September 2022 Web User Group summary: NUX, Premium, and MP

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Web User Group meeting venue, Denby

The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday, September 7th, 2022.

These meetings are generally held in-world on the first Wednesday of the month, with dates and venue details available via the SL public calendar. They 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.

Updates for the Last Month

[Video: 2:47-10:20]

Land Ownership “Journey”

  • 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.
    • This involves not only a re-write of existing land-related web pages (again, as examples, the Premium Linden Homes selection page, the Mainland auction page, the region purchase pages (which date from 2005!), etc.), and the development of completely new pages related to land “ownership”.
    • The work is being carried out using technology that is “new to Linden Lab”.
    • Initially, this work will not involve any changes to Land tools within the viewer UI. However as the project progresses, it will see changes being made to the viewer’s land management tools, etc., as well.
  • The first element of the land work to be user-facing will be the new Land Portal, which is expected to be made available in the next few weeks.
    • This will provide access to land.secondlife.com and offer a “preview” of what form the new “land journey” will take.
  • [Video: 15:36-17:15] Following the work on the Land Portal, the focus will likely either be on updating the Linden Homes pages OR the price region purchase pages.
    • Once the Portal is up and running, the Lab will be monitoring where people go on accessing it, which may influence the order in which the land-related web properties are updated.

Secondlife.com Beyond Land

  • The “land journey” work is the first phase in a larger project to completely update all of the secondlife.com web pages and portals, and which will also eventually encompass Marketplace as well.
  • Some of the thematic elements of this work can already be seen in places such as join.secondlife.com.
  • The overall aim of this work is to offer a modern look and feel to the Second Life web presence which is both easier to maintain / update and allows for new capabilities / functionality to be more easily added.

Marketplace Search

  • This work is to leverage all of the recent work put into “regular” such (e.g. the relevance engine, etc.) for Marketplace Search.
    • The current focus is on importing all the infrastructure work carried out for Search into the Marketplace search capability, including the framework for the relevance engine.
    • However, rather than using the current relevance engine, a version specific to Marketplace searches will be built for better optimisation.
    • The updated Search will likely include additional search options.
  • The overhaul of the search tools is seen as a further step that will better enable the use of Styles (i.e. single listings with multiple variances (e.g. colours) of the same product), although the first element of this work is liable to be the “next” significant release for the MP.
  • All of this work is being seen as a lead-in to the potential complete ground-up build and phased implementation of a completely new Marketplace, with 2023 being designated “the year of Marketplace”.

New User Experience

[Video 18:04-24:00]

  • The New User eXperience (NUX) has been identified by the lab’s Executive Team as a major area of focus for the at least next 12 months.
  • Some of the Lab’s work in this are has been previewed in terms of the upcoming “all mesh” New Starter Avatars (see here and here), but LL recognises more work needs to be done within the NUX as a while.
  • Questions asked at the meeting (from a Web Team perspective)  were:
    • Are there “silver bullets” existing users think might improve the overall NUX from sign-up to engagement?
    •  Is there something that could be implemented that would immediately change the NUX to improve retention?
    • What specifically could be done on the web side of things to present a more engaging NUX to incoming users?
    • Have people specific feedback from recent new users (e.g. those whom they may have asked to come try out SL) which might feed into thinking about improving the NUX (e.g. worries users have expressed in having to download and install the viewer as an “unknown” piece of software, issues of people being pressured into believing they are using the “wrong” viewer in favour of another, etc?
  • This is liable to be a major topic of conversation at the next WUG, so those with constructive ideas, particularly (but not exclusively) on the web side of NUX, are invited to attend.

Premium Subscriptions – Looking Beyond Premium Plus

[Video: 24:09-26:30]

  • Premium Plus take-up is still viewed as being “very successful” to the point the Lab is now considering ideas for other possible Premium subscription options, which may include things like:
    • “Premium Lite” – which might offer some of the options available in Premium, but not all of them, and at a lower price.
    • “Premium a-la Carte” – which might offer users the ability to pick and chose at least some of the options available to the current Premium / Plus offerings, each with its own fee, and thus pay a subscription based on the options selected.
  • No timeline on if / when any new subscription options might arise, what they might comprise or the pricing involved, as this is only in the “discussion” phase within the Lab, but feedback is being taken through the WUG meetings.

In Brief

  • Multi-factor authentication: moving beyond just the use of a third-party authentication tool (Google Authenticator / Microsoft Authenticator) to offer additional means to complete the MFA process is unlikely to come before 2023.
  • A further request was made to de-couple Homestead “ownership” from having to hold at least one Full region. While not entirely ruled out for future consideration, there are some very practical considerations around this idea that need to be considered:
    • One of these is the heavy use of Homesteads by private estates and the potential of severely damaging the market if Homesteads were to be de-coupled from Full region holding at the same price.
    • Another is the question of whether, if offered at a higher tier than when coupled to Full region holdings ($109 a month), what that tier would be in order to avoid too severe a disruption to the current land market.
  • Lower mesh upload fees for Premium Plus: this has been indicated as a future Premium Plus benefit. However, it is proving difficult to implement because unlike the other fees for uploads, etc., mesh does not have a “one fee fits all” structure – the cost varies in accordance with things like model complexity, LODs, etc., and injecting a fee reduction based on a percentage calculation into the process is proving to be a more complex task than imagined.
  • Eliminating store names appearing in Marketplace searches using item names: this is a fix currently being worked on as a part of weighting changes to search (e.g. store names and user names will not carry as much weight as item names).
    • Conversely, when searching for store names, these should have a higher weighting as the initial MP search updates are deployed.
  • SL Wiki: it was restated that, outside of various “official” pages, the SL wiki is no longer “officially” supported or subject to updated for a number of reasons.
  • Feature requests:
    • BUG-232355 “Group Name Change” given the desire to reduce the proliferation of Groups in SL and the load they can place on various back-end services, this has been a long-running request, now accepted by the Lab.
    • BUG230941 “Add a store blocklist to the Marketplace” – will possibly be amongst the “Soon ™” Marketplace updates.
    • BUG-231257 “Incorporate 360 Snapshots in to the Destination Guide” – is viewed as a more nuanced request requiring interaction across different services which may make implementation difficult, but the request has not been ruled out.

Next Meeting

  • Wednesday, October 5th, 2022. Venue and time per top of this summary.

A visit to Fellowship Falls in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Fellowship Falls, September 2022 – click any image for full size

I think I’ve sort-of hinted at the fact that I’m something of a Tolkien fan once or twice (at least!) in this blog, and with Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power now showing on Amazon Prime as a charting of the Second Age of Middle Earth, I thought I’d bounce my way over to Fellowship Falls, a Full region utilising the private region land capacity bonus to present a setting that offers an engaging mix of elements from Tolkien’s novels with some hidden extras.

Designed by Celerdir (Chappers101), the region is described thus within its About Land description:

An Elven & Tolkien-inspired sim where all free folk are welcome. Rez a horse to ride through the forest and over hills and make your way to Rivendell. Also explore The Labyrinth of Light…an underground maze of lights that leads to the Fantasy Forest.
Fellowship Falls, September 2022

The landing point sits tucked right into the south-west corner of the region, where information on the design can be found – and it is worth a read. Not only is Celerdir still relatively new to Second Life, having been active for less than 18 months at the time of writing, Fellowship Falls is also his first region build; and it is more than a creditable design, being very well put together for both Second Life explorers and photographers, regardless of any specific knowledge or interest in matters Tolkien.

From the landing point, the region is set out in a manner to encourage exploration either on foot or horseback. Trails run from the landing point into the setting at large, while those pressed for time might make use of the stone teleport discs to hop to the major locations – although I’d recommend against this, as it risks missing  a lot of the region’s beauty.

Fellowship Falls, September 2022

The north side of the region is given over to Rivendell (aka Imladris aka the Last Homely House, the seat of Elrond half-elven during the Third Age). Whilst surrounded by off-region mountains, it sits atop a rocky table of land separated from the rest of the region by a deep valley.

This might give some Tolkien purists cause to frown, given Tolkien states Rivendell sits within a hidden valley – but this is a region inspired by Tolkien, not representative necessarily of his world as encountered in book and film. As it is Rivendell has a suitably elven feel to it, with a richness of character strongly suggestive of an elven enclave.

Fellowship Falls, September 2022

The trail climbing up through the hills to reach Rivendell passes over a couple of bridges, one of which sits below a hilltop marked by ruins which look to have been built by the hands of men rather than elves. A broad stone causeway, this bridge is guarded at one end by the presence of the Argonath, the Pillars of the Kings. Again, for Tolkien purists, this might seem anachronistic, but here the scaled-down figures of Isildur and Anárion (I’m sticking with the books here, rather than the films) work.

The reason for Rivendell being set so high is provided in the region’s description – the Labyrinth of Night. I’ll leave to you to find the entrance, but will suggest you should take time exploring the tunnels of the labyrinth, as there is more than the forest awaiting discovery, including a further Tolkien echo, this one from The Hobbit, this one a reminder of what lay deep in the halls of Erebor and gave rise to Thorin Oakenshield’s Quest.

Fellowship Falls, September 2022

This is where my one small quibble with the setting lay – not in what is presented, but in the fact that the tunnels of the labyrinth are best experienced with the viewer set to Midnight – but given the layout of this part of the region, it could have been parcelled and set so that the tunnels have their own low-level EEP, making them a little more immersive. But this is a very, very minor quibble.

It is clear that throughout the region considerable love and consideration have been poured into is creation, with many small touches awaiting discovery; there are also many places offering visitors a chance to sit and pass the time. Finished with a local sound scape (one that can be a little interrupted by the surprise in the labyrinth!) and sitting beneath a rich sky (not seen in the images here), Fellowship Falls offers a richness of exploration and photography waiting to be appreciated – so be sure to visit soon!

Fellowship Falls, September 2022

SLurl Details

2022 SUG meetings week #36 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Rain-Washed Soul, July 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 6th, 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

For the most up-to-date information, please refer to the deployment forum thread.

  • On Tuesday, September 6th, the simhosts on the Main SLS channel were re-started without any deployment, leaving them on simulator version 574550.
  • On Wednesday, September 7th, all simhosts on the RC channels will likewise be restarted without any deployment, leaving them on simulator release 574611.

Available Official Viewers

On Tuesday, September 6th, the Maintenance P (Preferences, Position and Paste) RC viewer updated to version 6.6.4.574750.

The rest of the current official viewers remain as:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30 – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • Izarra Maintenance RC, version 6.6.4.574724, September 1.
    • Maintenance 3 RC viewer, version 6.6.4.574727, September 1.
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545,  issued on August 30.
    • Love Me Render (LMR) 6 graphics improvements project viewer 6.6.2.573263, July 21.
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.

Puppetry

  • The first of the twice-monthly Puppetry meetings will be taking place this Thursday, September 8th, at 13:00 SLT.
  • The meeting will take place at the Puppetry theatre in the Aditi  region of Castelet.
  • The focus of of initial meetings will be on development of the capability, rather than content creation.

Please refer to the video for further discussion on the capability.

In  Brief

  • A general discussion on child avatars and TPV radar system reporting the names of agents (avatars) in a region recently departed.

 

The artist known as Prins in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
NovaOwl Gallery: Prins

Hailing from Denmark, Prins (Skylog) has been active in Second Life for more than a decade; however, he has only recently gained an interest in Second Life photography (starting in December 2021) – and in a relatively short space of time, he has established himself as a highly visual artist and something of an experimentalist. Proof of this can be found in a somewhat immersive exhibition of his work which runs through until the end of October 2022 at the ground-level exhibition space of NovaOwl Gallery in Second Life

Entitled simply Prins, this is a genuine tour de force of the artist’s work; one that literally takes over the exhibition space in what can only be described as a riot of colour.  Large-scale reproductions of his work cover walls, floors and ceilings alike, forming a backdrop to more “traditional” framed pieces. The result is a hall literally alive with art, several pieces of which are animated and all of which – be they on the floor, walls, windows or ceilings – appear to be for sale.

NovaOwl Gallery: Prins

On entering the gallery space, one is greeted by Prins himself (as a large self-portrait on the floor) whilst facing a clever view of the gallery’s centre room windows, which Prins has effectively turned into a  triptych of paired “glass” images (if I might be allowed to mangle ideas like “triptych” and “pair” like this).These are bordered to the left and right respectively by a marvellously evocative image of a sea monster entitled Nessie and a mural depicting a woman in clown-like garb and in various poses, entitled Ladies in Red.

This is the start of a three-room adventure into colour and presentation, where there is literally not a single corner without something to attract the eye. From landscapes through avatar studies to expressions of other people’s art, Prins has an ability to both capture his subjects – and our attention – in a multitude of engaging ways that speak to a natural eye for angle and focus. He is also an artist unafraid to both offer a restrained hand with post-processing and also experiment freely with layering, colour, depth and finish to present pieces that might be said to border on abstract expressionism, further captivating and holding one’s attention.

NovaOwl Gallery: Prins

Such is the immersive nature of the exhibition, it can be a little overwhelming when entering the gallery (I’d advise reducing draw distance if you’re on a lower-end system and tend to use a DD of 100m+ just to ease texture loading), it can take one or two moments to adjust to the all-inclusive use of space.

However, the very fact that every surface has been utilised, coupled with the richness of colour throughout the majority of the space, balanced here and there with the considered use of darker or more muted tones, given a sense of life to the entire exhibition, the sheer vibrancy evident in some of the pieces giving the impression they are shouting their stories in joy.

NovaOwl Gallery: Prins

As is usually the case with NovaOwl, the exhibition had a “soft” opening on September 3rd. However, there will be a more musical gathering to celebrate Prin’s work on September 11th, 2022, starting at 12:00 noon SLT, with an open invitation for anyone interested in Prins’ work and art in general in SL to attend.

SLurl Details

2022 viewer release summaries week #35

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, September 4th, 2022

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 6.6.3.574158 – formerly the Profiles RC viewer, dated August 18, promoted August 30 – NEW.
  • Release channel cohorts::
  • Project viewers:
    • Puppetry project viewer, version 6.6.3.574545,  issued on August 30.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

V1-style

  • Cool VL viewer updated to versions 1.30.0.15 (Stable) and 1.28.2.84 on September 3 – release notes.

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Space Sunday: equations and launch scrubs

Posted on by Inara Pey
Dr. Frank Drake and his equation

Anyone with a reasonable interest in astronomy will recognise the above image as containing the Drake Equation, sometimes referred to as “the second most famous equation after E=Mc2

It was first proposed in 1961 by American astronomer and astronomer and astrophysicist Dr. Frank Drake as a probabilistic argument to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilisations in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its values are defined as:

N = the number of civilisations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible (i.e. which are on our current past light cone);

And:

R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our Galaxy.

fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets.

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.

fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point.

fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilisations).

fc = the fraction of civilisations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

In the decades since its initial publication, the Drake Equation has been widely critiqued by astronomers and mathematicians because the estimated values for several of its factors are highly conjectural  such being that the uncertainty associated with any of them so large, the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions.

However, these critiques actually miss the point behind Drake formulating the equation in the first place, because he was not attempting to quantify the number of extra-solar civilisations which might exist, but rather as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue about what had been very much looked upon as an outlier of research, and to help formulate constructive discussion on what is regarded on the first formalised discussion on the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), as he noted in his memoirs:

As I planned the meeting, I realised a few day[s] ahead of time we needed an agenda. And so I wrote down all the things you needed to know to predict how hard it’s going to be to detect extra-terrestrial life. And looking at them it became pretty evident that if you multiplied all these together, you got a number, N, which is the number of detectable civilizations in our galaxy. This was aimed at the radio search, and not to search for primordial or primitive life forms.

– Frank Drake

Frank Drake not only hosted the first US meeting to discuss the potential for seeking signs of possible extra-terrestrial civilisations, he pioneered several of the earliest attempts to seek any such signals as demonstrating methods that might be used as a means to intentionally communicate our existence to other civilisations within the galaxy. As such, his work did much to put our speculative thinking about intelligences elsewhere in the galaxy on a solid foundation of scientific research, as will as being responsible for some for the foremost research in the field of modern radio astronomy.

This is his story.

Born in Chicago on May 28th, 1930, Frank Drake was drawn to the sciences and to electronics from an early age, and in order to further his education in both, he enlisted in the US Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).  This allowed him to obtain a scholarship at the prestigious Cornell University, ostensibly to obtain qualifications in electronics, but also study astronomy.

While at Cornell, Drake’s astronomy class were able to attend a lecture by astrophysicist Otto Struve. While his name may not be instantly recognised, Struve was one of the most distinguished astronomers of the mid-20th century, a member of a generational family of astronomers stretching by to the 18th century and Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve. He was also one of the first astronomers to openly promote radio astronomy as a key to determining whether there might be other intelligences living in our galaxy – an idea his contemporaries tolerated, rather than embraced.

Struve’s presentation positively affected Drake, and following his required 1-year military service following graduation in 1951 (served as the Electronics Officer aboard the cruiser USS Albany), Drake enrolled at Harvard University, where gained his doctorate in astronomy, with a focus on radio astronomy.

Frank Drake in one of his official portraits at Green Bank observatory (1962). Credit: Green Bank

In 1956 Otto Struve was appointed as the first director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)), and he started overseeing the establishment of a number of national radio astronomy centres across the United States. One of these was at Green Bank, Virginia, a facility Drake joined as a researcher in 1958. His initial work here started with the static arrays at Green Bank, carrying out the first ever mapping of the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, and the discovering that Jupiter has both an ionosphere and magnetosphere.

However, Struve was keen to enhance the facilities with steerable radio dishes, and to this end purchased an “off-the-shelf” 26 m dish and had engineer Edward Tatel (for whom it was later named) design a motorised mount for it so it could be pointed around the sky. This work was completed in 1959, and Struve turned to Drake to formulate the telescope’s first science mission.

At the time, Drake had just read an intriguing article in Nature magazine entitled Searching for Interstellar Communications. Within it, physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison proposed using a large radio dish to monitor “incoming” radiation from stars along the 21-cm / 1,420.4 MHz wavelength – the radio frequency used by neutral hydrogen.  Given this is the most common element in the universe, Cocconi and Morrison speculated it would be logical landmark in the radio spectrum to manipulate as a message carrier.

Taking this idea, Drake developed Project Ozma, a three-month programme run at the start of 1960 to listen for any signals coming from the vicinity of either Tau Ceti or Epsilon Eridani. At the time, no-one knew if either star fielded planets (although both were found have at least one planet orbiting them almost 50 years after Drake’s experiment).

Frank Drake in front of the 85-1 (Tatel) Telescope. the first steerable telescope built at NRO Green Bank (and now one of 3 such telescopes, collectively referred to as the Green Bank Interferometer), used in Drake’s first SETI experiment, Project Ozma. Credit: NRAO Green Bank

Following Ozma, Drake was encouraged to formalise SETI research into a more co-ordinated effort (various programmes, such as Ohio State University’s work using the Big Ear telescope, were already in existence but without any real coordination). To this end, he helped put together the first small-scale meeting / conference on the subject in 1961 – the event at which he used his equation to  stimulate the discussion.

Among those attending were Otto Struve (now retired), Phillip Morrison, astronomers Carl Sagan and Su-Shu Huang, chemist Melvin Calvin, neuroscientist John C. Lilly, and inventor Barney Oliver. Together they called themselves The Order of the Dolphin (due to  Lilly’s work on dolphin communications), and together they laid the groundwork for a systematic approach to SETI research, which over the coming years would in turn give birth to numerous programmes, and more fully legitimise such research within scientific circles.

In the mid-1960s, and still based at Green Bank, Drake was nominated to spearhead converting the massive Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory  – originally built as a project to study the Earth’s ionosphere as a means of detecting nuclear warheads inbound towards the United States – into what would become more famously known as the Arecibo Observatory, for several decades the largest radio telescope in the world.

This work finished in 1969 when the National Science Foundation formally took over the Arecibo faculties, and two years later Drake was approached by Carl Sagan with another intriguing proposal. Sagan had himself been approached English journalist Eric Burgess – who at the time was writing about the upcoming NASA Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11  missions – about the idea of sending a physical message out to the stars.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: equations and launch scrubs” →