Linden Lab has just given us 16 brand new classic starter avatars for Second Life.
I’ve written about the starter avatars and some of the problems involved here; “The ongoing trouble with the new mesh avatars” and here; “An alternative to starter avatars”, also suggesting that they replaced and improved the old starter avatars in stead of those full mesh avatars.
Last year brand new full mesh avatars were released but many users (especially noobs) soon discovered that they looked nice but sadly were a bit static (no mouth opening when talking for instance) and it was very difficult to adjust them or even change their clothes.
Full mesh avatars are something even advanced SL users sometimes have problems with so you can imagine that they didn’t make things easier for people new to our virtual world.
And of course making sure they feel at home asap is very important to keep them from leaving.
So these new avatars are the good old ‘system avatars’ we know and love (and hate) but with mesh attachments.
In a way, the best of both worlds…?
I think these new avatars look pretty good, especially the one in the 3 piece suit, even though he needs a haircut.
He is ready to start exploring 1920s Berlin, maybe I’ll even put a box with that outfit as a freebie at our teleport area.
Sadly none of the ladies have 1920s suitable clothes.
Seriously though, of course there are a lot of people who’ll find that a certain type or kind of avatar is missing from this selection.
The one thing I dislike about these new avatars is that they are all young and pretty.
I would have liked people a little older, a little fatter and perhaps a little uglier.
You know, like real life 🙂
Anyway, quite an improvement on the old system avatars, at least at first sight.
I haven’t tried them yet.
But it is a shame that after all these years apparantly it is still so difficult to create avatars that look good, are all mesh, are animated and not so complicated to modify or dress.
Something that seems so easy in games.
But I still think that it would be even better to allow new users to create and already personalise their avatars right there on the website before they even enter Second Life, letting them have some fun and giving them an avatar they’ve already started bonding and identifying with before they’ve even put virtual feet on the virtual ground.
I’ve written more about that idea here; “Starting your Second Life” and here; “Starting your Second Life is still not easy”.
You should be able to try out these new avatars now.
Many years ago I had a little shop in a sim that used a single terminal rental system.
With other words, everyone in the entire sim who had to pay rent could do so at a prim situated in the main municipal building.
In all my years in Second Life I’ve had 2 rental systems (the two biggest ones everyone’s probably using) and neither offer that option.
I’ve asked, I’ve begged, I’ve bribed and although it is being worked on, it is still unavailable.
I wonder if anyone knows if such a system is around, somewhere.
Why would anyone want such a system you ask?
Well mostly because of prims and scripts.
In the region of 1920s Berlin we have about 100 rentals, yes I know, that is a lot.
But that also means we have over 100 rental boxes with each a script inside.
By using a single terminal rental system, I could free up these prims and remove the scripts from the sim.
But it also lets us have a more fun and realistic way to pay the rent for my tenants, in stead of throwing money at a box by their front door, they now have to take the tram to the post office and pay their rent at the counter there.
Of course, the system would also be able to control the front doors of apartments and have a nice online website where you can keep track of all the payment done, how much time on rentals is left, who is using too many prims, etc, etc.
So it is all not as easy as it sounds.
But still, I am desperate for such a system to be installed in Berlin and have been for years.
Do you know if there is such a system currently available somewhere?
And of course, I can’t help thinking about how this will happen in Sansar.
Has Linden Lab let some of the big rental system creators into their new virtual world yet?
Even if Sansar goes public, until there is a working rental system, I fear many sims will not get started but in stead will have to wait till one is build.
Unless… maybe the people at LL are building a new land system that lets you, as owner of a region, cut the land into tiny parcels and sell/rent on to someone else who then simply pays tier online but it ends in your pockets?
That could be interesting.
People all over the world broadcast their game playing online and some make a pretty good living out of it.
Millions of viewers enjoy seeing someone else play a game and in many cases it can entice them into buying the actual game, so game publishers are very happy with all this free advertising.
Game videos have now gotten so big that Youtube now has its special gaming channel.
Second Life also gets a lot of attention on Youtube as well but unfortunately most of these videos are far from good publicity for our virtual world.
Some are meant well but completely alienating to most outsiders (try and explain having a baby in virtual reality) and others just enjoy using Second Life to annoy and harass others and create grieving videos.
The latter apparently being very funny to a huge audience as those seem to get the most attention.
It clearly is important for Second Life to improve its reputation, at least on youtube.
Many people watch these videos and I doubt it makes them want to try SL.
So today I decided to try and stream a bit of SL myself.
For the record, I was using my early 2015 model Macbook Pro and Firestorm on a wireless connection, broadcasting trough Wirecast.
I did not bother to tweak the settings or look into many options, it was just a simple first try.
And I must say that it worked rather well but it can be quite a hassle.
The thing is, you need to tweak bit rate and CPU and keep an eye on all sorts of settings before you find the perfect balance between making it look good and broadcast smoothly.
My CPU pretty much went to the max right away.
SL runs pretty decent on my 2015 Macbook Pro but when the region is laggy and there is a crowd, things slow down and using shadows and such is pretty much out of the question in such situations.
Even people with very good computers often set their viewers only on ultra for making pictures.
But if you can’t show SL at its very best, it is sometimes better to not show it at all.
Spending a lot of time figuring out how to best set everything up is something which many users will not be willing to do or they may not even be able to.
In short, there is no plug & play option.
No “Lets just click broadcast and we’re fine” possibility.
And this is something where LL could perhaps offer their users a really cool service.
One that I’d love to see in Second Life but sort of expect to see in Sansar.
First of all why should LL bother?
As I mentioned, I think it is important to ‘flood’ the media with great images and videos of Second Life, with the best possible quality.
There is no better antidote to the idea that a lot of people still have about SL having bad graphics and has abandoned ugly old sims than showing people how SL can look like.
If LL gets one of the famous youtube gamers to try out SL, they could reach an audience of millions.
Something you’ll pay a fortune for in advertising money.
Also, LL is always trying to get people to become premium members and to be fair, besides getting extra groups, so far they have not offered amazing extras that people got really excited about.
The added option to create or even broadcast video directly from the viewer could be a wonderful incentive for people to become a premium member.
In short; it is in LL’s interest to get lots of good looking and interesting footage out there.
Now, I am not very technical and have no idea what is happening inside Linden Lab, unlike some people seem to think, I am not a regular visitor there, I do not have my own luxury suite and they found all the bugs I hid there.
So my following ideas may be daft or completely impossible.
But, in my perfect world, Linden Lab adds a ‘record’ and/or ‘stream’ button to their viewer that, just like the ‘upload to flickr’ function will allow us to very simply and directly record a video or stream it on youtube.
It would also be nice to have an option to hide the interface but only on the video, not on the actual screen so you can still use the buttons and options but this will not end up op the actual video or stream.
You also have this option in the photo making tool, you tell it to hide the interface on the picture, but you still see it on your screen.
As simple as that.
Of course this may be quite tricky, or even hellish for LL to implement, but I reckon it might be worth it as it would flood the internet with SL videos.
And if only LL could help out the Bright Canopy team or bring the former SL Go team on board and sort out a cheap streaming service for all… then we could start broadcasting amazing high quality videos and show the world what Second Life can look like.
This screenshot may look nice but with everything set to ultra, it became rather laggy.
Now this will be a wishful thinking post, as far as I know this is not coming to Sansar but one can dream!
Imagine fluid water dynamics in your favourite virtual world…
Water that not only looks like water (which already looks great in SL) but also acts like it.
It flows and reacts with its surroundings.
Imagine digging a hole in your garden… with a trench to the river… and then the water flows from the river into the hole!
While landscaping your sim, you’d build a mountain, click the water icon and a big water drop hovers over your land, drop it and it will fall onto your land, streaming down, filling dents, surrounding hills and turning them into islands, following riverbeds, causing waterfalls and ending at the sea or a lake, adding the risk of it overflowing…
Can you imagine the fun you’ll have?
Building dikes, breaking them, seeing towns get flooded, making waterfalls, underground lakes, etc. etc.
Not to mention that certain things would float on water while others would sink.
You could sit in a little boat and actually see it float down the river, following a stream, without you doing anything, without scripts, without gadgets.
Depending on how well it is implicated, it could be used for serious scientific experiences!
And who knows… it could maybe even be used to recreate REAL rain in SL… countless little drops that fall down and slide down roofs…
But that is perhaps taking things too far.
The water might even react realistically to items… or people jumping in!
Check out this amazing video;
Back to earth.
I know, I know, this is all much more than the LL servers or our computers can handle at the moment.
Although the video is a few years old, even today this would cost even super computers quite some time to render.
Calculating 3D water effects, responses, reflections, ripples, behaviour in real time sounds like science fiction.
Or so I thought…
Twitter user Cube Republic read my tweet about the video above and shared a very interesting link with me.
There is an online demo called ‘WebGL Water‘ made by Evan Wallace, that shows a cube of water that reacts to touch and interaction in real time, in a browser!
Or as Mr. Wallace explains himself, it has; Raytraced reflections and refractions, Analytic ambient occlusion, Heightfield water simulation and Soft shadowsCaustics.
I think this is very impressive, sure not super realistic, but very close and I could already imagine it in our Berlin swimming pool.
Check out this video;
This is also rather old, but, as non-technical as I am, I can’t help wondering, if this can run in a browser… how far are we from seeing this on a large scale implemented in a virtual world like Sansar?
When Ebbe Altberg (AKA Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab) did his interview at the SL12B celebrations with Saffia Widdershins and myself, we tried to get as many questions from the audience answered as possible but of course there is never enough time.
And some questions, although answered, keep coming back.
Today in an announcement you can read by clicking here, Linden Lab announced that they started a forum post that answered some of the often asked questions but they also opened up the thread to the public promising that Ebbe and other Lindens will keep an eye on it and try and answer as many of your questions as possible.
This is another great step to improving the communication between users and Second Life, as mentioned before, Ebbe also agreed to doing a regular question hour type show we hope to start working on soon.
So you can perhaps also ask him your questions in public soon.
Got a question for the Lindens?
Go check out the official forum thread by clicking here and ask away!
This morning Linden Lab released the following message in a blog post;
As of today, this exciting creative power is available to all Premium subscribers, and every Second Life user can enjoy participating in these seamless experiences with a new Viewer that makes it easy to manage all of your experience permissions.
Make sure you’ve updated to the latest Viewer or visit our download page to get it. This latest release allows you to manage all of your experiences whether you’re a creator or participant.
If you’re a Premium member and would like to begin creating with Experiences, check out this Knowledge Base article to get started. We can’t wait to see what you create!
I am not sure if the idea to make this something for premium members only is a permanent thing or just something just for now.
So I can’t tell you if eventually all users will be able to start using these tools.
Of course we’ll all be able to experience them.
In 1920s Berlin we’re experimenting with them and we hope to eventually hope to give you some experiences that will make your visit to 1920s Berlin more realistic.
Such as getting drunk, sick, having to go to the toilet, eat, drink and end up with a suspicious rash and itch after a wild night at the “Herrenclub”.
I’m not joking.
On the other hand, simply no longer having to ask guests permission to animate them every single time they sit on a chair or want to dance, would be wonderful.
We’re not ready for that in Berlin yet though, but I’ll keep you updated.
I think the experience tools are rather good fun and hope to see more of them.
Recently I got to try them at Loki Eliot’s excellent display at SL12B and it was a lot of fun.
So lets start creating some wonderful experiences!
Together well known VR Tv personality Saffia Widdershins and I got to interview Ebbe Altberg, aka Ebbe Linden, CEO of Linden Lab and thus, boss of our virtual world.
After a rocky start (something always goes wrong when audio and video are involved in SL) we got started.
It was interesting to note that Ebbe had returned to using his original avatar and was no longer wearing a mesh body.
Thus allowing his face to actually move as he spoke.
He said that he had only worn the mesh body as part of a presentation but I wish I’d asked a little further, because I can’t help wondering if perhaps he didn’t like the mesh avatar very much, especially the fact that you can’t really open your mouth with those avatars.
A rather bad side to the ‘new’ mesh avatars Linden Lab announced a while ago.
Nothing much new was announced or revealed during the interview, if you’ve been keeping up with the news and especially if you watched the earlier Linden interviews, you’d known most of what was being said already, although here and there extra information was being added but generally Sansar is just in too early a phase to get into real detail.
I was too busy to make notes, so I hope I remembered (and read from others) the below correctly;
In SL there will be more options to buy and own more kinds of land, I suggested something like this in my blog in this post (click to read).
Land in Sansar will be cheaper, even free for new users.
In Sansar LL plans to make money by putting a tax on sales and transactions in stead of land.
If you can run SL on your computer today you should be able to run Sansar on it as well although this could still change and Ebbe isn’t promising that you won’t need a new computer anyway. Then again, in VR everyone always needs a new computer.
Ebbe is proud of improving communication between Lindens and the SL residents.
Ebbe was also proud of several improvements that were implemented since he became CEO.
Ebbe repeated that he plans to make cashing out Linden dollars faster, right now it can take several days, the plan is to make it happen within 24 hours.
Ebbe said he walked around SL12B and enjoyed some Techno music, which I find a horrific announcement that shocked me to my core, I didn’t think that was even possible 😉
Ebbe almost always goes around Second Life as himself, not using an alt.
He does not mind mingling and said that quite often people don’t even realise he is the CEO.
Which I find odd but I guess not everyone follows the SL news and maybe not everyone gets excited when they meet a Linden, any Linden.
LL will also continue making SL run better and media on a prim will also be improved.
Second names will very likely not return to SL, but what names will actually look like in Sansar is not quite clear.
As Danger Linden already said, there will be one main account and several co-accounts per user, allowing you to have alts but still share the same inventory and linden dollar balance.
In Sansar, you will probably be paying for how much your sim demands from the LL servers, for instance if you don’t mind our sim being offline when you’re not there (for instance when you run a club thats only open in the weekends) or when you don’t mind visitors having to wait a little while your sim loads, it can be offline when nobody is there, bringing your costs down.
If you want your sim to be online all the time, you maybe have to pay a little more.
Which makes sense to me.
There won’t be an Linden Lab run version of SL Go yet, no Linden Lab Streaming service, which is a huge shame.
Ebbe explained that although they looked at it, but felt it would just be too expensive to run. I disagree, one of the SL Go people told me that although Onlive failed, SL Go on its own was very close to making a profit and that if they had realised from the start that their main target audience was the kind of SL user with an old computer and not the mobile user, they would have done better sooner.
SL Go also showed us that people were willing to pay 10$ a week for streaming SL.
And I also think that even in SL Streaming does not make any profit, or not much, it would be an important service that is good for SL, as it would allow people to see SL the way it should be seen and thus send out more high quality screenshots and videos into the world, giving SL priceless advertising.
So I hope that perhaps someone at SL invites some of the ex-SLGo staff to have another chat anyway.
Nevertheless, LL is looking into streaming Sansar, although again, this is something that isn’t happening any time soon.
As Sansar won’t be open source (at least not for a while), there is no room yet for third party viewers, such as Firestorm.
Which would be upsetting unless LL is implementing a lot of that what makes Firestorm the better viewer.
But there will be room for add-ons, so I assume people will be able to create certain tools you can add to your viewer to give them more features.
If this works, it would be really cool.
Especially if people can create all sorts of applications for the official viewer that they can then sell on the Sansar marketplace!
It could start a whole new industry.
Near the very end of the interview Ebbe said that he really enjoyed the chat and that we should figure out a way to do something like this again.
This made me think back to an idea I had a few days ago and posted about here on my blog;
I had discussed this with Saffia Widdershins before the interview and in a spur of the moment sort of thing, we decided to take Ebbe up on his offer and told him that we should have some sort of Question Time, but with Lindens.
Jokingly I suggested we could do one every week, but Ebbe thought that once a month would probably be better.
I replied that it was a deal, a verbal agreement and Ebbe agreed.
Afterwards, off the air, we briefly talked about this idea a little longer and it seems there really will be a Question Time show coming to Second Life.
So in a way, we had a little scoop after all.
I’m very excited about this because I feel it will make communication between us and the Lindens even better and there seem to be so many people with questions.
The idea will be simple; we invite Lindens (and perhaps one or two guests as part of a current SL related news story) and let the audience ask the questions.
Don’t start sending in questions just yet, we need to build a stage, find some space, set a date, etc.
But we will of course let everyone know when it is going to happen.
During todays yesterdays (I fell asleep before I could finish this blog) ‘Meet a Linden’ talk at SL12B with Danger & Troy Linden, it was revealed that ‘My Second Life’ will not be “developed further”, mostly because a lot of time and work is spend on improving other things.
He said;
Its kind of a mess and it’s very difficult to maintain. Its usage rate is on the low side compared to other features.
So it may not be a popular answer, but no more improvements are planned on that.
I think this is a shame, I feel that it would be good for SL and in the future Sansar to create an active social media tool for our virtual world.
Everyone in SL knows the many issues we have with groups, group chat, having your account removed from Facebook, losing your pictures on Flickr, getting lost on Koinup, trying to keep track of what is being said on Plurk, dodgy online event calendars that are somehow never up to date, etc, etc.
But SL for most people is all about communication, after all, many of us are part of one or more communities.
Keeping them running, organizing events, staying in touch with everyone, keeping a nice record of what’s been going on, sharing pictures… it is all quite a big job and not being made easier by all the options we have but also lack.
When ‘My Second Life’ was first introduced in 2011 I was quite excited, I hoped that it would replace all or most of the tools I use a lot to keep the 1920s Berlin community going.
But alas, I was soon disappointed and stopped using it a long time ago.
I think that if LL developed it further and make it more like a, let’s not hide it, Facebook clone, a lot more users would start using it.
The best thing about this kind of social media wouldn’t just be the chance to chat about what you’re doing, gossip and sharing pictures, but the ability to manage and run your SL communities and social life.
One of the most important things I need, and yes, I only speak for myself, as I always do, as I’m self obsessed, or should that be Berlin obsessed?
The most important options any social media can offer me is that of meeting a community online.
What we need in ‘My Second Life’ is groups.
Imagine having a group for your SL community, one where all the members can post stories, questions, pictures, etc.
There is space for photo albums, so you can share and keep all pictures people post of a certain event in one place, there is room for posting comments and respond to them, perhaps there is even a chat window.
But maybe even more important; there could be a shared events calendar.
With an active community it is always difficult to keep track of who is organising what, where and when and avoid events being organised at the same time.
It can also be complicated to make sure people find out where to look to stay up to date.
Right now we use Facebook, google calendar and an inworld board for this and still it doesn’t always work.
I’d love the ability to start group pages, with a event calendar, chat wall, pictures albums, etc.
One that those who join get (inworld) notifications from (if they choose to) when something new is posted or when an event is about to start.
An easy way for me to reach everyone who joined even if I myself can’t go inworld for one reason or another.
Imagine if this page was also representative of your group, something you can stumble upon in search and learn about the community and sim even before you join it inworld.
Maybe it could eve be the portal to your community, almost like a webpage for your sim.
Welcome to our 1920s Berlin site, here you see some pictures of events, here you see what we’ve been talking about and here is a big button that will allow you to install SL and teleport directly to a stool by the bar, schnaps is ready.
I’d love to have a more active personal page, with more options, to be more like… here it comes again; Facebook.
In short, I’d love to stop using Facebook and Google calendar, Google+, etc, and swap all that for a place on ‘My Second Life’ with more options.
I think it will be a good thing for the communities, events, etc.
I’d love to be in contact with my SL communities even when not inworld.
See at once glance what events are scheduled for today, see what people are talking about, etc.
Now, if LL wants to make me really happy, they would add more in-out world interaction.
Imagine if you could, on the 1920s Berlin community page in MSL also see a window with the inworld group chat… live!
Or, and maybe this is only for sim moderators or admins; a current list of who is actually in that groups sim at that very moment.
Even allowing you to eject and ban someone from there, all without even logging into SL.
More than once I’ve received a frantic IM from someone in SL asking me to take care of a griever ruining an event, but not being able to do something about it for precious minutes because I had to go get my other computer, wait for it to boot up, wait for SL to load, wait for everything in SL to load so I could make a snapshot of the griever in question, etc.
Imagine being able to write a message on your group page in MSL and it goes out to all members inworld!
We could stop using the expensive and not always trustworthy inworld mailing services!
Imagine being able to see your friends list there and send them an IM that, if they are online will receive inworld in a regular chat window and they can respond to.
You could have a regular chat while they are in SL and you are in RL.
I think if we had tools like these, MSL would be open in a window on my screen all the time and I’d post there several times a day in stead of once every few months, like I do now on MSL.
And yes, I know Herr Linden, that will be a lot of work and there is plenty to do already at Linden Lab.
But I bet that once MSL starts offering more option and freedom, a lot of people will start using it much more and improving communication, strengthening communities and bring more people to events.
If it has enough options, thousands of us can stop using Facebook with fake accounts, Second Life has almost 370.000 likes on Facebook and I reckon a lot of those come from ‘fake’ accounts, at risk of being deleted by Facebook at any time.
Places like SLUniverse are very active, have over 25000 accounts and people spend lots of time there having all sorts of discussions, even if they don’t spend much time in SL any more.
I think that with a few extra options MSL could become a much used and popular tool, one you’d check several times a day, somewhere you go to chat and see what is happening even if you can’t or don’t want to go inworld.
Letting it slide and stay as it is will be, in my eyes, a mistake.
It could be a very powerful and much wanted service and I am sure we will also want/need something like this for Sansar anyway, so working on this now will also be useful for the future.
The full Danger & Troy Linden interview;
I tried to post this to MSL, but it wouldn’t let me.
As part of Second Life’s 12th birthday (aka SL12B) I’ve been enjoying a series of interviews with Lindens.
I sneak into the audience and sometimes even get a chance to force my own opinions and questions to the front in a subtle and ladylike manner… ish… sort of… shouting is involved…
You may have read my near- hysterical post yesterday about when Oz Linden announced 24 hour days are coming, partially as a result of my nagging 😉
Since Linden Lab opened their doors and luredkickedpushedenticedset free allowed the Lindens to go out into the wide open world again we’ve been seeing a lot more of them and generally people really like seeing, hearing and meeting them in the wild.
And you can see that in these SL12B interviews as well, when Lindens get on stage, regions fill up.
The interviews are very good, veteran interviewer Saffia Widdershins does her job rather well together with Elrik Merlin, Draxter Despres and others.
Yes, they’ll even let me on the stage to talk to Ebbe.
If you’ve got any questions for him, leave them in the comments section, I may be able to squeeze them in.
If not, make sure you’re in the audience and ask them yourself!
But no matter how much the Lindens talk, you always think of something to ask that doesn’t come up or that you only think about after the interview is over.
And it made me wonder if perhaps it would be interesting to have more chat shows like these.
And no matter how interesting the interview is, the interaction with the audience is often even more exciting.
In the UK there is a tv show called ‘Question Time’, a hand full of politicians sit on a stage while the audience asks them questions.
They can ask (almost) anything they want, several questions are handed in before the show starts but people can also put their hands in the air and ask something else.
You can imagine that these shows are very entertaining.
And of course the questions can get quite difficult sometimes.
As far as I am concerned every country needs a show like this, a place where the politicians directly have to respond to the questions of their employers; the people.
Picture; BBC
I started wondering if perhaps this would be something great to have here in Second Life.
Imagine, once a month (or more often?) 3 or 4 Lindens and 1 or 2 guests who for one reason or another have something to do with whatever story is in the news at that time, are invited to Second Life Question Time.
The public gets to send in their questions in advance, there is a host, someone like Saffia, Merlin, Drax etc. and together with the public, for one hour, there is a debate.
The news of the moment is discussed, the questions that were send in are asked and members of the audience with lovely ‘hand the air’ gestures can get to ask questions as well.
This is something I’d watch and I bet so would many others.
It would be the cherry on top of the whole new openness that has changed how LL interacts with the people of Second Life.
What do you think?
Do you like the idea, is it something you’d watch, do you already have questions popping up in your head?
Here is a video showing the UK Question time, not very exciting, but it shows you the general idea of what it is;
And to make up for that video, here is one mocking Question Time;
I’ve been nagging, bribing and begging for a 24 hour day cycle in Second Life for a very long time.
You can read my first blog about it from 2012 by clicking here.
Every opportunity I’ve had I brought it up, bothering poor Lindens with it everywhere I could find them, even Ebbe himself.
But I realised that this was something only of interest to a few people and thus, rightfully so, Linden Lab we’re not that interested in putting a lot of time into it.
Nevertheless I kept asking about it and I am sure so did others.
And I kept changing the windlight setting in 1920s Berlin twice a day… by hand!
In 4 regions…
You can imagine that this is quite a pesky job!
And when I had a hangover after a wild RL party… Berlin wouldn’t see sun till in the afternoon!
After all I want to mimic reality in my sim and in RL Berlin days just don’t last 4 hours, as they do now if you turn on the day cycle option.
So today I went to listen to Oz Linden talk at the SL12B event and couldn’t resist mumbling something about the 24 hour day wish again.
Oz heard me and said that I’d convinced Ebbe and that 24 hour day cycles are indeed coming to Second Life!
Jo, you’ve convinced Ebbe that we need to do 24 hour days!
I can’t give you a time line but one of these days it will happen for sure.
It’s one of the things I want to make part of environment settings, whats the dateline.
So right now the 4 hour second Life day, the whole setting cycle is always 4 hours, is kind of baked in and it wouldn’t be hard to change it so that is a variable.
I’d like that myself, its one that really irritates me because I hold lots of inworld meetings at various places and I’d like it to be true that whenever I’m holding a meeting it’s day time and the way things are right now unless you just use a fixed setting its hard to make sure a particular setting always lines up with a particular time of day in real time.
I can’t wait to experience my first 24 hour cycle in Berlin, actually seeing it get dark in SL as it gets darker in RL.
Maybe we can even link the daylight setting to a timezone!
Imagine that, never having to tweak the windlight again and see it change as seasons change.
Or even better… a windlight system that is linked to the weather… so we can have windlight mimic RL even more…
But maybe we should save that for another day or Sansar.
I want my 24 hour days first, so I can finally stop tweaking the windlight twice a day…
I just want people to visit Berlin and experience the time of day it is in Berlin in RL at that moment, of course if they don’t like being there at night, they can always turn the sun back on in their own viewer.
Second Life offers us so much freedom, we can do pretty much whatever we want and we can build anything our imagination can come up with.
So its a bit odd that we’re limited to 4 hour day cycles!
