Cynite00

(Sorry) The argument made assumes: That the only reason to express support for a type of relationship is if it has been previously denied or persecuted. This ignores other potential motivations for expression, such as cultural or personal values. ` That response also implies that affirming one type of relationship necessarily comes at the expense of another, which is not inherently true.

That's because you react before reading the entire sentence, as usual you only snip the part you take offense to, and not the entire thought in whole.. A dishonest half-quote. Defending other people's rights means YOUR rights are also ensured. The same rights or freedoms you want to deny others, can and WILL be denied you.

I don't like mainland because it's laggy and ugly. That's pretty much it.

I prefer to give everyone the most freedoms possible, and freedom of expression, as we cannot be making rules regarding how someone might perceive, react or be triggered or be offended by - because that is subjective. CAVEAT: LL can do what it likes, as long as it recognizes there are consequences to it's success if overly-moderated. Yes, I will go as far as to tolerate people displaying Nazi flags, or the Union Jack, and the LGBTQ+ flag or anything else they see fit as long as it is not accompanied by what is defined as 'hate speech', calling for violence against an individual or groups, or promoting unlawful activity . But LL will time you out for refusing to address another SL'er by their preferred pronoun, so they've gone as far now to unashamedly stating they will compel their customer's speech... so why not go all the way and ban any political or social issue expression so that noone can ever be triggered, offended or allegedly 'harassed' in any way. I'd prefer to keep people open and visible, so that discussions can be had with them, even if they're found out to be fools - rather than simply driving them underground - and just get more bitter and battle-hardened. Displaying a MAGA flag, a BLM flag, a Kamala political ad, Russia/Communism flag, "Save Ukraine" flag, Union Jack, Nazi Flag or "Don't Tread On Me" flag does not hurt anyone else, and does not infringe on anyone else's rights or cause them harm - though ANY one of those can offend someone - should not be the grounds to attract any 'governance' action unless it goes further than that, and can be clearly proven to be used to harass another individual. A sign or picture can't do anything by itself, it is an inanimate object that can harrass noone - unless of course it includes hate speech with it. Me posting a picture of a married white couple with kids, in response to a neighbour promoting gay marriage for example, is not harassment, even if I posted it in response. If one person can 'advertise' or express their opinion or political position, then everyone else can - OR NO ONE CAN. At the end of the day, it is the inconsistency of LL's 'governance' and the 'spirit' of when they feel like moderating or not - is the issue. This is why we have TOS's, and arbitration. Right now LL's TOS is really just a formality, as they reserve the right 'to do anything and moderate as we see fit' so it's all moot. Be aware that potential users and customers see all of this, and react accordingly. If they agree with LL's politics and way of doing things to create a 'safe space' at the cost of 'fair' expression and 'inclusion', they join. If they look around and see a Tumblr culture, they won't. Sansar had it all locked down, complete with staff chaperoning of events, and presence at community meetings - like parents doting over and supervising the children playing - and no one could just relax and speak their mind for fear of retribution. Guess what happened? Those same people found other platforms where they could express themselves freely, and not have Mommy and Daddy watching over them all the time. Most users are NOT extreme in their views, but many individuals will certainly use hyperbole to make their case when appealing to governance, in order to get the maximum effect and hopefully get force used against others who offend them in some way. This is the best solution in the end. Give people the tools to manage their own experience in SL. Educate them on how to block, derender users and stuff they personally find offensive, ignore all the whining, and only step in in a case that is clear harassment or hate.

This can easily be solved in a relatively passive way, by posting the specs of the asset on the product page - this would 'encourage' creators to optimize their assets. However, one could argue that LL might lose a lot of sales because of this, as most customers won't notice or know or even care about these stats.. but for those that do, and the creators that serve them, could change SL towards a more optimized direction.

Second Life will never be 'dead', if you define it as 'having users or not". Even Active Worlds still has users, along with IMVU, Runescape, Ultima Online, Age of Camelot (LOL), Lineage (wut) and many other games and platforms. In general once a platform has 30,000 servers, and only 1 player in each of them, many will consider that platform 'dead' because they can't find anyone to play with. At one point even FPS game Rust had more servers than players, even though the concurrency was quite high. Now because of this the main population now comes from the official servers while custom private servers have taken a nosedive.. Many gamers will say "Wut? Rust? You still playing that dead game?". It's all relevant to the numbers, and especially if you can join it and immediately find lots of players to interact with.

It's interesting to note that it is very common online for people not even to bother exploring the sources I will provide - for more information, to define something, or to source why I hold my current opinion - and many times when they supply their own, it is a hastily googled up link supporting their own view. They don't actually expect me to go read their source - as I will to see if their counterargument holds up and therefore to change my view - then find that their source is based on a headline only and many times the article won't even support them.. Because it's about 'winning' on the internet, not learning or testing one's views against another's

It can only provide information that it is trained on, what it can scrape from existing internet sources, and through the built-in bias that it's creators gave it. Yes, it will conflict itself from time to time, I could end up arguing with it It definitely will stroke your ego, and almost repeat back to you what you previously typed, and many times I will challenge it on its claims then it will patronizingly apologize 'for overlooking those points' - and because we cannot train it ourselves by participating (by pointing the AI to the sources that say otherwise), it's just going to chug along from it's own viewpoint, ignorant or not. Keep in mind, this is not a Firestorm issue, this is an SL viewer issue, which FS is based on. BOTH need to be whitelisted otherwise Windows' built in antivirus goes crazy and gobbles up the CPU. It is also the first software I have ever had to explicity whitelist all its processes - though before the PBR viewer I never had to whitelist the SL viewers, nor did I notice any effects on the CPU as it is now. It is valid for anyone to be annoyed by this, as historically such high CPU use and thrashing would be indicative of malware or some app going crazy, as many had complained about a past update of Rust (FPS game), that thrashed people's computers and max'd out their RAM usage. PBR is not the issue. PBR is just a set of textures. The issue will be how LL can represent that set of textures in their viewer(s). You're already playing other games with PBR already, and probably with no issues.

Mm Hmm... yet.. as the op clearly started the topic, and how I responded to it... "I open debate about AI, the use of AI in Second Life and ethics in the use of AI in SL."

If you're going to open a debate on this, invest yourself in it by making an opening argument FOR or AGAINST the use of AI in SL... and WHY you believe your position is valid. Noone should even be replying to this until you do.

Ok, well then... we work on their attitude of being offended at signs, and flags etc, and perhaps point them to therapy so they can learn about managing their reactions to things in life.

I think you actually agree with me, but you want to go straight PBR, no 'backup texture', but just display the color texture? The reason I wanted at least to continue with the baked, is because it is VERY easy to make (eg. SP -> 2d View) in a pinch, but yeah it would require an extra slot. If it's PBR only, and default to the color, all the user will see is the color and will look drab anyway. What's worse. A solid white texture that 'encourages' them to get a PBR viewer, or an ugly "all I see is brown wood with no details" complaints on your product page and dms again (similar to BP - ALM) Whatever the outcome, I want it to be completed sooner than later, as I really don't want to waste energy making stuff mid-term.

Indeed. When did SL turn into a population of crybabie and tattletalers. Perhaps as part of the Welcome Hub experience, information about derendering and blocking should be part of the education. "Before hassling LL staff with your crying, first use these tools, that may solve your problem."

Grrr.. Why isn't a pack like this set to default in each viewer, so people don't have to make these posts to start with? Admittedly I'm a dummy with all this EEP stuff too, because I never cared I just went with "Shared Environments" so people could present their sims to me as they intended - but then default to High Noon for everything else, when working on stuff.

I'm all for that definitely. Efficiency and optimization, a good search engine, a fast and modern interface, all that base prerequisite work is needed first and foremost. There's so many parts to their possible success (and proven failure) it's hard to communicate all those angles, this is why I harp on them so much to get their stuff together, get the right people in the right jobs, pay them well, and get it on. Tick tock, running out of clock.

I would very much like you to have an SL where PBR exists for when and if you can upgrade to see its beauty, but for now be able to see a very optimized baked-texture that can run much faster on your system. If in a marketplace redesign, LL included the specs for the asset, including tri counts, amount of materials used and the size of materials (could just be a total...) then end users could decide to purchase the most optimized assets FIRST, and encourage creators to 'get good' at serving SL with optimized stuff in the first place. Right now, when any creator is making optimized and good looking stuff, with minimal materials and appropriate texture sizes (texel density), and optimizing their mesh for virtual worlds - and including proper LODs - all that extra work is not considered or recognized by the end user. This would improve SL significantly. No changes needed - just add asset stats to the product page and let the end user decide. We know low LI is very important to people - so much so that many creators cheat on their assets to get a low Li score... Then we could truly see "Who is a great asset to the creator community and SL" truly, and not just because they say so

I will assume you are using "YOU" in a general sense, and not addressing me directly - if so, you'd have to read my post again. Related to both these posts, I'm hoping a good solution to bridge the gap between those currently having trouble with PBR viewers, to be able to have a fallback texture - that which is similar to what exists now - a baked diffuse texture. During BP phase, many many users had Advanced Lighting Model turned off, so they could not even see or enjoy BP texture sets anyway, so many creators (even top ones) simply shipped their products with default baked diffuse textures anyway. I'm hoping the end result will be PBR + baked diffuse (no normals or spec included), and so those on current or lower end rigs will still be able to enjoy SL. I look around and I see many items in SL that look good as is, with no PBR or BP on them at all anyway.

I'd rather have you onboard (and I think you are from past posts) in how we open up SL to new blood, and kick LL's butt to get professional and prompt in their development roadmaps, etc so that you and I don't die before we see positive changes. Cuz at this pace they go... wow.. come on man. Time's ticking for them . Tick, tock, tick tock! In tech a year is a long time, never mine 2 , or 3, or 6 or 20! What's the hold up?

Before this can be presented as an argument, or agreed or disagreed with, it needs to have supporting statements to quantify it. Yes, as a creator myself, one of MANY 'talented creators who are an asset to our creator community' :D, we would like to be 'first to market' as it seemingly might give us a boost in profit. For myself and others I know, it is still a bit early so we're hanging back, to see how it will all be represented, and observe how LL will handle people with different computers, and what the OFFICIAL and final PBR + backup texture (if any) will be. However, being first to market is good for original and new content, gives a short term boost, but pretty much anyone can enter the market at any time - and have success if they make quality, wanted items - AND the users can actually see them properly, and run a Viewer on an average computer at present.

Exactly. The grease to SL, and how SL can grow (in part with other things), is empowering individuals to manage their experiences, stay out of what really are 'interpersonal disputes' - even over signs or flags - and just send form letters outlining the derendering, ignoring, muting and blocking functions available. SL needs to open up to different types of views, from left to right, right now it's just the Tumblr of virtual worlds. Why not? Even if it is a comment for/against recent events, at worst it's just someone being insensitive.. OR it was just a picture of a cat that went up randomly, and SOMEONE ELSE got triggered by it - by their own interpretation of it.." Like an example of a black avatar being sold on another LL platform and was named "Tyrone", but the creator was threatened with disciplinary action as apparently the name "Tyrone" was deemed offensive, - due to a meme at the time - and was NOT the intent of the creator. The problem lies in people's perception of something being weaponized. Just because a person might have a counter view to you, and say meet your impassioned expression with the same level of their own - doesn't mean it's weaponized against you. I can clearly tell you here and now - I am not a fan of LGBTQ+ things and rainbow flags, and so what? So if I express my own view, say "The Nuclear Family" or heterosexual relationships and lifestyles - why is it that many feel that is 'weaponized' against them? Why is it seen as harassment if I post pictures of heterosexual marriage, or those things.. in response, because I am your neighbour, or if it's how I would like to express myself - on the same private property where you and others so fervently promote as "People can do what they want on their own private property"? Why should LL get involved anyway, or come up with guidelines that would limit such expression, at the same time preaching 'inclusivity' on their platforms? Derender solves all issues, for others - mute and block.. But then, that wouldn't be as fun or as thrilling as seeing someone else have forced used against them on your whims? Seriously, we really do. I remember a SL that was wacky, wild, free and even if people didn't like your position, they weren't at war with you over it, or tattletaling as much as they do nowadays. Everything is an offense to them, every expression policed... Unfortunately those days are gone as LL has become more political themselves, and have a built-in and obvious bias that HAS affected their business model, but too blind to see how. Patience, tolerance, inclusion and most importantly forgiveness should be extended to EVERYONE. And in the office? Shut up about your politics or social issues or culture wars. We're here to get work done, thank-you.

One can go far with what is called 'true fans', they can keep your venture alive and kicking... until of course - they aren't! This is what SL is facing right now.

Thanks for joining the forums and making me your first reply post

I know where this goes my friend, back away slowly or it will be a battle of egos. 😄

Bots in chat rooms, game servers, etc will initially fool people into joining them, but then will have an immediate effect that "This place is dead, it's only bots (or afk people)" and they will not return. When I was running game servers, we knew we had to have a starchamber of 5-10 friends and associates that would be playing on the regular. That means if someone joins, there is immediately some engagement, gameplay and a community starts to grow as those people bring those friends. Now you have a hopping server of 64 regulars and now there's room for mods and admins when the starchamber isn't there. All the game servers I have played on, when THEIR starchamber stopped playing the game - going to something like WoW or w/e at the time, they show up less, less players are seen. Some turn to bots to 'fake the numbers', but that doesn't work long. Same thing as chat rooms. Chat rooms with no starchamber of regular bigmouths quickly die, then you will have rooms with 300 'afk' users (like an old IRC room) and people stop coming. This same psychology applies to welcome hubs and sims. Adding bots to your sims or platform is a signal the end is near. People want to find, meet and play with PEOPLE.