In May 09, as part of the discussion about segregating adult content, I conducted a survey of content on the SL mainland, which appears in this blog.
I’ve just completed a similar survey of OSGrid.
My methodology was largely the same, with the exception that I modified the criteria for ‘empty/abandoned’ when l landed underwater. In such circumstances I ‘peeked’ above water by moving my camera up only to score this single catagory.
I traversed 26 regions. This included several regions that were undoubtedly part of a megaregion.
Adult –
I saw no adult content in my travels.
Art -
In interests of scientific objectivity, I should say I somehow omitted this one from my list of things to score. I discovered this right after completing the data collection, so my memory was fresh.
13% of the sims contained art – a shop selling paintings and a stonehenge building that arguably rose to the level of architecture as art.
Natural or Landscaped Beauty
37.5% of sims contained natural or landscaped beauty, per the definition in the may 09 survey.
Violence
8.3% of sims contained violence or the tools of violence, in the form of a single military submarine, and a collection of weapons in a freebie store.
Ugliness
Subjective ugliness score was 41.7% – the large number of underwater landings probably lowered this, as I didn’t score underwater as ugly if it was reasonably terraformed
Educational Value
I found only a single ‘building tips’ poster that triggered educational content.
Commercial (New Catagory)
I scored for commercial activity if there were shops or someone selling something. I would have ignored land rental boxes, though I found none.
29.2% of locations scored commercial activity, divided about evenly between freebie shops and land sale/rental signs.
Advertising
I scored for advertisements separated from shops, but not shop signs unless the shop signs were outsized. I saw no outsized shop signs.
Many of the advertisements were an in-world teleport /search tool that looks like a TV.
25.0% contained advertising
abandoned/apparently unused land
I scored 29.2% of land as abandoned or apparently unused.
Conclusions:
I encountered no other avatars during my travels.
OSGrid has noticably more water than SL. I landed underwater 5 times, and had two more edge cases. I landed in knee deep water once, and landed under an offshore rock once. As always, when I landed trapped under something, I moved upwards until I was free of the trap and positioned myself over the original point.
There is noticeably less true ‘trash’ around.
Simulator performance is noticeably better without the vast array of stuff packed into the sky.
I was under the impression that the average OSGrid user would be an expert builder and highly technical person. Clearly that’s not true from the quality of the builds. Perhaps building skill and technical skill are not the same.
OSGrid tends to have clusters of regions owned by a single entity. Thus my ‘raster scan’ method might not be the best strategy for gathering random data. If I were to repeat this experiment I might choose to use a more ‘shotgun’ random effect.
