UnilWay SpiritWeaver

For land vehicles I'm partial to [sau] and 777. Both have fairly low land impact and good scripts. Thus I am able to fit 4 of them on my log home. The LOD can be a bit poor on [sau] at times, but they have the best riding experiences. 3 of the vehicles in this image are from [sau], one is from 777.

Since you said vehicle without specifics I am going to stretch and toss in 'Bandit / The Mesh Shop' (it's one brand with 2 different names for the same shop because yeah... I don't know...) In my opinion this right here is the absolute best vehicle in all of SL: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Bandit-IF/7305336 (Most of their products are only inworld. But always buy on MP from them if you can because the inworld vendors are not vendors - no tracking of your purchase so no redelivery system). Though I actually do have a complaint - you can't let anyone else sail it.

I think they've really breathed life into the fantasy theme. Given one of the top complaints used to be "no land to put stuff outside the house" and you now have most of the parcel as land below the tree - that's one major issue addressed. The theme that used to have the least amount of garden space now has the most if you go tree. But you get the choice, so I even have at least one new neighbor that went ground. My own former complaint of too much visual clutter has now flipped to being a perk: I have all this cool glow at ground I can go down and enjoy WHEN I WANT IT, but I can then go upstairs and be in peace without needing to flee into a skybox. From the windows of my treehouse, the effects below add just enough ambience to be cool, but not so much to give me a headache. They've pulled off two radically different house styles in the same regions that don't clash but actually work well together.

Is there a typo in this part or something else? By the "Trads" do you mean the 2019 era Bellisseria homes - those are a called Traditional and are Bellisseria mesh homes people commonly just call 'Trad'. They've actually added more home styles not too long ago (late 2022 or early 2023) into these. Or did you mean the old (2011 I think?) Linden homes that are made of prims and sculpties? Mountain View, Meadowbrook, Tahoe, Elderglen, and Shareta Osumai. These are the ones Linden Lab has said they plan to get rid of. But they remain liked by a notable number of people because they're covenant has very few rules - even though the lots are all small (512m). I've not heard of these referred to as Trads before, but since they are slated to be removed at some point, I was guessing you meant these.

So... The Belli covenant only bans hovertext when it's on a breedable (they don't call it that though, rather they have a definition of a type of object), and even then only when it can be seen from outside the parcel. - Which is a tricky thing because hovertext's range of visibility seems to be dependent on the viewer's settings and not the text's settings. The word 'text' appears exactly once in the covenant: That said, I suspect the intent is that annoying hovertext would be a problem even if just on a prim. I had to check this on my own land because I have some vehicles out and they add 'locked' or 'unlocked' hovertext depending - that in the ACS vehicle system I have been unable to find a way to disable... But thankfully it's fairly unobtrusive in the places I've put out vehicles.

Nah those are insanely cool. I especially like the 'photo' and 'watercolor' ones.

I had that the other day. Click and hold down on the box outside your land (the housecontroller) for about 10 seconds - when you let go it's scripts will reset.

Quite a LOT of us with Premium Plus don't have and don't even desire to have a ranch theme. I use mine for: A log home that I picked in the EXACT spot I wanted it. A 1104m plot on mainland-Zindra (that group bonus is handy) in an out of the way region. Free uploads of images. Give me time, I WILL fill the servers with all the images they can hold. Working on it. There are other perks too, like the stipend. But the reasons above where key. #2 and #3 are why I've kept it. As for Ranch Homes - they DO become available. People leave. But you have to keep spamming that page refresh to get in before someone else when somebody leaves. That noted - I've got the ranch home kit on two accounts and I've held a ranch home maybe 4 times because... it's not that hard to get one. It's hard to get one I personally like (because the theme just isnt me - yet. There are other themes I love that I originally didn't care for). Premium Plus is about getting 2048m of tier. They're giving you that, even if you can't manage to time picking up a ranch. A ranch home is just one way you could use that tier.

Ah yes. Arapaima actually exists for one specific moment in SL history that I remember now. The day Zindra launched, they were starting us there, and then let us move forward into the continent. Here my memory gets fuzzy: were we locked to that spot and just camming for a while, was there a ceremony there, or what... But I know it featured in the opening somehow, and was the kind of spot you'd expect to vanish after an event was over. I recall there was some kind of ceremony over at Mosh or Mosh South but again - memory is very fuzzy. It was a for while. Not sure if it still is, but for years I'd find myself in those spots anytime I stayed on a region past it's restart - even if I'd been on a G region. Particularly the one in Oritz. SL seemed to love throwing me there.

I missed Quartz's note. Did Quartz have a 'how to get started in this' guide? If not...: Slight tangent for a second but this is a guide to installing AI art tools on your own computer, and where to get training resources for them. It's about a year old but still points to the best sources and goes through some complex things (like installing python and running a git command to download something) in very simple step by step terms. As long as you follow the steps exactly and don't rush ahead, it works: The training models site can be used to get everything from hyper-real styles, oil painting, anime, etc. It does have a comically large amount of anime like content, but the other things are there as well... The tool in stable diffusion for making an AI image of an SL image is 'img2img' - you put your SL image into a window on one side, put in some prompts to customize, load up some 'training models' to filter the style, and have it do the work. I imagine there are online website to do this also.

Here's my main again. The same image, but enhanced with a tool called 'outpaint' that expands the image based on prompts and existing content. I did this to get a 4x3 - Going to bring it into SL as a picture in my home. Outpaint gets a little wild on the edges at times - obviously log homes don't fade out like that on the left, but the effect looks cool. This was actually a really cool idea to take an SL avatar and run it through AI tools. I'm going to have to keep this one.

Here's another one with my main. Managed to find an image with clothes on. Original:

Here: Original: I do a lot of work with Stable Diffusion actually. This one was more automated than my usual. I usually take images back and forth between Stable Diffusion and Gimp (an open source replacement to Photoshop). Instead... 50 passes through img2img in Stable Diffusion because it didn't understand that top and leotard she's wearing and kept giving me chubbier and chubbier results that I had to tone back with creative prompts and some of my LoRa presets (because the moment I put in furry it tried to convert her and the trees into a bare chested furry boys and I needed to some tricks to get around that).

Are those really full of bots? Those are the spots anyone with adult search flag on (which is most people) will end up in after a region crash. I don't see why we'd want to remove them though, even if they had piles of bots, what's the harm to others in leaving that spot there? One of the problems with Zindra's waterways is they don't connect to each other in places. That said, there are some spots on protected land where it'd be really nice to have a rez-zone. And that includes the roads as well. I also think they really need to finish the coast line - even if done the way Belli usually does it - a wrapping region that is half beach and half water and all protected land. Could even put in some spots people could reserve for events like Belli has. There's no waterway between Zindra and the rest of mainland on purpose. I'd actually prefer it is the rest of mainland could have all it's G and M regions split apart into 2 sections that couldn't be traveled between without a teleport - but its too late for that and has been for almost 20 years. I've got a houseboat just to the west of that screenshot and it's nice that I can now sail all the way up into Blake Sea from it, and all the way down the other direction as well. The rules of Belli make it a better place for sailing - less over water obstructions and scripted intrusions as you go by, so I've only bothered going up to Blake Sea... I think twice now. I use only wind-based boats, no powered boats, so things like obstructions and script lag matter more than the view. Historically this was why Blake Sea had lots of water only regions. It would be really nice if there was a little bit of usable water wrapping around each continent. Doesn't even have to be a full region wide - just enough to 'dip your toes in the water. But it is what it is. I really don't care if giving someone else a piece of water nearby makes their land a lot more valuable. Good for them. Living life by not wanting others to have nice things is not a perspective I have sympathy for. Sure it'd be great if we all got nice things, but there's no harm in a few nice surprises going to others.

Yes but no. Yes in theory - there's a lot of abandoned junk out there, especially inworld when you hit the really old regions that are where lifetime accounts last logged in back in 2006... But how do you make the call fairly? What if someone had a pile of freebie kits that folks are still using because they're still good? I would have an easier time if the call was to "delete accounts that have nothing inworld, nothing for sale, and haven't been used in over a decade - freeing those names up again." - Even though my alt that now owns my treehouse was exactly this until I recently reclaimed it, not having used that name in a decade (that was a task remembering the old password) and having done nothing with the account... in fairness someone should have been able to take the name from me. Now... anything that's actually "in use" in SL still, is a lot harder to justify getting rid of. But even saying this makes things complicated - if an old build is sitting there since 2006 with it's owner not having logged in since then - is it unused or something the neighbors have an expectation of seeing / visiting / etc. This all gets insanely complicated once you get into the weeds of how to decide fairly.

Yet another mile wide rear avatar? Haven't we explored that theme enough yet. I'm not a Maitreya user but I was glad at least one brand had avoided forcing that look. I had to go to extreme dial tweaking plus deformers to get out of it with reBorn. Hopefully that screenshot was just made with one of the other brands and this won't be the form Maitreya users are stuck with. (In my perfect scenario, I'd get a body form like Maitreya or the old Freya, but with the reBorn waifu addon, well supported, rather than the third part less well formed ones that do exist. But it starts with having a body with normal proportions, then kits to take it to extremes - not the other way around as it becoming common with other brands.)

- Mesh or Prim? Sculpty, Flexi (well not me, but it is an option). - Mainland or Private Islands? Bellisseria - Human or Furry? Elf - If Furry, Anthro or Feral? Faun, Neko, Viera - Skybox or "Ground-level" home? Treehouse - Rigged or unrigged? Bento

Its good to know them though, and start with correct proportions so that when you go off of them you can do so for effect rather than for 'oops'. Picasso had a master's understanding of proportional anatomy - and it's why his work is seen as amazing whereas the crayon drawings on the kitchen fridge in the house of a 6-year old are "that nice honey". An yeah... I use reBorn. And had to dial that thing down a lot.

Start with a selection of photos of real people. Put them in a side window and then get on a pose stand, zoom into your head, and adjust your shape dials to try to recreate the faces in your photos if only slightly in varied parts. Just make sure none of those photos are Social Media influencers because those folks are all competing for the same clicks so tend to copy each other's looks a lot. Many mesh heads brands and skin brands copy each other's looks a LOT too. Or within their own brand copy a basic look with very minor tweaks across their entire line. For male avatars, I really like the skin brand "Stray Dog" because the skins look so different from each other. It's harder to find that with female skins but it can be done. One trick - get the "wrong" ethnicity for a head, then mess with shape dials to make it the "right" one. If you're aiming to have your avatar be of ethnic group B, get a head made for ethnic group C, and vice versa. This will force you off type if the head was made well enough. Another trick is to get stylized heads. It's been a few years since I looked but Catwa was good with some extreme female heads back in the day. Somewhat cartoony or exaggerated. Dialing that down would force me to look unique. You can also make sure your head and body skins come in MOD-able tattoo layers. Then... tint it just a tiny bit with a very subtle shade of something else. Be extremely mild in this or you get a cartoon look (unless you want that). But a subtle difference in tinting here will help you be unique. I have tried the same trick with no-mod skins by using the tinting options in the head or body, but this doesn't tend to work as well and if I do it I have to make a copy of the head/body only used for that "look" and be sure to keep it through all the right outfit setups. Also start one skin tone away from whatever you suspect is the most popular choice if you yourself were also interested in that choice.

Yeah. Bit stream of consciousness here so I'm probably off in a few places. My general thought on this though is as follows: LL possibly did change their main source of revenue, but it's still related to land. A few years back SL was held together by a small handful of massive land barons renting out land in various forms: Users buys L$ ---> User pays land baron or buys stuff from User B who then pays land baron ---> Land baron pays LL Now it still has that, but direct premium accounts seem to have grown a LOT: User gets linden home ---> User pays LL. User gets mainland plot ---> User pays LL. These two methods have always been around (well, mainland has, and old linden homes have just over a decade), but since 2019 they appear to be become more and more often the norm rather than the exception. Bellisseria is HUGE - At a glance it seems to be about the same as all the rest of mainland. But it's also more occupied (and often by people like me who ALSO have some mainland). - So the income stream for LL is now more dispersed, and they have more flexibility to set policy regardless of the whims of "power users". Hopefully setting policy to match a majority of users, but they're free to not do that also. Belli is not so much a threat to mainland - I suspect it actually helps mainland (do I use my excess tier for a small plot on mainland, or for a linden home - amount depending) - but I suspect it is a threat to estate land. If you go premium, you CAN use that stipend to get an estate parcel - but then you're just wasting your tier. So you also get a Linden Home or Mainland plot, and then start to question why you're renting on an estate unless that estate is really high quality. That noted, for the past decade or so they have also been gaining revenue from marketplace - and SL has become more and more 'shopping focused' in that time as well. And nobody knows just how much they get from that. It's rather indirect too... it's a "gold sink". The "tax" on items forces people to keep having to buy more L$. It's small at the individual level, but it adds up over scale. Now... all the way back to the OP complaint. I can see one reason for land tier to be "unfair" - it's not in LLs interest for people to scale up too high. Mega land barons have outsized influence. Better to keep users at a smaller scale and gets lots of individuals instead of a few power brokers. But this "scale" is way beyond even owning a couple of regions. That's a concern when you start putting multiple 0s on the end of how many regions you own. Still, making it harder to scale early on just helps to discourage the idea.

Very nice looking but rather high Land Impact in the store because the parts are all unlinked. Anybody have this and tried linking everything together to see what they get? It's too pricey for an impulse buy but it really does look good for the theme.

Do they? Someone edit one and check. If it's all one prim and "growing" is just setting parts that were transparent to now be visible then not much would be going on. What's the "seed" do? Let you have another one or is it just a "harmless" unscripted object. EDIT: Went to their store, and checked their FAQ, and they're defiantly a breedable. The actual plant does seem to be a prim that changes what's transparent over time to do it's thing - but it's pack with a pile of scripts. The FAQ says you get seeds over time to grow new plants. There's a group for trading them, and as is typical for breedables: the plants are no-copy. They do look nice though. Last time I played around with 'breedables' was with Meeroos which were sculpties and look very dated now.

Where did you get the wall texture? Did they add it to the kit? It wasn't there when I did my room addon - they'd only had the one for the ground level houses.

But does that make my point? They were buying new heads? If this - that makes my point. Or were they buying heads they already owned? - this would just be weird. Or buying old heads that had been updated that maybe they had not bought previously when those heads first came out? - This would be the counter to my point/ Attracting new never before made purchases by doing an update is an unusual thing.