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This was a fun April 1 joke, but it ironically also exposes some glaring weaknesses in how LI is managed in SL based on land acreage rather than volume occupied as well, making multi-storey communal home builds like this generally a failure unless all residents are prepared to respect a shared covenant that covers this LI sharing strictly.
Still, it was nice to briefly dream about owning a home like this for real in SL.
Linden Lab Unveils New Soviet Tenement-Themed Homes for Second Life Players -- Visit Now!
In Ebbe Altberg's Second Life, Linden Homes live IN YOU. Click here to get your piece of the Soviet dream in the highly desired mainland sim of Milbank -- rubles or Linden Dollars accepted. Better hurry, though, avatars are streaming in by the boatload as I write this. Official (unofficial) an...
Given the current state of SL's shader engine, optimization is often a murder victim when flexibility is desired in any build. This needs fixing or this issue will persist with all mesh builds, not just heads.
(Disclosure: I have never bought into any of the standard mesh heads - I do have most of Utilizator Mode's work in this regard, and I don't regret one moment how different I look to others as a result, even though this complicates skin matching. The lack of polygons really helps drop my render costs slightly even as I stick to conventional mesh bodies and fashions.)
Catwa Head Mob Crush Perfectly Encapsulates Current State of Second Life (Comments of the Week)
Photo of Catwa sale mob crush by SL blogger Kirsten Corleone; large version is not worksafe. The L$1 sale of Catwa avatar heads caused the Marketplace website to crash due to heavy demand, provoking Linden Lab to remove the item from the store, and instead, make it available in-world on severa...
Conspiracy theorists are the same everywhere. Crackpots even on the rare occasion that they get it right, which I certainly doubt this is one of those cases. Regardless, I wish Oz Linden a happy retirement and hope he doesn't become a stranger. Drop in every now and then, okay? SL isn't going away anytime soon.
Farewell to Oz: Linden Lab's Open Source Director Retires, Leaving Position's Fate Unknown -- And Hole in Second Life Community's Heart
Emphasizing that his upcoming departure from Linden Lab "has nothing at all to do with the change in ownership of the Lab" (the long-running startup was recently sold to the Waterford Group holding company), the veteran technologist Scott Lawrence, known by tens of thousands of SL users by his ...
One of my favorite prim-only builds is an Elemental Air/Land/Sea vehicle - it uses the same prims for all three main forms, but changes prim parameters to form a boat, plane, blimp, hovercraft or car etc. you can't do that with sculpties or mesh. Granted it's very simple and minimalist, but it dates from an era where vehicles were rarely made of anything more than 31 prims due to physics and LI counting methods of the time. And it was free!
One of my favorite mainly-sculpty builds is a hairdo from Curio obscura that also serves as a cake delivery system, with swaps between sculptmaps and textures to change toppings and frostings. You can't do that as easily in mesh without some severely heavy polygonal overloads, and prims wouldn't be able to simulate some fruit shapes.
You can have a hybrid approach to using mesh, sculpties and prims. Each of those building blocks comes with its own strengths and weaknesses, so a wise builder would not immediately discount anything that isn't mesh but examine what they require of the build and choose accordingly.
Some of the strongest builds in SL are the ones where the creator has chosen to play up to the strengths of each kind of asset and not make mistakes like using one kind of asset to do a job that can be better done by another.
How Mesh Devalued Prims in Second Life & Made It a "Consumer World"
Works by the artist known as AM Radio in Second Life's pre-mesh age Philip Rosedale's open challenge to name another metaverse with dynamic, collaborative content creation evoked this response from reader Vivienne Schell: I think that Second Life's initial success was tied to in-world, collabo...
What I would give for a full implementation of CSG prims instead of the dumb "addition-only" approach we now have. carving holes in prims that are more unusual that the standard cylindrical/triangular/square holes, or making strange new shapes that are the intersection of two different prims.
We also lost the ability to define connections between specific prims in a linkset very early in the Second Life beta. bring that back - imagine actual working windchimes banging away in the breeze? or even easier definitions of rotations between joints in a prim-based sculpture.
There are a lot of possibilities in a prim-based approach - if only LL had continued banging down that door hard. Even if you needed a final publish to get it out into the world as a mesh everyone could see (booleans can get expensive very fast in realtime), perhaps you could have a mixed object format where the original prims are preserved, but the baked mesh resulting from all those operations is what makes it into the world.
such a shame. still, at least it's still open to being used for prototyping and roughing stuff out inworld, prims.
How Mesh Devalued Prims in Second Life & Made It a "Consumer World"
Works by the artist known as AM Radio in Second Life's pre-mesh age Philip Rosedale's open challenge to name another metaverse with dynamic, collaborative content creation evoked this response from reader Vivienne Schell: I think that Second Life's initial success was tied to in-world, collabo...
You've seen Bernie Sanders' Mittens. Now, behold... Bernie Sanders' Kittens! https://flic.kr/p/2kuMFDZ
Get a Free Bernie Cutout, Send Me Your Best Pics of Bernie in Second Life
As it turns out, we have not yet reached peak Bernie meme. Tossing kerosene onto that ebbing fire, content creator Max Graf (above) just created a free Bernie cutout to take around with you in Second Life to place Bernie in all your virtual world screenshots: Click here to teleport to get it i...
Dreams can run on PS5 in backwards compatibility mode, and the game is coded in such a way that it can take advantage somewhat of the PS5's increased capabilities to run more detailed Dreams. MM is working out how to take fuller advantage of the PS5 without breaking the game too much for PS4 players (e.g. allowing players to create PS5-only Dreams or author Dreams that contain optional additions that trigger only on PS5)
Despite Amazing Creativity, Why Does PS4's Dreams Have So Few Users?
Dreams, the Playstation 4 exclusive from Media Molecule, is a virtual world creation platform with what look to be some of the most impressive and user-friendly creation tools on the market, incredible user-generated content like this, and has at least nearly 1.4 million user accounts. (Accord...
We may have erred in underestimating the true strength of these terrors. Time to correct our mistakes.
Fascist Leanings of Trump's Most Extreme Followers Already Evident in Their Online Behavior Back in 2016
As the United States takes stalk of the violent riot of Trump supporters at the Capitol last week, led in part by people wearing Nazi shirts and carrying Confederate flags, I thought back to the behavior of Trump supporters in Second Life before the 2016 election -- mobbing the virtual HQ of B...
This for some reason looks like a trash bin on fire on a boat on fire on a river on fire. it is a TBOFOBOFOROFMMORPG.
New World Notes Notes New World, New World
Sorry not sorry for the title for this news: My preview of New World, Amazon Game Studios’ forthcoming massively multiplayer online PC game, would be limited to eyes-on, thanks to my stone-age potato of a gaming laptop. This is a game that touts 50-on-50 smackdowns, after all. Even if a new MM...
The tighter limits imposed after these attacks can be either looked upon as a hindrance or an encouragement to better ways of working.
Having to precache your rezzes in advance rather than forcing a massive storm of rezzes in a hurry means having to be more methodical about planning your use of assets and the timing of said rezzes, as well as give viewers more time to cache them prior to viewing.
Having to limit your text comms use means learning to be more concise in what you pass to the user and to objects, resulting in less heavy data use from wall texts. This also has follow-on benefits when doing comms between scripted objects and the outside of the grid.
Being unable to truly create new assets directly in world without a bot in the line means you plan your scripts and object design more carefully to gain the variety you need.
A wall is sometimes just something you prop a ladder against in order to climb higher.
How Many SLers Remember Its Era of Epic, System-Wide Griefing?
Via Gazira Babeli's blog which has more details Discussing the topic of drama and griefing in SL, longtime SLer Jumpman Lane compares and contrasts what griefing is considered now, versus what it once was: Drama is not new to Second Life. It's also not as bad as it's been in the past...by a L...
You know what the good thing about taking small profits as you go along rather than repeatedly soaking up the costs for a big payout is? You can reinvest the profit immediately in your ecosystem and you get an earlier warning when what you're doing isn't working out and your losses can be cut earlier.
Valve's Profit-Making Approach to Virtual Reality More Sustainable Than Facebook's Loss Leader Play (Comment of the Week)
Pictured: Half-Life Alyx, bundled with Vale's Index HMD Robert Scoble made a good case for Oculus requiring Facebook log-ins as a "strategy tax" to compete with Apple, but in Comments, reader "Seph" argues that Valve has the better, more sustainable approach to VR, both through its HMD partner...
This is unfortunately where bigger VR companies like Facebook-backed Oculus may win the day -
all they need to do is to work on the capability to self-destruct VR headsets, continue to seek reductions in the cost of producing their gear, and push a massive effort to get their gear into the hands of potentially interested parties on something akin to a 'shareware' basis:
provide a taster of the most popular apps on their platform, on a limited timer, say two weeks to a month after initial bootup, after which users will need to pay the full price of the headset to continue its use or wind up with a brick that does nothing. Charge a small amount on each trial, sufficient to cover postage and acceptable wear and post-return sanitization/recycling.
This will sadly mean a major spend into the hole for many companies initially as VR headsets, even the cheaper WindowsMR-kind rather than the premium I/O offered by Oculus Quest or SteamVR-native headsets, aren't cheap.
Expect further losses as less-honorable parties attempt to hack their way through the bricking of the headset or even break apart expired headsets for the components in them. The hope here is that the people who do try and like the concept enough to pay the full price after the trial will number sufficiently that things break even (at this point, this is all any business not directly involved in coping with the pandemic can hope for - profit of any sort is a dream)
This would also be limited to VR solutions that can be set up by a layman right out of the box. Anything more complicated - multi-axis treadmilling, room-scale VR that isn't just "stick a bunch of doodads in the corners of the room", any form of glove-area haptics etc. - is out and will require a trip to a showroom or physical exhibition that isn't happening anytime soon.
Ironically, any VR platform that has a decent access method that uses only mobile or plain old keyboard and mouse will probably do better at least till the pandemic is under control (it is not, not right now). Not everybody has a VR headset, but penetration of access to keyboard or mobile is very high in so many places, the only upset right now is the fact that cryptomining has become popular again in recent weeks - which may put a strain on the availability of GPUs for use in higer-graphical VR systems in coming months as well...
If COVID-19 Kills Off the Hands-On VR Demo, How Can VR Grow?
Earlier this year when the pandemic hit for the first time, my family and I were fairly well-prepared, in the sense that we had a huge supply of sanitary wipes on hand, even when store shelves had been completely wiped out of every bacteria-killing product. Why? Because late last year, I had b...
The "Marginal Cost" I am referring to in the original comment is the extra cost needed to pump out one more unit of the same product. I already referenced the costs that would be incurred regardless of how much of the product is sold - the R&D, the modelling and scripting, tier for inworld shop space, marketing, ensuring bloggers get their paws on free product (Blogotex costs money to maintain) - but once all that is past, when you buy a dress in SL inworld, the merchant incurs basically nothing in the way of extra costs for most products unless they require some form of service external to the LL-provided grid's servers (e.g. Smartbots bot script execution, networked fishing game systems) . The only way marginal costs for a product could fall to less than zero is if LL paid creators a subsidy on every unit sold, a situation that is really impossible.
The Economics of Fifty Linden Fridays -- Or, Why Dozens of SL Merchants Willingly Sell Items for the L$ Equivalent of Twenty Cents
The legendary Fifty Linden Fridays shopping extravaganza, in which top SL brands offer select items for a mere L$50 (i.e. about 20 cents), has been running since 2009. But it only just occurred to me recently: How the hell does this even make any economic sense? Or as regular reader Patchouli...
After the initial costs of tier, tooling, marketing, blogotex access, customer support, and hours worked, the marginal cost of these products is close to zero on the merchant's side if the sale is done purely inworld. Merchants on FLF and Secret Sale Sunday and other similar "ridiculous price hour/day" schemes do them because they're betting the volume they get in return on the product as well as the eyeballs on other normally priced items will pay off.
And it probably does, because this is a tendency that has long had legs.
Fifty Linden Fridays: Coolest Deals & Teleports for Shopping This Weekend!
Here's some select items from this week's legendary Fifty Linden Fridays shopping extravaganza, in which top SL brands offer select items for a mere L$50 (i.e. about 20 cents). Above is a seriously cool working bubble gun from BALACLAVA!! -- click here to teleport there to buy. A couple more c...
*sits down on a plywood prim with a blocky cigarbox banjo*
I wear my sunglasses at night,
so I can, so I can
bed Taylor Swift
inside the Oculus Rift...
*blinks blankly* *coughs*
Boy, mixing Father Misty and Corey Hart is NOT doing it for me.
Are Facebook's Holographic VR Glasses Viable? One Expert's Deep Dive
UploadVR has an interesting story on a new prototype created by Facebook’s VR research division which replaces the traditional, totally bulky virtual reality headset with something closer to the sunglasses form factor we've been wanting since Snowcrash: Facebook Reality Labs’ new approach is a...
In this comic, Nylon Pinkney points out that the new version of Last Names Linden Lab is now offering is basically about asking too much for too little. #TLDR
Seriously, the offer needs a rethink.
Things to Think About Buying Before Buying a New Second Life Name
Indie comic artist and illustrator Danielle "Nylon" Feigenbaum documents dubious adventures in SL, VRChat, and online worlds beyond for New World Notes. Her work has also been featured in Old Pal and the book Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating. Follow her on Flickr and Instag...
Would be interested in this session being recorded as well, as the times mentioned only cover half the globe and neglect people on either side of Europe and the Americas. As pedagogy-at-home becomes more common, more educators may be interested in this system especially in light of how messed up Zoom can be at times.
Educators Who Use Virtual Worlds: When Do You Want a Live Group Demo of Breakroom, the Free-for-Public Schools 3D Social Hub from Sinespace?
Loading… The developers of Breakroom, the new 3D social hub for remote teams from virtual world company Sinespace (a sponsoring media partner to New World Notes), are starting to hold live demos to companies and organizations interested in using the platform for classes, meetings, events and oth...
Extra points for the original hack using the classic pre-Internet parody ad for "Big Bill Hell's" *goes back to practising their challenge pissing to try getting no downpayments*
How to Hack the Video Player in Half-Life: Alyx and Rickroll Her in VR
So it turns out that some of the monitor footage inside of #HalfLifeAlyx are just webms inside a folder, AKA you can change it to whatever you want. Already contributed my part pic.twitter.com/9pJxD9gP2j — ThatAverageJoe (@AverageJoeSFM) March 26, 2020 If you're one of the many thousands curr...
That's not how this works! That's not what it means! xD
Social Distancing: Second Life Edition
Indie comic artist and illustrator Danielle "Nylon" Feigenbaum documents dubious adventures in SL, VRChat, and online worlds beyond for New World Notes. Her work has also been featured in Old Pal and the book Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating. Follow her on Flickr and Instag...
This coming weekend promises to exacerbate the problem(?) of coronavirus failing to push an uptick in social VR: on 20th March they'll be releasing a new Animal Crossing game and a new Doom FPS that have been hotly anticipated for weeks (to the point where their entirely disparate fandoms have started posting love odes to each other, a peculiar data point in a gaming scene where opinions on what is good and what is terrible have generally been polarised heavily.). Several major musical acts around the world have been (2d video) livestreaming their performances such as Dropkick Murphys and the Melbourne Orchestra, with all indications that they will certainly not be the last.
Zoom Website Traffic Jumps 15% Since Coronavirus Outbreak, Social VR Usage So Far Seems Flat
It's news that probably won't surprise the many millions now working from home since the last few weeks, but here it is: Traffic to the website of Zoom, the remote conferencing services company, has strongly jumped since the end of January, when the WHO first declared the Coronavirus to be an ...
I so badly need to go to this event.
Also: Alexandra - there's always something disagreeable to someone happening in SL all the time. Unless it touches on a major universal no-go like pedophilia or Naziism, I can't see any point in being outraged rather than merely unsurprised and disappointed with some folks.
The Second Life Fashion Event Everyone is Coming To
Indie comic artist and illustrator Danielle "Nylon" Feigenbaum documents dubious adventures in SL, VRChat, and online worlds beyond for New World Notes. Her work has also been featured in Old Pal and the book Blocked: Stories from the World of Online Dating. Follow her on Flickr and Instag...
Adeon: given LL's recent refocus on Second Life, and the epic messup that the EEP project has become, Ebbe may not be averse to putting him in a position where he can work this into the main branch of the viewer AND get paid. We are in damn the torpedoes mode here - the only thing keeping LL afloat atm is Second Life, in the absence of any major signings of other VWs or MMORPGs with Tilia as a payment RWC-to-gamecash gateway. Perhaps it's time to make a few brash moves rather than be eternally cautious.
Black Dragon, Second Life's Groundbreaking Viewer, In Danger of Dying Due to Creator's Family & Financial Crisis
Click here to consider supporting via Patreon future updates to Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following for how it optimizes and enhances the virtual world's graphics and for its unique, groundbreaking features, such as a highly detailed in-viewer poser. Supporte...
Black Dragon is a viewer with a niche appeal, but it is a surprisingly wide niche. Consider dropping a dollar a month in the tin if you can!
Black Dragon, Second Life's Groundbreaking Viewer, In Danger of Dying Due to Creator's Family & Financial Crisis
Click here to consider supporting via Patreon future updates to Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following for how it optimizes and enhances the virtual world's graphics and for its unique, groundbreaking features, such as a highly detailed in-viewer poser. Supporte...
a niche concept aimed solely at a niche IO peripheral was never going to work out. We'll still need screens and keyboard/mice for a while longer.
Sansar's End as Linden Lab Project Angers Second Life Users Who Feel Short-Shrifted (Comments of the Week)
As this video tribute to Sansar by Daisy Winthorpe suggests -- published to YouTube a few days before Linden Lab announced the virtual world's end as a Linden Lab-sponsored project and since seen nearly 10,000 times -- it does have (had?) some passionate supporters. To judge by the overwhelming...
A mistake was made. The mistake was costly. Hopefully going forward, Linden Lab can make decisions about Second Life's future that help to mitigate or even obviate the losses of Sansar entirely. Because consider the alternative is SL following Sansar into ignominy, rather than gracefully flapping its wings occasionally with new features in a controlled glide like a well-kept legacy platform with still much creativity and community running rampant in its fields.
Sansar's End as Linden Lab Project Angers Second Life Users Who Feel Short-Shrifted (Comments of the Week)
As this video tribute to Sansar by Daisy Winthorpe suggests -- published to YouTube a few days before Linden Lab announced the virtual world's end as a Linden Lab-sponsored project and since seen nearly 10,000 times -- it does have (had?) some passionate supporters. To judge by the overwhelming...
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