Category: Second Life

2025 Week #30 Project Zero User Group Meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab
The following notes were taken from the Thursday, July 24th 2025 Project Zero User Group (PZUG) meeting.

  • They are based on the official video of the meeting (embedded below) + my chat log.
  • They should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting.
Table of Contents

Meeting Purpose

  • The Project Zero User Group provides a platform  for open discussion about Project Zero, the cloud-streamed version of the Second Life Viewer. Topics can range from sharing the goals for Project Zero, demoing the current experience, and gathering feedback to help shape the future of cloud access for Second Life.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • The second and fourth Thursday of every month at 13:00 noon SLT.
    • In Voice and text.
    • At the Hippotropolis Campsite.
  • 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.

Resources

Recent Updates

[Video: 0:00-7:48; initially no sound on the video, as local chat is being used]

  • LL continue to experiment with sending some new users accessing SL via Project Zero to different start locations.
    • Part of July saw these users directed to the sandbox of the Welcome Hub; currently, they are being directed to Ahern.
    • LL is paying attention to what new users do when they get there and how likely they are to come back.
    • There is an intentional move to avoid traditional tutorial zones with these users, primarily because these tutorial areas are focused on the Desktop viewer, and Project Zero, within its emerging UI is starting to differ from the Desktop viewer.
      • There may in the future be a tutorial area designed specifically for Project Zero.
    • Suggestions for other locations new users could be sent to were sought.
  • Work is being carried out to move Project Zero’s Go menu to a sidebar within the browser window, so it operates in a similar manner to the Avatar Picker.
    • The number of available locations on the Go menu may also be expanded to more than three choices.
  • A focus remains on helping new users how to better understand avatar customisation and making new avatars.
  • A further focus is the development of a new web-based (presumably React / HTML5, as has been previously discussed) UI for Project Zero. This is designed to be a simplified UI specifically aimed at encouraging new users to give SL a try.

General Discussion

  • The general discussion revolved in part around further questions of a similar nature asked of users in the July Web User Group meeting. previous meeting: what was your first purchase; have you ever used a complete avatar; what originally brought you to Second Life; why did people say; were the first things you obtained in SL purchased or free; how did people obtain their first Linden Dollars (purchased, camping, etc), etc.
    • Obviously the responses were mixed, and mostly given in text chat.
    • his being the case, please refer to the video.

Date of Next Meeting

Essence of a Man in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Gallery Björk

Just over a year ago, I wrote about Venus by the Water, a Homestead region designed by Elizabeth (ElizabethNantes) and Cecilia Nansen. It featured a captivating setting, as I described in A Venus by the Water in Second Life, one which included the Gallery Björk.

Sadly, Venus by the Water has since closed, but Gallery Björk continues within a skybox location and featuring a new, light and expansive building sitting on a sandy island offering views on all sides out over open waters. Given the building appears to have been designed as a residential structure rather than a gallery / commercial structure, it’s an interesting choice for a venue – one that works well.

Gallery Björk, July 2025 – Essence of a Man

My visit was to see Essence of a Man, an exhibition organised by Cecilia and Elizabeth and featuring an ensemble gathering of pieces by male artist-photographers, which Cecilia describes thus:

We have asked a group of 11 men to create a black and white image depicting their personal interpretation of “the essence of a man”.

The 11 invited artists, who each submitted a single image, are: “Aegean”, “A. Salvatore”, Ayden Huntsman , Creep Wolff, Klint Kord, LordDylan Ansaldo , “Pedro”, “PK”, Shad Whybrow, “The Base Of Bad Ideas”, and Titus Palmira (quotes used against some names, as the gallery only appears to reference display names, making positive identification of the artists difficult).

Gallery Björk, July 2025 – Essence of a Man

Individual pieces are to be found throughout the rooms of the lower floor of the gallery and are placed such there no more than two in a given space – hallway or room –, allowing each piece to be appreciated without distraction as one meanders through the gallery.

While each is highly individual, almost without exception, the majority of the pieces focus on “alphaness” – buffness, muscle and bare chests – as representative of the male essence. Outside of Vulnerability and Strength by Pedro (note the way the guitar is being held as if shielding its owner), there is very little display of the softer, more vulnerable, aspects of the male nature.

Gallery Björk, July 2025 – Essence of a Man

I say this not as a critique of any of the pieces or the artists, rather – and allowing for the fact that such a direction might have been implied as a part of the invite to participate – that I find it interesting. Perhaps it is a reflection of the core difference between how men and women see as defining characteristics within their respective genders. Either way, each of the pieces is fully deserving of consideration in its own right, and all of which makes Essence of a Man any engaging and provocative / evocative exhibition; one well worth viewing.

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Within the Elvenwood in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Elvenwood, July 2025 – click any image for full size

Following my recent return to The Wylde to catch-up on more recent development there at the request of region holder Jazaar Silvermoon (Jazaar Heartsong) – see: Back to the Wylde and time in a Nightgarden in Second Life –, I received a further invitation from Jazaar to visit another of her Full region designs, that of The Elvenwood.

Occupying a Full private region leveraging the Land Capacity bonus, the region is a seamless blending of what might be seen as four somewhat different settings, all equally available from the Landing Point.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

To the west and north-west respectively, lay Delfai and Enoshima, both reached via the same stepping stone path and initial bridge as it spans the gorge separating Delfai from the landing Point. Comprising ruins and a large bathhouse, Delfai carries with it a Greco-Roman styling.

Delfai obviously suggests Delphi and the oracle Pythia, and the ruins appear to be the remnants of a temple in Pythia’s honour – a large statue of the oracle still standing within them, complete with offering on the dais before her. The path from the bridge meanders through a small walled garden area more suggestive of Italian / Roman heritage in order to reach the ruins. From there, steps climb up a short rise to allow the path to make its way on to the bathhouse.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

Located just above a large, open-sided pavilion possibly of ancient Greek design, and with a large terrace to one side of the main entrance, the bathhouse perhaps leans more towards a Roman design than Greek. Dancing can be enjoyed on the terrace, and steps lead down the side of the cliff to further remnants of a structure at at the water’s edge as the channel separates Delfai from Elvenwood.

Reached via a bridge spanning the channel between it and Delfai, Enoshima offers – as the name might suggest – a strong Japanese theme. It sits on an island in the north-west corner of the region, with gardens featuring water and Zen elements. Home to two large buildings, one of which offers a quiet, almost meditative retreat, Enoshima is, like Delfai, neatly self-contained and offers a lot to see in its own right, its paths and boardwalks encouraging exploration.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

The two largest elements of the setting are Elvendell and the Fairy Forest. Sitting to the south, Elvendell actually encompasses the region’s Landing Point, together with the Elvenwood.

Backed by high hills along part of the region’s southern side, Elvendell is perhaps liable to stir some thoughts of Tolkien and Imladris whilst having its own unique styling. The large house sits above the waters of what is clearly an artificial lake, its halls and rooms offering places to sit while its terraces offer open walks and dancing.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

Close by sit a council chamber and stairs providing access to a path rising to the highest point in the region rising to a temple-like structure mixing eleven and classic elements.  Guarded by miniature versions of the Gates of Argonath – the giant statues carved in the likenesses of Isildur and Anárion – this temple sits within its own plateau garden and offers another retreat.

The plateau hides a secret. To find it, look for the gates beyond the council chamber and the wooden pavilion to which they provide access. You should be able to find your way from there. The Elvenwood, meanwhile, lies below the eastern side of the hills of Elvendell, and offers its own routes of exploration. These should be followed carefully, as they also can reveal places otherwise hidden from casual view.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

Occupying the north and east of the region the Fairy Forest offers its own mix of beauty and expression, with tall towers rising into the sky, a wizard’s house, gardens and statues, and meandering paths. Again, time should be taken in exploring in order to reveal all the secrets – including how to reach the little island nestled into the south-east corner of the region between both the Fairy Forest and the Elvenwood without resorting to flying or getting your feet wet.

The beauty of this region lies not only in the way it has been built, but in the care Jazaar has taken to ensure that everything flows together naturally and fully, despite the many different (and what otherwise might be considered contradictory elements – Japanese, Greco-Roman, fantasy…) styles within it. This means that rather than being a set of four vignettes in and of themselves, Elvendell/Elvenwood, the Fairy Forest, Enoshima and Delfai very much flow together as a whole. Even the choice of bridge styles to link the different aspects of the region together simply adds to their sense of wholeness.

The Elvenwood, July 2025

Finished with both an over-arching EEP setting and the considered use of ambient sounds, Elvenwood really is a visual feast, with far more to see and appreciate than I’ve mentioned here. And if you’re interested in shopping, Jazaar’s can be reached via the teleport disk at the Landing Point.

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2025 week #30: SL SUG meeting

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lavender Springs, May 2025 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting (“off week”). They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. The notes were taken from my chat log of the meeting  – no video this week.

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):
    • Every other Tuesday from July 8th, 2025, at 12:00 noon SLT.
    • In text (no Voice).
    • 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.
  • The term “off week” is used to describe meetings held by Leviathan Linden on those weeks when a “full” Simulator User Group meeting is not scheduled to be held.

Simulator Deployments

  • There are no planned deployments to any channels this week, only restarts. Although the Main channel apparently had some issues on Tuesday July 22nd, leading to multi restarts for some regions.

In Brief.

  • Rider Linden is working on a few new script features that the moles need for an upcoming project. These mostly deal with land and being able to transfer or sell land using a script.
  • Pepper Linden has been working on a re-write of LL’s Conductor service, and is currently wrapping this up as it goes through QA. The Conductor service is responsible for placing regions onto servers, and the re-write is designed to allow the team responsible to more optimally place regions and prevent things like ‘hot-spots’ (e.g. one region on a host using more resources than it should and starving other regions of CPU time).
  •  Signal Linden is working on number of projects:
    • Making “shovel-ready” tasks for open source contributors. This includes: bringing back legacy search; implementing drag-and-drop uploads; resizing large textures before uploading; etc.
    • Looking at bounty/reward platforms for compensating people for working on initiatives LL hasn’t got much traction on.
    • Getting budget approval for taking SLua to production and merging some “nice small fix-up PRs” on the LSL-definitions repo.
  • The idea in having a series of defined tasks for contributors is to have more people contributing upstream to the viewer and providing “ready to go” code and thus free the Lab’s core viewer team to focus on larger viewer projects.
  • Having the ability to replace mesh / prim HUDs with something more suitable was discussed. One suggestion has been the development of an HTML5/CSS/JS solution of some sort. However, this would require quite a bit of both viewer and server work; as such, a proof of concept from the community would go a long way towards getting some server attention on it.
    • Some concerns were raised about this leading to people having to connect to unknown external websites.
    • Another suggestion was for a  small mobile subset of SVG within SL, although this is a potential awkward solution as it doesn’t allow thing like buttons lighting up on HUDS when moused-over.
    • This led to a discussion on options (HYML5, SVG, some form of modal system built-into the viewer, using MOAP / CSS, with various opinions being expressed.
  • glTF mech import:
    • As reported in my CCUG meeting notes, this is to go to “beta” with the next viewer update.
    • Full glTF scene import is regarded as “seriously deprioritised”, with Signal Linden expressing a preference for keeping it so until it can be implemented server-side.
    • There s a report that a change in the glTF uploader broke the glTF scene rendering. no further details available.
  • The plan to replace the SL Wiki (powered by Media Wiki) with a new documentation platform was discussed (see:  Modern Documentation Platform: docs.secondlife.com).
  • As of the next official meeting, the Simulator User Group will be at a new location (still TBC at the time of writing). What this should look like was a source of extended discussion, as was whether or not Simon Linden’s home (the meeting place until now) should be left intact or destroyed (“destroyed” won that part of the discussion).

Date of Next Meeting

† 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.

Seeing without Seeing in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Kondor Art Centre, July 2025: Angelika Corral – Seeing Without Seeing

In Japanese culture, names often convey profound meanings through kanji characters. One such concept conveyed by kanji is that of ‘hidden’, signifying mystery and secrecy, adding depth to a name. While I am no expert and am open to correction, I believe one such kanji is Inoru (“hidden”), which lends itself to a number of potential meanings in combination with other kanji, such that it might be used to form ideas such as hidden one, hidden village, hidden flower, and so on.

Another kanji is 祕, which can be taken as ‘secret’, ‘hidden’ and / or ‘conceal’, and at the Kondor Art Centre, Angelika Corral uses this Kanji as the focal point for what is a simply marvellous exhibition of black and white photography with a strong lean towards chiaroscuro, entitled Seeing Without Seeing.

Kondor Art Centre, July 2025: Angelika Corral – Seeing Without Seeing

Angelika has deep roots within the Second Life arts community as both as a curator of art and as a photographer. In the former role, she was a co-creator and operator of DaphneArts, in its time one of the foremost Second Life galleries in presenting exhibitions both ensemble and singular, which explored complex and rich themes.

As a photographer, Angelika works primarily in black-and-white, focusing on avatar studies noted for their depth and introspection, whilst carrying a richness of artistic technique and classic photography. Such is her skill, in 2022, she won Flickr/SmugMug’s World Photography Day award in the virtual photography category for I’m not just what you see, an award highlighting both her ability to craft compelling visual narratives within virtual environments and the validity of such environments as a vehicle for artistic expression.

Kondor Art Centre, July 2025: Angelika Corral – Seeing Without Seeing

The title of that winning piece actually resonates with the theme for Seeing Without Seeing, which Angelika describes thus:

This series is an invitation into the quiet … These images do not shout. They whisper. They leave space. They suggest rather than explain.
Inspired by traditional Japanese principles, these images aim to slow the act of looking. They are meant to be lingered [upon]. The subtle textures, partial forms, and quiet moments ask: what might lie just beyond the visible?

– Angelika Corral

Thus, within the images on offer, we are asked to look beyond the partial (and in places fragmented) nature of individual photographs and consider the nuances of framing, cropping, lighting and pose, and allow each piece and see what lies beyond, not what is presented in an of itself. To allow each each picture to talk to us in its own voice and listen to whatever narrative – or narratives – it might suggest.

Kondor Art Centre, July 2025: Angelika Corral – Seeing Without Seeing

Given the above, I am not going to offer my own interpretations here, but simply recommend Seeing Without Seeing to your own eyes. Just be sure to look closely and listen to what each piece might decide to whisper.

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A windswept Bella’s Lullaby in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Bella’s Lullaby, July 2025 – click any image for full size

It’s been a year since I last visited Bella’s Lullaby, the homestead region design series by Bella (BellaSwan Blackheart). It is one of several of Bella’s designs I’ve always enjoyed visiting, presenting as it does various pastoral and rural setting for people to enjoy.

At the time of my last visit (see: Bella’s summer Lullaby in Second Life) it presented a varied landscape, surrounded my mountains and suggestive of somewhere in Norway (perhaps). Prior to that, in February 2024, the region lay as a windswept island setting, the location of a modest homestead and watched over by a squat lighthouse (see: A return to Bella’s Lullaby in Second Life).

Bella’s Lullaby, July 2025
Welcome to Bella’s Lullaby where the vast, rugged landscapes stretch as far as the eye can see and nature’s beauty unfolds in every direction. The wide-open spaces invite you to breathe deeply and soak in the serenity that surrounds you.

– Bella’s Lullaby About Land description

It is to this latter theme that the region has returned for summer 2025. Which is not to say the current iteration is in any way a simple rehash of the February 2024 design; whilst similar in nature, there are sufficient enough differences between the February 2024 and July 2025 designs to allow the imagination to suggest that both are separate but perhaps within the same group of islands.

Bella’s Lullaby, July 2025 – click any image for full size

Where these island might lie is a matter for you imagination. For me, the setting has always struck me as being somewhere off the coast of Scotland, perhaps among the inner islands there. Or of not, then perhaps tucked away somewhere along Europe’s Wadden or Baltic Sea coastlines. The land is low, devoid of trees, but with a soil rich enough to hold wild grass on which goats and horse might graze, and patches of wild flowers.

Wherever it might lie, this particular island is popular with birds; they are to be found throughout on rooftops, tables, fence posts, circling the lighthouse and elsewhere. Perhaps the island is along a migratory or feeding path; perhaps the bird were carried here by the wind – or perhaps they are keeping and eye on things.

Bella’s Lullaby, July 2025

Scattered across the island area number of cabins and shacks, some with strong suggestions of homeliness on the outside, but few furnished within (which is also not to say they are empty shells). Together they present the idea of a rugged settlement, the fires within offering warmth in the face of the cold winds which doubtless make their presence felt across the island.

As well as being watched over by birds, the island is home to roaming horses and goats, and someone is also raising chickens. Also spread across the setting are places to sit and pass the time.

Bella’s Lullaby, July 2025

Rugged and caught under what might be a late evening sky, or one seen just before first full light of the rising Sun, Bella’s Lullaby remains an engaging, photogenic visit.

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