Category: My Bits

2014: A look back – part 2

Posted on by Inara Pey

atoluta Sanctuary, Sartre; Inara Pey, July 2014, on FlickrMatoluta Sanctuary, Sartre, July 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

It’s once again that annual time of reflection. The winter is with us, the old year is slowing dying, the new year awaits, and it is time to look back across the highs and lows of the virtual year as seen through the pages of this blog.

This year has been even busier for me than previous years, so I hope you’ll forgive that as I look back over the year as I’ve managed to report it through this blog, I’ve broken it down into three parts, this being the second, and you can catch-up with part one or jump ahead to part three, if you so wish. Not everything that happened through the year may be here; there are some aspects of  SL in which I’m not active, and so may have missed some headlines. Nevertheless, I hope this review sparks a few memories and provides some interesting holiday reading. As with the first part, rather than just offer a month-by month account, I’ve tried to group things together by topic to hopefully give more of a narrative flow.

The Lab

The promised new Patterns UI is launched, and things continue to look rosy for the PC / Mac sandbox game.

In a surprising (and welcome) U-turn, the Lab agree to allow Emily Short and Richard Evans to carry the Versu product and it titles forward as an independent entity. The news is followed shortly afterwards by the launch of Versu’s first title under its own name and Emily Short is interviewed by Drax about Versu, the Lab and interactive fiction as a whole, and Blood & Laurels receives New York Times approbation.

The Lab agrees to allow Emily Short and Richard Evans, together with are joined by Graham Nelson to take Versu forward
The Lab agrees to allow Emily Short and Richard Evans, together with are joined by Graham Nelson to take Versu forward

However, the big news of the quarter is Ebbe Alltberg’s confirmation (with audio) that the Lab is working on a “next generation” platform. The news first came during a TPV meeting. This was perhaps not the best way for the news to break, as within minutes there were Tweets and feed comments flying around, most of which tended to overstate some of what he actually said, and others really did misrepresent (albeit it accidentally, rather than maliciously) what was said – something that did a lot to further the anger and outcry that followed.

While it might have been better for a more prepared statement on the new being made, particularly given the hoo-haw that followed, my personal take on the news was, and remains positive. As much as we love SL, the fact is that it is getting long in the tooth, it is gradually getting harder to make sizeable improvements without considerable effort (2+ years of the Shining Project, 10 months to tweak around the edges of group chat, etc), and it is hamstrung by its revenue model. Ergo, the Lab do need to move with the times.

Fact is, for all the hard-edged protestations from some quarters, we’re all a fickle bunch, and there’s a good chance that when something bigger, better and shinier than SL comes along, it will wean us away, whether it’s because of broader creativity options, lower fees, greater market potential, more innovative technical capabilities / challenges – or all the aforementioned; and worries about inventory “investment”, etc., be damned. And it really is a mistake to think that just because it hasn’t happened so far, it by definition, won’t happen. At last this way we know who is developing a new alternative, and it is in their own best interest to keep SL going as strongly as they can, just in case the new shiny doesn’t work out.

Where might the Lab’s new platform take us? What form will it take? These have been two (of many) questions people have been pondering since it was confirmed the Lab were actively developing a “next generation” platform

Anyway, following the meeting, the Lab confirms it’ll be hiring-in around 40-50 additional staff to work on the new platform. And as the news on the new platform overshadows other statement made by Ebbe, I offer a piece on his comments on user retention. Official confirmation of the new platform’s development is finally given in a late July press release.

Mid-July finally brings word that the controversial Section 2.3 of the Lab’s Terms of Service has been updated. Sort-of. I’m initially sceptical that the change really amounts to anything, due to the way the wording is arranged, and go into greater depth a little later. I’m not alone in feeling the re-wording isn’t up to the desired snuff, as Agenda Faromet offers a similar perspective, and in August hosts an SLBA presentation on both the changes and the Skill Gaming policy, for which I put together a transcript.

Second Life

The Lab launches a new range of mesh starter avatars designed to make use of fitted mesh – except the base shapes for most of them are issued No Mod. Oopsie. While an update is quickly promised, it doesn’t appear until mid-June. We also get the Interest List viewer reach release status, while the initial release of the Oculus Rift project viewer arrives and Loki Eliot offers guidance on using it with the Xbox controller, mirroring work by Strachan Ofarrel with his CtrlAltStudio viewer.

In a continuance of opening the doors on communications, Landon McDowell (Landon Linden in SL), the Lab’s VP of Operations and Platform Engineering offers up and informative blog post on recent issues with Second Life which I can’t help but praise. The Secondlife.com splash / log-in home page gets a revamp and meets with a positive response.

The Guardian newspaper in the UK carries an on-line article about virtual cities, and aspects people to contribute images of their favourite virtual places, and a fair few from SL show up. June also sees the Lab indicate that, but for a small subset of updates, the major work on Project Shining, after more than two years, is complete. This has been a large-scale undertaking to work across a lot of aspects of the SL service – HTTP delivery for textures and mesh, improvement to avatar baking, updates to object rendering and caching, all designed to improve the overall performance of the platform and to make better use of the data shared between simulators and the viewer, etc.

The group ban functionality, introduced in 2014, is intended to give group owners more say in who can join their groups, and to ensure trouble-makers can be removed without risk of return.
The group ban functionality, introduced in 2014, is intended to give group owners more say in who can join their groups, and to ensure trouble-makers can be removed without risk of return.

Baker Linden’s group bans work also gets a project viewer release, so I provide an overview of this much anticipated functionality.

Continue reading “2014: A look back – part 2” →

2014: A look back – part 1

Posted on by Inara Pey

Isle of Mousai, January 2014Isle of Mousai, Ancient Alexandria, one of my first ports of call in 2014 for my Exploring Second Life series

Christmas is upon us, and following not far behind, the year’s end, which is often a time of reflection as we look back over the old before pausing to await the arrival of the new. It’s become something of a tradition in these pages to look back over the virtual year’s events as I’ve seen and reported them, and offer a chance to revisit the ups and downs and the good and the bad the last twelve months have brought us.

Once again, this has been an incredibly busy year for me, blog-wise – over 950 articles published so far (and counting!) since the start of the year. So I hope you’ll forgive that as I look back over the year as I’ve managed to report it through this blog, I’ve broken it down into three parts, which I’ll be publishing between now and the end of the year. Not everything that happened through the year may be here; there are some aspects of  SL in which I’m not active, and so may have missed some headlines. Nevertheless, I hope this review sparks a few memories and provides some interesting holiday reading.  Just to (hopefully) make the reading a little more interesting, I’ve tried to avoid just breaking things down entirely by month, in favour of offering what I hope is more of a narrative flow. Part two and part three are also available.

The Lab

The year gets off to something of a quiet start – literally. With communications from the Lab slowly drying-up throughout the period 2010-2013, There is an announcement (absent from any of the SL channels, due to the Lab’s approach of “siloing” what communications were forthcoming), that the still pre-release Patterns sandbox game / creation tool for Mac and PCs had been updated with materials processing and more, some of which gets a further tweak during the month. An update on the required documentation being sought from users meeting certain transaction thresholds is given, but doesn’t entirely enlighten, prompting me to seek further clarification from the Lab. Given the confusion evident, the Lab does issue a tax and account info FAQ to help people.

Rod Humble, with a little reminder from his past, becomes an CEO of the past at Linden Lab
Rod Humble, with a little reminder from his past, becomes an CEO of the past at Linden Lab

However, the biggest news to start the year comes  via Facebook messages, Tweets and tech media reports, as it emerges that, after three years at the Lab, Rod Humble had departed for pastures new around the end of 2013.

As a result, I look back over his tenure, and decide that, allowing for the warts it brought with it (breakdown of communications, the ToS changes, etc), in terms of the technical aspects of SL, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t a popular view.

However, the lack of anything from the Lab one the matter wasn’t encouraging at the time.

The first real confirmation of Mr. Humble’s departure from the Lab came with the announcement that Ebbe Altberg had been hired, and would join the company officially in February. This was met with statements of “Who he?” from many, so I dug around and put together a brief profile, which in turn prompted the man himself to drop by the blog – which is always welcome! Although admittedly, I couldn’t resist dropping him a letter on the subject of communications – not that I needed to have worried, as it turned out.

One of the first things undertaken as a result of Ebbe’s appointment is a review of the Lab’s attempts at diversification.This results in Creatorverse, dio and Versu being  axed, and I’m left wondering if Versu doesn’t deserve a future, particularly given a new title, Blood & Laurels, appeared ready to be launched; I’m not alone in this view. However, the Lab initially refuses the idea.

In the meantime, Patterns, having escaped the chopping block (or at least getting a stay of execution), gets its new UI. Positive moves continue elsewhere in the Lab as the door to improved communications is further pushed open, including a promise to re-open the SL JIRA  to public viewing and a promise to revisit the August 2013 changes to the Lab’s Terms of Service. The latter is made during an open Q&A session Ebbe takes  at the 2014 VWBPE; unfortunately, when it arrives, the update doesn’t, in the eyes of many (myself included), really seem to actually clarify anything – but more of that anon.

New man at the top, Ebbe Altberg (l), who quickly sets about reversing the Lab's policy on communications, opening things out and taking time to attend events such as the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education, where he appear via his alt-ego Ebbe Linden (r - image by Strawberry Singh)
New man at the top, Ebbe Altberg (l), who quickly sets about reversing the Lab’s policy on communications, opening things out and taking time to attend events such as the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education, where he appeared via his alter-ego Ebbe Linden (r – image by Strawberry Singh)

The re-engagement with the education sector continues later in the year with Ebbe meeting with representatives in-world, as he did with a number of other user communities, building bridges and seeking to understand needs and wants within SL as a whole – for which he should actually be congratulated. Also on the education front, the Lab  helps to promote education projects, such as the MOOC course for Spanish educators, which was to be repeated later in the year as well.

In April, the Heartbleed situation rears its head across the Internet, and the Lab offers advice to users, while I pick-up on a Tweet from Strawberry Singh concerning promotional videos and SL.

Second Life

The start of the year brings word from Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey that while region losses continued through 2013, the total loss is some 40% less than that experienced in 2013, although it still represents an 8.2% reduction in the overall number of regions. This does cause renewed demands for tier cuts from some quarters (although tier cuts are as best a very short-term answer, and could actually do more harm than good, as I explained back in January 2013).

Monty Linden: starts the year as he means to go on: overhauling the Lab's use of HTTP
Monty Linden: starts the year as he means to go on: overhauling the Lab’s use of HTTP

For me, my SL January starts with a number of questions from other users on the status of direct messaging on the SL feeds. Passing the enquiry on to the Lab, I receive confirmation that the option had been turned off, which surprises and disappoints some.

2014’s impressive list of updates and improvements to the platform takes off with the arrival of Monty Linden’s much anticipated HTTP project viewer, which he subsequently blogged about. As well as banging on all things HTTP, Monty also sets about cleaning-up the various third-party libraries used in the viewer build process, the first part of an on-going overhaul of that process that would continue through the year.

January also sees Andrew Linden’s last project for SL (completed prior to him departing for High Fidelity in December 2013), a capability to allow for the uniform scaling of linksets, arrive on the grid. Then, the end of January brings with it a surprise when there’s a change to the land bot policy, causing a few eyebrows to rise.

Among the Lab’s major projects, fitted mesh is impacted by AMD driver issues, one of several  AMD-related problems which will occur through the year, although they don’t prevent fitted mesh being officially launched in early February.

February also sees the first big step in the Lab’s AIS v3 project to improve inventory handling between the viewer and the simulators, with the release of the SSA / AIS v3 project viewer,

Photography in SL takes a couple of hits early in the year. January sees the issues that prevent snapshots being uploaded to the SL feeds continue, while in March, photo uploads to Facebook are disabled due to them violating FB’s policies by including SLurls.  This is finally rectified in April, with the formal release of SL Share 2, which allows photos (and messages) to be shared with Twitter and Flickr, and includes post-processing filter capabilities. I’m able to preview the capabilities ahead of the official announcement, which comes with a welcome video for Torley.

Continue reading “2014: A look back – part 1” →

Season’s greetings to all!

Posted on by Inara Pey
Calas Galadhon Noel
Calas Galadhon Noel – please click for full size

Merry Christmas to all, and thank you to everyone who takes the time to drop by this blog and read my ramblings!

And a little re-run of a suitable machinima.

Eight years on

Posted on by Inara Pey
Still enjoying SL: my island home with my toys: Catalina, MD-900, E-Tech cruiser and Loonetta-31
Still enjoying SL: my island home with my toys: Catalina, MD-900, E-Tech cruiser and Loonetta-31

December 5th. Another day in SL. My 2,922nd being a small part of Second Life; eight years. Blimey.

It’s been an interesting year – one I’ll doubtless delve into in some detail my end-of-year review;  but in that time we’ve been through some interesting times. We’ve seen a change of hands at the the top of Linden Lab, the promise of a new, cutting edge virtual world platform in the near(ish) future. There’s been a huge amount of work improving, through things like the completion of Project Shining, the arrival of the CDN, HTTP pipelining, and a lot of viewer updates and added functionality such as the new photographic capabilities, group bans, better group chat, improvements to region crossings, and so on, all of which have largely helped improve things for most of us, even with the odd hiccup for so here and there.

Yes, there have been some disappointments. The ToS situation wasn’t sorted out in the way many of us were hoping to see; words were played with, but frankly, what we’ve been left with is still ambiguous in its interpretation. Then the changes to the Gaming Policy, although not something the Lab could have avoided, haven’t perhaps been as handled as clearly as might have been the case, lacking information on fees, etc. But, on the whole, it’s been a pretty positive year.

Inara Pey: then and now
Inara Pey: then and now

On a personal level, the last year has been fun. There’s been more than enough to keep me busy on the blogging front, I’ve been able to visit and write about some stunning regions, art installations, galleries and performances, as well as trying to keep astride of all the news. All of this has meant that this blog has grown by nigh-on another 1,000 posts over the course of twelve months, and hit the 1,000,000 page views mark. Admittedly, some of the articles have been on topics away from SL and virtual worlds; my love of astronomy and space exploration has played a part in pushing up the number of posts, and of course, there’s been VR and AR to watch as well.

I’m still enjoying flying and sailing in SL; if anything, I’m doing somewhat more of both – my Loonetta 31, Exotix 2 sees a fair amount of use and has carried me far and wide across Blake Sea and beyond. Equally, G-NARA, my PBY-6A Catalina has seen a lot of use, and has also drawn a lot of compliments thanks to its distinctive colour scheme courtesy of the marvellous Josh Noonan.

The Catalina was actually responsible for my biggest personal change for the year: moving back on to a private island of my own, just so I could have a place to leave it sitting out in the sunshine, as seen on the right in the picture at the top of this piece. Truth be told, I’m pretty comfortable in the house, and continue to tweak the island here and there.

I am perhaps a little disappointed that it’s another year and no cake from the Lab. But still, can’t have everything – even if NASA did delay the Orion launch by 24 hours so it would launch on my rezday! 😀 .

Orion EFT-1 lifts-off exactly on time, 12:05 UTC, on Friday, December 5th, 2014. A nice rezday treat for me! :)
Orion EFT-1 lifts-off exactly on time, 12:05 UTC, on Friday, December 5th, 2014. A nice rezday treat for me! 🙂

As to the future – there is the new VW platform from LL, there’s also High Fidelity, and we’ll doubtless hear of others. Oculus Rift will eventually appear in a consumer version, and it’ll be sitting there with the likes of Magic Leap and castAR, and probably other systems and clones as well, which will allow us to enjoy environments – and maybe express ourselves – in ways we’re not even aware of. All of these things do inevitably mean challenges for Second Life; but the Lab remains committed to the platform, supporting it, improving it, and providing tools and capabilities to those of us who enjoy it.

Which may well mean that in another 12 months, I’ll be writing about nine years of involvement in SL!

Whirlybirding and painting things

Posted on by Inara Pey
A familiar fly-past: taking the MD-900 around the Fastnet Rock lighthouse
A familiar fly-past: taking the MD-900 around the Fastnet Rock lighthouse

Back at the start of the year, I wrote about my experiences in getting hold of an EC-135 Eurocopter from  Spijkers & Wingtips. As noted in that article, it’s a great little helicopter – easy to fly, plenty of space in the cabin, and nicely customisable. It’s been on my helipad ever since.

Well, at least until this weekend, when it found itself returned to inventory after one last (for the time being) flight. Not because I’ve given up on flying – oh no! Rather, as the images in this piece show, I’ve swapped to a new aircraft.

Gracing my helipad at home now is the Spijkers & Wingtips MD-900 Explorer. Superficially like the EC-series of helos in terms of exterior cabin looks, this is a 7-seater helicopter that is 100% mesh, the design by Sylvira (sylviramaus). And I have to say, it is beautiful, with a wealth of detail to enjoy.

The MD-900 in its default (supplied) finish
The MD-900 in its default (supplied) finish

The first thing that is immediately noticeable about the MD-900 is that it doesn’t have a tail rotor. Instead it uses a NOTAR system, employing a fan system together with a thruster mechanism at the end of the tail to both counter torque from the rotors and provide vectored thrust when turning, etc. With the S&W MD-900 the system is reproduced such that in-flight manoeuvring of the helicopter will see the directed thrust mechanism at the end of the tail moving in response to control commands, together with the twin rudders.

The helicopter comes as a comprehensive package: there is the MD-900 itself, Copy / Mod and with an LI of 54; a static display model, six customisable texture packs, optional combat script and cargo payload scripts. The default colour scheme for the helicopter is striking, and possibly the best of the supplied packs, and a further air ambulance option can be obtained from Sylvira.

The interior detailing is incredible; from the seat harness elements through to the individual buttons and dials on the controls and flight panel. Even the ducts air circulation system in the cabin is reproduced in detail, together with work front, passenger and rear cargo doors
The interior detailing is incredible; from the seat harness elements through to the individual buttons and dials on the controls and flight panel. Even the ducted air circulation system in the cabin is reproduced in detail, together with working front, passenger and rear cargo doors

Using the texture packs is a matter of unpacking the desired finish, then editing the helicopter via Edit Links Parts to drag and drop the various texture elements onto their requisite sections of the helicopter. For those who want something more personal, the textures can be saved as TGA or PNG files and amended locally & then re-uploaded at the usual L$10 a shot.

As most know, I have a penchant for red and white in my boats and planes, so one of the first things I did was grab one of the texture packs (“white with red stripe”) and download the various elements to produce a colour scheme more in keeping with my preferred style. When I did this with the EC-135, it literally took me 3 minutes to get something I was happy with  – although admittedly, I didn’t really try anything clever in editing the textures.

The MD-900 is one of the supplied texture finishes, and the default colour scheme to the rear
The MD-900 is one of the supplied texture finishes, and the default colour scheme to the rear

The MD-900 did take a lot longer. The was mostly down to my decision to go for a design which required some careful detailing around hinges and things. However, it also has to be said that, outside of the default paint scheme, the finishes on some of the packs are a trifle rough – in my case I found that white parts would have an odd splash of red where they shouldn’t (and vice versa, or that edging between the colours be a tad rough when looked at closely (and I do mean closely – the packs past muster reasonably when to the casual eye). Unfortunately, for me, once seen closely means such things are forever nagging; so I spent a good few hours doing some general clean-up, because I’m obsessive that way.

Handling-wise, the MD-900 is fabulous. I’m not sure how much updating Tig has done with her helicopter scripts, but the MD-900 really is a delight to fly. It’s very responsive, can move at a fair lick if required, and offers the usual 3rd person or Mouselook flight options (the latter feeling far more responsive that the EC-135). A HUD is provided for flying, although not essential (all commands can be entered via chat), and this reveals some of the extras – such as the searchlight (which can also be turned on / off via the chat command “sl”), the winch options for lifting cargo aloft – read the instructions carefully, and take note that cargo can behave oddly if particularly complex. There’s even a police / rescue siren!

A particularly nice touch with the more recent helicopters in in S&W range is the inclusion of auto-deploying pontoon floats. Simply drop down over Linden water in a low hover, and the floats will deploy for a water landing. They can also be manually deployed / stored when in flight via the HUD or a chat command.

My MD-900 at home
My MD-900 at home

All told, the MD-900 is a great aircraft, and niggles over the texture packs aside (they don’t in any way spoil the aircraft), it will make a great addition to any SL aviation enthusiast’s collection.

Related Links

Machinima and me – take 2

Posted on by Inara Pey

Back in September, I took my first stab at producing a “proper” piece of machinima. by that, I mean actually filming in-world and then editing the thing together, rather than just editing images and adding a soundtrack.

The results were mixed; while the PC had the omph to do things, I encountered issues with video formats and conversion which resulted in the first attempt suffering from degraded video quality.

Since then, I’ve not really had the time to focus on things as fully as I would like, but I have been tinkering as and when I can, and getting some guidance – I’d particularly like to thank Ormand Lionheart for her invaluable assistance and suggestions, and also (while he isn’t actually a Second Life user), JN, who also came to my aid when I encountered issues with my updated editing software.

For my second test, I took the liberty of filming on Jordan Giant’s evocative The Colder Water, about which I blogged back in August. The selection was based both on the fact that I love the environment and setting on the region, and the music I wanted to use, Doulogue by Javolenus seemed to fit the region.

The video is by no means perfect – had some issues with the actual recording when in-world, which has resulted in a slight jerkiness in the video. I also need a lot more practice with the Space Navigator (and get it set to my liking); but hopefully the improvements in overall quality can be seen, now I (sort-of) know what I’m doing.