Category: Second Life

A trio of Kultivate art exhibitions in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kultivate Windlight Gallery, April 2023: Captainofmysoul, Veruca Tammas and Jamee Sandalwood

Now open at Kultivate Magazine’s Windlight and The Loft Galleries are a trio of exhibitions, one of which recently opened, the others of of which have been open a while (and so may be coming to an end – be warned).

The newer of the exhibitions is an ensemble selection of art waiting to be found in the ground floor level of the Windlight Gallery within its main hall. As always with the Kultivate ensemble exhibitions, it features a rich cross-section of artistic styles, with a focus on Second Life-derived landscape art.

Kultivate  Windlight Gallery, April 2023: Angel Heartsong

The participating artists comprise captainofmysoul, Sheba Blitz, Angel Heartsong, Johannes Huntsman, Jamee Sandalwood, Hannah Starlight and Veruca Tammas. Of these, Angel Heartsong offers an engaging series of images of Jade Koltai’s Panjin region, a place I wrote about in A Red Beach in Second Life. With little (or very light) post-processing, these are images which perfectly capture the spirit of the region.

Along the wing of the ground floor between the staircase is a second exhibition, with works mixing Second Life landscapes with avatar studies. This features the work of Pam Astonia, Reya Darkstone, Jesse Janick, Vaness Jane, Anouk Lefavre, Kalina Sands, and Jamee Sandalwood (again). Tempest Rosca Huntsman is also listed, but at the time of my visit was not displaying within the group.

Kultivate  Windlight Gallery: Reya Darkstone and Anouk Lefavre

Upstairs, meanwhile, and spanning both arms of the gallery’s mezzanine level which forms The Loft Gallery, is a richly engaging exhibition of single-frame stories by Myra Wildmist.

Always an evocative artist,  Myra is a regular exhibitor at Kultivate, and never fails to engage the eye and mind. Within this selection of art – which has been open since at least early March, she offers a series introspective pieces mixing monochrome and colour to present what might be seen as both a potentially personal series of images that reflect moods and emotions which are simultaneously recognisable and understandable as they all reflect feelings and dispositions we have all experienced for ourselves.

Kultivate  The Loft Gallery, April 2023: Myra Wildmist

With their rich cross-section of art and technique, these three exhibitions, housed within a single space, make for a rewards visit.

SLurl Details

2023 week 13: SL CCUG meeting summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Celestial Glade, 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, March 30th, 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 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 March 30th, the Maintenance R viewer, version 6.6.10.579060, was promoted to de facto release status.
  • On March 31st, the  Maintenance S RC viewer updated to version 6.6.11.579153, bringing it to parity with the above release viewer.
The rest of the current official viewers remain as:
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21, 2023.
  • 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.

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 is still being progressed, and will likely update to keep in line with the current release viewer.
    • There is still a bug with glow which needs to be addressed, but this is not seen as a significant issue in terms of fixing.
  • Information in support of PBR materials and reflection probes is in development. This includes new wiki pages and – at least for reflection probes, if not both, new tutorial videos.
    • A very much Work In Progress version of the wiki information can be found in: PBR Materials.
  • The methodology for modifying PBR materials via script is to have the materials contained within glTF assets which can be stored in inventory (containing an LLSD header and glTF JSON, with the texture / material UUID stored in the image URI field), with LSL APIs used to modify the parameters within the glTF file.
    • Manual modification of the parameters can be done via the viewer UI in a similar manner to manipulating textures, etc., currently offered by the viewer.
    • The LSL APIs will work in a similar manner to functions such as llSetPrimPratams, etc. The only thing that cannot be changed in is actual image data.
  • For testing, it was noted the “local materials” should allow Materials to be tested directly from a user’s computer in a similar manner to local textures (and only visible in that user’s world view), which dynamic updating of the materials in the session as they are locally modified.

In Brief

  • Requests have been made for a more visual coding capability in SL to help those who are not programmers  / scripters, with the likes of capabilities similar to Blueprints in Unreal Engine. While such tools as the latter are acknowledged as being useful for putting snippets of code together, the notion of a visual coding system is seen by LL as potentially cumbersome for the results they would garner.
  • A very general discussion on games in SL.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday, April 6th, 2023.

A Small Town Green returns to Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Small Town Green, March 2023 – click any image for full size

Shawn Shakespeare pointed out to me that, after a extended absence from Second Life, Small Town Green is once again open for visitors to appreciate.  This being the case I recently jumped over to take a look.

The work of Mido Littlepaws, Small Town Green (or Small Town, if you prefer) is a place which has featured in these pages a number of times in the pas. My very first visit being almost a decade ago (!) in the summer of 2013 – although I didn’t actually write about it until winter of that year. Further visits followed through until 2016, when the Mido halted her builds for a while, although Small Town Green re-appeared in 2019, which marked the last time I wrote about it.

Small Town Green, March 2023

To be honest, I have no idea if Mido has has iterations of Small Town Green between then and now, but I’m happy that I’ve been able to rediscover it thanks to the nudge from Shawn; Mido has a way of building highly attractive region settings which are fun to explore, with this one taking the form of two islands, hugged in the arms of surroundings hills.

The largest of these two islands has the landing point located on it, sitting on a curled tongue of land holding within it a small, round bay open to the outer waters on one side, where a wrought iron and wood bridge arches over a narrow neck of water. This curling spit of land touched the ruler-like wall of a raised tramway, itself separating the land from a pair of wooden piers, one of which offers the opportunity to take a kayak out onto the water – possibly the easiest way to reach the second (and smaller) island.

Small Town Green, March 2023

I admit that I initially took the smaller island to be a private home whilst initially exploring, and so didn’t pay it too much attention. However, it appears to be open to the public if you do opt to paddle over to it, and despite what looks like a little bit of unfinished landscaping, it presents a charming bath house reached along a lantern lit path overseen by a bamboo copse and bamboo fencing.

Back on the main island, a path follows the curve of the landing point’s tongue of land, offering two directions of exploration. The first runs west and then north, passing through a little field of brightly coloured flowers and past a ruined house with little places to sit and relax, and thence over the little bridge mentioned above. Eastwards, the path also swings to the north after a short walk, passing between tramway and an expanse of nanohana to offer a choice of two further routes.

Small Town Green, March 2023

The first is a grassy trail running between trees and sheltered by their boughs, and the second a waterfront boardwalk arcing around the bay’s inner shore and under the outstretched arms of sakura trees which have sprinkled their blossoms on the waters. Both of these routes recombine at a set of steps leading up to the arched gateway of a little town sitting on the north side of the island, the path linking with the one from the little bridge in the process, the two thus forming a looped a walk around the little inlet.

The little town carries with it a very western sensibility, comprising two cobbled streets that cross one another and are marked at their extremes by arched gateways under which the cobbles pass and end. Two pubs vie for attention at point the two roads cross one another to form an erstwhile town square, the signs of the hostelries staring at one another from opposite diagonals, possibly seeing who will blink first. They share the streets with a mix of business places, some backed by what might be townhouses. 

Small Town Green, March 2023
The majority of the builds here are, admittedly, shells, with the exception of two places of refreshment. The first is Murphy’s Old Ale House as it looks across the square at its rival. It boasts a cosy interior, complete with a little furnished apartment over it, reached by a separate doorway. Just down the street and alongside the steps connecting town to aforementioned looping paths, sits the Café Expresso 

Throughout all of this, there are numerous places where visitors can sit and pass the time during a visit, and it would be remiss of me not to suggest viewing the setting under its intended EEP settings (World → Environment → make sure Use Shared Environment is checked). It really gives this iteration of Small Town an extra sense of depth and romance.

Small Town Green, March 2023

SLurl Details

Scripted Agent Access control for Second Life regions

Posted on by Inara Pey

via Linden Lab

Updated: Yay! between drafting this, having dinner and coming back and publishing, LL have updated the Scripted Agent Policy – see: Linden Lab Official:Scripted Agent Policy. There is also a discussion thread on the forum.

Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 saw the Scripted Agent Access control – also known as “Ban the Bots” update – became a grid-wide capability in Second Life.

Designed as a means to provide estate / region holders with the ability to prevent unwanted scripted agents (“bots”) from accessing their regions. It is a response to increasing concerns over the use of scripted agents to gather data – including user data – from across the grid and send it for processing / viewing outside of the Second Life.

It is an issue most recently brought to the fore by the BonnieBots system (see these locked forum threads: Has anyone else noticed the B[xxxx] accounts? ; Sorry. This is not OK. B bots profile scraping and Questions for the Lindens), and the new control was first mentioned as a coming feature during a March 2023 Lab Gab session (see: Lab Gab summary: Grumpity, Mojo &; Patch – SL Mobile, land, bots & more – Bots and Policies).

The following is quick overview of the functionality as it is now – full information can be found in the Scripted Agent Estate Access FAQ from Linden Lab.

How does it Work?

Currently, the Scripted Agents Access control uses an estate-wide flag called deny_bots, which for most viewers is currently accessible as a Debug Console setting, although a viewer UI update is available in the most recent official RC viewers found on the Alternate Viewers page, and will eventually be coming to the official release viewer and TPVs as they adopt it.

  • When ON, the flag prevents any properly indicated Scripted Agents from accessing a region. The only exceptions being:
    • Those listed on the region’s access list.
    • Scripted Agents specifically granted Estate Manager privileges.
  • It is region / estate wide, meaning it cannot be set at / excepted from individual parcels within a region.
  • When the the flag is OFF, all Scripted Agents are treated the same as any other avatar with regard to estate access.

Setting the Flag

The flag can be set in one of two ways: via the Region Debug Console or (for those viewers that have the update) via World Region / Estate (CTRL-R).

Via the Region Debug Console

  • If you do not have the Develop(er) menu option displayed, reveal it in one of the following ways::
    • Go to Advanced → Show Developer Menu.
    • Press CTRL-ALT-Q.
    • Go to Preferences → Advanced Show → check Show Developer Menu.
  • With the Develop(er) menu displayed, either:
    • Select Consoles → Region Debug Console from the menu, or:
    • Press CTRL-SHIFT-`
  • The Region Debug Console floater window will open; in the input field at the bottom of the console, type:

set deny_bots TRUE

  • Press ENTER. If the command is accepted, the floater will echo:

estate setting deny_bots = on.

  • If the console fails to echo for some reason, type the following and press ENTER:

get deny_bots.

  • The console floater should respond with the Estate setting message, above.
  • If you do not have permission to set the flag, the console will respond:

unknown or unauthorized parameter “deny_bots”

Left: the Region Debug Console, showing the deny_bots command options. Right: denying scripted agents option within the Region / Estate floater (when available in all viewers. Images via Linden Lab

Via the Region / Estate Floater

Again, note that this option is currently being rolled-out on Linden Lab RC viewers, and may take time to reach all third-party viewers (TPVs).

  • Type CTRL-R to display the Estate / Region floater.
  • Click on the Estate tab to open it, if required.
  • Look for the option Must Not Be A Scripted Agent, and click the check box to mark it.
    • If there is no such option, use the Region Debug Console option, as described above.
  • Click Apply.
  • Close the Region / Estate floater.

Additional Notes

  • If your estate has multiple regions, it may take time for the setting of the deny_bots flag to propagate out to all of them.
    • If a region does not appear to update with the flag being set, try restarting it, this should force the update.
    • If you have attempted to set deny_bots with the region console but the region continues to fail to reflect the change, please contact support.
    • If you get the error message “Estate already allows bot access, no change”, please try restarting the region, and then toggle deny_bots again. If you’re still having trouble after restarting, please contact support.
  • Note that the flag only applies to registered Scripted Agents (and all bots should be properly registered as such via the account’s Scripted Agent Status page on the account dashboard); it will not prevent unregistered bots accessing a region / estate. However:
    • It is a violation of the Second Life Bot Policy for anyone to operate a bot or bots which are not so identified. Failure to do so on the part of a bot operator can result in an account suspension.
    • If you have set the deny_bots flag, but believe your region is being repeatedly visited by an unregistered Scripted Agent, file an abuse report under the Disturbing the Peace category with the scripted agent’s name, where (region name) and when (date / time) it was seen.

Stories and colours in art in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

PsyGallery, March 2023: Deyanira Yalin

A recent visit took me to Psygallery, operated and curated by Twister Grut, for a couple of small exhibitions by two well-known Second Life artists: Ilyra Chardin and Deyanira Yalin which, while individual in content, do compliment one another quite nicely.

Located in the lower level hall facing the landing point, Ilyra presents Once Upon a Where, a selection of her original paintings reproduced in-world. This comprises a series of nine images located around a central sculpture – Time in a Bottle -, which nicely encapsulates the central theme of the exhibition: fairy tales, stories and flights of the imagination.

PsyGallery, March 2023: Ilyra Chardin

The images are all mixed digital media finished in the style of paintings, eight of which plumb the depths of visual storytelling to great effect, with the ninth forms a superb life study of a coastal bird bearing the title Not All Who Wander Are Lost, which. The latter, depending on your perspective, might call to mind Tolkien, Shakespeare or perhaps Lana Del Rey. Whichever might come to mind, there is no denying that the title fits the images perfectly allowing the imagination to take flight – if you will – in thoughts of the subject’s life on the wing, and where it might have journeyed from and journey onwards to.

Accessed via the teleport board is Col-or-ing, a series of vividly striking images by Deyanira Yalin. This is a richly diverse selection of pieces all joined one to another by equally vivid narrative content as well as their sheer beauty. As with Once Upon a Where in the gallery space below, the eleven images are framed around a central sculpture by Deyanira, a piece as rich in colour, and with a life and motion which matches the vitality of the digital paintings.

PsyGallery, March 2023: Deyanira Yalin

The latter – as is all of Deyanira’s art – are immediately captivating in tone, content and style. Each speaks to its narrative equally as strongly  the next, but I confess I was very much drawn to Africa, Lady Under a Red Moon, and In My Room – the latter very cleverly bringing a certain literal interpretation of the old metaphorical idiom about elephants and rooms in a most delightful manner. Africa, meanwhile, caught my eye as an expression not just of natural beauty, but a beauty encompassing the whole of the temperate African continent.

That said, all eleven pieces within Col-or-ing are attractive and engaging, the stories waiting within them  – as noted above – joining this exhibition with Ilyra’s as eye-catching expression of storytelling through art.

PsyGallery, March 2023: Ilyra Chardin

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #13 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

WQNC, January 2023 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, March 28th, 2023 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, March 28th, the SLS Main channel servers received the Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”).
  • On Wednesday March 29th, all simhosts on the RC channels will be updated to run the same simulator release, comprising the new LSL Functions llList2ListSlice, llSortListStrided, and llListFindListStrided (per BUG-231545). It also has a fix for DATA_SIM_STATUS from llRequestSimulatorData(), and doubles the amount of memory available for Linkset Data (LSD) to 128k.

Estate Level Scripted Agent Controls (aka “Ban the Bots”)

This is the simulator update referenced in the March 10th Lab Gab session – see: Lab Gab summary: Grumpity, Mojo & Patch – SL Mobile, land, bots & more – Bots and Policies).

  • The update includes a console variable that can be set by estate managers to either True or False. When set to True it will prevent Scripted Agents from entering regions in an estate (those required by the estate can be added to the access list so they can continue to access regions).
  • This will be supported in time by a viewer UI update to allow the option to be managed more directly – but it will still be a while before this UI change surfaces in the viewer.
  • There will be a policy change update published soon which will further cover these changes and the operation of Scripted Agents.

Further changes have been suggested within the Lab – notably to traffic – but it has yet to be decided on whether / when these will be implemented. In the meantime, please also refer to this FAQ.

Viewer Updates

On Tuesday, March 28th:

The remain viewer pipelines stand as:

  • Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
  • 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 6.6.10.578270, issued February 24.
    • Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21, 2023.
  • 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.

Reminder: LSL XML-RPC

Linden Lab is going to be shutting down LSL XML-RPC functionality completely. This was announced at the last SUG meeting, and confirmed by a later blog post. Please see either Shutting Down LSL XML-RPC (Linden Lab) or SL Scripters / creators: LSL XML-RPC shut-down (this blog) for details.

In Brief

  • This was another meeting with live music, so technical discussions were not up to the usual amount.
  • There was a general discussion on testing vehicle region crossings and on the deployment of the LSL functions currently being deployed and mentioned above. Please refer to the video for details.