Yorkie Bardeen

I think that estate owners have more direct metrics on how SL is working for them as a business.

The beta no longer requires membership in the in-world group and is available on the firestorm website. https://www.firestormviewer.org/early-access-beta-downloads/

Like I suppose many people, I've paid for all kinds of stuff that ended up disappointing or never showed up. Even this year I spent 650 on an AO set that wasn't delivered and the vendor owner (not the creator) told me to pound sand because he was not the seller. But the one that sticks with me, what must be 10 years or more ago was a time I bought some shoes on the marketplace. They didn't come with an alpha or shoe base that was meant to be in the folder. It was a time when occasionally things would blurp on the marketplace, and so far as I know, there was no redelivery back then, so I just IM'd the maker and asked if they could send the missing piece. They responded with some "I've never heard of anything like this happening before and I'm a big deal" reply, that came across like they were saying I was making it up, or I didn't look properly in the folder. I don't recall the whole conversation, but I remember feeling they were being accusatory and borderline rude about it. I just wanted some basic customer service help. I'm not belligerent as a customer, I was a seller myself, and I always tried to be helpful. I've spent way more on much more disappointing things in the time since then, but that bad experience has stuck with me. I'm sure that the person doesn't even remember it, and is a successful and well known brand in SL to this day. I'll never buy his shoes.

There is a reason that LL's voice implementation (at least webRTC, idk about vivox) will not expose IP addresses. People here talking like it's no big deal are minimising the fact that it only takes about two or three more pieces of information alongside the IP address if it's not obfuscated, to show up at your house and cut your power/internet lines. Rival corps literally did this in EVE Online. In the case of SL and the dramas we see every day with stalkers, alts, crazy ex partners, the outcome could be even worse.

Mastodon is tainted by the whiff of association with Japanese nonces, and I don't think LL needs that headline. Primfeed came out because it looked like there was going to be a flickrgeddon on all the non-RL photo communities, and now LL is doing the lowest effort thing possible.

Worse than a weird empty white face? No, it'll probably be fine. There are no baked AOs on the current terrain textures, or on a lot of landscaping items with repeating textures that don't look terrible without materials either. I have a non-baked, no materials, repeating texture in part of my build. It's fine, it's just less interesting to look at. It doesn't destroy the whole view.

When someone forks FS with an option to backfill the PBR Color texture into BP Diffuse in the viewer, people will use that and ignore that it doesn't look perfect because they were happily disabling materials already.

I have read the wiki entry for the Community Land Partnership Program, and I did not see anything in there relating to the behaviour of CLPP Participants as a requirement, so perhaps the question is answered, but I wonder if anyone knows if LL expects or enforces a code of conduct for CLPP admins that they would otherwise not get involved in for fully private estates. I'm not directly involved myself, but someone I know has copped an estate ban from one of the larger CLPP estates. Since this is the SL Forums people will say whatever about whether it was justified (from what I know of the person involved, it's utterly insane) so I won't go into the details. Rather, I'll ask this question as a hypothetical to apply generally. What I am wondering is if CLPP admins are supposed to be held to a higher standard when it comes to who they can ban (and block from travel access to other, adjoined CLPP and mainland areas) on the basis of rumour, hearsay, or personal animus, as opposed to clear and evident griefing etc.

I was being a bit silly, but I was thinking back to the original quote from years ago which compared avatars to a Quake game level.

Jacket.

I make a copy of my body and use the script delete option for just about every outfit I make. It reduces my overall worn scripts which is generally a good thing for everyone in the region, and I don't have to fuss with the HUD alpha for five minutes on an outfit change, since autohides don't always function/exist anyway.

Anyone who's spent 10 minutes messing with textures in SL, throwing some PBR color texture onto BP diffuse and just using it again as the specular has generally gone, "Yeah, that looks good enough for what I want in my place that's a mis-mash of 100 creators' diverging aesthetics already." It's the make-do and mend attitude of SL, and for most things it works fine. I used the same "PBR" textures on a two region event build including on the BP textures and nobody noticed. Yes, I cheated, because it doesn't really matter with concrete if this or that pixel is the one that looks up or down, or how roughness on rocks looks, but sometimes it works.

The problem is that SL is transitioning from a platform that is usable without a dedicated GPU to one that isn't. When half of the users just go off and play something else their computers can handle, the rest of us will be counting the days until they just close SL as being unsustainable.

Using Discord is the next step towards doxxing yourself outside of SL. I am OK with using Discord for SL stuff, because I don't have anything remotely RL connected on that platform, but a lot of people probably might see it as a problem. I get annoyed when stores put out notices with bit.ly links that go to facebook; one more way to expose people's RL information if they didn't copy/paste the link into a private browser tab first. So long as Henri is making CoolVLViewer I think there is a valid alternative without going so far as using purely text based viewers. I did use Radegast in the past, though, and I think it's not a bad idea generally to have something like that available. Firestorm text mode is not exactly that, and it really hoses your firestorm settings if you use it and want to go back to normal.

[ANGRY] by angrynoob and Contraption by walton.wainright might be good places to start.

So far it seems like the biggest complaints about Bellisseria are the people that moved there. I think especially in the second phase it was basically a land rush to get enough regions full of 23-24 houses stamped out as fast as possible, which is where the maze of copied and rotated regions with eight roads in and out came from. There didn't seem to be any time or interest for urban planning, and we will be stuck with it until the day SL closes. I realise that some bean counter at LL set a target for about 24 homes per region, since they're already eating the prims for the buildings and the paths/roads/easements, not packing everyone in cheek to jowl in 512s like the glory days of the mainland, but I think people want their elbow room these days, and lowering the home density would have been a good idea in the long run. "Main" roads are a relatively simple way to do that, and I think that lesson was learned since that early rush, which is nice to see. I don't blame the Moles at all for building what they were told to build, but I am sick and tired of yet more American stick and board homes that we will be stuck with again until the heat death of the sun/closing of SL. It's a massive wasted opportunity, and totally myopic. SL is full of residents who have created authentic or at least plausible communities in other styles who could have been consulted at any time or even just looked at. The only two interesting themes in the recent poll were themes that were a Big Deal on SL in 2006. The paucity of imagination and vision is frankly staggering. Finally, as some have alluded to, feting and promoting some unelected, unaccountable, private resident group and giving them free access to event venues and special home areas is a slap in the face of everyone who pays tier in this world. Using them as a proxy to promote Bellisseria with mainland billboards through their divisive, exclusionary, and monopolistic "game" is the icing on the cake.

Not all of these places are historical heirlooms, and I feel like a lot of people treat the mainland like it's some quaint living museum they want to visit every three years to chin-stroke over the old prims rather than participate in it as a shared experience. If updating the builds would encourage people to visit them, hang out, take selfies or otherwise engage with the area actively then I'd be all for it. There are probably plenty of other things that could be improved first. There's a road on Sansara that would be improved even with just replacement no materials prims, it's that bad.

Setting PBR materials on objects requires a different set of LSL functions to legacy materials, so until Maitreya update the body scripts to support them it will be impossible.

Firestorm is something of a hybrid, the pure V2+ viewers feel clunky in a different way and CVLV feels clunky in the other way. I don't know if FS have as much leeway around disabling PBR, I think they have some maybe stricter guidelines than other TPVs, including CVLV. Firestorm V6.x likely won't last a year, since WebRTC and Controller Support are the next things coming, and sooner than that. I think they are hoping to get WebRTC working in the next full release so as not to churn through versions, but it's only a guess, and with the fixes needed for PBR they can only delay pushing the current beta to release for so long.

So far the only official communication from Linden Lab has been to name-call their customers as haters and idiots on twitter.

There is some more detail in this feedback discussion: https://feedback.secondlife.com/bug-reports/p/directional-input-delays-with-latest-pbr-capable-viewers

After one failed motherboard and one failed super ultrawide monitor, I will never touch Asus/ROG again. YMMV.

Policing taste on the mainland is an uphill struggle. I prefer the cute smaller hubs for GTFO, but the people are having their fun on their land that they pay for, which I thought was what the libertarians of SL, including the Get Off My Lawn brigade are all about. The GTFO game has become so successful at least in terms of aspirations of potential hub owners that they have introduced stricter rules for applications, to reduce and limit the amount of hubs on the roadsides. There is no arguing against the fact that this game has contributed to a huge increase in active roadside parcels, all paying tier and contributing to the SL economy. Here is a video from seven or so years ago, before Drivers of SL and especially GTFO became popular. This is Satori. it's 70% abandoned roadside land. That land is almost all filled with places now. Yes, probably "ugly" and overbuilt freight stations, but the land is being used. It's more the fault of everyone else who abandoned the land, not the GTFO players who got enthusiastic and refreshed an entire continent's roadside activity. I remember when Satori was pretty empty, because my partner of the time (2018) and I got a 2048 roadside in an otherwise totally empty region, with land so flat I could land my little plane on it. I couldn't even find that place today, the region is hugely built up now. I know that not everyone likes sky signs for whatever purpose, but they are useful to some people. Every GTFO hub should have an area where rez is enabled, for example. Or if you want to go sailing, finding one of those yellow LCC (Leeward Cruising Club) signs means a location that welcomes you to rez your boat there. Even with 600 active users and 7000 members, I recognise that DoSL is still a niche in the wider SL community.

They didn't pay the DJ, the DJ put a tip jar out and the club did also.

Drivers of Second Life group routinely gets 300-600 participants on weekly excursions out of a total group of approx 7000 members, and it's only one of several travel based groups. Most residents who do vehicle related things generally do so in groups at organised times of the day and week. When Isard releases a new sailing boat I'm certain they sell more than 25 in the first hour. It's likely true though that the majority of people who buy boats from the big makers don't generally make a habit of sailing them, they want to moor them at their island retreat or at a socially desirable marina and admire the look of them. The fact that you can't go 50m on Route 8 without hitting a GTFO hub means that there are actually a lot of people who participate. The group has over 3000 members. The one time you looked doesn't really count for much in the way of data. I get some visitors each week to my place, but I don't obsess over traffic so I don't have a visitor counter. I see the "stock control displays updating a few times per week. The recent Mole work on new connecting roads in Satori led to a surge of interest and commercial activity in roadside parcels in the area. I posted the evidence in another topic. There are indeed far too many airports in SL. Airports are like Zindra land, mostly sold on by sharks to hapless dreamers who think that they can be the next great self-sustaining airport around Nautilus. It's a folly in almost every case, but apparently some people have deep pockets and they are paying tier/rent on full regions so they are supporting the SL economy.