Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, October 13th
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 version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5th – No change.
Release channel cohorts:
Voice Rc viewer, version 6.3.2.531587, released on October 8th.
From ancient times through to modern tales, by way of Poe and even the graphic novel, corvus corax, the common raven has held a special – if mixed – place in the tales and mythologies of the northern hemisphere.
For some, they are seen as the companions of deities, or even the embodiment of deities – a trait perhaps drawn from their intelligence: not only are ravens natural social in their nature, they have also been known to use other birds and animals to their advantage, such as calling wolves to strike down easy kills and then cleaning up what’s left once the wolves have had their fill.
For others, and perhaps more widely in more modern times and doubtless arising from the fact they are – like their cousins corvus corone, the carrion and hooded crows -, carrion scavengers (although they are also omnivores), they are associated closely with death, witchcraft and dark arts.
Ravenheart Museum: A Conspiracy of Ravens – CybeleMoon
In this latter regard, modern-era horror stories, poems (such as Poe’s famous The Raven) films and Halloween have also served to help make this time of year the one in which we perhaps think of ravens more than we might at other times of the year. Hence why the Ravenheart Museum, owned and curated by Talus Ravenheart, is currently hosting a mixed media exhibition A Conspiracy of Ravens.
Primarily located on the ground floor of the museum, A Conspiracy of Ravens offers an engaging look at the role of the raven through human history and mythology, with seven perched ravens acting as guides. Featuring photographs, drawings, paintings, illustrations and note cards, the exhibition includes a look at the realities of the raven and a bird, its interweaving into folklore a older mythology as a harbinger, familiar, deity and reputation for intelligence, as well as their roles in lore – notably that of the British Realm – and horror (Poe once again), and even their use in stamps around the world.
Ravenheart Museum: A Conspiracy of Ravens – Edgar Allen Poe
The art – reproductions of illustrations from books through to sketches and photographs and including a trio of CybeleMoon’s beautiful multimedia pieces – is richly diverse and presented as a series of seven themes, each with one of the aforementioned raven guides (you can find the last two upstairs). Click on each raven, and you’ll receive a note card on the theme presented by the accompanying images. Further, several of the items presented to support some of the displays, and even pieces of the art, will either also offer a note card when clicked, or take you to a web page where a story might be found.
Elegant in its presentation, A Conspiracy of Ravens offers engaging insight in our relationship with the raven, and for those who enjoy haunting and spooky tales that might include a raven or two, at 19:00 SLT on Tuesday, October 15th, the exhibition will be hosting Caledonia Skytower from Seanchai Library, who will be reading a series of short stories in The Spooky Classics.
And while visiting, do be sure to take in the magnificent (and I gather permanent) display of Libertine Eggs. Featuring the entire collection of these fabulous miniatures by Ali Baroque, each smaller than an average avatar’s head, this is also an exhibition that really requires first-hand viewing to truly appreciate the intricate beauty in each of the 60+ eggs on display.
It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.
Sunday, October 13th
13:30: Tea Time Haunts
A double serving of spookiness this week in a session that will likely run to over the hour:
Dubhna Rhiadra with a seasonally spooky story by author Mary Molesworth.
Corwyn Allen with The Japanned Box by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
I saw that Sir John Bollamore was sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream I was vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something squat and uncouth…
– The Japanned Box, Sir CA.C. Doyle
So, gather around the warmth of the hearth in the fireside room, and prepare enjoy two ghostly tales.
18:30: Tilly and the Bookwanderers
Eleven year-old Tilly has lived above her grandparent’s bookshop ever since her mother disappeared shortly after she was born. Like the rest of her family, Tilly loves nothing more than to escape into the pages of her favourite stories.
One day Tilly realises that classic children’s characters are appearing in the shop through the magic of `book wandering’ – crossing over from the page into real life.
With the help of Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland. Tilly is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to her mother all those years ago, so she bravely steps into the unknown, unsure of what adventure lies ahead and what dangers she may face.
Join Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe as she concludes the story!
Monday, October 14th 19:00: Variable Star
Gyro Muggins reads Spider Robinson’s 2006 completion of an eight-page novel outline from 1955 by Robert Heinlein.
When aspiring composer and musician Joel Johnston first met Jinny Hamilton, it seems like a dream come true. And when she finally agrees to marry him, he feels like the luckiest man in the universe.
There’s just one small problem. He is broke. His only goal in life was to become a composer, and he knows it will take years before he’d be earning enough to support a family. But Jinny isn’t willing to wait; she wants Joel with her in marriage now.
Unsettled by her conviction that money wouldn’t be a problem for them, Joel presses Jinny for an explanation. Her response stuns him: ‘Hamilton’ is not her last name – it is ‘Conrad’, and her grandfather is the wealthiest man in the solar system: Robert Conrad; she had been using subterfuge to ensure whoever she fell in love with really loved her for who she was, not for her grandfather’s money. With that truth revealed, she also informs Joel of her family’s broader plans for her and her husband-to-be.
Perhaps most men in Joel’s shoes, faced with the facts that Jinny really did love him and was offering a life of wealth, might have forgiven her for hiding her identity and plans. But not Joel. So it was that he found himself trying to get as far from her and her family as possible: aboard a colony ship heading deep into space. And then came the cosmic cataclysm that would visit so much calamity on humanity as a whole.
Wednesday, October 16th 19:00 The Mysterious Woods of Whistle Root
11-year-old Carly Bean Bitters suffers a peculiar malady: she can only sleep by the light of day, and is awake through the night, spending her time up in the attic of her aunt’s house, awaiting the arrival of the dawn.
One night, she notes a strange squash that appears on her roof. Investigating, she comes across Lewis, a fiddle-playing rat. Lewis tells Carly the squash is a replacement for one of the rats in the group who has been abducted by owls.
He goes on to explain that until recently, the owls join with the rats dancing in the moonlight within the Whistle Root woods to the music played by Lewis and has band. But then something changed, and instead of dancing with the rats, the owls took to abducting them.
Grabbed by an owl herself, Carly find herself dropped into the woods where she meets the once happy community of rats, now gravely threatened by the hostile owls. At school, and struggling to stay awake, she also finds a strange note warning that the “Moon Child” is in danger.
Enlisting the help of another strange child, Green, who spend his time hiding under the library, Carly sets out to solve the riddle of the “Moon Child” and the reason for the owls’ change in behaviour – and along the way, discovers something unexpected about herself.
Join Faerie Maven-Pralou as she reads Christopher Pennell’s 2010 novel.
Thursday, October 17th
19:00 The Sealed Book
Shandon Loring presents stories from the 1945 radio series of the same name. Also in Kitely – teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.
Fox Road, October 2019 – click any image for full size
Writing about Fox Road has proven to be a little difficult, even after several visits to the region. Designed by Vertiline Colter, this Homestead region is both open to the public for exploration, and home to her Little Fox brand in-world store.
I say “difficult” in terms of writing about it for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’m not entirely sure it is finished: several details, large and small, have changed as I’ve hopped back and forth between the region and home; the most notable perhaps being further landscaping of the north-eastern arm of the larger of the two islands. The second is, that while Fox Road has a personality of its own, I cannot entirely escape feeling an echo of NevaCrystall’s design for Borneo, Gac Akina’s handsome region (which you can read about in A trip to Borneo in Second Life).
Fox Road, October 2019
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the one is intentionally modelled upon the other; as those of us who travel Second Life are only too aware (and as I’ve occasionally noted in these pages), there are certain things – be they houses, bridges, landscaping elements, board walks, animals, cars, décor pieces, furnishings, etc., that tend to suddenly being en vogue for region designs to the point where it can feel you’re constantly tripping over them. Thus, visiting a region can oft put one in mind of another, quite coincidentally.
Here, the sense of familiarity is perhaps down to the way both regions are laid out: both share a very similar orientation and divide between the larger L-shaped island and the smaller; both feature cove-like beaches of grey shingle, and each has a wild, rugged feel. But Fox Road has more than enough about it to offer its own uniqueness of character.
Fox Road, October 2019
Take, for example the small cluster of buildings just to the south-west of the beach landing point. These have the suggestion that perhaps they was once the location from which fishing boats once put out to sea (something very much enhanced by the presence of two large trawlers in the bay), the old rail lines perhaps used to carry iced catches away to market. However, time areas to have moved on: the main quay where boats may have once come alongside looks to be in a state of disrepair, while the water weed blanketing the surface of the water beneath it suggest any boat attempting a mooring would end up with its propellers fouled.
Meanwhile, the bay formed by the two islands seems to have suffered from at least one land slip that has pushed gravel and shingle out into the water to the point of making it impassable to vessels and leaving the two old trawlers trapped in place – their only other route of escape being blocked by the low-hanging, if also ramshackle, bridge linking the islands. Indeed, one of the trawlers appears to have been here so long, her old hull may have been holed by the rocks of the cliff that plunges into the waters behind her, leaving her waterlogged and listing heavily to one side.
Fox Road, October 2019
The flat top of the main island is reached via a wooden steps and platforms that climb upwards from a shoreline cottage. Decking has been laid out across the scrub grass of the hilltop as if it might have been put there at some point in time to give vehicles better traction. Now ageing under the Sun and in places in need of repair, a part of it acts as a path pointing the way along the top of the island, while the rest of it almost suggests an outdoor space for music – or at least for splashing around in an old paddling pool that looks as if it might benefit for a little more air being pumped into its sides.
A greenhouse to one side of this deck area, along with one of the buildings down below, gives the impression these spaces are still being used, both having furnishings within. But who might be using them is up to visitor to decide; is it a hermit or hermits with a bohemian lean, or are the barn and greenhouse used as club meeting spaces? Whatever might be the case, it is clear their use is not sufficient to prevent nature slowly laying claim to them, just as it is with the other buildings to be found here.
Fox Road, October 2019
No sound scape was evident at the times of my visits, but those wishing to rez props for photography can do so by joining the Fox Road group – note that auto return is active, but do still please pick up your pieces after use should you opt to rez anything. Those who take photos in the region are invited to share them in the Fox Road Flickr group.
Burn2 2019 opens its gates at 17:00 SLT on Friday, October 11th, and will run through until midnight on Sunday, October 20th 2019, culminating in the burning of the Man the Temple on the closing weekend of the event.
The theme for this year is Metamorphoses, and is described thus:
Many cultures of the world have mythologies about transformations, or as the Greeks and Romans called them, metamorphoses.
In today’s world maybe humans are not turned into animals and frogs don’t become princes when kissed. But transformations can happen for a person or collectively for a group and these metamorphoses can have a powerful effect on our lives.
We invite you to immerse yourself in transformative experiences, explore the ideas and thoughts and dreams of creatives around you at Burn2.
Burn2 2019: The Temple
A week of activities have been planned for the event, including music, dancing, lamplighters processions and – of course – the burning of The Man (Saturday, October 19th at 12:00 noon SLT) and The Temple (Sunday, October 20th, 12:00 noon SLT). You can keep track of all BURN2 activities through the event schedule on Google Calendar.
To ease your explorations of the regions, don’t forget you can pick up a ride at the Department of Mutant Vehicles, car rezzing point close to the welcome area, and there are balloon rides to be had, while the festival volunteers can point you in the right direction and / or give you note cards listing the camps and points of interest.
As with previous years, participants have fully entered into the spirit of the BURN2 theme, and the regions offer a tremendous carnival atmosphere.
About Burn2
Burn2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups and the only regional event allowed to burn the man.
The Burn2 Team operates events year around, culminating in an annual major festival of community, art and fire in the fall – a virtual echo of Burning Man itself.
The following notes are taken from my audio recording of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, October 10th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.
Graphics Team
There are two new Lindens now on the rendering team – Euclid Linden, who has been with the Lab for around a month at the time of writing, and Ptolemy Linden, who has been a Linden for the last couple of weeks, again at the time of writing. Both will be working on various rendering projects which will include the Love Me Render viewer updates and also projects like the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) – which is considered a priority in order to move that project towards release.
Euclid Linden goes full-on shark-man, while Ptolemy goes a little more conservative with a starter avatar
Viewers
No further updates thus far in the week. The hope is that the Vinsanto Maintenance RC viewer (version 6.3.2.530962 at the time of writing) looks to be in “good shape” for promotion, but currently requires a little more time in its release cohort.
This leaves the official viewer pipelines at the time of the meeting as follows:
Current Release version 6.3.1.530559, formerly the Umeshu Maintenance RC viewer, dated, September 5 – No Change.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November 2017 – offered pending a Linux version of the Alex Ivy viewer code.
Obsolete platform viewer, version 3.7.28.300847, May 8, 2015 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7.
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).
Current Status
Work is progressing on building a predictive model based on the data LL has been gathering on mesh complexity, frame times, etc.
This model will be tested across a wider range of client hardware types and different ranges of settings.
The data thus far confirms that geometric complexity plays a large part in performance reduction, but also that there are a lot of other variables in play: rigged meshes are very different in behaviour impact to static meshes; some graphics properties can make a “big difference” in frame time, etc.
Details on the impact of textures has yet to be folded into the project.
Project Muscadine
Project Summary
Currently: offering the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.
Current Status
Still largely on hold while ARCTan is being focused on.
Other Items in Brief
Mesh Uploader: a couple of points were brought up concerning the mesh uploader:
At the time mesh was introduced, materials were no supported; therefore, in the uploader there is code to discard tangent space (which can be used by normal maps). This means normals must be calculated in real time, causing both performance problems and inconsistencies between how normals appear in Second Life and how they appear in the 3D software used to create them. It’s been suggested this issue should be the subject of a Jira.
Allowing for the work on ARCTan, some see the uploader unfairly punishing on grounds of size and LI.
It what pointed out that a very large mesh that can be complex to render get hit with a high LI and high upload cost, but a very small object – which may still have tens of thousands of triangles – is not penalised to the same degree, even though it might be as costly to render.
The alternative suggested was to have costs based not on LOD boundaries & changes rather than a simple size / LI basis. The idea here being that the cost is more reflective of what is seen and rendered by the viewer, which is seen as “levelling” the playing field (if a small object has a really high LOD tri count, then it would incur higher costs, in theory making creators more conservative in how they construct their models.
It was pointed out that in some respects complexity / LODs are already being gamed (e.g. by having one high LOD model then setting the medium and low LOD levels to use the same low poly version of the model for both and avoid costs for a proper mid-level LOD model), and such an approach as suggested might further encourage similar gaming.
Vir’s view is that the issue is not really that tied to the uploader per se, but is more in the realm of overall cost calculations (although LOD models obviously impact upload costs). As such, ARCTan is really the first step in trying to deal with these kinds of issues, and may help alleviate some of the perceived imbalance seen with upload costs.
Materials and Bakes on Mesh: a request was again put forward for LL to provide materials support for Bakes on Mesh. This is not an easy capability to supply, because:
System layers for clothing do not have a means to support any materials properties.
The Bake Service has no mechanism for identifying and handling materials properties to ensure they are correctly composited.
Thus, in order to support materials, both the system wearables and the Bake Service would require a large-scale overhaul which, given all that is going on right now (e.g. trying to transition services to being provisioned via AWS services), the Lab is unwilling to take on.
A request was made to allow 2K textures to be displayed by Second Life under “controlled conditions”, the idea being that a single 2K texture could eliminate the need for multiple smaller textures. The two main problems here are:
There is already a propensity for people to use high-res textures across all surfaces, whether required or not on the grounds “higher must be visually better”, so allowing even higher resolution textures to be displayed could exacerbate this.
Given there is no real gate keeping on how textures are used in-world once uploaded, how would any “controlled conditions” on the use of certain textures actually be implemented (both technically and from a user understanding perspective)?
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 