One of the things that changed during my period of not being inworld much was LL's terms of service for using SL. They changed in August 2013, they have just changed again, and the change has not been a good one.
People get het up about terms of service, often unnecessarily. The fact is, when your beautiful painting of a sunset, or the mesh for your combination screwdriver-coffeepot-and-sex-monkey, is rendered inworld, the data representing it needs to be uploaded and stored on LL's servers, and then downloaded to the viewer of anyone who comes and looks at it. This requires that data to be moved through a whole network (that there Internet thing, you may have heard of it) of other computers, possibly stored temporarily in places along the way. Besides the obvious technical challenges, in terms of intellectual property law, LL needs legal permission to do this, and that's where all that bit about granting an irrevocable non-exclusive license for the purpose of providing the service comes in.
Or did. Back in 2013, LL changed the terms of service to a much broader one, in which any content you create or upload to Second Life can be exploited, reproduced, redistributed, and more, in any manner whatsoever. Not just for the purpose of getting it from SL Viewer A to SL Viewer B across the Internet. For anything they like.
(A corollary of this - also enshrined in the new terms of service - is that we have to warrant that we have all the necessary legal rights to permit them to do this! The problem here is that this is broadly incompatible with a lot of IP law relating to Creative Commons licenses or even public domain works. Basically, the only things you can be sure won't breach the ToS are... things you have made entirely yourself, from scratch. All those prims in my tower, where I've covered them with textures bought in from USC and other places? Dubious, highly dubious. There is, though, a shovel and a pile of coal on one level, and I made the textures for those, both diffuse and sculpt maps, all by my very own self, so they are fine.)
Now, a lot of people were very upset about this, on the grounds that it constitutes an overly broad rights grab. There are quite legitimate commercial issues at stake here, too. There's quite a market out there for 3D meshes of one kind or another, they take time and talent to develop, they have a real commercial value - and if you upload one to SL, then LL now has the rights to sublicense or sell it for themselves, in any manner whatsoever, and if you don't like it, tough.
The inhibitory effects of this on content creators are significant - and SL needs its content creators, like no other online environment does. Without those creators, SL is literally nothing more than grass, water and sky, studded with people bitching at each other. Briefly. Before they give it up as a bad lot and go away to play Minesweeper.
I've been hit by this, in a small way, myself... I know SL book publishers inworld, and it so happens that my idiot mate who got me called Glorf is, in a small way, a frustrated author. He has unpublished novels, he knows me, I know publishers.... But, under LL's terms of service, putting one of his books inworld would assign almost all his IP rights to LL, forever, with no prospect of recompense, and this is a deal which not even my idiot mate is idiot enough to take.
So, recently, LL has modified those terms of service... and we have read them, and parsed them out, and discovered that the modifying parenthetical clause is stuck in at a point which makes it, essentially, meaningless. (I don't think I can add anything to the analysis here - which also, incidentally, demonstrates that the ToS is not only rotten English, but fairly rotten legalese as well.)
It is understandable, therefore, that content creators are manifestly Not Happy about this.
One wonders, really, why LL has chosen to go down this route. The best guess is that it might allow them to transfer our creations over to another service in future, the hypothetical SL2 (still very much hypothetical at this stage). I can think of other legitimate reasons for some broadening of the ToS, if I put my mind to it. Perhaps they want to make or license movies set in the world of SL, and don't want to worry about being sued if (for instance) my three-rotor hovering home in Steam SkyCity finds its way into shot. Perhaps. I could even be persuaded to accept this reasoning, if it was being presented that way - but it's not. I'm just speculating. All we know is that the ToS currently constitutes a grab at all our IP rights over our content. Which, to put it bluntly, sucks.
LL have given us informal assurances that they would never think about making free with our content in such an unprincipled manner. The problem is, informal assurances are like verbal contracts - not worth the paper they're written on. The only formal assurance we have comes from the ToS, and that says they absolutely can make free with our content.
And then there's the attitude of current boss Ebbe Altberg... who has, apparently, claimed that no one has told him what's wrong with the ToS, so LL can't possibly fix it.
It is at this point that I have to be a bit blunter than is my wont. A lot of people have made it plainly and explicitly clear what is wrong with the ToS. Granted, they have not all used exactly the same form of words - some of them are angrier than others about different parts of the thoroughgoing rights grab that it constitutes, and say so. But, overall, the message has been quite clear and unequivocal.
LL is claiming more rights than it needs to provide the SL service, and that has to change. Not just morally - commercially, too. It makes no commercial sense for anyone to provide LL with exploitable content for free.
And - which is where I have to be blunt - Ebbe Altberg knows this. He has heard what people have been saying about the ToS, and there is no way he can not know what the criticisms are.
So, when he says no one's told him what's wrong - well, he is flat out lying. There. That is me being blunt.
I really do try not to put the boot into the Lab when they don't deserve it, and I will bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt. But there comes a time when they do deserve it, and there is no alternative, then, but to draw back the old steel-toecap Doc Martin and let fly. (Yes, for a job like this, I use my RL shoes. Though, right now, I would happily step on Ebbe Altberg's feet in my SL stilettoes, too.)
Showing posts with label Miss Bulmer muses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miss Bulmer muses. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Slouching toward SL2
I've been spending some time at the SL11B sims, looking around the various builds... the birthday celebration has been offering impressive sights and impressive lag in roughly equal proportions. I took some snapshots, and may well take more.
Of course, the question is, will there be an SL12B next year, give the latest Epic Controversy That Will Bring About The End Of The Grid, Ebbe Linden's announcement that a successor platform to Second Life is in development?
Well, my guess would be yes... over the past eleven years, SL has built up a heck of a lot of inertia. People have invested gigantic chunks of time, love, and actual money in it, and they won't easily let that go. And it's still the major source of revenue for the Lab, and they won't let that go.
However, the announcement that "SL2" won't necessarily be backwards-compatible with existing SL content gives me a little pause for thought. Like it or not, that positions SL2, in a way, as a [I]competitor[/I] for SL... it will compete with the existing virtual world for my time, my attention, my cash.
... possibly. We know, as yet, very little about the plans for SL2 - not even whether it will be called SL2. We know it's planned to be in beta some time next year, we know it won't necessarily be compatible with existing SL - hmm, I say. To what extent will it not be compatible?
I mean... will existing SL avatars automatically have, or be able to get, SL2 accounts in the same names? If so, that would be a major plus - the stuff I have in SL, I can happily leave behind: I'm a builder, I can always make more stuff. The existing relationships between people - groups, friendships, partnerships - are much more important, and if they can make the transition intact, then that's a major obstacle to adoption out of the way.
Of course, I say "I'm a builder", but so far we don't know what sort of inworld creation will be possible in SL2, or even if it will be possible at all! (But if it isn't... well, the creative aspect of SL is one thing that keeps me coming back. Losing that from SL2 would be fatal to my interest in the project.)
What won't they keep? Well, the inertia that will keep SL "classic" going also lumbers it with a lot of stuff that ought to change, but is now far too entrenched and too expensive to update. I'd expect, frankly, that SL2 would include the creation of an Avatar 2.0 - probably with lots more detail, and more extensive armatures for rigging. Which would mean that SL classic UV maps for clothing, all existing rigged mesh items, and possibly BVH animation files, would not necessarily be compatible with the new avatar - all that stuff would have to start from scratch.
Whatever build system gets implemented, I wouldn't expect sculpted prims to make the cut, either. As an interim form between prim-based builds and mesh imports, sculpted prims have their fascination... but, ultimately, the technology for them is a blind alley, and I wouldn't expect a new platform to explore it.
We're told that SL2 will have Linden dollars and a Marketplace, "but better". This implies to me that our account balances certainly won't transfer over, or be shareable between the two virtual worlds. That might be another negative, there, in that setting up payment details and making separate payments into the new world is a bit of a hassle.
We don't know much about the technology it'll be using. There's been talk of SL2 running on mobile devices, which implies a very "thin client" approach. That might, frankly, be preferable to total-immersion systems using tech like Oculus Rift. (Although fascinating, Oculus Rift has always struck me as one of those very nifty pieces of technology that are solutions desperately in search of a problem. Most of us don't have - or even particularly want - lifestyles which permit total immersion in a video game. I'm a lot happier being able to see the real world out of the corner of my eye, just in case my mother sets the house on fire.)
And we do know that, whatever sort of client is used, it won't be open source, so third party viewers won't be an option (or not easily at least). I can see the Lab's point of view, there... the benefits and insights gained from TPV development are almost certainly outweighed by the massive amounts of hassle the TPVs have caused over the years, whether from copybotting viewers, or one-off cases like the Emerald fiasco, or maintaining inworld consistency between different viewers, or the bullying behaviour of some TPV advocates... The temptation to have a very simple TPV policy of "no TPVs" must have been irresistible. (People who absolutely cannot do without the V1.23 interface and its annoying pie menus are cordially invited, here, to take the traditional virtual stepladder and use it for the traditional purpose.)
But, for the most part... we just don't know. We can speculate six ways from Sunday, and I just have. Perhaps there will be a glowing portal in the middle of the mainland that we can step through with our current SL identities intact, and the building system will make 1 Land Impact equal to a set blob of voxels that you can manipulate inworld with a Blender-like toolkit - in which case I will be diving through it with my hammer, chisel and blowlamp clutched eagerly in my little paws. Or perhaps it will be keyed off your RL Facebook or Google+ accounts, and all the creation will be done with mesh imports, in which case you couldn't pay me to touch it. We just don't know.
It's going to be interesting to find out, though.
Of course, the question is, will there be an SL12B next year, give the latest Epic Controversy That Will Bring About The End Of The Grid, Ebbe Linden's announcement that a successor platform to Second Life is in development?
Well, my guess would be yes... over the past eleven years, SL has built up a heck of a lot of inertia. People have invested gigantic chunks of time, love, and actual money in it, and they won't easily let that go. And it's still the major source of revenue for the Lab, and they won't let that go.
However, the announcement that "SL2" won't necessarily be backwards-compatible with existing SL content gives me a little pause for thought. Like it or not, that positions SL2, in a way, as a [I]competitor[/I] for SL... it will compete with the existing virtual world for my time, my attention, my cash.
... possibly. We know, as yet, very little about the plans for SL2 - not even whether it will be called SL2. We know it's planned to be in beta some time next year, we know it won't necessarily be compatible with existing SL - hmm, I say. To what extent will it not be compatible?
I mean... will existing SL avatars automatically have, or be able to get, SL2 accounts in the same names? If so, that would be a major plus - the stuff I have in SL, I can happily leave behind: I'm a builder, I can always make more stuff. The existing relationships between people - groups, friendships, partnerships - are much more important, and if they can make the transition intact, then that's a major obstacle to adoption out of the way.
Of course, I say "I'm a builder", but so far we don't know what sort of inworld creation will be possible in SL2, or even if it will be possible at all! (But if it isn't... well, the creative aspect of SL is one thing that keeps me coming back. Losing that from SL2 would be fatal to my interest in the project.)
What won't they keep? Well, the inertia that will keep SL "classic" going also lumbers it with a lot of stuff that ought to change, but is now far too entrenched and too expensive to update. I'd expect, frankly, that SL2 would include the creation of an Avatar 2.0 - probably with lots more detail, and more extensive armatures for rigging. Which would mean that SL classic UV maps for clothing, all existing rigged mesh items, and possibly BVH animation files, would not necessarily be compatible with the new avatar - all that stuff would have to start from scratch.
Whatever build system gets implemented, I wouldn't expect sculpted prims to make the cut, either. As an interim form between prim-based builds and mesh imports, sculpted prims have their fascination... but, ultimately, the technology for them is a blind alley, and I wouldn't expect a new platform to explore it.
We're told that SL2 will have Linden dollars and a Marketplace, "but better". This implies to me that our account balances certainly won't transfer over, or be shareable between the two virtual worlds. That might be another negative, there, in that setting up payment details and making separate payments into the new world is a bit of a hassle.
We don't know much about the technology it'll be using. There's been talk of SL2 running on mobile devices, which implies a very "thin client" approach. That might, frankly, be preferable to total-immersion systems using tech like Oculus Rift. (Although fascinating, Oculus Rift has always struck me as one of those very nifty pieces of technology that are solutions desperately in search of a problem. Most of us don't have - or even particularly want - lifestyles which permit total immersion in a video game. I'm a lot happier being able to see the real world out of the corner of my eye, just in case my mother sets the house on fire.)
And we do know that, whatever sort of client is used, it won't be open source, so third party viewers won't be an option (or not easily at least). I can see the Lab's point of view, there... the benefits and insights gained from TPV development are almost certainly outweighed by the massive amounts of hassle the TPVs have caused over the years, whether from copybotting viewers, or one-off cases like the Emerald fiasco, or maintaining inworld consistency between different viewers, or the bullying behaviour of some TPV advocates... The temptation to have a very simple TPV policy of "no TPVs" must have been irresistible. (People who absolutely cannot do without the V1.23 interface and its annoying pie menus are cordially invited, here, to take the traditional virtual stepladder and use it for the traditional purpose.)
But, for the most part... we just don't know. We can speculate six ways from Sunday, and I just have. Perhaps there will be a glowing portal in the middle of the mainland that we can step through with our current SL identities intact, and the building system will make 1 Land Impact equal to a set blob of voxels that you can manipulate inworld with a Blender-like toolkit - in which case I will be diving through it with my hammer, chisel and blowlamp clutched eagerly in my little paws. Or perhaps it will be keyed off your RL Facebook or Google+ accounts, and all the creation will be done with mesh imports, in which case you couldn't pay me to touch it. We just don't know.
It's going to be interesting to find out, though.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Sinister Lovecraftian Formlessness
First, a little update: Land Baron contacted me last night with an actual apology, so fair play to him for doing that. He also told me he was winding up his operations, so my "hunkering down" strategy has paid off, or will come the end of next month. This may leave me as a single island of habitation in a sea of abandoned land... well, we shall see how things go from there.
Anyway. Last night, the talk at Oxbridge was mostly of the new mesh avatars, which are (as previously noted) not entirely an unmixed blessing - especially from the point of view of the tutors, who will have to explain to baffled new people that their avatars do not actually look like them, they are merely piloting human-shaped skin suits like the Slitheen in Doctor Who. I foresee confusion arising.
One part of the conversation turned to making more and better (and more ethnically diverse) mesh avatars, and in that context, Tali (who is brilliant and well-informed and I would say that even if she wasn't my girlfriend) brought up the MakeHuman program ( www.makehuman.org ), an OpenSource project for creating human-shaped meshes. And I sat in the lecture hall in unwonted silence and stillness from then on, because I was downloading this thing and having a go.
And, actually, it is pretty darn nifty... and it includes several features which are meant not only for creating avatar meshes, but for uploading them as wearable rigged objects into Second Life. My reputation as a mad scientist positively demanded that I try it out...
... and shortly thereafter, I appeared in the Oxbridge plaza as a cloud of shapeless protoplasm the size of a bus, the only distinguishable features being a pair of shoes. As Tali put it, "a shoggoth in bathroom slippers".
Well, these setbacks will happen. It may be a problem with the tool - it is still in early stages, officially a Version 1 release, and the Second Life compatibility tools may not yet be proven. On the other hand, a mesh expert I am not, and it might be somewhat hubristic to expect a perfect result based on one evening's playing around. So, I may persevere with this. (If nothing else, I'm sure I can export the mesh product into Blender, and I should be able to rig it from there...)
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I am tempted to utter those words which, spoken by people like me, make sensible people blench and hide their breakable items before running for the hills: "Oh! I think I see what I did wrong...."
Anyway. Last night, the talk at Oxbridge was mostly of the new mesh avatars, which are (as previously noted) not entirely an unmixed blessing - especially from the point of view of the tutors, who will have to explain to baffled new people that their avatars do not actually look like them, they are merely piloting human-shaped skin suits like the Slitheen in Doctor Who. I foresee confusion arising.
One part of the conversation turned to making more and better (and more ethnically diverse) mesh avatars, and in that context, Tali (who is brilliant and well-informed and I would say that even if she wasn't my girlfriend) brought up the MakeHuman program ( www.makehuman.org ), an OpenSource project for creating human-shaped meshes. And I sat in the lecture hall in unwonted silence and stillness from then on, because I was downloading this thing and having a go.
And, actually, it is pretty darn nifty... and it includes several features which are meant not only for creating avatar meshes, but for uploading them as wearable rigged objects into Second Life. My reputation as a mad scientist positively demanded that I try it out...
... and shortly thereafter, I appeared in the Oxbridge plaza as a cloud of shapeless protoplasm the size of a bus, the only distinguishable features being a pair of shoes. As Tali put it, "a shoggoth in bathroom slippers".
Well, these setbacks will happen. It may be a problem with the tool - it is still in early stages, officially a Version 1 release, and the Second Life compatibility tools may not yet be proven. On the other hand, a mesh expert I am not, and it might be somewhat hubristic to expect a perfect result based on one evening's playing around. So, I may persevere with this. (If nothing else, I'm sure I can export the mesh product into Blender, and I should be able to rig it from there...)
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I am tempted to utter those words which, spoken by people like me, make sensible people blench and hide their breakable items before running for the hills: "Oh! I think I see what I did wrong...."
Friday, May 16, 2014
Any Colour you Like, So Long as it's White
So there I was at Oxbridge, enjoying the traditional sight of a new avatar going up to anyone even vaguely female and asking for a date. (He gave me a chance to use the "my girlfriend's just TPed in" excuse, which is always fun... and receives a special Clueless Award for trying to chat up one lady with her very obvious husband standing right next to her.)
But, both Clueless Boy and the husband-and-wife - and several others who wandered through - were wearing unfamiliar, and rather sophisticated, avatars for new people....
The reason being, of course, new default avatars from our noble benefactors at the Lab. So, it became necessary to take a squint at these and see what is what about them.
What we've got, you see, are mesh avatars. The basic body is rendered invisible by a full-body alpha layer, and a mesh shape attached which acts exactly like your basic SL body. It's rigged, so it can change to reflect alterations in your basic underlying shape... up to a point; you can't do anything fancy like changing the face, for instance. And of course system clothing and other system-layer stuff like skins won't work on these things.
What are they like? Well, they vary. Some of them have really good detailed skins, others are... less good. They come with various bits of rigged mesh clothing, some of which is very good, as in "cannibalize it for other outfits" good. (Tali and I both fell with glee onKate Beckinsale's "Vampire Hunter Alison"'s leather trenchcoat.) There are other components which are worth nicking - one (otherwise fairly naff) female form has a set of included shoe alphas which might work with a bunch of pumps I can't currently use because they're invisiprim based.
The design of the avis is quite interesting. By and large, although some are traditional SL Barbie-dolls, there is a tendency towards more naturalistic sizes and shapes, which is rather gratifying (says the seven-foot blonde stick insect). The male avatars are pretty good looking, and certainly better proportioned than your usual SL man-mountain with very short arms. One thing I noticed, camming around them, was that the faces are, in places, a little bit asymmetrical. This is good: real faces are a little bit asymmetrical. On balance, we may expect a more interesting and (arguably) more attractive set of new people running around SL.
Oh, they'll all be white, of course.
Well, no, that's not strictly true - Tali found one vampire avi who is unmistakeably African male, apart from the fangs. So that's one unambiguously non-Caucasian. And some of the others might look vaguely Asian or Latino, in the right light... or might at least look as if they know someone who's Asian or Latino....
It is at this point that I heave a sigh, because this is an old, old rant, but it still needs to be ranted. It would not hurt, dear people in the Lab, to be a little bit inclusive. Just to the extent of offering options for non-Caucasians. Just to the extent of admitting they exist. One non-Caucasian avatar in the new batch. One. And even that one isn't fully human.
The excuse for this, apparently, is that the selection of new avatars is based on an analysis of what people actually go for when they're developing an initial look. The problem with this, it seems to me, is that defaulting to the majority choices makes the alternatives invisible. SL gets flooded with lookalikes, and the next batch of new people to come along adopt the same look, to fit in, and eventually we all look the same....
Assuming new people do come in, of course. I have to wonder just how appealing SL looks, based on its available choices, to people of anything other than Caucasian origin. My guess would be, not very.
Seriously, LL. Options. Inclusive options. From the outset. There is no excuse for failing to do this.
But, both Clueless Boy and the husband-and-wife - and several others who wandered through - were wearing unfamiliar, and rather sophisticated, avatars for new people....
The reason being, of course, new default avatars from our noble benefactors at the Lab. So, it became necessary to take a squint at these and see what is what about them.
What we've got, you see, are mesh avatars. The basic body is rendered invisible by a full-body alpha layer, and a mesh shape attached which acts exactly like your basic SL body. It's rigged, so it can change to reflect alterations in your basic underlying shape... up to a point; you can't do anything fancy like changing the face, for instance. And of course system clothing and other system-layer stuff like skins won't work on these things.
What are they like? Well, they vary. Some of them have really good detailed skins, others are... less good. They come with various bits of rigged mesh clothing, some of which is very good, as in "cannibalize it for other outfits" good. (Tali and I both fell with glee on
The design of the avis is quite interesting. By and large, although some are traditional SL Barbie-dolls, there is a tendency towards more naturalistic sizes and shapes, which is rather gratifying (says the seven-foot blonde stick insect). The male avatars are pretty good looking, and certainly better proportioned than your usual SL man-mountain with very short arms. One thing I noticed, camming around them, was that the faces are, in places, a little bit asymmetrical. This is good: real faces are a little bit asymmetrical. On balance, we may expect a more interesting and (arguably) more attractive set of new people running around SL.
Oh, they'll all be white, of course.
Well, no, that's not strictly true - Tali found one vampire avi who is unmistakeably African male, apart from the fangs. So that's one unambiguously non-Caucasian. And some of the others might look vaguely Asian or Latino, in the right light... or might at least look as if they know someone who's Asian or Latino....
It is at this point that I heave a sigh, because this is an old, old rant, but it still needs to be ranted. It would not hurt, dear people in the Lab, to be a little bit inclusive. Just to the extent of offering options for non-Caucasians. Just to the extent of admitting they exist. One non-Caucasian avatar in the new batch. One. And even that one isn't fully human.
The excuse for this, apparently, is that the selection of new avatars is based on an analysis of what people actually go for when they're developing an initial look. The problem with this, it seems to me, is that defaulting to the majority choices makes the alternatives invisible. SL gets flooded with lookalikes, and the next batch of new people to come along adopt the same look, to fit in, and eventually we all look the same....
Assuming new people do come in, of course. I have to wonder just how appealing SL looks, based on its available choices, to people of anything other than Caucasian origin. My guess would be, not very.
Seriously, LL. Options. Inclusive options. From the outset. There is no excuse for failing to do this.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
I am Woman, Hear Me Roar
So, about that protuberance mentioned in my last...
Well, I was at the Fantasy Faire, in Hope's Horizon (the Gondor-themed sim, if you recall), and I went in a shop, as you do when you are not setting yourself on fire and jumping off high things. The shop was MD/ND, skins and avatar accessories and stuff, and they had these lioness avatars on display....
"Hmm," I thought, "that skin actually looks like pretty good quality, especially around the face."
Now, like a lot of people, I have acquired some freebie neko stuff over my time in SL, but I get rather embarrassed at the thought of wearing it and standing next to Tali, who is such a carefully and beautifully crafted example of a feline avatar. But these things didn't look embarrassing at all. And there were demos, so I decided to take one home and try it on.
And, I thought, it actually didn't look bad. It was a style I could work with... and one of their lioness avis was in an RFL vendor, and the whole point of the Faire, really, is to raise money for RFL....
So, a donation to RFL later, there I was, assembling the various bits and pieces required to become part lioness.
This meant opening up the shape editor for the first time in something like two years, ever since I fixed that glitch that was making my eyeballs come through my eyelids sometimes. While I was quite definite about keeping the same basic Glorf shape that has stood me in good stead over the years, a small pointy human nose simply didn't fit the shape of a leonine muzzle, so a great deal of flattening, broadening and general softening of outline was needed there.
I know a great many people think nothing of chopping and changing their appearance on a whim, but (as people who've read my rubbish for a while may remember), I'm not one of them. An actual change of The Way This Bulmer Woman Presents Herself Inworld is, to me, a significant event, necessitating a certain amount of consideration and introspection. I know, of course, I can always change it back if I don't like it, but....
Anyway, you can see for yourselves.
Of course, how I feel about it is by no means the only factor... there is also the reaction of the important catlady in my life to consider. (By the way, the readership-at-very-small does realize that Tali and I are a couple, right? That we weren't testing all those couples animations in the Steam Hunt out of a spirit of purely disinterested academic inquiry? OK, just checking.)
In a sense, that is the important part of the whole undertaking. Most people who opt for a furry lifestyle in SL, I gather, do so out of a deep-seated emotional connection to a particular kind of animal. It's not something that I have, myself - I've always been quite adamant that if I have a "spirit animal", it's of the species homo sapiens. But it turns out I do have a deep emotional connection with a particular feline... and the experience of being feline is something I'd like to share with her.
Besides which, she can do amazing things with her tail and her whiskers (no, no details, this is still Not That Sort of Blog), and I'm looking forward to trying those out for myself....
So, there we are. An explanation for the tail. Will this be a permanent change, or just another costume to wear in SL? We shall see, as time goes on.
Well, I was at the Fantasy Faire, in Hope's Horizon (the Gondor-themed sim, if you recall), and I went in a shop, as you do when you are not setting yourself on fire and jumping off high things. The shop was MD/ND, skins and avatar accessories and stuff, and they had these lioness avatars on display....
"Hmm," I thought, "that skin actually looks like pretty good quality, especially around the face."
Now, like a lot of people, I have acquired some freebie neko stuff over my time in SL, but I get rather embarrassed at the thought of wearing it and standing next to Tali, who is such a carefully and beautifully crafted example of a feline avatar. But these things didn't look embarrassing at all. And there were demos, so I decided to take one home and try it on.
And, I thought, it actually didn't look bad. It was a style I could work with... and one of their lioness avis was in an RFL vendor, and the whole point of the Faire, really, is to raise money for RFL....
So, a donation to RFL later, there I was, assembling the various bits and pieces required to become part lioness.
This meant opening up the shape editor for the first time in something like two years, ever since I fixed that glitch that was making my eyeballs come through my eyelids sometimes. While I was quite definite about keeping the same basic Glorf shape that has stood me in good stead over the years, a small pointy human nose simply didn't fit the shape of a leonine muzzle, so a great deal of flattening, broadening and general softening of outline was needed there.
I know a great many people think nothing of chopping and changing their appearance on a whim, but (as people who've read my rubbish for a while may remember), I'm not one of them. An actual change of The Way This Bulmer Woman Presents Herself Inworld is, to me, a significant event, necessitating a certain amount of consideration and introspection. I know, of course, I can always change it back if I don't like it, but....
Anyway, you can see for yourselves.
The rounded lioness ears are not as mobile and expressive as Tali's, alas, nor are my whiskers as impressive as hers.
Snapshots taken while reloading on the sea bed at Pooley. Any remarks about wet pussies will be treated with the contempt they deserve.
In a sense, that is the important part of the whole undertaking. Most people who opt for a furry lifestyle in SL, I gather, do so out of a deep-seated emotional connection to a particular kind of animal. It's not something that I have, myself - I've always been quite adamant that if I have a "spirit animal", it's of the species homo sapiens. But it turns out I do have a deep emotional connection with a particular feline... and the experience of being feline is something I'd like to share with her.
Besides which, she can do amazing things with her tail and her whiskers (no, no details, this is still Not That Sort of Blog), and I'm looking forward to trying those out for myself....
So, there we are. An explanation for the tail. Will this be a permanent change, or just another costume to wear in SL? We shall see, as time goes on.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Limbo dancing
Prior to my, umm, sabbatical from the hurly-burly of SL, regular readers may recall, I was having frequent problems with what I called the "blue limbo" problem - this blue limbo being, basically, where I was left when I tried to log in. The world around me would start to load, and then give it up as a bad job, leaving me hanging around - more or less incompletely loaded myself - unable to move, with my ping time (the time it takes my client to communicate with the server, you can check this out yourself with Advanced>Performance Tools>Statistics Bar) pegged at 10000 milliseconds. Which is a lot of milliseconds, to be sure.
Well, returning to SL, I was getting this same problem, still, repeatedly. (It left me in a no-animations default posture at one point - literally crucified upon a login failure.) So I revived my old support case in as tactful a manner as possible, and much submitting of zipped log files went on, and...
... well, no definite conclusion has been reached, but I'm getting the problem rather less at the moment, and I think I'm beginning to understand why.
Basically, it might be a case of too much rubbish in my inventory.
Well, you know, duh, some might say, and not without due cause. After all, my inventory is not inconsiderable in size. And it is rather noticeably over the recommended limits. Let's face it, I have very nearly enough shoes, which is going some.
However - other people with similar building and shopping habits have accumulated even larger inventories than my 50,000 or so items, and still manage without getting limbo'ed. So, why am I getting this?
I still don't know for sure. But, the first time I shook myself free of it, it was by deleting my outfits folder, which contained a number of broken links - links to clothing items which the system couldn't resolve, for reasons best known to itself. And I'm beginning to suspect that the whole problem rests on a more general expression of this.
Basically, what's stitching me up (according to the guys working on my support case) is a timeout, where queries to the database regarding the components of my online self take too long to resolve. If I'm coming into SL with my inventory empty after a cache clear, I don't get the problem, implying that it lies somewhere in the lengthy process of reconciling the items in my inventory with the records in the database. Something, somewhere, is taking too long to add up.
So, I've been on - well, you couldn't quite call it an inventory purge exactly - but, at least, a slimming session of conceivably dodgy assets. Very old freebie items that I haven't worn or used in ages have been zapped - including a pair of boots that persistently threw up those "broken links" in my outfits folder. A lot of old notecards got the chop - and we know that there's an awful lot of different things can go in a notecard, right? Calling cards were purged - including some from people I know have had accounts deleted, or have otherwise left SL under a cloud: are those assets which are hard to locate? A lot of landmarks have been painstakingly removed from shopping folders... including several folders that I got from closing down sales, where in many cases the sims relating to those landmarks don't exist any more.
Now, it may be that I'm barking up the wrong tree completely here. All this slimming down has brought my inventory down to somewhat under 47,000, and it may be that that's simply a safe size to have, with my particular setup and connection. But... I have a feeling it may well be worth while removing assets from inventory that I know might be problematical.
Anyway. We shall, no doubt, see.
Well, returning to SL, I was getting this same problem, still, repeatedly. (It left me in a no-animations default posture at one point - literally crucified upon a login failure.) So I revived my old support case in as tactful a manner as possible, and much submitting of zipped log files went on, and...
... well, no definite conclusion has been reached, but I'm getting the problem rather less at the moment, and I think I'm beginning to understand why.
Basically, it might be a case of too much rubbish in my inventory.
Well, you know, duh, some might say, and not without due cause. After all, my inventory is not inconsiderable in size. And it is rather noticeably over the recommended limits. Let's face it, I have very nearly enough shoes, which is going some.
However - other people with similar building and shopping habits have accumulated even larger inventories than my 50,000 or so items, and still manage without getting limbo'ed. So, why am I getting this?
I still don't know for sure. But, the first time I shook myself free of it, it was by deleting my outfits folder, which contained a number of broken links - links to clothing items which the system couldn't resolve, for reasons best known to itself. And I'm beginning to suspect that the whole problem rests on a more general expression of this.
Basically, what's stitching me up (according to the guys working on my support case) is a timeout, where queries to the database regarding the components of my online self take too long to resolve. If I'm coming into SL with my inventory empty after a cache clear, I don't get the problem, implying that it lies somewhere in the lengthy process of reconciling the items in my inventory with the records in the database. Something, somewhere, is taking too long to add up.
So, I've been on - well, you couldn't quite call it an inventory purge exactly - but, at least, a slimming session of conceivably dodgy assets. Very old freebie items that I haven't worn or used in ages have been zapped - including a pair of boots that persistently threw up those "broken links" in my outfits folder. A lot of old notecards got the chop - and we know that there's an awful lot of different things can go in a notecard, right? Calling cards were purged - including some from people I know have had accounts deleted, or have otherwise left SL under a cloud: are those assets which are hard to locate? A lot of landmarks have been painstakingly removed from shopping folders... including several folders that I got from closing down sales, where in many cases the sims relating to those landmarks don't exist any more.
Now, it may be that I'm barking up the wrong tree completely here. All this slimming down has brought my inventory down to somewhat under 47,000, and it may be that that's simply a safe size to have, with my particular setup and connection. But... I have a feeling it may well be worth while removing assets from inventory that I know might be problematical.
Anyway. We shall, no doubt, see.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
All Square
Today is my fourth rezday. A great many avatars drop out of SL entirely by this age, and of course I was darn near one of them. So I don't propose to do a retrospective of my SL career or anything.
I do, however, plan to muse a bit on an arithmetical coincidence. Four is, of course, a perfect square. So are 49 and 81. What is the relevance of this? Simply that my mother's 81st was yesterday, while my younger sister celebrated her 49th earlier this month. I suppose it can't be that unheard of to have "square" birthdays in the same year as one's parents, but it's not all that common, either. (It's never happened to RL me - the numbers are wrong, with me being a bit older than my sister. Which you could have worked out from the way I described her as my younger sister, I suspect.)
I don't know if there's any great cosmic significance to be ascribed to this. But the coincidence struck me as interesting, and my little blonde brain has been busying itself working out what ages you have to have kids at, for this to happen. (Entirely academic as far as I'm concerned, I do assure you.)
I do, however, plan to muse a bit on an arithmetical coincidence. Four is, of course, a perfect square. So are 49 and 81. What is the relevance of this? Simply that my mother's 81st was yesterday, while my younger sister celebrated her 49th earlier this month. I suppose it can't be that unheard of to have "square" birthdays in the same year as one's parents, but it's not all that common, either. (It's never happened to RL me - the numbers are wrong, with me being a bit older than my sister. Which you could have worked out from the way I described her as my younger sister, I suspect.)
I don't know if there's any great cosmic significance to be ascribed to this. But the coincidence struck me as interesting, and my little blonde brain has been busying itself working out what ages you have to have kids at, for this to happen. (Entirely academic as far as I'm concerned, I do assure you.)
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
All in a good cause
I mentioned a couple of days ago that I'd be dropping by the fundraiser for Gala Phoenix's legal costs.... It seems this has become something of a hot issue! I tried to get into the Mesh sim, where the fundraiser is being held, several times yesterday, only to be bounced out every time because the region was full. This thing is drawing crowds.
I managed to turn myself sideways, suck in my tummy, and slide in unnoticed today. I must say, despite huge amounts of pressure, the sim itself seems to be holding up nicely; a bit of lag-walking in some spots, but in general I was moving about fairly easily. And the shopping worked just fine, too, which is fortunate, given the hole it has now put in my Linden balance.
I do think this is a cause worth supporting, because the legal case may lead to a serious rethink about DMCA takedowns and what's to be done when they are abused - and we are definitely overdue for some rethinking on that topic! Also, it is a cause worth supporting because there are is a lot of good stuff here from some very famous SL names, and, well, everyone knows about me and nice clothes, right? (Also a motorbike that I don't, strictly speaking, need.)
The vendors, by the way, have notices saying how much of the price is going to the cause... I am somewhat conflicted about this, on account of I think it might be a bit iffy to make money for oneself when setting up stall at a fundraising event. On the other hand, SL designers have to eat and pay tier like the rest of us... and some of them seem to think a fifty-fifty split, between the event and themselves, is equitable enough. I can see their point of view, I think; my own purchases, though, were restricted to ones that said "100% of the proceeds will go to meeting Gala Phoenix's legal costs." That is, after all, what I'm there to support... the nice clothes and unnecessary motorbike are only a side issue, right?
Anyway. I made it there, I overloaded my inventory again, and on balance it was fun. If only Second Pride had managed to draw this many people!
I managed to turn myself sideways, suck in my tummy, and slide in unnoticed today. I must say, despite huge amounts of pressure, the sim itself seems to be holding up nicely; a bit of lag-walking in some spots, but in general I was moving about fairly easily. And the shopping worked just fine, too, which is fortunate, given the hole it has now put in my Linden balance.
I do think this is a cause worth supporting, because the legal case may lead to a serious rethink about DMCA takedowns and what's to be done when they are abused - and we are definitely overdue for some rethinking on that topic! Also, it is a cause worth supporting because there are is a lot of good stuff here from some very famous SL names, and, well, everyone knows about me and nice clothes, right? (Also a motorbike that I don't, strictly speaking, need.)
The vendors, by the way, have notices saying how much of the price is going to the cause... I am somewhat conflicted about this, on account of I think it might be a bit iffy to make money for oneself when setting up stall at a fundraising event. On the other hand, SL designers have to eat and pay tier like the rest of us... and some of them seem to think a fifty-fifty split, between the event and themselves, is equitable enough. I can see their point of view, I think; my own purchases, though, were restricted to ones that said "100% of the proceeds will go to meeting Gala Phoenix's legal costs." That is, after all, what I'm there to support... the nice clothes and unnecessary motorbike are only a side issue, right?
Anyway. I made it there, I overloaded my inventory again, and on balance it was fun. If only Second Pride had managed to draw this many people!
Monday, July 9, 2012
The Curio affair of the DMCA in the night time
This rather non-sensational item from NWN hides behind it a rather alarming imbroglio between two SL content creators; I can understand why Mr Au is keeping his coverage restrained and non-judgmental, since the dispute has now escalated to the point where real lawyers - not just Internet "lawyers" - are getting involved. Still, following up on the links leads one into as juicy a tale of allegations and cliques and counter-allegations as one might wish to read in the proverbial month of Sundays. (I am, myself, convinced enough that I'll be dropping by Gala Phoenix's fundraiser to spend some Lindens for the cause.)
The main problem, it seems to me, is that whatever's happened, someone has been abusing the DMCA takedown process, by reporting as a copyright infringement content which they must know darn well isn't infringing. To me, this highlights an essential weakness in the whole process. It's all very well having a fast and effective method of taking down infringing content (I am not going to use the contentious word "stolen" here, as the issues are already quite muddy enough without distorting the meaning of another word), but the problem is the same as with the ready availability of firearms in some cultures - the bad guys get to have them too. In this case, it is quite clear that an innocent creator has been shot with the DMCA "gun" by a plagiarist trying to cover themselves with a bogus counter-accusation. Undoubtedly, the truth will come out in the end... and the RL lawyers will get a nice five-figure sum out of it, and everyone else is going to come out a loser.
This is surely not fair, and I'm hoping something can be done about it. It seems to me that there need to be serious consequences, somewhere, for an abuse of the DMCA takedown process - as things stand, an infringer can sling out a counter-claim and gum up a legitimate complainer's business, and it's not easy to see where they have anything to lose by doing that. Possibly, the RL courts will impose some sort of additional penalty - or possibly not; who knows, with many courts in many nations, not all of them up to the standards we in the developed world expect? But, it seems to me, abuse of DMCA needs to be something taken seriously in SL, too. I hope this is something LL is thinking about.
The main problem, it seems to me, is that whatever's happened, someone has been abusing the DMCA takedown process, by reporting as a copyright infringement content which they must know darn well isn't infringing. To me, this highlights an essential weakness in the whole process. It's all very well having a fast and effective method of taking down infringing content (I am not going to use the contentious word "stolen" here, as the issues are already quite muddy enough without distorting the meaning of another word), but the problem is the same as with the ready availability of firearms in some cultures - the bad guys get to have them too. In this case, it is quite clear that an innocent creator has been shot with the DMCA "gun" by a plagiarist trying to cover themselves with a bogus counter-accusation. Undoubtedly, the truth will come out in the end... and the RL lawyers will get a nice five-figure sum out of it, and everyone else is going to come out a loser.
This is surely not fair, and I'm hoping something can be done about it. It seems to me that there need to be serious consequences, somewhere, for an abuse of the DMCA takedown process - as things stand, an infringer can sling out a counter-claim and gum up a legitimate complainer's business, and it's not easy to see where they have anything to lose by doing that. Possibly, the RL courts will impose some sort of additional penalty - or possibly not; who knows, with many courts in many nations, not all of them up to the standards we in the developed world expect? But, it seems to me, abuse of DMCA needs to be something taken seriously in SL, too. I hope this is something LL is thinking about.
Monday, July 2, 2012
The play's the thing
So, there I was at home in Kuhrang, when I received a message from the estimable Mr Perryn Peterson; he was about to appear in a play, would I care to come and watch?
Shortly thereafter, there I was in Piedmont Landing, at the Jewell Theater high in the air, watching "The Ost", a Gorean-themed play in which Perryn was playing a two-timing guy who gets rather more than he bargained for, in a distinctly Gorean sort of style.
I have to admit, my own style wasn't particularly Gorean, since I was still baking a rather nice modern outfit from Ydea at the time... still, there were a couple of other conventional Earth people around, among all the silks and the slaves, so I sat quiet and said nothing and absorbed this little tale from a culture that is, to be honest, pretty much alien to me. (I read a Gor book, once, about twenty-five years ago; neither John Norman's writing style nor his sexual politics impressed me very much.)
The play was one of those areas where SL shows its... differences... from RL. On the one hand, fantastically detailed sets and costumes were rezzed in the blink of an eye, technology Shakespeare would have given his eye teeth for. On the other, the dialogue was exclusively in chat, so no intonation, no expression, there; and though the actors were perfectly choreographed, there is a limit to what they can do, too, with animations and precisely timed movement.
The subject matter, Perryn (quite correctly) assured me, was universal, but I kept looking about for the Gorean twists - the attitudes, and the resolution of the central situation, that were appropriate to the Gorean culture. (I commented to Perryn, afterwards, how different things might have been in other constructed cultures - citing as an example one of M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel stories, where the love triangle is resolved quite neatly by the hero marrying both the girls. But this isn't possible in a Gorean setting, apparently.) Anyway, it kept my interest, all the way through.
Must admit, though, the one thing that really threw me was the attitude of the audience, who were heckling loudly and commenting on the action all the way through.... Now, this might just be my cultural prejudices coming through, of course. My upbringing makes me think it's only a courtesy to the performers to keep my mouth shut and let them get on with the show - perhaps I am old-fashioned; perhaps it is different in Gor; or perhaps I'm not old-fashioned enough - Shakespeare's audiences at the Globe could cut up pretty rough, by all accounts. But I found it distracting, enough so to do a surreptitious mute on a couple of the most talkative (including one person whose open mic was delivering snatches of the Euro 2012 cup final along the way).
Anyway - it was definitely an interesting experience.... Of course, it occurs to me that I was present in my SL identity watching a bunch of other SL people assume the roles of yet other people in an invented society, thereby achieving such a level of "meta" that I'm not even sure I'm typing this. But it was certainly an interesting event.
Shortly thereafter, there I was in Piedmont Landing, at the Jewell Theater high in the air, watching "The Ost", a Gorean-themed play in which Perryn was playing a two-timing guy who gets rather more than he bargained for, in a distinctly Gorean sort of style.
I have to admit, my own style wasn't particularly Gorean, since I was still baking a rather nice modern outfit from Ydea at the time... still, there were a couple of other conventional Earth people around, among all the silks and the slaves, so I sat quiet and said nothing and absorbed this little tale from a culture that is, to be honest, pretty much alien to me. (I read a Gor book, once, about twenty-five years ago; neither John Norman's writing style nor his sexual politics impressed me very much.)
The play was one of those areas where SL shows its... differences... from RL. On the one hand, fantastically detailed sets and costumes were rezzed in the blink of an eye, technology Shakespeare would have given his eye teeth for. On the other, the dialogue was exclusively in chat, so no intonation, no expression, there; and though the actors were perfectly choreographed, there is a limit to what they can do, too, with animations and precisely timed movement.
The subject matter, Perryn (quite correctly) assured me, was universal, but I kept looking about for the Gorean twists - the attitudes, and the resolution of the central situation, that were appropriate to the Gorean culture. (I commented to Perryn, afterwards, how different things might have been in other constructed cultures - citing as an example one of M.A.R. Barker's Tékumel stories, where the love triangle is resolved quite neatly by the hero marrying both the girls. But this isn't possible in a Gorean setting, apparently.) Anyway, it kept my interest, all the way through.
Must admit, though, the one thing that really threw me was the attitude of the audience, who were heckling loudly and commenting on the action all the way through.... Now, this might just be my cultural prejudices coming through, of course. My upbringing makes me think it's only a courtesy to the performers to keep my mouth shut and let them get on with the show - perhaps I am old-fashioned; perhaps it is different in Gor; or perhaps I'm not old-fashioned enough - Shakespeare's audiences at the Globe could cut up pretty rough, by all accounts. But I found it distracting, enough so to do a surreptitious mute on a couple of the most talkative (including one person whose open mic was delivering snatches of the Euro 2012 cup final along the way).
Anyway - it was definitely an interesting experience.... Of course, it occurs to me that I was present in my SL identity watching a bunch of other SL people assume the roles of yet other people in an invented society, thereby achieving such a level of "meta" that I'm not even sure I'm typing this. But it was certainly an interesting event.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Wheels within wheels
So I logged in just now... which is not news to most people, I'd admit.
However, I was pleasantly surprised, because, for the past couple of weeks, I've been having an annoying problem, whereby I would log in to SL and find myself in a sort of limbo state, apparently in a region but disconnected from it - unable to move, TP, or communicate, with myself and the area around me loaded to a greater or lesser degree of completeness, and with a ping time pegged at 10000 ms. The only thing to do, it seemed, was log out, try to log in again, and hope that it worked. Sometimes it took up to four tries, and I was starting to get quite cross about it.
And, since about the middle of this week... that hasn't happened to me. I think it unlikely that this isn't connected to the server rollouts that always happen Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Whenever I am bitching about LL, I always try to remember how much the whole of SL is still a work in progress... they are meeting unique technical challenges, they are constantly expanding the capabilities of the system, they are operating, in many ways, at the cutting edge of virtual world technology. (There are virtual worlds out there with more impressive features, but not with SL's high concurrency levels... there are others with many more concurrent users, but not with SL's level of individual user freedom. SL operates in a niche which is far from completely explored.)
Of course, there are areas where LL deserves a thorough lambasting, and we can all think of six off the tops of our heads. But, sometimes, I think it wise to bear in mind just how much the technology is changing behind the scenes, and how hard it can be to predict the effects of those changes on the user experience. I would be very surprised if "Glorf's incomplete login problem" had appeared on a LL to-fix list at any time... but, something they've done seems to have fixed it.
However, I was pleasantly surprised, because, for the past couple of weeks, I've been having an annoying problem, whereby I would log in to SL and find myself in a sort of limbo state, apparently in a region but disconnected from it - unable to move, TP, or communicate, with myself and the area around me loaded to a greater or lesser degree of completeness, and with a ping time pegged at 10000 ms. The only thing to do, it seemed, was log out, try to log in again, and hope that it worked. Sometimes it took up to four tries, and I was starting to get quite cross about it.
And, since about the middle of this week... that hasn't happened to me. I think it unlikely that this isn't connected to the server rollouts that always happen Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Whenever I am bitching about LL, I always try to remember how much the whole of SL is still a work in progress... they are meeting unique technical challenges, they are constantly expanding the capabilities of the system, they are operating, in many ways, at the cutting edge of virtual world technology. (There are virtual worlds out there with more impressive features, but not with SL's high concurrency levels... there are others with many more concurrent users, but not with SL's level of individual user freedom. SL operates in a niche which is far from completely explored.)
Of course, there are areas where LL deserves a thorough lambasting, and we can all think of six off the tops of our heads. But, sometimes, I think it wise to bear in mind just how much the technology is changing behind the scenes, and how hard it can be to predict the effects of those changes on the user experience. I would be very surprised if "Glorf's incomplete login problem" had appeared on a LL to-fix list at any time... but, something they've done seems to have fixed it.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Well, don't I look stupid now?
No sooner do I finish pontificating about how Facebook doesn't do what SL does (and vice versa), then this NWN article pops up saying that yes, indeed, Facebook does do what SL does. Kinda-sorta. Well, is there egg on my face now or what?
Anyway. The Facebook "CloudParty" looks, according to the good Mr Au, a lot like SL circa 2003. Presumably, though, it's going to learn from the various mistakes SL has made, so will develop more quickly and surely, at least initially. (One example: apparently this thing has mesh integration right from the get-go, so no mucking around with blind alleys like sculpts.)
Where it's going to go from here, well, who knows? At the moment, it's bound to look a lot like early SL, with a limited amount of stuff-to-see and a crowd of early-adopter enthusiasts by way of population.... The question is how it's going to evolve, I suppose. I'm inclined to be slightly pessimistic, for several reasons. One is the demands this is going to place on Facebook's servers if this thing takes off; people don't always appreciate how far out on the cutting edge SL is, sometimes, balancing high levels of concurrency against a level of user freedom you simply don't get in MMORPGs. It takes a lot of oomph to render all those sims and allow you to wander round with an unrestricted point of view. Certainly, Facebook can provide enough oomph... for the moment... but one wonders, if their app takes off, whether they will regard it as the best (economic) use for the oomph at their disposal. After their rather troubled IPO, the people at Facebook might feel an urge to retrench, and a speculative venture that might consume a lot of resources with no immediate economic return... well, it might not look so appealling to them. (One possibility, therefore, is that it will develop into a reduced-features setup, a "spayed" SL like, say, IMVU.)
The second reason for my pessimism is that all the "barriers to engagement" I talked about are still there in this new app - if you are going to do anything with it, you are going to have to learn and work at it in a way which is outside the casual Facebook user's normal behaviour. And, unless people do that work - in reasonably significant numbers - it's going to go nowhere. You can't have user-generated content without a reasonable number of skilled users generating content. SL has managed to bootstrap itself into a full-scale virtual environment that can attract, effectively, virtual tourists; it remains to be seen whether this thing can do the same.
Of course, there is a quick way to generate content, and that's to rip it from other grids and other sources... which is my next reason for pessimism; what happens when the trolls, griefers and copyright infringers get a hold on this one? One must expect, I think, a degree of lawlessness on this new digital frontier to come....
Whatever happens, though, it seems likely that this will impact people's overall perception of virtual worlds - indeed, given the prevalence of Facebook, could become the default perception of them among the general public! Which means - well, I rather hope Facebook gets it right. Because if they don't, we'll all be tarnished by association.
Anyway. The Facebook "CloudParty" looks, according to the good Mr Au, a lot like SL circa 2003. Presumably, though, it's going to learn from the various mistakes SL has made, so will develop more quickly and surely, at least initially. (One example: apparently this thing has mesh integration right from the get-go, so no mucking around with blind alleys like sculpts.)
Where it's going to go from here, well, who knows? At the moment, it's bound to look a lot like early SL, with a limited amount of stuff-to-see and a crowd of early-adopter enthusiasts by way of population.... The question is how it's going to evolve, I suppose. I'm inclined to be slightly pessimistic, for several reasons. One is the demands this is going to place on Facebook's servers if this thing takes off; people don't always appreciate how far out on the cutting edge SL is, sometimes, balancing high levels of concurrency against a level of user freedom you simply don't get in MMORPGs. It takes a lot of oomph to render all those sims and allow you to wander round with an unrestricted point of view. Certainly, Facebook can provide enough oomph... for the moment... but one wonders, if their app takes off, whether they will regard it as the best (economic) use for the oomph at their disposal. After their rather troubled IPO, the people at Facebook might feel an urge to retrench, and a speculative venture that might consume a lot of resources with no immediate economic return... well, it might not look so appealling to them. (One possibility, therefore, is that it will develop into a reduced-features setup, a "spayed" SL like, say, IMVU.)
The second reason for my pessimism is that all the "barriers to engagement" I talked about are still there in this new app - if you are going to do anything with it, you are going to have to learn and work at it in a way which is outside the casual Facebook user's normal behaviour. And, unless people do that work - in reasonably significant numbers - it's going to go nowhere. You can't have user-generated content without a reasonable number of skilled users generating content. SL has managed to bootstrap itself into a full-scale virtual environment that can attract, effectively, virtual tourists; it remains to be seen whether this thing can do the same.
Of course, there is a quick way to generate content, and that's to rip it from other grids and other sources... which is my next reason for pessimism; what happens when the trolls, griefers and copyright infringers get a hold on this one? One must expect, I think, a degree of lawlessness on this new digital frontier to come....
Whatever happens, though, it seems likely that this will impact people's overall perception of virtual worlds - indeed, given the prevalence of Facebook, could become the default perception of them among the general public! Which means - well, I rather hope Facebook gets it right. Because if they don't, we'll all be tarnished by association.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Apples and oranges
My friend webspelunker Ghostraven is meditating here on SL and whether or not it has fulfilled its promise.... Comparisons to Facebook crop up. (Let's not dwell on the fact that, if you bought into Facebook's IPO, you could legitimately question whether that has fulfilled its promise, either.)
Now, Web is not the only person I've seen making that comparison... and, frankly, I think it's what they call a category mistake. Why is SL not as accessible and popular as Facebook? Well, very simply, because they do different things. Comparing them is, then, a matter of apples and oranges. SL is not very good at doing the sort of things that Facebook does, because that's not what it's for. Conversely, of course, Facebook is absolutely lousy at doing the sort of things SL is good at.
The foundations of SL - I keep saying this - are creativity and socialization. Facebook, naturally, is great at the socializing thing. (So I'm told. I do have a Facebook account - under my real name. If anyone wants to find out who the "real me" is, they could try it by looking through Facebook accounts finding one with little to no activity. I log on, once in a while, find that one of my four friends has posted some link to a "photo of the day" that turns out to be a poorly disguised phishing app, and log out again.) The creativity, though, is effectively nil. Facebook is great for creating links to stuff that's been created - photos, products, poorly disguised phishing apps - but what tools does it have to make stuff inside Facebook itself?
SL, conversely, is all about the creativity. In the beginning, the regions were almost literally a blank canvas for people to draw on.... Today, there is enough user-generated content in SL to keep any sensible person (a category in which I do not include myself) occupied for years.... Even so, even if you never turn on the build editor, modify your shape, or make a new clothing item from scratch, you still have to have some creativity to operate in SL; you have to create, if you like, a narrative for yourself inside it - you have to decide how you are going to interact with this virtual world. This is a problem pretty much unique to SL; in an ordinary MMORPG, you have a narrative role which is - within some scope for variation - pretty much laid out for you. The problem of finding or making your role in SL is a key one - the question "What do I do next?" is probably the one I see most often at Oxbridge (all right, after "wan 2 f**k?"). And failure to answer that question is probably the biggest single reason people stop coming back. It's not an easy question to answer. It takes thinking, and thinking's hard.
This is, in fact, a key reason why SL isn't as popular as Facebook, and in all likelihood never will be. It's not a question of barriers to entry - it is not noticeably harder to sign up for SL than it is to sign up for Facebook - it's a question of barriers to engagement. There are a lot of simple, obvious, well-signposted things to do in Facebook. You sign in to SL, though, and there are no signposts. You're on your own, and you have to figure out for yourself what to do.
And, of course, getting there is a lot tougher. If you are a social animal, finding a congenial group and gaining acceptance is hard work in itself. If you are a tourist, you will trudge across an awful lot of blank green land and abandoned shopping malls before you find a destination of interest. And if you are the creative type, learning to script and build and make clothing textures and mesh shapes... it's a whole career in itself.
(Am I putting down Facebook users here? No, not really. I doubt Facebookers are any less creative or intelligent on average as SL people - but they do choose to spend their intelligence and creativity on stuff outside Facebook itself, because creating on Facebook just isn't an option.)
So... SL is less popular than Facebook, because it is more like hard work, and that hard work isn't going to appeal to everyone. I think of it this way; Facebook is a sort of combination of desk jotter and photo album and bulletin board... SL is a creative medium. Using Facebook, therefore, is like writing in a desk diary; using SL is like writing a novel. There is nothing intrinsically better about either activity (unless you are Jeffrey Archer, in which case please stick to the desk diary), but one of them is harder work, and has a more specialized appeal. So guess which one is less popular?
I suppose it comes back to the "hype curve", as Tali keeps pointing out. SL has reached a point where people are stopping being disillusioned with it for not living up to the hype... it remains, now, to use it for what it does do well. Whatever that may be!
Now, Web is not the only person I've seen making that comparison... and, frankly, I think it's what they call a category mistake. Why is SL not as accessible and popular as Facebook? Well, very simply, because they do different things. Comparing them is, then, a matter of apples and oranges. SL is not very good at doing the sort of things that Facebook does, because that's not what it's for. Conversely, of course, Facebook is absolutely lousy at doing the sort of things SL is good at.
The foundations of SL - I keep saying this - are creativity and socialization. Facebook, naturally, is great at the socializing thing. (So I'm told. I do have a Facebook account - under my real name. If anyone wants to find out who the "real me" is, they could try it by looking through Facebook accounts finding one with little to no activity. I log on, once in a while, find that one of my four friends has posted some link to a "photo of the day" that turns out to be a poorly disguised phishing app, and log out again.) The creativity, though, is effectively nil. Facebook is great for creating links to stuff that's been created - photos, products, poorly disguised phishing apps - but what tools does it have to make stuff inside Facebook itself?
SL, conversely, is all about the creativity. In the beginning, the regions were almost literally a blank canvas for people to draw on.... Today, there is enough user-generated content in SL to keep any sensible person (a category in which I do not include myself) occupied for years.... Even so, even if you never turn on the build editor, modify your shape, or make a new clothing item from scratch, you still have to have some creativity to operate in SL; you have to create, if you like, a narrative for yourself inside it - you have to decide how you are going to interact with this virtual world. This is a problem pretty much unique to SL; in an ordinary MMORPG, you have a narrative role which is - within some scope for variation - pretty much laid out for you. The problem of finding or making your role in SL is a key one - the question "What do I do next?" is probably the one I see most often at Oxbridge (all right, after "wan 2 f**k?"). And failure to answer that question is probably the biggest single reason people stop coming back. It's not an easy question to answer. It takes thinking, and thinking's hard.
This is, in fact, a key reason why SL isn't as popular as Facebook, and in all likelihood never will be. It's not a question of barriers to entry - it is not noticeably harder to sign up for SL than it is to sign up for Facebook - it's a question of barriers to engagement. There are a lot of simple, obvious, well-signposted things to do in Facebook. You sign in to SL, though, and there are no signposts. You're on your own, and you have to figure out for yourself what to do.
And, of course, getting there is a lot tougher. If you are a social animal, finding a congenial group and gaining acceptance is hard work in itself. If you are a tourist, you will trudge across an awful lot of blank green land and abandoned shopping malls before you find a destination of interest. And if you are the creative type, learning to script and build and make clothing textures and mesh shapes... it's a whole career in itself.
(Am I putting down Facebook users here? No, not really. I doubt Facebookers are any less creative or intelligent on average as SL people - but they do choose to spend their intelligence and creativity on stuff outside Facebook itself, because creating on Facebook just isn't an option.)
So... SL is less popular than Facebook, because it is more like hard work, and that hard work isn't going to appeal to everyone. I think of it this way; Facebook is a sort of combination of desk jotter and photo album and bulletin board... SL is a creative medium. Using Facebook, therefore, is like writing in a desk diary; using SL is like writing a novel. There is nothing intrinsically better about either activity (unless you are Jeffrey Archer, in which case please stick to the desk diary), but one of them is harder work, and has a more specialized appeal. So guess which one is less popular?
I suppose it comes back to the "hype curve", as Tali keeps pointing out. SL has reached a point where people are stopping being disillusioned with it for not living up to the hype... it remains, now, to use it for what it does do well. Whatever that may be!
Thursday, June 14, 2012
On the flip side
After musing about stupid and obnoxious males - well, it was never going to take long before a female counter-example turned up.
So, last night at Oxbridge a young "lady" latched on to long-suffering tutor Elfbiter Skysmith and announced that she was now his girlfriend. Despite her summary of her personal assets and attractions ("I have big boobs!"), Elfbiter remained unimpressed... and, in fact, dealt with her more courteously than I could have managed, myself.
He was of the opinion that she was actually an RL male, but I remain unconvinced... there was something, to my mind, distinctly feminine about her dumb-and-obnoxiousness; it was arrogant and needy, more than arrogant and aggressive... a more stereotypically female behaviour, in fact. Of course, I could be wrong - I often am, especially when it comes to gender stereotypes. Me and gender stereotypes, we just don't seem to understand one another.
One thing I was wrong about, apparently, was her age - I had her pegged at fourteen, but she announced very loudly that she was sixteen, later on. She could have been lying, of course - I always assume that anyone I meet in SL is an unemployed forty-seven year old accountant named Norman who lives with his mother in Wolverhampton, in any case. Saves disappointment later on, you see - but, again, I'm not sure she was. Teenagers lying about their age in SL tend to go big. Sixteen is young enough to be believable....
... but it's also old enough to know better. I am not an advocate of children being seen and not heard - well, OK, I would prefer things that way, but intellectually I know it's not desirable - and I appreciate that adolescents will be brash and have lots of rough edges because they haven't yet learned social skills. But it is, in a sense, the job of an adolescent to grow up into an adult, and anyone carrying on like this girl at the age of sixteen is leaving things far too late.
One of those gender stereotypes - those ones I have such trouble with - says that women mature earlier and show more "emotional intelligence" than men. (Whatever the hell that means.) Sometimes I wonder if, since we get this stereotype reinforced repeatedly, women aren't in some danger of becoming complacent about our supposed superiority in this regard. Certainly, the girl last night was displaying no noticeable maturity, and about the emotional intelligence of a mink in heat. I am not impressed. Arrogant man-children are not nice to be around; I see no advantage, though, in arrogant woman-children....
So, last night at Oxbridge a young "lady" latched on to long-suffering tutor Elfbiter Skysmith and announced that she was now his girlfriend. Despite her summary of her personal assets and attractions ("I have big boobs!"), Elfbiter remained unimpressed... and, in fact, dealt with her more courteously than I could have managed, myself.
He was of the opinion that she was actually an RL male, but I remain unconvinced... there was something, to my mind, distinctly feminine about her dumb-and-obnoxiousness; it was arrogant and needy, more than arrogant and aggressive... a more stereotypically female behaviour, in fact. Of course, I could be wrong - I often am, especially when it comes to gender stereotypes. Me and gender stereotypes, we just don't seem to understand one another.
One thing I was wrong about, apparently, was her age - I had her pegged at fourteen, but she announced very loudly that she was sixteen, later on. She could have been lying, of course - I always assume that anyone I meet in SL is an unemployed forty-seven year old accountant named Norman who lives with his mother in Wolverhampton, in any case. Saves disappointment later on, you see - but, again, I'm not sure she was. Teenagers lying about their age in SL tend to go big. Sixteen is young enough to be believable....
... but it's also old enough to know better. I am not an advocate of children being seen and not heard - well, OK, I would prefer things that way, but intellectually I know it's not desirable - and I appreciate that adolescents will be brash and have lots of rough edges because they haven't yet learned social skills. But it is, in a sense, the job of an adolescent to grow up into an adult, and anyone carrying on like this girl at the age of sixteen is leaving things far too late.
One of those gender stereotypes - those ones I have such trouble with - says that women mature earlier and show more "emotional intelligence" than men. (Whatever the hell that means.) Sometimes I wonder if, since we get this stereotype reinforced repeatedly, women aren't in some danger of becoming complacent about our supposed superiority in this regard. Certainly, the girl last night was displaying no noticeable maturity, and about the emotional intelligence of a mink in heat. I am not impressed. Arrogant man-children are not nice to be around; I see no advantage, though, in arrogant woman-children....
Friday, June 8, 2012
World of tiers
Interesting discussions going on here and here on the general decline of land ownership across the Grid, and what LL might do about that....
Now, I've mentioned before that the reduction in land ownership is only to be expected, really, because 1) the RL economy sucks for everybody right now, and that's bound to have a knock-on effect on SL, and 2) the growth of Marketplace is acting as a disincentive for merchants to acquire land for stores. It seems, too, that a number of factors have conspired to make a temporary glut of virtual land in SL, and like most temporary gluts, it doesn't last - that is, after all, what "temporary" means - and a period of readjustment is bound to happen. Inara Pey's analysis of how LL might weather that readjustment makes for interesting reading.
Anyway. Tateru Nino looks at the advantages, or otherwise, of one possible option for making SL land more appealling - the obvious one of dropping the cost, a global reduction in tier. There are sound economic reasons, which Ms. Nino goes into, why this wouldn't necessarily be a good idea.... However, it got me to thinking. What other ways might there be of making land look more attractive? And it didn't take long before one occurred to me.
Land, as we all know, is kind of an abstraction of computing power, and while a certain amount of land equates to a certain virtual area on the SL grid, it also - and, for most of us, more importantly - measures the number of prims (or quantity of Land Impact) that you can put on it. So... What would be the results, economically speaking, of increasing the Land Impact available, from its current rate of 117 per 512 square meters?
First thing, I suppose, is to look at the costs of this, and this is an area where I don't have hard numbers, and I suspect no one outside the Lab does. Each virtual object in SL costs computing power to render, and I don't know how much the current 117/512 costs in real terms, or how much it would cost LL to raise that. However, I suspect there's enough slack in the system to support a modest rise with no significant additional cost to the Lab... indeed, to some extent that has already happened! With the introduction of mesh and the switch to Land Impact rather than prim count, a canny builder can fairly easily get an effective reduction in prims - I've heard figures as high as 43% being tossed around, though the finagling required for that is beyond the skill or the patience of most of us. But - well, 143% of 117 is a tad over 167. So, you have to figure that LL think the Grid can take that increase without any additional cost to them (because if it cost them more money, they would sure as hell pass the cost on to us.)
So... is there any slack left in the system, after we figure in that mesh-based reduction? Well, computer power continues, overall, to improve year on year, and that 117 per 512 has been a constant for a while now... you have to figure that there may well be. And if there is, LL might be well advised to use it!
Because, on a purely psychological level, it makes more sense than cutting tier fees. If you make additional capacity available to people with no extra cost, the tendency, always, is to use it - as with Parkinson's Law; prims expand to fill the capacity available for them. Suppose LL upped land capacity by about 10%, from 117 to 129, let's say. How is the average SL merchant going to respond to this? By reducing their landholdings overall by 10% to save money? Or by setting out 10% more vendors on the land they're already paying for?
And, for the non-commercial landholders - like, in a very small way, me - this is an incentive to tack another floor onto our homes, or design extra flashy things for our art projects, or improve and extend our clubs or our RP settings, or just to splash out on that steam-driven coffee-machine-and-bondage-bed that we didn't quite have space for before. In short, to make SL more interesting and better looking, and maybe to spend more on SL merchandise and thereby give the SL economy a shot in the arm.
It's a thought. I have no idea if it's feasible technically, or if it's viable commercially, or if LL is even thinking in those terms at all. But, if they want to make land more attractive, this might be a better way to do it than lowering the tier fees.
Now, I've mentioned before that the reduction in land ownership is only to be expected, really, because 1) the RL economy sucks for everybody right now, and that's bound to have a knock-on effect on SL, and 2) the growth of Marketplace is acting as a disincentive for merchants to acquire land for stores. It seems, too, that a number of factors have conspired to make a temporary glut of virtual land in SL, and like most temporary gluts, it doesn't last - that is, after all, what "temporary" means - and a period of readjustment is bound to happen. Inara Pey's analysis of how LL might weather that readjustment makes for interesting reading.
Anyway. Tateru Nino looks at the advantages, or otherwise, of one possible option for making SL land more appealling - the obvious one of dropping the cost, a global reduction in tier. There are sound economic reasons, which Ms. Nino goes into, why this wouldn't necessarily be a good idea.... However, it got me to thinking. What other ways might there be of making land look more attractive? And it didn't take long before one occurred to me.
Land, as we all know, is kind of an abstraction of computing power, and while a certain amount of land equates to a certain virtual area on the SL grid, it also - and, for most of us, more importantly - measures the number of prims (or quantity of Land Impact) that you can put on it. So... What would be the results, economically speaking, of increasing the Land Impact available, from its current rate of 117 per 512 square meters?
First thing, I suppose, is to look at the costs of this, and this is an area where I don't have hard numbers, and I suspect no one outside the Lab does. Each virtual object in SL costs computing power to render, and I don't know how much the current 117/512 costs in real terms, or how much it would cost LL to raise that. However, I suspect there's enough slack in the system to support a modest rise with no significant additional cost to the Lab... indeed, to some extent that has already happened! With the introduction of mesh and the switch to Land Impact rather than prim count, a canny builder can fairly easily get an effective reduction in prims - I've heard figures as high as 43% being tossed around, though the finagling required for that is beyond the skill or the patience of most of us. But - well, 143% of 117 is a tad over 167. So, you have to figure that LL think the Grid can take that increase without any additional cost to them (because if it cost them more money, they would sure as hell pass the cost on to us.)
So... is there any slack left in the system, after we figure in that mesh-based reduction? Well, computer power continues, overall, to improve year on year, and that 117 per 512 has been a constant for a while now... you have to figure that there may well be. And if there is, LL might be well advised to use it!
Because, on a purely psychological level, it makes more sense than cutting tier fees. If you make additional capacity available to people with no extra cost, the tendency, always, is to use it - as with Parkinson's Law; prims expand to fill the capacity available for them. Suppose LL upped land capacity by about 10%, from 117 to 129, let's say. How is the average SL merchant going to respond to this? By reducing their landholdings overall by 10% to save money? Or by setting out 10% more vendors on the land they're already paying for?
And, for the non-commercial landholders - like, in a very small way, me - this is an incentive to tack another floor onto our homes, or design extra flashy things for our art projects, or improve and extend our clubs or our RP settings, or just to splash out on that steam-driven coffee-machine-and-bondage-bed that we didn't quite have space for before. In short, to make SL more interesting and better looking, and maybe to spend more on SL merchandise and thereby give the SL economy a shot in the arm.
It's a thought. I have no idea if it's feasible technically, or if it's viable commercially, or if LL is even thinking in those terms at all. But, if they want to make land more attractive, this might be a better way to do it than lowering the tier fees.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Character ARCs
A conversation in Oxbridge group chat yesterday led me to turn on the Draw Weight feature for the first time in some months, and I was pleasantly surprised to see this had been fixed, at least in the dev version of V3 I have now.
Draw Weight, formerly Avatar Rendering Cost or ARC for short, is a measure of the visual complexity of your avi, or, roughly speaking, how much computational power it takes to put you on the screen. Turn on "Show Draw Weight for Avatars", and a number appears over everyone's head, or where their head would be if they had one. These days, that number starts at 1000, for an avi with no prim attachments or other complicating factors*, and that number is shown in a nice safe green... as the number increases, the green grows tinged with yellow, then shades to orange, and finally turns warning red to indicate that you really are getting a little complicated.
In addition to being a fine tool for self-appointed guardians of SL who will follow red-tinged numbers around accusing their possessors of wilfully creating lag, the Draw Weight metric does have some actual, legitimate uses, if you seriously want or need to keep your complexity down (example: if you are trying to do a low-lag look for hunting, which at the moment I am.) It's worth pointing out that the ARC metric has sort of grown out of outmoded assumptions, and many of the "lag-inducing" factors it measures don't matter any more on modern equipment, or even on my equipment. Still, it is useful to be able to see those numbers....
... or, at least, it was until V3 rolled out, because the numbering system changed (in V2, the base was 100, not 1000, and other numbers rolled up proportionately), but the colour coding didn't. So, even people wandering around in baseline avatars got a tinge of yellow to their names, and if you actually added some nice shoes and some prim hair - you know, basic necessities of life - you would go into the red zone pretty much immediately. As an example, all the humanoid starter avatars - the basic "newbie" looks - were red-numbered in this system.
Until recently. Now, the colour coding has swung back to being useful; my stock "hunting" look clocks in as weak yellow-green, as do a number of the starter avatars. 1000-point avis show up solid green again, and only the really complicated furry fashionistas have bright red scores. So, this metric is back to being almost useful, and you can play with your appearance, noting the effect of a pair of old invisiprim-based shoes (around 6,000) or new mesh boots (one pair clocks in at about 5,500), or a pretty brooch from Sparkle of Sound (165,000).
An additional feature, which is so stupid I heartily approve of it, is that the numbers also now come preceded by a message telling you whether the person you're looking at is "gray" or "textured", i.e. whether their textures have loaded yet. Because, clearly, you wouldn't be able to tell that just by looking at them, would you? Oh wait... (The idea of making a blank grey skin, with matching clothes, eyes and hair, just to mess with people's heads by being grey all over and still showing as "textured"... well, that is a fun one, isn't it?)
*You could, in fact, reduce your ARC by some complicating factors, such as wearing alpha layers that made some body parts invisible - if they can't be seen, the softwared doesn't have to work to render them, so - at least in the older system - your ARC was accordingly reduced. During an incident which I tend to refer to as the Plague of the Headless Noobs, you would see a number of people wandering around Oxbridge with no heads, and consequently an ARC of 60. I have no idea why this happened, but it was amusing while it lasted.
Draw Weight, formerly Avatar Rendering Cost or ARC for short, is a measure of the visual complexity of your avi, or, roughly speaking, how much computational power it takes to put you on the screen. Turn on "Show Draw Weight for Avatars", and a number appears over everyone's head, or where their head would be if they had one. These days, that number starts at 1000, for an avi with no prim attachments or other complicating factors*, and that number is shown in a nice safe green... as the number increases, the green grows tinged with yellow, then shades to orange, and finally turns warning red to indicate that you really are getting a little complicated.
In addition to being a fine tool for self-appointed guardians of SL who will follow red-tinged numbers around accusing their possessors of wilfully creating lag, the Draw Weight metric does have some actual, legitimate uses, if you seriously want or need to keep your complexity down (example: if you are trying to do a low-lag look for hunting, which at the moment I am.) It's worth pointing out that the ARC metric has sort of grown out of outmoded assumptions, and many of the "lag-inducing" factors it measures don't matter any more on modern equipment, or even on my equipment. Still, it is useful to be able to see those numbers....
... or, at least, it was until V3 rolled out, because the numbering system changed (in V2, the base was 100, not 1000, and other numbers rolled up proportionately), but the colour coding didn't. So, even people wandering around in baseline avatars got a tinge of yellow to their names, and if you actually added some nice shoes and some prim hair - you know, basic necessities of life - you would go into the red zone pretty much immediately. As an example, all the humanoid starter avatars - the basic "newbie" looks - were red-numbered in this system.
Until recently. Now, the colour coding has swung back to being useful; my stock "hunting" look clocks in as weak yellow-green, as do a number of the starter avatars. 1000-point avis show up solid green again, and only the really complicated furry fashionistas have bright red scores. So, this metric is back to being almost useful, and you can play with your appearance, noting the effect of a pair of old invisiprim-based shoes (around 6,000) or new mesh boots (one pair clocks in at about 5,500), or a pretty brooch from Sparkle of Sound (165,000).
An additional feature, which is so stupid I heartily approve of it, is that the numbers also now come preceded by a message telling you whether the person you're looking at is "gray" or "textured", i.e. whether their textures have loaded yet. Because, clearly, you wouldn't be able to tell that just by looking at them, would you? Oh wait... (The idea of making a blank grey skin, with matching clothes, eyes and hair, just to mess with people's heads by being grey all over and still showing as "textured"... well, that is a fun one, isn't it?)
*You could, in fact, reduce your ARC by some complicating factors, such as wearing alpha layers that made some body parts invisible - if they can't be seen, the softwared doesn't have to work to render them, so - at least in the older system - your ARC was accordingly reduced. During an incident which I tend to refer to as the Plague of the Headless Noobs, you would see a number of people wandering around Oxbridge with no heads, and consequently an ARC of 60. I have no idea why this happened, but it was amusing while it lasted.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Alarums and excursions, possibly redux
(As in, I may well have used that post title before, but can't be bothered looking it up right now.)
Anyway. A situation described in Nalates' blog resulted in an awful lot of region restarts, yesterday, and since then SL has been decidedly odd, for me at least. In some ways it is its usual self, and I have managed an impressive number of crashes and random disconnects as I wander around on Silk Road 3.... While I'm on, though, SL has been running unusually smoothly and fluidly, with my lousy frame rates distinctly less lousy than normal, textures loading quickly, all sorts of things making it less of a pain. (It's worth noting that, even at the best of times, my frame rates are well below the level which most SL pundits describe as "intolerably slow and jerky". But, then, this is the way I describe most SL pundits, anyway, so never mind. I get by, I get by.... )
There often seems to be a trade-off between stability and speed, as the viewer develops... possibly, with the latest dev viewer, the pendulum has swung towards the "speed" side, leaving those of us with clapped-out equipment running around and falling over, rather than safely plodding. Perhaps it will swing back, with the next release.... No doubt I will see, in due course. (Worth noting, I suppose, that in general there has been a slow but definite overall improvement in V3 performance, for me, since the interface change in V3.2. With gritted teeth, I commend LL for this. Oh, yes. Commended. Now fix the damn bugs already.)
Anyway. A situation described in Nalates' blog resulted in an awful lot of region restarts, yesterday, and since then SL has been decidedly odd, for me at least. In some ways it is its usual self, and I have managed an impressive number of crashes and random disconnects as I wander around on Silk Road 3.... While I'm on, though, SL has been running unusually smoothly and fluidly, with my lousy frame rates distinctly less lousy than normal, textures loading quickly, all sorts of things making it less of a pain. (It's worth noting that, even at the best of times, my frame rates are well below the level which most SL pundits describe as "intolerably slow and jerky". But, then, this is the way I describe most SL pundits, anyway, so never mind. I get by, I get by.... )
There often seems to be a trade-off between stability and speed, as the viewer develops... possibly, with the latest dev viewer, the pendulum has swung towards the "speed" side, leaving those of us with clapped-out equipment running around and falling over, rather than safely plodding. Perhaps it will swing back, with the next release.... No doubt I will see, in due course. (Worth noting, I suppose, that in general there has been a slow but definite overall improvement in V3 performance, for me, since the interface change in V3.2. With gritted teeth, I commend LL for this. Oh, yes. Commended. Now fix the damn bugs already.)
Sunday, June 3, 2012
In praise of blacklisting
I was displeased, last night, to see a message from loup30 crop up in a group chat. I thought we'd seen the last of that one, but, no, s/he/it was back again.
This is the name (user name - s/he/it has one of those display names with fancied-up characters, which is another thing that annoys me) of a recurring spambot; s/he/it's modus operandi is to pop into a group chat, post an advert for a store, and then leave the group before the moderators can withdraw s/he/it's chat privileges and/or deliver a kick. S/he/it gets Abuse Reported for spam, of course - I've done that myself, when it involves a group I mod - but seems to keep soldiering on regardless. (Why do I keep saying "s/he/it"? Because I have no idea of this person's real or SL gender, and because if you say s/he/it fast, it expresses how I feel.)
Anyway. This is one of those ongoing irritations, but it highlights a problem with the group system as a whole... Really, with a serial spambot as active as this one, word gets around, and group mods should be able to take preventative action - but we can't. We can't, because there is no way to block a specific person from entering a group. The only way to keep people out is to raise barriers to everyone - by making the group closed-enrollment, or by putting in an entry fee. (Even a small entry fee eliminates the minuscule profit margin which spammers get, so they won't pay one.)
Obviously, with many groups - new-people help groups being the ones I know best, of course - this simply won't work; those groups need to be open access so new folks can join them without impediment. So it would really help if we could blacklist known spammers and other in-chat griefers, without raising barriers to entry for the innocent and bewildered.... There's a JIRA about it, I'm sure. But no signs of progress that I know of.
This is the name (user name - s/he/it has one of those display names with fancied-up characters, which is another thing that annoys me) of a recurring spambot; s/he/it's modus operandi is to pop into a group chat, post an advert for a store, and then leave the group before the moderators can withdraw s/he/it's chat privileges and/or deliver a kick. S/he/it gets Abuse Reported for spam, of course - I've done that myself, when it involves a group I mod - but seems to keep soldiering on regardless. (Why do I keep saying "s/he/it"? Because I have no idea of this person's real or SL gender, and because if you say s/he/it fast, it expresses how I feel.)
Anyway. This is one of those ongoing irritations, but it highlights a problem with the group system as a whole... Really, with a serial spambot as active as this one, word gets around, and group mods should be able to take preventative action - but we can't. We can't, because there is no way to block a specific person from entering a group. The only way to keep people out is to raise barriers to everyone - by making the group closed-enrollment, or by putting in an entry fee. (Even a small entry fee eliminates the minuscule profit margin which spammers get, so they won't pay one.)
Obviously, with many groups - new-people help groups being the ones I know best, of course - this simply won't work; those groups need to be open access so new folks can join them without impediment. So it would really help if we could blacklist known spammers and other in-chat griefers, without raising barriers to entry for the innocent and bewildered.... There's a JIRA about it, I'm sure. But no signs of progress that I know of.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Magic of the Marketplace
A post by Tali here sent us both off on a frenzy of speculation about Marketplace and stuff....
I've mentioned, before, the apparent effect the Marketplace is having on SL as merchants increasingly rely upon it and downgrade their inworld presence. (Found another instance of this only two days ago, actually, when I popped over to the Alruneia Sentry sim to browse their interesting selection of SF/fantasy gear, only to find nothing but an empty stretch of grassland with a rental notice on it. Store appears to be Marketplace only, now....)
It's hard to disagree with Tali's conclusion, that the Marketplace just offers too many advantages over an inworld store for a merchant not to prefer it. (I am not a serious merchant, so I have no Marketplace presence... and I have near as dammit no sales, and those facts are not unrelated.) Also, many of the pro-inworld arguments sort of fall to pieces when you look at them. It's all very well saying that you can't see what an item actually looks like inworld from Marketplace, but most often, you can't do that inworld either - no clothing designer maintains dozens of models to wear and display outfits, and furniture or gadget makers who spend hundreds of Land Impact to show off stock are the exception, not the rule.
So, everyone should just hightail it for Marketplace, yeah? But you have to consider the implications of that for SL as a whole.... as I've discussed before, changes in land usage, and a contraction in the size of the Grid, are already apparent as this trend starts to take hold. And fewer sims being rented means less income for LL, and I have voiced my concerns over whether their cut of increased Marketplace revenues will make up for the shortfall.
Besides, there is going to be a knock-on effect - indeed, has already been a knock-on effect - on people whose business models are predicated on serving inworld stores. When Direct Delivery came in, it effectively destroyed the revenue stream for people who rent out space for other people's Magic Boxes - you can easily think of other SL businesses that are going to be hit by a general retreat of business from inworld. Some of them, I grant you, I won't miss - no one will be greatly upset by a decline in the number of traffic-gaming or advertising bots clogging up sims. Others will be a sad loss - promotional things like Shep Korvin's Lucky Chairs and similar won't be much good if there aren't stores to put them in, even though Shep has managed to build a sort of SL subculture all his own around his product line (I am a Lucky Tribe member myself, and have delicious toffee to prove it). I would miss Lucky Tribe if it went. For that matter, there is that other well-known promotional tool, the hunt, that you might remember I do a bit of (Silk Road 3 starts tomorrow, eep eep eep!). It's going to be bloomin' hard to hunt if there are no hunting grounds... and another SL subculture comes under threat....
Mention of subcultures, though, leads me to another point... Shopping is a social activity, after all (note to gentlemen readers, if any: it is, seriously, even if you don't get it), and some of the big stores have their own communities which have grown up around them... and this sort of thing can keep a main store going, even when the bulk of the catalogue has moved over to Marketplace. However, this is an advantage for the big stores that already have a strong, established following... there is no chance of me developing anything like that. For the small-scale beginning merchant, the rational choice has clearly got to be to go with Marketplace from the outset - and it may even prove to be a rational choice from LL's viewpoint, too, as the "long tail" of low-level transactions generates an overall profit for them. (Admittedly, LL's commerce team have been actively dismissive of the whole "long tail" concept in the past, preferring to concentrate on a smaller core of "prestige" merchants... well, it would not be the first time LL have been clueless, would it?)
But, well, I don't do SL for economically rational reasons....
So, it occurs to me, is there some way to promote the inworld side of things and keep the efficiency advantages of Marketplace? At this point, the techy side of me comes to the fore, and I happily lose myself in an orgy of unbridled speculation.
First off, each Marketplace page can contain - if the merchant has an inworld store - a "see item inworld" link, a SLURL that will get you to the inworld location of your item. Suppose, to climb up on one of my hobby-horses, we had a better integrated version of that - an in-browser viewer that took you directly to the store, instead of doing all that fairly tedious SLURL-ing type stuff (I apologize if I'm getting too technical here, all that jargon, you know how it is)? Back when I was yapping about the proper uses of Basic Mode, I mentioned the idea of using it as an in-browser viewer... now, you would need inventory options, which Basic Mode didn't have, to shop this way... but LL are already working on their Simple Inventory project; would it be beyond their abilities to merge the two?
However, there are no immediate signs of a browser-based viewer coming up... But there are new developments in the pipeline that could be used inworld, namely the Experience Tools coming soon to a beta-release channel near you. If you want to see how something looks inworld, the temporary attachments feature - as Tali pointed out - offers an excellent opportunity to try before you buy. And you could envisage some sort of shop-catalogue HUD, too, which would help you to find stuff in the first place. (In fact, I can think of at least one shop that already offers a HUD for in-store navigation...) Couple this with a general beefing-up of the inworld search function - which still leaves me staring at a blank black panel one time in every three - and you might have some inworld functionality which approaches Marketplace's ease of use. Maybe.
Now, the techy side of me looks at the Experience Tools and makes loud squeeing "ooh shiny!" noises, but my more cynical side thinks of the possibilities of these things for abuse, especially in a commercial context, and hears a faint grinding and grating sound, as of several cans of worms being opened in the not too distant future.
But, of course, this is SL, and new cans of worms are opened every day. Still, it seems increasingly clear that a seismic shift in usage is taking place as a result of Marketplace... and we need to think about how it will play out, and what technical factors might influence it. This has been an awfully long blog post already, and yet I have a feeling I've hardly scratched the surface of this subject, yet! Does the readership-at-very-small have any ideas?
I've mentioned, before, the apparent effect the Marketplace is having on SL as merchants increasingly rely upon it and downgrade their inworld presence. (Found another instance of this only two days ago, actually, when I popped over to the Alruneia Sentry sim to browse their interesting selection of SF/fantasy gear, only to find nothing but an empty stretch of grassland with a rental notice on it. Store appears to be Marketplace only, now....)
It's hard to disagree with Tali's conclusion, that the Marketplace just offers too many advantages over an inworld store for a merchant not to prefer it. (I am not a serious merchant, so I have no Marketplace presence... and I have near as dammit no sales, and those facts are not unrelated.) Also, many of the pro-inworld arguments sort of fall to pieces when you look at them. It's all very well saying that you can't see what an item actually looks like inworld from Marketplace, but most often, you can't do that inworld either - no clothing designer maintains dozens of models to wear and display outfits, and furniture or gadget makers who spend hundreds of Land Impact to show off stock are the exception, not the rule.
So, everyone should just hightail it for Marketplace, yeah? But you have to consider the implications of that for SL as a whole.... as I've discussed before, changes in land usage, and a contraction in the size of the Grid, are already apparent as this trend starts to take hold. And fewer sims being rented means less income for LL, and I have voiced my concerns over whether their cut of increased Marketplace revenues will make up for the shortfall.
Besides, there is going to be a knock-on effect - indeed, has already been a knock-on effect - on people whose business models are predicated on serving inworld stores. When Direct Delivery came in, it effectively destroyed the revenue stream for people who rent out space for other people's Magic Boxes - you can easily think of other SL businesses that are going to be hit by a general retreat of business from inworld. Some of them, I grant you, I won't miss - no one will be greatly upset by a decline in the number of traffic-gaming or advertising bots clogging up sims. Others will be a sad loss - promotional things like Shep Korvin's Lucky Chairs and similar won't be much good if there aren't stores to put them in, even though Shep has managed to build a sort of SL subculture all his own around his product line (I am a Lucky Tribe member myself, and have delicious toffee to prove it). I would miss Lucky Tribe if it went. For that matter, there is that other well-known promotional tool, the hunt, that you might remember I do a bit of (Silk Road 3 starts tomorrow, eep eep eep!). It's going to be bloomin' hard to hunt if there are no hunting grounds... and another SL subculture comes under threat....
Mention of subcultures, though, leads me to another point... Shopping is a social activity, after all (note to gentlemen readers, if any: it is, seriously, even if you don't get it), and some of the big stores have their own communities which have grown up around them... and this sort of thing can keep a main store going, even when the bulk of the catalogue has moved over to Marketplace. However, this is an advantage for the big stores that already have a strong, established following... there is no chance of me developing anything like that. For the small-scale beginning merchant, the rational choice has clearly got to be to go with Marketplace from the outset - and it may even prove to be a rational choice from LL's viewpoint, too, as the "long tail" of low-level transactions generates an overall profit for them. (Admittedly, LL's commerce team have been actively dismissive of the whole "long tail" concept in the past, preferring to concentrate on a smaller core of "prestige" merchants... well, it would not be the first time LL have been clueless, would it?)
But, well, I don't do SL for economically rational reasons....
So, it occurs to me, is there some way to promote the inworld side of things and keep the efficiency advantages of Marketplace? At this point, the techy side of me comes to the fore, and I happily lose myself in an orgy of unbridled speculation.
First off, each Marketplace page can contain - if the merchant has an inworld store - a "see item inworld" link, a SLURL that will get you to the inworld location of your item. Suppose, to climb up on one of my hobby-horses, we had a better integrated version of that - an in-browser viewer that took you directly to the store, instead of doing all that fairly tedious SLURL-ing type stuff (I apologize if I'm getting too technical here, all that jargon, you know how it is)? Back when I was yapping about the proper uses of Basic Mode, I mentioned the idea of using it as an in-browser viewer... now, you would need inventory options, which Basic Mode didn't have, to shop this way... but LL are already working on their Simple Inventory project; would it be beyond their abilities to merge the two?
However, there are no immediate signs of a browser-based viewer coming up... But there are new developments in the pipeline that could be used inworld, namely the Experience Tools coming soon to a beta-release channel near you. If you want to see how something looks inworld, the temporary attachments feature - as Tali pointed out - offers an excellent opportunity to try before you buy. And you could envisage some sort of shop-catalogue HUD, too, which would help you to find stuff in the first place. (In fact, I can think of at least one shop that already offers a HUD for in-store navigation...) Couple this with a general beefing-up of the inworld search function - which still leaves me staring at a blank black panel one time in every three - and you might have some inworld functionality which approaches Marketplace's ease of use. Maybe.
Now, the techy side of me looks at the Experience Tools and makes loud squeeing "ooh shiny!" noises, but my more cynical side thinks of the possibilities of these things for abuse, especially in a commercial context, and hears a faint grinding and grating sound, as of several cans of worms being opened in the not too distant future.
But, of course, this is SL, and new cans of worms are opened every day. Still, it seems increasingly clear that a seismic shift in usage is taking place as a result of Marketplace... and we need to think about how it will play out, and what technical factors might influence it. This has been an awfully long blog post already, and yet I have a feeling I've hardly scratched the surface of this subject, yet! Does the readership-at-very-small have any ideas?
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Changing faces
I have changed my SL profile picture. Of course, very possibly the readership-at-very-small knows this already, since an event of this epochal importance is automatically announced via my profile feed. (The same would apply were I ever to change, or indeed use, a Display Name.) Some people, the real enthusiasts for Facebook and Twitter and their ilk, wax lyrical over these sorts of little details, imagining a world of ultra-connected social media in which everyone is announcing everything cool or interesting that happens to them, all the time. I remain unconvinced. In a world where everyone is talking all the time, who will have time to listen?
Anyway. This is, in fact, the third profile picture I've had in all my SL career. The first one, I put up simply to avoid having that dreadful grey silhouette facing me whenever I looked. It was OK, I thought, but when I tweaked my face to remove some bugs, I thought I'd better put the new face where people could see it (even though I'd spent quite a bit of effort and ingenuity making it as much like the old one as possible, apart from not having the bugs). I thought the second one was OK, too, though it did prompt one of my friends to IM me and say "Hello, Ellen".... However. I have settled on a pair of eyes I like, and am slowly updating my outfits to use them, so I decided a new profile pic was indicated. Hopefully, too, it looks a bit less butch. Ellen, indeed.
I suppose, really, the profile pic ought to say something about me, but I'm blowed if I can think what, other than "I'm Glorf and this is what I look like". So, there it is. That is what I look like....
Anyway. This is, in fact, the third profile picture I've had in all my SL career. The first one, I put up simply to avoid having that dreadful grey silhouette facing me whenever I looked. It was OK, I thought, but when I tweaked my face to remove some bugs, I thought I'd better put the new face where people could see it (even though I'd spent quite a bit of effort and ingenuity making it as much like the old one as possible, apart from not having the bugs). I thought the second one was OK, too, though it did prompt one of my friends to IM me and say "Hello, Ellen".... However. I have settled on a pair of eyes I like, and am slowly updating my outfits to use them, so I decided a new profile pic was indicated. Hopefully, too, it looks a bit less butch. Ellen, indeed.
I suppose, really, the profile pic ought to say something about me, but I'm blowed if I can think what, other than "I'm Glorf and this is what I look like". So, there it is. That is what I look like....
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