On Tuesday, June 2nd, the RC channels were updated with a server update, version 543116, intended to fix an expired cert that was causing problems with HTTP calls..
On Wednesday, June 3rd, and providing there are no issues arising from the above deployment, the same server update will be deployed across the rest of the grid.
SL Viewer
On Tuesday, June 2nd:
The FMOD Studio RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542964, and dated May 29th, was promoted to de facto release status.
The Mesh Uploader project viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542535.
CEF Update RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542757, May 27th.
Love Me Render RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542484, May 19th.
Project viewers:
Copy / Paste viewer, version 6.3.5.533365, December 9th, 2019.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.532999, November 22nd, 2019.
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th, 2019. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th, 2019.
In Brief
Parcel EEP settings are still drawing complaints from some who travel over Mainland (particularly by air) who are not particularly enamoured with seeing “their” daytime settings suddenly change. However, there is a simple answer: all they need to do is apply their preferred EEP settings to their avatar before flying, and *presto* they have a constant environment in their viewer for both parcel and region crossings. Simples.
Apparently, a rumour has been circulating somewhere that LL are “rethinking” the cloud uplift. In response to being asked if there is any truth to it, Oz Linden replied:
[There’s] no truth to the rumour at all. The only re-thinking we’re doing is how to do it better/faster.
Group chat lag still continues to be a problem for some groups – notably those with a large membership. This appears to be related to the volume of message traffic a back-end group chat server is handling, rather than a specific issue within the chat service.
Those wishing to test the upcoming changes to nearby chat ranges (channel 0), can do so on Aditi in the following regions: Animesh1, Animesh2 and Snark
Tom Boellstorff and his digital alter ego, Tom Bukowski (image: Steve Zylius / UCI)
Professor Tom Boellstorff is someone I’ve oft written about in these pages. Known as Tom Bukowski in Second Life, he is a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and has a long association with the platform as he has, and continues, to engage a range of studies both on his own and in collaboration with Donna Davis (Tredi Felisimo in-world), a digital ethnographer at the University of Oregon.
Tom’s involvement with Second Life goes back to 2004, and has carried out numerous studies in-world that have resulted in a range of publications including Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008), the result of two years fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He has also co-authored Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method (Princeton University Press, 2012) a concise, comprehensive, and practical guide for students, teachers, designers, and scholars interested in using ethnographic methods to study on-line virtual worlds, including both game and non-game environments. Alongside of Donna, he co-curates and operates Ethnographia Island, about which I first wrote in 2016 (see: Exploring disability, new cultures and self in a virtual realm), and which later became the subject of a segment of The Drax Files World Makers video series.
My own contact with Tom started in 2013, as a result of my learning about and covering the story of Fran Swenson (Fran Serenade in Second Life – see: Of Parkinson’s, Second Life and a story worth reading), and with whom both Tom and Donna worked. Since then, I’ve tried to follow Tom’s work – albeit not always successfully, so I’d like to extend my thanks to Luca (lucagrabcr), co-founder of the Virtual Existence Society, for tweeting about Tom’s latest project (so to speak): bringing his classroom and students directly into Second Life as a result of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.
Anteater Island: landing point
As reported in the UCI News by Lilibeth Garcia, because social / physical distancing prevents him from teaching in his usual environment – an auditorium located in UCI’s state-of-the-art Anteater Learning Pavilion – Tom has created Anteater Island within Second Life, a place that allows him to continue to teach his course, Digital Cultures (Anthropology 128C), directly to his students without fear or risk of possible infection.
UCI’s digital cultures class is a rare sight these days, with unmasked students sitting together, often shoulder to shoulder, in a large venue and listening attentively as anthropology professor Tom Boellstorff presents a slide show. But the pre-coronavirus-style format isn’t flouting any social distancing guidelines. The class takes place in Second Life – a 3D virtual world that allows users to create communities and interact with each other – and the instructor and students are avatars.
– from Anteater Island, UCI News, June 1st, 2020
Anteater Island: the auditorium
Tom made the move to using Second Life as UCI sought to moving its teaching activities on-line as a result of the pandemic. Thanks to his long association with the platform, and while his colleagues were doubtless looking at potential options for moving their classes entirely on-line, Tom was able to capture the essence of the collaborative working spaces offered within the physical Anteater Pavilion as used by his students and replicate their capabilities within Second Life without having to confine himself to the traditional view of learning spaces as bricks-and-mortar structures.
Within the region, learning spaces are located around the coastline, offering a primary lecture auditorium, meeting areas for each student team, a display area where students will eventually display their work, and an office where he can be reached. Towards the centre of the island lies a social space where students can relax, chat and even dance, while a primary landing point providing an introduction to the island for students, and some basic notes on viewer use.
Given the course is about digital cultures, the approach of using Second Life is not only practical in terms of overcoming the issues of social / physical distancing, it is actually a potential enhancement to the course. After all, how better to get students thinking about digital cultures and how they impact / reflect / alter people’s lives, than by actually placing them within a digital environment where they can experience things first-hand, both through their own involvement in, and reaction to, the environment and through observation of their fellow students.
Anteater Island: central social area
Hence why, perhaps, Tom has also included three fun fair rides – roller coaster, sky drop and bumper cars – for students to try, as well as offering sandbox building space in the sky above the island. All of these allow students to both relax and have fun outside class time, and also experience some of the interactive appeal of virtual environments.
In a time when, thanks to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, our relationship with, and use of, on-line capabilities for communication, contact, learning and more, are being subject to so much re-evaluation, Tom notes that virtual spaces are especially deserving of greater understanding and study.
We need to get away from talking about the physical world as the real world. On-line sociality is a set of cultures that can be just as real as what is in the physical world … Virtual space gives you a sense of shared space that you don’t get with a phone call. Zoom fatigue is an interesting aspect, because I find engaging through an avatar less stressful than Zoom. There’s something lost with having an avatar, but there’s also something gained.
– Professor Tom Boellstorff, UCI
Hopefully, this is something we’ll be able to witness, as Tom plans to lead studies himself, with the assistance of a further grant from the National Science Foundation. Certainly, it’s something I hope to be able to report on in the future.
On Wednesday, May 27th, the Kokua team released Kokua 6.4.2, bringing the viewer up to parity with the Linden Lab official viewer, 6.4.2 code base (Camera Presets), promoted on May 19th, 2020.
This means that with this release, Kokua now includes:
the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP) release.
The most recent viewer Maintenance updates.
The aforementioned Camera Presets.
In addition, the Restrained Love Viewer (RLV) variants of this Kokua release include both include the latest updates to Marine Kelley’s RLV API updates – version 2.9.27.0 -, which include support specific to EEP, and which the Kokua team have also used with regards the new Camera Presets, as part of their own updates to the viewer.
Lab-Derived Updates
Environment Enhancement Project
In including support for EEP, Chorazin Allen makes an important point that all SL users should keep in mind when moving to EEP-capable viewers:
Before getting into the additional features and fixes we need to point out that EEP represents a major overhaul of the viewer’s weather, lighting, shine and reflection areas – it’s more than just a new weather system with configuration files as inventory assets instead of separate xml files. As a result you WILL find that scenes, structures and avatars can all look different. If you find a particularly noticeable instance you are encouraged to log details of it in LL’s Jira issue tracking system so that these differences can be fixed at their origin.
– Chorazin Allen [my emphasis]
The Kokua 6.4.2 release appears to be a direct implementation of EEP and its various floaters without any alterations to their layout. As such, I do not propose to cover them here; rather I’ll leave you with a series of links to resources:
The Camera Presets controls, developed and contributed by Jonathan Yap, is a capability that allow users to create one more more custom camera presets within the viewer to suit particular needs and then save them. This means, for example, that a user can now have a camera position for general exploring, another suitable for combat games, another for building, etc., all of which can easily be accessed and used at any time.
Again, the Kokua implementation of the UI elements is the same as the official viewer. However, the Kokua implementation of Camera Presets adds addition default presets as follows:
Left, Right and top: provide viewers of your avatr from the left and right side, and from directly above.
FPS (First Person Shooter) – positions the camera directly in front of your avatar and looking forward.
Nearer – a view looking from close behind your avatar designed to be more suitable for corridors and other narrow spaces.
Again, rather than go into specifics on creating and using Camera Presets, I refer readers to my Camera Presets tutorial.
Kokua Updates
Edit Floater – Bulk Rename
Kokua 6.4.2 includes a new button in the Content tab of the Edit floater that allows the contents of an object to be easily renamed. A typical case for this might be when updating the version number of the individual contents on an object for a new release: after the specific elements that have been updated / replaced in the object, the rest can easily be renamed with the new version number.
Kokua object contents bulk rename
As this is liable to be a special usage option, I’ll refer interested parties to the Kokua documentation on how it works.
Animation Override
Client AO updates
Kokua 6.4.2 offers two new options to the client-side Animation Override system:
Chat check box: when enabled, each new animation to run will be reported in local chat in the user’s viewer.
The intent is to allow a user to keep track of the currently running animation when using a new set of poses/animations to decide decide which should be kept or discarded.
It is not recommended this option is kept on at all times, as the animation reports can be intrusive.
Any button: located between the next / previous animation paging buttons a the bottom of the floater, it will randomly select a pose from the current listed set (Walking, Standing, etc), and play it.
Clicking the Next or Previous buttons will resume stepping forward / back through the list of animations from the randomly selected animation.
Hover Height
This release of Kokua includes the hover height slider from Marine’s RLV viewer, with the release notes stating:
Rather than include the small button to reset it to 0.0 we have made the numerical value next to the slider writable allowing any value to be directly entered.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, May 31st
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
Current Release viewer version 6.4.2.541639, dated May 11th, promoted May 19th, formerly the Camera Presets RC viewer – No Change.
Release channel cohorts:
FMOD Studio RC viewer updated to version 6.4.3.542964 on May 29th.
CEF RC viewer, version 6.4.3.542757, issued May 27th.
FionaFei invited me to visit her new installation that opened on May 29th at the Hannington Endowment for the Arts (HEA). Entitled I Had a Dream, And You Were There, it is a reflection of thoughts and feelings that may come upon us unbidden, be it through dream or through finding an object or hearing a sound or seeing an image or event, that bring to mind someone now gone from our lives.
Set as a dream-like forest, the trees rendered in Fiona’s familiar ink wash black on white, that we’re invited to explore. Within it, the ground is white, as if mist is sliding through the trees, brushed ferns grouping around the base of trunks. Among these trees are park benches offering places to sit in contemplation.
On or near the benches are bright red objects: an alarm clock here, a scarf draped over a branch there, a hat hanging on the back of a bench, a flittering butterfly or two, and so on. All of them are precisely the kind of thing liable to trigger a sudden memory of someone once close to us. Touch them, and they will even offer a specific memory in local chat.
Hannington Endowment for the Arts: FionaFei
For those who have lost someone from their physical or virtual lives, I Had a Dream is liable to be an evocative visit. And by “lost”, I don’t necessarily mean the individual memory recalls has passed away; we lose people from our lives in a wide variety of ways: friendships form and end; closeness fades as physical distance grows; relationships naturally shift in desire, want and need, and so on. Even so, memories of their presence and former closeness can remain with us long after a parting of the ways have come and can – no matter how the parting came about – still come to the fore in the most unexpected ways.
It’s also important not to ascribe the installation to a specific loss on Fiona’s part. As she states in the introduction to the installation:
It is a creative manifestation of thinking about someone and wishing that they were here … The artwork is not about any specific person.
– FionaFei
Hannington Endowment for the Arts: FionaFei
Simply and artistically presented, I Had a Dream… is an installation that can unfold to reveal considerable emotional depth, echoing as it does, feelings that many, if not all of us, have felt in our adult lives.
The International Space Station imaged from 200 metres by the docking systems camera looking out of the forward hatch window of SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour. Credit: SpaceX / NASA
On Saturday, May 30th, 2020 the United States successfully launched astronauts into orbit from American soil for the first time since July 8th, 2011. It came after an initial attempt on May 27th, 2020 had to be scrubbed (called off) due to adverse weather conditions putting the launch vehicle at risk of a possible electrical strike.
As I noted in my previous Space Sunday piece, the primary goal of the mission is to confirm the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle is ready to commence operations ferrying crew to and from the International Space Station. Intended to fly up to four crew at a time on such missions, for this final test flight, Crew Dragon lifted-off with only two crew aboard: NASA veterans Robert L. Behnken (flight pilot) and Douglas G. Hurley (commander).
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken (l) and Doug Hurley, photographed at the top elevator station at Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Centre, at a dress rehearsal for the Crew Dragon Demo-2 flight, May 24th, 2020. Credit: SpaceX
Weather was also a concern in the run-up to the May 30th launch, with NASA putting a chance of lift-off at 50/50 through to less than an hour ahead of the launch time. However, after a burst of rain in the area of Kennedy Space Centre as the Falcon 9 launch vehicle was being prepared for lift-off, the weather situation both around the Florida Cape and downrange of the launch site and along the track of the vehicle’s line of ascent, cleared sufficiently for the launch to go ahead.
The entire launch, from the astronauts suit-up in the crew room at Kennedy Space Centre, through lift-off, ascent to orbit, on-orbit operations and the rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station some 19 hours after launch, was covered entirely live through NASA TV and SpaceX on You Tube and other channels. This coverage made it one of the mos-watched launches of a space vehicle despite the limitations of travel in place due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, with 1.5 million people watching the SpaceX relay of the NASA feed alone.
Thursday, May 21st, 2020: The Falcon 9 / Crew Dragon vehicle bearing the NASA worm and meatball logos, rolls out of the SpaceX vehicle processing building en route to pad 39A
Following their arrival at the launch pad some 2+ hours ahead of the the launch, the astronauts – known as “the Dads” to the SpaceX team – travelled to the top of the launch tower prior to ingressing into the Crew Dragon vehicle and performing a series of pre-flight checks both before and after the crew hatch was closed-out by the fight support crew.
At around an hour prior to launch and with the flight support crew clear of the tower, the access arm was rotated clear and fuelling of the Falcon 9’s first and second stage tanks commenced as the weather clearance was given. Unlike Apollo and the shuttle, the SpaceX vehicles go through fuelling as a last stage of ground operations to minimise the amount of fuel venting / topping-up that is required as the super-cold liquid propellants start to slowly warm despite insulation and cooling.
Ahead of the launch, the ISS passed over Kennedy Space Centre and this photograph was taken. Centre top is the massive Vehicle Assembly Building where the SLS will be assembled for launch and the former Orbiter Processing Buildings, one of which is now used by Boeing for the Starliner crew vehicle and another by the Orion MPCV; The crawler / transporter track runs from the VAB toward the coast, splitting so one leg runs to the right and Pad 39B, which will host the SLS, while the second runs down to Pad 39A where the white SpaceX vehicle assembly building can be seen, with the Falcon 9 on the pad. Credit: NASA
A crucial aspect of the Demo-2 launch was that orbital mechanics demanded the vehicle had to lift-off precisely on time – there could be no “holds” that delayed it beyond the appointed lift-off time. Were launch to be delayed, even by a few minutes, the Crew Dragon would reach orbit at the wrong point related to the ISS, and so and rendezvous would be much harder, if not impossible, given what needed to be achieved in the flight ahead of reaching the space station.
So, at 19:22:45 UTC, precisely on schedule, the nine motors of the Falcon 9’s first stage igniting, lifting the black-and-white rocket and capsule vehicle smoothly off the pad. This marked a further first for the mission: not only was it the first US crewed mission into space undertaken from US soil bult and operated by a private company, the entire launch process was run by SpaceX and not by NASA’s Mission Operations Control Room (MOCR – or “moe-kerr”) at the Johnson Space Centre (JSC), although the latter were obviously looking over SpaceX’s shoulder and monitoring things, with the ISS Fly Operations Centre fully “in the loop”.
A Dragon rises with its riders as the Falcon 9 clears the tower at LC-39A, May 30th, 2020. Credit: NASA live stream
Ascent to orbit lasted some 8 minutes – although to all those watching, it probably seemed a lot quicker. Powering the vehicle through the denser part of the atmosphere, the Falcon’s first stage reached MECO (main engine cut-off) just over 2 minutes after launch. Separating, this continued along a ballistic trajectory, flicking itself around to deploy vanes to help with its descent back though the atmosphere so it might make a landing on the autonomous drone ship Of Course I Still Love You.
Camera footage from the first stage, transmitted as the Falcon’s second stage continued to boost the Crew Dragon vehicle to orbit, showed it orienting itself using its attitude thrusters, prior to three of the Raptor engines firing to slow it down and cushion it as it dropped back into denser atmosphere. From here, it dropped smoothly back towards the drone ship, the deployed vanes holding it upright. Unfortunately, video footage was lost prior to touch-down, but moments later, the feed resumed, showing the stage sitting on the ship’s deck as high above, the Falcon’s second stage reached SECO – Second (Stage) Engine Cut-off, and shortly after, the Dragon separated from it.
Timing in the flight meant that the Falcon 9 first stage successfully landed on the autonomous drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (l) at almost the same time as SECO was reached by the rocket’s upper stage, followed a couple of minutes later by Crew Dragon successfully separating from the second stage (r). Credit: SpaceX
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 