Back at the start of October, Beth MacBain pointed out on the forums that Patch Linden had received a promotion, to Vice President of Programme Operations.
At the time, I dropped Patch a line asking about his expended role – although as I didn’t hear back – and I did a quick check to see if his promotion had been reflected on the Lab’s official Management Team page.
Back then, the answer was no – possibly because I was a little quick on the draw. However, since then it has been updated – and it reveals that Patch is one of three senior staff with a specific focus on Second Life to gain a promotion to Vice President and join the Lab’s management team.
The other two – who have worked alongside Patch for some time as “the troika” (as Grumpity Linden puts it) who determine much of the product and feature direction for Second Life: Grumpity herself, who is now Vice President of Product (Second Life); and Oz Linden, who is now Vice President of Second Life Operations.
Linden Lab Management Team page, October 2019 – a line-up that now includes Oz, Patch and Grumpity Linden (highlighted)
Given this, I’d like to offer belated congratulations to Patch, Grumpity and Oz on their new positions. All three have contributed significantly to Second Life’s development over the years, and genuinely have the platform’s best interests at heart. If you’re unfamiliar with their backgrounds and their roles at the Lab, just hop over to the Lab’s Management Team page and click on their photos there (just scroll down the page to view them).
The October 2019 update to the Management Team page also reveals that the Lab’s General Council, Kelly Conway departed the company during the month.
Having been at the Lab since May 2013, Kelly was also a founding Director of Tilia Inc., where she oversaw the team responsible for regulatory compliance policies and procedures, including related to anti-fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) measures. She has now moved to Manticore Games, to take over the role of General Council there. I had some indirect dealings with Kelly over the years (mostly the results of assorted requests put to the Lab through Pete and Brett Linden that touched on Tilia, the Terms of Service, etc.), and would like to offer best wishes to her in her new role and company.
EXTRAprimitives is a new art installation by Nevereux that is open through until the end of November 2019, thanks to the sponsorship of Dreamseeker Estates. A semi-immersive installation, it is a multi-faceted piece that has been through a long gestation period, rooted in the idea of offering a piece intended to be largely theme-free, as Nevereux explains in her introductory notes to the exhibit:
EXTRAprimitives – a project I started in April 2018, initiated for fun and with no great theme in mind, a project I wouldn’t be doing without the support of people* who believe in art. Personally, I believe in love.
– Nevereux, introducing EXTRAprimitives
EXTRAprimitives, November 2019
Interestingly however, the installation opens with a “Manifesto” – or perhaps commentary might be a better term – that revolves around a series of observations on life, offered in a semi-cryptic manner. As one progresses through the installation, it is evident that those cryptic messages are evident as observations within EXTRAprimitives. They exist as a thread, rather than theme, that gently runs through the broader tapestry of pieces, coming to the fore here and there before slipping quietly back into the weave before again coming to the fore.
The best way to describe the installation is perhaps as a series of vignettes and displays. Some are defined within walled display spaces; others stand free on the walls. Each vignette or display is unique unto itself, with many offering a celebration of the creative potential within SL, again as Nevereux noted to me in conversation:
There is a bit of everything because when I started [I had] this idea [of] was what can I do with a cube and a sphere. Sadly, [due to space limitations] this is only half of the collection. I sacrificed the straight cube and sphere ones for the more interesting or meaningful ones.
EXTRAprimitives, November 2019
So it is that EXTRAPrimitives offers an extraordinary richness of content from the more light-hearted (notably among the signs on along the back wall of the installation – although several of these also provoke the grey matter between the ears into cogitating – through to the completely psychedelic Healing – which those who find moving lights and / or are prone to motion sickness should enter with care (and you should enter the piece with your avatar and draw your camera full inside Healing’s “box” to appreciate it properly).
The commentary on modern life can be found threaded throughout the installation within pieces such as Evolution, with it’s very clear Apple Inc., reference, Nothing Is All White and Inner Mechanism. Sometimes, as with these pieces, the reference is clear; elsewhere it is more subtle – such as with In A Bar, where the emptiness of the bar setting references the lack of genuine socialising modern life encourages.
Similarly, the piece reflecting Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures perhaps references the punk / Goth movements a lot less than it does the album becoming something of an anthem of the digital “social” age (e.g. as reflected in its use within the likes of Ready Player One), and so again underscores the shallowness in eschewing face-to-face social interaction in favour of the structured artificiality of virtual socialising.
Some of the pieces also offer a broader commentary on life. Feelings, for example appears to highlight the advertiser’s peddling of the idea that a genuine emotional response can be obtained via a can of soda. Meanwhile Fine Line points a finger at the collapse of social leadership with a clear reference to current politics, while Love Hate illustrates, perhaps the slow erasure of the separation between civility and incivility in society.
EXTRAprimitives – Healing, November 2019
There is also something of a personal statement here as well: EXTRAprimitives might be considered Nevereux’s legacy to Second Life arts, as she indicated to me that for her, the platform is perhaps not what it used to be and the time is ripe to turn her attention to pastures new, although she will continue to cheer the work of other artists. If true, this additionally makes a visit to the installation something not to be missed.
However you look at EXTRAPrimitives, it is richly expressive and engaging, with wonderful layering throughout that is likely to have you looking at the various pieces more than once as the brain cells start contemplating ideas, themes and constructs. As noted, it will remain open through until November 30th, 2019.
The following notes are taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on November 1st, 2019. A video of the meeting is embedded below, my thanks as always to Pantera for recording and providing it. This was a relatively short meeting, with some conversation on the viewer building process – error reporting, replacing cygwin with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) that are not reflected in the notes below – please refer to the video (between 9:23 and 15:35.
The Voice RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531811 and dated October 18th, 2019, was promoted to de facto release status.
The Love Me Render RC viewer was updated to version 6.3.4.532273.
On Friday, November 1st, the EEP RC viewer updated to version 6.4.0.532314.
Note that while it has not been tested, it is believed the voice plug-in with the Voice viewer is compatible with other viewers that are otherwise up-to-date with viewer release.
The remaining viewer pipelines remain as follows:
Release channel cohorts:
Ordered Shutdown RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531767, October 21st.
Maintenance RC viewer, version 6.3.3.531784, October 18th.
Project viewers:
Legacy Profiles viewer, version 6.3.2.530836, September 17th. Covers the re-integration of Viewer Profiles.
Project Muscadine (Animesh follow-on) project viewer, version 6.4.0.530473, September 11th.
360 Snapshot project viewer, version 6.2.4.529111, July 16th.
Upcoming Viewer Improvements
There will be further improvements made to voice. These will largely be focused on the overall robustness of voice operations.
The first viewer built using the updated build process using Visual Studio 2017 and Xcode 10.3 is currently caught in QA, but should hopefully be appearing “soon”.
Once the new build process viewer has gone through the RC process, LL plan to update the Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF – media handling) within the viewer.
Inventory Issue Handling Changes
[2:55-7:28] Broadly speaking, inventory issues that occur at log-in have been largely handled as viewer-side fixes (e.g. the viewer fails to receive data on the Outfit folder, and responds by creating a new Outfit folder). However, these kinds of “fixes” can lead to problems of their own in inventory handling (e.g. it can lead to duplicate folders, requiring Support to run an inventory transform to correct – such as in the case of the Current Outfit Folder being duplicated).
Instead, the Lab is working to give the servers more of a say when the viewer believes it has encountered an inventory syncing issue when logging-in. Instead of the viewer attempting to fix things, it will call back to the servers and have them fix matters by sending / re-sending inventory data.
Currently, the server end of this work is in progress, and a viewer with code changes to support this new approach will be appearing Soon™. These updates will be kept to a separate viewer branch to allow TPVs to absorb them quickly as the reach a state in which they can be adopted.
In Brief
[15:38 (text)-19:15] BUG-225655 “Viewer freezes while “Loading world…” – Intel HD 620 / Intel HD 630, Windows 10″ has a new wrinkle, as per Whirly Fizzle’s comment on the bug report. Firestorm has a fix that could be contributed, and LL have indicated a willingness to look at it.
[25:41-27:26] BUG-227818 “MapLayerRequest does not appear to work” – this refers to a request type that asks the simulator to relay a list of all the map layers and which is failing to behave as expected. The bug report has been requested in order for LL can look into the problem.
In particular with the last article, I wrote about converting the raised section of the Windlass design in a bedroom. This involved putting in a false floor and an additional stairway. While it worked to a point, having two staircases inside the houseboat was a bit weird, and while other things took me away from the houseboat (truth be told I barely set foot in it between that June 2019 article and the end of October), the issue nagged at me.
The problem, in short, was the “hard” stair railing that blocked any access to an upper floor put into the Windlass from the existing stairway – the stairs being intended purely to access the houseboat’s upper deck. However, in hopping back recently and swapping from my use of the Barnacle houseboat to the Windlass, I had one of those embarrassing “well, duh!” moments: Why even keep the existing stairway leading up to the upper deck?
Top: the June 2019 build, showing the added spiral stairs while the “fix” stairs remain usable behind the kitchen walls. Bottom: as revised – just the one spiral staircase, the “fixed” stairs now boxed in to created a “bathroom”, while the cubbyhole under the stairs has been opened to create space for a galley-style kitchen
In the June design, I had already partially walled-in the fixed stairway, boxing-in the cubbyhole under the stairs in the process, to provide a “back wall” for a kitchen area and a false space to suggest a bathroom. By opening this out again, but keeping the stairway hidden behind a curved “ceiling”, and then completely blocking out the bottom end of the stairs allowed me to:
Hide the existing stairway and create the impression of a bathroom tucked into a corner of the houseboat.
Extend the “bedroom” space the full width of the upper section of the houseboat, while keeping the stairway door as a mean to access the upper deck.
Relocate the spiral stairs serving the bedroom so they don’t dominate the floor space of the houseboat so much.
Use the re-exposed cubby hole under the “fixed” stairway as the home for a galley kitchen.
Open out the rest of the available space for a roomier dining space (so much pace, I’ve yet to work out what I want to do with bits of it!
Extending the new bedroom floor both provides more space while allowing the upper part of the “fix” stairway to serve as an access way to the roof deck k(seen on the left)
The exterior view of the houseboat, vis window placement, doesn’t quite align with the interior layout (the stairway is marked by two large windows) – but dropping the blinds on these tends to help hide this, although I did toy with blocking the windows out complete. On the flip side, general access to the upper deck isn’t lost this way – it’s still possible to reach it via the simple expedient of an external stairway, as seen in the top photo, one easily accessed from the lower floor of the houseboat and the docks I dropped in for mooring my boats.
All of this isn’t a genius move; doubtless others arrived at the same solution well ahead of me – hence referring to it as a “well, duh!” moment. But it at least makes me happier 🙂 .
Culprit owners Eku Zhong and Yure4u Sosa are known for producing quirky and fun products in Second Life, from vehicles to pets – like their Animesh followers, Sphynxie and Mousie, both of whom have been reviewed in these pages – as well as producing more “serious” items such as their Sonata Upright and Sonata Baby Grand pianos, which I’ve also reviewed in these pages.
For the start of November 2019, they’ve released another, more light-hearted product, currently available at the (I believe introductory) price of L$100: the Culprit Bento Moonwalker.
Exploring the new Bellisseria regions using the Moonwalker
Intended purely for fun (whilst allowing Eku and Yure4u to poke around at Bento), the Moonwalker is – well I guess the best way to describe it is a wearable “vehicle” that looks like half a sphere setting on ED-209’s legs. Supplied No Modify (due to the risk of messing up the rigging), it is designed to be added to your avatar rather than rezzed and driven. This means using it is a three-step process:
ADD the Moonwalker to your avatar – note that as it is Bento it should reasonably resize to “fit” most humanoid avatars.
Disable your own animation override (the Moonwalker has its own).
Start walking!
While the Moonwalker isn’t intended to be rezzed in-world for use, this gives an idea of its size – although it will automatically resize to “fit” most humanoid avatars as it is Bento
Once you get going you can walk, run and fly in the Moonwalker exactly as you would your avatar on its own, using your preferred keyboard options (e.g. WASD or the arrow keys, etc). When you’re done with it, just detach it once more.
However, when using the Moonwalker, there are some points to note with the Moonwalker:
As a Bento rigged object, the Moonwalker uses the Hind Leg bones – so if you are already wearing an avatar / avatar accessory that uses those bones, it will clash with the Moonwalker.
You should ADD the Moonwalker to your avatar using the set attachment point – if you reposition it to any other attachment point it may not work correctly / you may have unintended outcomes (or as the user guide notes, “you might end up with fire coming out of strange places”!).
Bento can occasionally result in an avatar looking deformed when the Bento element is detached. Should this happen to your avatar in your view, or should you be told by someone else you look odd, just right-click on your avatar and select Reset Skeleton.
As noted, Moonwalker is intended for fun – although there is potential for an assortment of vehicles coming off the back of it. Given it is supplied No Modify (and No Transfer), it is supplied in four colour options and is available in-world at the Culprit store – link below.
Exploring Bellisseria’s new regions in the Moonwalker
La Maison d’Aneli, curated by Aneli Abeyante, opened its November 2019 ensemble exhibition on October 30th, once again offering a rich mix of art.
The featured artists for this exhibition comprise IndigoClaire, Gitu Aura, Beertje Beaumont, Senka Beck, Treacle Darlandes, Lala Lightfool and Norton Lykin. With the exception of Treacle Darlandes’ Undiscovered Planet / La Serre, the individual exhibits primarily focus on 2D art.
La Maison d’Aneli: Beertje Beaumont
Beertje Beaumont and Lala Lightfool present their physical world art, with some very different pieces on offer. Lala presents a display entitled Flowers, a series of watercolour paintings of trees and flowers, some of which are conventionally presented – trees in fields, flowers in pots, while others are more abstract in nature.
For her part, Beertje presents a series of pieces that share a floral theme with Lala’s. However, Beertje prefers working in acrylics, often working them over a layer of sand and gesso. As shown in a number of pieces offered here, this gives them a marvellous textured look that is particularly effective given their subject matter.
Beertje Beaumont: IndigoClaire
With her installation, Senka Beck presents Detoxomania, Reboot, which she describes as her “individualistic version” of her collaboration Detoxomania, presented at La Maison d’Aneli in 2018 (see: Abstract and surreal in Second Life). This is a piece that must be viewed with Advanced Lighting Model enabled (Preferences → Graphics) and with local sounds enabled, presenting a mix of 2D and 3D elements that are best experienced rather than described.
IndigoClaire and Gitu Aura present exhibits that predominantly focus on avatar studies, while Norton’s exhibit comprises a series of pieces intended to be reflections on nature, love, perception and cognition.
Beertje Beaumont: IndigoClaire
Eclectic, diverse and rich in presentation and colour, this is another intriguing selection of art.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 