The InVerse Nizza house in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
My modified InVerse Nizza: re-textured throughout (bar the water of the pool!) at Isla Myvatn

As is my wont, I started getting the itch to fiddle around with another house design at Isla Myvatn. As regulars to these pages know, I tend to shunt my way between house designs roughly every 5-6 months, if for no other reason than the fact I enjoy kitbashing (as well as scratch building).

My recent choices have revolved around matching the house with the “split-level” design on my island home, with its low-lowing front lawns, gardens and boat moorings, and raised back garden and hills, the house sitting between the two with a two-storey front aspect and the upper floor opening on to the garden to the rear.

As a result, my two previous house choices came from Novocaine Islay’s InVerse brand, as they pretty much suited the lay of the land in terms of vertical dimensions and the minimal changes required to the land to get them both to “fit”. And after looking around, I happened to settle upon another InVerse house for this rebuild: the Nizza.

My Nizza house with, (inset) the original – note that I didn’t bother using the gazebo supplied with the house and seen in the foreground of the inset image. Also note the changes to the upper floor left-side room, and general re-texturing.

Featuring a roughly rectangular footprint of some 41.3 m by 13.85 m, including the large overhanging upper floor balconies, the house has a total of 6 rooms: a large living area accessed directly from the front doors, with linked dining area and kitchen opening off to one side with an angled frontage. Above the latter is a bedroom and adjoining bathroom; the bedroom and dining being linked by a spiral staircase. Above the lounge, and separated by a small upper floor hallway, is a smaller room with balcony access. The hall itself provides access to a roof deck and swimming pool via a second spiral stairway.

At L$449, the house represents very good value, including as it does  3 variants: an unfurnished version (with additional plants and lighting) at 118 LI; and two fully furnished versions at 253 LI, one of which has baked shadow textures and the other doesn’t, with all three coming with a gazebo and various plants and basic indoor / outdoor lighting. InVerse furnishing are passable if not outstanding, so for those looking for a “first house” with all the basic trimmings and who have at least 2048 sq m or land, the house represents pretty good value.

The Nizza living room as modified by myself with the fireplace divider and an added window to the side aspect, with the original (inset) showing the supplied finish and furniture and the window to the rear aspect, which I removed as it would effective be “underground” and below the level of my island’s back garden.

That said, InVerse build quality can be a mixed bag; texture choices can be a little off-putting, and this design in particular has some overly-glossy specular maps applied that result is some weird finishes to surfaces under various ambient lighting (e.g. stonework looking like it’s been coated in plastic). This wasn’t an issue for me, as I have a tendency to re-texture things, but if you have a fussy eye, then little niggles like these make taking a look at InVerse homes at their in-world store essential when considering them as a purchase if you are fussy-eyed like me.

A more obvious shortfall with this house for some (myself included) is that it has been designed with an “average” avatar height in mind. My avatar is far from oversized, but I did find that the arches linking several of the rooms were too low, as were the supplied lighting fittings. As such, I found it necessary to re-work the archways to eliminate the visual aspect of the top of my avatar’s head passing through the woodwork when passing “under” them, and to also replace the interior lighting with simple projected lighting.

The rear of the Nizza at Isla Myvatn: note the door to the garden I’ve added (just to the right of the garden statue), and further along the rear of the house, a spiral stairway linking the garden with the rooftop pool and deck.

Fitting the house into the existing Isla Myvatn landscape required a few adjustments to the garden space, but the changes to the house were relatively easy: the replacement of the rear windows and walls with blank walls on the lower floor, the addition of a rear door on the upper floor to access the garden (and which could be handily placed alongside the stairs to the rooftop area).

The interior spaces of the house are such that they offer a lot of internal space that can be used in a variety of ways – the furnished versions, for example, utilise the individual upper floor room as a house office, for example. For my part, I altered the position of the archway between the living room and dining area to create a little more space between it and the front doors to the house, and also added a fireplace room divider to the lounge to break things up a little  and offer a little space for my (inevitable) baby grand and guitar.

A closer view of the rear of the house, showing the added back door serving the raised back garden and the spiral stairs to the pool, compared to the original (inset), showing the “wooden” mid-point I removed to add the new door serving the garden

Overall, the Nizza is a fair design. Perhaps not as polished as either the Tarzana (reviewed here) or Orlando (reviewed here), my two previous InVerse houses in that it does require a little more work by the fussy-eyed (like me!) to adjust the texturing and some of the (minor) issues with the design, but nonetheless a good starter house / unit suitable for kitbashing. Plus, it again seems pretty mealy-mouthed to complain about the house given the price! Even so, and to repeat myself – do be sure to see the house in-world before committing to buy it.

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MarDayLine Pylons – a watery attraction in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022 – click any image for full size

Back in June time, Shawn Shakespeare passed me a landmark for a curious and engaging parcel called MarDayLine Pylons, home to a design by a group of individuals out of Japan led by 奈芙缇丝 (Subsequnce). Despite its small size – less than an eighth of a Full region (one with the private region LI bonus) – this is both a public / private environment, with the introductory notes (available on a sign board at the landing point) stating:

Welcome to Mardayline Pylons. We wish yo a pleasant stay here. The café, sofa fountain bar and onsen are at your convenience. Mardayline Pylons is a private community that is casual and friendly … Part of this area is residential for rent. Please do not enter or leave other people’s houses without permission.  
MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022

With a north-south orientation, with cloud-faced cliffs forming an eastern curtain and uplands bordering the southern end of the parcel, this is a place very much defined by water. It tumbles from the highlands in sheer or stepped falls, one of which has its waterflow directed down a covered nullah, to where a flooded street sits.

Quite what has happened – natural disaster or the result of global warming – is up to visitors to decide; however, the tumbledown state of the southern end of the parcel beneath the waterfalls suggests a sudden catastrophe having befallen a part of the town-like setting.

MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022

It is along the flooded street, and sitting between it and the equally flooded tram tracks which run around two sides of the parcel, that the rental properties appear to sit, together with the local café. The onsen, sofa bar and other eateries meanwhile, all sit top the uplands, the route to them offered by way of an elevator rather than stepped climbs.

Small in size the parcel might be, but there are plenty of small details waiting to be found that help present it as a place idea for photography, and Subsequence notes that the parcel is open to rezzing for props etc., – but please make sure you clean up behind you should you make use of the opportunity.

MarDayLine Pylons, July 2022

A simple, engaging setting that makes for an easy-going and please visit.

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The Melt and a story of H in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Lovr&Love Factory Art Gallery: Selen Minotaur – H

Two immersive exhibitions are awaiting discovery at the Love&Love Factory Art Gallery that are well worth visiting by anyone who appreciates art with a message and a story in Second Life, produced as they are by two artists skilled in the art of narrative presentation.

Before getting into details, these are two installations that should be experienced with the following enabled in the viewer:

  • Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) – Preferences → Graphics → make sure Advanced Lighting Model enabled. Note that you do not need to have Shadows enabled (should ALM activate them) – while projectors are used, it is sufficient to just have ALM enabled to see them in action, so Shadows can be safely disabled via the drop-down to improve performance.
  • Shared Environment should be used for best viewing of both installations (World → Environment → make sure Use Shared Environment is checked.
Lovr&Love Factory Art Gallery: London Junkers – The Melt

The first of the pairing – and I use that term loosely, as these are very much individual installations is The Melt by London Junkers.

This is a single, magnificent sculpture, framed by a poem – also called The Melt – set within an environment suggestive of the sea and under a night sky, both of which evoke a sense of age. The centrepiece might be an iceberg or the face of a glacier; cold and blue, it seems timeless – but pieces have clearly broken away and are caught mid-fall, hinting at the actual state of things – the vast piece is in fact melting and breaking, caught in a continuous state of flux.

It is a state of flux mirrored by the poem itself. Outside of the skeleton of the long-dead great whale, details might not be immediately apparent – but look closely and you might start to make out features: the suggestion of a broken nose here, the outside of an eye, the drop of icy tears.

Lovr&Love Factory Art Gallery: London Junkers – The Melt

What do we make of this? To me, The Melt sits as a commentary on the existential threat of global warming; of all we stand to lose if the required actions needed to curb our own massive contribution to the increasing rate of climate change are not taken: that the loss of the glaciers and ice caps is but the precursor to the loss of all life itself, as symbolised by the whale skeleton and the bones of human at the foot of the sculpture.

Meanwhile, Selen Minotaur presents H, a multi-media immersive piece offering its own statement of life – both physical and virtual. Within it, we follow the story of “H”; a neutral character whose very initial suggests either male “H(im)” and female “H(er)”, and their travel through life, told in part through local chat and through our following the path through a “maze” which eventually leads to a series of rooms – or rather, boxes.

Once upon a time…H. Since H was born, H loved boxes. H started to build some as soon as H was able to. So H was sleeping in a box, H was eating in a box, H was working in a box, H was shopping in different boxes. When H wanted to have fun, H was visiting dedicated boxes: one to meet friends, one to dance, one to listen to music, one to watch a show, and so on. Even after death, H planned to be laid down and locked in a box. Isn’t this weird?…
Lovr&Love Factory Art Gallery: Selen Minotaur – H

Again, the core theme is clear; through the maze, we follow H as they try to make sense of life; then through the various rooms (be sure to accept the Experience when prompted at the end of the maze by walking into the sign, and then walk into the additional signs to be auto-TP’d between rooms).

Within these rooms we witness the places and activities H users to define their life – be sure to sit on objects, click walls to activate media, etc). However, this is not intended to be purely a means to put us on the strange journey of someone called “H”; rather it is a reflection how we all increasingly live our lives; reliant as we increasingly are on the role of “boxes” – devices, electronics, apps (including Second Life, where we spend all our time in “boxes” – regions), and so on for our sense of connection and engagement. That despite all the so-called promise of a “connected world” offered by the Internet, the web, and – as the hype would have it – “the metaverse”, we are perhaps becoming more an more insular in our search for “meaning” (or at least engagement) in life.

Lovr&Love Factory Art Gallery: Selen Minotaur – H

Both H and The Melt are marvellously expressive and deeply layered in the potential for interpretation and consideration.

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Incanto is rated Adult

Fifty Shades of Pey in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Poster

A while ago, I was invited to display a selection of my blog images of the places I’ve written about at the NovaOwl gallery. For various reasons, I couldn’t make the dates initially offered, so things were re-scheduled for July 2022.

The exhibition – which I opted to call Fifty Shades of Pey in an entirely tongue-in-cheek moment – had a “soft” opening on July 3rd within the ground-level exhibition space at the gallery, and at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, July 13th the exhibition will have a more “formal” opening with music by Dj Uli, and I’d like to invite you to come along if you happen to be free, while the exhibition will be open through to July 29th.

I’d also like to thank Owl, Ceakay and Uli for the invitation to some my work, and for Owl for her promotion and support of Fifty Shades, as well as he continued and unstinting work in supporting art and music across Second Life.

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2022 SUG meetings week #28 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Wylde, May 2022 – blog post

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, July 12th, 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 latest updates and news, please refer to the simulator release thread in the forums.

  • There was no deployment for the SLS Main channel on Tuesday, July 12th, leaving all servers assigned to the channel on the crash fix deployment of Friday, July 8th (version 573149).
  • On Wednesday, July 13th, the Ferrari RC will be upgraded to simulator version 573176 (joining BlueSteel), intended to help future deploys work better. Simhosts on the remaining RC channels will be restarted without any deployment.

Available Official Viewers

  • The Nomayo Maintenance RC (Maintenance N) viewer updated to version 6.6.2.573023, on July 11th.

The rest of the current crop of official viewers remains as follows:

  • Release viewer: version 6.6.1.572458 – formerly the Maintenance M(akgeolli) RC viewer, promoted June 29 – no change.
  • Release channel cohorts:
  • Project viewers:
    • Performance Floater project viewer, version 6.5.4.571296, May 10.
    • Mesh Optimizer project viewer, version 6.5.2.566858, dated January 5, issued after January 10.
    • Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, dated October 26, 2020.

In Brief

  • The PNG-instead-of-jpg200 images issue and the “fallback” use of UDP messaging via the simulator for texture data fetching was covered in brief – both are outlined in more detail in my TPVD week #27 meeting summary.
  • The question was asked whether – should the need arise for an automated return of items within a region / parcel due to overflow – there is an implied hierarchy in which items are returned (e.g. are “unlocked” items returned before “locked”?
    • LL does not believe there is any differentiation between unlocked or locked objects when it comes to an automated return, but this will be confirmed at the next SUG meeting.
    • There are other potential factors involved in the selection of items to be returned in these circumstances which may come into play that could complicate which items are returned.
    • The purpose of the question was to ascertain a way of minimising damage in a region where a griefer manages to trigger the return of objects.
    • The question sparked a broader conversation on returned objects (particularly as coalesced packages) across much of the rest of the meeting – please refer to the video.
  • BUG-231802 “Prevent vehicles from entering parcels their riders cannot access”, together with providing a means for a viewer to request all active ban lines within a region, is said to be “queued” for work to commence on them – although no coding has started as yet.
  • BUG-232324 “Add STATUS_DIE_AT_NO_ENTRY Object Status” is described as being in the next maintenance simulator update.
  • There is a discussion on map tile texture UUIDs and surfacing them so that tools similar to those used by the (3rd party) Grid Survey tools could make use of them.

Summer at Missing Melody in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Missing Melody, July 2022 – click any image for full size

Bambi (NorahBrent) has been busy with her region designs, with both Longing Melody and Soft Melody gaining a lot of attention – including in this blog – since the start of the year (see: Visiting Longing Melody in Second Life and A Soft Melody in Second Life). Given this, a return to her Missing Melody was on my game card for 2022, but a poke from Shawn Shakespeare encouraged me to make a summer visit to this always-engaging homestead region.

What is a Missing Melody? It’s that song in your head that you can’t get out but not sure how it really goes. It’s that temptation you want to have in your life so you can fight to resist. It’s that place in your heart that is always waiting to be filled.

– Bambi (NorahBrent)

Missing Melody, July 2022

For this iteration, Bambi offers a region setting that is beautiful in its simplicity: a pair of small islands separated by a deceptively deep channel spanned by a long boardwalk floating serenely above the waters.  Both islands occupy the northern half of the region, sitting under a bright summer sky (I recommend using the region’s shared environment settings).

To the north-east, the small island rises a rich green hump of land, its slopes carpeted by flowering wild grass, and its crowned by green trees and a copse of lavender wisteria.

The latter form a canopy over the landing point, sitting as it does at the end of a fence-bordered track that points the way westwards before dropping down the gentlest of the island’s slopes, and along which an unexpected family is taking a constitutional walk.

Across the channel, the larger of the two islands holds multiple attractions awaiting discovery. These include the winding climb of steps which lead up to where a caravan and cabin lie on a tree-shaded shoulder of the island’s hills, through a second set of steps that descend to the island’s arc of beach to the north-west, through to the rocky path the climbs up the west side of the island, connecting the beach with a high promontory where a lighthouse watches over the southern waters.

Missing Melody, July 2022

The beach offers the most tropical feel to the setting – and the most places for visitors to relax and spend time, both on the sand and over the water. However, both the cabin and the caravan up on the hill top are furnished as well, making for quiet retreats, whilst between them there sits a little stage and outdoor seating for impromptu musical jams.

Picturesque, (obviously) photogenic, and finished with a gentle soundscape, Missing Melody really doesn’t require a lot of exposition on my part; it genuinely speaks for itself, as I hope the images here show. So why not pay a visit yourself?

Missing Melody, July 2022

 

Missing Melody, July 2022

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