Second Life – Page 207

January 1, 2013

Is It Time For A Linden Lab Login Account?

Back in 2009 Argent Stonecutter created a Jira suggestion that I very much agree with. SVC-6212 Create Master Account Name, Linking to Avatar Names. The idea here is that you’d login to Second Life and then select an avatar name to go inworld with, this would mean linking your alts, which could have benefits for issues such as Mesh uploads, which are currently on an avatar basis, so even though the person behind Ciaran Laval meets the requirements to upload Mesh, my alts don’t, this despite the fact that my alts are known by Linden Lab as they linked them for the cases of being adult verified back in the day when the requirements were more stringent.

I shouldn’t need to have payment info on all my avatars, having payment info on my overall account deals with this. However whereas this has merit for Second Life, it has even more merit now that Linden Lab are releasing new products. Patterns, Creatoverse, Dio and Versu are all Linden Lab products. There are different ways these products are delivered with some aimed at the mobile community and some web based but with Linden Lab producing multiple products doesn’t it make some sense for me to have a Linden Lab account, rather than a product specific account?

Blizzard do this, I have one login for World of Warcraft, the same one works for Diablo III and would also work for Starcraft II. This just makes the process of purchasing products easier, it makes billing easier. I’m already a Linden Lab customer, a bird in the hand and all that.

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December 31, 2012

2013 – Hopes, Wishes And Forthcoming Improvements

Usually at this time of year, someone will post some predictions for the forthcoming year, although that seems to be light on the ground this year, it’s always a bit of fun to see those predictions and see what transpires. However predictions aren’t for me, instead I’ll post some hopes and wishes and look at what may happen.

On The Horizon

On the horizon we have some useful looking improvements coming to us from Linden Lab. Project shining leads the way and is already well under production. This includes server side baking via project sunshine, which will be a pain point for some as older viewers such as Phoenix aren’t coming along for the ride but it should mean improvements to how textures load and improved performance. This is also alongside the new http-Library project which is already being used in the beta viewer.

This comes on the back of Linden Lab improving hardware during 2012, as stated on the blog post about 2012: “in 2012 we made the single largest capital investment in new server hardware upgrades in the history of Linden Lab”

So we should see the results of these hardware and software improvements during the coming months. We should also see the emergence of the open source efforts to improve graphics rendering performance such as the use of normal and specular maps during 2013.

Then we should see more work done on the good building practices wiki pages, which is turning into a bloody good resource.

Second Life expanding to Steam is still on the horizon. Changes have been made to the beta viewer, including a create account option, so it seems to be getting closer.

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December 29, 2012

Female Avatars More Likely To Be Scantily Clad Shocker!

I’m not sure what surprises me more, the fact that a University have been studying whether male or female avatars show more skin, or whether it’s discovering there’s a Laval University in Canada!

Geekosystem and abc news both cover this report and both appear to have their tongues in their cheeks, which isn’t that surprising.

The study was conducted by Laval University by researchers studying more than 400 avatars. The results were that 71 percent of male avatars kept at least 75 percent of their body covered, whereas only 5 percent of females did. At the other end of the spectrum, female avatars revealed 25 to 49 percent of their flesh, as opposed to just 9 percent of males.

I’m a tad bemused as to what the aim of this report was, you can tell that females reveal more skin from males from just looking at clothing lines on the marketplace, indeed there are often complaints that female avatars have too much choice of what is termed, slutwear, and nowhere near enough choice when it comes to a more conservative choice. I’m not a fashionista so I can’t really comment on how the land lies but female avatars revealing more flesh than males is not a surprise to me.

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December 28, 2012

Giulio Prisco Won’t Avoid The Immersion vs. Augmentation Issues In New Virtual Worlds

I was reading the Second Life Forums when I saw a post from Mecha Innis entitled Giulio Prisco of the IEET Declares Second Life Dead. “Here we go again” I thought and went to read the article itself: Snow Crash(ed) in Second Life (end 2012).

The article isn’t as ignorant as some articles on the death of Second Life, it’s clear that Giulio was a big fan and there are areas where I’m in agreement with him. However there are also areas where it seems clear that Giulio isn’t happy because people didn’t want Second Life to be as he wanted it to be, and that’s something I always find disappointing because the beauty of Second Life is that it can be what you want it to be.

The article is interesting because it brings up the old debate of Immersion vs Augmentation and has links to some interesting old articles:

“Many early users of SL were very jealous and protective of the early SL culture, strongly centered on pseudonymity and non-disclosure of real life information, and vocally resisted all technical innovations that could facilitate the intrusion of reality into their “magic circle” (see for example the very heated debates that followed the introduction of voice in SL in 2007). Most of them were “immersionists,” mainly interested in SL as “another world” where they could live “another life” entirely separated from their “first life” (FL) and strongly resisted the “invasion” of “augmentationists” interested in SL as a communication tool for telepresence applications related to FL. I think the tension between these two communities played a significant role in the demise of SL. Henrik Bennetsen’s essay on the subject is not available anymore at its original URL but a backup is still on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.”

The thing I find odd about Giulio’s comment here is that in the first linked article, of which he is the author, he wrote: “I support that idea that everyone should be free to live her Second Life, AND her Real Life, as she wants to live it. So, though I use voice in SL routinely, I do not have anything against immersionists refusing to use it and support their freedom of choice. At the same time, of course I protect _my_ freedom of choice and resist immersionists trying to tell _me_ how I should live _my_ SL (or RL). The point is, I _am_ into making my SL a reflection of my RL – and want the freedom to use all options that permit doing so.” Continue reading “Giulio Prisco Won’t Avoid The Immersion vs. Augmentation Issues In New Virtual Worlds”