Jupiter Rowland @JupiterRowland

"you look like a child avatar or a tween"

What are your criteria for this?

Under 6 feet/183cm?
Boobs smaller than standard Athena?
Certain hairstyles?
Heels too low?
Wearing too bright colours?
Wearing bright pink without looking like Jessica Biatchi?
Covering up too much/in the wrong way?
Generally not looking sexy/badass enough?

Examples, and yes, I have to bring this back: https://opensimworld.com/post/108261

The sim, maybe even the entire grid, still runs OpenSim 0.8.2.1, an old stable version that's superseded by four newer stable versions already. 0.8.2.1 was the very first version with BoM support, but only with very basic BoM support.

OpenSim 0.8.2.1 does not know universal layers yet, though. It must have been around 0.9.1.1 which introduced full BoM support when universal layers were introduced.

This message comes when your avatar wears a universal layer. You can tell them by the symbol, three red rectangles. Ruth2 v4 uses them for optional nail polish, and I think EvoX heads use them for something else, I don't know what, I've got zero experience with EvoX.

If you take the universal layer off, you should be able to enter the sim, regardless of body or head.

AFAIK, there's a notecard for that inside the OSW beacon that's empty by default. I don't remember its name right now, though.

Okay, hier sind mehr deutschsprachige wöchentliche Events:

Dienstag, 20.00 Uhr bis ca. 22.00 Uhr: Rubeus' musikalische Rumpelkiste
DJ: Rubeus Helgerud
Keine festgelegten Genres, manchmal festgelegtes Thema
Verschiedene Locations, Gridtalk, Dorenas World
https://opensimworld.com/hop/78056
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Gridtalk/237/175/22 (Frühjahr, Herbst)
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Gridtalk/41/153/22 (Sommer)
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Gridtalk/60/62/31 oder hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Gridtalk/36/14/22 (Winter)
(evtl. auf der Karte gucken; eine von drei Locations je nach Jahreszeit; das Event ist nicht am Hauptlandeplatz und zumindest im Winter in einem Gebäude mit zwei Stockwerken)

Erster Mittwoch im Monat, 20.00 Uhr bis 23.00 Uhr: Doppelparty im Bluewave Club
DJs: Dereos, Akira Sonoda
Nicht zwingend festgelegte Genres, manchmal festgelegtes Thema
Pyramid, OSgrid
https://opensimworld.com/hop/80180
hop://hg.osgrid.org:80/Pyramid/171/151/16

Zweiter bis vorletzter Mittwoch im Monat, 20.00 Uhr bis 23.00 Uhr: Doppelparty
DJs: Dereos, Akira Sonoda
Nicht zwingend festgelegte Genres, manchmal festgelegtes Thema
Bluewave, Dereos
https://opensimworld.com/hop/80333
hop://dereos.org:80/Bluewave/115/90/23

Letzter Mittwoch im Monat, 20.00 Uhr bis 23.00 Uhr: Clubparty in wechselnder Location
DJ: Malon Wyngard
Selten festgelegtes Genre, manchmal festgelegte Ära, durchweg älteres Zeug
Manhattan Loft Party Location (momentan meistens) oder Beatclub oder Moka Efti, Dereos (wird dienstags von Rubeus und am vorherigen Mittwoch von Akira angekündigt)
hop://dereos.org:80/ManhattanLoft/150/204/1326
hop://dereos.org:80/Beatclub
hop://dereos.org:80/Malons sunny Island/234/48/1664

Donnerstag, 20.00 Uhr (mit Vorprogramm noch früher) bis 22.00 Uhr: Budenzauber
DJ: Bogus Curry
Häufig grob festgelegtes Genre und dann gern blueslastig
Keule, Gridtalk, Dorenas World
https://opensimworld.com/hop/78056
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Gridtalk/214/198/22 (evtl. auf der Karte gucken; das Event ist nicht am Hauptlandeplatz und in einem Gebäude ohne Fenster)

Freitag, 19.00 Uhr bis Mitternacht: Rock-House
DJ: Anachron Young
Selten festgelegtes Genre, meistens festgelegtes Thema (+ traditionelles "Take Five" gegen 20.00 Uhr)
Rock-House, Nihilon, Dorenas World
https://opensimworld.com/hop/78058
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Nihilon/247/152/23 (dann im einzigen Gebäude in der Gegend; zur Not auf der Karte gucken)

Suchst du Club-Gebäude, also Objekte, oder Club-Partys, also Events?

Falls letzteres, dann hätte ich noch ein paar Tips für deutschsprachige Events Dienstag bis Freitag, die hier nicht als Events angekündigt werden.

Won't somebody think of the...

...um...

...suspensions?

You don't want her to sit in anything that doesn't have leaf springs all around!

While this isn't on-topic with my original post: I'm okay with shops that offer stuff for perfectly clean children's outfits.

But whenever I see a kids' shop that offers fully nude skins and scripted boy dicks, it seriously makes me wonder.

Is that shop owner so clueless about what's in the boxes in spite of what's shown on them? I mean, I know that next to no shopkeep in the Hypergrid curates their stuff, and many slap boxes with broken permissions or even empty boxes against their shop walls, but seriously.

Has that shop owner only hung up that stuff for completion's sake, hoping in all seriousness that nobody will buy it?

Is that shop owner naïve enough to believe that THEIR customers will ALL only acquire that stuff to play nudist family?

Is that shop owner so out of the loop that they're completely unaware of the existence of paedo ageplayers both generally and in OpenSim specifically, so they can't imagine these items could possibly be acquired for sexual purposes?

Does that shop owner know but (pretend to) not care who acquires that stuff and what for?

Is that shop owner secretly (or not so secretly) a proud paedo supplier? Or paedo themselves?

Or does that shop owner secretly have a logger script running to identify avatars who come and pick up that stuff, and the shop is nothing but a paedo honeypot after all?

"Why do people persist in trying to go to places which have a specific purpose or theme, and not fit into that purpose or theme?"

Well, first of all, there are those who don't care for dress codes. Like, at all. They dress like they always dress, and they seem to completely ignore their surroundings. Same reason why they insist in walking around snow-covered Christmas sims in skimpy micro-minidresses and 6" platform sandals with 12" spike heels or on subtropical beaches clad in black biker leather from head to toe like a one-percenter. Anything to not reduce their sexiness or badassitude.

Or it's simply their style which is the more likely, the more unusual it is.

I think some intentionally break dress codes to demonstrate how utterly they despise role-playing in any shape or form.

I also know someone who is too much of an anarchist to let anyone tell him what to wear. That is, even he puts on a tuxedo when appropriate. And he doesn't Hypergrid often anyway.

Then there are those who don't know that there is a dress code in the first place. Some go to OSW and look up which sims are busy without checking a) what that sim is and b) what's happening there. Others don't know the OSW website and believe the OSW beacons are nothing more than nifty Hypergrid teleporters. They seek out the busiest sim and teleport there to meet people. But the beacon doesn't tell them anything about on-going events either, not even about the sims except for whether they're Adult-rated.

At events that encourage or require nudity, there are those who a) are too prudish or too badass to strip down and b) couldn't possibly imagine for the life of them that anyone else actually would. At least not until they arrive there. After five minutes of waiting in vain for the clothes on the female avatars to rez, or after 30 seconds when the dicks on the male avatars have rezzed, they often nope out again anyway, so they aren't much of a problem.

Not being able to dress in a certain way because there's no fitting clothing of that kind for your body doesn't play such a big role. If I can't dress appropriately for an occasion, and I usually can't, then I don't go there, plain and simple.

I even refused to go to beaches for quite a while unless they were nude beaches. The reason: I have a Roth2 v2. There is absolutely no mesh beachwear that fits on this body. And layer swim shorts look ridiculous on me without a bulge. In fact, I had absolutely nothing I could credibly wear on a beach. I only started to go to non-nude beaches after I'd managed to re-texture some sculpty bulges for some layer swim shorts. Before then, I always sent Juno because layer swimwear looks better on her.

I think this only becomes an issue if you attend an event although you neither want to nor really can, but you have to because you were invited by someone who insists in your presence. For example, if someone absolutely wants you to attend the opening party of their fetish sim, dress code is latex, full stop, but you've got a Ruth 2.0 for which no latex clothes exist, and you refuse to wear stolen Athena clothes which may not even fit properly anyway. Then you can choose between coming as you are and breaking the dress code, coming naked which you think is sexy enough and still breaking the dress code or letting your sim owner friend down by not coming at all.

Now, this goes for single sims and mostly for specific events on those sims.

An entire grid with a specific dress code has to be monothematic and therefore tiny with no third-party sims whatsoever. I don't know any such grid from the top of my head. Even Littlefield isn't all about BDSM and doesn't require fetish outfits everywhere.

Okay, now let's imagine a hypothetic medium-small grid that's all about glitz and glam and showing off. Where everyone has a Lamborghini Veneno, of which only three were made IRL, as a daily driver. Two dozen sims dedicated to this in various ways. It's actually grid-wide dress code.

But there's one sim on that same grid where someone offers self-made, therefore legal, freebies. Let's suppose they're actually quite useful clothes for legal, made-in-OpenSim-for-OpenSim mesh bodies of a kind and in a quality that you can't find anywhere else, also because they're no-transfer exclusives. In other words, exactly what Juno and I need.

That sim is in that grid because the sim owner is friends with the grid owner, the previous grid which hosted that sim had gone down, the sim needed a new home ASAP, and the grid owner owed the sim owner one.

However, none of us can dress in the style required for the grid. There are no legal clothes for that theme that could possibly be worn on Roth2 v2, there are no legal clothes for that theme that could possibly be worn on Ruth2 v4, and both of us refuse to switch to stolen bodies with stolen heads, stolen skins, stolen hair, stolen clothes and stolen shoes just for that sim.

The only chance we'd have if we don't want to pass on that content, and we don't, is to sneak into the grid when there's nobody else online and hope that our mesh bodies and our clothes are too obscure for the grid server to have them blacklisted for not being glamourous enough.

Or a variant on this: Imagine a grid whose owner has openly stated that Athena Petite is an underage body, full stop, and therefore banned on their entire grid, full stop, because allegedly, everyone who uses this body is a paedo.

Now imagine you've got an avatar based on Athena Petite because you find Athena's boobs too unnaturally big, and you wanted your avatar to be more realistic and believable. You've actually managed to make your avatar look like a realistic, fully grown-up real-life woman. No doubt that your avatar is definitely not underage. Maybe even to the point that people say you dress like a grandma.

Okay, now imagine you absolutely have to go to that grid. There's a sim that offers exclusive content which you absolutely need, or your best friend is going to get married on that very grid, or your favourite weekly event has moved into this very grid, or whatever.

What'd you do? Pass on that content/your best friend's wedding because your presence is not tolerated on the grid because your avatar is allegedly a kid because it's an Athena Petite? Go anyway, just to let yourself be perma-banned? Pester your friend to get married elsewhere?

Throw your principles and the general look of your avatar overboard, get yourself a regular Athena and increase your boobs six-fold just to survive a trip to that grid?

If that isn't relatable enough, we could try another required dress code for a whole grid: business attire. For female avatars, this means: Blazer jacket. Pencil skirt. No bare legs, nylon is an absolute requirement. Medium heels, no flats, no high heels. Spoiler: That's actually doable with an Athena, but very difficult. In fact, it's easier with a Ruth2 v4 and 100% legal clothing, especially if you know how to make your own alpha masks (or you could ask, and you may get what you need).

Again, you absolutely need to go to that grid. What'd you do? Break the dress code, stay out or go insane trying to piece the required look together that you may think won't even look good on you?

Can't tell you about the rest, also because I neither know nor care where you can get which male clothes for which SL body.

But a hard hat can be found at Wright Plaza, the good old official freebie sim on OSgrid. Can't tell you at which coordinates, though. Just spend some time there and look through the shops, maybe you'll find other useful items such as sawhorses.

This whole topic would be a great deal easier to discuss if sim owners who label avatars potentially or actually underage by their looks laid their criteria for an underage look open, and if they did so in the descriptions of their sims right here in OSW.

If they consider all avatars under 6' underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they consider all Athena Petite avatars underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they consider avatars with twin pigtails underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they consider avatars wearing too bright colours underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they consider too light-skinned avatars underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they consider avatars covering up too much underage, they should explicitly say so.

If they discover new criteria for an underage look which they didn't even know exist until then, e.g. lips like in the above image as opposed to the big full lips that come with literally every last shape in every last female mesh head, then they should update their descriptions and explicitly say that this is not tolerated because it makes an avatar look like a kid.

Then and only then do we have rock-solid proof from sim owners what makes an avatar look underage. Then and only then can we discuss it without claiming that no avatar that doesn't wear a kiddie body will ever be considered underage.

"You look too young" without explaining WHAT EXACTLY makes an avatar look too young is too vague.

"Only recently i was at Lliba and was asked to leave or change my appearance because I looked "too young". My avi AND me are 5'6 and I had on an athena petite body and an outfit very similar to the image above. Long sleeves, long pants. Not even any pink clothing. I thought it was crazy, but I agreed to leave."

This. This so very much.

Many people claim that the only thing that could flag an avatar underage is an automated childgate configured to a minimum of 180cm or 6'. They claim that avatars would never be considered underage just by their looks. Until someone writes that exactly this has happened to their own avatar.

Even then, some either don't believe it, or they think their avatar, while not fully conforming to OpenSim standards, is safe. Until it surprisingly, unexpectedly happens to their very own avatar.

Those who still keep denying it, and I guess they're still the vast majority here, have female avatars that fully conform to the "professional San Fernando Valley porn star meets Kardashian family member, and the whole Hypergrid is Malibu or Ibiza in summer always and everywhere" standard. I guess they're staring at the above image in disbelief that it's even possible to build such an avatar, much less that someone has actually done it and, worse yet, sticks with it as a daily driver.

PBR has me wondering.

On the one hand, Second Life has the best graphics of all virtual worlds already now, also due to how the resident creators go completely overboard with textures and meshes. Both the official viewer and the most popular viewer are based on way outdated OpenGL versions because Second Life itself doesn't support anything newer. Enough avatars within the FOV, and even an overclocked RTX 4090Ti won't be able to keep the world from turning into a slideshow.

Second Life doesn't even appeal to gamers with powerful machines, and I think a rather substantial number of users is still on the same 32-bit office-level machines they got themselves over a decade and a half ago because they haven't been able to afford anything newer ever since.

Not to mention that they're going mobile and, I think, VR as well. Remember that VR requires a constant 60fps on mobile, battery-powered hardware.

At the same time, they're introducing both PBR and 2K textures in what looks like an attempt at having the only virtual world whose graphics outclass Cyberpunk 2077. And Cyberpunk is notorious for barely running smoothly on absolute highest-end gaming machines while having a state-of-the-art graphics engine underneath. Second Life wants to pull this off on phones and headsets while using over 20-year-old OpenGL.

I guess we all know what 2K textures mean. They won't mean that creators will stitch four of their many 1K textures together to have fewer textures overall and more simple meshes. No, they'll rather replace each 1K texture with a 2K texture because so does the competition. Yes, on buttons on clothes. And when that stuff is ripped and taken over to OpenSim, the importers probably can't be bothered to scale the textures down.

When PBR is finalised, it might have a slow start because it'll require expensive extra software and more work. But once one big brand starts, or a small brand becomes big by having PBR before the established big brands, all big brands will have to follow suit on all their products, also because they say that PBR and non-PBR objects look terrible next to each other.

I'm not sure how quickly PBR will spread in OpenSim. If it starts on legal content made in and for OpenSim, nobody will know and care because that content won't be available on any of the two or three super-popular freebie sims.

As for SL content, until now, practically none of the importers could even be bothered to re-add normal maps or specular maps. That's why almost everything in OpenSim has flat and dull surfaces. So I wouldn't be so certain that they suddenly start adding normal maps, specular maps and PBR maps.

That is, until either a new freebie sim comes up or an old freebie sim re-emerges with PBR content. Exclusive and no-transfer, of course. Then PBR will become what EvoX is already now: a seemingly absolute necessity for the content it concerns. Everyone will have to offer PBR content. More recent freebie stores might start rushing to hang up PBR content, maybe even replace non-PBR content with PBR content. And just like EvoX now and BoM before EvoX, many won't know what it actually means, but it's probably the newest, hottest must-have now.

Those who actually turn PBR on will find that some sims will look rather jarring: Some content supports PBR, some SL mesh content right next to it is of the kind that has even got shadows painted on to bring near-photo-realistic graphics to those who use SL on potatoes, and maybe there are even good old prim buildings on the same sim. This will also be a sure-fire way to tell that the sim builder has PBR off, just like you can tell sims whose builders have their viewers permanently switched to midday or whose builders always fly and never walk on their own sims.

Oh, by the way, I expect PBR to have one good side-effect: Baked-on shadows that clash with generated shadows will finally be a thing of the past, at least on new content.

Well, I think that, unless they're really small, classic layer-and-prim avatars have the "privilege" of being considered old-fashioned weirdos or perpetually stuck under a rock before being considered underage.

Oh, and Juno's outfits that are considered granny looks usually don't include socks. They rather include too long skirts in combination with nylon without visible garters because it's a pair of tights. Plus medium-height heels which therefore aren't high enough. Also, jackets that don't fall into one of the usual two categories (midriff-baring short jackets, black leather biker jackets).

Sim owners declaring avatars underage just by their looks can go and actually has gone further than you might imagine.

I know someone whose female avatar was kicked and banned from a sim for the combination of being under 6' (no childgate, just visual "child avatar recognition"), Athena Petite and wearing too much pink. Wearing too much pink. I'm not even kidding. And the avatar does look quite sexy otherwise.

And I think I actually recall a discussion on what makes an underage avatar. Hair style was mentioned, as was skin tone.

I mean, as long as you're a regular Athena of at least 6' with a deep tan and a long lush mane, perpetually scantily clad in what little skin-tight clothing is required and always walking on spike heels of not unter 6", you've got nothing to fear.

But deviate far enough to the wrong side (and Legacy, eBody Reborn and Decadence-HG are not the wrong side), and you might get into trouble.

Also, keep in mind that the child avatar definition that you know from the past is likely not to stay the same. Especially since that SL drama, sim owners are raising the defences. The definition will become more extreme.

When the eBody Reborn hype started, I unironically expected Athena to be demoted to teen and Athena Petite to be declared pre-teen at best.

"My point being: it isn't child avatars that are the problem, it's the community and it's appetite for harassment. It is that the OSW/opensim community is so completely hostile/toxic and it has such a high tolerance for harassment -combined with an unwillingness to address harassment effectively."

That's it exactly, and I keep having to tell people: OSW does not have moderation. OSW does not have "staff" in the traditional community staff sense. OSW's staff, AFAIK, is only Satyr. Satyr is only a tech admin and developer at which he admittedly excels. But he is not fit for moderation. He isn't interested in moderation either. He has stated several times that he wants us to deal with any kinds of trouble ourselves, and be it things that are clearly illegal. He has told me that he normally never bans anyone. As rarely as he's here, he never knows what's going on either, and he has never been in touch with the community. And he doesn't have time to moderate everything himself in real-time 24/7.

At the same time, he isn't even interested in establishing moderation at all. Neither does he implement moderation tools, nor does he appoint moderators, nor does he even define community rules as guides for moderation. This site has two rules for sims, both of which are frequently and blatantly broken with no repercussions whatsoever, and exactly zero rules for users.

In other words: On OSW, you can get away with everything. And I mean absolutely everything. AFAIR, OSW itself came under attack a while ago. Others would have called the authorities for investigations. Satyr simply restored the site and shrugged it off.

That's why it's so attractive to troublemakers. I dare say that not few people are only in OpenSim to cause trouble and harass others because it's so easy and with exactly zero consequences for themselves.

I mean, we, the community, can't do anything ourselves with no moderation tools to do it with. Ignoring doesn't work as has been demonstrated over and over again. The only countermeasure against troublemakers at our hands is retaliation, and that usually makes things only worse.

And I think I'm the only OSW user who has been here for several years while still only having one account.

"From where I stand, kid avatars are simply the red flag de jour; but any issue would work. This community loves them some pitchforks and torches!"

That, too. Only that most other issues lead to aggressive counter-attacks rather than attacks. I mean, it's hard to harass bot-using sim owners if there are always at least seven avatars on your own sim and always right after it has started, that number barely fluctuates up, and you claim it's regular visitor traffic. And you can't speak up against copybotting and content theft from SL if the only thing on your own avatar that's legal is the alpha'd-out system body. So you defend both tooth and nail instead with massive counter-attacks.

I hope their sysadmin hasn't rewritten the entire CLI, so at least IAR and OAR exports can still be done without having to reverse-engineer the grid software.

Any plans for the content offered at Welcome? Like all the clothes?

Granted, what Alia Soulstar has put up was gathered together throughout the Hypergrid. A lot of mesh clothes, including all male mesh clothes, are from Klamotto and not necessarily clean, although some are. But while the male layer clothes are all standard Linda Kellie fare that can still easily be found elsewhere, the female layer clothes installed by Alia seem to have all become exclusives to 3RG Welcome meanwhile, especially the underwear and the swimsuits.

And then there are Dawn Greymyst's boxes, especially the Clutterfly mesh clothes with HUD-controlled custom textures. It'd be a pity to see them go to waste when the grid shuts down.

Yes, they aren't the newest hotness. Yes, they aren't rigged for the hottest SL mesh bodies, at least not all of them. Yes, many consider layer clothes outdated. Yes, some call for all content older than a few months to be thrown out of all shops on the Hypergrid. And yes, some still call for a total boycott of any and all content related to Linda Kellie.

But then there are those who refuse to put anything illegal on their avatars. Finding clothes and accessories that are both legal and fit sufficiently well on legal mesh bodies is detective work and often requires sheer luck.

I've seen too much old but legal and still useful content vanish for good when sims shut down, when grids shut down or when sims were rebuilt. It hurts even more if you never even had the chance to pick up the sales boxes and save them which is the case at 3RG Welcome.

So I hope that at least the clean and exclusive stuff will be saved and offered someplace else.

FYI: Outworldz has loads of brick textures waiting to be used.

I haven't tested the normal maps that were probably generated from the textures yet, but they're there. A few brick textures even come with "hand-made" normal maps and specular maps.

Do you need something to generate NPC-defining notecards from an avatar?

Valerie NatureInSim has something that can do that at ValLands. https://opensimworld.com/hop/89519

Or do you need something to automatically rez moving NPCs?

Then maybe SFposer can cover that, developed by OSW's owner, Satyr Aeon. https://opensimworld.com/library?view=44 It's basically a sit animation controller very similar to PMAC, basically something like AVsitter if you're more familiar with that. But it can go way beyond PMAC and AVsitter in its possibilites while being more lightweight than both.

It's even better if you see it in-world.

Oh, and it can handle a full HG Safari as its audience without breaking down.