What's new in Sl?

So I been offline for a long time. What's all the new things going on in SL? Is it worth ugrading my computer so it runs?

Crystal

Well, depends on how long you been gone

Flexies, sculpties, windlight, voice, adult continent/settings...

*Class of '05 as well*

~Brie

I know about flexies but not about all the other stuff. Voice was being used when I had my club I think. So what's the adult settings?

There is a new continent where adult themed businesses are being moved to. According to the lindens any content that is sexually explicit or extreme violence must be moved there.

Menu driven outfit/avatar changes using Restrained Life (and many other alternate viewers) and LBOM (LustBaby outfit manager) is new.
https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1331215
and and example touchable clothing setup...
https://uncensored.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=1640097

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The whole adult thing is no big deal. If you buy some lindens or fill out the form on your account settings, you're all set in minutes. To date, people have spent far more time and energy gripin' about it than they have in actually getting set up. lol

Sculpties are the next building thing after flexies but they suck cuz they usually look like big grey blobs for the longest time - usually taking many many times longer to rez than everything else with a full sim. Folks like them because you can make things with less prims.

Windlight gives you pretty water and skies and eats more computer resources. Pretty much every new version of the viewer requires more resources - more cpu and memory and ever increasingly better graphics ability.

Hopefully you won't have to have Zindra land cuz once they release the rest of the land to auction, things over there will cost a fortune. To offset that, however, you can buy mainland super, super cheap now - most mainland, anyway.

Gambling and inworld banks have been ban. Sexual Ageplay has officially been stated as a no-no.

The forums still spend most of the time bitching about LL, talking about children getting access to the grid, predators going after the kids, whether or not we should have to age verify and why the hell LL cannot seem to make the age verify work right.

We haven't had a really good Gor or Furry thread in quite a while though. Not even a really good "is it cheating" discussion/argument.

Stipends are down to L$300 for new premium accts. You can get any number of accounts for free now and that has really screwed the grid big time. Bots have become a staple, especially for camping and other traffic inflating things. Lucky chairs are not as popular as when I first started -- or at least they do not seem to be. However, the "gridwide hunt" has become the latest "in thing" -- usually 5-10 going on at once, plus all of the various store and sim hunts.

That is all that I can think of from the last two years.



ETA -- damn, I must have felt talkative.

To get up to speed on Adult Content, you could do a lot worse than take a look at the independent slapt.me wiki http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Information_Kit

Ratings are long, long gone - they went shortly after I joined in 07.

There seems to be less and less Linden/resident communication. I guess it didn't scale.

Camping to increase parcel traffic is officially NOT ALLOWED, but it seems a lot of people didn't get the memo. (Or fed it to their bots...) What camping there is pays very poorly - hardly enough to make a SLiving on, I understand. (I don't camp, but that's what I hear and see.)

If you want to game Search these days, picks camping is where it's at - stores will offer products or money to avatars who add their stores to their picks, which apparently (may) help them do better in Search - All.

Midnight Mania boards seem to be the new Lucky Chairs, though the chairs are still around as well. Avatars can touch the boards to be added to the list - when a goal number is reached, the boards lock down and send everyone on the list the product on the board. If not enough people touch the board, it resets for the next day and you can try again.

Lots of places have closed. Lots of long-time avatars have left the grid. Lots of places have opened. Lots of young avatars have joined the grid. /me stops herself before she starts humming 'Circle of Life'...

if "every day is a new day", then, what with four hour days in SL, there's a lot that's new in SL.
always something new in SL, new builds, new dramas, new scams, new griefings and -ers.

if you want a little something more specific, get out there and re-explore. one of the first things you may notice is a LOT of the ugliest ad farms are gone.

yeah... it's worth upgrading your computer. if you decided coming back wasn't worth it, at least your computer got the upgrade it needed for the rest of the web.