Kaithleen’s is a store with a wonderful selection of women’s clothing—everything from formal ballgowns to sexy lingerie! If you join the Kaithleen’s group for just L$5, you can pick up nine free gifts from the group gift wall:
Here Vanity Fair is wearing two of the group gits: a metal-trimmed minidress that comes in black or pink (with a HUD to change the metal to one of seven different colours), plus the updated version of Kaithleen’s universal thong underneath (which also comes with a HUD with 17 different colours). The thong comes in versions to fit the Maitreya Lara, Belleza (Venus, Isis, and Freya), Slink (Physique and Hourglass), eBody Curvy, and the new TMP Legacy mesh avatar bodies.
But there’s also a hunt going on until Sept. 30th! Search for rotating golden coins hidden throughout the Kaithleen’s mainstore and you can snap up some well-designed outfits for only L$10 each:
Let’s look at three of the hunt items. The Snow ballgown in midnight blue has some lovely attention to detail, with lacing up the back and metal eyelets, both of which you can recolour using the included HUD:
Back view of the Snow gown
Next up is the curve-hugging black Ava Chance catsuit (there’s a HUD to change the colour of the stripes and the straps):
Finally, we have the beautiful Cream Cake ballgown in white, absolutely perfect for your Second Life wedding or another formal occasion!
Let’s make one thing very clear: I am not a happy camper. My first two blogposts I made very early this morning about the most recent update to Sansar (here and here) were bouquets to Ebbe Altberg and his team for a job well done, but this third blogpost is about a major beef I have with the new Avatar 2.0 system, specifically the new female avatar.
I decided to load up my Vanity Fair avatar to see what kind of impact the move to Avatar 2.0 would have on her inventory. I already knew that I would lose all the old custom avatars, as well as any rigged clothing and hair, but I wanted to see what I was left with, and how I could work with what was left.
The change was actually pretty wrenching for me. I hadn’t anticipated that I would lose EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. PAIR. OF. SHOES. I had ever bought! I was left with one pair of tan boots and that was it. I would have thought that at least shoes could have been carried over from Avatar 1.0 to Avatar 2.0!
And, as expected, all my old hairstyles were gone, replaced by the six default female hairstyles, none of which I liked. *sigh*
Another very unpleasant surprise was that Linden Lab removed all their previous default clothing from my inventory, except for the futuristic Nexus top, pants, and shoes I was wearing! What the hell, Linden Lab?!?? Couldn’t you have offered us some NON science-fiction outfits? Are we supposed to be an all-science-fiction, all the time, now?!??
I am not a fan of any of the preset face shapes, or the choice of skin tones and eye colours. Would it have killed Linden Lab to give us a few more options in these areas, especially since we have to wait for custom skins and eyes? This is the best I could come up with on short notice, without touching any of the sliders or the face deformation buttons:
Vanity Fair, Avatar 2.0
A little boring, but a perfectly serviceable starting point.
Now to get to the main reason I am so upset. The default basic female body shape is absolutely ridiculous. She’s too elongated, her shoulders and hips are too narrow, and her arms look like they have no muscles at all! I honestly cannot believe that we have been given such an unrealistic starter female avatar. What the hell was Linden Lab thinking?!?? I consider this to be a definite step backwards, and the sooner that Linden Lab implements proper body sliders and body deformations, the better.
So now it’s time to try on some of the Marvelous Designer-created clothing which survived the transition from Avatar 1.0 to Avatar 2.0, to see how well it fits and how much adjusting is needed. The first thing I tried on was a simple white top, which by default fit far below her actual shoulders:
Using the new Transform Item button on the Worn Items window, I tried to adjust the top to fit my new, overly-elongated body:
You can now edit clothing using tools which will be familiar to users of other virtual worlds such as Second Life: translate, rotate, and scale:
The fourth button allows you to adjust all three at the same time:
So, after a bit of fiddling, here is what I was able to come up with:
So yes, the tools are there for you to be able to make your old clothing fit the new avatars, but you are going to have to do a lot of fiddling and tweaking and adjusting.Even worse, you are going to have to do all that fiddling and adjusting all over again if you take the item off and then put it back on from your inventory, because when you put it back on, it will automatically go to the same spot on your avatar body.
It also means that any clothing originally designed for Avatar 1.0 avatars will be a pain in the ass to use, because it will not fit the new avatars well by default. Most clothing makers will probably land up just removing older items from the Sansar Store completely, since they won’t fit as neatly and automatically as any new clothing specifically designed for Avatar 2.0 avatars will.
And keep in mind that this sort of fiddling, tweaking and adjusting of old clothing designed for Avatar 1.0 will be a major stumbling block to new users of Sansar, who will not understand why their clothing “doesn’t fit right”. I can only imagine how much work that somebody has to do now, who has already put dozens, or even hundreds, of items of clothing on the Sansar Store, in order to make them work better for the Avatar 2.0 avatars. It’ll be like starting over from scratch. This is very clearly NOT going to be the smooth process that was originally promised by Linden Lab. If I were a clothing maker who invested a lot of time and money into making clothing to date, I would be furious at Linden Lab for making such major changes to the avatar. Why was such a drastic change necessary? Why wasn’t an effort made to keep at least some sort of backwards compatibility?
And finally, and most damning of all…
I put on my VR headset and looked down myself as Vanity Fair, and I was HORRIFIED! My forearms look like toothpicks, and my hands are much too small! I look like someone with a wasting disease or a small child, not a grown woman!
The difference between Avatar 1.0 and Avatar 2.0 is so jarring that it is immersion-breaking. It’s also a complete deal-breaker for me. This is just a truly horrible default female avatar and at this point, I don’t think I will even bother to design clothing for it until it is replaced or improved. I’m that unhappy with it.
What the hell was wrong with the much more realistic proportions of the default female Avatar 1.0? Why did Linden Lab fuck this up so badly?? What were they thinking?!?? Let’s do a direct comparison, wearing the same outfit, between Avatar 1.0 and Avatar 2.0:
Vanity Fair, Avatar 1.0: This is what a real woman looks like
Vanity Fair, Avatar 2.0: Way too tall, hips too narrow, too thin, hands too small, looks like a Barbie doll
If you can’t see that there is something seriously wrong with the default female Avatar 2.0 just by comparing them side by side, then I give up. There were clearly drastic design decisions made that were NOT communicated by Linden Lab effectively to the users. This is NOT what we asked for. This is NOT what we wanted.
UPDATE: O.K. I’ve had a chance to calm down and think this over.
I think it is highly unlikely that Linden Lab is going to roll us back to Avatar 1.0, but I really disagree with the direction they decided to go for the female avatars. Landon Linden reported from the official Sansar Discord in response to this blogpost:
We’re working to get body morph in before the end of the year. It is a top priority for us, too.
And this is a bit of comfort. I keep forgetting that this is a beta, and that things like this will happen. We all take part in the beta knowing that something could come along and break everything for us, and we have to start over again. That’s part of the deal. I made the assumption that things would not change, and when they did change, and that change potentially impacted an avatar clothing business that I would very much like to get off the ground, I got upset.
I’m sorry.
SECOND UPDATE:Market forces to the rescue! We now have some good interim solutions to the new default female avatar proportions, and I’m much happier!
Linden Lab is working on the next version of the default human avatar in Sansar, dubbed Avatar 2.0, which should arrive sometime in August or September 2019. Unfortunately, first-edition avatars will be discontinued, and any items rigged for them (such as clothing, shoes, and hair) will break and not be useable by the next-generation avatars. However, clothing made using Marvelous Designer should still work with Avatar 2.0 avatars.
Here’s a FAQ by Linden Lab explaining all the upcoming changes in more detail, as well as an official blogpost. Inara Pey has also blogged extensively about Avatar 2.0 here, here, here and here.
So, I decided to go through all 45 of Sansar supermodel Vanity Fair’s saved outfits and take some pictures, since it is possible that I might never be able to use some of these items again. (Some vendors will endeavour to provide re-rigged items when Avatar 2.0 comes out.)
You might notice a particularly busty bovine in the mix! That particular avatar was purchased mere days before the creator was banned from Sansar, so it is truly a limited edition, which sadly will not survive the move to Avatar 2.0!
You can click on any thumbnail to pull up a full-size image in this gallery.
In retrospect, I realize that I have been more than a little cranky this week (here, here and here). So I will be taking the rest of this week off from blogging. I need to find some happier things to do which don’t trigger me. I’ll be back sometime next week.
UPDATE July 12th: My main avatar, Vanity Fair, has just been banned from Second Life and the SL Community Forums for three days, for (and I quote) “abusive behaviour”. So apparently, Linden Lab just bitchslapped me back.
I had a friend (fuck, all right, one of my alts) post my status update to one of the Tilia forum threads which I had originally posted to, and it was promptly removed (along with any responses to it). Fine. Let Linden Lab censor me. Let them ban me. At this point, I am beyond enraged.
I still stand by everything I wrote in my original blogpost. Linden Lab did absolutely the wrong thing by deleting users’ legitimate questions about Tilia, and I am still really pissed off at them for doing it. Banning me is just throwing gasoline on the fire. At this point, I am incredibly disappointed and disenchanted with Linden Lab.
I am taking an extended break from this blog. I do this because it’s fun, but it’s not fun for me anymore. I’ve had it, and I need a longer break.
SECOND UPDATE July 12th: Well, obviously, somebody spoke to somebody, because I have been rather swiftly (and unexpectedly) unbanned from Second Life and the SL community forums. I am now sitting at the Tilia Town Hall, and I am really liking what the Lindens are telling me. And I finally have an answer to my question about what the Tilia account inactivity fee will likely be (answer: probably less than 3 dollars). And all you have to do to avoid that fee is simply log in to your account on the Second Life website at least once a year. Good. Finally, we are getting some clearer answers.
BUT… I am still rather angry at Linden Lab. And I’m just tired of blogging. I’m feeling burned out. I am still taking a break, maybe a longer one this time. My hardworking producer Andrew William is still working on editing upcoming episodes of the Metaverse Newscast, many of which are set in Sansar, and those I will blog about when we release a new episode to YouTube (we’re still aiming for one per month). But don’t expect much other output from me for the next month or two.
I suffer from a chronic form of clinical depression, and my depression is mostly a learned response to bottled-up anger which accumulates over months and years. After many years working on myself in therapy, I can now accurately identify when I am feeling angry instead of suppressing it, but I still need to learn how to deal with it more effectively, and especially to STAY OFFLINE when I am upset. I owe Ebbe Altberg and his team at Linden Lab an apology for my diva hissy fit. It wasn’t pretty and I am ashamed of myself.
Frankly, I am feeling rather disenchanted with both High Fidelity and Linden Lab at the moment (which is ironic, since all the episodes of the Metaverse Newscast to date have focused on one or the other platform). It’s a clear sign that I need to step back for a bit, and that Andrew and I need to broaden the scope of the Metaverse Newscast to include other popular social VR platforms, such as VRChat. We also want to cover smaller projects such as NeosVR, and niche platforms such as Engage.
I’m still feeling cranky, and I’ve been completely overreacting to things all week, and it’s a clear sign that something is wrong is wrong with me. I just need to take a break, this time a real, longbreak from blogging. Take some time away from social VR and virtual worlds. I hope you all understand. But even if you don’t, I am still taking that break. I’m sorry, but I need to do this to recharge.
