Here are my top 10 most viewed blog posts for 2018. This is my last blog post of the year. For 2018 I’ve posted more than 100 blog posts, received 293 likes and 146 comments. There are now 738 following my blog.
My 2018 Blog Stats
For 2018 my blog has received 43, 452+ blog views and there have been 21, 020+ visitors. Thanks so much for reading my blog this year.
Thanks to everyone that has viewed my blog this year and commented. Thanks to all those that have subscribed to my blog during 2018. I loved attending the annual events, helping out when I can and blogging about what’s going on. It’s been great fun.
My 2018 Annual Blog Stats
2019: The Year Ahead
I can’t wait to blog more on Second Life, OpenSim and Sansar. I’m sure it’s going to be another interesting year for sure.
Just like to say finally happy new year 2019 to everyone. Let it bring you more happiness and more amazing memories.
It’s time to reflect back at the last six months of 2018. See part 1 for the first six months of 2018 in Second Life.
I have included various bits on OpenSim and Sansar. I’m looking forward to more blogging in 2019.
July 2018
Closure of the InWorldz Grid
In mid July it was reported that there were two weeks of private regions growth in Second Life after the lab announced the new pricing restructuring. It’s good to see the grid growing again.
The well known InWorldz grid closed down after financial difficulties. This was a big blow to the entire OpenSim community and many decided to move to other OpenSim grids (The Adult Grid, DigiWorldz, Discovery etc). InWorldz was one of the first OpenSim grids I joined back in 2010.
The new Islandz grid is now open and the community is growing at a steady rate. There is still more work to do in the year ahead.
August 2018
The Shelter at 14 years old in Second Life
The Shelter in Second Life turned 14 on 20th August. The Shelter is one of the oldest resident run help organisations on the grid.
In mid August a new Sansar release became available which included more SimpleScripts, three new options when taking snapshots and Edit Mode improvements.
Second Life Map – 20th August 2018
A brand new continent appeared north-east on the Second Life map. The region names SSP1 to SSP80. Since then the continent has grown in size to 384 regions and it still remains closed to the public. Many have been saying it will be used for new Linden homes or possibly games.
September 2018
Ebbe Altberg At Town Hall Meeting
The Relay For Life of Second Life team officially decided to start the 2019 season a month earlier. The kick off event starts at 10am SLT on Saturday 16th February and the annual Relay Weekend will happen on 8th & 9th June 2019.
Ebbe Altberg held a town hall event with the Second Life community talking about the important things the lab have been working on including last names, tier rates, Linden homes, the cloud, premium subscription options and much more.
New look Second Life Join Page
Linden Lab revamped the Second Life Join Page making it easier to join than ever before. Everyone joining for the first time today can now choose their avatar type and membership level. Hopefully in 2019 the ability to change/choose your last name will happen.
October 2018
OpenSim Virtual Google+ page
Linden Lab decided to block the third party Android viewer “IM to SecondLife“. Apparently the block was due to serious violations of the policy on the Third Party viewers page.
Second Life and OpenSim communities received some sad news that Google+ was going be closing down in Q1 2019. For most I think now is the time to leave Google+ and try out other social networks.
VirtualVerse One Forums
The old SLUniverse Forums were closed down in early October. The new VirtualVerse One has been up and running for the past few months now. It’s very active and the community is growing pretty nicely.
Jason Gholston officially left Sansar and Linden Lab after six years. Jason started his new job as a creative director at Speech Graphics in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sansar on Steam
Linden Lab made a major announcement that Sansar will be moving over to the popular Steam platform and dropping Sandex. Since the launch on Steam on 5th December 2018 the usage numbers have not been very high. It will be interesting if the numbers can improve during 2019.
November 2018
Closure of Pfaffenthal 1867
Sansar reached a peak of 73 visitors via the chart for monthly public visitors. The number of experiences surpassed 1, 100 in late 2018. It will be interesting to see if the usage stays the same or increases throughout 2019.
Linden Lab sent out a statement on creator rights and IP protection for creating content in Second Life. In the statement the lab writes “recently, there’s been some debate about one of the more esoteric aspects of content creation, which impacts many in our community”. That debate is around the use of UV maps in mesh heads apparently. There has been a report of one designer issuing DMCA notices against many creators in Second Life.
The Sansar team released the new look at me release featuring a while new user interface, a first person avatar view, tons of revised controls, new & custom emotes, script raycasting and more.
Linden Lab announced some good news that Project Animesh had been released grid wide. It’s now in the default viewer download and all regions on the grid support Animesh.
Things that I took away from the town hall meeting..
Linden Lab is pleased with the response to lowering mainland tier. Resident owned mainland is at levels they haven’t seen for some time
The return of last names is still being worked on and it will probably wont be ready for deployment until Q2 2019. It may cost as much as several months of premium. Name change only for people with premium membership
Linden Lab are working on new genres for Linden Homes and parcels will come in difference sizes. It looks like the new SSP continent will be the new Linden Homes continent.
Animesh shipped this week on the grid and the viewer is in release
Linden Lab are looking at possible new features for Premium members including adding more group slots in 2019
There is a major project for 2019 to renew the Mainland group textures which is possible
Marketplace wish lists, favourites, bug fixes work continues quickly
Grid wide experiences will be coming next year when premium accounts get upgrades
The cloud migration is a big project still and more work still need to be done for moving stuff
SL rail system needs work on and its on the roadmap
The classic system avatar is not being phased out
The Pfaffenthal 1867 regions closed down in Second Life and moved to Sansar after having a strong presence inworld for many years. Pfaffenthal 1867 is moving over to Sansar because the land is free, the graphics is better, the use of VR headsets and real physical interactivity.
Sansar officially launched on Steam on 5th December 2018. It’s going to be interesting to see if Sansar can now reach a much bigger audience with it now being on the Steam platform. We will have to wait and see. Sansar now has greater potential to reach thousands of users in 2019/2020.
Google announced that Google+ will now be shutting down in April 2019 after the company suffered another data leak effecting 52.5 million users.
The Firstorm team released the Animesh Beta viewer. The full Animesh supported Firestorm release will be coming in early 2019. This new viewer release 6.0.1 is now fully merged to the 6.0.0 Linden code-base. There are plenty of changes, bug fixes, improvements in this latest release. Full Change Log
Linden Lab published their 2018 end of year key accomplishments and new feature highlights. The blog post goes into detail on new experiences, the Environment Enhancement Project, performance updates, reduction on land costs and much more.
OFFICIAL 2018 STATISTICS
Residents spent an estimated 336 million hours inworld
50 million+ chat messages daily
Daily concurrency rates remain stable
$65 million was paid out to Residents
Over 5 million virtual goods for sale on the Second Life Marketplace
This active population helped keep the Second Life economy healthy in 2018
2019: The Year Ahead
You can expect to see more improvements made to Second Life in 2019 including new grid-wide experiences, the ability to change your name, migration to the cloud and Linden Home updates.
Animesh and EEP will improve greatly next year I think. Second Life will have its 16th birthday in June 2019. The birthday events are always big and exciting. The new SSP regions are still being worked on and the lab will reveal details on that next year. 2018 has been a good year for region growth in Second Life I think after years of the grid declining. Hopefully the growth trend will continue in 2019.
I’m looking forward to all the annual events and more adventures next year.
There is a few things that are pretty worrying though Flickr and Google+ in 2019. Flickr because of the recent account changes they have made (your safe if you upgrade to PRO) and Google+ because it’s shutting down in April. Both of these platforms have a strong Second Life user-base and next year it’s going to be a pretty rough I think.
I think OpenSim will continue to do well and I guess the big question can Sansar draw in more users on Steam in 2019 ?.
It’s going to be an interesting 2019 ride for sure. Anything can happen and I’ll be ready to blog about it.
Bay City will be hosting their annual prim drop event on new years eve starting at 11.30pm SLT on Monday 31st December 2018. The event will be happening at Bay City Fairgrounds at the North Channel region in Second Life.
Earlier this year Bay City celebrated their 10th anniversary in Second Life which was incredible. I’m sure 2019 will be another awesome year for Bay City events in Second Life.
Food and drink will be provided. There will be a hour long DJ playing tunes to bring in the new year too.
Everyone is welcome to attend to celebrate the new year 2019 in.
As there is one week left of 2018 it’s now a good time to reflect back at 2018. This is part 1 looking at the first six months of 2018 in Second Life, Sansar and OpenSim. There have been many great memories and some not so good moments this year.
I think probably the biggest things I’ll remember most about 2018 is the following…
Second Life reached the big 15 years milestone
Linden Lab reducing the land prices (more region growth this year)
The announcement that last names were returning later in 2018
The closure of the InWorldz grid
Sansar launching on Steam
Bay City turned 10 in Second Life
SLUniverse Forums changing over to VirtualVerse
January 2018
The year started with a bang with Pete Linden departing Linden Lab after nine years. Pete decided to move over to Facebook. Pete Linden served under four Second Life CEOs including Philip Rosedale, Mark Kingdon, Rod Humble and Ebbe Altberg.
Firestorm released viewer update (5.0.11.53634) bringing the Asset-HTTP Project, an updated codebase 5.0.9, newer group abilities, Havok support for Windows & Mac versions and much more to the viewer.
February 2018
One Billion Rising opened in Second Life for 24 hours over four regions. Hundred’s of visitors attended and danced for hours.
My blog reached 600, 000 hits and 700 blog followers which I was very proud about. I hope for more blog hits and blog followers during 2019+. Again thanks so much for subscribing and spreading the word this year.
March 2018
Linden Lab reduced mainland costs by 10 percent and doubled the mainland allotment for premium members from 512 sq to 1024 sq meters for free. Many have said for ages that the cost of land is too darn high in Second Life.
Ebbe Linden talked at VWBPE 2018 about VR, Second Life, Sansar, education, land prices and much more. There was no major announcements this year to mention but rather small updates.
The attendance was pretty good this year for both inworld and online numbers. A few Lindens made a special appearance at the Main Auditorium and it’s always great to see them wondering around.
Linden Lab announced that last names would return late 2018 however it’s now announced that last names have been pushed back into early-mid 2019.
It was announced that OpenSim total land area was still increasing month on month. The biggest grid on OpenSim back in March 2018 was the OSGrid followed by the Atek Grid. Since the summer Hypergrid Business decided to stop publishing regular statistics.
April 2018
Linden Lab published a new SL15B in preparation for the 15th anniversary celebrations. The new Infographic shows the total number of Second Life accounts there have been, the total time users have spent in Second Life. new registrations, virtual goods created in the marketplace, chat messages sent daily and the most popular categories on the Second Life Destination Guide.
Linden Lab opened up a new Instagram account in celebration of the 15th birthday celebrations that took place in June 2018. Follow and discover the latest cool experiences.
May 2018
A pretty quiet month apart from Bay City 10th anniversary celebrations that took place in mid May 2018. The annual parade and live concert took place with big attendance numbers. The live performers did a great job this year and the organisers.
Ebbe Altberg and Philip Rosedale was featured on Second Life 15th birthday video. Ebbe was in the video speaking from Amsterdam. Ebbe mentioned that 68 million US dollars was paid to creators in 2017. 5 million virtual goods listed in the marketplace. Linden Lab are moving massive amounts of infrastructure into the cloud. At the end of the video there is a special surprise appearance from the founder of Second Life Philip Rosedale.
Second Life officially turned 15 years old on 23rd June 2018. Second Life is still one of the best virtual worlds out there today and still going strong. Here’s to another 15 years and more!
Elenia Llewellyn announced some updates on the Islandz pricing and packages mid this week. Over the past couple of months there has been discussions behind the scenes to look at the possible options that could be available. Check out the pricing layout above.
Here is the full blog post about the pricing…
We’ve had quite a while to look at our options in pricing and packages for Islandz over the last couple of months, and we’ve had a lot of questions as well. We’ve come up with a considerable amount of packages available, while keeping in mind we wanted to lower pricing at the same time.
First thing to note, is that these packages are an entire machine. From an inventory standpoint, this makes far more sense to us than the dedicated server system we had before. When someone would leave, we’d take down their region, but we’d have an empty slot that was not producing monies for the machine. Now, if someone leaves, we remove their regions, shut down the machine, and we’re no longer paying for it.
Second thing to note, we have way more flexibility than ever before with our packages and pricing. For example, let’s say you wish to have a region for a weekend event. We can in the future, set these up for someone based on an hourly rate, rather than a monthly rate.
Third and final note, we are not posting these to tell OAR region holders they have to buy a region to get their OARS. We’ve had interest in the pricing obviously, but also interest from people to have a region to play around in while we finish off the OAR loading command. That work is ongoing while we scan the OARS for the assets, which will be needed for the OAR load command to function properly. That said, if you are an OAR region holder waiting for your OAR file(s), we will be more than happy to work with you in scheduling OAR loading so you don’t lose anything current. It will be up to YOUR schedule of when we do the loading. For the rest of the OARS we need to load, more info will be coming in the next week or two.
The final part of the blog post reads..
There are a couple of packages beyond the listing above that are more geared towards landlords, which gives them a nice discount.
I hope this ends some of the confusion surrounding what is still in place vs what is not, and how we’re structuring this. Do note, my only real concern in pricing is the Lite Package as I see it as a large increase from our Scenics which is why I’m considering making it cooperative, so the cost doesn’t fall totally on the user. And while 2×2’s are now at $99 per set of 4 instead of $85, the configuration is anyway you want it on those 4 regions. They do not have to be touching, they do not have to be in a square, you can place them however you like. You can have one neighboring a friend, and three as a cluster. Or not. This is totally up to you now.
I wish everyone a really great day, and I’ll be watching the comments for suggestions and thoughts!
ETA: We added the lighter Lite-4 option, changed the pricing on Silver-4 (also it’s name to be more in align with the packages), changed the names on the packages for Gold, and added the Gold-20 package. Also added the last 2 packages that were not listed before.
2nd ETA: Due to typo, we changed the Standard package from $49 to $39.
Islandz welcome area
Islandz Stats Update – (22nd December 2018)
In the last few weeks the grid numbers in terms of existing residents opting in and new regions have been growing steadily. New registrations are still closed at the moment. The Islandz website is still under going maintenance work. There is still more work left to do apparently.
Users Registered: 802
Total Regions: 38
Not long until the big 1, 000 users registered will be reached.
Come one – come all to the Snowball Arena for a friendly ice battle of epic proportions! This Snowball Showdown means you’re free to pelt your fellow Second Life Residents and Lindens with a bevy of sparkling snowballs! But the Lindens and your fellow Residents get to return fire with their own avalanche of snow-arsenal.
The battle commences Friday December 21st from 11 am to 1 pm SLT. Spots are limited, so be sure to get there early to grab your snow launching weaponry from the vendors around the arena.
On Wednesday 19th December Linden Lab published their end of year key accomplishments and new feature highlights for 2018 which is pretty interesting to read through. The lab have added some useful statistics in the blog post on money (pay outs), hours spent inworld, daily chat messages, daily concurrency and virtual goods.
Official 2018 Statistics
Residents spent an estimated 336 million hours inworld
50 million+ chat messages daily
Daily concurrency rates remain stable
$65 million was paid out to Residents
Over 5 million virtual goods for sale on the Second Life Marketplace
This active population helped keep the Second Life economy healthy in 2018
The lab have seen some growth in the overall land market including increases in the land ownership, more region owners, more parcel owners, more group owned land and more regions on the grid.
It’s great to see the lab publishing positive growth statistics on the Second Life official blog and to see the Second Life economy doing well is most welcome news.
2018: a look back at the year gone by
Celebrating 15 years of Second Life
Second Life recently turned 15 and, to mark the occasion, the community held a jam-packed SL15B celebration across several crystal-themed sims. In addition, Linden Lab organized several birthday events including MusicFest and an ambitious Shopping Event. Relive the highlights in the SL15B Flickr feed. So… is anyone ready for SL16B yet?
Reduction in land costs
What a way to start the year! Early in 2018, we announced a 10 percent reduction in Mainland costs and doubled the Mainland allotment for Premium members. Then, in July we continued to reduce costs by lowering monthly maintenance fees on Private Estates by up to 15% with one-time land setup fees reduced by as much as 41%. As a result, land is now more affordable than ever!
Performance updates and new features
As part of our commitment to improving Second Life, we announced plans for 15 enhancements and features on our product road-map. Many of these improvements are already in place or are close to completion, while work continues to perfect additional enhancements and features for 2019.
Estate Owners also saw improvements to the Land Manager page including web-based region restarts. There is also an Estate Access Management Release Candidate Viewer, which simplifies many Estate Management tasks, including ban list improvements. It will be making its way to the default release soon.
Speaking of land … there is the overhaul for Auctions with several key improvements and a serious facelift – and we’ll soon add the ability for Residents to create Auctions to sell the land that they own.
In November, we unveiled the long-anticipated debut of Animesh, which allows independent objects to use rigged mesh and animations. We’re already starting to see some creative ways to take advantage of Animesh. This new “dancing Santa” from Blow Up is an Animesh companion, which can follow you around and even dance with you as you celebrate the holidays in Second Life. Or for you. Santa is cool with whatever.
Environment Enhancement Project (EEP)
The Environment Enhancement Project (EEP), is a series of new customizations in the environment rendering system (also known as Windlight). Soon, you will be able to create and share even more advanced environment settings including up to four different sky layers which can be set independently. Check out this preview video that shows early testing on the Second Life Beta grid from Resident Silas Merlin:
Testing also continues for Bakes on Mesh, a new feature that allows system avatar baked textures to be shown on mesh attachments. We’re hoping this will help us all ditch some of those avatar onion layers in the new year.
We also introduced the new Swaginator with two ambitious seek-and-find events. As part of our SL15B event, we created 15 limited-edition gifts for a Birthday Gift Grab grid-wide hunt that extended over a whopping 15 weeks! More recently, we held the Winter Swaginator Hunt which included five hidden gifts created exclusively for holiday hunters. There were also numerous exclusive shopping and community events, which are always a blast! Look out for the traditional Snowball Fight.
Here are the interesting insights into General and Mature-rated places and items:
You can expect to see more improvements made to Second Life in 2019 including new grid-wide experiences, the ability to change your name, migration to the cloud and Linden Home updates.
Second Life will turn 16 years old in June 2019 and it’s going to be incredible.
To add to this is Animesh and EEP will have a much more positive impact I think in Second Life in 2019. According to Linden Lab this week last names are taking a bit longer than expected but it’s definitely still being worked on. It will be interesting to see what the new SSP regions will be used for next year. It will be good to see the regions finally open to the public.
I think communications between the lab and the Second Life community will improve even more next year. Another year of Linden Lab user group hours will take place for sure along with music, town hall events. Hopefully Second Life will continue to grow further next year (more regions, sales etc) with probably more interesting announcements along the way.
We will have to wait and see.
Have any highlights from 2018 ? What do you think will happen in 2019 for Second Life ?
On Monday 17th December the Firestorm Team announced the long-awaited Firestorm Animesh update (v6.0.1.56538). The new Animesh feature in Firestorm is a public beta currently. The full Animesh supported Firestorm release will be coming in early 2019.
This new viewer release 6.0.1 is now fully merged to the 6.0.0 Linden code-base. There are plenty of changes, bug fixes, improvements in this latest release. See the full change log below.
You can now view and get sample Animesh at the following locations:
The Firestorm team have announced that there will be a three-hour dance party happening today from 2pm SLT until 5pm SLT from many live performers in Second Life. The party will take place over at the Firestorm regions (SLURLs below). Jessica Lyon will be there along with many other Firestorm team members.
Here are the live performers scheduled for today..
2pm – 3pm – Savannah Rain
3pm – 4pm – Max Kleene
4pm – 5pm – Annette Seranade
Arrive early as the regions will fill up quickly. Apparently there might be a surprise at the end of the party.
Here is the full blog post by the Firestorm Team…
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and for whatever else you celebrate! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Please join the Firestorm Team as we host a 3 hour music and dance party on Saturday December 15th in the Firestorm Gateway regions!
Jessica Lyon will be there among many other Firestorm Team Members and we hope to see you too!
Slurls (click a random one so we don’t all end up in the same region!)
The OpenSim Festival 2019 will be taking place from 1st to 3rd March with live performances and there will be plenty of great exhibits to check out via the hypergrid. Above is a short new promo for OpenSim Fest 2019 which is going to be incredible.
A full festival schedule will be posted nearer to the time.
See below for more details…
What is OpenSim Fest?
From the ashes of AvatarFest it is with great pleasure we would like to announce Opensim Fest rising like a phoenix. OpenSim Fest is the celebration of the strength and diversity of the hypergrid user community. For the community, by the community. The format, the idea and the aims of OpenSim Fest will stay true to AvatarFest and we hope to be worthy custodians for Han and Eryn.
We do not represent corporations, companies nor grids – we are the customers, users, builders and dreamers who live out here, sharing our dreams and creations with one another.
OpenSim Fest Weekend and beyond
There are two parts to the festival, the first is the weekend of live performances on the Opensim Fest grid on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of March 2019. and secondly you will be able to visit the region via the hypergrid to see the exhibits until the 6th April 2019. Nearer the time of the festival a full schedule will be posted and pages will be posted to the site with a full list of performers and exhibitors.
If you have been an exhibitor or performer and have anything on the festival region or in your grid avatar inventory you will need to export or transfer it by the 20th April 2019. All the grid databases, the region, website and grid accounts will be deleted on the 21st April 2019. The only thing that will remain throughout the year will be the main website as we will be using that each year.”
What can YOU do to be a part of OpenSim Fest 2019?
Creative Builders & Artists – there are build / Display areas waiting to be filled with unique creations! Please speak to Leighton Marjoramat leighton@opensimfest.org or Bill Blight at bill@opensimfest.org to reserve yours and receive guidelines information.
Live Performers, Live DJs – Performing Artists (Live Musicians, DJs) Please contact Cataplexia Numbers at cataplexia@opensimfest.org
Exhibitors, performers and volunteers will be asked to join the Discord server so we can communicate easier. To join the Discord server click follow this link in your browser https://discord.gg/T7QN2mZ (discord is a very useful real time collaboration tool and there is a desktop app you can download). We encourage all to participate and be a part of the Community festival.
You can come by and visit us at Expo region 5/Booth number 26 at this years OpenSimulator Community Conference (OSCC 2018) if you would like to ask us any questions or sign up as an contributor to Opensim Fest. Finally the grid will be open to the hypergrid so anyone can come and then in January 2019 the region will be restricted to builders (then the builds will a surprise at the fest in March).
Daniel Voyager 
