burning Life 2008 - What's the point?

I've been to about 12 of the BL sims so far in the last few days including one where there a live music event was being held and I never experienced any note-worthy lag. I ran my client on ultra graphics settings and still no problem. Some avatars' clothing did take more than a few seconds to resolve but that happens sometimes.

I quite enjoyed BL. There are some lovely artistic expressions. This is my third year attending.

for me, the point is dizzy banjo's "IO" thing. That, and some headphones.. best thing i've seen so far..

anyone else seen something awesome?

ok where will the wicker man be burned tonight? i do not see it in the schedule, and the Center Stages has a live act scheduled at the same time?

For me, gray textures rendered every visit to Burning Life not worth the bother.

Most visits were laggy, and there were numerous sim crashes.

I had moderate lag (about what I'd expect for such an event), but no issues with textures loading 'cept with things that cycle through textures sometimes. I had a couple crashes, but nothing major or out of the ordinary. I hate to say it, but could it be an older 'puter you're using?

I went when the sims were practically empty and had no noticeable lag, but I, too, had extreme delays in texture loading. But this is with the latest RC, and I suspect it may have yet another attempt to make sculptmaps load correctly in finite time, so YMMV. Also, this was with a low-end laptop graphics card (128MB, set to very short drawing distance--96m, I think); I'll try again with my desktop if I get a chance before it closes.

So anyway, I'd move a couple of exhibits and step away for a few minutes, then come back and check; after 10 or 15 minutes, usually most of the textures were rezzed, and some of the sculpties.

This made progress pretty slow. But just by chance I happened upon Oil Pigs, which was pretty well done. Can't compare it to much else, though, because I didn't really see much else. Oh, there was a copy of the SLRR Crenulate Station that's nice (it's nice in Crenulate, too); I think there was an oversized train assembly next to it, but I ran out of time before it rezzed.

Although I only saw a tiny fraction of the exhibits, it was enough that I now pray for a bug that causes llTargetOmega to turn off Glow.

I've only managed to go through two sims so far but it's quite nice to see such a varied amount of builds. Some builds are just nice to look at but don't have anything to do. The interactive ones will tend to keep me there for a few minutes. I think it turned out better than last year. I think I'll go back and visit again since time is running out.

I haven't had many problems with lag. The sims I visited only had about 5 people so that might be it.

I managed to drop in at few parties and dance and chat for a while. There are some amazing builds - even better than last year - glowies seem to be the big fashion this year - sometimes used to good effect, other times not so good.

On a good computer I crashed a few times but generally, rezzing and movement haven't been too bad except on the first day.

Well just by chance i found that the "MAN" was at the Tokyo sim, about 2 sims away from the Center Stage. No mention of this location for the burn in the schedule or the home page--but some people heard.

I saw it briefly. Then 3 of the 4 surrounding sims went down by 6pm. i waited about 20 min, but there was no reappearance of the sims, or the MAN, just a bunch of people shouting "burn the MAN", things like that.

That must have been when they restarted the sims. By 6 it was already filled.

There were about 203 avatars there, from noobs to Philip Linden.

I missed it. (T_T)

Thankies for the pics! XD

You bet!

Oh, and to answer the resident question that started this thread:

There's a tunnel in the Burning Life (Deep Hole) sim that explains what Burning Life is, going into a little detail abut how Burning Man influenced the development of Second Life, and how Burning Life attempts to carry some of that event's spirit into SL.

This was my third Burning Life, but the first I've really taken part in. I did not do a lot at the 2006 event because, well, I was still kinda new, and what little I did see did't seem like it'd need a kid avvie about in. I did tour the 2007 event a bit more extensively, But didn't really get into it at all. This year, too, I was going to pass on it after all the troubles at SL5B. I just wasn't sure if i wanted to deal with more "zOMG Ageplay" drama stuff. I only did end up getting a space, in the end, because one of my SLC compatriots, Loki, prodded me a bit. Admittedly, it did not take a *whole* lotta prodding. but still.

Burning Life is different from the SL Birthday in a few ways, and they're key. For one, BL is very much about individuals, while the birthday event seems more about groups. Yes, the birthday has individuals throughout the arts (including my own build this year, really) and Burning Man had groups like the trek folks -- but on the whole it seems to break down that way.

Burning Life avoids the sponsorships of the birthday. You'll find no (and by no, I mean few: you'll always find someone with an angle) commercial involvements at BL. At the birthday, some displays were barely masked storefronts.

The third difference? The SL birthday, particularly in the last year, has very much become a Linden Lab event. There was a whole week of SL5B that devolved into "corporate showpiece event" rather than "resident-created show of affection." The hand of Linden is very strong at the birthday. It's not as much at Burning Life. Yes, you still have a Linden presence, and the final say often is left at Dusty Linden's desk -- but it feels as if there is less control demanded of Linden Lab.

Now then, what was the point? To have fun, to be artistic, to make something wild and outrageous, to camp out with friends, to make new friends, to explore new horizons, to see what other residents are doing beyond the storefronts and corporate builds, to share with each other, and to burn away the old to make way for the new.

Was it laggy? You betcha. The burning last night was particularly laggy, but there were plenty of times for walking in molasses. Some of those builds were taxing, but the events also packed the sims. You can't put a pile of avatars together and not expect lag to come visit.

Was it worth fighting the lag? Any time you have an event like this, you'll have some builds that shine, and others that don't. Some we're well worth the time, like Dizzy Banjo's IO, Madcow Cosmos musical display (note that these two were made by groups of people, but they seemed to be the ringleaders in them), and others. My own was okay but esoteric (referring the souvenir part). Nevertheless, I loved the events, and found the lag just a side effect of it. Lamp lighting and the fire dancing after was well worth a bit of lag, as was the burning itself. Many of the individual events -- kite flying at Windyy Lane's build, or the pogo stick race that Loki did -- were worth my time. The random blurtophone concert at my own camp? That was amazing fun for me.

So that's "the point." Have fun. It's a simple thing.

Mari

ive been to a few of these

horrid lag, sims crashing and generally not all that fun for me

besides where else in SL can i just wonder around and see random crap



sounds like the mainland, maybe the participants of burning life should leave their small handful of venues, and private islands every once in a while and explore the mainland ... its like that all of the time

also its generally less crowded and less laggy

i really enjoyed the handful of places i visited...wasnt that lagged...some really pretty builds and interesting structures..and met a few new people...very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

I tend to drop in and take a series of photos of the exhibits I enjoy. Takes the lag out of the equation, and makes for very nice comparison and memories when the exhibits get all taken down.


Several of the exhibits were fairly nice. A lot of others seemed just bizarre or rapidly constructed for BL. And it seemed (to me anyway) that the overall quality took a slight dip from previous years.


I've been theorizing that this year's exhibition scared away a good number of more professional or creative developers, due to the weird policies and theme thing at registration.

Here's hoping next year is a return to the original spirit of Burning Life, instead of this formalized schpiel.

Event Machinima from Burning Man 2008

http://ravenelle.net/on-fire-at-burning-life-2008/

Cool one, Ravenelle!

Need to watch more BL videos? Try these!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46oxh7_EBW8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04NweJUa6fc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfIbP4e5cwk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_aCAvQlasY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7ScdwjL1W0

http://de.xfire.com/video/2d382/

http://de.xfire.com/video/2d3a6/

http://de.xfire.com/video/2d39d/

I loved listening and watching you and your friends with the Tuba's and fire dancing, that was great.

This is my first video using Vimeo, I am really happy about the Vimeo quality AND....

Vimeo has five more Burning Life related vids.
http://vimeo.com/tag:burninglife

Vimeo is soft on my eyes and doesn't seem to be all pixelated like some youtube's can be. Overall I am digressing about my new found love of Vimeo, but really it's so much more elegant.

I'm sad that those blurtophones will be history after BL -- but glad that Madcow will eventually do a more available version!



I gotta agree with you. It looks good by me.

Had serious fun at BL, I did!

I took quite a few Snapshots, too.

The only thing I had to compare this with was the SL5B. I preferred this one for its lack of selling and commercialization. But one thing the Selling and Commercialization did accomplish for SL5B was that the exhibits were clearly labeled.

I can't tell you how many times I clicked Inspect on something amazing in BL, hoping to find out who was responsible for a fascinating build. (Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't.)

I'm sure there was a Key to all the numbered spaces somewhere online. But it would have been nice to have clearer identification available to the avatars who visited the BL sims.

Still----overall, a very enjoyable experience. Thanks to all who worked so hard to bring it to us!

http://www.vburn.com has that very list -- but I totally agree. It should have been on the plot sign, at the very least.

Ah, thanks!

(I wonder if there was a conscious decision not to post the info in the sims? I guess they might have thought 'it will be less materialistic that way' or something....Interesting, anyway.)

My bet? A glitch. There was clearly a space on the access signs for it to be added to the floating text, as well as a few other places where it could have been.