November 2022 Web User Group: new “Plus” subscription level

The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022.

These meetings:

  • Are held in-world, generally on the first Wednesday of the month – see the SL public calendar.
  • Are usually chaired by Reed Linden, who is the Lab’s Product Manager for the Second Life front-end web properties (Marketplace, secondlife.com, the sign-up pages, the Lab’s corporate pages, etc.).

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

Marketplace Search Overhaul

[Video: 1:08-4:30]

  • All of the currently planned updates are complete and are awaiting the opportunity to “turn them all on”. This will likely happen (with an announcement) ahead of US Thanksgiving, 2022.
  • Some of the noted updates include:
    • Merchant and store names will no long be searched in product searches.
    • Searches for exact matches (using quotation marks around search descriptors) has been added.
    • Wildcard (e.g. using *) will be possible.
    • The back-end supports fuzzy matching to better handle typos when inputting searches.
    • There should be a noticeable increase in speed of search results being returned.
  • Once running, these updates will allow LL to add-in the relevance engine AI to the Marketplace search (as a separate API entity to the relevance engine already running on the web search).

Marketplace Styles

[Video: 12:15-14:00]

  • Work will resume on Marketplace Styles (allowing multiple colours, etc., for an item to appear within a single listing rather than each requiring its own listing) as soon as the MP Search updates are officially enabled.
  • It is hoped this capability will be available towards year-end.
  • It will obviously be up to merchants as to whether they use it to group variances in a product within a single listing or continue to list them separately – single listings for multiple versions of an item will not be mandatory.

Land Ownership “Journey”

[Video; 8:14-12:12]

  • A complete re-write of every route by which users can obtain and hold land, from Premium (+Plus) Linden Homes, obtaining Mainland (incl. Abandoned Land), and private island regions, and renting from private estates.
  • The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, a central hub from which to get to all aspects of land “ownership”.
  • Overall, this work is not liable to be surfaced much before the end of 2022.
  • When it does, it should be looked upon as a template / proof of concept for overhauling the rest of the Second Life web properties to give them a coherent appearance; make it easier to maintain existing web portals and pages and to add new ones; make SL’s web presence more performant overall and ensure it works on mobile devices as well as desktops / laptops.

New “Plus” Subscription Level

[Video: 4:1-35-8:05]

  • The new subscription option is to be called simply (if possibly confusingly) “Plus”.
  • This is designed to sit between Basic and Premium.
  • Its core intent is to unlock the ability to hold land on the Mainland, although it will have a modest stipend associated with it + a small bump in the number of allowed Groups.
  • Pricing is subject to the formal announcement that Plus is available, which is anticipated as being by the end of November.
  • It is hoped that once available and given time to determine how it performs / users respond to Plus, that further subscription levels – which may possibly include an “a-la carte” option – can be defined and added to the selection.

Premium Plus (and Premium) to be Renamed in the future?

  • It was suggested that the new subscription level would be better named “Basic Plus” – something that was not dismissed by Reed as an informal means of referencing it.
  • However, the Lab is apparently considering single-word names for all current and future subscription offerings, and Reed indicated that if this is the case, then Premium Plus is likely to be renamed at some point in the future, and this renaming might extend to Premium as well.

In Brief

  • It is hoped that a future Marketplace update will allow store owners to have access to search metrics for their items (e.g. which items are being popularly searched / purchased, etc.). However, this is not part of the Search updates described above.
  • The web properties updates will likely include improvements to the web version of the World Map. However, what these changes may be & which they might be implemented is very much still TBD.
  • Web profiles will not be entirely shut down for as long as the profile Feed remains popular with users – this is the one element of Web Profiles that has not been moved back into the viewer (and appears unlikely to do so).
  • It has been noted that if a user has the Profile Feed set to Private, the new Legacy Profile viewer code shows a broken version of their web profile in the Web tab.
  • For all other discussion points,  please refer to the video below.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, December 7th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

The digital mastery of Milly Sharple in Second Life

Milly Sharple – November 2022

I found it hard to believe that two years have passed since I last visited an exhibition of Milly Sharple’s fabulous digital art; so when I recently happened across a Landmark to her current gallery, I knew I would have to pay a visit.

For those who may not be familiar with Milly and her work, she is a successful artist and photographer in the physical world. Not only is her art sold on a global basis, it has been used for book and CD cover art, in promotional material, posters for theatrical productions, and even on bank cards. In 2020 she was invited to do a collaboration representing the Covid pandemic with Salvador Dali’s protégé, Louis Markoya.

Milly Sharple – November 2022

Milly joined Second Life in 2008, and established her first gallery the following year. Not content with simply displaying and selling her work in-world, she also established the Timamoon Arts Community, which in its day, hosted over 40 resident artists and was regarded as one of the most successful and popular art communities on the grid before circumstance forced Milly to retire the region on which it was based.

As one of the pioneers in introducing the world of fractal art to Second Life audiences, and while in recent years her work has diversified as she continues to develop and extend her range of artistic expression, fractals have remained an integral part of her creativity. To produce these pieces, she works with Apophysis, and open-source software package which allows her to create soft, flowing, liquid effects that sets her work apart from other, more rigidly geometric fractal art that can also be found displayed within Second Life. It’s an approach that not only acts a a differentiator between her work and other fractal art, it also gives her work a stunningly organic look and feel, rich in life.

Milly Sharple – November 2022

Alongside her fractal pieces, Milly also produces digital portraits that combine her use of organic forms with the human face and body. Flowing with intentionally rich and vivid colour, these pieces have a life that is both connected to, yet utterly separate from, her fractal pieces, containing as they do their own stunning depth of expression. These portraits share the upper floor of the gallery along with pieces that enfold within them elements of abstract expressionism, pure abstractionism and touches of surrealism in a further engaging selection of digital images.

And if this weren’t enough, the gallery offers a rich vein of Milly’s 3D sculptures and pieces. These again fold within them those elements of natural, organic form and multiple artistic genres to offer a rich and engaging select of pieces that work individual and collectively as works suitable for display in one’s own home.

Taken individually or as intentional sets (such as We Didn’t Start the Fire … Or Did We? – a quite marvellous commentary on climate and ecological disasters that can be said to have their roots in our own role in impacting the world’s climate), Milly’s work is always expressive not just visually, but in offering an idea or story.

Milly Sharple – November 2022

Offering the full richness of Milly’s art, a visit to her gallery is a must for anyone interested in either her work or in the potential of Second Life presents to physical world artists to display their work to a global audience.

SLurl Details

Linkset Data (LSD) – a new feature for Second Life

Editorial note on Linkset Data

This capability was deployed to the Main Grid Release Candidate (RC) regions, which account for ~30% of the entire grid, on Wednesday, November 2nd. If all goes well, the capability will be available grid-wide after the deployments of Tuesday, November 8th, 2022. But until the capability is grid-wide, it is important to note that:

  • The capability will only work on the RC regions where it has been deployed.
  • If an object containing Linkset Data is moved (physically or via teleport) from a region that supports the capability to a region that does not support it, all Linkset Data stored with the object will be lost, even if you go back to a region that supports the feature.
  • Therefore, until such time as functionality is deployed to all main grid regions:,
    • The functionality should be used for testing purposes only.
    • Products that use it should not be sold or otherwise released  until such time as the Linkset Data functionality is grid-wide.

Update, November 15th: LSD functionality is available grid-wide on Agni (the Main grid).

Hello, my name is NeoBokrug Elytis, and I’ve been a creator in Second Life since 2005, with a focus on scripting, project management, and exploring the bleeding-edge features of SL.  Today I’m a guest contributor here to tell you all about Second Life’s newest upcoming feature – Linkset Data (LSD). TABLE OF CONTENTS

I’m super excited about it, because I think it will forever change SL similarly in the way that rigged mesh changed avatars; but for scripts.

A Brief History of Scripts

In the early days of Second Life scripted content was crude and simple. All code, custom functions, and stored variables had to fit within 16 kilobytes (kb) – as that was the limit for scripts back then. For comparison, the HTML alone for viewing a single tweet is over 200kb, not including any images.

If you wanted a complex scripted object back then, you needed to add more scripts and use link-messages to communicate between the scripts. Think of it as a scripts-only chat inside an object where they’re listening and reacting to each other.  It’s still used quite a bit today.

Back then and still today objects can communicate with each other using chat, typically on hidden channels. Another way objects could communicate was with features such as XML-RPC calls, and object emails. They were a bit clunky, hard to work with due to memory constraints, and required a bit of a hack-y solution to be practically useful.

Eventually Mono was introduced to the simulator to make scripts better. There were a few significant things that made it better than what we had been using. First, was the speed of script execution which was over 200x to 500x faster for math-intensive workloads. Second, mono could do byte code sharing — which means copies of the same script shared the same memory in the simulator; a gigantic advantage for SL. But the biggest gift of this update was that scripts would have 64kb of memory to work with instead of 16kb!

Even after the Mono update, and consolidating lots of tiny scripts into single but bigger and more efficient scripts; scripters in Second Life kept pushing the boundaries of what is possible in-world. Eventually projects became so complex and big, that multiple scripts were needed once again.

Over time more and more features were added to scripting, including a function for making HTTP requests. It allowed objects to have a shared memory on external servers. For example if you sold a game where it kept track of high scores across 100s of copies of the game, you could do that! But it was still an external server, so if there was ever any communication problem, or the server went offline, you had to write more code to gracefully handle those errors.

Fast-forward many years, and Second Life introduced Experience Tools. But the rub of Experience Tools is that you or your customers need to allow your experience on their land. And just to have an experience, you need a premium account. One less commonly known perk is that you can read and write key-value-pairs to a table of data associated with your experience. That table could hold up to a whopping 128 megabytes of data! So if you wanted to keep track of player scores across the grid you could, AND you wouldn’t need your own external 3rd party server. For example your key could be “player_uuid” and its value could be “player_score”. You could store this information with any object that’s on any land that is a part of the experience. Then anywhere else on the grid where the experience is allowed, another object could read or change that data.

Using HTTP and Experience Tools requires a set of connections in a chain of communication in that they both need to contact a server that is not part of the region itself. In my experience HTTP is a bit more fickle than Experience Tools because it has to travel over the greater internet, and you’re less in control of the hops it has to make to get to its destination. That’s not to say Experience Tools hasn’t suffered from SL grid-weather itself; but it still has to travel internally, so once in a blue moon there are a few issues. Not to mention the requirement of a premium account.

The Hacks We’ve Used (and Still Use)

The methods I’ve described so far all are good examples of how persistent data is traditionally stored, or data that doesn’t change after a script reset or crash. And for the most part, that’s been it – except for creative scripters trying to find solutions that don’t involve other servers. I and others have been known to use a lot of little hacks here and there, just so we don’t have to use external servers or experiences.

One of the earliest and possibly most well known methods is to save persistent data in a note card that a user can edit. But reading note cards is quite slow, and you can only read the data; you can’t ever write data to a note card. I know that sounds strange, so here’s a fun fact: Every time you save a note card it creates a new asset on the asset server.

Another option is to have another script just to store data. While it is faster than a note card, it is another script in your project which might just get wiped out if the script is ever deleted, resets, or crashes.

That begs the question; where else can scripters read AND write persistent data in an object? The object description of course! While the length of the data in an object description is limited to only 127 bytes (characters), it’s good for saving simple product configurations and user options. Most big projects in SL use this, including the well known and now Linden Lab owned CasperTech. There are a few more places to save persistent data including invisible hovertext, storing keys on hidden faces of objects, etc., etc. None of which are “private”, and may cause viewers to try to download non-existent textures. That last bit I’m not 100% sure of, but reasonably — it makes sense.

Overall, the hacks folks use only allow small amounts of data, could be slow, might just be an extra script, or might cause some problems here and there.

What IS Linkset Data?

So far everything I’ve described has some sort of gotcha or caveat. What I didn’t mention was that workarounds for all of those caveats typically take a big bite out of your measly 64kb of script memory. Despite a lot of JIRA feature requests to add persistent data storage over the life of SL, nothing has really come of it… until now!

Linkset Data is a new collection of script functions and one optional event that reads and writes key-value-pairs to a small 64kb table of data that is part of a root object. These new functions clear out a ton of hurdles scripters have faced, and solve some long-standing issues that SL scripting has had since the start.

Think of it as an invisible table of information that travels with the object, except that only scripts can read and write key-value-pairs to it. Because this data is now part of the object itself, it doesn’t need to rely on external servers. It also doesn’t add any script time or script memory to the region because it’s not a script. It’s just a small ledger of information the object carries with it.

During the Simulator User Group meeting, it was asked if this data could be protected because some creators like to give out modify objects, but not modify scripts. It took less than a week for the server developers to add llLinksetDataWriteProtected and llLinksetDataReadProtected to the feature set. The way this works is the data is protected by a password. If you try to read, write, or delete it without the password, nothing happens (note: at the time of writing, the protected functions are not listed in the wiki article). It should be noted that the data can still be deleted with llLinkSetDataReset, which purges all the data in the linkset.

You may be asking, “Well what happens if I have two prims with Linkset Data on them, and I link them together?”  The Lindens thought of this and here’s what happens:

  • The new root becomes the new Linkset Data, and all data on other links in the newly formed linkset are checked for duplicate data which is discarded.
  • Remaining data in child prims is then merged to the Linkset Data until the 64kb limit is reached, where after more data is discarded.
  • In summary, it imports what it can up to the 64kb limit.

If you boil it down it all sounds real simple, but it’s probably the biggest and most impactful change to scripting in Second Life since HTTP requests were introduced!

How Will It Change Second Life?

Most importantly, Linkset Data is persistent. A script may be deleted, reset, or crash, but it won’t clear out the data.  It’ll still be there for whenever a script needs it again.

LSD is better than Experience Tools because it doesn’t require a premium account, and doesn’t require land to allow an experience to run.  It’s better than HTTP for certain applications, because there’s not going to be any communication errors in accessing the data. It’s better than note cards and all the little hacks we use now, because it’s crazy fast, and doesn’t require a lot of code to read and write data.  In testing, it’s been reported that there can be over 6,000 reads and writes per second to the LSD.

We won’t need little “memory-bank” scripts or note cards to store large swathes of unchanging data.  For instance in The Wastelands I have non-player characters NPCs that have dozens of lines of text stored in a script which easily takes up most of a script’s memory; now I can just store all of that as key-value-pair data!

All scripts in the object can access the data stored in the LSD – and the fact that any in the object can, and can modify the data in a linkset is a complete game changer. One of the causes of simulator-side lag is the volume of “Script Events per Second” (“eps”) it has to manage.

To explain: whenever a script has an outside influence that it’s waiting for, it will trigger an event; this can be as simple as hearing chat, being touched, or as complex as getting information from a HTTP request. An object can queue up as many as 64 events before they begin to be discarded. Currently, many objects in SL (vehicles being a good example) relay on link message events: the control scripts in the root of the object which send messages to the scripts in other prims in the object, which have to listen for them; so if the object has 10 links all listening for messages from the root – that’s 10 script events. Using LSD could eliminate those link messages entirely, helping us remove some of the load from the simulator!

If all this script talk seems overwhelming; let me phrase it like this: When Second Life got Windlight skies, it was a big deal. When SL got mesh, it was a bigger deal. When Second Life got rigged avatar mesh, it changed our in-world appearances permanently. This is as big of a deal as that was, but for scripting.

As of now, these new features are testing on the beta grid.  They might be on the Release Candidate regions by time this article is published, which means that this new set of features should be on the main Second Life Servers within a couple of weeks, assuming that there are no issues with the project. I’m super excited!

I want to give my profound thanks to all the Linden region/simulator developers. I know those office hour meetings can be hard, but I am grateful you listen to the users. I want to thank Inara and Pantera for dutifully keeping track of all the office hours, and the opportunity to write this article. This all started out as a long tweet thread when I got excited about the feature!

About NeoBokrug Elytis

NeoBokrug Elytis

NeoBokrug Elytis (“Neo” to his friends) has been active in Second Life for 17 years. He has defined his time within Second Life in many ways – as a creator, a region designer, a community builder, a teacher, and an innovator. His passion for the platform has remained constant throughout his time in-world, where he has not only founded (and continues to play a lead role in managing) The Wastelands, the largest post-apocalyptic community in Second Life, he has also provided services to third-party organizations as a recognized Second Life Solution Provider.

This service, offered via his business entity, Desolate Studios, has enabled clients like Brooklyn Law School establish a presence in Second Life, as well as being contracted by the Electric Sheep Company to develop their 2007-2008  multiplayer first-person shooter and role playing game, Survival: I Am Legend, designed as a tie-in to the 2007 Warner Brothers motion picture, I Am Legend, which starred Will Smith.

Today, Neo continues to provide help and support to organizations wishing to establish a presence in Second Life, as well as continuing to help innovate the platform through the submission of considered, well-documented feature requests, many of which have been accepted and implemented by Linden Lab.

Lab announces Homesteads for Premium Plus, and some thoughts

via Linden Lab

On Tuesday, November 1st, 2022, Linden Lab announced that Homestead regions are now available to Premium Plus members directly from Linden Lab and without the need to hold a Full region.

The offering was first indicated as a “coming” Premium Plus benefit during the Lab Gab session with Grumpity and Patch Linden held on October 21st – see here for a summary of that event – and the November 1st announcement builds on this.

In short the details are:

  • Premium Plus members are now able to hold  one private Homestead region from Linden Lab against their account:
  • Regions can be requested using a Support Ticket via support.secondlife.com. Tickets should:
    • Place an order via Land & Region → Order Private Region.
    • Provide a unique name for the region (in accordance with the region naming rguidelines) and a preferred location on the grid for placement.
  • The region can be held only as long as the member maintains their Premium Plus account. Should they downgrade to Premium (or any forthcoming Premium subscription level that does not include the Homestead “benefit”) or to Basic will lose the region.

There are no other changes to Homestead ownership, including the fact that anyone is able to own Homestead regions as long as there is at least one Full private region owned on that account as well, and pay the required fees.

Does This Make Premium Plus More Attractive?

Whether the ability to hold a Homestead region when taken on its own will make Premium Plus a worthwhile upgrade is questionable.

  • If you are not already a Premium or Premium Plus member, then looking at Premium Plus purely in terms of a means to obtain a Homestead region probably isn’t a worthwhile proposition.
    • When you add the minimum monthly fee for Premium Plus (US $20.75) to the Homestead region tier of US $109, it likely comes out to more than the monthly cost of renting a Homestead region from an established private rental estate.
    • Both renting privately and holding a Homestead via Premium Plus have the same core risk: paying the monthly tier.
  • If you are currently a Premium Member, then looking at Premium Plus purely as a means to obtain a Homestead region is a little less clear-cut.
    • On the one hand, upgrading to Premium Plus from Premium costs at least an extra US $12.5 a month.
    • On the other, this fee, plus the month Homestead tier will still be a competitive outlay when compared to renting a homestead through a private estate.
  • If you are a Basic or Premium member who already sees value in other Premium Plus benefits (such as the reduced fee for Name Changes, the other reduced fees, etc.), and are attracted to the idea of holding your own region, then upgrading to Premium Plus is liable to be worthwhile and cost-effective.

This last point is really the key to this offer: obtaining a Homestead is not the sole benefit available to those upgrading to Premium Plus, so it needs to be considered as a part of the overall package of benefits, and any decision made on upgrading should be made on that basis. For example, the option of holding a Homestead region is of little interest to me – but the forthcoming Premium Plus Linden Homes do. I’m therefore waiting to see what happens on that front before I make any decision on a potential move from Premium to Premium Plus.

 

 

 

2022 SUG meetings week #44 summary

Clair View Ruins and caves, The Realm of Rosehaven, September 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, November 1st, 2022 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

Please see the forum deployment thread for the latest updates.

  • On Tuesday, November 1st, the Main SLS and Events channels were restarted without any simulator update being deployed leaving them on simulator version 575585.
  • On Wednesday, November 2nd. simhosts on the RC channels will be updated with simulator release 576126, comprising the new Linkset Data capability (see below for more).

Available Official Viewers

No changes to the current set of official viewers at the start o the week, leaving the list as:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.5.575749 – formerly the Maintenance M RC viewer –  promoted October 26.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer version 6.6.5.575055 September 19.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.575529,  issued on October 12.
    • Performance Floater / Auto-FPS project viewer, version 6.6.5.575378, October 4.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.

Linkset Data (LSD)

  • Linkset Data is a new collection of script functions and one optional event that reads and writes key-value-pairs to a small 64kb table of data that is part of a root object.
  • It works similarly to Experience Key-Value store, but:
    • It does not require an underpinning experience – the data lives with the object that sends and receives the data.
    • Only scripts in the same linkset will be able to read the data written with this feature.
  • Important Note for the initial deployment:
    • Like all scripts containing new LSL functions, scripts running LinksetData* calls will only run on regions running version 2022-10-27.576126 or newer (so only the RC channels to start with).
    • However unlike some other functions if you move an object containing Linkset Data (or teleport wearing an object containing Linkset Data) from a region that supports the capability to a region that does not support it, all Linkset Data stored with the object will be lost, even if you go back to a region that supports the feature.
    • This limitation will no longer exist once the back-end support for the capability has been deployed to all regions on the Main grid.

llLinkPlaySound and Associated Functions

  • llLinkPlaySound together with llLinkStopSound llLinkAdjustSoundVolume and llLinkSoundRange are new LSL functions that are described as “coming soon”, and which allow sounds in child prims of a linkset to be played without the need for a supporting script.
    • Additional related functions might be considered if subject to a Jira feature request.
  • This is something that has been requested by content creators (particular vehicle creators) for a good number of years.
  • Flags included will be SOUND_LOOP, SOUND_PLAY, SOUND_SYNCH and SOUND_TRIGGER, and will be used to replace the llPlay/Loop functions.
  • Other sound restrictions within linkset remain unchanged.
  • The announcement spurred an extended discussion on the SL sound system as a whole (including pre-loading sounds), as well as options for the new functions, through the first two-thirds of the meeting – please refer to the video.
  • I’ll have more on the link sounds functions as and when LL have documentation on them and are ready to start deploying them.

In Brief

  • For a full (and maintained!) list of LSL functions,  please refer to the official wiki page LSL_Functions.

A Tango with Nottoo in Second Life

Tango with Nottoo, November 2022 – click any image for full size

Tango with Nottoo started life some three years ago as a tango dance venue occupying a Mainland parcel. The brainchild of Nottoo Wise, the club has expanded over the year, both in terms of size and offerings, and in August of 2022, it completed a move to its own Full region, where it continues the original club lounge as well as offering a range of dance venues, a movie theatre, beach, art gallery – and an eclectic mix of “hidden” attractions.

With its primary function being dance, music and entertainment, the region is styled differently to the majority of those featured in these pages, in that there is little overt terraforming within the region. Instead it present a largely flat aspect, the surface area given over to the various venues for music and dancing. Which should not be taken to mean it is without character; it’s simply that its character is invested in the venues and facilities offered.

Tango with Nottoo, November 2022

The dance settings take multiple forms, from the main ballroom, through the outdoor Always Tango area, where – as the name implies – an opportunity to dance a tango is always available (and, for those seeking a dance partner, the opportunity to find one through the Tango with Partners group) and the venues for both blues and jazz, to the outdoor dance expo garden and the very Deco inspired outdoor dance floor.

These all share the region with the Roxy Theatre, where dance performances may be held, the Bijou movie theatre, an art gallery, a 1950’s style diner and multiple places to sit outside and relax. Chief among these are the fine dining area, the beach and and an over-the-water bayou-style bar. Dancing is available through thanks to well-placed dance machines ,and the region boasts over 300 couples dances, a Spot-on Group Dance System, male and female individual dances and even a 3-person dancer!

Tango with Nottoo, November 2022

All of these points of interest are accessible from the main landing point – just follow the labelled paths leading away from it. The landing point also provides a wealth of information via notecard givers (and some gifts for visitors), as well as the daily schedule of events. A bicycle rezzer is available for those wishing to explore by means other than using their feet, and the Landing point is also home to one of the stations’ little railcar stations.

The  latter provides access to the region’s public “hidden” areas, sitting beneath the land and the waves. To explore them, click the railcar sign at the station and hop aboard the little two-seater car it rezzes ((if you are riding on your own, make sure you sit on the right-hand side). Take the car to start the ride, and the car will carry you through an eclectic series of settings linked by tunnels. Each setting has its own little station in the form of a barrier that will stop the car (allowing you to get out and explore) and a further rezzer (allowing you to resume your ride). Should you opt not to explore any of these settings, touch the barrier to make it raise out of the way, and your car will resume its journey.

Tango with Nottoo, November 2022

Off to the east side of the region are two smaller islands. Accessible via jet ski, the northernmost of these islands presents a garden space open to all and, at the time of my visit, caught in the colours of autumn. south of this, the second island is a “members only” area, only accessible to those joining the Tango with Nottoo group (at no charge). Reached via a members-only teleport at the main landing point, the member’s island is one of the many benefits offered to group members – for details of the rest, check the Tango with Nottoo Member Benefits notecard available via the information board at the landing point for full details.

For anyone who loves dancing, Tango with Nottoo offers a lot, whilst the additional facilities – including the art gallery, which I barely touched upon here despite it hosing an exhibition of Milly Sharpe’s fabulous fractal art at the time of my visit – means the region has a lot to attract Second Life explorers as well.

Tango with Nottoo, November 2022

With Nottoo being out-world for much of her time, the region is largely cared for by Mona Layla (Monalayla) – who extended an invitation to me to visit;  and Rachela Rossini – who gave her time to answer my questions during my visit as well as providing a pleasant welcome. To both of them I offer my thanks.

SLurl Details

Tango with Nottoo (Tango, rated Adult – but using Moderate rules within the public spaces)