Cloud Edge, January 2023 – 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, March 2nd, 2023 at 13:00 SLT.
These meetings are for discussion of work related to content creation in Second Life, including current work, upcoming work, and requests or comments from the community, together with viewer development work. They are chaired by Vir Linden, and dates and times can be obtained from the SL Public Calendar.
Notes:
These meetings are conducted in mixed voice and text chat. Participants can use either to make comments / ask or respond to comments, but note that you will need Voice to be enabled to hear responses and comments from the Linden reps and other using it. If you have issues with hearing or following the voice discussions, please inform the Lindens at the meeting.
The following is a summary of the key topics discussed in the meeting, and is not intended to be a full transcript of all points raised.
Official Viewers Summary
The PBR Materials project viewer updated to version 7.0.0.578526, on March 3rd, 2023. Note that this viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Available Viewers
Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2, 2023.
Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578270, issued February 24 2023.
Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21, 2023.
Project viewers:
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
General Viewer Notes
The Maintenance R and the Performance Improvements / Auto-FPS RC viewers are both now apparently in line for promotion to de facto release status, although both may go through further RC updates prior to being promoted.
glTF Materials and Reflection Probes
Project Summary
To provide support for PBR materials using the core glTF 2.0 specification Section 3.9 and using mikkTSpace tangents, including the ability to have PBR Materials assets which can be applied to surfaces and also traded / sold.
To provide support for reflection probes and cubemap reflections.
The overall goal is to provide as much support for the glTF 2.0 specification as possible.
In the near-term, glTF materials assets are materials scenes that don’t have any nodes / geometry, they only have the materials array, and there is only one material in that array.
It is currently to early to state how this might change when glTF support is expanded to include entire objects.
The project viewer is available via the Alternate Viewers page, but will only work on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid): Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Tone mapping: work is progressing on implementing the Krzysztof Narkowicz variant of ACES tone mapping, which should – depending on the monitor being used / viewer preferences set – produce better graphical results. As the result can vary by monitor / eye, this will include both an exposure slider and an option to disable the option.
Geenz Linden is working on the Mac side of the PBR work; Comic Linden is finalising UV treatment and Bed Linden is working on the one remaining server-side bug the team is aware of and Dave P (Runitai Linden) is working on atmospherics and issues with rendering them in linear space.
Linear space alpha blending: there are still issues with this, particularly at either end of the scale (high colours / high transparency and low colours / low transparency). This is being worked on, but may end up with a debug setting to disable linear space alpha blending by those who need to, with a warning that this is not how scenes are intended to be viewed.
A scene imported by Nagachief Darkstone and WindowsCE to demonstrate reflection probes (note the reflections on the knight’s armour – these are not generated by attached environment lights but by a reflection probe within the building structure. Image courtesy of Rye Cogtail
In Brief
It now looks as if the move away from the OpenGL API will be to Vulkan for Windows (/Linux?) and MoltenVK for Mac.
LL is interested in implementing something similar to the Firestorm Local Mesh capability by Beq Janus and Vaalith Jinn (see here and here for more), possibly as a result of a code contribution.
Land Impact:
Some creators are using the Animesh checkbox on upload to try to get around large mesh objects having heavy Land Impact values. LL gave notice at the meeting that this is regarded as an exploit, and it will be patched – so those doing so should really cease in order to avoid people facing unplanned object returns when their parcel start reporting they are over capacity.
In terms of Land Impact overall, it was acknowledged that while updated to allow for mesh, etc., the formula does still have some shortfalls; however, redressing this would require work which also involves bandwidth and server memory, and is not currently on the cards.
It is hoped that the move to support glTF mesh imports will offer a means to address LOD issues and Land Impact, as it will bring with it a fundamental shift in the data model
Cull distance volumes: one way to reduce the render load on a system is to have cull distance volumes. The PBR reflection probes are being seen by LL as a means to test data gathering which can eventually be used in cull distance volumes (e.g. so you can set-up a volume inside a room and have it so that the viewer does not start rendering anything within that room until a camera is within X metres of the room).
This could potentially make Land Impact more dynamic in terms of content streaming costs, based on the use of cull volumes / camera position.
It could also be used to assist in privacy matters (e.g. “don’t render what’s in this room unless people are in this room”).
At 09:00 SLT on Friday, March 10th, 2023, there will be pre-recorded Lab Gab session, featuring three of the Lab’s Second Life leadership team: Grumpity Linden, Mojo Linden and Patch Linden. They will be discussing all things SL-related and responding to questions submitted in advance of the event.
Grumpity Linden: heads up Second Life Product team, where she has overseen a shift to growth, a stronger, more balanced economy, movement towards better community cohesion, and an overall forward-looking approach. She originally started at LL whilst working for The Product Engine, and was involved in the development of Viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio), prior to joining LL full-time in 2014. As the Vice President of Product, she is responsible for coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life, liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, and so on; work which can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.
Mojo Linden: joined the Lab in 2021 at the Vice President of Engineering, filling the shoes worn for so long by Oz Linden. A 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, he has been responsible for launching numerous games across multiple genres and platforms, and has a strong understanding of platforms, architectures, product development and technical capabilities. In his role at the Lab, he has shown enormous openness and candour in seeking to increase the platform’s functionality and performance, and in pushing to expand SL’s capabilities.
Patch Linden: originally a Second Life resident and business owner who joined the platform in 2004, and became a Linden in September 2007. He worked across a number of teams within the company – notably within the support and product spheres, and is responsible for developing the Land Operations team, and more recently setting-up the company’s support office in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 2019, he has been Vice President, Product Operations.
If you have a question you’d like Grumpity, Moho or Patch (or all three!) to answer, be sure to submit it via Lab Gab Google Form, and to do so before 09:00 SLT, on Thursday March 9th. The session will be shown of the Second Life You Tube channel, I hope to have a summary of the session available some time after it has streamed; in the meantime, the salient details are summarised below.
Viewing Details
Time and Date: 9:00 SLT on Friday, March 10th, 2023.
Cover Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).
They are not intended for the discussion of Governance issues, land fees / issues, content creation & tools, viewer or simulator development / projects. Please refer to the SL calendar for information on available meetings for these topics.
A video of the meeting, courtesy of Pantera, can be found embedded at the end of this article (my thanks to her as always!), and subject timestamps to the relevant points in the video are provided. Again, the following is a summary of key topics / discussions, not a full transcript of everything mentioned.
Marketplace Search
The updates to the Marketplace implementation of ElasticSearch have been deployed, This means:
Merchant and store names won’t be included in product-specific searches anymore, increasing the number of relevant results.
The ability to do exact matches with quotes around a word or phrase.
Asterisk(*) wildcard searches.
Fuzzy matching will help with misspelled words and typos.
Search operators AND, OR, NOT will still work as before. (Note that they must be capitalised. Consult the tooltip next to keyword search for more information.).
Issues were encountered, such as the need to capitalise operators (as noted above), a bug with determining relevance, the result page displaying an inaccurate count of returns, etc. As per the official blog post, some of these have been addressed, and LL are watching the situation to address further issues as they occur.
In Brief
A general discussion on how the MP & search is used, e.g.:
How deep people go in scanning search return lists.
Do people use the MP & search to find specific products or general browsing (market research, curiosity, etc.)?
Do people use the MP as a means to find items then then purchase in-world or do they prefer to browse in-world and purchase via the MP?
The answers were broad-ranging and likely typical of a mix of merchants and consumers.
The question was asked about improving listing management for merchants, which generated numerous responses including:
Tags for listings, which when clicked will generate searches for items using the same tag.
An in-listing option for the owner of the listing to click on it to edit the listing directly.
Improvements to how discounts can be applied.
It was suggested that questions such as these should be put to users via the forums in order to generate broader feedback.
For details of these discussions, please refer to the video.
Next Meeting
Wednesday, April 5th, 2023. Venue and time per top of this summary.
Elvion, March 2023 – click any image for full size
It is no secret that I’ve never failed to enjoy the various iterations of Bo and Una Zano’s (BoZanoNL and UnaMayLi) Elvion – hence why I’m again writing about it once more, just a few weeks after my last piece about it, as they have recently re-opened with a new design; one which is something of a departure from the majority of previous region designs.
Elvion, March 2023
Where Elvion tends to lean towards rural / mystical settings, laced with a deep sense of beauty and mysticism, this design takes us somewhere else entirely, as Bo notes in the region’s About Land description:
Enjoy beautiful vistas exploring this paradise island, situated between the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea. From stunning ocean views and forest trails, to detailed cities and interiors.
– Bo Zano, introducing his latest Elvion chapter
Elvion, March 2023
Whether the location is between the French or Italian Alps and the Med is hard to say; the houses suggest a sense of Tuscany, but really whether based on an actual part of the French or Italian landscape between mountains and sea isn’t important; what is important is that – as with all of Bo’s and Una’s builds – this is a setting that has been put together with a huge amount of love and patience to offer visitors a further engaging, charming and relaxing visit.
Elvion, March 2023
The landing point lies towards the north-west of the region, on a high shoulder of a hill. From here one can travel north and pass through a bun-like thumb of rock via a tunnel to a secluded headland overlooking the sea on two sides and where stone steps wind their way up to the to of the rock. Or, if preferred, people can head south and down and along a rutted track to the coast and a causeway leading to an ancient fortification.
Elvion, March 2023
Then there is east from the landing point, and a broad bridge spanning the local river valley to where the local town sits. This is built around a series of gated paths running between the houses, including one that descends southwards to where another bridge spans the river as it broadens to reach a wide plaza with more houses and a way down to the beach. From here the road runs north along the east coast and to a little waterside location which carries a suggestion not so much of France or Italy, but – to me at least – a touch of Louisiana.
Elvion, March 2023
The transition from the more Alpine seating to the touch of Americana is subtle; thanks to the way the road along the east side of the region is kept naturally separate to the rest of the region, adding a further depth of mystery and magic to the setting. Those exploring might wish to keep their eyes peeled for entrances into the local caves – there are several ways into these, so they shouldn’t be hard to find, while for those looking for another elevated look-out point should – as the landing area notes – head for the local water tower.
As ever with Bo and Una’s Elvion’s designs, this iteration is incredibly photogenic – be sure to look inside some of the houses as well, as a number are furnished – and there are numerous places to be found for sitting, cuddling and passing the time. I also recommend using the region’s own EEP settings, as they offer the region almost as a painting. All told, another setting not to be missed.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, February 28th, 2023 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.
Server Deployments
On Tuesday, February 28th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 577734.
On Wednesday, March 1st, the majority of RC servers will be restarted without any change. However, those on the BlueSteel RC will be updated with server release 578370.
Available Official Viewers
On Tuesday, February 28th, the Maintenance R RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578285.
The rest of the official viewers currently available remain unchanged from the start of the week:
Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968 Thursday, February 2.
Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.10.578270, issued February 24.
Performance Floater / Auto FPS RC viewer updated to version 6.6.10.578172, February 21.
Project viewers:
PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578161, February 14. This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.8.576972, December 8, 2022.
In Brief
BUG-233440 “Add a method for dealing with user-customized keybindings in user-visible text” came under discussion, the Maestro Linden suggesting one approach, per the comments in the Jira.
The above segued into a general discussion on note card parsing commands in note card (with care!), making things like URIs within note cards clickable, and having an LSL command (e.g. llHTTPResponseNC() ) which could allows scripts to reply to HTTP requests within note cards – so if a HUD is using MoaP, JSON in the HTML could send commands back to it via post.
I dropped into Alpha Auer’s Alphatribe Island to take a look at Mythologies, a rather interesting installation she has created which is part cultural collection, part experimentation and entirely fascinating. Alpha is best known for her own original creations and installations, some of which I’ve covered in these pages (most recently in 2019). However, this is something a little different, and the easiest way to explain it is through Alpha’s own words:
Mythologies is a curation of cultural artefacts that were found on a vast 3D resource called Sketchfab where many museums from all over the world, as well as private individuals upload all sorts of 3D models but with an overwhelming emphasis on heritage material that can be downloaded and freely used under Creative Commons licenses.
Thus, instead of doing my own modelling this time around, I decided to use this remarkable bounty to put together an architecture and a number of small landscapes in which deities and characters from different mythologies across history could be present virtually – sometimes sharing spaces and sometimes thematically separated.
– Alpha Auer
Alpha Auer: Mythologies, February 2022
The result is a series of islands placed across a glass-like platform, each the home to the models Alpha has imported, each one more-or-less represent different cultures and their heritage. These range from renaissance Europe through North America to the Middle East, Asia and Far East. However, to define this as a dive into these cultures and mythologies would in part be a mistake, again as Alpha notes herself:
I do not pretend that this is a museum or any such serious endeavour. After all, I do not give any explanations or descriptions – rather it is one of my “follies” to be looked at as such. That said, should you wish to find out more about who these deities and characters are you can find them on sketchfab.
– Alpha Auer
Alpha Auer: Mythologies, February 2022
That side, the way the pieces are set out does actually encourage their study and consideration of the times and culture which gave rise to them and what they represent. To help sate curiosities, Alpha also cites sources from within Sketchfab, such as the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Bonn Centre for Digital Humanities collection – Alpha can provide licenses to those wishing to find out more, and also – in terms of cultures. Wikipedia is your friend.
The second Level of the installation – reached via a broad stairway – offers access to Alpha’s own store, including her fabulous avatars, and a smaller store containing many of the pieces featured on the main platform, complete with their Creative Commons License.
Alpha Auer: Mythologies, February 2022
Hailing from Istanbul, Alpha is an academic and graphic designer / artist. Widely published, she has presented papers and works are conferences and art spaces, some of which have spanned both the virtual and the physical worlds – such as her co-authored LPDT2/3 series of installations in Second Life and OpenSim, which she developed with MosMax Hax and Selavy Oh, building around Roy Ascott’s concept of distributed authorship – Ascott being one of the artists under whom she studied for her PhD. She very modestly does not consider herself an “artist” or “designer”, but rather a “thingmaker” – it’s an interesting term, given the range of her work, but I personally cannot help but think of her as a marvellously gifted artist / designer.
Separate to these main platforms are a pair of floating island and a third platform; these can be reached by the local teleport system. The islands continue the theme of mythologies and cultures.
Alpha Auer: Mythologies, February 2022
The uppermost platform is home to one of Alpha’s own installations, From Here On There Be Dragons. Originally displayed at Dividni Shostakovich’s now sadly closed Split Screen, it presents a celebration of these mythical, mystical beasts and much of what they represent both culturally and in terms of our own psyche – and you can read more on my own thoughts from that 2016 installation here. It adds a further dimension to what is a very different exhibition, one very much worthwhile visiting.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 