An 'honest' view of SL

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Once in a while a story about SL pops up in the mainstream media. Generally, the premise of such a story is:' wow, SL is still a thing?' Sometimes an experienced gamer slash YouTuber albeit unwitting SL n00b decides to give SL a try and concludes after ten minutes of extensive field research at welcome areas, popular adult destinations and debilitatingly laggy shopping events that SL is not for them or their target audience. On the other side of the spectrum, there are SL bloggers and vloggers slash SL advocates who aim to debunk the negative stories and prejudices around SL ('Isn't SL all about sex?'). They too tend to sugarcoat matters a little. To my personal opinion, SL is like the real world. It's a nice place to be, if you know where to look. But overall, it's a mess because people made it that way. In real life, a representative picture taken on our beautiful blue planet could show something like the ocean with lots of plastic in it (a.k.a. the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). It's not the kind of picture you want to carry with you in your wallet on intergalactic journeys, but it is a very average and honest view.

So, on my quest of an honest view of SL, I teleported to the middle of a continent and flew up a bit and set my drawing distance to maximum (1024m). Gazing and camming around, I came to the conclusion that SL is a desolate place, like the Pacific Ocean, with lots of junk in it, like the plastics in the real world.

This, times thousands and thousands if my draw distance wasn't limited. The  majority of these skyboxes is also unoccupied, unrented, unused. And behind this all are servers that keep them into existence while a power plant nearby exhausts some more CO2. So it's kind of depressing and I hide in my little skybox that's way nicer than all the others and keep my draw distance at a minimum and try to unsee what I had seen. Just like in real-life.

What's your honest view of SL?

[ChinRey]

10 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

What's your honest view of SL?

Pretty much the same as yours actually.

[chibiusa Ling]

34 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Once in a while a story about SL pops up in the mainstream media. .......YouTuber albeit unwitting SL n00b decides to give SL a try and concludes after ten minutes of extensive field research at welcome areas, popular adult destinations and debilitatingly laggy shopping events that SL is not for them or their target audience........('Isn't SL all about sex?')

Things of an adult nature have even begun to infect the pg areas of SL so I can see where they would get that impression. Also if you go to an adult area these days your guaranteed to have a sex crazed starved zombie in your IM box in seconds like "Hi...want f***". I was playing in the 3rd Rock Grid (Opensim) the other day and I fell in love with their new resident hub. You basically Rez into their world and walk straight ahead and there are avatars loaded as models with quite a few different mesh outfits that you can see worn and snap up if you want. Beyond that there are free ao's, hair, skins, shoes, fantasy outfits, motorbikes and other vehicles and all manner of other stuff right there for the new avatar to grab and start using. Along with a tutorial area that teaches you the basic points of their grid and finally a destination hub . I know SL has the resident created and official gateways that new avatars Rez into which I have tried but I gotta admit...what 3rdRG have done pretty neat. Now IF they had something like this included into the current welcome zones along with different pathways a new avatar could take that teaches them not only the basics of SL but also some building and some scripting then I think the initial opinion of SL would be slightly different. Especially if said welcome zone had a destination hub that showcased all of the main long standing popular sims from their respective different areas. For example : 

Anime : Annie May Heaven, Anime Universe, DBS Universe

Roleplay : Star Wars, Vampire Islands etc

Combat : Angels and Demons, XCS, TDT, SLMC 

Sandbox : Skidz, Mage etc

Something like this would give people a taste in a safe environment of what SL is and then direct them to the most popular areas on the grid to start meeting people from those communities and might help these YouTubers to see the other side of SL that doesn't consist of "Hey want some f***"

34 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

What's your honest view of SL?

I agree with you on your opinion but in terms of it being similar to the Pacific Garbage Patch...I actually like that about second life. Sure the million and one eyesore skyboxes can be a bit lame sometimes but out of the sheer garbage created on Second Life have come some seriously creative and nifty creations. The fact you can literally create anything from garbage to designer looking clothes to a huge skyline city with working monorail is what I love about SL. Your world your imagination. 

Edited December 5, 2018 by chibiusa Ling
Note : If im not supposed to mention other grids in this forum I apologise and I will blank it out if needed

[ErikaKotov]

Sims on sims of shopping centers empty. Miles of abandoned land once housing people's dreams of creating. Marketplace riddled with gotcha spam existing in both categories of gotcha and regular items. Poorly constructed mesh with millions of polygons blowing up my computer. Creators passing off turbosquid mesh as their own original creations. Being added to Subscribe-O-Matic without even subscribing in the first place. Shopping events laggy up to the wazoo.

Edited December 5, 2018 by ErikaKotov

[Rhonda Huntress]

My view is painted by music, group chat and a playful brat.  SL is beautiful when seen through my eyes. 

[Ren Toxx]

Places with things I want.

[Janet Voxel]

Mostly an interesting place to hangout and unwind, maybe meet someone interesting. If I had to break it down in a theme: wonderfully weird (in small doses)

[Chic Aeon]

Typically people see and come away with what the expect (and want) to see :D. 

Lower that draw distance and visit some of the really beautiful and not too laggy sims that abound. 

 

[Callum Meriman]

Dreams.

Creativity.

Friends.

[purrrkitten]

Aren't those dome shaped skyboxes the bella pace ones?

[MirandaBowers]

I see it as a place to explore a career path I can't otherwise take in RL. 

A MUCH cheaper option for a shopping lover like myself.

A more comfortable option to socialize since I am too shy to talk to strangers otherwise.

But most importantly, to me it is a looking glass into the unseen imaginations and dreams of others. An invaluable view. 

 

Without being so starry eyed though, of course it could use a major cleanup regarding all of the junk and whatnot for optimization.

[Garnet Psaltery]

That's the Mainland, @Arduenn Schwartzman . My honest opinion is that a large part of it is given over to skybox trash over a ground level devoid of life or miraculously sprouting tiki huts on prim sand over water.  Having said that, there are beautiful places on the Mainland, and many more on private islands.  I agree with Chibiusa about the 'adult' infection of PG areas; there really needs to be some tightening-up of governance there.

For myself, SL means contact with people, an outlet for creativity, and an endless supply of stories.  All that is precious.

[Theresa Tennyson]

3 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

So, on my quest of an honest view of SL, I teleported to the middle of a continent and flew up a bit and set my drawing distance to maximum (1024m). Gazing and camming around, I came to the conclusion that SL is a desolate place, like the Pacific Ocean, with lots of junk in it, like the plastics in the real world.

This, times thousands and thousands if my draw distance wasn't limited. The  majority of these skyboxes is also unoccupied, unrented, unused. And behind this all are servers that keep them into existence while a power plant nearby exhausts some more CO2. So it's kind of depressing and I hide in my little skybox that's way nicer than all the others and keep my draw distance at a minimum and try to unsee what I had seen. Just like in real-life.

After that, the little prince climbed a high mountain. The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knees. And he used the extinct volcano as a footstool. "From a mountain as high as this one," he said to himself, "I shall be able to see the whole planet at one glance, and all the people . . ."

But he saw nothing, save peaks of rock that were sharpened like needles.

"Good morning," he said courteously.

"Good morning--Good morning--Good morning," answered the echo.

"Who are you?" said the little prince.

"Who are you--Who are you--Who are you?" answered the echo.

"Be my friends. I am all alone," he said.

"I am all alone--all alone--all alone," answered the echo.

"What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them . . .

from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, translated by Katherine Woods.

[Blush Bravin]

Here's my honest view of SL in MY neighborhood.

Three views all at 1024 draw distance. I normally keep it at 120 though. 

You can see some sky clutter at this draw distance but honestly there's not that much in the sky and since I don't run draw distance so high I never see that clutter. I actually love my view of SL. I guess it just depends where you live in SL.

[Fionalein]

No one mentioned landscape print shoeboxes yet? There are places all over SL - worse yet: Land barons think placing the shoebox around parcels increases it's price...

Edited December 6, 2018 by Fionalein

[TatianaNikolay]

My SL?

My sister, our beautiful land/private sanctuary, her store, forum friends, friends, shopping, exploring. That's my SL.

[MirandaBowers]

9 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

No one mentioned landscape print shoeboxes yet? 

Those are a huge peeve of mine when they're not set to be transparent to the surrounding parcels. 

[iamyourneighbour]

I think they can experiment with vertical limits, maybe to 500 or something to enforce ground use in designated areas. 

Tbh, I don't think it is that grim, you will always find people come and go, and SL's update particularly extra LI grants was a pleasant surprise since there have been younger services and games that has already come and gone while SL is still going. It might not have been the hot stuff when it first came about but nevertheless is very steady. 

[Tari Landar]

My most honest, not to mince words view of sl..

Put in *****ty effort, get back *****ty results

🤷🏻‍♂️

Sl isn't to me what it is to many others, even people seemingly more like me than different. I, literally, see sl differently than pretty much anyone else you'll run into. I don't mean that in the philosophical sense, though I'm not discounting that possibility.  Sl is a place, for me, where I have met a multitude of people, from who knows how many different walks of life. I've met challenges and overcome them. I've provided ample challenges for others. I've made amazing friends, some I'd actually consider family, on some levels (and that's no easy achievement, I hold even friendship very sacred, and I actually mean it). I've been able to participate in the world's largest, most successful virtual environment to date. That's probably not much of a feat when you consider how weak the competition has always been, but still, noteworthy I'd say, for all it's faults and problems...can't deny the thus far success. I've been afforded creative opportunities that I'd once only dreamed of, and it has in fact had a massive impact on my rl, even my educational journey (helping push me towards selecting majors and concentrations for my degrees, the last of which I just completed last week..I digress..but, mini yay). I've had some of the most hilarious moments, and also some of the saddest moments, I've ever experienced in my life...with tons and tons and tons thrown in between. I've gotten to share my knowledge, learn lots of new things, express my creativity, marvel at the creativity of others, view and experience things only a virtual environment can provide...and let's not forget everything else I've had a blast doing..

bowling, baseball, golf-mini and regular, basketball, soccer, football(american), surfing, biking, boating, hiking, horseback riding, hovercrafting, hot air ballooning, white water rafting, bungee jumping, skydiving, parachuting, falling to my death, visiting museums, exploring new sims, aquariums, zoos, monuments, rl exhibits,  pretending we know how to drive in sl, randomly tping around the grid, hunts, arcade games, skateboarding, skating, hockey, sledding, skiing, watching the ball drop on new year's eve, partying all night, djing, participating in charity events, sitting and chatting with someone that just needed an ear, helping people new to the grid, helping people old but new to certain concepts(lol), taking group tours of the xcite sim-(all my old TSO buds, you know who you are, admit it, that was fun!!)-then visiting our designated not-our-sim-but-they-let-us-use-it garden on a vampire-owned sim so we could help people place bits and pieces where they ought to be(we lost a few good nipples along the way..sigh..)...omg I could literally write a book series and each series would be one month's worth of my sl shenanigans.....if I date that back to 2008...that's, ummm...someone math for me...

One of my favorite things to do, however, has always been weird thrower fights with friends...and strangers!!- popcorn,shoes,pudding, babymaking juice,water balloons, pumpkins, mattresses, fruit, playing cards,inner tubes, tires, other weaponry, arrows, nerf darts, goldfish, wigs, slime, prims, bouncy balls, fireworks, roman candles, cake..(I know I am probably missing at least a dozen more).

I mean, yeah I've had the crap, the horrible issues, the nasty people, the bad experiences, the emotions, the heartache, the...well, really, most bad experiences we all have at one point or another. But, really, why would I want to focus my opinion of sl on that, or even really let it have ANY influence, when the positive side has an overwhelming majority and I am not even remembering 1/1,000,000 of it, I'm sure. Meh...My honest review..it is what you want it to be, and what you want to make it. It really does boil down to that for me.

 

[animats]

Much as I like SL, my strongest impression of it after a few weeks was the emptyness. The big cities feel like places built for ten times the population.

[Kai Lyvingstone]

Definitely a place that you can visually tell is a shell of its former glory, but the places that thrive are amazing. Interior design and decoration far better than I could ever hope to do IRL, cozy fake furniture and houses, a good place to find new music and explore general weirdness of the human mind. Would be interesting if more people used it as a way to REALLY break into art exhibition-type stuff (I'm sure there was more of that type of stuff in the past) but I love the details and care people put into building everyday things. Wish furry avatars were the way they used to be around 2010-ish, with tons and tons of different creators making real, full avatars, instead of the same cutesy mods over and over for the same base avatar. Avatar modding crippled the furry avatar market. 

SL is a great place to embrace your inner home designer because I bought my own house/skybox the other week and it's great to have a place to call my own instead of endlessly drifting and logging out in sandboxes. A house that I would never dream of living in comfortably IRL (half the walls facing the outside are huge glass windows) is what I live in in SL

Sometimes I wish I was more outgoing about actually talking to other people and making friends because it seems like it enhances it, but being here almost 9 years and just wandering around alone, exploring and clubbing, for 95% of them is a start.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Kai Lyvingstone

[rasterscan]

Setting your draw distance to 1024m so you can come and gripe about lag and how ugly it all looks is a problem of your own making laughs. 

[Fionalein]

52 minutes ago, rasterscan said:

Setting your draw distance to 1024m so you can come and gripe about lag and how ugly it all looks is a problem of your own making laughs. 

It is one of the different aspects of SL, and bad mesh had no doubt part of the decline of the SLRR. I usually ride it with draw distance 512 to a) see ahead, B) enjoy the landscape. Sure, prim builds are not as impressive close up, but I can imagine how amazing the view must have been before we were wandering through a surreal broken dream of fractal triangles.

I guess this is also the reason many of the old RP places hold on to prim builds: Their continents do not crumble when you set DD to 1024.

tldr: Draw distance 1024 is not your everyday use, but for some of us it makes sense.

[AyelaNewLife]

15 hours ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

That's the Mainland, @Arduenn Schwartzman . My honest opinion is that a large part of it is given over to skybox trash over a ground level devoid of life or miraculously sprouting tiki huts on prim sand over water. 

At least I had the decency to find a practically useless patch of hillside/cliffside for my skybox flat

No seriously it was like a 60 degree incline, no one is building anything worthwhile on that

[Cindy Evanier]

I set up a little park/hangout/cuddle/chill/dance area on my roadside parcel ground level which used to get used by a small amount of people each day which made me happy. Until someone bought the next parcel an slapped a big black box rental company office type thing blocking most of it and now its rare to see a visitor