Linden Lab & Customers

 

Location: Bizarro World, Clearly

In what other community would rotten treatment be construed as part of a utopian dream? In reading recent posts about sim-closings over at New World Notes, I detect an evangelism that has all but vanished in academic circles whenever SL comes up as topic.

I'll keep an eye on Fearzom and my old parcel, maybe even do a walking tour since sim crossings no longer work well enough for a road trip. It's interesting what denial can do for a former darling of the mass media.

To quote a CEO in Bizarro World, "me lose customers and business! Company do great!"

June Road Trip: Fast Ride on Desolation Boulevard

Location: Southern Continent, Route 10

Well, the Lindens fixed something. They really did. I'd heard that sim-crossings have vastly improved. Time for a road trip to test it?

Being both busy and bored, an odd combination, I sent occasional reporter Pappy Enoch in "The Rip Snorter," his "weathered" F-150 pickup truck. Pappy was drunk at the time, so he could not write very much but he did send in some "o' them-there picture post cards from the fake highway." Pappy wrote some captions on the back in orange crayon. Here they am...I mean, are.

It were a dark an' stormy..hell, it were sundown when I done hit the road in ol' Rip Snorter

.

Sho' nuff am a heap o' abandoned land on the mainland. Maybe that am why things am so fast!

I done meant to do that. Hoo whee! I are a reg'lar Evil Kornevil! I landed in a house too.

Well, here am sum'fin you ain't a-gonna see every day: Furry Germnasium and some right pumped-up fur.

Go figure the only place that had real fake folks (them furs am bots) is a place selling fake-sex toys. I cammed in because I am shy and all that. There were a Gorean feller too but he would not answer my IMs about whether or not he done got lucky. The gal on the left gots pants that am like a belt. Hoo whee I needs to log in more often.

I FLEW down that fake road. Sim-crossings am first rate now! Try that in yo' fancy pants GTO, Mr. Onnagodadvida!

Verdict: And so I will, in July! Overall, it seems that Pappy encountered much improved travel, but the content on display shows what is happening to Second Life: crappy user-generated mainland builds, lots of vacant land, and the most dots on the map at a sex-themed store in a non-adult sim.

 I hope Linden Lab, if only for the sake of its employees and shrinking cadre of other types of users, can make money this way.

Update, July 1: Tateru Nino reports that Linden Lab has a three-pronged offensive underway to reduce SL's lag-tastic experience. Glad to see they are running scared after all our hoopla about Cloud Party. That's how it looks, even though their projects must have been in the works for months.

Roadtrip Attempt: Two Wheels Better than Four

Location: Linden Roads

Okay, I got on my bike, bald and de-primmed, unscripted and ready to roll.

It actually went well. Too well. With draw-distance out far but with graphics tuned down, I would even get up to 100 kph on some straightaways.  I did "bounce" at some sim-borders but never wrecked the bike. I even saw one avatar, in the middle of the road, and I dodged her while she changed her appearance. Now why DO folks go to the middle of a road to do that?

Fool that I am, I decided to return in The Machine That Must Be Worshipped, my '67 Black GTO.

Oh, what a mistake. Every baddy-bad from my last attempt returned to haunt me. Fail #2 for Mr. Billy Badass.

But first, while on the motorcycle, what DID I find along those Linden Roads: Crap. Crap. Same old crap as in 2007 or 8.  I've concluded that the Mainland is a wasteland.

First, a billboard that supports the idea that SL is the ideal playground for bored housewives. Say, where is Betty Draper when you need her?

This is not Betty. She's a Betty-bot at a rather squalid place to get money by entering raffles and contests.

Here's another shot from a den full of ugly avatars and "games of chance" that Linden Lab permits under their TOS. To my untrained eye, these scenes possess the wilted sadness of a senior-citizen bingo parlor, without the good cheer or aged avarice (those geezers can get testy...trust me).

Down the road a bit, a pole-dancing club full of blingy girls, ready to go "topless for 150L, nude for 300L." No, thanks.

Funny thing, that. When my campus built a parcel on the Sansara mainland continent in 2006, it was next to a casino with pole dancing. Same old, same old.

The trip home was a mess after I found a rezz-zone and switched rides. At any velocity over 40 kph, I crashed repeatedly into gullies and houses, until I got flung to the corner of one region.  I logged out.

Then today, a message in my inbox:

"Your object 'GB7 67 PMD Goat (Black)' has been returned to your inventory lost and found folder from parcel 'Deadly Sin' at Mitta 96, -1 because it went off-world."

Deadly Sin, indeed. I didn't even tip those dancers!

From a Tripod (remember that?) website, a definition of "Sansara": The rounds of birth and death and rebirth, reincarnation. Cyclic existence, the beginningless and endless wheel of rebirth. The world, the realm of desire.

Yes, and the wheel has turned and turned, but it is still 2007 in this part of Second Life.

October Roadtrip: Epic Fail for Billy Badass

Location: Gnashing Teeth on Wellington Road
Soundtrack: Dire Straits (oh, of friggin' course)

Thanks to the kind help of SeVeN VanDouser, I acquired not only a '67 GTO, but a Goat in the best color of all: Billy-badass black.

And, not surprisingly, Second Life's roads are not up to the talent of vehicle creators. On my last roadtrip, in my Mini Cooper S, I at least got through a dozen or more sims before it became ludicrous.

This time, I got through half as many. Ban-lines and regular sim-crossings made simple navigation into a hellish experience. I had to detach the car, run on foot to the next rezz-zone, and try again. I'm sorry, scenes like this one are beyond retarded. I know how to drive a SL car.
Simply put: cars are decor in SL. Nothing more.

Perhaps Will Wright's presence on Linden Lab's board can fix this. Or perhaps it's simply unfixable. Pity. That Goat would be the perfect ride.

Linden Lab, you spent a lot of time making these roads. Now fix them so we can enjoy them at more than a crawl.

PS to owners of real classics: urinal-deodorant blocks are keeping mice out of the badass '68 truck that my wife owns as well as a '65 Mustang ragtop we'll have on the road by Spring. Hope springs eternal, just not on SL's roadways :(

Road Trip Attempt: Linden Lab, I Hate You

Location: Sim Crossing

You reek, LL. The perfect car, and at the first sim-border, I get this. Fix the damned physics.

Road Trip?

 
Location: Looking at a car I would kill you to own

Pontiac GTO, 1967: the power and glory of a nation on a rocket sled. Men like young gods steer their street monsters into telephone poles, spewing testosterone and hubris. They want to be astronauts, but instead of Saturn V rockets they have Pontiacs.

My god, an SLer named SeVeN VanDouser made a '67 Goat that is worth my notice. IRL, I care for one classic vehicle (a hot-rod racing truck with some mice living in it) and I'd not want a real GTO until I had a better garage with climate control.

But in SL? Hell, yes. The '67 is The Machine That Must Be Worshipped.

Bring on the toys of the young gods.


So I guess I need to take roadtrip again, eh? Anyone care to visit the shop and get a car to race me?

Hint to classics owners: Urinal blocks keep the mice out, but your car smells like...a clean urinal. This, too, will never happen in SL.

Update: Next post will feature a road trip in the Goat. I also found out that, IRL, my Mini-Cooper S does a 0-60 time of 6.6 seconds, the same estimate as a stock '67 GTO with the 400 cubic-inch V8. As much as I love the Mini....the Goat still wins.

Mini Me, Redux

Location: Becoming my car

I love my RL ride, a chili-red Mini Cooper S. It's crazy-fast and a little silly, like a small dog who thinks he's big...and somehow manages to beat the bigger dogs.

When I saw the new "vehitars" from Linden Lab, available in the latest update of Second Life's viewer, I knew I'd have to be "Casey," a tip of the bonnet to my reborn Mini Cooper.

The SL design is toylike, so I hope that BMW won't bring suit. If anything, it's more evidence that the Mini, as a toy or a RL car, is just what a New York Times reviewer called it, "a BMW with a sense of humor."

As for Casey's performance, well....it's an avatar, not a vehicle. He won't win any races,  but his rendering cost is only 442. It's my lowest ever. Say, how about an Olds 442 vehitar!

Whatever the results when I drive to the next educators' meeting, Casey and his kin among the new avatars proves that Linden Lab, like BMW, does indeed have a sense of humor.

Compared to my vehicular Mini in SL, which proved so disastrous on my last and very laggy road trip, Casey won't have problems with sim crossings. I can now explore SL's road networks...as fast as the vehitar can run.

Now all I'll need is a Fiat 500 named Luigi and I'll feel that I'm in a sequel to Pixar's Cars.

Thanks to Dale: A Sense of Place

Location: Continent Hopping

Dale Innis has published an excellent free script (I stuck it in my left shoe) that with a click, tells avatars their coordinates and the virtual continent they are on.

Here's a link to Dale's blog post and his script. Tophat tip to Lalo Telling for letting us know about this. I like the fact that SL has this sense of place. It just got deeper.

January Road Trip: Better But Not Great

Location: Wellington Road, Jeogeot Continent

Mostly quiet on the road. I do give a hat-tip to Linden Lab for trying to fix a long-standing problem.

Despite the improvements in sim-crossings that Tateru reported, she's also correct that it remains far too slow for what I've always craved: a road rally with a dozen vehicles. While the solitary motorist can put up with the lag of hand-offs between sims, it's not something anyone who wanted to compete online would tolerate. I managed about eight sim crossings, and six of them worked well. Keep in mind that I was in first gear and doing no more than 25 miles per hour.

The crossing speed is good enough for my purposes: seeing what other SL residents have been doing. I met only a few residents, one of whom I spotted just before I nearly ran her down. A Chinese SLer, she was out looking for freebie skins and clothing.

My landmarks were  old, from the days when I sent students to freebie stores or took them myself (students not wanting to spend a single "real dollar" in SL). So were hers, and she reported it harder to find decent freebies in world. I don't know what the downturn in in-world commerce has done to this once-thriving market.

On the other hand, resident humor continues. Here's the profile for the creator of the 1903 Oldsmobile I spotted in Tieut sim:

Omicron Llewellyn has taken a vow of silence until he can import the sculpts on the screen into the SL.  Sorry for the inconvenience. Let him build, let him destroy, leave him to struggle with his own hubris, and for goodness sake, buy him a pint.  Do not try to save him, he is what he is, unrepentantly. The common denominator in all his failed relationships is him.

I think this perhaps the best profile I've seen in a bit. I IMed him, telling him that I wanted a copy of the car. Given the sim performance, even with the improvements in speed, an '03 Olds may be my next SL ride. I've got the Steampunk clothes to look good in a horseless carriage.


In addition to oodles of for-sale mainland plots, I found one of the Bot-cars that the Alphaville Herald reported some time back terrorizing SL's roadways. This 70s pimpmobile Cadillac, owned by AnnMarie Oleander, was stranded in a ditch by the roadside. Here's her profile info:

I am running self navigating vehicles on roads, railroads and waterways.  Sometimes they get caught in no-script land off the road.



This is an interesting technology, fun to dodge if I run across them, but I'd rather see more avatar-driven rides in SL.

More soon about what I find down the ever-more lonesome roads of SL.

Road Trip Plans in Second Life

Location: Fake Garage

My jaded ears rose up, like a bored terrier's at the sight of an escaped hamster, when I read  Tateru Nino's announcement that Linden Lab has done some work to increase the speed of simulator crossings. I'll give credit where it's due: this was needed badly. Nice work from the new CEO, who has a gaming background.

I'll just have to dust off the vehicles for a road trip.

Novella's commentary on a recent post stung in just the right way: I need to stop snarking, because life has been good in OpenSim and I've used a lot of what I learned in Second Life. With better prospects for road-trips again in "the old country," I might just get back to what I used to enjoy in SL: seeing what others are making.

And unlike my real Mini Cooper S, the fake one is paid for!  Let's motor!  I'll post the results here soon.

Richmond Island and House of Usher to Vanish

Location: Burying Madeline

Ah, well, all things must pass. My campus pays SL tier from discretionary funds, and they cannot cover a $150 per month increase in tier. I'll have a final chat with our team after EDUCAUSE, but I want to thank Kevin, Fred, Jon, and Sonya for their hard work to help me and Lee and Fran bring Poe's "The Fall of The House of Usher" to life in Second Life.

But The Virtual House of Usher will live on! It will take time and effort, but we'll rebuilt the simulation in an OpenSim grid. Over the winter holiday I'll be taking pictures and exporting what I can, before the sim we own goes "poof" in January.

Perhaps we'll organize a Halloween-night event at Usher! Your host, Roderick, cannot wait to show you the family crypt...

A bittersweet PS: given the death of the SLer called Adric Antfarm, who'd agreed to run the "Mad Max Challenge," as well as the death of my interest in promoting SL, the next roadtrip is canceled. Never fear, readers. I'll soon take some road-trips through the many regions of abandoned land, to show off what is happening to Linden Lab's dream world that they'd rather not have publicized.

Mad Max Challenge Update

Location: Looking for Fat Tank of Gas

As the Mad Max Challenge approaches, I have three Dogs of War (self included) who will attempt to drive through the Wastelands with me in October. Our brave victims…I mean drivers are: Adric Antfarm & AlexHayden Junibalya.

Are they the only brave SLers out there?

Surely not! I’ve asked Viv Trafalgar to be my gunner for this run. We’ll see if she’s crazy enough to let me drive.

Contact me here or in world, as soon I’ll have a starting point, finish line, and even a map!

I’ve begun on my own interpretation of what Humungus drove in The Road Warrior, with a secret weapon I designed myself, based on many fun hours playing Steve Jackson’s Car Wars game. It's too damned slow. I need to transplant over some components from a faster vehicle for my battle-buggy.

As for premade vehicles, I’m finding some potential at Xstreets’ marketplace: I don't have links to the new SL Marketplace yet, and who knows if these folks will move their content over. That means BUY NOW.

Mad Sax truck:A nice tribute to the Lord Humungus’ nitro-powered muscle truck. The blood stains are a clever touch.

Max’s interceptor:This is as close to Max's Interceptor (new and shiny from the first film, before it gets weathered in the desert) as we are likely to get.

The Tanker Truck:This thing has so many prims on it I wonder if it will even move, but it is a good reproduction of the tanker truck Max drives in the final chase scene.Now all I need is a hockey mask. And compressed-air tanks for my crossbow. And a can of Dinky-D dog food.

September Roadtrip: Mini Me, Broken Road

Location: Rock-->me<--Hard Place

When I'm not on my bicycle, a Mini Cooper S is my favorite ride, a wicked-fast but economical rascal of a car. A scamp but not a cad. It has more personality than would be legal if boring people ran the world. Well, they do run it. . .but they've yet to ban this sort of frugal fun.

So I had to get a Mini in SL, eventually. Thanks to ALV Rau, I found a Cooper a lot like my RL car, though it's not an S model and lacks the black bonnet stripes and top that sold me on the actual vehicle. Caveat: I dislike red cars, but black is always in style and Mini Me is at least as much black as red. Visit AL Motors in-world to have a look at the typical (but well done) SL Supercars and other unique items, like a Seat 600 (Spanish version of one of my faves, a Fiat 500).

With high expectations, I set out. How did Rau's virtual Mini hold up in SL?

Well, size matters a lot. Compared to the '59 Caddy or the Dominus Shadow I often use for road trips, the Mini can turn on a virtual dime, a virtue that commended my RL car to me as well.

I began my journey at Yadni's Junkyard. I had high hopes of making this circumferential journey back to the same spot.



Rau's driving HUD was a welcome companion on this trip. I could shift, monitor my speed, and do other tricks without losing sight of my driving. It's not nearly as good as using a wheel and pedal that a dedicated game could have, but I'm fast-fingered and can manage a keypad and a mouse for this sort of experience.



The car's interior is also well done, and though not a perfect match for my actual Cooper it shows a lot of care on the builder's part.


Normally, that level of detail would making driving a virtual car an immersive experience, but the Department of Public Works was on lunch break, I reckon. The upgrade to Server 1.42 did not improve sim-crossing much. A few sims, at first, loaded so smoothly I had great hope. But then I came to it: world's end at the Calisto/Atlas sim crossing.



Stuck there, I did something I'd never dream of doing in my real car: I texted. Yes, I got on IM and began to rage against the stupidity of a company that could not get such a basic service to work, especially after spending untold hours of staff time building a highway network in a world where we can fly and teleport.

What can Linden Lab do? Well, fixing it would be a modest suggestion. Hamlet Au reports that Linden Lab has just hired a Kim Salzer, an "an alumnus [sic] of Activision/Blizzard and Electronic Arts" as the Lab's VP of Marketing. Good news, if the Lab wants to "game up" SL, but Ms. Salzer will need to get the coders working hard on fixing the physics of sim-crossings. Otherwise, even a single vehicle cannot make a short run through nearly empty sims.

Otherwise, don't market SL with images of racing vehicles. It won't happen without some major changes, and SL's fleet of cool vehicles will remain simply eye-candy for dream homes and RP sims.

I'll attempt the same route next month and see how it goes!