Second Life – Page 446 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Virtual Cities and an Awakening in Second Life

Posted on July 14, 2020January 1, 2022 by Inara Pey

The Third Eye, curated by Jaz (Jessamine2108), is a new open-air gallery space that opened on July 11th, 2020. Located on a sky platform, the gallery is described as “a place that is designed to showcase art, particles, inspire stories, and offer a quiet place to relax and rejuvenate. It is the culmination of my many dreams – to create a place that nurtures and helps the growth of all types of creative endeavours – be it words, pictures, or particles.”

For the opening exhibition, the gallery features a selection of art by Jaz, entitled Awakening, coupled with Virtual Cities, a selection of pieces by Michel Bechir.

It is only right that I open the gallery with Michiel as the guest artist, as he was the one who introduced me to SL photography.

– Jaz (Jessamine2108)

For Virtual Cities, Michel presents some 18 pieces focused on urban living within Second Life. It’s a rich mix of images spread across Michel’s time as a Second Life photographer, starting in 2009 and extending to the present day. Within them, he captures the many different ways in which cities and living spaces can be represented in-world, from shining cities with gleaming skyscrapers to cities in decay, from Mediterranean waterfronts to the cramped confines of the favela, and from cobble streets to paved sidewalks.

Not only are the pieces here attractive for their breadth of representation of urban spaces, they also hold the eye because of the richness of style and finish they each have.

*Third Eye Gallery: Jaz (Jessamine2108)*

Sitting across the landing point from Virtual Cities, Jaz offers 21 pieces that see states are something of a departure for her.

The series “Awakening” is about my changing perception of SL – to the possibilities that it offers and to be able to see beyond the surface. I am stepping out of my comfort zone to communicate using the creations of designers rather than use landscapes and avatars. I would like to thank the mesh creators Harry Cover and Karthikeyan Engineer with their quirky and cool creations that helped me grow as an artist.

– Jaz (Jessamine2108)

This is an intriguing and engaging collection of images, rich with colour, each one perfectly framed to draw the eye into it. There are four pieces within this collection that might be called “traditional” landscapes – or at least focus on subjects Jaz has more familiarly covered. However, this doesn’t put them at odds with the rest of the pieces on display, rather it grounds them as a further expression of her art and growth.

SLurl Details

Third Eye Gallery (Midnight Sanctum, rated Moderate)

Coming to Second Life: Gen Con “the best four days in gaming”

Posted on July 14, 2020July 30, 2020 by Inara Pey

*The VRazeTheBar Gen Con Experience pre-event Welcome Centre*

Gen Con is the largest tabletop-game convention in North America, by both attendance and number of events. Covering everything from traditional pen-and-paper games to computer games by way of role-playing games, miniature war games, strategy games, board and card games, live-action role-play and more.

Founded in 1968 as the “Lake Geneva Wargames Convention”, since 2003 Gen Con has taken place annually in Indianapolis, Indiana, where in 2019 it attracted almost 70,000 attendees. However, as with a lot of physical world events, Gen Con in 2020 has been hit by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; but rather than being abandoned, the event is switching to offering itself on-line through a number of services and platforms – and as a part of this, solution provider VRazeTheBar is creating a special venue in Second Life.

VRazeTheBar is an organisation dedicated to providing virtual experiences to complement both physical world events and other on-line activities, including conferences, seminars, conventions and trade shows. They have partnered with Gen Con to provide a multi-region environment within Second Life that will offer those wishing to capture the atmosphere of the convention the opportunity to do so virtually, through VRazeTheBar Virtual Gen Con Experience.

Taking place alongside the rest of Gen Con Online over the four days of Thursday, July 30th through Sunday August 2nd, VRazeTheBar Virtual Gen Con Experience features four regions in Second Life that will host a full schedule of activities for gamers and attendees, which might be summarised as:

Tabletop Role Playing sessions run by experienced in-world game masters.
Panel and group discussions – such as the Game Designers Fireside Chat, featuring game designers and experts in the field.
In-world game creation sessions and tournaments.
Open gaming sessions that you and your friends can explore and discover new experiences.
Social events and activities – such as the Virtual Dragon Riding Rave, featuring a live mix DJ playing fantasy and sci-fi based electronic dance music.
A chance to meet the creators and designers of the virtual world.

To help make full use of the available space, the event’s regions have been collectively divided into themed areas defined by altitude:

Ground level (Sierra level): presentation area and historical.
500m (Lima level): modern / present day – down-town Indianapolis.
1000m (Echo level): apocalyptic.
1500m (Golf level): game play environments.

We’re building this over four private regions; [it’s] fairly small scale … But it allows us to do things well in terms of performance and offering an awesome social experience, which are important to us. So is the idea of recreating, as closely as possible, the actual venues that gamers feel comfortable as familiar hang-outs and social spaces when spending time in-world.

– Ron Clifton (RCArchitect in-world), VRazeTheBar’s Technology Lead

Each level will have specific features and attractions. For example, the ground level will include the main landing point and Welcome Centre. As the first location those attending the event will encounter, this serves a number of purposes:

It provides general information on the event itself, such as the schedule of activities.
For those who are not familiar with Second Life, it provides basic tutorial on using the viewer to move, communicate, and sit (and which is supported by additional introductory info on the VRazeTheBar website), together with general information on SL.
For those unfamiliar with table-top gaming in Second Life, it provides simple introductory games visitors can play to understand the essentials – such as using a game HUD.

Above this, on the Lima level is a photo-realistic reproduction of down-town Indianapolis that features the venues that host Gen Con in the physical world, intended to give gamers familiar with those venues a sense of recognition and comfort in where they are in-world.

Attendance at the event is largely free (although there is a nominal US $2.00 fee for some special events, mandated as a part of Gen Con Online’s registration requirements) – however, attendees must all register via the Gen Con website.

We’re really excited to have this opportunity with Gen Con. It’s very much a proof of concept to show what we can do in Second Life to recreate some of the Gen Con social experience.

– Alesia Clardy (AleisaPM in-world), VRRazeTheBar’s Creative Director

I’ll be covering more on the event over the course of the next couple of weeks in the run-up to doors opening, including some sneak peeks at the various event levels and what they’ll be offering.

In the meantime, Second Life users interested in finding out more about VRazeTheBar Virtual Gen Con Experience can do so by dropping into the pre-event Welcome Centre currently open on the Mainland. This will remain available to visitors through until the event kicks-off on July 30th, and as well as providing the introductory information outlined above, this version of the Welcome Centre also provides details on how to register for the event and offers links to join the in-world group where updates and information can also be obtained.

My thanks to Ron and Alesia at VRazeTheBar for their time in the preparation of this article.

Links and SLurl

VRazeTheBar website
VRazeTheBar Virtual Gen Con Experience event schedule
Public Welcome Centre (Welworn, rated Moderate) – available until July 30th
Gen Con website

2020 viewer release summaries week #28

Posted on July 13, 2020March 4, 2021 by Inara Pey

*Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation*

Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 12th

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 6.4.3.543157, dated June 11th, promoted June 23rd, formerly the CEF RC viewer – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
- Tools Update RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544474 on July 7th.
- Arrack Maintenance RC viewer updated to version 6.4.5.544465 on July 5th.
Project viewers:
- No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

SL release viewer download page – LL
SL viewer release notes – LL
SL Alternate Viewers page – LL
SL available viewer index – LL
Starlight alternative viewer skins page (not officially supported by LL)
Viewer release process overview – this blog
SL Viewer updates and reviews in this blog

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

Black Dragon updated to version 3.8.6 on July 6th, then to version 3.8.7 on July 7th and then 3.8.8 on July 8th.

V1-style

Cool VL viewer stable branch updated to 1.28.0.2 on July 11th.

Mobile / Other Clients

Speedlight browser version updated on July 9th – release notes.

Additional TPV Resources

Third-party Viewer Directory – LL
Third-party Viewer Policy – LL

Elvion’s return to Second Life

Posted on July 13, 2020September 1, 2021 by Inara Pey

*Elvion, July 2020 – click any image for full size*

Update: Elivon re-opened in August 2021 at a new, Full region location – see my review here. As such, the SLurl here has been modified to point to the new location.

When we first visited Elvion back in early 2019, we found it to be a magical ¼-Homstead parcel dressed as an elven retreat quite bewitching in its design and layout (see: Elvion: an elven sanctuary in Second Life). Later that year, Elvion relocated to take up an entire Homestead region, bringing with it a wholly new design that presented visitors with a setting beautifully suggestive of the open countryside of a national park, complete with distant mountains (see Elvion expands in Second Life).

Sadly, Elvion vanished from Second Life when its designer, Bo Zano (BoZanoNL) and his SL partner, Una Zano (UnaMayLi) opted to take a break from SL. However, Miro Collas, who first alerted me about Elvion back in 2019, prodded me via Twitter over the weekend to pass on the news that Bo and Una were both back in SL, and that Elvion would be opening anew on July 12th, 2020; so we scurried over to take a look.

The new landscape offers something of the look and feel of Elvion’s late 2019 design: there are the distant mountains / hills framing one side of the region, the low-lying grasslands cut by water, and familiar bridges that span said water. However, this is no reproduction of a previous design. There is a lot that is wholly unique to this iteration of Elvion that make it unique to itself and that carries with it a sense that rather than emulating a past build, this is in fact a continuation; that were we to follow the coastline far enough, or perhaps climb over the north-western mountains, we’d find ourselves once more looking out over Elvion’s past landscape.

This is also a place that offers a echo of Elvion’s more mystical elements. Tucked away behind a screen of giant oak and fir trees, for example, lie the overgrown ruins of a gigantic cathedral-like structure (a clever kitbashing of Mark Inkpen’s Chapel Ruins, a long-time favourite of mine).

Rising from among the trees, this is a place where water drops from high on the walls, flooding its lower floor even as more water bursts from rocks at the base of one wall. These rocks may one have been part of the foundational stone on which the great building had been established, but they have been rudely thrust upwards by some cataclysmic event that perhaps brought about the structure’s ruin. For those who wade across the shallow flood waters, a set of steps lead up to where a fountain awaits, doves keeping watch on the stone benches alongside it.

Away from this mighty ruin, and across the low-lying grassland and the swift-flowing river flowing through it, lies a smaller ruin, this one of an old tower. It is reached via two wooden bridges that use a long, slender mid-stream island to span the fast-flowing waters. Fed by falls tumbling from the north-western highlands, the waters of the river have a crisp, cold look to them, as if they are largely melt water originating in the snows of the mountains, so the bridges are a welcome means of reaching across them.

The eastern bank of the river shares offers space to both the tower ruin (with the curio of an old barber’s chair sitting within it) and a small summer house converted into a cosy bedroom. The latter also has a little fenced garden close by, offering one of the regions many places to sit – another can be found just to the north of the old tower, where a bench swing hangs from a high bough.

It is around the summer house and old tower that the richness of Elvion’s wildlife can be particularly found, as deer graze amidst the lush grass, watched over by birds, and heron sit patiently on the rocky banks of the river, awaiting lunch in the form of a passing unwary fish. In addition, elk can be found on the island and close to the cathedral ruins, while geese circle overhead and seagulls ride the breeze over the region’s eastern bay.

The presence of the animals and birds again echo past Elvion designs whilst adding that attractive sense of depth we like to see in region designs. They also add a tweak of humour as well – keep an eye out for a couple of members of the Rat Pack and two of the Three Stooges who are hanging around the island (I understand the third Stooge and another member of the Rat Pack might get to be added!).

Finished with a rich sound scape, and with much more hidden away awaiting discovery (do keep an eye on the region’s coastline, as there are one or two little areas of peace and solitude tucked away!), Elvion once again presents a natural setting perfect for exploration (including via a wearable horse, if you have one) and for photography.