SL isn't the same any more

[Leia36]

Phil, Its the same in my rl industry, I learned COBAL in college in 96, I started my rl business making websites in Frontpage in 2002. All the Licensed software I bought and skills I learned for a lot of those applications from 2002 till 2012 are now essentially useless. (And before anyone chimes in that coding is coding, to a degree you are right, however when you combine PHP with HTML and throw in responsive multi column layouts, it gets very specialised.)

in 2012 it became apparent to me that I was going to have to learn a whole new way of building websites if my business was going to survive, and the death knell to anyone building websites for a living came when google changed its ranking to favour responsive websites (works on any device)

Again starting this year I threw all my licensed software in the trash and started learning the latest software.

Mesh is much the same as responsive page ranking in that everyone had to go back and relearn almost from scratch, as a few have said in this thread.

Evolve or die

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

I assume you mean COBOL. Cobal appears to be a drug   I'm surprised that you were learning COBOL in '96 though. It's a very old language but, apparently, it's still in use and evolving. I never came across it for website creation though, but you probably didn't mean that. I don't think that evolving web creation is a good analogy for the evolving SL though, but it really doesn't matter.

Yes, I know that things develope and evolve. They always do. It's just that I find it a shame that a very significant part of the underlying nature of SL has moved away from what it was. It doesn't affect me in the slightest, but I think it's a shame, that's all, and I just wanted to say that.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[Leia36]

Been so long I had forgotten

I learned it because everyone then was pushing me towards getting a job with a big corporate, I have kept in touch with one other woman in that class and she did in fact get a job with a bank for ten years. For me it opened the door to my first real job with a medium size graphic design and printing company, where I learned the skills to design and code websites. 

The analogy of responsive php websites being similar to mesh in impact on an established platform is, I think, fairly accurate.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Leia36

[Ceka Cianci]

Myself,I'm kinda glad it's not like the older days..I am glad I experienced them and the many things we could do

I just remember in a lot of things you couldn't make a move without having to troubleshooting it..Mainly because of the glitches..Then once you would get used to certain glitches and they became part of your SL, there would be a patch and new glitches would show up from fixing the older ones or older ones would show up from fixing newer ones..

After awhile  of getting used to the glitches coming and going,you got used to recognizing the glitches..

Oh cool my favorite Glitch is back!! \o/

hehehehe

There was lots of cool glitches and bad glitches..

you could tell when you came passed someone that was around for awhile..Because it seemed like they always knew the work arounds..

 

Just found this on youtube ,for those that remember it..

hehehehe

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Ceka Cianci

[Phil Deakins]

35 minutes ago, Leia36 said:

The analogy of responsive php websites being similar to mesh in impact on an established platform is, I think, fairly accurate.

Our opinions differ in that respect, but I won't argue the point, because it doesn't really matter either way

[Phil Deakins]

@Ceka Cianci I do like that video, Ceka

[Aislin Ceawlin]

22 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'll neither forget the magic of watching someone else build something right in front of me here, nor the joy of joining in.

Remember the old "speed build contests" held on public sandboxes? So much fun to watch! 

[Phil Deakins]

That does ring a bell, Aislin. I never watched one though.

[Madelaine McMasters]

10 minutes ago, Aislin Ceawlin said:

Remember the old "speed build contests" held on public sandboxes? So much fun to watch! 

Yes! I competed in a few of those. Great fun!

I wonder if I still have the moon plane I built. It was a flying crescent moon with wings and a couple's cuddle pose for pilot/co-pilot.

Thank you for remembering that. Those contests are a perfect example of the collaborative creation joy SL decreasingly offers me. SL still offers all the tools I used in those speed build contests, but the results are comparatively cruder by comparison to things imported from Blender. It wouldn't be much fun to attend a contest where nothing happens for 29 minutes and then a bunch of intricate things just appear on the grass.

I've replaced speed build contests with RL community theater. We have to erect a complete set in less than five days and take it down in less than five hours.

Also great fun!

Edited May 11, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[Chic Aeon]

5 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

but SL was a place where anyone could come and create equally appealing stuff - user created content within SL.

I am not exactly disagreeing with you, but people still have the same opportunities to create even if they may have to work harder and longer to get those skills honed. Blender is free. Gimp is free. If someones wants to, they can learn to make basic mesh in a week.  I just finished a series of tutorials using the Cycles Renderer (harder than the Blender Render) and with a few days of effort they could make some simple things.  It certainly took me that long to learn how to make simple things building with prims. But yes, much creation has moved into 3D programs.

Even building with prims took lots of experimentation and if you wanted outstanding textures, you painted them yourself in a graphics program, so another skill that needed to be learn (and outside of the SL world). 

I think the more important point as you say is that we DID build a lot more inworld. That being said, my store is on mainland  -- and on the mainland you still see a fair amount of prim building. My neighbors have prim houses and one has been in the process of building theirs for some time now.  So people are still creating using the inworld tools.  AND if they want that prim experience they can venture over to Opensim where "prims don't count" (the land is so cheap it doesn't matter) and prims are still king for many people. I have been over there for over two years and actually returned to prim building and enjoyed it a lot. I have another video tutorial series on prim building that has been very popular.  Those same videos made for Opensim can be used to learn how to build with prims in  SL.

 

I am not arguing that the world is the same, it is certainly prettier now, but people can still create. Even in clothing, there is still a market for nicely made texture clothes and the applier interfaces are free, so not a lot of differences in that form of entrepreneurship. 

 

Edited May 11, 2017 by Chic Aeon

[Rhonda Huntress]

SL isn't the same any more

I think we all agree this is true.  Whether or not this is a bad thing is another story.  I think I have made my opinion known on that and it is just an opinion.

However ... what other 14 year old software package do you own and use that has not changed?

 

 

10 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

if you wanted outstanding textures, you painted them yourself in a graphics program,

and converted them to tga format so not just any graphic program would work. (or am I mistaken?  my memory is full of holes and crisscrossed connections;  the 70's were good to me.  or so they tell me)

Edited May 11, 2017 by Rhonda Huntress

[Madelaine McMasters]

43 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

 

 

If you watch Hippie Bowman walk around, you'd think nothing has changed since then. He's a walking time capsule, he is.

;-).

Edited May 11, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

SL isn't the same any more

I think we all agree this is true.  Whether or not this is a bad thing is another story.  I think I have made my opinion known on that and it is just an opinion.

However ... what other 14 year old software package do you own and use that has not changed?

And can you remember some long ago program that you wish was still around? For me that would be MacDraw. Every time I try to doodle up a quick drawing for something I'm making for my RL house, I curse the day Apple retired that program, which must be over 20 years ago. I wonder if MacDraw was even half as nice as I remember it.

;-).

Edited May 11, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[Anna Nova]

My wife and I are building stuff in Ogilvie.  We buy things too, mostly clothes since we don't want to learn all that, but the landform, the house, the airship, the Pod station are all our build.  We don't really care if others think the house looks like old SL prims - it's all mesh though.  Kya uses a prim to mesh service that cost about $5000L to buy.  I use Blender either from scratch or using her meshes as a starting point. 

The building is the hobby.

We don't want to sell anything anyway.  And it's our estimation that matters to us.

[Madelaine McMasters]

19 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

I admit I'm somewhat baffled at the people wanting everything in SL to be done "in world."

Like this guy?...

Early in that talk Philip Rosedale pretty much expresses the desire you find baffling. He will never achieve it.

I don't think what he had in mind could ever have gone mainstream because people like Rosedale (creators and entrepreneurs) are not mainstream. That became obvious to me shortly after arriving here. The instant gratification I get from dragging prims didn't motivate a lot of my friends. They were happy to dress up and decorate with bought objects. There's a lot of delightful creativity in that, but it's not the same thing. While the ratio of SL creators to consumers was far greater than in RL initially, it's converging. SL cannot escape the fact that consumers provide the funds.The tools for in-world creation look ever weaker in comparison to those out-world, which can be used to create for more than SL (as I do for my 3D printer). And so SL is inexorably drifting towards a place you create for, not create in.

Given enough demand, I could imagine in-world creation tools becoming as capable as Blender and easier to use. What I can't imagine is enough demand. There will be no Maker movement in SL like there is in RL.

[Trinity Yazimoto]

ok, im going to give my 2 cents here...(just because i havent used this forum yet and i wonder where did go all my post count... but well.. i dont care anyway)

I agree with you Phil, yes, SL has changed and im glad it did because IMHO it looks better now.

But i disagree with you when you say there is less room for creativity now... Because you seem to focus on prim building activities only. Years ago, before mesh, there were a lot of ppl not skilled for torturing prims, or creating sculpt. But those ppl had other skills like texturing, scripting, animating etc.. They could still use SL for that and if needed they would buy prim templates. Or ppl without texturing skills could buy textures or templates.

I think this is the same nowadays, except of course, now its no longer prim but mesh, so ppl doing that part are (for some) not the same (a lot are).

You seem to think that creating is only primbuilding, but.... there are a lot of other ways to express creativity within SL. What about those ppl creating a blog, or doing machinima, or writing novels within SL ? Of course also, photographers, sculpters ... And indeed, posers, animators, scripters, texturers and yes, meshers... They are all users.... so it's still user contents...

Now i will just add a lil moderation to what i said .....its about the big percentage (you would be surprised) of designers claiming they are doing original mesh, while they dont. Sometimes, they just hire someone to do the job, sometimes they get it on 3D plateforms.... legally or illegally, In most of the cases aggainst SL TOS and in ALL cases its a lie to the customer. For me, i think the big change is here... the vast hypocrisy that invaded the market.... Or maybe it was already like this before mesh... Idk.... 

When meshs arrived there was a strange feeling that if you dont learn it, you know nothing, you have zero skills, you are nada... So well, maybe "some" could not handle the pressure of that and prefered to lie... Sad. 

In my case, the pressure has been really painful, however it pissed me so much that it made me put all my effort in learning blender. It's been....omg... so hard, so painful.... but also... so rewarding.... and even if im not a pro mesher and ill never be one, im so super proud each time i finish an item, because it is always better than the one i made before. And without SL i would NEVER ever tried it. So well, SL changed... but again, im not regreting that. On the contrary, im happy it did. 

[Anna Nova]

1 hour ago, Trinity Yazimoto said:

... all my effort in learning blender. It's been....omg... so hard, so painful.... but also... so rewarding.... and even if im not a pro mesher and ill never be one, im so super proud each time i finish an item, because it is always better than the one i made before. And without SL i would NEVER ever tried it.....

Exactly, me too.  I actually got a UV Map to the shape I wanted last week, and then got a texture on it, and imported it, and it was what I wanted! (Thanks to Chic Aeon's tutorial)

Do it 'cos it's fun.

[Chic Aeon]

3 hours ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

SL isn't the same any more

I think we all agree this is true.  Whether or not this is a bad thing is another story.  I think I have made my opinion known on that and it is just an opinion.

However ... what other 14 year old software package do you own and use that has not changed?

 

 

and converted them to tga format so not just any graphic program would work. (or am I mistaken?  my memory is full of holes and crisscrossed connections;  the 70's were good to me.  or so they tell me)

I think that was true. I was using PhotoImpact at the time (I still have a later version on my Win10 computer since it will still work AND it does things that my other graphics program can't) and it took me forever to figure out how to save as a tga file (which my program alluded to as a television format?).  Some folks still use tgas but I can't get windows to show the thumbnails in the explorer in that format so I switched to ping long ago. 

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Given enough demand, I could imagine in-world creation tools becoming as capable as Blender and easier to use. What I can't imagine is enough demand. There will be no Maker movement in SL like there is in RL.

I think that is VERY true. Especially in the US (and indeed in other parts of the world too) we no longer MAKE things. We used to sew our own clothes, and knit, and grow our own veggies (I still do that) but that "home made" aspect has disappeared and I don't think of the loss as a positive thing. Lots of folks don't even know how to cook aside from throwing something in the microwave :D.

A few of us have a need to constantly create -- whatever the medium. I used to spend many weeks on a painting, now I work in pixels.  A few folks make good money on SL, but many do it as a hobby or as supplemental income. I could make  much MUCH more spending my time working in RL (and I suspect most could) but I CHOOSE to be here as most of the time the stress is minimal and I can't say that for RL LOL. 

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I don't think what he had in mind could ever have gone mainstream because people like Rosedale (creators and entrepreneurs) are not mainstream. That became obvious to me shortly after arriving here. The instant gratification I get from dragging prims didn't motivate a lot of my friends. They were happy to dress up and decorate with bought objects. There's a lot of delightful creativity in that, but it's not the same thing.

Yes but dressing up a pixel doll isn't exactly mainstream either. I'd ve very surprised if that niche is even as wide as the hobby creator one.

The "digital barbie doll" segment is where SL has become strongest though and for that reason it does make sense for Linden Lab to focus on that. It's usually better to play on your strengths than on your weaknesses.

What is srange however, is that when they updated the website recently, they changed the focus of the welcome page away from that and back towards their old markets. I already mentioned the two slogans targetting wannabe buidlers and wannabe SL millionaires. The third slogan on that page is geared towards SL explorers and that species is all but extinct by now.

Edited May 11, 2017 by ChinRey
typo

[Rhonda Huntress]

So ... if I still dress up my classic avatar pixel doll in prims and system clothes, does that make me an SL hipster?

[ChinRey]

2 minutes ago, Rhonda Huntress said:

So ... if I still dress up my classic avatar pixel doll in prims and system clothes, does that make me an SL hipster?

Yes

[Rhonda Huntress]

ta da BOOM, tish

[Madelaine McMasters]

2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Yes but dressing up a pixel doll isn't exactly mainstream either. I'd ve very surprised if that niche is even as wide as the hobby creator one.

The "digital barbie doll" segment is where SL has become strongest though and for that reason it does make sense for Linden Lab to focus on that. It's usually better to play on your strengths than on your weaknesses.

What is srange however, is that when they updated the website recently, they changed the focus of the welcome page away from that and back towards their old markets. I already mentioned the two slogans targetting wannabe buidlers and wannabe SL millionaires. The third slogan on that page is geared towards SL explorers and that species is all but extinct by now.

I'm comparing life within SL to life within RL. Doing anything in a virtual world isn't exactly (or even approximately ;-) mainstream.

Put on your immersion hat to follow my logic..

Within SL, the idea of dressing yourself up is as mainstream as that same idea is in RL. I do it in both worlds, you do it (probably better) in both worlds. Within SL, the idea of making your own stuff is (increasingly as a result of shifting creation back into out-world tools) as out of the mainstream as it is in RL. I create here, but not as much as I once did.  You also create here, but probably not as much as you once did. I've shifted my creative energies back to RL. If you're designing increasingly in Blender, you have, too.

One of the things I so loved about my early years in SL was the conceit of standing in a field or on a beach and carving and painting huge blocks of wood into a biplane. That was as primal a creative experience as making snowmen or sand castles in my childhood (okay, I still make both). I can drag and stretch and squish in Blender or AutoCad, but there's no chance that someone cute or funny will walk up to me and ask what I'm doing. I'm not immersed in the world where I'm creating, I'm just sitting in a chair, running a program that lets me view and manipulate 3D objects. That's not much different than creating things for RL.

Second Life was never able to achieve a truly immersive creative experience and it never will.

I just watched the first Iron Man movie and I was truck by two things...

1) How over-the-top the movie was in showing what one person could make.

2) How much I wanted to be that person.

Call me Maddy Stark.

Edited May 11, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[Rhonda Huntress]

I thought they all said the same thing.  Like someone made an alt just for this schtick.