Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 17th
This summary is generally published on 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 test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 5.1.5.515811, dated May 31, promoted June 1 – formerly the Love Me Render Release Candidate – No change.
The first part of the celebrations for Second Life’s 15th anniversary opened on Sunday, June 17th, when the SL15B Community Celebration regions opened to the public.
Events within the 24 regions will run from Sunday, June 17th through until Sunday, June 24th, with the Big Day, marking the original opening of Second Life to the public at large, far back in June 2003, taking place on Saturday, June 23rd. After the main celebrations, the regions will remain open for visitors from Monday, June 25th through Sunday, July 1st, although there will be no formal events during this period.
As befitting a 15th anniversary, the theme for this year’s community celebration is crystal, so expect to see a good few builds within the regions reflecting this – and possible watches and timepieces as well, given these are often gifts associated with 15th anniversaries.
Throughout the week of festivities, there will be much going on: music, dancing and performances at the various stages found within the regions; talks and presentations within the auditorium – including the now-familiar Meet the Lindens events, of which more anon, and some of the exhibits built be SL residents and found within the regions may also play host to events of their own.
The festivities bring together the use mix of resident-build exhibitions and SLB infrastructure builds – with the latter this year being provided by Mikati Slade – Cake Stage; Walton F. Wainwright (Faust Steamer) -Serpent Stage; Anthony (ADudeNamed Anthony) – Auditorium; Ancient Mole – Crystal Rotunda Stage and Welcome Area: and City Builder (Lim Pikajuna) – Stage North.
As well as these, there are special features, such as the Tapestry of Time, tracing Second Life’s History from 2003 to the present; people can also pay a visit to the original Cornfield – the Sin Bin of early Second Life, and tour Bear Island, which makes a return to SLB celebrations for all lovers of Linden Bears. Plus the ever-popular SLB Big Hunt and the pod tours and very much a part of the festivities.
This year, Meet the Lindens will talk place between Monday and Friday, at 14:00 SLT at the SL15B Auditorium. The participating Lindens this year include:
Xiola Linden – Monday, June 18th.
Patch Linden and Kiera Linden – Tuesday, June 19th.
Ebbe Linden – Wednesday, June 20th.
Grumpity Linden and Oz Linden – Thursday, June 21st.
Brett Linden – Friday June 21st.
Patch, Grumpity, Brett and Xiola – all taking part in this year’s Meet the Lindens at SL15B. Credit: Linden Lab
Where To Find Information
The best place to find information on all that is going on at SL15B is the SL15B Community Celebration website. Daily schedules will be posted there, together with news and updates. IN addition, you can view the daily schedules for the major stages and the auditorium via the following links:
Zion National Park – click any image for full size
Update: Zion National Park has closed. SLurls have therefore been removed from this article.
Zion National Park is an ambitious, two-region stretch of parkland designed by Judge Firecaster. It offers a look and feel of some of the great national parks of north America – most notably Yosemite, given the reproduction of the Mariposa Grove – and presents a lot to see and explore.
A visit starts on the north side of one of the two regions making up the park. This features a park lodge and a camping ground (parcels available for rent), looking to the north over open water and a distant range of mountains. A dirt track runs between the lodge and camp site, pointing west towards a narrow cleft between high shoulders of rock, and east to run almost parallel to the water’s edge and between the massive trunks of huge Sequoia-like conifers.
Zion National Park
Which route you take is entirely up to you – but if you have a wearable horse, you might want to add that and take to riding while exploring (a riding horse rezzing system would be a nice addition to the park). The route west will take you through the rocky cleft to where another body of water await, overlooked on both sides by a rugged landscape that, to the south, climbs towards distant green peaks.
Here the track swings by a small lodge were visitors can take a log ride around the lake – just wait for a boat to automatically rez ready to depart as one returns and de-rezzes. The ride will take you east along the lake, under the tall trestles of a cliff-top bridge spanning the water, and back around to the west before returning you to the little lodge. Or, if you prefer, you can follow the track to where it climbs up into the hills, switching back on itself as it does so, to arrive at a high café abuts the steeper slopes of the (off-sim) mountains).
Zion National Park
If you opt to go east from the landing point, the track will take you by twist and turn, passing the single permanent private residence to be found here, to where it again climbs up into the rocks and hills of the park. This leads the way past cliff-edge seating areas overlooking waterfalls, paths to hidden tunnels, and a climb up to a peak where a hang glider can be rezzed and you can take to the air to appreciate the park from overhead.
The high paths rise and fall, twist and turn, cross canyons and water by way of bridges, descend to the edge of bubbling streams and pass through mine-like tunnels to link up with one another, allowing visitors to fully circumnavigate the park, often just a few short steps from where the regions end and the off-sim mountains begin – a relatively seamless join that gives Zion Park a huge amount of additional depth, vastly increasing its national park like feel.
Zion National Park
Wild life is to be found here in abundance – the trees are rich in bird song, bears grumble and roam,raccoons raid litter bins and get up to other mischief, wolves bask in the sunlight and elk graze or drink cautiously from the banks of streams. Going by the chap out on the waters of the lake and the cormorants on the shoreline, fish are in abundance in the waters here as well. There could perhaps be a few more places to sit and enjoy more of the many views to be found within the regions, but this is a minor point; as noted, if you do have a wearable horse to ride, this is a place where you can put it to good use and appreciate the views.
All-in all, Zion Park is a rich environment which demonstrates just how much can be done when working with Homestead regions. The default Windlight settings perhaps don’t do the landscaping full justice – I’d certainly recommend playing around with any you have installed on your viewer to find something more suitable and warm. When exploring, keep an eye out for the information boards, and the way down to the subterranean lake. The former are a worthwhile read for those unfamiliar with American national park heritage, and the latter takes a little finding – but a visit cannot be said to be complete until you do 😉 .
Zion National Park
Should you enjoy your visit to Zion National Park, please consider a donation at the lodge alongside the landing point to help ensure the regions remain for future visitors to enjoy – and for additional visits of your own as the mood takes you!
SLurl Details
Zion National Park (Fhloston and Zion, both rated: Moderate)
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 17th
13:30: Tea-Time at Baker Street
Caledonia Skytower, Kayden OConnell and Corwyn Allen return with a Seanchai favourite: Tea-time at Baker Street. This time they are going right back to the roots of the legend, and the case which first introduced the world to Doctor John Watson and the renowned Consulting Detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
A Study in Scarlet was written in 1886 as a full-length novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published the following year. It is actually one of only four novel-length stories Conan Doyle penned about Holmes and Watson in the original canon (the remaining 56 tales of their adventures are all short stories). As it was the first time the two had appeared in print, part of the story was used to establish each of them, and how they met.
It is 1887, and Doctor John Watson, invalided out of the British Army after being wounded in the Battle of Maiwand during the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), has returned to London where he is seeking accommodation. After bumping into an old friend, Watson finds himself being taken to St. Bart’s Hospital, where he is introduced to a stranger carrying out a laboratory experiment. On shaking Watson’s hand, Sherlock Holmes immediately perceives that he has recently returned from Afghanistan, and thus Watson first experiences Holmes’ remarkable deductive abilities – although quite how Holmes came to his conclusion remains a mystery. After a short conversation, he agrees to join Holmes in moving into a flat (apartment) at 221B Baker Street, where they’ll split the rent.
In the story, it is actually several weeks before Watson learns of Holmes’ rather unusual chosen profession. When told, he remains initially dubious until Holmes gives a practical demonstration of his powers of observation and deduction, using a messenger from Scotland Yard as his subject. The messenger has come with a request for Holmes’ assistance; Holmes is at first reluctant to heed the call, but Watson urges him otherwise. So it is that they set out on their first adventure together, one involving poison, a double murder in London and a bitter tale of love, loss and revenge from America.
18:00 Magicland Storytime – Mrs Piggle-Wiggle
Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle lives in an upside-down house and smells like cookies. She was even married to a pirate once. Most of all, she knows everything about children. She can cure them of any ailment. Patsy hates baths. Hubert never puts anything away. Allen eats v-e-r-y slowly. Mrs Piggle-Wiggle has a treatment for all of them.
The incomparable Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle loves children good or bad and never scolds but has positive cures for Answer-Backers, Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders, and other boys and girls with strange habits.
Phssthpok the Pak had been travelling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years previously.
Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around an outer asteroid belt. The Belters were rebels, one and all, and Brennan was a smuggler. The Belt worlds had been tracking the Pak ship for days — Brennan figured to meet that ship first…
He was never seen again. At least not by those alive at the time.
Join Gyro Muggins as he reads Larry Niven’s engaging tale of humanity’s past – and future.
Tuesday, June 19th: Walt Longmire
Join Kayden OConnell as he reads more from Craig Johnson’s tales of Sheriff Walt Longmire.
Wednesday, June 20th 19:00: Written in the Sand
Images and Thoughts from the Seashore with Ktadhn Vesusino.
Thursday, June 21st: The Invisible Man
Oh! – disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over. Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything – save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. I could take my money where I found it. I decided to treat myself to a sumptuous feast, and then put up at a good hotel, and accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confident, – it’s not particularly pleasant to recall that I was an ass.
– Griffin, the Invisible Man
Join Shandon Loring as he delves into the classic tale by H.G. Wells of Griffin, a man already consumed by a desire to have power and fame, who finds a way to make himself invisible to the rest of the world – but not the way to become visible again.
The results do not go in his favour, heightening his bitterness and encouraging him to think only in terms of wreaking havoc as his bitterness grows deeper and his desire to revel in the absolute lack of conscience, to commit crime and instil terror, grows to the point of fanaticism… Also presented in Kitely (hop://grid.kitely.com:8002/Seanchai/144/129/29).
Please check with the Seanchai Library’s blog for updates and for additions or changes to the week’s schedule.
The majority of the following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, June 15th 2018. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to North for recording and providing it.
SL Viewer
The Pálinka Maintenance RC updated to version 5.1.6.516459 on Friday, June 15th.
The Bakes on Mesh project viewer updated to version 5.1.6.516270 on Thursday, June 14th.
The rest of the current SL viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Current Release version 5.1.5.515811, dated May 31, promoted June 1 – formerly the Love Me Render Release Candidate – No Change.
32-bit Windows Unloop RC viewer, version 5.1.6.515965, dated June 5 – specifically for 32-bit Windows users caught in the 64-bit install loop (see here for more). Otherwise, the viewer is functionally identical to release version 5.1.5.515811.
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.
[13:07-13:30] The 360 snapshot viewer has been stalled pending other work (such as support for uploading 360 images to Second life Place Pages) and for resources to work on it – but it has not been forgotten.
Upcoming Viewers
[4:15-4:36] Voice update: there should be a new Voice RC viewer arriving, hopefully in the next two weeks. This will contain a new SL voice updated from Vivox.
[5:56-6:26] Texture caching: a project viewer re-working texturing caching should be appearing soonTM. This viewer (and the work related to it) is currently on hold pending the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP). When it does appear, the Lab is confident it will make a noticeable improvement to viewer performance.
[0:24-2:46] The Lab is aiming to try to get Animesh deployed to a release candidate channel on Agni (the Man grid) during week #25 (week commencing Monday, June 18th, 2018). It is not 100% certain there will be a deployment but, according to Oz, if it does go ahead, it will likely be a part of the RC deployment to the BlueSteel channel. Region holders wishing to test Animesh can request their region be moved to the required RC via a support ticket.
Note that the viewer supporting Animesh will remain at project release status for the time being.
[38:28-42:40] discussion – voice and chat of the Animesh 90-degree rotation issue. Again, all see my CCUG meeting notes, linked to above.
Region Crossings
[4:42-5:50] Work on trying to improve region crossings on the simulator side of the equation is continuing. The messaging changes as a result of this work are being ported to the SL viewer, and should appear in a future Maintenance branch of the viewer, although the messaging updates themselves are not expected to have any real effect on improving region crossings from a viewer perspective.
The simulator changes are being handled one at a time, and will be appearing in simulator RC updates over the course of the next few months.
In the meantime, and as reported in my Simulator User Group updates (see here for an example), user Joe Magarac (animats) has developed a viewer-side update to help correct some of the region crossing issues within the viewer, particularly in relation to “partial unsits”. His work is likely to be featured in the upcoming Firestorm release, and I’ll have more on that in my review of that release. It’s not clear if these changes have been contributed to the Lab (or if they would be accepted if they have).
Global Experiences
[14:58-17:45] There have been concerns that the roll-out of grid-wide experiences will mean automatic opt-in to such activities, rather than consented opt-in. This will not be the case: grid-wide will function the same as current region / parcel experiences – consent will need to be granted via a dialogue box. Only experiences developed by Linden Lab may have automatic opt-in, although none of the Lab’s experiences to date use this, and there are currently no plans to deploy any that do.
The only difference with grid-wide experiences and current experiences is that the land owner doesn’t have to explicitly allow grid-wide experiences (it will – I understand – instead be a case of land owners opting out of grid-wide experiences if they don’t want them on their land).
There has also been a request to make experience dialogues when requesting the ability to take control to be friendlier / more informative on the grounds that people are scared of them.
[23:30-37:00] There is an extended discussion (mostly text) over unintended consequences of experiences when combined with tools such as avSitter (and / or RLV), and the potential for abuse. This includes a discussion on how to make it easier for users to discover what is acting on their avatar through the viewer UI (and the problems in trying to do so).
In Brief
[3:28-3:58] https move – work is progressing on moving all of the SL web services to https: – however, this work has been more of a background task of late while the web services team work on other projects. So, not time frames on when the various services still to be moved will do so.
[8:44-9:58] SL wiki edit rights / JIRA comments rights: because of issues with spam bots, etc., both the SL wiki and the SL JIRA has been locked from casual editing (wiki) / making comments on reports (JIRA).
If you have a valid need to edit SL wiki pages, submit a support ticket with a request for edit rights. All requests are reviewed and access granted on the outcome of said review.
If you have a valid reason to want to comment on SL JIRA reports, you should e-mail a request with your SL user name and why you are requesting access to letmein-at-lindenlab.com.
Note that the JIRA lock does not prevent people from raising JIRA bug reports and feature requests.
[22:48-23:28] The Read Off-Line Messages Capability: there have been a couple of issues in handling Friend and Group requests received while off-line. These are being addressed server-side, and it is hoped the code will be with QA in week #25 (commencing Monday, June 18th, 2018), and will hopefully be deployed shortly thereafter.
Quite by chance I stumbled across Classical and Surreal Sculpture, an open-air exhibition of works of surrealism taken from famous exponents of the genre and rendered as 3D models by MADD (maddomxc Umino). It’s a small place, and the setting a simple parcel field covering just 3072 square metres.
Within this space, MADD has reproduced surrealist works of art by some of the more famous exponents of the genre, including Constantin Brâncuși (1876-1957), Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Max Ernst (1891-1976), René Magritte (1898-1967),Walter Mac Mazzieri (1947-), and Masaru Shichinohe (1959-), together with assorted reproductions of a number of sculptures,- most notably perhaps Prométhée (Prometheus) by Nicolas-Sébastien Adam (1705-1778).
Some of the more famous pieces by these artists are offered: Magritte’s The Lovers, for example, or Ernst’s L’Ange du Foyer (Angel of the Hearth) and Surrealism and Painting. Despite the small space, all of the pieces on display are set out such that the field doesn’t feel at all crowded, and a couple are presented with copies of the original 2D art on which they have been based. In the case of Surrealism and Painting, this has been done quite humorously – the sculpture is painting the image upon which it is based (rather than the piece the original is painting).
All of the pieces on display are offered for sale – a point that did admittedly leave me a little twitchy around issues of copyright, notably – but not exclusively – around the pieces based on Mazzieri and Shichicohe’s work. However, and particularly in the case of the reproductions of the 2D art pieces, these are very well executed pieces, and while I’m not exactly a huge lover of surrealism (although I do admire Magritte’s work), this little corner of Second Life makes for an interesting visit.
