Category: Second Life

2022 viewer release summaries week #35

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, September 4th, 2022

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 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30 – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts::
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545,  issued on August 30.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated to versions 1.30.0.15 (Stable) and 1.28.2.84 on September 3 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Seanchai Library: mysteries, sci-fi and myths in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library – and this week previews the launch of a very special event.

As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home in Nowhereville, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.

Sunday, September 4th, 13:30: Evil Under the Sun

A Seanchai Library special event at SLEA.

The are times when even Belgian ex-pat detective Hercule Poirot needs a break from his chosen vocation; so when the opportunity arises for him to enjoy a holiday in Devon at the Jolly Roger Hotel (inspired by the Burgh Island Hotel) located on a tidal island just off the south Devonshire coast, he looks forward to the chance of a little R&R. 

Evil Under the Sun – a Seanchai Library special event

Whilst at the hotel, he encounters the other guests, notably Arlena Marshall who, desire being at the hotel with her husband Kenneth and step-daughter Linda, spends a lot of her time flirting with Patrick Redfern – much to the anger of Redfern’s wife, Christine and the disgust of her step-daughter. Also among the guests is Rosamund Darnley, who was once sweethearts with Kenneth Marshall.

Trying to keep himself apart from the intrigue, Poirot finds himself drawn into the middle of things and in need of his most particular deductive skills when Arlena Marshall is found dead on the sand of a secluded cove across the little island far from the hotel; a place where she apparently had a secret assignation…

Evil Under the Sun – a Seanchai Library special event

Join David Abbott, Corwyn Allen, Gloriana Maertens, Elrik Merlin, Kayden Oconnell, and Caledonia Skytower as they commence a reading of the 23rd adventure for Agatha’s Christie’s hero, first published in 1941, within the setting of the Jolly Roger Hotel. Should you wish, you can also enjoy the hotel’s grounds and facilities, partake of a little fun – and visit the cove which proved fatal for Arlena Marshall.

Monday, September 5th, 19:00: Two Stories by Mercedes Lackey

With Gyro Muggins, reading Werehunter and Wet Wings.

Tuesday, September 6th

12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym

With music, and poetry in Ceiluradh Glen.

19:00: Howl’s Moving Castle

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl’s castle.

To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there’s far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.

Caledonia Skytower reads Diana Wynne Jones novel.

Wednesday, September 7th 19:00: Seanchai Flicks

The Seanchai cinema space plays host to videos and throw popcorn around!

Thursday, September 8th:

19:00 The Nemean Lion

With Shandon Loring.

21:00 Seanchai Late Night

With Finn Zeddmore.

2022 week #35: CCUG + TPVD meetings summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
WillowWood, July 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from:

  • My audio recording and chat log of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, September 1st 2022 at 13:00 SLT.
  • My notes and the video from the Third-Party Viewer Developer (TPVD) meeting held on Friday, September 2nd, 2002 at 13:00 SLT. The video is provided by Pantera – my thanks to her for recording it, and can be found at the end of this article. Times stamps to the video are included where relevant in the following notes.

Both meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and their dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.

This is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting and is not intended to be a full transcript.

Official Viewers Status

[TPVD video: 1:00-2:20]

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.4.574724, September 1.
    • Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.4.574727, September 1.
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.3.573877 issued August 15.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545,  issued on August 30.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.

General Viewer Notes

  • LL are likely going to be updating the Windows viewer build tools to use Visual Studio 2022.
  • This will likely be ahead of the move to use Github as the main viewer repositories, as outlined at the previous TPV Developer meeting.

Materials and PBR Work

Please also see previous CCUG meeting summaries for further background on this project.

  • Overall, the work on the viewer side of things – rendering in support of glTF 2.0 standards (and consistency of results when going from a tool like Substance Painter trough the uploader to displaying in SL)  is now “near complete”.
  • It  is hoped that it will “not be long” now before a project viewer is more generally available, although there is still additional back-end work to be completed, together with adding support for things like transparency support, ensuring PDR rendering works under linden Water, and similar.
  • Again, the focus of this work for the first pass is “core” glTF 2,0 support.
    • Ratified (under ISO) extensions may be up for inclusion in future enhancements to the capability.
    • Non-ratified extensions will not be up for inclusion in future updates.
  • In order for to be compliant with glTF, tangents are going to have to be generated in mikkTSpace, where normal maps are applied. This means that existing normal maps within Second Life / normal maps generated without using MikkTSpace may not look correct when rendered via the PBR pipe.
  • [TPVD video: 28:41-30:55]:
    • Runitai Linden noted that this project has been a valuable experiment in real-time collaboration between the LL dev and members of the community through the Discord server.
    • He expressed thanks to the TPV developers and the creators who have assisted the graphic team both in the development of the PBR rendering path and in helping with the reflections probe development, both in terms of code contributions and in helping to identify and address edge-case issues.
    • He further noted It  is hoped more projects might by run this way.

Textures: Handling

[TPVD video: 5:19-10:22]

  • Also pulled into this work are improvements to the texture handling (previously DRTVWR-559), This involves  better core utilisation and VRAM usage.
  • For Windows, this work includes an API which:
    • More accurately track texture memory use in the viewer and report it back to the client operating system.
    • Should ensure all available video memory (i.e. that not being used by other applications) on  Windows systems is used by the viewer prior to any texture paging occurring.
    • Works with both Intel and AMD hardware (the latter is important that the OpenGL extensions commonly used by TPVs to achieve a more efficient use of VRAM apparently no longer work correctly on AMD hardware).
  • For Mac OSX, the new method is to use internal accounting to attempt to track how much video memory is free and then estimate a value of available memory for textures from that.
    • This is because the operating will not simply report the amount of free video memory (only how much is installed), ruling out the use of a more scientific approach.
  • Once available in production viewers, these changes should mean those running systems with more recent video cards with decent amounts of free video memory should see much improved texture fetching and loading and see a reduction of textures being paged out to cache (the blurring / sharpening / blurring of textures) seen when the viewer thinks it is using all available / allowed video memory.
  • A further change is to specify the maximum amount of system memory the viewer can use for textures (16 GB, if available on 64-bit systems; 4GB on 32-bit systems).

Puppetry Update

Please also refer to:

Notes:

  • The discussion on puppetry mentioned in  the above articles will be the first such meeting, and if there is demand for it, there will be a similar meeting on Aditi on alternate Thursdays from September 8th onwards, to be held in the theatre on Aditi Castelet region.
  • These meetings will (initially) be very development focused rather than creator / user focused, given the overall status of the project.
  • It is advisable that attendees use the Puppetry project viewer when attending these meetings (available from the Alternate Viewers page), so that they might see any demonstration which may take place during meetings.
  • [TPVD video 12:50-14:53]:
    • It’s important to notice that what has been made available is a very early stage “alpha” release.
    • The choice of  the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system means that it should be fairly easy to write third-party code to support capture devices (e.g. from Leap Motion through to (potentially) full body trackers – something Vru Linden is already tinkering with).
    • The Thursday meetings are being established to discuss precisely these kinds of opportunities and the potential for things like multi camera support, etc.
  • [TPV video: 31:09-33:24]  Given the success of the real-tome collaboration with PBR / Reflection Probes, it is likely the Puppetry project will also follow a similar approach and utilise a Discord channel for discussion and contributions, etc., over and above the fortnightly meetings on Aditi.

TPVD In Brief

  • [TPVD video: 2:26-4:15] Inventory Updates:
    • This is something the Lab is considering, and has been looking for feedback from users on possible approaches. – see also the previous CCUG  / TPVD  meetings summary.
    • If / when this work goes ahead, it will also involve some general code and other technical tidying-up,  including:
      • Reducing the number of different AIS APIs currently in use.
      • Removing deprecating (and eventually removing) UDP messaging paths for inventory, together with outdates inventory caps (particularly as the latter are superseded.

 

Next Meetings

  • CCUG: Thursday, September 15th, 2022.
  • TPVD: Friday, September 30th, 2022.

Onceagain with black and white in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Onceagain Art Gallery: B&W Group Exhibit (l-to-r): etamae, Mariza Reifsnider, Madame Reve, Moki Yuitza,  Whiskey Monday

Currently open (for a while longer, I hope, given its debut was August 11th, 2022), at  Onceagain Art Gallery curated by Onceagain (Manoji Yachvili) is B&W Group Exhibit – the title of which pretty much speaks for itself, being an ensemble exhibition of black and white and monochrome photography featuring both Second Life landscapes and avatar studies.

And when I say ensemble, I really do mean it: a total of 24 artists have submitted at least one image for the collection. Some of those who have done so will doubtless be familiar to patrons of art in Second Life, and others may be less familiar names – although their art is no less engaging.

Onceagain Art Gallery: B&W Group Exhibit (l-to-r) :Manoji Yachvili, Zakk Bifrandt

Together they are: Apple Pippage, BlazeAme, Celestial Demon, Dane Albion, D’cuir, Etamae, Kika Yongho, Kunisaki Izumo, Lika Cameo, Nino Vita, Madame Reve, Manoji Yachvili, Mara Telling, Mariza Reifsnider, Mihalisk, Moki Yuitza, Nekonuko Nakamori, Opie, Terrygold, Scylla Rhiadra, Violette Rembrandt, Whiskey Monday, Yeya Zuta and Zakk Bifrandt.

Given this list, and breadth and depth of the images on display is impressive, with the restriction of having to remain with black and white (as the majority have, although there are a number of more monochrome pieces within the collection) adding to both the appearance and appeal of those where one is more accustomed to seeing the artist’s work in colour.

Onceagain Art Gallery: B&W Group Exhibit (l-to-r): Mara Telling, Ninoo Vita, nekonuko Nakamori

With 24 artists taking part, it is not surprising that the entire main gallery is given over to the exhibition – and in this it is especially well suited to the exhibition’s theme.  The tonal quality of the gallery and its various rooms, coupled with the local environment setting leads an almost monochromic feel to the gallery, something further enhanced by the choice of décor placed within the various rooms, which heightens the feeling that the gallery is very much a part of the exhibit, rather than merely hosting it.

A further framing for the exhibition can be found on two of the gallery’s exterior walls, which feature quotes on the power of black and white photography from Ted Grant (1929-2020) – widely regarded as the father of Canadian photojournalism -, and Robert Frank (1924-2019), whilst the layout of the gallery, with its different rooms and levels (with access to the main hall down the stairs from the landing point, or to the upper level rooms via the catwalk, then using the internal stairs to visit the lower level) prevents the exhibition from every feeling “top heavy” from the sheer volume of piece on display.

Onceagain Art Gallery: B&W Group Exhibit (l-to-r):  Terrygold, Manoji Yachivli, Violette Rembrandt and Apple pippage

As noted, I have no idea how much longer B&W Group Exhibit will remain open, so I would advise that if you should like to visit, you do so sooner rather than later, just in case!

SLurl Details

A Lavender Bay in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lavender Bay, September 2022 – click any image for full size

Shawn Shakespeare recently pointed me towards Lavender Bay, a Homestead region designed by Clifton Howlett, working with Camilla Lupono.

Cliff is formerly one of the creative hands that brought us the likes of Hidden Lake (more here), Hidden Bottle (which I wrote about here and here)  and the celebrations of the Zamonia series of books by German comic creator and author, Walter Moers, The Empire of Dreaming Books (see here and here for more). Given this heritage, I was keen to see what might be found at Lavender Bay.

Lavender Bay, September 2022

Perhaps the easiest way to convey the setting is is quote from the About Land description / introductory note card available at the Lavender Bay Landing Point:

Welcome to Lavender Bay.
A SIM inspired by the Italian Tuscany. Make yourself at home and find your new favourite photo spot.

– From the introductory note card for Lavender Bay

Lavender Bay, September 2022

From this, it’s easy to guess that Lavender Bay is a place that is easy on the eye and engaging to the camera lens.

Located on the west side of the region on a small sandy headland, the landing point provides a keen senses of the region’s core theme – as a place of relaxation : several places to sit and takes things easy lay within in a few short paces away. Also close by is a boardwalk that climbs over the rocky south extent of the the headland and the bridge spanning a narrow gorge separating the headland from the rest of the region.

Lavender Bay, September 2022

The main part of the region offers exactly what its name suggests: a richness of lavender;  some of which is being cultivated within a large field rolling away from a hilltop farm villa, some of which is growing wild lavender which climbs the remaining hills of the island, mixing its colours with wild flowers.

The easiest way to explore the region is to take the track that winds up to the villa from the bridge, and the path running down the hill from the villa, paralleling the lavender field before climbing the hill to the ruins of what might have once been the original farmhouse, from whence an old, broken cobbled path climbs the tallest hill on the island to the local windmill.

Lavender Bay, September 2022

Throughout all of this there is much to see, all of which is easy on the eye and presents multiple places to sit, relax and appreciate the region’s natural looks and beauty – and one or two places that offer the more unusual ways to sit (keep an eye out for the wooden chair being held aloft just off the coast by a single balloon.

Finished with a subtle soundscape, Lavender Bay is another place that requires little in the way of description and it speaks loudly for itself – so do be sure to hop over and appreciate it first-hand.

Lavender Bay, September 2022

SLurl Details

2022 SUG meetings week #35 summary – Puppetry

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, August 30th, 2022 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

For the most up-to-date information, please refer to the deployment forum thread.

  • On Tuesday, August 30th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were updated with simulator version 574550. This release fixes an issue with some system textures being unavailable – notably the default water map being absent, resulting in totally flat glassy water or view-transparent mode having everything look solid..
  • On Wednesday, August 31st, all simhosts on the RC channels will be updated with simulator release 574611,which includes the above fixes + additional fixes (release notes pending at the the time of writing.

Available Official Viewers

On Tuesday, August 30th:

  • The Profiles viewer, 6.6.3.574158, was updated to de facto release status.
  • The Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545, was issued – see below.

The remaining official viewers stay listed as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.3.573877 issued August 15.
    • Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.3.573920, August 15.
    • Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.3.573882, August 5.
  • Project viewers:
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.

Puppetry

See also: the official blog post Introducing Second life Puppetry.

Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”,  Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.

We are excited about Puppetry’s potential to change the way we interact inside Second Life.  For example, using a webcam to track your face and hands could allow your avatar to mimic your face animations and finger movement, or more natural positioning of the avatar’s hands and feet against in-world objects might also be possible.  Alternative hardware could be used to feed information into Second Life to animate your avatar – a game controller or mocap equipment.  There’s a lot to explore and try, and we invite the Second Life community to be involved in exploring the direction of this feature.

– from the official blog post

Note that this capability is still very much experimental / in development and is not feature-complete. Also, the following should be noted:

  • The Puppetry viewer is very much experimental,  and is required to view any puppetry animations – viewers without the supporting code will not show them.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results will take more work.
  • For further information, check out the documentation links below:

Again, please remember this is very much a “alpha” implementation of Puppetry:

  • Linden Lab is looking for feedback from the community in determining potential use cases and onward development.
  • The Lab will be hosting an open discussion on Puppetry on Thursday, September 8th, and 13:00PM SLT. This will take place at the Puppetry theatre in the Aditi  region of Castelet.

Please refer to the video for further discussion on the capability.

Update, September 1st

  • The discussion on puppetry mentioned in  the above articles will be the first such meeting, and if there is demand for it, there will be a similar meeting on Aditi on alternate Thursdays from September 8th onwards, to be held in the theatre on Aditi Castelet region.
  • These meetings will (initially) be very development focused rather than creator / user focused, given the overall status of the project.
  • It is advisable that attendees use the Puppetry project viewer when attending these meetings (available from the Alternate Viewers page), so that they might see any demonstration which may take place during meetings.