Making things more complicated isn't improvement

[Amina Sopwith]

I'm not a huge fan of the complexity of mesh and change of culture since 2012 either, but that first response was funny and it wasn't on to be rude to people who were trying to help you.

[ChinRey]

I have the impression when "old-timers" hear somebody talk about Second Life 2012, they remember scenes like this:

But this isn't SL 2012, it's 2007. There has certainly been a revolution in content quality since then, yes, but most of that took place in the first five years of that period.

 

1 hour ago, Ashlyn Voir said:

I guess LL wanted to keep up with those other games.

LL hasn't contributed much there. It's mostly been up to the content creators to upgrade SL's looks. Even fitted mesh was developed by users trying to take advantage of a function LL accidentally left in the mesh code even though they saw no need for it.

[anonymousrailwaybingo]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I think you misunderstood the purpose of the pictures I posted.

I was refering to Blaise Glendevon's reply with the avatars (from 2012 and now).

This is what I wrote: 

"It really doesn't matter if you show me a perfect still picture of today's current avatar, because a still picture doesn't tell the whole truth. It's how the avatars and the whole game environment acts in motion that counts."

I wasn't talking about pictures in general in this thread.

 

[Amina Sopwith]

26 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I have the impression when "old-timers" hear somebody talk about Second Life 2012, they remember scenes like this:

But this isn't SL 2012, it's 2007. There has certainly been a revolution in content quality since then, yes, but most of that took place in the first five years of that period.

Yes yes yes! This is one reason why I usually sympathise more with System Stacey in those "system avatars all look awful and ruin everything and I should never have to clap eyes on one" threads. The best and most recent system avatars, from circa 2012 as opposed to five years earlier, really do not look bad, and neither did SL on the whole. In the last such thread I participated in, it was clear from the numerous disparaging remarks about system avs that a lot of people don't realise they evolved for years after 2007 and even system clothing doesnt have to have that textureless, body paint look. Some people, it seems, even quite like well-made flexi stuff if they get to see it.

 

[Alwin Alcott]

20 hours ago, ChinRey said:

Time to drag old the old time machine! These are all builds that were around in 2012 and the graphics settings are also representative for that time period.

 

i loved most of those Rampart Castles... own this Fortitude small version... this small one already near 500 prims

[Theresa Tennyson]

33 minutes ago, anonymousrailwaybingo said:

I was refering to Blaise Glendevon's reply with the avatars (from 2012 and now).

This is what I wrote: 

"It really doesn't matter if you show me a perfect still picture of today's current avatar, because a still picture doesn't tell the whole truth. It's how the avatars and the whole game environment acts in motion that counts."

I wasn't talking about pictures in general in this thread.

 

When a 2012 vintage avatar moved, its body would have ripped, stretched textures. Its hair would have parts that were a rigid mass that would cut through its body and other parts that would whip around semi-randomly with no knowledge of the outside world or even the rest of the avatar. A long skirt would either be a pointy mass that was far bigger than the hips and leave a noticeable gap around the waist or be made up of strips like something out of an automatic car-wash.  If the owner wanted to have anything resembling human toes its feet would be rigid structures built into its shoes which would need to be tinted through guesswork to try to match the skin; often they would be surrounded by an invisible blob that would also render parts of the outside world transparent. This is all on the assumption that the avatar would not be seen as a cloud to others because its rendering was dependent on the upload speed and quality of the user's connection, which in the days of DSL was often horrible.

 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Theresa Tennyson

[Qie Niangao]

14 minutes ago, anonymousrailwaybingo said:

I was refering to Blaise Glendevon's reply with the avatars (from 2012 and now).

This is what I wrote: 

"It really doesn't matter if you show me a perfect still picture of today's current avatar, because a still picture doesn't tell the whole truth. It's how the avatars and the whole game environment acts in motion that counts."

I wasn't talking about pictures in general in this thread.

People have different ideas of what "performance" means. A lot of posters here are absolutely obsessed with rendering speed -- basically FPS. Is the mesh as optimal as it can be to dance across the screen? I could give a sh!t.

The performance that has completely collapsed over the last decade is texture loading. When I started (okay, that's 2006, but it was good for a few years), textures would load as fast as you could fly across a region! Now we routinely sit with our cam trained on a spot for minutes waiting for the textures to load.

People wonder why shopping events are so full for so long. No mystery there: everybody is stuck waiting for pixels.

Thing is, there's practically nothing the Lab can do about it they haven't done already, using a CDN to push download-intense content to network edge. If they made that huge improvement, why is everything so bad? Because there used to be a few hundred textures to load over an entire region. Builders were careful to re-use textures as much as possible, and normal users were satisfied -- even thrilled -- to see and navigate around 3D textured shapes at all never mind the textures weren't fussy. Each side of a house, say, could share the very same texture, in sharp detail despite low resolution, because they'd repeat many times across a surface. Now, a single surface may have multiple faces just to hold all the hi-res texture detail, shadows baked and stuck in time regardless of lighting. It's just what's expected now.

And the result is everything looks great in photos. Takes forever to load all those textures and looks a hot mess when you cam around it, but SL caters more to fashion photographers, their static poses, and static backdrops than to actual builds and actual activity. There are exceptions -- but nobody will ever be satisfied with efficient texture use again (at least not until we shift to the GPU from network- and memory-dependent lighting effects baked into a ridiculous proliferation of textures).

[ChinRey]

50 minutes ago, Alwin Alcott said:

i loved most of those Rampart Castles... own this Fortitude small version... this small one already near 500 prims

Oh I love that small Fortitude but sadly I don't have room for it myself. I have all the other Rampart castles rezzed at various places but the small Fortitude is still hidden in my inventory.

[Marianne Little]

I think that I made awesome avatars from 2011. My images on Flickr from back then look good. So, that was me bragging.

But it was not easy or fast. It took a long time to edit all the sculpted parts in place, find poses that worked with the avatar without breaking it, then edit the parts to fit the pose. Plus finding hair that did not clip through the body, or change pose again. The still image look good, but when I released my avatar from the static pose, the attachments had to be edited back.

It was not as easy as people remember if you used lots of attachments and not only system clothes. It is another kind of work to customize an avatar now. And it is another kind of problems. Back then, the attachments could be edited so they fit over the avatar without clipping, that was because they were not rigged. But then, when the avatar moved, the attachments did not move correct with it. I can just mention belly piercings. Sculpted jackets.

When an avatar is dressed now, the parts move together if they are well rigged. In my opinion, I have sacrificed some freedom to wear whatever I want, to get better performance.

I also think the textures rezzing is the biggest problem now. I am not sure what can be done with it. Only LL can enforce some limits, but they are very reluctant to break existing content?

I never use the official Linden viewer, so I do not know how the finished version of EEP light looks like. But I tried on a test version some months ago.... Let us say I was not happy. I can imagine someone installing the newest official Linden viewer and say "What has happened to SL? It looks so strange now." It is still many bugs, from what I read in the feedback thread.

If how SL look is the problem, download a third party viewer and SL looks like you remember.

[Aethelwine]

I remember having to edit linked parts on jewelry and hair spending time on pose stands to get everything fitted properly. Resizing boots, and their invisiprims.  Colour matching your feet for hours only to change locations and have them look totally different again. Hair and attachments with scripts in each of the hundred component linked parts. Those lovely fluffy flexi tails, and neon bright jewelry. And then when they introduced rendering cost counters, those old looks rendering costs, 10 times higher than I wear now. Script counts ten and more times than we wear now. The dreaded pink cloud for ages whilst you waited to appear, sometimes having to Ruth to get dressed again.

I remember worse lag back then, maybe a different sort of lag. I don't recall ever having roads and buildings refusing to rezz without needing to relog like I have had since mesh was introduced. But I do remember Sculpts not rezzing and jagged lines across your screen in all directions, or looking like eggs, the lag like you get now at Uber where it is like your are walking through treacle, or when you let go you forwards button and your avatar keeps moving off into the distance only to snap back a while later to where you were before you started. I remember that on regions with just ten avatars, sometimes on otherwise empty regions.

I think they have made server side improvements since then that have made a dramatic difference we forget about. I think we are more conscious of the impact of what we wear. We always look back on the past with rose tinted spectacles, back in 2012 people were complaining it was much better in 2007. I think the belief in a wonderful past is a common illusion, and that that is mainly the cause of threads like these.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Aethelwine

[Maryanne Solo]

6 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

The mesh avatars sometimes look like cool robots to me...they are kind of cool.   But, we all have opinions.  

Huh ^^? Cool Robots....😬
COOL Flickin ROBOTS? 😯 *bottom  lip trembling... 

Nuuuuuuuuuuuuu! 😱😭 *runs from the forum yelling....
Leave my mesh ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Not a dig at you Fairre. Just the usual carry on.. 🙄😸

Edited April 29, 2020 by Maryanne Solo

[ChinRey]

52 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The performance that has completely collapsed over the last decade is texture loading. When I started (okay, that's 2006, but it was good for a few years), textures would load as fast as you could fly across a region! Now we routinely sit with our cam trained on a spot for minutes waiting for the textures to load.

For minutes? I've never seen it that bad but yes, there's little doubt that textures load much slower now than they used to.

  

34 minutes ago, Marianne Little said:

I also think the textures rezzing is the biggest problem now. I am not sure what can be done with it. Only LL can enforce some limits, but they are very reluctant to break existing content?

The pixel inflation is definitely a big part of the problem (and something I understand LL is looking at as part of ArcTan). There must be more to it than that though. I notice the detoriation of texture loading even at scenes that have fairly low texture density and haven't changed for years. Also, I did a quick test teleporting to a region I haven't been to for a while so most textures there weren't in my cache. Even when the viewer was supposed to be busy downloading textures, the bandwidth it used hardly ever went higher than 1.5 Mb/s and there were long periods with no network activity at all.

 

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Thing is, there's practically nothing the Lab can do about it they haven't done already, using a CDN to push download-intense content to network edge.

If I understand @animats right, the CDN may actually be part of the problem. LL used Hignwinds, a CDN provider specializing in games, at first but then they switched to Akamai, a CDN provider that mostly does websites. Websites don't usually have hundreds of textures of course so the number of files Akamai delivers to a client in one go is heavily capped by default. Animat's theory is that SL's settings there have been reset to default. That would seriously slow down texture loading of course and may also explain those periods of zero network activity.

But that may still not be the whole story. I'm not sure but it seems to me even cached textures load slower than they used to. Does anybody have anything to confirm or disprove this?

[Amina Sopwith]

1 hour ago, Aethelwine said:

I think we are more conscious of the impact of what we wear. We always look back on the past with rose tinted spectacles, back in 2012 people were complaining it was much better in 2007. I think the belief in a wonderful past is a common illusion, and that that is mainly the cause of threads like these.

This is a very good point, but I'm not entirely sure it rings true for this particular issue. What I actually find is that with system v mesh, a lot of people are tarring the past rather than rose tinting it. Mainly by mistaking 2007 for 2012, as has been said earlier in this thread. In another recent discussion about system vs mesh, a number of disparaging comments made reference to 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009. It was still all system, and evolving, for a few years after that. And while the best, highest quality system avs from 2012 don't match the very best, highest quality mesh avs now, I still really don't think they are so heinously hideous that the very sight of them in a region ruins immersion or experience, as I have heard some people complain.

Speaking for myself, I'm not under any illusion that SL was perfect back in 2012/13; it was then that I stopped logging in for a few years, so however good it may have been, it obviously wasn't doing it for me any more. (I honestly don't recall people calling en masse for 2007 graphics, though.) There were definitely problems with lag, ruthing, the limits of glitch pants, and flexi hair and skirts passing through objects and other things. Mesh does look better overall. I do miss the swish, though. But, I don't know. It's not a real world, so while it was annoying that things didn't look so perfectly real, it didn't bother me too much. It's still not absolutely photo-realistic now and that's not an issue for me either. I'm not technical, so I'll accept that there are probably a lot of flaws in details that a talented creator would notice and I wouldn't. Still, does the average SL resident understand the workings of mesh on a very technical level?

For me, the thing that's really changed is the culture that seems to have come with the mesh revolution. I obviously had my reasoning ass-backwards, as the Americans would say, because I thought that the introduction of something so highly complex (HUDs out the wazoo, neck seams, appliers, skins that don't work on both head and body, clothing that's not compatible with certain bodies) would have made people more forgiving of those who either struggled to get it right or decided not to bother at all. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened. There seems, to me at least, to be more focus than ever on aesthetics to the detriment of whimsy, friendliness and connection, as well as a degree of hostility towards "lesser" avs that I honestly don't recall seeing back in the day. I'm not suggesting nobody was ever unkind about appearances (I remember reading a profile with the immortal line "f*** off noob and get some prim hair") but I really don't think it was the cultural phenomenon that it is now. 

It could be me rose tinting the past, of course; nobody can make a completely impartial observation on this matter. But even if I am, I think a large number of people are recalling the worst of 2007 and thinking that's what it was all like prior to the mesh revolution. 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Amina Sopwith

[FairreLilette]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

 Now we routinely sit with our cam trained on a spot for minutes waiting for the textures to load.

People wonder why shopping events are so full for so long. No mystery there: everybody is stuck waiting for pixels.

Well, I guess my Wifi connection isn't so bad if other people are experiencing this as well.  And, with events, yes...it takes minutes if not longer...so I go to events after their initial opening if I go to an event; ie, wait for it to be less crowded.  Now, I shop mostly 90% of the time from my saved favorites on Marketplace.  

The thing is that the Lindens never made a mesh avatar to give some kind of a clue as to what specs would be needed to run these triangular behemoths of today.  So, the specs are basically for the Classic avatar.  How can LL, with user content (not their content) even know what users are going to create in order to put any specs?  That would be expecting the Lindens to mind read.  

As far as texture loading, some times it takes a long time for vendor pictures to load, so what I do is put my LOD at 2 and voila faster loading.  I was reading LOD under metadata before I went to bed and the LOD read 2 to 3 for most objects (mostly all mesh objects).  Putting my LOD down to about 2.5 has helped greatly for busy places.  

Maybe the LOD needs fixing?  However, if you are going to run sculpties you need your LOD at 4.   But, taking the LOD down by LL is like asking them to be the police of user content as it would probably obliterate sculpties altogether.  Not that I think I would mind all that much if sculpties were gone.  I use sculpties once in a while but prefer mesh without a doubt.    I love the mesh decor items more than the mesh avatars to be honest.  The mesh avatar still has a long way to go but that's just my opinion.  And, why do I say a long way to go, because a lot of people can tell what head you are wearing or what body...there isn't as much uniqueness and/or the head to body doesn't fit well...all kinds of things that could use improvement.  A fully modify mesh head would probably be in the future.  But, imagine that fully modify mesh head comes out today and makes all the users computers who claim they have no problem, suddenly not be able to run SL.  Do you think they will go out and buy a new computer for a new mesh head?   I certainly wouldn't.  

As far as my avatar back in the days...she was gorgeous...I used to get complements on her all the time.  I didn't make my own avatar nor make clothes, only bought...so the picture of the avatars (of the three women posted by ChinRey) looks more like user-made avatars and user-made skins.  There were excellent creators back then but you had to pay.   I bought a fabulous skin back in the day too...it didn't look anything like that picture from 2007 that's posted in this thread of the three women and my hair was way better too.  I also had shortly after coming to SL bought my first flexi hair from Damselfly.  It was a gorgeous hair and did not clip through clothes because there were probably geek things back then that enhanced the way the Classic avatar looked.  And imagine making your own mesh avatar today or buying a mesh avatar.  That's the difference between user-made avatars in 2007 or whatever year as compared to buying more detailed items for avatars from professional designers back in the day.  The user-made avatars...well...not my cup of tea back then to put it nicely.  And, what are user-made Classic avatars?  The SL system has a built-in system for you to make your own clothes, skin, eyes, etc.  I don't like those because they are not very detailed.  There were professional creators back in the day where you could buy far better stuff than you can make using the SL system to make your own stuff.  

As far as interaction, it was better because of the less lag.  

Edited April 29, 2020 by FairreLilette

[bigmoe Whitfield]

On 4/27/2020 at 10:05 PM, Jordan Whitt said:

Eep not me!  I was dating a major psycho then!!!

Yeah, there were things I have on my sona now that are fully apart of my sona and I'm nope, if they do.  outta here.

[RangiUtu]

On 4/28/2020 at 5:26 PM, Jordan Whitt said:

Sweetness, calm your t*ts.  I guess you left your sense of humour back in 2012 too.

But since you only want boring, dry and serious responses to your topic...

All good things require some form of effort.  But it sounds like that is just something you are not prepared to do.

 

Your response is exactly what's wrong with these forums. I'm not impressed.

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Amina Sopwith said:

Still, does the average SL resident understand the workings of mesh on a very technical level?

The average SL content creator doesn't and that's what causes most of the mesh problems.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, RangiUtu said:

Your response is exactly what's wrong with these forums. I'm not impressed.

I'm going to disagree, I'm afraid. You don't enumerate what you see as "wrong" about this place, but I want to suggest that Jordan's response is actually one of the things that's "right" about the SL forums.

This place often usefully functions as a useful resource for people who need help with in-world issues, or who want to discuss "serious" issues relating to the platform, which is great. I use it for both frequently.

But the forums aren't really a "Help desk," nor a debating society; they really need to be thought of as a sort of town square, or even an "agora." It's a place where an enormously diverse variety of people can congregate, meet, socialize, banter and gossip, and, yes, post one-liners. It can both serve a "serious," content-oriented function, and be a friendly and engaging community at the same time. Jordan's one-liner doesn't, it's true, address the "serious" issue raised in the OP, but it does serve a purpose as the kind of interpersonal interaction that makes this a worthwhile place to be. Without this kind of banter, the forums become dry and dull, with the human element more or less stripped out.

And, really, what actual harm has been done by inserting that banter here? The discussion carries on, as it always does, apace, sometimes on, and sometimes off topic, just as it inevitably does, and should, when real, living humans meet and engage with each other.

[Beth Macbain]

11 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

Doesn't mean this thread has merit, but let's not sit here and pretend like SL is runs as well as... Well, any modern software. Can't multi-thread, can't take advantage of any modern graphics or computing technology, and the code is a hacked together mess.

Dude, I don't even know what multi-thread means. I know squat about coding. Nor do I really care.

Does my avatar good to me? Yes. Do my houses look like I want them to? Yes. Am I able to move through crowded events easily and have things render and load pretty damn fast? Can my pixels bang other pixels? Yes. Can I ride my horses, drive my cars, fly my hot air balloons, and float my boats? Yes. I do some stuttering at region crossings and I'd love to see that improved, but in the whole scheme of things I do in SL, that's pretty minor. 

I have nothing else to compare it to. I don't play video games. As far as other modern software... most frequently I'm using MS Office and it runs like crap at times. I've crashed out of Word and Excel far more than I've crashed out of SL in recent years. And don't even get me started about my virtual desktop for work... it freezes and crashes multiple times a day if I so much as minimize a window. 

So I stand by my statement. I don't agree that SL runs like crap. It runs just fine for me. 

[FairreLilette]

See, as far as I see it, in a nutshell, is this a platform to create and sell stuff.  Linden Lab provides us with a platform and some basic stuff to run SL.  If we choose to use objects created other than by LL for Second Life, it is our responsibility to figure out how to run those items period.  Second Life is open to all sorts of content. 

There is some optimized user content and there are ways to look at triangle counts and LOD and other metadata prior to purchase.  To give you the easy way to read triangle data and LOD, right click an object and choose EDIT from the pie menu.  Next, click on the OBJECT tab of the edit menu and there you can read triangle and LOD count and other data you may like to know prior to purchase.  There are other ways to read the triangle count in Firestorm too which I don't have time to go into but that is also up to each person to learn how to use the features by joining inworld groups.  Firestorm has classes that can help you learn how to use it's feature to help optimize your own unique user experience. 

If your computer runs great, then the user doesn't need to learn how to optimize their experience by using content that is not made by using the Second Life platform itself.  If you don't like higher end types of products or can't run them, don't buy them...or get a better computer...hopefully one you can afford and/or will last quite a few years.  And, in my case, I need a better internet other than Wifi and a better graphics card too but I don't want to do that right now.  So, I make do.  SL it is what it is as it is but part is client side as well.   And, if we want better "stuff", we may have to pay for it.  

[Wulfie Reanimator]

15 hours ago, anonymousrailwaybingo said:

Unfortunately I don't have pictures taken in 2012 so I could proof my point. But no matter how many picture evidence people post, I still stick to my opinion: For me, SL ran smoother in 2012. And in my eyes, the graphics were just fine back then. 

It really doesn't matter if you show me a perfect still picture of today's current avatar, because a still picture doesn't tell the whole truth. It's how the avatars and the whole game environment acts in motion that counts. So if you want to bring me a valid evidence, a video clip would suit better. But then there's the fact that everyone only wants to highlight their "truth" by bringing such videos (or other evidence) that are in line with their own opinion.

In 2012 I had an extremely basic and grappy lap top and SL ran really smoothly in it. That's why I was amazed to discover how slow and laggy it was for me now that I revisited SL. I know my current computer is pretty basic and far from any gamer's pc units, but still I thought it would have ran smoother.

Thank you for all your answers and tips 💗. I hope I'll get to tune my SL so I can at least get some enjoyment out of it 🙂.

Yes, SL ran better back in the day.

Yes, SL was less complicated back in the day.

No, graphics weren't better back in the day. This is an objective fact. We have the potential for more detailed content that is easier to make and is more common. (That content is also the reason why SL runs worse today, and is more complicated.) What you're experiencing is nostalgia. It's common for people to have fond memories of the past, such as remembering that a game looked/felt/played better than if you were to experience it again.

[Lindal Kidd]

1 hour ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

..What you're experiencing is nostalgia. It's common for people to have fond memories of the past, such as remembering that a game looked/felt/played better than if you were to experience it again.

That's the truth!  I have fond memories of repeatedly getting killed by the Kilrathi in Wing Commander and Wing Commander II back in the old days of DOS and 386 processors.  I downloaded them from Great Old Games to try to recover those good times.  They were HORRIBLE.  Some of that was the kludges that had to be done to let them run on modern computers at all...but a lot of it was just the way they really were.

[rmarie Beedit]

On 4/28/2020 at 4:38 AM, anonymousrailwaybingo said:

Some people don't seem to know the difference between a chat full of impulsive brain farts and a discussion forum.

Anyway, you evoked some interesting perspectives on SL times since 2012. A successful thread evokes lots of different responses - funny, profound, thoughtful, and otherwise. So just notch a win.

Edited April 29, 2020 by rmarie Beedit
shortened quote, clarified other

[Simo Vodopan]

On 4/28/2020 at 12:48 AM, anonymousrailwaybingo said:

I kinda hoped for real discussion about the matter, but of course some one has to immediately arrive and ruin the topic with an irrelevant comment. And I thought this was a real forum, not a stupid childish "facebook-like" chat.

The comments like the one above are exactly the things that make this world more complicated. Thanks for clowning on my discussion feed. Seems like a desperate try to confuse the topic into sh*tty irrelevant one liners.

It took me a while to put my thoughts into words and someone has to arrive and sh*t all over it.

Oooh look at a raid boss of a character like this in Second Life we got here. People would be happy to help ya there but if ya get like that then they'd get a sour taste in their mouth. Come on now.

It's not so much as someone *****ting on the conversation; it's more like they're trying to make you laugh and while I understand where you're coming from it's in better sportsmanship to shrug it off and laugh at it and then be on your way; otherwise the pot just gets stirred accordingly. Setting yourself up to be a target you know? Over something seemingly harmless.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Simo Vodopan

[Maryanne Solo]

My introduction to computer entertainment was Zork Nemesis.
As a youngster watching the slideshow it was, on whatever lump of antique junk I was playing it on still fascinated me.
The stuttering sound didn't faze me one bit.
The regular crashing wasn't a problem either. 
Recently I thought ooh how would ZN run on this MegaThumpingGraphics3dWorksation and geeez.
How disappointing - lol