Books, magic and pirates in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, September 15th 18:30: Tilly and the Bookwanderers

Eleven year-old Tilly has lived above her grandparent’s bookshop ever since her mother disappeared shortly after she was born. Like the rest of her family, Tilly loves nothing more than to escape into the pages of her favourite stories.

One day Tilly realises that classic children’s characters are appearing in the shop through the magic of `book wandering’ – crossing over from the page into real life.

With the help of Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland. Tilly is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to her mother all those years ago, so she bravely steps into the unknown, unsure of what adventure lies ahead and what dangers she may face.

Join Caledonia Skytower at the Golden Horseshoe to find out more!

Monday, September 16th 19:00: Moonheart

Gyro Muggins reads Charles de Lint’s 1994 novel.

When Sara and Jamie discovered the seemingly ordinary artefacts, they sensed the pull of a dim and distant place. A world of mists and forests, of ancient magic, mythical beings, ageless bards – and restless evil.

Now, with their friends and enemies alike–Blue, the biker; Keiran, the folk musician; the Inspector from the RCMP; and the mysterious Tom Hengyr; Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of Tamson House, that sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.

Sweeping from ancient Wales to the streets of Ottawa today, Moonheart will entrance you with its tale of this world and the other one at the very edge of sight and the unforgettable people caught up in the affairs of both. A tale of music, and motorcycles, and fey folk beyond the shadows of the moon. A tale of true magic; the tale of Moonheart.

Tuesday, September 17th 19:00: Poems Line Jazz, like Poems

with Ktadhn Vesuvino, live on stream.

Wednesday, September 18th: The Night Before Pirate Day

With R. Crap Mariner, Da5id Abbot, Corwyn Allen, and The Dread Pirate Caledonia at The Pirate Cove.

Thursday, September 19th

Note: both Thursday sessions will take place at The Pirate Cove.

19:00: Jack Sparrow: The Siren Song, Part 2

Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew have suddenly fallen under a sinister spell. While continuing on their quest for the Sword of Corts, they find themselves entranced by an ethereal song which leads them away from their quarry.

With Shandon Loring, also in Kitely – teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.

21:00: Seanchai late Night

Contemporary Sci-Fi-Fantasy from on-line sources with Finn Zeddmore.

An engaging pot pourri of art at Focus Gallery in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
The Exploratorium, Focus Gallery – MBTY

Focus Magazine’s gallery space is constantly evolving, something that makes any repeat visit both interesting and enjoyable, both for the art on display and to see what is happening in general. My latest visit was in part a reflection of this, as I wanted to see the latest addition to the gallery’s exhibition space: the Exploratorium of Art.

Located at the southern end of the gallery’s skybox space, the Exploratorium presents an “underground” exhibition space for artists where they can display and – if they wish – sell their work.

The Exploratorium, Focus Gallery – Loegan Magic

It is a semi-permanent exhibition – by that I mean, they can exhibit as long as they feel they would like to or until they run out of fresh content, and artists replenish the work at least every month. Ideally, artists will be members of the group and have an interest in participating in the community.

– Focus Magazine Gallery co-owner Angela Thespian, discussing the Exploratorium

Currently, spaces within the Exploratorium are offered to artists on the basis of direct invitation, or as a result of names being passed on by other artists within the community; there is no fee charged to artists for mounting an exhibition.

The Exploratorium, Focus Gallery – Wanderer

Some 16 spaces are offered in the exhibition hall, with some familiar names on display at the time of my visit, including Anibrm Jung, CybeleMoon, Focus co-owner, PatrickofIreland, as well as two or artists whose work I was seeing for the first time. Together, those currently displaying present a rich mix of landscape and avatar studies

Alongside of the Exploratorium is the Focus Artist in Residence (FAIR) gallery, which at the time of my visit featured the work of Jos Loll, Finn Somerset, Kaleb Avedon and Bryce Sun. These are, as with the June FAIR exhibition I reviewed (see: Focus Gallery in Second Life, June 2019). Having witnessed his first exhibition just a couple of months back, I was particularly pleased to see a further display of work by Kaleb Avedon – who is also a gifted live performer in Second Life.

Focus Gallery -Doc Romano

The main gallery space, located in the focus office building, features an exhibition of work by Doc Battitude. I admit to being more familiar with Doc via the region designs of CandleWood (see: Touring CandleWood in Second Life, March 2019) and Iona Shores (see: Exploring Iona Shores in Second Life, June 2019).

When it comes to his art, Doc offers an eye for detail and framing that easily matches that see within CandleWood and Iona Shores and demonstrated by his partner, AdalynneReed. The images here focus primarily on male and female avatars, particularly on the upper level of the gallery space, while the lower level includes a selection of landscape pieces. The latter are, for me, eye-catching, but I must confess The Windmill and The lighthouse Tale particularly captivated me.

Focus Gallery -Doc Romano

Rounding-out the exhibitions on offer during my visit is an outdoor selection of art called The Happiness Photo Walk, featuring images and photos from Second Life and the physical world, taken by Feature group members of things that make them happy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of these feature dogs, although I was a little surprised that only one featured one of our Ruling Overlords – a grey cat looking suitably unimpressed!

Focus Gallery continues to engage with the art on display, and with a developing programme of art-related events and activities, including talks and discussions by artists, the gallery is a recommended destination for all those supportive of art in Second Life.

SLurl Details

Sansar Product Meetings week #37: feedback and Q&A

Posted on by Inara Pey

The following notes were taken from my audio recording of the September 12th (week #37) Sansar Product Meeting, which took the form of a Q&A  / feedback session. As always, key points are summarised, but please also refer to the official video. Note that streaming may have been curtailed prior to the end of the meeting; as I was watching the stream, I have no idea if questions continued to be addressed after streaming ceased.

“Major” Launch and Challenges

  • Sansar is preparing for a “major” launch with one or more partners on September 24th.
  • This will apparently see several more Core Portals at the Nexus come in to use (according to the Nexus maps, one was already reserved the Monstercat, LL’s music event partner).
  • In the run-up to this, there are two Sansar challenges:
    • Future Fashion: design an outfit that can be featured on the main Sansar Store page and which fits with the theme of the upcoming launch. This runs until September 23rd.
    • Attack of the Clones: a series of running (I believe) challenges for users to create avatar likeness of famous people using Sansar’s facial morphing capabilities (not made outside of Sansar and then uploaded). The first selection of faces runs through until Monday September 16th, and features the faces of Ripley (aka Signourey Weaver) from the Alien franchise, Lando Calrissian (aka Billy Dee Williams, not Donald Glover) from the Star Wars films or someone called Pow3r (no, I’ve no idea who this is either). I gather entries are to be posted to Flickr.
Clone one of these three in a Sansar contest. Don’t ask me if it’s just for fun or if there is a prize, as the info is apparently conveniently buried in a Sansar Discord channel.

I’m unable to give further context to these challenges, as the details are buried somewhere in Sansar’s Discord pages (where contests and competitions apparently don’t even have their own channel).

User-Created Guides

A new section has been created in the  forums for specifically for user-created guides, tutorials and tips.

Q&A

Avatar Related

  • Can a texture wheel be added for selecting textures for skins, nails, eyes, etc? No, but texture layering will be in a future release.
  • When will it be possible to change custom skins on an avatar, rather than having to change the entire avatar look? Soon, but dependent on the Sansar licensing system being extended to cover the avatar. This also goes for selling facial presets.
  • Will the baked shadowing issues for under the arms, under the nose, etc., be fixed? There is an upcoming point release to fix the underarm shadows, and may address under the nose, etc.
  • Marvelous Designer related:
    • Will Sansar all the import of more than one materials face from Marvelous Designer? It should, so this may be a bug and will be investigated.
    • Better pining for clothing when editing MD clothing  is being investigated.
  • Body morphing and shape:
    • Full body morphing, when deployed will only be for the system avatar and avatars built off of it. An update system will be supplied to transition all such avatars over to body morph support.
    • Body morphing will not be available for fully custom-built avatars; what will be provided in the future is the ability to transform bones prior to upload.
    • The female avatar will remain “as is” (oddly elongated) for reasons previously indicated (to give a better baseline for body deformation for both male and female avatars, and to allow gender-neutral clothing).
    • It is hoped full body morphing will help alleviate this by allowing users the freedom to alter their body shapes, and allow LL to provide a greater range of starter avatar shapes for incoming users.
Avatar proportions: both male and female body proportions are roughly in keeping with the “norms” – but the female appears to have been vertically stretched (head and body) in order to match the male avatar, resulting in an odd, thin and hipless look

Nexus / Codex Portal Related

  • There is a degree of negativity from some creators towards the Nexus. Given it is less than a month old, it is difficult to tell if this is simply personal discomfiture over such a clear change from the past for those with long-term experience in using the Atlas or whether it is genuinely leading to a bottleneck in discovery / exploration by incoming users.
    • The Lab is monitoring traffic flow through the Nexus, but no changes are being considered at the moment.
    • Changes will be made if the metrics tend to show the Nexus is bottlenecking discovery.
    • improving discoverability within the Prime Portal is being considered, such as adding more searchable categories to the Portal (presumably things like “Science Fiction”, “Games”, etc), and better surfacing of particularly popular worlds.
  • A more elegant means of toggling between logging in to the Nexus or a user’s Home Space is being considered.
  • New loading screens for worlds are to be deployed fairly soon. They will come in two phases: improvements to the loading screen space, followed by UI improvements.
    • These will be tied to the Sansar “backstory”
    • A request has been made for load screen to contain more information, such as the descriptions, creator name(s), etc., from the Atlas / Codex / Prime Portal entry. This will be considered.
  • Can portals be made more interactive (e.g. walk through to move between worlds)? Could an image of the destination world be displayed within and active portal? Both ideas are already being considered.
  • An upcoming change to the Codex will mean that the master instance of any world that is used to create an event space host an event will be added to the Codex of all users attending the event, always direct “re-visits” to that world.
  • The current cap of 20 avatars per Nexus instance will be raised in the near future.
  • The Nexus might be considered as the venue for seasonal events organised by Linden Lab.

General Questions

  • Valve Index support:
    • The headset has been tested and appears to work, but not clear if some client-side changes will be required.
    • No plans as yet to implement the Valve Index finger tracking.
  • Chat / messaging related:
    • Will direct person-to-person Voice calls be enabled? Not really been discussed.
    • Will capabilities such as spell check be added to text chat? No plans, but perhaps in the future.
    • Can an audible notification be added for incoming messages? Will be added to the list of things under consideration; if implemented, will include an option for be disabled for those who don’t like it.
    • Work on chat / messaging features and improvements have been somewhat pushed aside due to the work going into the Nexus, etc., and Avatar 2.0, the questing system and the XP system – but they are something LL plan to get back to.
  • Camera related:
    • Freecamming from sit points: can the F4 (Desktop mode) freecam capability be made available to users when using sit points (in chairs, etc). Under consideration.
    • Will it be possible to focus on in-scene objects and then zoom into them, a-la Second Life? This is on the Lab’s wish list for the Edit mode, but is not a priority.
    • Better zooming at the avatar’s lower body in look book when dressing / adjusting clothing has been requested.
  • Will the ability to upload / edit terrain heightmaps be returning to Sansar? No current plans to do so.
  • Will an Abandon button be made available for users to remove unwanted and incomplete quests from their quest log? Yes, likely to appear in the next-but-one release.
  • Will it be possible to have “neighbourhoods” in Sansar – experiences with individual plots where users can place their own “pod” to live? Unlikely.
    • Landon McDowell, the Lab’s Chief Product Officer indicated that while it is not officially part of the development roadmap for Sansar, ways in which to “stitch” worlds together are still being thought about at the Lab – something Ebbe Altberg alluded to possibly happening back before Sansar made its initial closed Alpha début.
    • The main mechanism that exists – and will continue – in Sansar for “linking” worlds is for creators to drop portals to one another’s worlds (a-la region-to-region teleports in SL).
  • Feature requests and feedback: there are multiple channels through which feature requests and feedback for Sansar can be put to LL (e.g. the feature request form thread, product meetings, Discord, general forum discussion, etc.). LL is looking to try to rationalised this and formalise a process for gather feedback / requests and reviewing / vetting / prioritising against current plans etc.
    • It had been indicated (2017/18) that LL would look to move away from ZenDesk for their bug / feature / documentation / community / blog tool. However, it now appears they are somewhat hoist by their own petard, and unwilling to pivot away from it due to the investment in building a knowledge base.

The caverns and castle of Abrahamstrup in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Abrahamstrup, September 2019 – click any image for full size

It’s been a while since I’ve last written about Binemust, the Full region held by Biné Rodenberger, a place we’ve oft enjoyed visiting for its landscapes and gardens both above and below the region’s waters. However, we were recently drawn back due to Biné having spent the last few months creating something very new and different for the region, and which she recently opened to the public.

Abrahamstrup as the region is now known, presents a great mountain of an island rising from the sea and topped by the stern walls of a tall, blocky castle keep, sans surrounding curtain walls and courtyards. The island rises steeply from a narrow ring of shingle beach, the rock offers no real means to ascend to the great keep – at least from the outside. How then, to reach it? The About Land description holds a clue:

A Mountain Island – A Labyrinth of Caves – A Castle.

Abrahamstrup, September 2019

And indeed, on the shoreline facing the landing point – located on a deck built out over the water and home to a small shack – is an entrance to a cave or cavern at the foot of the mountain, the board walk connecting deck to shore pointing a crooked finger towards it.

Those arriving are offered an introductory note card that explains more about what to expect, together with a flashlight. Whether the latter is required largely depends on personal choice – and possibly whether visitors opt for the local environment settings or tinker with them viewer-side. During our first visit, I opted to initially go with my preferred viewer-side settings before switching back to the region’s environment. For the pictures shown here, I used ~Clouds Fluffy White Elven Sky, by Stevie Davros, tweaked a little, together with the region’s settings.

Abrahamstrup, September 2019

Crossing to the shore and entering the first cavern gives a hint of the engaging curio of exploration that awaits: a great façade modelled on that of Al Khazneh (The Treasury) at Petra in Jordan faces the cavern entrance, while to one side, glowing flowers suggest a path to the heavy door of the façade. Across the cavern, a large sign suggests people EAT – with places to do so close by –  while another offers the invitation LET’S GET WEIRD.

Pass through the massive wooden door of the façade, and the path plunges downward into the first chamber of a network of caverns and tunnels. Each of these caves – about which I’d prefer not to say too much lest it spoil discovery – offers a certain setting, with those underwater offering a feel for actually being underwater, despite the flaming torches lining the tunnel walls (having the viewer’s Advanced lighting Model enabled  – Preferences → Graphics is strongly recommended during a visit), giving them a wonderful fantasy feel.

Abrahamstrup, September 2019

Along the way through the tunnels is a sign offering the direction to reach the castle, but when exploring for the first time, I recommend ignoring it and going in the other direction. This allows you to visit the rest of the caverns and tunnels first and avoid possibly missing what’s on offer. One of these tunnels may lead you back outside through a narrow cleft sitting above the eastern beach, if so, there are some local points of interest to see before re-entering the tunnels once more.

When you are ready, the ways to the castle can be found within one of the underwater chambers. And yes, I did mean “ways” – there are two teleport options available: a door to the very top of the keep’s central tower (use the pail of flowers and candles through which you emerge onto the roof to make a return), and a mirror that leads into the castle itself.

Abrahamstrup, September 2019

Throughout her time in Second Life, Biné has been a patron of the arts, and this has always been reflected in her region designs, as continues to be the case within Abrahamstrup. In fact, it is the presence of pieces by number of artists within this design that also make me hesitate in revealing too much of what lies within caverns and castle rooms. However, careful exploration will reveal pieces by the likes of Cica Ghost, Haveit Neox – whose alien and telescope found within the main hall of the castle offer something of  a nod towards his Paper Tower (see: A Carnival of Architecture to say farewell to a landmark) -, Bryn Oh and Kilik Lekvoda.

Set off to the north-east corner of the region and sitting on its own black rock island is a further curio: a Russian (Soviet era?) communal swimming pool, apparently broken and battered by time and perhaps tide. Sitting almost like an industrial era left-over, it presents a very different setting to castle and caves, and can be reached via the shoreline beach from the landing point.

Abrahamstrup, September 2019

My one regret with Abrahamstrup is that in order to make room for it, Biné has had to remove most of her marvellous underwater gardens – long a highlight of visits to Binemust. True, for those who plunge below the waves, some elements remain, but the gardens, paths, sunken trees and artistic corners have, for a time, vanished. Nevertheless, the island with its caves and waiting discoveries, together with the high castle keep offer more than enough to keep explorers and photographers happy, making Abrahamstrup a worthy visit.

Note: visitors must have Payment Information On File to access Abrahamstrup.

SLurl Details and Links

2019 SL User Groups 37/2: Content Creation summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Athenaeum, July 2019 – blog post

The following notes are taken from the Content Creation User Group (CCUG) meeting, held on Thursday, September 12th 2019 at 13:00 SLT. These meetings are chaired by Vir Linden, and agenda notes, meeting SLurl, etc, are usually available on the Content Creation User Group wiki page.

Animesh Follow-On – Project Muscadine

Project Summary

Currently: offer the means to change an Animesh size parameters via LSL.

Current Status

  • The viewer updated to version 6.4.0.530473 on Wednesday, September 11th – however, this is to parity with the EEP RC viewer, rather than any new features being added.
  • Viewer work is currently on the back-burner for now, while Vir is working on ARCTan. As such, it’s likely that the project will proceed with small updates  – such as those in the current project viewer – rather than gathering together a larger number of updates and releasing them together.
  • A potential update still under consideration is to revise the current throttle (limiting Animesh character to updating twice every 10 seconds). This was put in place to prevent people using the system as an alternative means of animation (and potentially thrashing performance)s.
    • Some have done informal testing with up to 20 Animesh characters changing shape under scripted control as fast as the current throttle allows and using 115 parameters, apparently with little performance impact.
  • Animesh objects currently count towards the overall avatar imposter limit – although it is possible these might be split.
    • The “pro” side of this is that Animesh objects have a fairly fixed rendering complexity.
    • The “con” side is how things might change if Animesh characters start having attachments.
    • It would also mean further complexity with graphics settings in the viewer.

Environment Enhancement Project

Project Summary

A set of environmental enhancements (e.g. the sky, sun, moon, clouds, and water settings) to be set region or parcel level, with support for up to 7 days per cycle and sky environments set by altitude. It uses a new set of inventory assets (Sky, Water, Day), and includes the ability to use custom Sun, Moon and cloud textures. The assets can be stored in inventory and traded through the Marketplace / exchanged with others, and can additionally be used in experiences.

Due to performance issues, the initial implementation of EEP will now likely not include certain atmospherics such as crepuscular rays (“God rays”).

Resources

Current Status

  • Work continues on rendering bug fixes.
  • There is still no indication as to when this might be promoted to release status.
  • A lot of EEP documentation is currently in the forum threads. There has been a request to move this to the wiki – or at least is the Knowledge Base, which is current a focus for documentation from the Lab.

ARCTan

Project Summary

An attempt to re-evaluate object and avatar rendering costs to make them more reflective of the actual impact of rendering both. The overall aim is to try to correct some inherent negative incentives for creating optimised content (e.g. with regards to generating LOD models with mesh), and to update the calculations to reflect current resource constraints, rather than basing them on outdated constraints (e.g. graphics systems, network capabilities, etc).

Current Status

  • Progress has now resumed, with Vir working on hooking new data gathering code into the viewer code base to allow more widespread data gathering.
  • The code currently isn’t available in a public viewer repository (in part because it is not ready).
  • It has been suggested that allowing Firestorm to use the code would potentially allow for a broader cross-section of representative data to be gathered. However, the core data gathering code is baked into viewer, and making that alone available for FS to adopt at this point in time could be difficult.
  • There are concerns that major changes in the costs of in-world objects could see an increase in Land Impact values that could in turn see large amounts of content returned.
    • This is something the Lab is concerned about as well, and it has previously been indicated that if this proves to be a significant risk, then steps will be taken to mitigate this – see Project ARCTan in 2018 SL UG updates #7/3: TPV and Web Meetings.
    • It’s been suggested that ARCTan could offer a new “invisible” mesh asset type: anything that is created uploaded after ARCTan is (eventually) deployed must conform to ARCTan; mesh in-world prior to ARCTan is not governed by ARCTan – as was done with Materials. Vir indicated this might be one option, at least during the initial roll-out of ARCTan.
  • There is a lot of chatter / speculation in the forums about what ARCTan “might” or “will” be; Vir’s response to this is again that no decisions have thus far been made by the Lab as the project is still in its early stages. Therefore, people should not put too much stock in forum thread unless it is posted by the Lab.
  • It’s important to note that beyond data gathering, LL haven’t even decided how ambitious the project will be overall.

Bakes on Mesh

Project Summary

Extending the current avatar baking service to allow wearable textures (skins, tattoos and clothing) to be applied directly to mesh bodies and heads.

Resources

Current Status

  • There has been extensive discussion on Bakes on Mesh in the forums, including ideas on future extensions, some of which are being pulled in by the Lab for additional consideration (which is not to say they will happen).
  • There is an unofficial list for BoM support (last updated at the end of August) which may help those interested.
  • Cathy Foil has been investigating the local edit issue she reported at the last meeting (see:) wherein odd results when using the appearance editor that correct themselves on exiting the appearance editor and when baked via the Baking Service. In her case, it appears the problem was due to a slip-up at her end of things involving a mesh with different UVs, although a Jira has been filed on a related issue.
  • There is a report that eye textures applied via BoM appear darker than if applied directly to the mesh. A Bug report is to be raised on this.

Art vignettes at Solo Arte in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Solo Arte, September 2019

Currently open at Solo Arte is an art garden created by Terrygold and MelaniaBis that features the work of invited artists displayed in a series of pods. At the time of my visit, the garden featured the work of CioTToLiNa Xue, Dekka Raymaker, Annalisa Muliaina, and Terrygold, together and an exhibition of art by Magda Schmidtzau. These are individual exhibits, rather than a combined installation – Magda’s art being the most recent addition. As noted, Each artist has their work displayed in an individual pod, with the the pods either placed on, or close to, the garden’s lawn.

In this, the setting has something of a feel of the Explore and Enjoy exhibition from 2018, also designed and curated by Terrygold and MelaniaBis (see:  Solo Arte: “explore and enjoy” in Second Life), albeit on a more modest scale. I have no idea if further pods will be added given the available space, although there appears to be room for more, if required. As it is, the four available at the time of my visit made for a contrasting group of 2D and 3D displays.

Solo Arte – Magda Schmidtzau (l) and CioTToLiNa Xue (r) – September 2019

Truth be told, I don’t have too much to say about the individual exhibits, as they all tned to speak for themselves. CioTToLiNa offers New Trips, which carries something of an echo of her piece from Explore and Enjoy, while Terrygold presents  a piece from her 2018 installation, Rusted Farm (see: A Rusted Farm in Second Life), while Magda’s 2D art is, as always, captivating in it richness of avatar studies.

However, the reality is these are art vignettes that should be seen for themselves – and in the case of Dekka’s, tried, as it is interactive – so I’ll leave you yo pay them a visit.

Solo Arte, Dekka Raymaker – September 2019

SLurl Details