Category: Second Life

June 2024 SL Web User Group summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday June 5th, 2024. 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.

Meeting Overview

  • 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.
    • In both Voice and / or text.
    • At this location.
  • 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.

Meeting Date and Time

[Video: 4:10-7:04]

  • Following requests for an increased frequency of Web User Group meetings, the web team has been looking to move the standing meeting to a different day / time each month.
  • Specifically, the day being considered is Tuesday, and the time moved from 13:00 SLT to 12:00 noon SLT.
  • Insufficient numbers were present at this meeting (just 7 people, three of whom were Lab employees and one (that would be me) afk throughout the meeting!). Ergo, this idea will be raised at the July meeting.

Marketplace Updates, Testing and Ideas

[Video: 8:56-20:08]

  • “Good progress” has been made on a new responsive layout for the marketplace intended to improve MP displaying on a mobile phone or if you are looking at the marketplace in the viewer at smaller breakpoints.
  • The Marketplace team has just completed a “research spike” looking at Search issues and believe they have some good solutions for some of the problems user have reported, and will be looking to make updates to Search based on the results of this work.
  • Some live experiments have been carried out on Search filters in response to concerns raised at past WUG meetings.
    • Specifically, the experiments focused on how filter changes might impact sales of non limited quantity items.
    • After looking at the data on marketplace for a weekend the team didn’t see much meaningful change in terms of sales or traffic for non limited quantity items.
  • The team is still looking into ways to better promote the viability of original creators and their creations on marketplace. One idea is to have some form of carousel of “most popular creators” (similar to the “customers are buying now” carousel on the MP home page), listing the most popular creators in terms of sales over a given period (e.g. the past 24 hours).
    • Sntax Linden is open to suggestions via the Marketplace Board at Feedback Portal on how LL might accomplish this.
  • Additional ideas for carousels on the Marketplace home page being mulled by the Lab include: “hot and new creators”; “popular items” and “hot & new items”, the idea being to help alleviate the need to use Search and result filters to find new release, new items, etc.
One of the things I would like to accomplish is better promoting creators. Being able to discover a product on the marketplace is great, but I would love more tools for creators to organically promote themselves or for shoppers to be able to find stores/creators.

– Sntax Linden

  • Another area of discussion at the Lab is how a “for you” capability might be implemented down the road, correlating the sales of the most popular items selling on the MP globally with a user’s own shopping history, with it being noted that personalised relevancy is something the team would like to “tackle across the platform”.

General Discussion

[Video: 20:12-end]

  • There was a general discussion on Search and how it is used to find good, creators, etc. This touched on idea around a system-generated tag cloud based on new / popular / “hot” items; better system-managed filters, etc.
  • Providing a New MP category geared towards specifically for new users that would enable to them to locate items that would be interested in (e.g. Senra clothing and accessories, easy-to-unpack and use items), with an emphasis on ease-of-use (e.g. does not require in-world unpacking, the need to read a notecard or wade through lots of options, etc.
  • The above touched on the core limitations of Senra – that even for new users, it requires a level of understanding of SL to make proper use of it post web-customisation during on-boarding, including:
    • What inventory is, how the system Library works.
    • How to copy items from the Library to inventory.
    • The difference between clothing layers and attachments, understanding the basic iconography they use.
    • As such broadening the knowledge base for Senra, providing information on it beyond the web-based onboarding was discussed.
  • Towards the end of the meeting was a general discussion on how parcels and land might be better searched in general (e.g. allowing those with multiple parcels to group them together as a “place” entry (not to be confused with Place Pages) which can be searched, and which displays information on all the parcels.
  • As these were general discussion point, rather than ideas for implementation, please refer to be video below for further information.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024.

JudiLynn’s Messages in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kondor Art Club, June 2024: JudiLynn India – Messages

Open through most of June 2024 at the Kondor Art Club, a part of Hermes Kondor’s Kondor Art Centre, is a solo exhibition by JudiLynn India which again demonstrates her extraordinary acrylic art, here given a digital edge through the considered use of post-processing via Procreate, a raster graphics editor developed for devices using Apple’s iOS and iPadOS.

JudiLynn has expressed a love of art and artistic expression for most of her life, studying the subject at both school and university, whilst also learning to play the piano, guitar and violin. Her art has always been a personal journey, one encompassing her outlook on life, her spirituality and her personality – which might be describes as vibrant, passionate and fuelled by a desire to create and explore. This latter aspect of her creativity has, over the last two decades, encouraged her to combining her love of acrylic painting with a growing appreciation of the potential presented by digital painting software and techniques.

Kondor Art Club, June 2024: JudiLynn India – Messages

All of this is fully displayed within Messages at the Kondor Art Club.

Occupying the full gallery space, this collection of some 40 digitally-enhanced, acrylic originals carries within it a familiar sense of the abstract and the natural – aspects of Judi’s work I have always enjoyed.

Each of the compositions offered is described as a spiritual adventure for the artist; something perhaps most clearly seen in the pieces carrying one or more circles within them – a motif, perhaps of the spirit’s enduring nature, and symbolising unending cycles – the embodiment of the alpha and the omega, if you will.

The use of the the circle is not the only symbol or motif to be found within these pieces; many include representations of writing. That the words /letters / symbols might be indecipherable makes no difference, their inclusion not only reflects the title of the the collection, they serve as a reminder that starting with art – in the form of simple paintings – and progressing to use of symbols, hieroglyphs and eventually the written word, we are a race of creatives (and in “written” I would also include the use of music, through its notations and interpretation, as both a means to communicate and to express ourselves), and also archivists; recording what we see, learn, love and cherish for both our out pleasure / knowledge and for those who will inevitably follow us.

Kondor Art Club, June 2024: JudiLynn India – Messages

In this Messages might be said to be an essay in art, a celebration of life, of humanity, nature and all that makes us individually and collectively unique. And like is, each of the compositions within this collection work collectively, each one adding its own lines to the exhibition’s narrative; yet at the same time each is unique and within its own voice, capable of standing on its own, ready to be appreciated just as richly on that basis as for any connection to the rest of the collection.

SLurl Details

2024 SL SUG meetings week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
A Place in the Sun, May 2024 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 4th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 4th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deployment.
  • On Wednesday, June 5th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be restarted.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts should be updated with a re-deployment of the Spring Break Simulator update.

Upcoming Deployments

The major deployment for June is set to be Summer Fun. Among other things this should include:

  • Leviathan Linden’s game controller event work to support game controllers – although these will require a viewer-side update to expose the updated viewer UI.
  • Rider Linden’s work on the SL Combat System (SLCS) 2.0 updates (see my Combat User Group summaries for more).
  • LSL updates:
    • A new parameter to llRezObjectWithParams REZ_PARAM_STRING – allows the passing of a 1024 char string to the object being rezzed.
    • llGetStartString() to retrieve the string.
  • A fix for the notecard cache so that it a fixed amount of memory (enough memory to store 48 max-sized notecards) rather than the count of notecards.
  • A fix for the “flying on logging-in” issue.

Those wishing to test any of the above in advance of the deployment of Summer Fun (due some time in June), can do so in the region Riders Test Channel on Aditi (the Beta grid).

The July simulator update is to be called Picnics, but there is no information on what it might contain at present, other than EZ_PARAM_DIE_IF_NO_REZZER, and llDerezMyObject.

Bugsmash Work

  • Bugsmash is the term given to a dev team suspending work on their core projects and spending a week(ish) focusing on resolving bugs and smaller features for inclusion in a future simulator release.
  • In recognition of this, it was suggested that if there are specific, niggling bugs people want looked at, they raise them at this meeting and the Tuesday, June 11th meeting. There is no guarantee any specific issues will be addressed during the Bugsmash period, but having a list  – and update to bugs on Canny will help the Lab assess what might be examined / fixed.

SL Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, June 4th, the Materials Featurettes RC viewer updated to version 7.1.8.9357006492.

The rest of the current official viewers in the pipeline remain as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, dated May 8 and  promoted May 13 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes) 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

In Brief

Please refer to the video for the following:

  • A discussion on further LSL functions / updates.
  • Commentary about avatar animations states / syncing between viewers / the simulator in terms of updates being passed back and forth.
  • The batting of ideas around particles and the particle system.

† 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Frolicking in Joyful Gardens in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Joyful Gardens, June 2024 – click any image for full size
Imagine romantic botanical gardens where you can have fun too. Visit our butterfly house and watch them flutter around you. Wander through the maze, hop on rides, or find a spot to dance, cuddle and kiss. Where romance lingers and memories are made.

So reads the description for Joyful Gardens, a simply delightful region design by Hedy Heartsong, and which is home to more than might first appear to be the case when visiting.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

Leveraging the Land Capacity bonus available to Full private regions, the setting’s charm commences with the general design of its three islands. This is hardly obvious from ground level, but can be seen on the map available on the reverse wall of the landing point’s notice board or indeed, by looking at the World map, although to really appreciate Hedy’s sculpting of the land, I recommend camming overhead and looking down.  Doing so will reveal that each island has been shaped in a manner which, when taken together, summarise the inherent theme of the setting: that of nature.

This is a place where it is exceptionally easy to get around on foot, each of the islands offering its own charms and attractions. The main island and the smaller island to the south-east are connected via a zip line and a small bridge. However, to reach the second of the smaller islands, sitting up off the north-west coast of the main island, you’ll need to either fly, make use of a rezzable skiff from the small jetty alongside the main island’s lighthouse or use the bubble rezzer available at the landing point for a more sedate ride to reach it. If none of these options appeal, then the island has a network of teleporters to help guide visitors from point-to-point around the setting: just look for the tree stumps with the topiary rabbits jumping over them.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

Located on the south side of the main island, the landing point is roughly equidistant from both the lighthouse and the bridge crossing the narrows to the south-east islet. It faces a walk along a narrow neck of grassy land which quickly flairs out into the main island proper. Which of the three routes you opt to take is entirely up to you; as noted, the lighthouse sits above a small jetty where a skiff can be rezzed so you can pootle around the islands on the water, whilst the south-eastern islet is the location of a cosy little house / cabin and can – again as noted above, be reached by way of a bridge.

The fact that the latter is set apart from the rest of the setting initially suggests it is a private residence; however, signs on the picket fence before it bid visitors welcome, an invitation to explore it and the grounds around it. Both  he house and its accompanying outbuilding have the look of having once been put to more work-a-day uses, possibly as barns, but have now been converted into a cosy little residence and bath house respectively. They sit within a wildling garden where the grass has been allowed to freely grow, and fruit and vegetables are being cultivated in planters watched over by ripening corn on the cob.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

Steps and a deck extend down from the island’s flank and out over the waters of the cove separating it from the main island, the deck presenting both a place to sit and a chance to rez a skiff and continue onwards by water. Just above and behind this is the termination point from the zip line which can also be used to reach the house from the central uplands of the main island. Obviously, you can also travel onwards from the house via the teleport network – but if you opt to take the skiff, don’t simply motor off and around the islands – it it to the middle of the bay and have a look at what lies beneath. the waves.

Away to the north-west Bird Island (as I’m going to call it) is home to a chapel, the waters between it and the main island guarded by a pair of sharks. Fortunately, it also has a jetty and skiff rezzer (I didn’t see a teleporting tree stump there), so you can avoid being looked upon as a moving snack by said sharks as you swim back across the channel separating the two islands.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

The main island in the trio is home to a number of points of interest spread across its gently rising form, including ruins up on the central uplands – which have their own weather as well as the starting point for the zip line mentioned earlier;  a maze (one of two awaiting exploration, although you will need to avail yourself of the teleporter system to reach the second (and larger) of them) and an outdoor space that seems to combine an events / celebration / reception space (the chapel is set for weddings) with a small formal terrace / seating area / pond and a brace of carnival rides and a pair of hippity-hop amusement rides.

Meanwhile, sitting under the ruins is an old mining tunnel which can be explored from one end as it dives under the hilltop, whilst the north side of the island is home to the Joyful Jardin Vert, and its exposition bontanique. Here, laid out in a small and tidy formal garden space can be found a profusion of geraniums, gerbera and nemophila flowering amidst privet brushes and shrubs, the flower beds neatly divided by paves walks offering access to a central fountain and seating area.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

Shielding all this on three sides are tall glass-and-stone greenhouses, one of which is now a butterfly house, the second a teaching room for those wishing to enhance their green-fingered skills, and the third a place in which to relax and enjoy a dance or a nibble of cake and freshly brewed tea (although the bubbly admittedly attracted me more – tea and I have a near life-long agreement that we will largely ignore once another!).

Throughout the entire setting are numerous places to sit and relax, opportunities to photograph the local flora and fauna and to generally appreciated Hedy’s landscaping talents. In keeping with this, do be sure to follow the trail between the trees on the west side of the Jardin Vert in order to fins more eye-catching and secluded little spots. And do make sure to travel with local sounds on to get more of an immersive feel for the setting. Photography is encouraged throughout, and should you need to rez props for your work, contact Hedy and she’ll do her best to assist you.

Joyful Gardens, June 2024

Genteel, relaxing and eye-catching under almost any EEP daytime setting (I’ve using the Shared environment in my images here), Joyful Gardens is a region that more than meets the promise of its name.

SLurl Details

2024 SL viewer release summaries week #22

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, June 2nd, 2024

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Release viewer: 7.1.6.8745209917, formerly the Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), dated April 19 and promoted April 23 – No Change
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version: 1.32.0.25 (PBR); and Experimental to version 1.32.1.8 (PBR) on June 1 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Monochrome Memories in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cayla (YumiYukimura): Monochrome Memories, June 2024

Cayla (YumiYukimura) invited me to visit her latest exhibition at Saint Elizabeth’s Studio and Gallery in Second Life, which opened on Monday, June 3rd, 2024. Entitled Monochrome Memories, and with the sub-title of Shades of Adolescence, its an exhibition that is somewhat personal for Cayla and which has – being frank – drawn mixed feelings from me on viewing it.

The personal aspect of the exhibition comes from the fact it is rooted in a physical work project Cayla undertook, as noted in the her introduction to the exhibition:

When I was a young teacher and photographer, I was invited to participate in a group exhibition at a prestigious local art gallery. I had to develop, process, mat, and frame the photographs in my own, one person, professional darkroom. During my free prep periods, at school, I would select a student, take them outside, and have them self pose against a wall of the school building dressed in their everyday attire. This was during the 1970s and 1980s. 
Unfortunately, all of my original photographs were destroyed in a flood, including the negatives. The AI-generated pictures presented here evoke memories of those I captured during that time. Just like the originals, these AI pictures are in black-and-white.

Cayla (YumiYukimura) on Monochrome Memories

Cayla (YumiYukimura): Monochrome Memories, June 2024

Cayla also note that during that original exhibition, several of the artists commented on how her images reminded them of the black-and-white photography of Indiana-born and Arkansas-based photographer Mike Disfarmer (1884-1959). He spent a good portion of his adult life living and working in a small photography studio where he would create and sell images of the local townsfolk and those from the surrounding area. As a working photographer, selling set of three photographs at 50 cents, Disfarmer never really garnered much attention during his life – and this might have remained true following his death, but for the 1970 discovery of a cache of his original glass negatives still located with the premises of his former studio.

Carefully catalogued, restored and preserved, these negatives formed the basis for two exhibitions of Disfarmer’s photography – and catapulted him into the realm of well-regarded and celebrated Outsider Artists, his ability to portray the lives of everyday folk in a starkly realistic manner which has come to symbolise life in the mid-west of the United States in the middle of the 20th century.

Cayla (YumiYukimura): Monochrome Memories, June 2024

Within Monochrome Memories, Cayla presents a collection of AI generated pieces which seek to both re-capture the core theme of her original physical world exhibition in that the subjects are (as per the exhibition’s sub-title) predominantly young / adolescent subjects pictured against a wall, whilst mixing-in a touch of Disfarmer in that that all carry either a neutral or (in some cases) slightly dour expression. In this way – and again like Disfarmer – they might be said to offer a stark, unblemished view of people joined not by art, but by the environment in which they live; thus offering a collective snapshot in time.

There is much that is attractive about this collection in its own right, as well as in the manner in which it seeks to offer an echo of a former display and present a reinterpretation of Disfarmer’s approach to photography. For example, I particularly liked the subtle use of self-portraiture (in terms of Cayla’s Profile image avatar) within the collection, and the little touches of humour (the bearded “JC” standing against a wall and reading a Bible-like tome and with a church steeple visible behind him, for example).

Cayla (YumiYukimura): Monochrome Memories, June 2024

That said, I will admit that the very fact these are AI images at their heart gave me issues; I have an admitted ambivalence towards such art for many reasons – including the way in which I feel it can all too easily detract from an artist’s intent more than add to it. Here, for example, it was just a handful of images that kept demanding my attention; not because of the artistry or narrative evident in them, but because they looked to me as if the AI tool had simply lifted from photographs of Tilda Swinton, Bob Dylan and James Dean, Phil Lynott and others. Whilst not Cayla’s fault, this reaction lifted me away from an appreciation of her work and into the realm of pondering the merits of AI tools – and for that, I apologise to her.

Nevertheless, I do see this as an exhibition worthy of viewing, and thus commend it to you.

SLurl Details