Greetings Harpers! Here’s a quick catch up of what we’ve been up to and what’s coming soon.
Quick news in 2018…
The last many months have been quiet for us in Second Life as some of us have been experimenting with some personal projects. I’ve been experimenting with new seating animation systems that go beyond the capabilities of the usual things you see out there, along with tricking out house rafts and developing lag detectors. Vicki’s been exploring odd artistic behaviors when you move your avatars into negative altitudes as well as building some unusual marine vehicles, tributes to Roger Zelazny, and Seamonsters. Candace has been building scavenger hunts and quirky clothes. Fifi and Harter have some of the newest mini-exhibits in our group land in the Miramare region. I apologize if I’ve left anyone out, let me know so I can make updates!
On the performance side, our creative partners and fellow harpers at Idle Rogue continue to experiment with different theater formats and show styles and most recently launched a high-production sci-fi build with dance shows and space particle shows for the Burn2 festival. Our friends at Beach Shack Productions have a built a few more shows with their signature incorporation of voice translation and comedy. Caledonia Skytower and friends produced a very polished, well acted machinema short where some of our tools made key contributions. Check it out and be inspired! Finally if you are yearning for more high fantasy steampunk inspiration, our friends at Flygearz launched a new regular social shindig of music and dance a few Saturdays each month on a luxurious steampunk airship in the skies of the famous Calais Galadon park regions.
So what’s coming next?
I’ve had a few bursts of activity lately and am excited to share what’s coming and also give the opportunity for anyone interested to reach out and join in if they so desire.
Interactive Theater Experience 2.0!
As many of you know we’ve been hosting the Interactive Stage Gallery in the Idle Rogue region for years. This is, to my knowledge, the only gallery that takes theater shows, and then allows them to be replayed with your avatar acting in the starring roles.
In 2019 we’re planning to redesign this concept to be even bigger and better. It will provide a wrap-around, immersive experience for audiences and no longer be constrained to a traditional stage and seats. It will also use new technology designed to make even the audience experience an interactive one. Finally we would envision this theater to be used for multiple purposes, a mix of both live performances and on-demand. If this is the kind of thing that interests you and you want to help in some way, speak up. We’re intending this to be a community project.
MetaHarper Choreography HUD!
I’m really excited about this one. This project is fairly advanced and will get its own post in the very near future. It aims to to be the best group freestyle dance HUD in SL and the best tool out there for designing animation and command sequences in SL. Have you wanted a slick graphical interface to the MetaHarper Show Tools? This will be that. You’ll start to see documentation pop up for it on the website.
New 6.0 MetaHarper Show Tools Release
The MST Suite is due for some technology upgrades that have been proven out in our other projects. The “never lose an invite” animation system will be added to the movers, and a high-performance event list processor from the MST Choreo HUD will make it into the performance engines. I’m also looking at using some new script capabilities to make access setup easier, and possibly adding the option to change the channel for direct chat commands. If you are an MST suite user and have suggestions for the next release, this is your chance! I want to hear from you.
Lag Management Tools!
As the Second Life platform has evolved and live performances become more sophisticated, squeezing every available drop of performance has become increasingly important. My goal for this project is to make it easy to understand the performance of your region, and more importantly make it possible to plan ahead of time to ensure a good live show experience.
I did some work on this over the past summer and hit a few interesting challenges. It turns out that the public tools that SL provides you for detecting script and region performance become unreliable when that region suffers performance degradation. So the worse off a region is, the less it is able to explain to you why it is under-performing. As bad as this situation sounds, I’ve prototyped a couple possible solutions and plan to try them out in the months ahead. Stay turned for more info.
That’s all for now, happy exploring
-Arrehn