Second Life – Page 62 – Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Insomnia: art and being in Second Life

Posted on February 1, 2025February 7, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Artsville, February 2025: Filipa Emor – Insomnia*

Insomnia, or sleeplessness, is a terms which might all have some familiarity with, although its definition covers a broad range of conditions and circumstances in which a person has trouble sleeping. In fact, the conditions under which insomnia can occur are so broad, analysis of the problem through study either by randomised controlled trials or via systematic review can lead to very different outcomes and even biased in findings.

Very broadly speaking, insomnia might be split into insomnia disorder (ID), which might de defined as protracted difficulties in sleeping and obtaining rest which might be tied to specific health / lifestyle / psychological issues, and insomnia symptoms, which refers more to shorter (but equally intense) periods where our sleep is disrupted due to briefer onsets of one or more of the symptoms of insomnia. The latter may run from simply eating a large meal too late in to evening and being unable to sleep while the digestive system continues to chug away through to the more recognised symptoms of insomnia such as a rise in anxiety or fear, and similar emotional condition or when we “can’t turn our brains off” as a result of something that occurred during the waking hours.

Whatever form it takes, between 10% and 30% of all adults can be suffering from insomnia at any given time, and around half of all adults will experience insomnia symptoms of one form or another during the course of a year – with up to 6% of them dipping into ID lasting more than a month.

It is these latter aspects of insomnia which are examined within the individual pieces making up Insomnia, an immersive installation by Bee (Filipa Emor) within a sky Gallery at Artsville. In doing to, the pieces come together to offer a broader perspective on Insomnia Disorder as a whole; one that is perhaps very personal to the artist – but through its individual parts, will doubtless hold meaning for each of us who visit.

Insomnia reminds us that the night is not just for dreams, but also for confronting our deepest thoughts … Each image is a fragment of my sleepless nights, shared to resonate with those who have also stared at the ceiling, chasing sleep.

– Bee (Filipa Emor)

Insomnia is also a genuine tour-de-force of artistic exploration and exposition; the arts and the space within which it is displayed – and designed by the inimitable Konrad (Kaiju Kohime) – combine to present an installation seeped in meaning and metaphor, inviting exploration and provoking contemplation. When visiting, you must have local sounds enabled to fully experience the installation and make sure you are using the Shared Environment; both are essential to this visual and physical journey.

Both the art and the environment are presented in monochrome tones of white and black – appropriate, given the subject – which combine to give sense of chiaroscuro which spreads from the individual pieces of art to encompass the entire installation, increasing the sense of being caught within that strange space and state where we hover listlessly between sleep and wakefulness; a space prowled by thoughts and inner demons intent on preventing us from passing peacefully from the former to the latter as the night hours pass.

Each piece here portrays a different facet of sleeplessness: the longing, the struggle, and the strange beauty of being awake while the world dreams. Insomnia reminds us that the night is not just for dreams, but also for confronting our deepest thoughts.

– Bee (Filipa Emor)

I don’t want to offer my interpretations of the images Bee presents; I have little doubt they will resonate in a personal, intimate way for anyone seeing them. What I will say about them is that they are designed to be touched, fading and brightening in a portrayal of the struggle to find sleep and thought roil within. They also have an order to them, as indicated by the clock display under each one, marking the passage of the night as they progress from the far side of the information board at the landing point, and progress counter-clockwise around the installation’s lower level.

Accompanying the images are quotes on the nature of sleep, restlessness, insomnia and the soul. Some of these also brighten and dim on being touched, in reflection of the flux of being they each represent. Located higher up within the installation, they are reached by stairways and walkways – as does a bed in one corner. Together these two climbs present metaphors: one for our rising desire to find the sanctuary of sleep as the heartbeat ticking of passing time torment us, and the other the physical act of climbing the stairs to find our bed – possibly accompanied by thoughts of whether it will be to sleep – or to lie trapped in thought.

Beautifully expressive and presented, Insomnia should not be missed.

SLurl Details

Insomnia at Artsville (Seabreeze, rated Adult)

January 2025 SL Mobile UG meeting summary

Posted on January 31, 2025February 28, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Campwich Forest grounds: location for the Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG)*

The following notes were taken from the Thursday, January 30th 2025 Monthly Mobile User Group (MMUG) meeting.

These notes should not be taken as a full transcript of the meeting, which was largely held in Voice, but rather a summary of the key topics discussed. For this initial meeting, video recording was not permitted, we hope that changes with future meetings.

Meeting Purpose

The Monthly Mobile User Group provides a platform to share insights on recent mobile updates and upcoming features, and to receive feedback directly from users.
These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
- The last Thursday of every month at 12:00 noon SLT.
- In Voice and text.
- At Campwich Forest.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Re-Cap on Recent Releases

Version: 2025.01.538 (Android) / 0.1.530 (iOS)
Push notifications for group notices.
Mobile chat history.
Avatar Improvements.
Streaks rewards testing (see here for more).

Upcoming Updates and Roadmap

A look at upcoming features for SL Mobile based on information supplied to bloggers – including myself – at the end of 2024, and referencing my blog post on that meeting – see: Second Life Blogger Town Hall, December 2024: Mobile, marketing and more:

Ability to create accounts via Mobile, including creating an initial avatar and logging in using the existing new joiner workflow.

*SL Mobile – the ability to create a Second Life account from within the app*

Addition of an Address Bar to the app, making it possible to:
- Search landmarks /create landmarks.
- Share SLurls with people on other apps (Discord, Reddit, WhatsApp, etc.) via the native share cards found in Android and iOS.
- Allow maps.secondlife.com work on the Mobile App.

*Coming soon – the SL Mobile: Address Bar*

The new Lobby feature, intended to enable communications, allow users to see who is on-line and provide general information whilst the app continues to load things like the 3D world view in the background.
- This is also seen as a means for those on lower / mid-tier mobile devices to make use of the App as a communications tool.

Other work in progress includes:
- Providing quicker access to chat when using the app.
- Providing the means to indicate which Group notifications you wish to see pushed to your mobile device.
- Improving in-world interactions within the app – making it easier to identify objects with which an avatar can interact, and know that something is happening when long-pressing an interactive object.
  - The identification will initially likely be the display of a timer under the finger when placed on an interactive object – when the timer expires (approx. 1 second), the interaction (e.g. a dialogue box) will be initiated.
  - Once available, this will be iterated over time to include selections form things like list views, where appropriate, limiting selection by distance, etc.

Roadmap Approach

Grumpity Linden reiterated the approach to Mobile development is focused on batching together requests and feedback on what users would like to see (allowing for us all having different expectation / needs / wants), to build end-to-end experiences covering a specific aspect (“journey”) in using the app.
To help with this, Grumpity also indicated that feedback (preferably through the Mobile app using the Feedback option in the menu) is greatly appreciated and does go into thinking about the roadmap and feature set for SL Mobile.

Avatar Rendering

As there are numerous differences between avatar rendering / operation in Second Life and Unity (e.g. in SL the Z axis references vertical movement; in Unity it references horizontal back / forth movement; each system handles rigged meshes differently, etc.), the entire rendering system for SL Mobile has had to be built for the ground-up over a period of over a year.
While much progress has been made, the team acknowledge avatar rendering within Mobile is not as yet on a par with avatar rendering in the viewer, therefore more work is to be done in this area.
However, because the SL avatar system is so open, there are still numerous specific issues where avatars may not render correctly in SL Mobile for assorted reasons (such the the way an attachment has been made, how it attaches to the the avatar, etc).
- These issues require fixing on a case-by-case basis (and the team already have a library of 50 such “avatar classes”), and each one must undergone extensive regression testing to make sure any custom fix does not break avatar rendering elsewhere.
- This is a current focus of work, and users noting persistent rendering issues as a result of clothing / attachments are asked to report it via the Mobile app’s feedback option, including information on the attachment / item which seems to cause the problem they are seeing, and where a copy of it might be obtained.
Once the focus can turn from the above work, there are plans to further improve avatar rendering performance, making it more efficient – and thereby improve app performance as a whole.
There are some tonal differences in how avatars appear SL Mobile (e.g. skin tone). This is because SL and Unity use different approaches to rendering ambient light. Again, the hope is that in time, lighting in the Mobile app can be made more “viewer-like” to help reduce such issues, but, this work will take time to develop and deploy.

Avatar Transparency Issues

During the run-up to the initial release of the Mobile app there was concern as to whether or not the app would get through the vetting process and onto the major app stores, particularly in terms of the risk of avatars appearing nude during rendering.
The transparent avatar approach was specifically to solve this risk; keeping the avatar transparent until such time as it has fully loaded and be preventing it from rendering properly should an attachment fail to apply as expected.
Unfortunately, the system is not fool proof, and false positives can be received which result in an avatar becoming “stuck” in the transparent mode.
There is thought being given to help overcome this (e.g. by forcing the avatar transparency mode to time-out after a set period to allow the avatar to complete loading), but this has yet to be finalised.
Those who do have repeated issues with being stuck in transparent mode, even after an outfit change (e.g. via the Desktop viewer) should file a feedback report, and if possible indicate the item they think might be causing the problem.

Memory Use (and PBR Rendering)

Another key difference between Mobile and the viewer is (obviously) available system and video memory.
Computers running the desktop viewer generally have at least 4Gb of memory to play with, with those with dedicated GPU cards also have dedicated VRAM.
Mobile has around 500MB-1Gb to play with. This necessarily limits Mobile in some ways (e.g. dropping texture resolutions as limits are more easily hit, etc.). However, there is work being put into this in the hope of again making Mobile more efficient in its use of memory.
In the meantime, the fact that memory is limited is one of the primary reasons why, as yet, there has been no attempt to implement PBR rendering into the Mobile app, and it significantly ups memory use.
The memory limit is also the reason why the number of avatars SL Mobile can render is set so low: avatars have a high rendering / memory cost, and can push the app to its limits, stopping other things from rendering – including leaving avatars transparent.

In Brief

A run-down of the top requests for Mobile (and the official viewer in some cases).
- HUDs: something the Lab would like to implement for Mobile, but the volume and complexity of HUDs in use, the screen space they require, etc., does make coming up with a suitable means of handling them difficult.
  - The likely approach to this will again be iterative: initially offering support for very basic HUDs, and then working up from there.
  - However, team resources are such that focusing on this as a multi-month project when there are other areas of Mobile to be enhanced and features possibly more easily implemented, means it is somewhat lower on the list.
- Inventory:
  - Another intensive task.
  - A preview of the work currently being done is in the Mobile app – the Select Outfit option, which is seen as a first step towards inventory support in Mobile.
  - Exactly what will follow this as it is implemented, is still subject to a final decision.
Mobile is generating a lot of new user traffic into SL, although precise metrics were not available at the meeting.

Date of Next Meeting

12:00 SLT, Thursday, February 27th, 2025, at Campwich Forest.

Looking at Streaks reward testing on the SL Mobile app

Posted on January 31, 2025January 31, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Streak rewards are available to some users of the SL Mobile app as an experiment*

The most recent update to SL Mobile – version 2025.01.538 Android) / 0.1.530 (iOS), dated January 14th, 2025 – introduced an experimental rewards scheme for some of those those using the app to log-in to Second Life, in order to encourage daily engagement through the app.

Encouragement of this kind is referred to as “streaks”, and can be used as a form of incentive to encourage or maintain specific routines or achieve daily goals through game mechanics, or some form of reward in return for engagement. Snapchat for example offers “collectible” emojis to users who exchange Snaps through the app with one another on a daily basis; meanwhile Roblox includes the ability for users to build their own streaks rewards systems into their games. With SL Mobile, the rewards take the form of modest (and incremental) offerings of Linden dollars.

The idea behind the experiment with SL Mobile is to see how rewards might influence people’s use of the Mobile app – particularly those referred to as “lapsed” Second Life users; those who have walked away from the platform and who have, according to Brad Oberwager, cited a lack of Mobile access as being one of the contributing factors for them doing so. This aim was also reiterated by Bridie Linden, the Project Manager for SL Mobile during the inaugural Monthly Mobile User Group meeting.

Some of you may have noticed we are doing an experiment that is trying to encourage follows to come back to Second Life and increase their engagement. So [it is] a log-in rewards offering. Not everyone will see the same thing, because we’re trying different variations in incentives.

Bridie Linden, SL Mobile Project Manager, January 30th, 2025

As it is currently an experiment and subject to A/B testing related to the general use of SL Mobile, not all users downloading the app or currently using it will be able to engage with the streaks rewards, as Grumpity Linden also explained during the same meeting:

Currently, log-in rewards are only available to subscribers, but not all who are subscribers will have the same experience; so I’m not going to say you should subscribe if you want to get log-in rewards in Linden dollars, because that’s not always going to be the case. But if you’re already a subscriber, you should check-out Mobile, and come back every day and see whether, maybe [you have the option]– because we’re going to continue tweaking this programme. Obviously, we want people to be happy, and we want this to be successful.

– Grumpity Linden, January 30th, 2025

To find out if you are eligible to join (and have not already done so – I am intentionally late in reporting on this scheme as I’ve been poking at it for the last 8 days), proceed as follows:

Start SL Mobile on your device and log-in.
Click the Menu button (top left, three horizontal bars) to open the menu.
If you are eligible to join the experiment, you will have a Streaks button displayed in your menu Highlighted below, left).
Tap the Streaks button to opt-in to the scheme and start the clock counting down to when you can claim your first rewards (which appears to be set to L$15 for everyone).

*Those who are included in the initial testing can opt-in to the Streaks rewards by going to SL Mobile’s menu and tapping the Streaks icon (if available), to opt-in to the the rewards*

Note the two sliders t the bottom of the Streaks screen allowing you toggle daily streak messages as soon as you log-in to the app off/ on, and to opt out / in to Streaks, both of which are enabled (“on” and opted-in) by default.

Once you have joined Streaks, rewards can be claimed daily, starting with the initial L$15. In addition, please note:

The amount of the reward offered each day increments (e.g. L$15 on “day 1”; L$20 on “day 2”).
The amount by which the daily rewards increments also increases the longer a streak continues (e.g. rising from a L$5 increment per day to (first) L$10 increments per day).
Streaks appear to last for 7 consecutive days before the reward amount automatically resets to L$15 (or you miss a daily log-in), and you start over again.

To claim a daily reward:

Log-in to the SL Mobile app. Your Streaks status should be automatically displayed unless you have turned off the daily login message, in which case, open the app’s menu and tap the Streaks button.
The display should tell you the amount available to claim, and the incremented amount that will be available for you to claim in 24-hours’ time (below left).
Tap the Claim button to claim the available amount and have it added to your SL amount L$ balance, and update your Streaks status (below centre).

*Claiming daily Streaks is required to transfer them to your account L$ balance (left and centre). Streaks appear to rest to the baseline L$15 after around 7 days*

Per the notes above, Streaks rewards appear to increment of a 7-day period, and then reset to the initial L$15 (see the image above right) and build up again. However, whether this is an infinite cycle or also limited; I have no idea.

As a means of encouraging users (current and “lapsed” to use SL Mobile, this is an interesting approach; I’d been particularly interested in how much traction it gets amount its intended primary audience – “lapsed” users – over time, and in how well it might act as incentive as new users are able to sign-up to Second Life through the app. However, we’ll hear more on both in due course.

The windmills of Zaanse Schans in Second Life

Posted on January 30, 2025June 7, 2025 by Inara Pey

*Zaanse Schans, January 2025 – click any image for full size*

Some 15 kilometres north of central Amsterdam and on the east bank of the Zaan river, sits Zaanse Schans. Today regarded as something of a neighbourhood of Zaandam, it is a place of historic and cultural significance. It is also a destination for tourists, forming as it does a part of the European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH).

Originally a fortification – or sconce – built during the country’s Eighty Years’ War for independence from Spain, it became particularly famous in the modern era after a huge preservation operation was put into motion in the 1960s through early 1970s. This saw traditional Dutch Zaanse houses and windmills considered to be of cultural and historic value being carefully uplifted and moved from the area referred to as the Zaanstreek, north of Amsterdam, and relocated at Zaanse Schans, where they joined two windmills already in existence on the bank of the river there.

Today, backed by tulip fields, Zaanse Schans is home to around a dozen windmills, seven museums, craft shops, historic Zaan-style houses, public gardens, and so on, all linked together by footpaths, cycle tracks, bridges, and waterways to offer an informative and cultural visit.

But most famously of all, there are the dozen windmills, many of which are also open to visitors, and which collectively demonstrate some of the many different uses to which these mills were put: cutting wood, grinding chalk, grinding seeds to make oil – even making paint! They stand as a living reminder of a time when wind was a major source of power, and when the region in which they stand was once home to an estimated 600 windmills to form a vital part of Netherland’s economy.

Even the names of the mills at Zannse Schans are somehow magical, breathing further life into them: De Bonte Hen (an oil mills dating back to 1693); De Zoeker (an oil, paint, and cocoa mill); De Kat (built in 1781, and the only working paint making windmill in the world); De Gekroonde Poelenburg (a Dutch paltrok mill, specifically design for sawing wood, and one of only five of it kind to survive to this day); and so on. Along the Zaanse, they stand brightly painted and well-maintained, and for those of us in Second Life who cannot get to see them first-hand, Jade Koltai presents a setting inspired by their timeless presence with her latest region design, Zaanse Schans.

Caught under a slowly brightening morning sky with the lowlands seeping mist into the air above them, this is an immediately visually engaging design. Visitors are greeted on one side by neat rows of tulips marching across the region, and on the other by the shadowy forms of four tall windmills guarding what might be taken as the bank of the broad river, the far side of which is little more than a misty silhouette. Like those of the real Zaanse Schans, not all of these windmills are the same, although all four carry their hoods and sails, some turning lazily in the breeze.

Rutted trails border the tulips in their field, and like the tracks and paths of its physical world namesake, these trails can be cycled along, courtesy of the rezzer near the landing point, or one can walk across the grassland to the windmills, all but one of which offers sitting of some from without itself or close by. Further places to sit await discovery along the banks of the “river” and the bays to either side, the walk / ride to them allowing visitors to engage in a little bird-watching along the way.

One of these places to sit appears to have been set-up by an angler eager to get an early start on a day’s catch; four fish already lie in a crate for transport home, while the little makeshift bohemian bench and sun shade they’ve erected is a cosy spot for two. Elsewhere, bees are being cultivated for their honey, their hives adorned with flowers to reduce their journey time, and the air is rich with the early morning calls of birds eager to start their day.

No Zaan-style houses are to be found here; instead something of a counterpoint between ancient and modern is offered: across the fields from the old windmills, three giant wind turbines raise their slender fingers to the sky, their great blades turning slowly.

Whilst the old windmills with their four sails apiece might not fool Alonso Quijano into thinking he was facing giants, one wonders what he might make of the great towers and pumping arms of the wind turbines. Indeed, seeing them across the fields perhaps causes another pause for thought: the windmills of Zaanse Schans have stood for around 400 years; would our our modern alternatives stand nearly so long?

Atmospheric and best seen under its Shared Environment, photogenic, tranquil and perfectly stated, Jade’s Zaanse Schans is an absolute delight to visit and see. Those wishing to rez props for photographs should join the local group (but please clean-up after!).