Socially|Mundane

I've been thinking about my favorite pet-peeves of Second Life for a while now. No, I don't mean all the Linden Lab SNAFUs or the Second Life Viewer bugs or the general wonky nature of the Second Life Grid.

I'm referring to those things in-world, usually the cause of which are residents themselves. So I am going to work my way through my top-ten pet-peeves list. But rather than just plop a bullet lists here, I'm hoping to elaborate on each, so you know why it's a pet-peev. And that if any apply to you directly, you'll understand why it's a pet-peeve and so irritating not only to me, but likely many, many others who come into your presence.

At the top of my list are "facelights". Gee, thank you Torley, {frowns with a finger-wag}.

First of all, if you feel the utter need to intentionally wear a facelight in Second Life, you have a serious vanity issue that needs consideration of professional psychological help.

Figure 1: A freebie facelight that steals five local light sources from everyone else around you. Show transparent is switched-on here.

There are a couple of issues with facelights that the wearer is certainly not aware of. The reason for facelights is simple enough: it brightens the face to present a more 'photographic' or 'natural' look to your avatar's appearance.

This certainly worked well with the older, pre-"WindLight" viewers. But the new WindLight viewers have changed the entire graphics engine of the software and now facelights are simply hideous, among other problematic issues.

First it was one facelight, then two and now I sometimes see four or five on one person! The first issue is how bad it actually makes you look. Especially in virtual nighttime. Your entire avatar is completely washed-out - the brightness factor is astonishing. However, because you always see yourself from the rear, you just don't see how horrific you actually appear to everyone else.

Figure 2: The incredible wash-out that occurs with facelight during virtual night time. The next picture is identical, but our model wears ebony skin. Not as bad, but still a bit over-the-top.

Not to mention that unnerving glowing light that bounces around every time you move your mouse or walk around.

The other issue is that the SL Viewer allows only six "local" light sources at any one time. So, if I am standing on a nicely built street with flame torches or other means of lights, when you come anywhere within range of me, my viewer turns those off, so it can show me your face.

You are stealing a pleasurable Second Life experience from me. So facelights not only make you look horrid, they make you rude and you don't even know it. You are stealing away the visual experience of everyone within a 96-meter range of you, wherever you go. And if you have three or more facelights attached to you, the more you steal.

You thief.

Figure 3: A side-by-side comparison of a fair-skinned model with and without facelights in virtual twighlight:

Figure 4: And the same side-by-side comparison of the same model and same facelight, but wearing an ebony-flavored skin with and without facelights in virtual twighlight:

Certainly, this comparison may make it appear the facelight looks better. This is because of the stark contrast in the side-side comparison, and the brightly colored background of this web page. (Our eyes are naturally attracted to brighter images.) However, when the entire scree is dark, the facelight is a rather strikng exception to the scene. Startling in a negative way, in fact.

Envision the whole scene without a facelight and the form and face and color of the skin is considerably more natural, and the natural (virtual) light plays off the skin, and with the changing light - variety in it - which I personally find more beautiful. And remember: this is supposed to be TWILIGHT - technically, the sun isn't even up yet.

By the way, all of these images are 'untouched' - they have not been doctored in any way. These are straight-to-disk photos from in-world. The only adjustment was in cropping the images for a better fit here.

Part of the problem is that facelights are attached to prim-hair. So I blame the creators of those. It's a shame because most in SL wouldn't know how to edit that hair to remove the facelights. Hell, why don't you go out and get a Facelight 3000 and do it right? Your vanity attitude will thank you greatly.

So I am making an edict: on my sims, you will be asked to remove any facelight you have on. I know there are fancier scripted versions, so just turning them off will suffice as well.

I really don't care how fugly you are, I'm just tired of you ruining my SL experience by stealing the lighting which makes the entire scene so enjoyable. It's as though you are forcing your self-importance down my throat and everyone else around you.

You vein bitch.

Yes, that statement is directed to you guys, too.

However, if you absolutely insist on wearing a facelight on my sim, I will be happy to provide you with the only authorized, approved and endorsed facelight here. This will be the "Facelight 4400 Turbo. I mean, if you're going to ruin it for the rest of us, you might as well ruin it big, right?

A dispensing vendor is available at all TP points, giving this facelight for free. No need to drop it on the ground and unbox it. Just wear it and away you go.

So if I see you are wearing a facelight and it's not this one, I will drop this onto you and give you a one-time courtesy request to remove your existing facelight and put this one on or be ejected from my sim.

The Facelight 4400 Turbo:

And it is stunningly beautiful at night!

Get it here.

In the mean-time, if you wear a facelight, please, Please, PLEASE at least learn how to turn the fecking thing off!

In short: facelight = nuclear fail.