Oct Oyen

That has been the ways of LL doing things, but they do deliver eventually (most of it); just not in a timely fashion. LL may not have the internal human resources to add it to their plates. But LL has fundings, they could fund some Blender.org folks to carry out the project. I'm talking about a super simple 3D modeling program that goes a bit beyond in-world prims, has just enough functions to get people to understand the fundamentals of making 3D objects for game engine like SL. Anyways, just throwing ideas out there, hopefully LL is listening.

Every generation has its own slackers population and they will drop out in natural selection process. SL needs to get a lot of new people to try it and let natural selection takes it course. It's also important to present a clear idea what one can do in SL and provide comprehensive helps for the chosen path through video tutorials and mentors...etc. They are tones of tutorials made by SL residents. But one will never find them if one doesn't know what to look for. In-world prims and editing tools system are very limited and dated. Blender on the other hand is intimidating as hell due to its Swiss army knife nature. There's a great opportunity for LL to create a super simple 3D modeling program based on Blender's code and have direct upload to SL and Sansar, plus export standard 3D formats. Like what Sketchup was before Google bought it, Zbrush is doing that with its free simplified version called Sculptris. The purpose is to get their feet wet while learning the industry standard 3D modeling principles and use SL as a sandbox. If it's done right, it could become the gateway program for getting into 3D creations.

Happy holidays people!! Go easy on the eggnog (just throw up a little in my mouth thinking about it) Didn't LL used to send out weekly newsletters via email? I agree with the notion that many residents know more about SL than some of LL employees (Torley Linden been the exception). A simple solution is have LL hire residents who are passionate about what they do in SL. Running the newsletter, being mentors or ambassadors...etc. The cost of hiring contractors would be a small pocket change compare to what LL is burning outside of SL, coughsansar. BTW, there seems to be more drama addicts here than I remember. Did SL universe closed or something?

There are some great ideas here. Does LL read the forums at all?

I believe there's a threshold point, once daily concurrency falls below it. The decline will accelerate exponentially until it bottoms out, if it doesn't bottom through it. It is my hope to get the conversation started and try out different approaches before we hit the threshold point.

I've not been actively participating in SL for some times. Each time I come back from months long break, I notice the world feels a little more emptier. SL has been steady, steadily declining as its own chart shows. Anyways, I have no stake in the game. Just hate to see it goes. Hello Blush, it has been ages. I'm glad to hear you're keeping yourself busy. It's a good news that text based VR still appeal to some of young generations. Consider almost the entire generation practically lives in social medias that have popped up the last few years.

"SL is dying" is nothing new for those of us who have been around for while. That being said, I'm a bit worry about its steadily declining stats. These days I hardly encounter real new residents who are less than two years old, it's mostly people who joined SL during the hype era and their shinny alts or days old residents who are lost and confused. Is SL suffering from Facebook syndrome? i.e. current state of SL just doesn't appeal to new generations. If that's the case, then LL should be very worry about the declining stats. I hope to get the conversation started before it's too late. What are things LL can do to retain new residents? IMO, SL is a sandbox game. It's also a huge and complex world. It would be very helpful for LL to create a comprehensive how-to video tutorials. For building stuff, starting with inworld prims and then move on to open-source software like Blender and Gimp. Like Torley Linden used to do, whatever happen to him? His vids aren't on LL Youtube channel. Tutorial vids on LL channels are piece-mealed together from different authors on various topics. A coherent and comprehensive bite-size tutorials can be a good guide for new comers. This is my suggestion from builders point of view.

Thanks for the insights.

Very classic.

That's fine, but why does the SL Plugin in Firestorm needs to connect to firestormviewer.org web server? Thanks.

your name is not in the inworld search

For some of us who have been here long enough should remember those days when LL had to halt the trading because the exchange rate was fluctuating like a crazy roller coaster. I'm really surprise how LL has kept the exchange rate stead for so long.

"Perhaps the best advice here is to choose splitting boundaries where these errors will have the least obnoxious effect?" That would be the best solution for now. Hopefully Sansar won't have this issue. Thanks guys.

I've broken a large single mesh (a house) into a group of smaller mesh by using Blender's Separate function. The seams between the smaller meshes are tagent edges. But after imported it into SL, there is a tiny visible gaps between all tagent seams. Is there a workaround or better way to separate the meshes in Blender? 

CV1 sold out less than a minute on Amazon, they probably only have like 5 in stock or something. Oh well, 1st gen technology is full of bugs anyway. Not to mention the privacy concerns, apparently it is collecting and sending info back to Oculus all the time regardless it is being used or not.

CV1 will be available at retail stores on May 6th, including Amazon. It would be interesting to see what LL has to say about VR for Sansar on the same day.

Game-ready stock models are growing by the numbers each year, I hope Sansar will have a strong content protection so we can take an advantage of stock models. They are really handy for populate a large scene, even if you have to modify them. Thanks for the inputs. Peace.

Bobbie Faulds pointed out the many benefit of having mobile friendly website, especially for an online social gaming company like LL. A mobile friendly websites are a brief version of the full website, it just need to have enough information to tell visitors what SL is and be able to register new members. How does a company advertise on mobile devices if it doesn't have a mobile friendly website? It's not that hard to create a simple mobile friendly site for marketing purpose. I think LL needs actively make its presence known in the mobile world. SL survived the first VR worlds wave that came and went years ago. The second wave of VR worlds is on the horizon, with mega players like Facebook and Googles. It's great LL is working on Sansar, but it needs to build its brand and grows the users base. You can't do that without tabbing into the mobile world.

I was talking to a small group mobile phone generation (aka millennials) about SL at a party recently. They don't know much about SL, naturally they took out their phones to look for it. But they quickly lose interests by the slowness of loading and navigating traditional website on mobile devices. I think LL can benefit from having a mobile friendly SL website, and even marketplace too. I'm sure some of SLers would love the idea to be able to browse MP on a mobile device.

Most of stock 3D models company doesn't allow their models to be used in SL. Are there ones that allow SL usage? I'm looking for simple props like dinning ware and foods. Thanks.

When I import female_2016_03_22.dea into Blender without the two amature options (fix leaf bones, find bone chains), the mesh avatar's right hand and bones aren't showing. The male_2016_03_22.dae has no such issue. With the two amature options checked, the female mesh seems to be imported correctly. I'm new to Blener, is that normal or something isn't quite right in female_2016_03_22.dea? When import a colllad rig into Blender, do you need to enable the two amature options? 

It has happened twice already. I took in a group of mesh objects with "take" command, those objects vanished without a trace.

LL has done a remarkable job on Marketplace, by modernizing the site design and adding new features. Majority of the problems from transitional period of Xstreet to Marketplace has been resolved. The two key issues still unresolved are web site loading speed and search engine. Web site loading speed is painfully slow. Sometimes it would take over 10 seconds to load the front page, this is with a 25mb/sec broadband speed. Then there's the search engine which often produces random result. Xstreet SL might have been an ugly web site, but its search engine was Google like. It gives you what you're searching for. It has been a few years since Marketplace replaced XStreet SL. I hope LL would address these two issues in a timely manner. Because it's not a good first impression to the new residents. New residents are already facing the challenge of navigating in-world. A slow loading Markeplace with random search result will only add to their frustrations.

So true. Call me old fashion, I'm a believer of " if it ain't broke don't fix it". SL Exchange & Xstreet's search engine were working perfectly. Oh well, it's the LL way I guess.