Shady Acre

 

 While checking the Bellisseria map, I noticed a white rectangle on the southeast corner of the Lonely Ranger sim. Taking a look, I noticed someone had put a huge prim over his house and grounds. 

 

 Why someone would do this, I can only speculate. Maybe he or she just likes the shade.

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

 

"It All Starts With A Prim" - Oldest Known Prim Rezzed 20 Years Ago

 

So how old is the oldest known prim in Second Life? While the world officially went online on June 23 2003, 18 years ago, people were here when it was in beta, so some objects are known to be from early 2003 or even late 2002. But what about January 25, 2002, twenty years ago yesterday?

Yesterday I found out this oldest known prim (to be technical, a copy of, but it retains the creation date) was on display at the Ivory Tower of Prims sandbox, courtesy of SarahKB7 Koskinen. It was a safe that when clicked on, the door opened to show the prim. And when examined, it showed the date: Friday January 25, 2002, 8:46 PM. Twenty years old.

There was no creator listed, as it had been made before Second Life's tools could show who made objects. According to Inara Pey, it was an Avi Bar-Zeev who not only rezzed it, but was the creator of prims. Talking to Philip Rosedale in Second Life's early days, Philip was trying to figure out how to make them, and Zeev offered to, "wrote a couple of hundred lines of code to make all the primitives in the world, with various knobs and capabilities to stick them together."

The safe is no longer at the Ivory Tower sandbox, the item being returned at Midnight. But later, to commemorate the Prim's creation,  SarahKB7 headed to Da Boom, the oldest sim on the Grid, and exactly at 8:46PM rezzed the original prim, then a brand new one over it, "The 2 prims are exactly 20 years of age apart.  I will call my newer prim the +20 Prim!"

Happy anniversary to the Prim, and thank you Avi Bar-Zeev.

Addition: Sarah would later message me, saying I made a slight mistake with the phrase "It all starts with a prim," saying, "the actual correct phrase has always been 'It all starts with a cube' (smile)."

Source: Modem World  

Hat tip: Tantari Kim

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at "Hug A Linden" at the Isle of View. For those having trouble reading the nametag, her name really is "Lost Prim." A name like that probably means trips to the sandbox are a little more interesting.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Commentary: Three Sims That Deserve Being Brought Back

In the past few months, three sims have come back from the virtual nether after vanishing for a time. The Oahu sim, the home of the USS Arizona Memorial, came back after the owner was able to finance it again. But two, Mont Saint Michel and The Lost Gardens of Apollo, required Linden intervention. This doubled the number of places brought back by the Lab. With Linden Lab seemingly more willing to bring back lost places, that got the newest writer in the Newser crew, Kain Scalia (Maus Merryjest), thinking about what locations he wished the most would return.

Read Kain's commentary in Places.

Linden Lab Announces Option For Private Sim Owners To Expand Prim Capacity

It was a little more than a week ago when Linden Lab increased the prim allowance of private sims from 15,000 to 20,000. For those who want still more, yesterday on Wednesday December 7, Linden Lab began offering the option to further expand it to 30,000, a 50% increase. But there will be a price. The sim owner will need to pay a $30 USD fee, plus a $30 USD fee every month.


Starting today, Full Private Region owners now have the option to upgrade to an even more impressive 30,000 prims! That’s an additional 50% more room for creating, decorating, designing your own store -  whatever you can dream up!

Upgrading to 30,000 prims costs $30 USD per Region and will incur an additional monthly maintenance fee*. For additional information about Private Region management and this Land Impact upgrade program, please visit our Knowledge Base.

To request an upgrade, please submit a case through the support portal on the Second Life website under the case type Land & Region > Land Impact Change Request.

In the case of residential sims where the owners rent out parcels, most will likely request the increase in further capacity only if the renters are willing to pay for more. In the case of the Purrfection Estates, Nydia Tungsten is currently asking the renters how they feel about ding so. No doubt there are similar discussions going on between renters and estate owners across Second Life.

Sunweaver Estates Get Private Estate Prim Increase

On Tuesday November 29, Linden Lab announced it was starting the increases of the prim capacities of private sims. On Friday December 2, Sunweaver chieftess Rita Mariner announced to the community that it's residents now had it.

Sunnies/Islanders:  I went around and upgraded every ones rent boxes to reflect the new level of prims you get based on the extra prims each sim got.  Each 512m lot gets 156 prims now, That is a nice boost and it's free! Those of you with large parcels got HUGE bumps in prims, ENJOY!  The ER will be open for Prim OD's 24 hours for the next several days.

That evening, Rita told me she had finished in the morning, thinking originally each lot would get 152 more prims, but instead they got 156, "It was hefty upgrade per lot."

There have been a few people asking why the private sims get less of an increase than the mainland ones did earlier this month, as well as it coming later. The general feeling of those I've talked to feel Linden Lab is trying to encourage people to move to the mainland. But most are simply happy with being able to do more with their land.

Bixyl Shuftan

Linden Lab Starts Increasing Prim Limits of Private Sims

On Thursday November 3, Linden Lab announced that they were in the process of increasing the prim limits of Mainland sims. They also stated that while private sims would also be seeing a similar increase, it would not be right away, but "within a couple months." On Tuesday November 29, the Lab announced that they were finally starting these increases.

As of today, we are extending this benefit to Private Estate Regions. Full Regions, Homesteads, and Openspace Regions on Private Estates will get a 33% increase in Land Impact allowance at no additional charge! Now everyone will have more prims to enjoy!


As with the Mainland sims, the private island prim capacity increases are being done through their weekly rolling restarts. So the process should be done by next Monday.

Linden Lab also brought up their plans to allow private sim owners the option to boost their prim allowance by an additional 10,000 to 30,000, saying it would be "starting next week" and details would be soon. In their announcement earlier this month, they stated it would cost a $30 USD fee up front and a monthly $30 USD fee thereafter.

Among the first private sims to benefit from the boost is Purrfection Estates, best known for the "Happy Vixen" beach club. There was a general feeling of optimism that night in chat groups, though one person did express reservations, wondering if a few people might go overboard and engage in "prim wars" over the holidays, decorating their places to the max.

Do you the readers have any stories about how you, or your neighbors, are taking advantage of the prim capacity increases, or not? If so, let the us at the Newser know.

Linden Lab Gives Full Details On Sim Prim Increases: All Will Go Up, Eventually

And now we know. Yes, both Mainland and Private Estate sims will see boosts in their prim capacity. No, Private Estate sims will not be getting it for a while.

Over the course of Monday Tuesday and Wednesday, it's been revealed that Linden Lab was increasing the amount of prims that mainland sims could handle. The questions people were asking the most were would Private Estate sims be included, and just by how much would prim capacities be going up? But Linden Lab wouldn't say on those matters until yesterday, Thursday November 4 at 2PM when Patch Linden and Saffia Widdershins hosted an audience of about a hundred residents. Dropping in at 1:40PM, the place was already packed, with lots of grey lingering for a while.

Eventually, Saffia asked everyone to click on the white screen, asking people to check out (this video) if the screen wouldn't work for them. The recording was of a chat Saffia and Designing Worlds co-host Elrik Merlin had with Patch Linden (Dee Linden was there, but spoke little). Patch would go on to state that yes, the Mainland sims were getting a prim capacity increase, and so would Private Estates, homesteads, and openspace sims.

Mainland sims would get a boost from 15,000 to 22,500
Private Estate sims would go up from 15,000 to 20,000
Homestead sims would go up from 3750 to 5000
Openspace sims would go up from 750 to 1000

Patch Linden confirmed reports on the Linden Blog and elsewhere that Mainland sims were in the process of having their prim allowance increased, saying it was going up through their usual weekly restarts. For Private Estates however, the change would not come right away but "within a couple months, could be sooner, hopefully not later."

Patch also mentioned that eventually full Private sims would have the option for even greater capacity, but for a price. They could have their prim allowance boosted to 30,000, but only if a $30 fee was paid up front and a monthly $30 fee charged in addition to the usual monthly tier.

Patch stated Linden Lab would announce when they would be ready to boost Private sims and offer the further increased capacity on separate dates in the future.

Would there be a downside? Patch stated there was the possibility of older computers taking more time to process the extra prims, but assured Linden Lab had been doing much testing and felt the extra lag should be minimal to most.

After the meeting, I asked Saffia about these changes, she answered, "I'm really excited by this. I think it opens up huge possibilities for creators - both in building more objects and in building with better use of LOD."

Inara Pey of Modem World posted about the time of the meeting an interview with Patch Linden about the Prim increases. Linden Lab would also mention it on their latest blog post.

And so, we have the full story on a topic that's gotten Second Life abuzz all week.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Big Change? Mainland Sims, Possibly Private Sims, Getting Prim and Land Impact Increase, Possibly 50%

Maybe this was the "important development from Linden Lab ...  that will change your Second Lives forever" that was talked about on Monday.

On Tuesday November 1 on the "Deploy Plans of the Week 10-31" thread, someone posted about what he noticed on his sim, "my 1024 sqm parcel there is showing a capacity of 351 PE when it should be only 234. Is there some bonus I don't know about or today's restart just buggered the land for the better?" Others noticed something was going on as well, and one stated, "I asked about the capacity increase on Live chat and the Linden said it is not a bug, that there was a roll to increase the prim useage on Mainland and that there would be a blog post from LL soon." This was followed by a message from Patch Linden.

Hi!  Over the next couple of days there will be some changes coming. The deploy will happen in stages. So as you see these changes rest assured it is normal and is happening as intended.

On November 3, we will post an official blog along with a video where I will have all of the information and details regarding these changes.

Keep an eye on the Official Blog, on Thursday for more info.

So it looks like there's going to be an increase in how many prims a sim can hold, at least for mainland. Kultivate Magazine claimed that not just mainland, but also private sims, both estates and homesteads, would get a 50% prim capacity increase. The growth would be 22500 prims up from 15000 on full private sims, and 000 prims, up from 3750 on homesteads, "Keep in mind that these prim increases are on some mainland regions, so your sim may not have been upgraded yet."

As of the writing of this article, there is no official word from Linden Lab. But there is plenty of chatter on both the thread of the official forums, and the SL Universe forums. Details will have to wait until the special announcement at 2PM today.

Image Credit, Inara Pey, Pussycat Catnip

Sources, Kultivate Magazine, Modem World, New World Notes 

Bixyl Shuftan

Two Anniversary Events, The CDS and Avatar Social Network

Two anniversaries are taking place this weekend. One is the tenth anniversary of the Confederation of Democratic sims, or CDS. The CDS forums (link) List several events there today and one tomorrow.

September 20th, 10:00 AM—Mike Carnell, in Concert.

Mike is a German gentleman, he sings authentic German songs and he sings them well. What a great way to begin any festivity that is to have a German flair, with an authentic German singer. Be there. It’s a little early, but then again we are going to party all day so we have to start early!

September 20th, 11:00 AM—Opening Oktoberfest Ceremony.

Come in your lederhosen as we salute the CDS flag and honor our Germanic history. The opening ceremony will then continue with German Polka music. Dance! Life throws a lot of mayhem our way, even our second life. And we all have the chance to hide from it, to sit it out or we could even dance through it. We hope you dance!

There will be a May Pole there and dance balls for you. Bring your sweetie or come alone. The beer is on CDS.

September 20th, 2:00 PM—In the Amphitheater, Live and in Concert, QUEEN!

Second Life's hottest tribute band company, Thunder Rock Productions once again brings their show to the stages of CDS. This astounding production company was voted the #1 entertainment act in Second Life for the year 2013. They kicked off the SL 11th birthday celebrations awhile back and they were the talk of CDS for awhile after that stage production.

Wayne, Pibbs, Crossfire Ricochet and their crew will be putting on a special performance just for us. This event will showcase the original Queen with Freddie himself. This production will feature an astounding laser light show and will be chock full of effects just for you. If you have to miss any of these fabulous events and performances, QUEEN in Concert is not the one!

September 20th, 4:00 PM—Bandit Eddingham Live From Baveria.

Yes, Bandit will be streaming a concert to us live from Germany.

Bandit is good! He is into American Country music. And just a little research shows he is not unknown in this genre in RL. He is inspired by many country singers that performed in the country music capital, Nashville, TN, USA. He has performed in many famous places himself, such as a performance at the one place all country music professionals seek as their ultimate career goal, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN. Yes, Bandit is a pro in RL! Enjoy this level of talent presented just for our residents of CDS.

September 21st, 2:00 PM—Religious History Of CDS-Theology Tour and Lecture With Your Host, Gaius Tiberius Curio.

This event will fascinate you, as if you are not into our community theology, it will surprise you at the diversity of religions that exists in our community. We have Baptists, Pagans, Pentecostals, Wiccans, Moslems, Humanists, Buddists and Atheists practicing their faiths or lack thereof right here in our small community. And we all get along famously!

Join Gaius Tiberius Curio as he lectures on world religions and hosts a tour of our Shrines, Churches, Temples and religious icons and teaches the finer theological aspects exhibited in humanity. It will be interesting if you are an intellectual, and if you are a CDSer, you is one.

*Addition* Cleopatra Xigalia informed the Newser September 20 is officially the CDS' birthday. So the reason it's quite a busy day for them.

Neufreistadt (158, 183, 172)

*  *  *  *  *

Earlier SL Newser Posted that the Avatar Social Network, which we reported on last month, was holding an event within Second Life to celebrate it's first anniversary. The Enquirer recently reported that the event will be from 9AM to 11PM at Prim (128/147/412).