[Do you do it for the likes?]

I do it for the pizza. But I haven't received any pizza yet and it's been a long time. I think the guy who was trying to sell me vampire bonds lied about the pizza. 😕

[Return of Last Names]

The LSL functions needed for people to connect someone's new name to their old name, etc. are rolling out to the main channel this week. It's getting closer.

[Vampire bonds are plummeting]

The only information Google search has about vampire bonds and SL is this thread. It's almost as if such bonds don't exist.

[If you could redesign the viewer...]

5 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

5 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Ability to pass windlight settings around to others inworld with a notecard like system.

Isn't this possible with EEP?

Yes, that's one of EEP's features -- the ability to pass EEP settings to others and also sell them.

[What are some of your pet peeves?]

35 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

but what does FGS stand for?

I think I know, but since I don't know for sure (and Google didn't cooperate by agreeing with me) I'll go with what I'm sure it's not: Fried Green Snakes or Fetid Goose Slime. It could legitimately be the Florida Geological Survey, but I doubt that's what was meant here. At least I've narrowed the possibilities down by a tiny fraction of a percent.

[Selling mainland parcel]

Once you've set the parcel for sale you've done all that's necessary. It will take awhile for the map to update. Generally I find the land shows up as for sale by the next day.

[How does your avatar look today ?]

14 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Original Ruth/Roth bodies are written into the viewer. A change to that code changes the body of anyone using the viewer and a Classic body. It is that body the Starter Avatars basically replace. But, those bodies are not built into the viewer. I don't expect the Lab to change the Ruth/Roth code in the viewer. I do expect new starter avatars. I think most if not all those Starters were made by non-Lindens and acquired by the Lab.

The starter avatars for the last couple years are the standard avatar with alphas and mesh clothing/hair. The mesh monstrosities aren't in the starter avatar panel any more though you can dig 'em up from their graves library folders. The mesh vampires are still in the avatar panel though.

[new homes]

Assuming you want to know what the change in rates for a premium account is:

https://secondlife.com/premium/ has the information at the bottom of the page. It's $99 billed annually, $32.97 billed quarterly, $11.99 billed monthly.

 

[How does your avatar look today ?]

2 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

"This wasn't how they described it at the travel agent's..."

This shot (Day 3 of Black Dragon) was prompted by something @Scylla Rhiadra mentioned about being surprised at how BD performed on some sims where FS bogged down. One of my favorite places is Tralala Loorde's Pine Lake, but it kills my computer on FS. It crashes me like nobody's business. Even with graphics set at the absolute lowest, I cannot even walk around Pine Lake any more. That happened about 2 years ago? So of course this was my sim to go to with Black Dragon. Ummm. Holy crap. Yes, textures took FOREVER to load (like literally go to the kitchen, make a hot sandwich, come back and it was mostly loaded at a short draw distance!), but I could walk, choppily, but I could walk. This photo has shadows off, because with the rain and other things going on at this spot, they weren't rendering well any way, but the point being: I had shadows full on at one point. LOD is ultra high. Etc.  Most interesting!

Even with turning down the gamma and glow, the light was too harsh on SR making her glowing white even with various WLs. I've not had that problem in FS. However, adding playing with the Global Light Strength under Light Softening made a huge difference.

This isn't the best photo in the world but there is no chance I'd have gotten ANY photo with FS.

ETA: Out of curiosity I did log back in to Pine Lake using Firestorm. I had the graphics set to Low, think one step above wireframe. Unlike the previous times, I could walk. I went to the bench and found Maddie M there, obviously stalking me. We had words. I then set my graphics up to higher, but not quite as high as what they were in Black Dragon, and yeah, things quickly got bad. I TP'd back home right before a sure crash was coming.

I hadn't heard of Pine Lake so checked it out. I kept my usual FS graphics settings (304m draw distance, ultimate settings plus others maxed that ultimate doesn't do on its own) but LOD at 2. I didn't have any trouble moving around and frame rates were usually in the 25-30fps range once textures had loaded. I changed to LOD 4 but that didn't make much difference. The region was maintaining its framerate but only 60 - 70% of the scripts could run in a frame. Anyway, here I am buying dinner from a street vendor.

[Cultured Companions]

I have some cultured companions growing in my lab. They're not very bright, but they're sure to stick to by you.

 

Sorry, I just couldn't resist that thread title.

[Upgrading Premium Linden Home]

On 1/5/2020 at 1:23 AM, London Inshan said:

I have heard that you can bbuy more prims for your Linden Home. Is this true and how do I go about it?

Thank you,

London Inshan

Not true, not possible.

[Newbie areas desperate for modernisation]

14 hours ago, rasterscan said:

I appreciate LL has a helluva workload but I urge some modernisation of the newcomer areas. This snippet of user conversation merits consideration:

[03:49] Ⓓoc Ⓡast (rasterscan Resident): and yes, the newb areas are still like 2005
[03:49------------------------------------------------------: yeah that's the problem now, when i first came here, i was laughing my ass off
[03:50] ----------------------------------------------------: the standard now should make it look like bellisseria grpahics now
[03:50] ----------------------------------------------------: so it will attract those newbies to explore and stay
[03:50] Ⓓoc Ⓡast (rasterscan Resident): 𝕐𝕖𝕤 𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕖𝕖𝕕𝕪 !

Over to you, SL

 

The old Help Island, Infohubs/Welcome areas, etc. have nothing to do with the onboarding process any more. A new user starts at one of a series of closed regions that contain the early tutorials then go to one of the Social Islands (either Linden ones or private ones owned by groups). The current system is updated fairly frequently. The others are relics and best avoided by newbies.

[Rez Day Experiences - then and now]

I joined in 2006. Newbies started on one island, went through tutorial sections, and then were teleported to an Infohub. I took it as quickly as possible, landed at the Infohub in Bear, and headed away from any dots on the map. I bought First Land a few days later (L$500 for a 512 sqm parcel, if I remember correctly), sold it to a neighbor for the same two weeks later, and rented a 2K parcel on one of Anshe's regions.

I have an alt I created in Feb 2016. Newbies start at an island that does the initial tutorials (how to walk, fly, jump, etc.) then go to one of the Social Islands. I created another alt in January 2017. The process was the same except the Social Islands had been updated. My latest alt was created in September 2019 ... in this case after going through what looked very much like the starter island that the other two had gone through, it ended up on Firestorm's Social Island. There's a Firestorm Orientation Island, but it doesn't look like what I saw. I've already explored the Firestorm Social Island so I teleported my alt to my region. The Social Islands still exist and are accessible to the public. The starter islands aren't open, but they do have newbie avatars created by some SL organizations that invite newbies to groups. I'd wondered how people could show up on a Social Island with group tags.

There are still two Help Islands on the grid: Help Island Public and Help Island Public2. There's still Orientation Island Public as well. Some newbies (first day in SL) still show up there somehow, which is unfortunate. Those regions are the same as they were in 2007 or so (I don't know when they started) and are filled with inaccurate information and teleports to locations that don't exist or are totally different than in the old days.

[What are you doing today!? :D]

Last of the steamboat pictures ... I went 6 regions north (5 of them in Bellisseria) and back, which took a long time. I had to pump water into the boilers and stoke the fires twice. A long trip would take forever. At least region crossings aren't a problem at that speed.

[Cost Of Name Changes Out Of The Bag]

2 minutes ago, Kimmi Zehetbauer said:

I think the system was still capable of handling surnames for new avis, although that was reserved for the "Resident" and "Linden/Mole" last names. But the new name change thing probably a manual job --- lodge a ticket with your new name and one of the staff updates the names in the back end.

The new name change is the result of a lot of coding ... change LSL to be able to connect the UUID with all of the avatar's user names, make sure the system doesn't barf when dealing with "John Doe" now being named "John Deere" (since not all of SL's code used UUIDs), fixing inventory as needed, etc.  It's built into SL now, but I'm sure it took a lot of work to get there. The people developing the software weren't around when it was originally written, so there's a lot of work needed to make changes without breaking other things.

[Cost Of Name Changes Out Of The Bag]

The $40 doesn't have to be about LL going for extra profit. LL could easily have spent over $100,000 (plus the loss of resources that could've been used on other work) to make the name change possible, so perhaps they're trying to recoup some of that cost. (And possibly get more premium members.)

[What are you doing today!? :D]

I took a shot at the new Linden houses & had no problem at all. All types are available - houseboat, camper, traditional, Victorian. I got a Victorian house for one of my alts. Today I read in a thread that the new portion of Bellisseria is to the south of the original, so I checked. The house is 24 regions north of waterfront mainland I have to dock a wee steamboat. Belliseria now goes all the way down to the continent that 's below it. Any new expansion has to be to the east or west. The steamboat now has much more water nearby than before, so that's good.

I just checked ... you can still get any of types of Bellisserian houses.

House (has a single chair in it & that's all there will be until after the holidays)

 

2K (32x64) parcel with steamboat. The boat is 42 meters long, so one of the Linden houseboats wouldn't work to dock it. Another alt has that parcel.

[Land Rentals/ Owners List]

There's no way to create a list of all the rental parcels in SL. If one existed it would always be out of date and too large to bother looking through.

[What is your favorite Christmas/Holiday cartoon,movie,show,song?]

Almost all of my favorites are already in, but here's one that was missed:

 

[Edit Slink Body Shape?]

Make sure you're wearing the Slink body - then you can edit your shape the same as with a system avatar. If you rez it on the ground you won't get anywhere.

[Premium Membership Land instead of home, option]

Make sure you're on mainland when you're looking for parcels. Tier allowance means nothing on estate land.

[Last names nearly here - and more. Yay!]

Just now, Selene Gregoire said:

I got that. That's not what I'm asking. From the way things read to me, it's saying that only new premium accounts will be able to choose a last name and new basics will not have a choice. Emphasis on new.

Yes, new basics don't get a last name.

[Last names nearly here - and more. Yay!]

6 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

So that means the LL post from today which says name changes will be available only for premium accounts (as I understood it) is correct or does it mean that last names for new accounts will be only for premium accounts? In other words, only new premium accounts will get last names and basic accounts will be stuck with Resident?

Sorry, I'm finding the whole thing a bit confusing.

Patch could've said it more simply: Any premium account holder who pays the fee can change their name, whether they currently have a last name or not.

[Do you want better parcel privacy?]

8 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

i would like to be able to set my parcel to hide me.  Anyone outside my parcel can't see me at all by any means. And I can't see them at all by any means.  The exception to this is an Estate Owner. But, when the Estate Owner (and/or Officer with this estate right) can see me by a method, overriding my hide method, then I can see them by the same method

is a parcel setting, not an independent avatar blocker

For what it's worth, an estate manager or region owner can't override the 'avatars can see ...' setting.

[BOM & Advanced Lighting Model]

Long ago in a thread far, far away (as in I'm not going to look for it), someone stated that Linden Lab had said BOM textures would not include materials -- just the diffuse texture without the normal and specular maps. It may be that merging materials textures is too difficult or gives bad results, but that's just my guess. It was pointed out as a reason why appliers wouldn't go away when BOM came out.

It took a long time for BOM to be released and apparently most people either didn't know about that, or forgot.

By the way, ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) has nothing to do with this other than you need to have ALM on to see materials textures.