Many OpenSim users actually still don't know what BoM even is. But "BoM" was slapped on all those new SL bodies and SL heads that showed up in the Hypergrid in the early 2020s, so it was simply considered a code for "this is the new hotness now, and everything that doesn't have it on itself is old and busted".
Hardly anyone actually fleshes BoM out. The new old way of putting on skins and make-up and tattoos is either seen as a nuisance but one that you have to put up with, or people got themselves an Athena 6 and a Catwa BoM head and use skin appliers and tattoo appliers on them.
Only very very few BoM avatars actually wear layer clothes. That's mostly because the concept of layer clothes has been declared obsolete in 2015, and absolutely everything, no matter how skin-tight, absolutely has had to be mesh ever since, no exception. Since Athena 6, there has hardly been any layer clothing imported from SL. One "Free Bakes on Mesh" box with layer lingerie and layer stockings. One third-party box with mesh lingerie plus layer stockings. That's all. And nobody ever wears either. One of the reasons why nobody had come up with the idea to steal layer tights from SL; the other reason is because maybe half a dozen avatars all over the Hypergrid would wear tights in the first place.
What layer clothes have been around before the arrival of Athena 6 is being snubbed even more. People only want the newest, the best, the hottest stuff. And those old layer clothes aren't just old technology, they're "seriously old crap" that nobody would want to be caught wearing.
The concept of alpha masks in combination with BoM is completely alien here. First of all, "everybody knows" that alpha masks don't work on mesh bodies. That's what they've been learning since 2015.
Then, even those who may suspect that BoM might include alpha mask support for mesh bodies "learn" that this is allegedly not the case. And that's only because they try it with Athena 6 or Adonis 4, and the alpha modes on these bodies are completely botched, so alpha masks actually do not work on them specifically. At the same time, alpha masks work on Ruth2 v4 and Roth2 v2 out perfectly of the box, but nobody uses these bodies, so nobody knows.
Lastly, the general attitude here is that alpha cuts are a more advanced technology and therefore the successor of alpha masks, having fully superseded alpha masks and rendered alpha masks obsolete. Wanting to use alpha masks on a BoM mesh body from the 2020s is akin to wanting to wear Linda Kellie layer clothes on a BoM mesh body from 2020s. Never mind that Ruth2 v4 is actually bundled with Linda Kellie underwear. And never mind that mesh bodies in SL have quickly become available without tiny alpha cuts and with full alpha mask support instead because, after all, alpha cuts are nothing but an ugly and performance-hogging hack for alpha-ing because alpha masks didn't work on pre-BoM mesh bodies.
What EvoX is and means, I think many OpenSim users don't know that either. But it's being aggressively marketed, and it's on all the newest and hottest mesh heads and skins. So it has to be the new hotness that you absolutely have to have. If EvoX is juxtaposed with BoM by having EvoX and BoM heads next to each other on the same store wall, this also creates the impression that EvoX is the new hotness to BoM's old and busted because BoM has been around for longer, and EvoX "clearly isn't" BoM.
So you absolutely have to have EvoX nowadays. Outfitting a new avatar with something that isn't the newest, hottest shit is generally understood as cluelessness about what the newest, hottest shit is. Sometimes, even refusing to upgrade your avatar to the newest, hottest shit is.
The next big thing will be something like EvoX 2K. Same as EvoX, but with 2K textures.
Fortunately, classic avatar layers, skins included, only support diffuse maps, but no bump maps, no specular maps and definitely no PBR maps. So unless bump maps, specular maps and PBR maps are firmly applied to the body or the head, and BoM can't mess with them, BoM or EvoX can't be combined with PBR. At least it won't be possible to market PBR skins because PBR skins aren't possible.
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