Saturday, May 11, 2013

My Three SL Wishes Meme

I'm a little late in the game, but here goes... It's not like I found a magic lamp in the sand, but I do have wishes for SL. Ofcourse there's the usual suspects like more stability, easier sim border crossings and less lag. Everybody wants that. Then there's the wishes of Strawberry Singh. Better reputation for SL, more building talent and, - oh the stability-thing. I can so relate to those wishes.
Thinking hard
Still, there's other things and other angles... Lets start with building...

1) Easier building.
I know Strawberry wished for more building talent. I'd turn that upside down. I think building should be easier. Think about Minecraft for a minute! It's dead easy to build in there. Perfection is not within reach, because everything is build from cubes; Mountains, clouds, trees; Even the Avatars look "cubistic". The entire world has an appearance kinda like a lego world on steroids. There will never be sailing there, because there's no wind, no way to make several cubes act like an item,  - and there's no scripting language either. The building process, however, it is extremely simple. After five minutes in creative mode I had a house with doors, windows, roof and a terrace overlooking the lake. It all looked like lego, so I won't be staying in Minecraft, but... I hate that I need to go outside SL to build. Make the tools better, and put them inside SL.

2) Better physics.
This one is probably impossible. It relates to sailing. Make the water, the waves, the wind, the physics of moving though - or on - water better. Advanced physics would probably be a selling point, because SL would be a much better gaming ending, - and a much better engine for flight, sailing and driving simulators. What if SL had waves? What if moving stuff through the water caused ripples? What if the wind caused ripples on the ocean surface? It doesn't have to be all about mesh clothing for teenagers does it?

3) Lower tier.
Everyone talks about that. Lower tier would be nice. Talk about product loyalty. What's keeping ppl in SL? The sailing, the people, the parties... lotsa stuff actually. However, if we all had a bit of land, an island or just a piece of dirt in the dessert with our stuff on, - wouldn't that be the single best creator of loyalty? I'd wanna build and rebuild a marina a million times. Hold parties. Test new stuff. Sadly the tier is way to high for that; Much higher than with any budget cloud host. SL must make money, but maybe it could be done differently. How about lowering the tier to get ppl to build houses and stay in the game. Then maybe put a VAT on the markeplace instead. This would boost ppls ability to build their own stuff and put it on the market, and who cares if they take say 10% of each sale? I mean, they are providing the system, are they not?

Hmm... What else?? Better boats ofcourse, but that's entirely up to us; The ppl of SL. Maybe put it on my iPad??

A record broken

Here's a little update on the RL sailing, which is just beginning up here in the cold Scandinavia. It's been a record breaking long winter with loads of snow and frost throughout march and april. Usually the sailing season starts mid april at the latest. This year it was different. This first little photo-mix is from the very last days of april.
Winter still
Hundreds and hundreds of boats on land; Most boat owners haven't even thought about starting the yearly wax on wax off sessions; Even on a cloudy sunday, the marina is completely silent; Like a video on hold. No action at all. No humming from sanders; No trucks moving boats around. Nothing. Only a few landlubbers queuing up at the icecream shoppe. How strange to wander around these sleeping boats...
Summer soon
It's like ten days ago, when everything was in total hibernation. By now we've had a couple of good races; The wind is no more than 12 degrees. The water is around 4. Celsius that is. That's 54 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit. No bikinis. Call me crazy, but still... it was worth the wait. So why haven't I been virtual sailing as much as I usually do? Been sneaking around and, - well that's another story...