Category: Second Life

An Inner Bloom of art in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner Bloom
Update, June 27th, 2022: Art Korner has Closed.

Say it with flowers is a banner line perhaps most recognisable from adverts for Interflora, the global flower delivery service. It is said to be a slogan crafted by ad man Patrick O’Keefe in 1917 on behalf of the Society of American Florists. It was a recognition of the fact that floriography – the  means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers that has been a common practice across many cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe – had soared to new heights of popularity throughout Victorian Britain and the United States.

Most usually we associate the use of flowers as a means of shared communication of feelings. We give flowers as an expression of love / desire or as a means of communicating shared sympathy / commiseration / commemoration, or of a united joy / shared happiness, and so on.

However, such is the versatility of flowers that they can be used as a means of personal expression and narrative – and this is beautifully demonstrated in Inner Bloom, a remarkable exhibition of photography by Ms. Squeeeze (Squeeeze), which opened at Frank Atisso’s Art Korner on May 27th, 2022.

Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner Bloom

Comprising 17 images spread through a single exhibition hall carefully crafted into three individual areas, Inner Bloom uses flowers to communicate moods, stories and feelings that may be highly individual to the artist, but are richly recognisable to the observer.

Separated by phantom translucent walls, the three spaces making up the exhibition are marvellously graduated in their presentation, the first section offering pieces largely slanted toward monochrome with just soft hints of colour, progressing to images where the colour is more prominent, to those with a depth of colour that contrasts strongly with those in the first section.

At the same time, the style of the images grades through the three sections, from a heavy, but controlled use of shadow and silhouette through to backdrops that provide clarity of image and lighting that more readily reveals expressions, whilst shadow and tone are used to draw specific attention and focus.

Art Korner: Ms Sqeeeze – Inner Bloom

By presenting the images in this manner, together with the changing colours of the flowers that form the “carpets” of the display areas, we are imbued with a sense of shifting moods and thoughts, and our imaginations are drawn to different narrative themes in progressing through the exhibition.

Evocative, rich in interpretation and artistic expression, Inner Bloom should be viewed using the supplied environment setting (World → Environment → Use Shared Environment), and with Advanced Lighting Model enabled.

SLurl Details

Second Pride 2022: a pocket guide to the celebrations

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Pride, June 2022

SL Pride, the event celebrating diversity organised by and on behalf of Second Life’s LGBTQ+ community officially opened on Friday, June 3rd, 2022 and runs through until Sunday, June 12th, 2022.

With entertainment and activities throughout the event, 2022 is a special year for Second Pride, marking as it does the event’s 15th year.

You are … Unmovable, Unstoppable, Unbreakable

– Second Pride 2022 Theme

Second Pride, June 2022 – Stonewall Inn

Funds raised at this year’s even will benefit:

ILGA Europe: an independent, international non-governmental umbrella organisation bringing together over 600 organisations from 54 countries in Europe and Central Asia, and a part of the wider international ILGA organisation, ILGA-Europe is a driving force for political, legal and social change in Europe and Central Asia. Its vision is for a world where dignity, freedoms and full enjoyment of human rights are protected and ensured to everyone regardless of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics.

Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS: is the philanthropic heart of Broadway, helping people across the United States receive life-saving medications, health care, nutritious meals, counselling and emergency financial assistance. It is one of America’s leading industry-based, non-profit AIDS fundraising and grant-making organisations, drawing upon the talents, resources and generosity of the American theatre community. Since 1988 Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS has raised more than US $300 million for essential services for people living with HIV/AIDS, struggling with COVID-19 and facing other critical illnesses in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

Second Pride, June 2022

This year set across two regions, the event follows its popular metropolitan setting, with the core music entertainment centred within a city park adjacent to the landing points. A Second Life Experience is operating in the regions to assist with teleports, etc., and newcomers are invited to join it as they arrive at the landing points. Also at the landing point are a couple of large posters that will provide visitors with a list of key landmarks around the event regions.

As well as the main stage at the park, events will also take place at a beach stage alongside the fun fair, and also the Bijou Theatre, where a series of live special performances have been scheduled:

  • Saturday, June 4th, 15:00 SLT: Men In Motion.
  • Sunday, June 5th, 14:00 SLT: Alchemelic.
  • Saturday, June 11th, 12:00 noon SLT: Britney Spears: A Live Event.
  • Sunday, June 12th, 18:00 SLT: Britney Spears: A Live Event.

When you arrive at the Bijou, walk the red carpet to the doors and you’ll be TP’d directly to the theatre proper.

Second Pride, June 2022 – the Bijou Theatre

There is also a teleport HUD that has been “in beta” during the run-up to the event, and which I was able to use extensively without incident in preparing this piece, so hopefully that will be available via kiosk / vendor at the landing points soon as well. It provides a full list of places of interest across the two regions, making getting around even easier.

This year also brings back some traditional landmarks for Second Pride: the elevated train line; the Stonewall Inn, outside of which Black Lives Matter is supported; the art exhibitions; the community resource centre; the Gateway Experience for those unfamiliar with Second Life who are coming to the event directly from the Second Pride website; and more. And of course, there are plenty of opportunities to donate and to shop!

So, be sure to make time to visit SL Pride during the coming week, share in the entertainment, see the art, tour the region – and donate to the supported charities.

Second Pride, June 2022

SLurl and Link Details

2022 CCUG meeting week #22 summary: reflection probes update

Posted on by Inara Pey
Deer River Spring, April 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, June 2nd 2022 at 13:00 SLT. These 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 Update

  • A new Maintenance RC viewer – Maintenance N, code-named Nomayo – version 6.6.1.572179 – was issued on June 1st. The viewer should offer improvements on media playback of web content, etc.

The rest of the official viewers remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.0.571939 – formerly the Performance Improvements viewer, dated May 25th – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Makgeolli Maintenance RC viewer (Maintenance M) viewer, version 6.5.6.571575, May 12.
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

Reflection Probes

Additional information available within my week #20 CCUG meeting summary.

  • A reflection probe will be a sphere or cube (mesh, prim or sculpt) set within a scene with specific properties allowing it to create a cube map of all objects within its bounding box. Anything within that bounding box with a “reflective” (shiny) surface (with the possible exception of worn attachments) will then offer “reflections” based on that cube map.
  • Cube maps for probes are a purely viewer-side artefact, and are updated approx. once every 30 seconds at 60 fps, although this will “get smarter” in the future and be based on actual probe location (e.g. in or out of the current field of view, etc.).
  • So, think of probes as mapping where reflections should be coming from in a scene, not as a tool for deciding which object should be reflecting things.
  • The viewer will hopefully be able to handle up to 256 probes at any one time (the number of probes in a region can be unlimited), each with a (current) maximum effective draw distance of 64 m.
  • Probes will:
    • Be detected by the viewer on load, much like lights already are (reflection probes use a lot of the code originally developed for light state management), with revisions to prevent issues associated with lighting such as flickering.
    • Have an influence volume, an ambience setting (which overrides the environment ambience) and a “near clip” parameter to help control what is rendered into the cube map (e.g. so items close to the centre of the probe and which might otherwise dominate any generated reflections, are not rendered into the cube map).
    • Require “PBR enabled”, and when this is set, legacy objects using glossiness and / or environment shine will render the reflection generated by a cube map respectively in accordance with the degree of glossiness / the sky environment, as well as any objects using the upcoming PBR materials.
      • There are a lot of nuances with the above bullet point such that legacy content won’t simply “work” with reflection probes, some degree of adjustment on object glossiness / shine might be required.
    • Work independently of LOD.
  • Probes will not be designed for use as attachments.

In Brief

  • Custom pivot point work: currently awaiting simulator updates & will require viewer-side changes; the focus is slowly moving towards trying to move the latter part of the work forward “in the not too distant future”.
  • It was noted that the mesh optimiser (as in the current release viewer) still has issues that need to be addressed,
    • One such issue is when the LOD generator is implicitly asked to simplify a model, and it cannot hit a target without destroying UV seams, it will destroy the UV seams (whereas GLOD will delete triangles, leaving holes in models). This appears to be happening on models with a lot of UV islands, resulting in texels becoming visible when they should never be drawn.
    • LL acknowledges that neither the optimiser issue nor the GLOD issue are ideal.
    • Issues with the mesh uploader are requested via Jira with objects included, if possible.
  • In response to a question, LL currently have no plans to alter the LI calculations for Animesh, however, with the performance improvements (and given part of the LI “penalty” was to compensate for the performance hit of animating Animesh characters), there is a suggestion it should perhaps be re-visited, particularly given most at the meeting with an opinion felt the 15LI penalty was a “blocker” to developing Animesh content.
  • The above points led to a general discussion on LODs, decimation, Land Impact based on size, the ARCTan project (still something LL would “like to get back to”), the impacts of draw calls over poly counts, etc., but with no actionable points raised.
  • There is a fork in the texture rendering pipeline underdevelopment that should, once available, ensure that only the required texture resolution is loaded when it is required (e.g. so the tiny buttons and the little broach and the earring etc., on an avatar won’t all be displayed at 1024×1024 all the time, but the system will only ever download at use a 128×128 version of the textures used).
  • Work is also in progress to ensure the official viewer uses all available video memory. This will eventually see the VRAM slider in Preferences → Graphics vanish.
    • Note that this is available video memory – not necessarily the total on your system; obviously, running SL and multiple browser tabs and other windows will impact how much memory the viewer can actually access, leading to the potential of textures being uploaded.

Next Meeting

  • Thursday June 16th, 2022.

Pausing at the Lost Gardens of Pompeii in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022 – click any image for full size

Update: The Lost Gardens has closed and the region has changed hands. SLurls have therefore been removed from this piece.

It’s been a while since I last wrote about one of Vita Camino’s region designs, so when Shawn Shakespeare sent me a landmark to The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, I immediately added it to my list of places to visit, and finally got the opportunity to do so at the start of June.

Occupying a Full private region leveraging the additional Land Capacity bonus, the setting – as you might guess from the name – is Romanesque is nature. According to its About Land description, it is also a work in progress; so there may be a chance things might change between my writing this and you getting to visit for yourself. There are also some rental villas tucked away on the south and east side of the region, but these are well to one side (and below!) the public areas, minimising the risk of trespass.

The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022

No landing point was enforced at the time of my visit, so I’ve arbitrarily set a SLurl in this post which will land you on the west side of the region, amidst a busy little waterfront setting. This is not a place of commerce per se, but where local fishermen bring their catch to shore each day and dry and smoke them to provide the village behind with food and, possibly, to trade with the odd passing merchant – at least going by the barrels of wine (or oil)!

The village itself appears to be rather prosperous; the houses solidly built, with room for trading on the lower level and living space above complete with balconies. Their general condition and the well-kept roads might be down to the largesse of the local patrician, whose expansive dwelling occupies the backbone of the region, a rocky table of a hill that steps its way up from the surrounding coast in a series of terraces.

The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022

It is this part of the estate in which visitors will likely spend most of their time, offering as it does multiple places to sit and appreciate the setting – and to do so in typical Romanesque comfort, complete with fruits and wine set out under tile-roofed pavilions or trellis-topped gazebos. Broad, carefully laid steps offer routes upwards through the terraces – some of which have been created or given shape by the skill of stonemasons rather than by nature – with paths also enticing willing feet onwards.

Water abounds throughout the gardens, with falls tumbling from a rock face to a crystalline pool below, and multiple ponds and fountains to be found throughout. In addition, there are two large bathing pools, each occupying its own terrace but joined by a single stairway which also provides access to the villa’s bath house.

The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022

Similarly, great care has been taken to both preserve and to plant trees to provide shade and further ornamentation, while statues of deities and (doubtless) ancestors or great leaders keep watch over all that is happening in and around the gardens. And to further ensure blessings be upon the estate and the village below, two temples await worhsippers and offerings (one of which is admittedly just a façade).

The crowning glory for the setting, however, is on the broad flat top of the hill. Here sits a square terrace centred upon an ornamental pond. With pavilions, gazebos, loungers and chairs, fruit and wine, all shaded by the broad growth of mature trees and with columns standing to attention around the periphery, it at first looks “typically” Romanesque. But look again, and certain things might become apparent, initially appearing anachronistic given the overall theme for the setting.

The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022

Take, for example the fountained pond; it is home to both koi and to red-crowned crane from Asia, whilst paper lanterns of Chinese styling and stone lamps that carry a hint of Japan might also be spotted. Of course, indirect trade between Rome and China (via India) was known to have taken place; so it is possible crane and fish came via that route; however, when taken within the setting as a whole, lamps, lanterns, fish and crane present a unique west-east fusion within the terrace that just works.

Elsewhere in the setting are other unusual elements that give The Lost Gardens of Pompeii a little twists – such as the opportunity to sit and partake of fruit and wine within a portion of the lost city of Atlantis (and no, it’s not under the waters surrounding the setting – it is more unique than that, but you can find it for yourself!). Meanwhile, those looking for textures for their landscaping can also visit Vita’s store, located beyond the northern end of the waterfront village and tucked neatly into a building matching the rest of the décor.

The Lost Gardens of Pompeii, June 2022

Light period role-play is apparently allowed – presumably free style and down to those who visit, rather than anything formalised – and period costume is encouraged but not required. Finished with a natural soundscape and, needless to say, highly photogenic, The Lost Gardens of Pompeii is well worth visiting and exploring.

SLurl Details

  • The Lost Gardens of Pompeii (Islas Ballestas, rated Adult)

June 2022 Web User Group: Premium Plus Update + Marketplace rebuild

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.

Premium Plus

[Video: 2:17-8:30]

  • Premium Plus will officially launch during SL19B (Thursday, June 16th through to Sunday, June 26th, 2022).
  • Grumpity Linden (VP of Operations) and Patch Linden (VP) of Product Operations will be discussing Premium Plus – price, benefits, etc.), during interviews at SL19B (dates TBC)).
  • The price will (obviously) be “more” than Premium, but there will be an initial “discount” for those signing-up following release.
  • Indicated initial benefits include:
    • More: free tier than Premium’s 1024 sq m; stipend; group slots.
    • Lower fees for uploads (excluding mesh initially, as the upload fees for this are calculated differently, so the hope is to offer discounted mesh loads after Premium Plus has been deployed).
  • “Future benefits” being considered for “the future”:  new region types; new Linden Home types; potentially discounts for options such as Name Changes, mobile applications (not defined), “priority access to some areas” (again not defined).

Search Update

[Video: 8:40-10:36]

  • As noted in past WUG summaries, the Lab is working to improve Search results relevance. This work is now progress.
  • The SL Search engine uses an Elasticsearch instance, and the third-party contracted-in to work with LL has Elasticsearch expertise.
  • In particular, work has been focused on building “search relevance engine” machine learning tool, designed to observe how Search performs and gradually improving the relevancy of results.
  •  Additionally, a number of fixes are being developed for common issues (e.g. search for an item by its name, but it doesn’t top the results list).
  • It is hoped this work should start surfacing in July(ish).

Marketplace Overhaul

[Video: 12:30-57:29]

  • The development of the listing Styles – formerly called listing variance,  the ability to have a single listing for an item that has multiple individual colour options that would otherwise have to be individually listed) -has been on-going for some time.
  • All of the backend infrastructure and database updates are now in place.
  • HOWEVER – in order to implement the capability, the front-end of the Marketplace effectively has to be re-built. Because of this, LL is considering a complete rebuild of the Marketplace “from the ground up”.
  • To this end, a portion of the meeting was spent discussing what form the MP might take to meet the needs of both merchants and shoppers, e.g.
    • What should it look like?
    • What features / capabilities are important to merchants or shoppers (either within the existing MP or that they would like to see added)?
    • What features / capabilities within the existing MP require improvement / replacing and how / why?
  • A further recognition of the need for a complete rebuild is that the MP is often the “front page” of Second Life for the user community, in that it is the web property that is most often used by residents (It also has a reasonably high visibility on the web in general), and thus needs to reflect this.
  • The plan is to discuss these points (and others raised by the Lab / meeting attendees) over the next few meetings.
  • Feedback from this meetings included:
    • Look and accessibility: more in the way of an Amazon style of look / feel (including the “Users who bought this also bought” type of section); better integration with tools like screen readers / magnifiers; better recognition of screen resolution / size and scales the UI to suit; an ability to produce short links to listings.
    • Search: more relevancy when searching for items (which will hopefully come out of the Search overhaul); ability to filter-out specific stores from search results; ability to have store names listed as a search result option; ability to add an item to the shopping cart directly from a Search results list (rather than having to open the product listing page and add from there).
    • Refunds / Redeliveries: the ability to allow refunds and prevent the redelivery of an item for which a refund has been given (BUG-226218); the ability to redeliver directly from the listing page.
    • Social Media integration: improved capabilities to offer You Tube links and links to Instagram accounts (e.g. for product preview images), etc. Seen as possible, with the caveat that apps like Instagram use tracking pixels, etc., so linking would be depending on negotiations around this (LL do not as a rule allow user data tracking).
    • Improved co-ordination between MP and in-world stores:  an ability for merchants to update their in-world store location globally, rather than by editing all listings; the ability to have an MP store better reflect the in-world store (e.g. if a creator had a store that has multiple “departments” or “mini stores” within it, these can be reflected as “sub-brands” or “sub-stores” within the MP, and if one of these “sub-stores” is renamed (either on the MP or in-world), the change is reflected on the other).
    • Tools for merchants: improved analytics / metrics on store performance / listing performance; options for applying discounts / promotional codes on selected items.

There were also a number of non-specific recommendations “make it better”; “better tools to deal with negative / inaccurate reviews”, etc., that will require more clarity / granularity as to what is desired.

Suggestions have been (and will be at upcoming meetings) recorded by LL, and will form the basis for both internal discussions and more idea generation at the next WUG meeting.

Timeframe and Approach

Assuming this goes ahead:

  • In rebuilding the new Marketplace, the ability to migrate existing listings from the current MP to the new MP would be factored in; precisely what form this would take has yet to be fully determined..
  • In reality, it is unlikely any form of initial “new MP” will be available until some time in 2023; the focus at the moment is purely trying to road map capabilities, features, design, with user input.

“Land Journey” Refresh

[Video: 57:30-58:33]

  • The next major web project will be a refresh of all aspects of land sales – the Land Store, how Linden Homes are offered / selected; how land for sale is located, how it can be rented (and from whom), etc.
  • This work likely will not include the return of land auctions by users, unless a system can be developed that avoids abuse and can pay for its cost of implementation / management.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, July 6th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

Gem Preiz: Exoplanet II: On The Way Back in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Gem Preiz Exoplanet 2: On The Way Back

In February 2022, Gem Preiz opened Exoplanet: Once Step Further; the first chapter in a two-part series that combines a science-fiction story with his fractal art to offer a vision of humanity’s innate desire to explore, discover, learn about and understand the cosmos around us (see: Gem Preiz: Exoplanet – One Step Further in Second Life). Now, with its formal opening on Wednesday, June 1st, 2022 comes the second chapter of the series, once again hosted by Akiko Kinoshi (Akiko Kiyori) within her “Akipelago” art hub of regions.

In the first chapter (which remains open to visitors) we are invited to a crew of astronaut-scientists engaged on the deep-space exploration of planets beyond our own solar system – referred to as exoplanets in the science community – and to consider the remains of civilisations the crew have discovered, as represented by Gem’s fractal images displayed within the base the crew have established. Now, with Exolpanet 2: On The Way Back, we find the crew aboard a space station (or perhaps, for reasons I’ll come to, a ship-come-station) about to make the return to Earth.

Gem Preiz Exoplanet 2: On The Way Back
Astronomy is a science that makes you dream. The observation of distant objects transports us in space and time, and leads us to ponder the origin of the universe and the possibilities of hosting extra-terrestrial life there. The discovery of exoplanets in 1995 opened up a new field of exploration which could undergo even more spectacular development thanks to the new James Webb telescope. The enthusiasm for their discovery was nourished by science fiction stories, now legitimized by the proof of the existence of these worlds.

– Gem Preiz

As with the first chapter, Exoplanet 2 is both art installation and immersive environment intended to nudge visitors into thinking about life and and interstellar exploration. The station (/ ship) itself is built on a vast scale, with multiple levels to explore, both within the vertical central core (housing the essential systems and services – control, power, life support (including a hibernaculum), medical and essential crew facilities), surrounded by two concentric rings of additional facilities, including labs, crew sleeping quarters, access to docking facilities and small ship hangers, escape pods, etc. Through all of this are points of interaction (look for the hand icons), whilst floor-and-wall mounted teleport disks and buttons provide fast transit between different points of the station.

The art comes in three primary forms to be found throughout the station. The first is a series of eight framed fractal images depicting the worlds the crew has visited; the second, eight sketch-like images of locations within Second Life, serving to remind the crew of their beauty of their home world – and us of the fact they we are all bound to a single, beautiful but wholly fragile planet.

Gem Preiz Exoplanet 2: On The Way Back

The third art element sits within the Entertainment section of the station. Here can be found two large media screens which can display videos of some of Gem’s past installations. These include a video of Wrecks, itself part of a  two-element exhibition of Gem’s art from 2016 (called Heritage) and which also formed an evocative foray into the realm explored through Exoplanet (see: Of Heritage and Wrecks in Second Life).

A fourth artistic element might be said to exist outside of the station, where Gem has used a series of EEP settings to provide a changing backdrop of astronomical images. These include distant galaxies, stars, imagined worlds and moons a lot closer to home, and can be viewed either by camming out or by one of the little personal flyers found in one of the station’s hangers and taking a trip outside. Just be sure you are using the installation’s EEP settings (make sure World → Environment → Use Shared Environment is checked).

Not only do these EEP settings offer an additional layer of art, they also suggest the station is “jumping” its way through the cosmos to bring the crew back to Earth.

Gem Preiz Exoplanet 2: On The Way Back

Exoplanet 2 is also linked directly with Exoplanet: One Step Further via the teleport HUD, which can be obtained at the main landing point (and which provides direct access to the major points of interest in both installations), or by finding your way to the shuttle about to launch from the station, and which contains a teleport to Exoplanet.

A detailed introductory card is available to visitors on arrival, which both provides an overview of the installation and explains some of Gem’s thinking behind it. The card makes for a recommended read, and Exoplanet 2: On The Way Back makes for a rich, engaging visit.

SLurl Details