Now that the TPVP (Third Party Viewer Policy) series is over, let's focus on the second soap opera from the Linden Lab Studios: "V2". The scenario is very impressive but the realization... not that much.
So, the scenario in short: Let's make a new viewer! Let's try to keep those new visitors who come once and never again. Let's make a browser!
My last post about V2 says it all. I hate everything about it. I haven't found a single feature to save it. And I'm not alone. A little visit in the so-called forums shows that every thread about V2 degenerated very quickly in a bashing party. PR bullshit and frustration have that tendency to push people over the edge.
The chat/IM system is totally broken. The chatbar forgets to take the focus and you type into the void half of the time while your avatar starts to move, jump, etc. The chatbar is also ridiculously small. The popups are a real nuisance. (Every modern browser has a popup blocker... except V2.) The use... over-use... abuse of the profile pictures everywhere just wastes space. The sidebar is totally crippled and limiting. Too many things try to forcefully find a place into it but you can only have one single tab open at any time. The layout is pathetic. There are huge empty spaces all over the windows, floaters and toolbars but everything in them has so few room that you must use arrows, links and buttons to have access to the full version. The tiny icons lost in an ocean of black at the bottom of the sidebar are really misplaced. The floaters which don't turn to transparent when they lose focus raise a real wall in between you and what's really important in Second Life: the world. The bottom toolbar lacks some very useful buttons of which the functions are now hidden in menus. The land media controls are too well hidden and make no sense. The ones who decided to shrink the view when the sidebar appears are now the most hated people in Second Life. The menus labels are totally alien and the menu organisation totally disrespects the long tradition of what people expect to find in the menubar. The navigation bar can't be hidden... unless you don't want to know where you are, what the land settings are. The pie menus are sorely missed. The level of personalization is close to zero. The colors are a bit depressing.
These are the problems I really care about. To the list you can also add the crippled camera and movement control floaters and the broken search which now seems to obey to the new policy of the maximum wasted space to present only a few results by page. I say "seems to" because the search doesn't work for me. Whichever way I open the Search window, I can see the contents for 1/4 of second and then it's replaced by a empty black page.
And last but not the least: V2 is slow! Very slow! I hardly reach half of the FPS I have with Imprudence viewer. I was using V2 recently to check the script memory usage on my land and in my attachments and it was almost laughable to see it load the items in my inventory one by one, at the incredible speed of one item per second.
And the answers from the Lindens to these issues when they still bothered: "You're allergic to change". Seriously? Yes. Or else "v1.23 is confusing". This one is the most laughable argument. In v1.23, you have only floaters which may contain tabs. Period. In V2, depending on the mood of the designers, you may have a floater or the (huge) sidebar will jump to your face. The sidebar has embedded floaters which will slide over the expected contents and stay here if you forget to close them, even if that means showing obsolete informations. The ridiculously small text areas have sticky popups to show the full contents. Talk about confusion.
The reason behind the split of the Communicate window is "because some people find it confusing to have both public and private chat in the same window and may end up typing private chat on public channels." Errr... First, this doesn't hold when you see private IMs mixed with very public group IMs. Second, this concerns only some people who could detach the public chat or any IM thread from the Communicate window. Instead of that, the majority of the people who don't find it confusing can't have a single window for chat and IMs any more.
There are still arguments about the whole Communicate window as demonstrated by the Cool Viewer where everything is still split as a long time ago. I didn't remember how it was and all I can say is that I love "my" Communicate windows. All the posssible ways of text chat in one single window. You can choose a friend, a group in 2 click. The layout can be improved but even in its current state, it makes sense. Instead of that, V2 forces you to open the sidebar and shows you the nearby people so you have to click to switch to friends or groups, then select, then right-click to open a popup menu and click again or else click one of the buttons nobody sees at the bottom. Come on! Talk about a rare efficiency!
I won't bother about proposing solutions, the Lindens don't care about user input. They took a very powerful drug which made them think that everything they do is wonderful and those who don't agree just don't understand the concept but will eventually get used to it... if they swallow tons of video tutorials.
At least, that's the feeling the Lindens have been sending until last week blog post. They have deserted the so-called forums... Probably repelled by the numerous bugs... The number of bugs filed against V2 on the Jira has exploded and these bugs are now treated behind closed doors. No need to come to monday's bug triage, there's nothing interesting any more.
Back to last official blog post. Once you remove the crust of PR crap, you can read: If you download V2, it means you love it. (Ho yeah! Really NOT!) It works well for those who know nothing else or, at least, some new comers come back... as if all the noobs never came back before V2. Linden Lab has also decided now to acknowledge that the oldtimers exist too.
(Excuse the sarcasm but Linden Lab has totally lost my trust in them with their repeated attacks against the users.)
So, in the future V2.1 which should arrive this summer, people will be allowed to choose not to let the sidebar squeeze the view. Not an option but already fixed in the V2 tweaks on the wiki. The "Build" option will come back into the menu where it should never have disappeared. (Fixed by the tweaks.) The bottom toolbar of v1.23 is coming back. (Partially resolved in the tweaks too.) I'm just wondering if all the buttons which used to be there will fit in the tight space. Some space must be reserved for the IM profile pictures, even if they are microscopic. (The really big question here is: Will the "Inventory" button open the sidebar or a floater?) The camera and movements controls will be reverted to their previous version. (Just one of those non-broken things that were fixed.) "Individual volume controls for Shared Media objects" will appear. (I've no idea what it means, I'm just expecting something laughable.)
The Lindens should now be a little relieved that the flood of hatred has greatly diminished in the so-called forums. I really hope that they don't fool themselves in believing that everybody will suddenly be happy with V2.1. Actually, when you look at it, there's really not much in this announcement. The major problems --the sidebar, the chat/IM mess, the land media controls-- are simply not addressed... and until at least 75% of the users have a viewer compatible V2, any improvement they might do in Second Life is useless. Period.
Let's wait and see... and prepare ourselves to be greatly disappointed.
2010-05-13
2010-04-27
Soap Opera
It's been a while but I alaways found a reason to postpone any new posting. Let's say I didn't read the fine print in my contract with Blogger saying how often I must post.
Any way... I found a Third Party Viewer (TPV) to replace any viewer made by Linden Lab. It is Imprudence. They claim to be the most adventurous in design but, in the end, you have the "official" 1.23.5 with a bunch of little tweakings and fixings in every corner. Nothing really transformed but it's good, stable and they have no bad reputation like some other viewer with the name of a green precious stone.
I thought during a moment I lost my new viewer because the team behind it decided to just stop any development for Second Life. Guess what, it was Linden Lab's fault. They decided to issue a Policy on TPVs.
This TPVP poisoned the relations in between Linden Lab and the third party developpers for over a month. A real soap opera for anybody watching the whole thing from the sideline of the mailing list. This so-called TPVP was a legalese document with some really bad wording leading to confusion, possible contradictory interpretations and an obvious conflict with the GNU Public Licence under which the sources of the viewer are supposed to be available.
The Lindens made all they could to explain what the purpose of this document was but it didn't change the fact that the TPVP was still looking like a contract with the devil that developpers had to sign with their blood. They just said "no thank you", all visible development stopped and a lot jumped off of the ship, like the Imprudence team.
On the sideline, I was jumping high and low, resisting to the urge to shout "beeeeep beeeeep beeeeeeeeeep! Why don't you (Lindens) simply write down what you really mean instead of this legalese crap?" I'll spare you the vivid image of what I wanted to do with a cork oak and the "egg hole" of the guy who laid that stinky "egg".
In the end, before to alienate completely the Open Source community, Linden Lab organized two public meetings to discuss face to face with the developpers. I'm not really a developper but I went to the first meeting. It really was like going to a live recording of your favorite soap opera. (I've never actually done this in RL but I can imagine.)
The Lindens wanted to use voice so there was 3 or 4 people talking and a hundred chatting in text. I really mean a hundredth. Impressive! I've never seen so many avatars gathered in any place. The crowd was spread over the corners of 4 regions.
Since the Lindens really don't listen to what anybody says, the meeting started with the list of complaints that have be expressed in every possible way since the beginning of the season of this soap opera. The poor Linden who must have felt like a lonely gladiator thrown in the arena repeated Linden Lab lines from previous episodes: "This is not what we intend", "We don't mean this". Until somebody finally dropped the question: "Why don't you just write down your intention and what you mean instead of this?" It has already been asked repeatedly along the whole season on the mailing list but, apparently, the Lindens don't hear anything if there is no witness.
With a hundredth of avatars attending the meeting and probably as many chat logs, nobody could pretend not having heard any more. So the contentious parts of the TPVP have been re-phrased into something more acceptable.
And the Imprudence team is back into business with Second Life. Pheeeewwww! Finding another TPV was a trip into frustration land. Nothing beats the interface of the "official" 1.23.5 viewer. Certainly not this horror named "v2.0"!
But I'll keep this for the next time. I'm gonna nail this client to the wall. Who said "crucify"? :P
Any way... I found a Third Party Viewer (TPV) to replace any viewer made by Linden Lab. It is Imprudence. They claim to be the most adventurous in design but, in the end, you have the "official" 1.23.5 with a bunch of little tweakings and fixings in every corner. Nothing really transformed but it's good, stable and they have no bad reputation like some other viewer with the name of a green precious stone.
I thought during a moment I lost my new viewer because the team behind it decided to just stop any development for Second Life. Guess what, it was Linden Lab's fault. They decided to issue a Policy on TPVs.
This TPVP poisoned the relations in between Linden Lab and the third party developpers for over a month. A real soap opera for anybody watching the whole thing from the sideline of the mailing list. This so-called TPVP was a legalese document with some really bad wording leading to confusion, possible contradictory interpretations and an obvious conflict with the GNU Public Licence under which the sources of the viewer are supposed to be available.
The Lindens made all they could to explain what the purpose of this document was but it didn't change the fact that the TPVP was still looking like a contract with the devil that developpers had to sign with their blood. They just said "no thank you", all visible development stopped and a lot jumped off of the ship, like the Imprudence team.
On the sideline, I was jumping high and low, resisting to the urge to shout "beeeeep beeeeep beeeeeeeeeep! Why don't you (Lindens) simply write down what you really mean instead of this legalese crap?" I'll spare you the vivid image of what I wanted to do with a cork oak and the "egg hole" of the guy who laid that stinky "egg".
In the end, before to alienate completely the Open Source community, Linden Lab organized two public meetings to discuss face to face with the developpers. I'm not really a developper but I went to the first meeting. It really was like going to a live recording of your favorite soap opera. (I've never actually done this in RL but I can imagine.)
The Lindens wanted to use voice so there was 3 or 4 people talking and a hundred chatting in text. I really mean a hundredth. Impressive! I've never seen so many avatars gathered in any place. The crowd was spread over the corners of 4 regions.
Since the Lindens really don't listen to what anybody says, the meeting started with the list of complaints that have be expressed in every possible way since the beginning of the season of this soap opera. The poor Linden who must have felt like a lonely gladiator thrown in the arena repeated Linden Lab lines from previous episodes: "This is not what we intend", "We don't mean this". Until somebody finally dropped the question: "Why don't you just write down your intention and what you mean instead of this?" It has already been asked repeatedly along the whole season on the mailing list but, apparently, the Lindens don't hear anything if there is no witness.
With a hundredth of avatars attending the meeting and probably as many chat logs, nobody could pretend not having heard any more. So the contentious parts of the TPVP have been re-phrased into something more acceptable.
And the Imprudence team is back into business with Second Life. Pheeeewwww! Finding another TPV was a trip into frustration land. Nothing beats the interface of the "official" 1.23.5 viewer. Certainly not this horror named "v2.0"!
But I'll keep this for the next time. I'm gonna nail this client to the wall. Who said "crucify"? :P
2010-02-25
SL Rants 2.0
That's it, "SL 2.0" is out of its closet. No more NDA prevents people from talking about it. Honestly, I think it should better have stayed in its closet. I just can't stand the thing!
First thing you should notice are the "fugly" colors. (Fuzzy and ugly.) It's all dark grey with a little touch of greyish dull green... and black. Let's not forget the black that you can't miss.
Nevermind. I've been fixing the skin of all my clients since the first day it became possible. Let's start.
First thing to do is to check the preferences in the "Me" menu. (Weird name...) They have been stripped down a lot! But I still found a good thing: You can disable the "dead cow" animation from here. I mean you can easily prevent your avatar from going AFK/Away when idle. Apart from that, nothing really interesting in here. And especially not the "fugly" default colors for chat and IMs.
Let's log in.
I won't mention the fact that the whole plugin system silently failed so that I don't have anything HTML based. This is just a bug, not one of the million hindrances of that clunky viewer.
My avatar took forever to rez. It reminded the old days when you could be "ruthed" from a few seconds to forever. Enabling the HTTP textures doesn't really improve things (The option is in the Advanced menu.) and the cache is still so borked and useless.
Now that you're in-world, you suddenly realize that you need that wonderful 30" screen you can't afford. The bottom bar has shrunk to a single line but that's only to give more room to the top bar which floats like a dark ceiling over your head. There are 2 new lines: the browser-alike navigation bar and the favorite bar. Both are deactivatable but without the navigation bar, you just can't see easily where you are. And when those bars are activated, they shrink the view.
And the navigation bar is really useless. You can go back and forth amongst places you visited but you never know where. There is a button with a down arrow at the end of the URL bar. It seems to be here to show your history. (It doesn't work.) You'll have to use the monster sitting silently, hidden beyond the right border of your screen. Not yet!
First, let's chat a little. Prepare to suffer!
Forget about reading anything that is beyond 3 words. Chat messages appear in a tiny solid black box the size of a post stamp. And to make things worse, by default, the name of the talker appears with the picture of their profile reduced to a tiny icon atop the text. Meaning: There isn't much room already but a large space is wasted for nothing.
Run to the preferences. Chat tab. Enable plain text chat history. The name isn't very descriptive of what the option does but that will turn back the chat to old style with name and text on a single line. (It will also apply to the IMs.)
If you don't have the time to read a sentence, you can open the Chat history... and cry. What you get is a solid black box obscuring a quarter of your screen in the bottom left corner. You can move it but that's all. It will hide another quarter of your screen elsewhere. What a choice!
I hope you didn't forget to watch also the bottom right corner of your screen. That's where IMs appear. Tiny solid black boxes popping with a flash of color and sound if you haven't already disabled what the Preferences call "Buttons sounds". The text isn't squeezed in its tiny box, it's just cut. Since you can't read anything in here, let's open the IM window. You just have click the blob of pixels (Profile picture reduced to a 16x16 icon). Please, be nice with Linden Lab and don't laugh at the wasted space used to show the profile picture, just click the button to hide it.
Before a second avatar sends you an IM, let's run to the preferences and enable the tabbed IMs. When you have a row of blobs of pixels to choose from, things tend to become quite fuzzy. Without mentioning that if you don't do that, each thread of IM will require its own solid black window. You just don't have enough room. You haven't seen the monster on the right side of the screen yet!
Chat is a pain and so are IMs. What was wrong with the Communicate window? You could easily switch in between chat and IM threads, start new ones. Everything what easily accessible in one place. Must be one of those examples of non-broken fixed things.
The system notifications also appear in the same corner than the IMs, they aren't cut but they can be worse than IMs: They steal the focus and block you if they contain a button. Really unpleasant. And Linden Lab forgot one little thing: The dialog to accept, decline or mute inventory offers. Now, somebody can spam you with inventory offers, you won't have the time to see your IMs and your inventory will explode under the flood without you being able to do anything. Even without going to such extremes, you still have to go and dig into your inventory to retrieve whatever somebody just gave you. Really not fun.
I haven't tested the dialogs but I read you must chase them if other notifications appear before you had the time to click anything. Must be "fun".
Now, let's talk about the monster. All the rest is just minor nuisances compared to what we have here: The toaster. (It seems to be the official name.) There is a row of tiny vertical tabs that make a giant thing appear. One third of your screen, full height. Non resizable. Solid black. And the killing detail: When you open it, your whole view is squeezed to the left. Come on! Give me the name of the one who had this idea, I want to make sure he/she never touch this client any more.
The tabs are: "Toggle", to open/close the thing but you can also close by using the currently highlighted tab. "Home", the page Linden Lab doesn't know what to do exactly yet. "My profile", which is so very useful to be able to access in one click. "People", with your friends and groups. "Places", with your landmarks and your teleport history. "Inventory", explicit. "My appearance", since you really really want to change it every minute so it's now accessible in one click.
Seriously, "My profile" and "My appearance" are useless in here. They are also located in the "Me" menu.
There are two new things in the "People" tab: "Near by" which is a rudimentary radar up to 130m and "Recent" to re-open IM threads you closed. Two good additions for the Communicate window... if it were still there.
"Places" is the tab to which the most attention has been given. It's really well done. You have access to your landmark folder, you can retrieve all the ones lost in your inventory, select favorites and navigate in your teleport history. You can even search.
Nothing to say about "Inventory", no real change except that now all the folders are the same.
Now, the reasons that make this thing totally unusable. Everything opens in it. Land informations in the "Places" tab, avatar's profiles in the "People" tab, object informations over the "Inventory". You can only have one opened at any time. How do you drop an item over somebody's profile? Huuu... You either have to start an new IM thread or to open a second inventory window. That makes really sense.
One stupid thing is that despite the huge place taken by this monster, the profiles and the picks are all cut and you have to click a button or the "more" link to be able to see then completely. Ridiculous. The profiles and picks in the previous clients were much better.
And with all that solid black all around the world view reduced to a post stamp, claustrophobia is getting closer and closer. You edit and object, open your inventory, answer an IM and that's it, you're separated from the world by a wall of solid black.
The worst thing is that Linden Lab took 8 months to do nothing. The leaked informations from June 2009 show pretty much what is in this new client. Minus some cosmetic changes. At that time, Alexa Linden crucified the thing in a very lengthy mail.
Nothing has really changed. Now, Snowglobe just got visited by the SL 2.0 revisionists and inherited from the same awful UI, loosing all its improvements and patches in the process.
Last nail to the coffin: A comment from Q Linden on the Jira about the possibility to have the old UI. In simple words: No. Never. Don't even ask.
"Hi, folks. I'd like to explain why you won't see this implemented in Viewer 2 (or probably any 2.x viewer).
The UI isn't just a layer. It's not just a bunch of buttons whose arrangement is arbitrary – we just put something like 50 person-years into development of this product, and a pretty good chunk of that was the design and implementation of the new UI. The interaction design of the new sidebar, the new menu systems, the inspectors. (...)
I don't wish to deny that some people like some features of prior viewers, nor do I contend we got everything right the first time. But the request in this issue is both technically infeasible and not the direction we intend to go. Therefore, I am closing this issue. (...)"
Linden Lab just don't care about their users. They fully respect their long tradition of shoving things down our throats, asking for comments, and ignoring them.
So long and thank you for all the fish. I'm going to find a 3rd party client.
First thing you should notice are the "fugly" colors. (Fuzzy and ugly.) It's all dark grey with a little touch of greyish dull green... and black. Let's not forget the black that you can't miss.
Nevermind. I've been fixing the skin of all my clients since the first day it became possible. Let's start.
First thing to do is to check the preferences in the "Me" menu. (Weird name...) They have been stripped down a lot! But I still found a good thing: You can disable the "dead cow" animation from here. I mean you can easily prevent your avatar from going AFK/Away when idle. Apart from that, nothing really interesting in here. And especially not the "fugly" default colors for chat and IMs.
Let's log in.
I won't mention the fact that the whole plugin system silently failed so that I don't have anything HTML based. This is just a bug, not one of the million hindrances of that clunky viewer.
My avatar took forever to rez. It reminded the old days when you could be "ruthed" from a few seconds to forever. Enabling the HTTP textures doesn't really improve things (The option is in the Advanced menu.) and the cache is still so borked and useless.
Now that you're in-world, you suddenly realize that you need that wonderful 30" screen you can't afford. The bottom bar has shrunk to a single line but that's only to give more room to the top bar which floats like a dark ceiling over your head. There are 2 new lines: the browser-alike navigation bar and the favorite bar. Both are deactivatable but without the navigation bar, you just can't see easily where you are. And when those bars are activated, they shrink the view.
And the navigation bar is really useless. You can go back and forth amongst places you visited but you never know where. There is a button with a down arrow at the end of the URL bar. It seems to be here to show your history. (It doesn't work.) You'll have to use the monster sitting silently, hidden beyond the right border of your screen. Not yet!
First, let's chat a little. Prepare to suffer!
Forget about reading anything that is beyond 3 words. Chat messages appear in a tiny solid black box the size of a post stamp. And to make things worse, by default, the name of the talker appears with the picture of their profile reduced to a tiny icon atop the text. Meaning: There isn't much room already but a large space is wasted for nothing.
Run to the preferences. Chat tab. Enable plain text chat history. The name isn't very descriptive of what the option does but that will turn back the chat to old style with name and text on a single line. (It will also apply to the IMs.)
If you don't have the time to read a sentence, you can open the Chat history... and cry. What you get is a solid black box obscuring a quarter of your screen in the bottom left corner. You can move it but that's all. It will hide another quarter of your screen elsewhere. What a choice!
I hope you didn't forget to watch also the bottom right corner of your screen. That's where IMs appear. Tiny solid black boxes popping with a flash of color and sound if you haven't already disabled what the Preferences call "Buttons sounds". The text isn't squeezed in its tiny box, it's just cut. Since you can't read anything in here, let's open the IM window. You just have click the blob of pixels (Profile picture reduced to a 16x16 icon). Please, be nice with Linden Lab and don't laugh at the wasted space used to show the profile picture, just click the button to hide it.
Before a second avatar sends you an IM, let's run to the preferences and enable the tabbed IMs. When you have a row of blobs of pixels to choose from, things tend to become quite fuzzy. Without mentioning that if you don't do that, each thread of IM will require its own solid black window. You just don't have enough room. You haven't seen the monster on the right side of the screen yet!
Chat is a pain and so are IMs. What was wrong with the Communicate window? You could easily switch in between chat and IM threads, start new ones. Everything what easily accessible in one place. Must be one of those examples of non-broken fixed things.
The system notifications also appear in the same corner than the IMs, they aren't cut but they can be worse than IMs: They steal the focus and block you if they contain a button. Really unpleasant. And Linden Lab forgot one little thing: The dialog to accept, decline or mute inventory offers. Now, somebody can spam you with inventory offers, you won't have the time to see your IMs and your inventory will explode under the flood without you being able to do anything. Even without going to such extremes, you still have to go and dig into your inventory to retrieve whatever somebody just gave you. Really not fun.
I haven't tested the dialogs but I read you must chase them if other notifications appear before you had the time to click anything. Must be "fun".
Now, let's talk about the monster. All the rest is just minor nuisances compared to what we have here: The toaster. (It seems to be the official name.) There is a row of tiny vertical tabs that make a giant thing appear. One third of your screen, full height. Non resizable. Solid black. And the killing detail: When you open it, your whole view is squeezed to the left. Come on! Give me the name of the one who had this idea, I want to make sure he/she never touch this client any more.
The tabs are: "Toggle", to open/close the thing but you can also close by using the currently highlighted tab. "Home", the page Linden Lab doesn't know what to do exactly yet. "My profile", which is so very useful to be able to access in one click. "People", with your friends and groups. "Places", with your landmarks and your teleport history. "Inventory", explicit. "My appearance", since you really really want to change it every minute so it's now accessible in one click.
Seriously, "My profile" and "My appearance" are useless in here. They are also located in the "Me" menu.
There are two new things in the "People" tab: "Near by" which is a rudimentary radar up to 130m and "Recent" to re-open IM threads you closed. Two good additions for the Communicate window... if it were still there.
"Places" is the tab to which the most attention has been given. It's really well done. You have access to your landmark folder, you can retrieve all the ones lost in your inventory, select favorites and navigate in your teleport history. You can even search.
Nothing to say about "Inventory", no real change except that now all the folders are the same.
Now, the reasons that make this thing totally unusable. Everything opens in it. Land informations in the "Places" tab, avatar's profiles in the "People" tab, object informations over the "Inventory". You can only have one opened at any time. How do you drop an item over somebody's profile? Huuu... You either have to start an new IM thread or to open a second inventory window. That makes really sense.
One stupid thing is that despite the huge place taken by this monster, the profiles and the picks are all cut and you have to click a button or the "more" link to be able to see then completely. Ridiculous. The profiles and picks in the previous clients were much better.
And with all that solid black all around the world view reduced to a post stamp, claustrophobia is getting closer and closer. You edit and object, open your inventory, answer an IM and that's it, you're separated from the world by a wall of solid black.
The worst thing is that Linden Lab took 8 months to do nothing. The leaked informations from June 2009 show pretty much what is in this new client. Minus some cosmetic changes. At that time, Alexa Linden crucified the thing in a very lengthy mail.
Nothing has really changed. Now, Snowglobe just got visited by the SL 2.0 revisionists and inherited from the same awful UI, loosing all its improvements and patches in the process.
Last nail to the coffin: A comment from Q Linden on the Jira about the possibility to have the old UI. In simple words: No. Never. Don't even ask.
"Hi, folks. I'd like to explain why you won't see this implemented in Viewer 2 (or probably any 2.x viewer).
The UI isn't just a layer. It's not just a bunch of buttons whose arrangement is arbitrary – we just put something like 50 person-years into development of this product, and a pretty good chunk of that was the design and implementation of the new UI. The interaction design of the new sidebar, the new menu systems, the inspectors. (...)
I don't wish to deny that some people like some features of prior viewers, nor do I contend we got everything right the first time. But the request in this issue is both technically infeasible and not the direction we intend to go. Therefore, I am closing this issue. (...)"
Linden Lab just don't care about their users. They fully respect their long tradition of shoving things down our throats, asking for comments, and ignoring them.
So long and thank you for all the fish. I'm going to find a 3rd party client.
2010-02-18
Scripters Choir
Seriously, I'm starting to hate scripters, especially the mammothes haunting the forums. I was doing my round in the websites orbiting Second Life and my internal Statistics Bar showed a sudden rise of blood pressure while I was reading a post in a scripting forum. Stupidity has this effect on me.
Here is how it usually happens: The original poster asks their question, the answers arrive and a bad word is written. Today, it was "timer". Immediately, the Scripters Choir jumps in the thread with all the delicacy their metric tons allow. (Imagine a mammoth dressed in a flashy gospel style robe.) They raise their arms/legs/trunks toward the sky and start singing: "Lag, lag, lag!" Stop it!
It's so stupid that it could be a comic effect in a soap opera. Imagine the main characters discussing in their couch, they pronounce one of the trigger words, like "timer", "sensor", "physics", or what-not... and BOOM! The Scripters Choir is rezzed in the background. Botox-smiling faces due to a broken animation overrider, particle blings from head to toes over their fullbright robes, shaking with ardor while they annihilate your hearing and break all window panes in a kilometer radius with their ultra-soprano voices: "Lag, lag, lag!"
Seriously, stop it!
Here is a word of wisdom: Functions don't create lag, scripters create lag.
Think about it. For a script to work, the sim has to take care of it, so it means that it has less time for the rest. To me, that's the definition of "lag". So, dear scripters, please quit scripting, you're creating lag!
Functions shouldn't be banned from your scripting vocabulary just because they allegedly "create lag". You must consider the overall impact of your script. If you use both a timer and a sensor faster than what the virtual machine can handle, you will obviously create some real lag. Otherwise, if you need a timer and sensor, go for it. The time needed by the sim to process your script can't be avoided. You're creating "lag". Period.
A concrete example: The dirigibles I'm working on right now use everything that "must" be banned: physics, sensor, timer. But they still don't register on the Top Scripts list of a sim. OK, I must admit that one dirigible was detected once using 0.07ms of script time. (Less than 1/10 of ms.) And they use around 0.2ms of physics time when they are moving. All this just to say: Use what you need... carefully!
And don't forget to mute the Scripters Choir!
Here is how it usually happens: The original poster asks their question, the answers arrive and a bad word is written. Today, it was "timer". Immediately, the Scripters Choir jumps in the thread with all the delicacy their metric tons allow. (Imagine a mammoth dressed in a flashy gospel style robe.) They raise their arms/legs/trunks toward the sky and start singing: "Lag, lag, lag!" Stop it!
It's so stupid that it could be a comic effect in a soap opera. Imagine the main characters discussing in their couch, they pronounce one of the trigger words, like "timer", "sensor", "physics", or what-not... and BOOM! The Scripters Choir is rezzed in the background. Botox-smiling faces due to a broken animation overrider, particle blings from head to toes over their fullbright robes, shaking with ardor while they annihilate your hearing and break all window panes in a kilometer radius with their ultra-soprano voices: "Lag, lag, lag!"
Seriously, stop it!
Here is a word of wisdom: Functions don't create lag, scripters create lag.
Think about it. For a script to work, the sim has to take care of it, so it means that it has less time for the rest. To me, that's the definition of "lag". So, dear scripters, please quit scripting, you're creating lag!
Functions shouldn't be banned from your scripting vocabulary just because they allegedly "create lag". You must consider the overall impact of your script. If you use both a timer and a sensor faster than what the virtual machine can handle, you will obviously create some real lag. Otherwise, if you need a timer and sensor, go for it. The time needed by the sim to process your script can't be avoided. You're creating "lag". Period.
A concrete example: The dirigibles I'm working on right now use everything that "must" be banned: physics, sensor, timer. But they still don't register on the Top Scripts list of a sim. OK, I must admit that one dirigible was detected once using 0.07ms of script time. (Less than 1/10 of ms.) And they use around 0.2ms of physics time when they are moving. All this just to say: Use what you need... carefully!
And don't forget to mute the Scripters Choir!
2010-02-14
Heresy
WARNING: If you are easily offended by a joke about religion, just look away!
Here is a little something I heard in Second Life. It passes from keyboards to screens and the grammar has been worn out a bit in the process so I cleaned it up.
Prayer to the Lindens
Our Lindens, who are in the Lab,
Hallowed be your prims.
Your Grid-dom come, your will be done,
On Main Grid, as it is in The Preview.
Give us this day our daily crash,
And forgive us our spammery,
As we forgive those, who grief against us.
And lead us not into private parcels.
Amen.
On a more philosophical than religious level, I also recommend The Tao of Linden.
I especially love this paragraph and I put it into my picks:
Walk in our Residents' shoes.
We are blessed by some of the most informed, passionate, committed customers imaginable. They are our reason for being, they are our world, and we call them Residents. They are an insuperable source of advantage and an awesome responsibility. In every choice you make, consider how your choice will impact their experience.
This one should be displayed in every room of the Lab, as a reminder. Some people always forget about us, the residents. May this Prayer to the Lindens be my way of showing respect and gratitude to the real Lindens in-world and behind the scene.
Here is a little something I heard in Second Life. It passes from keyboards to screens and the grammar has been worn out a bit in the process so I cleaned it up.
Prayer to the Lindens
Our Lindens, who are in the Lab,
Hallowed be your prims.
Your Grid-dom come, your will be done,
On Main Grid, as it is in The Preview.
Give us this day our daily crash,
And forgive us our spammery,
As we forgive those, who grief against us.
And lead us not into private parcels.
Amen.
On a more philosophical than religious level, I also recommend The Tao of Linden.
I especially love this paragraph and I put it into my picks:
Walk in our Residents' shoes.
We are blessed by some of the most informed, passionate, committed customers imaginable. They are our reason for being, they are our world, and we call them Residents. They are an insuperable source of advantage and an awesome responsibility. In every choice you make, consider how your choice will impact their experience.
This one should be displayed in every room of the Lab, as a reminder. Some people always forget about us, the residents. May this Prayer to the Lindens be my way of showing respect and gratitude to the real Lindens in-world and behind the scene.
2010-02-12
U-Turn behind a smoke screen
No dust has settled down. Instead of a nuclear bomb, Linden Lab just used a smoke bomb. The forums weren't destroyed, they just moved from one building to another behind a smoke screen. And the buildings were also exchanged so that when you ask a cab to drive you to the forums URL, you arrived at the new building, thinking that it was just re-painted.
Actually, you land on a page that resembles vaguely the old forums with its main sub-forums. The question now is: What's the use of SL Answers?
But Linden Lab's smoke bomb left a smell in the air. Their "focused, transparent, extensible" software gives a seriously crippled version of the forums.
First, the layout has a non-sensical fixed width. My window which isn't maximized in any way has a useless horizontal slider. (There's nothing more to see on the right.) And if I enlarge the windows, the useful part of the window is just a narrow band in the middle. Stupid!
And the hateful Dazzle colors are killing my eyes!
Then you can't say if you already read a thread. There's no marking, not even an HTML triggered color change. Nothing. And the "focused, transparent, extensible software" always jumps to the last post, assuming you read the original post, even if you don't. (I hate that.) If you don't land on the first page, you'll have to click your way back to the first post.
I won't say much about posting. I couldn't. My browser isn't supported. I got a spinning thing in a white box and it's still spinning. Of course, I can't switch to a more regular way of posting, like a plain text box. My browser has an integrated spellchecker, thanks.
Just to be thorough, I tried with Firefox. I even install an add-on to change the ugly colors... but I didn't find a thread I wished to post into. And I don't need help. Maybe a farewell post? That's the only thing I can think about. I've been running in circles for hours to try to make this mildly bearable. (And I still haven't found where to change my f*cking signature!)
In the end, the forums landscape doesn't seem to want to change. There is still these giant towers in the middle and a most complete absence of life all around.
Or is it me who is looking for something that doesn't exist (any more)? I'm so pissed that I can't express how pissed I am.
Actually, you land on a page that resembles vaguely the old forums with its main sub-forums. The question now is: What's the use of SL Answers?
But Linden Lab's smoke bomb left a smell in the air. Their "focused, transparent, extensible" software gives a seriously crippled version of the forums.
First, the layout has a non-sensical fixed width. My window which isn't maximized in any way has a useless horizontal slider. (There's nothing more to see on the right.) And if I enlarge the windows, the useful part of the window is just a narrow band in the middle. Stupid!
And the hateful Dazzle colors are killing my eyes!
Then you can't say if you already read a thread. There's no marking, not even an HTML triggered color change. Nothing. And the "focused, transparent, extensible software" always jumps to the last post, assuming you read the original post, even if you don't. (I hate that.) If you don't land on the first page, you'll have to click your way back to the first post.
I won't say much about posting. I couldn't. My browser isn't supported. I got a spinning thing in a white box and it's still spinning. Of course, I can't switch to a more regular way of posting, like a plain text box. My browser has an integrated spellchecker, thanks.
Just to be thorough, I tried with Firefox. I even install an add-on to change the ugly colors... but I didn't find a thread I wished to post into. And I don't need help. Maybe a farewell post? That's the only thing I can think about. I've been running in circles for hours to try to make this mildly bearable. (And I still haven't found where to change my f*cking signature!)
In the end, the forums landscape doesn't seem to want to change. There is still these giant towers in the middle and a most complete absence of life all around.
Or is it me who is looking for something that doesn't exist (any more)? I'm so pissed that I can't express how pissed I am.
2010-02-07
Suburban area
A very common picture from american movies: A big town with a tiny bush of skyscrapers in the middle of a vaaaaaaaaaste totally flat suburban area.
This picture represents the situation of the forums dedicated to Second Life. The skyscrapers are the forums on secondlife.com and all the rest is the flat area lying around. There may be nice places around but they're invisible compared the giant towers casting their shadow on them.
And here come Linden Lab with their smiling face and a nuclear bomb in their back pocket: "Dear Residents, the forums will be nuked on tuesday, please step aside."
Seriously? Yes.
People have always complained about the antiquated and bugged software of the forums but they learned to live with it because there was pretty much nothing around. Besides, the plan of the area was very clear: straight right-angled streets, clear street name plates. In other words, the names of the forums were explicite and it was easy to find the right place to look for the information you wanted or to ask a question. And most of all, it was a snappy site with fast-loading pages.
Little parenthesis: Linden Lab must totally dislike snappy things. First they removed the snappy camera in favor of a rubberbanding one. I scripted a little something for that. (Shameless plug. It sales well.) Then they removed the snappy dashboard pages. I used to go there to check my friends in world. Now, everything and more is loading at the same time, it takes hours and I don't care about all this crap when all I want is the list of my friends in world! I scripted another something. I now use a bookmark to connect to a prim in world which gives me the list of my friends in-world in pure text. Nothing else. Period. (Sorry, not on sale.) End of parenthesis.
OK, the forums weren't pretty looking, not very Web 2.0, but that's not the main point of forums. They must be a convenient commodity. And they were. It was a place to go and focus on the task at hand: To search for the information you wanted or, in my case, to give a scripting... err... helping hand.
There was also a thick crust of old stuff lining the bottom of the tank of the forums but it was easy to ignore. Linden Lab could just have updated the software and mothballed the outdated forums...
Instead of that, here is was Linden Lab wants to shove down our throats: A psychedelic anthill. Flashy blinking tunnels haunted by virtual bulldozers pushing the rest of the anthill toward you, soliciting you at every crossroad, flooding you with some much information that you don't know where to look any more and you end up forgetting why you came here to follow fading away shiny colored lights dragging you in every possible corner. Very "Web 2.0" indeed.
Seriously? Yes.
I never visit the blogs of Second Life. I subscribed to a few threads and I read only what interests me from my news aggregator. I don't like to be fed by force whether I'm hungry or not.
When it comes to the nuclear future of the forums, some people suggest to give a chance to what should now be called the "blogorums".
I tried, I really tried. I can't. Even when you know that the forums will be around the tunnel labelled "Second Life Answers", you will be lost. The closest from what interested me in the real forums is the "Creating" thread and it's just a mess. Everything that is vaguely related to creation --or even sometimes not related-- falls in this tank. Good luck to find anything! Especially that you can't even search.
Right now, it's not very alive because everybody is still in the forums. But all I see in the future is just more mess. I want real forums with clear subjects. I registered on SL Universe which uses an updated version of the same software than Second Life forums. It's also very quiet since they are in the flat area around the skyscrapers but it looks promising.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for the nuclear mushroom to dissipate and I'll see what raises from the ashes. Two days left.
This picture represents the situation of the forums dedicated to Second Life. The skyscrapers are the forums on secondlife.com and all the rest is the flat area lying around. There may be nice places around but they're invisible compared the giant towers casting their shadow on them.
And here come Linden Lab with their smiling face and a nuclear bomb in their back pocket: "Dear Residents, the forums will be nuked on tuesday, please step aside."
Seriously? Yes.
People have always complained about the antiquated and bugged software of the forums but they learned to live with it because there was pretty much nothing around. Besides, the plan of the area was very clear: straight right-angled streets, clear street name plates. In other words, the names of the forums were explicite and it was easy to find the right place to look for the information you wanted or to ask a question. And most of all, it was a snappy site with fast-loading pages.
Little parenthesis: Linden Lab must totally dislike snappy things. First they removed the snappy camera in favor of a rubberbanding one. I scripted a little something for that. (Shameless plug. It sales well.) Then they removed the snappy dashboard pages. I used to go there to check my friends in world. Now, everything and more is loading at the same time, it takes hours and I don't care about all this crap when all I want is the list of my friends in world! I scripted another something. I now use a bookmark to connect to a prim in world which gives me the list of my friends in-world in pure text. Nothing else. Period. (Sorry, not on sale.) End of parenthesis.
OK, the forums weren't pretty looking, not very Web 2.0, but that's not the main point of forums. They must be a convenient commodity. And they were. It was a place to go and focus on the task at hand: To search for the information you wanted or, in my case, to give a scripting... err... helping hand.
There was also a thick crust of old stuff lining the bottom of the tank of the forums but it was easy to ignore. Linden Lab could just have updated the software and mothballed the outdated forums...
Instead of that, here is was Linden Lab wants to shove down our throats: A psychedelic anthill. Flashy blinking tunnels haunted by virtual bulldozers pushing the rest of the anthill toward you, soliciting you at every crossroad, flooding you with some much information that you don't know where to look any more and you end up forgetting why you came here to follow fading away shiny colored lights dragging you in every possible corner. Very "Web 2.0" indeed.
Seriously? Yes.
I never visit the blogs of Second Life. I subscribed to a few threads and I read only what interests me from my news aggregator. I don't like to be fed by force whether I'm hungry or not.
When it comes to the nuclear future of the forums, some people suggest to give a chance to what should now be called the "blogorums".
I tried, I really tried. I can't. Even when you know that the forums will be around the tunnel labelled "Second Life Answers", you will be lost. The closest from what interested me in the real forums is the "Creating" thread and it's just a mess. Everything that is vaguely related to creation --or even sometimes not related-- falls in this tank. Good luck to find anything! Especially that you can't even search.
Right now, it's not very alive because everybody is still in the forums. But all I see in the future is just more mess. I want real forums with clear subjects. I registered on SL Universe which uses an updated version of the same software than Second Life forums. It's also very quiet since they are in the flat area around the skyscrapers but it looks promising.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for the nuclear mushroom to dissipate and I'll see what raises from the ashes. Two days left.
2010-02-03
The great illusion
This post is due to a great frustration during my work in Second Life. (Expect some rantings.)
I'm scripting a system of dirigibles on a private sub-continent (a quite large group of themed private sims). Basically, it's like the subway but in the sky; the dirigibles go automatically from station to station with or without passengers. The script has been written for quite a while and it's a little wonder of simplicity. Just 16 KB is enough to make a dirigible store a route, draw 3D curves in between points, do linear maneuvers, and stop at every station... with a precision of 1 cm. Yes, I'm kind of proud of my work and I've received nothing but compliments.
Two dirigibles are already flying for the moment. One of them is just like clockwork and the other one stumbles along the way. It's not a problem with the script or SL physics, it's just that some landowners don't have a clue about land permissions.
The most useful of the land powers is the auto-return. If you don't want to see your land turn into a wasteland, set the auto-return. Just don't set it below 5 minutes because it would create sim lag.
Once the auto-return is set, it's up to you to decide if you want other people to be able to rez on your land or not. And it becomes safe to allow objects to enter instead of seeing cars, planes and what-not abandonned, stuck at the border of your land... Usually, on a land without auto-return over which you have no power.
To disable scripts only annoys noob scripters who don't know how to ignore this restriction. For you, landowner, it has absolutely no benefit. Zero, nada, niet! It will certainly not stop a copybot and it will not improve the performances of the sim, unless you own it all.
Privacy is an illusion in Second Life. The only real privacy you can have is when you keep your real life separated from SL. That's privacy. But when you're in-world, the best you can do is to isolate yourself like a spider suspended in a corner under the ceiling of the sim... and then move to your own private island when you realize that the minimap betrays your presence whatever the privacy settings you have in your client.
I won't talk about banlines which are totally forbidden on the sub-continent where I work... and I take care of my blood pressure.
I'm scripting a system of dirigibles on a private sub-continent (a quite large group of themed private sims). Basically, it's like the subway but in the sky; the dirigibles go automatically from station to station with or without passengers. The script has been written for quite a while and it's a little wonder of simplicity. Just 16 KB is enough to make a dirigible store a route, draw 3D curves in between points, do linear maneuvers, and stop at every station... with a precision of 1 cm. Yes, I'm kind of proud of my work and I've received nothing but compliments.
Two dirigibles are already flying for the moment. One of them is just like clockwork and the other one stumbles along the way. It's not a problem with the script or SL physics, it's just that some landowners don't have a clue about land permissions.
The most useful of the land powers is the auto-return. If you don't want to see your land turn into a wasteland, set the auto-return. Just don't set it below 5 minutes because it would create sim lag.
Once the auto-return is set, it's up to you to decide if you want other people to be able to rez on your land or not. And it becomes safe to allow objects to enter instead of seeing cars, planes and what-not abandonned, stuck at the border of your land... Usually, on a land without auto-return over which you have no power.
To disable scripts only annoys noob scripters who don't know how to ignore this restriction. For you, landowner, it has absolutely no benefit. Zero, nada, niet! It will certainly not stop a copybot and it will not improve the performances of the sim, unless you own it all.
Privacy is an illusion in Second Life. The only real privacy you can have is when you keep your real life separated from SL. That's privacy. But when you're in-world, the best you can do is to isolate yourself like a spider suspended in a corner under the ceiling of the sim... and then move to your own private island when you realize that the minimap betrays your presence whatever the privacy settings you have in your client.
I won't talk about banlines which are totally forbidden on the sub-continent where I work... and I take care of my blood pressure.
2010-02-02
Unspecified future
This morning, I wanted to talk about the future of Second Life and coming out of the blue, here is what Liisa said:
(I mostly corrected only the punctuation and I added capitals.)
In 10 years maybe? Any way, back to the reality...
We know what the immediate future of Second Life holds: Viewer 2.0, shadows, meshes, LSL improvements and C#.
I know nothing about the Viewer 2.0 except that the marketing department would like to sell it to us a "SL 2.0". Bleh! (I hate marketing which promotes shit with cool names.) All I know for sure is that only 2 reactions are possible: disappointment or a V*sta Syndrome.
Disappointment because we will have waited for so long that expectations will be very high. People will want to see all bugs fixed in "SL 2.0" even if these bugs aren't actually related to the viewer. And that won't happen. Neither global illumination with shadows nor meshes. Nothing. This is supposed to be only a user interface revamping.
Apparently LL forgot the (little) riots when Dazzle was released and it was only about a color change. Honestly, I'm sharpening my fork and preparing a stock of vaccine against the V*sta Flu... err... Syndrome.
Radical UI changes will not be more welcome than a change of colors. The core of Second Life is the old-timers who defintively don't need an UI ("that will be much more compelling and relevant for a new Resident." (Quote from Howard Linden on Second Life Blogs)
All that we, old-timers, will retain is "frustrating", "dramatically", "different", "new ways", "challenging transition". (Almost a sentence.)
I heard somebody talking about the 3rd party clients to avoid the V*sta Syndrome. But will these alternate clients become obsolete because not "SL 2.0"-alike? Hmmm... I have doubts. Does any of these clients currently have a different UI than the official client? I don't think so.
When I see the awful mess that LL is about to shove down our throats to replace the good old forums, I have big doubts about the definitions of "good" and "better".
But let's drop the subject. I know nothing about this Viewer 2.0 but I offically already hate it. First, I hate the way LL handled the whole thing behind closed doors barred with Non Discolure Agreements although it's supposed to be OpenSource. LL must want to make us a surprize, forgetting that the last one was Dazzle and it didn't go well. Second, I hate the fact that everybody is waiting for this client. All innovation in SL and in the alternate clients is suspended until the release.
Let's switch the shadows on. Ho, it's nice but it's not for you nor for me. If you want any kind of performances, you better have the last graphics card that will be made next year. Prepare your wallet!
The meshes are a subject which deserve a blog post just for themselves. The implications behind the technicality are very serious for the future of Second Life.
Scripting improvements. Finally something that talks to me. The minor glitch is that we have to wait for this damn Viewer 2.0 before being able to test the new functions. I don't expect to see a new Release Candidate until then. The whole project is really good but the team which takes care of it is greatly underpowered and they must focus on a few chosen ones amongst the large number of functions actually needed. We will get closer from the final goal of reducing the number of scripts in Second Life but probably not as close as expected.
A second layer of improvements will be necessary and it should happen with C#. This would definitively not have been my first choice for a language to replace LSL but we don't have much option beyond taking what LL offer to us. Babbage already said no to any improvement to LSL besides new functions. So...
Let's wait and see!
Liisa imagines the future
:: Simulators can handle a lot more avatars. Sim borders behave like parcel borders. Draw distance is 5 km by default.
:: We have gathered to the town hall square and LL has 500 employeesdressed up as riot cops to keep the demonstration of 50,000 avatars peaceful.
:: Governor arrives on the balcony of the town hall, she waits for the typing sound to stop before she starts.
:: Governor gets straight to the point. She tells us that the rumored system will apply within 6 months. She raises her hand to silence the massive typing sound that suddenly started in the crowd.
:: She tell us that there is no point slowing down the progress just to keep backwards compatibility. This is good news to many of us, but there is still people who think Mystitool is cool, they start to type again.
:: Governor tells us the new improvements in a nutshell and gives us a link to find out more details. People cheer and [CENSORED]
:: Suddenly some Mystitool user throws a blitz ball towards the governor. It doesn't reach her but falls into the crowd instead. Everyone's lagmeter turns to red.
:: The sim cleans the laggy blitz ball automatically but the riotcontrol Lindens lower their visor.
:: When no one is watching, Governor shakes her head and walks back in.
:: Most avatars start to take off or rez a vehicle to travel to their homes.
:: A small group stays behind, the Mystitool fanclub.
:: The end
(I mostly corrected only the punctuation and I added capitals.)
In 10 years maybe? Any way, back to the reality...
We know what the immediate future of Second Life holds: Viewer 2.0, shadows, meshes, LSL improvements and C#.
I know nothing about the Viewer 2.0 except that the marketing department would like to sell it to us a "SL 2.0". Bleh! (I hate marketing which promotes shit with cool names.) All I know for sure is that only 2 reactions are possible: disappointment or a V*sta Syndrome.
Disappointment because we will have waited for so long that expectations will be very high. People will want to see all bugs fixed in "SL 2.0" even if these bugs aren't actually related to the viewer. And that won't happen. Neither global illumination with shadows nor meshes. Nothing. This is supposed to be only a user interface revamping.
Apparently LL forgot the (little) riots when Dazzle was released and it was only about a color change. Honestly, I'm sharpening my fork and preparing a stock of vaccine against the V*sta Flu... err... Syndrome.
Radical UI changes will not be more welcome than a change of colors. The core of Second Life is the old-timers who defintively don't need an UI ("that will be much more compelling and relevant for a new Resident." (Quote from Howard Linden on Second Life Blogs)
All that we, old-timers, will retain is "frustrating", "dramatically", "different", "new ways", "challenging transition". (Almost a sentence.)
I heard somebody talking about the 3rd party clients to avoid the V*sta Syndrome. But will these alternate clients become obsolete because not "SL 2.0"-alike? Hmmm... I have doubts. Does any of these clients currently have a different UI than the official client? I don't think so.
When I see the awful mess that LL is about to shove down our throats to replace the good old forums, I have big doubts about the definitions of "good" and "better".
But let's drop the subject. I know nothing about this Viewer 2.0 but I offically already hate it. First, I hate the way LL handled the whole thing behind closed doors barred with Non Discolure Agreements although it's supposed to be OpenSource. LL must want to make us a surprize, forgetting that the last one was Dazzle and it didn't go well. Second, I hate the fact that everybody is waiting for this client. All innovation in SL and in the alternate clients is suspended until the release.
Let's switch the shadows on. Ho, it's nice but it's not for you nor for me. If you want any kind of performances, you better have the last graphics card that will be made next year. Prepare your wallet!
The meshes are a subject which deserve a blog post just for themselves. The implications behind the technicality are very serious for the future of Second Life.
Scripting improvements. Finally something that talks to me. The minor glitch is that we have to wait for this damn Viewer 2.0 before being able to test the new functions. I don't expect to see a new Release Candidate until then. The whole project is really good but the team which takes care of it is greatly underpowered and they must focus on a few chosen ones amongst the large number of functions actually needed. We will get closer from the final goal of reducing the number of scripts in Second Life but probably not as close as expected.
A second layer of improvements will be necessary and it should happen with C#. This would definitively not have been my first choice for a language to replace LSL but we don't have much option beyond taking what LL offer to us. Babbage already said no to any improvement to LSL besides new functions. So...
Let's wait and see!
2010-01-30
Game Over
I like to launch the venerable Unreal Tournament from time to time. I know pretty much all the maps by heart. I'm an expert of the flak cannon and if I don't like the way the bots kill me, I take the sniper rifle and finish the map only with head shots. I'm no hardcore gamer, I can lose even with the bots at a medium level, I just play to have fun without thinking too much... and I grow frustrated. Something is missing.
All the games are finished even before you start playing. Think about it: Their end is written somewhere in their programming. Even if you can wander endlessly in the universe of a game, it will always be the same. The same characters, the same settings. It will never evolve. Second Life is totally different. It has no end and it changes and evolves all the time. *I* can make it evolve.
Some would skin you alive if you say that Second Life is a game because it has no definite goal. This isn't true. The goal is to make the game evolve. And that's what I like and try to do every day. Creation after creation, script after script, I change Second Life. And even if I don't log in, people interact with my creations. Whether they simply look, buy, use, copy the idea, or decide to do better, somewhere I touched them. I changed them. At least, I hope that my virtual hand changed a little bit their trajectory through Second Life.
It's all about people, creation and interaction. Even the most useless avatar stuck on a poseball in the darkest corner of a lost sex club makes Second Life evolve. Each activity beyond talking requires accessories, objects. These objects have creators who will eventually grow tired of their creations or dislike that somebody else did better than them and they will also try to do better or something else. Whatever. This clubber nobody cares about also takes part in the process of evolution, as much as this shallow bimbo who spends her time shopping, looking for the perfect skin, dress, hair or what-not.
And at the same time Second Life evolves, the people in it evolve too. Have you already found yourself irritated by a noob standing close to you without even saying "hi"? Do you excuse yourself when you bump into another avatar? Do you pay more attention to the name tag than to the avatar to recognize a person? To me, these are cultural traits from Second Life.
And every time you explain to a noob the appropriate behavior in a given situation, you are transmitting knowledge to the next generation. This is the very beginning of a culture.
There is something here. The Second Culture?
All the games are finished even before you start playing. Think about it: Their end is written somewhere in their programming. Even if you can wander endlessly in the universe of a game, it will always be the same. The same characters, the same settings. It will never evolve. Second Life is totally different. It has no end and it changes and evolves all the time. *I* can make it evolve.
Some would skin you alive if you say that Second Life is a game because it has no definite goal. This isn't true. The goal is to make the game evolve. And that's what I like and try to do every day. Creation after creation, script after script, I change Second Life. And even if I don't log in, people interact with my creations. Whether they simply look, buy, use, copy the idea, or decide to do better, somewhere I touched them. I changed them. At least, I hope that my virtual hand changed a little bit their trajectory through Second Life.
It's all about people, creation and interaction. Even the most useless avatar stuck on a poseball in the darkest corner of a lost sex club makes Second Life evolve. Each activity beyond talking requires accessories, objects. These objects have creators who will eventually grow tired of their creations or dislike that somebody else did better than them and they will also try to do better or something else. Whatever. This clubber nobody cares about also takes part in the process of evolution, as much as this shallow bimbo who spends her time shopping, looking for the perfect skin, dress, hair or what-not.
And at the same time Second Life evolves, the people in it evolve too. Have you already found yourself irritated by a noob standing close to you without even saying "hi"? Do you excuse yourself when you bump into another avatar? Do you pay more attention to the name tag than to the avatar to recognize a person? To me, these are cultural traits from Second Life.
And every time you explain to a noob the appropriate behavior in a given situation, you are transmitting knowledge to the next generation. This is the very beginning of a culture.
There is something here. The Second Culture?
Me and my band
Who am I? What am I? Once I say that I am a Resident, everything is said. I can be anything. However, I would tell that I do not favor human appearances. Most of the time, I am feline so, according to some of the other Residents, I am a Furry. You can also see me sometimes as a Tiny (a tiny cat of course!) or as that plastic doll in front of which another Resident could not resist and asked me if I was Japanese because it makes me look like a character from a Manga. I would simply say like Liisa, my friend and partner in SL, that I am just a Cartoon.
What do I do? This is the only constant in my second life: I script. I am a scripter. (Off-worlders say "a programmer".) I also build because a script without a container, an object, is rather useless. Tho I also build for pleasure. I like building realistic objects like that japanese wooden pagoda that I can admire reflecting itself in "our" lake. I also like impossible futuristic buildings, all shiny and twinkling in the night. Since my friend and I decided not to set glowing buildings on our side of the lake we bought, my futuristic buildings float in the sky at over 3 km high. In Second Life slang, this is a "skybox". Any way, we usually gather where the first of our "band" is... or where the "action" is. We spent a lot of time in our twin skyboxes when we built them. We used to work a lot underwater and now we just litter the beach with our unfinished projects.
Our "band" began a long time ago. Rehman remarked me because of the flapping wings I was scripting in a sandbox. Almost the first thing I ever made in Second Life. Rehman already knew Zappy so I happened to spend some time with Zappy too. At one moment, Zappy and I were all the time together and that is the time Liisa joined the band. (My memory is a bit fuzzy.)
This is the way it is in SecondLife. You begin alone and lost but if you come back regularily at the same place, you will start to notice the "locals". Just be friendly and you may become a local too, or else form a group of your own.
The next step beyond being a squatter is to become land owner. Liisa was the first, I think. Zappy followed, then me. We moved away and bought the south side of a nice little lake and most of it by the way. Do not ask how much it cost. It was quite a lot. Some people would be really surprised by the real money invested in SecondLife, if they only knew. Whatever. Finally, Rehman joined us in our region and the four of us now own a good part of it.
This is the core of "my band". (For privacy reasons, I won't expose my whole friend list.)
What do I do? This is the only constant in my second life: I script. I am a scripter. (Off-worlders say "a programmer".) I also build because a script without a container, an object, is rather useless. Tho I also build for pleasure. I like building realistic objects like that japanese wooden pagoda that I can admire reflecting itself in "our" lake. I also like impossible futuristic buildings, all shiny and twinkling in the night. Since my friend and I decided not to set glowing buildings on our side of the lake we bought, my futuristic buildings float in the sky at over 3 km high. In Second Life slang, this is a "skybox". Any way, we usually gather where the first of our "band" is... or where the "action" is. We spent a lot of time in our twin skyboxes when we built them. We used to work a lot underwater and now we just litter the beach with our unfinished projects.
Our "band" began a long time ago. Rehman remarked me because of the flapping wings I was scripting in a sandbox. Almost the first thing I ever made in Second Life. Rehman already knew Zappy so I happened to spend some time with Zappy too. At one moment, Zappy and I were all the time together and that is the time Liisa joined the band. (My memory is a bit fuzzy.)
This is the way it is in SecondLife. You begin alone and lost but if you come back regularily at the same place, you will start to notice the "locals". Just be friendly and you may become a local too, or else form a group of your own.
The next step beyond being a squatter is to become land owner. Liisa was the first, I think. Zappy followed, then me. We moved away and bought the south side of a nice little lake and most of it by the way. Do not ask how much it cost. It was quite a lot. Some people would be really surprised by the real money invested in SecondLife, if they only knew. Whatever. Finally, Rehman joined us in our region and the four of us now own a good part of it.
This is the core of "my band". (For privacy reasons, I won't expose my whole friend list.)
Three years ago
Here comes the original text file of my unpublished post about Second Life. (I just removed an "s".)
blog-070324
Honnestly, I haven't done much work for a week because of Second Life. If you don't know yet what it is, in short, this is a virtual world for you to visit thanks to an avatar seen in a third person view. I thought there wouldn't be any so-called client for Linux but when I visited the site, I found that a client existed, although it's an alpha version.
I've always wanted to explore this second world since I learned about it. I found the idea... well... fascinating. So, here I went. I downloaded the archive and registered with a false name but my real email which is needed. That's what I always do when I think that the people "at the other end of the line" don't actually need to know my real name.
The installation went very smoothly. Unpack and you're done. The directory contains all the libraries required by the executable. That's a bit a waste of space but don't worry, the executable knows how to waste much more space.
I registered for free even if to do so imposes you some limitations because you're then more than poor: broke and homeless. If you want to pay, it's $10/month or less if you pay quaterly or annually. The Linux client is IMHO in a too bad shape to make it worth paying for the moment but when you pay you receive a salary --a virtual weekly allowance of L$300 (Linden Dollars)-- and you may own land that you can call "home".
Yes, you need virtual money in Second Life. I find it a little disappointing that all what "they" succeeded in doing was to reproduce the real world --minus some law of physics-- but I even haven't found what else to do despite my vivid imagination.
Whatever. I launched the client, entered my avatar's name and my password.
First step: Orientation Island. It's a tutorial environment where you learn to do the basic things like walking, flying, talking, interacting with the objects, handling your inventory, the camera, getting dressed and undressed, taking and giving objects. It looks like a lot but it can be summed up this way: the arrows are used to walk (plus PageUp, PageDown to fly) and the mouse cursor is your hand.
Once you have completed the tutorial and stopped bumping into walls and other people, you're free to enter the big world. "Beam me up, Scotty!" Well, you will have to teleport yourself. All you will have to do is to click on a "Teleport" button here or there. (This very moment is a bit fuzzy in my memory.)
Unluckily for me, it was the night when I arrived at "Newbie Island". (I don't remember the actual name but it's the first place where all the newbies land and it's considered as your home until you own some land.) I bumped in a few things and didn't quite understand where I was. I left very quickly... to come back later --at a moment when the sun was up. I hadn't undergone the whole tutorial island just to leave so easily. (By the way, if you don't like the night, you can always make the sun rise for you. Open the "World" menu and look at the last line. The sun is at your orders.)
I was still lost despite the day but --at least-- I could see much farther.
At the corner of a street, I found the first word all newbie should know: "Freebies". (I guess it's a contraction of the words "Free stuff for the newbies".) When you register to Second Life, there's only a limited number of possible avatars with an extensive but very common wardrobe. The freebies are here to help the newbies personalize their avatar --even if they are broke-- and more.
My first move was to go to the biggest freebie mall and make my inventory explode. I pick up mostly clothes, a few avatars, gestures and some more useless things like a tubular house in a box and vehicles. I didn't take weapons the first time.
Some explanations, maybe? First, the house in a box. In a virtual world, you can put anything in a box that is small enough to be inserted on a line in your inventory. That includes a whole castle, a car, an airplane, a flying carpet, whatever.
The gestures. Your avatar can do much more than shaking its arms and legs to walk. The standard inventory contain the gestures for a basic body language like raising your shoulders, laughing (with sound), pointing at somebody or yourself, etc... but you can also dance, do some karate moves, play rock-paper-cissors, anything. Some gestures also have accompagning sounds or else are only sounds. So it's easy to let your avatar say a nice "Get lost!".
The clothes are apparently the easiest thing to do. You can find absolutely everything you want and even things you don't want, especially if you unlock your client in order not to hide "mature" content. I'm French and very open-minded, so not very impressed by anything... but I can't tell you all what I have found and seen because you haven't unlock the mature content of this blog.
The avatars, also called "avies" or even simply "AV" are not limited to a human form. There are a lot of bipedic human-sized cartoonish foxes in SL... but I've already seen a miniature cat, a big alien queen, some more unidentified aliens, cartoon characters, some more bipedic animals. Even a centaur. No bird but you can have wings. Angel, devil, butterfly, fairy, technoid wings. Some are even scripted to flap. And the most controversial avatars in SL: children. There aren't even (real) teens in SL but you can find children avatars. Most are used for some totally innocent role-playing. For example, in a mall, I've seen a mother and "her son" buying clothes. I stayed out of their sight and listen to a bit of their (written) conversation. It looked amazingly real. Nothing more than what you could witness in a real mall. The rest has been banned by the Linden Lab (the owner/maintainer of SL) which is rather embarassed and don't know if one can call this virtual cat "a cat" or not, since there's no cat but only dogs. (If you don't see what I mean, don't worry, you're just not ready to read in between the lines.)
The avatars aren't anatomically correct... but that can be fixed. I'm always dressed so I don't care but I nevertheless have freebie male organs... that I keep in my inventory. They won't stay concealed in my pants and the only time I put them out of their box, somebody came and asked me to pick up "that thing". Apart from this obvious thing, with some (a lot) of money, you can buy a new skin with body hair, remote controlled male organs or female details. Don't ask for more, all I know is that it exists. I haven't seen the... virtual things in action.
Hair. That's a problem in SL. The default hair is horrible. Period. You can try whatever you want, it stays ugly. To have a decent hair, you must pay an excessive price --excessive when you're broke like a newbie. Women are a bit more lucky than men since they can find one of these new flexi hairs that are acceptable in a freebie box. Men who care must pay because men's hair are rarer... like any men's stuff in general.
By the way, pay attention when you pick up freebies. Some people seem not to know the exact meaning of "free" as in "free beer" and it may cost you one Linden Dollar (L$)... or more. And since you "buy" freebies, (You do the same actions than to buy things with a real price.) you may discover that somebody stole the few L$ you found or earned.
As you should understand now, it's possible to earn money easily --although not quickly. For that, you need to expand your newbie vocabulary. Besides the freebies, you should also know the words "money tree", "camping" and "sandbox".
The sandbox won't bring you L$ neither cost you anything. It is important to know the word because since all land is own by somebody, you can't do what you want everywhere. Sandboxes are free spaces (as in "free speech") where you can unpack your boxed freebies, test your new avatars, clothes, skins, gesture, party effects and weapons. Things that you would do in your home --if you had one. You can also build things but that's another whole story to tell. And don't worry if you are very modest, you don't actually need to remove your clothes to change them. You just drag them on your avatar and what you wear transforms itself. Any way, underwears are provided. Keep your panties on... and avoid the menu entry "Remove all clothes" or you may get ejected if the sandbox rules don't allow nudity. Well, nudity is a relative thing when you don't have anything to hide.
Money trees. That's the first place where I found Linden Dollars. Call me lucky but I found L$17 on a tree. That's very rare to find that much money at once. Usually, there is a bill of L$1, a L$5 fruit (I've only seen one.) or nothing at all. Any way, you won't get very far with that and all money trees have a warning saying "Don't abuse me".
So, let's go "camping". Camp spots are usually chairs or dancing stands. You click them and your avatar sits or dance. You can still chat and look around but you can't do anything else until you get tired of it. Some camp spots detect your inactivity and push you away but there are also spots where you can stay all day long... even if your avatar looks like dead alive. This way, you can gain something like L$2 every 10 minutes, L$5 for the generous spots but the more a spot pays, the more you have to stay to earn it. This can be quite boring but that gives you time to go to the (real) bathroom, pour some beverage or eat something. Just don't forget to come often to check that your avatar isn't sleeping while standing. Camping spots don't stay cold very long. I even saw two women fighting for a spot... until one got ejected for bad language. There are also more discreet camping spots that propose you to clean the floor in a mall, re-paint the wall of a shop, wash its large window while standing on a ladder. That's the same thing than a dancing spot plus an accessory to look more realistic.
That's all. Since that day, the camping spots and the money trees have gone the way of the dodo. The Linux client isn't called "alpha" any more, I'm a paying customer, and I know what it means "to make one's inventory explode".
blog-070324
Honnestly, I haven't done much work for a week because of Second Life. If you don't know yet what it is, in short, this is a virtual world for you to visit thanks to an avatar seen in a third person view. I thought there wouldn't be any so-called client for Linux but when I visited the site, I found that a client existed, although it's an alpha version.
I've always wanted to explore this second world since I learned about it. I found the idea... well... fascinating. So, here I went. I downloaded the archive and registered with a false name but my real email which is needed. That's what I always do when I think that the people "at the other end of the line" don't actually need to know my real name.
The installation went very smoothly. Unpack and you're done. The directory contains all the libraries required by the executable. That's a bit a waste of space but don't worry, the executable knows how to waste much more space.
I registered for free even if to do so imposes you some limitations because you're then more than poor: broke and homeless. If you want to pay, it's $10/month or less if you pay quaterly or annually. The Linux client is IMHO in a too bad shape to make it worth paying for the moment but when you pay you receive a salary --a virtual weekly allowance of L$300 (Linden Dollars)-- and you may own land that you can call "home".
Yes, you need virtual money in Second Life. I find it a little disappointing that all what "they" succeeded in doing was to reproduce the real world --minus some law of physics-- but I even haven't found what else to do despite my vivid imagination.
Whatever. I launched the client, entered my avatar's name and my password.
First step: Orientation Island. It's a tutorial environment where you learn to do the basic things like walking, flying, talking, interacting with the objects, handling your inventory, the camera, getting dressed and undressed, taking and giving objects. It looks like a lot but it can be summed up this way: the arrows are used to walk (plus PageUp, PageDown to fly) and the mouse cursor is your hand.
Once you have completed the tutorial and stopped bumping into walls and other people, you're free to enter the big world. "Beam me up, Scotty!" Well, you will have to teleport yourself. All you will have to do is to click on a "Teleport" button here or there. (This very moment is a bit fuzzy in my memory.)
Unluckily for me, it was the night when I arrived at "Newbie Island". (I don't remember the actual name but it's the first place where all the newbies land and it's considered as your home until you own some land.) I bumped in a few things and didn't quite understand where I was. I left very quickly... to come back later --at a moment when the sun was up. I hadn't undergone the whole tutorial island just to leave so easily. (By the way, if you don't like the night, you can always make the sun rise for you. Open the "World" menu and look at the last line. The sun is at your orders.)
I was still lost despite the day but --at least-- I could see much farther.
At the corner of a street, I found the first word all newbie should know: "Freebies". (I guess it's a contraction of the words "Free stuff for the newbies".) When you register to Second Life, there's only a limited number of possible avatars with an extensive but very common wardrobe. The freebies are here to help the newbies personalize their avatar --even if they are broke-- and more.
My first move was to go to the biggest freebie mall and make my inventory explode. I pick up mostly clothes, a few avatars, gestures and some more useless things like a tubular house in a box and vehicles. I didn't take weapons the first time.
Some explanations, maybe? First, the house in a box. In a virtual world, you can put anything in a box that is small enough to be inserted on a line in your inventory. That includes a whole castle, a car, an airplane, a flying carpet, whatever.
The gestures. Your avatar can do much more than shaking its arms and legs to walk. The standard inventory contain the gestures for a basic body language like raising your shoulders, laughing (with sound), pointing at somebody or yourself, etc... but you can also dance, do some karate moves, play rock-paper-cissors, anything. Some gestures also have accompagning sounds or else are only sounds. So it's easy to let your avatar say a nice "Get lost!".
The clothes are apparently the easiest thing to do. You can find absolutely everything you want and even things you don't want, especially if you unlock your client in order not to hide "mature" content. I'm French and very open-minded, so not very impressed by anything... but I can't tell you all what I have found and seen because you haven't unlock the mature content of this blog.
The avatars, also called "avies" or even simply "AV" are not limited to a human form. There are a lot of bipedic human-sized cartoonish foxes in SL... but I've already seen a miniature cat, a big alien queen, some more unidentified aliens, cartoon characters, some more bipedic animals. Even a centaur. No bird but you can have wings. Angel, devil, butterfly, fairy, technoid wings. Some are even scripted to flap. And the most controversial avatars in SL: children. There aren't even (real) teens in SL but you can find children avatars. Most are used for some totally innocent role-playing. For example, in a mall, I've seen a mother and "her son" buying clothes. I stayed out of their sight and listen to a bit of their (written) conversation. It looked amazingly real. Nothing more than what you could witness in a real mall. The rest has been banned by the Linden Lab (the owner/maintainer of SL) which is rather embarassed and don't know if one can call this virtual cat "a cat" or not, since there's no cat but only dogs. (If you don't see what I mean, don't worry, you're just not ready to read in between the lines.)
The avatars aren't anatomically correct... but that can be fixed. I'm always dressed so I don't care but I nevertheless have freebie male organs... that I keep in my inventory. They won't stay concealed in my pants and the only time I put them out of their box, somebody came and asked me to pick up "that thing". Apart from this obvious thing, with some (a lot) of money, you can buy a new skin with body hair, remote controlled male organs or female details. Don't ask for more, all I know is that it exists. I haven't seen the... virtual things in action.
Hair. That's a problem in SL. The default hair is horrible. Period. You can try whatever you want, it stays ugly. To have a decent hair, you must pay an excessive price --excessive when you're broke like a newbie. Women are a bit more lucky than men since they can find one of these new flexi hairs that are acceptable in a freebie box. Men who care must pay because men's hair are rarer... like any men's stuff in general.
By the way, pay attention when you pick up freebies. Some people seem not to know the exact meaning of "free" as in "free beer" and it may cost you one Linden Dollar (L$)... or more. And since you "buy" freebies, (You do the same actions than to buy things with a real price.) you may discover that somebody stole the few L$ you found or earned.
As you should understand now, it's possible to earn money easily --although not quickly. For that, you need to expand your newbie vocabulary. Besides the freebies, you should also know the words "money tree", "camping" and "sandbox".
The sandbox won't bring you L$ neither cost you anything. It is important to know the word because since all land is own by somebody, you can't do what you want everywhere. Sandboxes are free spaces (as in "free speech") where you can unpack your boxed freebies, test your new avatars, clothes, skins, gesture, party effects and weapons. Things that you would do in your home --if you had one. You can also build things but that's another whole story to tell. And don't worry if you are very modest, you don't actually need to remove your clothes to change them. You just drag them on your avatar and what you wear transforms itself. Any way, underwears are provided. Keep your panties on... and avoid the menu entry "Remove all clothes" or you may get ejected if the sandbox rules don't allow nudity. Well, nudity is a relative thing when you don't have anything to hide.
Money trees. That's the first place where I found Linden Dollars. Call me lucky but I found L$17 on a tree. That's very rare to find that much money at once. Usually, there is a bill of L$1, a L$5 fruit (I've only seen one.) or nothing at all. Any way, you won't get very far with that and all money trees have a warning saying "Don't abuse me".
So, let's go "camping". Camp spots are usually chairs or dancing stands. You click them and your avatar sits or dance. You can still chat and look around but you can't do anything else until you get tired of it. Some camp spots detect your inactivity and push you away but there are also spots where you can stay all day long... even if your avatar looks like dead alive. This way, you can gain something like L$2 every 10 minutes, L$5 for the generous spots but the more a spot pays, the more you have to stay to earn it. This can be quite boring but that gives you time to go to the (real) bathroom, pour some beverage or eat something. Just don't forget to come often to check that your avatar isn't sleeping while standing. Camping spots don't stay cold very long. I even saw two women fighting for a spot... until one got ejected for bad language. There are also more discreet camping spots that propose you to clean the floor in a mall, re-paint the wall of a shop, wash its large window while standing on a ladder. That's the same thing than a dancing spot plus an accessory to look more realistic.
That's all. Since that day, the camping spots and the money trees have gone the way of the dodo. The Linux client isn't called "alpha" any more, I'm a paying customer, and I know what it means "to make one's inventory explode".
Once upon a time
Once upon a time, the Lindens gathered in the void in between the websites. Dissatisfied by what they saw, they started rezzing things. First came the simulator.
A sim is just a finite space in between a solid ground and an unreachable sky. Around a sim, there's nothing but void. Nowadays, there are mirages showing other sims but there are only this: Mirages. Crossing the void in between sims can be very hazardous if you go too fast. We call it "crossing the border".
Inside the sims, the Lindens rezzed objects made of virtual bricks, primitives, holding together thanks to a logical mortar, the link.
After having created the sims and some contents, the Lindens wanted to visit their creation. So they rezzed bodies to contain their presences. Avatars. The very first avatars were made of prims. The idea lasted as long as the Lindens were alone to visit their sims. Before to let ordinary people enter the sims, the avatars evolved into a superior being: the Ruth.
Don't ask me why "Ruth". It just happened that for a long time the female shape of the avatars was omnipresent. Logging in into the Linden world meant spending a few time --well, from a second to... forever-- as this female avatar called Ruth before the shape you chose finally rezzes. The expression "to be ruthed" comes from this. Nowadays, when you're ruthed, you're just a little white cloud floating over the ground. Much more neutral.
Finally, the Lindens put some life into their sims. They call their newly rezzed world "Second Life", let people come in... and things went havok.
Since I wasn't born when this happened, don't expect any exactitude in what I said hereabove. This story is passing from keyboards to eyes for such a long time that it already sounds more like a legend than anything else. Over 6 years. Eons in internet time!
I arrived in Second Life almost 3 years ago and the first thing I did was blogging. But the post remained a simple file on my harddisk.
I'm catching up...
A sim is just a finite space in between a solid ground and an unreachable sky. Around a sim, there's nothing but void. Nowadays, there are mirages showing other sims but there are only this: Mirages. Crossing the void in between sims can be very hazardous if you go too fast. We call it "crossing the border".
Inside the sims, the Lindens rezzed objects made of virtual bricks, primitives, holding together thanks to a logical mortar, the link.
After having created the sims and some contents, the Lindens wanted to visit their creation. So they rezzed bodies to contain their presences. Avatars. The very first avatars were made of prims. The idea lasted as long as the Lindens were alone to visit their sims. Before to let ordinary people enter the sims, the avatars evolved into a superior being: the Ruth.
Don't ask me why "Ruth". It just happened that for a long time the female shape of the avatars was omnipresent. Logging in into the Linden world meant spending a few time --well, from a second to... forever-- as this female avatar called Ruth before the shape you chose finally rezzes. The expression "to be ruthed" comes from this. Nowadays, when you're ruthed, you're just a little white cloud floating over the ground. Much more neutral.
Finally, the Lindens put some life into their sims. They call their newly rezzed world "Second Life", let people come in... and things went havok.
Since I wasn't born when this happened, don't expect any exactitude in what I said hereabove. This story is passing from keyboards to eyes for such a long time that it already sounds more like a legend than anything else. Over 6 years. Eons in internet time!
I arrived in Second Life almost 3 years ago and the first thing I did was blogging. But the post remained a simple file on my harddisk.
I'm catching up...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
