Linden Labs Run by Hitler?

There are a lot of Second Life related videos out there, including in-world machinima. But tonight, new friend Martin Maxwell pointed out a totally hysterical Youtube video, in which Philip is played by none other than Hitler himself. Don't watch this if you have to keep quiet, because you'll be howling.

Click here to watch.

Particle Prejudice

This week I happened to be helping a friend set up a display for a Second Life snapshot contest, including assisting the selection of photos. But we had a disagreement over which pictures were most appropriate. We deferred to the contest rules in an effort to determine which photos were permitted. The rules contained the usual, such as no photoshopping, must be PG material, etc. But hidden inside was one other ominous rule: No Particle Effects, or as the rules stated, “No Poofers”.

There. It happened again.

It's what I call, “Particle Prejudice”. When others declare that particles do not belong in Second Life.

I've had the same thing happen to me many times. A typical scenario involves visiting a new location, and I might discreetly start up an appropriate and minor particle effect just to add to the visual experience. Suddenly the owner or manager charges up to me and says “Turn that OFF Immediately!” and “You are causing LAG on the server!” Since it usually isn't my property, I turn it off. And leave.

There seems to be a peculiar type of paranoia regarding particles. Sure, if you have a really crappy graphics card, your PC might be unable to render all the particles, but that slows no one else down. Some may call this effect “lag”. In fact, most people don't seem to realize that particles usually have very little to do with lag. At my shop, Electric Pixels, there are often several effects running simultaneously. Does this slow things down? Not in the slightest. Server stats remain stable and running quite well. My experiments tell me that the single biggest factor of sim lag is simply the number of people within it. A single particle effect has virtually no effect on the sim whatsoever. Yet, you'd better shut that effect off Right Now otherwise you'll crash the sim!

When used correctly, particles can transform a Second Life scene from a lifeless stack of objects into a living, breathing environment, in much the same way as sounds can. I've found many people really enjoy particles. Some are my customers and they collect effects of all kinds. But others, particularly older avatars who rezzed years ago tend to avoid them, or worse, actively try to get rid of them. Perhaps this is a phenomenon originating years ago when servers were slower and PCs were far less graphically capable than today? Or maybe it's due to the griefers who abuse particles to disrupt public events. They are the bad guys.

And the rest of us? We're not the bad guys! We just love particles and use them appropriately. Don't shut us down, save it for the griefers.

Stacks Complete!

I may have mentioned in a previous post that I was building some custom fireballs for Veyron's industrial factory build in South Gate, and I can report they are now installed and working well. The three smokestacks blow off giant fireballs simultaneously every once in a while. It looks great in person, but it's difficult to capture a decent picture of them, like any fast-moving particle effect. (I say that with experience, having had to take hundreds of pictures of particle effects for my product boxes.)

Meanwhile, after the flames were positioned, Veyron took me for a tour of the rest of her industrial build. While there are some large buildings like the "factory", which has the three smokestacks, the most interesting part is deep underground.

In the basement of one building a passageway opens into some truly incredible sewers. The highly realistic underground tunnels twist and turn, leading you below ground between the buildings. Dirty walls, "aromatic-looking" water and assorted trash add a certain ambiance to this subterranean wonder.

Meanwhile, she opened a floor grating and invited me down into a very close cylindrical pit. Suddenly, water started filling up the chamber...

The next day in RL, someone asked what I was up to last night.

"Oh, nothing much - I drowned in a virtual sewer with a demon."

Another typical day, in the sims of Second Life.

Seven Wishes for 2008

Everyone else makes wishes, and so will I. Why? Because, if you hadn't noticed, Second Life isn't quite perfect. Here, in no particular order, are my wishes for things that I hope will happen to Second Life in 2008, some minor, some major, some impossible:

• Reliability. We all face this one several times a week. The Grid is down. You can't rez objects. Well, maybe if you repeatedly try 79 times it may work. Or 80. Maybe on the 81st? You buy something and you don't get the item delivered. Then you have to call ArminasX to fix it. Sigh.
• Less Lag. There are some days when it's just very difficult to move around, frame rates drop, typing becomes painful torture and just forget about doing any precision work. Meanwhile, an inspection of the Sim's health via the statistics bar reveals that it is "running perfectly". What the heck is wrong? I can only conclude that there are other factors involved causing lag and it really bothers me. And my customers. Because there aren't any when lag is bad.
• More Capacity per sim. You get 30 avatars and things start creaking. Forty and it's just about dead. More, well, that rarely happens. It would be nice to reliably load more than 40 into a sim.
• Easy Interface for Non-Builders. According to many observers, it seems that only about 10% of newbies survive to become active residents. Worse, many of these poor folk don't even make it out of orientation. Why? Because the client interface is far to complex for most people. It's designed for people to create content. That's good if you are builder, familiar with 3D development environments - but most people aren't. We need more residents on a grid that works smoothly. The Second Life client's interface is a big barrier for them.
• Inventory Management. I have around 10,000 items in my inventory. Some of my friends have 20,000+, and I am quite certain others (and you know who you are) have much more than that. And how exactly do we keep track of our inventory and manage its contents? With a dinky inventory window full of anonymous folders. Folders don't work on PCs with 10,000 files, and they don't work for SL inventory either. Isn't there a better way to manage items?
• Less Griping from Media. Every time I see a post about Second Life in a non-SL blog or media outlet, it is invariably neutral or negative. Worse, there will always be a series of comments that dump mercilessly on SL, but clearly have no idea about SL and more than likely have never used it. Can't someone (other than us SL bloggers) write about the amazing and wonderful things taking place in our virtual reality?
• The Linden's value rises by a factor of two-hundred and fifty! Hah - just kidding. It just would be nice one day to see my account have real dollars in it instead of Lindens! On the other hand, would I want pay US$800 for that pair of virtual pants?

Will these come to pass? Who knows? I would be very happy if only one or two really happened. Especially Less Lag. And Reliability. And Capacity. And...

Halos!

I saw someone wearing a halo the other day, and thought I'd see if I could make one too. I'd never made precision-aligned head ornaments before but perhaps I was up to the challenge.

It turned out that it was actually quite straightforward to build the halo, which is modeled here by Haley Salomon. They slowly bubble upwards, fading to a brilliant white. Haley is wearing the green version (naturally, because everything she owns is green, or at least that's how it seems.) Although I truly like green, I just had to make a few other colors.

Eleven, actually: Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, Purple, Indigo, Chartreuse, Fuschia, Pink and Sky Blue. And one more: a very special Vampire version that is Red and Black.

I've received positive feedback on these from several testers, and I hope you like them too. If you happen to like them a lot, you can buy all colors at once in the "Halo Collection". Available now at Electric Pixels!

Spooky

Ok, so I know that people make Second Life pets, and some of them even follow you around. My neighbor in Caso Milo has a wonderful pond with apparently artificially intelligent ducks. I've seen birds flying through the sky and I've ridden elephants for a laugh.

But last night I saw something a little different. As I was working with Veyron Supercharge on her evil "Sweatshop" build (I am making some evil-looking flames that will burst from the industrial-style smokestacks), she showed me an interesting sight next door at her South Gate parcel.

It was a ghost!

This small build contained a rather creepy looking sculpty tree (made by Seph DaSilva) with matching ground terrain. However, once we were nearby we were assaulted by ghosts! The "Spectre", made by Lyle Maeterlimck of Liquid Designs, slinks around the tree area and rushes up to unsuspecting passers-by. More ghosts are spawned and it gets pretty spooky.

That's a pet! Now, if only someone would make a pet that washed the floors in my store...

An Introduction to Second Life Ergonomics

Ergonomics? Isn't that about how you place your hands on a keyboard? How you sit in front of your screen? Yes, but that's Human Ergonomics. Today I am talking about Second Life Ergonomics.

What exactly do I mean by "Second Life Ergonomics"? I mean that those little avatars that we control (or is it the other way around?) have needs just as their human owners do. They can't see as well as humans, they have restricted ways of moving around and have utterly terrible dexterity. Some of them are pretty ugly, too!

But seriously, these "physical" characteristics of avatars really do affect how we travel throughout the Second Life grid. Who hasn't been stuck trying to navigate to a precise spot, overshooting, and backing up? And repeating 0ver and over? Crashing into walls? Getting stuck in a rotating door? Falling off the edge of a ramp? Try moving while the grid is bagged out!

Frustrating, these be.

When I first built my Caso Milo store, I wanted to right some of these wrongs so that visitors would not encounter those issues. But immediately I had to realize that:

Real Life buildings are made to accommodate Real Life people with their physical capabilities

Therefore,

Second Life buildings should be made to accommodate Second Life avatars with their virtual capabilities

Often I encounter Second Life builds that replicate real life buildings, or incorporate real life building ideas. While these builds are not wrong, they may introduce problems for avatars who do not have the same physical capabilities as humans. Our quest to be realistic sometimes results in difficulties for visitors.

What are the characteristics of avatars that make them different than humans? Let's make a list:

• Sight is normally set to a specific view - from behind the avatar, not from its eyeballs
• Motion is normally in straight lines, and difficult to perform accurately in a curve
• Teleportation is possible
• Flight is possible, except in sims where flight is disabled. (FYI - there is a secret way around this, revealed to me late last night by Veyron Supercharge at her demonic industrial build site... but that's another story for another day)
• Dexterity sucks. It is very difficult to accurately touch or manipulate small items
• Smell and Taste are absent - thankfully!
  

And let's add one final one:

• Avatars can't always know how something is going to work, since Second Life objects can behave unlike anything in real life. In other words, humans have half a chance at guessing how something works or acts since physics is, well, universal. But Second Life doesn't operate with the same physics. Pink Elephants can fly, Hearts appear on arms or Particle Fog, Doves or even Cheese can flow out of your butt! It's just a bit harder to know what to do.

Knowing that avatars have differences from humans, do you think that buildings should be made differently to accommodate them? I do! I built my shop after considering these differences. You might be interested in knowing how you can build in an ergonomic way... but I will save those tips for another post.