Medhue Simoni

1 idea, just off the top of my head, would be for LL to create the first complex game for this new world. Possibly some kind of shooter game. Something complex enough to encompass most games that people encounter. They would then pay coders, modelers, animators and so on to form this rag tag team, and work directly with LL to make it all happen. The game and assets should encompass all aspects of 3D creation. The end result would be a workable complex game for this new world, plus totally relevant feedback and adjustments to that world. For the users and creators, we'd then have access to all the assets for this game, so that we can create our own version, and build on what was initially made. If funding is an issue, then LL could do some kind of kickstarter type of thing, if the game looks engagin enough, or they could do all the funding in SL thru lindens. If the community likes the idea, they will help to fund it. Heck, just look at the Mesh Deformer that got funded by the user base. Not a ton of money, but even that would easily pay for quite a few game assets.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: The LDWP would be a good example of how LL all ready does this, as moles are resendent content creators, contracted by LL. Not sure how much contact mole currently have with the programers, but that could easly be changed for a project. An other way LL could easly do some thing like this would be to offer LEA land grants during the bata testing of the new SL, this would be better for user guided projects with feed back to LL, and LDWP projects for LL guided projects. Every creator is different, and is going to make things in different ways, depending on their strengths. I was in the Mesh Beta user group, and that was a very good experience, although I was just learning mesh, and didn't have much to input. The problem I see, is the participation rate, which will be spotting if their isn't incentives for the creators to be fully involved. Yes, there is a long term incentive to help out just so we get something good, but that long term incentive doesn't pay for the creators time today, when they need to eat. So, I'd like to see LL offer up a number of creation projects for this new world and pay creators to not only create them but give feedback. The goal should be to get as many creators involved as possible, across a range of creation skills. The cost to LL is minimal compared to the feedback they get back, and the end products could be freebies to start out the world with. I stress that the amount of creators involved should be as vast as possible. Not a dozen, but 10 dozen or more. Also, if the creator is getting some kind of pay, they are much more willing to give feedback, plus sign, and adhere to an NDA.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: sirhc DeSantis wrote: Short and sweet and right on the nose. One of the most sensible reactions yet. (And if we could have a bunch of Blender like capability coupled with the ease of in world tools I would gladly sacrifice my firstborn - metaphorically). (ETA my spelling is atrocious pre coffee) I'd love to see inworld mesh and animation tools, that would be the top of my list for new features. But I don't think the OP wasn't talking about blender as a tool, but doing some thing like the blend open movie projects as a way for LL to test and get user feed back on the new SL. Every year or so Blender sponsors a movie project to test the software and show off it's capabilities. http://www.blender.org/features/projects/ I wasn't talking about inworld tools, although I'm not against them. What I really do not want, is to be forced to use inworld tools. As a Blender user, I'd much rather use Blender, as LL could never make an inworld system that could equal Blender and trying would be a complete waste of time, which LL already has enough work to do and features to implement.

Perrie Juran wrote: One other thing that could add a little to this would be the scale factor. Everything everyone builds gets scaled up to accomodate for the so called "oversized (too tall) Avatar." If the base or center line is set shorter then a lot of furniture, cars, etc. will simply appear to be too big. I know a couple of girls in the 'real hight' crowd who have a terrible time with motorcycles. Some motorcycle creators are using resize scripts right now but no matter what they do they can't reach the handle bars. If they up their Ava's from 5'6" to 7'6", the problem goes away. So using builds designed for SL could require some tweaking. Something the women might want to ask their motorcycle creators to do, is create an invisible prim for people to sit on. Then, they can adjust the position of that invisible prim without moving anything on the bike. Just to keep things a little more simple for people, I like to create 2 options, a male and female option. Of course, this doesn't make it perfect, and every1 is a different size, but at least they have 2 options to choose from. Of course, I choose this option because I can easy make the different animations changes they might need.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Qie Niangao wrote: Whirly Fizzle wrote: Experience tools are about to be released! LL stated at the TPV meeting that the beta was coming very soon and there were two of the experience tools Lindens there to answer questions. I just saw this on Inara's blog. That's good news, indeed. Although I'm sorry to say that I'm less enthused now than I'd expected, for two reasons: First, at least initially it won't do Mainland (I no longer have any Estate land on which to play with it). And second, without assurance that some version of this will be available on the new platform, it's hard to get too excited about investing a ton of time making experiences for an audience doomed to dwindle (assuming the new world is a success). Perhaps I could get around the first of these by just dumping all my hard-earned Mainland and renting an Estate sim (or more like a Homestead, since I only have a full sim of Mainland tier and that wouldn't cover a full sim of Estate rental). Frankly, hanging on to Mainland -- always a bit of a folly -- looks ever more foolish anyway, with prospects for this new platform. But when I think about that, I get to seriously reconsidering what if any engagement I want to retain with virtual worlds, if I'm going to make that big a change. And this is precisely what I've been saying about the impact that this leaked news is going to have on Second Life. It's going to be subtle and slow at first, but the effect will accelerate as the new platform nears readiness. Not all content creators, land owners, etc., will react this way . . . but I'm afraid (and I've already been called a "fear monger" elsewhere) that this really is the beginning of the end for this platform. I think the problem with thinking this way is that you are making many assumptions that can't really be made. That first, and most important assumption, is that people will like this new world. We have seen many worlds come and go. Almost never did people from SL rush over there and set up shop. Even CP had very little participation. LL's new world will deal with the same results. I suspect that the way it will happen is that, in a year or 2, LL will open the new world, and it will be seriously lacking. Most of the first users will be creators, and some oblivious users. Be the end of it's first year, it will still be massively lacking and whether it will survive will be suspect. 4 years from now, will likely be some kind of turning point, and either LL did good, or not. I would not expect any real movement for at least a few years, at best. So, SL is safe for, at least, 3 years, if not more.

Phil Deakins wrote: Here's proof that I am right and you are mistaken. The original search system is still operating, so you can check your idea for yourself. That's the search that was operating when you joined in 2007 - the system you say was based on land size or the number of objects. Use a TPV and do a seach on something with the old search system (Singularity still has the old system), and check the land sizes starting from the top. The results come back ranked according to traffic and the traffic numbers are shown for each place. You can see that they are listed in traffic (numerical) order because all the traffic numbers are there. If land size came into it, those traffic numbers wouldn't be in numerical order. But they are. I put that paragraph first because, if you do check it out, the rest of this post can be skipped I'm sorry, Medhue, but are wrong. Everyone who was selling stuff before LL started with the GSA will tell you traffic was the only ranking factor. Of course you had to have the right keywords in the parcels name and/or description so that your parcel got into the results for particular searchterms. That goes without saying. But, after that, it was ranked solely in traffic order. Nothing else. The GSA was different. The ranking factors it employed were Google's - like the Google engine. I was a professional SEO and I knew what the main ones were. With that knowledge, i was all over the top of the results for many searchterms - not low down at #10 like you were At one point, I controlled most of the top 10 results for the main searchterm. I say "controlled" because I lifted other people's parcels up there without their knowledge, for the specific purpose of keeping one particular place down below the fold. Land size came into it quite a while after the GSA was started. LL simply stopped adding parcel pages to the index when the parcel was very small, so tiny parcels could not be ranked because they weren't even in the index. It may be that they gave large parcels a small boost some time after the GSA was started. The GSA system allows for that, so LL wouldn't need to do anything much externally. But only a boost. When I arrived, just before you, I started up in business too, and I soon learned what got higher rankings with that search system. Everyone knew. It's the sole reason why camping was so widespread back then. And it's the sole reason why traffic bots were also widespread back then. (Traffic bots were my method). If you'd been in the RA forum at the time, you'd have seen it discussed a multitude of times - usually with me on the wrong end of the discussion because I manipulated the traffic, and most forum users were dead against that. That's the period you said was all about land size. It wasn't anything to do with land size. When LL started using the GSA, it was about many things, but the main ones by a very long way were parcel Titles and links. Not land size. What you described about land size in the search when you arrived in 2007 is completely wrong. And it was also wrong during the GSA period. According to your posts, what you did was notice that your ranking rose as your land size rose, and you assumed that the rankings rose because of the land size, or because you had more objects on the land. It was a wrong assumption, I'm afraid. Well, I kind of hate that we are having this conversation, but I really can't back down because I know you are wrong. It's nonsensical to think that traffic was the only metric. You conceded that keywords in descriptions were used. They would have to be used, so what I said is exactly right. The more land you owned the more keywords you had. Picks were also another factor in the old search, until about 6 months before LL switched to GSA. They took Picks out of the equation because of some obscure Pick that associated some1's land with Nazis. At least, that was the reason LL gave us. In order for Picks to be part of the equation, the user had to have PIOF, so not all Picks were counted. Despite this, scammers got merchants to pay for Picks, which didn't help them at all. I had a ton of people with Picks of my store, as I gave a free product to any1 that put a Pick of my store in their profile.

Phil Deakins wrote: What are experience tools? If you watch the video, every1 asked that exact thing. I watched the video, and I'm still wondering. It allows you to grant permissions to things once, and then the user doesn't get hit will more permission popups to agree to. That is as much as I know about it.

Pamela Galli wrote: That's great, that there will be a new better SL. Yay! But after working very hard to replace my four sims of sculpted furniture and houses with mesh -- I am maybe 60% of the way there -- I cant say I am looking forward to redoing it all again for SL2. I am all for technological progress but it's not like I have a team of workers, it's just me. The good part is that you won't have to redo much about your mesh objects to make them work in the new SL. There might be things you might want to change about them, and of course you'll likely have to redo the coding, but other than that, they'll still work. This is exactly why I pushed so hard for every1 to learn mesh. It's universal, more so than animation.

Phil Deakins wrote: It's never been about land size. Before the GSA it was *only* about traffic. That was the only rankling fatcor. Nothing else. Of course, with larger land, it's quite possible that more people (traffic) were on it over time. Items on land had no effect until the GSA. Then they had a big effect, but not the numbers of them. It was their names and descriptions that were effective. Even then, they weren't as effective as the land's name and description. I think it's probably that you've seen your ranking rise couincidentally with the increasing size of your land and objects, and assumed that the land/objects were the cause. But they weren't. In 2007, traffic was the only ranking factor. That was commonly known. Then the GSA came along and the ranking factors were known by those of us in the RL search engine business, and we successfully got top rankings because of that knowledge. Not only did i get top rankings for myself, but I also got top ranking for other people's places - without their knowledge. It's never been about land size or the number of objects. Well, this is just going to go back and forth. I say you are wrong and I know it for sure. I've never, ever had much traffic. Again, NEVER. The biggest factor was keywords in object descriptions on the parcel. This was exactly the reason I was ranked so high for the word "animation". I had that word more times on my parcel than most other parcels. I didn't rise to that level totally by accident. It was because I understood how to get there.

Allow me to explain: The Blender Foundation is currently working on a movie project. They do this, or something like this, every year. The reason is to better design the tools how designers want them, or need them. The projects are a chance for the coders to work directly with designers/producers to make a better Blender. There is a wealth of creators in SL, and for the most part, we're cheap.

It looks as if they are serious about this, or they would not have moved most of the team over to it. There is just so much that could go wrong. It's incalculatable. What can we do about it tho? That is the tough part. Sitting, waiting and no input. I would very much love to get excited about this. What is possible, is vast. The avatar alone, could be something of complete amazement. Total joy and complete customization for the users. Way beyond anything imaginable on any platform, and a pure joy for us creators. Seriously, my mouth is drooling over the thought of what could be done. Then, the realization sets in. I'm never going to get anything close to that, despite it being completely possible. Imagine something very much like Daz's Genesis character. Imagine selling morphs for him that turns him into a zombie. 1 sliders that the user can adjust to their liking, or a number of sliders to accomplish the look. Imagine selling just different ear morphs. How about teeth morphs, to have any kind of teeth. Imagine animating facial morphs in a much better way. Of course, I ultimately want this kind of system to create a Werewolf that can literally morph from a human to a werewolf, with growing hair/fur and all. Like I said, I'd love to get excited about this, but I'm never going to get what I want. Again tho, I have to come back to, how the heck are they going to create it all, all over again? I mean, we have chat gestures, typing animations, and speech gestures. We have priorities in animations, and the ability to only animate specific bones. How will they do the facial expressions, if they don't allow us to import morphs? There are just so many decisions and parts to create, and we aren't half way thru the avatar yet. It's mindboggling the work ahead of them.

I'm not sure Aethelwine. I do make fullperm car animations, and did have to redo the positioning frame for a couple of creators, but I just did what they asked me and it all worked out. I was not involved in figuring out why. I've done a few of my own vehicles, but nothing yet that puts the character that low to the ground. From the limited times I have seen the issue, there is definitely some kind of physics things going on, but I can't say if it's the avatar or what.

Phil Deakins wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: I hear many merchants blame the Marketplace for the loss of land owners in SL. I'm not sure this is accurate. It is my experience that LL destroyed land ownership when they started messing with the inworld Search Engine. When I started out Jan 2007, I sold my first animation in a skybox. Only because of how few animators there were, did people find me. I learned very early on that land made a big difference. Immediately, when I had earned enough, I rented a decent size plot of land where I could put my business name as the name of the land, and add a description. This all went into the search engine and immediately got me many more customers. See, back then, we got around by using the Search Engine. Within 6 months, I moved to a much large plot on a private sim. I saw that the more land I owned, the higher my ranking was in the Search Engine. Eventually, I started checking out my competition a little, to see how I could better do things. Land was a huge deal to the metrics of the Search Engine. Eventually, I bought my own sim, on the Mainland, and when that happened, if you typed in just the word Animation into the inworld search engine, I was ranked 10th. That was the effect of the land being such a huge metric in the search engine. No matter what your business, if you were so successful that you were able to purchase more and more land, you would be ranked very high in all the keywords in your land description. This put all the best merchants at the top of the search engine, and customer could easily find what they want, and from the best creators. When LL started messing with the inworld search engine to try and make it more "fair", they destroyed the incentive to own more land. They shot themself in the foot, and today they still don't understand this. Every1 lost when LL decided to touch it. The original inworld search engine before they changed it, was a custom search engine created by a resident in the open source program, or that is how I remember reading about it. Soon after I bought my first sim, I did a survey of all my customers. It was all voluntary, and they just filled out a survey questionaire inside of SL. I stopped the survey when I hit 1000. 70% of all those people found me by typing the word "Animation" into the search engine. 15% found me by typing some variation of animation and another word. 15% found me through some other means than the search engine. You are mistaken, Medhue. When you joined in January 2007, the search rankings were *only* about traffic. That was the *only* factor for rankings. Land size was totally irreleveant. Those rankings were gamed to death by bots, camping, etc. I enjoyed partaking in all of that Later they leased the Google Search Appliance (GSA), which produced much better results because it used many factors for rankings, just as the Google search engine does. LL were unable to mess with it. They could do little things externally, but that's all. It's possible that they could have fitted in a bit of land size by adding something external but, if they did, it definitately made only a small difference. I got places up the rankings by using 4x4 plots of land. I thoroughly enjoyed gaming those results After that - not too long ago - they started to use an open souirce engine, which they can mess with. I stopped platying with search before they got it though, so I've no idea if they've incorporated land size into the ranking factors. What I do know is that what you wrote about land size and the search rankings is not right, unless you only meant with the current engine, which I don't know about. It's definitely not right concerning the engine you arrived to in 2007, or the GSA that followed it. I'm not mistaken Phil, although, I can't say exactly what the search was like in 2007, but by 2008 it was exactly as I said, as that is when I started paying attention to it. There are likely some old forums of me talking about it. The change to the GSA was not until 2010, the same time they released V2. Plus, I've lived off my SL income since 2008, so I know exactly when things declined for me, and it had everything to do with the implementation of GSA. If I remember correctly too, LL had dropped Picks about 6 months before GSA, cause I also took a big hit with that. From 2007-2010 I had extremely steady sales, within +5% or more, every single month. That went completely crazy when the GSA was implemented. Another metric to look at to will prove me right, is that the decline starts exactly on the day the GSA was introduce. It's right there in the stats. It is on that exact day that LL started losing sims. Wait.....something is coming back to me. Maybe, it was not exactly the land size that was the big determining factor, but the fact that the more land you had, the more items you could place on your land, which all went into the search engine. So, more land meant more keywords for the search engine.

Lexia Moonstone wrote: kind of like toll roads vs gas tax? I'd rather pay at the pump much more convenient for me, and saves me time getting from point a to point b with out stopping to pay all the time, and wasting more gas as you sit in the toll line, great free market solution. LL is not a government it's a corporation Ebbe using the tax word was not best word to use it's a business expense. Selling on the market place is not mandatory, you could just sell inworld for free, or on an other platform, or even on the internet from your own web page. If any one is being lazy it's some one who has a marketplace store and lets LL run and maintain the system while they just sit back and collect $ from sales. How is a listing fee lass lazy then a % of slaes ? it take the same amount of effort on LLs part once the system in place. LL charges a set up fee/tax and a monthly tire charge/tax for land dose' that make them lazy too? Really sounds like your hung up on some republican/tea party talking points, and name calling, why is every one you disagree with politicly lazy? You sound like a broken record how lazy is that... Could LL do things better sure, but it's not because their lazy socialist from San Fransisco. Wright brothers may have made the first airplane to fly, but it sure din't meet all the requirements for a usefull airplane, must have been because they were lazy soicialist from Ohio, that they din't get it right the first time. I always find it amusing to watch some1 take my words, which were generally thought out very carefully, and twists them all around to fit their own irrational scenerios. Where did I call any1 lazy? Read it again, and you will see I call that kind of thinking lazy, not the people lazy. Where did I ever call any1 a name? The difference between a listing fee and a tax on sales, is what the affect of it would be. A tax on sales means higher prices. The results of a listing fee is that people won't pay to have products on the MP that never sell. It affectively cleans up the MP. The fee doesn't have to be big, even 10 lindens per month, per item listing is more than enough to do what it should do. In the end, merchants get a better MP, and LL gets the money to cover costs. As far as promoting free market principles, it's just logical. I like logic. Obviously, some people like to live in fantasy land, where every1 is your slave and they do everything for you for free.

Perrie Juran wrote: This sadly appeared to be one again one of those last minute things that came up (like the absence of a Chat Bar in CHUI) because to much work was being done by people who don't have Second Lives. I'll be shocked if the Avatar Offset gets fixed correctly. They were too deep into the development on SSA and my suspicion is it would have broke a lot of the work they had done / would have delayed deployment much longer than they wanted too. /just my two cents Well, to be fair, just look at how they want to fix this. Do they not have Second lives? I would think that if they did, they would notice that animations aren't just imperfect on the z axis of the pelvis. I would not think they need an animator to point it out, although it is a constant question that I have to ask myself, "what size avatar is this animation likely to be played by?". This is why LL's best friend in a jira is the creators, but it's not a welcome place for us.

Lexia Moonstone wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: IMHO, the secret is obvious, but not if you have a socialist mindset. Let's not forget that LL employees mostly live in San Fran. So, I don't expect the secret to be obvious to them. LL makes tons of $ of course the secret is obvious to them. Funny that some one who seams against socialist is complaining about a corporation making $. I'm not complaining about them making money, I'm talking about how the best ways to do that is. I'm not against a monthly listing fee for products on the Marketplace. What I'm saying is that just taxing is a lazy solution, and always is. It's the lack of a real solution. To tax is a socialist solution, not a free market voluntary solution, that produces wealth between all involved.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: LaskyaClaren wrote: Oh, and by the way . . . as Derek and Qie have already suggested, were any proof required of the utter irrelevance of this forum to Linden Lab's communication strategy, the fact that there has not been a single "official" word here or on the blogs would seem to provide it. Welcome to the backwater. Personally, I think they just don't want the general public to really know, as they don't want it to affect the economy. But it is going to happen, so why retard it. I don't think it will affect the economy much, as I think anybody that has been around long enough wouldn't assume every1 would run over to this new world. We have seen many new worlds come and go. We have seen the hype, and then the fall off. We also know from the big changes LL has made, that it is ridiculous to think they can out do SL, or even understand why it is successful in the first place. IMHO, the secret is obvious, but not if you have a socialist mindset. Let's not forget that LL employees mostly live in San Fran. So, I don't expect the secret to be obvious to them. What I can't stop thinking, is that the current SL is FAR too complex for LL to recreate it. No1 will be happy with the end result, as it would have to truly be SL but better. I'm not really sure this is possible. Of course it is possible to have a better this or that, but SL has, what seems like, millions of this or thats. At best, it's going to take them years, and I suspect many aspect won't make it over. It makes no sense, really, to have publicized this intentionally this early on, particularly as it is going to create a great deal of uncertainty. Speaking as someone who does have a "socialist mindset" :-) . . . I think that ideological change I'd fear is not one to a more "socialist" model, but rather a much more neoliberal "corporatist" one. That seems to be the direction indicated, certainly, by the shift to a close source model. Look for LL to have much more tight control over the economy, content, and possibly even the social dynamic, than it does now. I actually don't have a problem with the socialist mindset, as long as it isn't forced upon me, as I would never use force against others to get my way. Economically tho, I do have a problem with it, as it promotes unsustainable practices. As far as what LL implied, I don't see it the same way. I think you are reading into more than is reasonably possible. I think, yes, it will be more controlled, but more because of the lack of feature and functionality. It's going to take them a good few years to even get something usable to any of our standards. If it is more Corporate, that will be because of the federal government, not because of LL.

LillyBeth Filth wrote: I would like to say that as someone who has been an active member of Second Life since April 2004 I hope that they make the new world more realistic economically for more people to own land. As it stands, a very small % of active SL users own and use virtual land due to the insane fees associated with renting it. That has lead to a mass majority of users who have nothing but their avatar to express their creativity with. Great for the avatar fashion/skin/hair designers but terrible for the building ware content creators. When SL was new and "novel" most people rented or owned land. People were building and developing and running events and socialising more. Then the economy fell through the floor in 2008 and since that time less and less people own full regions because who can afford $300 a month JUST for fun? For what ever reason, LL have not reduced the price of land rental and have driven customers to the Marketplace so in world shopping has become a thing of the past. Again, this impacts the whole social interaction within SL. Even as a business owner, I have had to let go of my own full region (Which cost me £1,200 to "buy") and am renting a Homestead because sales have been deliberately driven to the marketplace and there is no financial incentive to own land for me as a texture store. Unless people are selling things that NEED to be sampled in world, the whole point of owning a virtual store in SL has all but vanished. So we are left with over accessorised avatars who pass time doing shallow things that gets old fast like "dancing in clubs" and its gone so blah since the early days when everyone owned a piece of virtual land they could develop and invite people to and build, explore and eventually want to expand. Having a "house" if you have a premium account is just lame. You can't furnish it, it's nothing more than a place holder in which you have little freedom to be creative or expand. The loss on full region land rentals must have made a HUGE dent in LL's profit margins so I hope they have learned from this. I hear many merchants blame the Marketplace for the loss of land owners in SL. I'm not sure this is accurate. It is my experience that LL destroyed land ownership when they started messing with the inworld Search Engine. When I started out Jan 2007, I sold my first animation in a skybox. Only because of how few animators there were, did people find me. I learned very early on that land made a big difference. Immediately, when I had earned enough, I rented a decent size plot of land where I could put my business name as the name of the land, and add a description. This all went into the search engine and immediately got me many more customers. See, back then, we got around by using the Search Engine. Within 6 months, I moved to a much large plot on a private sim. I saw that the more land I owned, the higher my ranking was in the Search Engine. Eventually, I started checking out my competition a little, to see how I could better do things. Land was a huge deal to the metrics of the Search Engine. Eventually, I bought my own sim, on the Mainland, and when that happened, if you typed in just the word Animation into the inworld search engine, I was ranked 10th. That was the effect of the land being such a huge metric in the search engine. No matter what your business, if you were so successful that you were able to purchase more and more land, you would be ranked very high in all the keywords in your land description. This put all the best merchants at the top of the search engine, and customer could easily find what they want, and from the best creators. When LL started messing with the inworld search engine to try and make it more "fair", they destroyed the incentive to own more land. They shot themself in the foot, and today they still don't understand this. Every1 lost when LL decided to touch it. The original inworld search engine before they changed it, was a custom search engine created by a resident in the open source program, or that is how I remember reading about it. Soon after I bought my first sim, I did a survey of all my customers. It was all voluntary, and they just filled out a survey questionaire inside of SL. I stopped the survey when I hit 1000. 70% of all those people found me by typing the word "Animation" into the search engine. 15% found me by typing some variation of animation and another word. 15% found me through some other means than the search engine.

Phoebe Avro wrote: I think its a bad judgement on behalf of the ceo to 'leak' it at a 3rd party viewer devs meeting, surly the place to announce it would be on LL's website and the SL blog, but nothing realy changes at LL does it! I don't disagree, but I'm not sure LL looks at it that way. I think they thought it would come out eventually, and Ebbe probably thought why not mention it now, as it is relevant to the topic. The project was started way before Ebbe got here. So, imagine, you are the CEO, and there is this big secret. You might be an open policy CEO, but when do you mention it, and is it really relevant to the whole SL community. Or, is it only relevant to merchants like myself, or land owners, like myself. Personally, I would hope that this would come out in a Content Creators user group meeting, but we don't have 1 of those right now. How it came out doesn't really bother me. The only part that bothers me, is that we, the people that generate wealth in SL selling products, aren't directly part of the process of creating a new world.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: Drake1 Nightfire wrote: Parrish Ashbourne wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: I want to respond to Ebbe's comment about the new business model and taxing products more. You don't need to tax us at all. Think about it Ebbe. A tax on producers economically is saying you want them to create less. You never want to inhibit creation. You are this worlds government and hold a monopoly on many things. Use that monopoly to generate more income. As creators, and merchants, we want to advertise. We are begging to spend money on advertising. What does LL give us? CRAP!!!!! And then way over priced CRAP! Those enhancements for the Marketplace made LL a ton of money, but they SUCK, and are not well done. LL could get alot more out of them, and they should cut the price in half, when it works better. LL also opened up banner spaces on it's website, but it's at ridiculous prices. WTF was LL thinking? Did they not run some numbers? Yeah, it seems they gauge it on other popular websites. The logic escapes me. Again, my point is that LL has a monopoly on advertising and other aspect of SL. Don't tax us more. That is just lazy thinking. Be creative. Make something for us that we'll beg to pay for. He was saying lower land tax and higher sales tax, as a trade off, I think that would be a good trade off. To me the cheaper the cost of land the more people will buy land, and with more land and more people with land, people will buy more. All so if LL makes more from the marketplace then they have more of a vested interest to make sure it works right, and starting over may be the best way to make that happen. If the sales tax is just on the marketplace then that might help bring more stores inworld specially with cheaper land, again I think that would be a good thing. They have yet to lower land cost in SL1.. Why would we believe it would happen in SL2? until this rolls out every thing is just speculation, Ebbe had posted that they were thinking of lower land tax and higher sales tax as the new business model. So far the only facts we have is that some thing will happen, some time later. They have to lower tiers. Even LL knows their current rates are unreasonable, but they fear what a change will disrupt. A New world allows them to do this without upsetting the currect structure. Yes, things are a long way off, but that is exactly when you should be discussing the business model. I contend that taxing puts LL in a box. The only people LL helps with taxes are themselves, as it will hurt every1 else. See, if LL would create a Mass Media feature for this new SL, that would not only generate wealth for LL, but also generate wealth for the merchants, and better products for consumers. Again, if they just tax us, it has no wealth generating affect. The only people that benefit are LL. When you understand that a product sold and purchased voluntarily, creates real wealth between all individuals involved. It is sustainable, and will likely generate far more than any reasonable tax that the public would not revolt over.

LaskyaClaren wrote: Oh, and by the way . . . as Derek and Qie have already suggested, were any proof required of the utter irrelevance of this forum to Linden Lab's communication strategy, the fact that there has not been a single "official" word here or on the blogs would seem to provide it. Welcome to the backwater. Personally, I think they just don't want the general public to really know, as they don't want it to affect the economy. But it is going to happen, so why retard it. I don't think it will affect the economy much, as I think anybody that has been around long enough wouldn't assume every1 would run over to this new world. We have seen many new worlds come and go. We have seen the hype, and then the fall off. We also know from the big changes LL has made, that it is ridiculous to think they can out do SL, or even understand why it is successful in the first place. IMHO, the secret is obvious, but not if you have a socialist mindset. Let's not forget that LL employees mostly live in San Fran. So, I don't expect the secret to be obvious to them. What I can't stop thinking, is that the current SL is FAR too complex for LL to recreate it. No1 will be happy with the end result, as it would have to truly be SL but better. I'm not really sure this is possible. Of course it is possible to have a better this or that, but SL has, what seems like, millions of this or thats. At best, it's going to take them years, and I suspect many aspect won't make it over.

You should read it. It's not really saying that England isn't good enough. It talks about the English public and how they aren't appaulled that their team isn't as good as it used to be. It's about the public's exceptance, supposedly because they would never have before.

Parrish Ashbourne wrote: Medhue Simoni wrote: I want to respond to Ebbe's comment about the new business model and taxing products more. You don't need to tax us at all. Think about it Ebbe. A tax on producers economically is saying you want them to create less. You never want to inhibit creation. You are this worlds government and hold a monopoly on many things. Use that monopoly to generate more income. As creators, and merchants, we want to advertise. We are begging to spend money on advertising. What does LL give us? CRAP!!!!! And then way over priced CRAP! Those enhancements for the Marketplace made LL a ton of money, but they SUCK, and are not well done. LL could get alot more out of them, and they should cut the price in half, when it works better. LL also opened up banner spaces on it's website, but it's at ridiculous prices. WTF was LL thinking? Did they not run some numbers? Yeah, it seems they gauge it on other popular websites. The logic escapes me. Again, my point is that LL has a monopoly on advertising and other aspect of SL. Don't tax us more. That is just lazy thinking. Be creative. Make something for us that we'll beg to pay for. He was saying lower land tax and higher sales tax, as a trade off, I think that would be a good trade off. To me the cheaper the cost of land the more people will buy land, and with more land and more people with land, people will buy more. All so if LL makes more from the marketplace then they have more of a vested interest to make sure it works right, and starting over may be the best way to make that happen. If the sales tax is just on the marketplace then that might help bring more stores inworld specially with cheaper land, again I think that would be a good thing. A tax on the merchants is not really a tax on them. The customers pay the tax, not the merchant. What I'm asking LL to do, is not force artificially higher content prices just to line their pockets. They have a HUGE monopoly that they are not utilizing at all. The Marketplace can make much more with better advertising opportunities for us. I'll willingly pay a crapload for good, provable, advertising. So will many other people. Heck, I would pay to have the search engine fixed. What I don't want to do is raise prices because LL is taxing my customers. No matter in real life or in virtual life, taxing is a lazy response to an economic problem. It's the result of an unwillingness to think of or try something new. The legitimate way to acquire wealth, is to produce it, not take it by coercion. You know tho, if they wanted to up the upload cost. I would not be against that, just because it would make creators upload less junk stuff or test stuff. We'd also need better previewing of items before upload, like rigged clothing on the avatar moving around.

In the 3rd party user group meeting yesterday, Jessica mentioned the avatar height problem and the jira related to fixing it. Here is the Jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SUN-38?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel I can't comment on the jira, so I will say what I have to say about it here. This issue is not just about avatar height. When every animation is created, it is created on a very specfic avatar size. Sometimes, it's on the male or female default, which Qavimator, and SLat have. Same goes for Poser and DazStudio. In Blender, the animation can be created onto any size SL avatar. All of the bone shapes are changed when you use a totally different avatar size, not just the pelvis height. So, imagine I make a praying animation, on a male default avatar size, with hands perfectly together. In SL, that animation will only be perfect on that male default avatar size. If you put that animation on a female avatar, the hands will not be together praying. So, if LL wants to really fix this issue, they need to implement an adjuster that adjusts all the bones in the animation to the size of the avatar. Then, not only would the height be correct, but also the arms and legs. Just my thoughts on it.

Ok, here I want to comment on Ebbe's comment of "Empower creators....", which was a response to a question about whether LL will create a Default Avatar, or we can import our own. Ebbe, this is kind of a bad answer, as to me, it sounds like you don't understand why SL is what it is. This is not really my opinion as I can prove that the same thing set off a whole other 3d industry. The new mesh avatars are another clue that LL doesn't quite grasp things. LL giving us the SL default avatar was the core reason SL got so popular so fast. Because there are so many creators, that avatar has, literally, millions and millions of options. Thousands of creators make items for it every day. Having that standard avatar gives creators something to build onto. Both Poser and Daz3D are popular platforms because of their standard avatars that can be morphed into any character possible simply by changing it's shape. By simple morphing the characters shape, a creator can retain the other features, like facial expression, without having to remake them theirself. The default also gives clothing a starting point from where to morph from. In Daz3D, I can buy and sell morphs for the Genesis character. Imagine if we could buy morphs sliders to change the look of our whole avatar. The way to do the NEW default, is almost exactly how Daz3D created their Genesis character, with enough polygons in all the right areas to morph it into any character. You might even want to strike a deal with Daz3D to use their Genesis, or Genesis 2 figure, although it is a bit much for a game engine. Yes, of course, some of us will want to upload our own skeletons and all. That is a given. Plus, to do really crazy monsters, we need a custom skeleton system. My point is not to say we shouldn't do custom skeletons, but that we need a standard avatar so that we have something to start from.