Category: Second Life

Men in Motion 2020 at Men in Focus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Men in Focus November exhibition: Pavel Stransky

Officially opening on Saturday November 7th, is the annual Movember art exhibition at the Men in Focus Gallery, curated by JMB Balogh. Sponsored by the Men in Motion dance troupe, the exhibition is in support of the Movember Foundation, and furthers the gallery’s aim to both promote and feature photography by male artists.

Once again, I was graciously granted the opportunity to preview the exhibition – thank you, Jo! – which sees 2D artists Darkyn Dover, Winter Jefferson, Pavel Stransky and Arnno Planer join several of the Men in Motion dance troupe in displaying their work, together with 3D artists Mistero Hifeng, Luc Lameth and Reycharles.

Men in Focus Movember exhibition: Darkyn Dover

Of the 2D artists, I’ve long been familiar with the work of both Darkyn Dover’s Pavel Stransky, and admire both for their ability to frame images as stories.  This is very much displayed with the selections they present in this exhibition, where Darkyn’s work can be found on the ground floor and Pavel on the third, with some more “traditional” posed avatar studies (lying on the beach and looking out to sea) and portraits (notably Pavel’s striking studio-like piece simply entitled Portrait) added to the mix.

For those images offering a narrative, within these two selections, I found myself particularly drawn to: Darkyn’s No Ideas, which offers both a story in its own right whilst offering a strong feeling of familiarity and understanding for those of us who have ever suffered from a bout of extended writer’s block. Meanwhile, Pavel’s Singing in the Rain, which not only brings to mind Gene Kelly’s entire magical dance routine from that film, but also tells a story of Kelly’s entire genius as a dancer and the heyday of the Hollywood musical; it’s a genuinely evocative piece, beautifully framed.

Men in Focus Movember exhibition: Arnno Planer

Sandwiching Pavel’s work are the selections are those by Winter Jefferson (2nd floor) and Arnno Planer (4th floor). Both offer more “traditional” avatar studies, mostly tightly focused on the avatar such that while costumes are used, the narrative that might be offered is a lot narrower in presentation. This is not a critique of either artist in any way at all; every artist in SL has a specific style and approach to their work, and both Arnno and Winter’s work is engaging and very much broaden the mix of art here.

Of the 3D artists, all are making a return to the gallery, and their pieces  – as enticing as ever – can be found on each of the guest artists levels, and the two levels devoted to the art of members of the Men in Motion dance troupe.

The Movember exhibit officially opens with a 2-hour event featuring the music of Ame Starostin Cheveyo, starting at 17:00 SLT on Saturday, November 7th.

Men in Focus Movember exhibition: Luc Lameth

About the Movember Foundation

The Movember Foundation is a multinational charity raising awareness of, and money for, men’s health and welfare, with a focus on cancer, mental health and suicide prevention. Its titular and widely known campaign is Movember, which encourages men to grow moustaches during the month of November. The foundation partners annually with the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride to also raise money for men’s health.

Founded in 2003, in Melbourne, Australia by Adam Garone, Travis Garone, Luke Slattery, and Justin Coghlan, the organisation attained registered charity status in 2006, and has raised approximately US $700m in charitable donations. These funds have been used to fund more than 800 programmes focusing on prostate cancer, testicular cancer, poor mental health, men’s health awareness and healthy lifestyles. It is active in 21 countries and has a global workforce of 130 people. In addition, Movember coincides with International Men’s Day (November 19th), which among its aims, shares the goal of promoting the health and well-being of men and boys.

SLurl and URLs

2020 CCUG meeting week #45 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Where Our Journey Begins, September 2020 – 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, November 5th 2020 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

SL Viewer

At the time of writing, the current selection of official viewers (release, RC and projects) was as follows:

  • Current release viewer version 6.4.10.549686, formerly the Mesh Uploader RC promoted on October 14 – 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):
    • Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.4.11.551139, issued October 27.
  • Project viewers:
    • Project Jelly project viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.11.551213, November 2.
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.10.549685, November 2.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
    • Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
    • Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

ARCTan / Jellydoll / Imposter Avatars

  • Bug fixes for Jellydolls include:
    • Fixing an issue where jellydolled avatars could suddenly vanish with viewed on Mac systems.
    • Ensuring Amimesh attachments on imposter avatars update in sync with the avatar.
    • Impostered avatars and their Animesh attachments are currently rendered entirely separately to one another, so the code might be looked at to unify their rendering.
    • A general clean-up on the imposter code, which has led to the discovery that while code was added to the viewer to check to see if impostered avatars had been updated, it has never been hooked up to updating the imposter avatar as rendered by the viewer, leaving them frozen. This is now being fixed.
  • Once the Mac issue is sorted, the play is to merge the Jellydoll updates back into the ARCTan project (from which they were split earlier in the year).
    • However, the current Jellydoll work will progress as is through the currently project viewer continued through to RC and, ultimately, release.
  • As a reminder:
    • The current ARCTan work is focused on the viewer-side updates to avatar complexity calculations.
    • Work on providing in-world object rendering costs (LOD models, etc.) which might affect Land Impact will be handled as a later tranche of project work, after the avatar work.

Graphics

  • No news on work for replacing OpenGL.
  • Ptolemy Linden from the Graphics team has been working on performance improvements, notably related to Linden Water rendering. This work is currently focused on providing a means for those on low-end systems to completely disable water reflection rendering entirely and / or to make water opaque, both to reduce the rendering load.
  • The entire water rendering issue is complicated for a range of reasons (e.g. the fact the water plane is still drawn at altitude even though its appearance is occluded by the sky sphere, the fact that any changes made for some users could impact the “shared experience” / expected behaviour for others, etc.).
  • Ptolemy also noted that the viewer collects a lot of static rendering information that could potentially be used to assist with better drawing / rendering of scenes, and this could be something that might be looked at in more detail once the Project Uplift work is completed.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, November 19th.

Don’t forget: Lab Gab, November 6th: cloud update

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

Lab Gab returns on Friday, November 6th, 2020, with a cloud migration update.

As most are aware, the work to transition Second Life to operating via Amazon Web Services (AWS) has now progressed to a point where regions on the main grid (called Agni) are starting to be transitioned. In fact, by the time the Lab Gab show live streams, approximately one-third of all Agni regions will be operating via AWS services.

At the same time, as as per my November 2020 Web User Group summary, the Web teams are hopeful that all web properties will be running via AWS by early December, placing the Lab on course to achieve its target of completing the migration (referred to as Project Uplift) by the end of 2020 (although there will likely be more work related to it to follow in early 2021).

This being the case, the Lab Gab segment will feature Oz Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Engineering (and the man pretty much in overall charge of the engineering / technical aspect of the work) and Mazidox Linden, the Lab’s senior QA Engineer who has been particularly involved in the migration work, testing the simulator code in reference to the migration work, and who describes the project as “the largest change to the simulator [software] ever.”

“The Bugspray” Mazidox Linden (l) and Oz Linden will be joining Strawberry Linden on the Friday, November 6th segment of Lab Gab to discuss the cloud migration work

As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, or Periscope, at 10:00 SLT, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

For those who may have questions on the migration work, there is still time to submit them via the Lab Gab Google form, in addition, and if there is time, questions may also be taken from the chat feeds associated with the live stream channels.

Cica’s Bridge in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cica Ghost: Bridge

Cica Ghost dropped me an invite to visit her latest build, which opened to the public on Thursday, November 5th. Given I’m a long-standing fan of her work, I had to hop over and see it right away.

Bridge is another whimsical build – but also one that has a potential message for the world at large; a message encompassed in the quote Cica has selected to go with the installation:

It takes both sides to build a bridge.

Fredrik Nael

Cica Ghost: Bridge

For those who may not be familiar with him, Fredrik Nael, is an Indonesian writer of science fiction / fantasy short stories as well as a reviewer of books. In the west, he is perhaps noted for a series of inspirational quotes, of which the one Cica has selected might be his most famous.

With this build, Cica offers a pair of rocky tables sitting above the rest of the landscape, and on which sit two little towns – or perhaps the two halves of the same town, depending on your perspective. They are linked by a single bridge which – given both are walled on their own summits – appears the only way of moving from one to the other (although steps do descend from one to the valley below).

Cica Ghost: Bridge

Watching over all of this is a gigantic dragon. He doesn’t appear to be any threat to either part of the town (or the towns, depending on how you prefer to see them), but whether he is just visiting or a guardian is up to you to decide. He does, however, offer a nice link to Nael’s fantasy writing.

Walking around the tall, slender houses and the neatly set lawns and flower beds will reveal places to sit, places to dance and – across the bridge – pram-like cars (which can be purchased with a rezzing system) for those who want to try motoring around. Exploring will also reveal many of Cica’s cats, who very much have the run of the place – although they are likely not responsible for the little drawings from Cica that are on a number of the walls, and which bring further life to the setting.

Cica Ghost: Bridge

And the message? While Cica keeps her art largely apolitical, it’s hard to miss: at a time when we we tend to be defined by what divides us more than what can unite us, building bridges can do much to bring us back together.

Bridge will remain open through November 2020.

Cica Ghost: Bridge

SLurl Details

  • Bridge (Elle Island, rated Moderate)

November 2020 WUG summary

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

The following notes are taken from my recording of the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, November 4th, 2020. These meetings are generally held on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the Web User Group wiki page.

When reading these notes, please keep in mind:

  • This is not intended as a chronological transcript of the meeting. Items are drawn together by topic, although they may have been discussed at different points in the meeting.
  • Similarly, and if included, any audio extracts appearing in these summaries are presented by topic heading, rather than any chronological order in which they may have been raised during the meeting (e.g. if “topic X” is mentioned early in a meeting and then again half-way through a meeting, any audio comments related to that topic that might be included in these reports will be concatenated into a single audio extract.

Web Properties Updates

  • The SL Marketplace is again being transitioned back to AWS services, having been rolled back the the Lab’s co-lo after the initial migration. This work has been causing some hiccups in Marketplace service delivery.
  • For those will using the old style Linden Homes, the web-based control panel pages for these (controlling decoration, door locks, window blinds,, etc.), have now been transitioned to AWS.
  • The Destination Guide pages (world.secondlife.com) have been transitioned to AWS.
  • Tools and web pages related to the support teams have been migrated to AWS.
  • It is possible that by the next WUG meeting, all Uplift work related to the Lab’s web properties will have been completed.
  • Once the migration work has been completed the web teams will start reviewing their backlog of work and prioritising items for actioning.

Mobile Client

  • The iOS version of the mobile client is now with the Lab’s QA team who are testing the changes made following the initial rejection by Apple.
  • Once QA are satisfied, the app will be re-submitted to Apple for acceptance into their app store.
  • The Android version remains under development, but still “some way” behind the iOS version.

Please also refer to my periodic SL Mobile updates, which are made as and when there are significant updates in the status of the client.)

As an aside, for those who point to the likes of Lumiya and its capabilities and ask why the LL client isn’t offering the same right from launch, it’s worth remembering that Lumiya took several years to develop its capabilities  iteratively – it wasn’t launched with all of its features fully-fledged.  This is the route the Lab is trying to take with their mobile client.

Marketplace

  • Some have noticed that they are no longer receiving e-ail notifications when they have a sale on the Marketplace. The Marketplace team are aware of this issue and are investigating.
    • Those who do encounter the issue are asked to contact support and let them know, and the details will be passed to the MP team.
    • Re-verifying your e-mail address is also suggested, just in case.

In Brief

  • LL is liable to release a new batch of last names for Premium Name Changes during the winter months. this will likely see the removal of some of the lesser-used last names that are currently in the list, as happened with the first set of updates, as well as the “limited offer” SL birthday related last names.
  • There are currently 11 themes for the “new” Linden Homes that are either available or in planning, with a possibly farm-ish teaser  (note the hay bales) of the theme that will follow the Stilt Homes.
  • Premium Plus remains under discussion internally at the Lab, but no information on possible deployment dates or fees, etc., are available at this time.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 2nd, 14:00 SLT.

Inside mR J’s HoUsE in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020 – click any image for full size
You know….we’re never going to survive unless we get a little crazy … Imagine if every JoKeR character had a home they lived in during their reign…

About Land, mR J’s HoUsE

So reads the description for mR J’s HoUsE, the latest region design by Archetype11 Nova (aka Schmexysbuddy Resident), the genius behind Isolation’s Passengers (see: Isolation’s Passengers in Second Life) and before that, the distinctively captivating builds created under the Hotel California banner.

As with his previous designs, this is a visually impressive setting, one that – like Isolation’s Passengers in particular – carries something of a message for the times we are currently living through.

mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020

At first glance, the setting appears to be a purely fantasy / fantastical setting that carries echoes of the just past Halloween. This, however, is in part washed away with a reading of the About Land description dispels this simple explanation. The situation around the world today and the way in which politics, economies, working lives and even the collective health of nations are under assault, we are all perhaps a step from needing to give vent to a little craziness in order to stay sane – so what if that craziness were to become the norm?

Through mR J’s HoUsE, we can get to lose ourselves in a world where the craziness has been let loose; but not any craziness; instead, Archetype11 has given it at least a couple of twists.

mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020

The setting is almost perfectly described by the About Land description: we are within the grounds of the home of the archetypical crazy, The Joker (right down to a portrait of Heath Ledger’s iconic embodiment of that character in 2008’s The Dark Knight). It is a place that stands, perhaps in direct opposition to the staid grandeur of a place like Wayne Manor, but it is a manor house nonetheless.

But where the home of the Batman might offer order and respectability, this is a place that speaks to disorder and the rite of craziness: giant clown sculptures and grasping hands rise from the chaotic, untended grounds whilst leering jack-in-the-boxes stand guard at the entrance to the mouldering hall and a decaying carnival watches any and all comings and goings.

mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020

This is a place rich in narrative and commentary. Clowns are oft seen as malevolent as much as fun, this the craziness released her has an edge to it – a reminder, perhaps, that in this world, much of what gives rise to out need to scream and shout and go a little crazy is perhaps self-inflicted; and that under the veneer of politeness and civility, that craziness (and individual meanness ) are waiting to be exposed.

Mixed with these strands of narrative is also a strong vein of artistry. The contrasts of scale, for example, – from giant clowns to “life-sized” trees, or the gently-falling snow (or fairy dust – or perhaps something else; you decided).  Within the halls of the manor house more of this artistic sentiment to be found. Yes, the occupants of the house might all be a little unsettling, be thy mannequins or jack-in-the-boxes or puppets, but the manner in which they have been set out speaks to an artistic purpose that in turn breathes life into the old adage, there’s method in his madness.

mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020

Offering a description of where to go following your arrival within the region is pointless: the design is open enough such that visitors should simply go where their feet take them – and everything is visible to a point where the major landmarks are easy to see as one explores. Narrative and metaphor also abound – although not in a way that demands you take all of it in; if you prefer to witness the region as a work of artistic statement, nothing in lost through ignoring that narrative and metaphor.

And within the madness of the setting are also moments of beauty: the glimmering of light strings hanging from threes, the burst of colour from a hidden bed of flowers and the promise of a coming season of joy in the baubles strung from another tree. Although these also have there twists of madness – as a walk through the aforementioned flowers will reveal (yes, there are interactive elements to be found here).

mR J’s HoUsE, November 2020

Rich in detail, edged with menace (for those who don’t like clowns), whilst attention-holding and highly photogenic, mR J’s HoUsE is yet another captivating region build from a true master of design.

SLurl Details