Chic at Ebbe's Place

I haven't been to the High Fidelity website in awhile, but found myself there one late evening a week ago as you read this. News has definitely changed since my last visit; details are fleshing out.

They are in alpha testing now and of course I am not one of the testers :D. Once I saw the direction the project was heading in I knew it was not my thing and I was not their audience. An interesting concept, it may certainly be successful. There are many very popular bits of technology that are just not my thing.

One of the most interesting additions to the information pool was the statement that there would be crypto currency in sort of a wind generated power going back to the energy grid sort of system.

"Creators of virtual worlds using High Fidelity software can contribute their servers and other devices to each other for scalability, using a digital currency that compensates participants for shared machine time."

So venture over to their website if you are one that likes gear and lots of digital interaction! It may just be the new world for you. 

As I start to type this post, I am reflecting on my initial purpose of this blog -- to chronicle the move from SL 1.0 to SL 2.0 otherwise known fondly in some circles as "The New World". In fact, that is not what this blog has turned out to be -- so far at least.

There really isn't all that much news about TNW; instead my typings have become a look at the Metaverse at large. Not a bad thing really and I am definitely enjoying my adventures.

This afternoon after a frenzied and productive day on three grids (SL didn't make it into Saturday's line up) I spent a couple of hours (2.33 to be exact exploring the new grid on the block, The Great Canadian Grid.  I heard about the grid -- well there was reference to a new grid that was competition so I of course did some sleuthing and found it readily -- at a grid meeting. Ya just never know.

After a long day of work, I decided to give myself a break; yesterday I actually got a little bitchy by Miller Time and that is an unusual occurrence in my compulsively creative world. So, a busman's holiday was in order.

I went to the website, read through the literature including the TOS (very reasonable except for the "we can change this any time and you are still abiding by it" clause -oh well). I already had the grid in my Firestorm list by the time I made my new account.

Here is a short rundown of my adventures and first impressions of the grid.


I landed at a very pretty welcome area, a sort of Canadian wilderness lodge. There was a grid founder (you can tell by the last names -- see I DID read the literature) present but I didn't chat him up. I was busy looking at my orange cloud status. After several trips to the Metropolis grid (No Money Ever!) I never got past the cloud thing. The grid is apparently having some database issues and entering the world is one of them.

Now the founders of TGCG had this covered (hear loud clapping here as yet another account that I couldn't use was NOT on my want list). There was a big sign saying "decloud here" or whatever. I clicked the sign and got a box (OK. Demerit for the box thing which appeared later in the story. Just give the CONTENTS folks!). So I had to find a sandbox.

Typing in Sandbox on the map found it. Well you would expect that but happy it worked. I TPed to the sandbox complete with how to build charts that I have seen in other OS grids as well as the ubiquitous script and sculpt library  and opened the box. The top photo reflects my new REZZED look.

Yes, I am solid white with the spookiest (timely on that with October approaching) eyes. Those eyes REALLY got me. The clothes weren't bad but my hands were not good and the shoe base was missing on the shoes -- so they disappeared quickly.

I journeyed off to find A Better Newbie Look.

Now I have a lot of things I have made on previous adventures. I even had a modified Elliot skin that I had uploaded in IW for the sim's freebie shop. But FINDING the files on my computer was an issue. And discovering what was available was good -- both for you and me.

The on every OS grid I have visited Freebie Mall was there. Honestly I bypassed that. I found another freebie area -- also OS based and often seen. There were some skins there as well as some three year old clothes (a typical OS look - no disrespect intended). I explored a bit more and finally found the:

FREE CREATORS MALL.

The shops are huge and very nice and the whole shopping sim is quite snazzy in a minimalist way that I love. Big points there. Now just how do I get said free shop?  Well --- there is a Live Help button on the website, so I wrote to "live help". LOL

Now live helper 1, 2 and 3 were apparently all at dinner so I left a message asking how to get a shop, putting in my SL Marketplace URL (needed in Avination so seemed like a plan) and the location of the shop I liked.  Onward ----

Now this is a new grid -- a VERY new grid. There is little there besides what the grid owners have place (malls, freebie shops etc.) But, while I was trying to find the FREE CREATORS MALL, I stumbled upon the FREE LOTS. First I found the riverside lots (pine trees if I remember, green). It had a fair number of basic prim houses in residence.

A bit later I found the free BEACH lots with only one other house there. I decided that having my pick of lots (and choosing ocean vista) was a good choice. Beach it is.

My top photo was taken right after hitting the rental sign. I got a message saying to be sure and hit it again within two weeks (or IN two weeks, not sure on that) so that my stuff doesn't get returned.


This is me standing in front of my imported linkset Bayou Shack (seemed beachy enough for the locale) with landscaping, my wear on all grids overalls with tank -- well, it IS the beach -- and some hair that I made for a friend. At the moment my doors don't open. I forgot that not all OS grids can use my fancy door script. But I have one that does work on other grids so I'll stick that in tomorrow.

And as I look at the photo I see I need to hunt up my wood texture for the poles. Plain VERY smooth paint was not the plan!  [Later Note: Oddly when I logged in later the wood textures WERE there.]

With 1000 prims I can't possibly run out. And presumably I can make a workpad up at 3,000 meters for importing.

Now like all grids there are pluses and minuses. Of course the fact that there are VERY VERY VERY few people and almost nothing to buy is on the negative side of the ledger. On the positive side?  It is the cheapest grid out there with $5 Canadian a month (so $4.50 US) for a SL type sim (15,000 prims).

There is currency but no cash out at the moment. The website appears to suggest that ability will come and this is not a  "No Money Ever" OS grid *wink*.

It will be fun being a part of this new grid. I have never been THIS EARLY of a pioneer. Now tomorrow I really need to upload some shoes and maybe a chair to sit by the water.

That' the story. May you find your own adventures.

Last week as you read this I had the opportunity to catch up with an old virtual acquaintance. We met at Iheartsl when it was young and a community blog. We have kept in touch in that every few months fashion over the years.

HISTORY is important. FRIENDS (however you may define the term) are also. It is smart of The Lab to transfer our friends list over to the new world. Certainly there will be folks in our collection that are not actually there -- but still it will give us a feeling of transition.

I have a few friends from my youth. Most are real life folks who now and then still log on. Some are people I met in my early days. Many folks in my list are designers who I suspect just want to keep track of me in case they want to send review copies. It all works.

On of the things that keep people returning to their virtual world of choice is the connections they have made with others. On one grid I log in simply to chat with the lady that gave me a home there. We also email and discuss life in both virtual and corporeal existences.

I am not a big networker. I really don't need to know everything everyone does at each hour of the day. But I do like to keep in touch.

It would be quite spectacular if we could chat BETWEEN SL 1.0 and SL 2.0. That has been hinted at but I have no idea how difficult that might be.

Here's hoping it can be done.

I have been a resident of two grids during the last months of their existence. I watched hundreds of hours or work disappear. It was sad on many levels.


And yet, I wasn't angry. I didn't wave my fist at the platform owners or blame them for mistakes and choices. They were doing what they believed was best for them, or perhaps what they thought was their only choice.

Each citizen on each grid takes a chance. We trust that our homes and stores will be around awhile. That is the aim of the company too of course, but sometimes it doesn't work out as planned. In small businesses it could be conflicts among partners, waning of interest, not to be ignored, pressing real life issues. In bigger arenas it is almost always about the ledger's bottom line.

I have visited many grids over the summer. None of them seem as healthy as Second Life. There are problems and issues, certainly. There always have been. But the servers seem to be working close to flawlessly. Improvements are added regularly; no shoot off the fireworks changes, but small things that enhance our virtual lives.

Some grids seem on the edge, others appear determined to make their dream a success. SL is the largest and longest running platform out there. The economy is strong and seemingly stable.

The New World is a long way off and this does seem to be the safest port for now.

******************
 
And a PS added in the eve as I fix a typo :D. The ONE remaining realm is now fixed and while not overflowing with crystals as it have been a few notable times, there are no broken areas and a hud come to you on entry. So yeah for fixing that. I hope it stays. 

I understand that this is money going out for The Lab with not much reward. I also see the realms being advertised as a "come see us in SL" type ad, so obviously -- unless there are changes -- it needs to go on. Traffic has slowed a lot there, not even as many new folks as there were in early summer. Still, it may have a resurrection. I am just glad it is actually working on all fronts: I haven't seen that in well over a year.

I have noted something over the last months. Thinking that it might have just been a "summer slow season" effect, I pushed the idea aside. But it is Fall now; school is back in session, vacations mostly over -- time to get back to work.

And you know what? The forums are dead. Yes, of course there are the always present ads for land sales and rentals and "hostess" and dancer jobs, but there is very (VERY) little real knowledge being traded.

A year or so ago the mesh forum and the texture forum were alive with problems, questions and answers -- many of them mine :D. While I have worked out most of my mesh making issues, you would think others would be coming in and taking my place. And for awhile they did.

The activity downturn seemed to coincide roughly with the New World announcement. Now why would that be?

I can only come up with one answer. New folks thinking about coming into Second Life to make their mark in mesh or some other creation area may be waiting to see what the differences will be in the next generation world. That makes sense really. Why spend time and energy investing in a platform that is being replaced.  Hence the quiet.



We don't actually need more creators; we definitely have plenty in most areas. 

Or do we?

What are we missing? Folks to make clothes for all the newly arrived mesh avatar bodies for one thing. With The Mesh Project, Slink and Belleza all on the bandwagon for gals and Tellaq (and perhaps others) out there for the boys, we can all look pretty damn good naked. And I hear that the Belleza body especially works well with regular mesh clothes.TMP and Tellaq are not in the clothed camp yet. Slink works "sometimes".

It seems pretty obvious that the new SL will be mesh based (not in the legacy format); we are so obviously heading in that direction even is SL 1.0.  If there are new folks thinking about coming in, it is unlikely that they are the designers to fill this gap. By now the people that were interested in creation for creation's sake are here -- more than a decade gave them plenty of time to join in the party.

There must be new kids on the block looking to become part of the content creator pool, but I am guessing that they are in that workshop category, not original creators. I HAVE seen posts asking how to use AO maps on purchased mesh for example.

While the forums are not a definitive guideline on what is happening with the creator pool, it is a pulse of a trend. Happily, the top original creators seem to be in a frantic pace to keep up with all their sales opportunities giving us plenty of wonderful goods to purchase.

The long awaited Belleza mesh body for gals was just released.

Since the  Belleza sim has been packed for days with avatars popping in and asking, "is it here yet?" it was probably a wise plan NOT to have the demo available at the new store. And as I type this the sim, previously closed in the night is now full -- most likely with avatars looking for the mesh body and or demo.

I haven't  been in the Belleza group for a long while, using my group slots mostly for work and blogging affiliations. But I do have several friends in the group including some guys. One got a group message in the night with the demo attached. Well, they got an EMAIL saying that there was a demo waiting for them. It wasn't there. The others (maybe five that I wrote to and answered my question) said they knew nothing and that the archives of the group are empty with not even a "no past notices" textblock.

So THAT didn't work.

It is not Belleza's fault. With a group of over 45,000,  the system simply broke; at least that's my guess. The demo given via group was a decent plan and perhaps the best available, but large groups haven't worked in SL in years.

Originally groups were made for land use sharing and perhaps to add a sense of community for like minded folks. Then the size of groups became part of the search engine hierarchy and stores scrambled to get the largest sized groups in their category. There were free gifts, free money, free joining (fees waved)  -- on and on. Eventually some groups got to be huge and along the way stopped working in most any sense of the word.

I suspect the Belleza folks have figured this out by now and hopefully the 45 folks in the new store are at least waiting in line to get the demo. (Yes, that was verified while I was proofreading).  I am guessing many are buying without the demo. It may very well be an Arcade type frenzy.

So while "groups will transfer over to the new grid", it is important that they also actually WORK over on the new grid. That seems to be a glaring statement, but it is sometimes easy to overlook the obvious when you are deeply enmeshed in creating the new and wonderful.

Come this November 8th and 9th Philip Rosedale will be speaking a the second annual OpenSimulator Community conference discussing the opportunity of developing an open platform for virtual reality over the Internet. Philip's talk will be entitled, "What is the Metaverse?".

Registration for the virtual OpenSimulator Community Conference is free and opens on September 15, 2014.  The conference will also be livestreamed through UStream.  For more information go to the conference website at http://conference.opensimulator.org

The co speaker will be Dr. Steve LaValle, principal scientist at Oculus VR and professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois.
  
Both Philip and Ebbe are thinking in big terms these days, planing for their platform to be the new, BIG, multi-user grid of the future.  Philip's ideas seem to point toward an entwined global network of users supporting a grid aimed at communication. Philip's grid appears to be more of a gated community with high quality content the star attraction. Both seem to be very much in the Oculus camp.

Each world vision has it selling points, both aim to enhance virtual reality via gear; it will be interesting to see who comes out on top -- and then again, the both might.

Just like corporeal life, Second Life moves in waves of trends. The latest if we don't count the mesh body and body parts invasion is ----- THE VENUE!

This isn't a NEW trend by any means. I was in one of the first small themed events four years ago. From there charity events became a fad if you can call a worthwhile cause a fad. Small venues gave way to bigger events and onward to elite occasions -- you get the idea. Now there are locations appearing every day. Serephim actually started a whole new area just to keep track of the preponderance of themed buying opportunities.

I like venues. They often come complete with interestingly decorated sims or areas. People take time in most cases to make something special and to decorate their booths to make window shopping more pleasurable.

But, as with many good ideas that come to fruition, there is a downside. The top designers are overbooked. Well, how could they not be? They could say "no" of course and I suspect the do -- often. Still, keeping to the deadlines makes for late hours for many. Some seldom release in their main store any longer.

Lately I have noticed that some of the historically popular venues as well as the flavor of the months seem to be having trouble getting talented content creators to join in. Sometimes I notice because I get a behind the scenes pass for blogging. Other times on day two or three of said events, there are still noticeable missing in action folks. Recently a long standing yearly event had to postpone opening as so very many folks weren't ready.

Now as a merchant, I make sure I am on time. Honestly I am always there when the bell sounds for set up -- unless it is the middle of my night of course. I am almost always one of the first ready to go. This is my temperament and helps me keep calm. I hate deadlines! 

Some people -- and we do have to remember that there are real life bodies behind our pixelated selves -- are always late. That is simply THEIR nature. But lately I have noted an increase in the problem. I can see two possible reasons and there of course may be more.

One is that folks aren't passing up events even though they know their time is limited. They may have been asked to join in by a friend. They may want to support the charity. But even though time is an issue, there is a frantic "need" to be a part or lose out.

The other is that because there are so many opportunities (some open to all and not by invitation) the less serious folks are making their way into the market stream. This isn't a bad thing really. Everyone needs to start and learn. But with the increase of more "learners" there have increasingly become more issues.

I don't have an answer other than to slow down the amount of events --- and we know that isn't going to happen.

Until someone comes up with the next great trend, I suspect this storyline will continue.

Here's the thing.

When people leave "The Big Grid" for whatever reason -- money or policy are the typical grievances -- they make a choice.

Moving to a small grid works well for some people. It is considerably cheaper (free to $75 a sim rather than $300 a  month). The Linden policies that they may not have been in agreement with are often non-existent. 

But ----

There are tradeoffs. Small sims in most cases mean small rewards for retailers. The big names that SL folks are used to are busy making -- in some cases -- suitcases full of virtual money on The Big Grid. So why would they want to spend time if not money (uploads are free on all the non Lab grids I have visited) to set up shop where they will likely make much less than on the most popular of platforms?

Let's look at some real life examples.

It took four years for Vista to come to Inworldz. I assume they are doing well there being the top name of only a few AO makers. But I doubt they are making more than a small percentage of what they make in Second Life (R). I should note that I am very happy they ARE in IW and I have one of their AOs there as well as a few in SL.

Vista is also in Avination -- or at least they used to be. I can find remnants of their history (a classified leading to a now abandoned sim) but only a very tiny mall shop with older items could be teleported to. That leads me to believe -- in that sleuth manner -- that it wasn't worth keeping a sim in the 3rd to 5th largest grid. [ Update a week or so later: Closer inspection of the tiny Vista store shows both pose vendor and AO vendors not working. The only buyable items was an empty pose stand. So I think we can call that abandoned.]

Moving on to Virtual Life (a two month old grid formerly known as Virtual Paradise) we see the typical starting grid scenario. Brand new grid; in this case with the least expensive 45,000 prim sims that I have seen, excellent mesh uploader with friendly "rules", very good starter avatars and attentive support. The grid is growing at a fairly rapid pace for a brand new grid. Folks are now wanting stuff. Appendages for the guys are in high demand *wink* and AOs.

As it stands the second and third tier creators (my terminology) are coming in. There are some nice things; not The Arcade or COLLABOR88 or FaMESHed things, but perfectly good items. There are also plenty of not so great items that can be found on any grid. VL citizens want more STUFF. But in some sense they have traded that in for freedom and frugality.

The Lab or at least the leader of the lab seems to understand that problem. No matter how great the New World might be, it will never surpass SL 1.0 without the top designers.  Some have no doubt already made commitments, at least in spirit; but as with the rest of today's reported scenarios critical mass comes into play.

The New World needs enough first and second tier creators to invest in the new platform in order for it to be a success. The Lab apparently doesn't care much about the hobbyist creators and from a business standpoint that makes sense. It is unlikely that many of those who like to dabble in business will want to learn the new rules and scripts needed anyway.

Personally, the elitist part of me (I am very dual moded teeter tottering from elitist to egalitarian and back again) would like to see all the secondary creation go away. I preferred it when the people selling the products were the people that made the products. I still like buying from original mesh creators who of course make their own textures.

So perhaps in the best of all possible scenarios, the top designers can move over to the new grid keeping a presence in SL 1.0 for some time --  if not producing that many new products. The hobbyist can remain on the old grid happily doing their thing with plenty of folks content to buy their often quite good looking products.

I suspect that is the big picture the corporates see in their looking glass.

It would work very well for me.

I like writing notes to my future self, so that I can look back and recall at least in part what was happening in this time. I have never been much for "journaling" but blogging is a form of that sometimes.

I am trying to get the pulse of various platforms, to see if there was (or is) any fallout from The New World announcement.

SL seems to be fine with so many venues to explore and things to do I don't see how anyone could get board. We have established (previous post) that folks are indeed still shopping.

I have to say that for me this week has been slow. I have no inkling why that might be. Kids are back in school, vacations are over for the most part -- at least for the Northern hemisphere folks.

One thing to note in Inworldz (second largest grid after SL but very small in comparison) is that some SLers definitely moved over. How do I know that? Well -- some introduced themselves on the forums. But for me, the tell-tell event is the increase of sales for me on the Inbiz marketplace.

Historically I have sold VERY little there. Now I don't have a lot of stuff on the market there as -- also historically -- the Inworldz folks don't shop on the Marketplace; they shop in world.

So -- let's look at that. Six months of only a few sales (most all the same minimall LOL) and then an increase with a variety of things being sold. To me, this means the SL folks are shopping. And -- as well all know; SL folks are GEARED to Marketplace shopping. Many don't buy inworld at all except perhaps at venues.

So concurrency in IW is up a bit. Monthly logins also up a bit. And Marketplace sales (for me anyway) up quite a lot.

The new grid, Virtual Paradise (which seems to be changing its name to Virtual Life) is growing well. Still tiny it is up about 30% in the month that I have been there. Lots of things work very well there which is a plus. So you don't really feel you are in a "beta" type world. I was trying to make an AO since there really IS no AO except for the free-and-we-are-glad-we-have-it one :D. I have some stands painfully made (no mocap here) but the frustration level is too high and I am not having fun so that project will probably be abandoned.

In SL I am covering The Jewelry Fair, Clockwork Spiral, The RFL Home Show along with all my regular release and venues so it will be a busy week.

OH, one more thing. The OS grid has been down for awhile. Major issues it seems. I haven't tried logging into Metropolis lately but the symptoms people were reporting with OS grid are much like I experienced when trying to explore.

And that's what's happening a third of the way through September 2014.

A bit of real life is creeping in  this morning. Another more virtual post is in the queue for the dinner hour.

Eric Francis sent out a long article this morning called The War Goes On. On the eve of the 9-11 event the US military is off again. I am not a political person any more than I am a networker, but this was a good reminder that leaders often lie.

And with that memorandum, I won't be putting too many eggs in my New World basket. Things change. Heads of companies as well as heads of state are replaced. Themes often repeat but the new storyline can't be foreseen - exactly.

Arcade Flea Market at The Pea

One worry when The New World was announced concerned folks abandoning their shopping habits.

Now I am not a networker but I am fairly plugged into the shopper network even though I seldom actually BUY things *wink*. So I wasn't all that worried.

Judging from the huge amount of resell buyables at the flea market above, it looks like folks are indeed still shopping. We could also call it gambling or maybe even "investment".

Since I am not a gambler I have taken up stalking this big market and have done very well -- finding things that I want without taking any risk. Works for me and my temperament.

Most of these items will in theory port over, but they are one of a kind so it will be an either here or there thing -- and actually we don't know that won't be a choice on even copy items.

The summer has continued to be one of my best monetarily and I see no huge influx of closing store. Some name venues have pared down their vendor numbers. Whether this was due to lack of interest or another reason I can't say.

There are tons of things to do and places to go in Second Life; that doesn't seem to have changed at all.

So it seems we are in pretty good shape.

Every few days I end up at the old Cloud Party forums. I type in "forums" and Google in its wiseness (or not so wiseness) sends me over to the abandoned site. For several months there was a picture of a typewriter with a note about a company joining Yahoo. It was not Cloud Party.

So today I got there by mistake again to find this lead and info on yet another company absorbed into the fold.

I wonder what they are up to?  :D There are other virtual companies working on streaming live performances -- not that it hasn't been done before.

Hmmm.

I have been meshing about the last few days, a lengthy process which turned out well. Along they way and toward the end there were many frustrations -- all Second Life based -- and that had me thinking about the promise (well statement anyway) that The New World was being built with creators in mind.

I made this little garden shed, cute little guy. Need him for MOSP but he is a product too since most things I make for LEA7 end up as salables. I am such a niche gal; I always want things I can't find. And there are a few folks out there that want those same "unusual" items (some MUCH less mainstream than my little garden shed). It works.

I uploaded the house to three other grids. The land impact varied with Virtual Paradise winning (no surprise), but with some workarounds when needed -- all went smoothly and QUICKLY.

Then, three houses uploaded and on a roll I knew I need to make physics models and test them on the beta grid.

OK. That last sentence is a clue to what's wrong with this picture.

3 grids worked easily and fine.
SL was neither.

I made my physics models and they worked well for the roof, door and shade lattice. When I got to the walls, the uploader balked. Not only wouldn't it recognize my physics model (I "have" done this before *wink), it wouldn't even upload using the built in physics choices. And, it was of course higher land impact than any other grid.

So I spent most of the morning redoing the walls as sections, uploading and doing some tricky stuff to get my house to be 14 li. Then on to materials.

Oh my! Issues (possibly the viewer) getting material offsets to works (again - I "have" done this before). They kept reverting. With five tries you got things to stick (fingers crossed here). Then it somehow lost materials; it goes on and on. Eventually towards the end of the day, I got my house inworld and decorated and I am happy. But the journey was not a pleasant one.

I am hoping that the new grid WILL be more content creator friendly.

Yes, I am!

I have been grid hopping lately. I now have shops on four grids (some more than one building). I have explored other platforms along the way and for one reason or another decided not to put down my version of roots.

All this exploration got me thinking about merchant movement to the new  grid.

Typically creators are the first to move to a new platform. Whether they want to get the lay of the land, a foothold in the door or are simply curious, those that make our virtual goods are always the vanguards.

But how much investment do you make in a "new grid" ? And indeed The New World will be a new grid even though run by those we know. Do you upload or port over a small sampling of your best sellers? Do you make new things and then introduce them later to the other grid(s) you are in? Everyone will have their own method and their own comfort level.

But I have been sleuthing a lot in these new to me worlds. Some have brands I recognize, others very few. What is common is that no one makes too much of a commitment -- even after several years in some cases.

The other thing I have learn from all these shops in various places is that while I do make money (and oftentimes more than lots of folks -- little grids remember, I am not playing with the big boys), I never make NEAR what I do in Second Life. Other creators echo that statistic.

We are there for the adventure, to possibly help a new grid grow, because we like being big fish in little ponds -- there are many reasons.

My best bet from watching what has come before is that when The New World opens there will be plenty of creators testing the waters. They will need to learn new rules (EACH grid has new rules for mesh so that is a given).  They can port over recent things in some cases, in others they will need to make items a new.

I doubt that too many folks will try and recreate their stores all over again.

It will be a new world after all. It will be a growing process just like any other.