/me is waiting for neural connections. Really!

Just remembered - if you wish to have a sample of the kind of content that gets created in Second Life, you're able to visit and browse the following third-party sites for an idea:

• http://www.slexchange.com
• http://www.slboutique.com
• http://www.secondserver.net

These are e-Commerce sites run by users that will allow you to search & browse for creative items, and will deliver you the items directly to Second Life. The first one even allows you to pay either with the in-world currency (Linden dollars) or US$ through PayPal - so you can have an idea of the "real value" that people give to their content. Be warned, though, that these sites are not so popular as they may seem; they have just a few thousand items available (compared to the 6 millions that are in-world). People prefer to do their shopping in virtual malls in-world, and not on web sites :) If the slang becomes a bit confusing on those sites, and if you'll excuse me for more self-advertising, you can get a guide with some notes on slang on my guide to Second Life (read the second chapter of that guide). This guide and dozens of others are online at the Second Life Wiki, but again, you need to create an account to be able to view that :-( There are still few external sites that offer information on people interested in knowing more about Second Life and who wish to read a bit before testing it - most of the dozens of blogs, websites and wikis are meant for the users who have already joined.

Also, some indicators on the virtual economy of Second Life which you may find interesting:

• The Gaming Open Market is a money exchange - people place orders for buying and selling Linden dollars here (yes, the value is slowly dropping - the discussion over why this is happening occupies a large part of the time of the in-world economists and opinion makers :) ).
• The MetaAdverse, an agency selling billboard space in-world (it's meant to advertise content and events, not "real world companies").
• Second Life Solutions, a stock exchange selling shares on a Second Life company. Their assets are virtual land - so, if the company goes broke, you'll get a piece of land - not all is lost (land can be resold)
• Statistics on Second Life, like how many people are really logging in every day, based on independent analysis. The good news is that the total number of users seem to be similar to what Linden Lab claims :-)
• Snapzilla. While the quality varies a lot, these are pictures being shared by users of Second Life. They can give you a rough idea on what people are doing or building in Second Life.

Qualien - if the issue is just poor performance or too many crashes, you may set the Preferences for your card a bit lower. Sorry for the shameless plug, but you can get some ideas at my own blog. Sadly, most of the Second Life information is really only available once you create an account (I know this will change in the future, but right now, you only have access to 3rd party sites - fortunuately, there are many!).

Beware of addiction, though :-) As you will probably see, Second Life is not for "everybody" - some simply find it too boring for their taste. But the ones that like it, like it a lot. I think it's about as addictive as smoking, lol ;)

rreynolds - there is rather a large amount of information available on interesting places to visit when you arrive at the Welcome Area. Also, when you log in for the first time, you'll be able to choose one of the available volunteers to help you out with the first steps (you see who is available on the web site and can read their descriptions). Beyond that, well, the best thing is to ask around :)

As for toon and furry places, yes, there are quite a few furry communities, although I think that not so many toon places at the moment (although many people offer cartoonish avatars for sale, I haven't found an organised community of them - but then again, Second Life is big these days). The latest trend has been to create tiny furry animals as avatars (rabbits, squirrels) :-)

And enough "advertising" - I have been sometimes accused on other forums to be just spreading publicity & advertising for Second Life, hehe. Nothing of the sort, I'm just a very addicted user, as said. And I found it very interesting that Renderosity has included the option "Second Life" as one of the sources from visitors (it shows that there must be an overlap of both communities!). I've certainly made some efforts to point Second Life users to Renderosity since I started to use it last year or so (but alas, I have been mostly a lurker here!).

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2393856

See the link above for a solution on another thread...

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2393856

aztech, see the above link for a solution!

Attached Link: http://secondlife.com/

You must apologise me, as an absolute addict to Second Life, if I seem too overexcited about that platform - that's one problem we addicts have. Things just seem to be too bright when you're on the "other side", and I'm afraid my judgement is completely biased and partial. So take all my words with a pinch of salt, and better still, install Second Life (the trial needs a credit card to join, but you may use it for 7 days for free and then cancel your account before you're charged the US$9.95 for a lifetime account...) and try it out for yourself to make your own judgement.

The first thing many people will notice is that Second Life is to overeagerly pushing both your CPU and GPU to the utter limits - causing performance to slow for almost any computer, except top-of-the-line double-CPU machines with super-fast buses, 1 GB of RAM and 128 MBytes of RAM. So the first thing to do before logging is to click on Preferences and greatly reduce all settings, and only after the first few days, tweak with the settings, one by one, until you get a good trade-off of performance vs. quality.

So, what exactly is Second Life? It's very, very hard to explain, because it's something completely different for everyBODY. It is a virtual world (and definitely not low-poly, as some have suggested - some views are rendered at 30 fps with 4-6 million polygons, and all content is streamed in real-time, so be prepared for a surprise...). All content has been developed by the users, not by the company, who basically charges the lifetime US 9.95 to give you a 3D client "browser" for either Windows or the Mac (a Linux version has long been promised as well) and runs about 1,000 servers where you can store your content in a persistent manner - by charging you for "disk & CPU space" (similar to a Web hosting provider). The only difference is that this "3D content hosting" is called "virtual land", and is traded just like land - it has a physical dimension in square meters, and the amount of land you own also decides how much content can be brought into Second Life and stored permanently (you can also store content for free, inside your own personal "inventory", which is not visible to anybody, until you drop it on the ground).

You may bet that content is traded in Second Life! According to the statistics (and they aren't much exaggerated), around US $40,000 switch hands every day. Don't be too surprised - there are around 43,000 users of Second Life, so this means that on average you're just exchanging one US$ per day, but that's fine.

Perhaps for Poser users this is not so interesting - all 3D content (as well as the programming language that enables people to interact with objects) is created using the 3D modelling tool inside Second Life (so, the 3D browser also doubles as a 3D modelling tool and a programming tool - as a matter of fac t, you can't use an external tool). Unlike any other platform I've seen so far (well, at least usable platforms - there are several "experiments" and "works in progress" and "academic developments", but they really don't have a "serious" user base), content is created collaboratively. Say that 3 or 4 users wish to build a castle and create several figures (avatars) dressed according to the setting. From an outsider visiting the place, you would watch, in real-time, the "construction team" working together. A few would create cubes and cylinders, change them dynamically, stick them together, move some sections here and there and join them, while others would be dropping textures over those building blocks, and a few would be standing around changing their clothes. It looks like watching a silly animation about people magically building castles :) In the mean time, this "outsider" can interact with the whole group, by talking to them, even offering some help...

Only textures, sounds, and animations are created outside Second Life. While most people will use Photoshop/PaintShop Pro/GIMP to do textures for walls and furnitures, Poser is used to do all animations, as well as often to do finishing touches on the clothes (you don't need Poser for that, but it helps). Some top-of-the-line creators, wishing perfectly textured environments, usually also use Poser or some other 3D modelling tool to create very complex lighting effects, cutting them out as textures, and then reproducing the same environment in Second Life, and uploading the textures. It's only for animations that Poser is a requirement - most people simply design clothes from Photoshop templates, and textures never get that degree of realism that you expect on other platforms. Remember, Second Life is not an environment for professional 3D designers, but willing, creative amateurs - like myself! - who enjoy creating content without needing a degree in graphical design and 5 years of professional experience. Creating content in/for Second Life is very easy and straightforward for amateurs, and it is also very rewarding to see your things working so well after such little investment of your time.

Now the next point is - where is money to be gained in Second Life? Through several money exchanges, you can exchange US$ for the in-world currency (as mentioned above). Although the richest people in Second Life, dedicating perhaps 60-80 hours per week (!) to the platform, are able to make around US$10,000-40,000 per month, most people are definitely not that successful. Myself, by giving classes and selling a few programmed items using Poser-uploaded animations, I just make US$ 4-5 per week, but I'm very lazy - success in Second Life is not just placing things for sale, but actively (and agressively) marketing them! The best content creators - very often doing buildings and clothes - easily earn US $1,000-2,000 per month, but it's not that they are the best designers, they are just the ones that can market their services best. You'll see that Second Life's economy is pretty much like our own - the key to success is being a good salesperson and having adequate skills.

This by far doesn't explain what Second life is and I'm aware of that. For some, it's an edutainment tool, used for teaching classes. For others, it's a virtual marketplace for content, where one million US$ is exchanged every month. Others simply look at it as a 3D chat room, where you meet people, go out with them to listen to music or watch a movie together, or simply hang around in each other's homes to chat - and once in a while, attend a discussion on any theme. Others still view it as a game, since you can build vehicles and weapons and shoot at each other (there is a separate "grid" just for teenagers, but there are young adults very eager to shoot people around in the "adult grid" as well). And of course, many use it for cybersex - not surprisingly, because beyond the chatting abilities, you can supplement it with attractive avatars, appealing (or revealing!) clothes, and Poser-created animations. :) So it's hard to say what exactly is the most striking feature of Second Life - every person you ask will give you a different answer.

While the world is based on "primitive objects" for buildings (it's the only way to deal with the physics engine, which make things like gravity, impulse and momentum work), avatars are fully meshed, and based on old Poser 2 figures. You can create all sorts of "attachments" to improve the style of your avatar - for instance, shoes are usually very detailed objects made of primitives and attached to your feet, since the only alternative is doing tricks with textures. All clothes (and the meshed hair) flow with the wind and with your movements, although, for you who are used to Poser 5 or even Poser 6 figures, even the very detailed textures you can apply as "skins" on the avatars, will certainly seem to be a return to the past. It's not unusual that many people recreate their avatars in Poser (using a Poser 5 figure, for instance) just for making impressive ads; although I have seen very amazing pictures taken from avatars inside Second Life where I needed to ask the creator if it was done in Poser or in Second Life. It really depends on the quality of your graphics card, the quality of the texture you've got, and the luck you have capturing a picture (or a short movie) in the proper lighting.

Second Life grows slowly (quadrupling size every year or so, but I guess it won't be able to do that for 2006), and it takes an enormous amount of time to get improvements (although bugs are fixed every other week or so; expect many updates and patches) - we expect a move to Poser 3 avatars just in 2006 or so.

Also, the ratio of content creators to avid consumers is perhaps 1:10, but among those content creators, the vast majority are just amateurs seeking niches where they can sell low-quality things before a professional moves in and does a product with superior quality. There aren't much more than a few hundred top quality content creators - and they're in great demand (specially on buildings, clothes, and animations - Second Life is really lacking in good animations, there are only a few thousand around, and most are simple poses that aren't even high quality. Contrast that to about 6 million items already developed!). So, yes, there is a market there for someone who is really interested in investing their free time in doing high quality content (the company behind Second Life, Linden Lab, routinely outsources several of their "commons" structures to the users - like the Welcome Area, the Job Office, some train stations, etc. And they also promote art festivals for people to show off their skills, creativity and imagination).

Actually, if it weren't for Second Life, I would have never started to use Poser or even notice the Renderosity site... :-)

While sadly most areas of the Second Life site are closed to non-users, there exist several third-party sites, like, for instance, http://www.sluniverse.com, where you can get a feeling on what people are currently doing with the platform.

GeoffIX, I've finally used your suggestion of using the "archive and preserve users" reinstallation - it worked admirably well for Poser 5. Hooray! After so many months of frustration, I can use it again! (I don't have Poser 6 yet, so I don't know if it works as well for 6).

Poser 5 even "survived" all the updates I had to install afterwards, even using the traditional model.

I would definitely recommend that approach. I did not lose a single document, and although some of the network settings and Preferences disappeared (they were not so important for me), as well as all printers, the fundamental point is - it works.

Thanks a lot for that tip! It should be printed on bold, 80-pixel-font at e-Frontier's web site ;)