March Mesh Madness kicked off on March 1st, and has caused some upset / confusion. The event “brings together unique mesh designs from 20 established Second Life”, and is open until March 15th, and has been organised by Damien Fate, himself a mesh designer, and is hosted on Fate Island.

Part of the confusion seems to be that people mistakenly took this to be an LL-sponsored event as it is currently appearing on the splash screens for those Viewers using the official splash / MotD notifications. As has been pointed out in the thread linked-to above, such MotD links aren’t that uncommon – they are pulled from the Destination Guide (wherein Mesh Madness is listed), and so seeing it linked their isn’t necessarily a sign of any LL collusion.

Anyway, I decided to jump over and take a look. The sim itself is nicely designed in a modern, minimalistic look, comprising a central arrival plaza with a display kiosk in each corner, surrounded by 16 more kiosks, four to a side to form a square, all linked by walkways over water. The majority of the build appears to be mesh (or at least partial mesh) and as such, one would expect it to be relatively low-lag.

Sadly, this is far from the case. With just 12 avatars in the region, Fate Island exhibited more-or-less the same amount of lag experienced elsewhere with a similar number of avatars combined with the likes of multiple textures, vendors, etc. Rubber-banding was the order of the day.

In terms of the content on display, I’d have to say that things are – disappointing in some respects. Around twelve of the kiosks are devoted to clothing / footwear / accessories, with another three devoted to mesh hair and the remaining five offering up such items as furnishings, trees, and so on. There is little imagination shown with the various kiosks; most of which resemble mall-like slots, rather than attempts to showcase mesh. The one real exception to this is the Rustica kiosk, where Max Graf has (as ever) demonstrated his talent by producing a first-rate display of his mesh creations.

Of course, one might argue that it’s easier perhaps for Max to produce such a display than others – his items are very much touch / feel, whereas clothing is more look / try. Even so, his kiosk and that of Organica, situated almost exactly opposite in the region, are the eye-catching units that tend to draw one to them.

As mentioned, the majority of the creations being displayed here are of the looks / try variety – clothing, accessories, hair, etc., and most of the vendor boards offer demo versions of items so you can try before you buy – and this is strongly recommended.

It would have been nice to see a more varied selection of mesh on offer here – whether the final selection was down to a matter of whosoever applied for a slot, or whether the event was specifically more geared towards the fashion / accessory side of things, I’ve no idea. Until Pamela Galli made mention of the event, I wasn’t even aware it existed, and only saw the MotD as I happened to fire-up Dolphin this morning while running my weekly Viewer version checks (I use Firestorm as a rule, so don’t get the MotD otherwise).

Obviously, a single-region exhibition doesn’t allow for large-scale displays such as buildings, but it would have been nice to see more in the way of furniture and perhaps vehicles, etc.

That said, if you’ve not tried mesh clothing / footwear / hair, this is a place to visit if you want to grab a handful of demos and give things a try before you plunge deeper into the world of mesh.

March Mesh Madness

So, Rodvik has blogged on the subject of last names.  In sort: they’re not coming back. The overall direction of the post is pretty obvious from the outset – that last names won’t be making a return just yet  – simply because the first couple of paragraphs ramble somewhat – as if Rodvik knows what he is about to say is going to draw howls of disappointment.

As the Lab can’t strike a balance between freedom of choice and pre-set last names, they’re not doing either. However, special characters are being introduced to the sign-up process to allow some degree of freedom. This means, as Rodvik says, the someone signing-up can be “Horatio-Nelson”; it’s a step forward, given that the Lab are also looking to expunge all last traces of “Resident” (and Rodvik has asked to be informed if people come across any) – but it’s a very small step.

I have to admit, I found the claim that pre-set last names appeared to cause more new-user sign-up angst than the current system surprising. Admittedly, it’s been  a long while since I signed-up, and almost as long since I was forced to create what is now my “crash test alt”, but I can’t ever remember feeling frustrated by being limited to a list of pre-sets (which was pretty extensive). Rather the reverse, in fact – I found I was dallying over the name selection as the available presets were intriguing – a make of name-up names, names from history and fiction, ethnic names, and so on which (I do remember) got me thinking on the whole question of identity and how I wanted to project myself in Second Life – what aspects of my personality, which interests, and then playing with various name options to see how they worked before I made my final choice.

But then, I’m weird like that.

So as the Lab can’t strike a balance between pre-set and free-form last names, neither will be making a return to the sign-up page for new users. In the meantime Rodvik will be kicking-off a new Profile Feed “round-table” to discuss recapturing the “frontier feel” of SL, probably next Monday. Interestingly, one of the ideas he put up for discussion what that of allowing new users pick from a list of pre-set last names after having been involved in SL for six months or so. Also offered-up for discussion is the potential to re-think Linden Homes (which I thought they were doing anyway…or did I simply dream I’d received a survey on linden Homes last month…?), and the idea for a new “Mainland-like region” – something that is bound to intrigue / cause concerns ahead of the actual discussions.

Rodvik’s post can be read in full here.

The recent TPV Policy changes brought with them the news that the functionality of llRequestAgentStatus, popularly used to obtain someone’s actual on-line status would be changed at some point in the near future as a matter related to users’ privacy.

The ability to determine someone’s on-line status has been the subject of debate for some time now, as evidenced by JIRA SVC-4823.  The JIRA itself has received a lot of attention since the news on the TPV Policy changes broke, which both highlights the level of concern where potentially legitimate uses of llRequestAgentStatus is concerned, but conversely doesn’t help the Lab clearly understand all cases where this is so.

Yesterday, Oz put on a request on the JIRA, thus:

Everyone…. I don’t know if this will help or not, but I’m going to give it a try and see….

We hear what you’ve all said, we understand the issues, and we’re going to discuss what we can and should do about them.

Nothing is final.

We appreciate that Phoenix is moving appropriately to remove the privacy violation from their next release, and hope that they’ll do that soon, but we understand that these things take time.

In order to help us to have a better understanding, I appeal to the many of you who are posting messages that essentially say “I agree – this will be bad for me too” as opposed to describing a specific use case not already described here (and thank you to the many posts that have done a good job describing use cases): please stop with these “me too” posts – they just make it harder to read the full stream (and yes, I at least am reading all of every comment). We know that for every use case there are many users… we don’t need each of them to post something

This is a fair and reasonable request, and while it is understandable the many want to add their name to one or more instances where the function does have a positive use, it’s also essential the LL get a fair chance to establish the how and where and what in terms of what needs to be done in order to avoid causing undue upset or pain in altering the functionality – if indeed this happens.

If you do have a potential user case that hasn’t been listed in the JIRA (or perhaps hasn’t been fully explained), then now is the time to help Linden Lab help you by providing a clear and concise explanation of how the function is used and how altering it could be detrimental to the SL experience. If you just want to add a “me too” comment, without specifics, I would encourage you to consider Oz’s plea and resist the temptation, so that LL stand more of a chance of sifting through the feedback and properly taking all they need to understand into account.

Again, you can reach the JIRA to add your examples by clicking here.