[Official Statement from Oberwolf Linden]

15 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

You and I both.

To put my comment in context:

It’s not like I did a survey, it’s just a statistic I remember reading a while ago. I do not attest to the statistics validity and I am certainly not trying to diminish the relevance of anybody's personal experience. I mentioned this statistic because the discussion in the earlier pages in this thread were focused predominantly on females, which Love pointed out. 

[What year is considered oldbie?]

7 hours ago, Obic Malaprop said:

Memories of telehubs, and camping chairs, and dwell and first land ,and shoes stuck to my ass, and SL exchange flash through my mind

Wow i’d completely forgotten about dwell, I used to game the bejesus out of that, and paying for picks to game the classifieds. And for some reason the word Dwell reminded me of the word Tringo which I had also completely forgotten about too. I’ve destroyed an awful lot of brain cells since those early days and it’s nice to have old memories triggered. Thanks!

[Official Statement from Oberwolf Linden]

4 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I suspect we just don't have a lot of users participating in the thread who prefer to represent in Second Life using "apparently young boy avatars".  So lacking that, the conversation turns towards the "easiest target"; women.

I guess we should bear in mind that about 80% of child abuse victims are female, so people may generally associate the topic of child abuse more with girls than boys based on what they have learned during their lives.

[What year is considered oldbie?]

14 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Oooh! I love it when people go apesh!t because I have a high post count. 

Talking about post count, I am wondering if our current post count includes the total posts from the old forum too? This forum, v2.0 started in 2008/9 i think, so there could be 4 or 5 years worth of posts unaccounted for when it comes to the older oldbies.

[What year is considered oldbie?]

10 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

Ginko Financial - Wikipedia

It offered accounts denominated in Linden Dollars, which would be paid extremely high interest rates (at one point 0.145% per day or 69.7% per year^[1])

Well it all seemed too good to be true, SO IT MUST BE TRUE!! I was young and gullable.

I lost a small fraction compared to some people though.

[What year is considered oldbie?]

3 hours ago, Charlemagne Allen said:

What is your definition of oldbie?

Anyone who got ripped off by Ginko definitely is. Im still bitter about loosing that L$10K all these years later 😭

[Advanced Lighting / Ambient Occlusion]

I am trying to learn about the adoption rate of ALM. This thread is 4 years old and I am wondering if things have changed since then. Does anyone know if there is more widespread usage of ALM now? Thanks

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

On 3/3/2024 at 11:38 PM, Charlotte Bartlett said:

The challenge is also  you are using an old EEP that hasn’t been updated for the latest PBR viewers.  I am happy to send you one to run comparison with on legacy and PBR viewers.  Which obviously brings us back to think a post I made at the start on how older EEP settings will need adjusting in the newer PBR viewers.

Hi Charlotte, could I get a copy of your PBR EEP please? It's really handy being able to cycle through a bunch off PBR friendly EEP's when testing materials and It would be great to include yours in that list. Thanks.

[Marketplace changes? Fixes?]

On 2/1/2024 at 4:18 PM, Elvina Ewing said:

I'm bracing myself for the coming end of March, when Lindens will (traditionally) most likely come out with some new draconian ways how to squeeze yet more pennies out of their favourite cashcows. Gonna try and take most L$ and US$ out of SL in the last week of March, just in case...

This comment has been wondering what has occured in previous years  to elicit this response?

[Any other people try to make their ideal boyfriend or girlfriend as a Second Life avi?]

51 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

See also https://replika.com/

Thats just one more stop on the road to the movie Wierd Science becoming a reality. What a time to be alive!

[A couple of nooby questions about huge uploads.]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

For optimal LOD and LI split big and small tris into separate meshes.

I'm new to mesh, at least the SL side of it. I’ve been focused on PBR materials since I've been back and I've been importing models to test them on, not really caring about optimising LI at this point. But something that has been bugging me is that I can import 2 models with the same number of polys and the same size bounding box yet they can have different Li. I'm wondering if your comment about triangle size is the answer because the only difference between the two meshes would be the size of the polys. 

So if possible could you (or anybody) please speak more about the triangle size? Is there an optimal triangle size (in cm)? Are there limits to how big or small triangles should be when trying to optimise the LI. Why are you suggesting that small and large tris be split into separate meshes? Thanks.

[The new store.]

1 hour ago, Tealthantos said:

mixture of Substance Designer 5, Blender, Gimp and Instamat

Cool, I really like Substance Designer, it took me a few years to really get to grips with it but now I can make 100% realistic procedural materials just using maths, it's awesome! I’ve tried doing the same in Blender but it’s really hard work and less functional. Good luck with your new store and please let us know when it’s open.

[How to be Your Own Best Friend in SL]

On 3/2/2024 at 12:04 AM, graceblakeley said:

As I always have my 'Nearby' list showing I can see someone else is there too. I look at their profile. I zoom in to see the red cloud and I carry on for a bit. Then I look at them again to see if they've rezzed. They have. It's a terrible looking avatar 16 years old looking like they've had a 15 year sabbatical from the game. They're still stood standing in the same place. Haven't moved a pixel. Their presence gives me the creeps. I decide to leave. Nice place wasted.

I am using a 14 year old avatar and have had a 12 year sabbatical. Also when I teleport into a new area I never move my Av, I just move the camera. Please consider this as my official application for your creep list. 😁

[What do you want?]

57 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

I could model and texture that for you easily in about 20 - 30 mins.  😁

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The "competition" I'd watch would put the "haters" in an arena from which they can all leave in glory only when they agree on one "standard" PBR-friendly Environment in which all their desired content looks good.

If it's a competition you want, let's all sign up at PBR.com and become Professional Bull Riders (which is a real thing). Whoever comes top in the standings next season gets to choose the default PBR EEP.

Edit - On reflection I think we should forget this idea, it’s a load of old bullocks!

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

1 hour ago, Arielle Popstar said:

No easy answer is there for Creator or Consumer? We are both left with a supposedly enhanced look that will likely not please a portion of the buyers. Is your PBR setting going to be mod so the consumer can at least change that if need be?

Well I think there is an easy answer, which is for LL to provide a default environment fit for purpose. Content creators can use an equivalent HDRI map when authoring PBR if they want to and consumers can place legacy and PBR into the environment with acceptable visual results. That surely has to be the goal for LL. If people want to deviate from the default and start experimenting with other EEP’s then that's their prerogative, but it should not be a requirement.

Personally I won't be providing recommended EEP settings with PBR content because the PBR / glft  rollout still seems to be in beta and still subject to change at any given moment. I will just support customers if they ask.

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

So he is wanting consumers to go through their EEP choices and make the best selection and or make changes to it for the best look. At least those who can. As Rowan already pointed the default ones are not adequate and leave the interior too dark to see properly. 

No, I am talking about the default EEP here which is  LL's responsibility. A decent default EEP would hopefully negate the need for people to change their EEP settings at all if they dont want to.

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

42 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The STUFF in my house, I couldn't care less about but not even being able to see my avatar?

Having blundered my way through learning how to create EEP’s in the last few weeks, I have created some that work well with both my really old content and my new PBR, but only from the outside, when lit from the sky. Interiors are a whole different matter though. The only option seems to be to add lighting. Not a bad thing for PBR as it looks great with lighting and reflection probes but it feels wasteful using lights to achieve the look of natural daylight in interior spaces.  

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

41 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Somehow, "Second Life will get Patched"..

..Somehow..!

 

Surely it’s not complicated? Create a varied range of EEP settings then test them on the various types of content. Pick the one that works best for use as the default.

[Just discovered this -- Agni?? Huh? lol]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

Paying RL wages for RL jobs isn't ridiculously high IMHO.

Whilst this is true in principle,  it was unheard of in SL at the time when I met IBM i think, so when I said the fees were high, i meant compared to any other opportunities i'd heard about during that time. In later years SL was hyped as being Web 2.0, (I think that was the term) and lots of companies wanted a slice and were paying realistic levels of compensation, it became more commonplace to be paid a RL wage as it were.

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

They saw their projects as doing business, not playing Second Life.

This is both true and not true. Whilst some IBM employees were here for business, some were at work, being paid and just mucking about in SL because they could, with no business related goals.

/engage anecdote mode:

Here is how I met IBM, A random dude came into my stop and bought everything. I would estimate about 30 prefabs at the time. Then he sent me a message a few hours later and asked me to come and set them up for him as it was his first day and he didn’t  know his arse from his elbow. He offered me L$10k for a few hours of work. I got chatting to him and he told me SL was available to everyone in his office. He’d made an account and a coworker had given him L$50k. He didn't even know L$ had a RL value, he assumed it was game money. In the coming days, other IBM employees saw the builds I’d set up on their land and this led to commissioned work, if I remember rightly the first job was to build replicas of RL conference rooms from various IBM sites.

[Is AI able to create a mesh head texture from pictures of my RL head?]

13 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

You grabbed the wrong end of the stick.

The OP want's an Artificial Idiocy tool to turn a photo of their RL face into a texture they can use on an EXISTING commercial SL mesh head, either SLUV or Evo-X presumably.

Not "make their own mesh head".

 

Yeah, in fact I ignored the stick entirely and went off topic because someone said the word “meshy” and it got me all excited in my ai zone which resulted in a spewing of unsolicited ai related propaganda. Please forgive me. 🙂

 

[Second Life Product / Business Ideas for Generation Alpha]

43 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

CrapBlox

is a

FAILURE

It can't be a faliure because they introduced PBR a few years ago. Thats the key to success dont you know. Any day now things are gonna turn around for Roblox, you mark my words 🙂

[Just in Case - Inventory Hoarding]

2 hours ago, Wesley Spengler said:

Coming back to SL, one of the hardest challenges is reacquainting myself with the inventory, and how I struggled mightily from the very start with organizing it well, being able to find anything, and how today I'm paying the price of 18 years of poor inventory hygiene.

I just came back after 12 years and looked at my 32000 items and thought NOPE! I know the MP stuff is in a folder called MP Migration. Beyond that I decided to ignore the rest and just make a new folder called 2024 and I am working out of that. 

I was never into avatars much and am still walking around in one I put together in 2010.  I know nothing about mesh avatars or how clothing works or any of it. I don't even know what I don't know yet, if that makes sense. It's a bit overwhelming, 

I need someone to make a youtube video that starts with “previously on Second LIfe” and then recaps  12 years of development.

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

8 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

There is the problem.  You have made PBR friendly environments so.of.course your PBR items.looks as intended.  LL shipped ONE PBR friendly environment with their viewer.  That is the issue.  If they had shipped an entire PBR friendly folder with environments, then we wouldn't have a problem but they didn't.  

Yep it is a major problem, especially considering the one environment they did give us is pretty bad. Any average "player" who plops down some PBR for the first time in the default environment is not going to be happy when it doesnt look like it did in the store or the pictures. Undoubtably it will hinder PBR adoption.

[Why I Don't Like PBR]

20 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

PBR doesn't look/work right with the current LL PBR viewer UNLESS you use the ONE environment made for it.

This is not true in my experience. I can author a PBR material built using a HDRi environment that matches my PBR friendly EEP in SL. I import it in and it looks exactly as I expect. I then take that PBR material into another PBR friendly EEP which is a desert environment and it looks different, because the light is different, but the PBR is still working as expected, the surface looks different because it's a different type of lighting. I then take the PBR into a winter environment and it looks different again because the lighting is different, but the PBR is still reflecting the surface as it should. I’ve not had time to make other diverse EEP’s to test in so the examples end there. 

The point is, the PBR is working correctly in all 3 environments, but looks different because the lighting is different which is to be expected because that’s how PBR works. Anyone who is expecting their PBR surfaces to remain consistent when travelling in SL without using a personal EEP all the time is going to be out of luck according to the opinions I've read in this thread. 

PBR is not the problem, and PBR compatible EEP’s are not the problem, both can work together and deliver predictable results. I think the problem is people's expectation for consistency, they may spend a lot of time and money on making their avatar look great to both themselves and hopefully others. Anyone who wants to jump on the PBR train is going to have to leave that mentality behind and embrace the diversity of environments that PBR will find itself in, or just use a personal EEP. 

Maybe after a few years of everyone moaning about how bad their avatars look landowners will naturally gravitate towards using more universal EEP settings. Or maybe LL will roll out a new default environment that is fit for purpose and actually works with all old and new content. This would surely greatly negate the problem.