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Realtalk: How to get the community to like LL's viewer again?


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9 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If you knew how Firestorms area search worked, you wouldn't ever use it on a busy region. It is exceptionally heavy  .. like  " oh damn, it does WHAT?!!! " heavy,  don't get to complain about lag and script time or avatars if you're going to pop up and have your viewer kneecap the region by demanding every single bit of data on every single object in the most intensive way possible.

Could you elaborate on this more? I thought these features weren't a demand on sims. You telling me firestorm doesn't do it all client side?

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1 minute ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

Could you elaborate on this more? I thought these features weren't a demand on sims. You telling me firestorm doesn't do it all client side?

It has to do it client side as there is no server side infrastructure for the viewer to ask the region "hey, tell me about objects ___________"

It doesn't have all the required data for you to search through. The region doesn't send every little detail about everything, just enough to get the stuff you can see on your screen.

So how can the viewer get all the data about all the things, so it can then filter it against your search criteria? .. it edits. everything. Depending on your search settings .. that can be tens of thousands of objects.

That's why it can take a while for an area search listing to complete.

Now lets do that in the middle of a mall / object dense location , surrounded by 40 other avatars, all doing the same .. for a couple of freebies. 

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1 hour ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

The time you waste trying to fly in a sim with 40+ avatar is time you could've better spent camming around instead. It is quicker and more effective than flying around.

Secondly, if the event organizers does this then take it up with them. Make your case with them to enable flying. However for other sims, clubs, RP sims, combat sims, adventure sims, etc etc etc. If they turn on flying restrictions these things should be respected.

Honestly I'm surprise you don't use some sort of speed dash or if they allow double click to TP to get around faster.

No, actually once you clear the landing spot and get away things get a lot better.  Also some things will not rez for a while further away if the distance is far enough because the viewer is still too busy with the deluge of stuff closer.  Once you move out everything gets a lot better.  In addition some items only give information to chat and so you have to be closer for that and on a laggy sim I don't want to miss important information.  In the end sometimes flying is just faster and gives better results than camming from the landing spot.  Not every busy event is for shopping either, I cannot take pictures in front of the area of a gorgeous build I want to by camming.

Strangely enough direct tp'ing within a region is usually the other thing people disable (because their land their rules presumably, right?) and believe me, if that is enabled, I use it.  However, there is no override for that setting that I am aware of.

I don't have to make a case with anyone, I have a solution and I have never encountered an event that was worth going to that banned anyone for doing this so far.  Nobody listens anyway because nobody wants to admit that it makes no difference and put forward pointless straw-man arguments to justify it.  I have been there.

Respect is earned and people don't get that by turning off things that don't matter "just 'cause I'm in charge".  If I am not wanted at a place in the way that I prefer to operate my avatar, I am OK with that and I will be sent home or leave.

The thing that most fail to understand is that many, many people have left SL because things like this are frustrating when you want to go places, they are busy and people turn off things that might help.  What is the point of building a sim for an event that people cannot move around in?  For shopping it might as well be on the marketplace and for everything else it makes them pointless as people want to experience SL.  Turning off the feature we sometimes need to help us is only going to push people away.

The categories of regions you give in your post are not even universally against flying in all parts of their regions and so you have no way of knowing what to expect most of the time unless it is obvious.  I have fly-on-tp enabled and so I would even have to check to see if they turned it off.

The best places to let you know that it is a fully managed experience and have those kinds of expectations of no-fly all have a landing area far away from the main thing and make you read whatever to tell you what you must do.  That is the most obvious thing to do and usually signals that it isn't a place I am interested in.  This saves a lot of time and problems.  Again, these kinds of places are not the problem and nobody is going to these places expecting to fly around.  It is a straw-man to suggest otherwise.

 

Edited by Gabriele Graves
missing 's'
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54 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

It has to do it client side as there is no server side infrastructure for the viewer to ask the region "hey, tell me about objects ___________"

It doesn't have all the required data for you to search through. The region doesn't send every little detail about everything, just enough to get the stuff you can see on your screen.

So how can the viewer get all the data about all the things, so it can then filter it against your search criteria? .. it edits. everything. Depending on your search settings .. that can be tens of thousands of objects.

That's why it can take a while for an area search listing to complete.

Now lets do that in the middle of a mall / object dense location , surrounded by 40 other avatars, all doing the same .. for a couple of freebies. 

Sadly I expect this is exactly what will be contributing to problems at events because people want to find items they know the name of.  Factor in to that half a dozen bad search terms per person and things are probably going downhill fast.  What else are they supposed to do though if everything is grey or they cannot move?  This is the reality of popular events and will not change.  The events that have very short time frames often stay busy until they close.

Telling people things will improve if they don't use area search will have about as much success as telling people tp hammers are only making the problems worse.  People don't care if they think it helps them.

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1 hour ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If you knew how Firestorms area search worked, you wouldn't ever use it on a busy region.

I and most people still would. Ain't nobody got time to look through hundreds of slow rezzing vendors and often "full examples" of what an items is when I just want 1-2 of them and it's not in the most recent releases corner. Or it's some event and I already know exactly what I want to check and/or which demos to try before even going there (thanks to SL related websites, flickr etc). I'd argue that it has some positive effect too, at least when it comes to big and timed events. I only spend a few minutes there at worst, instead of 10-15+ while slowly walking through stuff I wouldn't grab even for free (not necessarily because it's bad, I just don't need it) trying to find those few items that I'm after. Less lag because of my avatar is there, less waiting time for someone who also wants to check the event, but can't because region is full.

And then there're not busy regions, like your typical landscape/decor/furniture stores, they are mostly empty or close to it, unless there's a big sale going on. Yes, in the ideal world every merchant/creator would put their releases in some kind of order that makes sense. Alphabetical, by the year of release or at least in groups of similar ones (that one actually is the case, but rarely. and often doesn't help, if there's still too much stuff). But it's very rare from my experience and things all over the place everywhere. I don't want to look through hundreds or in some cases thousands of items, so assuming that I saw something on the MP/flickr/whatever and know the name, I put part of its name into the search and usually find it pretty easily.

It's a QoL improvement among many others in some TVPs. Perhaps it's not vital, but all those little things add up together. I'm more happy, have more time for fun things instead of ones I've described above. And more likely to spend more L$ too, purely because I didn't spent whole day in futile search for items I need or want and can start to look for something else if I'm in such mood.

And yeah, before trying to do LL's work, by making "busy regions less laggy", how about waiting for them to fix their own stuff first, like teleporting avi lagging the hell out of not even busy region. But it's been the case ever since I joined and probably much longer and it's still here. Even in places where (at least I assume it's the case) little to no area search going on (clubs, hangout spots where everyone just stand around and talk in IMs mostly and similar ones) when new avi teleports in it's a nightmare if you're trying to move or do something during that time.

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2 hours ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

Honestly I'm surprise you don't use some sort of speed dash

This is what the Firestorm Flight Assist: Extreme Boost is handy for, it is like a flying speed dash.  It is important to fly as you need to clear the heads of others before moving forward or you will just bump everyone on your way through.

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2 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

It has to do it client side as there is no server side infrastructure for the viewer to ask the region "hey, tell me about objects ___________"

It doesn't have all the required data for you to search through. The region doesn't send every little detail about everything, just enough to get the stuff you can see on your screen.

So how can the viewer get all the data about all the things, so it can then filter it against your search criteria? .. it edits. everything. Depending on your search settings .. that can be tens of thousands of objects.

That's why it can take a while for an area search listing to complete.

Now lets do that in the middle of a mall / object dense location , surrounded by 40 other avatars, all doing the same .. for a couple of freebies. 

It sounds like the horrible stuff I used to do back when I was trying to code bots.

  • Give new camera angle to the server.
  • Get a bunch of new object data.
  • For each of those objects request the full data.

SL was designed as a visual experience, the server only sends you as little as it can to represent objects in-world. It doesn't even send their names, until you right click that object.

(On the subject of bots, it ended up being easier to make bots look for hidden hovertexts than a specific object name)

Edited by Kyrah Abattoir
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7 hours ago, WillowTenage said:

I honestly find it kind of flattering when I see someone's crosshairs on me.  I'm weird like that though ;) 

Makes me want to make mesh panties with a freenis on them, or a hand flipping the bird, or even a Have a Nice Day" :) on them. I mean give them something different to look at if they're going to look. Apparently the naked mesh Picasso upon landing didn't give them enough of a view ;)

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4 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Strangely enough direct tp'ing within a region is usually the other thing people disable (because their land their rules presumably, right?) and believe me, if that is enabled, I use it.  However, there is no override for that setting that I am aware of.

I don't have to make a case with anyone, I have a solution and I have never encountered an event that was worth going to that banned anyone for doing this so far.  Nobody listens anyway because nobody wants to admit that it makes no difference and put forward pointless straw-man arguments to justify it.  I have been there.

Respect is earned and people don't get that by turning off things that don't matter "just 'cause I'm in charge".  If I am not wanted at a place in the way that I prefer to operate my avatar, I am OK with that and I will be sent home or leave.

The thing that most fail to understand is that many, many people have left SL because things like this are frustrating when you want to go places, they are busy and people turn off things that might help.  What is the point of building a sim for an event that people cannot move around in?  For shopping it might as well be on the marketplace and for everything else it makes them pointless as people want to experience SL.  Turning off the feature we sometimes need to help us is only going to push people away

I feel you are misinterpreting what I am saying. This isn't about who is in charge. This is about created an experience with your land, a way you want people to see it and enjoy. That's all.

These events you keep going on about are an isolated matter for you and honestly these points should be repeatedly told to event organizers until they get the picture. We need fly, need double click tp, we need a detail map of vendor locations, etc etc.

To cripple the power of every other land owner and community that makes use of no-fly to better the experience of everyone just so you can buy your things quicker is selfish to me and while I understand your frustrations in these events it does not justify having broken features that should be working as intended.

The laggy issues you mention is an issue felt across all of SL (unable to move, gray textures, slow scripts, etc). Any sim that has 30+  avatars is enough to cripple it and it is really bad right now with the TP in/out lag. It certainly drives people away, as much as you would suspect in these communities. Yet still to me this doesn't justify the need to leave things broken.

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53 minutes ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

I feel you are misinterpreting what I am saying. This isn't about who is in charge. This is about created an experience with your land, a way you want people to see it and enjoy. That's all.

No, I am really just responding to what you said here which certainly looks like it is all about who is in charge to me (emphasis mine):

11 hours ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

It is my parcel and my land. If I turn off build, fly and scripts you shouldn't be able to override my wishes just cause you are too lazy to walk from point A and B. I'm sorry but land owners paid for it, they should be respected. Don't care if you could cam up 1000m and find obscurely hidden skyboxes you weren't meant to track down anyway. They remove fly for a reason like they remove builds or scripts for a reason.

 

53 minutes ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

These events you keep going on about are an isolated matter for you and honestly these points should be repeatedly told to event organizers until they get the picture. We need fly, need double click tp, we need a detail map of vendor locations, etc etc.

To cripple the power of every other land owner and community that makes use of no-fly to better the experience of everyone just so you can buy your things quicker is selfish to me and while I understand your frustrations in these events it does not justify having broken features that should be working as intended.

The laggy issues you mention is an issue felt across all of SL (unable to move, gray textures, slow scripts, etc). Any sim that has 30+  avatars is enough to cripple it and it is really bad right now with the TP in/out lag. It certainly drives people away, as much as you would suspect in these communities. Yet still to me this doesn't justify the need to leave things broken.

These events are far more relevant to why people want fly override than the straw-man argument of people wanting to fly around managed experiences, etc.

Nobody is crippling the power of land owners, that is just hyperbole and there is a very rabidly skewed point of view about land owner "rights" being absolute by a lot of region owners.  In fact, I would like one person to show me where in all of the TOS, Community Standards or other Linden literature it states that the rights of land owners, particularly region owners, are in fact inalienable and absolute over the "rights" of visitors for everything.

It boils down to this, all of our "rights" are granted by LL and can change at any time.  Just because a region owner pays a significant amount of USD to LL each month does not mean all of their rights are inalienable, absolute and automatically trump those of the visitors they allow.  They can of course refuse entry in response to what they don't like but that is it.  It doesn't mean the rights of the viewer user are absolute either.  There is a place where the rights of the viewer user and the land owner meet, that is a contentious place and only LL gets to decide, it can and does change.

As things stand today, land owners can turn off the ability to fly on a parcel but every, single, viewer of any significance has the ability to override that.  We have that right as granted by even the LL viewer today by virtue of the fact it is in the viewers and allowed to be there by LL.  That might change tomorrow but there is no "should" or "has to be" in either direction about it.  There are only opinions and LL has the final say.

This state of "rights" for the fly land option and fly override has been in effect for a long time and if it was such a problem for all concerned, there has been ample opportunity for LL to mandate that fly override must be removed and they haven't so far.
I hope it is because they recognise the rabid need of having absolute power a lot of region owners feel and realise it needs to be tempered because really there isn't a real problem here.  Personally, I would rather they be working on the real problems that are actually problems.

 

Edited by Gabriele Graves
Changed the general "you" for "they" and "their" and changed "feeling" to "need" to better show intent.
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6 hours ago, CoffeeDujour said:

It has to do it client side as there is no server side infrastructure for the viewer to ask the region "hey, tell me about objects ___________"

It doesn't have all the required data for you to search through. The region doesn't send every little detail about everything, just enough to get the stuff you can see on your screen.

So how can the viewer get all the data about all the things, so it can then filter it against your search criteria? .. it edits. everything. Depending on your search settings .. that can be tens of thousands of objects.

That's why it can take a while for an area search listing to complete.

Now lets do that in the middle of a mall / object dense location , surrounded by 40 other avatars, all doing the same .. for a couple of freebies. 

Any way we can we convince the FS team to can this feature?

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22 hours ago, Zoya McDonnagh said:

Makes me want to make mesh panties with a freenis on them, or a hand flipping the bird, or even a Have a Nice Day" :) on them. I mean give them something different to look at if they're going to look. Apparently the naked mesh Picasso upon landing didn't give them enough of a view ;)

I have an at-will animated gesture that does this. If I see the target on me I'll play it. Often get an IM "Did you just flip me off? LOL" and I answer "Yes?" and it can turn into an interesting conversation.

Edited by Alyona Su
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1 hour ago, Kyrah Abattoir said:

Any way we can we convince the FS team to can this feature?

Not a rats chance in .... Even if QueenStompyStomp Linden herself asked very nicely (omg .. with one of those 90ft avatars)

The only way area search goes away is if it gets added by LL correctly. Your viewer asks the region for all the objects that are ________ and it, having the entire list on hand, sends you just result you asked for. Allow objects to be pre-filtered by a parcel owner using the 'Show in Search' check box on the edit floater (unless it's you searching your own land).

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2 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

Not a rats chance in .... Even if QueenStompyStomp Linden herself asked very nicely (omg .. with one of those 90ft avatars)

The only way area search goes away is if it gets added by LL correctly. Your viewer asks the region for all the objects that are ________ and it, having the entire list on hand, sends you just result you asked for. Allow objects to be pre-filtered by a parcel owner using the 'Show in Search' check box on the edit floater (unless it's you searching your own land).

What If LL throttled the command on a per user basis?

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Just now, Kyrah Abattoir said:

What If LL throttled the command on a per user basis?

It's not one command, it's tens of thousands ... They could likely find another way to accomplish the same goal (bowing to massive user pressure) and we're one step back towards LL and FS being adversarial. Which in the grand scheme of things helps no one.

One of the perks of being a TPV is you can hack stuff in without needing to get the server side component in place. I would consider FS's area search and awesome prototype that has shown a solid well demonstrated set of use cases, there now needs to be a FS/LL project to move this from prototype to efficient solution and everybody wins (especially as we know from pathfinding, the code on the server already has the core functionality).

 

Just now, DarkRavenWolfie said:

i still use the default viewer because im getting the desire to scream uncontrollably when in third party viewers basic stuff such as the walking isnt by default bind to wasd and other stuff

If a viewer's defaults aren't what you like, let them know.

At least for Catznip, we try to ship what we think is a decent out the box setup, use the feedback button in the viewer if you think it's not. Kitty and I have very different individual tastes, so it's not like we're pushing our own on anyone.

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7 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

It's not one command, it's tens of thousands ... They could likely find another way to accomplish the same goal (bowing to massive user pressure) and we're one step back towards LL and FS being adversarial. Which in the grand scheme of things helps no one.

One of the perks of being a TPV is you can hack stuff in without needing to get the server side component in place. I would consider FS's area search and awesome prototype that has shown a solid well demonstrated set of use cases, there now needs to be a FS/LL project to move this from prototype to efficient solution and everybody wins (especially as we know from pathfinding, the code on the server already has the core functionality).

 

If a viewer's defaults aren't what you like, let them know.

At least for Catznip, we try to ship what we think is a decent out the box setup, use the feedback button in the viewer if you think it's not. Kitty and I have very different individual tastes, so it's not like we're pushing our own on anyone.

fair point, will do

 

So far trying to familiarise myself with the basics to begin with before moving to more advanced stuff ^^ 

still couldnt figure out how to put a collar on my furry avatar so that it doesnt blends in with its fur xD

Edited by DarkRavenWolfie
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17 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

It's not one command, it's tens of thousands ... They could likely find another way to accomplish the same goal (bowing to massive user pressure) and we're one step back towards LL and FS being adversarial. Which in the grand scheme of things helps no one.

I wasn't refering to the command volume being sent but the specific command clients use to get the extended data from objects. You could most likely throttle it on the server.

The server should protect itself from potentially rogue clients whenever it can.

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41 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

If a viewer's defaults aren't what you like, let them know.

At least for Catznip, we try to ship what we think is a decent out the box setup, use the feedback button in the viewer if you think it's not. Kitty and I have very different individual tastes, so it's not like we're pushing our own on anyone.

My two top favorites of Catznip are in this order: 1) amazing! performance and 2) Very, very much looks, acts, and feels like the Official LL viewer, so the learning curve is near nil. I am of the personal believe that Black Dragon and Firestorm (and to a smaller degree: Kokua) are doing it wrong by "training" everyone on a non-standard user interface. THIS is why people whine about the LL viewer the most: They've been learning to enjoy the *wrong way* of doing things.

Just like going into any fast-food place: they take your money as fast as possible then shoo you away from the register so they can get into the next wallet - no waiting area, no sign that says "pay today, eat tomorrow", and everyone stands around like cattle-chewing-cud. NO ONE that I know dares to expect "service" at any of these places. Because they've trained people for years to expect being treated like idiots and stand around brainless without complaint. )I never move away from the register until what I've paid for is ready to take away. ~snickers~

To the OP: Only if LL forced all third party viewers to maintain a standardized user interface layout will that ever happen (people enjoying official viewer again) - that won't *and should never) happen. Though I meet a LOT of people using the LL viewer and they're happy with it.

Edited by Alyona Su
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I'm not really sure what would bring me back to it, but, while I know it doesn't look as nice, they reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaly need to have shadow turned back off by default.

I know SL can be laggy on it's own, but having shadows on turns up that lag by 200% in most places, especially if full of junk and other people.

Edited by Digit Gears
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14 hours ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

But I am ask why! Why do you dislike it and have you tried it recently? :P

Because it is clunky, not in the least user friendly or intuitive.

As part of troubleshooting I keep a copy of the official viewer installed. Something every TPV user should do. For the simple reason that LL won't help you if you even mention using a TPV and they can tell what viewer you log in with so it's best to use theirs prior to asking for support and to be certain the issue occurs in more than one viewer.

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19 minutes ago, KanryDrago said:

Maybe I somehow missed it, did the op ever mention why she thinks more people should use the LL viewer?

It relates to the group fiasco we had last week and got me thinking. We want LL to improve SL and sometimes that requires new things, to innovate. Their only way to do that is through their viewer and server side updates. Many as you can see in this thread just don't like the base viewer and prefer another. So how is LL suppose to give us new fancy visuals if no one is there to try it and give constructive feedback.

In an age of Fortnite, Minecraft, Skyrim and fallout 4 and so on. How is SL still so far behind in terms of numbers. In a game where you could be anything with avatar customization being so far above all the others, how are we behind still? Can't be the adult content; Nutaku is a gaming company specializing in just that and they are making mad money. Enough so to invest $10m in game developers to make adult games.

My thoughts lead me back to the viewer and how if LL tried to modernize their UI to mimic more modern games they would get immense backlash and just wasted their money trying. So... that lead me to ask this question. :)

 

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6 minutes ago, Angelina Sinclair said:

It relates to the group fiasco we had last week and got me thinking. We want LL to improve SL and sometimes that requires new things, to innovate. Their only way to do that is through their viewer and server side updates. Many as you can see in this thread just don't like the base viewer and prefer another. So how is LL suppose to give us new fancy visuals if no one is there to try it and give constructive feedback.

A good first step would be to implement some quality-of-life features present in the TPVs, and offering alternative UI (maybe as a hidden option to protect the "new user experience" they want).

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