Lokiande

I use Alchemy viewer after years of switching between Firestorm and Black Dragon. It's not as "everything and the kitchen sink minute tweaks" as FS, but it has a decent enough amount that you shouldn't miss anything, and while it does have the ability to tilt the camera and make fine graphics tweaks like BD, it doesn't require you have a fancy gaming rig to be able to run it. If you need Area Search, all I know is that it IS coming as a feature this year. latest build on the site is here [posting the link BC the one in the TPV directory wiki is broken] https://www.alchemyviewer.org/downloads which is a few builds behind the latest nightly/test build in their Disocrd here https://discord.com/invite/KugCgs6

Any housing stuff like indoor or outdoor decor, furniture, plants and greenery... All get dumped into a rapidly growing folder called LANDSCAPING

Idk why people are poking fun at this, I think it's a great way to try and breathe a bit of life into how we interact/RP on SL! To be honest I actually tried doing something similar myself when I was still new to the grid, and over the years fleshed out how SL could work as a fictional setting! First, a name- Soth Leona. Idk what drove me to choose that name but I did and I like it. In the fictional world of "Soth Leona", it is another world entirely, off in its own section of a universe where vast intergalactic distances are traversed by warp gates. There is interplanetary trade between Soth Leona, Earth, "counter" Earth [Gor], and many other worlds. Gor is actually in the process of being completely decolonized except for a few wildlife research stations, and the horrors of slavery are a distant, if painful memory that nobody wants to see again. The planet of SL itself is teeming with a thousand different people and cultures but for now I'll try and focus on a few key things I thought up. There is the water of the Great Seas, that which surrounds the continents and gives life, but can also rise up to sink nations if the Pantheon hasn't been appeased. Mostly the Pantheon takes money, with the occasional offering of food. The Mainland [Heterocera, Sansara, Jeogot, Zindra, Corsica, Satori, Nautilus, and The Twins Gaeta] is debated over whether they are the corpses of cosmic horrors the Pantheon slew, the sleeping forms of the Pantheon itself... or just dirt. Everyone claims some stance, and if you ask you'll get about 10 different answers and 20 reasons why theirs is clearly correct. Beyond the continents of the mainland are the Islands. Scattered like stars throughout the Great Sea, they are traveled to by boat, plane, Dragon, sky chariot and many other methods besides. They can be vast Cities, thrumming with life and energy. They could be farmland and gardens, left to grow semi wild and tended to by unionized workers to be sold all around the planet. They might be Feudal Territories, held under sway by Lords and Ladies vying for power but a season, only to be deposed in bloody succession. The ones who truly rule an Island are those who choose to walk the life of Arbiter. They are the ones who seek out permission of the gods to raise land from the depths, to seed the soil and call forth life, to make it habitable and welcoming to travelers and settlers alike. They also have the powers of Banishment, to bar select people from their land until a time of their choosing. Often found on an island's Council, if not very close to it they are the final say on disputes between inhabitants. The average inhabitant of Soth Leona varies greatly in shape, size, and species alone. Humans, elves, furries, dragons, robots, aliens, dwarves and giants, the list goes on. It used to be that SLers were taught early on the skill of Crafting, not just that of the varied arts but of Summoning, of calling forth little bits of matter to be shaped and moved by magic. It is a skill that some say is being lost to time in favor of the ease of offworld imports of goods. Universal Healthcare exists, as does Universal Basic Income, and any work is done because people WANT to contribute to their communities, not because they'll go into poverty if they don't. Roads are wide to accommodate foot traffic, and ease of use for mobility aids such as wheelchairs and walkers. There is a robust public transit system on the Mainland, and personal transport never caught on as much as some hoped, so there will likely only be double wide car lanes and the occasional hulking skeleton of a parking garage. A year or two past it was not uncommon to see flocks of dragons in flight above the Blake Sea. Many years before, a vast floating citadel of dark brick, home to those calling themselves Grendel's Children, left the skies above the forest and canyon of Avaria Tor, instead making its way to a little volcano where it has stayed since. A new generation of little colorful horses has spread out from their own Island, belying their cute demeanor with foul words and alliances with the worst of the military in Jeogot. ...and that's all I got for "SL if it was a fictional world"!

Adding yet another dragon, this time on wheels!

I use those heads on the daily for my human avis and they work great! No weird clipping or rigging errors, they're full mod so you can manually tint or edit stuff as needed, they take the SLUV well, and they don't break the bank unlike most of the heads [SLUV or not] that are being sold now.

Nonbinary leaning more towards agender these days, here i am! I enjoy animal and monster avatars because its easier to just go "my gender is nope" with scales or fur than with bodies that by design, skew towards certain gender markers.

A favorite hobby of mine is to put on my dragon avatar, go flying in Blake Sea and chase the boats and planes around!

Still my favorite [and among the first!] sailing photo I've taken, LM below. https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dannielles/136/103/19

in RL: moving to an actual HOUSE near a city! as someone who's unable to drive, quick access to public transit will be amazing. in SL: found out Waterhorse released their Anipet horse recently for 4000L, and the devkit is free! it's copy/mod out the box and I am going to have SO MUCH FUN making tack, animations, textures, sounds, accessories- what I want to do is turn it into a pegasus to fly around on the Mainland.

here's a store that sells low cost but very nice SLUV mesh heads. I'm mostly a fan of them because some of the heads have nose shape variants so you're not stuck with a tiny button nose all the time. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/231700

Yeap. My financial situation isn't what it was six months ago. With the added sales tax along with IRL not-so-fun-stuff means I currently have a lot of ideas that just went up in smoke. I wanted to make and sell a rideable animesh mount, do a few furry mods liek custom skins and markings, do more in SL. But it seems like even before the sales tax thing hit new people were already jumping ship for VRChat, or returning account users were straight up dying of old age if they didn't get called away by more important things, all in all it just feels like SL has maybe a decade left before it keels over.

Yeah it's something I've been asking around for other viewers to add as well. The ability to tilt the camera left and right at an angle, on top of the turning and moving left/right/up/down that we already have. An example of the camera floater would look like this, here's an old tilted screenshot too.

Lately I've gotten into cleaning out my inventory! Also rebuilding old characters from years ago that I never boxed and saved.

Hence the headless body option. And tbh i just... don't see a big difference in this vs other name brand bodies??? Under any clothes you add it's still gonna look like any other Big Boob Big Butt Wasp Waist if you tweak the shape. Which 99% of SLers do because Thin=Sexeh but that's a whole nother can of worms

For a human body on a budget I'd suggest Ruth. Can fit Maitreya clothing with some shape tweaks, and is usually sold fullperm. So you can manually edit it to your liking. Has BOM capabilities Plus it comes with a foot pose in the HUD that lets you choose how you want your feet via animation- flat, and abt 5 different types of medium to high heel. AND a medium and high heel foot mesh if the pose HUD isn't your style. The variant I'm listing here also comes with a head, toenails, 5 fingernail options, eyeballs and lashes, hair, basic system clothing, and physics. SL users have made Thicc and macro variants, if you need more variety tho don't expect them to fit much. Hope this helps https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Ruth2-v4-Mesh-Avatar/20220006 EDITED TO ADD- ruth is also very low poly compared to other mesh bodies! there's a devkit on the MP in the same store for free if u wanna make stuff for it, and as soon as i figure out Bento Buddy I'm going to try and make addons for ruth. EDIT 2- first link gives you a body with built in head. here is the version that's headless. same store, same body. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Ruth2-v4-Extras/20220640

NFTs are garbage, they cause harm to the environment, they are useless, pointless, expensive code that basically means nothing. Whoop de doo, you claim to have an image or file costing thousands of dollars, that ANYONE ELSE can get for free by simply right clicking and saving. Kindly ***** off with that bull*****

HELL YEAH I FINALLY GOT IN

I have a tower from 2019, i've already done the "unplug router and restart PC" unfortunately that does nothing - Pretty sure this is an AWS issue because a few others have been having the same issue as me- in the bug tracker webpages at least one other person has the same unresolved problem and two more have reported it on the forums here and here

the router is right behind my monitor, unfortunately. Connections are stable and holding strong, I can play intensive games like RDO no problem- it's just SL that seems to be running into a wall.

Login keeps hanging on Requesting Region Capabilities on SL and FS viewer, Initializing World on BD. having a fresh install, rebooting router, disconnecting and reconnecting to wifi/ethernet does nothing. maybe logging into one of those regions will help, IDK.

Trying and failing to log into SL for the 4th day in a row. Seems there's some sort of host server issue going around that doesn't get fixed with a fresh viewer install

here's my blacksmith.

Also, unless LL is going to reintroduce the Teen Grid, I really don't see the supposed "reaching out to younger audiences" going well at all. By all means make a mobile app if you can, LL. But realize that your playerbase is adults, doing adult things, who will very likely throw a *****fit if/when actual children get access to SL. Hell I was witness to a sim owner that banned and reported an account when the user revealed themselves to be a child, because they did not want their head to be on the chopping block if anyone else did or said something inappropriate.

BDV is my new favorite viewer, great for epic photography PLUS with its fullscreen/windowless mode, ability to change text size, darker UI and darker default environment settings I don't get eyestrain as often! Also the controls and shortcuts are neat ^^

well *****