TPV Policies - Mesh - Creativity

Lots on my mind this morning. Fashion first -- for the feeds ya know. Shown here is another of the new mesh releases from JANE, the trellis oversized tee for the Mesh March Madness event which opens March 1.  Happily, it is AVOCADO. I added matching leggings from a JANE gift a few months back and lots of mixed bangles - love those multiple attachment points.

And yes, that was my segue line!  We would not have multiple attachment points if it hadn't been for a third party viewer. True, those "stomach2" points and the like only worked for those using said viewer, but we discovered we loved those options, couldn't do without them. Eventually they made it into other viewers and now we think of them as a given. That in part was the theme of Jessica Lyon's talk (Project Manager -The Phoenix Viewer Project) yesterday during open office hours. Third party viewers bring innovation. The devs work on projects for the betterment of the resident's experience, they themselves residents.

For those of you that live in your closet (no judgement intended), Linden Labs revealed additions to their Third Party Viewer Policy a few days ago.  Some of the functionality of the Phoenix and Firestorm viewers is now gone because of privacy concerns. Personally, I am in favor of anything that keeps our privacy -- we have so little these days with facial recognition software used on driver's license photos, etc. etc.   The last new rule is the one that upsets folks the most. It is a long and interesting story with yesterday's treet.tv show still being in post-processing as I type.

I showed up at the meeting two hours early to find plenty of folks already there. After problems with the feed, the show was on its way to opening half an hour late when the sims crashed. After some tricky TPing to Duke University and flying back once the sim came back, the sim went down again. That was the story of the day, more crashes (there were a lot of folks there but numbers dwindled over time), a Linden Labs restart during the middle of the show, an ejection of host, guest and crew from the sim they were filming on, more crashes -- you get the idea. The word "conspiracy" came up in IRC a few times and honestly after two and a half more hours I was ready to move into that camp.

The TV crew kept coming back in and it was interesting to watch the process on the live feed. The conversation stayed friendly and positive and joking. Lots of credit to folks dealing with too much adversity. The bottom line is that not too much is changing right away. Viewer tags and custom colors are gone; true online status will be changing. The question utmost in many minds is the future.

Third party viewers account for more than half of the traffic in SL. While I have no giant issues with the official viewer, I have been in the TPV camp since I met Kirsten in OpenLife long, long ago. I could compare the OpenLife viewer (Kirsten's) with the Linden Lab viewer and see which one I preferred :D. Ah, let's say it together now --- "choices".  Honestly there are some things in the third party viewers that I would hate to be without -- like derender for example. Many content creators are worried about the future of temp textures.

Think about it from the developer's point of view, as creators. How willing would you be as bloggers or fashion creators (my main audience) to make an outfit or style an outfit, take photos, put together vendors or blog posts et al -- IF you had to get the OK from Linden Labs before posting or selling?  That gives you an idea how the folks that have been improving our viewers must feel.  Projects like getting mesh to conform to an avatar's body rather than using five sizes and alpha layers might disappear. So much work and money wasted.

There is one bright spot on the horizon. It takes more than the fingers of both hands to count the times The Labs have done a reversal of (or simply never implemented) policy.  From charging vendors to put free items on the Marketplace, to trademark protection policies of their brand. If you are a few years old, you probably have your own list. So while The Labs definitely don't have the pulse of their denizens, they do seem to listen to their outcry.

With that in mind, you might want to join the I <3 Firestorm or I <3 Phoenix groups -- or any other third party viewer group you are a fan of and let The Labs know that we, the populous, want to keep our choices!

You can find the groups in search or look for the Firestorm one in my profile.

Poses by: aDORKable, "Legs" Festival of Sin (new) and the noctis chair