[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

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.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

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.

[Check here if you want more options]

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.

[Check here if you want more options]

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

[Introducing Kim Salzer, Our New VP Marketing]

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.

[Introducing Kim Salzer, Our New VP Marketing]

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!!!!!