Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 2nd
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 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22nd – NEW.
Release channel cohorts:
Rainbow RC viewer, version 6.2.3.527584, released on May 29th. Contains a Windows / Nvidia fix.
Love Me Render viewer updated to version 6.2.3.527478, on May 28th.
Cool VL viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.22.49 and Experimental branch to version 1.26.23.2 on June 1st (release notes).
Mobile / Other Clients
Lumiya is currently unavailable through Google Play – see my article and update here. However, it remains available to new users (or can be re-purchased if urgent) via SlideMe.
Once upon a time within the Calas Galadhon park regions lay a tribute to Santorini, the largest island of a archipelago in the southern Aegean Sea. Officially called Thira (Thera in classic Greek), the island is world-renowned for the brilliant, white-washed walls of its buildings – most keenly, perhaps, exemplified by photographs of the principal city, Fira.
Obviously scaled-down, the Calas tribute to Santorini was nevertheless a marvellous build. So, when in 2014, Ty Tenk and Truck Meredith, owners of the Calas park regions, announced the Santorini build would be closing at the end of that year (see A farewell to Santorini, December 2014), the news was greeted with disappointment among Calas Galadhon fans – myself among them.
However, in April 2019, Tapped me with a photo of him standing in one of the Santorini terraces looking up at the distinctive houses and with the comment, “Just thought you’d enjoy seeing what we are working on 🙂 still a big secret but I know you loved the original ..all mesh 🙂 “. To say I was excited would be an understatement.
The new build – called, appropriately enough, New Santorini – was unveiled by invitation only on May 25th, 2019 – and Caitlyn and I were fortunate enough to be along those invited, although we were like all the guests, asked to keep quiet about what we saw until after the public unveiling, which took place on the weekend of June 1st / 2nd, 2019.
Located on the Calas “holiday regions” of Eriador and Erebor, New Santorini recaptures almost everything from the original (although the waterfront café / events area has been replaced by a new open-air events area called Phoenix, sitting across the water from the main build, and within Erebor (Santorini itself lies within Eriador). However, being mesh and finely designed and implemented New Santorini offers much for explorers to discover both within its whitewashed walls and on and under the surrounding waters.
The landing point lies off to the east side of the region, within a semi-submerged cave. Follow the signs, and you’ll be led from this cave to a watery footpath that will present you with your first view of Santorini and the new events area (you may have to pump your draw distance up to see both, if your computer can handle things). This paths passes the gateway and steps leading down to the submerged gardens of Thera – an attraction in their own right, and again seeing a happy return (with a few revisions) as an ideal for merfolk to enjoy – although folk with legs are free to explore them as well.
The town offers a lot to see: terraces offer places to sit and to dance, stairs climb between houses and buildings, plants offer bright bursts of colour and cafés beckon the weary. Around the base of the main island and on the surrounding islets are hints of a much older civilisation, echoing Minoan Thera. Some of these are best seen from the automated boat tour around the islands that starts at the Santorini end of the long, low causeway linking the island with the Phoenix events area.
One aspect of the town that should not be missed is the updated interiors of many of the houses. These represent a fine mix of different historical / cultural styles that are a complete delight to see, each one decorated, I understand, by Truck.
Just how long new Santorini will remain is uncertain, and Ty candidly informed me.
We weren’t sure how we were going to show it off. We wanted it to be a special build, but we weren’t sure people would let us pack it up! But these are the regions we use for the holidays and our other special builds … although [as] both [Erebor and Eriador] are full regions now, we could put our special sky builds above where we have the [Phoenix] venue now. I’ve kept scripts down on Erebor to make room for builds above, so we’re still mulling it over.
– Ty Tenk on the new Santorini build and the future
However, the fact that it is back is a cause for celebration, and if you never got to see the original build (first built back in the days when prims were everything), then I cannot recommend finding the time to partake an excursion to New Santorini enough.
As it is, Phoenix will be the focus for all of the planned Calas musical events through June. These start on Sunday, June 2nd, at 14:00 SLT with Samm Qendra, and will include Reggie Sunset, Savannah Rain, Djembe Dragonfire, Voodoo Shilton, Antonio Galloway and Chapman Zane. There will also be two special themed FlyGearz events in June – Toga & Greek Mythology and Pirates. To stay informed of all Calas Galadhon events, be sure to check out the Calas Galadhon website and the Calas in-world group.
Update: due to illness in Sophie’s family, and as per Fuyuko’s comment below, the opening has been postponed until 14:00 on Wednesday, June 5th.
HippiMagic Art Studio and Gallery opens its doors for its first public exhibition at 12:00 noon SLT on Sunday, June 2nd, 2019, featuring the art of TaraAers and Fuyuko ‘冬子’ Amano (Wintergeist), supported with art by the gallery’s curator, Sophie Dunn (Sophie72 Congrejo) and a pair of fractal pieces by Raytracer (rinomon).
Occupying a 4096 sq m parcel, the gallery is split between in-door and out-door spaces in which the art is displayed, the landing point area neatly linking the two, and acting as an information point.
Within the gallery building is the display of Fuyuko’s art, which shares the gallery’s two levels with Sophie’s work (you might need to right-click on some of the images to determine the art through the Edit / Build floater, as the placement of the art is deliberately mixed). The upper level of the gallery also features a study space reserved for staff / invitees.
Fuyuko is well-known for her landscape art captured from within Second Life, and this is encompassed within the selection on offer here – but it is also mixed with some of her physical world photography to further demonstrate the breadth of her work. And in this, I confess to being constantly drawn to her photograph Past is Prologue, which has a beautiful melding of light, reflection, colour, symmetry (with the candle bowls), and the subtle hint of standing on the cusp between old and new years, all of which builds within it a wonderful sense of story.
Out in the garden (although with a couple of pieces tucked into the gallery building as well), Tara presents a selection of her art with each piece paired with a verse by Olean (Oleanhorok). This makes the selection something of a partner to her selection of images paired with Olean’s words for the May 2019 Visual Poems exhibition at The Edge Gallery (see: The magic of images and words in Second Life).
Each image – captured from within Second Life – is rendered as a painting, with the images displayed in the garden split between a version framed as a picture, and an unframed version that has been paired with Olean’s words. Both versions of each piece are offered for sale (as are Fuyuko’s pieces inside the gallery), offering those interested in the art a choice of potential purchases. There is a softest of colour and tone that makes Tara’s work attractive in its own right, and there is something captivating about the blending of her images with Olean’s verses.
A short wander in the garden in the direction of the 1960’s decorated VW camper van will reveal Raytracer’s fractal pieces neatly tucked into a candlelit corner, while indoors, Sophie’s work mixes will with Fuyuko’s to complete the exhibition.
The opening event for the gallery will feature both the key artists and music by DJ Phee Wonder. It will run through until 14:00 SLT.
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, June 2nd, 13:30: Tea-Time at Baker Street
Tea-time at Baker Street returns with the opening of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, the final set of twelve Sherlock Holmes short stories first published in the Strand Magazine between October 1921 and April 1927.
This week: The Adventure of the Illustrious Client.
The year is 1902, and Sir James Damery visits Holmes and Watson on behalf of his mysterious and illustrious client. The latter never actually directly revealed to the reader, although it might well be the king himself.
Damery’s client is concerned about the relationship between Violet de Merville, daughter of General de Merville, and Baron Adelbert Gruner, from Austria. Gruner is viewed as a rogue and a sadist and – in Damery’s and Holmes’ opinion – a murderer.
Despite the matter of his last wife’s mysterious death and his reputation, Violet de Merville will not be dissuaded from her determination to marry Gruner. So secure is the latter in his position that he is unfazed by a visit from Holmes – indeed, he warns the latter that a French agent who once confronted him with similar accusations finished-up a cripple for life after receiving a beating from thugs shortly afterwards; a veiled threat if ever there was one.
So, lacking obvious proof, how do Holmes and Watson prevent Violet de Merville from marrying Gruner and possibly facing the same future as the Baron’s last wife?
WithDa5id Abbot, Savannah Blindside, Kayden Oconnell, and Caledonia Skytower.
Monday, June 3rd 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.
Tuesday, June 4th 19:00: Crenshaw
In her first novel after winning the Newbery Medal, Katherine Applegate delivers an unforgettable and magical story about family, friendship, and resilience.
Jackson’s parents are in serious financial trouble; their stressful circumstances are taking a toll on Jackson. Mum and dad remain cheerful and upbeat, putting on a happy face for their kids, but Jackson is not fooled. He knows times are bad and, whether he likes it or not, Crenshaw the giant cat is here to help him through the worst of it.
Crenshaw is not only very large, he’s both outspoken and imaginary. He has come back into Jackson’s life to help him. But is an imaginary feline enough to save Jackson and his family from losing everything?
Author Katherine Applegate proves in unexpected ways that friends matter, whether real or imaginary.
With Caledonia Skytower.
Wednesday, June 5th 19:00: A Thurber Salute
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber (December 8th, 1894 – November 2nd, 1961) was an American cartoonist, author, humorist, journalist, playwright, and celebrated wit. His work as a humorist and cartoonist celebrated ordinary people as they faced the more comedic eccentricities and frustrations of everyday life.
Published primarily in the The New Yorker magazine, his cartoon and short stories were popular enough to garner reprinting as collections. This success spurred him on to write for the stage, co-penning the Broadway comedy The Male Animal, which was adapted as a a 1942 film starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.
Despite being also entirely blind in his later years, the combined long-term result of an accident at the age of seven, when his brother shot him in the eye with an arrow, and failing eyesight in his remaining eye, the last 20 years of Thurber’s life were his most prolific in terms of writing. His output ranged from books to short stories to some 75 fables, and a biography – that of the founder/publisher of The New Yorker, Harold Ross – and a five-party treatise on the American radio soap opera.
For this event, Kayden Oconnell and Caledonia Skytower read selections from three of Thurber’s most popular short stories. The first is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, written in 1939 and which is perhaps most famously associated with the 1947 film of the same name starring Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo and Boris Karloff (there was also a 2013 film adaptation, but no-one betters Danny Kaye…). Also on offer are selections from his 1937 short, The Macbeth Murder Mystery, and his alternate history parody from 1935, If Grant Had Been Drinking at Appomattox.
Thursday, June 6th 19:00: Thor The Mighty Adapted by Elizabeth Rudnick
Asgard’s greatest warrior, the mighty Thor, has vowed to protect the mortals of Earth with his legendary hammer Mjolnireven from his trickster brother, Loki!
With Shandon Loring. (Also in Kitely grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI).
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, May 31st, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it. The key points of discussion are provided below with time stamps to the relevant points in the video, which will open in a separate tab when clicked.
Note this meeting involved a lot of text-based chat on VRAM, script limits, and avatar complexity which, in the interest of brevity with these notes, I leave to the video.
The Rainbow Maintenance viewer – version 6.2.3.527584 – was released on Wednesday, May 29th. This viewer specifically fixes a known Windows / Nvidia issue where on exiting Second Life, the system video is distorted – see BUG-226803.
Note that at the time of writing this summary, the Rainbow RC viewer is not listed on the new Alternate Viewer page; if you are experiencing this particular issue, and wish to try the new RC, please go to the main Viewer Release page, where it *is* listed.
There should be a project viewer forthcoming “soon” with a number of open-source contributions
The remaining LL viewer pipelines are unchanged, as follows:
Current Release version 6.2.2.527338, formerly the Teranino RC viewer, promoted May 22 – NEW.
Linux Spur viewer, version 5.0.9.329906, dated November 17, 2017 and promoted to release status 29 November – 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.
As per my CCUG summary, it is anticipated updated versions of EEP and Bakes on Mesh RC viewers should be appearing in week #23 (commencing Monday, June 3rd, 2019).
The Lab has received a comprehensive open-source Debian-based contribution for Linux.
This will have restricted functionality (e.g. no Voice, as Vivox who supply the Voice EXE for the viewer no longer support Linux).
The Lab is currently putting time into trying to build this Linux option within their existing viewer build. If this succeeds, they will likely issue the viewer (I’m guessing as a project viewer initially).
As per my April 26th TPVD meeting notes, the Lab is considering the possibility of no longer sending group notices to e-mail when a user is off-line.
This will only be for off-line group notices. It will not block / change the receipt off-line IMs.
The reason for making the change is to help is secondlife.com being regarded as a spam domain by e-mail services.
Work has not yet commenced on this.
The Lab expects to be doing “significant” work on groups in general “pretty soon”. This will include work on group notice delivery reliability, general group chat lag, etc.
Work continues in trying to stabilise / improve teleports to avoid any repeat of recent problems.
Work is also in progress to improve how attachments are handled on teleports to lessen instances of attachment loss, ghosting, etc.
Some of these issues might be related to viewer changes, and the Lab is currently testing fixes and experimenting with the viewer, and the latter may result in some tweaks to the way the viewer handles attachments.
More on this to follow once the internal tests are complete and have been assessed.
As it is, improvement have been deployed to help prevent attachments getting killed on teleports, although further work on this may still be required.
LL continue to work on the iOS mobile client for Second Life.
iOS was selected because “at the time the decision was taken, there wasn’t anything for iPhone”, and the Lab didn’t have the resources available to handle both iOS and Android development.
More details on the iOS client’s functionality are hoped to be available “before too long”.
Android remains a hoped-for goal, although there is no time line for when it might happen.
[12:10-12:30] Last names: work is continuing on the return of last names, although deploying the capability is not imminent.
Again, work is progressing, and some services have been transitioned (note: not any user-accessible simulators), without any impact being noted / felt by users.
More services will be transitioning in the next few months.
The Lab is intentionally not providing information and when and which services are being transitioned in an attempt to more accurately garner from user feedback if things have go well or not (e.g. by preventing people reporting on the assumption that because X has been changed, it “must” be the cause of their issues).
[19:24-19:40] Viewer Caching Re-work: this has been paused for a while, but is due to resume.
[29:28-30:00] Visual Studio / Xcode Update: the Visual Studio 2017 (Win) and Xcode (Mac) update to the viewer build process is working locally but is not working within the viewer build farm. However, the switch to using them within the farm is expected “very soon”.
Note: I’m getting to this a little late as I was caught-up on in-world projects when the news broke – so please excuse my tardiness.
On May 29th, Linden Lab issued a blog post indicating some major restructuring of fees for Premium members, for credit processing Linden Dollar amounts to fiat money and out of Second Life, and alterations to Premium and Basic account Group and IM capabilities.
In my initial response I noted that while the Premium fee changes incur an “ouch!” factor, they are nonetheless understandable if the Lab is to meet the demand for lower virtual land tier fees and maintain its revenue flow. Of the other announced changes, the increase to credit processing fees, whilst again part of the revenue pivot, is nevertheless a hard bite to take for those generating their own income via SL, given it is the latest in a line of such increases over the last few years. However, and for many of us – Basic or Premium – the major injustice outlined in the Lab’s announcement was the cut to Basic account capabilities – namely the group allowance and the reduction in off-line IMs.
Again, as I noted in my initial blog post on the subject, and expanded upon in “Dear Ebbe II” (on the subject of Basic account changes, reducing Basic account capabilities in the manner proposed smacked of being a punitive act towards Basic account holders. This view wasn’t particularly helped by an official forum post indicating the Basic account reductions were an (ill-considered) attempt to encourage people to take out Premium subscriptions and – in the case of group allowances – an exercise in load-balancing to compensate for some of the group increase being given to Premium subscribers.
Such has been the upset that late on Friday, May 31st, the Lab openly conceded they’d made a mistake, and that the group allowance for Basic members will remain unchanged at the current limit of 42 – see: Group Limits Update: No Changes for Basic Members. However, the reduction in off-line IMs will still come into force from June 24th. So, as per the Lab’s update, From June 24th, 2019, Basic and Premium accounts group and off-line IM caps will be as follows:
Group and off-line IM capabilities as they are for Basic and Premium accounts, and as they now will be from June 24th, 2019 – the group allowance for Basic will remain unchanged
This does leave off-line IMs for Basic members reduced – although it has been suggested that planned changes to the events system might reduce the need for group messages to promote events, in which case this might help reduce part of the reliance on off-line IMs for at least some basic users (as well as possibly decreasing the reliance on groups overall in some cases). Time will tell on that; for the moment there is still understandable hurt over this reduction.
However, the fact that Linden Lab is prepared to listen and accept that they have erred on an issue should be acknowledged – and take steps to reverse that part of the decision that has caused the clearest feedback about the optics it presents – does deserve acknowledgement and a word of thanks for taking the time to listen, consider and respond.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 