Codex Alpha

Yes, because the response is oh so funny. Freedom is funny.

Part of civility and building a community is to not demonize others - and especially those who uphold human rights and freedoms. I am so amazed about what I have seen from 2020-2022 - a meming of such an important concept by many to turn something that is the back bone of the West and the USA specifically - human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of speech be turned into "Mah freedumbs! mah rites! Mah freedumbs!' Or even the accusation that those who promote such IDEALS of Western Democracy seek to abuse them and victimize others. This is uncivil. THIS is toxic. THIS spells doom for any world, virtual or not. To mock or meme Freedom means we are headed to doom. How can people be civil in a virtual world, or forum, when civility is GONE in real life.

Sounds amazing. And if screaming kids I just block them. Done. Next. Sorry, don't buy it. But it happens, and nothing you will ever do will change that - ensuring everyone is 'civil' all the time and a 'safe space' for everyone will come at great cost to the majority's freedoms and dignities. We've seen it demonstrated in real life the last 2 years. It will be worse in a virtual world who aims to make this their foremost goal. It has the same effect. You're protected through your own volition, no need to get governance. Well the other culture you propose is not one I want to move in. Now what?

Indeed. And it's best that way. They have very little influence and where they might have been big fish in a little pond, they get absorbed and irrelevant and have less effect. Best.

No. People taking responsibility for their own experience and reactions is the most important one, by using the tools they already have to manage their issues - and leaving platform staff out of it. Yet many many times, I don't see people using those tools, and seem to enjoy running to authority figures to wield as weapons against others. I've watched people literally orgasm with glee when they were successful at 'getting one over' on another user for whatever reason. They could barely hold their innards in, drunk on dopamines that they were able to get someone else to fight their battles for them. A battle that's not even worth it, but manipulating others is addictive to them. Yes, and that's a wonderful byproduct of a larger user mass. The tattle taling, the manipulation of staff, the cries of woe and alleged offense simply can't be handled personally anymore - and the people must resort to tools they already have. Like blocks and ignore. Yet to this day you will see users act helpless and victimized when the power is under their fingertip and takes 0.0001% second of their life to implement. The best thing for any platform is to grow to many numbers so that they can't deal with every little complaint, and that is when a platform is at it's best. Go look to Bansar and other small platforms who never grew past a small number where early adopting groups become their own force, and become toxic to any new user that tries to join. Couldn't happen on VR Chat or RecRoom as they grew too fast. Sounds absolutely amazing and a place I would like to be. Other than the most extreme (and exceptional) circumstance does a governance even need to step in - the most 'civil' and fair way is to give people the tools to manage themselves - and leave staff alone.

Yet that is usually not the result as observed and experienced. Maybe for YOU, but such movements are actually all about EXCLUDING others as a rule - who don't conform to their vision.

This also seems to happen randomly, but mostly if an object in front is obscuring an object behind, and if you move fast enough (or notice) you will see the object(s) behind 'pop' or be drawn into existence again. If it's a perhaps 'slow' draw, then you see a white flash before the asset is loaded back in. Seems like something that would happen as an optimization feature, but going a bit too hard on some system configs or graphics cards. It is very distracting though, especially when it happens in your peripheral vision or moving about lol

This may or may not be related, or what you are experiencing:

I can appreciate your passion on the subject - but really it isn't supposed to be that hard. Frankly all of this is quite tedious and I'm not interested in promoting victim culture and 'helplessness' to the point that governance of any type, whether in a virtual world or real - will happily step in and crush everyone in order to guarantee a safe space for all. A safe, secure and ultimately super boring and mediocre and soul-crushing space. Good luck. I hope everyone bans everyone else they think should get banned until there is no one left. "We can't manage the ban lists. We can't keep up with it. If we restricted everyone that everyone would like to have restricted, we'd have no one left" - Phillip Rosedale regarding social spaces in HiFi, where users constantly whining about others to the help desk, wasting their time, spreading drama and toxicity and fingerpointing and villainization of others - until ultimately it contributed (in part) to it's social area shutdown, and ultimate failure. Rinse and repeat on Bansar (in part), with the same attitude. Hey lets do it in Second Life too! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Perhaps this kind of thing can't be done anymore. It's over. Metaverse isn't going to happen, because it can't. The Rise of Victimhood Culture It's funny how one can notice a change in society, how much of a difference it makes in one's own reality and existence, and not really knowing what to call it, then come up with a relevant term for it, then find someone wrote a pertinent book on it. it really encapsulates what happens online and in real-world situations from home to school to workplace. In the end it just leads to the rise of the Nanny State - otherwise known as the Totalitarian State. "We're going to force you to be polite!"

Ah-ah-ah... that is not what I was proposing. I CLEARLY stated if it goes outside the TOS defined by Second Life and or even RL-laws of 'calling for violence against others', then it is already handled by the TOS or in RL, the law. Again, you can't be championing a movement to censor one person's expression, then bolstering another - which either/or is going to offend someone, so as a society we have allowed the maximum expression possible - making it legal to express your ideas short of calling for violence against the other. Yet online, when one group goes after another individual, and calls for them to be 'fired' from their job, or their 'career ended'.. this should be considered a 'call to violence against others' because it is an attack on their livelihood and how they feed themselves and their family and therefore is a direct and violent attack on their very lives. Why is it an attack on their very lives? Because the clear and END intention is to separate them from their means of living and creating an income - and people shouldn't play stupid like they don't know what this literally means - they die. Last time I checked if you don't have a job, you don't have money, you're first homeless, then you die. People play at this like it's no big deal - but it is, and in extreme cases people will act out in justified self-defence against such action - and as a country that can have serious ramifications and lead to serious conflict. Censoring, cancelling and inevitably destroying someone else just over what they said or a word they used is going too far, but some people will only learn civility the hard way - with uncivil like action.

Maybe not. One could argue it costs LL less to run your parcel (which one may want 100% private and free from visitors and griefers) and could be part of a Premium plus package. And yes, more features outside the norm will cost more money, but it is a solution for those who are apparently besought and besieged by people they never want to see, and can't get the 100% privacy they need without affecting the user experience of others around them in the process. If the counterargument is "I know it makes sense, and I would get the privacy I want and need - but I just don't want to pay extra for it" while being in a publicly accessible area - well then that's kind of revealing, don't you think? If the argument is "I would like private land away from everyone else that might bother me, but it's too expensive", then we work for solutions to that.

This affects the auto-loading of all the meshes of course. If one changed their mind and use LOD0 for both 0 and 1 slots, then the suggested "Use LOD above" (to not reload meshes - could have been one of your suggestions :D) is very easy. If I was to manually enter them in, I've been doing that pretty much all the time until recent, but then discovered its backwards from what I expected. I generally try to make LOD_1 a bit more optimized then the default higher poly, remove stuff that I can get away with, and fill out all the rest, though admittedly LOD_3? (Lowest) is generally a waste of time unless you have an image on a billboard, so it's mostly pointless. This new trend of 12000, 12000, 2, 2 on objects isn't the answer either, but if SL is working on Auto decimation might not matter

The mainland region and how it operates now remains. It remains open as it is now for people to purchase the parcel as they are today - except they are limited like in Belissaria as to what they can do - to maintain that relative openness. Those who would pay/move to a private instance have nothing more to do with the region (which is a server), and moved to their own 'instance'. Completely unrelated to each other. See Kitely to see how they spin up regions and others 'on demand' other than 'always on'. See Sansar for how an individual world is an 'instance' of it's own.

To be fair, and the risk of going off topic, that would be an unfair comparison. I can disagree with an implementation or policy, and not be a threat to anyone. I can disagree with 0 second orbs, and yet not be a griefer, troll or threat to anyone. I can be against the over-regulation of firearms, and not be some psycho or criminal. Or the classic comparison in this vein "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care?" regarding surveillance, monitoring, etc. One can have nothing to hide at least for criminal or other actions, and still be against unreasonable search or surveillance of their lives. I can be seriously upset about a sudden requirement by an employer to submit to a random drug test, or be *****ed by a needle - and yet not do any drugs. We need to discuss ideas here only, and not the person underneath. It's also a trait of intelligence to discuss and explore ideas without actually having to agree with them, or even believe in them ourselves - as by discussion or knowledge and understanding can be expanded. I'm also for Free Speech and Expression to be allowed for all, or NONE at all, and nothing inbetween and just short of breaking the TOS. I don't agree that you should be able to AR or call to ban those who hold different political views to your own - even if it is Nazi, or other. Being offended or severely disagreeing with another worldview should not be considered abuse, unless they have gone outside that normal expression and purposefully have done things to grief, troll or taunt you... then that becomes an actionable abuse report. If we are to exclude, silence, censor, limit and ultimately ban everyone who offends us - then the same governance should extend to anything political and social, and scrub SL of all of it. Including movements or ideas that YOU may support. After all, is Second LIfe advertised as a virtual world for everyone to come explore and build, or as some sort of political and social platform to spread ideas on their dime?

True. Changing from some mass convention for SL's sake isn't going to work. I've tried and even dedicate each project to it's own folder, but when something is backwards... becomes counter-intuitive That is what makes Firestorm so great for many of us who are creators, developers and observers/deconstructers/learners/admirers of other people's products. I understand it's hard to be a be-all for everyone - perhaps that could be solved by hiding all the 'engineering'-level features by default - like a 'developer' mode or "Advanced" menu like SL Viewer has. I'm just one person, so may not be worth changing for me, but the options to match other engine schemes would definitely be helpful - but I'd hate to cause you to waste your time with such features - when I'm just one person and the general attitude seems to be 'just deal with it'. Looks good though and useful for those of us who want to maintain a certain workflow. Right now many of us are of course working with more modern file formats like FBX, working in PBR, working in or trying out different game engines, already dealing with other issues trying to get things into SL (as relatively newer creators still figuring out the kinks) so anything that facilitates that is good for anyone who would be interested in such a thing. Not sure how many people working in Unity, Unreal or other engines (Even Godot) are actually using *.dae Probably very few. FBX is king. But yes going from a more intuitive (and standardized) LOD_0-4 naming system will definitely help. It's not intuitive to select #4 before #3, even if one were diligent, and if you name so that SL can automatically load it, then the filenames have to be backwards. Appreciate you working so hard on Firestorm. It is a good example of how a viewer can be, and I am progressively unable to live without it because as a creator builder and explorer it has too many tools that are useful for me NOT to make it my go-to now

Sorry I don't understand the use of Potemkin Village when talking about this, and no I never said anything about the Wild West, or allowing access to your property, just that if a parcel WERE instanced, it is no longer technically in that region grid. It is as I have presented it as - an 'instanced' world, much like a Kitely region is now, or as a Sansar world already works as. I was providing a theoretical answer as to how a parcel would be represented - as an 'instance' it would no longer be represented in the physical mainland, it would revert to open and available to others. It is not a second 'instance'. Your 'instance' removes you from the region altogether. I'm still not so sure why people who want major privacy or to not be disturbed still want to reside on public-accessible lands - which will immediately and forever expose them to all sorts of variety types of users.. I'm just offering a real solution to that problem. And also solves an issue I have with free flying and exploring. You don't have to agree, and that is okay

Sometimes the best thing to deal with alleged trolls and griefers, and on the other side 'elitist' or 'early access community members' is to dilute their effect with having a platform grow big and fast enough - to make their influence moot. Yet anonymity has probably been one of the most freeing concepts universally that has allowed the safe exchange of ideas. I've seen what people can and will do when given the opportunity to silence others for a view that they disagree with. It underscores more than ever the need for anonymity (at least between users) - as many people truly 'play for keeps' and will come after you and your RL interests 100%. This is what the whole NFT and crypto-coin movement is about. It is a trojan horse promising riches for one group, and opportunity to get rich for artists - but you will have a unique ID world wide. This may apply to your participation in "Metaverse" style platform like Decentraland or other - and be the ultimate control over you. There will be no escape, no restart, no reset for you. It happens all the time. If people disagree with another on the internet, it won't end there.. they will seek other ways to continue to 'punish' that person by whatever means they can. Or the more recent tactic now employed by many companies - to hide away all information, discussion, news and announcements behind a Discord wall - far from the internet access and search - and under close watch of governance as to who is allowed in, to view what, and who can participate. This creates a chilling effect for many - and the result is only a handful, a literal handful are vocal in any way, and only because they unceasingly bow to and pander to the status quo.

As a person who expresses many views and opinions for many years participating on the internet, and experiencing the most mundane of disagreements to the largest - to the point that in 2022 I know have to compartmentalize and protect myself from others who stalk me across internet platforms to dislike, thumbs-down, 1 star rate and purposefully destroy my reputation and in some cases where they had personal details - dox me to unsavory types - it is most certainly important to protect one's real identity. Of course this is not always the case, as some places it is fine - but with the growth of ease on finding people through search now with many methods, and connected databases (and even motivated employees of companies with access - yes it's happened who have relationships with users) can be an Achille's Heel should you 'offend' someone because you said in chat "Warehouse jobs should be automated because they are soulless, mind-numbing jobs. Human beings aren't meant to do boring repetitive tasks like stacking boxes - so robotics is the answer and we could get retrained into something more meaningful" and now they hate your guts because you allegedly "Insulted my living/job". Yes. Something that little can quickly snowball, and especially in 2022 - to quickly make you a target and the Devil after one incident through the 'telephone' psychology sounds worse and worse each time it's told until its "oh he said warehouse workers are numb-brains and that they should be replaced by robots - he's insulting the job I have been doing for 10 years" - then turns into a campaign to ostracize you, or the hatred they now feel for you over one incident grows into "let's ostracize this guy", or other malicious things. I've had to remove all my friends of friends list because otherwise they would be caught up in all of this themselves, and have been in the past. "Yep, sorry about that. They probably banned you cuz you were on my friends list, for a social or political view I expressed inworld or on a forum." If these same people had access to my personal details, place of work, etc - and as we have seen from RL incidences about how hard and how far some groups will go to censor, silence, ban, and ultimately the big prize - destroy their reputation and livelihood - yeah there is good reason. If people were civil then we wouldn't need to. Also consider too that even if we use a nickname for ourselves, especially us current and former hardcore gamers :D, that our nick becomes our identity - and it becomes very personal - and even under that nick we can gain or lose reputation - and can feel the same as if our real life persona is being attacked. Civility is first taught by Mom and Dad, and other adults we grow up with. Then if that's not enough, or there was a shortage of parenting and teaching that that person still is not civil and respectful of others - then we have the guns of the State to enforce their civility. Personally, I like to debate and discuss the IDEAS a person may present - as it wouldn't matter what their name is or whether they are private or public in their speech - and thats we should all stick to - Civil discussion. As soon as someone goes beyond that and want to destroy someone else in any way - then the need for anonymity and compartmentalization is made clear. Also, if you apply a Social Credit type status to people (Bansar (typo but lol is that funny gonna leave it in :D) loves to do this - everything you say or do is on record to forever judge you with - right or wrong) - you effectively chill conversations and free expression - because others see what can happen to others that fall afoul of a ruling party/government/majority's preferences at the time - they don't want to be treated like that either. Wield a banhammer big enough and terrible enough and without mercy or arbitration - and apply it unevenly and erratically and hitting innocent people in the process - very much creates a chilling and fearful attitude. "I don't want to say something that will get me in trouble or banned. I don't want to be seen agreeing with or associating with that person, etc","I don't want to forfeit all my creations, world and hard work over this". This is the kind of existence Facebook and other 'metaverse' companies want to run - the promise of fun and opportunity - with the reality of lording over you, monitoring your behaviour and speech, and holding your purchases, worlds, creations and investments hostage to control you. I would also argue that if the goal is to be civil, there is a strange phenomena that was observed on YouTube and the comment sections: When there was a move to promote the use of real names - there was a time where it was civil - until people became even so emboldened in their positions - and with the rise of virtue signaling type of behavour - they PROUDLY stated their full names. Of course they only do that when they're in the majority and relatively safe from being mobbed, censored and banned by others - and they forget that should the tide shift that they would then be subject to the same measures against them. Even if their names were 'exposed', they didn't need or care for 'civility' nor did it shame them into 'good behaviour'. All most people need is to be in the majority, then they cannot be shamed or otherwise motivated to be 'civil' anyway. But yeah, arguing with others that "The rights you deny others can and will be denied you" is completely fruitless, because as humans I guess most of us simply do not care until we are personally affected. Of course there will always be an element of people who will use anonymity to do malice in the world - but taking away the anonymity from legitimate, law-abiding, productive people will only allow the malicious more weapons against them.

Yes Kitely is quite closed and many times the servers that spin up the world don't even bother and don't work - or they're not accessible at an instant. This wouldn't be a problem though for those who want such privacy and 'to be left alone', as that is exactly what would happen - with an extra layer that when they're not there, they're not a burden on Kitely itself (running an empty world) but also negates the need for security measures that annoy other users. These 'private parcels' would effectively be on their own instance, they're no longer actually in that mainland parcel. That mainland parcel is thus freed up for anyone else to use - with more 'open and contiguous'-friendly attitudes that you speak of - while the die hard 'stay off my lawn' types can enjoy their privacy elsewhere.

I could go on with great length on this, but perhaps it is all over, and as I had posed to recent staff on a related platform - that current society and it's social issues and needs of the individuals for safe spaces and to ban and cancel everyone and everything they don't like - then add to that some form of Facebook babysitting and governance, etc - that it is no longer possible to have a free and open virtual world. The last 2 years I saw how far the nanny state will go. I had experienced it first 2 years in a virtual platform and experienced first hand what it feels like when people want a safe space where nothing will ever offend them - and then in real life to a shocking degree that I will never forget, and am probably traumatized by if I am being honest. The nanny state is here and only growing in both virtual and reality worlds. AR is just code for 'tattletaling', and yet real disputes are handled with "Both of you stop arguing, or you're both grounded!" - both very frustrating and unfair yet modern practices. It's really hard to build worlds alright, creators will know more than anyone the work it takes even into the smallest instance or 'game level', and it makes it harder when it must conform to squeeky clean, apolitical, don't offend anyone with anything at anytime - or you lose it all - is not conducive to investment into it. It was fun while it lasted, but virtual reality seems to want to mirror the real world and be a hellish hole of governance and parental doting and tattletaling, and possibly with a bigger Metaverse manifestation - a means of mass user control. No thanks. As usual... born to early to get in at the ground floor, too old to take the ball and run with it because it all died before you had the chance. As a creator, for a company to have the ultimate say over your future - and who can wipe out your creations, your worlds, your accounts and your investments 'at our discretion' will allow them huge control over those types and other people - and I've seen it used and personally experienced it. I won't be joining any platform that aims to put me under chains in order to particpate. It can stay dormant and 'broke' like some platforms that decided to do so. I should be excited about the metaverse and the possibilities but how Facebook and other companies want to do it, just looks like a hellish experience

Yes that is what I get sometimes, and I'm not sure what changes.. Depends if it's analyzed or not, and not sure now for sure if the older 'plane' defined physics (unclosed mesh) now don't work because cube shapes are preferred. Yep sometimes have to take a break for SL specific stuff then get back to it

Sure, I didn't mean to make you feel like you have to defend yourself, just commenting that I value yours and other's opinion on SL related things, that sometimes get lost and I'm like "Now I know someone mentioned this before, but what topic was it..." later

All one piece? Using cubes and not just planes? Can't get the planes to work as I've seen an older video demonstrates, SL seems to close them all up now - pretty sure i was using planes (ala Chic Aeon tutorial) years ago but it doesn't seem to work now. And old piece in one of my builds once I separate it, or try to re-upload it, even now with more efficient physics shape now wants to be big Li. The same model, nothing changed. Glad you got yours working

Yeah, they post such good info and insights on the scripts used, then it gets lost in an unrelated topic

No.