Why doesn’t LL limit creators more?

[Tonk Tomcat]

Alright, so, conclusion: You just want to let all be like it is, poor creators have to rush out the highpoly stuff because the costumers are demanding it.

I did not ignore what was said to the limits, but those limits are the only way to prevent the lag and all the highpoly stuff and i even said how to do it so "smart" ppl can not just circumvented those limits. So, let's say how it is: We don't have to discuss anything, because LL will not change anything, so are the creators. All for the quick money, nothing to improve things like it's done for every other multiplayer gaming plattform. Good to know even the user defends those creators to rush out with this highpoly stuff. So i better will not look into the forum in the future to tell that it's possible to create the same good looking stuff, even with every limits applied, just not in the short time.

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

The recommended hardware list dates back to May 2010, so Linden Lab has literally every piece of mesh ever uploaded for reference. Basing system recommendations on what SL was like a decade ago is really doing users a disservice. 

I was going to ask how old the recommended specs were.   Wow.  

Sounds like a Town Hall Meeting to discuss some of the issues is this thread is needed.

Or would LL just say, it's user created...we have no control over what others import into SL or something to that affect.  

Or, they could add an additional recommended specs for mesh head and body and/or give users a beginner mesh avatar of some kind. 

Edited March 2, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Solar Legion]

Again, you've had it explained to you just why your suggestions will not work and why there is nothing whatsoever you can do to keep creators (and some users) from finding ways to circumvent those suggestions.

Congratulations on becoming a brick wall.

[Orwar]

4 minutes ago, Tonk Tomcat said:

Good to know even the user defends those creators to rush out with this highpoly stuff. So i better will not look into the forum in the future to tell that it's possible to create the same good looking stuff, even with every limits applied, just not in the short time.

[Selene Gregoire]

30 minutes ago, Tonk Tomcat said:

Alright, so, conclusion: You just want to let all be like it is, poor creators have to rush out the highpoly stuff because the costumers are demanding it.

I did not ignore what was said to the limits, but those limits are the only way to prevent the lag and all the highpoly stuff and i even said how to do it so "smart" ppl can not just circumvented those limits. So, let's say how it is: We don't have to discuss anything, because LL will not change anything, so are the creators. All for the quick money, nothing to improve things like it's done for every other multiplayer gaming plattform. Good to know even the user defends those creators to rush out with this highpoly stuff. So i better will not look into the forum in the future to tell that it's possible to create the same good looking stuff, even with every limits applied, just not in the short time.

You aren't the first one to say it is possible by applying limits and you won't be the last. Even LL will tell you that it isn't something easily or quickly done, if it is even possible, because of the way SL is coded. 

[Selene Gregoire]

24 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

Again, you've had it explained to you just why your suggestions will not work and why there is nothing whatsoever you can do to keep creators (and some users) from finding ways to circumvent those suggestions.

Congratulations on becoming a brick wall.

Here. I think you need this.

[Tonk Tomcat]

I'm glad you're having fun.

As in any game, there are only a few things to improve performance. And for sl that are polygon count and texture usage. If you cannot apply limits, then there is no way to improve anything. Now enjoy your brickwall, because that is you who don't want to realise that there are no other options to improve. Or please show me other options if you think you have to laugh about mine? I did not see any other solutions.

[FairreLilette]

4 minutes ago, Tonk Tomcat said:

 I did not see any other solutions.

I have a possible solution to reach some kind of middle ground.  

It's for Linden Labs to create a beginner mesh avatar and then come up with a middle ground for recommended mesh specs.

And to all, is it time for LL to get into the 21st Century regarding mesh avatars and clothing at least...or is there something on the horizon that could make mesh obsolete sooner than later?  

The recommended specs as they stand now are all pre-mesh I'm pretty sure but not 100% sure.  

 

 

[Orwar]

19 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

It's for Linden Labs to create a beginner mesh avatar and then come up with a middle ground for recommended mesh specs.

   That's a terrible idea.

   If LL made MORE beginner mesh avatars (we've already got 'em, you know), it would change .. Nothing. People chose bodies based on their preferences of appearance and for how well supported they are by creators. If LL rolled out a mesh body today, it would still be years behind even the moderately popular bodies in content, and it would take a very long time for it to compete with the other bodies even if creators chose to support it. The one good thing that would come out of it would be that anyone would be able to create content compatible to it, as opposed to most bodies' super secretive and mega exclusive creator packs - but on the flip side that also means more unskilled creators making more unoptimized content.

   Measured just in triangles, and looking at my current getup, the body AND head are roughly 1/4th of the triangle total, and less than 1/3rd of the VRAM - and all of the accessories and apparel are within LL's complexity guidelines. My current FPS at my platform is at 246 - and if I have my avatar walk out of the frame and wait a moment to let it update .. It pushes up to 249. Same test on ground level, i.e. in my Linden Home neighborhood, 111 FPS with my avatar in shot, and when she walks out .. 113. 

   Not the most scientific test, perhaps, but you're really focusing on the wrong thing. Some mesh bodies *cough*Legacy*cough* are worse offenders than others, but even so it's when you start heaping up on badly made clothes, accessories, shoes and hair that the triangle count begins to run off, and even then it's just graphical lag - it's when people wear highly scripted genetalia and HUDs that regions begin to tank and make the experience unresponsive.

[Beth Macbain]

19 minutes ago, Orwar said:

it's when people wear highly scripted genetalia and HUDs that regions begin to tank and make the experience unresponsive

I will have you know, my good sir, that my highly scripted genitalia makes "experiences" much more responsive. 

🤭

[animats]

A big problem with avatar complexity is that the level of detail system for avatars is so broken. Everything on the avatar switches level of detail at the same time, resulting in highly detailed jewelry being rendered fully on avatars ten meters away.

Why? Because much clothing looks terrible at the lower levels of detail. It may turn into a some-triangles see-through mess the uploader's mesh reducer generates when you give it a very small target number. Mesh reduction on clothing is a hard problem anyway, because of all those close-together layers. The reduced mesh may be on the wrong side of the underlying layer.

I was trying out some mesh reduction algorithms in Blender. Quadric mesh reduction, which is the main algorithm used for game assets today and is available in Blender, produces terrible results on thin objects like clothing. It trims the edges inward, rather than flattening wrinkles, because that causes the least volume difference between original and reduced form. Try this in Blender: create a cube, flatten it so it's thin, subdivide it into about 10x10 squares per face, and grab part of the center and pull it out to create a bump that affects both sides. So that's a piece of cloth with a wrinkle. Now apply quadric mesh reduction and see what happens. The edges pull in and the wrinkle remains. You never get a flat piece of cloth.

You're better off with a simple merge small triangles algorithm, if you don't push it too hard.

Most cloth in game characters is a double-sided single mesh, with zero thickness. But Blender clothing is often a real volumetric object, two meshes back to back. Mesh reduction for that doesn't work right.

How do the better creators deal with this?

[Tonk Tomcat]

18 minutes ago, animats said:

Most cloth in game characters is a double-sided single mesh, with zero thickness

Don't do that for clothes. It's like using twice the polycount of your object and it's totally unnecessary. Retopo your object by hand, so you only have one solid hull. For the holes in your cloth(like the neck and wrist areas) just build the thickness and do like 1-2 rows of polys in the inside, then extrude one time and merge verts to center. So you close the hole. Make the texture black on that area and fade it out to the outside. That way you simulate the shadow from the inside fading to the outside. Try to avoid having polys where you can't see them.

[Seicher Rae]

3 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

The pressure exists because very few can be patient enough to wait for it to be done properly.

You've said this, in various ways, several times in this thread. As a consumer (oy vey, look at my inventory), who hangs around other consumers, I don't know wtf you're on about. Pressure to create, willy nilly? Who does that? How? I certainly don't know any end users who do that. How would we know how fast, and as I've already been stating, or well a creator is creating? I think, based on my own anecdotal evidence that your premise is wrong. Unless you have quantitative, non-anecdotal evidence to cite.

[Selene Gregoire]

Some of the groups I am in, it's a daily occurrence for some people to ask "When is the next release?". Used to see it every day several times a day in the FS support group. Still do, especially when people know there will be a "next release". That's when the pressure is really on. Customers want you to hurry up and finish so they can buy the product so you feel pressured to get the project completed and released. That's also when you start making mistakes and forgetting to do things you don't normally forget to do.

[Seicher Rae]

1 minute ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Some of the groups I am in, it's a daily occurrence for some people to ask "When is the next release?". Used to see it every day several times a day in the FS support group. Still do, especially when people know there will be a "next release". That's when the pressure is really on. Customers want you to hurry up and finish so they can buy the product so you feel pressured to get the project completed and released. That's also when you start making mistakes and forgetting to do things you don't normally forget to do.

That's not significant pressure, though. Or it shouldn't be to an adult. Your loyal customers will wait (a reasonable amount of time) and the fly-by-nights will always be there when you release things. Sure, a few impatient folks for... what? a new "special" micro-mini blue jean skirt and crop top?...will purchase now and you lose a sale.  Pressure is consistently losing sales. Several people asking "when is the next release due?" are people being curious. The creators should give an honest answer. "I'm not sure but I'm working on it now..." would be one type of answer. I just do NOT see hordes of angry hair shoppers with pitchforks mobbing poor, overworked creators, forcing errors. It might be nerve wracking, I agree, to be asked consistently in groups, but if this is a business then the creators need to put on their big girl panties and do the work and not get faux bullied into changing things.

[Selene Gregoire]

Is everyone's definition of "reasonable amount of time" the same? I'm pretty sure it isn't.

No one said there were hordes of angry shoppers. It's like the road trip with the one kid asking every five minutes, "Are we there yet?", it gets old really fast and you subconsciously press on the accelerator a little more.

No one is being bullied. They're just reacting to the situation in a very human like manner.

[Seicher Rae]

7 minutes ago, Selene Gregoire said:

Is everyone's definition of "reasonable amount of time" the same? I'm pretty sure it isn't.

No one said there were hordes of angry shoppers. It's like the road trip with the one kid asking every five minutes, "Are we there yet?", it gets old really fast and you subconsciously press on the accelerator a little more.

No one is being bullied. They're just reacting to the situation in a very human like manner.

Then that is not the pressure that my original comments were in regards to, now is it? That premise is still flawed.

[steeljane42]

58 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

You've said this, in various ways, several times in this thread. As a consumer (oy vey, look at my inventory), who hangs around other consumers, I don't know wtf you're on about. Pressure to create, willy nilly? Who does that? How? I certainly don't know any end users who do that. How would we know how fast, and as I've already been stating, or well a creator is creating? I think, based on my own anecdotal evidence that your premise is wrong. Unless you have quantitative, non-anecdotal evidence to cite.

It's mostly big events that give such pressure. And a lot of creators have various reasons why they attend those events. For some it's exposure/promo reasons, some trying to catch up after taking a hiatus to remind their (not so) loyal customers they are back, some see if they can make their brand bigger and more well known. And those events are usually monthly as you know, sometimes they also align with quaterly ones which those creators also want to attend. So in some cases it could be up to 4-5 releases a month, sometimes even more. Now if it's clothes and rigged to at least top 3-4 most popular bodies it's a lot of work and thus pressure.

Lots of creators don't care and do it for fun mostly, some are already large enough to not need this, since they did build a large enough fanbase, but the "upcoming" ones do have such pressure for sure.

I'll also disagree with you on whole loyal customers thing. Sure, they are some that loyal to brands, be it RL or SL, but vast majority is not. If you (as a creator) don't create, people will buy things at other places especially with such amount of alternative as we have in SL for most things. There are a few exceptions to the rule, like mesh heads/bodies, which do have alternative, but far from hundreds of options, but usually if someone's "favorite" creator didn't create a spring outfit that is available in exact time frame, then that someone just going to grab it from someone else who did create it, thus 1st creator is losing money. Same story with most seasonal stuff.

---

Anyway, I do agree with what was already said. SL is not the place where one should even expect content to be the same quality as in AAA games made by professionals developers. And like market shows, it's not needed or desired by most SL users either. It's pretty, it sells, it makes money to people and LL. Of course there always be a few "purists" who can and willing to invest tons of time to make "better" content and then get offended it doesn't sell as well and insist on crazy limitations, because "everyone must play by their rules". To which I'll always say - let market decide. If better looking, but less optimized content sells better than your good optimized one... then perhaps it's the wrong platform for you to create for to begin with. But instead they keep ranting with their "suggestions" here and on some other places (one individual from this thread does it for a while already, so nothing really new).

Edited March 2, 2020 by steeljane42

[FairreLilette]

2 hours ago, Orwar said:

   That's a terrible idea.

   If LL made MORE beginner mesh avatars (we've already got 'em, you know), it would change .. Nothing. People chose bodies based on their preferences of appearance and for how well supported they are by creators. If LL rolled out a mesh body today, it would still be years behind even the moderately popular bodies in content.  

I kind of figured a beginner mesh avatar would not compete with the best of what one can purchase but it might give a starting point or a middle ground to creating new recommended specs rather than the current recommended specs of 10 years ago (and pre mesh).  What would suggest to do to update the 10-year-old recommended specs?

Also, I did not know SL had beginner (starting in SL) mesh avatars.  Which ones?

Quote

   it's when people wear highly scripted genetalia and HUDs that regions begin to tank and make the experience unresponsive.

Is it the genitalia hud specifically or huds in general?  I kind of wanted to know about huds in general for clothing and wearables and if the huds for clothing, etc 'do' create a lot of substantial lag or not.  

Edited March 2, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Tonk Tomcat]

13 minutes ago, steeljane42 said:

So in some cases it could be up to 4-5 releases a month, sometimes even more

I just can laugh when i read this Depends how complicated the item is (i'm talking about clothings), if you do it right, you do 1 release per month, at most you do 2. Thats when you retopo by hand to optimize things. And believe me, the bigger brands don't need more than that. I will not call any numbers how much a single item will bring, but if a big brand attends on more than 2 events per month and don't have optimized content, thats just greedy, and not because they need to do that.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

How about lowering the Land Impact limit in sims regions? I'm all for it.

 

[Beth Macbain]

Can we consumers start using pressure to convince creators to start saying no to events and slow TF down on releases? I'm so sick of all the events that all look the same with the same full-perm template shirt with a different color texture slapped on it. If you've been to events recently, you know what shirt I'm talking about. 

Now that Seraphim has somewhat redesigned and rebranded themselves and has a weekly mainstore release post, stores can get some publicity for their releases that don't involve being involved in so many damn events and maybe some of the events will cease to exist. 

Even the events that used to be good are pretty craptastic now for the aforementioned reasons. 

Dear creators - Just say no to events. Just stop. And while you're at it, stop with the gachas, as well. Just let me go to your shop and buy what I want to buy. OH, and stop with the mega-packs, too. I might want a shirt in 30 colors (doubtful, but I might) but I definitely don't want the same pair of shorts in 30 colors with the same pair of shoes in 30 colors and the same pair of fishnets in 30 colors because jean shorts and fishnets look horrifying to this 50 year old. 

[Tonk Tomcat]

4 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

How about lowering the Land Impact limit in sims regions? I'm all for it.

Be careful, people don't want to hear about limits in here

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

5 minutes ago, Tonk Tomcat said:

10 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

How about lowering the Land Impact limit in sims regions? I'm all for it.

Be careful, people don't want to hear about limits in here

Meh, bring 'em on. But I agree it's a draconian measure that will cost both LL and SL creators money, so I'm pretty sure lowering LI limits is not going to happen. It's up to people who decorate sims not to buy and rez stuff that causes a drop in frame rate. And it's up to visitors to decide to stay or leave sims that slow down their fps.

As I said before: SL efficiency is at a natural equilibrium subject to a very free market mechanism, with limits that are (presumably) fine-tuned to what generates most revenue for LL. Acceptable to some, unacceptable to others.

[steeljane42]

43 minutes ago, Tonk Tomcat said:

And believe me, the bigger brands don't need more than that. I will not call any numbers how much a single item will bring, but if a big brand attends on more than 2 events per month and don't have optimized content, thats just greedy, and not because they need to do that.

And it's entirely up to them. You/we might agree or disagree with their business model, but if it works and customers are happy, then their business model is better than 1-2 releases a month. Pressure part is there as a downside, but it's still up to them to decide what is more important to them, additional income or less pressure.

And again, what is right or wrong is very subjective. SL is not the place for "best quality" content, nor vast majority of content creators are even capable of doing this, since it's just a hobby for the most. Introducing severe (and I'd even call them crazy) limits will just hurt already declining SL. Way more than not having a few extra people on ancient netbooks around, that would be possible if SL was the best optimized thing ever.

41 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

How about lowering the Land Impact limit in sims regions? I'm all for it.

Increase after moving to cloud with (hopefully) better hardware is more likely. We already had one in 2016 when full private regions went from 15k to 20k and homesteads from 3.75k to 5k, as well as ability to add extra 10k prims for private regions for the total of 30k. Next step is 25k/37.5k (upgraded) for the full regions, probably.

38 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

Can we consumers start using pressure to convince creators to start saying no to events and slow TF down on releases?

Unrealistic, based on how popular events remain to this day (except cases where their own management and mistakes of people in charge did hurt their popularity quite a bit), especially during their opening days. It pretty much shows the demand of majority. A few unhappy, but loud people won't make creators do anything.  Same for the gachas, sadly. I personally despise them, but I know some people who burn through 70k-100k L$ on every big gacha event. So I can see why creators keep doing those, even ones who don't exactly "need" extra cash. Why sell 1 item in popular color for 250L$ if you can sell same 1 item in same popular color bundled with 10 others for 750L$?

Edited March 2, 2020 by steeljane42
typos