Jenna Huntsman

Games within games is an established thing at this point, SL unlike other platforms, say, Unity, has some core 'loops' outside of just pure development, hence why I refer to it as a game. My opinion, of course. The casino example is a flawed one, as a casino is usually referring to a place. You don't need to be in a casino to play poker. But if I download a 'virtual casino' app on my phone and use it to play poker, I'm playing a game, and poker is the game-within-a-game.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the points you make. Yes, they shouldn't be broken. 100%. But what's done is done, and creating fixes does cost development time and therefore money to pay employees. Employees have homes to upkeep, families to feed, etc. so the money to spend fixing stuff has to come from somewhere. The main reason why I say that a new System avatar doesn't need to (directly) compete with mesh bodies is mainly so as to not infuriate people who have spent 5000+ L$ on a body and clothing *and* alienate the developer of the body itself. You'd just end up with hundreds of forum posts of people talking smack about LL actually trying to do something good (Just take a look at the 2FA threads going on right now) So make the system avatar be a viable option, not an outright replacement for mesh bodies. Bonus points if LL uses that as leverage to encourage current mesh bodies to lower their complexities to create less of a performance impact. Although agreed r.e. the current practice of de-rendering.

Hey, can't fault me for expressing an opinion I think that at least fixing the infrastructure that runs group chats would be a good start. Map tiles are on their way back, we know that, but given that SL relies on it's social aspect then the group chats being borked definitely doesn't help. Make the viewer not run like absolute garbage on most PCs, so users can experience the world smoothly and not feel like they're in a slideshow. (Yes, user-generated content is part of the issue, but the engine that SL runs on is a very large factor in this) Update the system avatar. It doesn't need to be a competitor to mesh bodies per-se, but at least make it passably good so that the 'new' Linden mesh avatars can be dropped in favour of something that can be customized easily. SL already has the customization down, but it just needs a better (free and easy) platform to be used at it's full potential. (Yes, the Ruth Bento avatars on the MP are good, but why not use that as the default avatar in the first place? Stop confusing newbies!) Redesign the destinations floater to make it easier to find content, and list it in a way that makes sense. (I mean, the current one is pretty awful if you're looking for new *interesting* places to go. Not to mention the 'What's Hot Now' page is pretty broken). Clean up the search page, and make it easier to find content that the user is interested in, instead of being *completely* plastered with ads. (Yes, they do relate to in-world content, but it's not helpful to the user if they have no interest in the topic. Maybe implement some kind of targeted advertising based on search terms to display ads which the user might be interested in?).

SL at it's core is a video game. There's no 2 ways about that. But SL is in a very unique class of game, as it's more so a development platform for user-generated content which is shared throughout the in-game world (hence the 'virtual world' branding) - the only other game (that i'm aware of) that comes close to this is ROBLOX. However, SL's problem is that it's having a hard time convincing new users to join *and* stick around. SL currently revolves around it's social aspects, as it's not a great platform for games as lag is an unavoidable issue (Engine behind the viewer is too old, and can't make use of modern hardware properly - Not to mention the proprietary script language). Not to mention, as SL is ostensibly a 'free' game, there is definitely a cost of entry as the avatars new users are given are either pre-built mesh which has very little customization and zero third-party support, OR the system avatar which is an old, jagged mess, which means if a new user wants to look pretty like their peers, then they need to go and buy Lindens to buy a mesh body & clothing. Combined, it doesn't make for a great new-user experience, which is a large part of why new users don't stick around long. My hope is that with the increase in fees, LL can invest in more resources to bring the world up to 2021 standards, and create real fixes for ongoing infrastructure problems that the platform has had for years.

Computers don't run like that. Yes, having another program installed uses disk space, but it won't impact performance unless it is actually running, and even then for a 2FA program the impact would be extremely low. There may be a tiny impact on HDD seek speed, but by that logic any videos or photos you have on your drive would also cause the same issue.

What you probably want is a script which uses llGetAgentList (limited to your parcel) on a timer, so every 5 seconds or so the script will scan, get a list of avatars on your parcel, then run a FOR loop to use the command Rolig mentioned, to see if they have PIOF, and if not, use llEjectFromLand to boot them off the parcel.

SL has a major problem in that most of it's users don't have a blind clue as to how it works, and so anyone can say anything, and people will believe them so long as it's not totally insane, regardless of whether it's correct or not. Admittedly, LL doesn't help this issue as even a lot of creators encourage bad practice, and the customers assume that people who create stuff for SL know how it works (a lot of the time, this isn't true). LL really need to put a simplified 'content creation guide' on the Wiki to give a basic rundown of best practices when making content. As well as being a bit more transparent around issues the platform is experiencing.

I'd second this. I'd like to be able to have 2FA protecting my account in it's entirety, not just on web properties. It definitely should be optional though, as I appreciate it's not for everyone.

Unicode in a name is an absolute nightmare because a mere 9 times out of 10 it won't display properly on a different font / different viewer / a different computer or all of the above. It's highly dependant on what localization the operating system is using, if the font supports Unicode characters, etc. Not to mention non-native English speakers have a hard time trying to read what is essentially obfuscated text. TLDR; don't use Unicode in your display name, for the reasons given above this post as well as the reasons given here. It's a nightmare. Don't do it.

Because then it wouldn't be an exchange fee, you're just paying for more Lindens.

Then you'd get blowback from a lot more people that pay for premium membership being locked out of aforementioned perks, not to mention free members. Essentially anything that they could offer would devalue Premium or Premium plus (whatever that entails)

Unfortunately, that's not how a currency exchange works. Also, it's important to bear in mind that LL haven't really adjusted the fees to account for inflation in this period, as well as transferring to a new payment provider (Tilia), so Tilia fees also factor into this change.

That'd be a good guess, although I'm kinda on LL's side on this. If you're spending that much on SL, then a minor bump in the exchange fees shouldn't be a massive factor, especially as it's capped.

Not all too familiar with ToS myself, but here's my 2 cents: LL provides us creators tools to communicate with external services. If we charge for those services, LL doesn't really have much of a say, so there's not much stopping you. Think of how you have all of these streaming music boxes which are linked to people's Spotify accounts. If this explicitly was not allowed, these streaming boxes go against ToS. I think that when it comes down to it, if you want to set up a payment portal, deal with any bad actors (nonpayment, etc.) and convince your users to transfer to the new service, there isn't much stopping you *right now* Again, not all too familiar with the ToS, so this could be wrong in it's entirety.

If you're a member of the 7 Deadly Skins group, they often run classes on how BoM works & how to use it. I think they run daily, but I could be wrong on that.

Unfortunately, it's not even that simple. Going back to what @Wulfie Reanimator said, in SL you also cannot get the location and rotation of a specific joint while it's being animated. Heck, as far as I know you can't get the position / rotation of a specific joint at all, as functions such as llGetPos will return the avatar's root position. You can make some educated guesses about the relative location of joints by calculating the height of the avatar, but nothing can be done for their rotations. I guess the closest you can get script-wise is to make use of a linkset with the root attachment point on the head, as then you can make use of local rotations instead of region relative; but again you'd be limited to the avatar only looking straight ahead as the script does not know the animated position of the head (and thus cannot calculate the correct rotation for the eyes to look)

That works by making use of the scripted camera controls to request the region-relative coordinates of the avatar's camera focus position (what the avatar is looking at), then simply calculating a rotation to make the eye look towards the object (the focus). The problem is, this doesn't work when attached to an avatar as the focus position reported will always be the avatar itself when in the normal camera mode, and thus this will work *only* if the user is in the freecam mode (there is no way to get the region relative coordinate of the avatar's mouse cursor, as this is not reported to the region). TLDR; what you're looking for already exists in SL, but animators are *currently* unable to use any IK in their animations, and thus doing this is impossible unless you engineer with LL's existing IK implementation in mind. It's not impossible, but very much impractical.

Regions already have code which allows them to throttle down and be 'slept' when no one is there. The difference between what you're thinking of is that in SL the regions are never truly 'stopped', as scripts etc. will continue to run, albeit at a much slower pace. What you're asking for would be some kind of regionwide hibernation feature wherein the region can be dynamically started when a resident requests to be on the region, and then stopped once they leave. Obviously scripts would only be able to run while the user is there. Not a bad idea, but would mostly be an option for the region owner with some clear downsides depending on what they want to use the land for.

The VAT thing is more likely a regulatory compliance issue rather than one actively made by the Lab. All European countries have laws about what and how VAT is applied, and specifically what types of items are exempt (of which I'm certain SL isn't). (I'll note here that even in the most favourable light, looking at the Lindex as a bureau de change it still isn't exempted from VAT. Looks like there was a lot of fuss about this in 2019, but not much happened).

Finally! Any ideas on how that will integrate into the web services / viewer logins?

I'm using Photoshop CC 2021. Maybe PS doesn't like PNGs now. If what @Nalates Urriah says is correct, that could be entirely possible if another format was borked in the past. Or, as you say, SL's importer could be doing something silly. Edit: Could be that Kakadu handles PNGs better than the open-source JPEG2000 handler, but the open-source one handles TGAs better. Not a viewer dev (probably for the best), so couldn't say, but that also seems like a possibility.

If you're looking at new PCs, then i'd (personally) avoid an All-in-one as you can't upgrade their components down-the-line as you can on a desktop, so if you've got the space a traditional desktop is the way to go. With that said however, you could upgrade your existing monitor (assuming you have a traditional desktop). But I'd probably get your GPU situation sorted first before thinking about that.

Yeah, thankfully. (sorry, not sure if you caught my drift, but 10 bpc represent the colour depth of the display - higher being better. Most consumer monitors are either 6bpc + FRC (emulated 8 bit) or 8bpc (native 8bit) - 10bpc is used for professional applications, and by *some* HDR monitors. but TLDR; if there was a difference, I'd have seen it)

I've got a 10 bpc display. Can't see a blind bit of difference between the 2. Correct, the max Firestorm will allow you to use (VRAM wise) is 4096, depending on how much VRAM your GPU has. Other viewers allow you to use more, but that's the current cap for FS. If you can, see if you can source a GTX 770 (4 GB) or a 780 (6 GB) as these would be slightly faster. But that should work just fine if you're just looking for something to tide you over until the shortages end. Ignore the 'you may need this too'. TLDR; if you're computer's working fine right now, and you're just upgrading your GPU then you shouldn't need that. Double check with your brother-in-law to make sure the GPU will be compatible with your PC before you buy though!

My best guess is that right now *not much* has been done towards fixing group chats. With Oz retiring, there isn't any one person to guide where development resources are being spent right now, so that's a big problem. Another thing is that group chats aren't the only thing broken right now. My best guess is that a lot of development time is being spent on the map tile problems as they're a lot quicker to make (proper) fixes to as opposed to group chats which require a lot more time and effort to reengineer for something they're getting just as much fuss over. Not to mention the issues with the beta grid not syncing right now (probably another quick fix, but again map tiles). To put the cherry on top of this however, is that trying to make changes to the existing system to increase stability (most likely) has just been met with an incredible amount of blowback over a feature which seemingly wouldn't be that useful to regular group members. It's a situation where LL can't win right now.