Monocle Man Gallery: Willow (Cutewillow Carlberg) – Fall Splendour
As yet another year starts drawing to a close, heralded in the northern hemisphere by autumn’s fade into winter and a time when thoughts inevitably turn to snow-covered landscapes, frosted streets, heavy coats and foggy breath, I decided to spend a little time drinking in the autumnal – or fall, if you must – beauty brought forth by nature by visiting two similarly-themed art presentations currently in progress.
The first is that of Willow (Cutewillow Carlberg), entitled Fall Splendour, which opened at the Monocle Man Gallery on November 10th. I’ve encountered Willow’s art at various ensemble exhibitions over the years, but this is the first time I’ve seen her landscapes offered as an individual exhibition.
Monocle Man Gallery: Willow (Cutewillow Carlberg) – Fall Splendour
Spread across the two floors of the gallery’s main hall, as well as in the foyer and side room, these are pieces captured from within Second Life to provide images of autumn’s many faces, from golden-hues fields and tries crowned with leaves turning to reds, browns, oranges and yellows, to overcast days when drizzling rain catches us unaware; or in which sunlight plays through rolling cloud caught on the wind to fall as fingers of light to touch castle and tower, and bursts of shadow dim the land, causing it to brood moodily until sunlight returns.
In places seemingly untouched by post-processing, save for cropping and framing, whilst in others looking as if the lightest touch from tools external to Second Life has been felt, Fall Splendour is an engaging series of images perfectly encapsulating the many shades of autumn’s passing.
BOSL’s Waterfront Café Art Gallery: Reign Congrejo Capalini (Reign Congrejo) – Falling into Love
At BOSL’s Waterfront Café Art Gallery, meanwhile, is a smaller but equally engaging exhibition by Reign Congrejo Capalini (Reign Congrejo). Entitled Falling intoLove, and with each of the eight pieces appended With Fall, this is a simply exquisite series of images which appear to be from both Second Life and the physical world which also capture some of the many faces of autumn in all of its rich, vibrant colour – and most particularly with the sense of romance the season can so easily present.
From woodland walks where sunlight slants through tall fingers of trees to dapple the path ahead, to the shimmering beauty of water and trees caught in the light reflected by the mirror of a full Moon to drape itself gently over the landscape, these are images celebrating that many faces and emotions autumn offers. Within them, we might also find reflections of the simple pleasure of sitting under a rustic canopy of leaf and bough as wind and sunlight play across the waters of a still lake, or memories of the promise of warmth and comfort as we walk home under darkening evening skies as light pours forth from windows warmly lit from within and doorways illuminated by lamps as we pass.
BOSL’s Waterfront Café Art Gallery: Reign Congrejo Capalini (Reign Congrejo) – Falling into Love
Taken together, these are to visually expressive exhibitions presented through very different lenses and eyes, but which are unified by both their beauty and the love of the season felt by both of the artists. With both (I believe) due to run through until early / mid December, their natures allow them to be viewed individually or jointly, depending on your preference.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, November 3rd, 2024
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
Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC, dated September 11, promoted September 17 – NO CHANGE.
Release Candidate: ExtraFPS RC, version 7.1.11.11565212741, October 30 – NO CHANGE.
Brutal City, November 2024 – click any image for full size
In June 2024, I visited Blade Runner, Brutal City 2060, another of the outstanding region builds by Hera (Zee9), and somewhat based on her Blade Runner-esque region designs. In that particular instance, which I covered in Hera’s Blade Runner Brutal City in Second Life,), I noted that the setting encompassed:
The familiar, whilst offering some tidy little twists and turns for lovers of science fiction (and potentially obscure TV series of that genre), as well as other references, it is again a highly visual environment which spreads the Blade Runner elements more broadly, folding into it elements of Blade Runner 2049, whilst also drawing on 2012’s Dredd.
Brutal City, November 2024 – conversations with Poe
Well, as of early November 2024, Brutal City is back for a time, offering a further take on the original themes of Hera’s Blade Runner builds and Brutal City, complete with further dips of the toes into various other sci-fi series – and something more besides, as Here notes in her introductory notecard:
I was re-building Brutal City trying to add more OTT sex stuff etc 🙂 and Kacey said, I have been trying out some things and I think I can link up an AI model to SL. Day later it was there :). She has done a fantastic job. We have had a load of fun sorting it out, me on the dumb user side and her at the sharp tech end, learning a lot about AI as we went.
I guess the big deal is this. Online games have NPC’s that are programmed to say what the game company wants them to, multiple choice questions with hard wired answers. These Bots in Brutal City are doing their own thing, Try them, they get stuff wrong like we do, but ALL you hear is them RP-ing their characters.
Brutal City, November 2024
This is not the first time that AI has been hooked up to NPCs within Second Life; various people have been working on similar for a while – but I admit to finding the work that Hera and Kacey Stratton (KaceyStratton) particularly attractive, as the environment in which they’ve employed the AI encompasses sci-fi references that have a personal appeal – notably in this case, Blade Runner films (obviously) and the Altered Carbon TV series.
As an update to the original Brutal City, which in turn carried forward elements from previous Blade Runner-esque designs by Hera, there is much within the setting that will be familiar to those who visited the June 2024 iteration of the build. Also as is typical for Hera’s builds, the Landing Point is separate from the setting, and offers an onward teleport together with the opportunity to obtain the above-mentioned notecard. The teleport here will again deliver arrivals to a subway station, which in turn offers a choice of routes up to street level.
Brutal City, November 2024
Here again, the layout follows a design familiar to anyone who has spent time in Hera’s city build; one that is both forced upon her by the limitations of region space and size, and one which instantly give the sense of coming back to a neighbourhood that is both familiar and new. Many of the hints towards various film franchises and TV series are to be found still – the BCPD / LAPD police HQ with its echoes of total Recall 2070, the spinner-like police cars and decommissioned spinners as road cars; the sea of neon advertising – even the noodle bar reminiscent of Deckard’s initial encounter with Gaff – although it’s now under the ownership of Tony.
Which is not to say this is a simple re-run of Blade Runner: Brutal City; there is much that has changed that awaits discovery. Gone, for the example are the overt references to Judge Dredd, whilst in come more noticeable references to Altered Carbon. Whilst the re-sleeved Takeshi Kovacs (in the form of actor Joel Kinnaman) remains displayed on a screen within the BCPD building, a broader reference to the show can be found in the presence of The Raven Hotel and its proprietor, one Poe, an AI modelled after Edgar Alan Poe.
Brutal City, November 2024 “(Monsieur, azonnal kövessen engem bitte.”; “He say you under arrest, Mr. Deckard.”; “You got the wrong guy, pal.”; “Lófaszt, nehogy már. Te vagy a Blade … Blade Runner.”; “He say you Blade Runner…”)
The Raven replaces one of the three gang-related clubs of the previous Brutal City build, and Poe became the first AI NPC within the setting with whom I interacted – and I was instantly impressed. Care has been taken to imbue the AIs with parameters which match their nature / character. With Poe, for example, I was able to converse on his nature compared to that of the Poe AI from Altered Carbon and on Takeshi Kovacs himself (also, whilst visiting the hotel, check-out the Poe Suite). Similarly, at the noodle bar, Tony was aware of Deckard’s preferred dish and was able to offer it to me a we discussed the day and “played” a round of cards.
Yes, as the introductory notecard states, the AI can occasionally glitch (Tony got rather hung-up on offering to prepare a specific dish for me, for example, despite the fact I had “Deckard’s favourite” in front of me!), but the level of natural exchange in conversations meant that when it comes to free-form role-play, there’s much in the way of potential to be found throughout the setting. In this, the notecard available from the Landing Point is invaluable in helping to understand the framework set for the various types of AI NPC you’re likely to encounter, and the setting as whole and what might go on.
Brutal City, November 2024
Elsewhere in the setting, the other clubs have been altered to offer new venues (although the Snake Pit remains tucked inside the Dream Palace), whilst the Tyrell Corporation building (which became the Wallace Building in Blade Runner 2949) is now owned by the Warlock Corporation, which also happens to run this sector – Sector Six, the most dangerous sector of Brutal City. The corporation’s CEO, Max Wallace can be found inside, and it would appear that – going by the portrait dominating one wall of his office, he’s quite enamoured of Tyrell’s legacy.
Visitors might also find a fairly strong Aliens franchise reference whilst wandering; something hardly out of place, given Ridley Scott saw both Alien and Blade Runner as existing in the same universe. Within it might be found a further AI in the form of Mr. Giger, who will confirm he is something of a personification of Hans Ruedi Giger, albeit one (perhaps fittingly) offered as a hologram-like form, rather than a three-dimensional figure.
Brutal City, November 2024
There is much more to be said for Brutal City AI; through might be found Hera’s attention to detail – itself deserving of careful observation of the small as well as the large, and which can be found in unexpected places. There are other nods towards the likes of Altered Carbon awaiting discovery, but rather than ramble on, I will stop here. Instead, I’ll simply suggest you pay a visit for yourself – and as a final point, do remember that Hera’s builds are as dreams: vividly alive and present for perhaps only a short time before vanishing into memory; so if you do intend to visit, then “soon rather than later” should perhaps be your watchwords.
As I’ve said a number of times in this blog, I’ve been an admirer of Monique Beebe’s work ever since her first exhibition in Second Life in 2017, and have since covered many of her exhibitions in-world. Over the years Moni has shown herself to be expressively rich through her art, and a growing experimentalist when it comes to medium and form. Her work generally carries a sense of narrative and is often subtle in subtext, as well as often containing a highly sensual nature. Individual exhibitions often thematically driven, and she has worked both entirely with images captured in-world which have then been carefully digitally enhanced and processed, whilst more recently has been experimenting with the use of AI driven tools as an adjunct to her art.
With regards to the latter, in October 2023 at the Kondor Art Centre, operated and curated by Hermes Kondor, Moni presented a fascinating series of AI images combined with video editing to provide On the Move, 14 captivating images-in-motion (see: Artistic digital fusions in motion in Second Life). For November 2024, she is once again back at the Kondor Art Centre with a further exhibit utilising this combined AI / video loop approach in an exhibition she has called Oblivion.
Kondor Art Centre: Monique Beebe – Oblivion
Comprising some 20 2D pieces on the gallery’s walls, supported by a series of free-standing and mobile pieces, Oblivion comes without liner notes from the artist, leaving the visitor free to interpret the images without any potential bias towards meaning. Further, whilst the techniques used are much the same as those witnessed in On the Move (for those who recall that exhibition), this is not what I’d call a “sequel” to that exhibition per se; rather I’d suggest that Oblivion is an expansion of the idea of generative art in motion as presented through On the Move, but one in which there is perhaps no singular theme but rather an interweaving of idea sand reflections.
On first inspection, the images might trick you into believing they are static in nature. However, when you enable media playback in your viewer (if not already enabled or autoplay is not set) by clicking the “motion picture” camera icon in the top right of the viewer window as it sit between the volume control button and the audio streaming button, and then click any one of the images, then it will come to life in a looping playback.
Kondor Art Centre: Monique Beebe – Oblivion
As noted, the themes / ideas expressed in the pieces do vary. Some appear to offer fairly direct commentary on the human condition (Sheep, Maze,Time, for example) others might appear to be more abstracted whilst still having reflections on life and / or times (Mind Fuck,Trip through Years, Big Mouth, for example). Yet others touch on science-fiction/fantasy laced (perhaps) with quiet whispers on our stewardship of the planet; one in particular (Dutch Tulips) seems to offer an link back to On the Move in terms of its presentation and motion.
However, those are just my thoughts on the pieces, and as such, they are entirely subjective and swayed by my personal outlook; how you might view them might be worlds away, the lack of liner notes from Moni leaving us entirely free to view and interpret, as noted. This also extends to the free-standing pieces occupying the floors of the gallery; clues to their intent might be found in their titles, but how we respond to them and regard them is down to each of us.
Kondor Art Centre: Monique Beebe – Oblivion
All of which makes for a richly engaging – and at times almost mesmerising – selection of art, one that offers a considered further exploration as to how rich and unique art produced with the assistance of AI tools (as opposed to solely through the use of such tools) can actually be. As such Oblivion is well worth the time taken in visiting it. Oh – and if you find you end up with multiple pieces playing, with some distracting your focus, just toggle the media playback button off/on.
Evermore the Folklore, September 2024 – blog post †
The following notes were taken from my audio recording and chat log transcript of the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting held on Thursday, November 7th, 2024. This meeting lasted some 1 hour 50 minutes, due to the presence of Philip Rosedale, who address feedback from the audience as well as discussing SL in general.
The majority of the session was livestreamed by Strawberry Linden, and her video is embedded at the end of this article. However, as the meeting extended beyond the recording session, I’ve summarised the rest based on my chat log and audio recording.
The CCUG meeting is for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current and upcoming LL projects, and encompasses requests or comments from the community, together with related viewer development work. This meeting is held on alternate Thursdays at Hippotropolis.
Meeting dates and times are recorded in the SL Public Calendar, and they re conducted in a mix of Voice and text chat.
The notes herein are a summary of topics discussed and are not intended to be a full transcript of the meeting.
Release viewer: version 7.1.10.10800445603, formerly the DeltaFPS RC (multiple performance fixes, etc), dated September 11, promoted September 17 – No change.
Performance improvements: enhanced texture memory tracking, broader hardware compatibility and higher FPS gain; additional code to improve texture streaming on rigged attachments (e.g. if an earring is made with 2K textures, the viewer will correctly calculate the required resolution for the textures and download them, rather than downloading the full 2K textures), etc.
Aesthetics improvements: new Antialiasing setting – SMAA; Contrast Adaptive Sharpening; Khronos Neutral Tone Mapping (can be changed to ACES via the RenderTonemapType Debug setting).
UI Optimisations.
Near-Term Viewer Release Roadmap
ExtraFPS work remains focused on bug fixes.
The first maintenance RC to follow ExtraFPS will be a viewer bringing together the updates originally planned for the Maint B and Maint C viewers which were side-lined with the focus on viewer performance (Atlasaurus, DeltaFPS, ExtraFPS).
Some issues have crept into the merge process for this work, so the focus on this will be stabilising it after ExtraFPS is promoted to release status.
This likely means there will be a longer than usual pause between ExtraFPS being promoted and the new Maintenance viewer RC appearing.
WebRTC communications protocol (RTC=”real-time communication”) is the new Voice communications protocol for Second Life, replacing Vivox Voice.
Situation remains that Linden Lab are waiting for more users to switch to a WebRTC enabled viewer prior to switching over to using WebRTC only, and disabling Vivox.
A core sticking point here appears to be Firestorm users remaining on a pre-PBR (Vivox-only) release of that viewer, and they are being strongly encouraged to try swapping to the latest Firestorm release (7.1.1) or if performance with that doesn’t suit them to temporarily consider moving to an alternate viewer to help LL with enabling WebRTC (which is a superior Voice option to Vivox) / avoid losing Voice altogether should it reach a point where the switch is thrown for WebRTC.
Core focus remains on performance work , and will remain so until “everyone is happily on PBR-enabled viewers”.
Average viewer performance for most users is believed to be “pretty good” for PBR, but the Lab remains aware of the fact that their are cohorts of users who, due to hardware, etc., are “suffering some pretty significant performance loss”.
“Hunting down” and trying to fix these issues is now the priority, but will take some time.
LL is carrying out A/B testing with Firestorm 6.6.7 (pre PBR) and SL Viewer’s ExtraFPS (RC viewer at the time of writing) to try to better understand performance differences and which lower-end hardware is being particularly hit under PBR (e.g. lower-spec Intel systems (integrated graphics?), some AMD GPUs).
In terms of Nvidia, Runitai believes performance on PBR viewers is “pretty close” to levels enjoyed pre-PBR, although there are still issues to be ironed out with some older GPUs / cards with low VRAM (such as those with only 2GB). Some of this is likely to be a case of “turning down” some internal settings in the viewer so it its friendlier towards lower-end GPUs with limited VRAM.
One thing that has been identified is behaviour on launch / entering a scene (location):
Pre-PBR viewers like Firestorm 6.6.7 tend to launch with high frame rates which then decreases as the scene loads and memory is used, before stabilising.
PBR viewers tend to front-load textures, resulting in a low frame rate from the get-go, which improves as the scene loads the the viewer rationalises the textures it needs to display. This gives a false impression that performance is “bad” from the outset and only liable to get worse, potentially causing people to quit using a PBR viewer before they witness the increase in frame rates.
Part of the work in testing involves automation: the Lab has established a “potato farm” of laptop with limited resources and which are used with SL in order to carry out automated tests to determine where performance issues might reside
Originally slated as being a part of the viewer to follow ExtraFPS, the Khronos Neutral tone mapper, intended to improve overall ambient lighting in SL, making things somewhat brighter and more vibrant.
Khronos Neutral was to have been the default, with the option to switch back to ACES via Preferences → Graphics. However, following feedback, the decision has been made to leave the default as ACES and make Khronos Neutral the option, together with the ability to disable Tone Mapping.
Setting Tone Mapping will eventually be a Sky setting within EEP.
The recommendation to content creators remains don’t bake the Tone Mapping into your textures, allow the post-processing the the viewer handle it – in other words, Tone Mapping belongs to the camera, not the object.
The above rule also applies to thigs like lighting under PBR as well.
Geenz Linden is now working on both the Tone Mapper and on auto-exposure.
Work has already been done within the auto-exposure process to make transitions “softer / easier on the eye”, and Geenz is now extending this work to make it more configurable (e.g. a “maximum”, a “minimum” and and “offset” for auto-exposure that users can set to their personal preference).
The intent is to have these new auto-exposure controls within the EEP Sky settings.
This work should help with issues such as the environment looking “dim” over water, snow, and similar.
In Brief
[17:36-25:40] Mina PBR Hair issue: Mina Nakamura indicated a possible alpha issue she is experiencing when using the specific PBR versions of some of her hair styles, which has only become apparent with the release of DeltaFPS. This may be a result of multi-layering of alpha blends, but copies of the hair have been passed to LL for testing.
[27:48-28:49] It was noted that there have been problems in get various content artists (hair makers, skin makers, etc) engaged in the Content Creation Discord channel, which has impeded some of the work relating to Baking, alpha/gamma, etc.
As LL – via Derrick Linden – has requested I do not publish information on how to join the Content Creation Discord channel, if you are a content creator not involved on the channel, please contact the likes of Vir Linden, Runitai Linden and Geenz Linden to request information on how to access it.
2K Bakes on Mesh remains in general QA on Aditi (the Beta grid), and content creators are asked to test content there and provide feedback.
Specific feedback being sought includes: bakes coming out at the correct resolution (e.g. if all layers at 1024×1024, that the Bake is also 1K); everything appears visually correct without any compression artefacts or similar; that the general experience with Bakes is the same as on the Main grid.
As a part of this work, the Bake Service as a whole has received some performance improvements. However, this aspect of the work has yet to be deployed to Aditi, plus once deployed, they may not result in a visually faster bake, depending on the complexity and resolution of the layers being baked.
If all goes according to plan, it is hoped there will be some form of 2K Bakes on Mesh support to the Main grid (Agni) by the end of November – although this is subject to confirmation; and they the Lab will provide a date when 2K skins, etc., can start to be listed on the MP, etc.
There was a reminder that account syncing with Aditi should now be automatic at the time of log-in (no need to raise a support ticket). However, anyone encountering issue still with Aditi access should contact support.
Viewer Discussion
This was a wide-ranging discussion commencing at the 29:14 point of the video. The following attempts to summarise that discussion, however, to try and keep a general sense of context, the bullet points may not reflect the order in which comments were made.
LL are looking to encourage greater engagement in testing new capabilities and features for SL, rather than having to wait for Firestorm to ship a viewer with support for the new feature / capability, in order to avoid a similar situation as occurred with PBR.
The SL viewer (SLV) has a good cross-section of hardware running it, but the overall pool of users is much smaller than that of Firestorm, and of those that do use it tend not to be so engaged in the platform so as to test and try things / report issues, which can result in problems such as those seen with the deployment of PBR: the Lab doesn’t have a sufficient deep pool of engaged users to report issues as they are encountered as new features / capabilities are being developed.
The question was asked as to what makes Firestorm attractive to users. This boiled down to four major areas:
The additional UI elements Firestorm have built to expose functions native to the viewer, but otherwise hidden within Debug settings.
Dedicated additional features created for Firestorm (e.g. Contact Sets), our specific new UI elements which pull together options and setting from assorted elements of the viewer and present them as a cohesive whole in their own right (such as the Phototools code contribution; the Graphics Improvement floater, etc.).
Very basic quality-of-life improvements, e.g. the ability to de-render / block the rendering of in-world objects (see below for more on this); the additional options to position tollbar buttons in the window (e.g. make them left or right ranged along the bottom).
The level of in-world and additional support Firestorm provides: in-world classes teaching how to use the viewer; in-world support groups providing “live” support in multiple languages, etc.
Shortfalls within the SL viewer were noted as:
Loss of simple quality-of-life elements (e.g. the chat bar) and lack of accessible in-world support.
A lack of general support documentation / material (in this, TPVs have a distinct advantage, in that users of those viewers are willing to produce their own tutorials and guides, whereas few do so where the official viewer is concerned).
General misapprehensions about viewers. for example:
The idea that the SL viewer “doesn’t have capability X or Y, as it remains hidden with Debug settings.
The belief that features capabilities added by LL are “Firestorm” (or whichever viewer is being used) simply because it is first seen in that viewer, and thus are “missing” from the official viewer.
The idea that LL “doesn’t support” older hardware; as Runitai Linden noted, LL does not intentionally seek to make the SL experience any worse for those on older / less capable hardware; when this happens, the Lab does make efforts to redress things.
[Video: 49:19-End] An extended discussion on the Derender capability within Firestorm, with pros and cons, together with whether it should be generally surfaced for new users, due to the impression it gives (“welcome to our world; yes some of it is naff, so you might want to derender it”).
Pros: the ability to stop unwanted objects being rendered in a scene either for a session or until cache is cleared. This is very hand for a variety of reasons such as in-world photography.
Con: the ability to de-render mesh clothing on other avatars.
The discussion also touched upon alternatives to derendering for certain use-cases (e.g. the ability to click-through something like mesh “rain” to touch a vendor board – something which can now be set, as Rider linden indicated).
Also mentioned was the option for a degree of automation to help deal with some instances where de-rendering might otherwise be used (e.g. some form of flag mechanism / land setting such that should someone enter a G/M public space with genitalia / “adult” attachments on display, the simulator orders the viewer to remove them (see below for this).
Post-Video Discussion
A discussion on streaming on Twitch to reach new users – which Philip Rosedale has previously noted, is a subject of ongoing discussions between LL and Twitch, with the caveat that seeing Twitch as a possible “marketing / promotional” channel for SL is not ideal, due to the younger age demographic of many Twitch users.
It was noted that VRChat, which has “adult” content manages to be able to have people stream from it to Twitch.
It was also pointed out that Twitch is a channel for content creators to produce tutorial-like live streams on how to use external content creation tools (Substance Painter, Blender, etc), to create content for SL – but they are unable to steam video of the content being used in SL via Twitch.
The idea of a flag mechanism was discussed in broader terms: as well as having a specific land control switch, having a switch in the viewer which derenders “adult” attachments on avatars. This:
Would provide the control at a per user basis (don’t want to risk seeing “adult” attachments? Leave the switch set; no objection – turn the switch off and allow “adult” attachments to be rendered.
Allows, when combined with the land control, the greatest flexibility of use: store owners or owners of G / M rated public regions, for example, could opt to set the flag at Land level, and thus automatically prevent rendering of any / all “adult” attachments in their regions in all viewers in that region.
The above led to a conversation on Second Life continuing to allow adult content whilst working to ensure there are workable safeguards to ensure those not wishing to see it do not see it. This discussion touched upon:
Issues of Marketplace content not being properly flagged as adult / being tagged too broadly so that either someone with the MP content rating set to General or Moderate still gets to see adult content; or b) adult content appears in entirely unrelated categories.
The need for a more granular rating system. There are many reasons for this (e.g. Adult is often a catch-all, rather than indicating “sexual” (or possibly offensive): art galleries, for example, will often opt for an Adult rating, simply to avoid the risk of being reported for displaying nudity, genitalia, etc., within art.
Philip Rosedale asked about the appropriateness of clothing in public spaces (specifically indicating his own use of chaps with a “stained glass” crotch area in a public meeting venue – even through the chaps revealed nothing, they still drew people attention to his crotch).
Suggestions were made that the new user experience should provide mor details on common activities within Second Life, to give incoming joiners a clearer idea of what to expect / what they might discover.
This included an idea that anyone expression an interest in “Adult” content should be “sent straight to Zindra” – which (personal opinion here) I believe would be a bad move, as Zindra is most strongly associated with sexual content – and as noted earlier in the meeting, “Adult” in SL does not automatically equate to sexual activities. But, by pushing people who click the option merely out of curiosity directly to Zindra, risks reinforcing attitudes that SL is focused on sex / porn.
Philip also provided some updates on matters raised during his November 1st, 2024 Community Round Table:
That work is being put into place to better explain the user name selection in the join flow, and the difference between the user name and the Display name, to help overcome issues of people choosing user names they come to regret (e.g. “xyzmnop3210”).
A reiteration of the (oft-voiced at UG and Meet the Linden / Lab Gab technical sessions) fact that the reason Groups are capped for membership levels is that activities such as sending Group message comes an a non-trivial computational process (and associated cost) of the back-end systems having to look up which users are in a particular group in order to receive said message(s).
The above comments led to a series of personal requests being made directly to Philip, which as he pointed out, highlight the fact that prioritising requests is not easy – those who talk loudest / most persistently do not necessarily represent the majority thinking, and thus their request – even if apparently easy to achieve – many not reflect what “the community” (a term itself hard to quantify) actually wants.
In this, he specifically reiterated some of his comments from his Community Round Table about trying to find mechanisms by which the Lab can better engage with groups of users on topics / ideas, in order to get a broader representation of people’s views without either a) responding only to the most dominant voice in a group; or b) having a group so large, it is impossible to get a broad consensus on feedback / ideas.
Amidst the general airing of points-of view, Philip asked a question which is of potential relevance to many; as such I’ll include it here:
One of the things I’m trying to think about is how to make Second Life more accessible to all of you. What I mean by that is, for that one thing that brought you in, is Second Life also accessible to everyone else for whom that one thing is also true? So, for example, I spoke to someone the other day who is hard of hearing; and I can imagine that’s a pretty good reason to want to be in Second Life, because being in the real world sometimes can be quite difficult if you’re hard of hearing, right? Potentially, Second Life can make that easier, but only if we do the accessibility work to make that functional.
So I kinda ask the broader question – and again, if you want to follow-up with me by e-mail, please do so. The broader question is, what is it that brought you here, and then is Second Life easy to use for everyone else like you, is kind-of the way I’m thinking about right now. It seem like so many things are hard; in different ways, Second Life is appealing, but then many, many other features of it make it excruciatingly difficult. Like, we talked earlier about if I’m a teacher who wants to play around with using Second Life at university, but I’m so exposed to sexual content that I just decide “no”, that would be a perfect example of that; so in that case, Second Life is just not accessible to me as a university teacher, because it’s just too sexual.
The above led to a range of opinions on what SL is, griefing, accessibility in terms of supplied avatars, etc, running through the last 10 minutes of the session. However, given Philip’s question and the fact that some might wish to respond – to Philip via e-mail, not in the comments here, which he may not read! – I will close the summary here as it is already well into the realm of TL;DR!
† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a gathering of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday November 6th, 2024. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting, recorded by Pantera Północy, is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks as always to Pantera for recording it and making it available.
The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), the forums.
As a rule, these meetings are conducted:
On the first Wednesday of the month and 14:00 SLT.
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.
Data Feeds: a re-cap on the new from the last meeting that the issues causing the breakages to the data feeds API metrics (number of users logged-in, etc), for use by external services, have been fixed.
Marketplace UI / Responsiveness Updates: defined as being in the “final stages”, with changes under review and subject to on-line feedback from users.
It was noted that a lot of what is visible to users is just “pieces” and a lot hasn’t been released as yet, with the intention that all the work is out by the end of 2024.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): as per the last meeting, is being extended across all of the Lab’s web properties to make them all consistent, so those opting-in to MFA will find at times that they may have to re-authenticate when accessing a wider range of Second Life web properties.
At the previous meeting the target for implementing this was within 4 (October – December 2024). In this meeting, less confidence was displayed that MFA would be deployed by the end of the year, and a more likely target is Q1 (January-March) 2025.
The reason for this appears to be competition for resources between the MFA work and another project.
Web Properties Responsiveness and Appearance: as well as working on Marketplace responsiveness, the Web team is now looking at improving the responsiveness of other web properties, and bringing them more up to the look and feel of those web properties like the MP which have been undergoing an update.
This is described as not being a large-scale overhaul of all web properties, but more an update to those which are looking particularly outdated.
Examples under consideration for this work include: Web log-in and Dashboard (secondlife.com), the Account pages, and the download page.
Make web maps more usable on smaller screens, and refining the left-side Destination Guide bar so it does not intrude so much into the map display on smaller screens.
Ensure that when a destination in the Destination Guide on the left is clicked, the map scrolls to the destination and opens an information pop-up that provides actual information on the location, not just the “Welcome to Second Life” boilerplate, as seen below.
LL are looking to make the information pop-up for destinations on the map selected via the Destinations Guide sidebar more meaningful than the default boilerplate text that tends to be displayed
“Stars” in MP product / store names: there have been complaints about the use of stars (e.g. via emojis / unicode, etc.) in the names of products / stores, which people feel are being used to give the false impression that the product / store is “star rated”. The web team is working on a means to prevent this.
[Video 22:34-26:30 and 30:54-34:34] Marketplace images being distorted, notably in the Related Products section of listings (see: this Canny report). This appears to be a clash between absolute image size and aspect ratio (the latter being quotes as 1:1 or 4:3 – when it is more 3:2). The 3:2 ratio also conflicts with viewer thumbnails being 1:1.
Alongside of this was a request to increase the (viewer thumbnail?) image size / aspect ratio (the latter might be subject to a Lab-raised Canny to allow the correct aspect ratio information to be stored with the textures to avoid the 1:1 default).
Concerning this the distorted images, Garfield Linden noted:
The fixes to images will be shipped after the next batch of fixes (which improves half of the issues with Related Items, as well as some weirdness when there is an error during product listing image upload fails) in our queue ships.
Preferences were also expressed for support custom image aspect ratios at upload and / or from a drop down of common aspect ratio options.
It was suggested that an overlay / crop tool might be provided to allow images to be suitably cropped to meet display requirements within MP listings.
[Video: 26:34-30:30] Embedding videos in MP listings: rather than simply lining to videos on You Tube, the option to use You Tube’s Embed capability to embed videos in MP listings.
Seen as a good move, if it can be supported, with the suggestion that embedded videos should be restricted to a maximum length to avoid abuse (e.g. someone creating a listing and embedding an entire movie from You Tube).
An alternate suggestion was a video thumbnail image which, when clicked opens up the video on You Tube, etc., or within a dedicated tab / floater, if possible.
Embedding would be preferable to direct uploading and / or front-loading, as the latter requires LL storage and front-loading could slow down page loading responsiveness.
[Video: 38:45-45:39] A discussion on further Marketplace categories / tagging.
[Video: 45:56-50:09] General discussion (with interruption!) on multiple shopping carts (focus on on dedicated for gifting) and labelling the Buy Now button to indicate it means buying for yourself.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 