Drayke Newall

Linden trees are still around. But they do suffer the same issue with people creating alts. That said this can be easily resolved by LL just actually enforcing their alt limit rule which as far as I am aware they haven't done so for many a year. The problem is that there is no one at the starting area to guide them. The days of mentors been gone has led to no one to help newbies from the get go. As far as nothing to do, whilst generally true, this is also a by product of LL poor utilisation of what they have. The experience that new users should have is land at noob island, go through a quick basic tutorial with a prize at the end of a high quality avatar, skin and accessories. Even better would be a token that gives the new user 30 days of premium for free (aka a free trial) so they are introduced to premium as well as showcased owning and decorating a home. The mentors at the newbie area (could be similar to moles) would be there to answer questions or even offer a more advanced building tutorial for example. From the newbie area, after completion of the basic tutorial they should be automatically teleported to Linden Realms where they can participate in the game to earn money, with explanations as such and also offer other money making avenues as suggestions. Give them a basic start and a good experience on how to 'play' second life and what is possible in SL whilst earning money. The Linden Trees used to be really popular back in hype days (with new users not alts), with even if I recall the hud being offered for free at the starting region. Now those are never heard of by the new users despite being around with the possibility of earning quite a lot of lindens. The more trees around the more lindens on offer. In the hype days you also had numerous freebie places. Unfortunately places like freebie warehouse etc, whilst still around, still generally only have free items of poor quality or made decades ago. These need to be updated with decent products and advertised by LL through the intro to SL. By doing the above the new user start will be a good cross section of the fun SL can be and all the while learning, meeting, playing and earning lindens. If you want to go even further upon your sign up and avatar creation on the website have a list of things people like. If for instance they like adventure manga's when they tick that and go in world they are sent to a sim that is themed like an adventurers guild hall whereby the have to go and register at the guild hall desk (this could be register for payment info on file) and from there they could go to Linden realms to earn lindens and experience (or another custom zone). They could also have a guild recruiting board which is a place RP sims could advertise their particular RP zone "like a guild". The above example could be expanded for exploration with Paleo world, or it could even be expanded by LL actually finishing cross region experience hunts whereby they could get a monster hunting experience to hook them in. LL should be offering the hook for people to see what SL is. Relying on the community at the start is to much for a new user as there are so many places to go, most of which are either empty or boring (sorry to say). Noob island could also be converted to a game system whereby apes have stolen all of your belongings and clothes leaving you only with minimal coverings (and a decent avatar). The goal is to find your clothes through the region by fighting the apes or doing puzzles to find your belongings. Hidden treasure chests could also offer some small linden prizes. All through this process it guides the user on how to use the viewer and controls, including basic prim creation. There are so many possibilities to improve the new user experience, however there has always been the mentality in LL that all that needs to happen is sign in, quick tutorial then your on your own.

Ah I see, I only mentioned it as I was told in the forums by a Linden that I need to go take my questions and ask it in person at the meeting. No mention of submitting it etc. Just shows how convoluted the process is and the average person would find it to bothersome to even try.

This ties into a post I made in another thread where LL need to look at approaching (as much as I hate the word) 'influencers' that are outside of the SL userbase. It's fine to run adverts, however 70% of the population are missed with that form of advertising due to ad blockers or due to the randomness of ad generation. Also taking the avatar customisation ad as an example, usually on youtube you can skip the ad after 5 seconds. That means that in those 5 seconds you have to make the ad so engaging that the person wont skip. With the exampled ad, was it engaging in the first 5 seconds? No, all I saw was what the average person would think is a website sign in process. Certainly not an ad I would have kept running to see what SL is or even actually know what the ad was showing about SL. Directly approaching people with like minded video or social media outlets and offering them a small sponsorship (or just approach them and say give it a try) means that these people directly do a fact based and personal opinion based ad within their social stream that can not be blocked and directly shows the platform to likeminded people who would be interested in such things. Taking that surfing advert as an example, how many surf interested people will that ad reach? How many disabled people who want to surf irl and cant but want to feel some form of the sport will the advert reach? The ad is targeted to a specific group of the population, however the ad itself is just a general ad to the population. If I type into search, "sports to do with a disability" am I going to get that advert for SL showcasing the proven positives the platform can provide for such people? No. If I search "want to surf but not near beach" or the like, will I get the ad for SL showing that you can experience it in a somewhat basic form (this is why VR should have continued to be worked on for SL)? No. Targeted ads work far better than general ones and approaching influencers with 1000+ followers also provides direct advertisement to the right market. Like I mentioned I've never seen a SL ad so have no idea what criteria you need to have them show, however, I'll bet my hat that they generally show as game related, which has proven to not be the right audience.

Yep. It is refreshing to see so many Lindens taking the feedback in the forums in the marketing thread. It is also why I think and have been requesting for years that they should have a Second Life feedback section within the forums itself as it shows when LL employees post, that they are listening to their userbase. Jira is an awful platform for feedback. It is designed to be a bug submission system and the general userbase will never visit there. A new user wants to see in the official forums regular posting by staff members, not just forum moderators as it give the impression to them that they are engaged in the community as well. This used to be the case many years ago when LL actively interacted with the community though it fell to the wayside. Then there is the issue of the inworld meetings. Sure they can still have them, but telling people (like I have been told in the past) that I need to submit my questions in those inworld meetings or they wont get heard is ridiculous for a platform that spans timezones. I am not going to log on in the wee hours of the morning just to submit a question or feedback. This is where the issue you mentioned comes into play. Only those few residents that visit these inworld meetings are listened to and so they get skewed data and opinions of what is and isn't wanted.

Sad thing is I could probably find you many posts from 10 years ago and up till now that basically say the same thing you have said yet, it always falls on deaf ears. Until LL pull their head out of the "we don't get involved with the world" sandbox and actually listen to decent feedback nothing is going to change. The other issue is there are a select few that LL seem to listen to who have rose coloured glasses on and give LL feedback that everything is fine and so nothing happens. Call me cynical but it has been shown time and time again to be the case.

As someone who has never seen an SL ad on the internet (I know shocking), it was good to see in that blog post what they do look like, however looking at them, I myself thought they were poor in the same sense as what Rathgrith posted but also in other ways. Why do I say they are poor? Firstly, the image advertisements offered no discernible context to any specific audience and just gives the appearance that you picked a picture off the net and added 'Join for Free' button. Whilst I understand that its a small image space for advertising there can certainly be a lot that can be placed in such a small space to get your point across. None of the picture adverts provided any form of showing what a person can expect to do in SL (apart from the DJ one) or most of all why they should join. A picture just showing an avatar with black wings or a picture of two avatars close to each other offer no incentive for anyone to see what it is all about and don't get me started on the cheesiness of the summer one. With these image adverts LL need to make sure that they encompass exactly what SL is like and all its positives with in a precisely imaged and worded advert. Things like be anyone or anything or bring your imagination to life or meet someone from another country without going there. Those are the core fundamentals of second life (now at least considering inworld creation is so poor) and encompass everything that SL is, Be anyone, create anything and meet everyone. That should be the focus of adverts and they should be done in a creative (non cheesy) manner to reflect the personality second life has. Showcase its strong points not just 'here's a random picture of two people close to each other with a join now button'... That is done to death by the likes of the sims, or imvu or any other dress up or meetup virtual world/game. Think of something different and more engaging. For example (and keeping in the theme that SL offers) of how impacting image marketing in a small space can be images like these need to be produced: This image (one of a series) is simple yet brings across the point in a directed manner. Reading a book you can become anyone. There is no ambiguity in the picture and is a perfect example of how to advertise the reason WHY you need to try something. In this case reading. SL has the same characteristics of a book in that you can be anyone or live any life or be anywhere in any time. Focus on that and show it. Don't just show a picture that shows nothing or reveals nothing about what you can do in SL. Be creative. For example get a picture of a famous crowded landmark and blend it seamlessly into the SL built equivalent and simply caption it "To crowded to see? Join SL now and skip the queue". Whilst yes, they will see it isn't as good as the real thing, it showcases to the new user what can be seen and done in SL all the while engaging them in something they are passionate about, travelling and seeing the sites. As to the video marketing ad's, they are better but are still flawed. As some have mentioned, don't showcase things that are badly implemented in SL like the sword fighting scene in that advert for role play. Just watching it with the bad animations, poor look avatars and not to mention horrendous blood splatter looks like a game made in 2005. It wont appeal to many if any. By all means focus on the RP aspect of SL as it is a major drawcard and bonus of it, however if you want to engage people don't show them things that put SL in a bad light or will disappoint them down the track. For RP focus on old school RP, or acting. Those kind of things that don't showcase combat which just doesn't work at all in SL due to the limit in scripting and etc. Focus on things like Harry Potter themed RP where you can attend classes, be a wizard, act it out as if you were part of it with custom hud, custom spells etc. Get permission to use a snippet of the classic Harry Potter music (though that might be a tough ask!). Never mention anything in the advertising about making things as, like Rathgrith mentioned, it gives the false impression that you can create beautiful things in world. That ship has sailed due to the prim system not being updated. Either fix it or just don't advertise it unless you can somehow advertise creation with 3rd party software in a good way (good luck with that). With the 'avatar customisation/fashion' advert, within the space of 15 seconds you could have skipped all of the sign in to SL irrelevant stuff and started off with a moving (dancing) avatar changing into various outfits slowly (with no jerky camera movement) and then over the course of the advert it speeds up showcasing many more outfits and avatar looks (and not just human) all while the avatar moves. Instead, all you did is made a really jerky off putting advert that, with the camera moving around like it does, just makes it really hard to focus on the main subject (the avatar) as your eyes are constantly trying to focus on the right place. To make it even more engaging and to showcase multiple aspects of SL you could have the background changing with the outfits fitting the outfit theme. So a dance club with a dance outfit, and medieval outfit with a medieval background. Within 15 seconds you could have by the end showcased 100's of outfits and backgrounds, all the while also giving the impression that there are hundreds of possibilities not just 4! Lastly, whilst the surfing advert was interesting, try not to mention things like "the best thing about this beach is that no one is here" it gives the wrong impression. No, it doesn't give the impression that it is an exclusive beach in some hideaway place only locals know of therefore it is quite with no one around. All it does is highlight to people that SL is vastly unpopulated. You want to give people the impression that it is full of life, not just one person surfing and Drax being the extra 'cause there was no one else.

How about things like: How are you going about improving retention and the new user experience? Are you actually reading the posts, blogs, blog comments, news article comments of users that left and why they left to try and use those as a way of how you can improve retention? - A lot of their comments from years ago still are not addressed. Will in-world creation ever be competitive even in a basic form (i.e. prims can be joined into one whole mesh and uv mapped) to imported mesh? Will homesteads always be locked archaically behind full regions even when moved to the cloud? When will we see any form of better cache management e.g. the one hinted at that seems to be vapourware for a few years? When will we see better inventory management whereby I can flag an item as 'Furniture" and the object icon changes from a yellow cube to a chair and then I can apply a filter to find all furniture flagged items? Will we ever see some form of SL forum section for SL feature requests that is directly tied to Jira? For example I post a feature request in the forums and that is automatically transferred to Jira and vice versa. This would mean that those that don't know Jira has a feature request but knows of the forums can actually submit feature requests and allow people in the forums to see what features have been approved or not. This will show how you are making SL better to a much wider audience. As CoffeeDujour said, its all well and good to talk about things you have been working on (for years and still not released) but we can find out how those are going by scrolling down in the forums. What users want to know is long term goals and how you intend to make SL relevant to a future and constantly moving userbase.

All this last name stuff makes me wonder how much the older last names would be worth if they were sold via a LL introduced auction similar to their land one. I know LL don't allow this and is against the ToS, but there is a clause within it that allows a user to approach LL to ask if an account can be passed to someone other than when they die. It would certainly be an interesting way to offer the older last names to people and fully run by LL (including them getting profit). The auction would allow a user to pass on (abandon them just like land goes to Governor Linden) unused accounts to people on the basis that if they are passed on this way the system deletes all of their content (if they had any) and the account goes to a default state. Another way would be that the last name gets transferred only to the buyer and the old auctioned avatar gets a default resident last name. For example I have an account I don't use anymore (and have never really used) that has the last name Snowpaw. It's just gathering dust and has been for years. I know it wont happen but a curious thought as to the income it could generate LL.

Nothing will motivate them. That's the point. It is the downward spiral of what happens when LL release new features and don't release them to their fullest. Sure, they cant envisage everything a person may or may not do with the released feature that's a given and an expectation that their planning would take into consideration, but they really do need to start releasing features to at least the same standard that is used that the feature is to replace/improve or, improve it beyond the later being the best solution. The issue now comes as to whether they will update it. Ill put all my lindens on the table that they want update it to support materials. Why? Not because it would be to hard, but because they wont be able to. There are two main reasons. Firstly, because as we have seen with many of their projects or features, from their original release to any promised update can be years. Windlight to EEP is the prime example of this. This has many negatives such as the code being too old and intertwined with other features that are introduced in-between to simply needing a complete re-write due to better ways of doing it. This is why EEP has been so hard to implement due to other newer features getting in the way of the older windlight system. The positive list of such an action would be one line simply showing "none". Secondly, because the longer LL wait to update the feature the more likely such an update would break existing content and therefore per LL known rules of never breaking old content, they wouldn't be able to implement it. The mesh onion layered avatar is the prime example for this case. If LL updated the default body to a standard equal to the current mesh onion bodies when mesh was released (they could have even had a similar body system but instead have the actual layers auto togglable only when the appropriate layer e.g. tattoo was worn) but better optimised and restricted, then the debacle we are faced with as far as multiple incompatible bodies (needing different clothes sizes, skins etc) now would never have been. Instead they have wasted so long in actually looking at updating the default body that any attempt would break content and cause user backlash so they don't. This has eventuated to BoM, which is the fix that would never have been needed as the system default body would have been updated to work with the system materials from the get go. Meaning EEP or other improvements/features could have been worked on far earlier as BoM wouldn't have wasted development time. This will be the outcome of any possible material support for BoM. So to answer your last question no it wont happen before BoM catches on for human avatars as it will never be implemented. This will mean that due to the non-human avatars utilising many of the human bodies and assets those non human avatars will be forced to downgrade until at least a better workable user made solution is created, thereby by passing any positives optimisation wise BoM intended to have.

I am in no means in favour of Onion bodies. I think they are a plague and one directly linkable to the erroneous and lack of foresight thinking of LL upon mesh creation. They should be removed and I think most people would agree with this. That said, due to their favoured use over the years, BoM has and will always be seen as a back step in graphics quality and choice to many. As I mentioned before, BoM is generally solely targeted to human avatars and this is the problem. By doing this it means that a large portion of the userbase, and those generally that want to use a lot less rendering complexity in some cases for more (and of which already do have FAR lower complex avatars than human avatars despite using onion layered bodies) are ignored or have to use poorer products to achieve things onion bodies can. For instance, as a human one would have generally a skin, hair, tattoo and makeup layer (seeing as clothing BoM is terrible). This works fine as the base layer of BoM on the new bodies allows for a skin pore normal map and so that works very well for human avatars. Therefore human avatars can use the multiple human skins etc available i.e. choice. Conversely, if you look at non-human avatars then the problem with BoM becomes clearer in that it limits the possibilities/choice dramatically and stagnates creation. Take a mermaid. Current onion bodies allow for that person to be a mermaid by buying any nice looking human skin, add a separately created tattoo for gills (with normal map), add a separately created tattoo for scales (with normal map), add a separately created tattoo for shells (with normal map) to cover the nipples, add a separately created skin tattoo blend (with normal map) scale effect to blend the tail with human body and add a tattoo normal map for a water on skin effect. This cannot be achieved in the BoM method. Whilst yes, you can have any skin and tattoos, the definition and effects multiple normal maps provide isn't possible. This means that to get the same look using BoM a skin creator will have to make a mermaid skin with all the tattoo's and effects included on that skin and a single normal map to accommodate (which will also have layering issues). The same applies to androids, furries and any other non-human or semi human avatar. The above means that it limits the choice of the person wanting to be a mermaid as they only have very select (few) skin creators to choose from rather than any human skin. It also stagnates the creation community as rather than having multiple creators creating multiple tattoos and letting the user choose, with BoM bodies it limits this to relying on only a few creators. That is to say, with the above mermaid example, 7 different creators could benefit from the mermaid avatar sales wise (whilst also increasing choice) whereas, with true BoM only 3 creators benefit (body, skin and tail). This is why it isn't popular and is also why we have now seen Matreya bodies come out with a BoM body and then multiple separate (optional) overlay bodies along with more scripts etc within them. I.e. more or just as much render complexity and drain on the servers and viewer as well as also meaning less attachment points for some. There were possibilities for LL to look into or implement multi layered material support for BoM. Their previous suggestions of it being implemented later after release of BoM is evidence of this. The issue comes that LL put it in the to hard basket at the time rather than looking to issue the update as a complete package. The very same method in which LL is now looking to release EEP, as a non complete package with actual wanted features released later or not at all. With Matreya being the most popular female body, I am sure more skin creators will change to BoM now that they have BoM bodies but there is the blatant downside mentioned above to this.

I think you will find more people than you think do use ALM especially given that it is usually activated by default now with very little impact on performance. OptimoMaximo has said what I believe is the answer as well, BoM doesn't support material and therefore the body effects/options aren't as limitless as onion bodies are due to this. Not having this support and also the nature of how BoM works it makes the skin, tattoo's etc. very flat looking and not to the standard and flexibility people have come to expect with over 8 years of onion layered bodies. LL were told this prior (I would assume, or at least hope, in their somewhat limited in-world meetings as well) that not including materials (even if it meant delaying for a solution to be looked into) would negatively impact on uptake but they didn't listen and instead said it will be a future possible feature, which is looking doubtful now. It also comes down to money. Whilst body makers MAY provide a free update and generally will, there is no reason for skin makers to do the same. Why? Because the previous onion bodies are still there - and still provided by the body makers (in some way due to LL's policy of not breaking content) and therefore have a market and a far more established one at that. This means that skin makers are better business wise to create new skins for BoM and then charge for them separately to the un-updated ones. The consequence of this is that, due to the cost involved with some skins consumer wise or the variety people have already collected over the years, it can be cost prohibitive. Add to this body makers still making union layered bodies or variants of it that support/dont support BoM due to the lack of material support, the consumer will see very little need to update from an onion body to a newer different variation of one. Additionally, due to the above, the skin creator would need to include multiple versions of their skin (irrespective of how easy or not it is) as part of the product to accommodate old and new or face loss of income due to people not upgrading. Add onto that then the farce of left arm only tattoo's not working and issues with AUX BoM layers for left arms etc having issues (unless these have been resolved) and it should be relatively clear the reason why the update hasn't had a better uptake (i.e. it wasn't a QA tested and finalised release but instead, a release that has bugs, issues, lack of already well established features and in general only support for one avatar community - humans).

Well in the past before recapture, such programs were written to 'protect' Last Names when they were available upon sign-up. 😉

AMD has the same type of streaming using your comp as the server and streaming to all devices.

Um.... what is a Dinkie? At the moment being so late my Australian slang brain is trying to convince me it is our butchered slang word for someone riding on the handle bars of a bicycle. But I'm sure that isn't what you mean lol.

I agree, don't know where people assumed that bots were scripted in Linden Realms. That's why I mentioned in my post that they are people actually running around just semi afking watching youtube while they stand still for a bit to try and convince LL they aren't botting. I think people are getting confused with a bot or scripted agent and botting which is running around for hours and hours collecting crystals via the most optimal path.

Actually no and if you played Linden Realms regularly you would know this as well. A lot of the botting that took place in Linden Realms was actually main accounts or maybe a second account that would bot. Most of the time this was the case due to the way Linden Lab would often eject any 'player' based on how full their profile (ie groups etc) was or based on pathing of which the person would need to change it up every now and then to not get flagged. Meaning an actual person being behind the avatar you saw but maybe afk on the web or something. What I meant is actual botting whereby there is no need to every now and then change pathing or stop here/ there or type when IM'ed by someone. In other words the introduction of daily quests seem to be LL's way of filtering out bots instead of actively watching or relying on pathing to detect. So in other words more alt accounts being used as bots and actual botting non stop. You are joking right? Creating an account is nothing more than going to the website and creating an account. So long as the recapture can be broken, which it has many times via simple python coding it is certainly possible for a program to create an account over and over. There is even a specific chrome extension that allows you to run actions via java script on a website for this very thing.

As many as one desires... https://www.throwawaymail.com/ Alt accounts botting will be the new botting method of which is impossible to stop.

I was getting this yesterday as well when trying to buy something from marketplace. I would assume it was an issue with their web services. Try again today should be ok now.

So what are people supposed to do in the case of something like mesh grass which can be plagued by this issue as well? Surely a custom physics model isn't needed for grass considering it is most often set as no-physics in world and yet trying to rez on it sometimes (not all the time - seems to be viewer mood day driven) causes the same issue described in this thread...

That is because AMD have never provided a full OpenGL driver with the shaders component only being emulated. They have always concentrated on Direct3D/X and their own developed system Mantle since 2013. Mantle was then freely given to Khronos Group who renamed it Vulcan which has now replaced OpenGL entirely. Nvidia have also directly altered the driver code of OpenGL to suit their graphics cards in the past by implementing features that the base drivers never offered. OpenGL is no longer updated and hasn't been since 2017, which has meant AMD really only have supported OpenGL as a life support measure as opposed to Nvidia who actively pushed it until recently. The fact that there is talk of no longer supporting OpenGL as new graphics cards come out poses a serious issue for games such as Second Life that still run on them as Vulcan is not backwards compatible with OpenGL.

The problem is that seeing as this is a LL created area, they should be the ones setting the example mole or not. For a simple tree that is repeated over and over, the time spent creating it correctly, even if it took a little longer, would be far more beneficial in the long run. Add to this the potential of adding the tree to the LL inventory Library for everyone to use and its even better as it provides an example of proper creation and its benefits. EDIT: I actually have just then been to Belleseria for the first time and was to be honest surprised at the lack of optimisation in the area. Trees and bushes as you mention using outdated physic tricks using prims (prims have worse optimisation than a mesh object), buildings that use a combination of mesh and prims where prim faces not seen having 512 textures still on them, mesh buildings and rocks that have faces/shape that could have easily used normal maps to achieve the same result, grass that in a small patch has more triangles and vram usage on it than mesh grass 4x the size can achieve, lamp posts that render cost is just to big, bridges that use improper smoothing systems making them look like a cut octagon, prims used on bridges instead of mesh, textures that could easily be combined into one texture, list goes on. I get that they are moles and not 'professional' but LL really need to step up their game.

Its a problem at the moment that is being discussed I believe at length and has been discussed before in this thread in the second post. The rest is about universal unless that is what you are meaning as well. Don't think an true resolution was established though.

Good heavens, given the backlash over the years of MMORPG's over use of dallies, last thing I expect or want is to do more of the same mundane 'quests' in a place like second life. Cant see how it would make it more fun. As for cheating, it was never a case of cheating per se, it was always a case of bots. I foresee a nice increase in account generation for LL as those bots make alts instead to farm the lindens.

Would be nice, though I would dare say it would be a huge drain on the system to be able to do that, not to mention probably a coding impossibility considering SL Viewers single core reliance. I would love to see such a feature in even modern games not just sl.

The day I see a TPV creator or general user manage to fix second life viewers underutilized cpu (i.e. no multi core support not including an extra thread to process chat) or graphic card ram/optimisation utilisation issue or hardware cache utilisation issues etc. (and it not being LL and is actually ALLOWED by LL) is the day I will say Sansar is the best platform ever. To the OP, many things rely on you not just for your own experience but for others as well. If you actively reduce your avatar render weight to good levels and use items that have optimised textures and objects then not only will your performance increase but so will others. EDIT: it also comes down to how creators do things and how that flows on to the user/consumer. For example, many mesh bodies are a single body that uses a hud to make segments disappear. If creators however separated their bodies into smaller parts then it allows the user to not wear that part entirely if clothing covers it. For example if I wear full length pants and the mesh body has a separate lower body and feet I simply remove the lower body, wear the pants and then save that outfit in the outfits tab to use later. This means the viewer doesn't need to render the lower body or its alphaing at all.