Category: Second Life

Colour and monochrome in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Love & Love Gallery: Kerupa Flow

I first visited Love & Love Art Gallery, curated by Lylaya Love (lylaya), back in June 2020. Since then, it has relocated, and earlier in August, two new exhibitions opened, featuring the work of Kerupa Flow and Norton Lykin respectively.

Kerupa Flow presents another series of her truly remarkable tablet-and-pen creations, the majority of which are monochrome in nature. There is a richness of diversity present in these pieces, suggestive of multiple roots for Kerupa’s work. To take just a handful: When it Rain, for example has an ink wash style about it, whilst Hug and Curious Walker hint at pen-and-ink drawings whilst Lurking Now is surreal in nature and the landscape of Indelible Night carries an abstracted element within it.

Love & Love Gallery: Kerupa Flow

I admit to finding Kerupa’s work quite fascinating since first encountering it in 2015; her work is always rich in the narrative it contains, and all of the pieces offered here carry that same strength and depth – perhaps most notably her 3D piece, I’ll be sure to find you.

Across the hall, Norton’s work tends towards the striking, with bold, strong colours, and this exhibition is no exception. Twelve pieces of a somewhat abstract nature with a twist of futurism are presented here, offering reflections on love, life, art and the cosmos.

Love & Love: Norton Lykin

Several of the pieces reflect the art of others – Mario2 Helstein and Giovanna Cerise, as re-imagined through Norton’s eyes. These are particularly striking, while Sunrise with Shadows and Red Moon present unique views of the most recognisable occupiers of our solar system (outside of Earth).

When visiting, be sure to take the teleport mat to the gallery’s lower floor where, at the time of my visit, Patrick Moya’s iconic art was still on display, nicely balanced by a display by Oblomov (Jos Bookmite) I reviewed back in June 2020.

Love & Love: Norton Lykin

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Second Norway: a closer look

Posted on by Inara Pey
Second Norway Airport

At the start of August 2020, we made the move to Second Norway (see Farewell, Isla Pey, hello, Isla Caitinara). Since then we’ve been settling in, and as I noted a few days ago, I’ve been playing with a scene rezzing system so that we can have a choice of homes on our island (see: House changing with a scene rezzer in Second Life – and we’re up to three designs now 🙂 ).

However, what surprised me about our move was the feedback (comments on this blog and via IM) from people under the misapprehension that the April / May change in ownership of the estate had somehow resulted it in being “broken up” and replaced by “cookie cutter islands”. In fact, while there have been changes to the estate, much of the original Second Norway remains – and as a frequent visitor-turned-resident, I can also say that none of its spirit has been lost.

In this, I hope this small selection of photos helps to illustrate that point.

The central regions in the estate still have their road and rail system – the latter having (I understand) been ungraded. For water access, this roads mean that the familiar drawbridges are still present

Of course, the airport is still there – as can be seen in the banner image for this piece. So to – contrary to rumour – the road and rail system, as shown above.

The estate also has a good mix of residential and commercial spaces – Motor Loon’s famous MLCC brand is still present for example. On the south side of the estate, AustinLiam has taken this a stage further – an entire group of regions set out as a village, offering his houses and commercial units and other buildings in a contiguous setting with roads, waterfront areas, moorings, and more.

AustinLiam’s regions on the south side of Second Norway

Of course, there are the outer islands – which in the future may well expand, depending on demand, but the Vanity Bonito’s team have also put in new infrastructure that offers opportunities that may not have been so readily available previously: such as the Eidet Event Centre sitting on is own wooded island.

The Eidet Event Centre, Second Norway

Residents within the estate have also sought to offer places of interest as well – camp sites, vacation centres, air fields (although the latter seem to mostly lack rez zones) – all of which add to the estate’s appeal.

Another look at Austin Liam’s commercial regions

With a balanced approach to building codes and themes, as well as offering tenants terraforming rights on their islands, Second Norway is a good mix of the “old” – the central regions with their roadways, rail lines, airport and bridges – and the “new”, with the updated island designs, allowing it to both retain its character whilst offering newcomers a good mix of opportunities.

So if you’ve not paid Second Norway since the changes, now’s the time to hop in your boat or ‘plane, pull up the map and take a look!

 

2020 Simulator User Group week #35 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Cascadia, June 2020 – blog post

The following notes were taken during the Simulator User Group meeting of Tuesday, August 25th, 2020.

Simulator Deployments

Please refer to the server deployment thread for news and updates:

  • On Tuesday, August 25th, the majority of servers were updated to server maintenance update 547110, previously deployed to the RC channels comprising updates to assist with the cloud uplift.
  • On Wednesday, August 26th, there will an RC deployment with version number still TBA at the time of writing, so please check the deployment thread for update. This should  comprise, in the words of Rider Linden:
We hope will help with test pilots being cut in half by their helicopters and other such unpleasantness. There may still be a few issues with unexpected collisions on a region crossing. But we think we have most of the cases. That is going out to LeTigre at least, we may put it on other channels also.

SL Viewer

The have been no official viewer updates to mark the start of the week, leaving the pipelines as follows:

  • Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.5.544079, June 30.
    • 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.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
    • 360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.

In Brief

  • The improvements to region crossings have resulted in a race condition that mean the receiving region can start acting on a vehicle (running scripts, etc), before avatars are correctly re-seated. As noted, the RC deployment in the planning for Wednesday, August 26th, should help with addressing this.
  • Further thought is being put into how to improve region crossings further, but there will always be limits to what can be achieved due to the nature of the beast (handling data between two region simulators and the viewer), as Mazidox Linden pointed out:
Ultimately moving data blobs around takes time. Moving a lot of data blobs around to a lot of different places at once takes a lot of time and a lot of complexity. It’s never going to be totally seamless without I-Don’t-Want-To-Think-About levels of rearchitecting. And I’m sure even that would come with trade-offs.

Maxidox Linden, SUG Meeting, August 25th

  • HTTP-out restrictions remain in place on the Aditi regions running on AWS infrastructure. Work is progressing on code that will allow these restrictions to be lifted, although the implementation (when ready) will come in stages. One of these stages will be to make the new HTTP-out code available on regions still in the Lab’s co-lo (Aditi first, then Agni) to allow for more widespread testing.

2020 viewer release summaries week #34

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

Updates for the week ending Sunday, August 23rd

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

  • Current release viewer version 6.4.7.546539, dated August 11, promoted August 17, formerly the Arrack Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.8.547427, August 21st.
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No Updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

YavaScript Pods: situation resolved as Lab to work with Yavanna – UPDATED

Posted on by Inara Pey
Yavanna’s pod tours: agreement reached between Linden Lab and Yavanna that will see normal operations resume

Updated, August 25th: following Patch’s forum post, Yavanna issued a note card through the in-world Pod Riders group stating her pleasure with the outcome, and I’ve quoted it at the end of this piece. 

On Friday, August 21st, I reported on the news that for various reasons – including her on-going recovery from being stricken by COVID-19 -, Yavanna Llanfair, had decided to suspend the automated running of her Mainland YavaScript Pod tours (see: YavaScript Pod Tours Mainland operations suspended – UPDATED).

At the time, there was a certain amount of confusion over what may have happened with regards to an account suspension she had received in late July. As I noted in an update to that original report, this matter had particularly confused Patch Linden, who commented on a forum thread on the subject, promising to look into things.

Keeping his word, on Monday, August 24th, Patch provided a further update:

Howdy everyone!
I have returned with an update!  😁  We have just met with Yavanna and I am super excited to say that we will be working more closely together going forward on not only helping to support the pod tours system as it currently exists, but also expanding it in to other areas it does not reach today.   I’m sure that as expansions and other fun add-ons unfold, there will be more updates on those as they happen.  For the immediate future, the pod tour system should be retuning to normal functionality.
Thanks to all for the feedback!

– Patch Linden, August, 24th, 2020

By “returning to normal functionality”, Patch presumably means that the automated running of the pods across the Mainland will shortly resume.

In the meantime, speculation has already started on what the “expansions” to the system might be – including suggestions such as using the pods to make tours of Bellisseria and the SS Galaxy, which as I reported in January (see: SS Galaxy drops anchor at Bellisseria), is now moored off the west coast of that continent.

Obviously, time will tell where the expansions are concerned, but for now, Patch’s immediate news is being warmly received by the majority of Mainlanders concerned about the situation, and pod users.

Update – Yavanna’s Comments on the Outcome

Following the publication of this article, Yavanna issued a note card giving her very positive reaction to the understanding that has been reached between herself and the Linden, which reads in full:

Dear pod riders,
I am very pleased to report that I’ve just had an extremely constructive meeting with Patch Linden, Derrick Linden and Tommy Linden. Hopefully I won’t get suspended for a pod crash again! (It was clearly a mistake). I have therefore removed the server block on the pods.
It’s actually better than just that though. We were able to discuss possible future joint ventures, and how they could help me going forward. So I’m very happy about the outcome of all this.
I’m extremely grateful to you all for your support. It’s not been an easy time for me lately for reasons I’ve talked about before, but your good wishes have made me feel so much better.
I’m still going to be mostly keeping out of SL for the moment, but as the winter nights draw in and I feel better in myself I hope to be working on more pod projects.

 

Art and themes at Art Care Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
ArtCare Gallery, August 2020: Eva Burroughs

Currently open at ArtCare Gallery, curated by Carelyna, is an ensemble exhibition featuring Black Rose, Juidlynn India, Eva Burroughs, Ladmilla and Eli, and Patrick Ireland, all of whom are presenting theme selects of their art.

For States of Mind, Lamilla and Eli present 24 of their image / poem combinations focused on reflections on life, love, relationships, some of which can lean towards darker, more regretful thoughts, all of which are richly evocative in both form and words – as is always the case with this unique pairing. Rounding out the exhibition is a thirteenth piece sans words, that offers a slide show of images that are again intended to poke at the grey matter.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2020: Ladmilla and Eli

With Flowers and Sea, Black Rose offers two selections of her physical world paintings which, as the title of her exhibit indicate, focus on flowers and on the sea. The former total seven pieces that are rich in colour, reflective of the vitality and life of their subject matter – which in this case includes butterflies as well as plants.

In the neighbouring bay art eight pieces representing the sea that again use colour to reflect the changing nature of both the ocean and our relationship with it. Some are offered in lighter, paler colours or given predominantly in blue, suggestive of the colder nature of the sea, or the way in which oceans and weather can so often quickly change their moods. Other offer warmer tones – yellows, oranges and reds, with the Sun sitting low over the waters and / or lighting the bellies of clouds. With their softer, warmer shades they remind us of our more romantic views of the sea.

ArtCare Gallery, 2020: Black Rose

Warmth might also be an adjective that could be applied to Judilynn’s selection of art, presented under the title Texture and Tone, given the deeper colours on offer in these paintings. Another might be tactile, because  – and again in reflection of the title of the collection – these are pieces that are visually physical in their layering on paint and colour.

Most of the pieces are richly abstract in form – and thus powerfully evocative (just look at The Lighthouse, for example, and the richness of colour and narrative it contains). Two perhaps lean more to a suggestion of neo-impressionism with a modern edge.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2020: Judilynn India

Eva Burrough’s Visus Aquam (the sight of water) returns to an aquatic theme, the focal point of which is a stunning rendering of water bordered on either side by two sets of superb images of tropical and semi-tropical fish. beyond these, on the wall separating this collection from that of Judilynn are three abstracted images of coral that are as captivating as the six fish paintings, and which offer something of sense of flow between the two exhibits, given their abstracted style. Facing them, and rounding-out the collection are images of ships and lighthouses captured from within Second Life, and two intriguing monochrome studies of coral.

In Carnival, Patrick Ireland offers an unusual trip through his art, and I mean that in a literal sense: re a bumper car, take a seat and get up close and personal with Patrick’s remarkable avatar studies, all of which are powerfully expressive and rich in narrative.

ArtCare Gallery, August 2020: Patrick Ireland

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