Pixels Sideways

LL changed the title of my OP. Apparently they didn't like the actual topic re: inequity of the first come, first serve grab of the limited number of new homes. ------------------------------------------ So per New World Notes, there are around 60,000 SL premium members. Not everyone pays the annual fee of $72 USD at once, many pay monthly which is $!20 per year, Erring on the conservative estimate side, 60,000 x $72 = $4,320,000 in revenue annually from paid memberships alone. That's A LOT of revenue. Add to that the fees for land, commissions from sales inworld and on MP and transaction fees (LL charges $1.50 USD for every Linden currency purchase transaction which they're profiting from since PayPal only charges LL $.30 per transaction and banks charge more but not $1,50 for every transaction) so LL is doing quite well re: SL. Anyway, 60,000k members are entitled to a home - a new home since that is what LL has promised everyone. Let's say 1/2 that number are aware of the new homes - 30,000 members. The other half is not and/or includes people who purchased land on mainland and use their Linden home allotment to cover their own land tier fees in full or in part.. Back to Linden homes... A sim can accommodate 64 1024 parcels. That's without any community terraforming/landscaping to accommodate roads, pathways, etc. So lets nix 16 parcels to accommodate community services. We now have 1 sim = 48 parcels available to 48 premium members, Dividing 30,000 by 48 = 625 sims. Remember, we are only calculating for 1/2 the total premium members. I don't know how many land/water parcels (homes) were part of this first roll out but let's say 624 homes were made available. If there are a max humber of 48 home parcels per sim, then that would be 13 sims. That means for LL to accommodate 1/2 of their premium members, they still need to create 29,376 more home parcels on 612 sims. This is why the first come first serve for a fraction of the homes needed is a totes cockamamy process. As I previously mentioned, LL should have set up a form that premium members could fill out indicating yes, they want a new Linden home and then create fields for data on what type of home and even what area on a sim, type of sim (urban, suburban, forest, desert, tropical, fantasy, etc.) facing which direction (N, E, S, W) and any other particulars. Then LL would have a far more concrete idea as to what the members ideally want and could build out the sims accordingly so members could get an ideal space via a lottery process. Explaining the numbers to premium members along with the process and time involved in creating each sim would put this into a far better perspective because creating upwards of 625 new sims to accommodate 30,000 - only half of the premium members - is a daunting undertaking and is going to take a lot longer than the way LL has represented the new Linden homes availability and roll out. If they want to deliver on this in a timely manner - especially to new members - they're going to need to hire more people.

I appreciate your replies. This isn't about paying attention. People I heard from were well aware of the new premium membership homes and the date they would be available. They didn't have the time (or access) to hover at a computer all day waiting for the start signal or refreshing. And they shouldn't have had to. No one should. They are paying the same premium membership fees as everyone else. Some have been members for years, one person I know holds a weekly event, others are less engaged in the community but that still should not make them more or less eligible to have the same access to the new homes as everyone else. The idea that some folks because of their level of community engagement in SL are more entitled and should have had first shot at the new homes is straight out of Orwell's "Animal Farm" when the authoritarian pigs declare "some animals are more equal than others." Also "That's the way they've always done it in the past" is no excuse for not improving the user experience which encourages user retention. Offering new premium members new homes and not delivering sets a negative tone. The moles are LL employees (or contracted) so saying they worked really hard on making these homes, sims, etc, so cut them some slack is a rather odd perspective since that is their RL job. Not to say they shouldn't be praised or appreciated for their talents and hard work but they do get paid to create content for SL so they're not some volunteer org toiling away on their own dime. I realize there will always be subsequent ptemium members signing up however, current premium membership numbers are not an unknown since LL derives revenue from the fees and setting up an online query is not a lot of "paper" to pull in info from members to determine what type of home they want so LL could gauge how many of each to provide. The roll-out of the Linden homes was not thought out very well in advance otherwise there would have have been more than enough new homes for every member. Would members have had to wait longer? Yes. Would it have been a fairer process to wait so everyone who is a current premium member could get a home at the same time? Yes. The only way rolling out a limited number of the new homes would have worked fairly would have been via a lottery and would still require a pre-selection of home type by premium members..

I heard some folks who wanted one of the new Linden Homes that they were shut out because they weren't logged in with their finger on the button when the limited amount of new homes became available and were quickly claimed. This doesn't seem fair since LL has totes control over creating the Linden homes sims and types of homes and could easily do this differently. LL should consider listing the types of homes available -- houseboat, traditional, etc, -- and let members sign up for which one they want and allocate accordingly instead of the first come, first serve rush that left a lot of members out in the cold without a home. This way, LL will know how many of each type of home to create so everyone gets their chosen home at the same time. Be like Oprah: You get a home and you get a hoe and YOU GET A HOME!!!

Maybe LL might consider listing the types of homes available -- houseboat, traditional, etc, -- and let members sign up for which one they want instead of the first come. first serve rush that left a lot of members out in the cold without a house. This way, LL will know how many of each type to create so it's fair and everyone gets their chosen home at the same time. Update: I created a thread for this

So this started happening tonite. I log in -- at a SL sandbox because all my other locations weren't letting me log in. Only my hair would rez and then in about a minute I get logged out. What is happening in SL? Anyone else experiencing this?

Thank you. I'll try that fix when/if I can log into SL which seems to now be an issue. Always sumpin'!

ahhhhh... 🙂 I unchecked the HDPI box as you noted, restarted and unfortunately that did not fix the problem. Any other thoughts on what might be causing this?

Not a Retina display. These are the display window settings. HDD is not an option.

Hiya. After the last update Second Life Release 6.2.0.526104 (64bit) when I try to zoom in using my mouse and the Option Alt key, the camera zooms rapidly far out and spins and will not zoom in at all as it always has done. Is this a bug in the the viewer or something I may have inadvertently done to change the key command? It is making camming in SL - especially for content creation - difficult at best. I've never experienced this issue in all my years in SL on PC's or the MacBook. Thank you! Edited to add the SL Viewer update is the EEP version: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Release/6.2.0.526104

UPDATE: Shutting off the computer. restarting and reloading fixed it. I'll leave this here in case anyone else has the same issue. I just now logged into SL and got the update pop-up and like every time before said yes. It did it's thing, then closed the program. When I tried to log back in, this happened. It's totes DOA. Now what? Do I have to re-install the last version? I'm on a MacBook Air running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 - and yes, I haven't upgraded the OS but that hasn't been an issue. Thank you.

Thanks Phil. It's kind of fascinating and disturbing to watch.

****** I figured it out. I had derped on the debug console. The toggle is cntl+shift+4. I'll leave this here in case someone else derps their keystrokes. Derpity derp derp. I accidentally hit some weird combo of keys and now every activity I do in SL from moving my avatar to opening up my inventory or just being logged in is scrolling a non stop block of text. Essentially I'm seeing scrolling text of all the processing in real time. I logged out and back in and it is still there scrolling away. A snippet of what this looks like is attached How do I turn this off because it's taking up almost half my screen and it's freaking me out. Especially the warnings.. Thank you.

Sandboxes are still places to build collectively. There are private and public sandboxes, premium membership sandboxes and LEA has a public group sandbox which a lot of folks use to create things individually and collaboratively. For creating mesh content, check out the Mesh Generator (you can find it on MP) -- it's an inworld tool that that allows you to use inworld building prims then it converts them to a mesh dae file which you download to your computer then upload the mesh model into SL. You can texture up to 8 faces/materials as well. It has add-ons for different shapes too. By no means is it equal to Blender or pro modeling software but it's a great interim inworld tool to create mesh content while learning 3D modeling programs. It's not cheap but for me was worth the investment especially to whip out simple mesh elements. I've seen some amazing work people have created with it.

It looks like a very cool mesh model editing system. However it apparently only works with windows PC's, not Macs per the text at the end of the video.

Hello Lindens and Moles: #3 box isn't working. This is frustrating. Especially this box because getting to it isn't easy. Keep getting this chat message: [03:43] Winter Gift Box v 1.14: Please stop clicking the box. It will not respond to you again unless someone else clicks it first. Another person who was here couldn't get the box to work either. Now we have sadz... The mist just kicked me way from the box -- now I have to try to get back to the box again. Super sadz. I will check back later. Good night.

Update: I just picked up Gift #2 -- it's a much easier clue/find. The gift box at the second location gave the gift but it didn't register on the HUD. >>> Detaching and re-attaching the HUD worked. Gift #2 is def different content than Gift #1. To check the contents, just add the gift box you received from your inventory to your avatar and it will auto open and send the contents in a folder to your inventory when you select Keep. Then you can check the contents asap at the location. Gift #2 is much improved and better experience than Gift #1 - which I hope they are still offering to folks as that one was totes confusing. ADDED: Still can't find where the Premium Tokens to wear are for the "special" skates and snowboards. Does anyone know? Lindens? Moles? Meanwhile...

To The Lindens and The Moles: About 2-3 hours go I finally found the gift box. I found out about this from TP message, went to the online news announcement for Winter Swaginator, got your map SLURL/LM TP and got sent to the Portal. It's not clear what you do next. I just turned 11 on my rez day on Nov 6 and I still had trouble figuring it out so for noobs it must be like WTF? When I finally found the Winter Wonderland portal the first time it flashed the experience pop up but not long enough to say yes. I tried again and was able to TP into WW where I got the swaginator from the sign. I couldn't read the sign right away, it was very slow to rez but I figured sign in middle of landing area, touch it... . Once in WW, I knew from asking in Builder's Brewery group what area the gift was located in -- snowball area which I had trouble at first finding until I saw the signs. Even following the signs was rather confusing but eventually, made it to the Snowball Arena. Found the gift on a bridge however, shortly after I got the gift and it showed up on the swaginator, the gift disappeared so all the people after me were like, where is it? Did it move or is it gone? Many people had sadz... So, Lindens and Moles. This is NOT an easy hunt/gift find like SL15B was. If you want people to spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure this out and then searching two sims for gifts, it would be very helpful (and less frustrating) if you could provide more specific clues AND leave the gifts up for at least 10 days. I only found out about the hunt yesterday so if the first gift "expired" just after I was lucky enough to tag it, then I have no doubt many other people are totally unaware of the winter swaginator or if they just found out, and figured it all out, they are very disappointed to find there is no gift. Unless it moves. Then you NEED to put that in the info online and inworld. Also, where do you get a premium token for the snowboards? That was totes not clear. Suggestions to make this experience a lot more enjoyable: 1. More info online and inworld on how to access Winter Wonderland (go to WW portal, touch portal door/whatever, get experience window, say yes to the experience to TP to WW) 2. Once in WW, the HUD signs are clear once they rez. So touch sign to get HUD, wear it. (You might consider putting MESH letters above the signs that say HUD which would rez faster than the textures on the signs). 3. Once HUD sign is touched, provide more detailed HUNT location information to find the gifts. 4. Leave gifts out for at lest 10-14 days to allow for people to figure all this out and find them. 6. If you move gifts to different locations during their individual 7+ days, please let people know both online and inworld that they moved and what area they moved to. 7. The Snowball Arena should be nicknamed the land of frozen molars/teeth. 😄 8. Please have instructions by the snowboard dispenser on how/where to get the premium member token. I didn't see anything that gave out one. 9. Last but not least: Thank you for making all of this. I realize it's a lot of work. I like the fun surprises here and there and over and under. 😮 10. I am so going to snowball you. 😄

Years ago I did a "ride along" with a couple of people from the Virtual Ability sim on an orientation for a new resident who was legally blind. She was using some special viewer/screen reader combo that allowed her to mouse over objects and the interface between the viewer & screen reader would allow the screen reader to read aloud the object name and info. This also worked for chat and I think notecards. She could also listen to streaming music and streaming media if it had sound and also just regular sounds in SL. You might consider contacting the folks at the Virtual Ability sim to find out what new tech they may know about that visually impaired folks are using in Second Life in addition to what Whirly Fizzle said about increasing the UI font size in preferences.

** CHAT SPAMMERS: This is the second weekend I've been plagued by ass*oles who kept creating and spamming group chats-- I have no idea how or why I was included in these that were littered with really disgusting racist, sexual, sexist, bigoted, etc., awful stuff. As soon as I would block their text, and close the chat, another one would pop up. This was borking my viewer. I couldn't find a way to report the avatars who initiated these group chat spams -- I'm using the SL viewer for Mac and I couldn't find a report avatar button specifically for these group chat spam attacks. Am I missing something in the viewer or user profile window where I can report them while it's going down or is there not a report avatar for abuse button on their profile? These chat spam griefing incidents weren't just annoying, the content was offensive and creepy and violated the LL TOS. OTHER THINGS: 1. INVENTORY SEARCH: Unlike searching for content on marketplace, the search feature in inventory requires exact properly sequenced words so if I want to find all my red shoes or pink elephants, unless i put in the exact name and punctuation elements of each object like red-shoes or shoes red or Jumbos Shoes - Red, I will not get all the red shoes results whereas on MP if I put in pink elephants or red shoes, pretty much everything with those words in them will appear. This should have been an upgrade ages ago. 2. MARKETPLACE SEARCH: Now, this search does work they way it should, however, a bunch of crap that shouldn't come up when doing a search on red shoes or pink elephants does appear because people are either stupid or intentionally annoying and think by putting all kinds of search/words in their product descriptions/tags that I'll see their product and want to buy it. This actually is so annoying it has the opposite effect and I will NEVER buy from that merchant because they are intentionally wasting my time by making me have to scroll through all their crap I am not interested in. This could be fixed by a filter that I could access and filter out that merchant so their content won't appear. There should also be a report button for this. I can see if something might be cross referenced but a lot of these are not. I should not have to wade through a gazillion skanky whore outfits when I'm looking for Catamarans. AND there also needs to be a way to filter out words like GACHA and DEMO so I'm not bombarded with those things either if I don't want to have to scroll through a crapload of search results so a "filter out words" or shops or creators feature would be brilliant. 3. MARKETPLACE REVIEWS: These should be editable so they can be updated so, if a product has issues down the road or you discover some cool thing you didn't notice before or the creator does something really cool or ignores you when you need help, you can update your review. Also, I should be able to find all my reviews in one place so maybe in the list of all the things I've purchased, I would be able to select "show reviewed purchases" and that list comes up. Also I should be able to search my purchases and my favorites and the recently added wish list. 4. MARKETPLACE QUESTIONS: In addition to reviews, there should be a feature on the item page to ask the creator/merchant questions about the item they are selling. Too many people get ripped off buying things that are misleading or lack specific details in the descriptions. The creator/merchant would answer the question there as well. This would also alert buyers to creators/merchants who don't answer their questions and would provide answers for buyers and save creators/merchants from answering the same questions over and over again. 5. SIM ARCHIVING: Being able to save entire sims with all the terraforming, terraform textures, all content, etc., on them so they can be swapped out in a few minutes. This should have always been an option for private sim owners and even for projects like LEA art exhibitions. I have no idea what the storage challenges would be but there could be a small fee to cover that storage. 6. SL VIEWER: Since I mentioned searching inventory and marketplace, why doesn't LL integrate find object(s) on a sim search features into the viewing client like Firestorm has? Also add copy paste features on the build menu so if I want to move an object to the location of another object, I can copy the destination object's vector location by checking a box and then paste it into the object I want to move there. Should also be able to do this for the sizes and for rotations too. If I think of anything else, I will add to the list. Thank you for all you do to keep the lights working in SL. pixels sideways

Thanks for sharing this. BTW, I snuck into your house. Totes love this room -- and the the animated background. I hope you are okay. It appears you may have been eaten by a shark.

Sansar is also not compatible with Macs / Macs are not compatible with Sansar. That's keeping a lot of folks out of that loop. So it's either SL or Open Sim for Mac users. SL doesn't have near the numbers of users like when I first logged in back on 2007 -- that was sort of the heyday period. But it's definitely improved a lot with the addition of mesh and other features. Still expensive if you want your own sim even with the recent reduction in pricing. I do think VR will prevail but the cost of equipment that is VR capable has to come down as well and right now we're in some deeply uncertain times with the crazy stuff going on with the US and trade tariffs so that could change for the worse -- with costs of electronics increasing across the board. The idea of a VR Amazon is still hovering out there but the costs to recreate everything in 3D is high so that may not happen on that scale. I keep seeing more companies using 3D content -- not necessarily in the scope of VR but it's becoming more common especially in home improvement and decorating and of course games and apps. And I have a few VR people and companies that I follow on Twitter so I'm seeing articles all the time about what is happening in VR. There are a lot of interesting things going on -- just not in SL. Education is an area that has seen growth in VR and VR is an ideal match for educational development. The immersive and interactive aspects of VR enhances learning. It's being used in teaching medical procedure, safety training for various industry, and for general academia, history, art history, cultural history -- I can a lot of opportunity for VR. How all of this filters back into Second Life -- that depends on where SL is headed and also the land costs. Education isn't exactly a priority of the current US gov administration so academic institutions are not jumping into VR with fistfuls of dollars when they're not sure about their own basic funding to cover their overhead. On the flip side, online VR classes could have a huge cost advantage, however, that may be more suited to Open Sim where you have more control over you space and the costs are significantly less that SL. SL still has to offer outside of the general fun and game -- but selling that isn't going to be easy -- the novelty has worn off and Open Sim and other VR worlds have gotten a lot better. I'd like to see more collaboration between LL and residents -- especially in crossover SL/RL art projects that exhibit in RL galleries, museums, art festivals. That's an area where VR is definitely making inroads. I also think LL would do well to really support the RP and gaming challenge sims beyond their own. I wanted to ask Ebbe a question but missed the question deadline and the the live Town Hall. It's about sim archiving which would be a very cool feature to have. I started a topic on it in this forum.

My bad -- missed the deadline on the official forum so hoping someone at LL will see this. I have been creating full sim experiences for art and edu in SL since 2008, primarily on the LEA sims. I've also visited sims throughout SL in the 10+ years I've been in SL. So many wonderful places that are gone. While this has long been the transitive ephemeral nature of Second Life, it doesn't have to be. I've discussed with many artists and content creators and having the ability to archive a full sim -- a special kind of inventory where you can select and rez an entire sim exactly as it was -- all the terraforming, content, etc. -- would be pretty awesome. This would be especially great for sims created by people who are no longer active in SL or have passed away. When someone creates a full sim experience, they could archive it and choose some options such as, if I am no longer active in SL, I give my permission to LL to exhibit my work" so that the sims could be handed off to LL as legacy exhibitions so they could be razzed periodically for new residents to explore and be inspired by. This would also be wonderful for RP and and exhibitions by groups or individuals to be able to swap out sims. The cost of a full sim in SL is still very expensive so having the ability to archive sims and swap them out would expand the use of full sims. The LEA sims, for example, if they had been "archived" would be able to provide some amazing full sim exhibitions from the past. Within a few minutes, an exhibition that took someone months to create could be easily recreated. This would also allow people to rework old projects to update with mesh, etc., using the previous sim as a template. I have no clue how much storage an entire full sim full of content, scripts, etc., would take up on a server if it was "zipped." There would obviously be some kind of fee that people would pay to have full sims archived. It should be very nominal though. I think this would also be an economic advantage. People who are struggling to fund one full sim are not going to get another one to create more experiences unless they are willing to scrap all their work on the current one they are using to create a new full sim experience. However, having the ability to archive an entire sim -- and being able to easily reinstate it -- would encourage sim owners to make more use of their sims -- and create or purchase more content for several different sims that could be archived. So that's my question. Can LL set up some kind of full sim archiving capability? Thanks! pixels

It's been fixed. Thank you.

UPDATE: It had been fixed. Thanks Quartz. Hello Lindens and Moles: The SL15B Weekly Gift Box at Bay City airport is not working. The script may need to be reset. Thanks! PS: Looks like someone is trying to fix it . :-)

Thank you. As I noted above, I went with the original touch script. Thank you for info. xoxo