Sixteen years in Second Life

So I’m sweet sixteen! Or at least my avatar is – would that it applied to me once more…

When I reached 15 continuous years in SL I really had little to say (although I managed to say it in around 900 words!), as not that much had changed with me personally over the course of 2021 – and SL itself had remained fairly well balanced.

2022 has been slightly different – there have been new features and capabilities deployed to Second Life, with LL working to try to increase the platform’s appeal and engaging with users in the development of new features. True, some of the planned work hasn’t quite come to fruition and so won’t be popping up until 2023 – but one project in particular should over time very much change how SL looks for the better. 

On the “personal” SL front, things have changed a little. While blogging takes up a lot of my time – thank you to everyone who follows and supports and helps me along that journey – the second half of the year has allowed me to spend a lot more time enjoying the company of those closest to me (notably Imp, who has given me endless reasons to smile and laugh – there’s a reason I’ve given her that nickname!). That said, things in the physical world have been turned upside down on a number of occasions through the year, resulting in blogging efforts taking a back seat here and there. 

But that said, I’m still nicely settled within Second Norway (and still recommend it to anyone looking for land they’ve like to rent and establish a home within), although I’ve not actually done as much sailing, boating or flying as I’d like. Regulars may have noticed (and been breathing a sigh of relief at the fact) that I’ve not been boring people with write-ups of the latest changes in house and / or island design. Not that I’ve stopped; I’ve simply reverted to building things from scratch, rather than using any rebuilds as an opportunity to review a particular commercially available house designs – although admittedly, the current house was heavily inspired by Cory Edo’s Jura Waterfront Cottage, a genuinely stunning design which (unfortunately) didn’t quite marry up to my kitbashing needs, so I opted to build from scratch whilst keeping the look of that design in mind.  

One thing I had considered doing this year was to take time out to look at some of the other worlds I’ve visited in the past. However, the truth of the matter is, there is nothing out there (outside of OpenSim) which offers the broad creative richness and freedoms as Second Life; not just in terms of content creation, but in how we expression our personalities, how we interact, how we have fun, what we can do to encourage and support others (in-world and out-world), and so on. Thus, I just haven’t felt the incentive to do so. As I said on occasion of my 15th rezday, I really don’t see anything like Second Life emerging from the haze of verbiage people call “the metaverse” any time soon. 

In this regard, I am far more excited – even as a comparative lay person – by the new features and capabilities Linden Lab is working on to further enhance SL. I’ve particularly appreciated the performance boosts we’ve seen in the viewer thanks to the Performance improvements work, and have appreciated the efforts to bring users directly into the fold in developing things like support for glTF 2.0-compliant PBR materials / reflections probes (which lays the foundations for even greater glTF compliance in the future, making content creation for Second Life a lot more predictable when using external tools and workflows), and the Puppetry Project work, both for the capabilities it can bring to a range of SL activities and for the foundations it lays for potential future enhancements to the platform.  

Other than that, I really don’t have too much to say on the occasion of my rezday – other than maybe one day I’ll get a card / cake from Linden Lab like others do on their rezday *sigh* – but for now  I’ll shut up and return this blog to its usual schedule! 🙂 .