Masami Kuramoto

Innula Zenovka wrote: SL2 is going to have what Cloud Party, Blue Mars and Open Sim never had -- a functional and very liquid economy right from the word go. Since L$ accounts will be accessible from both grids, people are going to have far more willing to drop a few hundred L$ on their first and second visits than they were anywhere else, and having done that, they'll have more of a reason to return for more visits, and maybe bring some friends. Yes, but will they spend more in total? I don't think so. A considerable part of SL's current population has no payment info on file. The idea that SL 2 will turn freeloaders into paying customers or even attract large numbers of new customers with no prior SL experience is quite far fetched in my opinion. I think it is more likely that SL 2 will be designed to provide an experience similar to SL 1 but at much lower operational cost for LL, e.g. by launching simulators on demand from cold storage rather than having lots of empty regions burn CPU cycles all the time. However, no such cost reduction through SL 2 will materialize as long as the Lab has to keep SL 1 running anyway. Developing SL 2 makes no sense unless the goal is to get rid of SL 1.

Innula Zenovka wrote: I think that what may well happen, at least initially, is that creators will use SL 2 for creating experiences. If, for example, as may well be the case, sim crossings are easier to negotiate in SL 2 and it becomes possible more easily to script better and more versatile vehicles, I can see people staying on SL1 for most things but going to SL 2 to fly, sail or drive. That way, I wouldn't need to abandon my old inventory. I'd simply need to buy my new vehicle in SL 2 and some clothes to go with it, and split my time between SL 1 and SL 2 People have split their time in similar ways between SL and Blue Mars, SL and Cloud Party, or SL and OpenSim. I'm not aware of anyone canceling their SL account in favor of an alternative. If this is how people will use SL 2.0, it will be a disaster for LL because the company will end up operating and maintaining two expensive platforms competing for the same customer hour and dollar.

Linden Lab may soon find out how difficult it is to make people migrate to an empty world while the old and familiar one with all its content is still around -- even more so if the new world imposes stricter limits on mesh detail etc. to support mobile devices. People dislike re-learning, scaling down, giving things up and starting from scratch, even if the new platform comes with some improvements and much lower prices. Consider how hard it was to make people switch to Viewer 2. Consider how few gave up their SL inventories in exchange for abundant OpenSim land. It will be interesting to see what Linden Lab will do when they hit that wall with SL 2.0.

Gavin Hird wrote: For all practical purposes there are currently only one alternative platform that can readily take content developed for SL, namely opensim. Despite all the qualities of opensim (that I love), the hard fact is it is even less scalable than the current SL backend and server code. – Significantly less scalable as it currently is. That is simply not true. The scalability of Second Life is limited by the hardcoded maximum size of a single grid, i.e. 4096x4096 regions. OpenSim not only removed that limit but also added the capability to partition the world (and its hardware resources) into multiple interconnected grids, each with its own map layout and its own set of grid services (e.g. asset storage). The maximum size of this "hypergrid" is limited only by the number of available IPv4 addresses -- because there is currently no IPv6-capable viewer. OpenSim recently also removed the hardcoded region size limit of 256x256 square meters, enabling large open spaces to be hosted in a single simulator instance without any region crossing effects. The bottom line is that everyone can be not only a region owner, but a grid owner as well, and each grid can be configured as powerful or lightweight (in terms of CPU power per unit of virtual space) as needed. As an added bonus, if one such grid goes down, none of the others will be affected in any way. Users can teleport from one grid to another, send IMs across grid boundaries, take their inventory to any place they like, etc. OpenSim wins that scalability contest hands down.

Gavin Hird wrote: Ambitions are there and it is a good start, but the problem with Kitely marketplace is you have to upload your creations to their asset servers, meaning you also must be a Kitely paid user, to trade on the marketplace. This is problematic for anyone who have their assets well established elsewhere, even on grids they operate themselves. A true marketplace for Hypergrid should be able to broker content without moving this from their original asset store. There is a lot of FUD about OpenSim and content protection, as you can tell from Innula's posts, and the Kitely guys have figured out a way to exploit that to their benefit. The fact that you have to upload your merchandise to their asset server is sold as a security feature. In the end they will control all the commercial content on the hypergrid, because every item and every transaction has to pass through their servers, and they can change their terms of service at any time, just like Linden Lab did. You would think that content creators wouldn't fall for the same scam twice, but here we are. Kitely has managed to put itself into quite a unique position as the hypergrid's first and only vendor of commercial content, capable of delivering even to non-commercial grids without any local economy and currency. If they want to, they can even establish "Kitely Credits" as some kind of hypergrid Linden Dollar, a reserve currency for their marketplace -- and become the hypergrid's central bank. It's a bit like Philip Rosedale's "High Fidelity" business model, except that Kitely's platform is more mature.

Mony Lindman wrote: Hmmm that's a little too technical for my "artistic brain" lol but still very interesting. I wonder why there are only small , mostly private grids there and none of the bigger Open Sim worlds like Inworldz or Avination.. I supose its because of those legal issues you mentioned. But LL could bring some order into that chaos also .. Added in edit : Or even better, SL could use that technology or a similar and better protected one to connect with the bigger grids in Open Sim. The time when Linden Lab had the opportunity to become the hypergrid's central bank and central marketplace has passed. That role is now being played by Kitely. OpenSim is no longer compatible with Second Life anyway; the scripting languages are different, and Linden Lab's viewer would crash right after teleporting to an OpenSim varregion. With only a small development team left to maintain Second Life, Linden Lab is unlikely to catch up with OpenSim and fill the feature gap between them. And to be honest, even if LL still had the capacity to merge SL into the hypergrid, I doubt that the OpenSim community would welcome them. The hypergrid is run by artists/techies who left the old world behind for good reason. They are happy to build their own worlds from scratch without interference from Linden Lab.

Drongle McMahon wrote: With no map, there is no seam. With the blank map, there is a seam. So it's something happening with any UV map. The effect of the blank map can't have anything to do with tangent basis etc. Since there is no seam with no normal map, it's not to do with the basic rendering in ALM. So it must be happening in the code that applies the normal map. My blank is <128,128,255>. It might be interesting to try slightly different colours. As far as I know, a blank map would be <127,127,255>. Any other color will bend the normal relative to the current tangent basis.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Here are the two maps (reduced), with the differences (value x 5) in between. That kind of "waviness" in normal-mapped surfaces is not just due to differing tangent spaces. It's also a result of baking to the wrong kind of geometry. Your normal maps show that your bake target was a smooth-shaded cube, i.e. a low-poly sphere. That's why there are those large color gradients in areas that should be completely flat (and therefore use nothing but RGB color 127,127,255). If you had used a cube with sharp edges, your normal map would look more like this: This map comes straight out of Blender, without postprocessing in Handplane or similar tools. Color gradients occur only in areas where the high-poly cube had additional detail such as ridges and bevels. All the coplanar regions are uniform 127,127,255 and therefore maintain their flat appearance in-world when mapped to a basic 12-triangle cube with split edges:

If your lowpoly mesh has split edges, you have to split its UV layout along those edges as well, but that doesn't mean that you have to split the model if there are multiple UV islands. What the guy did in the video is exactly backwards. The most important thing to understand about baking in general is that the projection from highpoly to lowpoly always occurs along the interpolated vertex normal of the lowpoly mesh. Interpolation stops at split edges, which is why you can't get a seamless bake on a model with split edges unless you use a cage or a proxy that is entirely smooth. If your model has flat areas, you have to insert additional control loops to keep the projection flat as well, otherwise there will be distortions towards the edges of those flat areas. If you use xNormal for baking, you have to insert those control loops into both the lowpoly mesh and the cage (since the topology of the cage must match the topology of the lowpoly mesh). If you bake in Blender, only the proxy mesh needs those control loops, so you can save a few vertices in your lowpoly model.

Gavin Hird wrote: Why don't you just download opensim free of charge and start create your relevant, unique and exciting grid for only the cost of the power to your server(s)? Just about any creation is free too if you hypergrid your utopia, or even better join one of the big grids for free. You'll find plenty of 5 minute PhotoShop clothes and fast creations that can help you move faster. (To be fair to opensim creators, there are some very high quality work there too, but the bulk is from mediocre to craptastic.) Enjoy your new journey! ;-) The next time you get out of your basement, ask some professional 3D content creators what they think about the bulk of Second Life content. You'll be surprised -- and embarrassed. Here's an example: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123296 Seriously, as a Second Life resident you are hardly in a position to judge the quality of anything. You are here, which means you have learned to endure (and enjoy!) the most craptastic looking game in history. What OpenSim has going for it is the non-scarcity of space and the absence of eyesore shopping malls. The total area of all (known) OpenSim grids already exceeds the size of Second Life, and if you exclude the shopping malls, OpenSim is probably three times larger than SL. What SL builders cram into one sim or less, OpenSim builders usually spread out over an area of 2x2, 3x3 or more sims because they can afford the space. The effect of this cannot be described, it has to be experienced. It's like moving from Tokyo to the Midwestern U.S. Unlike SL, where people get banned for flying over someone else's land or for not having payment info on file, OpenSim is much more relaxed and hospitable. I'm not sure why some people here suggest OpenSim as a place to implement communism. There is nothing communist or even remotely socialist about OpenSim. On the contrary, the hypergrid is the only major 3D virtual world where people can actually own their land (read: server space and data) rather than rent it from a central government. You think SL is about capitalism? Where is your property? Haven't you read the TOS? You guys don't even own the content that you upload!

Sharie Criss wrote: Are there more controlled ways of editing the mesh weights than weight painting? There is a less controlled, more automatic way of creating mesh weights which produces very good results for skirts. It has been in Blender since version 2.4x. See http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/49086-mesh-nda-lifted-15.html#post1026510 If you have to adjust the weights manually for some reason, there are weight gradient and blending tools available to smoothly interpolate bone influences across a mesh. They are documented here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Vertex_Groups/Weight_Paint_Tools

Use separate textures for coarse and fine detail. Here's an example: This plane uses the two 512x512 diffuse and normal maps you can see below. The diffuse map is stretched across the entire plane while the normal map is tiled 64x64 times. In the background the normal map fades away (so the tiling won't become too obvious), but in the foreground it distracts from the pixelation of the diffuse map.

LL's failure to provide an Avatar Development Kit has puzzled me for years. I mean, how hard can this be if even Cloud Party's super small dev team gets it right? Without third parties filling the gaps (deformer, liquid mesh, materials, Avastar, Chip Midnight's clothing templates etc.), LL would be lost. It's like there is no one left in-house who fully understands their software.

It is possible but computationally expensive. There are ways to use modern graphics cards to speed up physics-based cloth simulation, but these are not available to most SL residents. (LL collects such hardware info for statistical purposes.)

Toysoldier Thor wrote: Secondly, LL MUST execute the DMCA as instructed to them by what the state IP Owner (as this person has convinced DMCA they are) has instructed LL to do. LL is not the IP owner. They never were and with the new TOS they still are not. So if the DMCA tells LL to take remedial action... they still must comply. A takedown notice is only valid if the content to be taken down is infringing. A takedown notice that misrepresents properly licensed content as infringing is actually illegal. The license that creators grant to LL by agreeing to the new TOS is so broad, it's almost impossible to imagine situations where LL's use of uploaded content would be infringing. It's an irrevocable license that even allows sublicensing "for any purpose whatsoever". If LL decided to put full-perm copies of all your stuff into every resident's inventory, this license would allow them to do so. If someone copybotted all your stuff and sold it on the marketplace, LL could grant them a sublicense and make it legal. If you DMCA'ed them for doing so, they could even charge you with misrepresentation according to Section 512(f). That's how broad this license is. LL has to comply only in cases of unlicensed content, i.e. if the IP owner never agreed to the new TOS or never agreed to upload the content. But then again, these cases are rare, and for most SL merchants that ship has already sailed. I don't expect LL to abuse their new license, but it will give them some wiggle room where the regular DMCA takedown process would clearly punish the wrong party (as it did in C. vs. H.).

KateMcCridhe wrote: - Bring up the Terminal (Control + Alt + T) - Change directories to the proper folder... (cd SecondLife ... cd <Folder_Name> ... Note... case sensitive) - The install command is "./secondlife" or ./<name_of_viewer> Solutions like this contribute to the myth that Linux requires the command line to do even the most basic things. The reason why double-clicking the file opens it in a text editor is because someone (you?) reconfigured the file browser to do that by default. The file browser has a preferences dialog that you can open by clicking "Edit" and then "Preferences" in the menu. The preferences dialog has a tab called "Behavior" which looks like this: See the options in the section "Executable Text Files". In your case, the configured default behavior is "View", and that is exactly what you get.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: So to answer your first question on WHY LL would go through all this trouble and squat on this new IP Rights hi-jacking TOS and allow the entire creator community to explode in anger, shut down uploading, move content to other grids, 3rd party sites banning them, major supporters walkin away from them? Once you figure it out maybe you can tell all of us because LL refuses to explain it officially. Saying that "the entire creator community exploded in anger" is quite an exaggeration. So far, none of the big names has pulled out of SL. Bryn hasn't pulled out either; her leaving the LEA group is merely a symbolic act. She and her content will stay in SL. Of course, part of the reason why few people seriously consider leaving is because there is no other place to go. You can't be a famous virtual world artist in OpenSim, because OpenSim doesn't attract enough eyeballs. Contrary to what Bryn wrote in her blog, exposure is everything. For artists it is the precursor to business. Why did Linden Lab change the TOS, you ask? Two words: consumer protection. Few people so far have been looking at it from that angle, but it makes perfect sense if you consider that Second Life is basically a shopping mall where you can buy many things but aren't allowed to take them out of the building. The only party who can make sure that your purchased goods are still in your inventory tomorrow is the mall owner, Linden Lab. In order to do so, they need a license. Consider the following example: "A" and "B" are Second Life merchants. They sell avatar skins. One day "A" finds out that "B" has ripped and re-uploaded a few of "A's" skins and is now selling them under the brand name of "B". "A" files a DMCA takedown notice against "B". "B", being a non-U.S. citizen, does something unexpected: She files a counter-notice against "A", claiming that it was actually "A" who stole the skins from "B" in the first place. Now "A" would have to file a lawsuit against "B" in order to defend her IP rights, but she decides not to do it (due to cost etc.). As a consequence of "B's" now uncontested counter-notice, Linden Lab is required by law to take down "A's" assets rather than "B's", in spite of overwhelming evidence that "A" is the original creator! I won't mention any names here, but it's a true story. Some of our fellow readers may remember it. It's a well-known fact that most copyright disputes in SL occur between residents. Although there is plenty of stolen content coming from outside sources (e.g. other games), those outside parties rarely care enough about it to take action. Most of the time Linden Lab is dealing with residents stealing from other residents. The problem with DMCA takedowns is that they may also affect innocent consumers. In the example above, "A's" customers were at risk of losing items they legally purchased from her. To protect consumers from the fallout of merchant-vs.-merchant disputes, Linden Lab needs a license that allows them to leave purchased copies of stolen content on the grid, no matter if "A" stole from "B" or vice versa. Under the new TOS, Linden Lab gets that license from either "A" or "B". They could even allow "A" to continue her business despite the false accusations by "B".

The best way depends on whether you're making the clothing for a Pixar movie or for a game such as Second Life. If it's for a movie, you transfer the weight of the closest cloth vertex to the entire button. If it's for a game, you bake all the buttons and other small details (wrinkles, seams) into the texture of a low-poly version of the cloth and export that. Remember all the stuff about normal maps, specular maps etc. that was added to SL a few months ago? This is the time to use it.

I guess you switched to the Cycles renderer which has a different set of nodes. Select "Blender Render" from the drop-down box at the top to switch back. Cycles currently cannot bake textures anyway.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: More and more of them are pulling out their inworld shops and going MP only - at which point they contribute nothing into the economy, and only take out. They contribute nothing? How about the time they spend to produce the content that keeps residents glued to this grid? If that is not a contribution, then Linden Lab isn't contributing anything either. However, I don't see anyone here disputing Linden Lab's right to "only take out." The marketplace exists because most creators wouldn't be able to make money here if land ownership was mandatory. Without the marketplace, SL would not only lose land but content as well.

16 wrote: delusions are funny things. lucky for us there are serious people who dont delude themselves + June 2012 http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/06/grid-numbers-rise-visitors-fall/ December 2012 http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2012/12/region-numbers-continue-to-fall/ I recommend reading past the headlines. Of course, with the number of grids doubled, there is some leakage on the top 40 ones. As long as most of the new grids open themselves up for hypergrid travel, decentralization is a good thing.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: I wonder why it is so hard for you to understand that I totally 'get it' that there are people who want to build just for fun. If you "get it," why do you keep pointing at sim-on-a-stick as if it were the same thing as a sim on a public grid? But, what I don’t get is why they feel the need to slam on the people, and place, where there are those who want to build for profit, which is what you’ve been doing. I'm not slamming anyone who builds for profit. It's easy to build for profit in SL: Just put some stuff on the web marketplace and walk away. I am merely pointing out that if you measure "success" in land mass, there are very few profitable businesses in SL. And that means most people here do not work for themselves. If you pay 100% of your earnings to the state in the form of taxes, you don't work for yourself. Marketplace commission is a tax on income. Tier is a tax on property. The difference here is that an income tax does not keep residents from making money, but a property tax does. If the tax burden on property is too high so that it exceeds earnings, people have to cut back their land ownership. This is why SL landmass keeps shrinking. The problem here is that merchants who give up their land and retreat to the web marketplace still put pressure on those merchants who try to keep their land. The web marketplace is the equivalent of an offshore tax haven: make money in SL, but spend it elsewhere. You only have to extrapolate this trend to realize that SL will soon be gone. Its economic model is no longer sustainable. And it seems that the Lindens know this but do not care. They milk the SL cow as long as they can, while they reposition themselves as a game development company (Patterns, Creatorverse etc.). Yes, but the early adopters were a handful. The reason SL grew, is because of the profit based ventures, and the economic dynamics. The reason why SL grew was because for each net consumer turning into a net seller, there were a handful of new consumers signing up and picking up the tab. Celestiall Nightfire is not my only account. Perhaps you have seen something I’ve built, but you just don’t know it. Aren't we all successful business people on our alt accounts? Where have I heard this story before? So, my assertion that for OpenSim to grow, means moving away from the “freebie mindset” is confirmed. Because, you have now switched from talking about free, to talking about paying money. The reason why you feel confirmed is because you switched from "open source mindset" to "freebie mindset." I never claimed that OpenSim is free. I just claimed that it offers a better deal to those who want to own land. Maybe you should go back and read my first post again. You want to prove me wrong? Show me someone running a 9-region sandbox in SL! There is nothing permanent, and certainly not in a virtual world. There is, but it takes an open source mindset. If we’re talking amazing sims disappearing, then the Privateer Space Sim is the sim that left a big creative hole in SL. But, the creator/builder continues to create with a multitude of alts, as she did before, in SL. That is the joy of creating, as she knows that the maximum amount of people will see and enjoy her builds in SL. See, that's what I'm talking about. She works for the Lab without realizing it.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: If you did read the article you linked to, you'll see that the major growth is due to profit based ventures expanding. You got that backwards. The profit-based ventures you mention are not in-world businesses but region hosting providers, and these expand due to growing demand for OpenSim regions. If you look at the grid list linked to the article, you'll see that most of those grids still do not have any in-world currency. Yet they keep growing, and new grids get added. What makes OpenSim grow is the demand for (public) virtual land by people who do not want to run a business. In SL, if you want to own nine regions like I do, you need a very solid business plan. You need to pay $9,000 to even launch those regions, and if you keep them for a year, you'll be spending a total of $40,000. That is the salary of a full-time graphic artist -- or the price of a new 3-series BMW. Who would spend that much on a computer game? It's insane. My OpenSim regions on OSgrid cost me $26 per month. And mind you, I've rented them from another profit-based venture. They are not freebies, they are just competitively priced. I wonder why it is so hard for you to understand that there are people who just want to build in a public place for fun. I don't want to join Linden Lab's cheap labour pool and produce content which they then use to lock even more people into their overpriced world. You keep recommending sim-on-a-stick as if it was the same as a public grid running 24/7 on dedicated hardware. It is not. People will be able to see what I build -- if they want to. There are no barriers. OSgrid.org is included in the grid selector of the Firestorm viewer by default. Comparing it to a homegrown and firewalled sim-on-a-stick makes no sense. I don't know if OSgrid really lacks content, but if it does, that's one more reason for people like me to go there and build, don't you think so? I don’t know too many people who want to build just for themselves or a handful of other people. SL would not exist without the people who wanted to do precisely that. They were the early adopters. Yes, I’m a builder. Have been building in SL since day two. Have owned shops, sims, been part of large build teams, currently setting up another sim. How come I have never seen any of your builds in the past six years since I signed up here? Maybe you're building for fewer people than you realize, even on this densely populated grid. It’s irrelevant. When I make something in SL, and then export it with XML, and import it into an Opensim space, the result is the same. I have what I made. What you’re describing can’t be done on most OpenSim grids, and OS virtual worlds, and is something that can only be done by the OpenSim admin/owners. I visit several science and university OpenSim grids, personally owned grids, etc, and there’s not one of those places where a complete assets backup can be done by someone who is not the sim owner. So, if I want my own little OpenSim running on my own hard drive or server, then it can be done. You’re putting quite a spin on the capabilities of what one can do in OS, unless they are running the grid/sim themselves. I described the capabilities of what I get for $26 per month. I don't own the grid, but I do own my regions. In SL I could spend $40,000 per year and still wouldn't own anything. There have always been new sign-ups who never return, that’s nothing new. It’s happens in all the online games and virtual worlds. So, what’s your point? My point is that you may have delusions about SL's popularity. As a brand name, SL is better known than OpenSim of course, but in terms of popularity, it is merely the leper with the most fingers. And recently it keeps losing fingers at an alarming rate. First, I didn’t say that Open Sim/Source spaces were growing at all. I said that the freebie mindset, and economics will keep it from growing. If you run a business in SL and that business pays for less land than you could own on an OpenSim grid, then you essentially give away your products for free -- not to your customers of course, but to Linden Lab, who then use your content to bind more people to their service. This is the reality for the vast majority of content creators in SL. They work for Linden Lab, not for themselves. Since I want more land than I could possibly afford by running a business in SL (I would have to sell $3,000 worth of content per month to pay tier for my nine regions), OpenSim is the only viable option for me. This is not a freebie mindset but a perfectly rational economic decision. If you measure the purchasing power of your work in terms of square meters rather than Linden dollars, you will find that OpenSim grids offer a better deal to creators than Second Life does. You are basically saying that it's my own fault if I don't manage to produce and sell $3,000 worth of content per month. You call me a "hobby builder" for not trying. Well, I'm glad I don't have to, and I gladly accept the hobby builder tag for the privilege of running those nine regions without worrying about a business plan. I've seen top quality builders fail in SL because they shared your beliefs. Latest examples: the Hosoi Cluster and Empress and Hierophant. I read your comments over on the NWN blog regarding land barons, and you’re one of those people who aren’t just happy to go to OpenSim to build. No, you have to spread your personal dissatisfaction of SL to everyone else. That’s what you’re doing. I was responding to a land baron who complained that the web marketplace disrupts his business. That was his dissatisfaction, not mine.

Celestiall Nightfire wrote: Hmm, that's why OS grid rivals SL right? Hahaha (But, as we both know it does not!! ) I don't know if OSgrid is a SL rival, but OpenSim as a whole certainly is. Why else would the hypergrid expand while SL keeps shrinking? Well, maybe you'd better rush out and explain that to all the land barons and people actually making money in SL. I'm sure that will be news to them. (some people I know totally support themselves with their SL content creation and/or inworld rentals) How many land barons or content creators do you know who set aside nine full regions for non-commercial use? I don't want tenants, I just want the land. OS is fine if you want a handful (if you're lucky) of people to see your build. OS not full of people. I know it, and you know it. This is circular reasoning. First you're saying that people don't go to OSgrid because it lacks content, and now you're saying it's pointless to put content there because it lacks people. In the end it's all about quality and advertising. Just because someone launches a region in SL doesn't mean that everyone will drop by automatically. The content must be worth looking at, no matter where it is, and people need to be informed about it. So, if someone just wants to build 3D objects for a hobby, just get a sim-on-stick, and have your own little grid. Can get a four-sim package to setup easy. But, it will just be *your* playground. Sounds like you're a hobby builder, who just wants to make things for youself. If so, then sure, OS or sim-on-a-stick is fine. OSgrid has been around for half a decade, has a web portal for account management, a forum, a wiki, a friendly community and a good reputation. I'm not sure I'm getting the point of your suggestion. "Hobby builders" should not share their stuff with others? I've tried over, and over, to find something comparable to SL out there in OS grid-land, and it's not there. I'm a member of a OS Sci-Fi grid, but when I do go there, there is never anyone there! I've spent days wandering around OS grid seeing great builds, and no avatars. I'm just not interested in logging into an empty 3D build-scape, which is what OS grid is. I prefer to interact with other people, that's why I'm in SL. That's because you're not a builder. Builders prefer to spend their time alone in skyboxes rather than parking their avatar on a pose ball in a dance club. As I said: OpenSim is a builder's dream come true. It's not necessarily a dream that all of us share. As for backing up SL builds, anyone can log into SL with the Impudence viewer and do a XML backup to their hard-drive. I do it all the time for my SL builds. I do it in reverse too. I've made something in an OS grid/sim, and imported it into SL. It's not a problem. That's an export/import, not a backup/restore. Importing creates a new object with new assets. Restoring modifies the original assets to a previous state, including object inventories, scripts, terrain, parcel data and settings. You can't do that in Second Life. I think the LL shrinking has as much more to do with the RL world-wide economic recession, than the barely-visual OS grid/sims being any kind of competition. Maybe, but how do you explain those thousands of daily new sign-ups who never return after the first look? Is that because of the recession, too? Bottom line is that the economic dynamics that make SL, is also the very thing that keeps Open Source grids from growing. But they are growing. The shrinking grid is Linden Lab's. Again I notice some weird reasoning here: If SL grows, it's because of the in-world economy. If it shrinks, the causes are external (recession, global warming etc.). If OS grids shrink, it's because of the lack of an in-world economy. If they grow, just deny that it's happening. The freebie culture is why the really good content creators are not out in OS, as it's not worth their time to make things to give away free. Without good content, and competition, you do not have a dynamic environment. You may not like that reality, but it's still the reality. I'm sorry to burst your delusional bubble, but the really good content creators are neither in SL nor in OpenSim. Remember how scared everyone was when Linden Lab introduced mesh to the grid? How everyone thought it would attract the professionals, disrupt the market and kill mom's and dad's little prim business? Apparently the professionals had better things to do than to join SL's cheap labour force.

>> it can't be done with the Open Source mindset, as the freebie part negates the market dynamics of SL. It can't be done _without_ the open source mindset. Most of SL's land-owning content creators already work for free, since all their earnings are sucked up by Linden Lab in the form of tier. From an economic perspective it makes no sense for them to be in SL. They are working for the Lab, not for themselves. I am currently working on a large mesh build that will fill at least one entire region, possibly more. I own a 3x3 region area on OSgrid, and the build will be rezzed there when finished. This kind of thing is _impossible_ in Second Life. Those market dynamics of SL are precisely the reason why you will never see truly immersive continuous builds in Second Life. Nine full regions in SL would cost me $32,000 per year, plus $9,000 for the initial setup. I'd have to sell more than $3,000 worth of content every month to make this affordable. Instead of working on the things I wanted to build in the first place, I would find myself producing mainstream items such as shoes and clothing, because those are the only things that sell in large quantities. I'd have to compete with merchants who own no land at all and sell only through the web marketplace. I would depend on donations. Most likely I would have to set up a shopping or rental area in my regions, invite collaborators, or scale the entire project down to a manageable size. After a year or two, I would have to give up and let Linden Lab delete my work, like so many others before. I've seen this happen again and again. I joined SL in 2007, and all my favorite places from that year are gone. OpenSim is a builder's dream come true. Vast amounts of land, unlimited prim size, full backup capability. The fact that Linden Lab's grid is shrinking tells me that more and more residents wake up and smell the coffee.