Medhue Simoni

It is my experience that in SL, the percentage of disabled individuals in SL is actually much, much higher than any normal online "game". It is this very factor that made me completely fall in love with SL. I'm not disabled myself, but I do have much experience with disabilities, which I will not go into here. Of course, I don't have any facts on the actual numbers. Personally tho, an extremely high % of people that I get close to in SL, eventually tell me about their disabilities. I shed a tear everytime I think deeply about how SL affects these people, and I'm extremely proud to be a part of something that does so much for so many. Chances are, every1 in SL is friends with some1 who has a major disability, they just don't know about it.

Ok, I know I'm going to get blasted for this, but I seriously am disgusted by many of the comments in this blog post. Reality Check! When is the last time any1 ever heard a college or university announce they were lowering their rates. Oh, that is right, NEVER. They all charge more almost every single year, to the point now that rates are completely indefensible. It is nearly impossible for many people to ever pay off their college loans. The only reason many of the kids can even goto these places is solely because of government money. So, basically, all of us pay higher taxes to pay for people to goto these colleges and universities. It is not the kids that are getting free money, it is the colleges and universities. Not to mention that all you professors take that stolen money. Yes it is stolen because, if we all don't pay it, we goto jail. How much do you professors think you would get paid without this stolen money? Hello, you all make a hell of alot more than 90% of the SL public. Even high school teachers make more than most of us, with less hours and alot more vacation time and benefits. Same thing happens in SL, they get the deals and all the rest of us pick up the slack. You can bet that educational sims need way more assistance than any1 of our sims. Who pays for that assistance? We, the public, do. Yet, you all want to sit and whine and cry about some spare change. Booohooo, the educational corporations have to pay their fair share. My heart is bleeding. I was sympathetic at the start, but after reading these blog comments and seeing all the ridiculous crap on the net about it, I've lost all my sympathy. When you stop taking government handouts just to line your pockets, maybe you will get some of your selfrespect back. Oh, and some of you actually say that your peers and students make the best content. Please, give us all a break. I've seen hundreds of amazing things in SL and none of them were on an educational sim. If you think your people make the best stuff, then prove it in the marketplace, on a level playing field. Do not just make statements that have no actual basis in fact. Plus, if this were the case, why would you need a discount? I easily pay for my sim, usually in a few days. Don't think I'm some kind of LL fanboy, cause that is practically the complete opposite of who I am. I do love SL tho.

Yep! Bad idea and I can't really say anymore than what has already been said. Considering that I do not expect LL to change course on this decision, I started thinking about the possibilities for an educational environment in the free market. Yes, you have to pay full price, but this also includes the ability to raise your own money freely on the grid. Students could donate items to sell in the marketplace to support the sim. Or the sim could hold events or even hold concerts, plays, or whatever. For the educational sim, these would be off peak hours for them and could earn the sim money to function. The price of a Mainland sim is $199/month, which is less than 50 bucks a week. If you ask me, the educators are sitting on gold mines too. They are some of SL's biggest promoters, but 1 huge thing I think alot of people are overlooking is that they bring in new people on a regular basis. From an SL merchant's stand point, access to opportunities for acquiring new customers on a regular basis is a rare thing. If a bunch of educators got together to buy 1 sim and they brought in 500-1000 new customers every few months, I'd seriously think of sponsoring that sim in some way. As a merchant in SL, I understand the benefits of name recognition, and if all those new virtual pioneers see my brand on a regular basis, then I'm going to benefit in some way or another. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that it is not all that bad to turn your thinking slightly more in the direction of profit. Who knows, maybe some day it can pay for a fulltime teacher or just incentives for more educators to join in. No, I'm not saying that LL's prices are fair. They are very much way over priced for the customer service that we get and total lack of concern overall. All I'm saying is that there are some free market solutions that could do more to benefit these groups than any discount could ever do. Sorry om, I did not mean to reply to you.

Great point, Darien! I've not tried any of this yet, but LL has mentioned that if you wear a mesh, some of the adjustment features have influence on the mesh. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, if you make a jacket for an SL avatar mesh, then it should fit the mesh no matter how morphed the person makes the default body mesh. At least, I hope this is how it will work. If I'm wrong, some1 please do correct me. Like Darien said tho, If you make a new body mesh and the default skin does not fit it, then any1 buying that mesh will only be able to get a skin for that avatar from you. Being that SL has a default avatar and a default skin template, I would think that few people will venture outside of these templates.

Suite, It's just not going to be that easy. I've not tested anything yet, but from what I understand, what we'll be importing is a collada file, or dae file. This means that the person who imports the mesh will need to own and know how to use a 3d model making program like Blender, 3ds Max or Maya. I think Dazstudio also allows for collada creations. It is not just a matter of downloading an obj file and then uploading it to SL. The only things I want to know are more details on the collada format. Also, it was real interesting to see how the mesh is applied to the skeleton. It makes me wonder if it would be possible, someday, to create a mesh tail with it's own bone structure and attach that. Oh boy that would be super cool. Imagine making a hand with it's own bone structure. Who knows tho, maybe we'll be able to script a mesh hand to work with an ao. Anyways, as an animator, I love SL's current bvh animation system, and I think it is far superior than any other way to use animation in a virtual world, so seeing that collada and our current system can easily work together makes me very happy. But.... I'd love to know more about how future plans for collada, animating, and SL will be moving.

Kittrannia, rigging is not really all that hard, but I'm sure that LL will supply us with a rigged model, probably in a collada format. If not then within minutes of release, some1 will give out a free rigged model, and probably in a number of formats to fit each program. Plus, there are hundreds of tutorials on Youtube about rigging in just about any program you can think of.

First, I also have my mini map up all the time, plus my stats. 2nd, I'd agree that open sourcing the viewer was a bad idea, mostly because the real development went outside of the official viewer. 3rd, I'd have to disagree with statements about large merchants. Actually, I almost fell off my chair laughing. Not all large merchants do things the same way or have the same attitude. For the most part, a large merchant got to be large because they are prolific workers, listened to their customers, and caters to them, hence why they have so many. Also, being that they do listen, when they come to office hours, they bring all those customer concerns with them. Profit is simply a product of their hard work, not greed. If the customers actually thought that, then they would not tell their friends to go there. They tell them to go there because they get quality products with quality service. The only way a merchant can make a living off SL is by listening to customers. Any smart merchant understands that real solid growth comes with the total growth of the grid and population. To think differently means you are likely creating your own little bubble, which is likely to break sooner or later. Go checkout some of the creation categories in the forums. If merchants were all greedy, then why would any of them give answers or create tutorials so that others can become merchants or make products themselves? 4th, I think that LL needs polling for certain feedback. It is something that I do, and is immeasurable in what you can learn. Of course, polls need to be worded very carefully and have the proper choices, if there are more than 2 choices. You can't just sit and create a poll in 5 min and think that somehow you are going to get good results from it.

Q, I think some of the problems here is language. Options and features, to many of the users, mean kinda the same thing. This might need to be explained more. Consider that these forums are used by many different people of many different backgrounds and ages. Plus, with so many things that are not working as expected, ie search, no Lindens should realistically expect to be given any kind of cheery responses. Last point - Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but the issue of options came up because of the WASD discussion. Moving about within a virtual world is a key area of development, and 1 that easily makes that world sink or swim. Chat is also 1 of these key areas. SL did much better in these areas, in the past, which still puts it way ahead of places like BM. WASD screws up both of those key areas. If there is 1 most important area where options are major, I'd say it is here. Personally, I use a 5 button mouse and connect the 2 extra buttons to my forward and back, with jump being on my middle scroll button. I turn by grabbing my avatar. This is what I meant by saying I don't touch my keyboard, unless I'm chatting. On a sidenote, I did see something about the key.ini changes we can make, and I love the idea of playing around with this. It would be cool to make this and internal viewer thing, where as we can alter this by adding a notecard to a window, much like the internal AO inside emerald. Just my thoughts

Hey Kim, I think another good idea for marketing is to show off the different people in SL and tell their stories to the world. Personal stories can be very engaging and there are many great 1's here. They all show the world just how diverse this community is and will definitely hit many sweet spots in the world outside SL. We are all in a new age now, where many of the tricks from the past age, just do not work. The strength of SL is that almost anything you could ever think of, is here somewhere. The achilles heel is actually finding those things. Please do enjoy your LL honeymoon, cause everything after this is, well, you'll see, lol.

Welcome Kim! Please do not focus solely on clothes, as past promotions have, I don't think too many come to SL just for the clothes. You would do well to engage the merchant class, as we could be SL's best and most diverse tool for marketing to the net. This won't be very easy, as many of us have fallen out of favour with SL. It has been a tough year for LL, all the bad decisions are going to be hard to over come. Good Luck!!!!!

If you have copy mod right, then copy the ao and wear the new 1. Also, as a last resort, if you go into edit/contents, select any script, then goto Tools/reset scripts in selection.

Yep, I'm guessing its a gesture, maybe even triggered by a word, possibly. This maybe why it seems random. Goto Edit/Gestures to fix. Also, if it is an attachment, then type WORN into the search. Maybe it is something you forgot about.

Have you uploaded similar anims b4? I just uploaded anims fine yesterday on the latest viewer.

Only if its transferable. Money of course is. Everything that you got copy or mod/copy will not. You can talk to a linden but chances are that they cant help ya here. Best thing to do is ask the merchants, maybe you can work a deal out with them. Many have big hearts.

Gestures are a fun and easy way to be more interactive in SL. Any1 can create their own. The gesture editor lets you create some pretty complexed combinations of animations, sound, and text. All with no scripting/coding knowledge needed. There are so many ways to trigger a gesture, maybe too many, lol. Here are hopefully most of them: *Local chat *Gesture list on right side of Local Chat *F2-F12 keys, Shift+F2-F12 keys, CTRL+F2-F12 keys *Edit/Gestures *with another gesture I'm sure i missed 1, lol. ***Remember*** - It's best to use single play animations, not looping animations, in a gesture. You can use a looping anim, but you will need to start and stop the anim inside the gesture. Just simpler to use a single play anim. Plus, I think a gesture can only be 10 seconds long.

Or...... Rightclick/wear Basically..... Rightclicking on anything in your inventory tells you what you can and cannot do with it and gives you all your options, until you wear it or rez it.

If I remember correctly, yes there were limits b4 and yes there are kinda limits now. Now, you will still need a device to allow you to fly at higher heights. I think you can fly up to 200 meters without any assistance. There are many names for these devices, but try searching for a flight enhancer. They are usually fairly cheap, so dont pay alot. Or, a quick fix is to ask some1 already at the place high up to TP(teleport) you.

Also could be

Torley's tutorial The actual unpacking of the box part is around the 2:40 mark, if you dont want to watch the whole thing.