Secondlife declining player base

[Coffee Pancake]

42 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

It's entirely anecdotal, but in my experience those avatars tend to rarely be a problem. Most of those I see in SL tend to fall well below the types of resource use we're talking about here.

I agree .. however there is technically ok and hammered by ARC. One is a subjective judgement, the other is an easily weaponized number.

[Phorumities]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Some people settle on a look or avatar years ago and refuse point blank to ever change.

Change, if it is a big improvement, is good. Change just for the sake of change, maybe not so much.

Incremental improvements are just a money pit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaOgZwk9rN8

I laughed at all my friends with their mesh feet and mesh hands and mesh breasts (or was it prim breasts?), but when a complete mesh body that responded to   sliders made change worthwhile, I was all in.

Now I laugh at their obsession over mesh heads.

When they finally make one that will allow me to match exactly my system head, then i'm all in once again.

Seriously, how many mesh heads can one person buy?

Edited August 17, 2018 by Phorumities
fixed a couple of words for clarity

[Penny Patton]

8 minutes ago, janetosilio said:

Ok, I can get behind that. I just think 30k is a little low for a cap.

It wouldn't seem that bad if content creators were optimizing their work. It's because so much of the content out there is so bloated that it feels difficult to reach those low ARC numbers.

If LL were to introduce a cap that low it would have to be well after giving people the tools and time necessary to incentive better optimized content. So by the time the cap came into place, people were already well under it. And I'd probably still aim for a higher cap than Coffee is suggesting. I still think LL only needs to curb the worst offenders as far as unoptimized content goes, to achieve massive performance gains in SL. But 30k really isn't as crazy as it might seem.

9 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I agree .. however there is technically ok and hammered by ARC. One is a subjective judgement, the other is an easily weaponized number.

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think we might be better off without ARC and just using VRAM use and triangle count as 2 separate indicators of avatar complexity. ARC already fails to take either into account as well as it should. They're far better indicators of how difficult it is to render an avatar. Instead of an ARC cap, why not a cap on texture use, and a cap on triangle count? They're both easier to explain and understand than "ARC" and if the main goal is to discourage unoptimized content, incentivizing content creators into putting out the most optimized work they can, simply having a cap on each would, in the end, result in content that would make it easy for the average SL user to wear whatever they like, rarely needing to even look at how close they are to either cap.

And if we're talking about people using things like "ARC" or "VRAM use" to go on a tear bullying people they encounter for having too high a number, I'd repeat that I believe LL shouldn't even put such numbers in the regular viewer until well after content creators have had a heads-up on what's coming, with the time and tools to adapt. I know people are worried about the amount of work it would put on content creators to optimize existing content, but it's really not that bad for most of the content. It would actually be pretty easy, given the tools and enough time, to update their existing content, and make such updates available to their customers.

Because again, a goal should be to make the transition as easy on the userbase as possible, even if it means taking the long way around to get there.

[Theresa Tennyson]

5 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

• Even if you don't use those layers, you keep them hidden, their polygons are still being rendered by your hardware, and so are the textures. Assuming you have 1024x1024 textures on every layer that's eight 4MB textures right there for a total of 32MB used by your mesh body alone before we even add materials. That's an additional 8MB if you only have materials on your body, but some applier clothing also uses materials which can push an "onion skin" mesh body up to 128MB of memory all on its own.

 

Nope.

If you wear a mesh avatar and watch the "Ktris/frame" number, you can see that turning off parts of layers reduces the number of polygons drawn per frame and increases the framerate. If you watch the texture console you'll see that the amount of bound graphics memory also drops as you turn layers off.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[animats]

I normally run with avatar impostors enabled, and set to 2 or 3 avatars. After the 2 or 3 nearest avatars, others are rendered to a flat image about 4 times a second or less. It's not perfect, but the viewer won't choke in a populated place. You see the avatars you're interacting with clearly, and the background avatars move jerkily.

[Penny Patton]

52 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Nope.

If you wear a mesh avatar and watch the "Ktris/frame" number, you can see that turning off parts of layers reduces the number of polygons drawn per frame and increases the framerate. If you watch the texture console you'll see that the amount of bound graphics memory also drops as you turn layers off.

Hmm, I'll have to follow up on this. That's good to know, and that's great it if works as you're saying...but, the moment you make any of those layers visible, you're making everyone around you render a complete additional avatar model with the associated textures and that's still not a good thing. Not as bad as I was under the impression it was, but still not good.

[Phorumities]

1 minute ago, Penny Patton said:

Hmm, I'll have to follow up on this. That's good to know, and that's great it if works as you're saying...but, the moment you make any of those layers visible, you're making everyone around you render a complete additional avatar model with the associated textures and that's still not a good thing. Not as bad as I was under the impression it was, but still not good.

Jelly them all and only render those you interact with, that's what I do

[Penny Patton]

26 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

Jelly them all and only render those you interact with, that's what I do

All I'm saying is that we shouldn't have to do that.

That's something a lot of people don't seem to understand. My view is that the average SLer should never, ever, need to even think about this technical stuff unless they develop an interest in it. They should be able to log into SL, go to the sims they like, buy the content they like, and it should all just work (within reasonable expectations).

There is no reason you should not be able to log into SL right now and enjoy double or even triple the framerates you usually get. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to crank the graphics options that much higher and still have acceptable performance. There is absolutely no reason SL couldn't be easier to get into, more fun to use, and at the same time offer more creative freedom than it currently does.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Nope.

If you wear a mesh avatar and watch the "Ktris/frame" number, you can see that turning off parts of layers reduces the number of polygons drawn per frame and increases the framerate. If you watch the texture console you'll see that the amount of bound graphics memory also drops as you turn layers off.

I suggest you try again using the scene statistics floater

53 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

Jelly them all and only render those you interact with, that's what I do

That's ... a really sad state of affairs for a visual group social platform in which the people are the most interesting aspect. We might all stand about in silence a lot, but at least we try to do it together.

33 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

All I'm saying is that we shouldn't have to do that.

That's something a lot of people don't seem to understand. My view is that the average SLer should never, ever, need to even think about this technical stuff unless they develop an interest in it. They should be able to log into SL, go to the sims they like, buy the content they like, and it should all just work (within reasonable expectations).

There is no reason you should not be able to log into SL right now and enjoy double or even triple the framerates you usually get. There is no reason you shouldn't be able to crank the graphics options that much higher and still have acceptable performance. There is absolutely no reason SL couldn't be easier to get into, more fun to use, and at the same time offer more creative freedom than it currently does.

Penny is right.

No only should it be better  .. it was better.

Your frame rates were higher , your draw distance was higher,  you could see more people, you could do more things .. like collaborative building. .. and all that on the exact same hardware you have on your desk today.

I used to have my draw distance set to 512 everywhere, now I can barely see past the end of my lawn. I used to spend countless hours building with friends .. now the few that still build do it offline and we pass like ships in the night sharing work via telegram or discord. I used to hang out at clubs that routinely had 60+ avatars ... I now watch my frame rate dip when two come to my home and find clubs about as fun as pulling teeth. I used to hang about and mess about in sandboxes and welcome areas, those places are now deserted or stacked full of bots that failed to TP home. A stack of dots on the map meant somewhere was worth a look, now it means stay away.

I'm thankful when places have an automated thing that pushes avatars off the landing point.

I used to apologize when I bumped someone.

[Phorumities]

3 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

 

That's ... a really sad state of affairs for a visual group social platform in which the people are the most interesting aspect. We might all stand about in silence a lot, but at least we try to do it together.

Penny is right.

No only should it be better  .. it was better.

Your frame rates were higher , your draw distance was higher,  you could see more people, you could do more things .. like collaborative building. .. and all that on the exact same hardware you have on your desk today.

I used to have my draw distance set to 512 everywhere, now I can barely see past the end of my lawn. I used to spend countless hours building with friends .. now the few that still build do it offline and we pass like ships in the night sharing work via telegram or discord. I used to hang out at clubs that routinely had 60+ avatars ... I now watch my frame rate dip when two come to my home and find clubs about as fun as pulling teeth. I used to hang about and mess about in sandboxes and welcome areas, those places are now deserted or stacked full of bots that failed to TP home. A stack of dots on the map meant somewhere was worth a look, now it means stay away.

I'm thankful when places have an automated thing that pushes avatars off the landing point.

I used to apologize when I bumped someone.

Your experience sounds like before i got my latest computer. When I first joined second life over 8 years ago, it was with a computer that triggered the message "your computer sucks and you won't have a good time, but we'll let u log in anyway".

I could go anywhere, do anything, no matter how busy a club was, it was no problem. By the time I replaced it about 4 years later, my top frame rate in even a moderately busy venue was 2 or 3. It was pure torture. I got my current computer, kept my same settings and I was at around 50 fps. It was amazing the things I missed before upgrading.

When i'm home or out sailing now I often set my draw to the maximum, it doesn't hurt my frame rate (throttled at 25). I jelly everyone because as I said before my video card fan failed and I need to baby the card so it doesn't overheat. I selectively render avatars,  to check them out, and of course my friends are always fully rezzed. If i'm talking to you in a club, I can see you fully.

When I replace my computer i'm hoping for the latest nvidea card, but even then, i'm not gonna max out my graphics settings,  I might not even unthrottle my frame rate, it's totally not necessary for a social platform.

Oh, and every animesh I see when it hits the main grid, I'll derender, and half the battle against lag will be won.

I really don't need the oooo factor, SL works just fine as is.

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

38 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I suggest you try again using the scene statistics floater

 

Why? Tell me why it's more accurate than a live report of the actual work the rendering engine is doing at any given moment as provided by that rendering engine.

[Coffee Pancake]

12 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

When I replace my computer i'm hoping for the latest nvidea card

Fixing the fan on you current one shouldn't be that hard .. lash a fan to it with cable ties if you have to, buy the fastest CPU you can afford and keep your existing GPU.

I have a 780 and a 650ti in the same box, with the same settings they perform about identical .. the 650 maxes out, the 780 is half idle (SL cpu bottlenecks). (weird set up .. so I can play WoW on one dedicated GPU and SL on the other .. or SL on one and blender on the other .. etc).

[Penny Patton]

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I suggest you try again using the scene statistics floater

 

22 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Why? Tell me why it's more accurate than a live report of the actual work the rendering engine is doing at any given moment as provided by that rendering engine.

I want to hear this, too, because it's not the first time I've seen conflicting information on this exact topic. For that matter, why is this even a thing up for debate? There really should be some concrete form of official documentation we can all just turn to and have the answer laid out for us in black and white.

47 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

Oh, and every animesh I see when it hits the main grid, I'll derender, and half the battle against lag will be won.

Why? How? What makes you think derendering animesh is going to help you battle lag? Comments like this and how over time your FPS was dropping until it was "pure torture" before you got a new computer, also seem to contradict your "everything is just fine" statements about SL as well. Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with how much you enjoy SL, but the problems you do bring up exist for no reason whatsoever. They are entirely avoidable. You say things like this then follow it up with "SL works just fine as is" and it sounds like you're saying you'd rather derender avatars and animesh than have SL just work without you needing to do those things. What's wrong with acknowledging that things could be better?

[Phorumities]

19 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

 

I want to hear this, too, because it's not the first time I've seen conflicting information on this exact topic. For that matter, why is this even a thing up for debate? There really should be some concrete form of official documentation we can all just turn to and have the answer laid out for us in black and white.

Why? How? What makes you think derendering animesh is going to help you battle lag? Comments like this and how over time your FPS was dropping until it was "pure torture" before you got a new computer, also seem to contradict your "everything is just fine" statements about SL as well. Again, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with how much you enjoy SL, but the problems you do bring up exist for no reason whatsoever. They are entirely avoidable. You say things like this then follow it up with "SL works just fine as is" and it sounds like you're saying you'd rather derender avatars and animesh than have SL just work without you needing to do those things. What's wrong with acknowledging that things could be better?

so should i let everything render and basically lock up or selectively derender unnecessary stuff and have a bearable experience?

i would think anything you derender decreases the work your computer has to do.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Phorumities

[Coffee Pancake]

27 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

 

I want to hear this, too, because it's not the first time I've seen conflicting information on this exact topic. For that matter, why is this even a thing up for debate? There really should be some concrete form of official documentation we can all just turn to and have the answer laid out for us in black and white.

Without pulling the render pipeline apart and finding out exactly what both of those displays are actually showing I can't answer you. But the fact scene stats exists and disagrees with the quick stats is kind of a thing, both are real time btw, scene stats just isn't as twitchy. Note to self .. scene stats should probably be re-sizable and not block interaction with the world.

Having gone down this rabbit hole before with stats in SL I'm solidly confident that both are not showing exactly what you think they are, although at face value I'm tempted to trust scene stats more. Ktris per frame jumps about because two sequential frames in SL are never the same, even when nothing changes just because of how the pipeline works. In the case of it dropping when layers are hidden, it might just be counting visable geometry and ignoring invisible yet still present tris.

Likewise with the texture console .. don't make a point of running SL with it open, it being open has a meaningful effect on how the decoder pipeline works, it's not just informational stats.

7 minutes ago, Phorumities said:

so should i let everything render and basically lock up or selectively derender unnecessary stuff and have a bearable experience?

i would think anything you derender decreases the work your computer has to do.

Derendering does, in that the thing goes away, but its rare that there will just be the one thing that's killing your PC or that you will have a meaningful impact manually picking out stuff to remove.

You would be better reducing your draw distance and lowering the object detail slider. If the stuff in your house suddenly looks like junk ... well, time to replace it with stuff that doesn't.

[Klytyna]

8 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

That's a point I think I've so far failed to get across to people like Klytyna and Solar Legion. They've got it in their head that trying to solve this problem automatically means harsh, difficult to meet caps that will force them into ugly, undetailed avatars, and that's just not what we're talking about at all.

The REASON we got it into our heads that you and your running mate are "talking harsh and difficult to meet caps", and more importantly "harsh fascist enforcement" of those caps is because...

Your running mate in this campaign, a person who on other threads has revealed a severe lack of understanding about MOST of the technical concerns involved, has stated point blank, that SHE has picked an arbitary number out of thin air.

This is somebody who AGREED with a clueless suggestion that texture thrashing could be solved by loading textures into VRAM with MiP-Mapping, despite the fact that would increase memory usage per texture by 50%, and thus INCREASE texture thrashing.

This is somebody whose grasp of mesh makers in SL is so poor they publicly slandered 99.999999 % of commercial clothing mesh makers with accusations of IP theft, and "uploading stuff they didn't make and painting it blue".

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

So what, exactly, is the point you're trying to make here? Because my point still stands, regardless.

My point is that if you plan to use NUMBERS to prove your point, do NOT just make up numbers and claim them as facts.  You want us to see your viewpoint?

Telling LIES, closes our eyes...

...

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

If content in SL were being made with optimization in mind, it would probably be extremely easy for even a highly detailed avatar to get their ARC below 30k.

First of all, how about you get one of those Ruth-2b's mentioned earlier, you know, the "single layer no onions low poly moddable mesh Maitreya look-a-like" mesh body that's been offered as a shining example of the future of the Arc-Nazi Reich, and wear it...

Texture it with 3 blank white 512x512 textures and see what it's RCI ACTUALLY is... Before calmly telling us that "Oh under 30 k will be easy in the Reich, no really, it will, and you'll still look fantastic, not a hint of octagonal boobs etc., no really..."

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Honestly, while 30k is extremely reasonably given the existence of optimized content, I would aim more for something less restrictive, like 100-150k.

Earlier in this thread Magnet asked who sets the cap and at what level, and I replied "pick an arc-nazi and add 10% to their usual RCI on their favorite saved outfit.

I'm sure I remember you stating you sometimes run at about 90k, and here we are, you suggest 100k as a cap.

What a surprise...

MY RCI tends to fall in the 40-90 k range depending on what clothing if any I'm wearing, some of the higher RCI stuff, will take me into the 100-150 range. But that's with the "LoD Exploit" style mass market mesh.

If I strip naked and wear my mesh Ropes, from Real Restraint, we're talking 200-250k with shoes and hair. Before you scream blue murder, I do NOT wear that level of RCI to say, the Hair Fair when it's busy... That's strictly, at home with a few friends away from the crowds, and it's NOT a problem.

I have a pair of strappy shoes, I got on offer at FaMeshed last year... When I got home and tried them on, they had an RCI of 150k all by them selves. I never wear them, and the price was low enough I'm not that bothered.

BUT...

Because some dingbats insist on wearing their prim-pet wearables and swaggering around in 200k avatars all the damn time, everywhere, bangles n bling.

And that's NOW, before LL and the "Beta Grid Meeting Content Creators" give them ANIMESH, and the ability to wear a second mesh avatar along side their first, Soon they can wear an ANIMESH boyfriend or girlfriend, with their prim pets while they stroll around... 

YOU and your running mate state I shouldn't be allowed to wear my rope set ever again... That to "restore" YOUR idea of public fun, I have to give up my private fun that doesn't adversely affect YOU in anyway.

Thanks... And you wonder why some of us see you as a bigger enemy to SL than the lag.

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

it is probably impossible to get on a better path without hitting a few bumps, but there are ways to mitigate those bumps so that the average SL user will be relatively unaffected and have everything they need to get through the transition as painlessly as possible

I'd hesitate to call telling every mesh clothing and/or body wearer in SL that they can throw away EVERYTHING they bought in the last 4 years, and MOST of what they will buy over the coming year "a few bumps".

I remember how hard it was convincing people that 400 scripts in their flexi hair meant time to buy a NEW hair made in the SECOND decade of this century, and that was voluntary. People have already done the "throw away your system crap from 2008" and we lost a bunch of them. Now you want to tell people to thow away their "mesh crap from 2018" without even having anything worthwhile to offer as a replacement.

Did you and your caffeinated running mate mis the point of this entire thread, how to improve retention and stop the decline?

You think driving out more of the current population, and then ripping off all the new population by letting them blow their initial spending allowance on stuff only to be told they are forbidden to use any of it...

You really think that's going to SAVE the Grid from declining user numbers?

HEADS UP... You do not save a declining player base by exterminating most of it.

9 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

 

1. You've given everyone the tools they need to prepare.
2. You've given content creators all the information they need to work with the cap.
3. You've given enough of a grace period where most avatars will naturally fall below the cap long before the cap is enforced. The idea being you want the cap to have as little an impact on the average SL user as possible.

And what exactly is a suitable "grace period" before telling people they can throw away 5 years worth of SL, and march like obedient little render-slaves into the Fugly Gulag, or choose Exile...

What do you say to people who WILL complain when they get the following message from SecondLife...

"The Self Appointed Council of Arc-Nazi Commissars has determined that use of this content is FORBIDDEN! Thanks for spending your money in SL, now start again from scratch with Approved Content from US and OUR friends, or fornicate off and die... K'Thx'Bai..."

...

People have already been offered a "super optimised content start again from scratch" option...

So far Project Stupid hasn't convinced most of them.

Frankly, so far, your proposed Cure, is WORSE than the damn disease, and gets worse with every re-iteration...

 

[Qie Niangao]

Okay, this is all making me a crazy person.

• Penny:  Even if you don't use those layers, you keep them hidden, their polygons are still being rendered by your hardware, and so are the textures.
• Theresa:  Nope.
• Coffee:  I suggest you try again using the scene statistics floater

So look, there's a ground truth here that's knowable, I just don't know what it is -- and it's not as if I haven't been paying attention. How are creators supposed to guess what to do to make stuff render better if we don't know even this fundamental fact about how the viewer renders the world?

Sometime within the past year or so we were told that the viewer simply does not render attached mesh set to 100% (blended alpha) transparency, and that this was why transparent mesh avatar parts removed tris from the rendering load. This seemed counterintuitive because blended, not masked, but it was to be understood as a special case of attached items only.

Is that the same thing y'all are discussing? Are we now deciding it's not true after all? Or maybe it is?

[Coffee Pancake]

Not rendered does not mean non-existence, the mesh has to exist in order for raycasts to work .. There are two places that a raycast happens, one is on mouse over to generate the clicky hand icon the other is on an actual click (this is for an attachment)

100% alpha blended faces show the icon and are clickable.

100% alpha masked faces do not show the icon, but are still clickable.

Without looking at the code I can not say for certain if the difference in mouse-icon is a bug or a deliberate decision (it seems more like an oversight), but if I enable visualizing the raycast in the render metadata, it always highlights the faces regardless of them being blended or alpha. The mesh certainly exists and its geometry is consuming resources, even though no pixels are altered as a result of the render pass. If the geometry didn't exist then the raycast would fail and invisible objects would not be clickable.

In this case, not rendered is probably short hand for "the render engine doesn't waste a infinitesimal amount of time producing no output for truly invisible faces" and the stats floater is only counting tris that are rendered rather than the total amount.

This is a bit of a rabbit hole, you do not need these numbers in order to create well optimized content. Well optimized does not ever include hidden or untextured geometry, it's literally the first rule of model making - Don't model stuff no one can see, the second being don't use geometry when a texture will do.

[Theresa Tennyson]

6 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

 

Having gone down this rabbit hole before with stats in SL I'm solidly confident that both are not showing exactly what you think they are, although at face value I'm tempted to trust scene stats more. Ktris per frame jumps about because two sequential frames in SL are never the same, even when nothing changes just because of how the pipeline works. In the case of it dropping when layers are hidden, it might just be counting visable geometry and ignoring invisible yet still present tris.

 

1.) Not when advanced lighting is on. With a static scene it will show exactly the same number of polygons drawn per frame.

2.) If something's invisible it's not being drawn. If there was an "Amount of Eggs" statistic bar in your kitchen it might be completely accurate if it said 12, but if 2 are in your omelette and 10 are in the refrigerator that makes a big difference in your cholesterol count.

1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Not rendered does not mean non-existence, the mesh has to exist in order for raycasts to work .. There are two places that a raycast happens, one is on mouse over to generate the clicky hand icon the other is on an actual click (this is for an attachment)

3.) Raycasts won't hit or detect worn rigged mesh outside of "Edit" mode. The only reason you can click on a worn rigged mesh is the click detects the default avatar underneath and then it will track down; that was actually added later to make it possible to detect a worn mesh. If you try clicking on a worn mesh in an area that wouldn't have the avatar under it you won't detect it unless you're in "Edit" mode.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SH-1595

https://jira.phoenixviewer.com/browse/FIRE-4812

 

Edited August 18, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[Coffee Pancake]

I was testing the raycasting while posting, I was not in edit mode, the mesh was not rigged and attached to avatar center moved away from my body,

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

I was testing the raycasting while posting, I was not in edit mode, the mesh was not rigged and attached to avatar center moved away from my body,

That's why my statement and the JIRA's I quoted referred to rigged mesh, which is what mesh avatars are. Rigged meshes are constantly moving and changing shape; raycasting a rigged mesh would be like putting a collar on a cat in a room full of laser pointer dots.

Edited August 18, 2018 by Theresa Tennyson

[Theresa Tennyson]

2 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Okay, this is all making me a crazy person.

• Penny:  Even if you don't use those layers, you keep them hidden, their polygons are still being rendered by your hardware, and so are the textures.
• Theresa:  Nope.
• Coffee:  I suggest you try again using the scene statistics floater

So look, there's a ground truth here that's knowable, I just don't know what it is -- and it's not as if I haven't been paying attention. How are creators supposed to guess what to do to make stuff render better if we don't know even this fundamental fact about how the viewer renders the world?

Sometime within the past year or so we were told that the viewer simply does not render attached mesh set to 100% (blended alpha) transparency, and that this was why transparent mesh avatar parts removed tris from the rendering load. This seemed counterintuitive because blended, not masked, but it was to be understood as a special case of attached items only.

Is that the same thing y'all are discussing? Are we now deciding it's not true after all? Or maybe it is?

There's a very practical way of looking at this - in a situation where all else is equal, turning off avatar body layers/sections increases frame rate. I did some experimenting that I reported in the "Bakes on Mesh" section of the forum that shows just that. I'm sure that the excess geometry and hidden textures are loaded somewhere and I'm not saying they're a good thing, but if the ZOMGPOLYGONS!!!!!1!! school was correct I don't see where you'd have that happen, and ultimately we're talking about viewer lag.

[Coffee Pancake]

The difference on your singular avatar might not be huge, but get a group together and it multiplies up very quickly and everyone takes the position that there own avatar in isolation isn't really that bad, it must be all these other bad avatars that are making it slow .. lets find the person with the highest arc and blame them.

 

[ChinRey]

On 8/16/2018 at 2:30 PM, Penny Patton said:

You have to look at the big picture. How many potential SL users get pushed away by the added complexity mesh bodies add to the already overly complicated, user unfriendly nightmare that is Second Life?

 

On 8/16/2018 at 4:28 PM, Theresa Tennyson said:

In 2015, when mesh bodies were just starting to become popular and mesh heads were rare, Linden Lab was bragging on merchants cashing out $60 million a year. Mesh feet were noted as a big source of income for one of the creators.

I think you both are right and that's one of the Catch 22's the Lab has to face. They depend so much on that revenue stream yet the complexity of mesh bodies is one of the key factors that keep new users away.

[ChinRey]

On 8/17/2018 at 12:59 AM, Phorumities said:

Everything is a tradeoff, and I'd personally trade lower frame rates and longer load times to look good.

Don't worry, LInden Lab isn't likely to change anything there.

But, as you said, it's a tradeoff and one of the inevitable results is a declining userbase.

Face it. Accept it. Live with it.