Tag: My SL

Two thousand, five hundred and fifty-seven days; that’s a tad over 365 weeks, or around 84 months. Or to put it another way, seven years.

That’s how long I’ve been involved in SL in this incarnation. Even when you take into account the fact that I’m not actually here 24 / 7 (although back in the early days, it certainly felt that way!), that’s still a pretty long time. Not as long as some have been here, I know; but it still boggles my little brain.

When writing on the occasion of my last rez day, I focused on a couple of the ways in which SL had changed for me as a result of exploring and discovering new pastimes; I also wondered, albeit idly,  as to what 2013 would bring, given it marked SL’s tenth anniversary.

As I suspected (and no tea-leaf gazing was required to reach the conclusion at the time), SL is still here, still moving forward and still with the same worries: tier, users, retention and so on (something I’ll have a lot more to say about shortly, trust me 🙂 ).

We’ve seen the 10th anniversary celebrations come and go, marked by events big and small. Those longing to SL in the media once more got their wash granted, with Rod Humble fairly bouncing around interview-wise, even if the message was a little confined – something I encountered when asked to interview him for Prim Perfect magazine in June (although the interview didn’t appear in print until August). Even so, there were some very good articles on Second Life to be found, as well as the expected lazy journalism on the part of others, as I also had a poke at.

The year has, of course, seen a lot of LL’s projects on the platform come to fruition. We’ve had Server-side appearance arrive in while is quite possibly one of the most complex updates / deployments to the platform in its entire history, and certainly the most successful first-time deployment on record for a change so far-reaching in extent and potential impact had anything gone wrong. With it, one of the longest-running (and most oft-complained about) banes of Second Life was almost completely eradicated: that of bake fail. For this project alone, the Lab does deserve a decent hat tip of recognition and a word or six of thanks.

We’ve also seen the viewer release process improved, allowing the Lab to push through fixes and updates a lot more quickly than before, as well as learning from the issues of a year ago when viewer updates were badly bunged-up for over two months by a series of recalcitrant bugs. Then there is Monty Linden’s work on the viewer / server communications front, Andrew Linden’s work (with others) on interest lists, Baker Linden’s tweaks, nips, tucks and all with various projects, and lots more besides. All of which add-up to an overall improvement in the user experience in SL, even if some of the work has yet to be completely polished-up. Nyx and his team are working to ease things on the inventory side of the fence, and of course we’ve had, or are in the process of getting, further new toys to play with – materials, the upcoming experience tools / keys, many improvements to the viewer and so on.

Yes, there are still bugs and issues and worries and upsets (dare I say … T…O…S?), but overall, 12 months on, we’re all still here and the world hasn’t blown up. For my part, I’ve continued exploring SL (as per my travelogue pieces), and flying and boating still feature in my in-world activities. Admittedly, I’ve now graduated onto something  bigger than a Warbug (as featured in last year’s post) for the flying, and have swapped the sailboat for an E-Tech Sparrow 2, which I’ve named Lady of Calas after Ty and Truck bestowed that honorific  upon me earlier in the year, something which touched me quite deeply.

While I remain a Premium member, regulars here will be aware that my interest in boating and flying has led me back into renting land in SL, rather than living within my little Linden Home (which I still have, given it is in a rather nice location). As I noted yesterday, the “new” place has been undergoing a re-vamp over the last 24 hours, and even now, I’m just finishing that off and refining things.

It’s been a fairly fun year, complete with a few ups and downs, but nothing to complain about. There is a lot still to come where Second Life is concerned, and 2014 already looks like it is shaping up to be an interesting year, with things like Oculus Rift and Leap Motion hopefully making their debut as well as various other things the Lab has up its collective sleeve.

Who knows? I may even blog about it! 😉

Berry offered another Monday Meme on … umm… Monday (September 2nd). I didn’t take a look then, as I thought she’d be off enjoying Labor Day (even if it is spelt “l-a-b-o-U-r” ;-)). But, she did. And while it is rare for me to respond (this is only the third), I thought I’d give it a go – if only to win the most boring response in the world award :).

She asks six questions on the theme of windlight settings and photography. So here’s my replies.

Do you use windlight while taking pictures? If not, why not? Yes, and usually most of the ALM bells and whistles – occlusion, shadows, etc. Admittedly, this pretty much killed my old GPU stone dead at times, but I like to at least think there’s an element of realism in my shots as a result.

When taking a closeup snapshot for a profile picture, which windlight preset do you use most often? The only profile pictures I ever took were pre-WL (seriously). Since around 2008, I’ve only ever had someone who knows what they’re doing take my profile pictures and I certainly wouldn’t try to take a shot for someone else’s profile; not if I want to keep them as a contact / friend …

Which windlight presets do you use for full body portraits? See above.

If you do landscape photography, which windlights do you use for that most often? Hmmm. I like the late afternoon, so windlights built around that get used a lot; I also like ambient lighting so anything which gives that kind of feel gets used and tweaked. Jackson Redstar, Chic Aeon, William Weaver all see a fair amount of use. There are a couple of Bryn Oh’s which I particularly like and enjoy tweaking quite extensively to get some results (I like her Mayfly as I can twiddle around with the sun position, sky colours, etc., and get some nice “night-time” effects); I’ve also recently started juggling with some of Torley’s windlights.

Do you have any tricks or tips that you could share for using Windlight effectively? I’m not sure I’m in any position to offer practical advice. My rule of thumb is actually “suck it and see”; I tend to cycle through the windlights according to what I think might work, depending on where I am. This usually involves taking up to 6 or 8 shots from the same angle and seeing what looks “right” (I find what’s on the screen doesn’t always faithfully transfer to a still image – but that could simply be my eyes). I have a notepad I keep where I will jot down what works and what tweaks I make at times, but most of it really is finger-in-the-air.

Taking multiple shots from the same angle and different WLs probably sounds like a, “well, duh!”, statement (I mean, film is free in SL, so who wouldn’t? :)). However, I find it useful as I tend not to blog immediately about a place all the time, so the snaps can lie dormant for several days (or weeks), so having multiple shot allows me a greater spread of ideas when I do finally start writing-up a review; particularly if I suddenly get the idea for a set of “vignette”-style image captions. It also means I have a fair library of images should I need something to go with a future piece. At the very least, I hope that by having a range of “looks” in snaps I’ve taken, I can present a region under different lighting, “weather” and time of day and so hopefully add depth or interest to a write-up that way.

I think a lot also comes down to not just windlight, but use of other tools – the camera controls, etc. In this, I find Will Weaver’s phototools invaluable (as I avoid faffing with debug settings: he’s gathered them all up and presented them in a series of excellent tabs on a floater), as are the additional floaters in Exodus. Also, I’ve started getting into post-processing images (in a basic way), so I look for windlights which lend themselves to this. I also make use of Firestorm / Vincent Nacon’s clouds – if you don’t have these installed in your viewer for landscape / outdoors work, you should. They add a lot of depth to the sky without always having to dial-up the cloud coverage excessively.

Have you created any windlights that you would be willing to share with us? No! They’re mine, I tell you, mine! Mine!

No, seriously, I tweak and play, and because what I do is all a variation on someone else’s work, rather than anything original from me, I don’t often to save anything, and those that I have, I wouldn’t dream of sharing for the reason above – they are purely derivative. When I have the skills to create something worthwhile, then I’ll share :).