Janet Voxel

So the mesh body market is about to get even more crowded. Siddean Munro the creator of slink, is coming out with a new brand called Cinnamon & Chai on November 16th. I haven't gotten to play with this one, but it looks like its in the same vein as Ebody Reborn and Legacy. The features also look pretty nice. https://becomecinnamon.com/

I think @Coffee Pancakesaid it a while back. A free open source body and head for men and women that is on par with what is out there with a downloadable creators kit. Put it in everybody’s inventory. There would be an uproar from creators, but people love their Maitreya, they would never switch…right? Make putting it on and dressing it part of newbie island. That would go a long way. You’ve put users who want to look nice right off the bat on par with everybody else. You’ve also given users who log in with dreams of being the next great fashion designer a starting point. Two birds, one stone.

That’s definitely part of it. The other part of it is: while we’ll never know what the reason a person who logs in that one time and nopes out after five minutes was, we do get valuable feed back from people that ask for help. When people call Secondlife a game it triggers people. While technically it’s not it really, it shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people see it that way and why. Yet, a lot of people discount that. To be honest…as a game, second life sucks. That in itself is an answer. While some people may not be concerned with how their avatar looks. A lot of people it does. Look at the discussions that happen right here and how many of them revolve around identity, gender identity, sexual identity, etc. What’s the most popular thread in this forum? How does my avatar look today? When somebody is asking for help or talking about something, people often throw a random picture of their avatar into their post. I’m not making fun of people that do those little things. It just goes to show how it ties into everything. There’s a reason triple A games make millions of dollars off of micro transactions just customizing a character. When I found Second Life, it was a pretty dark time in my life. What it does…works for me. My husband? I tried to introduce him to it, he tried it a couple of days. “It’s trash…” that was his feedback. I know he’ll play Warzone for hours on end though. Secondlife definitely isn’t Warzone. When someone says “I don’t know what to do” that’s valuable feedback. People say the things that frustrate them about second life all the time. “When I wore this dress, my eyes came out” Why? That’s easy…attach the dress, not wear it. But why? Well see….*logs out* It often boils down to: ease of use, where to go, finding their community, what to do and what to do when something goes wrong. How do we fix that? Or I should say: how does LL fix that?

One of the interesting things about Second Life is how it touts uniqueness. There is a flip side to that, the sheer amount of conformity. There are many ways to do things, however… When someone asks for help with something…anything. The usual answer is usually “What I do is…” That doesn’t work for everybody. Keep in mind we’re talking about newbies that don’t stick around or things newbies struggle with. There are certain things that people have struggled with and in a lot of ways, those things have gotten worse over time. It’s not really the controls people struggle with. It’s the UI, the lack of good direction as to what you can do and the lack of uniformity. Right from the start. It’s funny you mention a game like candy crush. Sure you start with level one, but the concept is simple and it’s pretty intuitive. You can’t say the same of second life. If I hit the striped red jelly bean, it’s going to erase all of the red jelly beans…every time. If I buy a pair of jeans, they may not fit. Why? Because it’s not for the body I’m wearing. I have the right body but there are little bits poking out. I have to alpha it? What’s that? Oh it’s in my hud? What’s BOM? Wait…my body is BOM and I have to wear an alpha? But the clothes didn’t come with an alpha. Now what? That’s just one example. I could come up with dozens of examples where something goes wrong. There’s five different ways to do it, for the simplest thing. For someone that doesn’t get it….imagine how exhausting it must be spending an ridiculous amount of time trying to do something simple….daily. So while you’re saying start at level one. What’s level one? Learning how to walk and fly? I already know how to do that. Someone else might not. But I do…now what? Where do I go to meet people? I went there; nobody’s there. Now what? I can sit on a platform and build…stuff? I don’t want to do that. I want my avatar to look nice. You don’t care about that? Well who can I talk to that can help me? Hi…I need help with my avatar. Well, what I do is….I don’t want to look like that. Now what? Nobody still told me where I can go to meet people. What’s a furry? I’m not into that. Now what? *logs off*There’s nothing to do in Second life and it’s hard. Here’s the thing. Whatever you come up with, for every person that it works for, there’s going to be five people that says it’s stupid and they don’t want that. If came up with a cool intro and a story based “This is your avatar” intro, somebody would come along and take a big steaming dookie on the idea and they wouldn’t be wrong, because it just doesn’t work for them. I don’t think most people want “I want it all, I want it now”. If they do, so what? How you use second life is not how everybody else uses Second life. Your morality or code of conduct is not everybody else’s. I think people want the experience that they saw in those pictures and that slick ad. That’s not a big ask. The thing is you can have that…if you invest X amount into your avatar, know where to go, have an established store, etc. However it’s done it has to be simple and intuitive on a level that it’s just not right now. And you know what? If it’s done that way people will still hate it.

Everybody doesn’t care about how their avatar looks, but a lot of people do. Think about it this way: when you look at the splash page for Secondlife or any kind of advertisement: do the starting avatars look like that? For some people, it can be very consuming to look like what you saw before you even downloaded the app. The issue isn’t really that it’s false advertising. They are showing SL at its best. It can all be yours too…for about $50….to start. To put it another way: If the latest hot video game came out after months and months of hype. The characters didn’t look like what was advertised or you couldn’t do what the game promised, there’d be an uproar. I’m looking at you Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky. I recently opened an account with an alt. Newbie island has improved. Know what the new barrier is? You can’t go anywhere you want. A lot of places have an ‘age’ limit. Your account has to be at least 30 days old. I think if that happened to me back in 2009, that might’ve made me log out and never come back. I know a lot of that has to do with sim owners and they have their reasons, but barriers are bad.

This is another issue: back in the day if you wanted to create, all you had to do was go to a sandbox and….start. Now, you have to apply for a kit. Might not get the kit, might not even be told why. There’s a barrier to entry now.

It can be, but keep in mind you’re getting second hand opinions from people who stayed. My first impression of Second life and was: there’s a lot going on here. I don’t mean activity wise either. I mean in the viewer itself and that’s just the regular LL viewer. I knew how to move around from playing video games. The problem was ‘Where do I go now?’ I figured out how to tp, but now, how do I go back? I remember ending up at the freebie pyramid for about a week, which was great learning about clothes, hair, etc. When I figured out how to leave, everybody looked better. That leads me to the next problem. That was 2009. I was concerned that I looked like a noob, even though I was. Where I ended up wasn’t really helpful because it didn’t help me look like everybody else. I still hadn’t completely understood the concept of Secondlife and that you have to go to different locations and buy things and that there is no real quality control on the things you buy. So I tried updating myself. I uploaded $20, which was a lot for a 20 year old college kid. I ended up at some mall and bought a skin for some outrageous price. I think it was between 2500 and 3000L. Needless to say the mall was a total ripoff and so were the clothes I bought there. In the end, I still looked like a noob and had no more money. I still didn’t know where to go to meet people and I still looked like crap. Eventually, I started asking random people for help. So let’s recap so far: Overwhelming UI, I was steered to a place with outdated things, then steered to a rip off place with overpriced outdated things. It’s rough out there for a noob. So I started asking people where they go and what they do. Reactions varied, but I started getting landmarks and an idea of where I could go. Keep in mind, this was still the era where people actually gave you free things. Imagine what it’s like now? I was really just looking for a place I could hang out and chat with people. Instead, I’m tp’ing around still trying to make my avatar look like everybody else. Eventually I found some people. Mind you, there’s about three places where people would’ve logged out and never returned. I’m riding this out, there’s got to be something I’m missing. So I meet this guy…you know when it starts out like that what’s coming. So I meet this guy and he’s all, “I can see you care about your avatar, some of my friends can help you.” He introduces me to one of his friends…a lady friend, he had lots of lady friends. She starts giving me all this free stuff, skin, shape, clothes, shoes. I’m finally starting to look like everybody else. Then she says, “What viewer are you using?” The one everybody uses? Oh, no, no, no…nobody uses that viewer. Download this viewer. I think it was Firestorm. Downloaded. Installed. Logged back in. Ok…now enable this thing called RLv. Log out again. One of the free things I’m wearing is a collar btw. I’ll spare the gory details of that episode and the couple of days it took me to disable rlv and take the collar off. The point of the story here is, as a new user: You run into people that don’t really have your best interest at heart too and you don’t really know the difference. It’s hard to tell the difference. Fast forward 12 years. A lot of new people I talk to have the same basic problems. Except now it’s worse. People aren’t as friendly, you not only have to worry about your avatar, but which body and head to get. Shopping events make things a little better, but how do you know what is crappy mesh and what is good mesh? There’s still the issue of where to go to meet people, what place is active? You mean there are other viewers too? I’m not going to pretend to know the answers or say everybody had the same kind of experience I had, my first month or so. But a lot of things aren’t very intuitive and the people you first run into can seriously shape your initial experience here.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Pretty-Liars-eBODY-Reborn-Deformers/22788223

That's interesting because to me, everything seems brighter and more specular in the last week or so. I'm seeing more glow from lights, etc. I thought maybe it was me or something, but whatever happened seems like an improvement imo.

I believe the story with that one is it's not easy to rig for, or the creator didn't update the rig or something to that effect. At least that's the story I've heard a few times.

He answered your question though. Secondlife is rendered in OpenGL.

They're both really good! Kalhene Erika is like an updated Freya. Reborn is like a Maitreya/Legacy hybrid with a butt. I think its going to come down to what kind of body type you prefer. I have both and the Ebody support has been almost Legacy levels at the shopping events. Stuff was out there before the body came out and stuff was there on launch day. They also have a big queue of creators applying for a kit. The only thing that seems to be lacking is shoes for them. It's too early to tell which one will be more successful, I think.

I played around with it for a while and here are my thoughts: It's going to be a pretty successful body. Before, I said its somewhere between a Legacy and a Kupra. Not quite accurate. Where a Kupra scales really well on a larger scale, this one scales really well on a smaller scale. Technically, it fits in the 'curvy' body category, but that's not quite accurate. I'm going to be saying that a lot because it does some things I've never seen before. It can get really small. I mean almost completely flat chested and flat butt. Then it can scale up at least to a larger legacy size. So I think its going after a different niche, someone that wants to be curvy, but not kupra size, yet have options. That's the best way I can put it because it does a lot. The sliders respond a bit differently. You can go from having a flat butt to gadunkadunk in the span of maybe 30 increments on the shape sliders. I mean...gadunkadunk too. The breasts aren't super sized on larger settings, but they can get pretty fleshy. It's already getting support and I suspect its going to get a lot more in the near future. All those creators that didn't want to create for kupra because mesh does interesting things on larger settings are going to be right at home here. People that are making things for Kupra will probably want to create for this too. Skins are fine, I'm using a maitreya skin and an EvoX head in the pic below. I did a set more or less regular size and slightly larger and I didn't max anything out. I didn't even play with that yet. That's another thing. The neck/head seam is nigh invisible. I'm expecting big things from this body.

Look out Aesthetic!

It's pretty similar, yes.

The freebie one is fine. It might be a little complicated though if you're just starting out. You can go simpler still. One where everything is pretty much done for you would probably be better. This one is very simple: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Texture-changer-simple/14018252 You put your listener script in your clothing, make the appropriate changes, plug in your uuids and boom you have a working texture hud. If you're good with building you can retexture the hud prim and eventually when you're comfortable with some additional scripting you can add more boxes for more selections.

Usually the auto-hide script is included in the creator-kit, not to be confused with the creator kit you have to apply for, but the freely available one. From there you just have to follow the directions included in the kit.

It looks like they changed something recently, but you shouldn't need to go through facebook or social media to set up an account though. Email should do.

Just getting into Equal10 now. Actually, if you own Ebody or Ebody curvy the body is only 2250L and if you own the Ebody full pack its 1750.

I used to say that all the time on here. This one is going to make a splash though.

I’m with everybody else, that act in itself is a red flag. It’s not just a red flag for the general weirdness that usually follows. If it’s not weirdness, then they’re spamming some club or trying to sell something.

80. That’s my daily driver. I’ll bump it up for sailing or pictures to 256.

Bad idea, simply because there are people actually make a living from Second Life. Then there's the countless people with a myriad of social anxieties for whom SL is their only social outlet. If you can unplug from Second Life every once in a while, you definitely should, but it shouldn't be forced on you.

Much better! You might want to add Ebody Reborn in a third column, because its coming out on 10/10 and Kahlene Erika seems to have some legs.