Watch: SeraCast’s Live Stream Showing Off New Items at The Outlet
In case you missed it last weeks live stream from the Seraphim sim during the holiday, here’s Del and Kess with much fun, snark, and surprises, not to mention a truly excellent flower umbrella. They’re showing off all the new available items, and roll out two ne brands: Stealthic and Dove & Pear.
On the Second Life team we are always talking about ways to improve the in-world experience. Often we hear from the Support team about problems with inventory loading times. We dug into this problem and discovered that many of you have inventories which may partially or never load, and even worse, can prevent you from logging in. We have identified a couple of ways the Support Team can fix the most common issues for you.
Starting Tuesday, June 21st, Support will implement a process to stabilize only those inventories affected. For the small group of Residents this affects, you may see a change to the organization of your inventory, but all your objects are still there. If you encounter any difficulty with your inventory, please reach out to our Support Team https://support.secondlife.com
Why it’s important to organize inventory
You can do your part to make your inventory load completely. Organizing your items into folders with fewer items at the same level can make a big difference:
Ease of use: Finding what you’re looking for when you want it
Saving money: Not buying something you already have because you can’t find it
Saves you time: Do you really want to scroll through thousands of folders looking for the outfit you bought last week? Or is it faster to go into your Clothing Folder? The Vehicles Folder?
Tips!
Start organizing your inventory early It’s a great idea to create a few top level folders which represent common things you buy such as Hair, Jewelry, Shoes, etc. Many people also organized clothing into categories.
Get rid of demos When buying a demo and trying it out, you know pretty fast if you like it — and usually if you do, you buy the non-demo version soon after. As a result, search for demos in my inventory and if you no longer need them, move them all in the trash.
Clean your trash out regularly And speaking of trash, it’s much easier to catch an accidental deletion when you’re only looking through a few dozen folders versus thousands of items.
Renaming Folders Did you just buy an exceptional item but the folder’s named in a way that it doesn’t identify what it is? Rename it. Think about naming an item “long lace dress with high neckline – Red”. Your own name for an item is more meaningful to me than “**~~XX BRANDNAME~~** Tiffany Red”
Clean out Lost and Found If things are returned to you or possibly detached, they may appear or get returned to your Lost and Found folder. Many times it’s going to appear as a Coalesced Object (a collection of different objects returned as one mass, shown with an orange box icon with a bite taken out of it).
Rezz these coalesced objects and take each item back into your inventory so you can find them again. Sandboxes are a great place to do this.
Don’t have a Lost And Found folder? That’s great! It means you don’t have anything in it!
Move things out of your Received Items Folder You can wear and use items directly from your Received Items section (at the bottom of your inventory window). But it’s not a good place to keep them long-term. Take a moment each time you receive an item to move it somewhere in your main inventory that makes sense to you.
Antivirus, Firewall and Security Applications While everyone should keep their home network and computers safe, sometimes overly cautious applications or settings may interfere with the communication between the Second Life Viewer and our Inventory servers. This could result in errors like “body part missing from database” and in these cases those assets may be permanently lost..
Too many friends It is possible to have “too many” friends. Check your Calling Cards folder and remove any duplicates.
New inventory error message “There was a problem loading your inventory. First, try logging out and logging in again. If you see this message again, contact Support to correct the problem.”
This error message is new in the Second Life Viewer and is shown to let you know that your inventory has problems.
The sooner you contact Support to resolve this problem, the better! Inventory problems may worsen over time if you keep trying to connect to Second Life before getting assistance from Support.
Please note — clearing the cache and relaunching Second Life will not resolve this specific, new problem that results in this warning message.
Note: We have reports that residents who have changed the “NoInventoryLibrary” debug setting to “True” will see this error message and not be able to load their inventory. That issue has been reported at BUG-231865. The quick workaround is to change that setting to False. If you have changed this setting and are still seeing the error message, you should contact support.
You may contact Support directly at https://support.secondlife.com/create-case. Choose “Submit a Case,” select Technical Question > Inventory Issue, and complete the rest of the form to get assistance. Our amazing Support team is aware of these issues and is on the lookout for these new cases.
Second Life University
Second Life’s Director of Product, Alexa Linden, will be on a Second Life University livestream tomorrow covering these inventory management tips, and more! Watch it live on May 19th at 11:30am PT on the Second Life YouTube channel. We will be monitoring the YouTube chat and answering your questions.
Highlights from the Second Life Destination Guide – 05/13/2022
By Strawberry Linden,
Destination Guide
Pictured: Zen at Astoria
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you’re struggling, know that you are not alone. I wanted to highlight some destinations that offer support within the Second Life community and a place to find your inner peace because everyone deserves the opportunity to reflect on their mental health in a safe and meaningful way.
Mental health issues are common and are not something that anyone should feel ashamed of. Impact offers incredible peer support by people who’ve already been through, or are going through, the same things as you. Whether you just want to listen in, get something off your chest, speak to a mentor, attend a group meeting or just play games with people who are ok with every part of you, Impact is a great place for you. If you need support, please join their group ‘Impact Mental Health’ or click on the boards located in the foyer of the main building and an available Mentor will contact you.
Nirvana Island is a sanctuary for your soul dedicated to well-being. All faiths and points of view are welcome. Diverse traditions and systems are harmoniously connected in this beautiful natural landscape full of treasures for mind, body, or spirit. There are daily group meetings and events. If you are in need of healing, solace, or sanctuary – you will find it here.
Braided Lives is a multi-platform initiative designed to bring people from all walks of life together to tell their stories and collaborate on the creation of a more equitable and sustainable future. The concept was born in response to the isolation, stress, anger, and frustration that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing racial tensions. For more info, visit braidedlives.com
Mindful Cove exists to provide both an entry point into Second Life, and an ongoing community region for newcomers and long-time residents alike, based on the core principle that SL can be an excellent place to engage in activities that support emotional and mental well-being.
Mindfulness can literally transform your entire world from the inside out and for the millions of mindfulness practitioners around the world, it’s doing just that! Come and discover the most incredible and wonderful surprise: everything you’ve been searching for ‘out there’ feelings of fulfillment, peace, and wholeness, have been within you all along. The Center for Mindfulness is a beautiful and calming place to come meditate and learn a few mindful tricks. Learn more at mindfulnessinsl.blogspot.com
SL Project Hope was created to empower and support survivors individually and collectively. They are committed to fostering hope, opportunity, peace, and empowerment for all those who are on a healing journey.
In the times we live in, we need to find our peace, come to know your inner power, become the wonderful person you have hidden in you and reach the spiritual level you always dreamed of. Connect with the universe, we are all one!
A beautiful quiet spot to relax, have some me-time, do some yoga or meditate. Enjoy the silence and create a moment for your inner self at this place, you deserve this!
As She Celebrates 15 Years in Second Life, Avatar Influencer Strawberry Singh Discusses the Tedium of Creator Credits & Ways to Bring Back the Fun
Strawberry Singh, who became the SL community’s top social media influencer and then went on to work for Linden Lab in 2019, has a new post celebrating her 15 years in the virtual world. It includes a surprising confession — she almost quit SL entirely, mainly due to the tedium of posting credits to her avatar fashion reviews:
I had been feeling like the creative light Second Life had always been for me was diminishing because I was getting bogged down with doing mesh head reviews. I have to be honest with you, I absolutely hated doing those videos. I had come to a point where I loathed all the time I was putting into reviewing things and sharing style credits and not being able to just be more creative and have the time to do fun things in Second Life.
“Writing out style credits for every single item I was wearing in each post was a lot of work back then,” she tells me. “I had so many blogs just saved as drafts at a time and I couldn’t publish them until I took at least 30 minutes to sit there and write out all the style credits. It was time-consuming, exhausting, and not fun at all.” (She hastens to add that she’s still glad she made those reviews: “[A]s much as I was tired of it at the end, I know how important those videos were and many people have reached out to me and said that they learned a lot from [them].”)
This is actually a common theme in SL social media, and a recurring complaint that comes up when Cajsa writes about Second Life fashion blogs — either the creator credits are non-existent, incomplete, or not informative enough for readers to know where they might buy those listen items. It’s the blessing and curse of a virtual world where everything is user-generated: If you’re really trying to give credits to every creator whose work is depicted in a screenshot, it’s a painstaking process where you will need to credit the creator of everything in view, up to and including the literal sky.
That to one side, Strawberry has ideas for how the community could inject more fun into the social media ecosystem of SL:
“I’d love to see more people get into creating videos. Either adding them to their blog posts or just sharing them on socials. Our avatars are beautiful and the animations available are just incredible too so to capture that on video, it looks amazing.” (See her Instagram video above for inspiration.)
“It’s why I did the OBS Tutorial again recently, because people kept asking me how to create videos. I hope it gets more people into doing that. Exploring and recording different destinations or making videos of their avatars dancing, and including their friends, etc. It will make their whole blogging experience more fun.”
As for a less tedious way of creating credit lists, Berry believes there’s a HUD which may do that, but forgot the production information. In other words, it’s difficult for us to credit the creator of a credit creator.
I actually think this might be something Linden Lab could better solve: As all this data already exists on the asset database, wouldn’t it be relatively easy to add a function which generates a list of all the creators associated with an avatar, including attachments and their current location on?
Update, 4:45pm PT: Berry just recalled there’s an output function for your outfit details, at least — in the official viewer. Watch below:
I just remembered there is a way to save your outfit details in the Outfits menu in the viewer. I made a quick video to show.
Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands
Months after its producers began scouting among the Second Life community for avatar-based performers, the avatar-based reality competition show Alter Ego is here: Watch on Fox TV’s site.
I just saw the first episode and I have mixed feelings about its mixed reality presentation. Fundamentally, the whole concept seems to be directed at an audience who don’t quite understand how virtual world avatars work, created by producers who definitely don’t know how they work. Which is strange, because the vast majority of the show’s target Gen Y/Z audience (I’m tempted to say all of them) have an avatar in Fortnite and other virtual worlds.
Speaking of which, as I suspected, the show uses Unreal, the graphics engine that also runs Fortnite:
To film, Alter Ego relies on 14 cameras, eight of which use advanced camera-tracking technologies. “It’s not something that’s done in post,” creative producer Michael Zinman — who previously partnered with Fox on The Masked Singer — tells Rolling Stone on the still-empty studio floor. Above our heads, thousands of Infrared Reflective (IR) markers — one-inch-by-one-inch silver squares that, essentially, create a map for these cameras — twinkle like a mini galaxy. The smart cameras then communicate with Unreal Engine, a video-game design software [sic!], to render the avatars in real time.
… The problem is, outside a virtual world context like Fortnite, the Unreal avatars seem strange and disconnected from the live audience and judges.
And while I like the concept of real people who were previously afraid to perform in real life, afraid they’d be judged on their real life appearance because they don’t fit the expected mold… that’s already a core concept to the reality show competition format! (Hello, Susan Boyle became famous for that very reason back in 2009.)
No: The magic of avatars is not the 3D graphics in and of itself, but the immersive social context of the virtual world in which they appear. It’s why hundreds if not thousands of people now have full-time professions as performers in countless virtual worlds.
I’m hopeful the show succeeds but it’s hard to see that happening, especially after the mocap gimmick wears off. Again, it’s still missing the opportunity of recruiting virtual world-based performers like Skye Galaxy from Second Life or TFMJonny from VRChat to appear, bringing those worlds’ fanbases with them. to cheer them on. But maybe that’s coming up in later episodes.
If the show survives long enough, that is, because… yikes:
I’m working on the assumption that Alter Ego will be canned after a single episode, because for my own sake I have to place some faith in mankind. But if it isn’t, and this wretched series eventually ends up with a winner, then who will actually become famous? Is it the shy, fallible human who performs backstage with a camera stuck to their forehead? Or is it their perfect avatar? For the life of me, I hope it’s the former. Singing competitions have always carried a sheen of exploitation to them, so imagine how much worse it would be when you’re put to work as the workhorse component of a cartoon fairy. It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Hand on heart, Alter Ego is the worst thing I have seen on television in a decade. Please, someone, fire this monstrosity into the sun so it cannot hurt us any more.
A very special thank you to Wagner James and nwn for this opinion post.
Have a Great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands
City Keeps Selling Her Virtual Fashion to Help Support Her Family. A Russian Friend is Assisting Her.
Among the many strange moments amid an utterly horrible war, this one must be the most surreal: Hanna of OSMIA, a leading Second Life brand, is a Ukraine citizen in real life, and since Russia’s invasion, has been hiding out in her now-occupied city. She is now nearly 7 months pregnant. But because OSMIA is a key income source for her and her now-growing family, she must still maintain her virtual world brand. And after many weeks of sporadic Internet service — what with a genocidal war happening around her — she was finally able to upload a new avatar fashion release, pretty clothes for glamorous, carefree avatars:
“I am from Ukraine and there is a war in my country, I am in a city under Russian occupation,” as she put it simply on her OSMIA Facebook page. “Now I have the Internet (for how long I don’t know). I was able to publish a release that was supposed to be released on February 25th.”
“I want to say a big thank you to the Kustom9 event and Rebel Gal for offering and giving me space for my latest release, which should have been released at the end of February,” she adds. Notably, Rebel Gal is based in Russia, another Russian Second Life user among many who have rallied to help their Ukrainian friends while their government’s army ravages the neighboring country.
As for Hanna, who I communicate with on Facebook from time to time, I won’t say where she is now, except to say that she is thankfully much safer than she was last month. But like the rest of her nation, still far from being truly safe.
Our hearts go out to Ukraine ♥♥♥
Have a Great Week From All Of Us At Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands
