Polenth Yue

I got a bag once that I couldn't use, because no mod meant I couldn't rip the scripts out and make it work for my avatar. Wearables are more likely to have issues with this. But keep in mind that rigged items can't be resized even if they're mod. A lot of wings are rigged bento these days.

I'm a tiny. Which means I'm heavily armed with pointy sticks and protest signs. 'Tis tradition.

The viewer still supports legacy shiny and bumpiness, which was the system before Blinn-Phong (as well as still supporting Blinn-Phong). Worth noting though that invisiprims are now very dead. They weren't a good idea before, as they didn't work under the advanced lighting model. But some people disabled that, so they'd still see them working. That's over now.

Though as a reminder before the lock, a lot of stuff seems shinier to some people because they didn't turn on advanced lighting. So for anyone in that situation, your avatar always looked like shiny plastic, and your wood floors were always varnished and washed out by overly strong lights, because you couldn't see the shine. But most other people had it turned on, so you/your house always looked that bad. The upside is that now you can see it, so you can fix it.

There is official cake. You can get it at the Aquatorium (where they're doing the Linden/Mole chats). Outside of those times, it's usually pretty empty. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB Pizzazz/17/4/62 There's a cake hat in the welcome gifts they hand out at the main landing point (there's a sign you click for it). This is also where you can get HUDS for the two hunts. A swaginator hunt (where you're looking for four stone signs in the Linden builds) and an elements hunt (where you collect 100 elements, which randomly spawn on the exhibit roads). http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB Awesome/128/136/46 On PBR, my build has one item that uses it. The cube crystals look more like marble blocks with the fallback texture. They're actually shiny transparent crystals in PBR. But it was really too early this year to go over to PBR completely. Next year, it'll be the new normal, as most people will have upgraded.

There are people living near me that I don't see getting out much. I go all over the place though. I don't think they've sent me a breakdown of how many regions in a year for a bit, but it's a lot.

My first impression is lack of FAQs. How big should the profile banner be? Do I have a restriction on number of images as a basic account? Can I make links clickable in my profile? Why don't my social media links show on my profile? Why does my Bluesky link keep deleting? There's not a link to the feedback sections when you're logged into the site. I ended up Googling to see that existed, but I couldn't find a basic help section. Other than that, it looks like a fairly typical social media layout. Whether people will actually use it more than Bluesky, we'll see.

Caspervend going down means I won't be heading to the shops today, but I did get the special KittyCats pair. I have the hunt hud to earn the boopie, but seems like I'd get enough for that just wandering exhibits later. I ended up at the opening, though the main announcements are going to be at the other events. Now, I have to actually go do some work, but will be back to look around later.

Boopie #16 Cobalt (who is on fire) is available for collecting 100 elements at SL21B. You can get a hunt hud here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/SLB Awesome/113/146/46

As someone with general mainland right by a moderate region, it really hasn't been an issue. The moderate people have to keep most stuff inside and often set land so you can't see the avatars on it. I suppose there's a slim chance of a nude gallery or the like, but a fence is usually enough to add a barrier. The only time there was public adult stuff near me, it was a general neighbour who put the stuff out (and that did break the rules). Private estates usually have a buffer at maturity boundaries. In some cases, it might be worth having a sign telling people (like if you did have an adult region next to a general one, because that's not common and people might not realise). Not because these things are required by the rules. It's just most people try to keep to the spirit of the rules (giving people control over what content they want to see).

On the exposure thing, the Firestorm default (1.0) looks right to me. The skies are a good brightness and my avatar and objects look much as they did. This is without reflection probes. I can get the colours to pop more by adding a probe, but it looks okay without. So, if you look terrible at the midday setting, it's more likely to be a materials issue than an exposure issue. If you look fine at midday, but terrible with your favourite EEP, it's down to things in the EEP needing changes. The danger of notching exposure right down is that most stuff will end up looking very dark. You'll end up overcompensating when you edit EEPs and objects, so they're like holy balls of white glow to everyone else. You only really want to fiddle with that if everything, not just your own avatar, is the wrong brightness at midday. A bit back, someone complained their home looked all wrong now. The before picture had advanced lighting off. The after picture had advanced lighting and it turns out the floors were shiny polished wood, which was washed out with overly strong lights. So yes, a lot of people didn't know all their stuff was shiny. However, I've always known I was shiny!

The Firestorm PBR seems to work like the official viewer, so I've not hit issues in that sense. The texture stuff works fine for me. It's the sky changes where I need more options (it's working as intended, but I need to turn it off).

I couldn't watch more than the start of that video. I didn't get to a tunnel. It does highlight the problem though. When they're looking up at the sun and back at the ground, see how the light changes? That's an accessibility issue for me. I need it gone. I need the light to be unrealistic. I feel sick and disoriented when the light does that. It's not viable to use Second Life for more than a few minutes at a time with that feature. Now, I can work around with a fixed midday sky, but it means shared environments aren't something I'll see in the future. So this is my plea to all viewer creators. Add an option to turn off auto-exposure. If there's some way to turn it off and leave it so it does the other HDR stuff, that'd be the best of all worlds for everyone. But if that can't be done, just let us turn it all off. This is an accessibility issue for people who need it. Off is the only way to solve it.

Unfortunately, this setting doesn't do that. It only works for legacy skies that didn't set a value. New skies that have a value set still do the vomit thing. I can get around it by using a fixed sky, but no proper solution yet that I can see in the new Firestorm.

SL21B opens tomorrow. Patch has said in chat that boopie #5 is "Really Very Soon™" so stay alert!