Category: Second Life

2022 TPV Developer meeting summary, week #1

Posted on by Inara Pey
Pemberley, December 2021 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 7th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held every other week.  They are recorded by Pantera Północy, and her video of the meeting is embedded at the end of this report – my thanks to her for allowing me to do so – and it is used with the chat log from the meeting and my own audio recording to produce this summary, which focuses on the core topics discussed.

SL Viewer

[Video: 0:00-1:28]

There have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the year, leaving the current crop as:

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.1.566335, formerly the Cache+ 360 Capture viewer, dated December 7, promoted December 15 – No change
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566860, issued on December 17.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566879, issued on December 17.
    • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

General Viewer Notes

  • The Performance Improvements project viewer is currently going through a round of bug fixing prior to being promoted to RC status. However, no further additions / changes to the existing feature set beyond the fixes are planned.
  • Depending on how things go, it is possible the Performance Improvements viewer may be the next to be promoted to RC status.
  • [2:17-2:30] The Legacy Profiles project viewer is awaiting further server-side updates before proceeding.

Upcoming Feature Work

[1:30-1:51]

  • At the end of 2021, the Lab issued a blog post reviewing the year and offering an overview of some projects planned for release in 2022.
  • Vir indicated that discussion on those projects mentioned in the post (and others?) is still on-going, and that the Lab is not ready to discuss time frames, etc., for any particular feature or release at this point in time.

In Brief

  • Mojo Linden arrived after the meeting had ended, and reiterated that:
    • A focus for the year remains on performance improvements.
    • A key aspect of work as a whole remains improving the entire New User Experience (NUE).
    • He also clearly dodged questions on the specifics of the new “avatar expressiveness”.
  • [3:20-9:50] A general discussion on building the viewer, of interest to viewer devs and self-compilers.

CyberNorm: the two sides of an artist in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Art Korner Main Gallery: CyberNorm – The art of “Cyber”

Update, June 27th, 2022: Art Korner has Closed.

Recently opened in the Main Gallery at Frank Atisso’s Art Korner is an intriguing exhibition that presents two sides – two personalities, if you will – of a single artist: CyberNorm (aka ndl1971).

As “Norm” the artist – who has had their work displayed in several exhibitions in Düsseldorf, Germany, between 2018 and 2020 – explores art using the brush and canvas, using the medium as a means to explore life and politics in a somewhat playful manner, and explore aspects of gender politics. Meanwhile, as “Cyber”, the artists works with the digital medium, expressing their imagination through structured, mathematical terms – in this case through the use of fractals.

Through both forms of art, the CyberNorm particularly explores the subject of control: the use of political standpoints to exert control over the world as a whole, and the ability of mathematics to present structure and control within the digital domain.

Art Korner Main Gallery: CyberNorm – The art of “Cyber”

At Art Korner, these two sides of the art’s work are displayed across the two floors of the gallery building. The lower level is primarily given over to the art of “Cyber” (with one exception), and the upper level to the work on “Norm”.

The digital art offers a vibrant richness, bringing together the richness of natural forms with those of more abstracted elements to form pieces that are all individually unique and captivating. Some of these offer suggestions of Nature and life, while some capturing the infinite beauty of the Mandelbrot set, while others suggest textile-like pieces that offer their own fascination.

Art Korner Main Gallery: CyberNorm – The art of “Norm”

The display on the gallery’s upper floor offers paintings that demonstrate “Norm’s” approach to political commentary / satire, together with broader pieces that offer food for thought on the topic of what might be seen as commentary on gender, continuing female sexual emancipation and societal freedoms, including how (for some) these might be seen as threatening (as with Dragon and the Firefly, for example).

Taken individually, both halves of this exhibition contain much to hold the attention; together the present a wealth of expression and contrast the play off one another, revealing as they do two very different sides of the artist’s nature. For those interested, it will remain open through until February 2nd, 2022.

Art Korner Main Gallery: CyberNorm – The art of “Norm”

SLurl Details

A Winter’s Lost Dreams in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lost Dreams, January 2022 – click any image for full size

It’s been three years since I last visited Cathy Vathiany’s (zaziaa) ever-evolving region design Lost Dreams (which started life as Les Reves Perdus (“Dreams Lost”), which has itself hopped around the grid a few times. So when I learned it had re-opened in a new location and with a new design in November 2021, I added it to my list of places to visit – although after initially dropping in in December, I had a couple of issues getting back to it in order to take photos.

Cathy has always had an eye for engaging, rural-themed region settings; places where Nature tends to stake a centre seat and where there is always a richness of detail waiting to be found and appreciated. Sometimes these looks have had a distinctly European / North American lean, although it has also taken us to the orient and to Scandinavia. With this iteration, we slip to somewhere that presents something of a sense of both Arctic and Antarctic climes.

Lost Dreams, January 2022

The current Lost Dreams might be mentally split into five areas: three on the main landmass, and the remaining two formed by a pair of outrigger islands. One of the latter is where the landing point can be found, a rocky plug of an island to the west of the region. Small, and dominated by two large trees, this island at first appears to offer little beyond the landing point itself. However, below the cliffs, a stone outthrust heavy with fallen snow has been taken over by penguins that lend that suggestion of the southern hemisphere to the region.

A bridge sitting upon high stilts connects the landing point’s island with the largest landmass in the region: a large, rugged space that can, as noted, be mentally / visually split into three. First, there are the rugged westerlands, sitting on the far side of the bridge, a hulking shoulder of rock splitting the path from the bridge into two. The left branch descends downwards close to the cold-looking waters of the bay in which the landing point island sits, passing through a narrow defile before rising once more to the uplands of the island.

Lost Dreams, January 2022

The second arm of the path twists around the rocky shoulder to reach a second bridge spanning a smaller cove formed by the outflow from waterfalls that mark the terminus of a fast-flowing stream. Here the path splits again, one arm twisting by to descend the down to the shingle shoreline that huddles around the feet of sheer curtain wall cliffs.

The other arm of the path passes across the second bridge before winding upwards, and doubling back on itself as it reaches the bank of the stream, itself fed from a further set of falls that drop from the highest peaks in the region. Crossing this is possible by way of a pair of tree trunks trimmed into a rough bridge to re-join the path rising up through the defile mentioned above.

Lost Dreams, January 2022

Once joined, the path lead up to the centre part of this large island and a large stone lodge sitting on an outstretched table of rock that is home to a skating rink, a children’s play area, a carousel and other outdoor points of interest. It is here that a more northern hemisphere aspect to the setting can be found in the form of deer wandering the grounds.

Paths wind around the grounds here, with one curling back down to the low-lying eastern end of the land, and the rest of the main landmass. This is home to a a cosy hideaway and, a little further away, a little folly. from here, a final bridge – this one made of stone – reaches the final aspect to the setting: a small, low island that is home to a pool of water and a little camp site.

Lost Dreams, January 2022

Such is the nature and aspect of this little island, that is it possible to image that once upon a time it many have formed a headland reaching outwards from the rest of the main island, but time and tide have intervened, creating a channel of cold water to separate the two and necessitate the stone bridge.

Within all of this, there are lots of additional elements and details: water birds stand along the coastal areas, there are outdoor sit points and places to dance awaiting discovery, and further wildlife give the setting additional depth, as does the local soundscape. All of which leaves us with another thoroughly engaging place to explore and photograph and not to be missed before a seasonal change comes along!

Lost Dreams, January 2022

SLurl Details

VWBPE 2022: call for volunteers + Thinkerer Award nominations

Posted on by Inara Pey
via VWBPE

The 2022 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference will be taking place between March 31st and April 2nd inclusive, and both a call for proposals and a call for volunteers to help run things has been issued.

VWBPE is a global grass-roots community event focusing on education in immersive virtual environments which attracts over 2,000  educational professionals from around the world each year, who participate in 150-200 online presentations including theoretical research, application of best practices, virtual world tours, hands-on workshops, discussion panels, machinima presentations, and poster exhibits. For the purposes of the conference, “virtual world” refers to any on-line community through which users can interact with one another and use and create ideas irrespective of time and space, whether 3D in presentation or as characterised through platforms such as Meta, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., in which the direction of the platform’s evolution is manifest in the community. The conference itself is hosted within Second Life.

Volunteers are required for the following roles:

  • Hosts: usually located at the Gateway landing area, but can also be at the Exhibits and Social Events to help participants, hosts are the first people that conference participants meet. and should be familiar with VWBPE areas in Second Life and VWBPE Conference events. A minimum time commitment: 1 hour training is required, with 1-hour blocks of time commitment (we appreciate multiple time sign ups, please do this at your convenience).
  • Mentors: pre-conference coaches and one-on-one support people for presenters attending the conference (presenters are matched to mentors). Minimum time commitment: 1-hour training is required (this includes training in the presentation tolls in their assigned venues). Time per presenter varies from 1 to 3 hours, depending on the presenter’s experience level.
  • Technical Support; experts in providing support across the conference and in liaising with Estate Managers when issues arise on the parcels. Minimum time commitment: 1 hour training prior to conference, 4-hour blocks.
  • Quadrivium Assistants: assist Quadrivium Facilitators in leading a Quadrivium Discussion. Minimum time commitment: 1 hour + .5 hours (Quadrivium + Prep + Assistance with Report).
  • Stream Team: provides video capture and streaming for each presentation at the conference. Members may need to be available for training up to 2 months prior to the conference.

Full details of all roles can be found on the VWBPE volunteers page; if additional information is required these can be relayed to the conference organisers via e-mail.

Those wishing to volunteer can do so via the VWBPE 2022 volunteers form.

Thinkerer Awards

The Thinkerer Award is presented annually to an individual whose deeds and actions have shown consistent selfless service towards the promotion of learning, community, and educational practices, and who exemplifies the spirit of cooperative development within immersive environments. It was first awarded in 2014 to Selby Evans (Thinkerer Melville) for whom it is named. Since then, the committee conducts the selection process based on public input. If you know someone who deserves to be recognized by this life-time award, please complete the 2022 nomination form below.

For further details, including nomination criteria, please refer to the VWBPE 2022 Thinkerer Award nomination page.

VWBPE Important Dates

Additional Links

A World of Fairytales and Beauty in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dragon Sanctuary Gallery: World of Fairytale and Beauty

For their first exhibition of 2022 Dragon Sanctuary Gallery presents World of Fairytale and Beauty, a joint exhibition of art spanning the virtual and physical worlds presented by the Second Life partnership of Orpheus Paxlapis-Savior (OrpheusofDarkness) and Viktor Savior (ViktorSavior). Within it, Orpheus offers rich selection of avatar-inspired art, and Viktor more of his real-world paintings.

Located on the ground floor of the gallery, Orpheus presents 37 images that most clearly carry the fairy tale and beauty aspects of the exhibition. And if you are unfamiliar with his name, it might be for good reason: its marks his first public exhibition of art within Second Life – and he only started placing his images on Flickr in May 2021.

Dragon Sanctuary Gallery: World of Fairytale and Beauty

His work has a distinct clarity of style, one that carries a strength of narrative  / story with in, as is very apparent in the images he has selected for this exhibition. Offered as pairs and groups, they carry us to the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome, and those of the Celts, elves, shamen, warriors, princesses and more; the figures drawn of the imagination, yet capturing the essence of our ancient past and the richness of fantasy and fairy tale. Gently and lightly post-processed, these are pieces that are instantly engaging to the eye and imagination.

On the upper floor of the gallery, Viktor offers a collection of 38 paintings he created in the physical world and has uploaded to the virtual. Offering  a mix of flowers and plants, landscapes and seascapes that have the beauty of watercolours and the rich depth of colour oft found in oils that together present the beauty and world elements of the exhibition.

Dragon Sanctuary Gallery: World of Fairytale and Beauty

Mixed with the flora and landscape paintings are a number of abstract pieces that again offer Viktor’s richness of colour and presentation. However, what is particularly engaging with the works is that a number of them are digital copies of pieces he displayed at physical world exhibitions in Italy, Spain and Mexico in 2021.

Offering highly individual styles that nevertheless offer a balance of art from the physical world and from within Second Life, World of Fairytale and Beauty is a captivating and appealing exhibition that opened on January 4th, 2022, offering plenty of time (at the time of writing this piece!) for people to visit and appreciate. When doing so, use the teleport disk at the main landing point to reach the gallery (select “*Exhibit*”).

Dragon Sanctuary Gallery: World of Fairytale and Beauty

SLurl Details

2022 SUG meeting week #1 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Drune Giger City, December 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 4th, 2022 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. The meeting was recorded by Pantera Północy, and the video is embedded at the end of this summary. Note this summary focuses on the key points of the meeting; where there is something to report, the video should be referred to should full details of the meeting wish to be reviewed.

Server Deployments

There are no planned server deployments for this week.

Week #2 should see the simulator currently deployed to the RC will by rolled to the Main SLS channel.

Available Viewers

This list reflects those viewers available via Linden Lab.

  • Release viewer: version version 6.5.1.566335, formerly the Cache+ 360 Capture viewer, dated December 7, promoted December 15 – No change
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • The Jenever Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566860, issued on December 17.
    • The Koaliang Maintenance 2 RC viewer, version 6.5.2.566879, issued on December 17.
    • The Tracy Integration RC viewer version 6.4.23.563771 (dated Friday, November 5) issued Tuesday, November 9.
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Improvements project viewer version 6.5.2.566967, dated December 17.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.4.23.562625, issued September 2.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.4.23.562614, issued September 1.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.

In Brief

  • Questions were asked about the “avatar expressiveness” mentioned in the “2021 review” blog post issued by the Lab. Specifically:
    • How the system will work given the plethora of mesh heads available, the different brans (and perhaps even different styles within brands) being weighted differently / possibly making use of different bones / sliders.
    • How this will be handled without body tracking, in order to avoid head gestures / expressions being mis-matched with AO body animations.
    • Will it use a 3rd party facial morph system.

In response, Simon Linden would only note:

Dissecting that slightly, a) there is a camera involved and b) there are gestures and movement involved. You can probably guess / connect that a bit yourself, ’cause I can’t talk more about it … I don’t think you’ll get more info until it’s ready to go out – and it’s not at the present. It’s under development.

There is also the question of how many people actually use cameras with SL – or would be interested in doing so.

  • A lot of general chatter about what SL “needs” and “the metaverse”, please refer to the video.