Is SL getting stagnant?

[Gabriele Graves]

1 minute ago, greek Wingtips said:

I tend to agree with Blush, I been in sl for a long time and one time it was in every night, but now it periodically, I have a vested interest to come in and look after my Jack the ripper site, but anything else seems to have lost its sheen. , I cannot put a finger on it why, it just has.

This happens to lot of people and can indicate that you need to take a break away from SL.

[Phorumities]

31 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I saw 144fps and thought, you could sell this person a pig in a poke..because anything over a certain frame rate cannot be detected by the human eye. 

Old movies were what? 30 frames per second?  That's plenty for second life. I'm lucky if I get half of that on a crowded sim, and the motion is still fine. Its when fps drop below 10  that things seem less than smooth. Below 5 is like stop action motion.

 

[chibiusa Ling]

2 hours ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

People not know the difference between first person mode and mouselook. Well, mouselook is not first person mode, already for the simple reason you still need to switch to third person todo things.

And for correct first person mode you need correct scale.

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Let's say it different, many lsl commands could run client side. As example, i think animesh lsl commands or scripts could run clientside and lower (script) lag. Security ? Am sure there are solutions for that.

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Why i need 144fps, because my monitor need that. The best setting is ro cap it st 72fps in the viewer but it keeps bad. 30fps is really bad, you notice every left or right turn is far , far from smooth. And yes i have gtx980 not crappy hardware. That's mabye the problem with sl. Mabye it runs better on old hardware.

Im running a 970GTX capped at 80 and I can play SL fine with no issues what so ever. Also I know what you meant by first person. And I said that mouse look was a "version" first person mode. I never stated it was the be all and end all of first person options. I gathered you meant it more in terms of Minecraft or something where you can create, use, build etc etc all in FP mode, however it think that would be a more cumbersome way to do certain things in SL. For example if you are building a sim first person mode using the build menu and having to constantly fly around and keep repositioning yourself, place things, align items, texture VS a much more efficient way IMO of ALT+Click camming + build menu. Personally I prefer the second option as its much faster and way more efficient. My camera can cover the length of the sim 10 times faster than you can fly there.

However, this is Second Life. There is nothing stopping you from learning to script and making something like this yourself if thats really what you want.

As a rough example (read very rough example also this would only work for objects with modify permission as all placed objects would need a script inside of them) : 

-In mouse look fire a ray cast at where you want to position the object

-Check the object collided with is either sim terrain or another object

-If its another object then perhaps check its not one we have already placed using this method

-If it is then alert the user

-If not place the object at that point using the ray cast for the placed objects central coordinates

-Press a gesture thats bound to a key to switch into re positioning mode

-Use left, right, forward, back, page up, page down arrows to position your object properly

-Press a gesture key to switch into texture mode

-Click to fire another cast at what you want to texture

-Have a texture box pop up on the screen

-Use ALT to get your cursor back and select which texture or again use arrow keys to move between them

etc etc etc

[Blush Bravin]

10 hours ago, greek Wingtips said:

I tend to agree with Blush, I been in sl for a long time and one time it was in every night, but now it periodically, I have a vested interest to come in and look after my Jack the ripper site, but anything else seems to have lost its sheen. , I cannot put a finger on it why, it just has.

What are you agreeing with? My post was all about why I keep logging in. I don't think there's anything stale about SL. So you have me very confused.

[Richardus Raymaker]

23 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I saw 144fps and thought, you could sell this person a pig in a poke..because anything over a certain frame rate cannot be detected by the human eye. 

No you cannot sell me a pig. but i see the difcerence between the 144hz monitor and a 60hz. i have a second one that only do 60hz .

But your mabye right that you not see it, if secondlife would generate a solid 60fps server side ! Everything below let's say 72fps in the sl counter you notice the missing frame when turning or moving.

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

17 minutes ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

No you cannot sell me a pig. but i see the difcerence between the 144hz monitor and a 60hz. i have a second one that only do 60hz .

Now you say 144hz. Earlier 144fps was written. The two are not the same.

Edited October 26, 2018 by Love Zhaoying

[chibiusa Ling]

1 hour ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

if secondlife would generate a solid 60fps server side ! Everything below let's say 72fps in the sl counter you notice the missing frame when turning or moving.

I didn't realise that Second Life was played on Linden Labs servers and simply streamed to our computers. That pesky Linden Labs not ensuring their hardware can graphically deliver us a solid 60FPS!!. We will have to invest in our own graphics cards so that our rigs are the ones that render the fantastic world of second life.....oh wait....

You may want to take a look at your hardware, settings, drivers....the usual stuff. As I stated in a previous post I limit my FPS to around 80 (Not for any particular reason it just seemed a good number) but I rarely see any issues on my gaming laptop even if I limit my FPS to 30-40 (like I just did to test this out in a fairly complex region). I had no issues turning, no issues in rendering other avatars, no issues with interaction or any other action I attempted. My experience was more than playable and im only running a mobile 970 GTXm. Your cards are way way more powerful than mine. You can't blame LL/SL for all of your issues here. There are many MANY things that contribute towards a degraded experience, from overly complex mesh builds, high avatar count with high complexities due to mesh body, highly complex clothes, lots of active attachments etc etc. There is also the issue of drivers, I had to downgrade my graphics card drivers a few months back as one of the latest updates at that time caused me no end of issues when playing Second Life. Onto of that you also have the issue that Windows 10 (if you use it) is still in some cases being temperamental when it comes to playing SL and requires a few tricks to get it running smoothly. It could also be due to Windows automatic update running in the background, that was the bane of my SL existence for a while until I figured out what was causing me issues, that process takes up a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. So much so that it affected SL, online gamine etc and resulted in me modifying the registry to turn it off entirely. There is also another simple issue that most people never think to do which is ensure that your dedicated graphics card is the one set as default for running Sl / Firestorm / Whatever it is you use. If you use Firestorm it could be the viewer itself as its a well known resource hog compared to other viewers so perhaps try Alchemy, the official viewer, Singularity etc etc. 

I even just tested FPS limits on my 6 year old MacBook Pro Retina. I limited it to 40FPS and set the graphics to medium and unless im in an overly complex mesh region...its smooth and extremely playable with no real noticeable issues and thats running on 8GB DDR3 and 1GB Nvidia 650m.

Edited October 26, 2018 by chibiusa Ling

[Kimmi Zehetbauer]

One thing that is stagnant is some clubs.  Some that used to get like 20-30 barely gets any. My man DJs now and then at one club and most of the time it's just staff. Sometimes we'll  show the game on one or two TVs in our bar, but discontinued that practice due to an almost empty virtual club.

 

But sometimes it is fun just the staff and a straggler or 2, as during the DJ sets, we can pull some gems out of the "vault" as some would like to hear only the familiar stuff.

[Klytyna]

19 hours ago, Richardus Raymaker said:

Everything below let's say 72fps in the sl counter you notice the missing frame when turning or moving.

You might have a graphics card that can generate 144 fps, you might even have a monitor that can display 144 fps...

But, like most clueless "leet gamerz" fps braggarts, you only have the standard Mk  1 Human Eyeballs, which can only SEE the image at a measly 25-30 fps...

That's why analog televisions half a century ago were made in 50-60 fps INTERLACED, for an actual fps of 25-30.

That's why video games consoles of the 90's boasted of 60 fps (they forgot to mention it was interlaced).

That's why tech illiterate "leet gamerz" think that 60 fps NON INTERLACED and over, is in fact, needed at all...

 

 

Edited October 27, 2018 by Klytyna

[Selene Gregoire]

SL doesn't get stagnant. People do. I was stagnant for 4 years. Now I'm back.

And you're all stuck with me! 

[animats]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:13 PM, AyelaNewLife said:

Sim rental costs have almost nothing to do with the free market, LL arbitrarily sets a $ monthly fee and a $ setup fee, and that's how much it costs.

You're paying for access to the user base. An OpenSim region from Kitely starts at $14.95/month. No one will come there, but it will run.

[KanryDrago]

On 10/24/2018 at 9:48 AM, Richardus Raymaker said:

sEcondlife is 95% to expensive to own a sim. To be really creative and have control that is when the fun start. Still waiting for the 10$ sim. And a stable 144fps on heavy sims.

Also it first need RL scale, and first person mode. means that secondlife need to dump that base camera angle.

Run more scripts clientside, so you get a good response.

No No No if anything sims should be more expensive.

Cheap sims means more people setting up places 90% of which will be totally crap. This would result in the online userbase being even more diluted when the number of clubs/galleries/ etc doubles

[Nalates Urriah]

OK... let's mess things up with some facts.

Quote

The USAF, in testing their pilots for visual response time, used a simple test to see if the pilots could distinguish small changes in light. In their experiment a picture of an aircraft was flashed on a screen in a dark room at 1/220th of a second. Pilots were consistently able to "see" the afterimage as well as identify the aircraft. This simple and specific situation not only proves the ability to perceive 1 image within 1/220 of a second, but the ability to interpret higher FPS.

Quote

The human eye can physiologically detect up to 1000 frames per second. The average human, tasked with detecting what framerate he/she is looking at, can accurately guess up to around 150 fps. That is, they can see the difference in frame rates all the way to 150 fps.

Amazing what people believe from life in an echo chamber and what you can learn when you break out. Try Google and DuckDuckGo.

In SL we are dealing with our perception of the result from a series of technical issues affected by our individual physical  ability, the ability of our hardware, and the SL system.

Starting with the SL servers, they are going to generate at most 45 FPS, but those are NOT the visual FPS most are talking/thinking about. The SL servers do not provide visual rendering they only support the viewer by providing fresh data for the viewer's render engine. They often fall behind and begin cutting corners. One way they do this is to run fewer scripts and cutting out pathfinding processing for a given frame. There job is to tell the viewer what needs to be rendered and where it is.

Next the viewer is trying to render the data (stuff) provided by the server at whatever FPS it can generate. That ranges from single digit FPS to 200+ FPS. When there is no new data to base a frame on the viewer interpolates. At the low end we see that as rubberbanding when the data rate and FPS rates get out of sync when one or the other is too low. Without data the viewer interpolates as best it can. The jerk happens when the viewer and server resync and viewer draws a previously incorrectly interpolated moving object in the correct place per the server.

The video card is rendering the actual visual ro be sent to the screen. It works as fast as it can with the data delivered to it. What we see is a matter of how far ahead or behind the card is in its job and that is a matter of how well the local hardware is performing. 

Lastly the screen is taking what the video card hands it and displaying it at the fastest rate it can. A 60Hz refresh rate screen can only ever display 60 FPS. It will do that whether the card supplies 10 FPS or 144 FPS. Depending on how we have setup our card and screen the divergence in rates is displayed different ways. Screen tears & jitter and motion blurs are the common distortions we notice. Tears happen when the screen can't keep up and more than one visual frame is displayed in a single screen frame pass. Screen jitter starts to show up when the video card gets behind and the screen starts repeating a supplied video frame while waiting for the next. But, video card tech has ways to compensate for these problems to make them less noticeable. So, what we actually see is very dependent on screen, video card, and our settings.

But, there are people that can see and are annoyed by these technical distortions in FPS well above 30 FPS.

[Nalates Urriah]

On 10/24/2018 at 12:13 PM, AyelaNewLife said:

Sim rental costs have almost nothing to do with the free market, LL arbitrarily sets a $ monthly fee and a $ setup fee, and that's how much it costs.

No... you don't understand how the free market works. Study up. Try Econ 101. Basic Supply-Demand concepts. See An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith.

TL:DR version... what would happen to region prices if no one leased regions? The same thing that happens with anything else companies sell. If Ford were to price their Ford Focus 2018 (base price now <US$18,000) at a billion US dollars? Demand would go to zero, no sales. No one would want it at that ridiculous price. Ford calculates that at $18k they will sell the most units possible at the profit margin they want. But, if there were still no demand-sales, Ford would drop the price. At some point dropping the price to improve sales would become counterproductive. Once Ford is at breakeven or a loss per unit they stop making and selling the Focus. Actually, when ther return on investment drops below a certain level they stop making them. Look up the history of various Ford vehicles and other car makers.

The free market quickly responds to supply and demand. Thus the most efficient allocation of resources. Something governments cannot do and thus the repeated failure of centralized government control from misallocation of resources. Talk to anyone that has immigrated out of socialist Russia (pre-1991). Ask them what they thought when they walked into an American supermarket for the first time.

[Cam Chattoway]

Fun is just toolin' my own things, on my own sim. Community is fun too, but it's not restricted to that. I think that expectations of SL were pretty high, but that it's still challenging to develop a real time virtual environment for expression. 

[AyelaNewLife]

3 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

No... you don't understand how the free market works. Study up. Try Econ 101. Basic Supply-Demand concepts. See An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith.

TL:DR version... what would happen to region prices if no one leased regions? The same thing that happens with anything else companies sell. If Ford were to price their Ford Focus 2018 (base price now <US$18,000) at a billion US dollars? Demand would go to zero, no sales. No one would want it at that ridiculous price. Ford calculates that at $18k they will sell the most units possible at the profit margin they want. But, if there were still no demand-sales, Ford would drop the price. At some point dropping the price to improve sales would become counterproductive. Once Ford is at breakeven or a loss per unit they stop making and selling the Focus. Actually, when ther return on investment drops below a certain level they stop making them. Look up the history of various Ford vehicles and other car makers.

The free market quickly responds to supply and demand. Thus the most efficient allocation of resources. Something governments cannot do and thus the repeated failure of centralized government control from misallocation of resources. Talk to anyone that has immigrated out of socialist Russia (pre-1991). Ask them what they thought when they walked into an American supermarket for the first time.

Second Life is not a free market economy though, not truly, and the $ price of land is arbitrarily set. That's why LL have hiked transaction and marketplace fees, to compensate for the loss of income from dropping the price of land. The free market equilibrium price of land is higher than it is currently, and LL have made a conscious decision to ignore that in favour of an ideological stance - namely that land should be more affordable and therefore more accessible to residents, even when knowing that the increase in customerbase would not compensate for the loss of income.

Basic supply/demand free market concepts exist, sure, but they can and have been overruled by ideology. This is true for SL, and it is true for every single real world example of a "free market".

[ellestones]

a totally free market version of Adam Smith's work is here: https://eet.pixel-online.org/files/etranslation/original/The Wealth of Nations.pdf

[Nalates Urriah]

5 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:

Second Life is not a free market economy though, not truly, and the $ price of land is arbitrarily set. That's why LL have hiked transaction and marketplace fees, to compensate for the loss of income from dropping the price of land. The free market equilibrium price of land is higher than it is currently, and LL have made a conscious decision to ignore that in favour of an ideological stance - namely that land should be more affordable and therefore more accessible to residents, even when knowing that the increase in customerbase would not compensate for the loss of income.

Basic supply/demand free market concepts exist, sure, but they can and have been overruled by ideology. This is true for SL, and it is true for every single real world example of a "free market".

You really are missing the point...

SL is very much a free market economy, within and without. The 'truly' is a cop-out. All economies are a mix of free and controlled these days. LL and SL are WAY more free market than not. 

LL controls the cost of L$ to an extent just as real-world governments try to control the value of their currencies. But, market forces from people voting with their dollars controls the value of a country's currency. Ask any Venezuelan. Within SL it is very much a free market. If you think not, point me to the central control that is setting the price of goods.

And it isn't like SL is the only virtual world and runs a monopoly. LL has competition. So, they are controlled by market forces.

The price of goods within SL are controlled by the developers like Blueberry or Addams and the people willing to pay the price they ask or not. The same with region costs. The supply side always wants to get the highest price possible. The demand side the lowest. Basic human nature always prevails and supply and demand prices equalize at various price points.

Ideologists try to combat human nature and control supply and demand. Russia had to give up on the idea of socialism, an ideological system. It never works. Did you talk to any Russian immigrants?

Edited October 31, 2018 by Nalates Urriah
spelling

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Russia had to give up on the idea of socialism, an ideological system. It never works. Did you talk to any Russian immigrants?

I expect a Russian troll to pop over.  Well, a few months ago that would have happened.

Which do you think is more tightly controlled, L$ or land in SL? 

[AyelaNewLife]

3 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

You really are missing the point...

No. You are creating a point out of nothing. This comment chain started when you claimed that the price of land was the natural result of basic free market principles. That's not true, at least not totally; LL have artificially reduced the $ price of land to fit their ideological vision for SL, even at a net cost to them. Supply/demand market forces existing, but overruled. 

Please stop with the grandstanding about basic economics. You're not telling me anything new. There's no need to treat me like a child when you're the one missing the entire point of my posts.

[Theresa Tennyson]

8 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

LL controls the cost of L$ to an extent just as real-world governments try to control the value of their currencies. But, market forces from people voting with their dollars controls the value of a country's currency. Ask any Venezuelan. Within SL it is very much a free market. If you think not, point me to the central control that is setting the price of goods.

And it isn't like SL is the only virtual world and runs a monopoly. LL has competition. So, they are controlled by market forces.

The price of goods within SL are controlled by the developers like Blueberry or Addams and the people willing to pay the price they ask or not. The same with region costs. The supply side always wants to get the highest price possible. The demand side the lowest. Basic human nature always prevails and supply and demand prices equalize at various price points.

Ideologists try to combat human nature and control supply and demand. Russia had to give up on the idea of socialism, an ideological system. It never works. Did you talk to any Russian immigrants?

LInden Lab has unchallengeable control over the both the supply and the maintenance cost of land within Second Life. Anyone in the land business in Second Life will be dealing with Linden Lab, and only Linden Lab, on their terms. That means that the land business within Second Life is far from a free market.

[Blush Bravin]

I see the lab acting like the Fed (USA) does to curb inflation by adjusting interest rates. It's still capitalism at work and supply and demand is a huge part of that, but there are things that the Fed (LL) can do to impact the economy (land pricing).

[ChinRey]

9 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Russia had to give up on the idea of socialism, an ideological system. It never works.

All the Scandinavian countries are based on socialism. Even the right wing parties here would probably have been counted as "socialists" in USA.

GNP per capita in USD in 2015 (according to wikipedia):

5	Norway	74,505
10	USA	56,207
-	Faeroe Islands	53,613
12	Denmark	53,015
13	Iceland	50,734
14	Sweden	50,585
19	Finland	42,405

(The number in the first column is the world ranking - Faeroe Islands is unranked because it doesn't have enough historical data).

Poverty rates (no data avaialble for Faeroe Islands)  - percentage of population living on less tha 1.90 USD a day:

Finland	0.0%
Iceland	0.0%
Norway	0.2%
Denmark	0.2%
Sweden	0.5%
USA	1.3%

Icelandic number from 2014, U.S from 2016, the rest from 2015.

I'm not saying that the Scandinavian way is the one true way everybody should follow. Different nations face different challenges and need different solutions. But that is my point: Do not generalize!

[FairreLilette]

Honestly, the music is a bit.  

I need help in that area!  Finding a club with people in it with more diversified music. 

I want to hear more vintage stuff...psychedelic...great organ...fabulous guitar...and I don't want to IM the dj all of the time.  If the music were good, I'd tip anyway instead of leave.   lol

[Blush Bravin]

1 minute ago, FairreLilette said:

Honestly, the music is a bit.  

I need help in that area!  Finding a club with people in it with more diversified music. 

I want to hear more vintage stuff...psychedelic...great organ...fabulous guitar...and I don't want to IM the dj all of the time.  If the music were good, I'd tip anyway instead of leave.   lol

I'm a fan of the live music scene in SL, but I base where I go on the performer and not the club. I have a list of my favorite performers and I follow their schedule. This way I know I'm going to like the music and I know there's a pretty good group of people who follow that performer as well. In time you get to know each other in the group.