Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, July 9th, 2023
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, version 6.6.13.580794, formerly the Windows 32 + macOS pre-10.13 RC, issued June 30, promoted July 5th.
[REN] May, 2023 – blog postThe following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, July 6th, and the Third Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, July 7th, 2023.
Meetings
The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work.
The TPV Developer meeting provides an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and features for, the Second Life viewer, and for Linden Lab viewer developers and third-party viewer (TPV) / open-source code contributors developers to discuss general viewer development.
As a rule, both meetings are:
Held in-world and chaired by Vir Linden.
Conducted in a mix of voice and text.
Held at 13:00 SLT on their respective days.
Are subject to the schedule set within the SL Public Calendar, which includes locations for both meetings (also included at the end of these reports).
Open to all with an interest in content creation / viewer development.
As these meetings occasionally fall “back-to-back” on certain weeks, and often cover some of the same ground, their summaries are sometime combined into a single report (as is the case here). They are drawn from a mix of my own audio recordings of the meeting + chat log (CCUG), and from the video of the TPVD meeting produced by Pantera Północy (which is embedded at the end of the summaries for reference) + chat log. Not that they are summaries, and not intended to be transcripts of everything said during either meeting.
Viewer News
The Windows 32 + macOS pre-10.13 RC, version 6.6.13.580794 was rapidly promoted to de facto release status on July 6.
The Second Life Project Inventory Extensions viewer updated to version 6.6.13.580656, on July 6.
glTF / PBR Materials viewer, version 7.0.0.580782, June 30.
Maintenance T RC viewer, version 6.6.13.580700, June 28.
Project viewers:
Emoji project viewer, version 6.6.13.580279, May 30.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.12.579958, May 11.
General Viewer Notes:
The Windows 32 + macOS pre-10.13 viewer is the last official viewer supporting either the Win 32-bit version or Mac OS versions prior to version 11. As viewers for 64-bit only and MacOS 11+ become the defacto releases, this viewer (as it is and without further update) will be moved to a side cohort, and used when someone running a pre-11 MacOS release or a Windows viewer incapable of running the 64-bit version of the viewer will receive this version instead.
Maintenance T has returned to being the most likely RC viewer due for promotion to de facto release status, now that its high crash rate has (hopefully) been brought under control.
The Emoji project viewer is liable to see further improvements to the Emoji picker in the UI.
glTF Materials and Reflection Probes
Project Summary
To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
Substance Painter is also used as a guiding principal for how PBR materials should look in Second Life.
Up to four texture maps are supported for PBR Materials: the base colour (which includes the alpha); normal; metallic / roughness; and emissive, each with independent scaling.
Given the additional texture load, work has been put into improving texture handling within the PBR viewer.
In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
As a part of this work, PBR Materials will see the introduction of reflection probes which can be used to generate reflections (via cubemaps) on in-world surfaces. These will be a mix of automatically-place and manually place probes (with the ability to move either).
The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
Bug-fixing within the simulator code is also on-going, so those testing PBR materials where the support is available should take note of this.
Obviously, to take advantage of these regions (both to upload PBR Materials and to see the new PBR environment lighting + the demonstration objects provided within some the regions, you must be running the PBR Materials RC viewer.
The cost of upload for Materials without any textures is free; however, the L$10 texture upload fee is charged on a per texture basis for any included within a PBR material surface (up to four can be included).
Any PBR materials content created within these environments which is later rezzed in any region that is not Materials-enabled, will become “material-less” in a non-recoverable way, and will need to be recreated.
Because of the above point, until PBR support is fully gird-wide, any attempts to put PBR-enabled goods on the Marketplace will be sanctioned.
General bug fixing on the viewer is also continuing, and the spread PBR across the grid is largely down to a mix of bug fixing and getting everything stable, and seeing if any particularly nasty blockers or bug rear up.
As an aside, the additional texture overhead for PBR Materials has been one of the drivers behind increasing the amount of VRAM the viewer can use for textures, as also now found within the PBR Materials viewer.
PBR Mirrors
This is a follow-on project to the PBR Materials, intended to provide a controlled method to enable planar mirrors in SL (i.e. flat surface mirrors which can reflect what is immediately around them, including avatars).
The approach Geenz Linden is taking towards enabling mirrors is to use a “hero probe” concept. In short:
With PBR, reflections are generated using reflection probes, per the notes above. These are capped at a maximum resolution of 128×128 per object face; hero probes will be capped at 512×512 per object face, providing a mush higher resolution of reflection.
Hero probes are an automated selection process. “Standard” probes cannot be converted to hero probes by manual intervention, nor can they be created.
A hero probe is selected on the basis of the “mirror” surface / probe and the proximity of the viewing avatar / camera to it.
Thus, if there are 5 mirrors place in a room, only the mirror closest to any given avatar / avatar camera will be used as a hero probe within that avatar’s viewer; the other four will remain “standard” probes, until such time as the avatar / camera moves closer to one of them, at which point it will become the hero probe, and the former hero will revert to a standard probe.
The primary use case for this work is mirrors, but it is possible, depending on performance impact, etc., that in the future, one additional hero probe might be allowed per scene, and the use case broadened (e.g. the water reflections).
In Brief
Via the TPVD meeting
Simulator updates: two simulator RC are currently with QA:
One includes updates to the avatar arrival code (i.e. handling avatars being received into the region via TP) which should help reduce the “viewer freeze” / frame rate drop others in the region can experience.
The other includes bug fixes and additional LSL functions.
General discussions on:
Anecdotal spotting of increased teleport failures, but lacking specifics on location, repro, etc. LL’s gridwide stats on TPs is not reflecting any noticeable uptick in failures. Therefore, those who do encounter them frequently are asked to:
Log where / when / how such failure occur.
If a pattern emerges (e.g. failures consistently occur when teleporting after doing X, or, say, in the first TP are logging-in, or anything else which suggests a possible underlying pattern), to file a Jira bug report, providing as much of the info they’ve gathered as possible.
A similar anecdotal report on people seeing themselves (or others as clouds for extended periods with in increased frequency. Again, where this is seen to happen consistently, a bug report is requested.
The official viewer CHUI + lack of chat bar (which also leans into what appears to be a lack of awareness that the Chat Console is not a “Firestorm feature”, but something generally available to people – although new users may need their attention directed to (and how to open chat from it), as the fade-out can case thigs to be missed and the click-to-open chat is not obvious.
On options available if TPVs that are not available in the official viewer (or possibly, with some, just not exposed through the UI), but which possibly should be.
Please refer to the TPVD meeting video below for further details on the above discussions.
† 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.
Viper Heaven, July 2023 – click any image to view on Flickr
Cube Republic (of landscaping fame) poked me recently concerning Viper Heaven, a skyborne installation built by Markarius Viper high over one of the regions of Viper Estate, which Markarius runs along with JimSqu Sunbelter. An artist, builder and regions designer, Markarius’s name is not new to me, although I had to go all the way back to 2016 to find the last design I’d blogged about in which he played a role in designing (Osprey Ridge, which he designed with Flo (SweetFloXO), a place now gone from SL and the region repurposed as a marina). Given this and – most importantly – Cube’s recommendation – I stepped on the pad, figuratively speaking and ordered “energise.”
And am I ever glad I did; Viper Heaven is one of the most visually engaging, photogenic, imaginative, potentially romantic and mysterious designs it has been my pleasure to visit. Built high over a Full region utilising the Land Capacity bonus, Viper Heaven seamlessly brings together elements of fantasy, mythology, ancient civilisations, art, lighting, and a light smattering of religious iconography in a genuinely captivating setting which is an utterly Must See destination.
However, before getting into specifics – no easy task in itself, given the visual richness of the setting – there are a number of points worth keeping in mind ahead of any visit. The first is that everything within the setting has been carefully orchestrated – including the environment settings. It’s therefore vital it ensure your viewer is set to Use Shared Environment (World → Environment menu) prior to visiting. Alongside of this is the fact that Viper Heaven uses a localised Experience to handle seamless transitioning between the different environment settings as visitors move between locations and levels. This Experience also allows for automated teleports when the setting’s various portals are encountered, therefore, it is essential you join the Experience when the pop-up dialogue is displayed by your viewer.
Finally, and while Shadows do not need to be enabled during a visit (in fact, because of the surrounding shell of the “sky”, I would suggest leaving shadows off, even if you do normally explore with them enabled), due to the use of projectors, it is vital you make sure Advanced Lighting Model is enabled in your viewer (Preferences → Graphics → check Advanced Lighting Model if not already checked – and am I ever glad the occasions when I’ll have to give that reminder will start to draw to a close in the future!).
Viper Heaven, July 2023
To describe Viper Heaven is something of an exercise in futility; the simple truth is that this is a genuinely rich and immersive setting folding so much into it, and to appreciate it properly, it has to be seen first-hand. That said, and just to whet appetites, visitors will, within the three primary levels of of installation, find touches of ancient Egyptian and Grecian religion and mythology. For example Isis, Anubis, Bastet and Sobek occupy a setting that might easily suggest a location on the banks of the Nile at Thebes or perhaps Memphis; elsewhere, there is a ruined temple of an Oracle – still visited, it would seem, given the fresh fruits laid out before her statue in the hope of receiving divination by those leaving the gifts. Then, perhaps most noticeable of all – there are the three mighty Titans holding aloft the upper level, as if in honour of Atlas as he held aloft the celestial spheres, whilst Ganesha / Ganesh sits on a stone plaza, offering another touch of religious mythology.
And that’s just to start; also awaiting discovery are touches of Elven and Fae fantasy – particularly in the form of plants and structure by the Master Elf himself, Elicio Ember, whilst one corner of the setting carries a strong hint of Fritz Lang, another carries a Lovecraftian air, and still another a suggestion that dwarfish tools have been at work in hidden caverns. As all this is just for openers. From the landing point on the uppermost level paths wind around the main island as it is held aloft by the Titans, bridges reaching out to islands floating close to hand, stairs rising to different levels and exotic plants floating among the trees to cast a further air of alien fantasy into the mix.
Viper Heaven, July 2023
As mentioned, portals link the various levels, and these take various forms. Some are animated and rather indicative of their purpose. Others many appear as doors partially opened or tight shut. Still others might appear to be just a blank face of rock or wood into which the path seems to collide. No clue is given as to where they might lie or where they might lead – so if you want to discover all of Viper Heaven’s myriad secrets and appreciate its beauty and design to the fullest – walk is the order of the day!
Nor is Viper Heaven alone within the estate; also awaiting discovery is Viper Hell, as well are several other public locations. These are separate to Viper Heaven – giving me an excuse for return visits in the future! – but Markarius has developed a HUD to help people get around, which will hopefully soon be generally available at landing points, etc. But in the meantime, if you do pay a visit and catch Markarius on radar or in person, he’ll be happy to provide you with a copy of the HUD on request.
And all that said, I’ll leave you with my impressions of the setting on video – the first I’ve been able to produce of any reasonable length in a good few years thanks to ne hardware. I’m not sure how many videos I’ll produce going forward (I have some outstanding obligations to fulfil now I have everything sorted once more!), but frankly, Viper Heaven was simply too beautiful not to attempt to film it.
My thanks to Cube for the pointer, and to Markarius for taking the time to chat with me.
Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.
A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.
This was not the “usual” for of meeting – little was said by way of web updates, etc., which have occurred since the last meeting and no updates on upcoming projects.
In Brief
A general discussion on how Flickr is used in relation to the Marketplace: creators using it to promote new products and / or encourage interest in their brands / as an alternative to using in-world Groups, etc., through photo competitions, giveaways, etc; fashion bloggers using it as a means to micro-blog about clothing, hair accessories, etc .; users being able to flow merchants and see images / videos of new releases directly on their Flickr feed, etc.
Not sure on the purpose of the question (from the Lab), and no-one asked in the meeting.
A request for people who would like to see ONE thing WRT SL web properties and services (preferably). Responses include:
Allowing multiple versions of items (e.g. different colours) within a single listing (as has been LOOONNG promised with the Marketplace Styles function, but has yet to actually surface); or to have different versions of an item to be individually listed, but have buttons within their listings so that users can easily toggle between the, a-la Amazon (e.g. so if an item is offered in say, single, twin, triple and quadruple sets, the various sets (and their prices) appear as a button on one another’s listing page so that users can swap back and forth between them).
The ability to remove certain stores / items from Search results (e.g. search for “cars” and have an option to select “don’t show me products from this creator again”, and having further results from that creator removed / excluded from search results).
The ability to click on reviewers’ names and see a full list of all their reviews (allowing for better judgement of their bias, etc.).
The ability to contact sellers directly through the MP.
Having fields which state when an item was listed / last updated on the MP.
How does Search order results? It varies, but as a rule of thumb:
“First time” searches & general searches from the MP home page, should show results by relevance.
“First time” searches of stores should list in terms of newest first.
If an option to display search results has been previously selected from the drop-down, that is generally the option use to order the results of further searches (until changed).
A lot of discussion on the pros and cons of “brand tagging” listings + identifying folders in Inventory.
Very much a meeting where it is easiest to watch the video (enable closed caption if required).
Midway through its run at Selen’s Gallery, operated and curated by Selen Minotaur, is Far From by Bamboo Barnes, featuring previously unseen works by the arts drawn together in a theme I always find fascinating: the nature of time and its relationship with personal experiences and the formation of self.
It’s a subject I’ve been fascinated by since first reading Burnt Norton, the first poem in what would become T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, a discussion on the nature of time, the relationship between past and future and both of them with the current moment in time, alternate realities, the contrast between the experience of the modern man and spirituality, mixed with ideas of unity with the cosmos, and more. Whilst The more spiritual reflections of time and human nature are not necessarily a part of Bamboo’s Far From, the central theme of Burnt Norton’s opening (perhaps the most famous lines of the poem / The Four Quartets as a whole) was immediately brought to mind for me when reading Bamboo’s introduction to Far From.
What do you feel now if you close your eyes? Do you see the faint flicker of light that your memory gives you as you reach out in total darkness? Or is it something you wish you could have forgotten? A past that has become distant yet drawing you in heavily. The now that seems so far from it, but it is a part of you. A part of you that can never be denied.
– Bamboo Barnes, Far From
Selen’s Gallery: Bamboo Barnes – Far From
In other words, what we has gone before, given if not fully remembered – even if we no longer wish to recall it – is as much a part of us today, just as what we now do will become a part of our tomorrow; that while we might live in the “now”, we also live with the shadows and light of the past, factors which perhaps distort, or at least consciously or not, direct our way towards the future, subliminally or directly influencing as they do the decisions we make in the now.
Compare this with Eliot’s opening reflection from Burnt Norton:
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.
– T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
Again, which is not to say the Bamboo’s art is intended to be any kind of visual essay on Eliot’s works; far from it – this is a subjective parallel I saw, and which other may not see or agree to. However, it is these kinds of parallels I so often find in Bamboo’s work and which – for me – further elevate her art.
That is, within Far From she offers a unique and highly visual meditation on then theme of the interconnectedness of time, just as Eliot does through the ideas he offers within the five parts of Burn Norton. Bamboo does this not only through her introduction to this exhibition, but in the manner of the images themselves. Each is distorted, some somewhat fragmented, all utilise colour in a striking manner.
Selen’s Gallery: Bamboo Barnes – Far From
These approaches are all elements which set Bamboo’s work apart from that of others, and can be found in many of her pieces. Here they combine to visually represent those memories and events which have shaped who are are now, and how we came to be who / where we are within our life (and, particularly, in our understanding of our own self). At the same time, elements of the images, combined with the 3D elements Bamboo has included in the exhibition space engage in themes of the past and present combing to shape our personal future – and that, but for decisions of the past, the idea that our life’s path might have taken a different course; the the flow of decision as much as the fluidity direct our lives.
This latter point might must clearly be suggested by the animated mosaic Bamboo presents as the landing point for the exhibition. The interconnectedness of past, present and future might also be see within those images which use repetition of images, the different colours within them underpinning the influence of past on present, and present on future (and, if we opt to extend – the manner in which the future itself informed those past actions which have brought us to where we are today.
Selen’s Gallery: Bamboo Barnes – Far From
A further beauty of Bamboo’s art is that her images can be enjoyed in their own right, as essays in style, colour, light, shade, subject and composition, each one standing entirely independently to the others around it. Thus, whether or not – like me – you opt to see an elegant artistic treatise within Far From, it offers a collection of richly engaging pieces which can each be appreciated on its own merits, making it a very worthwhile visit, and it will remain open to view through into August 2023.
Grauvik, July 2023 – click any image for full size
It was off to JimGarand’s Homestead region for me recently, after several people poked me about Jim having both joined Emm Evergarden’s The Nature Collective and opened a new setting within his region, temporarily abandoning his normal name for his settings – Grauland – in favour of Grauvik, a name suggestive of Scandinavian / Norse roots. There’s no accident in this as Grauvik offers a fictional island apparently sitting off the coast of Iceland.
As a fan of Jim’s work, I always enjoy seeing what he has produced, but learning he’d settled on an Icelandic theme I was almost immediately off to take a look: Iceland is one of the many places around the world I’ve been fortunate enough to visit, spending time in the south-west and travelling extensively around the north of Iceland (it’s no accident my primary home in Second Life is dubbed Isla Myvatn – I spent part of a very happy vacation close to the lake and the impressive lava fields of Krafla 🙂 .
Grauvik, July 2023
I’ve no idea if Jim has based his build on a specific location in Iceland; “Grauvik” appears to be a concatenation of “Grauland” and “Viking”, rather than the name of an actual place (although “vik” itself is a common place ending in Icelandic – e.g. Keflavik, Reykjavik -, which is said to mean “bay” or “inlet” or a derivative of the old Norse for “harbour”. However, I have seen mention that the little fishing village of Grenivik, nestled on the eastern side of the fjord Eyjafjordur may have served as inspiration.
I’ve no idea if this is correct, not having been able to talk to Jim directly. However, Grenivik does sit on the east side of the impressive fjord (which offers a spectacular descent down into the local airport at Akureyri, the airliner flying down and below the mountain peaks on either side of the fjord, including the 1,100 metre tall Kaldbakur beneath which Grenivik nestles), and with the island of Hrísey sitting within the fjord’s waters, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if it did play a role in helping for some of the ideas for Grauvik in Jim’s imagination.
Grauvik, July 2023
The setting certainly contains elements which are not uncommon to Iceland as a whole: the volcanic “sand” of the beach areas, the brightly-painted, wood-built houses, its rugged, flat nature (several of Iceland’s islands tend to be relatively flat, or flat-topped – with Flatey (literally “flat island”) being the obvious example); while the wooden boardwalks are mindful of those which can be found extending over various hot springs and also located in places like Thingvellir National Park – of which some parts of the walkways in Grauvik reminded me). Also like Iceland are standing stones and outbursts of modern art, short, hardy grass and heathers growing from the soil, etc.
Having mentioned Flatey Island, I’ll admit that from some angles when camming, Grauvik put me in mind of photos of various parts of that island I’ve seen (I confess I’ve not as yet visited it, although it is one of the places I would like to see whenever I make a further trip to Iceland, partly because friends have told me it’s a lovely place to visit and partly because of its connection with the Flateyjarbók, the largest medieval Icelandic manuscript and noted for bringing together the histories of notable Norse settlements.
Grauvik, July 2023
Jim’s work often includes interior designs – he’s as skilled in this area as much as he is in creating landscapes – and this is again on display within Grauvik, the little cabins carrying the look and feel of having been fitted-out as a holiday retreats, utilising the clean lines of décor and furnishing frequently found in such houses and in hotel rooms in Iceland.
This is an easygoing place to explore, again mindful of some of the nature walks common to some of the islands of Iceland as well as within the inland parks. In fact, rather than “explore” I’d suggest Grauvik is a place to meander through, perhaps reflective of the easy-going nature of many Icelanders. Touches of Norse history are awaiting discovery along the modern art, notable outside the large café / landing point building, and again over at the operating boat builder’s shed sitting on the top of what appears to be a very modern quayside which itself extends down to what might be the remnants of an older set of wooden wharves.
Grauvik, July 2023
All told, another engaging build from Jim, and a fitting addition to The Nature Collective.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld