Reading Radar

Updated 11/26 - Hoshikuzu
Updated 11/17 - Samurai Edo

NOTE: this post is a work in progress!

Naturally I have an interest in a lot of the Japanese sims, and in how many Japanese content creators, designers, and artists there are in SL. I thought I’d make this post an ever-changing list of Japanese sims, stores, and related places or people that catch my eye.

Psst. Ever-changing means I’ll be adding things one at a time, and also I may not have all the obvious ones up for awhile, so hit me if you know of something good I’ve missed, I will go check it out and post it!

A little note here, my kanji reading skills blow chunks (as in, I can read a small handful of them), although I can read katakana and hiragana, so at times if it seems like I don’t know much about a location, it’s entirely possible. Kanji generally take some kind of formal study to get anywhere with, if you doubt the complexity of the undertaking, see for yourself. So I find myself in the dark a lot when written Japanese is my only interface to some piece of information.

Edo Japan - The Edo Japan sim is another Japanese sim that’s “old school” themed and is primarily commerce driven (aka, full of shops), but it’s a good look around.

My favorite store on the sim is the 19 Sosaku-Kobo, which sells some gear primarily for bikers with a Japanese flair, but what I REALLY can’t wait for is when the owner/creator PaintO Jie finishes and releases this beauty:

I’m getting one, ’nuff said.

Score: 3 out of 5 Well done, just not a lot besides shops.

Hoshikuzu - This store/mall area of Ayame Musashi’s is on the Musashi sim. By the way, Ayame Musashi has been around since 2004, is one of the C:SI (Samurai Island Combat System) creators, and is the designer of the Musashi Blades katana, which you can indeed buy at Hoshikuzu, as well as other places in SL.

There’s some kind of freaky big ass bluebird type thingy watching over, but it didn’t peck my eyes out or carry me back to the nest to feed to the little ones, so I guess it’s ok.

The whole place has been renovated and is different than last time I went. It’s not bad, but I liked the last build better, it had the whole thing indoors and you could walk around in a big circle to visit all the stores. Still, it’s not a bad place if you need to get a new katana or some other gear apropos to a samurai. Don’t all samurai ride motorcycles?

Score: 3 out of 5 Anything Ayame Musashi does has to be pretty much ok, and I like her sim/mall idea. Not sure about the build layout on this rev, but who really cares. The gear is where it’s at.

Samurai Edo - Samurai Edo is the first C:SI (Samurai Island Combat System) sims I visited and it was where all the action used to be.

Currently it says it’s under renovation, but it looks pretty good to me in its current state. It’s a LOT different than it was before - more centrally organized, before all the action took place in the sim corners, but it did have a more rural Japan feel to it before that was nice.

Score: 4 out of 5 The new layout looks like it should be less laggy than before, but it’s hard to say without getting a group of people over there in combat and finding out.

Tokyo College City - Based on the notecard, this sim seems related to the Metabirds sim, and is in a large group of Japanese owned sims around Metabirds. The College City web site, which renders horribly in my browser, calls it a city of business and education in Second Life!

The main attractions here seem to be a college/business building which is almost totally empty save a few meeting places sponsored by corporations, a gallery, and a student hangout, and an in-world build for the Tagged World Project, which is based on the creepy Japanese acceptance of RFID tags for everything under the sun. The in-world exhibit seems to be a kind of inter-building jaunt where you don a pair of scripted shoes, and wander around with doors opening based on recognition of your RFID simulated shoes. Sadly, I couldn’t get my shoes to rez so I couldn’t try it out. Although, if you are going to let RFID take over your life, better your second one than your first one.

Score: 2 out of 5 If I ever see anyone there, I might raise that a little. Sorry.

A lot of different blogs, a lot of comments on the openspace rate increase. And so many of them are outraged and blaming LL for their use of openspace sims as residential or business locations based on the fact that LL double the prim quota on openspaces. “Clearly they MUST have wanted me to use this for my booming business!” goes the argument.

I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine and his wife bought a steam cleaner. They took it home, cleaned all their carpets, then returned it. I asked what was wrong with it. “Nothing,” was the answer. “We never meant to keep it. They have a great return policy and they don’t ask questions.” Saying that clearly LL wanted you to load the openspace sims with tons of prims, scripts, and avatars because of their higher prim counts is like saying clearly retailer X wants you to buy steam cleaners, clean the whole house, and then return them because they have a good return policy. Both are unethical and at best naive, at worst totally dishonest.

I don’t think the rate hike is a good thing either, and I don’t think it’s the way to deal with overloaded openspace sims. But come on, people, at least be honest about this, if you’re going to complain and leave SL in droves (which is doubtful, but we’ll see). Don’t make stuff up just because it suits your cause. If you really believe LL encouraged you to use these for other than the clearly specified purpose, you’re just engaging in a predisposition to see it that way to justify your use of it as such.

Well, LL’s new policy on Openspace sims certainly has people up in arms. And while I can agree that throwing more money at misuse of resources won’t help, I have to feel that most people overloading openspace sims knew what they were doing. I’ve seen it all over the place - estate owners selling “half-prim sims” to people, which are really nothing more than openspace sims, and not warning them about performance issues or overloading concerns. For that reason I do like the part in the new policy that the sim owner can’t be changed to anyone but the real owner of the thing.

I don’t think Openspace sims were ever publicized by LL as for being for us as anything OTHER than.. well, open spaces. Waterways, empty buffer areas for putting next to your sim, etc. That’s the whole point of them, as they’re shared four to a cpu on the servers.

I’ve been told by one particular Linden that they’re constantly getting support calls on these things by people who have them loaded to the gills with scripts and junk and wondering why things go wonky, or when they’re using them as residential or commercial sims and the other openspaces on the server are bogging them down and they aren’t getting the performance they want for their activities.

It does seem like raising rates will hurt people who are using openspace sims correctly, and I have to say if you’re running a water or other almost empty buffer sim, $125/mo is kind of hard to swallow. I mean, honestly, the prices per month for sim tier are a little high anyway, IMO. On the other hand, dedicated servers in the web hosting business are all over the map on price, and can go up to $500/mo or more, depending on if they are truly dedicated, virtual servers, how much support is included, etc.

Bottom line: The tier increase sucks, there should be a better way. But every time an estate owner has sold one as a residential island, or someone’s used it for educational or commercial “heavier duty than intended” use, they’ve been bending all the other openspace owners over and making them fall for the banana in the tailpipe. And now none of them like the consequences. For those who haven’t used them in ways they knew they weren’t intended for, it’s a huge shame you now have to pay more (or more likely, NOT pay more but not own them anymore), and for the rest of you, quit trying to get away with stupid, selfish, and sometimes unethical behavior you know isn’t really supported.