Reader Submitted: Letter to The Editor - The Death of SL

 

From Magnus (Magnustemporal Resident)

as of 11:22:47 am on Tue 11/26/24 there are currently 17,560 active users in Second Life.

"The death of SL."

The title of this does sound very dismal does it not? It makes one think that perhaps the grid will shut down tomorrow, or next year....it just sounds dreadful, however it's not quite what you think, In fact there's a lot more to the picture than you think....read on to find out more.

I have been around in SL for a very long time, 17 years in fact....maybe not on this account. But on total it's been about 17 years.

At one point during this time, when content creators failed to gain protections for their IP from LL....a lot left SL in almost a mass exodus....and this is when I started seeing this pattern...I'm not sure what to call it other than a cyclic event, and it works like this:

Whenever a major content creator leaves SL, or a major DJ or venue switches platforms and leaves SL for whatever reason, there is a exodus of people from the grid. This lowers the number of citizens in world, I have seen it happen time and time again, a major club or person or DJ leaves SL and others follow suit, in time the grid does recover some of the numbers lost, however they're never as "good" as the numbers before.

SL is made or broke by us the citizens, with the content we create, the people we help, or the friends and family we make, when people have pleasurable experiences in world, they are much more apt to come back. At some point when the numbers above get small enough SL probably will go offline for cost reasons. But seeing the impact that a single citizen can make in world. I know the power of good things. And of good causes.

I have seen this cycle repeat it's self so many times, and I have no idea how many have caught on to it. The solution however does start with us citizens. We need to be more active in getting people to try the game, to look around and experience all the great and awesome stuff people make and things they do, 

I used to own my own business in real life, and I never paid for advertising. My customers had good experiences and I was referenced soley by word of mouth. In time I became rather successful.

The point of that is, that we can grow SL's numbers and draw in content creators and new citizens simply by word of mouth alone.

The next statements are more personal views than anything else and are not intended to offend at all but give cause for thought.

For a lot of people, SL starts with finding out the game exists, either by search engine advert, or you guessed it word of mouth from a friend. 

So the experience, the first experience a person has with SL is dependent entirely by the viewer they choose to use. 

What I noticed with the PBR based viewers is that there was a rush to be the first to produce one, and with disastrous results. 

The first few viewers where atrocious as the different viewer makers struggled with the new technology, there where bugs, but some rushed to press to be one of the first to produce a PBR viewers. 

Did anyone stop and think for a moment, how this open experimentation might effect first time users? 

they create an account, log in and......lag, missing textures, stability issues.....all sorts of things....what will these people think these potential new citizens? They may have been referenced to a particular viewer by a friend only to have a first time substandard experience, some may try again while others might quit entirely.....this is not good at all for the grid. 

I think that more and through testing before releasing a version of the viewer on the grid, to ensure that new and seasoned users have a pleasurable experience. When they do, they talk, and for SL talking is good. it brings people.

Content creators and venues should give careful consideration about quitting SL before doing so because that can also have a grid wide impact especially if the person or venue has a lot of support from the community...

I get people are gonna quit, but there's things even then that can be done to reduce the loss of citizens on the grid, and maybe the cycle that I see everytime a big person or place or club or what have you leaves, there won't be such a hit on the grid, and that 17,560 people could become 100,000.....in fact I think we were somewhere near or over that number of people at one point. and it was awesome.

But things start and end with us, so what are we gonna do with our future?

Magnus.

Extra

Reaching Out and Remembrance

 
By Fritter Enzyme,

Depression is inevitable.

With things the way they are now it truly is. All of us are effected. I see so many online seeking friends to talk with. So many want to help, real problems require real assistance. I must state at the start, seek professional help. Below I will list some resources. They will lead to others. Depression comes to us all but not en masse and for this long. Other than wars we haven't dealt with times like these. There is much help is online, but as we recoup our lives we can again meet face to face. I hate to even mention the loss of pets during this time.

Holidays have been disturbed, traditions dropped, loved ones separated. Not like there isn't plenty of craziness other than the virus. We will want to have the past back, but things will not be the same.

Hot lines are a good way to seek help, if not in person. They can give you resources to fit your life and needs. But again, trained professional workers.

Some have told me they have no insurance. When I was without insurance I went through my county health department. Call 411 for First Call for Help. They can lead you to agencies to work with. Call 911 if it is an emergency!

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1-800-273-8255

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Survivors of Suicide in Second Life

SOS - Survivors Of Suicide, Legenda (46, 58, 22) - Moderate

https://www.survivorsofsuicidesl.org/

Veteran suicide prevention

To connect with a Veterans Crisis Line responder anytime day or night:

• Call 800-273-8255, then select 1.

• Start a confidential chat.

• Text 838255.

• If you have hearing loss, call TTY: 800-799-4889.

https://www.va.gov/health-care/health-needs-conditions/mental-health/suicide-prevention/

There are places in Second Life to grieve and set up memorials:

Linden Memorial Park Candle Beach, San Michele (76, 152, 20) – General

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/San%20Michele/77/152/21

CARTHAGE MEMORIAL, Carthage (51, 149, 46) – Moderate

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Carthage/51/149/47

Living Memories Memorial Garden, The Sardar (6, 101, 21) - Moderate

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/The%20Sardar/6/101/21

Fritter Enzyme

How To Second Life : A Guide For Those Who Are New - Part Two

By Cyfir (Cyfiremmerich)

In part one of this guide, I focused on getting started and taking your first steps in Second Life. In this part, I’ll focus on more advanced features. Before that, though, reader Cynthia Farshore recommended the Caledon Oxbridge University which is an educational center for new and/or young Second Life residents. This place can be found here, Caledon Oxbridge (93/194/27).  Once you teleport there, just follow the numbered path and begin reading the signs. This place goes much more in depth than I could with a series of articles and is a valuable resource.

Now that you’re fairly familiar with the basics of Second Life, I’ll share some more advanced features you can take advantage of in Firestorm. First, assuming that you’re over the age of 18, you can choose to make more Adult locations visible in search (which we will touch on in a moment). Click ‘Avatar’ in the top left corner of Firestorm and then click ‘Preferences’ from the resulting drop down menu. In the general tab, where it says ‘I want to access content rated:’ you can change this to whatever you want. By default, adult locations are filtered out.

In the same General tab, you can also set up your ‘start location.’ You can set this to be the area you designated as your home (World/Set Home To Here) or your last location and you can check the box that says ‘Show on login’ which will automatically show you the location you set when you are first logging in. From this same tab, you can also set up how you want name tags to be displayed and what you want the browser to do when you are away. You may have noticed that my menu buttons are purple. You can set up different colors for your browser in the ‘Custom Colors’ tab.

You don’t have to touch the graphics tab. In fact, your browser should automatically set everything to what your computer can handle efficiently. However, I customized mine to show a little more detail just for the sake of having things look better. I used to get better performance with these settings when I was running Windows 7 with the same hardware. Now I’m lucky if I reach 60 FPS on Windows 10.

In the ‘Move and View’ tab, you’re going to want to click the checkbox that says ‘Disable camera constraints.’ Now hold Alt on your keyboard and click anywhere in the world while moving your mouse around. Check the box that also says ‘Allow the camera to move without constraints through prims’ and the box that says ‘Disable minimum camera zoom distance.’ You now are able to zoom all the way out and see everything there is to see. Holding Ctrl+Alt and clicking while dragging the mouse lets you pan around any fixed point.

In the privacy tab, click the ‘LookAt’ sub tab and if you don’t want others to see what you’re looking at, check ‘Don’t send my look at targets to others’ and ‘Don’t send any lookat targets at all, not even to myself’ for good measure. If you don’t want people to constantly see what you’re editing in world check ‘Don’t send my selection target hints.’

One of the most important tabs is the Backup tab. Click this tab and select the assets that you want to save and back them up. You never know when you may have to reinstall Firestorm only to find that all your settings are now wiped.

Now, to search for any person or place just simply type Ctrl+F to bring up ‘Firestorm Search.’ Here you’ll find different tabs to search for resident names (People), Groups, Places, Events, and Classified ads. This is one of the most valuable resources in Second Life and will help you find communities based on interests of yours. For instance, if you’re in to Star Trek, type Star Trek in the ‘Places’ search tab and you’ll be presented with a list of sims to choose from and teleport to to check out.

Before you go hopping around though, a word on trolls/griefers: Whatever you do, do not feed them. Do not give them a reaction. Do not talk to them. Do not even acknowledge their existence in your space. There are bad actors in Second Life who just want to have fun at the expense of others. If they are bothering you, click the region information in the top center portion of your Firestorm browser. This should bring up the ‘About Land’ menu which should tell you who owns the region. Inform them of the troll and move on with your day. If they are really bothering you, following you, making threats or anything of the sort. You can report them directly to Linden Lab. The easiest way to do this is to right click on their avatar, and click View Profile. At the bottom right corner of the profile window there should be a button with a gear on it. Click that and then click ‘Report’ from the resulting drop down menu. Now click Block in the bottom right hand corner of their same profile window. They should now be a harmless orange cloud.

In part 3, I will be focusing on land and setting up your first home. What else should I focus on in future installments? Sound off in the comments below!

Cyfir

How To Second Life : A Guide For Those Who Are New - Part One

By Cyfir

Counting my older account that I lost the password to, I’ve been in Second life for over eight years. In that time, I’ve learned from many people on how to use Second Life. I’ve done everything from a sim janitor (picking up spare objects that people have lost) to a sim co-owner. However, if there’s one major thing that I’ve learned it’s that there is a major learning curve and thus a sizable barrier to entry into Second Life. I’m hoping that this article will be useful to those who are thinking about joining Second Life, are new, or know someone that is thinking about joining. It’s really not that difficult to learn, and once you get it down, you will take it all for granted.

The first thing that you will obviously want to do is create an account. You will do this at http://www.secondlife.com Click on the ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Join Free’ button and from there you will enter in all your information, choose your username, and begin to choose your first base avatar. Don’t worry because there are near infinite possibilities on how you can customize this later.

Now here’s the important step. Do yourself a favor and skip the download of the official browser. You’ll want to download the third party client called Firestorm instead. It can be found here (https://www.firestormviewer.org). It is much more capable than the official browser and most people you will run into will be using it so they can help you better if you run into any issues.

Once you have Firestorm installed you can go ahead and launch it and enter in your new account information. Your new account’s avatar will likely be plopped in the middle of an info hub. I would recommend walking through this and reading all the signs to get acquainted with basic movements and such. The rest of this article assumes that you went through with that.

One of the main issues that I had when I first joined Second Life was that I didn’t know how to open items that I received in my inventory. I don’t remember there being any infohubs telling me how to do so back then. When you receive an item, your inventory window should automatically pop up for you. To get back to the inventory menu, all you have to do is click on Avatar in the top left corner of Firestorm and then click Inventory from the drop-down. Alternatively, you can type CTRL and I at the same time to bring it up or clicking the button for it in the Toolbar down at the bottom (should look like a briefcase). From here, you can click on and drag the item to the ground or right click on and attach the item from the resulting drop down menu if it’s a hud that provides the object. However, don’t just go trying to drop items from your inventory anywhere. You need to go to a place where you have permissions or “rez rights.”

Usually, you can drop (“rez”) items at sandboxes. One sandbox that I would recommend to those who are new is Curious Sandbox (Curious 20/19/23). This also happens to be where you can find a free feline avatar called the Felis to get you started. Assuming that you’re a furry, this is a perfect starter avatar. To obtain the avatar, find the rotating box below where it says ‘Felis’ on the wall. This particular avatar is not boxed, making it easier for those who are new to wear, but if you did need to ‘unpack’ it, you would go to the sandbox area (the big empty space) and drag the box to the ground. Once you see the box appear on the ground, you would right click on the box and then click ‘Open’ from the resulting drop down menu. The items should then appear in your inventory in their own folder.

If you want to wear the contents of the folder, the easiest way is to take out any parts that you may not need such as alternative ears (pierced ears or none-pierced for instance) or male and female shapes depending on which gender you want to be. Then right click on the root of the folder (the very top of where the folder starts in your inventory where the name of the folder is) and then click ‘Replace Current Outfit’ from the resulting dropdown menu. To save this outfit, you’ll want to click on Avatar at the top right of the browser window and then click Appearance from the resulting dropdown menu. In the appearance window, click ‘Save As’ and name the outfit.

You may have noticed a sign when you arrived at the Curious Sandbox that tells you that you may not be able to enter the sandbox without payment info on file. One of the reasons why I chose this particular sandbox is because this is a perfect opportunity for you to become familiar with your Second Life account. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll want to have payment information on file. While you can enjoy Second Life for free, you’ll really want to buy Linden Dollars (the platform’s virtual currency) in order to buy things that you’ll need. This is especially true when you’re new because you’re going to have trouble finding a Second Life “job.” Most clubs and other places do not hire accounts under a certain age because they want to make sure that their staff know how to use Second Life. That will come in time and before long you may find that you no longer need to hand over real money to buy things in Second Life.

To add payment information, you’ll want to go back to secondlife.com. Once you log in to your account there, click on ‘Account’ in the left hand menu and then click on ‘Billing Information.’ From here, you can add a payment method (such as a debit or credit card or paypal account). You can buy Linden Dollar at any time by clicking the ‘Buy L$’ button near the top right of the Firestorm browser. Simply enter in the amount of ‘L$’ that you need and click ‘Buy Now’ but be careful because it takes a second for things to update as you type them since it has to calculate how much it will charge you for the L$. You don’t want to accidentally buy 50000000L and end up overdrawing your checking account! Now buy yourself a better avatar on the MarketPlace. You deserve it.

In Part 2 of this series, I will be focusing on some more basics of how to use Second Life as well as some more advanced features you can use. If by chance you have any suggestions for what to include in future installments, please feel free to comment or message me.

Cyfir