We have the power to make SL a "big thing" again (really) and tip the ongoing narrative, let's do this! c= let's do our part (for our sake)

[Sid Nagy]

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

On the issue of Bellisseria, while it's fair to say it was designed, built and tested using the official client, it's not fair to say it was designed and tested for the official client. All bets are off once we move in and fill the houses full of random junk. I'm sure there are plenty of houses that would give even a TPV with all the VRAM a workout.

So basically no one down at Linden Lab expected that people would actually try to make homes out of their houses by using some of their LI allowance.
18 Years in, and still not knowing enough of the basics about how and why their customers use SL.


 

Edited June 2, 2021 by Sid Nagy

[cunomar]

19 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

 

Define normal.

 

A normal person will tell you to try one of these if your laptop struggles with SL whereas weirdo's will start talking Klingon about CPU , SSD , i7 and so on .

 

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

So basically no one down at Linden Lab expected that people would actually try to make homes out of their houses by using some of their LI allowance.

That's right and it's not as if anybody warned them either, is it?

https://community.secondlife.com/forums/topic/426577-ssp/page/31/?tab=comments#comment-1871988

Sometimes I wish I was the kind of person who found pleasure in saying "I told you so". That would have been one thing to enjoy in SL.

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by ChinRey

[Kelsey Bluestar]

nice ideas.

 

 

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by Kelsey Bluestar

[FairreLilette]

9 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

They are still in your viewer in quick preferences in the EEP viewer.  You can still move the sun around just like with the slider.  Same thing just a different window to do it in.

ETA.  Not sure which of those older viewers you are currently using but it should be Firestorm 6.3.9 (58205) Release

That is the last pre EEP version and what you would have been using before you updated.  The one you liked.

The windlights don't look the same in the newer EEP viewers plus one can click on that moon thing in the EEP for the windlights until the cows come home and one will never have the magic of the slider.  In the EEP viewer, the magic is gone plus it's a mega hassle.  With the magic gone, it's gone and EEP cannot compare in any way.

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[FairreLilette]

9 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

The minimum requirements won’t even run Windows. Personally I think the minimum should be at least something that supports all of the shaders SL uses. Turning it up to ultra may not run well, but at least it should look right. The minimum video cards, if they’ll even run Windows 8 or 10 (and that should be 8.1, not 8 ) won’t run SL right. 

I've spoke about my build in that it was a gift and I didn't want the person to spend a lot of money so I said SL is not a video game, it doesn't need a super graphics card.   So, my friend goes to a computer store to have it built and the person looks up the recommended specs for SL and builds it for that.  I'm a computer dummie so I don't know much.

But, SL specs are for SL stuff - the classic avatars and the stuff one can make inworld with prims.  Upping the specs means LL needs to know what type of mesh or non mesh one is buying and how can they know that when people have avatars that are in the millions with body, head, hair and clothing?  What if a body comes out tomorrow that is 5 million polygons alone...how can one figure out specs then?  Since LL doesn't know what people are going to buy or build, they've obviously left the specs for the classic avatar and the stuff one can build inworld, which is sensible if you think about.  If a body comes out at 5 million polygons tomorrow, people will expect it to run on SL's old viewer and say I have the most amazing computer so it will work or it should work on my amazing computer.  That's not the way the viewer works.

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Rowan Amore]

10 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

I've spoke about my build in that it was a gift and I didn't want the person to spend a lot of money so I said SL is not a video game, it doesn't need a super graphics card.   So, my friend goes to a computer store to have it built and the person looks up the recommended specs for SL and builds it for that.  I'm a computer dummie so I don't know much.

But, SL specs are for SL stuff - the classic avatars and the stuff one can make inworld with prims.  Upping the specs means LL needs to know what type of mesh or non mesh one is buying and how can they know that when people have avatars that are in the millions with body, head, hair and clothing?  What if a body comes out tomorrow that is 5 million polygons alone...how can one figure out specs then?  Since LL doesn't know what people are going to buy or build, they've obviously left the specs for the classic avatar and the stuff one can build inworld, which is sensible if you think about.  If a body comes out at 5 million polygons tomorrow, people will expect it to run on SL's old viewer and say I have the most amazing computer so it will work or it should work on my amazing computer.  That's not the way the viewer works.

That they even have an integrated graphics card as a minimum requirement makes the case for them needing to update those recommendations.  When I first started SL 12 years ago, I had one.  That was pre-mesh and it struggled running SL.  No way an integrated card should be on their list.

[FairreLilette]

12 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

That they even have an integrated graphics card as a minimum requirement makes the case for them needing to update those recommendations.  When I first started SL 12 years ago, I had one.  That was pre-mesh and it struggled running SL.  No way an integrated card should be on their list.

Mine worked pre-EEP and I have tons of photos in the photo threads on the forum here and I could up the pixels way up in my SL camera and set the graphics up to ULTRA for photographs, so I was happy with it.  It's EEP and integrated that are not compatible; it's murky like submerged under water with materials, bump and shiny put together and the alpha channel runs horribly with the EEP set-up for integrated.

However, to have new specs, it would seem LL should have a new mesh avatar and then set specs to run that mesh avatar.  However, if the mesh avatar is nice, it would eat away at their profits of selling all these mesh avatars.  It seems to me LL has been stuck between a rock and hard place about it.  But, one can rest assured, if LL ever does come out with a good starter mesh avatar when one joins, a 5 to 10 million polygon body will come out that everyone will want and then it all will start over again even for people with the best computer one could buy and people will say that viewer is outdated because they have the best computer but it's laggy for their 5 million polygon body and 5 million polygon head.  

But, I did mention in one of my posts, who is SL's audience new audience...the FB crowd or what?  Because I could recommend SL but most everyone I know has a minimal laptop even if they have a house on the beach.  They don't play video games so they have the minimum kinds of graphics cards to run YouTube or FB videos.  

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Solar Legion]

The System Requirements page was out of date before Windows XP went EOL. If you're using it to build even a minimal setup .... That is your own fault.

Do bear in mind that this is coming from someone who is on a fixed income and knows just how much of a PITA it is to build anything on such or worse.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Solar Legion

[FairreLilette]

24 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

The System Requirements page was out of date before Windows XP went EOL. If you're using it to build even a minimal setup .... That is your own fault.

Do bear in mind that this is coming from someone who is on a fixed income and knows just how much of a PITA it is to build anything on such or worse.

It may be partly the person's fault who built my computer from the recommended specs on the SL page because if he's a computer builder he should have known better and should have discussed what might be better for me his customer, but then I think, he didn't know anything about the new mesh avatars obviously four years ago and neither did I.  When I rejoined nearing four years ago now, I didn't even know there were mesh avatars here.  I was thinking they would be all the classic avatars.  So, in that respect, I don't see it as his fault.  There are two sets of specs on the page - one is the minimum, the other is the recommended, at least that's how it was four years ago.   The computer guy built to the recommended, not the minimum.  But, now is not a good time for me to consider a new graphics card.  Maybe soon but not now.

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Coffee Pancake]

3 hours ago, cunomar said:

 

A normal person will tell you to try one of these if your laptop struggles with SL whereas weirdo's will start talking Klingon about CPU , SSD , i7 and so on .

Best of luck adding a constant inductive load on the 5V/USB rail to your cost optimized struggling laptop.

No. I will not fix your computer.

[Solar Legion]

7 minutes ago, FairreLilette said:

It may be partly the person's fault who built my computer from the recommended specs on the SL page because if he's a computer builder he should have known better and should have discussed what might be better for me his customer, but then I think, he didn't know anything about the new mesh avatars obviously four years ago and neither did I.  When I rejoined nearing four years ago now, I didn't even know there were mesh avatars here.  I was thinking they would be all the classic avatars.  So, in that respect, I don't see it as his fault.  There are two sets of specs on the page - one is the minimum, the other is the recommended, at least that's how it was four years ago.  Now is not a good time for me to consider a new graphics card.  Maybe soon but not now.

And both sets are out of date and were four years ago. Just as they were when XP went EOL.

Yes, it most certainly is their fault - they did not do any research outside of looking at that page before doing a build. Knowing about the mesh Avatars and such is a literal excuse.

ETA: Looking at the page in question ... Yep. They still have not properly updated that beyond what amounts to a Workstation system.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Solar Legion

[Finite]

Isn't mesh more efficient than prims? Assuming they're properly made and with wrapped textures.

[Silent Mistwalker]

3 hours ago, cunomar said:

 

A normal person will tell you to try one of these if your laptop struggles with SL whereas weirdo's will start talking Klingon about CPU , SSD , i7 and so on .

 

 

That would have been funny if it hadn't been so insulting. I'm using a laptop right now. An i5, in fact.

So, nope. Next time try using a valid definition or maybe a little more maturity.

[Finite]

17 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

And the other half of the questions are is this Best Buy deal of the day laptop good enough for SL. 

What do people consider a "potato PC"? 

Bestbuy actually has decent deals for Gaming PCs and Gaming Laptops. I wouldn't recommend a laptop for gaming but other people swear by them. Mainly for their convenience. Not so much because of their performance. They wouldn't be bad if you can manage keep them cool while gaming otherwise you'll be in the market for a new one relatively soon. I guess to me, any laptop is a potato when if their primary use is gaming.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pc-gaming/gaming-desktops/pcmcat287600050002.c?id=pcmcat287600050002

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pc-gaming/gaming-laptops/pcmcat287600050003.c?id=pcmcat287600050003

[FairreLilette]

39 minutes ago, Finite said:

Isn't mesh more efficient than prims? Assuming they're properly made and with wrapped textures.

Properly made is difficult.  What has been discussed is a polygon limit builders can import or something geeky like certain limits for the mesh when importing that I don't particularly understand.  

[FairreLilette]

6 minutes ago, Finite said:

Bestbuy actually has decent deals for Gaming PCs and Gaming Laptops. I wouldn't recommend a laptop for gaming but other people swear by them. Mainly for their convenience. Not so much because of their performance. They wouldn't be bad if you can manage keep them cool while gaming otherwise you'll be in the market for a new one relatively soon. I guess to me, any laptop is a potato when if their primary use is gaming.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pc-gaming/gaming-desktops/pcmcat287600050002.c?id=pcmcat287600050002

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pc-gaming/gaming-laptops/pcmcat287600050003.c?id=pcmcat287600050003

I would never work on a laptop for SL.  I have a laptop and I use it for listening to music with headphones.

I need a large computer flat screen and I like my build as it has an appropriate cooling system and tons of storage space for photos, just tons, and I need a full keyboard as a I have carpel tunnel syndrome.  Sure I can set up a peripheral keyboard for a laptop but that pushes the laptop's screen further away from me as the keyboard needs to fit on the desk and then I can't see too well.

I need ergonomically designed desktop comfort for issues I have and I like a good cooling system - that much I know.  

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Solar Legion]

... Much as I loathe to remind (considering my thoughts on using a laptop for Second Life in general), you can connect an external monitor to a laptop.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

On 5/31/2021 at 7:47 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

[...]

I want a modern multi threaded render pipeline. I want automatic on the fly LOD generation. I want global illumination and RTX lighting. I want building in SL to be a viable way to create content. Modern communications and collaboration tools. A mobile client that gives telegram or discord a run for it's money with a full fat metaverse waiting for when I get home. A smart animation system with the kind of situational inverse kinematics hobbyist indie games take for granted. No more region borders ever again. Client side responsive physics. LSO scripts in the trash forever. Sculpts too! A switch from the shared experience to a focused user experience. A new set of system avatars that replaces 3rd party bodies & heads and content creators can target. New users not having buy a socially acceptable avatar at great expense. Tools that let us build narrative interactive experience that scales to multiple users at multiple stages of play. The capability to prototype and build actual games in SL, with all the god-tier capabilities that would require. Instanced content. Bubble universes. Boss fights. 300 people in a club at the same time. Licensed & franchise content. Console ports. Merchandise. Literal Magic.

In other words: you want something like Sansar Plus 

I don't disagree with you, Coffee. I believe you're right. The real issue with Sansar was that — for obvious reasons — it was impossible to upload one's SL avatar and inventory to Sansar and have it there. This will always be a thorn on LL's side: how to dramatically improve SL while keeping the same content around? (And, of course, within a reasonable budget — you shouldn't need to mortgage Amazon to get enough money to do such a project)

Their first serious attempt at 'dramatic improvement' was, well, Sansar. But for that to work, they had to drop SL compatibility. Big mistake. It's not that SL hasn't got any 'real' competition; it's just that SL seems to be an unicorn — there is only one, it works (sort of), it makes money (sort of), it has its user base (which does not grow much). And it has a business model that is impossible to replicate. Not even by Linden Lab themselves! Not even by Philip, as he found out the hard way.

That still doesn't mean that SL is doomed to remain at its current, already outdated technical level. It just means that every year that passes makes it harder to close the gap. This was as true as of 2003 as it is today. It's partially a 'money problem', but, as others have mention, also a developer problem: LL might have been able to attract a few developers back in 2003, just because of the novelty issue, but these quickly found out that they were stuck with a platform that is anything but easy to dramatically upgrade — except for starting from scratch — which LL did try... and fail.

Where LL did manage to make dramatic changes was on the server infrastructure (aye, I know, more could be done, and I guess that now that the pressure of constantly having to buy new and faster hardware is eased — since they can just instantaneously order whatever amount of cloud-based units of computing they need from AWS — they can have their system developers tinkering with things without the fear of breaking everything). By contrast, the viewer gets harder and harder to change, even though — let's be honest! — they have done a lot in the past few years. Well, past decade — that's when meshes were introduced.

What I think is that they could start working on the opposite end. Instead of starting with the current viewer and tinker with it until it becomes 'better', they could just license a modern 3D rendering engine to start with (say, Unity, for the sake of the argument). Then they would need to communicate with the existing servers. All right, start with baby steps. First you need meshes and textures to play with. That's easy enough. Oh, they found a limitation at the server level? There is some format that Unity specifically requires that the SL simulator software cannot export? Fine! Get the system developers to create a thin layer enveloping the communication protocol — now designed to take the cloud environment into account and leverage on it — and export it to the Unity-based viewer. Suddenly that makes everything slower? No problem — we have lots of ways to cache and proxy content, and unlimited bandwidth, CPU, and disk space on AWS. So, if that means you have to replicate much of the current servers' content — that's not really an issue nowadays. And you can do it incrementally — warming up those caches, so to speak.

Great, now we have avatars, and we have meshed content. It's time to look at the inventory and the permissions system. Again, there will be some things easier than others, and it might require changing communication protocols, proxying them, creating a whole 'virtual SL' enveloping the current environment. All that takes time, patience, and lots of developers.

That's still ok. Once you use an off-the-shelf 3D engine, that means that a whole number of issues simply disappear. No more worries about maintaining the engine — that's for the Unity engineers to deal with, not LL. Found a bug? No problem — it's Unity that will fix it, not LL's developers. Mesh looking wrong from a certain angle because there is a rendering issue? Meh. That's #NotOurProblem any longer. (But at the other end of things — the server side — things also get simplified. Instead of developing a whole ecosystem from scratch, using unique protocols that no one else in the world uses, and lots of hacks and weird ideas to squeeze a bit more performance from what still seems to be a conceptual system, not a production one — they can fall back to modern paradigms (say, gRPC) and use standard tools. Need a fast way to store the relationship between avatar keys [UUIDs] and avatar names? Do not reinvent the wheel: use Redis, memcached, Bolt, whatever rocks your boat and can be deployed on AWS by clicking on a checkbox. Cannot hire enough developers proficient in C and Assembly code (because they're all working for AAA game companies)? That's too bad; encapsulate all the old server code with a layer of modern communication protocols and data representation (say, using protobuf or whatever is fashionable these days), and just expose an API which looks like any one of thousands of APIs out there. This, in turn, would allow potential developers to come to work for LL and actually hone their skills in developing software for massively deployed, distributed networks — not much different from anything else out there.

Granted, that wouldn't be the case on the viewer side; but picking an off-the-shelf, popular rendering engine would go a long way to attract programmers — because at least they could classify their work at LL as 'acquiring experience in Unity' or whatever they'd picked.

Is this so difficult to do? Well, maybe. The only thing we know for sure is that it is possible to step outside the Linden environment and still get a 'SL experience' just as before. Back in 2007, a group of curious programmers had some fun creating a 'SL Proxy' — intercepting the data streams coming from LL's servers to the viewer, and decoding the message protocol. That became the base of what is known today as libOpenMetaverse (currently code-frozen, but there is at least one popular fork which continues to get updated). This, in turn, allowed the development of third-party viewers that do not share code with LL's own viewers — such as the old Lumiya viewer (for Android devices) — and, conversely, it inspired a different group of people to create OpenSimulator — which, to this day, can replicate almost all the functionality of LL's own server software, in spite of being written in a completely different programming language and just using open-source libraries (thus, no Havok physics engine).

O-kay. Whew. That was a mouthful, even for me 

TL;DR: Updating Second Life (viewer & servers) to the standards of the 2020s is possible. It just requires a slightly different approach. We know it's possible, because open-source developers pretty much did it.

Quote

 

But most of all I want some vision.

I want LL management to draw a bold line between where we are now and a brave new world that changes and challenges everything, and most importantly empowers us to be a part of that change. Not some crypto ntf hype bubble. Not by making something off on the side for new people who may or may not exist, but for us, the customers they have right now, the good the bad the sexy and the insane. A roadmap. A supercharger. A warchief and a lot of red paint.

 

In other words: you want Philip back ..

Seriously now, I totally agree, but... I also demand a bit more: I want a realistic vision. We did have all sorts of 'visions' in the past — all of which failed. In fact, Second Life seems to work best when there is no vision.

Imagine if LL made a 180º turn and allowed casinos and L$ speculation (outside LindeX) again — with a direct Bitcoin-to-L$ exchange, and possibly throw in a few NFTs (such as, say, https://www.nft-art.finance/ — that would appeal to artists and content creators for sure). You'd get the grid crammed full with new residents, coming in troves. Would that be a desired vision? Probably not — but it would certainly give the SL economy a huge boost. Sure, it would also mean lots of legal issues for LL, but all these can be dealt with in one way or another... it's just a question of hiring the right lawyers and following their instructions to the letter 😇

So, sure, we need vision, but we also need the right kind of vision, and that's much harder to get these days...

[FairreLilette]

45 minutes ago, Solar Legion said:

... Much as I loathe to remind (considering my thoughts on using a laptop for Second Life in general), you can connect an external monitor to a laptop.

I would not redo my set up at this time as I don't have a cooling system for my laptop any longer and I'm not a fan of EEP plus I need my computer for other projects not related to SL. 

I think EEP is a mega hassle compared to just clicking on a menu of environment windlights like before and moving a slider which gave amazing lightings in less than minutes.  I've said my opinion on EEP.  It won't change because it's also a hassle as I said I cannot even find the EEP lightings I purchased because they have odd names and are no modify so I could not re-name them. 

So, I took the time to go through my account and write all my EEP names down on a notecard and now I forgot what I named the notecard.  I'm not convinced EEP was a good move, I actually think it was a bad move even with a good computer as it's a hassle and took me over an hour to get one lighting I liked for a photo where it used to take minutes - one hour for a lighting.  That's way too much of my time.  Plus, with the slider the lighting was magical.  It's not magical like that anymore no matter how much I click around on the EEP thingies.  I have a right to state my opinion about it.  It's a backwards step, imo.  A dud.

Edited June 2, 2021 by FairreLilette

[animats]

1 hour ago, Gwyneth Llewelyn said:

off-the-shelf 3D engine

Neither Unreal Engine nor Unity is a good match for SL. The big game engines are intended for a specific workflow. Level designers build a game map with objects offline. They optimize the assets. There's a huge amount of asset prepping that takes place before the game assets go into the game. This allows many performance optimizations SL cannot do.

For example, in most games, houses are never see-through; even if they have transparent windows, you rarely can see in one side and out the other. So everything behind a building can be ignored when rendering. GTA, for example, uses this heavily.

Second Life does not work like that. Everything is dynamic. Even terrain. This is extremely rare in gaming.

Most user-modifiable worlds are either modified offline (Sansar, Decentraland, Sinespace) or are voxel-based and blocky (Minecraft, Roblox, Dual Universe). Some games let you have high-detail objects in world, but you can only use or combine the pre-optimized ones. (The Sims).

There just isn't an off the shelf solution for SL-type worlds. Unreal Engine 5 is a bit more runtime-dynamic than Unreal Engine 4, but still relies extensively on offline asset prepping.

(I've been looking at this pretty hard, and have been building some things over the last few months. Many of these problems can be overcome. Developers who want to discuss the technical details, IM me in or out of world.)

[ChinRey]

2 hours ago, Finite said:

Isn't mesh more efficient than prims? Assuming they're properly made and with wrapped textures.

It's a bit more complicated than that. I wrote a blog post about it a while ago: https://chinrey.blogspot.com/2019/03/lag-geometry-prims-meshes-and-sculpts.html

It's a bit longish but to sum up the points most relevant here:

• Prims will always load much faster than mesh since even the most complex prim is made from a smaller dataset than the simplest mesh.
• Mesh can render slightly faster than prims but only if it's well optimized and it rarely is in SL.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Most user-modifiable worlds are either modified offline (Sansar, Decentraland, Sinespace) or are voxel-based and blocky (Minecraft, Roblox, Dual Universe). Some games let you have high-detail objects in world, but you can only use or combine the pre-optimized ones. (The Sims).

A couple of years ago I went back to the Blender Game engine with a view to seeing if it could be adaptable. I gather now though that it's not to be a part of the going-forwards Blender, and of course it had the big drawback of not being able to actually build inside the game-engine, just use things made in Blender. And, as I've said elsewhere, I find trying to use Blender very similar to the nano-tech assembly devices described in The Diamond Age, you're peering in through a viewport and trying to use manipulator gloves.

I'm happy enough with what we currently have in principle, I'd be happier still if it all worked smoothly.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Profaitchikenz Haiku

[cunomar]

4 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

 

That would have been funny if it hadn't been so insulting. I'm using a laptop right now. An i5, in fact.

So, nope. Next time try using a valid definition or maybe a little more maturity.

Though i have little patience for such things i did my research and ended up with this just for SL https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Leopard-015UK-Gaming-Laptop/dp/B01MS3CL4U

Running firestorm graphics with the slider halfway between high and ultra the first of its fans failed at 12 months and the second not long after . I replaced both but they were faltering again before long so i bought a cooling pad and i haven't thought about heat in maybe 3 years since .

A 2001 XP laptop will still do everything else i might need a computer for so when the MSI dies i will buy a budget laptop and expect that to be the end of my sl . I won't then need a cooling pad either .

[Silent Mistwalker]

54 minutes ago, cunomar said:

Though i have little patience for such things i did my research and ended up with this just for SL https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-Leopard-015UK-Gaming-Laptop/dp/B01MS3CL4U

Running firestorm graphics with the slider halfway between high and ultra the first of its fans failed at 12 months and the second not long after . I replaced both but they were faltering again before long so i bought a cooling pad and i haven't thought about heat in maybe 3 years since .

A 2001 XP laptop will still do everything else i might need a computer for so when the MSI dies i will buy a budget laptop and expect that to be the end of my sl . I won't then need a cooling pad either .

 

None of that has anything to do with defining the word "normal". Which was exactly what my OP to you said.

Define normal.