Why does it cost serious money to own a sim?

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, Alwin Alcott said:

no sorry Penny, you'r turning a simply cost subject again in a building issue.

Great you fight for that, and in some things you'r right, but don't put everything in that box.

 

I demonstrated that how you build directly impacts how much land costs you. How is that not related?

1 hour ago, Phil Deakins said:

 For instance, who would want a house that other people couldn't walk into?, and would feel like a human in a doll's house if they managed to get in? Even a small size reduction would make it difficult. I once came across a house that didn't look too small but I still could get through the door without crouch-walking, and I wasn't a giant.

If people want to be 8' tall giants, that's their prerogative, I'm simply pointing out that there is a very real monetary cost to that. The argument that "the size of a metre in SL is arbitrary" doesn't change the fact that if you own or rent land in SL then you are spending more money to make everything larger. I'd also argue that most people don't want to be giants, they end up as giants due to factors outside their control, factors most people are entirely unaware of. For example, you say you're not a giant but what are you basing that on?

 

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Secondlife was designed as a multi-user shared experience, I don't know why we keep receiving more and more users who specifically refuse this idea but despite that, want their needs filled.

Regions are 256x256 because they are designed to fit on a grid so that walking off the edge of a region leads to the next pretty much seamlessly.

You might not like the mainland but this is what SL was made for and nothing else, the entire infrastructure is built solely with the mainland in mind. Private regions are an afterthought, an exception to the rule, and Linden Lab expects that if you need one or more entire regions disconnected from the main gris, that you are going to develop it into something. That it's there for a special requirement, business or other. And this special requirement comes with a luxury tax.

But no people just want to plop their house in the middle and a sex bed.

There is nothing wrong with people wanting small, private spaces for themselves and their friends. It does not detract from a multi-user shared experience whatsoever. It's also good environment design with regards to performance. Why should I be forced to have low framerates because my virtual neighbors rez tonnes of laggy content? That sort of thing drives people out of SL.

I would argue that if LL were smart about it they would design a way to have these private instances be able to connect to public spaces. Like take the features I described but apply them to user chosen heights within the sim, so they can have their private vistas, but when they walk out the front door it teleports them to their house on the ground, surrounded by neighboring homes. Best of both worlds right there.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

2 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

There is nothing wrong with people wanting small, private spaces for themselves and their friends. It does not detract from a multi-user shared experience whatsoever. It's also good environment design with regards to performance. Why should I be forced to have low framerates because my virtual neighbors rez tonnes of laggy content? That sort of thing drives people out of SL.

I would argue that if LL were smart about it they would design a way to have these private instances be able to connect to public spaces. Like take the features I described but apply them to user chosen heights within the sim, so they can have their private vistas, but when they walk out the front door it teleports them to their house on the ground, surrounded by neighboring homes. Best of both worlds right there.

Well it's a tragedy of the commons both ways.

Do you want a SecondLife where there is hardly any public/shared space because 99% of the users are cuddling inside private instances? That's basically IMVU and it's not the virtual world I signed for.

The main neighbor issues people bring up I can never understand. I just left a message to someone that their sign caused issues with vehicles on the Linden road and the guy THANKED ME and sand he would fix it immediately.

I'm sure there are horror stories with SL neighborhood but first, I don't think they are the majority (I think people like to have scary stories to tell), and I think it's down to people perpetuating a loop of hate and distrust for anyone who isn't in their little social circle.

Old Kyrah here but back when private regions didn't exist, we didn't have many neighborhood problems because we had to deal with it instead of going all passive aggressive about it.

I've never understood back then people who joined SecondLife and wanted something from it that it clearly isn't made for.

[Penny Patton]

Just now, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Do you want a SecondLife where there is hardly any public/shared space because 99% of the users are cuddling inside private instances? That's basically IMVU and it's not the virtual world I signed for.

You're suggesting that merely offering people the option to have a little more privacy and freedom for land parcels would turn the entire grid into shut-ins who never step outside their virtual houses.

That's a pretty, um, bold claim.

As is the claim that there were never any bad neighbors until private estates existed. If, on the off chance, that is true I would chalk it up to the limited number of people in SL, and the type of people SL would have probably attracted at that early stage. Our ozone layer is not being depleted due to a deficit of pirates.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

The ozone and pirate thing that's an old one.

I'm just looking at how massively popular IMVU was and still is. Private estates that provide public spaces are pretty rare and those who do are usually considered "upscale" and are priced accordingly.

There is a pretty consequent demographic in SL that turns on ban lines and security orb before they even build anything. I don't know if we want to encourage more of them to join.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

4 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

knowing that we count from 0....

255 = 0xFF 
511 = 0x1FF

Not arbitrary. Back in 2002 the savings in using half the database bytes likely mattered.

3 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

512 means you were sending 2 times the number of bytes for x and y through the slow modems of the day

512 means you were storing 2 times the number of bytes for x and y in the 32 bit (4GB maximum) databases of the day

Guys.. Floating point numbers don't work like that..

And "Halving the length of the meter" is a horrifying idea, even now we can already see rounding errors between 2000-4096 Z or beyond. 

3 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

If not, what do you think drive the architectural descision to set a sim to <byte,byte,word>?

<float, float, float> --- Things can exist between 0 and 1.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Qie Niangao]

Coincidentally, last night before looking at this thread I posted across the street that the "private" experiences of Second Life could be better served exclusively by Estates addressing that market specifically, and that Mainland would be better if restricted access/visibility simply weren't an available consideration. Everybody would be happier. If I ever wanted that kind of seclusion I could get an Estate rental in addition to "open to the public" Mainland.

(I also opined that the current "parcel privacy" setting is less than effective on Mainland because the isolation zones are the entire parcel, all the way to the sky, so to achieve the promised isolation, "security" scripts must shoot down planes passing thousands of meters overhead. As currently implemented the setting simply shouldn't apply to Mainland -- nor should most of the parcel settings.)

Edited May 26, 2018 by Qie Niangao

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Yeah but as long as mainland is the cheaper solution people will try to wrestle it into what it isn't, example: those region sized skybox rentals.

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Penny Patton said:

I demonstrated that how you build directly impacts how much land costs you. How is that not related?

no, you still put it in your own box

it's WHY it is expensive, not how to use less land for less costs.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

4 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

If not, what do you think drive the architectural descision to set a sim to <byte,byte,word>?

I dunno as a programmer I'm naturally attracted to power of two values.

EDIT: But hey maybe that's just me.

2 hours ago, Alwin Alcott said:

no, you still put it in your own box

it's WHY it is expensive, not how to use less land for less costs.

We told you already it's paying for all the infrastructure that no one has to pay for directly.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Rob Huntsman]

3 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I dunno as a programmer I'm naturally attracted to power of two values.

EDIT: But hey maybe that's just me.

We told you already it's paying for all the infrastructure that no one has to pay for directly.

I still don't understand how that's not updated.... A lot of programs have "Built-in" memory with no additional costs for everyone else's account. For Example, when playing WoW on private servers or chat logs even from Discord, all of the inventory/chat is compiled in its "Built-in" memory... Not considered as "Someone else paying for it."

[Kyrah Abattoir]

2 minutes ago, Haselden said:

I still don't understand how that's not updated.... A lot of programs have "Built-in" memory with no additional costs for everyone else's account. For Example, when playing WoW on private servers or chat logs even from Discord, all of the inventory/chat is compiled in its "Built-in" memory... Not considered as "Someone else paying for it."

Your character on wow fits in a floppy disk. And private WoW servers are not businesses (on top of being of dubious legality). You pay a monthly fee to play on Blizzard's servers.

My SL inventory is probably several gigabits at this point.

[Rob Huntsman]

3 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Your character on wow fits in a floppy disk. And private WoW servers are not businesses (on top of being of dubious legality). You pay a monthly fee to play on Blizzard's servers.

My SL inventory is probably several gigabits at this point.

I'd agree to that back in the day when WoW was first created and Second Life. However, it's been over a decade. Where it's quite common to buy computers, with 8 Terabytes (TB) of memory even. Memory devices have completely changed and much larger in this generation.

Although, once People start getting over 40k worth of items I notice its good to delete stuff because a large inventory can lag you. Like a full memory, the computer goes slower because of more programs to load. 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Remember that on wow all content is static so all the game ever save for you is just reference IDs of objects.

In SL absolutely everything has been created by users, imagine how many 10L$ textures have been uploaded in 15 years, that's not even the start.

It's also an experience, sure you can run your own SL grid with 3rd party softwares but it will have no content.

The content is what makes SL.

[Rob Huntsman]

2 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Remember that on wow all content is static so all the game ever save for you is just reference IDs of objects.

In SL absolutely everything has been created by users, imagine how many 10L$ textures have been uploaded in 15 years, that's not even the start.

It's also an experience, sure you can run your own SL grid with 3rd party softwares but it will have no content.

The content is what makes SL.

You could probably still have all that, like if Discord & Fornite was able to pull off "Free" servers. I'm sure SL can think of something.

Was just pointing out much has changed. There's a reason, why a lot of programs are going free and they're making even more cash because of it.

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Well then feel free to present your new business plan to Linden Lab. In the meantime, this is how things are here.

[Alwin Alcott]

4 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

We told you already it's paying for all the infrastructure that no one has to pay for directly.

"we told you already"?

you think you'r talking to, your teen  kid or so?

[Rob Huntsman]

29 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Well then feel free to present your new business plan to Linden Lab. In the meantime, this is how things are here.

Well here is how Minecraft creates Free servers, which in a way are sort of similar to SL sims.

 

[Fionalein]

13 minutes ago, Haselden said:

Well here is how Minecraft creates Free servers, which in a way are sort of similar to SL sims.

What part of "the information of those games is localy stored on your hard drive" didn't you understand in the previous explanations?

Edited May 26, 2018 by Fionalein

[Rob Huntsman]

20 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

What part of "the information of those games is localy stored on your hard drive" didn't you understand in the previous explanations?

Well, I can't really think of a solution for that. At this time but, I figured it might be worth posting that video. For Minecraft people are just creating their "Own" sims by using their home router. For Free, no 100's of dollars involved. 

 

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Well lets take the example of minecraft sure.

There is a server out there that hasn't been reset for 4 years and whose main rule is "anarchy".

https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t/

They even have a subreddit. Where am i getting at with this? The server save file is over 800Gb.

This is minecraft.

That's 800Gb JUST to store the map data.

 

Whatever you do on your own computer is fine and all, it's a completely different story when you are hosting for others. I typically keep 7 weeks of backups for my servers to avoid "accidents" on a remote ftp and 7 days of backup locally. so in practice i need (worst case scenario) 7Gb of local backup space for each Gb of usable data and 7 of remote space.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Kyrah Abattoir

[Rob Huntsman]

23 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Well lets take the example of minecraft sure.

There is a server out there that hasn't been reset for 4 years and whose main rule is "anarchy".

https://www.reddit.com/r/2b2t/

They even have a subreddit. Where am i getting at with this? The server save file is over 800Gb.

This is minecraft.

That's 800Gb JUST to store the map data.

 

Whatever you do on your own computer is fine and all, it's a completely different story when you are hosting for others. I typically keep 7 weeks of backups for my servers to avoid "accidents" on a remote ftp and 7 days of backup locally. so in practice i need (worst case scenario) 7Gb of local backup space for each Gb of usable data and 7 of remote space.

True, it would probably only big enough currently for a skybox for yourself.

However, I think if SL could perhaps develop a way to host your own sim/server, by using the same technique these websites will help out. Just like they are with minecraft, I even found another video listing top 5 websites to make your own Sim/land. However, none of these currently have their own options for SL.

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Haselden

[Kyrah Abattoir]

Would you pay 100$ a month for Linden Labs to allow the region you run on your computer to be connected to the SL grid?

[Parhelion Palou]

10 minutes ago, Haselden said:

True, it would probably only big enough currently for a skybox for yourself.

However, I think if SL could perhaps develop a way to host your own sim, by using the same technique these websites will help out. Just like they are with minecraft, I even found another video listing top 5 websites to make your own Sim/land. However, none of these currently have their own options for SL.

 

Go find your favorite flavor of OpenSim and install it on your computer. Now you've got your own SL-like place. It won't be connected to SL or work quite like it, but it's yours and it's free. Enjoy.

[Coby Foden]

10 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

It's true that the default camera position has a lot to answer for, but it's the default and, unless the default changes, we residents won't change it to accomodate things. As you know, there are places that make things smaller than usual, such as Berlin, but it simply doesn't work because people have to change the camera position - and manage without being able to see what's around you well enough. Perhaps we could get used to such things, but, as things are now, we donlt need to get used to anything. It just works.

Default is just what the programmer decided to be the default. In many cases it might not even be the best setting. The default camera position in the viewer is really bad one (I would refer to it as a view of the world from the top of a tree). For many years I have used better position for the camera and it works extremely well - anywhere in SL, whether the place is built oversized or if it's built with realistic (i.e. close to or exact real life dimensions).

So, there is no need to constantly change the camera position "to accommodate things" because the better camera position works well all over SL.
And it really gives a better view of SL. I would never ever go back to the default camera position.
My better camera position "just works" too - and better than the default.
- - - -
I have heard some whispers that the viewer might have later some easy controls to change the default camera position.
Which would be great because now the settings are kind of hidden in the debug settings what lots of users might not even be aware of.
- - - -