Secondlife declining player base

[Blush Bravin]

16 minutes ago, Nextio said:

Now the SL playerbase is stuck with this dying old game.

Much to their own doing because they will not give up their inventories. LL is not to blame for that. I too don't want to loose my collection of things. But we can't make all these changes unless we are willing to give something up in return for making it better. LL won't break our content. That alone keeps our world tied to the past instead of being able to move forward. 

Edited August 5, 2018 by Blush Bravin

[Coffee Pancake]

16 minutes ago, Nextio said:

SL's biggest problem has always been it's game engine, because it was constructed by amateurs.  It was never built to have performance and optimization as it's top priority, unlike mmorpgs.  They would need to start all over with a new engine to handle new coding techniques and hardware technologies that deal with rendering, culling, draw distance, and so on.  People were hoping for SL 2.0 but we got Sansar instead.  Now the SL playerbase is stuck with this dying old game.

No. No. No. No.

The idea that SL has a poopy game engine is not true, has never been true and routinely gets tossed about by people with zero idea of how any of this works.

[Phorumities]

52 minutes ago, Blush Bravin said:

Much to their own doing because they will not give up their inventories. LL is not to blame for that. I too don't want to loose my collection of things. But we can't make all these changes unless we are willing to give something up in return for making it better. LL won't break our content. That alone keeps our world tied to the past instead of being able to move forward. 

Yes give up everything to start over with a new shiny? I don't think so

I have no desire to give up my inventory, and if I was forced to move to that horrorshow known as Sansar, I'd just leave.

And why would I spend even one more penny on buying stuff if I knew it could be rendered obsolete at any time.

Someone posted that even basic simple prims cause lag, and we should get rid of even those to boost performance.

If you want better performance and better looking scenes there's lots of single purpose sex platforms starting up, but if you want the total social experience, Second Life is still the only game in town.

NOTE: "only game in town" is an expression, it is not my suggestion that SL is in any way shape or form a game

[Nextio]

33 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

No. No. No. No.

The idea that SL has a poopy game engine is not true, has never been true and routinely gets tossed about by people with zero idea of how any of this works.

Well, i was using "game engine" as a broad term.  When you break it down, it's made up of different components, such as rendering, physics, audio, scripting, etc.  Are you really trying to say all those different components are comparable to modern game engines such as Unreal, Unity, and mmorpgs?

I'm not saying the code hasn't been updated, but Linden Lab isn't solely focused on game engine optimizations.  They are mostly focused on front-end development and management.  It's practically in maintenance mode these days, with the exception of new features such as bento and bake-on-mesh (gotta throw a bone to the base every now and then).

Newer games handle rendering in different ways than it was in 2003.  Different engines, such as Unreal and Unity, are mostly focused under the hood, i.e. coding and algorithms, while 3rd party developers focus on the front-end of development.

There isn't really much you can do to SL's code anymore without re-writing the entire thing.  Updates help, but they also conflict with other code, and then you start going down the rabbit hole trying to get everything to work harmoniously.  Just take OpenSim and SL for example.  Both are practically using the same engine, but nobody would seriously say that OpenSim is comparable to modern game development.

[Nextio]

53 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

Yes give up everything to start over with a new shiny? I don't think so

I have no desire to give up my inventory, and if I was forced to move to that horrorshow known as Sansar, I'd just leave.

And why would I spend even one more penny on buying stuff if I knew it could be rendered obsolete at any time.

Someone posted that even basic simple prims cause lag, and we should get rid of even those to boost performance.

If you want better performance and better looking scenes there's lots of single purpose sex platforms starting up, but if you want the total social experience, Second Life is still the only game in town.

NOTE: "only game in town" is an expression, it is not my suggestion that SL is in any way shape or form a game

Technology advances, whether you like it or not.  Successful businesses adapt and stay alive, i.e. Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, etc.  They gradually change over time, and eventually phase out their old products (VCR, 4:3 TV, etc).  The majority of people aren't using Win 95 anymore, and almost all software development has stopped supporting Win XP.  Why would any company cater to a dying audience when there's an ocean of new customers?

SL is a mess.  It's a patchwork of prims, flexi prims, sculpties, mesh, etc.  And then you have the mess with avatars:  Ruth, SL's default non-bento avatars, SL's default bento avatars, then 3rd party bento avatars & parts, such as maitreya and catwa heads.  There's no standardization or conformity.  It's basically the Frankenstein of virtual worlds/games.

They had various options to phase out that old stuff over five years ago.  The community tried suggesting ideas and tried helping, but Linden Lab decided to do things differently.  They wanted to keep the status quo to keep people like you satisfied, but here we are years later confirming their decision was wrong.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Nextio

[Magnek Fang]

Why is it that nearly all the suggestions to breathe new life into SL end up boiling down to 'throw out the stuff I think is old'? As a scavenger and appreciator of the old, I find this rather disturbing. I don't appreciate being forced to toss stuff out because some hipster thought I should 'get with the times', and I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. Yes I do have mesh stuff, but that's more due to scrimping and saving than anything else. I mean, that's half the charm. The last time LL tried to make something new, we go Sansar, which isn't exactly thriving (and prolly never will as long as VR rigs are expensive, need large amounts of space, and induce vertigo, or for that matter as long as VRchat exists).

What we may need to do is make it easier for new people to find stuff to do, like maybe give the search engine a tweak, or maybe just remind the rest of the world that we're still here and there's more than sex.

[Phorumities]

37 minutes ago, Nextio said:

Technology advances, whether you like it or not.  Successful businesses adapt and stay alive, i.e. Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, etc.  They gradually change over time, and eventually phase out their old products (VCR, 4:3 TV, etc).  The majority of people aren't using Win 95 anymore, and almost all software development has stopped supporting Win XP.  Why would any company cater to a dying audience when there's an ocean of new customers?

SL is a mess.  It's a patchwork of prims, flexi prims, sculpties, mesh, etc.  And then you have the mess with avatars:  Ruth, SL's default non-bento avatars, SL's default bento avatars, then 3rd party bento avatars & parts, such as maitreya and catwa heads.  There's no standardization or conformity.  It's basically the Frankenstein of virtual worlds/games.

They had various options to phase out that old stuff over five years ago.  The community tried suggesting ideas and tried helping, but Linden Lab decided to do things differently.  They wanted to keep the status quo to keep people like you satisfied, but here we are years later confirming their decision was wrong.

Yes I'm sure you'd be happier if everything was standardized, one avatar for everyone perhaps.

You call it a horrible mess of avatars, I call it a fantastic range of options. 

What is this push to conformity I keep hearing about? 

Its like, its like...

[Nextio]

1 hour ago, Magnek Fang said:

Why is it that nearly all the suggestions to breathe new life into SL end up boiling down to 'throw out the stuff I think is old'? As a scavenger and appreciator of the old, I find this rather disturbing. I don't appreciate being forced to toss stuff out because some hipster thought I should 'get with the times', and I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. Yes I do have mesh stuff, but that's more due to scrimping and saving than anything else. I mean, that's half the charm. The last time LL tried to make something new, we go Sansar, which isn't exactly thriving (and prolly never will as long as VR rigs are expensive, need large amounts of space, and induce vertigo, or for that matter as long as VRchat exists).

What we may need to do is make it easier for new people to find stuff to do, like maybe give the search engine a tweak, or maybe just remind the rest of the world that we're still here and there's more than sex.

Because most of that old stuff hinders SL's development and growth.  As pointed out earlier in this thread, it comes down to badly optimized mesh created by amateurs.  Then you have prims which was a hack that made things worse.  On top of that, SL's in-world building tools were abandoned and never updated to conform to "mesh", and that's why the best content is made in Maya and Blender.

That's like saying, "why throw out those old car parts that the T-Model used"?  Would any car manufacture seriously be using old parts from the 1930s alongside modern parts?  Of course not.  They eventually phased out the old useless junk and replaced it with efficient parts, or just created a new design from scratch.

Giving new people something to do isn't going to help when the world around them is lagging and glitching everywhere, due to old prims and badly optimized mesh.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Nextio

[Phorumities]

3 minutes ago, Nextio said:

Because most of that old stuff hinders SL's development and growth.  As pointed out earlier in this thread, it comes down to badly optimized mesh created by amateurs.  Then you have prims which was a hack that made things worse.  On top of that, SL's in-world building tools were abandoned and never updated to conform to "mesh", and that's why the best content is made in Maya and Blender.

That's like saying, "why throw out those old car parts that the T-Model used"?  Would any car manufacture seriously be using old parts from the 1930s alongside modern parts?  Of course not.  They eventually phased out the old useless junk and replaced it with efficient parts, or just created a new design from scratch.

Giving new people something to do isn't going to help when the world around them is lagging and glitching everywhere, due to old prims and badly optimized mesh.

Sounds a lot like what an American major said in Vietnam... It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it

http://www.nhe.net/BenTreVietnam/

[Nextio]

1 hour ago, Phorumities said:

Yes I'm sure you'd be happier if everything was standardized, one avatar for everyone perhaps.

You call it a horrible mess of avatars, I call it a fantastic range of options. 

What is this push to conformity I keep hearing about? 

Its like, its like...

That's not what i'm saying at all.  I'm saying SL needs to adhere to a standard instead of patching it up like Frankenstein.  I don't have a problem with 3rd party avatars or content.

I'll break it down for you.

 

SL's avatar system

• Ruth/Roth
• Non-bento mesh avatars (w/o mesh head, only standard head)*
• Bento mesh avatars (w/o mesh head, only standard head).*

*Appliers do not work on their mesh avatars, so they are implementing bakes-on-mesh as a solution.

 

Now let's look at the conundrum for creators 

• Develop for the above SL standards (three variations!)
• Develop for 3rd party mesh avatars (even more variation)

There should only be one variation of the standard SL avatar.  (3rd party variation is fine and the popular ones are determined by consumers)

 

What about clothing and appliers?

• Ruth/Roth (tattoo layers?)
• Standard sizing
• Fitted mesh
• Bento mesh
• 3rd party avatars

 

Which of the above options should creators focus on?  They have limited time, so they focus on their target audience, because it's more efficient in their workflows.

All the top creators do not design for Ruth/Roth anymore.  They do not create Standard or Fitted clothing anymore.  They create for Bento and 3rd party avatars, because that's what customers want.

It's like the real world.  You either adapt, or be that person who never conformed to a modern lifestyle.  Those are the people who never changed their hairstyle or upgraded their wardrobe.  They are stuck in the past, still rocking a 70's moustache and/or wearing bell-bottoms.  The rest of the real world/SL world  is moving on though.

 

 

Edited August 5, 2018 by Nextio

[Nextio]

27 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

Sounds a lot like what an American major said in Vietnam... It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it

http://www.nhe.net/BenTreVietnam/

You're going off the rails with hyperbole.  I'm talking about a virtual world with a gradual change over time.  Either stick to the subject or i'm just not going to bother anymore.

[Phorumities]

2 minutes ago, Nextio said:

You're going off the rails with hyperbole.  I'm talking about a virtual world with a gradual change over time.  Either stick to the subject or i'm just not going to bother anymore.

you are saying the same thing are you not?

And I'm not hyperbolic, I'm a simple semi transparent rotating sphere.

*made from one prim with a render weight of 450*

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Nextio said:

That's not what i'm saying at all.  I'm saying SL needs to adhere to a standard instead of patching it up like Frankenstein.  I don't have a problem with 3rd party avatars or content.

I'll break it down for you.

 

SL's avatar system

• Ruth/Roth
• Non-bento mesh avatars (w/o mesh head, only standard head)*
• Bento mesh avatars (w/o mesh head, only standard head).*

*Appliers do not work on their mesh avatars, so they are implementing bakes-on-mesh as a solution.

1) The mesh bodies you're describing aren't part of the SL avatar system; they're third party products. (If you're talking about the briefly available mesh starter avatars from years ago, they had mesh heads. Meanwhile, the starter avatars with Bento wings/horses that were introduced a while ago don't have mesh bodies.)

2) The only difference between "Bento" and "non-Bento" avatar bodies are the hands

3) Appliers were actually invented for mesh bodies; they won't work on non-mesh heads. Non-mesh heads use system skins which were developed into appliers.

Now let's look at the conundrum for creators 

• Develop for the above SL standards (three variations!)
• Develop for 3rd party mesh avatars (even more variation)

As I said, there's no such thing as "3 SL standards"

There should only be one variation of the standard SL avatar. There only is one (if you don't count the very unpopular mesh starter avatars from four years ago). (3rd party variation is fine and the popular ones are determined by consumers)

 

What about clothing and appliers?

• Ruth/Roth (tattoo layers?)
• Standard sizing
• Fitted mesh
• Bento mesh
• 3rd party avatars

All popular third party avatars use fitted mesh, and Bento has no impact on clothing or appliers other than things for hands.

Which of the above options should creators focus on?  They have limited time, so they focus on their target audience, because it's more efficient in their workflows.

No sugar, Sherlock. That's exactly what they're doing.

All the top creators do not design for Ruth/Roth anymore.  They do not create Standard or Fitted clothing anymore.  They create for Bento and 3rd party avatars, because that's what customers want.

1) There are vast amounts of items for older avatars still on the market and will be indefinitely - virtual goods don't have to be "produced" after their initial creation.

2) All clothing for third-party avatars is "fitted mesh."

It's like the real world.  You either adapt, or be that person who never conformed to a modern lifestyle.  Those are the people who never changed their hairstyle or upgraded their wardrobe.  They are stuck in the past, still rocking a 70's moustache and/or wearing bell-bottoms.  The rest of the real world/SL world  is moving on though.

Another similarity to the real world - if somebody makes an argument and its clear they know little about what they're saying they will have a hard time convincing anyone.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[ChinRey]

Not quite signed off from this thread then.

 

7 hours ago, Nextio said:

SL's biggest problem has always been it's game engine, because it was constructed by amateurs.  It was never built to have performance and optimization as it's top priority, unlike mmorpgs.

That is not correct. The original SL developer team was a bit messy (with details like documentation and such) and young and inexperienced but they were brilliantly talented programmers and very conscious about optimizing performance. But there was a power struggle between them and the "marketing" people who wanted fame and fortune fast. It culiminated in 2007 when the CTO was fired. The new CTO didn't have the backbone to stand up against the by then allmighty CEO and that's when the hunt for "shinies" - quick-and-dirty implementations of new features that looked good but weren't built to last - started.

Oh well, the old CTO eventually became a Vice President at Facebook while the CEO and the new CTO got stuck with a DOA VR project nobody else could give a toss about. I guess they all got what they deserved in the end. Not that it makes any difference to SL or LL.

What does make a difference to SL and LL, is that the current developers are doing an amazing job. They don't seem to achieve much and they've made some serious mistakes. But considering what they started with, it's amazing they've achieved anything at all and I seriously doubt that Second Life would even have seen its 15th birthday if it wasn't for them.

Edited August 6, 2018 by ChinRey

[Coffee Pancake]

7 hours ago, Nextio said:

Well, i was using "game engine" as a broad term.  When you break it down, it's made up of different components, such as rendering, physics, audio, scripting, etc.  Are you really trying to say all those different components are comparable to modern game engines such as Unreal, Unity, and mmorpgs?

Game engines have very broad scope from the developers side, and very limited scope from the players side. Game engines present fixed content to the user, it can be very broad in scope, but it all has to exist and be coded in before the player ever experiences it.

SL does not have the same separation. You are walking around inside the editor, everything can change frame to frame. There is none of the pre-calculation or baking that game engines do between the editor and the playable end result.  SL is 100% real time, everything you see has to be processed as it arrives or as it is created (these actions are exactly the same).

SL also has a very different server client model, everything to do with the world and your interaction is server side. The client fetches, unpacks and renders only what the server tells it about. You press a key to move .. SL tells the server you did and that in turn works out what happens and tell you and everyone around.

You could not make SL in a game engine like Unity or Unreal. 

7 hours ago, Nextio said:

I'm not saying the code hasn't been updated, but Linden Lab isn't solely focused on game engine optimizations.  They are mostly focused on front-end development and management.  It's practically in maintenance mode these days, with the exception of new features such as bento and bake-on-mesh (gotta throw a bone to the base every now and then).

Also not true, the bulk of the labs work the last few years has been working on the backend and moving services to HTTP and the cloud. SL now works the best it ever has. There are many front facing projects on the go at any one time, development is slow as the lab has heavy involvement with content creators. The slow pace that new content types are added is for our benefit.

Current notable projects include bake on mesh, environment enhancement (windlight assets and zoned per parcel lighting controls) and animesh (adding bones to mesh content and then animating it). All of these have extended beta periods where the lab engages with users to create test content and help define how features should work. There are many other less notable dry technical projects of equal importance, like reworking the cache or further cloud integration.

The lab is also working with TPV developers to add contributed features to the client.

Everything has to pass a rigorous quality control.

SL is not in maintenance mode. It might feel like it doesn't change as everything you see and associate with SL has nothing to do with LL.

Making the render engine do more pretty always comes with a high price as it has to be done in real time.

7 hours ago, Nextio said:

Newer games handle rendering in different ways than it was in 2003.  Different engines, such as Unreal and Unity, are mostly focused under the hood, i.e. coding and algorithms, while 3rd party developers focus on the front-end of development.

Game engines are also able to do a ton of work between the developer and player, this has a massive impact on how scenes are lit, how objects are rendered (or not), physics and so on.

SL can not work this way. Yes. You could put SL content in a game engine and it would run twice as fast and be beautifully rendered. But the parts of SL that couldn't be translated are those that define SL. Rez a something, create something, change geometry on the fly, add a script, upload brand new content, arbitrarily change literally everything between frames ... and do it all in a wholly shared way.

7 hours ago, Nextio said:

There isn't really much you can do to SL's code anymore without re-writing the entire thing.  Updates help, but they also conflict with other code, and then you start going down the rabbit hole trying to get everything to work harmoniously.  Just take OpenSim and SL for example.  Both are practically using the same engine, but nobody would seriously say that OpenSim is comparable to modern game development.

OpenSim and SL have nothing in common aside from presenting a similar end experience to the user. 

 

It is worth pointing out that the SL viewer has been opensource for a very long time at this point and no-one has ever managed to port a game render engine to the client, or the client to a game engine. Significant man hours have been sunk into going over the render pipeline only to end up with the conclusion that it's actually pretty solid.

If you feel differently, by all means have at it, we will all (LL included) be very excited to see you succeed. As Apple are depreciating OpenGL, might I suggest you re-implement the engine using Vulkan.

 

[Penny Patton]

21 hours ago, Tari Landar said:

To do what they should do-that is, what a lot of people want them to do, or to have done for that matter-would ruin what sl is today,

False. I'm not going to repeat why again because I keep doing it and no one has yet offered any sort of argument opposing my points. All that happens is someone repeats a falsehood that's already been thoroughly debunked, or makes some vague claim that basically makes it sound like they're saying "higher framerates are scary!"

 You don't have to "ruin" SL for it's current userbase to make it better. No one is arguing for any changes that would ruin SL for the current userbase. Those of us who want to see SL improve are SL users just like you, we don't want to tear SL down and turn it into Sansar or anything like that. We don't want to make it a gamer's-only club. We want to make it easier for users to get into dressing up their avatars, creating content, and exploring the world, not harder.

21 hours ago, Phil Deakins said:

I know that's not what you meant, but the very idea is still scary.

I get what you mean, that's why I try to explain things as thoroughly as I can, so allow me to elaborate on this point.

Prims do not all use the same amount of resources. A torus is not the same as a cube, it's a lot more complex, so it makes sense it should cost more LI than a cube. That said, you should still be able to make content using prims and not have it pushed out by overly strict limits. At the same time, with the current state of the tools, an optimized mesh should be able to do a lot more using less Land Impact than something made out of prims.

However, I'd like to see the prim tools improved. I want people to make better looking content with the in-world tools and I believe that's possible. We've seen other platforms do it. SL's in-world tool set has not fundamentally changed since inception. That's 15 years with no real progress. Sure, materials and the ability to change the physics shape of objects, but these were implemented in the service of mesh. We need real improvements to the base tools. Bring back the charm SL had in being able to log in, go to a sandbox and start creating.

 LL has stated that any changes they make to how Land Impact is calculated will be a ways off yet (and considering we're still waiting on features that they said would be out "soon" almost a year ago, I think it's safe to assume LI changes are not something anyone needs to be immediately concerned about). They've also suggested they'd like to give people tools to adapt to the new LI changes. What form those tools will take, whether they will include changes to the prim building tools, remains to be seen.

 And maybe they won't change how prim LI is calculated at all! Maybe they'll single out sculpts, since those tend to be the real problem. Or maybe there will be no changes to any prims and the changes LL has planned will be exclusively regarding mesh. It's way to early to get worried since we don't even know what LL's plans are beyond trying to push content creators towards less laggy content.

[Coffee Pancake]

I'd like to see prims basically free. Twisted Tori are pretty horrible (and about the same as a sculpt), but only l33t builders ever made everything from them. >.>

Most prim content is cubes, plain simple cubes.

[Tari Landar]

34 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

False. I'm not going to repeat why again because I keep doing it and no one has yet offered any sort of argument opposing my points. All that happens is someone repeats a falsehood that's already been thoroughly debunked, or makes some vague claim that basically makes it sound like they're saying "higher framerates are scary!"

 You don't have to "ruin" SL for it's current userbase to make it better. No one is arguing for any changes that would ruin SL for the current userbase. Those of us who want to see SL improve are SL users just like you, we don't want to tear SL down and turn it into Sansar or anything like that. We don't want to make it a gamer's-only club. We want to make it easier for users to get into dressing up their avatars, creating content, and exploring the world, not harder.

 

Nothing that  have said has been debunked, by you or anyone else, lol.  Someone else already did a better job of explaining how and why many of the "LL should"s simply will not work and how they can, easily, "break" or "ruin" what sl is today, should they be implemented. I can't articulate it any better, and I certainly don't want to try. None of my "claims" are anywhere near "higher framerates are scary", that's a ridiculous comparison, lol. I don't even know where one would pull something like that, to be honest, nor do I want to, lol. 

[Penny Patton]

35 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

Someone else already did a better job of explaining how and why many of the "LL should"s simply will not work and how they can, easily, "break" or "ruin" what sl is today, should they be implemented.

Are you talking about ChinRey's post? I like ChinRey but her explanation of the risks associated with making any changes to SL can be summed up as "If LL rushes in with a lot of nonsensically disruptive changes overnight, it would ruin SL!" It's a ridiculous worst case scenario where other, more sensible paths have been clearly laid out.  Repeatedly and in thorough detail.

 

ETA:

I'll go one better, here's the link to the post where I respond to ChinRey's post to explain why it's flawed.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Penny Patton

[animats]

Fixing SL's internals is not hopeless. Just hard. They have a lot of technical debt, though.

The basic SL performance problem, as everyone who's looked under the hood realizes, is that overly detailed user content can choke the viewer and network. In the prim era, it was hard to choke the viewer because prims were usually pretty simple. Few people used all the complicated twist cases. (Go to the Ivory Tower to see a collection of what's possible. One-prim non-mesh spiral staircases. Nobody does that stuff. Not a performance problem.) Sculpties made it possible to make the viewer work harder for less land impact. Mesh made it even more possible.

The way SL was designed, what the creator puts in is pretty much what gets fed to the viewer. There's no intermediate optimization stage. This is a problem. In game development, there are polygon budgets and performance testing to get the complexity under control. SL doesn't have that. It can't - no one person knows what a final scene will look like.

SL needs something in the back end that crunches on assets, makes better LOD models, bakes what can be baked, impostors what can be impostered, and redoes this work when something changes. Most stuff doesn't change all that much, and that needs to be exploited for optimization.  Some of this can be done in the viewer, but it's more efficient to do it once on a server somewhere.

This is SL's big missing piece. It's not something most MMOs have, although they're getting there. InstaLOD (which, I think, Sansar uses) is a big step in that direction.

Even impostor generation with 10 year old technology would be a huge win.

 

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

There is a lot in RL that isn't optimal either, but we have to get along with it. My approach is to play the hand I've been dealt, and make the best of it, and to me, half the fun of SL is coming up with workarounds to do the "can't do that in SL" things.

 

"Darn, you have been logged out of SL. Please try the forums instead"

[animats]

16 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

There is a lot in RL that isn't optimal either, but we have to get along with it.

Or people can leave, often joining and leaving very quickly. that's what this topic is about. SL's new user retention is not very good.

[Phorumities]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

We need real improvements to the base tools. Bring back the charm SL had in being able to log in, go to a sandbox and start creating.

 

And why can't you do that now?  The joy of creating is still here, unless someone is gonna sit and complain it's no good because they have to use dumb stupid old prims instead of the shiny new mesh.

A well built prim building can look just as good as a mesh one, and there's no worrying about physics or calculating the right number of triangles or verticies or whatever you need to make sure your land impact isn't thru the roof.

 

 

 

[Phil Deakins]

5 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

However, I'd like to see the prim tools improved. I want people to make better looking content with the in-world tools and I believe that's possible.

What sort of improvements?

[Theresa Tennyson]

12 hours ago, Nextio said:

Because most of that old stuff hinders SL's development and growth.  As pointed out earlier in this thread, it comes down to badly optimized mesh created by amateurs.  Then you have prims which was a hack that made things worse.  On top of that, SL's in-world building tools were abandoned and never updated to conform to "mesh", and that's why the best content is made in Maya and Blender.

That's like saying, "why throw out those old car parts that the T-Model used"?  Would any car manufacture seriously be using old parts from the 1930s alongside modern parts?  Of course not.  They eventually phased out the old useless junk and replaced it with efficient parts, or just created a new design from scratch.

Giving new people something to do isn't going to help when the world around them is lagging and glitching everywhere, due to old prims and badly optimized mesh.

http://www.oldcarsweekly.com/car-reports-values/auction-sold-prices/1935-duesenberg-model-sj-sells-for-incredible-4-5m