Category: Second Life

A little more Shakespeare in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

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.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream Events

One of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a four-stranded play set within a forest inhabited by the fairy folk under the rule of Titania and Oberon. There is the over-arching theme of the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, due to take place within the forest. This is to be in part celebrated by a group of six amateur actors staging a play, and who have also come to the forest to prepare. Then there are the four young Athenians who are to be among the guests at the wedding: Hermia, is in love with Lysander, but has been order by Egeus, her face to wed Demetrius, who is deeply loved by Helena, Hermia’s best friend – but whom he dumped to be free to wed Hermia.

Within the forest, Oberon and Titania are somewhat estranged over Titania’s refusal to accede to Oberon’s demand to hand him her Indian changeling. Angered by her actions, Oberon summon Robin “Puck” Goodfellow, his “shrewd and knavish sprite”, with the intent of putting into motion a plan to shame Titania into doing as he wishes through the use of a magical potion. However, as the plot is put into motion, Oberon witnesses assorted actions: the cruel words of Demetrius to Helena, the assery (a deliberately chosen term in the circumstances 🙂 ) of Nick Bottom, one of the amateur players, and the plot inevitably thickens – helped in no small part by a slight case of mistaken identities, until the fairies are forced to convince those with whom they have interacted have just experienced a dream – and Puck suggests that the dream might even extend to the audience.

Seanchai Library continue to celebrate this popular comedy throughout the week with a series of special events:

Saturday, June 22nd, 19:00 The Listening Picnic

Grab a “sammich” and the hand of a friend, and come hang out in Ceilliuradh Glen to celebrate the beginning of summer with a dream or two! Broadcast will be on Stream.

Tuesday, June 25th, 19:00: Making Scenes at A Midsummer’s Night Dream

With Kayden Oconnell and friends at the A Midsummer’s Night Dream installation on LEA 2.

 

A Midsummer’s Night Dream, LEA 2

Wednesday, June 26th, 19:00: A Midsummer’s Night Dream – The Whole Story

With Shandon Loring at the A Midsummer’s Night Dream installation on LEA 2.

The Rest Of The Week at Seanchai Library

Sunday, June 23rd, 18:00: James and the Giant Peach

Caledonia Skytower reads Roald Dahl’s classic at the Magicland Golden Horseshoe.

Monday, June 24th 19:00: Incident at Hawk’s Hill

Gyro Muggins reads naturalist and historian Allan W. Eckert’s popular novel.

In 1870, Manitoba became the fifth province of the (then) three-year-old Canadian Confederation. Over the previous 18 months, it had seen strife and rebellion, but for William MacDonald, his wife, Esther, and their family, the lands around what would eventually become the city of Winnipeg, are ideal for farming, and so they have settled and built Hawk’s Hill.

The open spaces are perfect for the MacDonald’s four children – or should have been; while the three elder children thrived, the youngest, six-year-old Ben, became increasingly introverted.

Small for his age, Ben was reserved and prefers being with animals, learning to imitate the sounds of many, and well as copying their movements and actions. In return, the local animals seem to respond well to him – although members of his family and the other locals consider him odd.

But then came the day when Ben, in seeking new animals to mimic, wandered further than was usual, venturing into unfamiliar territory – only to become hopelessly lost. When a storm breaks, he has no option but to hide in a badger hole – an occupied badger hole. And thus begins a relationship spanning several months between young boy and a female badger, to the benefit and comfort of both.

Thursday, June 27th

  • 19:00: Monsters and Myths: Shandon Loring continues Bernard Evslin’s words on Hecate, variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery.
  • 21:00: Seanchai Late Night: contemporary fantasy and science fiction with Finn Zeddmore.

SL16B and marketing Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
For existing users, SL16B is part of the scrolling banner of images featured on the secondlife.com log-in page. It marks one small part of marketing work around the birthday celebrations

The celebrations for Second Life’s 16 birthday commenced on Thursday, June 20th at 10:00 SLT, and will run through until July 8th. It is a time of a lot of in-world events marking Second Life’s “birthday” – and it’s also an opportunity for Linden Lab to remind the world just how long-lived, – and potentially relevant – the platform is.

This outreach can take various forms. It can, for example encompass direct outreach to the media at large, as we’ve seen with SL’s 10th and 15th years, with media interviews with the CEO, press releases and the release of materials such as infographics offering snapshots of Second Life in facts and figures.

For 2019 the Lab has already produced a special Second Life landing page for SL16B. Landing pages are those seen by people attracted to Second Life via adverts and marketing campaigns, and I’ve covered how these pages work in my 2015 piece Landing Pages: marketing Second Life. However, given it is available, I took the opportunity to contact the Lab’s Marketing Manager for Second Life, Brett Linden about what else the marketing team are working on to promote Second Life during its 16th anniversary, and he was only too happy to talk me through some of the work.

The entire marketing team has been working to promote SL16B through multiple channels, including organic, paid, email and social campaigns. Most of our energies on SL16B have been on re-engagement of existing or lapsed Second Life Residents but we do hope that the event will draw the interest of outward (non-SL) media, as well.

Our Senior Marketing Manager Darcy has been promoting via paid display and search ads, most of which are being primarily used for [this] “re-targeting” [of] existing Second Life Residents to encourage (and/or remind) them to log back in. The landing page is referenced in some of the paid campaigns that link directly to it, [some of which] include 15 second and 30 second edits of our main SL16 “first look” promo video.

– Brett Linden describing the marketing work around SL’s 16th anniversary

While it may sound a little odd trying to market Second Life to users who have not logged-in to it for a while – after all, if they’ve not logged-in, then surely because they’re no longer interested? – it does actually make a lot of sense. There are many potential reasons why people might take a break from logging-in to the platform or who opt to put it to one side with the intention of coming back – but never quite get around to it. Thus, reaching out to “lapsed” users can be beneficial.

Certainly, it’s an approach that has yielded worthwhile results for the Lab, hence why it continues to be a staple part of their marketing efforts. If nothing else, re-capturing the interest of those who were once engaged in the platform is potentially a lot easier than trying to draw in an entirely new audience (not that this shouldn’t also be done / isn’t done).

Some of the paid advertising and search ads Darcy Linden has been working on in the run-up to SL16B that will be used in marketing campaigns around the birthday celebration

Part of this outreach will be in the form of e-mails. Target groups for these e-mail are being identified by one of the Lab’s marketing analysts, Maveric Linden, and e-mails will start going out during the week commencing Monday, June 24th. Part of this campaign will encompass active Second Life users as well, in the form of one e-mail promoting activities at SL16B, and another promoting the new Premium Gift released for SL16B (a retro ’50s diner already available through the Premium gift kiosks).

Social media plays an important role in marketing, both for SL16B and in general. In this the reach of a message can be greatly amplified through the likes of Twitter re-tweets, both by Second Life users and others.

Lead Community Manager Xiola has been leading the charge with promotion across all our social channels including working with the community to help spread awareness. It was exciting to see that founder Philip Rosedale tweet the video, but we’ve also had dedicated outreach to many Second Life vloggers and bloggers, such as yourself that allowed many influencers to get an advanced sneak peek to prepare their coverage for opening day.

– Brett Linden describing the way social media can help amplify a message

Of course, reaching out to vloggers and bloggers engaged in SL (you can catch my pocket guide to SL16B if you haven’t already) is to be expected. But what about more outward (non-SL related) marketing? Brett acknowledges that SL16B doesn’t specifically have a direct focus here, but that doesn’t mean the more mainstream media is being ignored.

We are engaged in ongoing efforts for outward press opportunities covering multiple other angles including reminding the media about our pioneering role in the mainstreaming of virtual worlds, virtual currencies/economies and VR. One of the things that we’ve noticed some recent media traction on is the “Love Made in Second Life” mini-series and some of the other non-romance ethnographic videos featured on our social channels.

For example, we already have a major cable news network and an established podcast creator working on extended pieces inspired by some of those videos. We’ve been very happy with the attention received by our “Made in Second Life” series and the recent Destinations videos since they serve the dual purpose of showcasing SL and surfacing great stories to both the existing community and external audiences.

A practical demonstration of this broader engagement with the media actually came as this article was being finalised, in the form of How Virtual Reality Is Changing Healthcare, a techopedia article by Terri Williams, which includes comments by the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, directly referencing Second Life’s relevance to healthcare.

Marketing is a complex topic, but it is one in which LL are constantly engaged, even if we may not always see what is going on or the results – or even see it in the form of press interviews or similar. As such, I found it interesting to hear from Brett on just one aspect of the work; and I hope this article helps shed some light on work we, as users, don’t often get to see.

My thanks to Brett Linden for his time in allowing me to write this piece.

2019 SL User Groups 25/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey

Hors du Temps; Inara Pey, May 2019, on FlickrHors du Temps, May 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, June 20th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements allowing the environment (sky, sun, moon, clouds, 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.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

  • Graham Linden continues to work on the shader / rendering issues.
  • A simulator-side RC update went to the Magnum and LeTigre channels on Tuesday, June 18th, with a number of bug fixes that should hopefully have addressed some of the current rendering issues:
    • BUG-226815: “[EEP] Since the grid was rolled to 19.04.15.526263 yesterday, region windlight is broken for all legacy viewers”.
    • BUG-226252: “[EEP] Please create an internal error code for llReplaceAgentEnvironment() & llSetAgentEnvironment() that distinguishes whether an agent does not have the experience allowed and if the experience is not allowed at their location”.
    • BUG-226917: “EEP Environment, New Sky should default to midday and not 6pm”.

Bakes On Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos, clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies as well as system avatars. This involves viewer and server-side changes, including updating the baking service to support 1024×1024 textures, but does not include normal or specular map support, as these are not part of the existing Bake Service, nor are they recognised as system wearables. Adding materials support may be considered in the future.

Resources

Current Status

  • As noted in my Simulator User Group summary, the Bakes on Mesh RC viewer has been pulled due to a significant bug surfacing.
    • The viewer remains listed on the various official viewer pages, but cannot actually be downloaded.
    • Anyone attempting to run a previously downloaded version will be forced to update to the current release viewer.
  • It is believed the Appearance Service has been fixed for correctly handling alphas on the new “universal” channels.  However, this cannot be tested until the viewer issue noted above has been rectified.

Animesh Follow-On

  • Vir believes the basic ability to adjust the visual parameters of an Animesh object via LSL (i.e. changing its height, length of arm, etc.), is now working as expected. However, he’s like to get a little more functionality in to the capability before a project viewer supporting it is provided.
    • The capability allows parameters to be looked up by name or ID, and the command uses ranges from 0 to 1 to make adjustments.
    • It has been suggested many of these values (e.g. head shape and facial parameters – lip size, thickness, angle, etc., – breast size, torso muscles, leg size, butt size) require non-zero values to better define a neutral state for those bones. However, the problem here is that many of the slider values on which bone manipulations are made are entirely arbitrary within individual bones (one might have, day, a range of -1 to +1; another might be 0 to 10m etc)., so defining a value of 0.5 (being the mid-point between 0 and 1) to a bone might not actually correctly map to the “neutral” position of the bone as defined by the slider values.
    • Note that there are obviously sliders that morph the avatar shape rather than directly manipulating bones, and these cannot be manipulated through this LSL mechanism.
  • The Bento Skeleton Guide has been further updated and now: with a list of So this page now attempts to:
    • Define all sliders that directly affect bones and which might therefore be manipulated using the new LSL command(s) with Animesh.
    • Define the sliders that affect collision volumes, to help with things like fitted mesh that could potentially be used with Animesh objects.

UI Panel for Manipulating Animesh Object Shapes

  • A repeated request has been for the Lab to provide a viewer UI panel for manipulating sliders associated with Animesh objects to allow their shapes to be edited a-la he shape sliders UI for avatars.
  • The major issue here is that for such a panel to work, Animesh objects either:
    • Would require an associated body shape, which they currently do not have.  While this has not been ruled out, it is not something the Lab is committing to at this time.
    • Requires an extensive project to not only develop the UI, but to develop a means to represent and manipulate all bones, etc. that someone might want to individually move on an “on the fly” basis, and then present this through a UI element. As such, this approach isn’t being considered at present.
  • Instead, it is hoped that the LSL parameter manipulation noted above would perhaps provide the means for Animesh creators to offered their own HUD-based “slider system” that is specific to adjusting the shapes of their Animesh creations, rather than being a generic UI element in which assorted options may not apply to their Animesh.

General Discussion

Rigged Mesh HUDs

  • As we’re all aware, HUDs are objects that are taken by the viewer are effectively attached to our screen space without being displayed in-world when attached.
  • However, rigged mesh HUDs which have been produced by some behave differently: when attached, these HUDs appear to the person using them as being attached to their avatar (although no-one else can see them as such, as HUD rendering data isn’t sent to other viewers).
    • This has been described as an “unexpected” behaviour, but given such HUDs are – as the “rigged” in their title implies – rigged against the avatar skeleton, it perhaps shouldn’t be that surprising, given the viewer would naturally assume rigged objects to be associated with a skeleton (avatar or Animesh), regardless of the selected attach point.
  • The Lab is now looking at some way to warn people when this happens, to help prevent people being caught by surprise (e.g. by having clothing knocked-off by the HUD as it attaches).

In Brief

  • Feature request BUG-202864 “Change Mesh Uploader to preserve Scene File object names when a full linkset is uploaded”: viewer-side work has been carried out for this, which should be appearing in a Maintenance RC viewer soon™. However, it is dependent upon some yet-to-be-done back-end work.
  • Feature request BUG-227171 “Bring Avatar Cloth to Mesh”:
    • Bento and Animesh have, to a degree, allowed some cloth behaviour to be seen in mesh (e.g. the skirt of a gown moving with an avatars legs, rather than the legs extending through it. However, these solutions can be labour intensive.
    • Currently, LL have no plans to work with cloth-like motion for mesh clothing, but this request has been imported for future reference.
  • Project ARCTan: this is the project to re-align the impact of rendering content.
    • It’s still on the back burner at the Lab, although it is hoped focus can be returned to it soon. There are obvious concerns as to how it might affect land impact with in-world objects; given this one suggestion has been to only apply it to new content uploaded to SL, effectively making it something of an “opt-in”, a-la materials.
    • However, there is nothing official to report on how ARCTan will be implemented, as there is still a lot to be done before thing get to that point.
  • Script processing issues: the music at the SUG meeting this week meant this didn’t get to be discussed. In short, Rider Linden is leading the investigation into understanding what is going on and possible causes, and what can be done to correct  / mitigate the problem.

A Small Town Green in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019 – click any image for full size

Update: Small Town Green has closed and the host region is now home to a club / hangout.

Miro Collas gave us the nudge about visiting Small Town Green, the Homestead region design by Mido (Doli3).

A few years back there was a region also by the name of Small Town Green, but whether this build is a continuation / renewal of that, I honestly cannot say. However, I can say that Mido has in the past been responsible for Small Town Café (see A visit to a Small Town Café), and we did hop over to an earlier iteration of her Small Town Green roughly six months ago, prior to it popping up in its current location, but I didn’t blog about it at that time.

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019

The current iteration of Small Town Green is an eclectic build in three parts defined by three separate islands. One of these, tucked into the south-west corner of the region appears to be a private home (ban lines denote it is certainly off-limits to casual visitors). The second island is to the north-west, and is certainly open to the public, as is the largest of the three, sitting on the region’s east side.

This large island contains the region’s landing point – or rather, it is the closest of the three major landmasses in the region to the landing point, given the latter sits under pouring rain on a flooded section of roadway, a submerged railway line paralleling it as they point towards the ruins of a town on the island.

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019

It would appear that something has happened here at some point; not only are the road and track submerged, they are partially blocked by large boulders, and while the wreck of a car and a train respectively sit on or against them, the car has been around long enough to become festooned with flowers while the tracks from which the train has toppled is similarly overgrown with flowers sprouting out of the water.

Follow the road “inland” and you’ll start to discover the eclectic novelty of the region that makes it so attractive: koi carp slowly circle around the entrance to a subway station, rain falling around them as they bring a new perspective to the term “flying fish”. More fish – but somewhat smaller – can be found idly circling within and old British telephone box close by.

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019

Take the stairs down to the subway and more surprises await.  While it might be under water, the station nevertheless has a train awaiting passengers – although the tree growing on that platform is probably not the kind of “passenger” you might expect to encounter in an underground station! Across the road sits the ruin of a school, the upper floor of which is still occupied by surprisingly pristine looking desks, the building itself long overgrown and roofless. More shells of buildings and skyscrapers, equally overgrown, mark the eastern extreme of the town, suggesting this place has been long deserted.

Across the water, and beyond the small island with its broken lighthouse that lies close to the road, the second public island is similarly overgrown and offers curios of its own. There is a gabled avenue of trees, for example, pointing the way to where an old manor house lies in ruin, the trees growing around and through are festooned with lights. Then there is the old tram car converted into a diner and accompanied by its odd little menagerie of giraffe, zebra and raccoon, it’s entrance long blocked by a wild garden despite the apparent freshness of the meals placed at the tables.

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019

Not far from the tramcar is a little café, a trifle overgrown, perhaps, but cosy nonetheless, while between them is a delightful little curio of a corner, stacked with books and more, and just beyond it a cosy little hideaway perfect for cuddles. It is these contrasts: ruin and little snuggle spaces, the rain and the little, perfectly-detailed dioramas, the open waters and the wild, yet someone cultivated islands, that make this Small Town green a genuine pleasure to explore (although some might find the rain around the landing point and island a little hard going).

Amenable to a wide range of windlight settings, Small Town Green makes for an ideal photographic study, and an engaging opportunity for exploration.

Small Town Green; Inara Pey, June 2019, on FlickrSmall Town Green, June 2019

SLurl Details

SL16B: your pocket guide to the celebrations

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

The SL16B celebratory regions have opened their doors to mark the 16th anniversary of the public launch of Second Life. As with previous years, the event includes music, entertainment, talks, presentations, performances and the opportunity to explore themed builds and exhibitions by participating members of the Second Life community.

This year marks something of a departure from recent SLB events, in that for the first time since SL9B, these celebrations have been under the direct management of the Lab and the Linden Department of Public Works (LPDW), rather than being community-led. The most notable aspects of this change are that this year, the celebration doesn’t feature things like the familiar 4-region Birthday Cake stage – in fact there are only two official stages: the Main Stage and the DJ Stage.

The SL16B Main Stage as seen from the beach at the lake

The second notable aspect is that the exhibitor spaces are considerably fewer this year than in previous years, and these are located in the five regions on the west side of the SL16B estate, being: SL16B Astonish, SL16B Captivate, SL16B Enchant, SL16B Incredible, and SL16B Sparkle. Each of these is marked by a large central exhibitor display with a landing point associated with it, with smaller parcels laid out around it in a grid pattern of roads (traversed by the familiar pod tours) and footpaths.

The rest of the celebratory regions are given over to public spaces, the stages, the auditorium, a large central lake and beach, and a couple of Linden Homes preview regions, of which more anon.

This year’s SL16B regions include many open spaces that offer room to breathe whilst visiting

The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Sweet Sixteen”, with a focus on a 1950’s, the start of the “youth revolution” and a general period of social change in America that continued through the 1960s.   Given this, there are the inevitable core elements of diners, drive-in movie theatres, bright colours, vinyl and 50s B-movies and typically 50’s views of “the future” that involve rocket ships and the like to be found throughout the exhibitor displays, but there are also those that put the 50s into context as informative pieces, and those that cast their net a little wider.

In this latter regard, I admit to particular liking the International Space Museum / National Space Society’s central display that celebrates our once and future presence on the Moon. Yes, we didn’t reach the Moon’s surface until 1969, but NASA was a child of the 1950s (officially formed in 1958), and July 2019 does mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing.

Part of the ISM / NSS exhibitor display Back to the Moon!, marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11

The community spaces offer attractions of their own: the lake and beach noted above, meandering parks, and spaces that can help take the load when dealing with large numbers of avatars bunching together in the core events areas. And here I might sound a little critical, but having become used to fantastical builds for the various stages and event centres over the last seven years in particular, the core builds – stages and auditorium – for Sl16B come across as – well – a touch bland.

Yes, I can understand the reasoning; some of the more fantastic builds seen in the past were doubtless resource heavy for both servers (with a scripting load) and – more particularly – viewers (lots of mesh and textures, for example, clogging up local computer resources). The builds here are a lot more economical in these respect; but while they do reflect the teens / 50s theme, they do seem to lack the attractive lustre and thrill of previous community designs.

Events and Activities

But in terms of major events, what does SL16B hold? Well, the best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below.

However, there are a couple of significant events taking place which you might want easier reminding about – the weekday Meet the Lindens sessions, and the SL16B Music Fest, so I’m including a few notes on them here.

Meet the Lindens

Now a staple of SLB activities, Meet the Lindens features the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of, employees of Linden Lab at 14:00 SLT, Monday 24th June through Friday, 28th June at the SL16B Auditorium.

You can find out more about who is taking part this year in my blog post, SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who, however, the schedule for the sessions is given below for ease of reference.

Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT) Lindens
Monday 24th June Patch Linden, Senior Director, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June
Oz Linden, Senior Director, Second Life Engineering and April Linden, Systems Engineering Manager, Operations
Wednesday 26th, June Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden, Marketing Specialist
Friday 28th June Meet the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

SL16B Music Fest

The SL16B Music Fest will take place on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st June, at the Main Stage at SL16B. Again, for ease of reference, the line-up of live performers is given below.

Time Friday, June 21st
 Saturday, June 22nd
10:00 Parker Static Dreama Summerwind
11:00 R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo) Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon Tempio Breil Grif Bamaisin
13:00 Gabriel da Silva Donn DeVore
14:00 Alazarin Mobius Skye Galaxy
15:00 Evely Lane Effinjay
16:00 Zak Claxton Quartz

Other Points of Interest

The Welcome Area

The best place to start your visit, the Welcome Area features:

  • A click-to-teleport map of the celebration regions that will deliver you to a destination (or the closest landing point to it).
  • Free gifts and free 1950s-style avatars to help you fit the mood of the celebrations (and potentially reduce your rendering impact on others visiting the regions, should you choose to use them).
  • The Swaginator HUD for the SL16B gift hunt.
The Welcome Area, on the east side of the SL16B regions is a good place to start exploring – there’s a click-to-TP map, and various freebies (including 1950s style male and female avatars) and the SL16B hunt swaginator HUD

The Tapestry of Time

An anniversary celebration is something the evokes memories and gives us cause to look back, and SL16B is no exception. Building on an event from 2018, this year’s celebrations include an expanded Tapestry of Time, a full region devoted to providing in words and video, the chance to look through SL’s long history from 2003 through to the present day. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region for the historically minded to find of interest.

The Tapestry of Time

Linden Homes Preview Regions

There are two Linden Homes preview regions.

  • The first  – SL16B Stunning – presents the current crop of Traditional land-based homes, and the existing Houseboat type of home that can been found on Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent.
  • The second – SL16B Spellbound – presents the upcoming trailer-style homes that will form (a part of?) an upcoming new Linden Homes release.
The four new styles of trailer / caravan based Linden Home that will be coming up soon and can be seen at SL16B

The Linden Trailer Homes are liable to be gaining a lot of preview coverage, and they are certainly an interesting idea. However, the preview comes with an important note from the Lab:

Please keep in mind this region is just a PEEK at content that is still in progress. The final live regions will be somewhat different and will have some variety built into them just like the previous themes do, but this gives a taste of what is coming.

Patch Linden will have more to say on these units during his Meet the Linden presentation on Monday, June 24th. Following his session, I’ll have a more in-depth look at these new trailer homes including comments from Patch.

SL16B Shopping Event

While not a part of the SL16B regions per se, don’t forget that running from June 20th through until July 8th, 2019 is the SL16B Shopping & Gift Event. This can be found in the familiar Second Life shopping event mall, covering 15 regions (five for shopping) and decorated in the SL16B colours. See SLurls and Links below for the region SLurls

The SL16B Shopping and Gift Event – June 20th through July 8th. See the links below for SLurls

SLurls and Links

SLurls

Core SLurls Exhibitor SLurls
 Shopping Surls
SL16B Welcome Area SL16B Astonish Aurelian
Tapestry of Time SL16B Captivate Gilded
SL16B Auditorium SL16B Enchant Golden
SL16B Main Stage SL16B Incredible Halcyon
SL16B DJ Stage SL16B Sparkle Tinseled
Linden Homes Preview 1
Linden Homes Preview 2

General Links

Myf McMahon at Club LA and Gallery

Posted on by Inara Pey
Club LA and Gallery: Myf McMahon

Currently on display on the ground floor of Club LA and Gallery, curated by Fuyuko ‘冬子’ Amano (Wintergeist) is a modest exhibition of landscape photography by Myf McMahon, a Second Life photographer whose work had previously escaped me.

With 12 images on offer, this is a small but comfortable exhibition featuring pictures of some of Second Life’s more popular public regions such as Ukivok, Author’s Point, :nostos deer:, Wild Edge and (I believe) Cold Ash. Each image is intended to evoke a feeling or sentiment – as indicated by their titles – And the end of all our exploring,  That missing part that we are always searching for, etc., and each of them succeed in achieving this.

Club LA and Gallery: Myf McMahon

These are elegant images, showing the minimum of required post-processing to bring them to life. And while none of them feature avatars and few feature animals or birds, they are nevertheless rich in life: the toss of waves, the pressure of wind and breeze as signified by the bent backs of trees or the billowing of a windsock – even the casual leaning of a bicycle against a railing.

I understand from the notice outside the gallery that Club LA and Gallery may be under some renovation, and given I’ve not dropped in for a while, I’m not sure how long this little exhibition will remain, so a visit in the short term might be advised.

Club LA and Gallery: Myf McMahon

SLurl Details