What the fitmesh LoD bug actually means

[steeljane42]

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Have you never looked outside the tiny bubble that is the SL userbase and seen what everyone else says about SL? Have you never talked to anyone who wouldn't give SL a chance? Or anyone who did try SL but wound up leaving it behind? If you truly believe that SL's poor performance and excessive hardware requirements to run at higher graphics settings have had no impact on it's ability to draw in and retain new users, you're beyond hopeless. 

And let's be absolutely clear, take a look at all of the arguments made against optimization. How many of them include statements like "I think SL is just fine" or "If you want higher framerates then you're acting entitled". These arguments can be boiled down to them saying "Your experience doesn't matter, I should be able to do whatever I want regardless of how it affects everyone else."

Yeah and other people say all kinds of stuff about everything else, mmorpgs, mobas, battle royale games and more. If I were listen to those people I'd never try any game ever, because usually all forums for all games/services are filled with complaints. If someone is unable to form their own opinion based on their own experience, be it SL or anything else (especially if it's free to try) and need others' people "reviews" for that... well, their loss.

But yeah, same can be said about every other "game" (no need to tell me what is different between traditional games and SL, I know it well enough). Game A has a high entry cost point - it affects said game poorly, because new users can't even try it normally without investing a lot of $. Game B has high hardware reqs, so people with bad PCs can't even try it at all or in serious disvantage compared to people with decent machines (example FPS' with online modes, where an average person struggling to maintain 30 fps will do much worse than someone running it at least at 60 fps, if not 120-144fps). Game C is grindy and requires tons of free time and has timed events where you are required to log at specific times to make some progress, so people without tons of free time can't really play it normally either. Can't please everyone, can't keep all new users no matter what. SL is no different. I'd argue that the confusing UI, griefers/trolls filled starting areas and lack of general idea of "what to do here" makes potential users to leave much more often, than poor performance right from the start.

For the 2nd part of the quote - your idea is not that much different. "Your experience doesn't matter, SL should be the way I/we see it". If I want to wear/rezz badly made item, it's my own business. I said it last time already and will say it again, I'm all for remaking jelly doll/complexity calculation system the way it would actually work and people with low complexity limit wouldn't see me because suddenly my avi became not average 40-100k, but 2-3m. Some level of regulation is fine, it exists in RL and in SL too. There's the ToS and what not, the rest is not needed in my opinion and because it doesn't fit your idealistic view on how content should be in SL, it doesn't mean it has no rights to exist.

Only thing I'll agree with you on is the stolen/ripped content part. It shouldn't be the part of SL, because it's just stolen, but seems like all that DMCA thing is a bit pointless, I keep seeing tons of Disney and games related stuff in world, from toys and outfits to just ripped assets from the games I played before (it's easy to recognize it, because I played them. I imagine there's even more from the games I didn't played myself, so I have no way to tell).

 

4 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

If you read a little more carefully, the suggestions of a hard cap on complexity are paired with suggestions on how to do this without the disruption you're worried about.

And I've seen those too. And yes, they are fine. More quality content is always welcome. But it should be somehow encouraged to make such content, not just forced. So it's the "regulate and force everything" suggestions that bother me.

 

6 hours ago, OptimoMaximo said:

So i'm done with you, keep babbling your nonsense and let us be. Hopefully LL reads some of this and considers taking some action.

It's fine, not like you were able to provide any discussion anyway, so same goes to you. But I'll agree on the hopes that LL reads some of that and will take some action, like increase regions max LI to 40k via upgrades after they'll make a move to cloud and hopefully get better serves that way, maybe increase attachments slots to 50+ and so on.

 

6 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Do you believe that in the real world, emission requirements are killing the automotive business and that we would be much better off with less of those pesky rules and regulations that ensure that we don't turn the environment we live in into a radiated wasteland?

"What do you mean the smog is killing you? Don't breathe, it's that simple!"

But it's SL, not RL. No need to provide some childish examples either. You can't avoid breathing, drinking and eating, but you can avoid using any online game/service if it's too much for you for any kinds of reason, be it monetary  one or anything else. Or you go to forums of new games and yell there that they didn't made a version for P2 and Voodoo graphics? SL being 15 years old is a thing, yes, but it evolved quite far from the original release, so we can't and shouldn't expect it to have reqs from mid 2000s for any kind of comfotable daily use.

And if go by your silly rl example, then we all should be forced to use electric cars already and recharge them only using green kinds of energy, because traditional ones are as bad for environment as the normal cars. Is it a thing? Nope and won't be for a long long time, because it's just not realistic.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

2 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

But it's SL, not RL. No need to provide some childish examples either. You can't avoid breathing, drinking and eating, but you can avoid using any online game/service if it's too much for you for any kinds of reason, be it monetary  one or anything else. Or you go to forums of new games and yell there that they didn't made a version for P2 and Voodoo graphics? SL being 15 years old is a thing, yes, but it evolved quite far from the original release, so we can't and shouldn't expect it to have reqs from mid 2000s for any kind of comfotable daily use.

And if go by your silly rl example, then we all should be forced to use electric cars already and recharge them only using green kinds of energy, because traditional ones are as bad for environment as the normal cars. Is it a thing? Nope and won't be for a long long time, because it's just not realistic.

Stop pulling out strawman arguments, no one is talking about running SL on a venerable voodoo card, or to go back to the olden days of SL.

You see those next generation games that where announced this year?

How about we start by putting a hard cap to about THAT level, and we can then re-evaluate it up yearly if needed. Instead of weeping for the possible death of models that should never be in a 3D realtime application to begin with.

 

[Fionalein]

Is

2 minutes ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

strawman arguments

the "Remove bad content"-Thriumphirate's version of "fake news"... I see from whom you got that idea ...

Shhh hint: he's no good role model

[Penny Patton]

2 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

If I want to wear/rezz badly made item, it's my own business.

The difference is, your choices affect everyone else, every day. If LL reigned in unoptimized content in the ways that have been suggested in this thread, then if you were effected at all it would be minimal and short lived. Every fear you've brought up is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts.

4 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

So it's the "regulate and force everything" suggestions that bother me.

Your problem is you only see the extremes. Total anarchy or overwhelming restrictions. There's a huge gap inbetween that you're ignoring.

A few reasonable restrictions that wouldn't affect the average SL user at all (beyond the higher FPS and less lag they would eventually enjoy) would make a world of difference. And you'll note that it's not only restrictions that are being suggested, also better tools and features.

 And let's look at this from a practical standpoint: SL is lacking features that cannot currently be implemented due to the existing performance issues brought on by the complete lack of optimization in most SL content. Here are some of the things you are trying to prevent every SL user from having with your arguments:

• Larger texture size options
• More people able to run SL with ALM and shadows
• More people able to run SL, period.
• People able to enjoy SL with more advanced graphics features like motion blur, volumetric lighting/godrays, etc
• VR in SL (a big part of why LL eventually gave up on this was their inability to get reasonable FPS in SL in VR mode)
• fully featured SL on mobile devices
• If people were smarter about optimization you probably could have more LI for your land
• Less lag
• faster rez times
• More avatars in a sim with less of a performance hit
• Being able to render every avatar, avatars that look just as good if not better than the best SL has to offer right now, with no jelly dolls and no performance hit.

You are against all of that. You might not realize it, but this is precisely what your arguments are against.

16 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

Or you go to forums of new games and yell there that they didn't made a version for P2 and Voodoo graphics? SL being 15 years old is a thing, yes, but it evolved quite far from the original release, so we can't and shouldn't expect it to have reqs from mid 2000s for any kind of comfotable daily use.

It looks like you've already been called out on this, but shame on you. Shame. You know you are fabricating an argument no one has made. We've all been clear in how much better SL can look if people optimize. It is precisely your "no rules" ideas of content creation that hold SL back in the graphics department.

 

2 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

the "Remove bad content"-Thriumphirate's version of "fake news"... I see from whom you got that idea ...

A straw man argument is when someone refutes an argument that no one made, trying to make it look like they have a point when in fact they have not addressed anyone else's arguments.

Like steeljane42 refuting the idea that SL should be held to mid 2000's hardware requirements, when absolutely no one has made that argument.

 Or you pretending I thought one texture used on multiple faces uses more memory when I never said any such thing.

These are easily pointed out for the falsehoods they are. If you disagree, quote an example where I claim one texture uses more memory when used on multiple faces. I can link you to an example where I say the exact opposite in this very thread. 

 So, Fineline, go ahead and quote any statements Kyrah or I have made that show these examples aren't the straw men we claim them to be.

 Oh and still waiting for you to address the post where I offered you a chance to make a coherent argument. With all of these direct challenges to your "arguments" that you keep failing to counter, it's beginning to look like you're not even trying to make a coherent argument. I'm thinking that you're just trolling. You know you're talking nonsense.

 Prove me wrong. I've given you a way to do it.

• Any example of me claiming one texture used on multiple faces uses more memory
• Any example where Kyrah (or anyone else for that matter) has claimed SL should be restricted to mid 2000's graphics standards.

But we all know you're just going to say some unrelated nonsense and pretend it's an argument. Just like every other post you've made.

[Fionalein]

Come on Penny, no one can guess what you want form your wild rants and propositions, ... we have to guess ...

That is we have to guess most things, unlike you calling me names ...

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

... Fionapplebum...

7 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

 ... Fineline ...

... that is the one thing we can now savely assume you want to ...

Edited September 7, 2018 by Fionalein

[Penny Patton]

5 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Come on Penny, no one can guess what you want form your wild rants and propositions, ... we have to guess ...

 

12 minutes ago, Penny Patton said:

• Any example of me claiming one texture used on multiple faces uses more memory
• Any example where Kyrah (or anyone else for that matter) has claimed SL should be restricted to mid 2000's graphics standards.

It doesn't get more clear than that. You claim the accusations of straw man arguments are untrue. All you had to do to prove was find any post that proves anyone made those arguments and quote it. But you knew that. And you knew you couldn't.

Instead you did exactly what I said you'd do. Ignore that direct challenge and try to change the subject.

Troll it is.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Fionalein]

13 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

Troll it is.

Yeah, keep calling me names...

13 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

You claim the accusations of straw man arguments are untrue.

You sound like "LALALALA it is all 'straw arguments' which I do not have to answer anyways" Very good rethorics, Penny, now if I only I knew who of us two brought up behaving like an adult again? Oh right here it is...

On 9/6/2018 at 4:14 AM, Penny Patton said:

Try again, like an adult.

...

Thanks Penny for showing your true self...

You, Optimo and your supporters are on a self proclaimed mission no one asked you for. I have no idea what fuels your zeal but it looks unhealthy and pretty emotional. Please continue promoting your hard cap and other restriction proposals in the way you do, I am pretty sure you cannot do those who oppose your "ideas" a bigger favour than being yourself

I'm outa here - see you in the next thread you folks hijack.

 

Edited September 8, 2018 by Fionalein

[imacrabpinch]

This is probably something unpopular to say, but I like how sl is non-optimized and laggy. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the experiment they call sl.

[Penny Patton]

11 hours ago, imacrabpinch said:

This is probably something unpopular to say, but I like how sl is non-optimized and laggy. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the experiment they call sl.

Are you sure you're not confusing the lag and unoptimized content with some positive aspect of SL you might believe those drawbacks are intrinsically a part of?

Remember, these problems are not some unavoidable consequence of creative freedom or the freedom every SL user has to personalize their appearance or build on their own land or any other positive part of SL you might be attributing them to. You can have all that without the lag, low FPS, etc.

[ChinRey]

On 9/8/2018 at 10:38 AM, imacrabpinch said:

This is probably something unpopular to say, but I like how sl is non-optimized and laggy. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be the experiment they call sl.

You mean you like lag?

I don't actually disagree with you and I'll explain why but let's get a few things straight first.

The reason why we have these high poly, densely textured meshes in SL, is not that the meshes need all those laggy polys and texture pixels to look good, it's because the makers don't have the technical skills and understanding to make efficient mesh. They may be good designers but they don't understand the material they are working with so they don't know how to make their great designs come true in the best possible way.

If you want your car to drive faster, you have two options: you can install a larger engine or you can switch off the handbrake. If you don't know enough about cars to understand what a handbrake is, a more powerful engine is your only option. I know that's a far fetched metaphor but the principle is the same. Brute force can sometimes compensate for technical flaws but it'll never make things better and it always comes at a cost.

I think I said this earlier in the thread but I better repeat it because it is important: Optimization is not about simplifying the look of the item. It's all about keeping exactly the same look but reduce the workload it gives our computers.

---

There is one thing we tend to forget to mention: this is not about the small time hobby builders at all, it's the big names that dominate the market, provide the bulk of the SL content and make serious money from it. I do actually think we should expect a certain level of professionalism from them and we don't usually get that. Professional design, yes. Professional marketing, certainly. But professional craftmanship is often sorely lacking. Not always - some of the big names have excellent modellers who do excellent work. Too many don't, though.

And then there are those who choose the easiest way, reselling content they bought or found on the internet. As Fionalein said, being a good general 3D modeller does not necessarilly mean you are a good at SL modelling. When meshes made specifically for other environments are uploaded to SL by people who don't even know enough to make simple meshes themselves, there will always be problems.

As for the small time hobby builders, the few builds we have rezzed across SL won't make much difference to the overall lag anyway and besides, we are slowly but surely being squeezed out of Second Life. Hobby builders tend to take pride in their work. No matter how skilled or unskilled they are, they always try to do their best and put a lot of effort into theit builds. That makes it hard to compete in a market flooded with cheap mass produced content. Hobby builders are hit by the lag level too and many of them have given up. It doesn't matter how much you love building or how good you are at it if you can't even use SL in a satsifying way. Glancing through my own friends list, I think there are more ex-builders there who gave up because of the lag than there are active builders.

Do not use variety or creativity as arguments against better load accounting. One of the big negative consequences of the current swiss cheese style accounting system is less variety and less creativity.

And do not ever use the small time hobby builders as an alibi for less load control. We are possibly the user group who looses the most from the current situation.

---

But as I said, I still don't disagree with imacrabpinch, at least not completely, and the reason is that it's too late for drastic changes. This should have been done in 2011 - no, it should have been done in 2008! So many of the basic premises are set now and it would take some drastic changes to make any significant improvement.

The future of SL does not depend on facts and logic. It depends on the current users' perception of Second Life. That perception is very much based on factoids, myths and "how we've always done it" but whether we like it or not, it's what LL has to cater for to keep their users.

Edited September 9, 2018 by ChinRey
Just correcting some typos

[Penny Patton]

On 9/9/2018 at 4:00 AM, ChinRey said:

But as I said, I still don't disagree with imacrabpinch, at least not completely, and the reason is that it's too late for drastic changes. This should have been done in 2011 - no, it should have been done in 2008! So many of the basic premises are set now and it would take some drastic changes to make any significant improvement.

I disagree, to a point. I understand what you're saying, and I even understand the concern among people who don't understand enough about content creators to see that trolls are just trying to deliberately muddy the issue because they enjoy stirring up trouble on forums. LL cannot rush out any changes to content creation that will immediately cause people to lose content. That would be a disaster.

Some good roadmaps have been put forward on how LL could reign in the worst habits among content creators, again without disrupting the average SL user's enjoyment of the platform, avoiding the worst case scenarios people have raised concerns about. And it's been demonstrated in-world that it doesn't take a whole lot to see some shocking levels of improvement. Content creators don't have to be held to strict levels of professional quality optimization, they just need to be guided away from the worst habits.

 Sure, a lot of what LL should have done in the beginning, they can't do now, and to achieve what they should do they now have to take the long way around, but there is still plenty they could, and should, do.

On 9/9/2018 at 4:00 AM, ChinRey said:

The future of SL does not depend on facts and logic. It depends on the current users' perception of Second Life. That perception is very much based on factoids, myths and "how we've always done it" but whether we like it or not, it's what LL has to cater for to keep their users.

HARD disagree here. Correcting people on their misconceptions about content creation, what causes lag, etcetera will not cost them any users. Not a single one. And, in fact, I'd argue it's even more to their benefit to be up front and proactive about correcting these misconceptions precisely because they now have to take a longer, more careful approach to reigning in the lack of optimization we currently see. They should be chiming in on threads like these, just to drop in a point of fact now and then. Patch should have an official content creation blog, sharing best tips, explaining how to create better content, and showing how to get the most out of the tools LL provides.

A big part of why the myths and misconceptions are so prevalent is due to LL's silence outside of office hour meetings that very few SL users attend or watch. There is absolutely no benefit in LL catering to it.

 It's also worth noting that LL has stated, multiple times, that changes are coming to LI calculations to make them more effective. If LL wants that change to go smoothly, they need to start educating people now, long before any such changes go into effect.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Jagix Linden
Removed name-calling element

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Penny Patton said:

and I even understand the concern among people who don't understand enough about content creators to see that trolls like...

 

There are no trolls in this thread.

Edited September 10, 2018 by ChinRey

[Penny Patton]

13 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

There are no trolls in this thread.

When someone is clearly making stuff up, and making no attempt to even hide that that's what they're doing, it's pretty obvious that they're trolling.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Penny Patton]

r...

Edited September 10, 2018 by Penny Patton

[Damian Mills]

On 9/7/2018 at 1:26 AM, Fionalein said:

PS: You three might have realized by now folks have stopped trying to argue with you because it's futile? If you want to know why I didn't quit arguing myself it is because even if you are lost causes someone might stumble on this thread and deserves to read both sides, ...

Actually, I haven't stopped reading and my reply contains no argument with the "limits crowd" because they are right... as are you... and I think that's' obvious to anyone.  There are two points being made here:

• Some level of optimization needs to be enforced in the system.  
• Some careful thought needs to be given to the problem of transition management.

I just spent $300 on a graphics card and that's on top of a new motherboard/cpu/ram/SSD last year.  I get decent framerates with ALM and shadows in most places.  I have a preset for "club graphics"' that limits how many avatars get rendered to 10 and that works in most clubs to keep me at 15fps or better.  I manage more or less OK. 

My new friend is lucky to see 15fps in a deserted sandbox.  In a club, FPS drops to around 2-4.  That''s without ALM and shadows and avatars set at 3.  That's the reality of SL for way too many people and somehow that needs to change.  I''m also none too happy with how the flaws in the LOD calculations encourage developers to cheat.   Because as a consumer, how that cheating ends up affecting me is in hair that turns into 2 triangles the moment you're more than 5m away from me or furniture that does the same.  I want LOD to work the way it's supposed to and I want ARC to work the way it's' supposed to.

Personally, I think if hard caps are introduced they should be very high.  I think most of the course correction will happen by venues banning laggy avatars and people's clients de-rendering them.

[Love Zhaoying]

On 9/9/2018 at 8:34 PM, Penny Patton said:

r...

?

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I still wish we had finer controls when it comes to managing venues. Something more gradual than "kick the person home" (which doesn't work if they have set home at the venue).

And sadly there is no reliable ways for a script to scan for avatar/attachment complexity (it fluctuates wildly since it is based on client reports, thus using it as a tool to police a venue would be irresponsible).

[Coffee Pancake]

15 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

I still wish we had finer controls when it comes to managing venues. Something more gradual than "kick the person home" (which doesn't work if they have set home at the venue).

And sadly there is no reliable ways for a script to scan for avatar/attachment complexity (it fluctuates wildly since it is based on client reports, thus using it as a tool to police a venue would be irresponsible).

Automated "offending avatar" removal systems shouldn't ever be part of a solution. We had a huge mess with the script time slap fight that was based almost entirely on ignorance about how the script engine worked combined with numbers a decade out of date. Creating a revolving door by removing people as they arrive on a region for "arbitrary reason" places a huge load on the region.

Script access to avatar/attachment complexity would be a terrible idea as we will just tie it to parcel ejection and create the same mess we had last time.

The ideal solution is that the viewer would render avatars with lower complexity in order to keep the frame rate up, which is impossible with current clothing & avatar accessory creation workflows / dependency on manually created LOD models.

The only thing I can think is that the viewer will end up having to ignore LOD models and do decomposition on the fly.

[ChinRey]

On 9/15/2018 at 4:18 AM, CoffeeDujour said:

The ideal solution is that the viewer would render avatars with lower complexity in order to keep the frame rate up, which is impossible with current clothing & avatar accessory creation workflows / dependency on manually created LOD models.

The only thing I can think is that the viewer will end up having to ignore LOD models and do decomposition on the fly.

It could do both of course. A viewer setting to limit the maximum number of triangles and/or pixels for each avatar. If the pixel count is too high, mipmap away. If  the triangle count is above the limit, first try lower LoD models and if that isn't enough, let GLOD take care of it. This is actually something GLOD should be suitable for, its crudeness should mean it's faster than other decimation systems.

You could try to sell the idea to LL if you want to.

Edited September 16, 2018 by ChinRey

[Kyrah Abattoir]

On 9/15/2018 at 4:18 AM, CoffeeDujour said:

Automated "offending avatar" removal systems shouldn't ever be part of a solution. We had a huge mess with the script time slap fight that was based almost entirely on ignorance about how the script engine worked combined with numbers a decade out of date. Creating a revolving door by removing people as they arrive on a region for "arbitrary reason" places a huge load on the region.

Script access to avatar/attachment complexity would be a terrible idea as we will just tie it to parcel ejection and create the same mess we had last time.

The ideal solution is that the viewer would render avatars with lower complexity in order to keep the frame rate up, which is impossible with current clothing & avatar accessory creation workflows / dependency on manually created LOD models.

The only thing I can think is that the viewer will end up having to ignore LOD models and do decomposition on the fly.

Did you even read what I said?

I DISLIKE that the only option we have is to send people home. Most people get really pissed off when you do that and I wish we had more possibilities to deal with problem avatars that doesn't involve the nuclear option.

[Coffee Pancake]

9 hours ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Did you even read what I said?

I DISLIKE that the only option we have is to send people home. Most people get really pissed off when you do that and I wish we had more possibilities to deal with problem avatars that doesn't involve the nuclear option.

Yes, but like with script counts, there wont ever be a practical alternative.

None of the script count / memory tools would gently inform people that maybe they should, at their leisure, work on using fewer scripts. They were all coded to kick.

There is no reason to presume a scripted way to check someones ARC would result in different end products, unless the lab specifically added it to the ToS .. which they wont.

 

 

 

[Kyrah Abattoir]

i'm spitballing here but back when i was trying to get LL to accept 'estate level' scripting functions, (long before experiences) I had this idea of a special set of scripy events that an estate level script would receive when someone did something in the region, and you could retun true to allow it, or false to deny it.

For things like rez, attach, sit, or other thing a region owner might want to have control over.