NASA
In particular, the latter offices note that SLS launches will cost around US $2.5 billion each. This includes all elements of a vehicle and the facilities required to launch it – the rocket, its boosters, the re-usable Orion crew vehicle + its service module, the cost of all launch support facilities, etc., together with the cost of future enhancement to the system, such as the Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) which will allow SLS to carry even heavier payloads to orbit. The cost per launch also takes into account the on-going expenditure in developing the system (US $26.4 billion, 2011-2023). As such, and while by no means cheap, its high cost is perhaps better understood.
However, cost isn’t actually the issue here. Rather it is capability. Simply put, there is no other launch system available that is either capable of launching a crewed Orion vehicle to the Moon or rated to do so.
To get to the Moon, the 26.52-tonne Orion and its European Service Module require an additional booster to send them on their way to the Moon. Currently, this booster is the 32.74 tonne Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for the Space Launch System. It is the only human-rated upper stage capable of boosting the Orion+ESM mass to the Moon and it is only designed to be used by SLS.
The Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) of the SLS – a crucial component in getting Orion to the Moon. Credit: NASA
And therein lies the rub; whilst people have been bandying ideas of “alternatives” to SLS around like sending human-rated payloads to the Moon is akin to playing with Lego – just stick the bits together you need and away you go, this just isn’t the case.
For example, Falcon Heavy might well be able to lob Orion+ESM+ICPS to LEO off its own back when used in fully expendable mode, a) it must be rated for human flight first; b) it will require significant, potentially costly, and certainly time-consuming, modifications to its core stage and (likely) to the ICPS. These latter points remain true even if the launch is split (e.g. one vehicle to launch Orion+ESM and a second to launch ICPS), which would allow the core and booster stages of Falcon Heavy to be recovered.
And while a split launch might also allow the use of Blue Origin’s New Glenn as an alternative to Flacon Heavy, (a) and (b) remain constraining factors. This is also true of another idea: launching Orion + ESM on New Glenn and then use the Centaur stage of ULA’s Vulcan-Centaur as the kick stage to send them on to the Moon after a rendezvous and docking. But again, again, Centaur is not human rated, and Orion+ESM are not designed to be used with Centaur off-the-shelf. Also, Neither system (nor the ICPS for that matter) are designed for the necessary kind of on-orbit rendezvous and docking, thus, these proposals all add complexity to each and every mission.
An artist’s impression of an Orion vehicle and its European Service Module attached to the ICPS of a Space Launch System, as they orbit Earth. Credit: NASA
This is not to say such alternatives cannot be made possible; it isn’t even necessarily (in the face of SLS launch costs) how much they will cost to bring about; it is the time they would require in order to become feasible, particularly in adapting the disparate system (Orion+ESM (and possibly the ICPS) and Falcon Heavy and/ or New Glenn, and / or the Centaur upper stage) to all play nicely together and reach a point where human missions using them can start. I would venture to suggest reaching such a point in the 2-2.5 years between now and the launch of any Artemis 3 mission (the SLS for Artemis 2 having already been fabricated + currently undergoing assembly / stacking at Kennedy Space Centre) probably isn’t that realistic.
And time is the critical issue here; no programme or project is really “too big to fail”; the more the time frame for Artemis and getting humans back onto the surface of the Moon get repeatedly drawn out (+ the more it is seen to be sucking up available budgets), then the greater the risk an administration and / or Congress could pull the plug to cut losses.
Which is not to say NASA and its incoming new Administrator shouldn’t take a good look at alternate strategies over SLS (and potentially even Orion); rather, they should have a very good game-plan and very realistic numbers on how to proceed and make good on their lunar aspirations before they simply yank out the plug on SLS.
Isaacman Nominated as New NASA Administrator
On December 4th, 2024, the incoming Trump administration announced its choice for the post of NASA Administrator: Billionaire Jared Isaacman, the founder of Shift4, a Payment financial technology company he founded whilst just 16 and which he turned into a multi-billion dollar success.
Jared Isaacman in the cockpit of one of his just fighters
Passionate about flying and (at least) the human exploration of space, Isaacman is a qualified jet fighter pilot (although has not served in the US military), operating one of the largest fleeting of privately-held jet fighters through another of his ventures, Draken International, a company contracted to provide pilot training to the United States armed forces. He also flies as a part of the Black Diamond Jet Team air display team, and as a solo air show pilot flying a MiG-29UB. And if that weren’t enough, he set a world record in 2009 for circumnavigating the world in a light jet (a Cessna Citation), taking just less than 62 hours to complete the flight, operating the aircraft with two others.
In terms of space activities, his is best known for leading the Inspiration4 private mission to space in 2021, and more recently, the first in a series of planned Polaris missions to orbit, Polaris Dawn, which saw him become the first private citizen to complete what is called a SEVA – or stand-up EVA -, partially-exiting the Crew Dragon space vehicle, a feat also completed by SpaceX employee Sarah Gillis in the same mission.
All of this has resulted in many responding to his nomination as positive movet – and again, some circles see it as a sign that SLS will likely be cancelled: Isaacman has been a strong critic of the system, and clearly leans towards more partnerships such as the one directly benefiting SpaceX. Indeed, his closeness to SpaceX and the fact he has consistently refused to reveal his own financial ties to he company has already caused some concern on Capitol Hill.
Isaacman has also used his position as an “independent space entrepreneur” to call into question NASA pursuing similar deals it has made with SpaceX with other commercial entities, such as Blue Origin. In particular, he is highly critical of NASA working with Blue Origin to develop the latter’s alternative – and potentially more practical / cost-effective and certainly more sustainable – Blue Moon family of lunar landing vehicles, openly stated he “doesn’t like” the fact NASA awarded a second contract for reusable human and cargo lunar landing systems.
Given this, some senators are concerned over questions of Isaacman’s overall neutrality when it comes to NASA contracts, and have indicated this is liable to factor into any confirmation hearings involving him.
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024 – click any image for full size
I first wrote about Goblins Knob, a Homestead region designed by Tolla Crisp and her frequent region design partner, Dandy Warhlol (terry Fotherington), back in August 2024, not long after it had opened and a further element of Tolia’s Frogmore family of regions in Second Life (see: Wandering Goblins Knob in Second Life).
At that time, the setting was described by Tolla and Terry as being somewhat inspired by London’s infamous Pudding Lane (before the fire) mixed with elements of the Harry Potter and the Spiderwick Chronicles series. As I noted back then, whilst familiar with the latter, I’ve never read the former (nor even watched any of the films in full; I’ve simply never been a fan of the franchise or its author), and so required a degree of education on matters (thank you, again, Wilhelmina!) but thoroughly enjoyed my explorations.
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024
With the end of the year fast approaching, Goblin’s Knob has been redressed for winter and, whilst maintaining elements tying it back to the likes of Diagon Alley, it has also been redressed in places to better fit with the season. In doing so, it has the sense of becoming a more independent setting, unburdened by the former references, as reflected in the change to the region’s description since my August 2024 visit:
Welcome to the tiny village of Goblins Knob, a Frogmore Region, where the windows glow with a warm welcome and hearts are filled with the spirit of Christmas.
– Goblin Knob’s Destination Guide description
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024
For those who may have visited the August iteration of the region, the central canal remains, bordered on either side with houses and places of businesses. However, the eastern end of the canal now closed off, rather than passing under bridge and walkway to reach more open waters. This more easily links the two banks of the canal for exploration, although the large calibre cannon maintains a watch along the length of the canal from a rooftop above the cobbles now connecting the two sides of the waterway.
Also gone for this iteration are the balloons and dirigible that had been floating overhead, and the boats chugged the narrow, deep canal (and the waiting water monster!), leaving the latter as an uncluttered body of water.
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024
All of this, together with changes along the north side of the canal (and particularly to the north-eastern corner of the region) allow the setting – as noted above – to come more into its own as a singular location, rather than blending together various ideas (including for me at least what felt like a faint echo of Lovecraftian mystery). Meanwhile, the snow it blanketing rooftops, drifting along cobble paths and embracing open spaces as it falls silently from the sky, brings a new magic and delight to Goblin’s Knob.
This is place where the warmth of wintertime shines, despite the coldness of the setting. Light blazes from windows and doorways, carrying the promise of warm hearths and bright flames awaiting cold toes that might be wriggled before them, whilst partially-numb fingers might curl themselves around the gentle heat of a mug of hot chocolate supped from the comfort of a familiar armchair. Outside, sprinklings of seasonal decorations, the presence of snowmen, stalls selling hot roasted chestnuts and a slightly faded carousel guarded by colourful nutcracker soldiers, all exude a time-of-year warmth of their own to counter while might otherwise be air cold enough to fog breath and chill one’s insides.
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024
Close by the Landing Point, a musical clock plays Someone To Watch Over Me in a tinkling tinkling greeting to further turn thoughts of the cold to one side, the music occasionally accompanied by the happy trilling of a bird or two, as a brazier’s fire hisses and crackles in the background. The latter casts its glow over the chairs ranged next to it and the local wishing well, ideal for those wanting to take photos at the latter without feeling too cold.
Finding your way to all the locations in the setting can be a little confusing, but this makes exploring more fun. To get to the south-western end of the village where the old carousel resides, for example, it’s probably best to cross to the north bank of the canal and head for the stone bridge at its western extent and then cross back from there. Although that said, you could slither / slide down snowy rocks near the wind / watermill and that ascend stone steps and reach the same point, if you’re feeling adventurous.
Goblin’s Knob, December 2024
Getting to the skating rink is also perhaps easiest if you go through the wrought iron gate behind the Landing Point and make a right turn through a gap in the iron fence to follow a sort-of snowy trail back around and behind the houses to where the rink is tucked away. Whilst small and without a skates giver of its own, those with skates in their inventory might find it useable!
Throughout all of this are plenty of opportunities for photography, and I would suggest using the local environment when doing so, as it suits the overall ambience of the setting perfectly. Those wishing to rez props for photos can do so be joining the Frogmore group; as Auto Return appears to be turned off, however, do please remember to pick up your bits afterwards.
Now open through until December 13th, 2024 is the Winter Showcase in support of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), through Team Diabetes of Second Life, ADA’s official and authorised in-world fund-raising team. As with previous years, the event includes live performers, DJs, dancing, ice skating, and the Winter Showcase for shopping and a seasonal hunt.
As is traditional for the event, it occupies one half of a region, with the Showcase shops for merchants bracketing the central events and activities area. The merchants participating in this years event are:
Merchants are each offering at least one item among their displays with 100% of proceeds from sales going directly to Team Diabetes of Second Life. The full shopping guide can be found on the Team Diabetes of Second Life website.
Team Diabetes of SL Winter Showcase 2024
Event Schedule
Sunday, December 8th, 2024
10:00 – Samuel James
11:00 – Mimi Carpenter
12:00 Noon – Mapoo Little
The Reindeer Hunt features prize-giving reindeer. Find them, pay L$10 and claim the prizes. All proceeds go to ADA. A list of prizes is available on the Team Diabetes of Second Life website.
About the American Diabetes Association and Team Diabetes of Second Life
Established in 1940, the American Diabetes Association is working to both prevent and cure diabetes in all it forms, and to help improve the lives of all those affected by diabetes. It does this by providing objective and credible information and resources about diabetes to communities, and funding research into ways and means of both managing and curing the illness. In addition, the Association gives voice to those denied their rights as a consequence of being affected by diabetes.
Team Diabetes of Second Life is an official and authorised fund-raiser for the American Diabetes Association in Second Life. Established with the aim of raising funds in support of diabetes treatment and to raise awareness of the disease in SL, Team Diabetes of Second Life was founded by Jessi2009 Warrhol and John (Johannes1977 Resident).
Angelic Bay, December 2024
Angelic Bay Winter Celebration Photo Competition
As noted, the Winter Showcase occupies one half of Kultivate Magazine’s Angelic Bay, a Full Region intended for photography. Currently dressed for winter, the second half of the region is open to visitors, and is currently hosting a photo competition offering a total prize pool of L$30,000 to be split between four winners.
Angelic Bay, December 2024
Details on the competition can be obtained from the main Landing Point, but in brief:
Images entered into the competition:
Must have been taken within the half-region setting.
On Friday 6th, December, 2024, Linden Lab hosted the second of its Zoom-base “Blogger Town Hall” calls with invited bloggers to discuss Second Life in a session. The topics discussed were wide-ranging, covering Mobile, marketing, the desktop viewer, support and other issues.
Participating directly in the meeting from Linden Lab were: Executive Chairman, Brad Oberwager, CTO Philip Rosedale; VP of Product and Engineering Grumpity Linden, Pluto Linden (Mobile UX), with Brett Linden hosting the event.
As reiterated in this meeting, the Lab is experimenting with routes of engagement with the broad user base of Second Life – many of whom may not read the official blog posts on secondlife.com, but who may follow one or more bloggers. Further, these bloggers know how to communicate with their audience / have come to enjoy an audience because of they was they blog – written or video, etc., and so they offer a far-reaching channel of communications. Most particularly, the zoom meetings:
They allow for face-to-face interactions between users and those at the Lab, allowing the latter to be seen as they are.
The format allows LL to easily bring together different groups of bloggers relatively easily according to the core subjects the Lab would like to discuss and take feedback on.
Given this, these meetings are not replacing other forms of meeting / channels of communication – the Lab is experimenting with multiple ideas for improving their overall communications with users – and leveraging existing communicators / bloggers within the broader SL community is just one aspect of this work.
On The SL Mobile Roadmap
SL Mobile Credit: Linden Lab
Pluto Linden provided a presentation to highlight some of the upcoming features and capabilities that will be coming to SL Mobile in the coming months (approximately December 2024 through to Quarter 2, 2025), although as with everything, time frames for precise delivery on the following is subject to confirmation / change.
In doing so, Pluto emphasised the fact that all that has happened with the SL mobile product is foundational; “and now, a lot of the really exciting stuff is to come, and on the horizon for 2025”.
The presentation itself highlighted the following upcoming new features and capabilities:
2024 Plans
Ability to create accounts via Mobile, including creating an initial avatar and logging in using the existing new joiner workflow – also see below for more on this.
Extending the work on push notifications to include Group notices, including the ability to specify which of your Group from which you wish to receive notifications .
Persistent chat / IM conversations between log-ins.
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SL Mobile plans for late 2024
Quarter 1, 2025
Implement an Address Bar, making it possible to:
Search landmarks /create landmarks.
Share SLurls with people on other apps (Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc.) via the native share cards found in Android and iOS.
Allow maps.secondlife.com work on the Mobile App.
Shipping the first version of a new feature called Lobby, intended to:
Reduce the time between launching the App and in-world interactions.
Provide information and a focus on communication within the App, allowing the user to see and respond to incoming messages; see who among their friends is on-line, even as the App is loading the world, .
Provide an ability for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to make use of the App as a communications tool.
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SL Mobile plans for Q1 2025
Quarter 2, 2025
Better and faster access to chat, avoiding multiple taps on the screen.
Better selection of, and interaction with, in-world objects.
Laying the groundwork for item-level avatar editing, which is seen as a springboard to offering other / further ways of interacting with Inventory, including the potential of eventually making Marketplace purchases through the App and being able to unpack and use them.
SL Mobile updates planned for Q2 2025
Mobile App – Audience and On-Boarding
As noted in Second Life Mobile: free to all users & Lab execs discuss the product and goals, SL Mobile is being broadly developed at the moment with two primary audiences in mind: existing users, as a means for them to enhance their SL experience through being able to engage with the platform whilst away from their desktop viewer access; and “Lapsed” users who have left SL, and who have stated a reason for them doing so is because SL doesn’t address their preference for using mobile to access the things they want to do.
This was reiterated by Brad Oberwager when discussing the fact that SL Mobile will have the ability to create new SL accounts in the very near future.
We built the Mobile App for current residents with the hope it brings lapsed residents back. But because we’re not putting any marketing dollars behind getting people into [Second Life] through the Mobile App, the join flow is really going to be getting an alt put together [so] while you can do all sorts of things through the join flow, this is really designed for current users.
We wanted to put the full experience on the Mobile App, because that would cool if VentureBeat was going to write something, and they want to come through, it would be cool to have that happen; but that’s not what we’re marketing towards.
-Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
Measuring SL Mobile’s Success
In terms of measuring the overall success of SL mobile, the Lab is not focused on technical elements (features, crash rates, bug fixes etc.). The key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the App’s success are focused on usage, for example:
How many times a month is the App being used overall / how many times a month is an individual using the App.
How many times a day is the App being used overall / how many times a day does an individual log-in to SL using the App.
How long does an individual spend in-world when logged-in via the App.
How many people are downloading the App is considered a separate measure, as it both leads to the above three as meaningful measures, and is more a “ego statistic”.
On Marketing Second Life and Top-Level Goals for the Platform
What our goal is as a company … as we start to gear-up marketing dollars and things like that, is to do two things. One is to bring folks back who have recently been engaged as residents [and] who have now stopped that engagement for whatever reason, to bring those folks back in to enrich the community; and to do outreach to bring in new residents. New residents that get excited about living in Second Life [and] they spend a lot of money because they’ve got to dress their avatars and get their houses and things like that.
So everything that we’re doing now is designed for those two things. So that means making Second Life easier – high priority; giving a better experience for current residents – high priority, because if you can satisfy that, then you can have those current residents bring-in lapsed residents. So everything that we’re thinking of goes in that lens … We’re spending our money towards the desktop, getting ne folks in through that channel so that they can spend more money on our creators, so our creators are reinvigorated and the community continues to be invigorated.
– Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
He went on to confirm that with all the work that has thus far gone into Second Life and the Lab over the last few years, including the recent restructuring is to pave the way towards growing the platform and in Marketing it more and more clearly.
Everything we’re making [in SL}, we’re putting it back in. What I am going to do, is I’m gong to start to change where I’m putting that money. And I’m going to start putting that money into marketing dollars because I want to bring folks into the world. … I think that our product is relevant; I don’t think it is relevant for everybody … but I think there’s an imperative that [Second Life] continues and it’s extremely valuable for folks out there to learn about and come in. That costs money.
– Brad Oberwager, December 6th, 2024
This work as actually starting now, with money “dribbling out” with a focus on SL on the desktop and in bring people back to the platform, on getting existing users to log-in more, and on bringing-in the people who would likely find Second Life a great place in which to spend time. Some of this will be experimental, with the Lab continuing to analyse what works and what doesn’t over the next few months, and the marketing work will, interestingly, be synced with new product releases.
On SL Desktop’s Accessibility and Future
The focus with desktop viewer development over the last several months has been on making the platform more accessible to lower-specification computers (as reported in the likes of my CCUG meeting summaries). This work has most notably included significant performance improvement work on the viewer, and the purchasing of a lot of older hardware / graphics cards on which Second Life ca be tested and better determinations made as to how best to handle performance shortfalls / bottlenecks / enable SL to perform reasonably well on such hardware (affectionately referred toas the Potato Farm at LL).
We did identify various pain points for people on lower-end machines, and there’s been a lot of work our team has been doing to address them. They’re working quickly and they’re working together with Firestorm so that those changes [many in the ExtraFPS viewer, which at the time of writing was in Release Candidate status and close to being promoted to release status] are rolled out to everyone as quickly as possible once they’re ready.
There’s going to be changes to viewer settings that will improve performance and some controls people are able to have over choices that they make in terms of how good things look and how fast they run. And we’re also looking to put together some recommendations for [hardware] configurations where we know Second Life will run really well at different price-points.
– VP of Engineering and Product, Grumpity Linden
The overall goal of this work is “to meet you where you are, on the hardware you are [on], and we want you to have the best possible experience in Second Life.
In addition, Philip Rosedale noted that LL have a lot of “different tools in the hanger” which can help further improve the viewer when running on older hardware, including the Unity-based rendering engine developed for Mobile.
It is, as you know, not exactly the same by any stretch as other engines that are out there, but we have it as a tool. How we use it to, say, improve the desktop experience, we’re not sure yet. But we’re definitely happy that we’ve got a pretty good Second Life renderer running on Unity, we’re just not sure how we’re going to use it. But we are going to make Second Life more accessible on all machines.
– Philip Rosedale, December 6th, 2024
In this, it was also emphasised that the presumption at the Lab is that the primary mode for accessing and using Second Life will remain the desktop viewer (in some form), and that SL Mobile will be very much an adjunct / companion to that use.
We do not believe the the experience of Second Life at this point in time can be transitioned entirely to a a “black mirror” experience, as I like to say, because it is more the small size of the window that is the challenge here … Even if we could do anything technically we wanted to, we remain cautious – in fact sceptical – about the ability to do all the things one wants to do with Second Life on a mobile device.
– Philip Rosedale, December 6th, 2024
On Matters of Support
It was noted that in the recently company restructuring (which saw a number of layoffs and was geared toward a focus on customer success and trust and safety, the ball was dropped on matters of general user support for a time. This is not improving, and Brad Oberwager, whilst taking full responsibility for the slip, believes that by the years end, support responses will by “100% better and faster”.
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, December 5th, 2024.
The session was livestreamed by Strawberry Linden, and her video is embedded at the end of this article. Timestamps are provided to the relevant points in the video for ease of reference.
Meeting Purpose
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.
Meeting dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.
Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.12150664210, December 5. This focuses on performance improvements for lower-specification / old viewer hardware and includes:
Enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain; additional code to improve texture streaming on rigged attachments (e.g. if an earring is made with 2K textures, the viewer will correctly calculate the required resolution for the textures and download them, rather than downloading the full 2K textures), etc.
A new checkbox to disable HDR- this will improve performance for lower-spec machines but will see some of the “banding” previously seen in things like skies – and PBR emissive. These may be split into two separate checkboxes to allow one or the other to be disabled / kept.
A pass on “legacy” skies (e.g. those in the Library and / or which have no been converted from PBR skies) will look much as they did on pre-PBR viewer. This is described as the “least bad” option to address issues.
Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).
UI Optimisations.
It is hoped that the December 5th RC version of ExtraFPS will be the version that will be promoted to de facto release status soon.
Near-Term Viewer Release Roadmap
There is additional work going on around performance that isn’t seen as urgently enough to delay the release of ExtraFPS, so there may be a “hotfix” viewer release to handle some of these, if required. Some of this additional work could take the form of:
Improvements to avatar loading, work which it was noted at the SUG meeting that Monty Linden had recently been tasked with looking at.
[Video: 6:38-6:55] Further texture streaming improvements (if these do not make it into ExtraFPS prior to promotion), which prevent the viewer repeatedly loading redundant textures.
The work in combining the “pre-performance work” Maintenance B and Maintenance C RC viewer codes into a single RC update is continuing. However, exactly what will be in it and when it is likely to appear as an RC viewer is still TBD.
General Discussion
[Text only] It was noted that some are seeing the texture bias tends to get stuck at high values in ExtraFPS, and failing to unstick until the viewer is restarted. This has been acknowledged by LL, but so far they have been unable to consistently repro it. SLurls of regions where it frequently occurs have been request (feedback portal).
[Video: 12:08-14:45] a request to have settings in the viewer to allow users to set their own loading / rendering priorities depending on what they are doing, such as “near avatar”, or “near camera”, “avatars”, “rezzed items” , etc.
For example, while most use cases might be biased towards “near camera”, there might be situations where such as landing in very busy environments where “avatars” might be a preferable priority, so as to avoid shoving other avatars around when trying to move because they cannot be seen. Conversely, when cam-shopping, the priority is liable to be camera+ objects, with loading other avatars a much lower priority.
This was seen as having potential (allowing for the viewer and simulator carrying out different roles in scene loading: – the simulator sends the basic data of where things are and whatever meshes and textures are associated with them, but the viewer decides for itself what it is actually going to fetch (from the CDN) and when), but the current focus of work, per above, is on simply getting avatars + their attachments to simply load faster.
[Video: 17:38-18:31] Linux viewer status: the Linux work is defined as being in the “big bundle of stuff” which originally formed the Maint B and Maint C viewer code branches, which is in the process of being combined into a a single viewer under the Github Develop branch. As such, its progress and disposition is tied to this work, and while their are builds within the Github Actions, they are not in a condition for general release.
[Video: 18:47-21:33] A request to be able to crate new folders in Inventory from the Recent tab (or have newly-created empty folders at least appear on the Recent tab).
This was seen as a reasonable feature request submission.
A request was also made to be able to purge Trash from the Recent tab – however, given the Trash only shows items added in the current log-in session; purging all of Trash from Recent could have unintended consequences (e.g. an item previously and unintentionally dropped in to Trash gets mistakenly purged on account of it not showing in Trash under Recent).
It was also pointed out that opening an additional Inventory floater (CTRL-SHIFT-I) can help with issues of moving items around, rather than solely relying on one floater and its tabs.
[Video: 22:00-24:32] Add a checkbox to the Build / Edit floater – Select Only My Objects, rather than having to go through the Build → Options menu to set it:
A problem here is the Edit / Build floater is already overcrowded, and the Build menu can be torn-off when editing / creating (although this can obviously impact screen real estate when open with the Edit / Build floater).
Simply enlarging the Edit / Build floater to accommodate additional options is also seen as a problem, again due to the added screen real estate taken up, particularly for those using lower-resolution screens.
Rather than having a single set of folders defined for uploads of specific types (e.g. a set folder for images, a set folder for sounds, a set folder for objects, etc), allow users to define which folder they wish to use for a specific upload / number of uploads via a drop-down, which can then become the default until next changed.
This is seen as advantageous to content creators, etc., as it would allow them to upload different asset types by “project” (so all mesh items, animations, sounds , etc., for “Project X” go to the “Project X” folder, for example).
A feature request was requested for this, with the added not that the current work on the viewer is not focused on adding to the UI, so it may be a while before such requests are reviewed & potentially actioned.
[Whilst not precisely the same, a similar request has been made regarding the upcoming llGiveInventory function, so that rather than having receiving folders simply defined by the object giving them, recipients can select the folder into which they can receive the incoming items].
[Video 26:57-48:14] & intertwined with the above bullet point] Various discussions on hiding the current outfit folder, avatar customisation, etc., which were more general in nature and of a more historic / subjective nature than covering potential changes / improvements. This also touched on avatar creation in Sansar, the use of devkits / applications (such as Marvelous Designer) etc. This also bled into a re-hash of oft-raised issues around the new user experience, the use of Senra vs. the continuance of the Creator Avatar option in the viewer (which references the older starter avatars), which has no connection to Senra, etc. Please refer to the video.
[Video 51:18-53:47] The above led to a question (from LL) about the provision of a “private changing room” for people to be able to change their appearance anywhere in SL without being seen.
A similar capability was provided in Sansar, where altering the avatar’s appearance happened in a editor “outside” of the current scene, with the avatar returned to the scene post-update.
The idea has been the subject of requests for Second Life as well, being tied to the Appearance Editor; as such it is on the Lab’s radar for possible future implementation.
[Video: 55:45-End] In terms of implementation, one option under consideration is the re-cloud the avatar to other viewers whilst the avatar is having its appearance edited. An alternative would be to impostor the avatar to others.
[Video: 53:48-54:50] A reiteration that LL do plan on integrating RLV/a into the official viewer (code contributions from kitty Barnett for RLVa have been received, together (I believe) with input from Marine Kelley on RLV).
However, it was emphasised that this is a large project requiring significant code contributions / integration, so the work in regarded as in progress.
Because of the stigma associated with RLV/a (e.g. the “restrained” element of the title), it was suggested a rebranding might be in order.
† 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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 