Hermes Kondor is a photographer and artist I’ve come to greatly admire since first witnessing his work in 2020. Whether presenting his photography from the physical world or his digital art, Hermes has a remarkable range of artistic expression that always engages the eye and the brain. Given this, his Kondor Art Centre with its multiple art spaces, always makes for a worthwhile visit – as I noted in The art of Hermes Kondor in Second Life.
On January 7th, 2021, Hermes opened his latest exhibition, providing an excellent reason to both appreciate his artistic vision and to explore his art centre. Entitled SL Behind the Scenes, he presents a portfolio of art made within Second Life, but with a truly unique perspective, originating as they do with images taken while running the viewer in Wireframe mode.
Hermes Kondor: SL Behind the Scenes
For those unfamiliar with Wireframe – or wire-frame model, it is the the visual representation of a three-dimensional (3D) physical object used in 3D computer graphics. As such it is common in all virtual environments, be they games, animations using computer graphics, environments such as Second Life, and so on. In the case of SL, the underpinning wireframe model can be revealed via the Developer menu (under the rendering sub-menu) or by pressing SHIFT-CTRL-R (use the same option / shortcut to turn wireframe off again).
The mode has a number of uses in SL (particularly where content creation is concerned). However, I’m not going to delve into them in what is an arts review. Suffice it to say that if you’ve not witnessed the wireframe view of SL before, it can be both confusing and intriguing – and for Hermes, it offered a new way to present images of the places and events he’s recently visited.
Hermes Kondor: SL Behind the Scenes
The result is a fascinating collection of compositions that, whilst originally captured in wireframe mode, have been richly post-processed and composited (possibly with “natural” images of the same scenes, although I’m by no means sure of this) to focus on specific elements within the captured scene to present us with views of Second Life that are genuinely unique and contain a marvellous sense of narrative.
Some 22 images are presented across the two floors of the gallery, each one using solid colour to draw the eye into their detail and frame its story, whilst careful elimination of aspects of the wireframe helps to add further depth and provides a quite enticing sense of life and / or motion to many of them.
Hermes Kondor: SL Behind the Scenes
Visually stunning, SL Behind the Scenes takes us into Second Life in a most individual manner That genuinely sets this exhibition of places and art in Second Life well apart from others, offering as it does – as Hermes notes – an opportunity to draw back the curtain and see into “the Matrix” of Second Life.
Highly recommended – and don’t forget to use the teleport disk outside of the gallery to visit the rest of the facilities at the centre.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, January 8th, 2021. Unfortunately, other commitments prevented me from attending the meeting, so I am solely reliant on Pantera’s video. However, for some reason, the region hosting the meeting was re-started mid-session (possibly the result of a rolling restart), and on resuming, Pantera suffered a recording glitch that meant the second half of the meeting did not get captured.
While I have the chat transcript of the full meeting (my thanks again to Pantera), given that the majority of commentary is via Voice, replies to questions and comments are unavailable, so this summary only covers the period of the meeting that was recorded successfully.
The Jellydolls viewer (updates to avatar appearance based on rendering costs) was promoted to Release Candidate status with the issuing of version 6.4.12.553798.
The Custom Key Mappings RC viewer updated to version 6.4.12.553437.
A new Love Me Render (LMR 5) viewer, version 6.4.12.553511, was released as a project viewer.
The rest of the current official viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.553053, released December 3rd.
Project viewers:
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, issued on November 12.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
General Viewer Notes
Viewer updates have been delayed both due to the holiday break and as a result of a couple of processes being broken as a result of the cloud migration process. The latter have now been fixed.
Currently, the OS X (Mac) build process for the official viewer is currently “broken” and in the process of being fixed.
The LMR 5 viewer comprises a number of EEP fixes together with fixes for water reflection rendering and for the Mesh uploader preview image. The full list of fixes from the release notes comprises:
SL-12740 [EEP] The EEP moon has a hardcoded blue light that is not present in Windlight-based viewers (Lab internal Jira).
SL-13888 The model is displayed with artefacts in the upload preview floater (Lab internal Jira).
SL-14275 Water Reflection new modes (Lab internal Jira).
BUG-228581 [EEP] Specular map reflections are way too weak.
BUG-228781 [EEP] Specular color interpreted wrong (too bright) from point lights.
BUG-228914 [EEP] Deferred Soften Shader fails to link when Atmospheric Shaders are disabled. This causes Debug viewer builds to crash.
BUG-229122 [EEP] Glow should be directly behind the sun or moon when it is near the horizon.
BUG-229689 [EEP] cloud texture is rendered backwards
The Profiles viewer had been expected to be promoted to RC status, but there appears to be a UI issue that needs to be addressed before this can happen.
It is not clear which of the RC viewers will be the next to be promoted to de facto release status. However, given the amount of testing against the Custom Key Mappings RC viewer, this could be a strong contender.
Following on from the switch away from using UDP messaging for asset handling between the viewer and the Lab’s back-end systems that took place in recent years (assets are all handle by HTTP), the Lab is now looking to make a similar switch away from UDP messaging for all “mission critical” (e.g. messages that need to be handled in a specific order / receive responses in a specific order).
These changes are to be made over time and on a “case by case” basis.
Exactly how this is to be done has not been entirely worked through; it may be that some changes can be made without impacting TPV developers with a lot of additional work on their side of things.
Part of this work will involve moving some of the message handling for chat to TCP as well.
This work will take time to complete; however, once it is finished and once the replacement messaging protocols have been a part of the official release viewer for around 12 months, the Lab will seek to removing UDP message handling from both the viewer and the back-end code where it is no longer required.
The reason for doing this is because UDP is not a reliable messaging format when information is required in a specific order, and can be at the heart of assorted issues users can experience. Ergo, the aim is to make things a lot more predictable and robust.
In Brief
[4:02-5:06] There are a number of services still being adjusted post-uplift, these include:
World Map tile generation.
Land Store.
Some noticeable performance glitches.
These adjustments likely mean there were be a slightly higher cadence of server-side changes, but the focus is on trying to fix things and get back to the usual Tuesday / Wednesday simulator deployments within the next week or two.
[5:08-5:53] There is a further update to help with Group Chat issues that will hopefully be deployed in week #2 (commencing Monday, January 11th).
This is not seen as a “total fix” for issues, but part of the continuing work to improve things.
The focus is to “sharply limit” the amount of group chat traffic generated by people logging into or out of Second Life. This means that the member lists for very large groups may not report everyone in the group who is on-line, but will report all those actively using the group chat function as being on-line.
[5:55-10:17]There is to be a “real push” to make improvements to the Second Life Voice service. This will likely be based around a new Voice SDK supplied by Vivox.
As a part of this work, the Lab is gathering data on users who are still running on very old viewer versions / old version of the SLplugin.EXE for voice, as part of this work will likely result in some of the oldest, low-quality codecs used by the Voice API being disabled in the Voice package from Vivox at some point in the future – which may “break” Voice for those still using those really old versions.
The reason for disabling these old codecs is because they are of much lower quality output, and if just one person in a group voice chat is using a Voice package reliant on them, everyone in the same group chat is downgraded to the old codec, impacting the Voice quality right across the session.
This work will also focus on trying to correct / eliminate the “little” voice drop-outs that can occur (so those listening don’t hear every single word the speaker says).
[13:55-16:25] Another change with the viewer is the on-going removal of code that is not longer being actively used. A further example of this is that there are two protocols used for handling requests for logging-in to SL. One of these (XML-RPC) is almost never used nowadays, so this code may well be removed – with warning beforehand – in the future.
The acquisition, sees three new board members replacing Jed Smith, Bill Gurley, Dina L. Evan and Bing Gordon. Two of them have been previously mentioned: Brad Oberwager and J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield (you can read my own notes on these two gentleman here: Linden Lab announces it is to be acquired). However, what may come as news is that there is a third member of the Lab’s new board: Raj Date.
The following are the biographies for all three as found on the Lab’s About web page:
Brad Oberwager
Brad Oberwager has spent his entire career in technology and consumer focused companies as an entrepreneur and board member.
Currently, he sits on the board of two public companies, Asure Software (NASDAQ: ASUR) and Better World (NASDAQ: BWACU). He is the chairman of two companies he founded, Jyve and Sundia and is also on the board of TEGSCO (aka AutoReturn). He owned Bare Snacks, acquired by PepsiCo in 2018.
Brad was Vice-chair of YPO International, a global organization of 25,000 CEOs.
Brad received his BS from Georgetown University, his MBA from the Wharton School and lives in San Francisco.
J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield
Mr. J. Randall (Randy) Waterfield, is the Chairman of Waterfield Holdings, which traces its origins to 1928. After selling the largest private mortgage company in the US and largest Indiana based bank in 2006 and 2007 respectively, he diversified into technology, manufacturing and other industries.
Randy holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a graduate of Harvard University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Red Oak Partners, Waterfield Technologies, Linden Research, Inc. and has previously served on the boards of YPO (and was the 2017-2018 Chairman of YPO), Asure Software ( NASDAQ: ASUR), SMTC Corporation (NASDAQ: SMTX), RF Industries (NASDAQ: RFIL), among others. He is also the Co-Chairman of Missouri Cobalt, LLC, the largest cobalt mine in North America.
Randy supports various education, environmental and community development charitable causes through the nonprofit Waterfield Foundation and J. Randall Waterfield Foundation.
Raj Date
Raj Date was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board.
Before being appointed Deputy Director, Raj acted as the interim leader of the new agency, serving as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He led the CFPB for most of the first six months after its launch.
Currently, Raj is the Managing Partner of Fenway Summer, an advisory and investment firm focused on financial services and financial technology. In that capacity, he chairs the investment committee of Fenway Summer Ventures, a fintech venture capital fund, and works with clients of FS Vector, the fintech advisory firm. He also serves as a Director for a number of innovative firms in financial services: Prosper, the marketplace lender; Green Dot, the bank holding company; Circle, the digital asset firm; Grasshopper, a de novo bank; and College Ave, a private student lender.
He is a graduate of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley (highest honors) and the Harvard Law School (magna cum laude).
Without wishing to take anything away from Mr. Oberwager and Mr. Waterfield, Raj Date’s credentials are especially impressive for a relatively small company like Linden Research; having joined the CFPB in February 2011, on what he thought would be a 2-3 month tenure, he was asked by Elizabeth Warren, who oversaw the establishment of the CFPB as a Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury, to lead “the guts of the policy apparatus” within the Bureau. When Warren sought to (successfully) run for the U.S. Senate later in 2011, Date was nominated to succeed her as the CFPB’s Special Advisor to Treasury, and (as the Lab notes), its first Deputy Director, under Richard Cordray.
His background with consumer affairs, finances, and his post-CFPB founding of Fenway Summer would appear to help lend significant weight to Linden Lab’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Tilia inc; while he is not currently listed as a member of Tilia’s board, his background and expertise could be used in an advisory capability, and his name certainly brings a further level of gravitas to Tilia.
Thus far, the acquisition and arrival of the new board has been handled in a relatively low-key manner. While some might be tempted to see the negative in this, it’s likely more a case of the Lab wishing to demonstrate that, from their perspective and that of the incoming board, things are very much “business as usual” rather than being indicative of any kind of radical change.
Wildwood Gardens, January 2021 – click any image for full size
With the end of an old year and the start of a new one, thoughts inevitably change from those of winter and snow to the arrival of spring and the rebirth of nature’s colours. Given this, I decided to hop over to Legallyblondmod Demonista’s setting of Wildwood Gardens.
Occupying a little over half a Full region, this is a richly detailed environment that is rich in colour; one that attracted me through the promise of a timeless setting within its description, and I was far from disappointed.
Wildwood Gardens, January 2021
Enjoy lakeside deep forest and exotic caves gardens among the ruins of old. Where hints of ancient magic still linger. Relax and take time to explore.
– Wildwood Gardens About Land description
The lake in question lies on the east side of the setting, at the far end of the woods and their gardens relative to the western landing point. This sits on a small headland that looks out over a narrow channel of water sitting between Wildwood Gardens and an off-region ribbon of an island and overlooking a west side beach.
Wildwood Garden, January 2021
With its flower-bordered track running south along the back of the beach and lit by iron street lamps, together with the offer of a Teagle horse rezzer for those who might want to ride, and a folly-style rotunda sitting on the grassland on the far end of the beach, this initially has the feel of a simple garden, but there is fall more awaiting discovery, as the About Land description hints.
Proof of this comes by following the track as it passes along the back of the beach before turning inland to arrive at a junction. One arm of this points towards the rotunda on the coast, the other turns east, passing along the foot of a large elven hall that brings a slight flavour of Tolkien to the region.
Wildwood Gardens, January 2021
Elven in style the hall maybe, it has a distinctly contemporary feel to its furnishings. There’s nothing wrong it this; the two styles compliment one another perfectly, offering a unique look to the hall. A further element of this magic can be found along the branch of the track pointing towards the rotunda near the beach. Following it will reveal it passes by the rotunda to arrive at the entrance to a network of tunnels and caverns.
The network is surprisingly extensive, winding its way under the highlands that form the southern side of the setting, and it is worth both following the suggestion of the sign at the entrance and set your viewer to Midnight and in taking time to explore underground; the caverns offer hidden waterfalls and pools of water, exotic flowers and crystals and a choice of routes back to the surface.
Wildwood Gardens, January 2021
One of these offers a way back to the main track which, after passing over a stone bridge near the elven hall, passes through the denser trees, side paths branching off to reach places to sit – a camp ground here, a swing seat there, or a parasoled banket – look carefully and you’ll find them.
The remaining route through the cliffs leads to the southern bank of the lake and a hidden tree house that awaits discovery and enjoyment. It is overlooked by a cliff-edge stone pavilion that offers another Middle Earth feel, even though it is not intentionally designed as such. It stands as a hint of another secret to the setting: the cliff-top gardens that also await discovery.
Wildwood Gardens, January 2021
These offer multiple points of interest – a pond with cosy summer house, a walled garden that further combines hints of fable with a contemporary design, a wooden gazebo – but how do you get up to it is the question. All I’ll say is, find the ruins watched over by unicorns that lies below the cliffs – you’ll find them further along the track from the main hall, and the entrance to a tunnel and steps that lead up to the plateau are not far away. Should you miss it, you can still carry on along the track to where a bridge spans a gorge linking the lake with open water and another table of grass-topped rock that offers another wild garden with its own attractions, and when finished there, find the tunnel stairs on your way back.
And all of this just scratches the surface of the beauty and magic of Wildwood Gardens, which is genuinely a place in which to lose oneself. There are multiple places to sit and share, a profusion of colours that naturally blend through flowers and plants, that captivating mix fable and contemporary that gives the setting a truly magical depth and sense of timelessness, all of which is rounded out by a perfect sound scape.
My over-the-water Stilt Home parcel at Bellisseria, with the Tortuga style house rezzed and furnished
Back when I previewed the Linden Homes Stilt House theme, and again when the theme was released at the end of 2020, I mentioned it was the first theme that might tempt me away from the Houseboat theme, which has tended to always win-out against the subsequent Linden Home releases in terms of desirability.
While swapping homes wasn’t high on my priority list, I have to admit that the temptation to just give the Stilt Homes a try had been growing over the Christmas break. And so, while it did cause no small amount of anxiety – my Houseboat location was really very good – at the start of the week, I decided to make the swap, trying for an over-the-water Stilt Home.
Obtaining one took a little time – Stilt Homes-are obviously popular, being new, and the over-the-water version particularly so (Stilt Homes are offered individually as over-the-water; with pier or on land variants on the Linden Homes selection page). But careful refreshing within the page throttle limit meant I was able to eventually pick one up.
My Linden Stilt Home parcel with the Havana style house with moorings I’ve added myself
When previewing the houses, I had been somewhat swayed towards the two-storey designs (Lauderdale and Santiago). However, after re-familiarising myself with all four styles, I actually found the Havana and Tortuga better suited to my tastes, providing the best value (in my view) between living space and available water in the parcel for mooring boats, and betted options for interior customisation, having very good sized rooms (the Tortuga in particular).
Both styles are 3-roomed designs, with the Tortuga offering the slightly greater interior space in the form of two large through-rooms and a smaller room, while the Havana presents a central front-to-back through room flanked by a smaller room on either side. Both designs have a large, split-level rear deck that gives plenty of scope for sun decks and moorings.
Havana interior: the main room gives plenty of room for expression
While I cannot compare it directly with Camper / Trailer, Victorian or Log Home themes, the Content Creation Pack for the Stilt Homes offers a somewhat greater range of options than the pack for the Houseboats, with furniture plants, textures, useful colour matching guides and other little goodies than might be put to good use. I was a little disappointed no corner posts were offered to go with the additional deck railings, or that there was no bi-fold door that might be used to split the Tortuga’s two through-rooms, but these are not exactly hard-to-overcome “shortfalls”.
Although there are already add-on kits for the Stilt Homes a-plenty on the Marketplace, I much prefer building / kitbashing, and the Tortuga with its big rooms immediately attracted me with the potential for adding my own features. So much so, that I spent several hours playing with different ideas in both rooms!
The Tortuga’s large deck area can be used for boat moorings without it feeling crowded – although admittedly, I’ve thus far minimalised décor and furnishings( a simple pergola, suitably sized, shading a couple of rocking chairs and some planters with flower to break things up
In the end, I went with the simplest approach: a free-standing “room divider wall” that splits the largest room in the Tortuga into two without actually dominating the space or looking out-of-place. One side of this became my “living room” overlooking the rear decks, with the divider itself neatly providing space for a fireplace (with added chimney jutting from the roof above!). This then allowed me to use the “front” part of the room as a kitchen / the dining area, with the long interior wall ideally suited for placing kitchen units, while the width of the room meant I could include a kitchen island, again naturally breaking up the floor space quite naturally.
While the Havana’s large main room could be similarly broken up, I found that with a little careful placement of bits, this isn’t really necessary; I was again able to include living area, dining area and kitchen comfortably into it. With the addition of decking and steps to moorings outside the front of both (and the use of one side of the Tortuga’s deck), I have been able to provide ample space for mooring those boats I want to have rezzed (all of them otherwise sitting in my vehicle rezzer until I want them).
I’ve deliberately kept furnishings and décor on the decks of both the Havana and Tortuga to a minimum, the former having a free-standing pergola with large sofa, etc., and the latter a pergola and shades directly adjoining the back of the house (thus helping to shade the living room from the Sun) and a couple of rocking chairs I may admittedly play with both decks a little more in the future, but for now, that’s all I really need.
I like the large main room of the Tortuga particularly amenable to being made a comfortable living space – plenty of room for a kitchen, dining area and lounge space – and even a fireplace to act as a natural room divider
As noted earlier, giving up my Houseboat did give me a moment of anxiety after I’d let it go, but over the last 3+ days I’ve become more settled with my decision; the Tortuga has been proving to be a very comfortable and flexible living space (even if only as a second home when Isla Caitinara isn’t available), and it is very likely I’ll end up saving several internal layouts of furnishings, etc., into my personal rezzer, just as I did with the Houseboat. I’m also admittedly fortunate that, like my old Houseboat, the parcel I’m on is fronted by a large channel of open water (a natural divide between Stilt Homes and Houseboats), so I don’t feel at all crowded in.
I’m not sure I’ll make use of the 2-storey styles; while I like to look of both, they’re a little too big for my needs. But then, I might just be tempted at some point to have a play. in the meantime, would I recommend the Stilt Home designs to someone looking for a new Linden Premium Account Home? Absolutely.
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, January 5th, 2021 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting.
There were no planned deployments for 2021 week #1. It is hoped that the deployment schedule will resume in week #2, depending on their run through QA.
SL Viewer
There have been no changes to the current crop of official viewers, leaving them as:
Current release viewer version 6.4.11.551711, formerly Cachaça Maintenance RC viewer promoted on November 12 – No Change.
Release Channel cohorts:
Dawa Maintenance RC Viewer, version 6.4.12.553723, December 15.
Custom Key Mappings project viewer, version 6.4.12.552100, November 12.
Project viewers:
Simple Cache project viewer, version 6.4.11.551403, issued on November 12.
Project Jelly project viewer (Jellydoll updates), version 6.4.12.552224, December 4.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.4.11.550519, October 26.
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22, 2019.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16, 2019.
In Brief
Experience Keys
It is believed that the end-of-year experience keys issue (the XP_STORAGE_EXCEPTION problem, see my 2020 #week #52 update and BUG-229892) has been resolved. However it has been noted that some user may still be experiencing “lingering performance issues” with experience keys. Those experience any experience key issues are asked to contact Support.
Issues and Rumours
There were some issues experienced over the weekend, with users reporting an inability to rez and / or their avatars remaining as a cloud, and poor attached scripts performance. Rumours circulated about the issue being due to a “server” fire, and some reports appeared to have been exaggerated (e.g. the issuing being open on Grid Status for “several hours”, when in fact it was reported as resolved some 45 minutes are initially appearing). Whilst not going in to specifics, Oz Linden noted that while there were issues, in terms of the circulating rumours, he noted:
It was much much less dramatic and interesting than that.
Map Tiles
Map tiles are still not being regularity updated, however the Lab both identified the cause of the issue and a possible fix. Progress is being made on the fix, however, it appears that it is taking time due to the Map code not having been touched in a good while.
General Post-Uplift Issues
While the core work of transitioning all SL services to AWS systems has been completed, there are still some niggling problems that are being dealt with – such as with the Map tiles (above) and on-going issues with things like the official viewer Splash screen updating, the land store, etc. The Lab is addressing these as they can.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 