Lindens Changing Beta Grid - Aditi - to Premium Only?

[BobbieEarhart]

I have an alt who is not Premium but has the Mesh Studio program that changes prims into mesh so he is on the Beta Grid building and testing a lot. Yesterday Verenda Sandbox that I've been using on Aditi was offline so I moved back to the Sandbox on the Morris sim. Today I tried to teleport back to Verenda only to receive a message saying this sim was only available to Premium Members. There is a new sandbox sim adjacent to Verenda called Astutula and that too is Premium members only. Wanderton Sanbox is still open to all but that is a no script sandbox. That appears to leave just the 2 small sandboxes on Morris open to all where you can run scripts. Is this the beginning of a move by the Lab to restrict Beta to Premium members only?

[Qie Niangao]

I don't have any information but I have a hunch. The new super duper premium plus will involve some special negotiations between the sim and the viewer... I guess some user operations will only be valid for the Plus subscribers and the viewer needs to know that, or something. So maybe viewer developers need a Premium sandbox with that special stuff enabled.

As you can imagine, the change has triggered all the usual drama from all the usual dramaturgists in the opensource-dev mailing list.

But it's just a hunch. For one thing, you'd kinda expect the Lab might have mentioned something if that's what they're up to, and I haven't seen anything (but then I don't watch all that carefully either).

[Fenix Eldritch]

2 hours ago, BobbieEarhart said:

Is this the beginning of a move by the Lab to restrict Beta to Premium members only?

I doubt that.

According to the wiki page, the beta grid has limited capacity, so regions come and go as needed for testing. It also lists several permanent sandboxes residents can use, which include Astutula, Exemplar, Pristina, and Verenda. These are of particular interest because their counterparts on the main grid are in fact actual premium sandboxs - which are indeed supposed to be for premium members only. These were introduced around the time of the first Linden Homes specifically for premium members.

If these four Aditi regions were previously open to all as you say, then it may be a simple case that those regions were refreshed on the beta grid and carried over their premium-only status. It could be an honest mistake. I'd suggest opening a JIRA ticket to see if those beta grid regions can be restored to open status again.

Edit: Qie posted as I was writing this, but his hunch also has merit. The Lab may have switched Verenda over to premium only for their own testing for the upcoming premium-plus plans.

Edited March 4, 2020 by Fenix Eldritch

[ChinRey]

On 3/4/2020 at 12:50 PM, BobbieEarhart said:

I have an alt who is not Premium but has the Mesh Studio program that changes prims into mesh so he is on the Beta Grid building and testing a lot. Yesterday Verenda Sandbox that I've been using on Aditi was offline so I moved back to the Sandbox on the Morris sim. Today I tried to teleport back to Verenda only to receive a message saying this sim was only available to Premium Members. There is a new sandbox sim adjacent to Verenda called Astutula and that too is Premium members only. Wanderton Sanbox is still open to all but that is a no script sandbox. That appears to leave just the 2 small sandboxes on Morris open to all where you can run scripts.

Search for Mesh Sandbox 2. It should be open for everybody and it allows scripts. It does tend to be a bit crowded though.

Verenda and Astutula are both copies of premium on the main grid and the reason they are set to premium only on beta too is probably just that LL forgot to change it when they copied them over.

Edited March 5, 2020 by ChinRey

[BobbieEarhart]

Thank you all very much for your replies. I've visited Mesh Sandbox 2 and taken an lm. As I'm Premium I'll try Live Chat first and then raise a ticket if needed.

Added after Live Chat - I've been told that it looks as though the change to Premium Only might be intentional but it is being looked into in case it needs to be modified.

Edited March 4, 2020 by BobbieEarhart

[Pussycat Catnap]

Since it's a beta grid they were probably just testing something.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

The new super duper premium plus will involve some special negotiations between the sim and the viewer...

huh? you mean more controls for premium users?

[Qie Niangao]

6 hours ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

huh? you mean more controls for premium users?

Don't know. They've been pretty tight-lipped about what's coming in the Plus bundle. I think the feature they're working on includes different fees for some viewer-initiated operations... maybe uploading assets? But no idea what else there might be.

[Mollymews]

two things that Linden mentioned about Plus.  Discount for Name Changes and there will be a Premium Plus Linden Homes Estate. What this is I dunno exactly. Probably at least 4096m with a split down option to 2048m . Like the 1024m/512m split for current Premium

 

[Chic Aeon]

32 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

two things that Linden mentioned about Plus.  Discount for Name Changes and there will be a Premium Plus Linden Homes Estate. What this is I dunno exactly. Probably at least 4096m with a split down option to 2048m . Like the 1024m/512m split for current Premium

 

Just want to note that if you listen to the Lab Gab where Patch mentioned that there was NO size talked about and it was WAY in the future possibly.  UNLESS of course this was mentions somewhere else. If so, please source your info. thanks.  I am sure many of us would be interested to know where you heard that. 

 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Chic Aeon

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Chic Aeon said:

Just want to note that if you listen to the Lab Gab where Patch mentioned that there was NO size talked about and it was WAY in the future possibly.  UNLESS of course this was mentions somewhere else. If so, please source your info. thanks.  I am sure many of us would be interested to know where you heard that. 

 

i didn't hear it anywhere. I guessed

there are 3 levels that Premium Plus can go to

1) Double the current Premium. 2048 tier. 600L stipend. Half price Name Changes. Other than reduced sink fees there is not a lot else that Linden can sell to residents. $175 annual

2) Quad the current Premium. 4096m tier. 1200L stipend. Half price Name Changes. Reduced sink fees. $300 annual

3) Supersize the Premium. Homestead. Stipend/name change/reduced sinks

i guess that it will 2) as I don't see the point in 1) other than a possible $25 annual discount over 2 x standard Premium. I also guess it won't be 3) if what Patch said holds up - that Premium Plus will get a Linden Home

edit ps.  Could be 3) tho.  Linden Home Homestead

 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Mollymews
2 x

[Lucia Nightfire]

6 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

there are 3 levels that Premium Plus can go to

Premium Plus "could" be anything. No one below the totem pole knows 100% what it entails.

[Mollymews]

23 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

Premium Plus "could" be anything. No one below the totem pole knows 100% what it entails.

yes. The exact details we dunno

but unless Linden have some whole other new different product that is worth more than $100 a year to sell to residents, then its just more of the same products bundled.  When so then is only about the size of the bundle

i would like a whole new other product tho. A black box parcel. I would pay $300 a year for this. And a Grid-wide Experience key

[Holger Gilruth]

Thank you for this informations.

[Soft Linden]

For a while premium-only destinations there were open to all. Reverting to the current state was intentional and a part of testing, but it's not indicative of a broader trend on the beta grid. If anything, we'd like more users testing and filing bug reports on aditi. Closing access would hurt that cause.

If anyone else wants to get on aditi and doesn't already know how, you can find more details here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Aditi 

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

Don't know. They've been pretty tight-lipped about what's coming in the Plus bundle. I think the feature they're working on includes different fees for some viewer-initiated operations... maybe uploading assets? But no idea what else there might be.

The viewer associated with the premium changes is now in the release candidate track. The release notes have various mentions of upload fees and number of attachment points. Note that the only items that would show up in the release notes are issues that were fixed and there may be other aspects that didn't need fixing.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 3/4/2020 at 1:50 PM, BobbieEarhart said:

Mesh Studio program that changes prims into mesh

Kind of besides the point, but you don't need any additional programs to do this. You can use built-in viewer tools to export anything full-perm as a .dae file, including prim builds.

And from what I've seen, Mesh Studio isn't as good at it either. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Chic Aeon]

25 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Kind of besides the point, but you don't need any additional programs to do this. You can use built-in viewer tools to export anything full-perm as a .dae file, including prim builds.

And from what I've seen, Mesh Studio isn't as good at it either. 

You need to be the MAKER of the mesh object in order to export to dae. You also need to be the maker of the textures to export those.

Exporting to collada from prims is less than a great way to make mesh and comes with many issues, so learning to make mesh within a 3D program is of course the "better" way.  Agreed there. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Chic Aeon
said things wrong - just waking up

[Selene Gregoire]

35 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

You also need to be the maker of the textures to export those.

Since when? Full perm textures can be saved to your hard drive regardless of who the creator was. I've been doing it for more than a decade.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

50 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

You need to be the MAKER of the mesh object in order to export to dae. You also need to be the maker of the textures to export those.

Exporting to collada from prims is less than a great way to make mesh and comes with many issues, so learning to make mesh within a 3D program is of course the "better" way.  Agreed there. 

Huh, weird that you need to be the creator of the prims you want to export. That doesn't apply to textures (which is why I assumed it would be the same for prims).

Either way, I would assume anyone who was regularly making prim builds to own the prims they're building with. Exporting the textures isn't necessary if all you want to do is convert prims to mesh. Whether or not it's a good idea to do that is (also) besides the point.

[Chic Aeon]

And you need to be the maker of any PRIMS you export. This was made very clear YEARS ago when the feature was added by the third party viewers (I don't know if the Linden viewer has this feature).  Otherwise it would simply be a copybot exploit  (well, duh) LOL.

 

Downloading Prims to dae is very handy for LAYOUTS and SIZING but it is NOT good as finished goods. Just want to make that clear ONCE AGAIN

 

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

removed because it's not working as i remembered it

Edited March 5, 2020 by Bitsy Buccaneer

[Chic Aeon]

1 hour ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

You can SAVE anyone's textures to your hard drive as long as they're FP (like Selene notes) but you can't export prims with someone else's textures on them, regardless of perms for the textures.

I ran into that awkwardness a couple of months ago. I don't remember if I tried exporting with my own textures. That got lost in the utter frustrations of trying to turn my linked prims into mesh. Turned out all I really needed from inworld was some measurements and a good reference photo.

 You CAN export the prims, just not the texture. This is obviously a cube I rezzed. Used someone else's full perm texture. Note that the prim can be exported as a dae but the texture will not be downloaded. 

 

 

Neither can you "backup" the TEXTURE  (like saving a linkset to upload to Opensim as a prim build)  but you can export the prims and add texture later. 

 

 

At least that is the way it works in Firestorm. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Chic Aeon
pictures getting pasted in MANY times for some reason

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

40 minutes ago, Chic Aeon said:

 You CAN export the prims, just not the texture. This is obviously a cube I rezzed. Used someone else's full perm texture. Note that the prim can be exported as a dae but the texture will not be downloaded.

What do you know, it worked this time. Must have been something else that somehow got altered when I stripped the textures.

[ChinRey]

15 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

Kind of besides the point, but you don't need any additional programs to do this. You can use built-in viewer tools to export anything full-perm as a .dae file, including prim builds.

And from what I've seen, Mesh Studio isn't as good at it either. 

I have to go back to my very first meshes to reply.

This window for example.

Made from prims, meshed with Mesh Studio, imported directly with no editing whatsoever. 1 LI with proper LoD models and everything.

It takes a bit of creative outside the box thinking to get the LoD models right but you can do it with Mesh Studio. You can't with Firestorm's dae exporter.

Edited March 6, 2020 by ChinRey