Category: Second Life

Cica’s Happy Town in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost: Happy Town, April 2023

For those who have visited and enjoyed Cica Ghost’s region-wide art installations in Second Life over the last decade plus, her build for April 2023 may well raise a sense of nostalgia and memory, whilst retaining its own originality.

Happy Town, which opened on April 7th, 2023, presents a whimsical townscape with a rather unusual feature: everything in it appears to be made of, or covered by, sewn and stitched fabrics, or has been knitted. The land sits as a patchwork quilt, buildings appear to have wall coverings which have been sewn onto them, indoors and out. Even the trees are strangely two-dimensional, their tops looking like snare drums over which green baize has been stretched and onto which flowers have been sewn, before being sat on their sides atop hemmed and sewn trunks. Even the sky appears to be a grey blanket into which the clouds have been stitched like so many patches to cover holes or tears.

Cica Ghost: Happy Town, April 2023

It is an engaging and imaginative setting, a place where only the citizens appear to be organic – and even these are not human. Instead, this is a town apparently populated by anthropomorphic cats who tend happy-go-lucky sheep, chickens and pigs whilst also working as the local mechanics. And even then, I’m not sure the sheep or chickens are actually being “kept” so much as also being local inhabitants.

True, they might for the most part be clustered in what might be taken for a central meadow, along with their barns and hen-houses whilst hemmed in (so to speak!) by a low fence with a single opening; but equally might this not also be the local park where the locals have simply come for some weekend fun? Certainly, the hi-fiving chickens seem to be having fun and the sheep – whilst possibly not related to Shawn the Sheep, look as capable as him.

Cica Ghost: Happy Town, April 2023

The buildings are a curious mix – some on the ground, others up on stilts, some as wide as they are tall, some with pipes entering or exiting them. It is here that for those of us with long memories might feel that hint of nostalgia, as there is something about Happy Town this brings forth memories of Cica’s 2014 Small Town. This is further aided by the presence of the little cars and the road winding through the town. While both are different in nature to those of Small Town, sitting in one of the cars and setting out along the road brings back memories of driving around Small Town.

As well as the car to drive (you can be sure they are roadworthy thanks to the cats looking after them!), Happy Town includes places where you can dance, places to sit, ladders to climb, and a little theatre where another memory from Cica’s past builds: one of her animated stick figures as seen in the likes of Ghostville offered as a movie to be enjoyed.

Cica Ghost: Happy Town, April 2023

Delightful and light, Happy Town will be open through April for people to enjoy.

SLurl Details

2023 week 14: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Perpetuity, February 2023 – blog post
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, April 6th, 2023 at 13:00 SLT.  These meetings are 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. They are usually chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar. Notes:
  • These meetings are conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either to make comments / ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.
  • The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.
Additional note: unfortunately, physical world matters meant I missed the initial part of the meeting, and as it is held in voice, there is little by way of chat transcript to reflect initial discussions prior to my arrival.

Official Viewer Status

On April 6th:
  • Maintenance T(ranslation) RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579154, was issued.
  • The PBR Materials / reflection probes project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.579241.
The rest of the current official viewers remain as:
  • Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance S, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
    • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.11.579238, April 4th.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

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.
  • To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
  • The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
  • 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.
    • It is currently to early to state how this might change when glTF support is expanded to include entire objects.
  • The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid):  Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
  • Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

Status

  • The viewer has been updated to maintain parity with the release viewer, and work continues to get the viewer to a position where it can move to RC status.
    • Once it does go to RC status, it is expected to remain there for “a few months”.
  • Currently, the viewer is at a point where creators who wish to make content using PBR tools such as Substance Painter can do so and work to the rule-of-thumb that if it looks the same in both Substance Painter and the glTF viewer, than all is well and good – BUT, if the SL version looks noticeably different in the viewer, then a bug report should be filed, the issue should not be worked around.
  • Getting the simulator support for glTF moved to Agni is now being considered.
  • With regards to Bakes on Mesh, glTF Materials work in a similar manner to the current materials – the result of the BoM process gets fed into the base colour (+ the emissive map) like it does with the diffuse map for materials at present.
    • This does not mean BoM is glTF materials enabled; that still requires an update to the Bake Service to support materials data.
    • Updating the Bake Service is still seen as a “high value” future project.
  • The Sun midday position of the Sun has been adjusted so that it is no longer directly overhead, but is angled to appear as it would at a latitude of around 40ºN/S in spring.
Left: the glTF viewer repositions the midday Sun so it is in similar position as it would appear in the physical world at a latitude of around 40ºN/S in the spring, as opposed to being directly overhead as seen in the image on the right. Credit: Runitai Linden
  • Automatic alpha masks are turned off in the PBR viewer, and are likely to remain this way unless a compelling reason emerges for this not to be the case. So the Develop(er) → Rendering → Automatic Alpha Masks option for deferred rendering is off (and the one for forward rendering removed, as the glTF viewer does not support forward rendering).

HDRi Sky Rendering

  • In order to  get parity with High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRi) environment maps has meant the sky as rendered on the glTF viewer is essentially HDR with added dynamic exposure. Without this change, the sky was lighting everything as if it were a “giant blue wall” rather than a bright sky.
  • This has impacted EEP (the Environment Enhancement Project, and means that the sky can look over-exposed under some settings.
  • LL is trying to zero in on a sky of sky parameters that is acceptable to most EEP settings. However, the issue is particularly noticeable for EEP settings which use “day for night” (e.g. they utilise dark sky tinting, etc., and replace the Sun texture with a planet or moon or some such, because the HDR rendering assumes that because the Sun “up”, there should be a brighter lighting used in the sky.
  • The choice here is:
    • Should the parameter be adjusted for uniformity (and some EEP settings require adjustment), or
    • Should additional control be supplied to allow additional control over the sky brightness, etc., to deal with EEP settings  where the above issues occur?
  • The problems with this second approach are that:
    • It “severely” fragment the expected colour space in the process, leaving content creators having to work with multiple lighting models (e,g. as with working with ALM on or off at present)?
    • It is akin to LL removing the ability to disable ALM in the PBR viewer and remove the older forward rendering code, only to then implement another “button” to alter the environment rendering, rather than keeping things uniform.
  • This topic has been the subject of heated debate within the Content Creation Discord channel.

In Brief

  • Priorities for graphics / content creation work after glTF Materials are currently planar mirrors and then glTF mesh imports.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, April 20th, 2023.

A Blue Finch spring in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Blue Finch, April 2023 – click any image for full size

Blue Finch is the name given to a Full private island designed by Second Life couple Grant Wade (GMi7) and Dianna Wade (DiaMi7) which has been featured in the Editor’s Picks and Nature and Parks section of the Destination Guide. A Moderate rated region, it offers a warm greeting to visitors:

Welcome to Blue Finch Ridge. Uniquely beautiful and enchanting. with a rustic warm quiet charm. Romantic hideaways but please No adult activity. Be respectful.

Blue Finch About Land description

Blue Finch, April 2023

This is a place of serene beauty, one which at the time of my visit lay caught in the colours of spring. It sits as if a part of a rugged coastline, a rocky island cut off from the surrounding hills of its brethren courtesy of the not-to-distant see having stretched its finger deep inland, flooding the lowland to surround the island, leaving it sitting within a deep inlet or bay, the main channel of which sweeps inward from the north-west.

Across the island and tucked into its south-east corner where it is sheltered by the nearby hills, sits the landing point, occupying a pier gazebo as it extends out over the water. It is here that visitors can join the local group, read about the region and offer their support towards the region’s upkeep and their appreciation of the settings or teleport directly to the event / activity areas within the region – but I obviously recommend using your pedal extremities to explore the setting – and take your time doing so.

Blue Finch, April 2023

As the About Land description notes, this is place to visit and appreciate for its beauty. Offered under a basic EEP day setting, the region is well suited to almost any daytime settings, and I hope the images here demonstration, having been taken using my default personal EEP settings.

Once across the bridge and on the island, there are numerous paths for visitors to follow, with stepping stones and bridges of various kinds ensuring the waterways cutting through the land do not hinder and path of exploration.

Blue Finch, April 2023

All of the paths lead to somewhere interesting, be it the little fishing hamlet along the south side of the island, the pottery centre up on a high plateau, the old castle that serves as the movie centre, sitting over a wide cavern forming the gateway to the north-side beach, or more directly down to the eastern beach. And this is barely scratching the surface of the region.

Throughout the region are multiple places to sit and pass the time, look-out points, the event spaces, and various public buildings where time can also be spent – my favourite being the little coffee house. And all of it is wrapped in an engaging soundscape.

Blue Finch, April 2023

However, this is not a place to be written about – it is a place that should be appreciated first-hand  – as such I’ll finish with a couple more photos and a strong recommendation you drop in and see Dianna and Wade’s work for yourself.

Blue Finch, April 2023

Blue Finch, April 2023

SLurl Details

 

2023 SL SUG meetings week #14 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Panjin, February 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, April 4th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, April 4th, the SLS Main channel servers were updated with the simulator release 579022 which adds several new LSL methods, including methods to hash strings, replace substrings, and get additional data using llGetEnv and llGetSimStats. It also cleans up some unused codepaths to make future improvements easier.
  • On Wednesday, April 5th:
    • The majority of RC simhosts will be restarted and remain on simhost 579022.
    • The Bluesteel RC channel simhosts will be updated with simulator release 579248, an update to 579022 containing a series of bug fixes and doubles the linkset data memory limit to 128KB.

Wiki entries for the above functions are still in progress.

Upcoming Simulator Releases

The next two week or so should see simulator release intended to address some long standing bugs:

  • The issue with a vehicle colliding with the avatar that was riding it on a region crossing.
  • Throttling on erroneous llReturnObjectsByOwner.
  • A number of internal bugs plus some further issues if the fixes can be completed an passed to QA.

Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, April 4th: Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version updated to version 6.6.11.579238.

The remaining viewer pipelines stand as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
  • Project viewers:
    • PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578921, March 23 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.

llReturnObjectsByOwner() and OnwerID

  • Leviathan Linden has been looking at a non-public bug, BUG-11770, regarding throttle behaviour for llReturnObjectsByOwner().
  • He has noted that if returns are too fast, it will block the owner_id, potentially indefinitely.
  • While there is a workaround – where if you try to return a different owner_id, then it will unblock the first – this is described as “not very useful” as it requires a 2-hour wait before it really has an effect, and even then might not work without a region restart.
  • Instead, Leviathan has suggested a more optimal throttle would be one that limits the rate of return if it threatens to kill the database service, but then gradually opens up again as the database catches-up with the returns requests.
  • Other suggests included:
    • Rather than llReturnObjectsByOwner() simply finding all the objects on the parcel and trying to return them all in a single operation (thus hitting the database service), the object are effective batched and returned by said batches, with a further suggestion that while this is happening, the selected objects are locked / frozen to prevent them being used / moved until returned.
      • One concern with this approach is people arriving during a return operation and witnessing objects in-world mysteriously vanishing.
    • If  BUG-8383 “Feature Request: Parcel and script options to return no-copy objects and delete copy objects” were to be implemented, it would reduce the strain on the data servers; however concern was raised that deletion of copy items could lead to lost work on sandboxes.
  • It was also suggested it would be useful if there was an LSL function to detect the amount of objects (e.g. a “llCountObjectsByOwner” function), which could compare it to the upper limit of returns, so that people could know if a return operation will fail due to the throttle before making the attempt.
  • Leviathan is taking the feedback gained to consider what can be done.

In Brief

  • The issue of Friends not correctly showing as on-line (or off-line) is receiving attention within LL, and apparently “multiple issues” have been found, which are likely to take “a bit of time to get them all fixed”.
  • Please refer to the video for the rest of the meeting discussions.

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #13

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, April 2nd, 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: Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, dated March 28, promoted March 30th.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.11.579153, March 31st.
    • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21, 2023.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

SL20B: Volunteer, exhibitor applications open

Posted on by Inara Pey

via Linden Lab

June 2023 will mark the 20th anniversary of Second Life opening to public access on Thursday, June 22nd, and running through until Sunday, July 2nd; and as we’ve all come to expect, a portion of the month will be given over to celebrations at the Second Life Birthday (SLB). On Monday, April 3rd, the Lab opened applications for exhibitors and volunteers, and both will remain open through until Sunday, May 14th, 2023, alongside of the currently open applications for the SL20B Music Fest and Performer applications.

The theme for the event is Our Fantastic Future, which the Lab describes thus:

The cornerstone of this idea is what we would define as eco-futurism including sustainability, a focus on our environment, and the next generation of our world. Some might call this science fiction, but what is science fiction except a dream for a possible future? In Second Life we build worlds. Our worlds, our way. For SL20B, we invite you to show us your worlds of the future! 

SL20B Exhibitors – Notes and Changes

In terms of Exhibitor applications, and as with recent SLB events, the Lab notes:

Your exhibit does not need to stay in theme. Share your Second Life passions with us. Your interests. Your communities. Your world! Every year we celebrate because of you, the amazing and creative Residents who have chosen to call Second Life home. What has drawn you into this world, and what keeps you here? These annual festivities are an opportunity to show us what fuels your Second Life. Let’s celebrate that together! 

This year will see a number of changes to the Birthday for exhibitors, including:

  • There will be both General and Adult rated regions available to exhibitors.
  • Exhibitor parcels will be 4096 sq m in size, with a Land Capacity of 1872 LI.
  • Exhibitors can use there parcels for more than one exhibit, with the Lab suggesting those who wish to can re-display exhibits they have created for past Birthday events if they have them available, and there will be a Birthday Reboots category at SL20B in support of this.
  • There will also be a Second Life History category for those exhibits specifically celebrating SL’s past 20 years.

There are also the usual Exhibitor rules for applicants, and these can be found on the SL20B Exhibitor Application form.

Volunteers

Volunteers for SL20B are also being sought to help with the event and festivities. In particular LL are looking for: Stage Crew to help with the performances and entertainment; Stage Hosts to help manage and maintain the flow of performances; Stage Crew Technicians to be available on an on-call basis to help with stream management / issues; and Greeters working to help welcome those visiting the Birthday and answer any questions they might have, etc.

All volunteers will be expected to attend training sessions and to commit to completing at least two hour shifts at a time, and be available for more than just one or two days during the week of festivities.

Full guidelines and requirements can be found in the SL20B Volunteer Application form.

Related Links