VAI’s Mental Health Symposium 2024 in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, Second Life

The 2023 Virtual Ability Inc., (VAI) Mental Health Symposium on Friday, May 17th, 2024, marking the internationally supported Mental Health Awareness Week (May 13th through 19th, 2024, inclusive). As such, it forms a part of a wide range of physical world and virtual world events framed around Mental Health Awareness Month, which has been throughout May observed in the United States since 1949.

2023 marks the 13th such symposium hosted by Virtual Ability Inc., and has the theme Our Youth, Our Elders, carrying a focus on the fact that children and the elderly face unique mental health challenges that are not well understood and often not adequately addressed.

The Symposium will take place in the virtual world of Second Life, at the Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability Island. Those from outside of Second Life wishing to attend can do so by creating a free Second Life account through Virtual Ability’s Sign-Up Portal, and then entering Second Life via Virtual Ability’s New Resident Orientation Course.

The schedule of speakers for the event can be found on the Virtual Ability Inc., website, and presentations commence at 07:30 SLT (US PDT) on the morning of Friday, May 17th, and run through to the concluding presentation, which starts at 14:30 SLT, with each session lasting approximately one hour. For ease of reference, a brief summary of the presentations is provided below – but do please check the complete schedule via the link above for the fullest information on speakers and talks.

  • 07:30 SLT: Dr. Esther Gachuri, PhD and Dr. Anne Wambugu, PhD, MAMFT, MA, Pan Africa Christian University (Nairobi, Kenya) – “Elderly Peoples’ Perception of Their Wellbeing in Selected Mainstream Churches in Kenya”.
  • 09:00 SLT: Dr. Folajinmi Oluwasina, PhD, FRSPH, University of Calgary (Canada) – “Invisible Struggles: Addressing Mental Health Among Black Youth in Canada”.
  • 10:30 SLT: Mr. Horta Reis da Silva, Lecturer in Nursing Education at King’s University, England – “Loneliness in Older Adults”.
  • 12:00 noon SLT: Dr. Valerie Hill, MLIS, PhD, director of the Community Virtual Library in the metaverse and co-coordinator of the Virtual Worlds Education Consortium, and Rose Hill, MLIS, CPC, SUDP-T, is a Certified Peer Counsellor with a focus in trauma and crisis counselling – “The Impact of Parasocial Relationships with AI on Mental Health”
  • 13:00 SLT: Jessica Simionato, MPH, BSp, La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) – “Intergenerational programs – bringing youth and elders together to enhance social connectedness”.
  • 14:30 SLT: Robert Walker, MS, COAPS, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, USA – “Older Adult Peer Support: Our Time Has Come”.
Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island, Second Life

For those unable to attend in-world, the symposium will be live streamed on You Tube.

About Virtual Ability

Virtual Ability, Inc. is a non-profit corporation, chartered in the state of Colorado, USA.  It is a non-profit tax exempt organization under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. This means that for US citizens, contributions made are deductible as a charitable donation for federal income tax purposes.

Virtual Ability hosts this annual Symposium to share information about mental health and mental disabilities with the general population. Within its cross-disability community, VAI has members who deal with a variety of mental health issues. So, not only is this an opportunity for VAI community members to learn more about topics related to mental health from experts they probably would not have a chance to meet otherwise, it allows the general public to attend a professional conference at no cost.

With thanks to Gentle Heron for the information.

Related links

Linden Lab announces venue for 1st Second Life community Round Table

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

Following recent announcements about efforts to improve communications and engage with the users, and to provide the opportunity to ask questions of members of the Lab’s senior leadership (see: Linden Lab: updates to policies and new initiatives on community relations (May 2nd, 2024) and Summary of Tilia acquisition Lab Gab + SL Round Table News (April 24, 2024)), on Thursday, May 16th, 2024, Linden Lab announced both the venue details for the the first Community Round Table and those from the Lab’s leadership team who will be attending.

You can read the full details in the official blog post: Community Roundtable on May 20 – Your Chance to Help Improve Second Life. However, and in brief:

In addition the the above, the post provides details on how users can engage with the Lab through the Feedback Portal and Support Portal, and by attending the regularly scheduled User Group meetings held in-world on a range of specific subject areas. For details on the latter, please refer to the SL wiki Official User Groups page, and for dates and times, please see the SL Public calendar†.

The official post concludes:

We understand that agreement on every idea or suggestion may not always be possible. However, we can assure you that your ideas and suggestions matter deeply to us, and those perspectives help shape our decisions. Your voice is valued in our ongoing journey together.
We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with each and every one of you in shaping a world that is not only enjoyable and prosperous but also vibrant and flourishing. Your presence here means the world to us, and your contributions are invaluable in making Second Life an exceptional place to belong. Thank you sincerely for sharing your time with us and for being an integral part of our journey towards creating something truly special together.

Again, please read the official blog post for all information on the meeting.

 

†While they are not officially representative of the Lab or these meetings, please note that I attempt to provide summaries of a number of user group session within these pages, and Patera Północy provides video recordings of the meetings she is able to attend via her You Tube channel).

The First Day … at Nitroglobus in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

Most of us have likely heard the expression “[Today / This] is the first day of the rest of your life” – but what exactly does it mean when we hear it / say it? What does it pertain to life and how we face it?

For most of us, the response to that question might well lean towards the promise that with each new day comes the opportunity to seize new opportunities, to put the past behind us and look forward to all the potential the future offers. For others, however, the expression might be seen as more a curse than an expression of hope, as Selen Minotaur explores in her exhibition The First Day, (subtitled of the rest of your life) which opened on May 13th, 2024 at Dido Haas’ Nitroglobus Roof gallery.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

The easiest way to describe the installation – which encompasses 2D and 3D elements an multimedia, is to refer to Selen’s own words:

“The first day of the rest of your life” usually refers to a new beginning, full of promise and hope. But what if that first day was actually a repeat of the previous days, or worse, a nightmare?
This exhibition speaks of the fears, beliefs and fantasies that invade us in the face of the unknown. And the courage it takes to overcome them, mobilize and move forward. Because no matter what anyone says, the first day of the rest of your life remains a mystery…

In terms of the images, this brings forth a series of richly layered pieces which, depending on your mood and perspective on visiting, might be interpreted in differing ways, both within the context of the the exhibition’s theme and in a manner which might also encapsulate different aspects of both it and how we opt to interpret the underpinning expression.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

Take The First Station, a marvellously layer image encapsulating ideas of trying to move forward in life whilst forever unable to leave what has come before as it seeks to pin us in place and blind our ability to see how we can move forward, instead making us look forever back at what has been rather than towards the freedom of what might be. Beautifully symbolised through the use of red colouring, the black and reaching out from between the rail sleepers, the tracks themselves and the eye in the mirror, the symbolic core of this piece is perfectly framed.

Then there is  First Sunrise. This is a piece which might be seen as one of those casting a wider net of potential interpretation. The promise of a new day, of open horizons and all the promise they hold – be they through the arrival of a new day which marks our decision to mark it as a new beginning, our “first sunrise”, so to speak, or the literal first sunrise of birth. At the same time, the Sun rises as a clock, the ever present reminder that life is finite; that no matter who or where we are, we are allotted a finite time. Do we allow it to dominate us, to cause us to live in fear of the every diminishing pile of minutes left to us? Or do we simply “live in the moment”? Where does the balance lay? Is life itself not a state of progress from the former to the latter?

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, May 2024: Selen Minotaur – The First Day

There is more I could state here around the likes of the caged head, the face mask, and the 3d elements; in fact, I did start – but the reality is, The First Day should be experienced first hand and interpreted directly – and possibly over more than one visit. All I will say here is that I recommend viewing the images and sculptures first prior to viewing the video; in this way, ideas are neatly framed and the narrative then unfolds.

SLurl Details

2024 SL SUG meetings week #20 summary – updated

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lenixus Project ~ Chapter I : The Snail Princess, May 2024 – blog post †

Update: May 15th: The WebRTC test region is WebRTC Voice 1. Read more on WebRTC Voice in this official blog post.

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript, and were taken from my chat log and the video by Pantera – my thanks to her as always for providing it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • 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.

Simulator Deployments

  • On Tuesday, May 14th, the Main SLS channel was restarted without any deploy,
  • On Wednesday, May 15th:
    • The BlueSteel RC channel will be updated with the Spring Break Simulator update.
    • The rest of the RC simhosts will be restarted.
    • A small Snack channel has been set-up for WebRTC testing (sorry, no region name available).

SL Viewer Updates

  • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247 and dated May 8th, was promoted to release status on Monday, May 13th.

The rest of the official viewers in a pipeline remain as:

  • Release channel cohorts:
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
    • Materials Featurettes RC viewer, version 7.1.7.8883017948, May 2.
    • Maintenance B RC (usability updates / imposter changes), version 7.1.7.8820696922, April 29.
  • Project viewers:

PBR Materials + Blinn-Phong Support

[Video: 7:45 and (discussion) 46:05-meeting end]

  • Concern was raised over a quote of a comment by Runtai Linden I carried from the May 10th TPV Developer meeting; specifically:
Sometime between now and then, we’ll likely start making the LSL scripts that modify Blinn-Phong parameters modify their PBR equivalents, or do nothing when a PBR material is applied. So llSetColor, for example, would set the base colour, not the diffuse colour. That should make life a lot simpler for scripters going forward, as scripters have been giving us feedback that trying to do something simple like that with existing scripts is impossible as they have to do a check to see if a glTF material is applied, and if there is then use llSetPrimParams and if there isn’t, use llSetColor.
  • This caused concern at the SUG meeting, and so Brad Linden Offered the following:
So, not officially speaking for Runitai, but I think his most important concern is that SL is trying to move towards standards compliance. and for objects with GLTF content attached, the only standards compliant way to display it is to fully implement GLTF PBR exactly as the Khronos group specifies it. so if an object has PBR attached, then displaying anything else is a “MUST NOT” behaviour: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2119#section-2.
Defining fallbacks for older viewers that have not implemented the spec, is potentially negotiable.
Any face that has a PBR material applied MUST be displayed using PBR
  • Brad also pointed to a Feedback request where there is further discussion towards the issue of “PBR llFunctions”, including colour .
  • The major source of concern raised on Runatai’s comment and Brad’s expansion is the belief that some SL users are unable to display PBR materials as they are too taxing on their systems; so if creators cannot offer a fallback position, they well leave SL due to the amount of content they cannot see correctly, couple with the view that maintaining the ability to keep llSetColor “as is” does not break with the glTF requirements, but allows those users to stay with SL until such time as they can upgrade their hardware.
  • The counter to this was that there are users still on SL who have hardware unable to correctly render mesh, and that LL are a) working hard to get PBR performance up to a level where the majority of user hardware can support it and b) they do not want to pressure creators into having to support two different content creation / rendering approaches / specifications.
  • Please refer to the video below for further comments on this issue, plus expect further discussions at upcoming Content Creatin meetings (see the SL public calendar for details of the latter).

In Brief

  • [Video: 28:52-46:00] A discussion on Key Frame Motion and on the impact of scaling on KFM + possible, including an idea from Rider for a llSetScaleLimited function, which would scale an object as specified – unless doing so hits a defined LI limit (e.g. “increase the object size to 5x5x5 or stop scaling if the LI exceeds 8”) – the idea being to prevent an animated object from exploding in LI on scaling. This also saw a further suggestion of having a universal timestamp (server and viewer) to better sync operations,

† 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 rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Mirai Melody’s Japanese fusion in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Mirai Melody, May 2024 – click any image for full size

Another year has passed, and so once again I decided to click my heels and make what is now an annual pilgrimage to Bambi’s (NorahBrent) Missing Melody. I did so because a little birdie informed me that she’d teamed up with Ethan Takeda to produce an interesting sky platform called Mirai Melody. However, the project didn’t start out with the intent to build a complete setting, as Ethan explains:

The inception of this street stemmed from Bambi and my initial vision to craft a backdrop for an editorial piece on NeoJapan for L’Homme Magazine April 2024. What began as a mere backdrop evolved into a captivating narrative, sparking discussions about creating a mini-sim. As ideas began to take shape, our conversations ignited a creative flurry, resulting in the birth of Mirai Melody.

– Ethan Takeda

Mirai Melody, May 2024

The setting comprises a single street “somewhere in [insert name here]” as the hoary old TV / film caption goes. Not there is anything hoary about Mirai Melody; rather the reverse, offering as it does an engaging fusion of “old” – a ramshackle environment in a city where the surrounding high-rises might well look down on disdainfully – but their very presence allows it to carry a life of its own; one edged in the bustle of local life and – going on the presence of certain individuals at the landing point – can have a frisson of danger associated with it.

The main street scene is packed with detail – I strongly recommend visiting using the shared environment and, if you can manage them, with shadows enabled. This will ensure you get the full impact of the setting. There are local sounds as well, but I admit I’m not sure they entirely worked for me although they certainly add depth to all the eateries along the way.

Mirai Melody, May 2024

This is a place rich in the tradition of the street market and what – going on the general friendliness evident throughout most of the street’s length – is likely a relatively close-knit community of small businesses support the local populace and possibly used to having tourists find their way through its length.

It is also a place which, as well as having a history to it, is very much of the present (or the future-present, so to speak). Holographic advertising is much in evidence, at one some are using “old school” mobile phones, other XR units which project information and data around them, and one of the sushi bars appears to have dropped in quite literally, given the thrusters located along its underside! Elsewhere, an apothecary’s shop offers a haven of peace, even if it does share the paved square in occupies with a noodle bar managed by mechanoid server that would look just as at home strolling across Mars!

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Away from the landing point and the paramilitary types loitering there (are they the local militia? Here to keep unwanteds out or to stop those here wandering into the city proper? I’ve no idea – you make up the story for yourself!). Fortunately, most of them appear to be preoccupied by the flickering holo dancers just to the side of the landing point, so slipping past them is not a problem – although their presence appears to be enough for one stall owner to feel the need to wear a sidearm and another to look as if she’d happily bop the snoz of anyone remarking unfavourably on the gifts on her stall!

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Further along the street things are a lot friendlier, as noted above, and visitors can mangle with the static NPCs, poke at the shops and stalls, slipping (literally in one case!) into a side-alley to find a book stall or through a doorway into a bar or a little old-style school.

For photographers, Mirai Melody is a delight, whilst the touches of detail and humour are bound to raise a smile. There might be an tendency to look at it quickly and think Bladerunner (as someone commented in local chat whilst I was hopping in and out), but I’d disagree. Whilst mixing an Oriental street scene with cyberpunk / futurist elements might have caused Ethan and Bambi to lean in that direction, they have wisely avoided the temptation and instead come up with something visually unique and engaging.

Mirai Melody, May 2024

Visit and enjoy it whilst it lasts!

SLurl Details

2024 SL viewer release summaries week #19

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, May 12th, 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: 7.1.6.8745209917, formerly the Maintenance Y/Z RC ( My Outfits folder improvements; ability to remove entries from landmark history), dated April 19 and promoted April 23 – No Change
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance X RC (usability improvements), version 7.1.7.8974243247, May 8.
    • Maintenance C RC (reset skeleton in all viewers), version 7.1.7.8820704257, May 6.
  • Project viewers:

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version: 1.32.0.22 (PBR); and Experimental to version 1.32.1.5 (PBR) on May 4 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links