Surviving Fantasy Faire

Macmoragh & Muse At Sanctum

Fantasy Faire, like any busy event in Second Life, can be a troublesome affair, the lag, the bumping into things, the sims being reset. However if you take a little care, you can have a far more enjoyable experience. The first thing to remember is that we all contribute to lag, some more than others it has to be said, but we all contribute and we all add load. Now we can’t all be invisible, but we can pack lightly.

Mounringvale Thicket

Yes I know, it’s Fantasy Faire and we all want to look awesome, wear our wings, hit people with wands, strike others with a curse of doom, but there are plenty of days for you to do this and you don’t have to do it all in one sitting.

Scripts, there’s always controversy about scripts at busy events, there are tools that inaccurately reflect resource usage, but scripts, like everything else, use resources, so if you are going scripted, try to be lightly scripted to avoid disappointment.

Blackwater Glenn

Taking photos, now this is tricky. There are other people there for a start and when you’ve played with your windlight settings, tried to ramp up your graphics and finally got the perfect angle, don’t shout abuse at people who wander into the shot. Unlike real life, in Second Life people don’t realise you’ve been piddling around for twenty minutes trying to get the best shot.

Also, don’t shake your fist, curse and roar with anger when you try to save a snapshot to disk and the viewer crashes .. maybe that’s just me.

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All The Fun Of The Fantasy Faire

Draxtor Despres had posted a teaser video:

The Fantasy Faire blog had been previewing like crazy but now the wait is over, the hype will be delivered, Fantasy Faire 2014 is open!


Fantasy Faire 2014

Celebrating its sixth year, the Fantasy Faire is the largest gathering of fantasy designers, enthusiasts, roleplayers and performers in the virtual world. From May 1st through the 11th, treat yourself to eleven days of shopping, live music concerts, auctions, hunts and roleplaying. Come join thousands of Second Life residents and creators as they bring their visions together in support of the American Cancer Society.

Visit in Second Life

Linden Lab have even joined in the fun by blogging about it. This is a far cry from the days when my post on the official forums about Fantasy Faire was deleted by a moderator and I received a warning … I really should let bygones be bygones on this …. but it still irks me!

However back to the Faire, it will be running from May 1st, (which is a rather special day in my calendar and one on which I’m a year older than I was yesterday) to May 11th. The event will be very busy, at some times maybe a little too busy but that’s the beauty and beast of such events.

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Linden Lab’s Bizarre System Requirements Move

Yesterday Linden Lab blogged about updates to the Second Life system requirements. This mainly centred around Linden Lab no longer wanting to support Windows XP because Microsoft no longer support Windows XP. This is fine and lots of companies will follow suit.

However where matters get a tad distasteful is in Linden Lab’s moves to block future installs of the client on machines that aren’t running Windows XP Service Pack 3.

This is a very bizarre move considering the client will happily run on Windows XP SP2. There are numerous reasons why clients crash on systems, people running Windows XP are likely to be running older hardware and have less RAM than modern systems, for example, but upgrading to a new OS or Service Pack is not likely to improve their performance to any great degree in terms of Second Life.

I don’t see the problem with Linden Lab saying they are going to stop supporting Windows XP, it’s a sensible move but it’s not Linden Lab’s role to dictate to people whose systems can run Second Life, what Service Pack level they should be at unless it poses a threat to the Second Life service as a whole, which is clearly not the case or else Windows XP would have been blocked long ago.

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