Tag: Misc Events

Balticon 54: a real world sci-fi convention using Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Balticon Station, Second Life

As we’re all aware, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused a suspension of many events around the world, with some seeking alternative means of going ahead with their programmes.

In April I reported on MuseWeb, a global organisation offering members a range of professional learning opportunities, using Second Life to support its 2020 conference (see: MuseWeb: utilising Second Life in support of a global conference).

Now, this coming weekend – Memorial Weekend in the United States – the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) will be hosting their annual Balticon science fiction convention on-line, and will be using Second Life for a range of social events and activities in support of the convention.

Balticon Station Transfer Station

Running between Friday, May 22nd through Monday, May 25th 2020 inclusive, the convention is free to attendees, although support for it is requested through a Gofundme page, the money from which will go towards the primary work of BSFS – see About the BSFS, below). It will include panels, presentations, and readings hosted as webinars across several platforms, together with guest speaker talks, filk singing (folk singing with a science fiction or fantasy theme), film presentations, etc.

The Second Life element of the convention will be centred on Balticon Station, a multi-level environment centred on one of the Lab’s turnkey region solutions for business use – specifically, the “futuristic” island. At the ground level, this provides a landing point and short-form tutorial on some of the Second Life basics – walking, chatting, using voice, and so on.

Balticon Station – tutorial area

From here, visitors are offered a social lounge, a bar, and a portal hall (together with information boards on using in-world media). A ramp alongside the portal hall provides the way to a seabed facility where visitors can again socialise or, if they wish, go scuba diving (a short tutorial on SL swimming and basic inventory management is also provided).

The portal hall offers a series of experience-based walk-through portals. Several of these will deliver people to spaces is the sky over the island, and other are intended to link the region with other sci-fi related destinations within Second Life – although at the time of my visit, these were still awaiting final configuration.

The Balticon Station underwater facilities

The spaces over the region comprise:

  • A speedway platform, where visitors can participate in slug or segway races.
  • A elven forest, with walks and a hall.
  • An art exhibition hall, featuring physical world art (also connected by a ramp with the speedway).
  • A space “transfer station”.

To help promote the use of Second Life, the convention’s website includes a dedicated page on the platform, which includes an outline of how to obtain the SL viewer and create a account, as well as the SLurl to Balticon Station.

Attendance in-world – or via the other on-line services offered by the convention – is open to any science fiction fan (or anyone curious) within Second Life, and as noted, attendance is entirely free of charge this year.

Balticon Station – Elven Forest

Full details on the convention, its special guests, its programme, virtual dealer spaces, etc., can be found on the the convention’s website.

About Balticon Science Fiction Society

BSFS is a 100% volunteer-run organisation that depends upon Balticon as its main source of revenue. This funding supports efforts to develop new writers and foster literacy among Baltimore City’s disadvantaged youth, and helps pay for the maintenance of the BSFS East Baltimore building, which houses a free lending library of more than 12,000 volumes.

The loss of direct fees (registration, etc)., resulting from the cancellation of Balticon would mean:

  • No 2021 funding to support awards for writers (BSFS normally seed awards for new writers to the tune of US $7,000 a year).
  • No funding for the BSFS Books for Kids programme, which is traditionally supported by fund raised through the convention’s annual auction. Books for Kids provides as much as $1,800 in grants to Baltimore City neighbourhood organisations and schools to help support youth literacy.
  • Funds for the upkeep of the Society’s East Baltimore building.

To help overcome this, BSFS hopes that attendees of the 2020 Virtual Convention, both on-line and in-world in Second Life will consider donations to their GoFundMe campaign. so if you do attend the convention, please consider supporting the work of BSFS through GoFundMe.

Related Links

Previewing Lab Gab with Izzy Linden & the return of the Solution Provider Directory

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The next edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, May 22nd at 10:00 SLT (18:00 UK; 19:00 CET). For those who have not seen the official blog post about it, the segment will feature Izzy Linden of the Second Life land team.

Izzy has been with the Lab for some 13 years, working with the Land Team in various roles. Most recently he has apparently been working on a new Solution Provider’s Directory, which will be a core part of time on the show.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Solution Provider’s Directory formed a part of the Second Life Solution Providers Programme, this provided the means for businesses and organisations seeking specific skills – scripting, building, etc., – to make contact with individuals or companies / organisations providing such capabilities. At its height, the original solution provider programme included general users active within Second Life through to “gold” solution providers – those who had formalised their status (e.g. as a company of some form).

Izzy Linden with Lab Gab host Strawberry Linden

The original Solution Provider programme comprised a dedicated micro-site on the “old” Second Life web properties, and was supported by an in-world group and mailing list (SL Dev), a dedicated in-world region, and a series of SL wiki pages. However, it entered something of a decline from around the start of 2010 onwards, and in May 2012, the Lab announced the programme was to be wound down – see: End of the road for the SL Solution Provider Programme).

Since then – as far as I’m aware, the Solution Provider Directory has lain largely dormant, but as the Lab Gab announcement notes, it is now being revived (and in fact has two “full service” providers already listed), apparently driven in part by the number of business enquiries Linden Lab has received as a result of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Exactly whether or not this means LL will attempt to revive the broader aspects of the old Solution Provider Programme – direct links to relevant micro-sites such as connect.secondlife.com to better surface information on solution providers, together with a mailing list / in-world group and and supporting region, etc., – remains to be seen (although I’ve dropped a question or two on this ahead of the programme!).

If you have any questions for Izzy about concierge work, the Land Team and / or the solution provider programme, you can submit your own questions via the Lab Gab Google form.

As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

Adult Swim special streaming event in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Adult Swim

In what has to be the most curious event to reach Second Life is a while, Linden Lab has teamed up with Adult Swim, the American adult-oriented night-time programming block of the children’s basic cable network Cartoon Network to stream four episodes of The Shivering Truth at a special in-world event.

For those not familiar with it, The Shivering Truth is a stop-motion animated surrealist anthology sketch comedy television series, featuring the voice talents of creator Vernon Chatman, together with cast members such as Janeane Garofalo, Trey Parker, Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Zack Pearlman, Maria Bamford, Conner O’Malley, David Cross, Martha Plimpton, and Peter Serafinowicz.

The Second Life event will take place on Friday, May 8th, 2020, starting at 16:00 SLT. It is to comprise two episodes from the first season of The Shivering Truth, followed by two episodes from the show’s second season, which will start airing in the United States on Sunday, May 10th, 2020.

The in-world streaming will take place in-world at a special location created for the event, with the Lab noting:

During the event, you can chat with fellow fans of the show and other special guests as you experience the show together for the first time in the virtual world. Free limited-edition virtual gifts and mementos will also be distributed during and after the show — just look for the “Free Gifts” kiosk near the front entrance.

– Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event, Linden Lab, May 5th, 2020

The showing is open to anyone to attend – details below – however, those attending will need to be running the special CEF (Chrome embedded Framework) viewer issued as a release candidate on Thursday, April 30th. This viewer will help with streaming content on more sites in general, with the Lab further noting:

The event also marks the first media partnership utilising the new limited-release Second Life Viewer, which enables content creators and entertainment companies to broadcast live video events to virtual world audiences. In the future, you may see several new forms of entertainment including movie and TV premiers, live concerts, and artist/fan meet-and-greets. We’re very excited to partner with Adult Swim for the début of this new feature, which we plan to integrate into the main Second Life Viewer release in the coming weeks.

– Exclusive Adult Swim Second Life Event, Linden Lab, May 5th, 2020

Those wishing to be a part of the event can do so as follows (again, as per the Lab’s blog post):

  • Download the CEF RC viewer and install it ahead of the event. Note that other viewers will not  be compatible with the live stream during the screening event.
  • On the day of the event, this link can be used to teleport to the venue from 15:30 SLT. Early attendance is recommended, as seating is extremely limited.

For those unable to make the premier, the programme will be repeated hourly through until 21:00 SLT on Friday, May 8th.

To help promote the event and steer non-SL users to the in-world venue, the Lab has launched a special Second Life landing page focused on it, and which provides further information on the event and the sneak peek video of the venue, embedded at the end of this article.

The banner for the Second Life landing page created for The Shivering Truth event

The choice of Adult Swim to premier a new service / option that is clearly intended to appeal to an audience of potential interested partners from outside Second Life is an interesting one.

Certainly, similar events held in Sansar (notably around the Star Trek franchise, which have seen cast members from the various Trek incarnations, as well as writers and other backstage crew, mixing it with users and fans at meet-and-greet / QA sessions, proved to be an popular means of drawing people into that platform – if not necessarily retaining them as engaged users. So it will be interesting to see who else the Lab has lined up for such events / streaming activities like this is the future, and what the response is among SL users and non-users alike.

Related Links

Lab Gab 23 summary: meet the EEP team!

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 23rd edition of Lab Gab live streamed on Friday, April 24, featuring Rider Linden, Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden, who between them form the core team behind the Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), officially released by Linden Lab on Monday, April 20th.

The official video of the segment is available via You Tube, and is embedded at the end of this article. The following is a summary of the key topics discussed and responses to questions asked.

Rider Linden is a Senior Software Engineer who has been with Linden Lab for just over five years – although his familiarity with Second Life goes back beyond that, as he is one of the many personnel LL have recruited from the ranks of Second Life users. He was responsible for initially defining the EEP project. He then went on to develop the viewer controls for EEP, taking considerable feedback from users along the way, as well as working with the rendering team during the project’s development. More recently, he has transitioned over the the simulator team, working on that side of the SL and routinely attending the Simulator User Group meetings.

Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden are more recent hires at the Lab, both are working on the rendering side of Second Life. Both have been Lindens for around 6-7 months, and have really cut their teeth as Lindens whilst working on EEP. Neither was a resident prior to joining the Lab, and both are now looking forward to tackling more graphics-related work within the viewer.

Euclid, Rider and Ptolemy Linden will be joined Strawberry Linden to discuss EEP

What Is EEP?

EEP is a set of environmental enhancements for Second Life that supersede th use of Windlight XML files. The primary aim of the project was to make lighting / atmospheric / water environments easier to create and use within Second Life and extend the ability to customise them to the parcel level. In brief EEP:

  • Uses environment objects that you can keep in your inventory and / or share with others – including selling (subject to the SL permissions system) via in-world stores and on the Marketplace.
  • Provides parcel-level control of environments.
  • Allows up to four different, independently controlled sky layers.
  • Allows custom textures for the Sun, Moon and clouds.
  • Provides an extended day cycle of up to 168 hours (thus allowing a 7-day, 24-hour day / night cycle to be defined, for example).
  • Means that as environments settings are simulator-side, and so by default are automatically seen by anyone using any EEP enabled viewer on entering the region / estate / parcel.
  • Still allows the use of “personal” settings seen only be the use applying them, for the purposes of photography, machinima, etc.
  • Provides additional LSL controls for environments.

EEP Q&A

Unresolved Issues

EEP was promoted to release status with 75 issues on the viewer listed as “unresolved” (viewer version 6.4.0.540188). Will LL continue to work to resolve these?

  • LL was focused on clearing what were considered to be major / severe issues with the system before releasing.
  • Remaining issues are viewed as annoyance / edge cases rather than things that prevent EEP from being used. These will be cleared up as time allows, but not within what might be considered a dedicated EEP project at this point in time.
  • The exception to this will be any issue which proves to be a continuing problem for users in trying to use EEP, and which becomes a source of widespread forum complaint and / or the subject of bug reports.

Can the EEP UI Elements be Reduced in Size?

Several of the EEP UI elements take up a lot of screen real estate. Can these be reduced in size in future viewers / altered so that they can be resized by users?

  • There is a wider project at the Lab to revisit a lot of the viewer UI.
  • The EEP UI elements will like fall under this work.

Can EEP Settings be Applied via a Drop-down List, Rather than Attached?

  • No, as they are contained in inventory assets.
  • However, there is another broader than EEP project to look at inventory in general, and providing the means for users to preview EEP items which may, as it matures, help.

Does EEP Affect Teleports / Region Crossings?

(Asked as a result of the April 21st issues, which were not EEP related, but part of wider Internet issues within the United States).

  • Not at all.
  • The simulators have been supporting EEP for over a year thus far.
  • The additional data carried through  TP  / region crossing due to an applied EEP asset is minimal.
  • Transitions in EEP are handle very fast, and shouldn’t interfere with physical region crossings in vehicles [it has been noted at Simulator User Group meeting that if you are travelling fast enough to pass from region to region to region before EEP can fully transition from the first the the second environment, it will skip the second and go directly to rendering the third].

Further Information on EEP

Does EEP Work on TPVs?

  • As the code is adopted by them, yes.

Will In-World Objects Need Updating to Look Right Under EEP?

  • A lot of time has been spent by the Lab trying to ensure that EEP renders objects as closely as possible to how they look under Windlight.
  • It’s note entirely one-to-one in all situations, and there may be some subtle differences. However, the hope is that for the majority of objects, EEP shouldn’t present a significantly different look.
  • If there are significant breakages in how some object look, the request is for creators to raise a bug report JIRA on them (and provide a sample to the Lab, if possible / requested).

How Can EEP Settings / Object be Created? Can they be Sold?

  • EEP settings / assets can be created in inventory with EEP-enabled viewers and experimented with.
    • For EEP viewer, the Library includes a group of settings (Library → Environments) that can be copied to Inventory and then edited and experimented with / used.
Creating a new EEP asset via the + button (1) or via right-clicking on the Settings folder and the selecting the required asset type from the create menu > My Settings option (2)

Can I Use My Old Windlights with EEP?

  • Windlight settings cannot be used directly with EEP. Windlight used XML files external to the viewer; EEP uses settings contained with SL inventory assets.
  • Windlight settings can be imported into EEP however.
Use the Import button in the edit floater to open a file picker and select the windlight to be imported

Will There Be More Rendering / Graphics Improvements for SL?

  • Rendering enhancement are on-going (e.g. via the Love Me Render project, which periodically releases RC viewers with rendering updates and fixes).
  • Id there is something specific you would like to see, please raise a feature request for consideration.

WILL SL Ever Have A New Rendering Engine?

  • Second Life cannot really adopt a commercial rendering engine, as the platform is too highly adopted to the user-generated content in-world.
  • However, as noted, it is actively being worked on for improvements, and this includes removing legacy code where it is no longer required.
    • An example of this is the EEP viewer code removes the ability to turn off the basic shaders in the viewer.
  • There are certain imperatives that are driving some system changes related to the rendering engine – such as Apple discontinuing support for OpenGL.
  • Trying to re-engineer SL to use a commercial engine also simply doesn’t make sense, as it would mean “throwing away” all that has been developed so far and practically re-engineering SL from the ground up.

 

Previewing Lab Gab 23: meet the EEP team!

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The 23rd edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, April 24th at 10:00 SLT (18:00 UK; 19:00 CET). For those who have not seen the official blog post about it, the segment will feature the team primarily behind EEP – the Environment Enhancement Project: Rider Linden, Ptolemy Linden and Euclid Linden.

Rider Linden is a Senior Software Engineer who has been with Linden Lab for just over five years – although his familiarity with Second Life goes back beyond that, as he is one of the many personnel LL have recruited from the ranks of Second Life users. He was responsible for initially defining the EEP project. He then went on to develop the viewer controls for EEP, taking considerable feedback from users along the way, as well as working with the rendering team during the project’s development.

Ptolemy and Euclid Linden are more recent hires at the Lab, both are working on the rendering side of Second Life. Both have been Lindens for around 6-7 months, although I confess I have no idea if their familiarity with SL extends back further than that. Since joining the Lab’s team, both have been engaged in clearing-up the rendering issues with EEP and have been regulars at the Content Creation User Group meetings.

Euclid, Rider and Ptolemy Linden will be joining Strawberry Linden to discuss EEP on Friday, April 24th

As EEP was officially released on Monday, April 20th, all three are appearing on Lab Gab to discuss EEP – but I have little doubt they’ll endeavour to answer more general questions on the viewer and rendering. If you have a question you’d like to put them, make sure you submit it via the Lab Gab Google form.

As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, and if all goes according to plan, I’ll have a summary of the video (and the video itself) available soon after the the broadcast, for those unable to watch live.

EEP Links

Previewing Lab Gab 22: Caledonia Skytower

Posted on by Inara Pey
via Linden Lab

The next edition of Lab Gab will be live streamed on Friday, April 17th, 11:00 SLT, and while it is not a show featuring a member of the Lab’s team, I’m mentioning it here because it will be featuring someone I consider to be an exceptionally talented woman, whose work oft runs entirely under the radar for most users  – and the amount of work she puts into Second Life is incredible.

Caledonia Skytower is the director of Seanchai Library in Second Life, a post she has held for as long as I’ve known her, and in which she organises, frequently hosts and often designs, the groups activities and events.

For those not familiar with Seanchai Library, it is perhaps the longest-running group in Second Life devoted to bringing stories, literature, poems and more to life in Second Life and beyond through the spoken word. Founded in 2008, Seanchai Library has presented thousands of storytelling events across the grid, and in the process has raised thousands of US dollars for numerous charities. The group takes its name, which it formally adopted in 2010 two years after being founded, from seanchai (pr. Shawn-a-kee – a traditional Irish storyteller/historian).

As well as bringing a weekly series of readings and events at their headquarters at Holly Kai Park, Seanchai Library has also made numerous immersive storytelling presentations across Second Life, including their annual Christmas trip to Victorian England with The Dickens Project, and events such as an immersive telling of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, to name but two. In addition, Seanchai Library lends its skills to events and activities run by others across the grid.

The timing of Strawberry’s interview with Caledonia couldn’t be better, as this year marks Seanchai Library’s 12th year of activities in Second Life (They’ve also built a presence in Kitely), and next week they will again be supporting Fantasy Faire.

Caledonia Skytower (l) with Strawberry Linden on the Lab Gab set

Cale herself is a gifted theatre producer, writer and storyteller. She has also – whilst via in Second Life – brought the virtual and the physical together with a joint presentation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatesby with the Tacoma Little Theatre, which allowed audiences attending a stage performance based on the book to go into a virtual environment designed by Cale and Seanchai Library, and learn more about the novel, the period in which it was set and F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.

Given this, she will make an engaging guest on the show and offer people a real glimpse inside the work of Seanchai Library. As usual, the programme will be streamed via YouTube, Facebook, Mixer, or Periscope, so be sure to tune in!

My thanks to Berry for responding so positively to the suggestion Cale is approached to appear on the show.