Orwar

It's entirely possible, and already available. But what's the point? Having a combined body and head gives you one option. There are dozens, if not hundreds of heads, and a bunch of different bodies around, allowing you a huge range of variety - let's say there are 7 bodies and 50 heads (which is far from how many there really are), that gives you 350 different possible combinations. The people using the combined head and body avatars? You can spot them a mile away, because no matter what skin they use or how they shape it, they're worn by so many people looking nearly identical.

My favourite board game in SL (and RL - though I don't have as pretty an Othello board in RL) is the ancient game of Othello .. Anno 1971 .. But it is based on Reversi which is really old! .. Well, from 1883. But it's sort of like Chess. But better.

Not so much point and click puzzle games, aside from Dracula: Ressurection, which was great fun back then (and scarred me for life, not due to the story or the horror elements, but because of the character models!). The good thing about games though is that you don't really have to miss them, you can still play most of them (worst case scenario you'll just have to install an emulator). I recently replayed a game I loved as a kid; Birthright - the Gorgon's Alliance, which .. Became a whole lot easier now that I can actually understand English, unlike my 8 year old self button-mashing my way through it (strategy games don't really work well for that!). Back then games could last weeks .. Now I could conquer the entire map in a day.

.. The Latin alphabet, if I may. Huffs.

I'd rather they removed the current special symbols available for use in the display names. Then again, it is a good indicator when out and about for what people you should avoid - people thinking themselves special snowflakes I can do without. Also, if I have to address people who at any point in their name employ a ß as a 'B', I will write 'ss' instead. Hi Ssella Ssig-ssoobs!

I was listening to one of my ska/punk playlists in the workshop today and this song turned up. I'd put it in the wrong playlist somehow. Now it's stuck in my head.

That depends on your philosophical perspective on what constitutes an avatar. One could argue that the data that is the makeup of an avatar isn't biological and, thus, is inanimate. But, to push the boundaries of that thought, what about an artificial intelligence in a robot constructed out of toxic materials, would it be toxic or poisonous - or if you built a robot that bites people to inject toxins into its victims, whilst meanwhile having an artificial intelligence of such a high degree that it is 'mentally' indistinguishable from a living being - is it then venomous? Can artificial intelligence ever be considered a living entity? Do robots dream of electric sheep? What is life, and does it have a purpose? What happens with all those socks that vanish in the washing machines?

I don't generally furniture shop a lot, but I do tend to pay Muniick a visit every weekend to get whatever they're offering for the weekend sales. That's probably your best bet in terms of saving money; keep your eyes peeled on the weekend sales (there are a lot of them, plus some mid-week ones). You can browse most of them on Seraphim.

You pretty much don't have any privacy from Linden Lab, as far as what you do on their platform is concerned. Never did. 'Tis even in the big print before the fine print: https://www.lindenlab.com/privacy

Whoever said reading a book isn't a group activity?

No. If I bite you and I die, you're poisonous. If I bite you and you die, I'm venomous. If you are toxic, you are an inanimate element or compound.

.. Not even close.

A totally free skin texture, that you may tint to whichever skin tone you want, no shading to worry about whatsoever. You're welcome.

That something says it's made for something is not a guarantee that it will fit, that it will look nice, or that it will work at all; this is why we demo things. Skin shading and shape has always been 'a thing'; this is why we demo things. You're outright admitting not to understand this 'magic', so changing your argument is entirely futile and pointless; your assumptions and your conclusions are wrong. That is not 'because it's BoM', that is because 'the creator took a creative decision and shaded that part of the skin like that, and whether they'd put the texture into an applier or put the texture in a system layer, it would look the bloody same'. Second Life does not have realistic lighting, and so creators compensate by baking and painting shadows to things. Personally I'd much rather have that shadow there, than looking like I'm fully illuminated from all angles at all times. The nose fix is explicitly made to make pre-mesh skins, i.e. old system skins, compatible with the UV maps of mesh heads, as a lot of people were hyped about using their old, pre-mesh skins; it's essentially the exact same thing like the finger and toe fixes for bodies since old 'system avatars' didn't have any nails and so had them painted onto the skins. It is not meant to be a 'magical fix as in to aesthetically please each individual's preferences in terms of the extent of shading'. If you don't like BoM, go ahead, use appliers - no one's going to stop you.

You do realise that you're basically repeating '2 + 2 = 5', right? That's not how UV maps work. The Evo line contains several, different heads. That something has been designed to fit with one head does not mean that it will look good on another, it's why we demo things; some Evo heads have sharper noses and would look awful with a skin designed with the shading for a rounder nose, and vice versa.

I feel an overwhelming need to bite you.

Why, what could possibly go wrong?!

Mine isn't a 'fix', there's nothing 'wrong' with the nose. The only thing it does is make the nostril shading a little brighter; the skin creator could just as well have done that on the skin directly, it's simply an aesthetic choice I made because I felt like it improved the look, as the skin itself had pitch black nostrils which looked off due to my avatar's nose shape. If things don't fit, it's not 'because it's BoM', it's because either: The skin is designed for a different head/body than what you are using (i.e. 'user error') It's of poor quality (and price is never an indicator of quality) There have been, and probably are, several gift skins of great quality, that are BoM, for most of the large brands. Or you can sink thousands of L$ into a skin because the description says it'll fit, and it looks pretty in the overtly photoshopped advert. My second alt's first setup was: A Maitreya body bought on sale. A free mesh head. A free BoM skin. As far as quality was concerned, it is all really good; all pieces were from first grade brands. The head she uses now is a different, also free, mesh head, and the first skin I got for that was also a Christmas freebie, from a reputable brand, and it looked excellent. I then bought this skin she uses now, which is not at all a famous skin brand, but the quality is excellent and it was relatively inexpensive. It's all a matter of testing things out, and finding something that works for you; but at no point, in any way at all, are any issues 'because it's BoM'. I'm not sure what you're referring to. MP photos should never be used as a reference when buying a skin; many of them have been heavily edited in photoshop, some even with skin sampling or face melding with real pictures. You should always demo a skin before you buy it, and if a store doesn't offer demos, find a different one. If it looks 'greasy' or 'like a doll', you've simply set it too high. It's as easy as: selecting the specular and bump map settings (most heads will have a few options), setting the glossiness, intensity, and environment sliders to where you'd like them, and you can, at least in my head, change the hue of the specular reflection. My regular settings: a soft bump and very little specular glossiness. Materials turned off. Glossiness and intensity cranked up, the skin looks oiled up / sweaty. Environment slider whacked up; send help. Applier skins work exactly the same way, the only difference being that the texture applied may have a different specular and normal map, whereas a BoM skin doesn't, and thus rely either on the ones offered in the head's HUD, or ones applied via a third party HUD. To most people, operating a few simple sliders isn't 'a hassle', it's a tool that allows us to create fun and interesting aesthetic effects, and create more realistic (or idealised) looks.

Pet peeve. Getting distracted when listening to that song (and, in extension, that album - 'cause Reign of Light is just one of those albums that I'll actually listen to as intended, it's like Bat out of Hell and The Perfect Cult) without coming to think of a Raubtier song. It's not just me hearing it, right?

We're working on it ..

I once stumbled into a brony hangout whilst exploring, and whilst the venue rules said 'everyone welcome', some of the people there were really salty about my bipedal presence. I haven't seen many bronies around recently though, but then I haven't been looking for them either. Are they still a thing?

Well, most bloggers are paid only in the products they advertise for the creators they work with, which gives both parties publicity opportunities. Fashion blogging has pretty much replaced in-world modelling, and whilst there are similarities between the two, bloggers will often not just model, but also take the picture themselves, edit the pictures, play the Flickr game, design a website for their blog, operate the Blogotex, occasionally using further platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, writing credit lists with store SLURLs, etc. - all whilst themselves paying for their domain, premium/pro features on those platforms and for subscriptions for their editing programs. So, a model wanting to do only a fraction of that work, wanting to get paid in addition to just doing the styling part, when there's a legion of aspiring and experienced, hard working bloggers out there .. Sort of comes off a little naive and entitled, to be honest. And, as you mentioned yourself, a store owner could just as well just put in their policy that their CSRs should be on-site and be representative of the brand's products whilst on the clock, to kill two birds with one stone. There still are catwalk events though, and whilst some stores may use models, most stores who do will use bots - some tattoo stores even have bots that customers can control via demo interfaces to TP over to the tattoo you're interested in and put it on so you can see what it looks like in-world without putting a demo on (because apparently making demo versions of tattoos is too much work - BoM products rarely have demos, which I find curious). Back in the early days of SL, when many people were happy to make L$5 in a day of sim camping, and anyone who could figure out how to rez a prim could potentially become a successful creator, being paid a steady income of L$5 per hour to be a model was, in a sense, glamorous. The economy of SL has changed a lot since then, most clubs' tip jars start at L$50 for their suggested tip amounts, and dancers can list hundreds of L$ for a 15 minute private dance, with some going up to thousands in hourly rates for more intimate services.

That's not an issue of it being BoM, though. There is absolutely no difference between applying a texture via applier, or using a system layer, in regards to how the UV mapping functions (except for the applier onion layers being scaled up by a few micrometres to appear on top of each other, rather like a Russian doll). One of my alts use the Lilly head, and is fully BoM, including Izzie's nostril lightener: BoM does not support material channels. What materials you have depends entirely on which settings you use from the body and head HUDs. There are ways to change the material textures for the skin layer via third party HUDs, just the way appliers did, and you have the option to turn materials off completely as well as adjusting glossiness, intensity, hue, and environmental - everything exactly the same as when using appliers. If you don't want shine or bump, going BoM is actually an improvement as you won't be applying speculars or normals when wearing system layers. Many appliers did. The HD stuff is not BoM, the whole thing with them is that you use an applier with a specific UV for an onion layer representing a smaller portion of the face, accommodating a higher pixel density and specific materials - which, frankly, is a step backwards in many aspects; it makes absolutely no sense to use a full resolution texture for a pair of lips that are very seldom going to be zoomed into until they take up the majority of the screen for anyone - it's the whole 1024 x 1024 button texture issue all over again. I feel like I'm starting to sound like a virtual environmentalist, but texture and script pollution in avatar design are easily in the upper portion of the list of reasons why SL's performance tends to be so bad; unlike in games where game designers (ideally) allocate a fairly large portion of their time considering resource management, SL is a public canvas where anyone are free to doodle. Remember shooters from the late 90's and early 2000's where you'd often have ramps instead of stairs? That's not because making stairs was at all difficult, heck, 11-year old me thought that creating a map for such a game with pleeenty of stairs was a great idea to make it stand out by the level of detail - until compiling the map almost broke my PC and actually playing on the map turned out to be practically impossible as drawing it took wa-hay more resources than the game was supposed to use. It's why I'll triangle-shame creators who make clutter and knick-knacks with meshes with unreasonably high complexity for what they're trying to represent; if a teacup with a lemon slice in it has a higher draw weight than your average partial mesh house, something is seriously wrong. And yet, in SL, it's pretty much the norm. Just as an example, I'm currently sat in my girlfriend's house and she's got a candle on the coffee table that has 24,232 triangles. Her house, a Linden Stilt Home, has 24,881 - and the Linden Homes are unfortunately a terrible example of resource management not being high enough on the list of priorities in the design process. Someone ought'a be keelhauled for this ..

Arrested avians.