SL isn't the same any more

[Chic Aeon]

4 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Yes that sounds exactly the way the thing I bought works, except i didnt add the different textures beforehand, and I had two different textures each of which ended up as faces in the final object. I was trying to create a frame that held three separate images, but the three images are all the same face. But this is exactly the way the the feature in Firestorm is supposed to work to, but instead of putting a script in the object, you right click and one of the options is Save, and you choose Colada, or however it is spelled and supposably it saves the .dae to your computer. Now I really want to get off work so I can get home to try this. And yes it is 8 faces that is the max that can be imported into SL

http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_import_export

Just want to note that the items you get from a 3rd Party Viewer -- and likely from the other gadget -- when exporting prims to mesh are NOT optimized -- meaning they have WAY more vertices than necessary. There is plenty about this on the mesh forum from time to time and hopefully easy to find. Simplistically prims have been "divided" into many more sections (I think it's 8 but not logging in to test as I am heading to bed). That was done originally (info from a Linden so hopefully correct) so that the prims could reflect light more realistically.

So while you can turn prims into mesh to save land impact, you are actually making it harder on the viewer than when the item was a prim because prim recognition is built into the viewer.  You can in many cases turn your items into Convex Hull in the Features tab and lower the land impact by half. This will NOT work with sculpts (the export feature for sculpts is HORRIBLE and should most likely never be used by the way). And it will not work with things like hollowed cubed, but for something made with plain prims it works well. 

Anyway :D.   there is a reason why folks actually learn how to make things in a 3D programs. They also have many more options since they can make most any shape they want. 

 

[ChinRey]

5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Just want to note that the items you get from a 3rd Party Viewer -- and likely from the other gadget -- when exporting prims to mesh are NOT optimized

We're heading a bit off topic here but this is page four of the thread so I suppose that's only natural.

The Firestorm team is very careful to point out that the dae export function in their viewer is only for quick backups and not intended as a prims-to-mesh converter. It simply taps into the OpenGL output and saves the mesh exactly as it is sent to your gpu. What you end up with is the worst of two worlds, all the flaws os mesh on top of all the flaws of prims.

It is possible to clean up an Fs generated dae file in 3D editor but it is a rather complex process and usually not worth the effort. This is how you do it in Blender:

1. Open the dae file
2. Select one of the objects (each prim becomes a separate object)
3. Type the ctrl+A keyboard shortcut and apply Location, Rotation and Scale
4. In the Object data palette, change the name of the UV map to something easy to remember and type
5. Select the next object and repeat #4-5. Make sure the name of the UV map is exactly the same for all objects (that's why you want to use one that is easy to remember and type)
6. Once you have run all objects through #4-5, select them all and Join them
7. Switch to edit mode, clean out excessive polys and vertices, join materials that should be joined and all that stuff

This reminds me of an instrument maker friend of mine. Somebody once brought a really battered up old cello to his workshop and asked if it could be repaired. My friend replied: "Yes, but it's cheaper to build a new one."

Edited May 26, 2017 by ChinRey
typo

[Phil Deakins]

Don't worry about going off-topic, ChinRey. I started the thread, and I said what I wanted to say, so it's fine to wander off in other directions. It's a normal thread, after all, and that's what threads here do

[Penny Patton]

I agree with the OP that SL has changed. People can debate whether those changes are positive or negative, but the fact is SL has changed.  I see a lot of people arguing back and forth about whether SL should have remained prims only, I think that misses the point. 

Personally, I do enjoy what mesh import allows, but I also wish that LL had continued to develop the in-world creation tools. I even believe that SL as a whole would have benefited from LL pursuing improved in-world tools to the exclusion of mesh import. Especially if LL had also worked towards improving other aspects of SL, such as the system avatars.

Putting the focus of content creation on imported mesh creations has made it more difficult for the average SL user to jump into content creation, and the complexities of mesh content (from the fractured clothing market due to incompatible mesh bodies, and the multiple types of rigged mesh due to LL's mishandling of the feature) have made it more difficult for new users to get into SL itself.

 Another unintended downside is that many of the popular mesh bodies and heads these days are no-mod, which has diminished the ability of SL users to personalize their appearance with custom modifications. It has also lead to laggier avatars due to taking away the customer's ability to remove parts of these mesh bodies they may never use and content creators packing in more scripted features in an attempt to cover a small fraction of the features that are gone the moment you uncheck the "mod" perm.

These are issues that have affected SL's ability to draw in and retain users, and while I'm not going to suggest SL is in danger of dying at any moment, it is worth pointing out that SL's userbase has been dwindling for a long time.

[Love Zhaoying]

What does a sled-driver with a hairlip say? "Mesh! Mesh!"

[Pussycat Catnap]

Shortly after SL started it was a place to go online and hook up for some animated sexting and listening that music that went out of style 30 years ago. SL is largely still a place to go online and hook up for some animated sexting and listening that music that went out of style 30 years ago.

I don't see anything having changed.

It's only us freaks that do anything but animated sexting that are having to figure out what else there is to do every now and then. And we've always been a tiny minority of SL.

 

[ChinRey]

29 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

Shortly after SL started it was a place to go online and hook up for some animated sexting and listening that music that went out of style 30 years ago. SL is largely still a place to go online and hook up for some animated sexting and listening that music that went out of style 30 years ago.

But the music that went out of style 30 years ago today is not the same as the music that went out of style 30 years ago 10 years ago!

And besides, gambling used to be just as popular as pixel sex.

[Solaria Goldshark]

On 5/11/2017 at 1:48 AM, Phil Deakins said:

What is still doable? Yes, prim stuff does still sell, but only in small numbers now, because mesh stuff is so good. But that's not really the point of my post.

My post wasn't really about the business side of things, although I used that as an example of what I mean. It's the fundamental nature of SL that's changed. Most people didn't get into creating, I know that, but a fundamental thing about SL was that anyone could create, and all on an equal footing, because everyone had the same tools, and it didn't take long to learn how to use them. Some would be better at it than others, of course, because people's aptitudes for things vary, but SL was a place where anyone could come and create equally appealing stuff - user created content within SL. Yes it can still be done with prims, as you said, but not equally appealing stuff any more - not compared to stuff that's created outside of SL by skilled 3-D modellers, that is.

I ought to say that much of the mesh stuff is absolutely excellent. There is no doubt about that in my mind. And I would definitely choose it if I were buying. I'm not against it. I'm only saying that the fundamental nature of SL's original user-created content - the world created by its users - is long gone now, and I think that's a shame.

 

Well said...and the gap is growing. perhaps these two worlds would benefit from bringing their creative forces together.....on second thought no...Lets just keep things clear and simple:  Manufacturer and Consumer.

[Cheetah Hammerer]

no kidding, LL stopped making improvements almost entirely a long time ago, these days they've switched to actively making things worse with the noob last names people get when registering now, the absolutely awful UI redesign, the still insanely high priced land/tier cost that simply isn't justified for something that is certifiably in the free to pay MMO death throes.

i'm not joking at all either, SL has been being maintained like it's a greedy platform to extort money from people and give nothing in return for quite a few years now, they literally never make significant improvements at all and i bet they only have people in the office when it starts to come apart at the seams.

where is support for modern PC hardware, seriously? 4GB is an absolutely abysmally small hard cap to place on v-ram, they've never once done a single performance optimization since i've joined secondlife either and it's been overdue since your avatar rating stopped governing how many lindens you made.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Cheetah Hammerer said:

no kidding, LL stopped making improvements almost entirely a long time ago, these days they've switched to actively making things worse with the noob last names people get when registering now, the absolutely awful UI redesign, the still insanely high priced land/tier cost that simply isn't justified for something that is certifiably in the free to pay MMO death throes.

Yes and no.

Second Life suffered from complacency, bad planning and poor organization for many years but they have started to get their act together. The change of personnel in 2014 (and I'm not only talking about the new CEO) helped a lot there and although things didn't change overnight, almost every big project they've launched since then has been better thought out and better executed than the previous.

But the UI design and the insane tier cost are still major sore points that LL doesn't seem to have any answers to.

 

2 hours ago, Cheetah Hammerer said:

they've never once done a single performance optimization since i've joined secondlife either

You joined in 2009. LL has made several attempts to optimize performance since then and although not all of them have been successful, some have:

• 2013: Server side baking. A complete mess at first but once they got it right, it gave a significant performance boost. The effect didn't last of course but nobody could anticipate mesh avatars back then.
• 2013: Project Interesting. Complete disaster at first (this was still the old regime after all) but it eventually evolved into a serious improvement.
• 2014: CDN and html pipelining. That was the first project by the new management and an instant and permanent success.
• 2014: The big library update. Completely overlooked but perhaps the biggest single performance improvement in SL's history.
• 2016: Quick Graphics. Yes, they messed that one up badly but even in the sad state it is in now, for many it's still the reason they can log on to SL at all.
• 2016: Bento. Damage control rather than actual improvement but still important for performance. Imagine what would have happened if reckless merchants had kept coming up with crude hacks to add Bento like features.
• 2017: 64 bit viewer. Coming soon
• 2017: Server side texture baking for meshes. That one may backfire but hopefully not.
• All the time - and most important: Constant tweaks under the hood. You only hear about them in Caleb's weekly deployment messages but they add up to far more than any big project. Seems LL is finally beginning to learn the lesson that true progress always comes from evolution, not revolution.

I still think it is too little and too late to save SL in the long run. LL had to learn strategic planning and consequence analyzis from scratch and there are so many bad habits to break and so many skeletons to clean out of the closet. All that takes a lot of time and effort. But at least the improvements they are implementing should prolong SL's life singificantly and you certainly can't say they haven't done a single performance optimization.

[Prokofy Neva]

None of this is true.

SL has never been the egalitarian society imagined by its creators and early adaptors because their imagination was always constrained by their own circles and class of people -- they mean "anyone" who has technical skills of either coding or art or building who can make things that can be sold.

It's great that any clumsy oaf such as myself who can barely put two prims together can in theory "make and sell things" but I have sold very, very few copies of my "atomic table" or "Nautilus But Nice Lamp" even mercifully put on mod.

It was ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE the case that the people with SKILLS who were the BEST at making sold the most and got in the public eye. Sure, those who endlessly fiddled with traffic gimmicks and complained about how traffic wasn't working in their favour *cough* might make sales, but usually the best filtered to the top. In the early days, it was harder for newer people to get to market because oldbies blocked them and tried to sabotage their democratic access to telehub markets run by oligarchs by agitating to do away with them entirely. 

But with the advent of hundreds of islands and p2p, a store could be anywhere and then even only be on the MP or only be shown at temporary merchants' events or live inside a gatcha machine.

All of this is good because skill and quality have been rewarded in a free market. Those of us who can't build an realize our artistic leanings through decorating. 

I do think a world where you can't edit or build even a little table or step will be just a circus where you are a gawker. I like having the ability to build at least some things even if I suck at building. And so do most people. So it's important, but it's wrong to claim there was this perfect world before. I was there, and I early caught on to the fact that certain favourites prevailed and got a boost and not always with talent if they knew the devs. But today, there is less of that because the world is bigger AND because blogging, merchant events and gacha machines have loosened the grip the early makers had on the market.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Prokofy Neva

[ChinRey]

6 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It was ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE the case that the people with SKILLS who were the BEST at making sold the most and got in the public eye.

Here is a mesh tree made by one of the best known and best selling plant makers in Second Life:

Here is one by a maker who never really made it:

Sorry about the dark pictures. I wasn't going to spend more time and effort than neccessary on this and I hope my point is clear enough.

Edited May 28, 2017 by ChinRey
Typo

[Prokofy Neva]

I disagree that the maker whose tree you are showing "never really made it". And you're selecting two trees out of the many made by multiple top-selling merchants and not showing the best sellers. In fact, the people who make the best-looking stuff sell the most.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

3 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I disagree that the maker whose tree you are showing "never really made it". And you're selecting two trees out of the many made by multiple top-selling merchants and not showing the best sellers. In fact, the people who make the best-looking stuff sell the most.

Assuming that they make things for the purpose of selling them, marketing is just as important as creative ability in SL these days.  Not everyone is motivated by profit, especially when you're talking about artists and those driven to creativity rather than drawn by greed!

[Talligurl]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

the people who make the best-looking stuff sell the most.

Not true here, not true in RL, not true anyplace. And just think about it a second, the very best, the best clothes, the best cars, the best digital cameras, are they what sells the most? Are there really more Maseratis on the road than Honda Civics? The very best is always relatively rare, because it costs more than mediocre, and most people either can't or won't pay for it.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Talligurl

[Chic Aeon]

10 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Not true here, not true in RL, not true anyplace. And just think about it a second, the very best, the best clothes, the best cars, the best digital cameras, are they what sells the most? Are there really more Maseratis on the road than Honda Civics? The very best is always relatively rare, because it costs more than mediocre, and most people either can't or won't pay for it.

I agree with your statement but I doubt it has anything to do with ChinRey's tree photos. I see some really HORRIBLE things (skill wise and design wise) sell like hotcakes at venues. Most buyers don't really know what to look for so far as mesh goes. They may have figured out that they are less  likely to see "those triangles" with some designers than another. But there is a lot of really badly made mesh out there at very popular venues. I am not sure if the creators or just lazy or are too busy, or just don't look closely at their work. 

It discourages me sometimes.

I am sitting here asking myself why I am discouraged. After all I do my thing so it shouldn't really affect me. Still, I think in all thing both real and virtual it is important to do the best job we can (and that of course is an uneven scale just by experience and knowledge) and to take pride in our work. Some popular designers are doing fantastic work these days and others seem to be in some sort of "oh well" mood. And to them I guess it doesn't matter as long as their stuff still sells. With just a tiny bit more effort though, it could be miles better and still sell. 

Late for me. Eyes are closing on their own accord.  Just some thoughts. 

Edited May 30, 2017 by Chic Aeon
spelling

[Phil Deakins]

2 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Not true here, not true in RL, not true anyplace. And just think about it a second, the very best, the best clothes, the best cars, the best digital cameras, are they what sells the most? Are there really more Maseratis on the road than Honda Civics? The very best is always relatively rare, because it costs more than mediocre, and most people either can't or won't pay for it.

You are right. An even better RL example was the video recorder. There were 3 formats available - VHS, Betamax, and Philips N1700 followed by their V2000. For picture quality, the best of them were always the Philips machines, and the worst, by a significant margin, was the VHS. But the VHS won. After a while, it was the only one left standing in the UK. It definitely wasn't because of its quality. I was done solely through marketing.

The VHS was put into almost all of the big TV rental companies, each with their own badge on it, so a massive number of people used rented VHS machines. That, in turn, meant that video libraries carried many more VHS films than Betamax, usually at least twice as many, and hardly any carried V2000 films, which caused those who bought their video recorders to buy VHS.

VHS won by a landslide, even though it had the worst picture quality of them all. It only took a few years for it to be the only one left, and it was marketing, not quality, that did it.

Unlike the Mazerati-Honda example, this was done when the video recorders did the same things and cost roughly the same as each other, so perhaps it's a better example when discussing SL.

Later, the VHS picture quality was greatly improved, but that was after the battle had been won.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[ChinRey]

11 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I disagree that the maker whose tree you are showing "never really made it". And you're selecting two trees out of the many made by multiple top-selling merchants and not showing the best sellers. In fact, the people who make the best-looking stuff sell the most.

I could point out that you said "always" and "everywhere", in capital letters even, so a single example of the opposite is technically enough.

But no, there are numerous examples like this. Both in SL and RL. I can list other examples but others have already started done that so let me ask you a question instead: When you buy something, do you always consider all alternatives and the pros and cons of each? That's what it takes for a free market to always favor quality.

My favorite example how a free, unregulated market can work dates back to 19th century England. Some dairies discovered that you could make skimmed milk look like whole milk by adding a little bit of lead to it. Of course, that meant their customers were likely to die from lead poisining after a while and dead customers are usually not good customers. But it was still worth it and there was no law against it. So they did.

[Prokofy Neva]

Chin, you haven't disproven my blanket statement because you've shown a tree that in fact isn't proven to be a better seller than the better-made ones, so I don't know what your point is.

You seem to be confusing selling MORE with selling AT ALL or being "somewhat popular".

Believe me, the mesh trees sell way, way more than the planar ones. Just look around the world. I see this everywhere not only among my tenants but among my neighbours.

You also seem to have a deep aversion to capitalism, as so many techies do on SL, although they themselves benefit from it. You've fetched a 19th-century example (!) about food poisoning (!) which doesn't relate to SL at all. And I mean, it's totally irrelevant. I don't know how this framed in your mind. Did some tree poke your avatar eye?

As for "considering all the alternatives," I think most people buying in micro-payment markets aren't doing this kind of deliberation they might do in real life. I certainly don't. Perhaps for some very expensive skin or mesh head or something but most people buying a lamp pick the one that looks best.

There are holdouts that still quaintly decorate from the Linden Library. I actually have oldbie tenants who do this, God bless 'em. Most people buy the mesh that looks better, Chen. You know this, but for some reason you're feeling contrarian.

[Prokofy Neva]

3 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Not true here, not true in RL, not true anyplace. And just think about it a second, the very best, the best clothes, the best cars, the best digital cameras, are they what sells the most? Are there really more Maseratis on the road than Honda Civics? The very best is always relatively rare, because it costs more than mediocre, and most people either can't or won't pay for it.

In fact, true. Mesh looks better. and mesh is selling boatloads and boatloads -- in gachas, at events, off the MP. Watch what floats by in the ticker of what people actually buy on the MP. I watch this all the time. And it lets me know that people aren't buying old ugly prim craftsmanship but the best mesh.

You may confuse mass taste with better higher taste but then that sells less because it's not part of a cultural stance, not necessarily because it "looks the best". If most people find a lamp "looks the best" and buy it for that reason and it sells the most, that's the lamp that looks the best. Some arch hipster might say a twisted collection of tin cans looks aesthetically better even if it sells two copies but that's not looking the best. The Honda Civic looks the best, and most people buy what looks best to them. In some abstract way they may concede that the "Maserati looks better" but this is an edge case. 

What this discussion is about is what looks better -- mesh or old school prim and sculpty. And the reality is, like it or not, mesh looks better and sells more. You can try to split hairs and edge case and say whatabout this or whatabout that but the reality is -- mesh looks best and sells more, the end. 

[Prokofy Neva]

46 minutes ago, Phil Deakins said:

You are right. An even better RL example was the video recorder. There were 3 formats available - VHS, Betamax, and Philips N1700 followed by their V2000. For picture quality, the best of them were always the Philips machines, and the worst, by a significant margin, was the VHS. But the VHS won. After a while, it was the only one left standing in the UK. It definitely wasn't because of its quality. I was done solely through marketing.

The VHS was put into almost all of the big TV rental companies, each with their own badge on it, so a massive number of people used rented VHS machines. That, in turn, meant that video libraries carried many more VHS films than Betamax, usually at least twice as many, and hardly any carried V2000 films, which caused those who bought their video recorders to buy VHS.

VHS won by a landslide, even though it had the worst picture quality of them all. It only took a few years for it to be the only one left, and it was marketing, not quality, that did it.

Unlike the Mazerati-Honda example, this was done when the video recorders did the same things and cost roughly the same as each other, so perhaps it's a better example when discussing SL.

Later, the VHS picture quality was greatly improved, but that was after the battle had been won.

Also all completely irrelevant because this is a debate not about splitting hairs of meaning and analyzing "what looks best" as an abstraction cherry-picking VHS or Philips.

It's a discussion about whether mesh looks better and sells more, or old sculpty and prims of your generation look better. And the answer is: mesh looks better and sells more, the end. Arguing about this with silly RL examples about TV picture quality is silly when you have only to look at the stream of things sold on the MP.

Again, this is just a bad case of forums contrarianism among people who don't want to change or accept either mass taste or the capitalist market and the free flow of goods and services. They want some socialist god to intervene and make it possible for them to live their old prim life again.

[Prokofy Neva]

On 5/26/2017 at 2:02 PM, Penny Patton said:

I agree with the OP that SL has changed. People can debate whether those changes are positive or negative, but the fact is SL has changed.  I see a lot of people arguing back and forth about whether SL should have remained prims only, I think that misses the point. 

Personally, I do enjoy what mesh import allows, but I also wish that LL had continued to develop the in-world creation tools. I even believe that SL as a whole would have benefited from LL pursuing improved in-world tools to the exclusion of mesh import. Especially if LL had also worked towards improving other aspects of SL, such as the system avatars.

Putting the focus of content creation on imported mesh creations has made it more difficult for the average SL user to jump into content creation, and the complexities of mesh content (from the fractured clothing market due to incompatible mesh bodies, and the multiple types of rigged mesh due to LL's mishandling of the feature) have made it more difficult for new users to get into SL itself.

 Another unintended downside is that many of the popular mesh bodies and heads these days are no-mod, which has diminished the ability of SL users to personalize their appearance with custom modifications. It has also lead to laggier avatars due to taking away the customer's ability to remove parts of these mesh bodies they may never use and content creators packing in more scripted features in an attempt to cover a small fraction of the features that are gone the moment you uncheck the "mod" perm.

These are issues that have affected SL's ability to draw in and retain users, and while I'm not going to suggest SL is in danger of dying at any moment, it is worth pointing out that SL's userbase has been dwindling for a long time.

I've never heard of anyone leaving SL because they...couldn't mod their mesh outfit or head.

Mesh outfits and even bodies are cheap enough to people buy tons of them and change them constantly.

Sure they end up fiddling and complaining about it a lot, but that's part of SL.

If they had a choice between returning to the early days of SL when they could make a prairie skirt like Home Ec in 1974 on their system avatar template, or have beautiful mesh things, they will take mesh. Being able to edit your prairie skirt doesn't mean anything when it is surpassed hundreds of leagues by mesh.

[Phil Deakins]

52 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Also all completely irrelevant because this is a debate not about splitting hairs of meaning and analyzing "what looks best" as an abstraction cherry-picking VHS or Philips.

It's a discussion about whether mesh looks better and sells more, or old sculpty and prims of your generation look better. And the answer is: mesh looks better and sells more, the end. Arguing about this with silly RL examples about TV picture quality is silly when you have only to look at the stream of things sold on the MP.

Again, this is just a bad case of forums contrarianism among people who don't want to change or accept either mass taste or the capitalist market and the free flow of goods and services. They want some socialist god to intervene and make it possible for them to live their old prim life again.

Judging by the string of posts you just wrote, you're the one who is being contrary, because you disagree with everyone, or at least you appear to do your best to find something to disagree with everyone about

You won't find me arguing that prims are better than mesh. They aren't. I've said that before, and I also said that I'd buy mesh if I were buying, simply because there are some excellent objects out there that prims can't compete with.

Now I'll correct you about this discussion. It is NOT about "whether mesh looks better and sells more, or old sculpty and prims of your generation look better". I started it, so I should know   You brought prims vs mesh into it because of the trees, and marketing then came into it.

I posted a very relevant example of how marketing is THE most important part of an item's success. So don't be so contrary all the time. Follow the discussion that you came into, and go with the flow without criticising everyone along the way, and without trying to focus it on your own pet topics. The prim tree could vastly outsell the mesh tree due solely to marketing. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know, and I don't think that you know either. The point is that, just because an item is mesh and much better quality does not mean that it will outsell an inferior prim item.

Creating something really good in mesh sells nothing. It has to be marketed to sell any at all, even if that just means putting it up for sale somewhere. If someone else came along and did a better job of marketing an inferior alternative, then that item would be the big seller, not the better quality one.

So I'm sure you'll now understand why I posted the very relevant post in a thread that I started, and that you came into later

Edited May 30, 2017 by Phil Deakins

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Chin, you haven't disproven my blanket statement because you've shown a tree that in fact isn't proven to be a better seller than the better-made ones, so I don't know what your point is.

You seem to be confusing selling MORE with selling AT ALL or being "somewhat popular".

Believe me, the mesh trees sell way, way more than the planar ones. Just look around the world. I see this everywhere not only among my tenants but among my neighbours.

Ok. I really thought those two pictures could speak for themselves but since you ask so nicely:

1. Both trees are fairly detailed mesh trees. They are not elaborate feature items but nor are they "planar trees" as you call them. More to the point: their designs are of about the same complexity.
2. The trees represent the overall quality of their respective makers very well.
3. I do not know how long the two makers have been in SL but they are both old enough to have legacy names and they both started their businesses long before I entered Second Life.
4. The maker of the first tree is one of the most prestigious names in SL landscaping. He has won several awards and you see his builds everywhere.
5. The maker of the second tree has a small and faithful group of fans but she has never managed to catch the eye of the majority of SL users and I have yet to see any of her trees anywhere in SL except for at her store.
6. This example is not unique. It is fairly typical of what you see in SL.

Please don't hesitate to ask if you have any further questions.

Edited May 30, 2017 by ChinRey
Typos

[Trinity Yazimoto]

Well, i think that there are at least 3 different points of view confronting here. I know that Prokofy goes to a lot of shopping event, thus i know he has some good knowledge about the current SL markets. Also, Chic is designer in a lot of big events and she has also a good knowledge about what sells and what not sells. 

However, i think you all forget one super important element : the usual "sheep behavior" of the market. 

It doesn"t matter the item is good quality (Althought, of course, it cant be denied that good quality helps, indeed).

It doesn't matter there are 10 and 10 same items looking alike... (ie those shoes with string over the legs we see endlessly in ALL the events... i want to scream now everytime i see one.. and trust me, i bought several of them when they first came, i loved them...but i think im having like a total overdose with those pesky shoes)

It doesn't matter, its obvious you cheat, rip, stole... (sometimes it even happen that 2 diff creators in the SAME event are realising the same mesh they took from a 3d plateform, most often legally, they paid for it, but still AGGAINST SL TOS and most of the time those websites TOS aswell..Also you lie ot your customers implying you made yourself the mesh but who cares ?

Because, well the question is that : Who cares ?

They will buy anyway ! 

Why ?

Because you are famous. Because they know your name... (you may then even release the first cube that comes in Blender when u open it, and slap on it a pic of your rl cat or of your rl feet and they will buy by thousands... 

Seriously, you just need to open Seraphim website and see the gallery for event and you wanna cry... because really sometimes it's even over insulting your intelligence.

(i love Prokofy's blog for that btw, bec well at least its spontaneous opinion, it's refreshing and if he thinks the item is *****, he says it.. not tons of explanations, but it's his sincere opinion.)

So of course, Phil is right : marketing does half of the job... With a good adpic you may sale anything.

But the other half of the job is not the quality of the item, saddly. The other half of the job is about the psychology of the mass. The group effect... That seems to decerebrate the ppl when they go to those events (even myself sometimes). It looks like they are remoted. "Oh ! Brand X releases the same shoes than Brand Y did last month and which i got 2 pairs yet ? no problem ! After all its Brand X !!! brand X!!! i will buy again of course!!!"

"Oh this coat is poorly rigged ! and textures is bad.... yes... BUT it's from brand Z ! omg i want bec its brand Z ! And i saw it on flikr !! if those talented photographers worn it on their pic it cant be that bad ! The demo not fitting me ? naaaa , that's my fault.. i maybe dont see it well... if its good for the flikr photographers i must have it !! That' s all... yes ? photographers are posing, so rig doesnt matter ? yeah well i wont move my avi while wearing this *****  adorable coat ! that's all"

And so on...

You sell because, it's seen on beautiful pics... your vendor pic first, then you have a lot of famous bloggers in your team, they show on their pics and eveyrone want your item.

you sell bec your name is famous. it  does the effect of a switch on your brain. Everytime u see the name, there is a something happening in your cortex that makes you click the buy button. How do u make your name famous ? Mystery.

And of course you need to be in big events for this happen (but it's not enough, you need the 2 other conditions above first)

That's all...

You work hard for the quality of your item ? naaaa... instead... work on the fame of your name, work on licking the right asses and you 'll get the sales.... work on quality never did anything except for a small portion of the population who arent the majority bec if they were, our world would be really different right now.

And this is SL AND RL... 

The marketers know really well