Mr Amore

I'd be interested in hearing your findings. I haven't needed to sync with the main grid before, but it's good to know! Not that I can even login yet, possibly issues arising from a name change during the past months.

Forgive the revival of an old thread, but has there been an update on uploading 30 second sound files. Is it still on the horizon?

It's not about being more like them, Evah, but giving creators more tools in SL and making it simpler to share content. So far as virtual concerts go, this will be tough to beat:

This happened once with 'SL Go', but streaming games is still a niche experience. It won't become mainstream until the 2030s. I liked landscaping in SL, there's a ridiculous amount of trees, rocks and animals in my inventory. When I was actively building it could takes weeks to complete a scene, but eventually they would be deleted to make space for another. There are drastic considerations between building on the ground, or for a skybox. There's no SL water in the sky, your swimming AO and vehicles generally will not function for prim water. Then the terrain mesh may come with exotic physics models, and you are limited to those static shapes. It's clearly not the same as demonstrated in Roblox Studio where they have natural terrain and water features for a skybox. And the asset browser, the background and environment settings are all a nice touch too. Yes, you can do this in SL, it's just more expensive, less intuitive and next to impossible to distribute as the scenes you make are generally no-transfer. So the question we arrive at is, how often have you messaged a friend and said, "I've just completed this scene, rez it on your land and see." Or how often have your friends sent you some fancy environmental creation of theirs? This generally isn't possible in SL, where we travel to one another's sims to see their builds - but - we cannot share them. Every modern metaverse will capitalize on user creativity and encourage them to share(Free content!). From SL, I've learned to script and mesh and it's nice to see them functioning inworld. And yes, SL touts itself as an Educator's world, but how active are those sims? Back in March I attended the 'Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education' conference, videos of which are available at their youtube channel. I only learned of the conference this year by someone posting in the wrong chatgroup. And the fact that many of their videos have less than 50 views is indicative of how well LL have promoted the event. I am not taking digs at LL here, but if you promote your platform as being a tool for educators you have some obligation to support them too. For anyone interested, here's one of the streams from the event:

That Fantasy Faire video appeared to be stuttering from performance issues, but it's the interpolation from the camera's path. And that random observation aside... I'm by no means lamenting the graphical superiority of Roblox over SL! It's not a game I'm interested in playing. However, search for Roblox Studio on youtube for a look at their environment creation tools. That's something I would like for SL, or anything similar to it. Core (by Manticore) have developed a similar studio for their system. These are aimed at games, but we could use them to create environments in SL too. The trouble with SL is, we tend to think of our builds as permanent spaces, when they could be temporary scenes-on-demand. A look at Roblox Studio: And a second link, laughably sponsored by GameMaker Studio. The TLDR is, Roblox are gouging 75% from their game developers, who take home just 25% of their earnings. It is undeniably obscene.

These are real issues in need of addressing among others. Growth will come from new residents entering the game, but in that first hour they need an incentive to stay and not be confounded by the disaster that is the V3 UI. When I first installed SL around 2006, it was a smooth experience with an intuitive UI. Recently I installed the official viewer again... and I was confused. The search wasn't working(couldn't find my own avatars), the UI was too busy with icons everywhere, the friend's panel is an absolute nightmare to navigate. LL doesn't need to reinvent the interface, they just need to restore it to V1, back when it just worked. New residents aren't reaching the point of discovering TPVs, they're installing the official viewer... and uninstalling it after ten minutes of nausea. Another detriment is the cost of entry, creating an avatar now is upwards of $100 and that's just to get started. If LL were to create a couple of BoM enabled mesh bodies, like the Ruth 2.0, it's an incentive for new residents. The developer kits for these bodies would be available for all and introduce even more residents to rigging attachments. I don't fault LL for attempting a new project, Sansar recognized SL's limitations. Their mistake was betting on VR, over mobile. When any analyst could have told them, VR will continue to be a niche product until the 2030s when battery and hardware improvements will make headsets viable for all. Meanwhile, mobile devices are in every home. IMVU and Roblox targeted mobile users and they're reaping the benefits. SL's real advantage is the talent of its creators, Second Life's avatars are easily the most diverse of any game. When the new 'metaverses' launch, they will be optimized for mobile and VR too, so SL will hold its aesthetic lead for years to come. But eventually there will be talent-drain of creators from SL to more profitable platforms. That alone should be LLs main concern because the creators keep this game afloat. When they're gone, it sinks.

Since the 'uplift' to the cloud, I've wanted to see instanced regions which are: Online when you need them Offline and off the grid when you're gone. Disconnected from other sims with no neighbors, perhaps not even part of the world map. LL could trial new technologies in 'instanced sims' without worrying about breaking old content, such as larger sims. And there could be a pay-as-you-go pricing structure, for instance paying $60/month for a sim I've used for 40 hours makes more sense than $200'ish for a sim I'll use for 40 hours/month. Sansar had the right idea with instanced 'Experiences', it should be possible in SL too.

When virtual worlds are discussed we rarely see Second Life mentioned now because it's considered a failure. And you may protest a steady performance of 40,000 concurrent users, a respectable figure for any game. And that is the issue, this number hasn't grown in over a decade. Meanwhile Roblox, which is almost as old as SL, measures its concurrent users in the millions. The game was largely promoted by its demographic, mostly children play it and introduce others to Roblox in their schools. But their support for creators, building tools and ease of deploying content in the world make SL look prehistoric by comparison. Disclaimer: I've never installed Roblox and have only seen their building environment from youtbube videos, maybe there are glaring issues I'm not aware of yet it's clearly working for their creators. Meanwhile, SL hasn't had a functional beta grid since last year because that's how deeply LL values its creators. Going forwards, here's an excerpt from a recent BBC article https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57942909 It really is the evolution of the virtual world, where the host is mining every little detail. The place an avatar faces, the object its focused onto, every word written, every surface touched, all of it permanently associated with a real identity. This marks the transition of the Internet into a new era of creepy.

Objects rezzed on no-script land are unable to communicate at all. It's only a factor for objects which can serve a purpose without their scripted features.

@arabellajones When I was using Manjaro, Firestorm installed without a hitch from the AUR. Voice was also working without additional steps. Other distros may require some tweaking to get voice on, I don't normally use SL Voice, it's not something I look for. But I do miss running Catznip on Linux!

'Several weeks' have turned into several months and is steadily creeping up to a year, before LL will pull a resource away from their latest money spinner(Lastname sales), to spend a minute addressing the Aditi issue. I was able to access the beta-grid up until this month, now it no longer recognizes my login/pass. So if you have access now don't assume you will keep it! Maybe restricting Aditi access has become a side hustle for LL, after 8 months of thumb twiddling it's clearly not a priority and I'm not holding my breath for a resolution any time soon.

What does Second Life need for sustainable growth? New Players. What happens to new players who install the Second Life viewer? They are traumatized by the harrowing UI experience and uninstall it 30 minutes later. I recently used the official viewer and even as a seasoned SL'er, I was lost. The interface is confusing and the search was utterly dysfunctional. Telling new residents to install Firestorm is not the answer, most will never stay in the game long enough to learn about TPVs. Nothing will change until LL rollback the hideous changes to the official client and finally trash the 'web search' panel. Even reviving the SL client from a decade ago would result in a cleaner first-time-user experience than the present.

Only in SL will you find a thriving ecosystem of pretenders and patsies. The 'pretenders' aren't particularly inventive or clandestine by nature, they don't need to be, they are precisely the partner persons of a certain disposition are seeking.

In almost every case I've encountered an adequate Homestead build, the community begins to grow, the management take that fateful step to a full sim. And a couple of months later it all comes crashing down. It's been a predictable pattern since Homesteads became available. Once LL have completed their transition to the Amazon cloud, there will probably be an adjustment in tiers and more flexibility in options. I wouldn't expect anything before then.

Just keep an eye on this thread for tips on the next release date, and you will get one.

Thanks Raeleeh. They make it sound so simple on the website, this is what you're subscribing for: