Category: Second Life

2020 SL project updates week #16: TPVD summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Little World, February 2020 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, April 17th, 2020. These meetings are generally held every other week, unless otherwise noted in any given summary. The embedded video is provided to Pantera – my thanks to her for recording and providing it. Time stamps are included with the notes will open the video at the point(s) where a specific topic is discussed.

The latter part of this meeting as largely general text chat related to group chat issues – please refer to the video, if required.

SL Viewer News

[0:00-7:20]

  • As per my week #16 CCUG meeting notes, the EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.540188 on Wednesday, April 15th.
  • If no issues are found with this version of the viewer, it will likely be promoted to de facto release status in week #17 (commencing Monday, April 20th).

The remainder of the official views currently in progress remained unchanged through the week as:

  • Current Release version  version 6.3.8.538264, dated March 12, promoted March 18th. Formerly the Premium RC viewer – No change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Camera Presets RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538729 March 25.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538760, March 25.
    • Zirbenz Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.9.538719, issued March 19.
  • Project viewers:
    • 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.

General Viewer Notes

  • EEP is expected to be promoted “early” in week #17. By close of business Friday, the viewer had around 1/3 of the preferred number of users hours LL look to have before determining on a viewer’s promotion.
    • This viewer should allow personal environment settings applied to an avatar to persist across log-ins. However, if this is used with custom settings, there is a risk the viewer will crash on logging-in; a fix for this will follow the viewer’s release.
  • The order of promotion for the remaining RC viewers still TBD.
    • It had been indicated that the LMR RC would not follow behind EEP in the order of promotions, as the Lab did not want to have two sets of rendering updates going out almost back-to-back to one another (allowing for the 2-week gap between release promotions). However, from comments made at the CCUG and the TPVD meetings, LMR may be the next to be promoted after EEP.
    • However, all of the current RC viewers appear to be in good shape and ready for promotion over the next 1-2 months.
  • The Camera Presets RC viewer is currently suffering from around an issue a week cropping up that is preventing it being declared as fit for promotion.
  • The mesh upload updates viewer is expected to appear in project viewer form soon, but could rapidly move to RC status once available.
  • Another viewer due to appear is the build tools viewer (using the updated tool chain with VS 2017  / a more recent version of Xcode). This currently has a couple of significant crash issues that are to be resolved, but once available might also go through a short cycle to achieve release status.
  • Once the build tools viewer is out, there are plans to upload the viewer’s Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) for media handling, that should result in improvements to handling more (and more recent) video codecs.

In Brief

  • [11:18-16:10] Names Changes
    • Currently causes a breakage in the viewer’s ability to handle chat logs and settings (e.g. if you have a log of “user XY” who changes their name to “user XZ”, the viewer cannot reconcile the two names and give you the complete chat history using both names). There is currently no viewer-side change being implemented to auto-update chat logs should someone change their user name. But if this becomes an issues, LL will consider doing so – although a contributed patch would be most welcome.
    • Despite the US $40 fee, name changes have proven popular, as has been noted by the Lab and by Firestorm (who have received a lot of support calls over it). Oz noted in particularly that the initial demand has gone higher than the more optimistic forecasts by LL.
    • Scripted support for finding and listing the past names of and avatar will not be supported.
    • It was suggested by user Anastasia Horngold that Premium members should be able to pay the fee to change the name of the alt accounts without having to upgrade said accounts to Premium as well – and it has been suggested that the idea be submitted as a feature request.
  • [18:23-20:03] Could the viewer have a separate rendering distance for shadows (e.g. so a user can have draw distance set to 200m, but can set the maximum distance for rendering shadows to (say) 20m), to reduce the processing load on their system?
    • Would need to be tested for potential performance boost, but could be worth considering. Again, a feature request has been requested.
    • An ancillary suggestion to this would be to tie shadow rendering to an object’s LOD settings so shadows are only rendered on the high and medium models.
    • It was also suggested a simple general cap on the distance from the camera at which shadows are rendered might also help with performance.
  • [30:50-33:05] Could terrain drawing be decoupled from object drawing, so aviators, etc., have a “long” terrain draw set so they can see the land ahead, but without the load of object data transmission / rendering? LL is not well-disposed to setting relatively “long” drawing ranges (e.g. 512m or greater), as this ends up putting extra update load on all the simulators on which an avatar could have a child agent.
  • [36:57-39:24 + beyond in text chat] Chat lag: the increase in user concurrency has resulted in some strain on the group chat services, particularly those handling very large groups – however, the issue is not a common across-the-board issue with all groups.
    • It is believed the issues of failing group chat message delivery is down to an issue with a single group chat server that has a couple of “spectacularly large” groups running on it, which at present cannot be relocated (efforts focused on cloud uplift). LL is investigating to see if something else can be done to alleviate the problem.
    • It is hoped that transitioning group chat services to the cloud will help improve general performance, but it is likely that specific issues such as group loads will require algorithmic changes to the code itself.

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020 – click any image for full size

I arrived in-world on April 17th, 2020, to a message from Dya OHare inviting me to hop over to her latest region design, Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, which now supersedes her Abandoned Vacation Spot design I blogged back in February (see: An abandoned vacation spot in Second Life).

The new setting, as might be gathered from the name, presents Dya’s take on a Caribbean setting, and is with her previous build, she packs a lot of detail into the region, offering a real taste of the tropics with nicely placed touches that add authenticity to the setting while the overall layout once again suggests a place much larger than a single region.

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020

This is one of the smaller, cosier Caribbean islands, surrounded by clear blue waters that gently shoal to a sandy apron that encloses the island on three side – and gives the impression it might completely surround it at low tide. The island raises its sapphire back from surrounding sea and sand, presenting a roughly diamond shape with an south-eat to north-west orientation. The landing point lies towards the former, located in a little commercial hamlet that sits on the top of the island, its single pedestrian street flanked on either side by a number of small businesses, including what might best be described as a boutique hotel, together with a bar and local small diner.

Looping around this tiny slice of urban life is is dusty track of a road that offers the primary means of exploring on foot as it curls and branches its way between uplands and beaches and rocks. Follow it south and behind the bulk of the taller commercial properties, and it’ll take you to a dead end and a tongue of sand that licks its way up over the grass with an invitation to walk across it. Doing so brings you to a stretch of golden sand that is watched over at one end by a whitewashed lighthouse, and at the other by beach house that offers shade from the Sun’s heat and glare and a cooling freshwater pool. Just offshore, the point at which the sandy shelf surrounding the island gives way to deeper waters is marked by a ring of anchored buoys (actually denoting the region’s edge).

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020

Take the road the other way from the landing point and it’ll offer a looping walk around the northern aspect of the island, rising and falling in response the land’s own undulations. A modest motel sits on the western side of this road, offering a view (partially obscured by trees) of the ocean, which here meets the unyielding rock of the isle, as the tide appears to be in.

Further along the road sits a little chapel facing steps that climb up to a little shanty village of corrugated tin huts straddling the island’s backbone,  the road again looping around it below. Just past the chapel and the step up to the shanty, the road offers a glimpse down into one of the island’s secrets: a landlocked cover of clear water that tumbles from a waterfall and sheltered by rocky walls and the verdant greenery of the island. Cut off from the open sea by a further beach, this cove is an attractive hideaway, perhaps now filled by freshwater given the sea apparently can no longer reach it.

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020

After curling around the north-western headland, the road loops back towards the landing point once more, passing as it does so a set of stone steps that offer the way down to what would appear to be – at low tide at least – the island’s largest expanse of sand. With the tide in, most of this is covered covered by water – if only moderately so – meaning a walk out to the tiki bar that marks where the depths significantly increase is actually going to be something of a wade / swim. For those not feeling so energetic, there is shade to be found under an awning set out over the ruin of an old boat further along the beach.

Like her previous build, Dya offers something of a story with this setting. Little clues are scattered about that suggest this island perhaps sits not in the present, but in the last of 20-30 years ago: the style of car parked here, the only Honda mopeds scattered around, and so on. Certainly, it would appear to be a place that is showing signs of age: paintwork on buildings, rowing boats and elsewhere is all well sun-bleached, while board walks out on the water are in a sorry state of repair – even the plumage on one of the island’s parrots is looking a little careworn!

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020

All of this suggests this isn’t one of the Caribbean’s more popular tourist stop-off points, but at the same time, all of the little touches waiting to be found – like a glimpse of a Bob Marley photo through an open door here, the roadside fish stall there, the fading beat of reggae music to be heard drifting through the air as one explores, clearly indicate the island is very much home to those who live on it.

Dya tells me this design will likely remain in place for at least six weeks, although she will continue to add to it / tweak it (a hurricane may apparently be on the way!), so there is plenty of time yet to visit. For now, and given the weather in my part of the physical world has gain turned cold and damp, I’m off back to Dya’s beach house with its shade, pool and – hopefully – a glass of chilled white wine as should be used to counter the Sun’s heat!

Dya’s Scent of the Caribbean, April 2020

SLurl Details

2020 Content Creation User Group week #16 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Otter Lake, February 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, April 16th 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.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Resources

Current Status

  • The (possibly last) RC version of the viewer  – version 6.4.0.540188 was issued on Wednesday, April 15th.
  • If all goes well with this RC viewer, then EEP will likely be promoted at week #17 (commencing Monday, April 20th).
  • Once EEP has been promoted, the flow of RCs in the coming weeks also being promoted – allowing for the Lab preferring to keep to one promotion per every 2 weeks – should increase.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).

As of January 2020 ARCTan has effectively been split:

  • Immediate viewer-side changes, primarily focused on revising the Avatar Rendering Cost (ARC) calculations and providing additional viewer UI so that people can better visibility and control to seeing complexity. This work can essentially be broken down as:
    • Collect data.
    • Update ARC function.
    • Design and provide tool within the viewer UI (i.e. not a pop-up) that presents ARC information in a usable manner and lets users make decisions about rendering / performance.
  • 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.
  • The belief is that “good” avatar ARC values can likely be used as a computational base for these rendering calculations.

Current Status

  • Vir is looking at the avatar visibility controls – jelly dolls (which are not optimised for avatars with a lot of attachments) and imposters.
    • He’s been particularly looking at getting better performance from jelly dolls (e.g. avoiding any drawing of rigged attachments for jelly dolled avatars, reducing the memory required to handle them).
    • There are places in the code where jelly dolled avatars are handled inconsistently (e.g. setting an avatar to never render should see it treated the same as jelly doll, but this in not the case – it can actually be more expensive to render as shadows are still turned on for it, etc).
    • Improvements arising from this work could be issued within a maintenance RC viewer, rather than awaiting a specific ARCTan viewer to fix them.
  • Another thing Vir has looked at briefly with a view to possibly looking at in more detail in the future, is the time taken to compute a mesh preview when right-clicking an avatar, which can impact the time it takes for the corresponding menu to be displayed. How big an effort it might be to improve this is unclear, but it “would be nice” to see it improved.

More on Jelly Dolls

  • One of the things Vir has been experimenting with vis jelly dolls, is displaying them as monochrome system avatars, so the system avatar mesh is used, and so rigged mesh it is wearing is ignored (as per notes above). A disadvantage here is that non-human avatar forms that are jelly dolled then look “a little weird”.
    • This could be avoided by ignoring all scripted transforms contained in any mesh the avatar is wearing, as these most directly deform the avatar, and so ignoring them would prevent the monochrome system avatar  “looking weird”.
    • The question was asked if having non-human avatars appear in a humanoid shape if jelly dolled would be a problem, with the opinion broadly being that would be up to the person using the jelly doll option.
  • Some alternatives to jelly dolling discussed at the meeting included:
    • Simply render jelly dolled avatars as elliptical capsules.
    • Follow Firestorm’s lead and provide an option to only render avatars on a user’s Friend list (all others are ignored and not rendered).
    • Offer improved lower LOD options for avatars that could be automatically swapped (or used when jelly dolled).
  • One of the issues with jelly dolls is whether or not the capability is widely used – people tend to complain more about seeing mono-coloured avatars in their view than worrying about having their performance hit by fully rendering all the avatars around them; it’s not clear if alternative options would change this.

In brief

  • Mesh Uploader project viewer:
    • Not available as yet, but getting close to a project viewer release.
    • Incorporates Beq Janus’ contributions, as see in Firestorm.
    • Also adds additional information about joint offsets and provides better logging.
  • Next meeting: Thursday, April 23rd.

A boutique gallery visit in Bellisseria

Posted on by Inara Pey
Beckridge Gallery: Yellowstone Boardwalk

The Linden Homes at Bellisseria can be used for many things besides a house; so long as commercial activities don’t take place within one, people are limited only by their imaginations. So it is that friendly cafés, information centres, hang-outs, group centres and more have sprung up across the content – as have a number of boutique art galleries. I’ve had occasion to visit a couple of the latter in 2019, and the opening of two new exhibitions in April gave me cause to hop back once more.

Like myself, Diamond Marchant has an interest in space flight and astronomy, a fact that first drew me to her Beckridge Gallery in July 2019, when she was presenting an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the Moon (see: Celebrating Apollo 11 in Second Life and Sansar). For April 2020, Diamond presents Yellowstone Boardwalk, an exhibition of her own photographs taken in Yellowstone National Park over a 10-day period in June, 2019.

Beckridge Gallery: Yellowstone Boardwalk

Yellowstone is famous for many things: being the first U.S. National Park (if not the first in the world), for its mountains and waterfalls, its geysers and hydrothermal system, and the incredible richness of its flora and fauna. As such, it is a place that allows people to create marvellous images of sweeping vistas, tumbling falls, rugged mountain ranges and towering peaks, and to film its fabulous array of wildlife.

Sitting atop a vast caldera some 72km by 45 km, sitting over a massive magma chamber thought to be 60 km by 29 km and up to 12 km in depth. This chamber powers much of the geologic activity within the park, and gives rise to a dynamic environment of heated pools, fumeroles and more, with paths through these living location by the use of board walks that both protect the landscape and the tourists visiting it.

It is from these board walks that Diamond has produced a series of images that convert the setting into wonderful fractal-like scenes that  show the hidden energies that lie below ground and seen only by the wisp-like venting of gas and steam. The make for a fascination portfolio of photographs, beautifully rounded-out by two of those sweeping vista style shots that capture the enormity of the park’s open skies.

Hoot Suite Gallery: Awesome Fallen

The Hoot Suite Gallery, curated by Owl Dragonash meanwhile, offers an exhibition of Second Life  art by Awesome Fallen.

Surrealistic is tone, rich in colour whether dark or light, Awesome’s work often has a dream-like feel to it, sometimes tinged with whimsy and at others by fantasy – but it is always carries a sense of depth and story. All of this is very much in evidence across the two floors of the Hoot Suite, the upper floor featuring a quartet of avatar studies that mix of fantasy and whimsy. The rooms on the lower floor can be found pieces that demonstrate the more surreal nature of Awesome’s work. Together, upper and lower floor offer a compact, engaging cross-section of her art.

Hoot Suite Gallery: Awesome Fallen

Yellowstone Boardwalk will, I believe, remain open through the spring of 2020; Awesome Fallen’s exhibition will remain open at the Hoot Suite Gallery through to May 11th, 2020.

SLurl Details

Fantasy Faire 2020: nominations for king, queen and chancellor

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Fantasy Faire

One of the fun elements introduced to Fantasy Faire in 2015 was the opportunity to nominate and then vote for the King and Queen of the Fairelands and their (strictly non-human) Chancellor. Nominations came from across all realms of fantasy, with the top five for the positions of king and queen (human or human-looking nominations only) and chancellor, went forward for a public vote-off during the course of the Faire.

The event has since become a staple of the Faire, and it is once again back for 2020, with nominations now open. It’s important to note that this has nothing to do with avatars or people per se, but is a fun election purely for characters from works of fantasy, with the “winners” announced at the end of the Faire.

Nominees can be from written fantasy, graphical novels, cartoons, films, television or radio series, and from genres such as fairy tales, high fantasy, magical stories, urban fantasy, vampire sagas or steampunk, etc. The only major requirements are that nominations for king and queen must be human (or human-type) characters, whilst nominations for chancellor are restricted to non-human (or non-human type) characters, and that the winners from the previous year are no eligible for re-election.

How It Works

  • Nominations are made between now and the end of Saturday, April 25th, 2020(23:59 SLT), using the form below.
  • The top five nominees for each role – king, queen and chancellor – will be selected for a final vote-off.
  • During the Faire, people will have the opportunity to vote for their favourites.
    • There is a fee payable for voting, but all money raised will go to Relay for Life.
  • The winners will be announced at the Fantasy Faire Live Auction on Sunday, May 3rd.

Past Winners

  • 2019: king: the Goblin King (Labyrinth – 2nd time); queen: Ser Brienne of Tarth (Game of Thrones); co-chancellors: Falkor, the Good Luck Dragon (Neverending Story and Kalessin of Earthsea (Earthsea novels). Not these are not eligible for nomination again in 2020
  • 2018: king: Gandalf; queen: Galadriel; chancellor: Totoro.
  • 2017: king: Serverus Snape (Harry Potter); queen: Leia Organa (Star Wars); chancellor: Rhiow (Book of Night With Moon).
  • 2016: king: The Goblin King; queen: October Daye; chancellor: The Last Unicorn.
  • 2015: king: Havelock Vetinari; queen: Granny Weatherwax; chancellor: Greebo the Cat.

Additional Links

Previewing Lab Gab 22: Caledonia Skytower

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The next edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, April 17th, 11:00 SLT, and while it is not a show featuring a member of the Lab’s team, I’m mentioning it here because it will be featuring someone I consider to be an exceptionally talented woman, whose work oft runs entirely under the radar for most users  – and the amount of work she puts into Second Life is incredible.

Caledonia Skytower is the director of Seanchai Library in Second Life, a post she has held for as long as I’ve known her, and in which she organises, frequently hosts and often designs, the groups activities and events.

For those not familiar with Seanchai Library, it is perhaps the longest-running group in Second Life devoted to bringing stories, literature, poems and more to life in Second Life and beyond through the spoken word. Founded in 2008, Seanchai Library has presented thousands of storytelling events across the grid, and in the process has raised thousands of US dollars for numerous charities. The group takes its name, which it formally adopted in 2010 two years after being founded, from seanchai (pr. Shawn-a-kee – a traditional Irish storyteller/historian).

As well as bringing a weekly series of readings and events at their headquarters at Holly Kai Park, Seanchai Library has also made numerous immersive storytelling presentations across Second Life, including their annual Christmas trip to Victorian England with The Dickens Project, and events such as an immersive telling of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, to name but two. In addition, Seanchai Library lends its skills to events and activities run by others across the grid.

The timing of Strawberry’s interview with Caledonia couldn’t be better, as this year marks Seanchai Library’s 12th year of activities in Second Life (They’ve also built a presence in Kitely), and next week they will again be supporting Fantasy Faire.

Caledonia Skytower (l) with Strawberry Linden on the Lab Gab set

Cale herself is a gifted theatre producer, writer and storyteller. She has also – whilst via in Second Life – brought the virtual and the physical together with a joint presentation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatesby with the Tacoma Little Theatre, which allowed audiences attending a stage performance based on the book to go into a virtual environment designed by Cale and Seanchai Library, and learn more about the novel, the period in which it was set and F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.

Given this, she will make an engaging guest on the show and offer people a real glimpse inside the work of Seanchai Library. As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, so be sure to tune in!

My thanks to Berry for responding so positively to the suggestion Cale is approached to appear on the show.