SL is very complicated for beginners

[Vivienne Schell]

"Did you know those of us who took part in the mesh beta had to fight tooth and nail to get LL to include any sort of rigged mesh at all? LL did not want to do it."

Yes, I know. And because i know i see my thesis - that LL finally listened to the "Hail the Holy Mesh" crowd is just another proof for their lack of intention to adress the mainstream crowd - approved. And another fact many of you seem to ignore is that Linden Lab operates with very limited resources lately since the big lay off campaign in 2009/10 (Which was the final retreat into a niche). Linden Lab simply did not and does not have the resources nor the time to implement your wishes. So, what you got is what LL was able to give - not more, not less.

[Iyoba Tarantal]

OK, mesh shmesh and I mean it. You can always tweak your avatar a million times to do it over so no big deal. If you want to, Ruth is still back there in the library, fully dressable in a bathing suit and customizable with sliders. And what is the fun of something you can't fix a million times. Perfection is what is truly boring.

 

But what is trully complicated about Second Life is the "what do I do?" factor. My answer from previous MU**ing experience (in mostly text based worlds and also in Active worlds) is find the road and start walking. Look to your right. Look to your left. Look above you. Look behind you. Try the search engine. See where you land. If you don't bounce on someone's ban lines or get booted by a security orb, try harder.

 

Put terms in the search engine for what interests you. If you are a libertine, put some credit card info on line and go search out..... If you are conservative, put Christian in the search engine. If you want to ski....you know waht to search. If you want to swim.... same deal. Do you want music?

Learning to see, walk, and find things is lesson one. After that you can think about what you want for your avie and how to make her trully your own. PS, I just stripped off Ruth's old clothes, uploaded my own textures, and dressed my avie. The texture hair was an utter disappointment (Bald spot in the back! when cut short). One of my first successful builds, though I had to chase it all over the sandbox (I did not know about posing stools) was a hair piece for a short bob. I can still wear the thing and feel good which is very weird. Beginner's luck is part of the fun.

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Penny Patton wrote:

Your only restraint is a 256LI cap on any single attachment. But you can wear up to 38 attachments. This means a single avatar can wear more than half a sim's worth of content.

---

It's far worse than that. As you said, there is no LI calculation for attachments. The only restriction is a 256 cap on amount of objects in a linkset. Since a single object can be "as big as a sim" and you can link 256 of those objects together, wear that thing 38 times, the impact is beyond comprehension (both for humans and computers).

I'm not sure what the exact triangle limit is, but the grand total is in the 1 billion range. (130k triangles x 256 x 38 = 1.3 billion)

The amount of texture memory used is even worse. Every mesh object can have 8 textures, so then we're at a maximum of 10 billion unique textures.

Looking at certain avatars/attachments, I sometimes get the idea people are actually trying to reach these numbers.

[Celestiall Nightfire]

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Penny Patton wrote:

 

Maybe, rather than shouting down criticism of SL's problems,

understanding those issues and putting pressure on LL to actually address the problems, might be more beneficial to everyone.

---

I don't see people shouting down critisism of SL problems.  On the contrary, the people who have posted agreed with the OP.

Also, in the seven and half years that I've been in SL, there has been a constant and unrelenting, set of voices putting pressure on LL to address problems.   Just about everyone I know, (myself included) has done that very thing.   But, you know this, as you read the forums, blogs, feed, off-site forums, and SL-JIRA, ect.  

You want to knock LL, have at it.  But, don't knock the other posters, as they're already doing the very things you suggest!

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Penny Patton wrote:

I see a lot of people defending SL's difficult learning curve, but the sad fact is, SL's interface and tools suffer from exceptionally poor design. Difficulty stemming from such design issues does not enrigh the SL experience in any way and is, in fact, the root of most of the common complaints shared even by SL's staunchest supporters.

 

 Maybe, rather than shouting down criticism of SL's problems, understanding those issues and putting pressure on LL to actually address the problems, might be more beneficial to everyone.

---

There's a real limit to how much you can "simplify" or "improve" SL while keeping the present "world".

Think of it this way: A violin is diabolically difficult for a beginner, especially someone looking for a casual pastime. A fair amount of the difficulty is in its design - the curved neck without frets, the bow, the "busy-Sixties-housewife-on-the-phone" way you need to hold it.

You can make a four-stringed musical instrument the size of a violin much easier to play for a beginner - give it a flat neck with frets, hold it in a more natural way and pluck or strum it.  Basically, turn it into a ukelele, the easiest of all stringed instruments for a beginner to play.

However, if you give someone this ukelelefied violin they will find that there are many pieces written for a violin that they simply can't play because they were written with the traditional violin structure and technique in mind.

You can start someone in a "simplified", "improved" Second Life environment but once they get into the "wild" they'll almost instantly run into something bizarre and arcane that they aren't prepared for because its a mishmash of ideas that made sense three years ago, made sense nine years ago, or never made sense at all but that was just how someone decided to do it. Poseballs? Crotch flaps? Seriously?

Even before the "new world" was a rumor I had come to the conclusion that the only way Second Life would become a true mass-market application was if some sort of controlled, modernized, streamlined layer was put on top of it that would effectively shut new people out of a lot of the older things until they decided to delve deeper into it. Once you start doing that you might as well just rebuild it from scratch.

[Vivienne Schell]

"Once you start doing that you might as well just rebuild it from scratch."

Too easy. No one can "rebuild" Second Life "from the scratch". One can build something different. Based on a completely different conception and a basically different technology under the surface. But Second Life as is is a unique mixture of Linden Lab input and user creativity which piled up over ten years. No one can ever manage to "rebuild" the same thing. And anyone who will try that will fail miserably for various reasons. Just like Opensim, In-Worldz or even Cloud Party (which came very close to an attempted "Rebuild") failed to atttract more than a niche audience. I don´t know where you people build your hope for a "Second Life Two, Three, Four, Five or Six" on. It´s a miracle to me.

[Penny Patton]

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Celestiall Nightfire wrote:

---

Penny Patton wrote:

 

Maybe, rather than shouting down criticism of SL's problems,

understanding those issues and putting pressure on LL to actually address the problems, might be more beneficial to everyone.

---

I don't see people shouting down critisism of SL problems.  On the contrary, the people who have posted agreed with the OP.

---

Out of the 8 replies to the OP before my post, four were outright dismissive of their complaint that SL was too difficult and only two were in agreement with the OP.

 

I rest my case.

[Penny Patton]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

There's a real limit to how much you can "simplify" or "improve" SL while keeping the present "world".

---

That limit is further away than you think, The comparison with learning to play a violin is disingenous. A better comparison would be learning to play a broken violin while being instructed by a teacher who did not know how to play a violin themselves or have any experience teaching anything whatsoever.

There are plenty of tools in SL that are broken. They do not do what they were designed to do. Like the height display in the appearance editor which gives you incorrect information. Or how Land Impact is designed to manage rendering resources and yet leaves out one of the most important parts making it entirely incapable of achieving its purpose.

 Many other tools suffer from horrendously bad design. Fun fact, LL decided from the beginning not to hire professional artists. They belived such professionals were only good for creating content, and since LL is not in the business of content creation they did not need them.

 The problem is, to design proper content creation tools, you absolutely NEED content creators who know what they're doing as a part of your development team.

 That huge post of examples just from the appearance editor alone? That was just the tip of the ice berg. I guarantee you it is more than possible to create better tools than SL provides, without constraining the creative possibilities of SL. In fact, better tools would, without a doubt, increase creative potential in SL for all users.

 That is why this horribly mistaken idea that SL cannot be made easier without sacrificing what SL is capable of needs to be called out for the fallacy it is. It is not only wrong, it is entirely indefensible. 

[Penny Patton]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Just like Opensim, In-Worldz or even Cloud Party (which came very close to an attempted "Rebuild") failed to atttract more than a niche audience. I don´t know where you people build your hope for a "Second Life Two, Three, Four, Five or Six" on. It´s a miracle to me.

---

First, Inworldz IS an OpenSim grid. And OpenSim is more flawed than SL. That is why it fails to draw in a big crowd.

Blue Mars, Lively, and other non-OpenSim attempts to take on the virtual world market were also more flawed than SL. Many of them lacked any sort of viable business model.

Cloud Party was bought out and shut down before it got out of the early alpha stages of development. It was certainly nowhere near ready for prime time before the plug was pulled, so we'll never know if it ever would have been viable.

[Hoshi Kenin]

Hi, Penny.  I still have one of the first good cam huds you gave me yonks ago.  I like your new/old sim, too.

However, you must know you swimming against the current in these forums?   Have LL ever taken any of your good ideas up afte rall these years?  I rest my case.  

Our problem is lack of time to posts thousands of posts here, methinks.   Then again, like me, I think you prefer to spend time inworld rather than here.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

There's a real limit to how much you can "simplify" or "improve" SL while keeping the present "world".

---

That limit is further away than you think, The comparison with learning to play a violin is disingenous. A better comparison would be learning to play a

broken

violin while being instructed by a teacher

who did not know how to play a violin themselves or have any experience teaching anything whatsoever

.

There are plenty of tools in SL that are broken. They do not do what they were designed to do. Like the height display in the appearance editor which gives you incorrect information. Or how Land Impact is designed to manage rendering resources and yet leaves out one of the most important parts making it entirely incapable of achieving its purpose.

 Many other tools suffer from horrendously bad design. Fun fact, LL decided from the beginning not to hire professional artists. They belived such professionals were only good for creating content, and since LL is not in the business of content creation they did not need them.

 The problem is, to design proper content creation tools, you absolutely NEED content creators who know what they're doing as a part of your development team.

 That huge post of examples just from the appearance editor alone? That was just the tip of the ice berg. I guarantee you it is more than possible to create better tools than SL provides, without constraining the creative possibilities of SL. In fact, better tools would, without a doubt, increase creative potential in SL for all users.

 That is why this horribly mistaken idea that SL cannot be made easier without sacrificing what SL is capable of needs to be called out for the fallacy it is. It is not only wrong, it is entirely indefensible. 

---

Completely missed my point. My point is that learning how to play a non-broken violin won't do you any good when you encounter music that can only be played properly on a broken violin.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Completely missed my point. My point is that learning how to play a non-broken violin won't do you any good when you encounter music that can only be played properly on a broken violin.

---

I wonder if the very nature of SL ensures that this will always be the case. Other VWs do not expose the innards to visitors in the way SL does. The scenery is crafted by trained professional design teams, who are in close contact with the technical people who build the underpinnings. The users are only exposed to a very simple subset of tools that allow them to engage in the world's game play.

The Thing After SL™ may look like it's built on good ideas the day they open the doors, but a decade later, absent the abiility to clean up what come to be thought of as messes under the hood without breaking user created content, I suspect we'll be right back here, rolling our eyes over the stupid decisions that were made years ago, when The Thing After SL™ seemed so promising.

[Vivienne Schell]

"Cloud Party was bought out and shut down before it got out of the early alpha stages of development. It was certainly nowhere near ready for prime time before the plug was pulled, so we'll never know if it ever would have been viable."

Wrong. We know that the conception was not viable because it was shut down. People with a viable commercial interest do such things to hopeless attempts.

[Penny Patton]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Completely missed my point. My point is that learning how to play a non-broken violin won't do you any good when you encounter music that can only be played properly on a broken violin.

---

Except, the music you're referring to cannot only be played on a broken violin. I'm telling you that music would be much easier to  play on a non-broken violin. And you'd be able to play it better.

 

 Thge broken violin adds nothing, but limits things quite a bit. There is no justification for it.

 

[Darrius Gothly]

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Vivienne Schell wrote:

Wrong. We know that the conception was not viable because it was shut down. People with a viable commercial interest do such things to hopeless attempts.

---

Your faith in the infallability of corporate decision making is reassuring .. and terrifying. In the last few decades of my professional career I was involved in no less than five projects that were shut down, starved to death, or "rightsized" into nonexistence by Corporate types basing their decisions on everything EXCEPT viability. Politics, personal grudge, god-complex, complete inability to think beyond the tip of their pen .. errr .. nose. But clear-headed rational logical decisions?

Not a one of them ...

[Penny Patton]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I wonder if the very nature of SL ensures that this will always be the case. 

---

 

I can answer that question for you.

No.

 And I will say that again and again. SL's tools are not as difficult as they are because it is necessary to allow the kind of content and creative freedom you see in SL.  The same content could be created much more easily with better tools. And if the tools were designed well, the content would benefit from that, meaning people would not only be able to create the same content, but they'd more often end up creating better content.

[Darrius Gothly]

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Penny Patton wrote:

[snip] .. Thge broken violin adds nothing, but limits things quite a bit. There is no justification for it. 

---

On the contrary, the true success of any technological invention is found in its ability to fail, break, stop working in places yet continue to perform its overall function sufficiently. This means that one designs with the understanding that things will break, no matter how hard we try to prevent it.

Why does this matter? Because the true size of the customer base that has perfectly operating computers, with no bugs, viruses, broken system parts and the like is so incredibly small as to make it very foolish to build a platform that can only be accessed by them. As you open the specs, you widen the potential marketplace. Eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns.

The art of managing a technology-based company includes knowing where to set that balance point and how to intelligently move it along as the marketplace shifts in computing capability. Go too far in either direction and you either waste money making it work for people that won't ever return anything to the bottom line, or you spend too much time making it too high performance and not enough people can join in.

The "broken violin" goes even deeper though. There are a number of Legacy Issues that act as time-anchors in the growth of SL. There is so much existing content, "absolutely critical and cannot be broken without causing massive revolt" content, that depends on broken things and unexpected responses in SL. Server Devs have more than once gone nuts, had to reverse themselves, and pull back something that just could not be put in production because it was just too injurious to SL's survival.

Reducing the complexity of the SL Viewer interface, and consequently the starting point followed by all third party Viewers, is something that can only be done by someone (team, division, or maybe just one person) that really understands not only the goal but the bedrock on which the Viewer must be anchored. That bedrock includes all the rubble, quicksand, granite and fault lines that are part of SL now and have been for many years.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Completely missed my point. My point is that learning how to play a non-broken violin won't do you any good when you encounter music that can only be played properly on a broken violin.

---

Except, the music you're referring to cannot only be played on a broken violin. I'm telling you that music would be much easier to  play on a non-broken violin. And you'd be able to play it better.

 

 Thge broken violin adds nothing, but limits things quite a bit. There is no justification for it.

 

---

Okay - let's give a concrete example. Invisiprims. How much tutelage should a new person get in them? If you explain them it's one more thing they need to keep their head; if you don't they'll run into them somewhere and be mystified. If you ban and remove all invisiprims you'll change the world.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

Any kind of mesh avatar in SL is a showstopper for newbies, rigged or not rigged does not matter. It´s something for the advanced user only,  who is willing to trade flexibility for kinda better looks (kinda, if 10 percent matter).

---

It doesn't have to be that way. This is a direct result of LL choosing to limit the functionality of mesh, or rather being very lazy about implementing mesh.

Did you know those of us who took part in the mesh beta had to fight tooth and nail to get LL to include any sort of rigged mesh at all? LL did not want to do it. The Lindens in charge of implementing mesh stated that they did not believe there would ever be any interest in mesh for avatars.

LL also did not want to fix rigged mesh with the introduction of fitted mesh. They only caved after years of pressure from the userbase and even then the Lindens in charge of it weren't shy about stating they felt it was a waste of time.

 SL's implementation of mesh is extremely flawed because of this attitude.

---

If it isn't a prim in a public sandbox that has combat turned on... the Lindens don't understand it.

 

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Penny Patton wrote:

Mesh clothing should be the simplest thing in the world. Again, any complications associated with it are a direct result of LL's poor implementation of mesh in SL. Mesh clothing should be the poster child of "plug and play" in terms of avatar appearance. Wear it and it should just work.

 

 

---

If anyone doubts this, just go download the current version of Daz Studio. These days in 3D art you can fit almost anything to anything. Last year when fitted mesh was coming out I noted the 'button issue' of "fitted" and deformer solutions - that fine details which pop out of an outfit and are not part of the rigging will lose shape when deformed.

Daz has, somehow, solved this for most cases.

 

*************** Different more general point below **************

 

The problem with SL is that its developers have never quite understood the visual side of their tool. What 90% of us do in SL: make things look nicer to our personal sense of style. Be it our avatars, our land, our homes, our arts, whatever.

Linden lab fundamentally does not understand the visual.

They're like Command-line programmers, that insist on using the command line even to do animation on a Mac...

- The Sandbox mentality... that it is about 'hacking the virtual' rather than 'living the virtual'.

We all wish to live the virtual. They wish to hack it. What motivates them is not all that different from what motivates many griefers - except they're on the side of protecting the platform rather than tearing it down. But in both cases, its about "taking the engine out of the car and looking at all its pieces" whereas the rest of us just want to go for a drive in the country.

 

This is why time and time again - they fail to see the use case for a feature even as the residents are busy demanding that very feature and supply those use cases.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I wonder if the very nature of SL ensures that this will always be the case. 

---

 

I can answer that question for you.

No.

 And I will say that again and again. SL's tools are not as difficult as they are because it is necessary to allow the kind of content and creative freedom you see in SL.  The same content could be created much more easily with better tools. And if the tools were designed well, the content would benefit from that, meaning people would not only be able to create the same content, but they'd more often end up creating better content.

---

If its still open to join, the 'Everquest Next Landmark beta' proves this point.

Very simple tools - to make a world. And you can move around inside of it with super intuitive ease - run, jump, spin around, take actions, etc... at "action video game" speed.

 

The difference is that Landmark is gamers making a virtual world.

Second Life is Unix Command Line Hackers making a virtual world.

 

Of course this means the end product of Landmark will NOT be a good virtual world... its a tool to help a game. Certain choices are not ideal. But the general core of the concept shows that...

None of the problems Second Life has, had to be there.

 

[Penny Patton]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Okay - let's give a concrete example. Invisiprims. How much tutelage should a new person get in them? If you explain them it's one more thing they need to keep their head; if you don't they'll run into them somewhere and be mystified. If you ban and remove all invisiprims you'll change the world.

---

GOOD EXAMPLE! LL broke invisiprims years ago. Anyone who has deferred rendering enabled does not see invisiprims.

And yet, in defiance of LL's own "shared experience" policy, people who do not have deferred rendering enabled still see invisiprims as they always (sort of) worked.

That is an example of a needlessly complicated situation LL has created. My argument is that we should have never had invisiprims in the first place. (Or rather, we should not have been forced to use them how we would later end up using avataar masking.) We should have gotten avatar masking right from the beginning. Since we didn't, LL should have been consistent in how they addressed invisiprims. When they disabled invisiprims for people with deferred rendering active, they should have disabled it for everyone. Alternately, they should not have disabled it at all. One or the other. But they most certainly should not have created a situation where some people are wandering around still using invisiprims that are disabled for many other SL users.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Okay - let's give a concrete example. Invisiprims. How much tutelage should a new person get in them? If you explain them it's one more thing they need to keep their head; if you don't they'll run into them somewhere and be mystified. If you ban and remove all invisiprims you'll change the world.

---

GOOD EXAMPLE! LL broke invisiprims years ago. Anyone who has deferred rendering enabled does not see invisiprims.

And yet, in defiance of LL's own "shared experience" policy, people who do not have deferred rendering enabled still see invisiprims as they always (sort of) worked.

That is an example of a needlessly complicated situation LL has created. My argument is that we should have never had invisiprims in the first place. (Or rather, we should not have been forced to use them how we would later end up using avataar masking.) We should have gotten avatar masking right from the beginning. Since we didn't, LL should have been consistent in how they addressed invisiprims. When they disabled invisiprims for people with deferred rendering active, they should have disabled it for everyone. Alternately, they should not have disabled it at all. One or the other. But they most certainly should not have created a situation where some people are wandering around still using invisiprims that are disabled for many other SL users.

 

---

And frogs should have been born with wings so they wouldn't bump their butts when they jump. But those indisputable facts don't do either the newbie or the frog any good because they didn't happen.

So, what do you do about it?

[Celestiall Nightfire]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Celestiall Nightfire wrote:

---

Penny Patton wrote:

 

Maybe, rather than shouting down criticism of SL's problems,

understanding those issues and putting pressure on LL to actually address the problems, might be more beneficial to everyone.

---

I don't see people shouting down critisism of SL problems.  On the contrary, the people who have posted agreed with the OP.

---

Out of the 8 replies to the OP before my post, four were outright dismissive of their complaint that SL was too difficult and only two were in agreement with the OP.

 

I rest my case.

---

Oh, that's right, because you didn't address the rest of my comment.  lol

 

 

Plus, no one "shouted down" the OP!  Just nonsense.  You were making a hyperbolic statement to lead into your hammering point that you always go on, and on, about.  (Sheesh, do you know how many times I've seen you post your avatar pics?  Good grief woman, like a broken record)

[LlazarusLlong]

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Penny Patton wrote:

Anyone who has deferred rendering enabled does not see invisiprims.

 

---

I know nothing about the technical side of SL, nor am in interested in it, but surely the whole point of something called an "invisiprism" is that you can't see it...

[Qie Niangao]

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LlazarusLlong wrote:

I know nothing about the technical side of SL, nor am in interested in it, but surely the whole point of something called an "invisiprism" is that you can't see it...

---

Of course, "invisiprim" was always a misnomer. I guess we really need to face the fact that this hopelessly broken language needs to be replaced by English 2.0 in which all the imprecise terms can be replaced. It would be so much easier for new language learners.

Oh wait. No, it wouldn't. So how come we're so good at working around all the design errors of our natural languages, yet our imperfect virtual worlds become, over time, unlearnably complex?

Probably lots of reasons, but one is that there's very little cost to linguistic obsolescence. Sure, it's now difficult for us to read Middle English, but in exchange we're free to try out slang that's outdated before it can echo. Language is robust because it's so disposable. We're loathe to see virtual world content the same way.