Category Archives: SHOWCASE

An Interview With Joel Eilde

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Entry posted by Tara Linden in Music Mondays

 

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This week’s featured musician is Joel Eilde (Joel Tamas irl), who plays rock interspersed with little doses of jazz, country, and blues both inworld and with his band Red Heaven. He has played over 3,000 shows in SL over the last decade and encourages newcomers to join the unique virtual music scene.

Please check out the official Red Heaven website.

Q: When/how did you hear about Second Life?
A: Back in early 2007, I was working as a tech journalist and I was doing a week-long series about Second Life, which I had only just heard of at that point. So I made an account to jump in and try it out and… I stayed. Simple as that. 

Q: What instruments do you play, and what made you pick them up?
A: I sing, I play guitar, and I play bass. Like a lot of young adolescent males with unrealistic dreams of stardom, I picked up bass as a young teen and got more into guitar later on. I didn’t get singing for real until I started performing in Second Life in 2011. I had dabbled before, but never felt confident about my voice until I was in my 40s. Now I actually think of myself as a singer first, so things have really changed.

Q: Tell us the origin story of your band Red Heaven.
A: Red Heaven is, unequivocally, a Second Life success story. I started performing in Second Life because I wanted an option to play music without going to bars and all that malarkey. And doing so built up my skills really fast: singing, playing, songwriting, all of it. I really credit Second Life for being the woodshed that got me to the point where I could really make Red Heaven a proper real-life band. I honestly couldn’t have gotten to this point with the albums and real world live shows if I hadn’t been grinding in Second Life for so many years. 

Q: Are your band mates also SL Residents?
A: Only one: Olga Zoubkova, whose SL name is Loreen Aldrin. She lives in Russia so she’s not part of my performing band, but she’s all over every single Red Heaven album. The others, I don’t think they have any idea what Second Life is. :)

Q: How has your relationship to creativity been affected by the last year?
A: Well, since January 2020 I’ve released two albums (with another to come this summer), started streaming live Facebook shows, did the biggest live-streamed full-band show of my life, and have been pounding out Second Life shows on the regular. So I guess I’d say it’s been pretty good, but I’m also one of those very lucky people who’s had tons of free time during the pandemic so far, and therefore it’s been easy for me to put it to good use doing what I love.

Q: What is the most meaningful aspect of the SL music community to you?
A: What I love more than anything and with all my heart is the absence of “stardom.” An ordinary person can just turn on their mic for an hour and play their acoustic guitar and sing, and they can get a legit following and even make a little money. That’s a beautiful thing to me; the way Second Life audiences embrace amateur music without celebrity. I don’t know any other audience that’s so open to and supportive of amateur music. And I honestly wish the world was more like Second Life in that way.

 

Thank you, Joel!

We have had the pleasure of having Joel at Brick Shiphouse a few times and continue to find new and seasoned musicians alike for your entertainment pleasure.  Please check us out in world https://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mango/128/128/20/

and Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BrickShiphouseSL

Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands

VWBPE 2021

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VWBPE 2021: Patch Linden – the board, Second Life, and more

 

VWBPE 2021: Patch Linden – the board, Second Life, and more

Posted on by Inara Pey
 
VWBPE 2021

On Thursday, March 18th, 2021 Patch Linden, the Lab’s Vice President of Product Operations and a member of the company’s management team, attended the 2021 Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education (VWBPE) conference in the first of three special events featuring representative from Linden Lab.

The following is a summary of the session covering the core topics raised. The notes provided have been taken directly from the official video of the session, which is embedded at the end of this article. Time stamps to the video are also provided to the relevant points in the video for those who wish to listen to specific comments.

Notes:

  • This is a summary, not a full transcript, and items have been grouped by topic, so may not be presented chronologically when compared to the video.
  • In places, information that is supplementary to Patch’s comments is provided in square braces (i.e. [ and ]) are used in the body text below to indicate where this is the case.

Linden Lab’s New Board

[Video: 4:04-10:55]

[For additional information on the new board members, please also see: Meet Linden Lab’s new board of directors (January 9th, 2021) and Linden Lab’s board of directors: snippets of news (February 4th, 2021).]

Linden Lab’s board of directors (l to r): Brad Oberwager, J. Randall Waterfield and Raj Date
  • New ownership team is a “joy to work with”.
  • Brad Oberwager is particularly active, and has the avatar name Oberwolf Linden  and is described as “a lot of fun” to be around and to work with. [He is both on the board and serves as Executive Chairman on the management team.]
Brad Oberwager has joined the Lab’s management team as Executive Chairman, and his long-time colleague, Cammy Bergren serving as Chief of Staff
  • As Executive Chairman Brad Oberwager’s aim is to see Second life set as the “largest and best” virtual world,  and has a genuine love for the platform.
  • Both J. Randal Waterfield and Raj Date (particularly) appear to lean more towards the Tilia Pay side of things, with Brad Oberwager more “in the middle”. However, this doesn’t mean there is a dichotomy. Tilia is a key component of Second Life (it runs the entire Linden Dollar eosystem), and Tilia’s own success and growth will benefit SL.
    • [Tilia is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linden Research (Linden Lab). It’s board comprises two members of the Linden Research Board: Brad Oberwager and Raj Date), together with Aston Waldman, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Linden Lab. The management team comprises: members of the the Lab’s management team: Aston Waldman, David Kim, Ray Johnson, Emily Stonehouse and Brett Attwood.]
    • The two entities enjoy a symbiotic relationship: Tilia is owned by Linden Research with Linden Research also a primary customer. However, day-to-day operations are carried out by two separate  teams.
  • [48:48-49:59] The new owners are bringing a tremendous new energy to Linden Lab, and are “super enthusiastic” about growing Second Life, including its educational use. What gets to be invested in the platform will only benefit everyone.
    • The key question Brad Oberwager asks and prompts people to ask is, “How will it benefit the residents, and how will it benefit Second Life?”

SL Short-Term and Longer Term

Priorities for the Second Life Team in the Next 12 Months

[Video: 10:57-16:02]

  • Immediate priority is to increase the Second Life active user base. This is very much being driven as a goal by Brad Oberwager, and includes:
    • “Drilling down into” the new user experience.
    • Refactoring the on-boarding process and orientation islands.
    • The work will include viewer-side changes that are intended to “smooth out a lot of the bumps in the road”.
    • The will will be built on two years of active study and A/B testing to try to determine what the on-boarding path should look like, together with learning from users returning to Second life as a a result of the SARS-CoV-2 impact.
    • It is hoped this work will both help LL improve user retention and also feed through to the community gateways, particularly with regards to the upcoming changes which will be made to the viewer.
    • No specifics provided, but the viewer changes are described as:
      • “New UIs”
      • Refreshed looks.
      • Easier to find information.
  • There is also the need to complete the work of transitioning to AWS – fixing the current issues directly related to the move and also on-going work to properly leverage the AWS environment for the benefit of the platform.
    • [29:24-30:00] This work includes a  lot of under-the-hood simulator performance improvements that will be continuing throughout the year.

Second Life in Five Years Time

[Video: 16:04-19:33]

  • The company would like to at least double the active user population over the next 3-5 years.
  • This is seen as a realistic goal in light of the shift in emphasis seen within business, education, etc., from purely physical world interactions towards more digitally-based interactions / hybrid opportunities that mix various formats [e.g. digital + virtual + remote working / learning].
  • AWS offers the potential for regions to be geographically located around the world, potentially bringing them closer to their core audience.
    • This could allow educational regions, for example, to be hosted much closer to the schools / colleges / students they serve, making them more responsive.
    • This approach could potentially start to be used towards the end of 2021.
  • Further out, geolocating regions could potentially offer the ability for the Lab to offer white label grids to specific customers / groups.
  • [24:00-28:25] White label grids present the opportunity for the Lab to better meet specific client requests to remove features and capabilities from the viewer – and also take features an capabilities required for a specific environment and potentially make them available across the entire Second Life product.
    • Two examples of the latter already exists: the new extended chat range feature available to region owners, and the Chrome Embedded Framework updates that allow video to be streamed into Second Life, as originally demonstrated in the Adult Swim streaming of episodes from The Shivering Truth in May 2020.

What Lessons has LL Learned due to the Pandemic?

[Video: 20:31-24:00]

  • The pandemic, particularly as a result of attempts to leverage the platform for education, business and similar use by organisations and groups, reinforced the fact that the new user experience needs to the overhauled.
  • It has also underlined the fact that people’s usage habits have changed.
  • The Land Team in particular has learned a lot about business, etc., needs of clients – the team deals directly with such requests as they come in to the Lab, and so have been dealing first-hand with understanding client requirements, determining the best for of assistance (e.g. providing one of the Lab’s turn-key solutions or brokering contact between the client and a solution provider who can meet their requirements.

Pricing and Options

[Video: 30:27-34:17]

  • Nothing on the roadmap related to pricing; land costs should remain untouched through the rest of the year.
  • There is the potential for AWS to allow the Lab to develop new region products; this is something that may start to be looked at 12-24 months hence.
  • AWS might also allow for on-demand spin-up of regions, initially building on the idea of Homestead holders being able to take a temporary upgrade to a Full region to run a specific event, then downsizing back to a Homestead.

Competition and Experimentation

[Video: 34:39-45:58]

  • Competition helps drive innovation.
  • There is no Lab-based group specifically tasked with investigation competitive platforms, but staff tend to try them out through their own interest.
  • Attention is paid to how other platforms adopt newer technologies and the challenges encountered in such adoptions.
  • There is still no real, direct competitor to Second Life in terms of size, flexibility of use, or in having an in-built content creation tool set.
  • LL don’t regard users as beta testers per se. However, major new features do require trialling / testing, which can involve selected users / tried at scale to determine feasibility / performance, etc. Sometimes the result is a capability has to be withdrawn as it is not performant enough (e.g. the VR headset viewer) and / or negatively impacts the user experience.

Oz Linden’s Departure

[Video: 46:09-46:56]

  • Oz was a fabulous colleague to work with. His retirement leaves a “gaping chasm” at the Lab.
Have a Great Week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands

 

Try These 10 Tips To Prevent Identity Theft

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Identity fraud affected over 14 million U.S. consumers in 2019, with losses totaling $16.9 billion. Spikes have been noted in ‘new account fraud’ and ‘account takeover fraud’ — two of the most damaging types of ID theft. In addition, more than 1400 data breaches at major corporations had consumers vulnerable to phishing and other forms of fraud. I haven’t found stats for 2020 yet, but we can assume they’re equally dismal. Read on for my tips on avoiding fraud and identity theft…

  
 

Ten Ways to Protect Yourself From Identity Theft

Identity theft is one of the most traumatic non-violent crimes to which one can fall victim. When a crook uses your good name to commit fraud or robbery, the impact on your reputation, employability, and credit is severe, and can last for years. It’s even possible to find yourself arrested for crimes you did not commit. So it’s important to protect yourself against identity thieves.

Javelin Strategy and Research says “the resurgence of higher-impact fraud types such as new account fraud, account takeover, and misuse of non-card accounts casts a shadow over the progress made in fighting card fraud.”

The telltale signs that your identity has been stolen can be subtle and may go unnoticed for months, even years. Inexplicable charges on your credit card bill may be chalked up to clerical errors. Letters from creditors you’ve never heard of and certainly never did business with may be ignored. But eventually, an enormous credit card bill, legal papers, or police show up at your door. You are denied a mortgage or a job. Then the real nightmare of proving “I didn’t do it” begins.

It can be maddeningly difficult to clear your name, costing hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. That’s why it’s important to take steps NOW to make it as difficult as possible for a scammer to victimize you. Take action on these ten tips as soon as possible, and you’ll tips the scales in your favor:

    1. Check your credit report on a regular basis, to see if there is any incorrect information, or accounts you don’t recognize. Read article FOUR Free Credit Reports Online explains how U.S. citizens can get four free credit reports per year, and avoid the credit report scammers.

    1. Shred your sensitive personal documents before throwing them away. A battery-powered cross-cut shredder can render your banking and credit card information unreadable and costs less than $30. “Dumpster diving” is a favorite, low-tech way by which ID thieves collect bank statements, credit card numbers, Social Security Numbers, and other bits of your identity from your trash.

    1. Be wary of telephone solicitors asking for personal or financial information to “verify your identity.” Common scams involve someone who claims to be from your bank or credit card company, claiming that there is a problem with your account. If you did not initiate the call, hang up and call the toll-free number on your statement, then ask for the security department. This happened to me recently, where callers claiming to be from my utility company and Chase Bank called my unlisted number and asked for me by name. I Googled their number on the caller ID, and found that many others reported similar calls.

    1. Keep important documents, such as tax returns, birth certificates, social security cards, passports, life insurance policies and financial statements secure in your home. A fireproof safe is a good idea, but remember to bolt it to the floor or hide it well. Consider using encryption for your personal and financial data, in case your computer is lost or stolen. See my article Is it Time to Start Encrypting Your Files? for help getting started with encryption tools.

    1. ATM Safety: Make sure no one is looking over your shoulder when you enter your debit card’s PIN at an ATM or point-of-sale terminal. I recommend the “two finger method” where you point two fingers at the ATM keypad, but only press with one. This makes it nearly impossible for someone nearby to discern your PIN while you’re entering it. You should also be wary of “skimming” devices at ATMs and gas pumps, which can be used to steal your card information. See All About Skimmers to learn how to identify these devices.

    1. Do not write PINs, account numbers, and passwords on scraps of paper kept in your wallet, purse, or laptop case! A password manager will help in two ways: generating strong passwords, and automatically entering them on websites when needed. See related articles How Hackable is Your Password? and Can This Robot Manage Your Passwords?.

    1. Get blank checks delivered to your bank branch, not to your home mailbox from which they may be stolen. On a similar note, eliminate junk mail which may contain “convenience checks” and credit card offers that can also be intercepted from your mailbox. Visit OptOut Prescreen for help eliminating these dangerous nuisances.

    1. Credit Cards: Check to see if your online banking service has a feature to notify you by phone, text, or email when you when a credit card transaction exceeding some threshold occurs. Also, when you order a new credit or debit card, mark the calendar and follow up promptly if it does not arrive within 10 business days. Ask the card issuer if a change of address request was filed, and if you didn’t do it, hit the panic button.

    1. Don’t give your Social Security Number to any business just because they need a “unique identifier” for you. Instead, ask if you can provide alternate proofs of identity, such as your driver’s license or birth certificate. Exceptions to this rule would be employers, banks or landlords with a legitimate reason to do a credit check or withhold taxes.

  1. Consider placing Fraud Alerts with the major credit bureaus, so new accounts cannot be opened without your knowledge. Call Equifax (800-525-6285), and they will pass along the request to both Experian and Trans Union. Fraud alerts expire after 90 days, so you can repeat the process quarterly, or lock down your credit file with a Credit Freeze. A freeze is permanent and free (in most U.S. states) but it may interfere with loans applications, employment screening, signing up for utility or phone service, new insurance policies, and other transactions. See article [ALERT] Freeze Your Credit Files Now for details on how to place fraud alerts or freeze your credit file.

There are plenty of common sense things you can do to protect against identity theft, but sometimes it’s beyond the control of even the most vigilant. Data breaches perpetrated on healthcare companies, hotel chains, airlines, department stores, mobile phone providers, and social media firms are a “treasure trove” of data that could be used to commit identity theft and fraud. Here’s a very interesting article detailing the 52 biggest data breaches of recent years, and what types of consumer data were affected.

What About LifeLock?

You may be considering LifeLock or a similar identity theft protection service. Although this can be helpful, no company can guarantee that identity theft will never happen. These services monitor your bank account, and look for suspicious online activity done in your name. They’ll alert you if they spot any red flags and promise to help you repair the damage. But because of lawsuits filed by the credit bureaus, Lifelock can no longer place fraud alerts on your behalf.

It can be a nuisance to manage fraud alerts manually. But given the recent focus by scammers on new account fraud and account takeover fraud, a service such as LifeLock, Identity Guard or IdentityForce may still be useful. The downside is that most cost $10-$20 a month, and none of them can claim to prevent all forms of identity theft.

Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands

Can Second Life Ever Grow Again?

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A Veteran Game Designer Has Some Very Good Insights

Alexia Mandeville social vr designer Second Life

Pictured: Alexia in High Fidelity (as a cloud)

Rather than write yet again about what went wrong with Second Life way back when, I recently asked veteran game designer Alexia Mandeville what could go still go right.

She’s in a very good position to offer her perspective: An SL user herself back in the day, she’s now a designer at Niantic (creator of Pokémon GO, the massive AR-based virtual world), and a designer on the early iteration of Horizon, Facebook’s social VR world. Even more pertinent, she was also a UX designer at High Fidelity, Philip Rosedale’s follow-up virtual world to Second Life. She sees a shared corporate culture to that startup and SL developer Linden Lab, which has hampered consumer adoption of both their virtual worlds:

“[A]cquisition was never a strength at these places,” as she puts it. “You need a strong aesthetic style (Minecraft/Roblox/Fortnite) and the ability to communicate your use case articulately to attract mainstream people.”

So what are her recommendations to Linden Lab, to grow the Second Life user-base when so many previous attempts by the company have failed?

Ms. Mandeville makes four key suggestions:

Brand revamp

“I was part of the World of Warcraft crowd during the height of SL, and my crew of friends didn’t use SL because we perceived it as a place for people to have sex.

“Today you can’t check out the Second Life website without logging in. As a new user, I would want to know what it’s about before I commit to giving out my info.

“I think some of the messaging leaning into connections could be paired with some of the building and economy aspect of SL to move away from the perception that so many people still have about SL just being about sex.

“This perception was only validated when we would talk features at High Fidelity, and we’d be discussing pose balls and jiggle physics with some of the engineers who came from Linden Lab.”

Make building more accessible

“Two years ago I was in SL looking to do some building and was completely overwhelmed with the tooling. A [veteran SLer] was showing me around the tools, too. So it’s not like I didn’t have help. There needs to be some scaffolding there, start with a few tools, onboard a creator as they become more advanced.”

She acknowledges the bifurcation challenge, where SL’s prim-based system has largely been abandoned for offline mesh rendering — but thinks there’s a better way of marrying them:

“Obviously you can’t take that external import system away at this point in the product, but I believe it to be a big issue for aesthetic cohesiveness which brings it back full circle to acquisition of new users because your product LOOKS good.

“I guess a solution for improving it as it currently stands in SL would be to make sure all the materials have a similar visual aesthetic for both tools. Get all the creators on some sort of even playing field, or find another way to even out your aesthetic. That was one of my biggest issues as a creator in High Fidelity. Getting everything to look similar whenever I imported materials from Maya. I think that can go a long way to lift the style and make it more appealing.”

Aesthetic

“SL is old, of course the rendering system could probably use a revamp. If you go take a look at it, it just feels blah, drab, sad.

“Even the website has drab colors. I have no perception of who Linden is actually marketing to by looking at this site. There aren’t any creator spotlights or event highlights, like you might see in Horizon or in Fortnite.”

After telling me that, she did eventually find event listings by digging around the official forum — which sort of proves her next point:

Highlight community events

“I follow IMVU and Fortnite and Roblox, and I’ve seen events for each of these things in my social media and in the news. Makes me wonder if SL is really taking advantage of social media, or the community is confined to the website and forums.”

Some might point out that Second Life does in fact have a large official presence on Facebook, but to her point, it’s very inwardly direct, seemingly speaking only to the existing user base. It’s similar to Second Life’s official YouTube channel, which also suffers from insularity — it’s why a YouTuber can draw far more views from her own Second Life videos, which are directed to general interest gamers, instead of just the existing user base.

“I really want to see one of these virtual worlds become really huge again,” Alexia tells me. “I think the one that last resonated with me was Minecraft. I don’t really want to have to put a headset on and I want things to just be simple to hang with my friends and meet new people.”

Or to put it another way, make Second Life fast, easy, and fun — which is something the company promised to do in 2010 after having to make a major round of layoffs. The fact that this never happened suggests they have not been listening to designers like Ms. Mandeville — or as she suggests, that Linden Lab’s corporate culture is simply not designed around that goal.

Have A Great Week From All Of Us at Zoha Islands Fruit Islands/Eden

Where Did Linden Lab Go Wrong With Second Life?

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Where Did Linden Lab Go Wrong With Second Life? (Comment of the Week)

Pictured: Official 2009 commercial for Second Life which very briefly shows the in-world creation tools in the background only once — and doesn’t mention them at all in the captions

Reader “Pulsar” posted a comment last week that touches on one of Silicon Valley’s greatest mysteries that fascinates me to this day: How did Second Life, which received massive mainstream media coverage from 2006-2008, even showing up in several popular TV shows and movies, still steadfastly refuse to grow much beyond its existing user base of some 600,000? Pulsar’s answer:

 

Second Life official ad YouTube 2009

[Second Life] was originally meant to render simple cartoonish avatars and basic but tweakable primitives with which you could create anything.

But was that bad? A game doesn’t need an awesome graphic to become popular and can be fun even if made just by cubes (you know, Minecraft).

However, then Linden Lab took a different path and targeted a different kind of people. They hammered new features into SL (sculpt, mesh…), [but] they failed at turning SL into a conference tool. They pleased the niche who uses SL as a doll-dressing game or as a porn simulator, who is happy to see every detailed bit up to skin pores. So SL has became prettier, but the added complexity distanced the crowd who enjoys construction sandbox games.

Coincidentally, it was May 2009 when Minecraft has been released and later took off; SL had started its decline around that time.

It almost feel like Linden Lab missed a train by following those marketing ideas, instead of focusing on the construction game… and they missed it again in 2017 with Sansar, that among many other issues, it started serious a bit like a VR museum experience; while the most successful VR social game so far, VRChat, [has] a weird, funny, anime crowd – and although someone found a few more serious uses for it later, VRChat remains a crazy, colorful anime crowd.

Roblox, it’s worth noting, also launched in 2006 at the peak of Second Life’s media hype, and look what happened there.

You can see what Pulsar means by “SL as a doll-dressing game” in the official ad for Second Life above, which scarce mentions or even depicts the user-creation tools. I think this focus contributed to a negative feedback loop, since it put Second Life in implicit competition with The Sims and social games popular on Facebook at the time — both of which were much easier to install and play than SL. Whereas if SL was marketed as a sandbox construction game with the chance to make real money — basically the approach Roblox took — we would have attracted a more tech-savvy consumer who’d be more patient with the world’s daunting user interface and hardware requirements.

Then again, marketing is only part of the problem. More later. (But seeing as they’ve basically been writing about this since 2009, I bet you already knew that.)

Comment lightly tweaked for clarity. 

Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands Fruit Islands/Eden

Cache What Is It and What Does It Do?

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Good Monday Folks

I was thinking what better time to share viewer Cache tips and tricks for firestorm these pertain to the SL viewer as well please check Second Life Viewers wiki page for that info. February is a great time to spring clean your system as well as sl viewer and Inventory.

 

What Cache Is

In simple terms, the cache is where information is stored on your computer that allows things to load faster than if you have to download it from the server. In more detail:

In SL-relevant lay terms, the cache is a time-saving device. When you need to see a texture in SL or get something from your inventory, it happens more quickly if the item is already cached than if you need to download that asset from the SL servers. If you wander into an area with a lot of textures you don’t already have cached, it’ll take some time for your computer to capture them all and store them in your cache. Under normal circumstances, you want to leave those textures there (that is, don’t clear cache) so that the next time you’re in that location, you don’t have to wait for everything to download again — it’ll already be available to you on your hard drive. Same with inventory. When your inventory cache is full and not experiencing any issues, then when you log in to SL, all your inventory will be right there. If it’s been cleared, then you have to wait for everything to get fetched from the SL servers again before you can see it and use it. For a more technical explanation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache.

It is commonly believed that clearing cache can help with a multitude of issues, but really it’s only helpful for a handful. We do not recommend clearing cache unless you are having an issue that cannot be solved by other means.

Cache Size

We get asked a lot about what to set cache size to; the simple answer is to set it to the maximum possible in the viewer, as long as you have room on your hard drive. In Firestorm, the cache size can be increased to 9,984 MB. We do have a way to allow you to have a larger cache, but it requires extra hardware and software. If you are interested please see Squid Proxy Cache

Clearing Cache: The Do’s and Don’t s

Be picky about why and when you clear your cache. Clearing cache doesn’t fix everything. In fact, it doesn’t fix nearly as many problems as many people seem to think. And doing it when it’s unnecessary has its drawbacks, including slower initial rez times and excess bandwidth being pulled, which can create sim lag. “Clear your cache” is something we’ll recommend ONLY if the problem appears to be cache-related: that is, pertaining to textures or, once in a while, inventory. A full cache is almost always better than an empty one. Here is a basic “DO” list:

When NOT to clear your cache

Don’t clear cache as a matter of routine maintenance. If there isn’t something actually wrong with your cache, then this does nothing beneficial.

Don’t clear it for problems unrelated to the cache. For example, it won’t help for:

  • teleport issues
  • asset upload issues
  • movement or communication problems
  • most kinds of lag
  • most kinds of crashes
  • a vast majority of bake fails
  • any problems concerning music, video or voice.

There are some exceptions (e.g., crashes related to textures), but in many cases, other causes are more likely, and clearing cache doesn’t have to be the first measure. The list above is by no means exhaustive; its purpose is to provide an idea of how many common issues are unrelated (or only occasionally related) to cache.

When to clear your cache

  • When many textures appear as distorted rainbows or psychedelic colors, you may choose to clear your texture cache.
  • When your inventory is not loading fully, you may choose to clear your inventory cache.
  • A cache clear may be part of performing a clean install of the viewer.

Note that often, only part of your cache needs to be cleared. While you can clear your full cache by clicking the button in Preferences, it is not hard to perform the needed part of the cache clear manually. You can find your cache folder by going to Preferences and then Network & Files → Directories. Click the “Open” button alongside the path to your cache files location. In there you’ll see some files ending with .inv.gz – these are your inventory cache files – and a folder containing your texture cache. More information is here for Firestorm.

Have a great week from all of us at Zoha Islands and Fruit Islands/Eden