Good news to start 2023 of with is that Second Life has been positively been growing since 2021. During the past few years Private Estates have increased by at least one thousand regions and Linden Owned regions have increased by at least 500 regions.
Hopefully region growth will continue though 2023 and we will be blogging any major changes during the year ahead. Stay tuned for those updates in (March, June, September and December 2023) on our blog.
Below are the region counts from 2021, 2022 and now 2023. More growth in 2022 it appears and hopefully there will be growth in 2023/2024. It’s not known if 2023 will any easier than 2022 was with the cost of living going up globally (risk of another recession). We will have to wait and see what happens.
Total Regions
3rd January 2021: 25, 555
2nd January 2022: 27, 231
1st January 2023: 27, 659 – (1812.66 KM)
Private Estates
3rd January 2021: 17, 024
2nd January 2022: 18, 332
1st January 2023: 18, 370
Linden Owned
3rd January 2021: 8, 531
2nd January 2022: 8, 909
1st January 2023: 9, 289
All data supplied via the Second Life grid survey.
New Grid Statistics 2023
Second Life Main Grid size as of 1 Jan 2023
Ownership
Total
General
Moderate
Adult
Offline
Total Area (km�)
Total
27659
2580
17254
7821
4
1812.66
Linden Owned
9289
1583
7299
407
0
608.76
Private Estates
18370
997
9955
7414
4
1203.90
Have A Great New Year From All Of Us At Zoha Islands/ Fruit Islands
Due To High Demand Please Contact one of our Sales agents about our Extended Buy Down Program. You can own your land at the lowest tier prices in Secondlife.
A Return to Our Roots…and a New Vision for the Future
As 2022 comes to a close, it is time for our annual look back at some of the year’s most notable developments and accomplishments in Second Life. The year 2022 began with a bang as original founder Philip Rosedale returned to Second Life as a strategic advisor. Philip’s pioneering vision for the now-mainstream concepts of virtual economies, cultures, and communities played a crucial role in the launch and subsequent success of Second Life since its inception almost two decades ago – and we are excited to work closely with him once again to shape our future direction.
One of the newest Second Life initiatives championed by Philip has been the long-awaited Preview Grid availability of “Puppetry“, which adds avatar “expressiveness” either via camera-based movement or connecting the viewer to motion-based capture hardware for a whole new level of interaction and connectedness. Our announcement of this work was among the most-shared posts on our social channels for the year, and we’ve opened up the development of this feature to community contributions.
The introduction of Event Regions makes it easier to hold large-scale events with expanded capacity for more concurrent visitors – owners and renters of Event Regions can host up to 175 avatars and get a 20% script performance boost along with other benefits.
Second Life membership got a power-up too, with the introduction of Premium Plus, which rolled out to a steaming hot reception this summer. The introduction of the Plus membership tier later in the year has allowed residents to dip their toes into the waters of SL membership and mainland ownership. Everyone can find a level that fits their Second Life needs at the moment, and we hope the expanded offerings will continue to serve you well.
This year, Residents spent nearly 320 million hours inworld, and we hope that you were having a blast the whole time!
2023 Roadmap
Want a sneak peek at the shape of things to come in 2023? Here’s a look at what’s already in the works for the new year and beyond:
In 2022 we started working on a number of graphical improvements including physical based rendering (PBR), GLTF adoption, and reflection probes – with the intent of shipping our first iteration of these features early in the coming year.
Creators will be able to use tools like Substance Painter to generate GLTF materials to import into Second Life. PBR will leverage the new material types and sample from reflection probes for environment reflections and lighting. Second Life is about to get a lot more shiny.
All the reflection probes work set us up nicely for a much requested feature. Yes, Planar mirrors are also on our roadmap for 2023!
Also in the works for 2023:
Avatar customization improvements to simplify creating your virtual identity, including inventory thumbnails to give a preview of what’s sitting in those boxes
New user experience upgrades to better fuel retention, engagement, and growth across key parts of the new user journey
New centralized “hubs” to better connect residents to the communities that match their passions and interests
First peek at a world and avatar centered mobile-first Second Life experience
New LSL functions that improve the quality of life for scripters
Even more performance improvements to increase the quality and visual fidelity of the Second Life experience
…and much more!
2022 Highlights
In addition to the Second Life innovations noted above, there were several other key accomplishments in 2022 worth spotlighting.
Bringing Second Life Back into the Conversation
In 2022, the renewed general interest in the Metaverse translated into significant media opportunities for Second Life. Over 21,000 articles and other stories included Second Life in 2022 – nearly 5 times greater than the amount of media coverage we received in 2021. We are especially proud of the range and scale of the media coverage – everything from community forums to more specialized technology press as well as some of the world’s largest media properties including the BBC, CNN and The Wall Street Journal. The four part Wall Street Journal podcast, How to Build a Metaverse, was particularly excellent coverage.
New Options, New Opportunities
In response to community feedback for more Premium account options, we debuted two all-new membership opportunities (Plus and Premium Plus) – each with added features and extras to match any budget. Check out our Premium overview page for a comparison of all benefits. In addition to land, groups, stipends, priority entry and multitude others, we’ve also partnered with a third party viewer – Speedlight – to give Premium Plus members unlimited online time and priority support access on “Speedlight” – a mobile and browser- based viewer which allows you to stay connected to Second Life while on the go.
Premium Plus members are now also able to purchase a Homestead region with their membership with no additional requirements for a full region. We’ve seen a lot of interest here, and are happy to be able to offer this valuable benefit.
By far, the most popular perks of both the Premium and Premium Plus membership are Linden Homes, which give Residents the opportunity to move into a ready-made home crafted in a variety of styles – including the new-for-2022 Newbrooke and Sakura themes. Could another new theme be around the corner? Saddle up and stay tuned…and expect even more new extras and enhancements to the various Premium offerings in the coming year.
Additionally, we continued to rotate in new “Last Name” options for community members seeking to better craft their identity and personas, including limited-time availability of several in-demand and specialized last names. Demonpaws, anyone?
Improved Performance & Viewer Enhancements
Our engineering team continues to make general performance updates to increase the quality of the Second Life experience. For example, there was improved support for complex scripting capabilities, often doubling the number of scripts that can run in regions! We also migrated our code to GitHub to help improve and modernize our tooling and better support the open source community.
There were also several backend improvements made to logins, including a fix to new device email notifications for newly created accounts, performance improvements for the viewer login handshake, and improvements to metrics and diagnostics for our internal tools. We also added the long-requested Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to help community members better protect their accounts.
Other modifications to the Official Viewer were made based on community feedback, including improvements to Viewer profiles for a more responsive experience (including streamlined availability to Groups, which is now more accessible on the main Viewer profile tab).
Linkset Structured Data
In November, we introduced Linkset Structured Data (LSD), a new way for LSL to store data. The feature has been covered by external blogposts, and has been touted as a game changer for scripters who need persistent storage of data.
New Partnerships & Possibilities
One of the biggest community developments of 2022 was Second Life’s acquisition of several SL-related assets of CasperTech, which will help ensure that its popular merchant and vendor services will continue to operate smoothly with even more enhancements in the future.
Our parent company Linden Lab also announced that Tilia LLC, the all-in-one payments platform that powers the Second Life economy. secured a strategic investment from J.P. Morgan Payments. The investment will help enhance its current capabilities throughout its processing platform including providing increased payment and payout methods, expanded pay-out currencies and support services.
There were several exciting entertainment and media industry partnerships in Second Life over the past year, too. The year started strong with the Metaverse Fashion Week event, held inworld in February. The event, which was covered in major outlets including Vogue and Glamour, included an elaborate inworld runway show that debuted an all-new virtual fashion collection from designer Jonathan Simkhai (who debuted the physical collection of the same fashions the next day in NYC).
Our partnership with Film Threat also continued with several virtual cinema screenings, including the premieres of Draxtor Despres’ documentary “Virtual Cultures in Pandemic Times” and Huckleberry Hax’s full-length shot-in-SL machinima “WAARHEID.”
Community Celebrations, Marketing Milestones
All of the media attention throughout the first half of the year helped to heighten interest in our SL19B Celebration, which was the most successful birthday event ever with an all-time record for attendance and participation! The 24-region event housed 225 community exhibits and the related music events featured a total of 346 performers! We also saw record engagement at the SL19B Shop & Hop 20-region shopping event, which racked up all-time record sales for the 400 participating merchants. So, who is ready for SL20B?!!
In 2022, we opened the all-new Second Life University to help better educate both new and existing community members on how to get the most out of our virtual world. This initiative includes a series of both live and produced community videos educating participants on a variety of topics including Viewer Basics, dressing your avatar, and much more.
In addition, the community team debuted a new weekly email newsletter for those who want to stay connected with regular updates on the latest news and events each week.
Happy Holidays from Second Life
Thank you to the entire Second City community for your ongoing loyalty and support. While we will continue to work hard at Linden Lab to improve Second Life, we know that it is the Residents and your many creative contributions that form the heart and soul of our shared virtual world. Our Metaverse, if we may.
Optimize the first-time orientation for low-end computers. Ideally it should look halfway decent on even a PC/Mac laptop with no 3D card. More from Yves Firlan:
Update the default settings so any system they might have runs halfway stable with decent graphics after installing the viewer for the first time (like: did they ever change the default setting for bandwidth from 500 to 950/1000 which is one of the main reasons things rez frustratingly slow for Newbies?)
Immediately connect new users with affinity groups:
I don’t think there is a single new user experience in the history of Second Life’s carrier that prompts you to join groups you may be interested in. Such a no brainer for social. — Adeon Writer
[I]t’s astounding Linden Lab never figured that one out. To take it further, groups need to be improved. (Or maybe we need a feature separate from groups that can act more as a social hub, as current groups are tied to land ownership and other features that limit how many groups we can have, cause group chat issues, etc.) — Penny
Yes, exactly. I’d go so far as to say new users should be able to choose groups on the webpage sign-up.
A couple more important recommendations:
Update the default avatar:
Refusing to update the default body, instead pushing us to user-created mesh bodies, fractured the entire avatar creation aspect of SL. Now you need to choose a mesh body, which costs money, and to make an informed decision you need to understand the THREE different types of rigged mesh (rigged, fitted, and Bento), understand that clothing is made for specific bodies, and have a grasp of what kind of clothing support each body has. How is a newbie supposed to figure all that out on their own? – Penny
That’s good advice but not sure how feasible it is, since so much of the SL economy depends on mesh bodies.
Speaking of which, here’s a radical ideas —
Pay established SLers to onboard new users:
The way SL is designed it will never be easy to use, one can only make it easier for newcomers to stay by assigning them a Mentor who should get some type of remuneration from Linden Lab depending on how long they can make their Mentees stay and come back into SL. – Yves
Second Life’s many complexities are so difficult to fix, it might make more sense to literally pay veteran Second Life users a “bounty” to onboard new users, spending the 3-5 hours necessary to get them over the first-time user experience barrier.
I’m not sure how feasible this suggestion is either, but look at it this way:
If Linden Lab paid, say, $10 in Linden Dollars for each successfully on boarded, retained new user — i.e. someone who logs into SL 3 months after creating their account — it would cost the company $1 million to grow its user base an extra 100,000; to add 1 million new users, just $10 million. And maybe that would be the most cost-effective way to grow the user base?
Have A Great Week And Happy Holidays From All Of Us At Zoha Islands/ Fruit Islands! We will have limited support during the Holidays while our staff spend the holidays with their loved ones, so please be patient.
Be the First to See WAARHEID and Meet the Cast on Lab Gab
We’re excited to announce that Second Life and Film Threat are partnering for the world premiere of WAARHEID, the sequel to STÖMOL, an award-winning feature-length sci-fi movie shot entirely in Second Life by machinima creator Huckleberry Hax! Watch it live with your fellow residents at a special virtual cinema screening event exclusively at the Film Threat venue in Second Life!
Learn more about this special screening event and watch some of the cast on Lab Gab as they give you a peek behind the scenes and also a walk through the WAARHEID art exhibition opening soon. You can also watch the trailer for this movie on Huckleberry Hax’s YouTube channel!
Add the following dates and timings for the upcoming events to your calendar:
Watch WAARHEID, a feature-length sci-fi thriller completely shot in Second Life, during this special virtual cinema screening event at the Film Threat venue in Second Life. Watch together with the cast and crew of the film and along with other members of the SL community on Thursday, December 15th at 1:30pm PT!
Ben Franklin opined that nothing is certain except death and taxes. I would add “aging eyesight” because it affects everyone eventually, diminishing the pleasure and productivity of computing. Various adaptive technologies are available to compensate for loss of visual acuity. Some are built into Windows. But these options all have limitations, and using them in certain combinations can actually make it more difficult to make sense of what’s before your eyes. Read on for a look at Windows display settings and how to use them to best advantage…
Getting Windows Display Settings Right
Before trying to improve the display it’s best to reset it to default values so you know how the manufacturer intended things to look. Defaults also provide a baseline against which tweaks can be compared.
Open the “Change Display Settings” desktop app by right-clicking anywhere on the desktop and selecting “Display settings” from the drop down menu, or type “Settings” in the search box, double-click on the Settings app, click System, then Display. On Windows 10 or 11, you will see a list of controls like the one below.
Set the following items to the values indicated to restore your display to its defaults:
Night Light: Off
Size of text, apps, and other…: 100%
Resolution: “recommended,” the highest your display supports
Orientation: Landscape
On some devices you may see a Brightness control in the Display Settings panel. I recommend setting it at 50%, or as close as you can get it with the finicky slide control. (Some monitors have physical menu buttons on the front, side or underneath, that let you fine tune the brightness, hue, scaling, and other aspects of the display. If yours does, check those settings and set them to default values as well.)
If any advanced display settings are in effect you will see a notice to that effect. If you do, follow the instructions to disable them. You will be logged out and will need to sign in again to see the default settings take effect.
On a Windows 7 system, there are fewer controls. Click Start, enter “display settings” and then click the item “Change display settings”. Set your screen resolution to the highest your display supports, then click Apply. Next, click the “Make text and other items larger or smaller” link. Choose the “Smaller – 100%” option. Finally, click “Adjust ClearType text” and follow the instructions to get the sharpest-looking text on your display.
Moving Beyond Default Display Settings
Most likely, things will look smaller, crisper, and move faster. Using default display settings has a positive effect on overall system performance because few resources are diverted to accommodating custom display settings.
But default display settings may be hard on your unique eyesight. So now let’s see what we can tweak to make the screen easier to view and navigate.
One of my favorite tweaks is very easy. Hold down the Ctrl key while rolling the mouse wheel forward, away from you. All text in browsers, word processors, PDF readers, and other document display apps gets bigger! Reverse the wheel’s motion and everything gets smaller. A page’s left and right edges will expand or contract accordingly. This trick gives you pretty fine control over text size, and text size can be different from one window to another.
If you don’t have a mouse with a wheel, you can do the same thing by pressing Ctrl and the “+” or “-” keys. I prefer this method, because I can quickly return to the default magnification setting by pressing Ctrl and “0” (zero).
But you will notice that parts of the screen do not change size. Menu bars and other fixed objects that surround text remain the same size. In some apps, the window that confines text will not change size and enlarged text overflows the edges of the window, getting lost from sight.
More Tweaking the Windows Display Settings
To avoid this problem, return to the Windows 10/11 “Change Display Settings” app. (For Windows 7, use the “Make text and other items larger or smaller” option described above.) In the “Scale and Layout” section you will find the option to “Change the size of text, apps, and other items.” The dropdown menu allows settings of 100% of the default (recommended), 125%,and 150%. Play with those, logging out and back in after each change.
Notice that as you enlarge things they may no longer fit on your screen entirely. The bottom of the display settings page drops down out of sight beneath the edge of the screen. You will need to PgDn to see what you are missing, which may include important options for the app you are using. (On a related note, you may want to visit the Settings -> Ease of Access page and UNcheck “Automatically hide scroll bars in Windows.” By default, Windows hides the scroll bars on some screens, making it hard to tell if there’s more on the page.)
The brightness and “night light” options on the display settings page change the hue of light, mostly by adding or removing some of the blue spectrum. A warmer, less-blue hue is often easier on the eyes and can help prepare your body for sleep, so try the “night light” toggle switch. Click on “Night light settings” to see how finely you can control the warmth of light.
Back up under “Scale and Layout” you see “Advanced scaling settings”. Toggle on the switch that promises to “Fix scaling for apps”. It can make text look less blurry when it’s enlarged or shrunk. Custom scaling percentages can also be set on this page; they will be indicated back on the main page when they are in effect. Don’t neglect to click on the “Apply” button at the very bottom of this page or your custom settings will not take effect.
The resolution of your display should be left at its recommended maximum. If it’s changed, there will be fewer pixels available and everything will look less sharp, blurry. The advantage of using a coarser resolution is that those tiny border items will look bigger, but blurrier. Leave “orientation” alone unless you switch to a monitor that is taller than it is wide.
The multiple displays section is for those who have more than one monitor. Writers, programmers and gamers often have dual display systems, but they can be a blessing to the visually impaired as well. You can control the settings of both types, and even specify an app to be used to test graphics settings.
Windows 11 has a Dark Mode option, which effectively flips the black/white color balance on your screen. The background of your screen will be black, with white text. In addition to extending battery life on mobile devices, some say dark mode boosts productivity and is gentler on the eyes because it reduces glare and blue light exposure. Some sources say it’s NOT good for the eyes because it’s harder to read long chunks of text with a light-on-dark theme. One article I found quoted an ophthalmologist saying dark mode does not affect eye health in any way, but the author wondered if it might lead to depression. Make of that what you will. Try the Dark Mode option and see for yourself. Click Settings -> Personalization -> Colors, then use the “Choose your mode” toggle to switch between Dark and Light modes.
I’ve noticed that as my eyes get older, annoying things like floaters and retina puckering cause text on the screen to come in and out of focus, and sometimes I lose track of the mouse pointer or text cursor. Pressing the Ctrl key repeatedly will flash a large circle on the screen to indicate the position of the mouse pointer. I also found it helpful to change the color of the mouse pointer. Go to Ease of Access -> Mouse Pointer, and you can change the size and color of the pointer. Mine is a lovely (and highly visible) shade of green now. Likewise, you can go to Ease of Access -> Text Cursor, and fiddle with the cursor color and indicator.
I want to mention one more option that can help if you are visually impaired. The Magnifier (on Windows 7/8/10/11) can make any part of the screen larger. Press and hold the Start key and the plus (+) sign to activate the Magnifier. Move the mouse to the portion of the screen you want to magnify. You can adjust the magnification level if desired.
These are the basics of Windows display settings. Things get more complicated when you begin using display settings built into apps such as Chrome, in addition to the Windows settings. I recommend avoiding that. Do the best you can using Windows display settings alone.
Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands/Fruit Islands
The 12th annual Second Life Christmas Expo for 2022 will open to the public next week on Friday 2nd December through until Sunday 11th December 2022. The SL Christmas Expo 2022 theme is The Magic of Holiday Stories.
The SL Christmas Expo regions have arrived on the grid and now work is underway to get them ready for the big grand opening next week. The SL Christmas Expo is spread across 12 regions (Chapters – different holiday story) featuring more than 150 shops and more.
There will be live entertainment, live performances, special hunts, decoration competitions, photos with Santa and much more. The return of Linden Lights of Hope region showcasing Linden Homes from Linden Lab. There could new details announced about the next Linden Home theme during the expo.
SL Christmas Expo 2022 Regions
Please spread the word about next week’s SL Christmas Expo 2022.
Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands/Fruit Islands
