Penny Patton

There's like three completely unrelated issues being talked about in this thread. :smileytongue:

I have never seen someone wander into a tutorial about Photoshop, 3D modelling or any other visual design software, medium or technique and somehow twist it into a personal attack on their work. This sort of attitude seems exclusive to SL.

I added this bit to the version on my blog, but already hit the character limit for my post here. Additional Camera Features I also wanted to mention some interesting camera features that many are aware of, but many are not. Are you aware that you can move your camera around with the mouse as you're avatar is moving? You can even steer your avatar this way for finer control of your avatar in navigating an environment! To make use of this feature simply move your mouse cursor over either your avatar or your avatar's name tag then press and hold the left mouse button. While holding the left mouse button down, move your mouse. You'll find your camera moves as you do, move the camera far enough to the left or right and your avatar will begin to turn in that direction. You can also angle the camera up or down in this way, even as you're walking. This has a bit of an interesting side effect on your movement controls. As long as you continue to hold the left mouse button down the keys that normally turn your avatar left/right will instead cause your avatar to "strafe" to the left or right just as they do when in mouselook!

@Ceera Also, and this would make a good addendum to the article, the reasonb the off-centred view is so popular is precisely because of the "blind spot" issue. When you centre the camera behind your avatar, you are moving that blind spot to the centre of your view. If you notice in the screenshots, you're not seeing the direct rear view of my avatar or those videogame characters, due to the way the camera is angled, the central focus of both your camera and the direction your avatar/character are facing is the same. Say I want to walk up a thin ramp, only about as wide as my own avatar. I'd centre it in my view and press forward. My avatar, despite being offset, would walk up the ramp with no difficulties. If the camera is centred, I'm obscuring the ramp I'm trying to walk up with my own avatar. That's the explanation, at least. I do fully understand that some people just cannot get used to the off-centred view, which is one reason why I think multiple options should be available to users. Willow Danube wrote: Thank you for this very valuable information. I will try this on as soon as I get back home tonight. I have 2 questions... Have you tried using this perspective for activities that requries percision like landing an aircraft on a spot, target shooting or aligning prims? Is there a visible difference if you are in Mouse look? 1) Most vehicles already have their own scripted camera positions. I have found the "over the shoulder" view much better for precision avatar navigation than the standard SL camera placement. Every weapon I've seen in SL (which is admittedly not a lot) has required mouselook to fire, but I do know that the "over the shoulder" view is preferred by many for action games. "third person shooters" utilizing this view are extremely popular. "Dead Space", one of the games I use a screenshot of at the beginning of the article, actually requires a lot of precision shooting as you have to hit limbs and small targets rather than just blasting away. 2) There is no change in mouselook or scripted cameras.

Ceera Murakami wrote: Also, one note: If you choose "Disable camera constraints", your camera doesn't get "forced down by solid object", or blocked from going below the surface of the terrain. As a builder, I usually have Disable Camera Constraints checked, because I need to look from below the terrain some times to adjust foundations or to locate a prim below the ground's surface. That's an interesting note, I wanted to test it myself before adding an addendum to the article because I'd never noticed it myself. I actually had camera restraints off for the screenshots I posted (I do a little bit of building now and then) so I reverted to the default camera and tested out a solid ceiling with restraints on and off. I set up a ceiling at 2.5m high And walked under it. That's not mouselook, the camera is situatied above my head, pushed forward by the ceiling so the point where I can't see my own avatar at all. The things is, the above screenshots are from when I had camera restraints disabled. It was the exact same result either way. You also could not zoom out further than the wall, regardless of camera restraints being on or off. Of course, this does not affect alt+camming, but speaking just of the camera in the default follower position it will snap to when you start moving. This was also just a test with regartds to camera behaviour around prims, as you say disabling restraints allows you to zoom out much further and move the camera under terrain, which is why I regularly have restraints disabled. There is also a camera "minimum" restraints which allows you to zoom into the avatar mesh or alt+cam inside a hollow object without the camera being forced out. I know you can find that feature in TPVs like Phoenix, not sure where it is in the stock LL viewer, but it's a great and handy feature for builders and for adjusting attachments.

Originally posted at the Digital Pasture. This article is intended to illustrate the effects of camera placement on our engagement to, our ability to navigate and our freedom to create content within virtual worlds such as Second Life. I touched on much of this in "A Matter of Scale", but wanted to expand on the specific issues of camera placement in SL beyond the impact on scale, as well as explain how the camera placement settings in Second Life actually work. A Matter of PerspectiveThe importance of camera placement in virtual environments. "The video game industry spent a decade learning important lessons about how camera placement impacts our interaction with, and enjoyment of, virtual worlds -- lessons Linden Lab cannot afford to ignore." If you're in your late 20's or early 30's and have been playing video games since the 90's you probably recall what a hot issue camera placement was up until about 2005. In the early days of third person 3D video games how well the camera behaved was one of the primary concerns of most gamers. It could, quite literally, make or break a game. From the time the first 3D gaming consoles arrived up until about 2005 every review of a third person video game made some mention of the camera placement and how it affected or hindered game-play as games came and went with varying degrees of success in dealing with the camera issue. The video game industry takes the issue of camera placement very seriously, trying many approaches to the issue to see what worked and what didn't. In 2005 Capcom's "Resident Evil 4" hit the market with a new "over the shoulder" camera view that worked so well for third person videogames that it has become the industry standard.  Why is the over the shoulder view so popular? There's three primary reasons. Environment Creation - The camera is crucial to environment design. You can't have cramped, claustrophobic corridors or a small shed in the woods if the camera sits so high it will wind up on the wrong side of the walls or ceiling. Larger environments don't seem nearly as large and impressive. Everything needs to be upscaled for usability and aesthetic impact, which presents additional problems, such as the fact that it will become increasingly difficult to keep the on-screen characters in scale with the environment. Usability - The additional sense of "place" extends to a more intuitive sense of where your avatar is standing in relation to your surroundings, even when you may not be able to see your avatar's feet. This makes it easier to navigate your environment Many early third person games would centre the camera behind the character. The problem here was that it placed a "blind spot" directly where you most need to be able to see. Off-setting the camera to a shoulder view moved the blind spot out of the most critical viewing area. Immersion - Placing the camera closer to eye level puts you, the player, into that world, rather than making you an outside observer watching from afar. It gives you more a sense of presence within the world. As you can imagine, all of this translates directly into a non-game 3D environment like SL, especially in the case of environment creation which is much more important directly to SL users, since the environments in SL are all user created. Let's take a look at the camera placement in Second Life. Second Life has had the same camera placement since Linden Lab first opened the doors in 2003. The camera placement in SL is set very high above the avatar. Zoomed out far enough to see your whole avatar it sits approximately 2 metres over your avatar. When you try to zoom in, the camera continues to rest at least half a metre over you, with only the very top of your head remaining visible on screen. Compare these screenshots to the video game screenshots above. How does Second Life's camera placement affect environment creation, usability and immersion? Take that building to the right of my avatar in the screenshots above. The criss-crossing roof supports sit at about 2.65m high. For a bit of perspective, the average ceiling in the average apartment/house sits lower at 2.45m high. I'm not even talking the roof itself, which peaks much higher. Despite the high ceiling, this is what it looks like when I wander inside with SL's camera placement. The environment creation issues are apparent immediately. As we walk inside we find that the camera sits above the supports. If the ceiling was solid instead of a phantom sculpt, it would push the camera down below the ceiling, but it would still be angled down, at the back of my head. By resting so far above the avatar, the SL camera pushes up minimum required ceiling height. Taller ceilings will make buildings and rooms look stretched, which encourages people to expand outwards to compensate. This contributes to SL's scale problems by pushing environments out of scale with avatars, which encourages people to make larger avatars, which in turn pushes the camera up further because the taller your avatar is the higher up the camera rests. This greatly reduces your freedom to create in SL, since you are then forced to compensate for the SL camera. At least if you are designing an area open to the public, such as a shop, club or a role-play sim. Also, larger builds eat up more prims and more space, leaving you with fewer options for content and detail in your build. These same issues make it extremely difficult to navigate smaller environments in SL, contributing to tendencies to greatly over-scale environments in SL. You just need much more space to see your surroundings than you would with camera placement closer to eye level. You can also see from these screenshots how the view in SL is more removed from your avatar than the shown in the video game examples, reducing immersion and engagement. You are not inside the room with your avatar, you are watching a character on a screen from above. Why should this matter to me? I'm always alt+camming around my environment anyways! Chances are you're only using alt+cam to zip your camera around your environment when you're standing still. So as long as you're moving, camera placement is important. SL is not IMVU, your avatar isn't a static element in a 3D environment hopping between pre-set poses within a room, you can walk around, explore. If you want to explore a cave, wander the corridors of a dark spaceship, a dimly lit fallout shelter, or simply walk from one room to another in your own hosue in SL you are affected by this. Is there any way to improve the camera placement in SL? Yes, it's actually quite easy. Some readers may recall that Torley Linden posted, some time ago, a video with instructions on how to adjust the camera placement in SL. Unfortunately Torley's video only covered half the process. There are actually two debug settings you need to change to properly adjust your camera placement in SL. Here's a screenshot to help you visualize the settings. It helps to think of these two debug settings as tacks on a cork board with a string tied between them. "A" in the graphic above represents your "CameraOffset", this is the setting Torley mentions in the video. "B" in the graphic represents your "FocusOffset", in simple terms this is the area in space where your camera is pointed. Let's take a look at what happens when you adjust "A", the Camera Offset, without adjusting "B", the Focus Offset. With lowering "A", the Camera Offset, to eye level while leaving "B", the FocusOffset, where it was "A" is now below "B", meaning your camera is actually pointed at an upwards angle. Not much of an improvement now that your camera is looking up towards the sky. It allows you to more easily deal with lower ceilings, but disrupts your sense of "place" in your environment. So this is why we need to also adjust "B", to keep the camera angled forward and down. Seeing is believing, here's a few comparison shots between the default SL camera placement and some custom settings I'll share in a moment. The default camera is on the left, my own settings on the right. In an open environment you don't run into too many difficulties, although you are more removed from your avatar, as if watching from above. The lower camera angle brings you into the world with your avatar. It's more like "being there". Inside is more of an issue, here I've even angled the camera down slightly so it's below the ceiling support beams, but what you can't see here is that this caused issues between my camera and the wall behind me. My camera continuously snapped from inside to outside the wall. I have no such issue with my own camera settings on the right. Also, you can see that it is much easier to judge where I am in the room in relation to the hay bales scattered about than it is with the default camera placement where my avatar is cut off above the waist. I don't even see the ceiling supports from an eye level view unless I angle my camera up! Will altering my camera affect items with scripted camera controls? Not one bit. Vehicles, camera positioning HUDs, chairs that take over your camera placement, will all work exactly as they did before. What if I don't like the changes after I've made them? Simply look up the two debug settings you changed and click the "Reset to Defaults" button for each one. This will reset your camera to the original SL default placement, exactly as it was before you made any changes. Alright, how do I change my camera placement? This is simple, but I will need to go into a bit of detail because it is slightly different between 1.x viewers and Viewer 2. I am including in these directions the changes one needs to make to get either a centred view or a left shoulder offset. Most people prefer the right shoulder offset however some people who do not play many videogames have found the offset view difficult to adjust to and I've had at least one person ask me how to get a left shoulder view. First you need to reveal the Advanced menu at the top of your screen. To do this simply press ctrl+alt+a and the menu will appear to the right of the Help menu in your menu bar. Viewer 2 users can also go to the Advanced tab in Preferences and select to have the Advanced menu shown. From the Advanced menu select "Show Debug Settings", near the bottom. The Debug Settings panel will appear. At the top of the Debug Settings panel is a field where you can type the name of the setting you'd like to adjust. Viewer 2 users will want to type "CameraOffsetRearView". People using a 1.x viewer will instead type "CameraOffsetDefault". The panel provides you with three integers to change for the x, y and z placement of your CameraOffset. Change them to these settings; x: -2.000 y: -0.400 ( Make positive for a right shoulder offset, leave as 0.000 for a centred view. ) z: -0.200 Once that is done click on the input field again and move to the next setting; Viewer 2 users will type "FocusOffsetRearView". People using 1.x viewers will type "FocusOffsetDefault". Once more you will have x, y and z positions, this time for the focus point. Change them to these settings; x: 0.900 y: -0.700 ( Make positive for a right shoulder offset, leave as 0.000 for a centred view. ) z: 0.200 Viewer 2 users will see their camera change as they enter each number, 1.x users may need to restart SL to see the changes to their camera take effect. Enjoy your new perspective in Second Life! I recommend visiting sims like Mont St. Michel, Doomed Ship, the Wastelands and the 1920's Berlin Project, all of which are vastly improved by better camera placement, to see just how different it can be when travelling through small corridors, underground tunnels and through 1=1 scale environments. Here is a Jira requesting these changes be made in the official viewer. The nice thing is that with one of the Viewer 2 updates LL introduced camera placement presets. There is now a rear view, front view and a side/group view camera preset built into Viewer 2. This is why the Camera and Focus Offsets were renamed for Viewer 2. This means LL could easily add in more presets, such as creating a new default preset, while retaining the old camera placement as a "classic view" for residents unable to adjust to a new camera placement. They could also make the left shoulder offset and centred view as easily selectable presets one can choose from either the "Preferences" window or the "View" panel. Given the popularity of the "over the shoulder" view it seems guaranteed to help draw in and retain more new users and with how simple it is to implement it's a wonder they haven't already.

I've posted a more complete version of this article on my blog. Basically, I've compiled all of the additions and screenshots that would not fit into the original post here after I hit the character limit. Some of the stuff like the screenshots showing camera placement comparisons and a few more details about avatar proportion I had to cut to fit changes into the post here have all been compiled into a single, comprehensive article about scale in SL. Also, I now have a blog!

I'm sure someone must have pointed this out by now, but it bears repeating, You can use spaces. That is what display names are for. Your username is not meant to be displayed as a name, it is the name of your account not your avatar. The problem is not that usernames aren't display names, it's that Linden Lab does not properly explain display names to new users. (Or old users, for that matter.) It also doesn't help that LL sets usernames as appearing in nametags by default. I don't need to see two names floating over an avatar's head and I get enough access to usernames that I can double check someone's username at a glance if necessary. (I don't even need to click anything, just slide my mouse cursor over their avatar and there it is!)

That's what I said, avatars shorter than the ground sit pose is intended for will sink.

Canoro Philipp wrote: some people care about connecting their profiles to Facebook, Flickr, and every entity possible on the web, they just have to have it all. Facebook bring us some advantages, the posts stream is a good idea, unfortunately, Facebook played with our data, irrespective of our needs for privacy, and that leaved a scar on many people that think that a data streaming service is an invasion of privacy. i see this move, creating our own stream of data as a separation of Linden Lab from Facebook, if Facebook dont want to provide us with the service, we can have our own, and inworld, if some people see advantage in a data streaming service for their clients and friends, they dont have to have a Facebook account, where their data can be in danger. for those who still prefer to have a Facebook account, they can do so. if Linden Lab denies them that because some dont want to use a data streaming service it would be unfair to them, why taking off a feature because some users dont use it? You're right. I was painting with a broad brush stroke there. Still, SL's strength is as an entertainment venue. Looking at people's profiles we see a very significant portion of SL's users take a "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" approach, and regardless developing SL's in-world social tools would be a boon to both LL and the residents. I'm hoping LL isn't blind to that, they've been chasing the Facebook dream for a while now and it has not been working out well for them or us.

I'm hoping this is a very early work in progress with a lot of changes coming. My biggest worry is that LL will continue to chase the Facebook bandwagon in vain rather than actually improve their own product in ways that actually matter and really will draw more people into SL. No one cares about connecting to Facebook and Twitter, people who use, or will use, SL need better tools to connect to other SL users, SL events, and SL locations. Not twitter feeds and Facebook accounts.

Keli Kyrie wrote: Sleeping since Valentine's Day? Viewer 2.5 with Web Profiles Has Arrived This is why it's a good idea to read the comments before posting. No, he's not talking about the web profiles we've had since 2.5.

Elite Runner wrote: Are you referring to web profiles? No, he's referring to a new kind of web profile that LL is testing. https://my-demo.secondlife.com/penny.patton

I saw a link to these in another forum. I'm tentatively impressed, as I've long said LL should push much harder to make profiles a social tool that brings people together in SL and makes it easier for people to get invested in SL through the people they meet. So far the new "Social Profiles" seem very basic, but it's a start. I'm hoping you can eventually use these to hold conversations with people even when one or both of you are not in SL, maybe create "Social Circles" similar to Google+, and maqybe tie profiles closer to land and groups. Like maybe in addition to listing your groups you can also list land you own, or estates you manage, or land owned by groups you're in. With, of course, the option to hide any of these for privacy reasons. Maybe LL could introduce a "postcard" feature that lets you have a separate "wall" where you can post screenshots with a short description and an link that lets visitors to your profile see the places you've been? Maybe for the groups you show or land picks in your profile you also see events being hosted by those groups or under that land, as well as events tyou yourself have posted. Could do the same for the "postcard" feature I mentioned, list upcoming events for that location along with everything else. There's really just so much LL could be doing with profiles.

Really LL needs to stop making good settings so difficult for the average user. Breast physics are just one example. The sliders we have for adjusting breast physics should be considered "for advanced users", with regular users able to select easily from a bunch of clearly labeled easily selectable presets. This can be applied to other aspects of SL, like body shapes. Provide a selection of pre-made shapes selectable right from the appearance editor (Super Hero, High Elf, Dwarven Warrior, Athletic, Overweight, et cetera). They should also improve SL's default settings in general. Ever seen SL with an actually well made day cycle? It looks so much better you could post screenshots and people wouldn't even realize it's SL.

A few people I know use IMVU a lot and several people who came to SL from IMVU. One thing I've learned from them is that most IMVU users considered IMVU prettier and more capable than SL. Yes, you read that right. IMVU users often think that IMVU has much better graphics than SL. Not even slightly, we're talking substantially. On one occaission a friend of mine who uses IMVU was showing off screenshots of my recent builds in SL at the time to people she knew in IMVU. One of these people declared, "That's not SL. I've used SL and it does not look like that." Whether certain elements of the SL community like it or not, this is how a lot of people feel about SL. From LL's marketing to the new user experience, people are given a very strong impression that SL is ugly and incapable of good graphics. I've even had Lindens react to my own SL screenshots like that. "Wow, what game is that from?" "Um, that's something I'm building in SL." "THOSE are SL screenshots?!" Combine this less than stellar impression of SL's graphics with an extremely sharp learning curve (SL has never had a proper new user tutorial) and IMVU's popularity should not be surprising.

Unfortunately there's no easy way to offset a ground sit animation. If you adjust your Z position as others have suggested, you will need to un-adjust it again the moment you stand up or it will leave you floating over the ground. The best suggestion would probably be to grab one of those "Open Collar" slave collars and remove the z offset animations from it, find one that works well when played in conjunction with your ground sit animation. Unfortunately, this will only work if your sit animation is not a higher priority than the Z offset animations. ------------------------------------------------------------------ The problem is due to a combination of SL's scale issues with poorly made ground sit poses. Some animators simply create the ground sit pose without understanding how the avatar's in-world placement is affected. More often, however, the problem is due to the huge variety of avatar sizes possible in SL. Most avatars are about 7' tall. If your avatar is shorter, even a little, than the size avatar the ground sit pose is made for, it will place you in the ground. instead of on top of it. The "Average" avatar can be anywhere from 6'5" to 8'10", the vast majority of avatars fall in this range, and most people have absolutely no idea how large their avatar is, adding to the confusion.

Keep in mind that you won't be able to build accurate recreations of real-world buildings without visitors running into problems. Avatars are most commonly between 6'8" and 8' tall (the height given in the appearance editor and many scripted "height detectors" are wrong) and crouching does not affect your physical bounding box so there is no way for them to even fit through the door of an accurately constructed real world building. Up-scaling will work, but it also dramatically increases the amount of prims and land area you'll need.

Greene Paine wrote: So I was curious, is it possible to have ANY online argument without -any- trolls emerging? What if the argument is already proven 100% correct and there is no other side? Would it be possible to craft an argument so perfectly that no troll could find ammunition, or their counter-argument would be so silly as to invoke endless laughter? I wrote an article about scale in SL. The article had nothing to do with judging the size of current SL avatars or even trying to convince them to shrink down, rather the article was focused on the effects of scale in SL. Pointing out basic, gradeschool geometry such as the fact that four 10x10m squares will fit inside a single 20x20m square. All of the dissenting comments were from people who somehow twisted that around to me wanting to impose size limits on avatars, have LL force everyone to shrink their avatars down, and one particularly off balanced person even suggested it was some sort of age player conspiracy. In fact, at one point before I wrote my article I was trying to explain this to a person using that specific example, that four 10x10m squares will fit inside a single 20x20m square and they claimed that was not true. So, yes, trolls will come out even if their "counter-arguments" so completely miss the mark as to be laughably silly.

Linden Grass is basically a bunch of 2-sided planes with flat 1-bit alpha textures on them. It will always conform to surface of the ground you rez it on. Each instance takes up only 1 prim. There are sculpted alternatives with better texture work. Try looking in the marketplace.

Kasya Sciavo wrote: They are making money quite nicely, and let's not forget they trimmed the staff last year into the bargain. Generally cutting 60% of your workforce, including skilled people in critical positions, generally is not considered a good thing. Not the sign of a company "making money quite nicely." Fact of the matter is concurrency has dropped since the peak of the hype bubble and LL also lost a lot of lucrative corporate accounts because they failed to develope the platform in a direction that was useful for such accounts and their entire idea of corporate accounts within SL (Basically framing it as a virtual office space) was ill conceived. As such their heavy investments in products such as "Enterprise" amounted to tossing money out the window. Also, they do advertise. I see SL advertisements now and then. Too often it looks like they're mimicking IMVU's marketing and usually the imagery they use to promote SL more likely feeds people's bad impressions of SL. Their new CEO strikes me as a pretty savvy guy, so I'm thinking he realizes they needed to fix new user retention before trying to draw more people in. Due to some good changes they're starting to see better retention. When it gets up to a comfortable level they'll likely start pushing the advertising side of things more.

I absolutely love the robot and vehicle avatars, they're extremely well done. The anthro animal avatars seem a bit odd. Like the attachments, as well made as they are, were slapped on a shape they weren't meant for. The arms on said shape are a bit too short, too. Still, the prim parts are well made and additional diversity is fantastic. I'd love to see the human avatars brought up to a higher level of quality. Not to mention brought down in size, the current human starters are all around 7' tall!

Peggy Paperdoll wrote: So you are advocating that LL discontinue user created content, delete all that's been user created and supply professionally created content in it's place? That's about the only way you will get past that "Second Life is Ugly". You might be able to put into place some basic skills requirement for content creators......Blue Mars tried that and look where they are now. That would also drive most of the present residents away. Then it's starting over with a brand new demographic. It might work. And LL might make billions if they did it (doubtful, but it's possible). And Second Life would then fall from unique to mundane............another run of the mill virtual game/world/social network. It wouldn't be SL whatever it would be. White washing it will "new user experience" doesn't change what it would mean to the platform. No, that's not what I advocate at all, and also you are very wrong that such a course of action would be the only way to make SL look good for marketing materials and new residents. Peggy Paperdoll wrote: --------------------------------------------------------------- Second Life is UGLY. It doesn't have to be. Actually, there's some gorgous sims in SL which illustrate just how good SL can look in the hands of an experienced artist. But...most SL users are not experienced artists, and obviously LL has no experienced artists in a position to affect starter avatars, the new user orientation, or overseeing the face LL puts forward when marketing SL. As a result, to the public at large SL like this. Ugly, maleformed avatars in blocky, poorly textured environments. The images LL uses to market SL are often not much better. This is only reinforced by the new user experience, where users are given a selection of t-rex armed, pin headed avatars to choose from before diving into confusing, fullbright orientation areas that don't really teach them anything and then drop them in one of a selection of hand-picked, but usually not very well made, locations. Getting people to join SL only backfires if you drive them away with an awful first impression. Before LL throws money away on making that bad first impression they need to completely revamp the new user experience. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first point in a "report" such as you posted is the tone setter for the entire report.............that first point is discribing something other than what SL is. It says a great deal about the reporters knowledge of the subject. When someone says SL is ugly and LL should............*fill in the blank* they just demonstrated that they know nothing about Second Life. If you want SL to become something completely different then just say so.......don't try to impress by showing ignorance. Making comments like the above, which are directly contradicted by the contents of what you're replying to, make it seem like you didn't actually read before commenting. The bolded, underlined comments that "SL is ugly" and "there's nothing to do in SL" are common complaints, not my own judgement of what SL is. In fact, if you read the very next sentence you'd realize that.

LL has done an extremely poor job of advertising SL, but it's a bit more complicated than saying they need to improve their advertising, run some sort of gimmick sign-up drive, or advertise more. No, first LL needs to do a better job of presenting SL to new users. A bad first impression costs LL in both the short term and the long term. SL sees lots of sign-ups, but abysmal retention, They need to find ways to keep people here and to do that they have to ask themselves why new users don't stay. Second Life is UGLY. It doesn't have to be. Actually, there's some gorgous sims in SL which illustrate just how good SL can look in the hands of an experienced artist. But...most SL users are not experienced artists, and obviously LL has no experienced artists in a position to affect starter avatars, the new user orientation, or overseeing the face LL puts forward when marketing SL. As a result, to the public at large SL like this. Ugly, maleformed avatars in blocky, poorly textured environments. The images LL uses to market SL are often not much better. This is only reinforced by the new user experience, where users are given a selection of t-rex armed, pin headed avatars to choose from before diving into confusing, fullbright orientation areas that don't really teach them anything and then drop them in one of a selection of hand-picked, but usually not very well made, locations. Getting people to join SL only backfires if you drive them away with an awful first impression. Before LL throws money away on making that bad first impression they need to completely revamp the new user experience. LL needs to hire a creative director. One who has both experience as a professional designer, and a solid understanding of SL. They need to give that person authority to make decisions, like quality requirements for new user starter avatars contracted out to resident creators so they're not just getting more poorly proportioned 7' tall bad impressions as starter avatars. Someone to design, or oversee the construction of new welcome areas. New users should log in for the first time and instead of seeing this they should see this or this. LL needs to encourage and promote amazing, great looking and interactive builds in SL. They also need to, through a revamped new user orientation and improved search, teach people how to go out on their own and find amazing content. In short, new users need to be able to look good right off of orientation island, be exposed to high caliber content right off the bat and shown how to find more. That's just the visual side. There's nothing to do in SL! That's not true, of course, but it's a common complaint. There's definitely some truth to the complaint in that it's extremely difficult for new users to find a reason to stick around, and LL doesn't do anything to really help them. LL also needs to hire people who understand getting users engaged and invested in a social/game environment. Linden Homes are something of a misstep. Right idea, bad execution. Good because Linden Homes get users "owning land", which is an investment in the environment. Bad because Linden Homes are ugly (See the entire first point about presentation above) and they hurt the resident run land business by putting LL in direct competition with them. A third point is that they fail to build community which is another key to makeing customers (residents) invested in the product (Second Life). A better way of doing it would to have created better looking, more prim efficient Linden Homes but made the homes actually count against the 512sq.m. parcel's prim limit. Why would this be a better way? If LL could make nice looking houses that were actually prim efficient they could illustrate just how much can really be done with a 512 parcel, which encourages users to strike out on their own buying land elsewhere, in turn leading to the person becoming even more invested in SL. Showing how much you can actually do with a 512 parcel would encourage people not interested in Linden Homes but wanting land to pick some up by showing them they don't need to own a quarter of a sim just to build something nice. Resident Land Barons would not be at a disadvantage competing with Linden Homes. They would have the advantage of unique living experiences and themed communities to offer new residents, without the prim limit handicap. I'd probably also make an easy to find in-client tutorial about finding land in SL, complete with a short Torley video showing off resident run communities (tho probably not naming them, just showing them to drive up interest in the resident). LL can drive up a sense of community by improving profiles and land information pages. It seems new social-oriented profiles are coming, which is great, but how about land? Why not turn the page that appears when you search for land display multiple screenshots? Say, three? And also have it include a shout board/wall for visitors to post messages, impressions, etcetera (moderated by the land owner themselves). Just throwing an idea out there, but how about letting people rank sims? Just a 0-5 stars, no need for an actual text review just short Tweet length wall post. How about the land page actually displays upcoming events that will be taking place on that land? And what about groups? Groups should be a hub of social gatherings. How about instead of "group IM" that pops up whenever there's a new IM to the group, make a group "room" instead. An IRC-like chatroom people can join or leave at will. A group shout-out board. A list of events linked to that group, etcetera. People shouldn't just be using groups for titles or build rights. Groups should be an actively engaging part of the SL experience. A draw that brings people back again and again, and keeps them connected even when unable to be logged in. LL doesn't need to do all this before marketing, of course, but they should at least improve the new user experience so it doesn't drive potential new residents away, screaming and telling others how horrible SL is. Once the new user experience is improved, LL should begin marketing heavily, even if they're still trying to improve in other areas. LL should advertise all across the board, as SL has extremly broad appeal. Gaming sites, YouTube video advertisements, hobby magaine page ads, etcetera. Target the ads at specific markets. An ad on a videogame site would show off the game like elements of SL. RP areas, cyberpunk cities and combat sims. Other ads could focus on the social aspect, or the Farmville like social games, or just play up the sexy like IMVU tends to do.

Couldn't resist pointing out a few things. Spectran wrote: Gosh, I'm new here. I fell like i MIGHT be saying something stupid, But I still feel that the need to complain might be something beneficial. I would wish that Second Life Forums would contain a whole 'Wish List" subforum. It is manufactured by jinnis after all, right? What else do I wish for 'Second Life'? Plenty of wish for its evolution! * Better graphics over time-- can it compete with PS3 and Xbox360? Can it compete with film? Actually, SL is capable of far better graphics than most people realize, including the Lindens. LL's approach to graphics has always been 100% technology. Adding local lighting, flexi prims, windlight and glow, shadows, mesh. Technologies that make better graphics possible. This ignores the artistic and aesthetic side of things. LL's own windlight defaults are terrible. The human starter avatars and default "new shape" are horrendously bad, LL's new "Depth of Field" effect defaults are also terrible. We lack tools to make better looking content. Do you know how large your avatar is? Probably not. Until Viewer 2.1 LL provided nothing about avatar size in the appearance editor. Now they do, but the height displayed is wrong. Scale is an important design element, but issues like this toss it out the window. Proportion guides, decent starter shape templates to work from, the ability to lock proportions or scale a body shape up or down while retaining proportions! The system skins could be made to look every bit as good as uploaded texture layers, just by improving the art assets that make them up! The Fallout/Oblivion games use basically the same setup and achieve much better results. Built-in sculpting tools allowing people to "bake" regular prims into sculpts to save prims would go a LONG way towards improving how SL looks. Ever considered camera placement? It has always been a hot topic in videogames. Good camera placement is considered a feature, and until Resident Evil 4 arrived in 2005 videogames were constantly striving for better camera placement for third person 3D environments. SL's camera placement has not benefited at all from that, it still looks like camera placement from a videogame made in 1996. A talented and skilled 3D artist who understands SL's tool set and its problems can manage to turn out some amazing visuals in SL. Ever seen the futuristic city at Hangars Liquides? The sci-fi/horror sim Doomed Ship? The African safari sim Cap Estel? Amazing looking sims seem to be SL's best kept secrets. You wouldn't need to be a pro level artist to turn out such amazing builds if LL helped out new users a bit more with better tools and some proper building tutorials. Every Linden sandbox should have a set of building tutorials in it, talking users through creating simple to increasingly complex items. Spectran wrote: *Better interactivity-- how easy or possible is it to go jetboarding, skiing, snowboarding, parachuting, flying a kite, adventure gaming, imagining anything, interacting with the environment in any which way? SL has some clunky capabilities in this regard, but a certain level of interactivity is possible with adequate scripting capabilities. I'd like to see LL add in the ability to animate environments and the ability to populate sims wtih faux-avatar "NPC objects". Fake avatars you can dress up and animate like a real avatar, but also use an NPC tool set to make them walk/run around on a set path, engage actual avatars in scripted dialogue, and interact with the environment via scripted events. I'd also like LL to finally give avatars the ability to crouch and crawl under low ceilings. Long overdue. Spectran wrote: * Vehicles please! Or at least the ability to run, fer Christ's sake. Am I missing something here? There should be the ability to purchase your avatar a vehicle, be it a flying saucer, truck, scuba gear, jet pack, cheetah, snail, or portal gun, all with different speeds. We already have both vehucles and the ability to run. I do wish we could do more with vehicles, like give them a suspension system that actually raises and lowers wheels/treads/etcetera with the terrain. Double tap in any direction to make your avatare run. Vehicles do have different speeds you can set (most people make their own vehicles too fast, making them difficult to control and making SL's large sims seem smaller than they are) but we're stuck with one set of walking/running speeds. I think if you crouchwalk you walk a bit slower than regular walking. I wish we could have some control over this as a "Wearable" like avatar physics. I'd love to make a big, bulky avatar carrying a huge backpack and make them walk slower than a short, thin avatar that sprints everywhere. Spectran wrote: * Better sound synthesis-- when there's a song playing, I don't want to suddenly hear it. I want to slowly hear it more as I get closer to it, just like it is in 'real life'. Same with voices. SL already has this too, just lots of people set it up poorly. Voices give you the option of setting your ability to hear them according to either your avatar position or your camera position. In-world sounds are also dependant on where your camera is (so if you zoom in on a radio playing a music loop, the radio will get louder as your camera gets closer to it). I'd love the ability to stream music/media audio directly in-world via prims. As in, instead of a parcel music stream, the music stream plays through a radio on the land, subject to your distance from it like voice and in-world sounds. Spectran wrote: * Better customization over time-- customize the flash of light that happens when you warp to new worlds. Customize the way your voice sounds. Customize the censorship. Customize the desires. Customize everything! SL already pretty much does this. It just takes a bit of know-how. I'm beginning to realize you're new here. Spectran wrote: * Earn your magic-- maybe you shouldn't even let these people fly to begin with. Make it a game. Do you realize how much you could be selling? !00 Lindens per angel wing~! Okay, maybe we should fly to begin with, just as in a dream. But can you imagine how much more is possible, and what secrets to behold? Only when you won sacred dragonfire can you see what lays behind the curtain! Make it perfectly accessible for people to create a video game in each world! How about the Sims version 900000000000000000! Don't really agree with this. I'm content with landowners being able to turn the ability to fly on or off. The extra immersion by keeping people grounded is great for game and role-play sims, but awful for shopping malles and sandboxes. Spectran wrote: * Make a complete synthesis with the genius of the computer! Can you Skype people you know at second life while driving down the street? What's their cyber-cell #? Can I watch true cinema at the cyber-through theatre? Can I completely interact the virtues of my PC with the the Cyberian outback? Certainly possible! I think LL introduced a feature giving avatars a "telephone number" or something like that a while ago, but to my knowledge nobody uses it. Not sure if the feature is still around. Being able to skype with a person, or group, in-world could be a nifty feature, but probably very limited in usefulness for most of us. And yes, you actually can find movie theatres in SL playing actual movies. I watched War of the Worlds in SL around 2005-2006. Being a virtual theatre did not make the movie any better, but being able to heckle it in a virtual theatre with friends was a lot of fun. Spectran wrote: * Infinite programming possibilities * And I'm sure I could think of a bagillion more. Can you? In good conscience, what would you suggest? While not infinite, there's certainly a very broad amount of possibilities in SL, you just need to have the know-how. If I made a wish list for SL it would mainly be themed around a couple of concepts, providing the tools to help people create better content regardless of their initial 3D modelling/programming experience. Second, I'd wish for LL to do a better job in actually protraying the possibilities of SL to new residents. Why are none of SL's welcome areas as good looking as the sims I named above? Why doesn't LL show people the possibilities with avatars by providing good ones (they actually added some great robot and vehicle avatars recently, but the human avatars are still terrible), why does LL provide so little direction, so little instruction to new users? Yes, SL is a world where people make their own fun, but you are much better equipped to do so when you understand how SL works. LL seriously needs to revamp the content creation tools, the new user experience, and their presentation of SL to both new users and via their marketing materials.