Category: Second Life

Lab further updates SL splash screen with mixed media video

Posted on by Inara Pey
A still from the video now featured on the further revised secondlife.com splash screen

Watching the secondlife.com splash screen is becoming something of a past-time of late.  Last week I noted that the screen had been tweaked after an update in April, with an enlarged still from the broadcast advert by Levitate Media and a revised menu  (Secondlife.com splash screen gets a further tweak).

It  now appears the April update and the tweak last week might be part of a rotating set of splash screens being tried out – as I noted on May 17th in an update to that article, the version of the page I  referenced in that article had reverted to it’s April format.

This week, the page has been further revised – as those logging out and back in may have noticed. The latest change retains the old format of menu up in the top right corner of the screen, but the still image has been replaced by a video loop that mixes footage from the Levitate Media video with video footage shot within Second Life.

Running to 1 minute and 12 seconds, the video may well be the full Leverage Media advert, just sans music or other accompaniment – previously, we’ve only been teased with behind-the-scenes clips of the ad.

Certainly, the inter-cutting of live and Second Life footage comes together very well, although some might critique it for being somewhat vague on specifics about Second Life or that it misses some of the core aspects of the platform – such as the creative elements. However, I’d suggest that as far as enticing interest goes, such critiques are misplaced: the video offers a series of images designed to capture attention, pique curiosity, and entice people to sign-up, rather than reveal all there is to Second Life.

That said, as one scrolls down the page, it would perhaps be nice to see something a little more dynamic when it comes to expanding on what Second Life is – frankly the three selections are vague; and while things like remote meetings in the age of the pandemic have been important to the Lab and SL’s use, it would nevertheless be good to see a broad cassavas of the kind of interests that have tended to attract and retain the wider Second Life user base.

Anyway, click the Play button below and check the video for yourself. Again, note that as it is a hero screen version, it is without sound.

Sunny Sunvana in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sunvana, May 2021 – click any image for full size

Occupying a Homestead region and recently opened, Sunvana is a public setting offering visitors a chance for some “sweet summer escape”.  Laid out as a vacation spot, it is the work of Jayce (Jayce Takeda) – with some assistance from Peter (Peterkes Beaton) and Kaelyn Alecto (TheNewKae) – the region is also home to Jayce’s Moment pose brand.

While Sunvana doesn’t enforce teleporting to its landing point, visits are intended to start at the island’s reception and information centre, a domed structure towards the centre of the region. This offers direct teleports to various locations around the region: the art pods, the coffee and tea house, the pool house and pool, the pose store, the peach and the club house. In addition, a further series of teleports provide access to other regions designed by Kaelyn  – It all Starts with a Smile and Soul Deep (which I recently reviewed).

Sunvana, May 2021

Where you from here is a matter of choice; the teleports offer a quick and easy way around the region, but step outside the reception dome, and steps will take you down to the road for a walk around the island, or up towards the Moments store and a rock causeway leading to a “hideout” sitting on a headland.

The latter overlooks a deep bay cut into the rock by a pair of waterfalls to offer a deep swimming hole complete with a diving platform, a cuddle float and a rope to climb back up out of the water. Seats within the hideout and close by offer plenty of places to sit alone or with friends.

Sunvana, May 2021

The swimming hole is just one of the numerous eclectic aspects of the region that add to its appeal. For example, those who don’t fancy walking between locations might avail themselves to a number Cube Republic’s excellent rope slides and zip lines to be ridden. Then, to the west, and alongside the Club House are board walks and stone paths set out over the water, watched over by a mix of street lamps and African elephants.

For those who like more traditional summer vacation pursuits, the beach around the east side of the island has places to sit, while the swimming pool offers sun loungers to relax on and floats on which to pass the time whilst floating on the water.

Sunvana, May 2021

Elsewhere, the art pods present little vignettes that might be seen as 3D art pieces or further places to appreciate and/or sit: a little garden, a cabana with chairs and lights, a Mustang under repair or a little pool (as in the game) room. Off to the south-east, and not mentioned as a teleport destination, is a little place signed as a motel, although it is far cosier than that, with places to both sit and to cuddle.

Below the “motel” and tucked into a little watery tunnel is a rowing boat that can offer a lovers’ tryst, moored out of sight of other eyes.

Sunvana, May 2021

Unusually for a region of this kind, Sunvana lacks a significant soundscape – the falls generate familiar thunder and there are spots of sound elsewhere, but there is no over-arching sound scape across the region. There are however, numerous (and increasingly familiar) NPC static characters to be found throughout to help add a sense of life to the setting.

Making good use of EEP (use personal lighting to move the Sun around to catch the local rainbow), Sunvana is an engaging place to visit, made more so by the rope slides and teleports (look for the sign board beyond the reception area) to get around, and offers plenty of opportunities for photography.

Sunvana, May 2021

Slurl Details

2021 SUG meeting week #20 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cherishville II, March 2021 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 18th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes relate to the core points of discussion; other topics may have ben raised without specific feedback from LL as actionable items, so  please refer to the video at the end of this report for the full meeting and all points covered.

Server Deployments

At the time of writing, there had been no server deployment thread available for review.

  • Tuesday, May 18th saw no deployment to servers on the Main SLS channel.
  • Wednesday, May 19th should see some of the RC channels updated with the new llOrd, llChar and llHash LSL capabilities. A further change is that the updated simulator no longer reports child agents as part of agents, as it has been doing so inconsistently.
  • The remainder will keep to release  559679 with the llOpenFloater() function intended for use with Linden-owned Experiences – see my week #18 SUG summary for more.

From Rider Linden’s comments at the week #14 SUG summary:

LlOrd() will return the ordinal of the first character in a string, llChar() given an integer will return a single character string, and llHash() is a non-cryptographic 32 bit hash. I was looking for a way to just have an integer that had a reasonable change of being unique for an arbitrary string.
Use case I can see: Given an owner of two objects I want to select a chat channel with a low probability of colliding with other agents in the area.

SL Viewer

The start of the week has seen no updates to the current crop of official viewers, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Release viewer: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23, promoted April 29 – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Project UI viewer updated to version 6.4.19.559612, May 14.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 5 viewer, version 6.4.18.558365, dated April 22.
    • Maintenance 2 RC viewer – Fernet, version 6.4.18.558441, dated April 21.
  • Project viewers:
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, dated December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, dated November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, dated July 16, 2019.

In  Brief

  • The Lab has a group working on various simulator physics issues and general health, some of which can generate errors (e.g. “Unable to create object that has caused problems in this region”). No ETA on when these might be deployed.
  • Thought is still being given as to how to fix the dim ambient lighting seen on the Mainland since the introduction of EEP – a problem that appears to be harder to fix than people appreciate / understand.
  • Questions have been asked if some of the simulator-side resource issues could be fixed if additional CPU cores could be allocated to support really busy regions – such as events, etc. Responding to this, Mazidox Linden, Lead Server QA Engineer said:
There are various hardware (and *maybe*) some software resources that can be in contention for any given set of simulators on a simhost, network, memory, CPU, IO, things like that. So allocating an additional core to a simulator fixes *maybe* one of those bottlenecks. If it’s the bottleneck affecting your performance. Which is a big if.
  • There have been reports of teleport failure spiking recently,  including viewer disconnects. Rider Linden is hoping to poke at the teleport code some more as time allows,  but it appears the issue might be a communications issue between the receiving region and the viewer.  Maxidox Linden explained the matter thus:
The destination simulator knows someone is supposed to show up, so it creates some space in the receiving warehouse. No one ever arrives to fill it … Our best guess (and it is a *guess*) is that it involves the destination region and the affected viewer waiting for each other to send something first.

Video

The following video of the meeting is courtesy of Pantera Północy.

A dreamer’s golden stories in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Itakos Project: Golden: A Journey into the Art of a Dreamer

Currently open at the Itakos Project Art Gallery, curated by Akim Alonzo, is Golden: A Journey into the Art of a Dreamer, featuring the work of Paola Mills.

Spread across the two levels of the gallery are some 29 exquisite avatar studies that incorporate a range of themes, and are linked by the fact that each one forms a single frame story.

The Itakos Project: Golden: A Journey into the Art of a Dreamer

From fantasy to what might be considered beauty shots and going by way of touches of sci-fi, horror, edges of transhumanism, and even a homage to a classic film (Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest (see:Follow the Ageless Tide), these are all stunning pieces. Many carry a degree of subtext through title to further drive their story, although equally, a fair number are untitled – but they still speak clearly to those who study them.

This is because all of the pieces offered here, produced in both colour and monochrome, are marvellously crafted, rich in detail and composition. Within them are to be found stories centred on a range of subjects: identity, love, life, sexuality, emotions, loneliness, memory and more.

The Itakos Project: Golden: A Journey into the Art of a Dreamer

As well as the individual images mounted on the gallery walls, Akim has included an animated slide show system that pages through copies of all of Paola’s pieces in the exhibition. It’s an approach that will a new feature with exhibits at the gallery. Here, with its smooth, gentle animations and cross-fades, the slide show brings together the images in such a way that the transitions from one to the next presents a feeling of shifting dreams in keeping with the sub-title of the exbition. Further, several times during the show, the transition from one image to the next naturally suggests a broader story spanning the art than might be found when viewing in the individual images around the walls.

It is really hard to write about this exhibition, as the pieces are so rich in narrative that they really should be seen first-hand, rather then through the intervening eyes of and thoughts of another. Nor are they pieces to be simply seen; they deserve to be given the time to speak and tell their stories. As such, I strongly suggest paying a visit through the month the exhibition will be available.

The Itakos Project: Golden: A Journey into the Art of a Dreamer

SLurl Details

A trip to the Bayou in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021 – click any image for full size

*80 Days* The Bayou is the latest region design by Camila (Camila Runo). As the name suggests, it’s a region design that takes us down into Louisiana, where a mix of open water, mangroves and a small town that feels like it might have been cut from a corner of New Orleans just across the state line, and dropped neatly into the grasslands here.

The landing point is located on a large waterside pier, against which is docked a paddle steamer of the kind perhaps also more readily associated with the Mississippi – although that was not the only river along which these majestic boats once regularly plied, their great stern wheels thrashing the water.

*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021

The unmistakable work of Analyse Dean, the steamer sits with her saloon and card table set as if awaiting fare-paying customers, the perfect backdrop from which to start a visit to the region. And, from the paraphernalia on the wharf, the perfect backdrop for a film crew – a sign even inviting you to sit in the spotlight and take your own picture (or have a friend take it for you).

The wharf joins with a trestle bridge that spans the river on which the steamer sits, suggesting that if she does still make way under her own power, this is one end of any journey she might make. Across the bridge on the south side of the river, lies a muggy, tree-shaded expanse of bayou, cut here and their by water channels. A raised board walk offers a route over the waterlogged land to keep feet dry as it winds its way to a grungy bar sitting among the mangroves.

*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021

On the river’s north side, the bridge gives way to a road leading to the little town, passing the obligatory cemetery along the way. This is the place where the main street basks in the late afternoon heat and humidity, overlooked by the balconies of the places of business that line it on either side. Up on one wall, Satchmo plays his horn, while the sounds of his playing echoes along the street from open windows, washing over visitors as they explore places like Maison Devil, with its voodoo overtures, or drop into the quirky Goofy Gator lounge (which has a nice minimalist ambience, but I wasn’t entirely convinced by the green beer!).

To one end of the town sits a small restaurant with streetside dining and dancing, the road beyond it giving way to a dirt track which curves down to a beach looking out over (presumably) the Gulf of Mexico. A second track parallels the route to the beach, just across the car park from the restaurant. However, rather than also leading to the beach, it instead offers a path to the local alligator farm.

*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021

Between the town and the river, the land is flat and given over largely to grass and wild flowers, although a third track does point the way to a little pier that juts out into the river. Watched over by a plump pelican, this pier is home to a little motor boat rezzer people can use to putter around on the water – just be wary of the region boundaries when doing so.

The rezzer is one of a number of little interactive elements included in the setting that help bring it to life. Others include opportunities to dance or scrub a car, enjoy a drink or pose for a photo. There are also number places where visitors can sit and pass the time, some of which sit out in the bayou to offers places of solitude for those who want to be on their own, while others are well suited to couples or small groups.

*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021

Populated by the static figures that appear to be having their 15 minutes of fame among region designers at the moment – and which do help bring a sense of life to region designs – and rounded-out by a nicely balanced sound scape, *80 Days* The Bayou makes for a photogenic and engaging visit.

With thanks (again!) to Shawn Shakespeare for the pointer.

*80 Days* The Bayou, May 2021

SLurl Details

2021 viewer release summaries week #19

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week ending Sunday, May 16th

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: Eau de Vie Maintenance viewer, version 6.4.18.558266, dated April 23, promoted April 29 – no chnage.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links