Why bother with a TPV?

I heard (or rather read) a comment by a person who “couldn’t be bothered wasting time on customising” a viewer to suit their SL. They wanted one that did what they wanted “straight out of the box”. This sort of person presumably buys “One size fits all” clothes in RL, since they cannot be bothered to find out their own size… It’s a bit like buying a car and expecting the seat to be “just right” as soon as you get in. It doesn’t happen…it cannot, unless you are rich enough to buy bespoke items.

I have used, and set-up, Third Party Viewers in SL for the last 3 1/2 years, simply because they do what I want them to do, how I want them to do things. It’s not “rocket science”…I’m pretty incompetent at computer things on the whole, but I appreciate the effort someone has gone to to allow me to set the thing up as I want it. The Official Viewer did things pretty well, but the way LL wanted it to do things, (mostly). TPVs were just…better!

What sets one group apart now is dedication. Today, I had emails from members of Phoenix/Firestorm Support, asking for information relating to an issue I had found with the viewer. Today…December 26th…Boxing Day (in the Christian calendar)…now that is what you get when committed keen folk are running a show. Linden Lab simply cannot compete with such enthusiasm, mainly because it is a commercial company and its staff are salaried.

Competence is at least as common outside LL as it is inside, so in short, TPVs are, not to be faint-hearted, simply better. Now it may take you a few moments to get a TPV to be exactly like you want it, but there will be enthusiasts ready (and sometimes over-willing) to assist you, if you ask.
Now I have used many, though not all, TPVs over the years, and I am not going to say “X” is better or the best etc..but there is a wealth of expertise out there and one or two groups seem to know how best to make use of this skill and enthusiasm. Put a little time and effort in and your SL will be vastly improved. Honestly!

Left hand?…meet Right hand, you may not have met before

This post is critical of Linden Lab, and some of its most outspoken critics. Not its employees, at least not those I know. I recently read that compared to Google and PayPal, Linden Lab are wonderful communicators. I have to say that is like saying that compared to drowning and suffocating, bleeding to death is a really good way to die.

The Lab do not, as an organisation, know how to talk to their customers…plain and simple. PayPal is hopeless, Google is just arrogant. I have abandoned two accounts on websites due to PayPal’s utter ineptness and despite repeated attempts to contact the organisation, I have been quite unable to get a simple matter resolved. I will say no more.

People rant and rave at LL due the perceived isolation in which the Lab’s senior planners operate. I am told that it is unreasonable to expect planners to consult with customers about the direction of a company. Now we see an apparent policy change at Linden Lab that will further hamper constructive information exchange between those of us who can only spare a little time to attend meetings in SL and the Linden Lab employees that work most closely with the SL populace.

The arrogant and pompous posturing of some SL users who DO have the time to attend OH and such user-groups as LL deign to attend is becoming intolerable, as is the idiotically rude, pointless and unfounded nonesense spouted by the most vocal “critics” of SL and LL.

There seem to be fewer “reasonable” folk left to discuss germane matters in a civil fashion, and the attention paid to them by Linden Lab appears also to be waning. I simply do not know why Linden Lab are so at odds with the SL populace. The SL populace…user-base…call it what-you-will are all that stands between Linden Lab and oblivion. We WILL NOT be ignored. The more we are ignored, the louder some folks will shout, and the less sense they will make.
Come on folks….we all want to live our Second Lives, don’t we? So…Linden Lab, please start to use joined up thinking, it is really not that hard. Residents…if you cannot be specific and constructive – SHUT UP!

Disinformation

Following on from my comments in the previous post about RC channel information, I had another thought (Yes, I will go and lie down soon). It is easy enough to spot the RC channel one’s sim is on if one notes the server version number and then goes and looks at the Relese notes, so although it will be made harder to tell, it will not be hidden from those who are determined to find out.
UNLESS….(and I feel it only fair to issue a “conspiracy theory” warning here)…LL stops issuing release notes, so that we won’t know which bugs are being fixed and what scripted or physical functions are being changed. That’ll stop the moaners….won’t it? Oh, no, I suppose it won’t, they’ll still moan. What it will stop is sensible information being fed back by residents that do give a damn about the functioning of SL. I really, really do not understand LL’s motive here.

A Storm in a Fireplace?

So…finally, and not without some pushing and trepidation I moved to a V2/V3 viewer…aka Firestorm’s first release. And so far I have to say it is awesome! Yes, I had to relearn a few things, but nothing big and the performance is just brilliant. Now, at last, I am beginning to reap the benefits of spending what seemed at the time to be silly money on a top-spec PC and graphics-card set up. I seem to be able to run shadows and still have alphas stay transparent (at least for now).
SecondLife is as much better than it was as it seemed back in the time I migrated from a non-Windlight capable viewer to one that would show Windlight physics. At the time my graphics were barely able to render Windlight effects, but I got a better card in time and more RAM and all seemed well. This time I was determined to do it right from the outset, and so far it seems to be paying off handsomely.
To anyone pondering the move, my advice is make sure you have good hardware and READ THE MANUAL! The advice given by the Firestorm team is not simply for the sake of it…it is important and it works!
I’ll edit more into this post as I go along, who knows, it may all end in tears, but I somehow doubt it!

EDIT 12th December 2011:
Well, 10 days in and I can confidently say that I love Firestorm. OK there are one or two things about its features vs late-model Phoenix that I find it irritating not to have, but Mesh is a bonus I was NOT expecting.
I bought a Mesh Corset-System dress from KaS a few days ago and found to my surprise that, not only does Mesh look even better than I’d hoped, the shape of the garment, since it is intended to be figure shaping, is very good, even allowing for the necessity of alphas. Indeed the open-boobed version allows the use of clothing layer items, while retaining breast-physics, so fans of bouncing and swaying boobies aren’t disappointed!! The best part for me is the short skirt that actually does shape itelf to one’s thighs as one sits. That to me is a BIG PLUS.
Obviously the incorporation of Karl Stiefvater’s “parametric deformer” will allow shaping and editing of Mesh clothing such that alphas may not be needed, at which point I predict an explosion of Mesh clothes onto the SL market. I know Dari Caldwell is hard at work on some items that will not disappoint long-time Dari’s Haus devotees.

At the same time SL is not a happy place. It seems that we have been annoying Linden Lab by pointing out when bug-ridden software is placed on the RC channels, so in a bout of Munchausen-like zeal, Linden Lab apparently plans to hide channel info from us in the New Year. I, for the life of me, cannot understand this move. Yes, some comments about recent releases have verged on the hysterical, and RC channels do seem to be coming in for a lot of criticism – well in the last 3 months we have had two fairly major bugs on LeTigre which have been cleared up by LL, but have destroyed irreplaceable content.

Sadly S*** happens, but you cannot blame folk for being upset. It is not the fiscal value of broken items but the emotional value that is behind the anger, something which LL seem utterly unable and unwilling to comprehend.

I have one serious concern. If we do not know what channel we are on, does it then mean we have to guard against restarts for two days each week instead of one? How will that help Secondlife in these straitened times? Our SL experience will be degraded as will the specificity of information that LL will need in order to tie down the root cause of bugs. It makes no sense at all.

Dollification vs. Objectification

Two words – one meaning? Well, not really. A doll is an object, Yes, dehumanised and objectified, but an object can be many other things, and usually is fixed in one place. Neither can communicate in the SL word as a rule, and can only IM its owner. If the rules of BDSM as D/s are followed, only essential communication with the owner is permitted. Sight is more often than not attenuated if not denied, and hearing may also be similarly restricted. In some cases the ability to see names or any “hovertext” may be restricted, but those situations are less common.

I post this to clarify some common misconceptions about what Dollification might be. It is, by and large, whatever the Dominant chooses it to be. It is a matter of some puzzlement to many as to why someone should use what is to many a social medium to practice such isolation, my only answer to that is that, as I said in a previous post, it is just that social interacivity that the subject wishes to isolate iteslf/themselves from.

There is an element of bravado and self-serving in many attempts at isolation – I was guilty of that early in my SL, but ultimately that is a hollow action and doesn’t provide the element of “consensual non-consent” that is provided by genuine SL D/s. In the limit we can all cheat out if we so wish, so there is a safety net in that.

In times past it was possible to convert the Linden Viewer into RLV with no “get out” short of redownloading the viewer, such immutability may be possible to those who know how to customise viewers, but it is well beyond my ability. For me, the matter does not arise, since the concept of cheating out of an RLVa imposed punishment or restraint is utterly repulsive to me.

I’ve been here before

I cannot speak, IM generally, I can barely see and I cannot see my location or a map of any sort. I am a Doll again. I’ve tried to give a reasoned account of this state before but how do you give a rational account of such an apparently irrational state? While this status resembles the Bane condition in “Eudeamon”, there are elements of bondage as well, and my external appareance is that of a chastised black latex Doll, not a Bane (OK semantics you might say, but I consider there to be a subtle difference!) To achieve this state involves use of RLV and sufficient scripts to dim the lights in some sims, so I do not TP around the Adult Grid much!

All I can say is that it makes me work harder to communicate anything, and so long as this state pleases my partner and Dominant, it will persist. This is not done for personal gratification…I am in almost permanent mouselook and I do not have access to my inventory. This consensual withdrawal of contact within SL, this isolation, is a state I have examined several times in my Second Life. I find it exciting, but not in an autoerotic way. Any contact that is successful is intense in a way I cannot really convey. It focusses my SL on my Dominant, who indulges me in this way because it also pleases her to do this.
This merely serves to emphasise that for a D/s relationship to thrive, there must be both a high level of trust between the partners and a very close matching of the personalities involved.

On an entirely separate matter it seems that Linden Lab has crept out of its self-imposed purdah of the last 5 days and admitted that there is a serious and so far inexplicable problem with Grid-wide traffic calculations. There was a large head of steam building in the SL community about this, and I for one am glad that LL allowed commonsense to prevail (now as to fixing that, the horrible sim-crossing issues, the log-in problem and several others…we must wait). It is nearly Thanksgiving in the USA (a big date in the US calendar) and then Christmas will be upon us, so getting a lot done before January is a little unreasonable.

3 Years….A Journey into understanding.

Today marks the third Anniversary of my partnering with my Dominant, Rachael Ezvalt. It is an anniversary that I never thought to see, RL and SL being what it was 3 years ago. However we are still together and as far as I can see, our bond is as strong as it has ever been.
Some of this has been due to the stability that having a true partner who understands me and loves me for what I am brings. I’m not going to get all slushy here, anyone reading this blog doesn’t want that. What I would say is that if you give any thought at all to your virtual life, treat others with as much care and consideration as you would expect yourself. Don’t forget that the avatar might just be pixels in a virtual environment, but the intelligence guiding it is real, with all that that entails.
In Victorian times “Do as you would be done by” was a mantra for humane interaction; it is just as true today.

As regards our virtual world of SL; there are signs (not strong, but positive) that a growing number of Linden employees are seeing that things need to be improved if this world is to flourish and survive. Mesh is a nice addition, which, in time will have value, but as it is now, it is merely a toy for some to play with. What is desperately needed is that SL actually WORKS, that one can follow pursuits in this virtual environment that may be denied one in RL due to physical impediments. I know it isn’t easy; SL is far more complex than most people realise, but it can be made to work.

If SL WORKS, it will thrive; if it doesn’t it will atrophy and die. It is as simple as that.

What is Going On?

Now, I’ve been known to shout about supposed issues that have afflicted me in SL before, such that one respected blogger seems to think that I only focus on the negative.
In this case I plead guilty as charged.

Recently, as far as I know since the OS Upgrade, we have seen UK evenings with spikes of low TD (as low as 0.01 on one occasion) and sim pings as high as 24 seconds. Restarts have merely postponed these occurences by say 24 hours, and they do seem to coincide with higher levels of concurrency in SL. From comments in the Server Forum I know we are not alone in this.

We experienced the horrible TIMEWARP bug a couple of weeks ago when our sim effectively died three times in rapid succession. Our thanks go out to Support and In-world Tech services, who sorted us out very quickly…BUT…the issue is still with us and shows no sign of getting better yet.

Recently I found that my prized sailing boat, expertly crafted by a well-known SL boat builder (I will not mention a name, it would be terribly unfair to do that), had unaccountably turned into a racing craft, hurtling around our sim at ridiculous speeds for a sailing craft. The odd behaviour was reproducible at the Boatyard as well, so it wasn’t just our sim….
In the end the maker gave up trying to find out the solution and kindly refunded the cost of the boat. To be honest I still feel utterly cheated…not by the maker, but by Secondlife.

Script performance lately has been somewhere around fair to poor in general, with occasional spikes of awful. I have spent well over 3 years in SL, two of which have involved very careful attention to script-induced lag both for myself and others. Recent changes have taken this issue into another league.

If, as rumoured, Linden Lab is to introduce Script-limits for avatars I will be upset. If LL introduces lower script tolerance (limits by another name) for Homestead sims I will be outraged.
Just at the time when SL residents are feeling the pinch of the recession hitting their purses and wallets, for Linden Lab to introduce such a policy would be insane and devisive in the extreme.
I wonder, however, if rather than go on record to do this, Linden Lab have chosen to do this surrepticiously, covertly, in order to obfuscate the true meaning of these strange afflictions from which many are suffering?

I feel that I am doing SL something of an injustice by mentioning its shortcomings when there are so many good things about it, but in this case it really is ruining the quiet enjoyment of my SL home….and I strongly resent that!

PS: As of 3pm on Sunday PST I also found that region crossings are borked unless you teleport. Walking across a sim boundary bounced me out of a sailing sim and crashed my partner. Not amused. This is something that vehicle users have been going on about for a couple of several weeks now, users and creators of boats must be tearing their hair out.

Let’s do the TIMEWARP….again

Now, I’d be the first to admit that I don’t fully understand the workings of SL…to be honest I don’t really have a clue! The current bout of troubles in SL, ranging from slow texture-rezzing through odd forms of sim-lag, to full-on TIMEWARP are taxing everyone, including Linden Lab, who really thought they had it taped.

I thought we’d be largely immune from TIMEWARP, having had one server die on us due to it some weeks ago, but a couple of times recently we’ve had spells of appalling lag, with sim pings rising to several seconds (yes, SECONDS). We were moved again, and so far (touching a lot of wood) we have escaped its predations.

The skeleton of SL, its Operating System has just undergone a major upgrade, as Oskar Linden reported recently, and that was a major undertaking for the Lab, but sadly it does not seem to have eradicated TIMEWARP (assuming it was hoped that it would – perhaps I misunderstood), and reports of crashing sims that stay offline for long periods continue to be seen.

I’ve been critical of Linden Lab before now (really??), but this issue must have them pulling their hair out, ‘cos it’s certainly responsible for a rash of baldness in residents. I can only hope that a solution to this issue can be found, and soon.

OS Upgrades – They’re finished….Official!

A posting this morning in the Server Blog by Oskar Linden finally confirmed what I had been hoping for the last 24 hours – the long series of sim restarts and upgrades have finished, and SL’s Operating System is upgraded.

Thanks to some increasingly heated exchanges in the blog threads, I think Oskar decided to step in and defuse the potentially inflammatory escalation of posts which have been arising and give a clear, concise answer to at least some of the questions being asked. It is clear that Oskar is one of the more able communicators in Linden Lab, and his comments on the “why” of these upgrades certainly clarified the position to me, relative to this terrible TIMEWARP bug that has been plaguing SL for some time now. On our home sim of Woods of Heaven we have encountred TIMEWARP twice, though at the time we did not know what was turning seemingly benign servers into totally unresponsive hell-holes.

So now we await the next series of changes in SL. I can only hope that such as Oskar is permitted to defuse any further potential rows before blog-posters’ tempers become as frayed as they have seemed to be of late.