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Rant: Mesh marked the end of SL, in my opinion. And it looks like Sansar is going to be mesh-only.


Fmeh Tagore
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Second Life has always had flaws.  I don't look at mesh as one of them.

I remember a time when male avatars all looked alike (before mesh) because there were limited options for skins, shapes and clothing.  Options for female avatars far exceeded that of males, because skirts (for instance) were easily made.  Male clothing was at a standstill for a lot of years, until sculpties and mesh came along and opened up a new world of possiblities.

I've seen a lot come and go in my almost 9 years of being in Second Life.  One thing remains the same.  Second Life allows you to be as creative as you want to be, but you have to put the work into it to get the reward.  Building, scripting, graphic design, mesh, running businesses---all of it requires hard work and doesn't come easy.

I started from scratch in late 2007.  I learned to do everything I needed to create my products.  Some of it came easy, some of it not so easy, but I stuck with it.  Either you want to be creative or you don't.  Either you step up to the challenge and conquer it or you don't.  I would love to paint in real life, but I don't want to deal with the mess of it all.  Instead, I create in Second Life.  In other words, this platform, this medium, it's not for everyone.  Someone else may prefer to paint in real life.

The addition of mesh extended the life of Second Life by several years, something just adding more shapes couldn't have done.  It made SL viable again, before it was deemed obsolete.  Complaining about mesh and performance issues is valid, but it's like megaprims before it and scripting---people need to be educated in the proper way of doing things.  LOD, script efficiency, viewer settings (somehow overlooked), etc.   In other words, it takes responsible people to make Second Life a success.  Responsible creators, responsible consumers.  Education is key.

Second Life has always been flawed in one way or another.  None of its flaws have ever been a deal breaker for me.  Some of them I find endearing.  Its limitations make it that much more enjoyable to work with creatively, because you must find new ways of doing things.  It forces you to think within set boundaries and come up with something you never thought of before.

Second Life is near the end of its life.  Something better will come along.  Something that allows the level of creativity.  When another platform emerges that combines scripting/programming with ultimate creative freedom, Second Life will fall by the wayside.  People will move on.  It's inevitable.

I remember a time, before the internet, when ANSI art and BBS's were a creative outlet.  Then the internet and the web came along and made BBS's obsolete.  Many held on for several years, but now you can't find but a handful of BBS's still running and even those are empty.

Second Life will live on for many of us; people like me who still find creative things to do in Second Life on a daily basis, whether it be writing a script, making a mesh chair or designing a new logo for a business venture.  Second Life is second to none in ultimate creative outlet.

The amount of abandoned land is evidence of decline, but I blame the marketplace for a fair chunk of it.  No longer do merchants need to have an in-world store.  It's so much simpler to open a marketplace store and save money, not having to build a store and pay tier or rent land.  LL shot themselves in the foot when they bought the marketplace and turned it into what it is.

You have to keep in mind, Second Life is based on an aged platform.  The fact that we've come this far is a miracle in my opinion, given the limitations that bind; Second Life would have to be completely rewritten from scratch to bring it up to snuff and fix some of the glaring issues.  Even then, it would never be the Second Life we know and love.

There were times when I used to be cynical about the future of Second Life.  Nowadays, I spend my time enjoying what I love about it, because I know its days are numbered.  I'll probably be one of the last to leave, if at all, and even then I'll move on to another grid (or run my own).

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I'm sorry that you want to look like this:



When the majority want to catch up with current-gen graphics and look like this:



(Not my pics, found through Google)

From your OP it's clear you don't really understand how mesh works. Your basic ugly linden body is mesh. Everything you see in SL is mesh. The only difference is their complexity. Complex mesh = the "mesh" that people talk about, the ones that can mold into complex shapes. Obviously, there's a cost associated with better looking graphics. Mesh in my opinion is one of the best things to happen to SL. Most people will leave SL if they still look like the above pic 1 in 2016, and that's a fact.

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Suki Hirano wrote:

Most people will leave SL if they still look like the above pic 1 in 2016, and that's a fact.

Yes but to be fair, the main difference between those two pictures is the skin (and probably a bit of photoshopping) and that has nothing to do with mesh bodies at all. ;)

 

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ChinRey wrote: Yes but to be fair, [...]

Oh, well, to be fair would entail reading and understanding the OP's actual post, rather than illustrating the very point he was making. Two hideous pictures that somewhat differ in how they're hideous -- after all these years -- is exactly the problem: prettier pixels have never resulted in more users for SL -- indeed, exactly the opposite trend has obtained.

To amplify the OP's point, the specifics of SL's Mesh implementation not merely killed-off in-world building as a popular SL activity, but crippled the resulting mesh objects themselves, discouraging script supported user interaction in a host of ways.

On the other hand, I think the relatively recent introduction of Experiences (finally, after literally years of delay), even though themselves somewhat neutered from the original specifications, at least point in a direction that could be promising if enhanced and expanded.

But I'll bet that instead, the pixel polishers will suck up all available developer resources, leaving Sansar, like Second Life, full of inert but o-so-pretty objects that nearly nobody will ever see.

Sansar may survive without all the inherent creative interactivity of a Minecraft, but if it's little more than a 3D chat platform with shiny avatars -- like SL -- it will never even recoup development costs.

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ChinRey wrote:


Suki Hirano wrote:

Most people will leave SL if they still look like the above pic 1 in 2016, and that's a fact.

Yes but to be fair, the main difference between those two pictures is the skin (and probably a bit of photoshopping) and that has nothing to do with mesh bodies at all.
;)

 

Of course it has. The hair on the second picture is mesh, the eyes probablay too, because this head reminds me of the mesh heads I saw from Logo or Lelutka. And we can't see her body, but I would not be suprised if it was mesh, too. And even if she doesn't go full body: Her feet will definitly be mesh, if she likes likes to wear open shoes from today and the last two years.

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Using a starter quality Ava for an example is a dishonest comparison for this topic.

Consider the Vanity Thread where you can view dozens and dozens of beautiful NON Mesh Avatars that don't bring peoples computers to a crawl.  All done without lagtastic mesh.

The only real advantage I see to a mesh body is it does get rid of some of the "sharp angles" but beyond that nothing much more.

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It's threads like this that are the reason there is nobody bothering with these forums any more.

This, and ones about things that people claim to have discovered because even though they can't actually see them, they believe they are there because of the effects they seem to have. - a bit like moderators, I suppose.

***Call me when you have something interesting to say

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