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Prokofy Neva

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Everything posted by Prokofy Neva

  1. There is so much abandoned land around now you should dump the Linden home and buy 1024 of abandoned by scouting out a nice place and then filing a ticket with the Concierge to get the parcel for $1/m. Be sure to check the area with volume and water and land owners showing to make sure there are no hidden surprises. Put draw distance high and see if the area has anything you don't want to look at or keep de-rendering. Look at your neighbours' parcels as see their claim date to see if they are keepers. And if you hate it then dump it and find another. You can also contribute 1024 to a mainland rentals' group and get an equivalent rental -- I have this system as do others, 1025 = $700/wk credit which generally will give you a lot of prims, more than the Linden homes certainly.
  2. If you charge less for a space than $100 or at least $150 ideally, you are losing money. As Rey said, there is a huge turnover on the lower-priced units. I already said that the way to solve it is to stagger the apartments so they have their own stream and spacing beyond 20 m. I realize that it's important for you always to contradict whatever I say, even if it means saying the same thing differently lol. But even if you use textures instead of built mesh or prim windows, etc. etc. it's hard to do on 4096 or 8192 and beyond that it becomes ridiculous. You should take that same space and just rent it out as townhouses or ranches or whatever. And I don't just have my own experience to draw on. All around me in the massively abandoned Nautilus 2 region (the pink mountains) are people trying these cheapie "holodeck" apartments with tiny spaces stacked up forever. They are all empty. No one comes. What does rent are those giant 4096 domes that uglify the landscape because to cram in as many as possible, they start at nearly ground level to allow for the 20m issue. They should be outlawed. Those are fuller, but still half empty I find. At one time in SL's history I had 4 apartment towers, all nearly always 100% full. That was because there were a lot more newbies who wanted an inexpensive pied a terre until they could figure out land better. But today, there are Linden homes and abandoned land and island rentals and people go to those rather than an apartment tower.
  3. The short answer might be: don't. It's as very hard way to do rentals; it's hard to build and hard to manage and hard to rent. Why? Because everyone is in a tower on one parcel, so they do not have dedicated media streams or privacy. Yes, you can build towers (and I have had them done for me) where you allow little micro parcels for streams and "avatars can't see me"; where you space things out beyond 20 meters (so chat can't be seen), and so on. But you are still left with certain problems. One is security orbs, that are just an annoyance in such a small space. At first people might think, oh, wouldn't it be great to live in an apartment, sitting on my balcony looking at the Manhattan skyline and sipping wine with my honey. Except...you have 8-10 or more other people in the same tight space with you. One boon is that they rarely all come on at the same time -- they are on different time zones or don't log on. But still, the thrill ebbs quickly as soon as you hear other chat or see other people so close by. It's hard to get people to understand at first how to use a teleporter. You would think this is basic and simple. Believe me, it isn't. You would think if you tell people all apartments look exactly like the foyer they would grasp that they don't need to view it before renting, but they don't. I would explain that you can use the TP to view apartments but that they look like the foyer, and it never sunk in - a sign saying "You must read at a 12-year-old's level to rent in this place" actually did work as it either got people mad enough or amused enough to comprehend the sign. What Mollymews is describing sounds more like town houses in terms of their spacing. I have towers large and small, and here is how I solved these problems. I put out the tower with closeable windows and locked teleporters -- that's a little privacy. One build I have wasn't done with 20 m -- another was but that really isn't enough to solve people's need for privacy. So on an adjacent parcel, where on the ground level I have docks and stalls for rent, or a shopping mall or a forest or whatever, I cut up 256 or so parcels to fit skyboxes -- that's often enough for small ones. Then I place a teleporter inside the apartment that takes them up to that skybox, where they have a dedicated parcel for media, and can have an orb above 500 m. That's often still not enough and they rent poorly. Another direction I go in is to make them very cheap with no skyboxes or anything, so that people just use them as a little hangout and a place to change clothes or sort inventory -- their expectation is not high. If you are going to work with 4096 or 8192 or more to rent out, why kill yourself with apartments? Put out cabins or homes. The other issue with apartments is that you can't really charge a lot for them, given their lack of amenities, yet you still have to ,make up that $11 US or so per 4096. Can you get people to pay $150/wk which is only about $2 a month (if you give a discount for advance payments)? Can you charge more (US $2.25 would only break even)
  4. I should have planned more than I did, but I find it more fun to jump in and start doing things. Of course, you begin to regret this later, especially if you already rented out parts of the sim and can't go back and re-parcel. The very first part of the plan is: how will this sim get paid for? Unless you are paying for it as a hobby. So I did plan out the rentals from large to small. I should have perhaps first parceled out the sky platforms, then put out the giant villa with the landing points for each platform, but I did it the other way, to fit the landscaping (Mainland only goes up or down 4 or so meters so you are sometimes limited in what you can do). If you go to the sim of Crespo, you can see how I made my community called "La Montana Rosa". o Italian villa on the top of the mountain o Sky platforms divided up across this area o Adobe homes at levels going down the mountains o Small cabins o Adobe build from which small skyboxes are reached o Inca ruins and caves o Stone steps o Towers (to hide a neighbours ugly purple tower top -- well, it's Mainland. So I was left with little problems here and there which I solved over time, sometimes re-classifying some of the rentals from homes to platforms, which sell better. But it was a lot of fun. It's the first whole sim I have done since my original flagship sim of Ravenglass. On that sim, I had help as a newbie from a landscaper and builders. I also put levels of cottages, and a big Celtic tower on the little Mainland island. So I have larger waterfront parcels and cabins and also skyboxes. I wanted to make sure it had a park running through it to provide nice views. I then later put a Celtic forest in the sky for quests and hangouts. I have gone back and built a lot more in the skies in recent years as I see prims not used up and ways of doing things differently, and also saving prims with mesh. Professional builders like Aria Baroque plan out their sim builds to the meter and spend weeks on them. I'm an amateur and for me it is more fun stumbling along some times so it doesn't feel like a job. There are certain sims I look at only now in horror at how poorly planned they are, and I try to remedy it a bit. But there is an inimitable law: every meter costs US $0.00267 and has to get paid for.
  5. Then it's not likely the same issue as I faced -- and I don't use Firestorm and there is no issue about administrator, I'm on the regular SL viewer. My inventory is at 144,000 and counting over 15+ years. And at a certain point last year when it was still only like 120,000, I got so that I couldn't even log on. And I repeatedly had this content issue, and nothing would load. The Lindens finally took over my account for several days, purged the inventory of a few bad files (not sure what they are but things can get corrupted), then more importantly, sorted unsorted files by alphabet and/or year, "My Inventory A-F" or "Notecards 2007" etc. After that, I could log on, and things loaded.
  6. How to you make seamless textures for SL? And with Paint.net, not PhotoShop, because I'm a beginner. I got the extension for Paint.net to do seamless textures, I downloaded it correctly, got it working, but what it generates doesn't work in SL. But I may not be doing it right.
  7. The chairman of the board is Jed Smith, and at least formally, wouldn't he be the seller? https://www.lindenlab.com/about
  8. I wonder what you see as SL's assets. Servers with content on them aren't assets, they're cost centers, they have to be run, billed, fixed, etc. The content is an asset I guess but where else can it be used? Most of it only in SL. The users are assets only if they are bundled with the other things, the servers and content, if those aren't there, they flee. So how can it strip? What can it strip? I wouldn't assume it will go the way of say, Toys 'R Us.
  9. I realize that you wish to be cynical to appear cool, but seriously, why is Tilia even a thing in a world of not only PayPal but Venmo and everything else? They can handle small amounts of currencies, too. If the value-add is micro-currencies, well, there are plenty of wallet projects including some bought by Facebook but just not implemented because they are a management and regulatory and security chore. They need constant watching. It isn't Tilia that has that experience of watching and implementing, but Tilia. And again, if there's nothing to buy with your microcurrency, it's as useless as Joe's Bitcoin, so content is still at the center.
  10. I don't see how it can be a jewel. The deal is still waiting regulators' approval because they are a money service. But then so is PayPal and much larger and better known and B2B as well. I don't see it. Content creation -- and sale -- is supposed to be the jewel of SL's crown. But as I already said, microcurrency management IS content creation/sale so it's maybe all the same thing.
  11. It's not Ebbe's to sell. He's not the owner, but the CEO hired to run it by the investors. He may have stock but he may not be consulted on the sale.
  12. I don't have an informed opinion on this, other than from watching the black box that is the Lab for the last nearly 16 years. So, my first thought was: Mitch Kapor will at last get a payday, probably his biggest (or only?) since Lotus-1-2-3, and since his life is now devoted to philanthropy, with his main causes being the end of copyright, freeing of content, undermining of government encryption, on the one hand (which I don't support), and helping of Blacks, underprivileged youths, human rights, etc. which I do support, I guess we can expect more havoc/good from that quarter. My next thought was that this fellow buying the outfit seems to have more business success (with this sort of better Task Rabbit thing called Jyve) and more experience than the past lab technicians, and that's a good thing. My third thought was: why the emphasis on Tilia, money. licensing etc when it's supposed to be about virtual content creation? Or maybe those are the same thing, essentially. My fourth thought was: no, I don't think SL will die. Look at Sansar, once it was out of the Lindens' hands, it seemingly has thrived with big rock concerts and such. Even I visited it. OK, maybe not. But still. When the Lindens said they didn't have any more sims to sell, I thought that was very, very, very weird, in a world suddenly forced to go online. So I guess it was about this. Does it mean they were hurting? SL is actually one of the rare online virtual world success stories. So many others have failed, or they don't enable their users to make money. Users make more money in total using SL than they can using FB, since basically only screened app engineers can make money from FB. Instagram doesn't help you make money. What does? But SL has something like $450 million in profits *for users* which is rare and exceptional. So maybe its worth is recognized. Yet it does have all kinds of problems, whether sim seams, or my bugabear, the edit window opening up and blocking the very thing you're trying to edit. Lindens used to say that fixing SL would be like trying to swap out the engine of a plane while it was flying. But "going to the cloud" or whatever it is -- that has to be done. Usually when there's an acquisition, the current CEO is replaced, yet Ebbe didn't seem to talk that way. But likely he will be. It would be folly to raise the price and chase away loyal users already made skittish by the announcement. Yet they will raise the price because -- see above. They will have some kind of developers' license you can buy that will enable you to upload unlimited textures, sounds, and mesh but will cost you something to be using this platform to make money. I predict they will keep Oz because he basically runs the place. Others are going to be let go. There are certain ones I'd like to see in that number but they manage to survive through every change of regime so it's not likely. Basically, SL is too complicated and rare a toy to buy if you merely plan to put it out of business. That is, if you are Google, and making your own thing, sure, it would make sense. But not for this guy. He likely imagines he can turn it into a virtual meeting space on demand.
  13. SL is broken, so... Go and see the new conference chat thing made by Philip Rosedale (founder of Second Life)/ Visit Sansar (made by LL and sold to another company). I think the rock concert might still be going. Go and see SL's YouTube chanel.
  14. Group accounts work on a 24-hour basis so you don't receive the payment right away, you receive it the next day.
  15. Yes, thank you for making a field trip and confirming my point: no rules are being enforced. If they were, merchants could take out lamp scripts because the prim will stay lighted. As we all have to do at SL17B or FF or any other event. Hello! There isn't the policing, and there should be. I will have to say the Moles haven't remove their lights, either, however, as I said in the OP, naming one of the objects.
  16. It's a given that avatars crowd events like this and their rendering points are a big factor in lagging. But that's harder to control for, unless there are guards at the door and scanners and rejections of those over a certain limit. My point is THE MOLES THEMSELVES can control for the OTHER PIECE of the lag -- which is the Mole build itself, and the individual merchant builds. Every single one of these can meet the standards of every other event and remove unneeded scripts, use 512 textures, put on phantom, etc. Did they? No. And yet you are strangely resistant to simply acknowledging that yes, this is an area where improvement is more easily made than in trying to police avatars.
  17. Have you been to Stop 'n Shop? It's nothing like Fantasy Faire or really anything. It has these big RL mall-style pools with fountains and seating that no one uses. These are laggers and avatar traps. The huge ceilings are the gigantism. I don't see that they add anything.
  18. Go and examine the mall build itself, I think that's creating the problem as to complexity of build, vertices, scripts not removed that could be etc. Also some of the merchants have made quite complex builds.
  19. As a computer programming expert and builder in SL, you probably have a better/more expensive computer with a better/more expensive graphics card. Most people experience lag. And there is no reason not to take the steps I've mentioned that are in every single other event, including Linden events, and remove the bling scripts out of those dreadful hanging hedges, just to take one example, plus all that moving water in all those ridiculous pools.
  20. Yes, right on cue, the usual contrarians step up and contraire. "Works on My Machine". It's not about turning off scripts in furniture that YOU sell and someone might want to test. It's about removing scripts for light or rotation or other things that either leave their effect on the prim, or else are not needed for something like sitting down. So that means you can remove all scripts in lamps, candles, etc.; all shrink/re-size scripts; rotate scripts (who needs spinning things anyway, they're annoying); texture change scripts (those can be big script time eaters -- pick one texture and leave it, unless it is a feature of the thing you are selling). The overwhelming majority of merchants use one essentially monopoly vendor.
  21. As I said, there are always contrarians to what I say, and you're always one. I personally think setting physics to "none" isn't advisable as it generates a scary error message about how prims "can't" have "no shape". You can put "convex hull" just as easy which reduces prims, but not always, and "phantom". You can wear a script sensor and that will give you a list of scripted things, you don't have to hand-examine every single one. You're wrong about light, as the point is not what you/the viewer/the client side sees, but *the script itself". A candle script can be removed, as surely you know, and the prim will stay lit, so that way you have eliminated the script. Lindens tell you to do this, so I don't think it is mere "lore". "Inspect" isn't on the SL viewer.
  22. I did all that. You don't even have to show friends. I already have low draw distance, particle etc. And it's still laggy. Which is what I think you are confirming. There is a list of all the stores with direct TPs, that helps but that still lands you inside builds that trap you much of the time: Also, once this blog entry disappears after the day it is posted, like all Linden blogs, it is HELLA HARD to find. You have to look and look through all the stuff they have. You see posts from 2019. But you can't find last week's easily. Trying again with a better link - see what I mean?
  23. Since I'm a white person, some will find that I can't speak to this legitimately. I have an Asian avatar, which gives me some little insight to this issue -- people treat me as if I am invisible or "the help" at times. But generally, I don't find the level of racism there is in RL inside SL. I have Black tenants who have reported racist attacks on me, and after I investigate them, those other tenants are expelled and reported. Sometimes reports go "nowhere". Sometimes they work. Fortunately this has not been a common occurrence. Most of the incidents of racism I have seen in 15 years come from a notorious commuter college group related to 4chan involving white kids going around in what amounts to blackface, which should have been instantly discredited -- but was not. They went around in Black avatars with large 1960s Afros and the "Pool's Out" meme. They were most definitely not Black or Hispanic but white kids as they were happy to tell you at SL meet-ups and on social media. They would spam Bill Cosby jello ads and other strange racist and anti-semitic memes, and crash sims. They even had a RL professor who also dressed in this blackface and did not hide this fact. It's the sort of thing that cost people their jobs now in RL. But instead, this group was treated as "edgy" and various left-wing professors would write thinky studies of how they were "transgressive" -- when really they were criminals. And this sort of Internet group tragically has spilled over into RL with RL racist and terrorist attacks. So I think it was always the right thing to AR these miscreants, even if "virtual". And eventually I think it works. I would like to think they could not get away with these antics now. But I could be wrong. I remember for a time -- again about 14 years ago -- when there was a set of white bloggers absolutely convinced that there were no Black skins in SL, and this was a sign of racism. This was so patently false, and there were so many people with Black skins (and I remember for a time I had an Indian avatar with a Nehru jacket) that it just made no sense. It was one of these white liberal concoctions that they needed to invoke about SL because it's real crime, in their minds, was that they protected copyright. I find the capture roleplay sites absolutely abominable and I think LL should outlaw them. They are also based on a racist meme often, and involve denigrating women. But there are so many of them, and I guess some high-value patrons, that LL thinks they need to keep them in them of free expression.
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