Ayashe Ninetails

Aside from making changes to height and face on occasion, I find I'm always tinkering with my body sliders. Some pants/shorts/skirts really blow out the hips for some reason. I find male shopping to be so much more fun. I think it's because I don't have to navigate the obnoxious "lemme just pull up half of my shirt/skirt" trends everywhere I go. Their mesh items also play a bit nicer together it seems. Pairing a top and pants from different stores isn't as rage-inducing as doing it for my female avatars. Pairing shoes with long pants is a whole PAIN, though, but I'll just toss them into womens shoes/boots if I have to to work around that.

I'm certainly NOT pro-ID or age verification and think the entire thing is invasive and will never do it for simple entertainment, but some of the more determined companies in the freelance/employment space are playing around with facial recognition. They tell you in order to receive payments, you have to download this app or visit this website, sign in, use your phone to scan your government-issued photo document (driver's license, passport, non-driver ID, etc.), then take a selfie via that same app when prompted so it can scan your face, then agree to let this third-party security company few have ever heard of work some magic in the background to verify you in real-time, and if you pass the checks, you'll be officially verified on the platform and get a cute little badge on your profile. If it fails for some reason (bad angles, weird facial expression, can't match you) and you can't get it to work, sucks to be you too bad so sad. Oh, and if you close your account, we'll keep your data for up to 3 years on file and then delete it - we promise! I have even stronger feels about facial recognition ID verification that I won't go into and wouldn't even entertain the notion when the IRS was kicking the idea around, so there's no way I'd do that anywhere else. There are sites I'll never do business with as long as they have this as a requirement. I don't think Second Life would go for that method as it seems like more of a financial safeguard than simple age verification, but that's pretty much the standard now in other spaces.

All of this. Especially the fact that age verification in no way stops a user from willingly or accidentally sharing with an unverified user in their household. Sure, you can verify your own self, but get up to answer a call or pet the family turtle and a younger sibling sits down at the PC, welp. Even easier with mobile. As for handing over documentation, I'm so dang careful with doing that these days. I've already been a victim years ago of someone taking my credit card number for a shopping spree across a state I've never even visited, and I'm one of those who can never even remember passwords since they all look like the result of two cats fighting across my keyboard. Bank called me to ask if I had lost my dang mind and while we were chatting, the person was still running charges in real-time, so that made us laugh quite a bit while they worked to shut it down. Granted, there are lots of ways that could happen, but I'm not about to go throwing more info than necessary all over the Internet just in case and I've reduced the number of sites I do business with. If I lose access to adult content - oh wells. Don't need it anyway.

This is a really good point. I don't know how other platforms with tons of user-generated content work that all out. I think they have standard bodies at least. No idea how they handle other content and what, if any, restrictions there are. I've never been particularly motivated to download and try them. Truthfully, I'm a bit user-gen contented out. 😂 Yep. Just a wait and see situation for all of this. Hopefully not a repeat of what we just went through. Yeah, it's a difficult path they're trying to navigate there. I certainly do NOT envy them.

Exactly. One thing I do think is tripping SL up quite a bit - who are they looking to attract and retain? Not having a specific demographic in mind makes it so incredibly difficult to develop, maintain, and grow the platform. I totally get that they want to make SL open for everybody, but if they're going to keep lower-end/older hardware in the equation, then graphics are going to have to be fairly light. Once you start getting into PBR and other tech, even if considered old news by now, you start raising the bar. This is why a 12-year-old machine just isn't going to be running Elden Ring on max. There's a game in development coming out this year that has recommended specs that include a 3070 or higher GPU. There are tons of disappointed would-be players who are cursing their older systems knowing there's no way in heck they can run the thing. Some even tried. They installed the demo and it crashed repeatedly. Heck, I tried the thing (I have a 3070) and my performance was still fairly sluggish in spots. I probably need more RAM or a slightly better CPU, which I wouldn't upgrade just for this as there's a competitor also in development that should be easier on the hardware. It's an unfortunate reality, though. You want your stuff to look hyper-realistic, you're going to limit who can play it. Some platforms and games manage to widen the umbrella by releasing on numerous different platforms like PC/Mac, higher-end consoles (Xbox Series S&X/PS5), lower-end consoles (PS4, Switch, etc.), mobile. That's pretty difficult to balance, too. Just look at the trouble CDPR had with Cyberpunk on release trying to make it work on older consoles. 👀

No, never had to do that for Google. Never even encountered it before. As far as Apple goes, I never use it. I have a pretty strict policy regarding ID verification online. Generally, I'm fine using photo ID (driver's license, etc.) to verify for freelance gigs that require/request it. I do need to work, after all, and many sites pay via Paypal, which also has their own security processes for valid reasons. Anything dealing with finances is kind of touchy that way. So whatever, it's fine. If it does NOT involve paid work? I'm not doing it. My trust for a company's ability to keep that kind of data secure is a big fat 0. Doesn't help that many sites use some random third-party located halfway across the planet to handle such things. In fact, there are some popular work sites I wouldn't even give my ID to because now they're also playing around with face recognition and all that mess. They don't pay enough for the trouble. Nope.

Ew, no way. Unless someone is paying good money, I'm not paying a single cent to let them confirm my identity/age/run a background check, etc.

I've never personally seen anywhere charge for ID or age verification. Not even work-related platforms. No chance would I ever pay for it here.

Agree, and this same type of thing happened with the release of Baldur's Gate 3 and Dragon's Dogma II. I saw more character creation content than actual gameplay with those two. Those didn't even have the push/pull system. They were VERY flexible, though. Dragon's Dogma II probably a bit more. People went nuts with that one. You can often tell how things are going for a new release by looking at what people are creating. Once the celebrity and pop culture character designs start rolling in on social media, you know a game has hooked people. 😂 The thing is, all of these games make it easy, fast, and almost effortless to do. A lot of this same stuff could be done in SL, also, but it's so incredibly time consuming and unfortunately - it's not free. Edit: They apparently gave out full game beta access to a few streamers. I haven't been watching long, but from what I've seen, both interiors and exteriors look gorgeous (with plenty of natural-looking reflections) and yes, there are working mirrors. Seriously pretty game, but definitely requires good system specs. Oh and one thing I noticed - live mode looks more like Second Life and less like The Sims. Especially outdoors. And...Zois can rap. Because of course they can.

I change heads, shapes, and full skins several times a day, usually.

How dare.

That one, I dunno. Mine is "yes."

That's actually a good point. I'm going to have to keep an eye out for PBR frog skins, LOL.

More on topic: It's an inconvenient truth that I can't even rock cute frog feet here because I have way, way too many shoes.

I personally wouldn't upgrade a PC (or especially a laptop) just for SL, so unless there was some other pressing reason I needed 32 gigs of RAM, I wouldn't really do that myself. I run on 16 gigs, which has been perfectly fine for my own needs overall (SL + gaming + whatever software I find myself needing to use here and there). As far as low-end users go, SL does eventually have to weigh the pros and cons of keeping itself updated. Unfortunately, very few modern games and platforms are going to run on older hardware, unless they're very easy on the graphics. For a start, LL needs to come up with a reasonable set of system specs to work from, because what's listed on that Wiki is ancient. As a former creator, I can tell you that many of them will put in hours, days, sometimes weeks to months-worth of work in exchange for near pennies when all is said and done (fees, taxes, etc.). That's if they make any money at all. The absolute last thing I'd ever call a creator is lazy. If you've ever made anything from scratch in SL (from prims, from sculpts, from mesh, animations, poses, scripts, etc.) you know how wonky it can be to get things to work within our fiddly system, let alone work well. Adding even more work on top of that? Nooo thanks.

Your RAM is great, but if viewing avatars in crowded regions will crash you, yeah, you're definitely going to struggle running PBR with good implementation, even. If this is a laptop, SL is going to slap it around unless it's fairly high-end anyway, so don't feel too bad. The good news is it doesn't seem you'll have to worry about using PBR at all for now, and it's going to take quite some time before the world itself becomes unusable (all white no textures).

Yeah, those system reqs desperately need updating. How low end is your machine and how do you typically run SL (which viewer, ALM on or off, typical settings, etc.)?

I am absolutely losing my mind over the hair textures. The corkscrews. The dreads. Losing. My. Mind. We need this. I know, I knooow. 🤣

I'm dragging you and Paul shopping one of these days. Y'all are struggling out there. 🤣 Edit: Orwar: I don't know what to do with my arms! Me:

Pro-tip - stop looking for male dances. If you're talking about singles, that is. Nothing good comes from that. I shop by type or genre. As far as I know, they're not gendered until you get into couples territory, and that doesn't even make a difference much of the time. I've used couples anims with girls before and they look fine. Maybe some minor height adjustments here and there, but nothing major.

Inconvenient truth: we can find absolutely anything in Second Life except the very thing we're actually looking for!

Lol, I'm the total opposite. I replace stands and walks with dances in my AO from time to time, so I'm usually dancing all over the place. I'll agree the standard club/couple dances are absolutely boring, though. You gotta bring your own.

You don't dance a lot in SL, do ya? Ya gotta get out of the clubs with the stale old stuff. Mocap couple and group dances are some of the most hilarious things IN Second Life, are you kitten me rite meow? My friends and I would waste whole hours in animation stores buying the dumbest group dances to use while out and about.

Oh yeahhh, traditional gender roles are quite alive and well in SL, for sure. Don't I know it. 😩😄 LOL, I nicknamed my best friend "Fuzzy" so so so many years ago when we first met and it's stuck all this time, with numerous variations (Fuzzers, Fuzzykins, Sir Fuzzington III, Fuzzers Fuzzington Fuzztopolous Fuzzwiffle the Fird). I just love words like that. Fluffy...can do a lot with that one, too. Better watch it. 👀🤣

That's a little different than what Fluffy is referring to, I think. Fluffy can poke me if I'm incorrect, of course. Side note: I'm having way too much fun typing "Fluffy," btw, so don't mind me. Fluffy. Anyhoo, I know of a few relationships where the woman works/runs a business and the man is the stay at home dad. That's probably not overly common, but it does happen here and there. How often that's represented in Second Life, if at all - I dunno. I can't even comprehend adhering to a single gender role in the first place (lol, RIP to the men who have tried my patience with that) so these types of non-traditional switch-ups don't particularly surprise me.