New World Notes

Amazing Aperture Photos: Look at These Raw Screenshots Taken in Second Life's Hot New Third Party Viewer

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Silivren Atheria shot this amazing picture using the new Aperture viewer recently added to the approved third-party viewers for Second Life. (Read Hamlet’s write-up and interview with lead developer William Weaver here.) It is a viewer created for photography and folks are having great fun with it. Sillivren wrote “I actually love the post processing / photoshop when doing any pics, RL or SL. But having a viewer that can start that process when actually taking the pic? My inspiration may have found it's way back again.”

I did a scan for some of the best Aperture pics on Flickr, check them out here:

All About Aperture: Why William Weaver Created a Whole New Way of Seeing Second Life

Originally published on my Patreon. Since then, Weaver tells me Aperture has been downloaded over 1500 times and has been added to Linden Lab's official Third Party Viewer Directory

What you're watching above is the birth of a new Second Life viewer -- but in a real sense, it's also the culmination of the creator's lifelong fascination with light in all its varieties. The video starts at a baseline, which is what every viewer (default, Firestorm, etc.) displays, then shows off 18 presets in this new way of seeing and screen-capturing Second Life.

It’s called Aperture Viewer (links below), and it's lead developed by William Weaver. Over a decade ago, Weaver became renowned within the Second Life art community for his exquisite images and astoundingly moving machinima like this one from 2012.

He largely left SL for many years, however, after a dearth of graphical updates -- "When the visuals feel static in a platform that’s really been about visuals for me," he explains now, "the fun just fades" -- but returned in 2024, curious to see how the release of physically based rendering last year had changed the world.After logging back on, he installed a PBR reflection probe.

"My jaw hit the floor," as he puts it now.

“Light was bouncing—something we’d never had in‑world. It felt like a whole new engine hiding in plain sight. I still think many people have no idea what this thing really does now.”

But after weeks of tests, he realized the existing SL viewers hadn’t fully adopted to this new PBR era:

“Phototools had been basically untouched for a decade and couldn’t expose half of PBR’s magic. We needed more tools, things that SL didn't have, to start complementing what it can now do."

Rather than explain what he’d learned in a tutorial, he went several steps beyond -- or rather, several thousand:

About Aperture: Why William Weaver Created a Whole New Way of Seeing Second Life -- New on My Patreon

Now on my Patreon (free to read for all members), I talk with William Weaver about the Aperture Viewer, his attempt to completely reinvent how we see and screen-capture Second Life that shows off all the graphics features now possible in the virtual world -- even to SLers who don’t have a high-end PC.

Among other things, he tells me that he's already in the process of officially registering it with Linden Lab:

“Linden Lab emailed the TPV Contributor Agreement to the official Aperture inbox two days ago (I only just spotted it). I’m signing and sending it back immediately, so the listing is moving forward smoothly.”

Read it all here.

As for why so many SL content creators are excited about Aperture, well, here's a 2012 machinima Mr. Weaver made:

Firestorm Streaming Survey Results: Most Aren't Interested... Unless It's Free.

Here's the results of my New World Notes survey last week, asking SLers what's the most they would be willing to pay for the new Project Zero option of streaming Firestorm/Second Life on a browser.

As you can see above, a strong majority aren't interested in any option, even one that's free with advertising. About 15% were willing to pay $.50 cents/hour to $2/hour, but the most popular "paid" choice by far was the ad-supported, free version. (The Patreon member version of this survey garnered pretty similar results, with 32% preferring free with ads.)

Which is somewhat surprising, from one angle. Rather than pay, say, $2500 for a high-end gamer laptop that runs Second Life pretty well, why not get a low-end $500 laptop and stream a highly optimized version of Firestorm by the hour? Even at $1/hour, this would be more cost effective for most SLers.

However, from another angle, these results point out another reality: By and large, Second Life users are core gamers and/or power users who already own and prefer a high-end PC for many other applications beyond SL.

As promised, I showed these survey results to Linden Lab:

SL Survey: What's the MOST You Would Pay to Regularly Stream Firestorm on a Browser, to Get High Quality Graphics on Even Low-End Laptops & Smartphones / Tablets?

Project Zero now has a Firestorm option, so you can stream Second Life on a browser using the virtual world's most popular viewer, with an introductory discount price of 5 hours for L$250: Go here quickly to get the special offer.

However, that's not likely to be the price when this option is officially launched -- hence the survey above. What's the MOST you would pay to regularly stream Firestorm on a browser?

Try it out now, and then take the pricing survey! And yes, I'll share the results with Linden Lab, which may or may not impact the final pricing.

Watch: Upcoming Firestorm Viewer Comes With Powerful On-Screen Avatar Poser Feature

Courtesy Spooky Pumpkins, owner of the Wraith brand in SL (socials & links here), watch this seriously cool new feature for Firestorm, now available in preview. Explains Spooky:

"If you use their poser, you'll now see a gizmo on each bone... and on-screen selection for the bones. You can legit rotate [bones] from the joint itself ON YOUR SCREEN instead of fiddling with sliders. I don't know if this is on any other version than the newest preview build (beta viewer) which has some issues with the nested menus in the inventory window BUT this poser SLAPS."

It does sure seem slap-tastic! This is currently (and only) available in VERSION 7.1.12.77526 - BETA VIEWER.

More from Wraith's owner on how to get this bet now:

BREAKING: Linden Lab Test Launches Browser-Based Streaming for Second Life -- And You Can Try it Now!

Above: At my office in Waterhead via Project Zero

Starting now -- and starting 2025 with guns blazing -- you can try out browser-based streaming of Second Life, enabling you to experience the virtual world with maximum graphics settings displayed on a web browser, even on low-end PCs/laptops -- go here to access it for up to 10 minutes.

I just tried it out, and it's pretty impressive, even in this early test phase. Teleporting to sims is quicksilver fast, taking less than a second. Right now, you access it through Linden Lab's existing default browser, but in future iterations, the streaming user interface will completely change. (More on that below.)

This streaming project, internally dubbed “Project Zero”, has been in development even before Philip Rosedale rejoined Linden as CTO in late 2024, is hands-on proof that the company is not completely pinning the future of Second Life to the new mobile app. Project Zero is shaping up to be the way new users will first experience the virtual world, seamlessly and beautifully, whether or not their machine can manage SL's full 3D graphics.

A Surprising Solution to Post-PBR Problems

Project Zero also an answer to a problem Oberwager acknowledged during another briefing last year: Second Life’s recent upgrade to PBR graphics caused a drop in log-ins among the existing user base, as people with lower end machine had trouble displaying physically based rendering.

“We have come up with an incredible fix that will have an amazing impact on all current and future residents," he told me last month. I initially thought he was referring to bug fixes, but no: It’s a whole new way of experiencing Second Life, and when it’s officially rolled out, will come with a modern upgrade to the UI, re-built from the ground up.

I should say a new old way: Linden Lab originally tested out browser-based streaming of Second Life in 2010, then again in 2015, from well-funded startup OnLive. (Disclosure: I helped OnLive launch that project on the marketing side.) It worked pretty well, but broadband and computing costs were too expensive back then to make it scalable. Since then, however, those prices have come substantially down, driven in part by the recent boom in large language model AI programs like ChatGPT.

2025, Linden Lab believes, is the year Second Life streaming is finally ready to deploy with Project Zero. 

In internal testing, Philip Rosedale told me on a recent briefing, they’re getting zero latency. It doesn’t even necessarily require super high-end broadband. “If you can watch Netflix [on your machine],” as he put it, “you can do this.”

Another key difference from the 2010 and 2015 deployments: 

The Subtle Power of PBR in Second Life is Much More Than Mirrors

Now that PBR graphics are fully launched on Second Life, we're seeing a barrage of pics and videos showing off reflective/mirror effects made possible from physically based rendering. But it's this video of a swimming pool created by SL content creator Bhad Craven which recently caught my eye -- watch. It's not so much the mirror effects per se, but how the light reflecting on linoleum tiles and metal surfaces adds a subtle sense of realism and immersion.

"PBR is a game changer," Bhad affirms, laughing. "I hope people start to like it as much as creators. It's so much faster since baking isn't a thing. It makes my items actually shine, not having to fake reflections is great."

Not that developing in PBR is easy -- here's some notes of caution/advice from Mr. Craven:

How to Optimize PBR Era Firestorm: Notes & Tips from the Lead Dev

As noted yesterday, quite a few SLers are having a poor experience with the new PBR upgrade to Firestorm, by far the most popular viewer for Second Life. Fortunately, as Firestorm project lead Beq recently detailed for me, there are a number of fixes and perspective shifts available. The starting point is understanding how the new viewer works with some WindLight/EEP modes, and (as Beq puts it),  first "[getting] past the denial and screaming stage."

Heavy technical details ahead -- in fact, if you're not highly familiar with the terms mentioned, I'd highly recommend reading them with a friend who does before tinkering with your viewer/worlds settings:

SLer Survey: Firestorm's PBR Upgrade Generates Firestorm of Mixed Reactions

Here's the results of my survey on the PBR upgrade in Firestorm, which brought in 177 responses. (A pretty large sample size, as these things go.) Asked how it's changed their overall Second Life experience, a plurality -- nearly 1 in 3 respondents -- chose "Much worse than before". That's compared to 20% who said Firestorm PBR has made their SL experience "much better".

Overall, the reaction is about evenly split between the Somewhat/Much Worse camp (45%) and the About the Same or Somewhat/Much Better (42%).

My initial read of these results is there's a hiccup of adjustment as SLers get accustomed to the virtual world lit by PBR. More on those later, but meantime, here's some readers' decidedly mixed reaction to the PBR update: