Cartoon of the Day: Names With Meaning

Taken at the Gen Con

By Bixyl Shuftan

More on the Return of Last Names, Expect in Late 2018

Last Wednesday, Linden Lab announced a number of upcoming changes to Second Life, including the return of last names to accounts. Since then, more details have come in about Linden Lab's plans on the issue. Oz Linden was asked about the topic at the Content Creator User Group meeting on Thursday March 22, and he answered some questions about it.

Of when surnames reappear on new accounts, it seems the goal set by the Lab is by the end of the year.

That is not something that we’re going to be able to deliver real quickly. Don’t look for it in the next few weeks. But it is on the road map for this year, and we’ll try to make it better than the very end of the year, but there are a couple of things that have to get fixed on the back-end before that can work. So it's on the list, and we'll get someone on it as quickly as we can, but it's not something that's coming real soon now.

The plan is not just for new accounts that are created once the change is in effect, but to allow everyone to change their account names more or less when they desire. Like the old system, people can choose whatever first name they want, and chose one of a list of surnames. Once a name is created by someone, it cannot be used by anyone else, even if the account is deactivated. Even if a name is changed, you can still look up the person on Search as the old name is kept in the records.

As with the old system, the list of surnames will be routinely changed. Oz did say they will likely take suggestions from the residents, "It used to be something of a headache to put new names on the list." "Linden" (and possibly similar spellings such as "Lynden") will not be options .

Display names are not going away. Patch Linden did comment on the official blog that he wondered if the return of surnames might lead to their being less used, "it somewhat sunsets the need for them." Patch would also say on the forum thread, "Only standard English characters will be permitted." So the fancy letters in some display names cannot be used.

While people can theoretically change names as often as they want, there will be a fee involved to keep people from changing it too often. Oz stated, "we're just going to make it expensive enough that people won't think it's amusing enough to get lots of names." How high the fee will be has not yet been decided, "I don't know ... what expensive enough is."

It's probable that more details will be revealed at "Meet the Lindens" events at the upcoming Second Life Birthday. Stay tuned for more details.

Source: Modem World, Daniel Voyager

Image Credit: Toady Nakamura 

Bixyl Shuftan

"What's In A Name?”

Names. Everyone has them, but what do they say about a person? Unlike real life, Second Life residents have had some degree of choice in their names. Before 2010, people could chose whatever first name they wanted, and one of a limited number of surnames. Since then, new people have been limited to a unique single account name (and the default surname of "Resident"), and a separate "display name" which could be whatever they wanted. As it turns out, display names can include some fancy letters that weren't an option before them. So what are some examples of what residents can come up with? For Newser reporter MajikVixen, she only had to go to her partner and circle of friends for some examples.

Read MajikVixen's story in People.

Mesh Imports & “Back to Basics” Tech Improvements

On October 13th in the Second Life Blog, Jack Linden announced that the Mesh Import Beta was open to all residents, “Mesh Import allows you to bring models into Second Life from the many popular 3D tools such as Blender or Maya(t), using the COLLADA file format. We see this as an important step to empower content creators to make the inworld experience an even richer and more creative one than it is today.”

Those wanting to use the Beta will need to download a special Mesh Viewer, which will gain them access to the Aditi test grid. It’s sperate from the Main Grid, so anything done there can’t be moved back with you. To help out, a few walkthroughs are available to follow. Residents are reminded the same Terms of Service of the Main Grid also apply here, so only material a resident has rights to can be imported.


Although the base technology that drives mesh is in good shape, we still have some way to go before this is production ready. We wanted to get it into your hands sooner, versus later, to get your feedback. You should only take part if you’re comfortable with beta software that may crash or cause content that you’re working on to break in unexpected ways. In addition, the product design piece -- the user interface -- still needs some work so you can expect that the interface for mesh will change and improve over time. The Mesh Project Viewer will auto-update as we ship updated versions, so when there’s a new version, then you’ll be prompted to install it.

For the beta Grid, the maximum size of a prim was increased from 10 m to 64. This change may soon be main on the Main Grid soon, depending on how these larger prims perform.

For the rest of the blog entry, Click Here.

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The next day on October 14th, FJ Linden announced some new developments for improving performance on Second Life, results of Philip Linden’s “Back to Basics” directive. To combat the “jitters” residents in a sim sometimes got whenever a new resident, especially a number of new residents about the same time, the “slow point” in the code was moved “to a seperate thread.” Faster texture loading times were aimed for, with reduced latency time for Viewer 2. A new group chat service under development was announced, with “test deployment ... by the end of the year.”

The 25 group limit will be raised to 40, with the “qualifier” that if it results in more lag they’ll roll the limit back. There was also a new Main Grid code deploment process, from three to four times a year to a weekly basis. He also announced the “Display Names” Feature was now in public beta, and mentioned the Mesh import beta of the previous day.

Response to the Mesh release was overall positive, with several people reporting some bugs. To the new tech developments, most everyone was happy to hear they’d be able to be in more groups, though a few expressed reservations about the possibility of having to give them up later. Of FJ Linden’s statement lag was being reduced, numerous residents responded they hadn’t noticed any less lag on the Grid.

For the complete blog post on tech improvements and responses, Click Here.