Second Life on Steam?

[Klytyna]

9 hours ago, animats said:

While SL doesn't get to pre-bake a game level as you would for UE4 or Unity, it could do background processing to group objects. The background processing which builds the pathfinding mesh is like that. It runs maybe a minute behind the world state.

Pathfinding bakes are laggy crap, and if you'd been paying attention, after builds it's not uncommon for a region to need a restart to "bake" the navmesh properly, because the pathfinding baker can't cope, live.

9 hours ago, animats said:

Some of the newer MMOs do some dynamic organization of assets server side as a background task

But they don't use a petabyte of streamed content, just the 30 gb already on your hard drive...

9 hours ago, animats said:

The "can't be done" old-timers in SL need to keep up with the technology if they want to criticize.

The "surely we can because other systems with different codebases and under 50gb of prebaked content can" noobs need to learn the difference between prebaked 30gb and live streamed  petabyte plus, before they make clueless suggestions about how we can simply rewrite the whole of SL in UE4 as an MMOFPS...

9 hours ago, animats said:

Remapping ("gamma") can be optimized for "can see as much detail as possible" or for "looks like RL when you're being dazzled by the sun". This is to some extent a matter of taste.

Ah... So while I assign Project Stupid's fugging awful renders to "a bad render engine" you assign them to "all Project Stupid experience creators have crap taste and poor design skills"...

I'll continue to blame the lame duck dead end obsolete before it's released Project-Stupid-Vom-Cam-Tech...

9 hours ago, animats said:

I spent about a month reading message logs

Yes, but you also spent NINE months discovering that sim crossings fail because "you your attachments and your vehicle arrive in the new sim by 3 different methods, so trying to cross at high speed with a laggy inventory is fatal", which we "can't do old timers" told you on the VERY FIRST PAGE of your 9 month waste of time thread.

And after looking at texture usage, for some time, you concluded that the way to cure texture thrashing due to VRAM overfil was...

To INCREASE the VRAM used PER texture, by 45% by loading not only the original texture, but a load of bloody mipmaps as well, causing VRAM to overfill that much faster, and thus to texture thrash EVEN more.

A house cat can spend hundreds of hours looking out the window at the passing cars, but that doesn't make the cat a motor mechanic... The time you spend looking at stuff, means very little.

9 hours ago, animats said:

That's not how user testing is done. You go outside for testers. It's fairly easy to test the first hour or two of a new game, because random people off the street can be used. SL's first two hours are its weak point.

It's not how *I* would test some Koder-kiddies work, it might not be how YOU would test it, but it is how the Lab tests stuff...

5 Minutes -  Empty region - Beta Grid - Middle of the Night - The Koder-Kiddie who wrote it.

9 hours ago, animats said:

One of the greeters at Caledon Oxbridge told me that new users think he's a quest giver. Might not be a bad idea. New users do need a bit more direction. There's not much disagreement about this. LL hasn't been very good at coming up with ways to do it, although they've tried.

Anyone who NEEDS to be given quests when they arrive in SL, has arrived in the WRONG DAMN PLACE, and should return to playing "Italian Plumbers vs the Croco-Turtles of Doom Episode 27", with their Thumb-troller on their SonTendSoft PlayCubeOne as soon as possible...

 

[Resi Pfeffer]

8 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Anyone who NEEDS to be given quests when they arrive in SL, has arrived in the WRONG DAMN PLACE, and should return to playing "Italian Plumbers vs the Croco-Turtles of Doom Episode 27", with their Thumb-troller on their SonTendSoft PlayCubeOne as soon as possible...

 

Agree. Its a world without preset quests or desirable achievements. Its all about the users very own and specific road to the goal, whatever that might be. 

But there is not only black or white. I met a lot of "hybrids". Some manage to be in SL for 10+ years, but still they dont know what to do here... When i log in, very often the IM bombardement starts like:  "What are you doing?" "can we meet?" "Im so bored" "tp me."
Would be better having them signed up at GTA, heading for a mission.

[ChinRey]

53 minutes ago, Fionalein said:

Qie might think the brute squad™ will come and mass relocate the beggars - er basic premium owners to SSP.

Oh. Well, that's not going to happen. In this world of uncertainty, it's good to have one thing we can be absolutely sure of.

[Maryanne Solo]

You do know that all the unwanted children from Sansar get dumped back into SL don't you 👀?

Maybe the steamers could play them? 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Klytyna said:

But they don't use a petabyte of streamed content, just the 30 gb already on your hard drive...

That's true and the only solution there is to go parametric and reserve polylist meshes for only a few special items.

 

2 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Ah... So while I assign Project Stupid's fugging awful renders to "a bad render engine" you assign them to "all Project Stupid experience creators have crap taste and poor design skills"...

Now, we all know of course that there isn't a single line of Unity code in the Sansar software...

 

... but it's certainly inspired by Unity and the performance and graphics functionality are in many ways similar so a comparasion isn't too inappropriate.

This is what Unity 2018 can do:

 

Edited December 13, 2018 by ChinRey

[Qie Niangao]

2 hours ago, Fionalein said:

Qie might think the brute squad™ will come and mass relocate the beggars - er basic premium owners to SSP.

[hmm... I submitted a reply but it never appeared, so...]

I'm interested in the idea of making land ownership an automatic, opt-out benefit of paid membership, not the current opt-in followed by paralysis of choice.

As to forced exile, I'd simply be surprised if many Premium members (with current benefits) stay put on existing Linden Homes regions after SSP.

But... do we suddenly know what levels of Premium will be available? I'd fallen out of the habit of even speculating about it.

[Solar Legion]

3 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

[hmm... I submitted a reply but it never appeared, so...]

I'm interested in the idea of making land ownership an automatic, opt-out benefit of paid membership, not the current opt-in followed by paralysis of choice.

As to forced exile, I'd simply be surprised if many Premium members (with current benefits) stay put on existing Linden Homes regions after SSP.

But... do we suddenly know what levels of Premium will be available? I'd fallen out of the habit of even speculating about it.

To the above, bolded bit: Oh Hades no!

[Qie Niangao]

4 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

To the above, bolded bit: Oh Hades no!

Really? Assuming it's clear that it would only apply to new Premium sign-ups (which I maybe should have specified?), could you elaborate on what would be the problem?

I could concoct just-so stories about how it might leave Linden Homes regions with an even higher percentage of empty-but-owned parcels, or how it might be hard to make the opt-out frictionless enough to keep from burdening the Billing department, but what downsides do you see?

[Solar Legion]

It is a matter of choice, Qie.

General land holdings? Linden Home? In both cases it should be up to the user to choose a plot (assuming they go the purely Mainland route) or to choose which style of Linden Home they wish to have. It should be noted that the removal of some choice in the current Linden Home system is my only problem with it as it stands.

If you don't like the location of your chosen Linden Home, you have to abandon it and choose again from the list and hope the next location it picks for you is more to your liking.

It's not foolproof, no ... It is far better than having a place assigned.

[Qie Niangao]

It certainly isn't intended to remove choices... although I guess I am assuming that, post-SSP, nobody in their right minds would choose the existing Linden Homes regions, so the assignment there would be just for those who don't want to bother with choosing (yet). I'm assuming the SSP regions would operate same as Linden Homes regions do now, so anybody is free to choose from whatever's available (along with all private for-sale parcels, Estates, etc, same as always).

Of course, there's also the soon to be expanded role of Auctions, and I have no idea if there's anything planned for them relevant to SSP choices or something similarly unknowable (to me).

[Solar Legion]

Unfortunately Qie, that isn't how what you wrote came across. It read as though you were suggesting new Premium users have an SSP plot picked out for them and that they would have to abandon it before either picking a new one or going after Mainland or similar.

[Qie Niangao]

Oh. Sorry 'bout that. I'm gonna pretend I was clearer in the version of my homework that the dog ate. 😛

[Solar Legion]

6 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Oh. Sorry 'bout that. I'm gonna pretend I was clearer in the version of my homework that the dog ate. 😛

No worries - already gotten into the entire reacting to what one reads into a response vs. what was actually written thing elsewhere, hence being a bit more gentle when pointing it out in the further response to ya.

Then there's the fact that your opinions and feelings on some topics are well enough known, so the way you came off seemed a bit out of character for you.

My initial response was not quite entirely serious - a reaction to what was written as opposed to your likely intent.

[ChinRey]

57 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

although I guess I am assuming that, post-SSP, nobody in their right minds would choose the existing Linden Homes regions,

That's how I understood you and I'm with you so far. But most of the existing Linden Homes seem to be taken by people who have been there for a while and you can't expect many of those to move. A while ago I checked the traffic count for the parcels of two random Linden Homes sims and the vast majority showed up with zero traffic even though the hosues were owned by somebody. I think it's fair to say the vast majority of Linden Home owners today aren't even active in SL anymore.

Edited December 13, 2018 by ChinRey

[Qie Niangao]

That's interesting too. Because the Linden Homes owners are necessarily paying Premium membership fees, at least their credit cards are still being billed, so I was assuming that most of them were still active enough to be interested in moving to SSP. Admittedly, that could be all wrong. I wonder if Marketing can figure that out, or somehow already knows it, in planning the SSP launch.

[ChinRey]

52 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

That's interesting too. Because the Linden Homes owners are necessarily paying Premium membership fees, at least their credit cards are still being billed, so I was assuming that most of them were still active enough to be interested in moving to SSP.

It's perfectly normal for any subscription service with recurring payments to accumulate a large number of passive subscribers/members over time. Some hold on for old time's sake, some intend to use the services again but never get around to it, some do use the services once in a blue moon, some simply forget about it because it's not that much money...

Of course, there are also those who are active but have really put their heart and soul into decorating their Linden Homes and are too attached to them to want to move, there are people who prefer the "good old" SL style over modern mesh builds, some who only use their house for a home position anyway and some who may find the extra lag unacceptable. I suppose I should have included some Linden Home sims among my lag comparasion examples earlier in the thread. Better late than never:

 

Despite their reputation for being laggy, those sims seem to perform almost as well as even the best optimized hybrid sims and certainly far better than any regular or Mole made mesh builds.

 

52 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I wonder if Marketing can figure that out, or somehow already knows it, in planning the SSP launch.

If not, they've made a HUGE noob mistake. It may not be a critical one though, there could be plenty of mainlanders and even a few islanders who want to move to SSP.

Edited December 13, 2018 by ChinRey

[Selene Gregoire]

16 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

❤️

When one is 9 one looks forward to double digits. OMG 10! Woohoo. I am a big boy now!
When one is 12, one counts half years "I am 12 and a half, almost 13!"
When one is 16, well... all those things like driving unlock
When one is 18, Finally alcohol (unless you are American)
When one is 30, Ummm, what happened? All my friends got married.
When one is 40, Nooo, take it back, I want to stay 39!
When one is 50, Ouch, this damned well hurts
When one is 60, Hmm, when did they start hiring children as policemen?
When one is 70, Ha! You can't imagine what's coming yet
When one is 80, Yay! Seniors discounts at the local all-you-can-eat restaurant.
And so on.

In the US, senior discounts start when you turn 55. 

You're also eligible for AARP when you hit 55. 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Selene Gregoire
hit, not it... oh just hit it

[Morwen Blaisdale]

On 12/8/2018 at 12:32 AM, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Re Adult content issues: DeviantArt has recently stepped up the removal of illustrations that breach it's guidelines, and Tumblr has announced that it is going to remove all porn, so perhaps there's a general wind blowing on from the Puritan Isles which will affect SL.

(/me switches back to the main line)

As for Steamers rubbishing SL, I'm not so sure, perhaps many will, but maybe others will see the creative side as something fresh and come across for a look around? I've also noticed that notoriety is sometimes as effective as glowing praise when it comes to drawing people in.

The general puritanial drift of Western Culture is palpable. The lefties see anything sex-positive as offensive to/exploitive of gender and sexual minorities. Rightists see open display of sexuality as sin. Period.

[animats]

8 hours ago, Klytyna said:

(deleted)

Has K. actually done anything in this field? Programmed anything hard? Fixed a major bug? Designed impressive objects? Developed non-SL games? Have a background in computer science? Citations in academic papers? Talks at conferences? Anything significant? Is this person worth responding to? Whenever something technical comes up, there's a claim she understands it, but never any technical detail. I'm getting tired of this.

(This is one of my patents. I did the first physics engine that could do a ragdoll falling downstairs, in the mid-1990s. I'm responsible for what's now a standard demo for physics engines. Made a lot of money off of that. So I do know something about this.)

8 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Anyone who NEEDS to be given quests when they arrive in SL, has arrived in the WRONG DAMN PLACE, and should return to playing "Italian Plumbers vs the Croco-Turtles of Doom Episode 27", with their Thumb-troller on their SonTendSoft PlayCubeOne as soon as possible...

Should I just block the rants?

[Coby Foden]

4 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I suppose I should have included some Linden Home sims among my lag comparasion examples earlier in the thread. Better late than never:

Despite their reputation for being laggy, those sims seem to perform almost as well as even the best optimized hybrid sims and certainly far better than any regular or Mole made mesh builds.

My experience is that Linden home regions are not laggy at all. I wonder where that reputation that they would be laggy has come from? Maybe from the earlier days when they were released? Maybe there were more people visiting their homes then than there are now? And naturally the computers where generally slower (compared to today's computers) when the Linden homes were released.

Nowadays there are very few people present in any Linden home region. Many regions might have no avatars at all in them. Houses are very close to each other and there are lots of them in any region. But the houses are quite lightweight to render and most houses are very sparsely furnished. So the two major lag causing things are not present there: lots of poorly constructed mesh and crowds of avatars wearing mesh.

So, it's pretty nice experience to have a home there.

[Selene Gregoire]

24 minutes ago, animats said:

Has K. actually done anything in this field? Programmed anything hard? Fixed a major bug? Designed impressive objects? Developed non-SL games? Have a background in computer science? Citations in academic papers? Talks at conferences? Anything significant? Is this person worth responding to? Whenever something technical comes up, there's a claim she understands it, but never any technical detail. I'm getting tired of this.

(This is one of my patents. I did the first physics engine that could do a ragdoll falling downstairs, in the mid-1990s. I'm responsible for what's now a standard demo for physics engines. Made a lot of money off of that. So I do know something about this.)

Should I just block the rants?

I'm not asking this to be a jerk, I really am interested in knowing why someone like you would take any kind of interest in Second Life? I don't understand the appeal SL would have for someone with the kind of background you say you have. I'm not disputing the background at all. I just want to understand the motivation behind the interest. The tech behind SL, after all, is more than 15 years old.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Selene Gregoire

[Klytyna]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Is this person worth responding to? Whenever something technical comes up, there's a claim she understands it, but never any technical detail. I'm getting tired of this.

Shall we check your own record on this?

Didn't realise that loading mipmaps into vram would increase vram usage by an average of 45% PER TEXTURE.

Thought he could cure a 15 year old problem JUST by dicking about with the velocity interpolation code in a sidebranch home-compile of somebody elses viewer.

Took nine months to realise what he'd been told nine months earlier was in fact correct.

Doesn't know the difference between 30 gb baked contend on the hard drive and over a petabyte of streamed content.

Thinks JPEG2000 files contain mipmaps.

Had to spend a significant amount of time websearching for an online converter to open a 40 bit texture file, that any clued up 3D person would have opened in seconds using an appropriate tool

Has decided to write Blender plugins to generate imposters for meshes automatically, despite openly admitting he knows sod all about 3D modeling, UV mapping or texturing.

And that's just *SOME* of your TECHNICAL failures, we haven't even touched on your SOCIAL failures, such as the various attempts to exile people who don't play SL the way YOU want them to, ban "bots and alts", cover the grid in "gritty urban biker gang controlled rape RP areas", force people to LIVE in said areas, legalise copybotting by people like you, "but only for Good", or your assumption that anyone in a skybox home who refuses to respond to some clueless noob who IM's from 2.5 km away must be  a "dummy avatar or npc".

Your posting history over the last year makes facinating reading, considering your pretentious statements about citations, and speeches at conferences.

...

Despite your claims to be a "Game Physics Coder" in previous threads, and your claim to be one J*** N****, patent holder, you have over the last year, made a series of suggestions for social and technical "improvements" to SL, that all have two things in common...

A) They all seem focused on converting SL into a 30 gb single install, UE4 based MMOFPS, used by nobody over the age of 35, and

B) Every single one was at best, a pile of worthless, poorly conceived crap, and at worst, inherently destructive if ever implemented in SL.

Are YOU worth responding to? Or should we just BIN all your suggestions without reading them?

...

Putting SL on Steam? All we'd get is more people who will either hate SL, and walk away on their first day, or hate sL and decide to stay as part of their Crusade to convert SL into an ePeener vs ePeener MMOFPS, where they can celebrate their Spawn-Camping Noob-Gank Victories by jerking off while staring at SL's digital boobies...

1 hour ago, animats said:

[Deleted for being pretentious "Leet Gamerz For UE4 World Domination" anti-SL drivel...

 

 

Edited December 13, 2018 by Klytyna

[animats]

11 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

Despite your claims to be a "Game Physics Coder" in previous threads, and your claim to be one J*** N****, patent holder.

I'm tired of these attacks. I am who I say I am. You can write to me at "nagle@animats.com" and I'll answer.

I'm trying to figure out how to fix this thing. I think SL is worth saving, but it's sinking slowly and being left behind by technology. Plus the Sansar money drain on LL threatens SL. Denial and ranting does not help. One thing we have going for us is that the viewer is open source and the content belongs to the users. So we can do a lot from the user side regardless of LL.

(I'm not a game developer, by the way; I came at game physics as a sideline from robot simulation.)

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Morwen Blaisdale said:

The lefties see anything sex-positive as offensive to/exploitive of gender and sexual minorities.

I have the sense, frankly, that you haven't met a whole lot of actual "lefties." In fact, the term "sex-positive" is virtually a coinage of Third Wave feminism, which is about as "leftie" as they come.

You might want to move a bit beyond the entertaining caricatures in the mainstream media?

[Callum Meriman]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I think it's fair to say the vast majority of Linden Home owners today aren't even active in SL anymore.

There will be a quite sizable chunk of people who can't log in, or don't log in much.

There will be a few who forgot they are premium, and never notice the money coming from their accounts.

There will be a few who paid yearly, and passed away.

There might even be some who are prefectly happy in their current home. Hard to guess about people!

I don't think that the old housing area will ever empty, and the Lab can't force them.