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1 hour ago, Drayke Newall said:

Yes, it is a platform whose features (that generated a new technological innovation never seen before) have been steadily replaced by 'out of platform' alternatives instead of allowing them to remain created inworld. Its core feature of you can build everything you want inworld whilst socialising etc has been ripped out.

Agreed. SL already became "another program" as in-world building became irrelevant. (They took it even further in the Sansar wasteland, where the shared space wouldn't even permit assembly of pre-existing creations.)

Thing is, it's kinda too late now. I mean, if they'd spent all the money they wasted on Sansar instead grafting some cutting-edge next-gen Blender functionality into SL, that may have attracted the same creative types who frequented SL in its heyday, and SL could have been the platform where content is developed for use in other apps and games. But now, the few remaining vestiges of in-world creation just don't draw people to SL.

It's kind of depressing that much of current creative in-world effort is to extract content from the interactive 3D medium into static images and canned 2D machinima. Those are creative and valuable endeavors but they don't power SL to be the platform media of the future, as it was at its peak.

So that's not what SL is about now, and not its current audience. And I'm not sure there are all that many more folks like the current audience to be found.

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1 minute ago, Qie Niangao said:

Agreed. SL already became "another program" as in-world building became irrelevant. (They took it even further in the Sansar wasteland, where the shared space wouldn't even permit assembly of pre-existing creations.)

Thing is, it's kinda too late now. I mean, if they'd spent all the money they wasted on Sansar instead grafting some cutting-edge next-gen Blender functionality into SL, that may have attracted the same creative types who frequented SL in its heyday, and SL could have been the platform where content is developed for use in other apps and games. But now, the few remaining vestiges of in-world creation just don't draw people to SL.

All that is needed is basic modelling in the existing creation system. Boolean commands and the ability to combine multiple prims that are joined into one object that removes any surfaces not seen. I am not a programmer so no idea how hard that would be but surely it is worth it even now. Black Dragon already has created the animation creation system bare bones wise I believe.

People want to be able to log into second life and do everything in there. LL talk about retention but fail to realise what that requires them to do. People see Second Life not just as a social platform but what Linden Lab advertise it as. The ability to create things and then make real money from that. It is on their homepage after all.

"Imagine the Possibilities...Create and monetize your own creations to earn real profits in a virtual economy..."

With that comes the expectation that the program that you download has everything you need to create and earn that money. Just like other platforms do.

When a new user learns that to create and earn money as advertised from LL requires learning a complicated 3D program, it destroys not only any advertising clout LL may have but also destroys the retention of the new user.

Much of also what Syd said. Its the creation and social aspect that draws people as well. Without that it is simply a dress up and shop game.

1 minute ago, Qie Niangao said:

So that's not what SL is about now, and not its current audience. And I'm not sure there are all that many more folks like the current audience to be found.

That is the problem with focusing on what current SL is and not what SL could be. For years Second Life has stagnated to meet its current audience but without evolving the platform to accommodate for both existing and new, no growth will be seen.

Take for instance graphic emoji's in second life inworld chat. Most newer users would love that to be implemented, as these days it is an expectation in chat to have such things. Therefore it is in LL best interest to do that. Some existing users however would hate to see that. Rather than LL accommodating for the new users and having the option for existing users to not see them, LL just doesn't introduce them.

You can not please everyone. Until LL realise that they will simply not have any growth.

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5 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

All that is needed is basic modelling in the existing creation system. Boolean commands and the ability to combine multiple prims that are joined into one object that removes any surfaces not seen.

You can already combine multiple prims into one object by linking them. The problem is that SL's server side software doesn't seem to recognise linksets at all and treats each part as a separate object. With that flaw fixed we could have had 10-20 prims for 1 LI.

Adding a function to cull hidden tris shouldn't be too complicated either.

---

I'm not sure if this is relevant here but it seems few people know what prims really are, so a short explanation: A prim is a mesh that is generated by the viewer by combining two one/two dimensional shapes, called "profile" and "path" and adding up to 14 shape modifier parameters. The prim generating algorithm is simple enough even the weakest client computer can handle it without any problems and even the most complex prim shape only needs less than 50 bytes to be downloaded. For comparasion the simplest mesh cube needs about 250-1000 bytes (depending on the creator's skills) of data transfer. Unfortunately there is a lot of overhead with prims because each is stored and retrieved from the assets database separately, handled by the simulator separately and downloaded as a separate file. Get rid of that overhead and we have a much more efficient system. I once did some calculations on it. I can't remember exacly what the result was but it was something like 10-20 prims being equal to 1 LI worth of mesh.

There's a lot of potential for making the prim system more flexible too. Some upgrades would only require fairly minor modifications to the UI. Prims today are nerfed due to a misguided attempt to make the system more user friendly so we don't have access to all the shapes the current algorithm can generate.

Other upgrades would mean adding more profiles, paths and/or modifiers. Double the number of each of those and you get a vastly more flexible inworld building tool that is still as user friendly as prims are today and only marginally more resource heavy.

---

I think the problem is what I call the "Unity complex", a special case of the "invented here" anti-pattern. In the beginning Second Life was highly innovative with a number of unique solutions that gave it an edge over the competition. Since 2008 development has been almost exlusively focused on emulating solutions such as Unity and, recently, the Sims. Sansar is even worse than SL in this respect - for all its hype it was never more than a fairly crude Unity/UE3 clone.

One of the most fundamental rules in any kind of business is that you need have something that sets you apart from the competition. It doesn't have to be much and it can be a lot of different things but it has to be something. The only real edge SL still has, is the large number of well established users. That should be enough to keep it going for a while but it's not nearly enough for it to expand.

Edited by ChinRey
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12 hours ago, MoiraKathleen said:

I probably would not have if it hadn't been for grandparents, and the year they gave me the Barbie Carnaby Street House doll case, I was in  heaven :)    More germane to the thread about  "Are we too Nice", my dolls lived a quiet and agreeable life without a lot of drama or competition. They liked being nice, even if they were seen as boring.  My sister's and my cousin's doll families were always full of drama and fighting, which I did not like even as a child. 

Back on topic to the Lab Gab episode,  I was really encouraged listening to him.  I like that it sounded like he's been in-world quite a bit, and especially that he went through the new user experience all on his own.  I think that he will be one who gets what SL is about, and I think that is even more important for a Chairman of the Board than a CEO (although it's still very important for a CEO, also).  Anyway, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic, because why not?  I have no desire to waste energy on doom and gloom and negative scenarios that probably wouldn't even come to pass.  So, I'll keep a positive outlook, see how things go and re-evaluate how I feel about my experiences here if or when there are actual significant changes that impact them.

My brother, who was a year younger than me, and I had a set of toys which we called "Guys 'n Dolls," obviously influenced by a Broadway show of the era and a record my parents had. The "guys" were the more interesting ones -- teddy bears were at the top of the apex, with the leader Alexander, as old as I am, whom I still have (although one eye fell off recently and I have to sew it on), assorted stuffed rabbits, turtles, Frarg (a beanbag creature whom I still have), made by a fascinating neighbour with narcolepsy,  and in the lower ranks, G.I. Joes -- with the dolls simply not as interesting and requiring too much dress up, and generally just arranged along the wall as a kind of audience. I had an aunt that literally knitted a 100 outfits for some porcelain dolls that broke and had to be sent to the old New York Doll Hospital which is gone now. We played tea party, BBQ picnics, racing games, built elaborate houses and shops, and regularly gave the rabbits haircuts, which resulted in very mangy creatures my mother would then throw away, breaking our little hearts. I still wonder what happened to Lil' Rab, though it has been 60 years. I remember the horrifying moment when I saw Crow get ground up in the garbage truck and realized the truth about what Mom was doing to our guys.

We gave ourselves the names "Frank and Ernest" as the fathers -- there wasn't a mother except for our real mother who would occasionally make some cookies or lemonade for this world. Also one can see the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books' influence. My little brother was an RH baby and very sickly in his childhood and I remember the day he was finally allowed to play outdoors on a blanket with our guys when we were about 3 and 5 and how thrilling it was. Occasionally the rabbits were so ill behaved that they had to face a hanging -- this idea came from TV, although Dad never let us watch "Branded" starring Chuck Connors, which came on at our bedtime at 8:30, we would watch a few minutes and then listen from the other room. I guess this was our first virtual world. 

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9 hours ago, SarahKB7 Koskinen said:

STOP CALLING THEM "LEGOS" !!!

Lego is a company name, not a product name. Lego make interlocking plastic bricks which are officially NOT called "Legos".

They, (Lego) would prefer you call them "Lego bricks", not (cringe) "Legos".

 

Now ask me if I give a flying fig about what they want. It's my mouth, my voice, I will use them as I see fit. 

A single brick is a Lego. Several bricks are Legos. Even Spellcheck agrees with me.

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1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

You can already combine multiple prims into one object by linking them. The problem is that SL's server side software doesn't seem to recognise linksets at all and treats each part as a separate object. With that flaw fixed we could have had 10-20 prims for 1 LI.

Adding a function to cull hidden tris shouldn't be too complicated either.

---

I'm not sure if this is relevant here but it seems few people know what prims really are, so a short explanation: A prim is a mesh that is generated by the viewer by combining two one/two dimensional shapes, called "profile" and "path" and adding up to 14 shape modifier parameters. The prim generating algorithm is simple enough even the weakest client computer can handle it without any problems and even the most complex prim shape only needs less than 50 bytes to be downloaded. For comparasion the simplest mesh cube needs about 250-1000 bytes (depending on the creator's skills) of data transfer. Unfortunately there is a lot of overhead with prims because each is stored and retrieved from the assets database separately, handled by the simulator separately and downloaded as a separate file. Get rid of that overhead and we have a much more efficient system. I once did some calculations on it. I can't remember exacly what the result was but it was something like 10-20 prims being equal to 1 LI worth of mesh.

There's a lot of potential for making the prim system more flexible too. Some upgrades would only require fairly minor modifications to the UI. Prims today are nerfed due to a misguided attempt to make the system more user friendly so we don't have access to all the shapes the current algorithm can generate.

Other upgrades would mean adding more profiles, paths and/or modifiers. Double the number of each of those and you get a vastly more flexible inworld building tool that is still as user friendly as prims are today and only marginally more resource heavy.

---

I think the problem is what I call the "Unity complex", a special case of the "invented here" anti-pattern. In the beginning Second Life was highly innovative with a number of unique solutions that gave it an edge over the competition. Since 2008 development has been almost exlusively focused on emulating solutions such as Unity and, recently, the Sims. Sansar is even worse than SL in this respect - for all its hype it was never more than a fairly crude Unity/UE3 clone.

One of the most fundamental rules in any kind of business is that you need have something that sets you apart from the competition. It doesn't have to be much and it can be a lot of different things but it has to be something. The only real edge SL still has, is the large number of well established users. That should be enough to keep it going for a while but it's not nearly enough for it to expand.

I'm not sure if I wasn't better off not knowing about how this particular sausage was made, but ok.

What prevents SL from doing these things to tighten up the overhead and whatnot? Is it only the "Unity Complex"? And if Unity is all that, why are the Unity worlds not drawing the most users and content creation?

Could you explain how you see LL emulating the Sims? 

I think the other aspects of LL that draw users and keep them despite everything is the society itself and how it has evolved, with various customs and traditions and certain limited freedoms. Obviously, the IP rights and permissions that enable it, for better or worse -- which are greater than any other world -- are a big plus.

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5 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

Now ask me if I give a flying fig about what they want. It's my mouth, my voice, I will use them as I see fit. 

A single brick is a Lego. Several bricks are Legos. Even Spellcheck agrees with me.

I never heard of this at all, and my children had them for years. Is this one of those things like "sim" and "region"? Is some Lego executive going to swoop down on the forums and correct us -- or else? Legos have a very special property, which is that they are always able to painfully find the bare feet of parents rising bleary-eyed early in the morning to make breakfast.

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9 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

Why is The Sims popular? Because it allows you to build things in world, enjoy them and people can sell them and share them. No need to learn another program

That is not how things work with the Sims 4. And you do need Sims 4 Studio which is not EA/Maxis as well as Blender and GIMP or other such programs. It's been that way with all iterations of The Sims. You also can't sell anything you created if it was cloned from a Maxis object. Which the vast majority of objects available from TSR,  MTS etc are cloned Maxis objects. That's why you don't find many people trying to sell Sims stuff. EA will go after you in a heartbeat.

I've learned a heck of a lot playing the Sims for the past 21 years.

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8 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

I never heard of this at all, and my children had them for years. Is this one of those things like "sim" and "region"? Is some Lego executive going to swoop down on the forums and correct us -- or else? Legos have a very special property, which is that they are always able to painfully find the bare feet of parents rising bleary-eyed early in the morning to make breakfast.

Why are you asking me? I'm the one saying I don't care. Sarah is the one whining about that, not me. All I said was I am going to call them what I have always called them and what everyone around me has always called them. Legos. Full stop.

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2 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

And if Unity is all that, why are the Unity worlds not drawing the most users and content creation?

That's part of my point actually. Unity is a game engine, not a virtual world engine, and the requirements for those two are not the same. God only knows how many thousand Unity based games there are but if you've done any computer games at all the last decade, you almost certainly have played on a few Unity based ones.

Even so for all its shortcomings as a virtual world engine, VRchat is quite popular these days and Sinespace was the one who managed to survive the three way competition against Sansar and High Fidelity. Both of those are Unity based.

 

11 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Could you explain how you see LL emulating the Sims?

I was thinking about the way SL's focus has been shifting from creator based to consumer based with people buying more and more into ready made standardized scenes like Bellisseria.

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2 hours ago, ChinRey said:

The problem is that SL's server side software doesn't seem to recognise linksets at all and treats each part as a separate object.

Maybe I misunderstand, but isn't each link (whether mesh or prim) in a linkset a separate object with its own distinct properties, which can be read and set by script, individually or in groups, along with its own inventory and so on?  

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48 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

I was thinking about the way SL's focus has been shifting from creator based to consumer based with people buying more and more into ready made standardized scenes like Bellisseria.

Aren't a lot of people using Bellisseria to create particular environments, both physical and social?      Creating content is part of the story, but without people to use and enjoy it, it's not of any particular value.

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9 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Maybe I misunderstand, but isn't each link (whether mesh or prim) in a linkset a separate object with its own distinct properties, which can be read and set by script, individually or in groups, along with its own inventory and so on?  

That's right but I don't see any problems maintaining all of that and still integrate parts of a linkset more closely.

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8 hours ago, ChinRey said:

I was thinking about the way SL's focus has been shifting from creator based to consumer based with people buying more and more into ready made standardized scenes like Bellisseria.

i think this is true also.  I think that Linden are trying to grow the consumer space

SL already has heaps of creatives whose primary purpose is to extract money for themselves from the service. The creatives need customers for this to continue

making pre-packaged experiences like Belli helps with growing the consumer space.  New people can get a home without all the hassles that come with buying mainland and having to set up the parcel from scratch. Is a lot simpler to just buy some pre-made furnishings from the shops and mount them

also too I notice that Patch Linden mentioned at SL18B that Linden are going to make a Avatar 2.0. A plain all-in-one mesh body that is Bento/BoM compatible as the starter avatar for new people.  As a way for new people to easier transition to more advanced user-made bodies/heads/etc. Which I think is a good thing  

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10 hours ago, ChinRey said:

You can already combine multiple prims into one object by linking them. The problem is that SL's server side software doesn't seem to recognise linksets at all and treats each part as a separate object. With that flaw fixed we could have had 10-20 prims for 1 LI.

I know that. The issue comes to commands. Currently for example, the prim has a very very basic cut command whereby you can cut a hole in it or slice it. Additionally if I wanted to cut a hole in a shape to make a hexagon hole it is impossible to do. To do that I would need multiple prims. That is where the boolean commands are needed to be updated so as there is a method for a simple cut by using another object are needed or addition.

Linksets also have their own issue in that the object still retains all its geometry even if those faces are not seen in the linkset. Being able to combine 4 prims into a single mesh object is beneficial for this as well as other things.

Those are also the simple things. Then there is deformation of the prims such as advanced stretching etc. These are what the inworld creation needs to be updated to.

Then there is just simple texture painting. Having the ability to paint a texture on an object in world would mean that everything can be done in SL and also provide LL with better optimisation controls. If people want to do more complex content creation then they would still have that ability with 3DS max.

If a mobile device is able to create a better 3D modelling system than a full desktop client can when that desktop client (SL) is know to be able to create things in world, then it should show everyone how outdated Second Life's tools are and the large update they need.

To put it into perspective of what the inworld creation needs to be, this mobile editor should show enough of what should be capable in SL without the need for external modelling software.

 

9 hours ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

That is not how things work with the Sims 4. And you do need Sims 4 Studio which is not EA/Maxis as well as Blender and GIMP or other such programs. It's been that way with all iterations of The Sims. You also can't sell anything you created if it was cloned from a Maxis object. Which the vast majority of objects available from TSR,  MTS etc are cloned Maxis objects. That's why you don't find many people trying to sell Sims stuff. EA will go after you in a heartbeat.

I've learned a heck of a lot playing the Sims for the past 21 years.

Apologies I thought there was a marketplace for people to sell their house creations they made in world in sims 4. I do know in the Sims 3 I was able to download (for free mind you) houses that people had made in world and add them to my game. That is what I meant in that you can build a house on a lot in the sims and then share it in some form. I have never played sims 4.

Edited by Drayke Newall
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31 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

Apologies I thought there was a marketplace for people to sell their house creations they made in world in sims 4. I do know in the Sims 3 I was able to download (for free mind you) houses that people had made in world and add them to my game. That is what I meant in that you can build a house on a lot in the sims and then share it in some form. I have never played sims 4.

 

https://www.ea.com/games/the-sims/the-sims-4/pc/gallery

 

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40 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

That is where the boolean commands are needed to be updated so as there is a method for a simple cut by using another object are needed or addition.

That's called Constructive Solid Geometry. LL did actually consider using CSG for their building system back in 2002/2003 but rejected it because it is very processor heavy. Avi Var-Zeev, the Linden reponsible for developing the prim system, explained this in a blog post a few years after he had left LL. His blog is gone now but the post is still available at webarchive.org.

Adding a hexagonal hole as an option for prims can be in a much easier way btw. It would only take some fairly minor tweaks to the prim system for it to handle any regular polygon.

I'm not sure how much I should go into details about how the prim generating algorithm works and which potential extensions could be both simple (at least from a mathematical pow) and useful. It can get very technical and possibly not that relevant for this thread.

Edited by ChinRey
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13 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

That's called Constructive Solid Geometry. LL did actually consider using CSG for their building system back in 2002/2003 but rejected it because it is very processor heavy. Avi Var-Zeev, the Linden reponsible for developing the prim system, explained this in a blog post a few years after he had left LL. His blog is gone now but the post is still available at webarchive.org.

Adding a hexagonal hole as an option for prims can be in a much easier way btw. It would only take some fairly minor tweaks to the prim system for it to handle any regular polygon.

I'm not sure how much I should go into details about how the prim generating algorithm works and which potential extensions could be both simple (at least from a mathematical pow) and useful. It can get very technical and possibly not that relevant for this thread.

Fair enough, however just pointing out that what that video shows is where LL should have evolved their prim system to. It could have been a gradual evolution, but to do that kind of thing now in a short time would be difficult and time consuming. Their failure to not do that evolution has resulted in one of the core aspects of what made second life's virtual world unique obsolete.

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1 hour ago, Drayke Newall said:

Fair enough, however just pointing out that what that video shows is where LL should have evolved their prim system to.

Look at the tree at 0:17 in the video. It's 240 triangles.

This tree is 220 triangles:

2058908787_OPQPoplar03L64-01_017.thumb.jpg.ff75ee8d3e0ec891b8fe7291b717dc67.jpg

In case you think I'm cheating with flat pictures and empty back side, here are pictures of it from eight different angles 45 degrees apart:

123142083_OPQPoplar03L64-018angles.thumb.jpg.f60f3440e06ba042cf2c7cd05d68c442.jpg

Which of these two trees would you rather have on your land in SL?

Edited by ChinRey
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7 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

are you selling these trees in SL ?

If you mean this specific tree, I'm not sure but probably not. It's part of a big series of trees and tree groups in a similar style but with different textures, shapes and complexity levels. I did upload afew hundred of them to Second Life and even listed a few on MP but this is a fairly late addition to the series so I think I made it after I gave up on SL.

I would have loved to make them all available to people here and to get them out of my system but listing on MP is a mindbogglingly dull, tedious, time consuming and even painful job and there's not really anything in it for me since optimized content doesn't sell in SL.

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1 minute ago, ChinRey said:

I would have loved to make them all available to people here and to get them out of my system but listing on MP is a mindbogglingly dull, tedious, time consuming and even painful job and there's not really anything in it for me since optimized content doesn't sell in SL.

i understand that you have been reconsidering if the time vs reward invested in SL is worth it to you. I think most creatives go thru this at times

yes is true that often people don't think to much about the impact their choices have on the environment they are in. Is the same in the real world.  In another thread about the real world environment I mentioned that often people will not go out of their way to save the planet.  What people tend to do is rely on the creatives (builders, recyclers, etc) to make and sell products which are environmentally friendly. And when the creatives do then we as product consumers gravitate toward those products when they are in our face in the shops

SL in this sense is the same as RL. When there are environmentally friendly products then we will buy them, but we tend not to go to far out of our way to find them. However we can't buy them when they aren't available

while this may not be of much help to you in how you are thinking about things at the moment, I would urge you to keep on making stuff on the OpenSim platform and when a efficient/environmentally friendly product can be added to the SL commonweal then do it, while understanding also that SL is no longer your main focus

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1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

Look at the tree at 0:17 in the video. It's 240 triangles.

This tree is 220 triangles:

You are missing my point entirely. I am not saying to replicate that tree in the video I posted but instead to allow in SL similar methods such as shown in that video.

For example, the tree you made has a bent trunk and that trunk is one mesh piece. That is impossible with the current prim system and you made that using another software. In the video I posted it shows how LL could create a simple system where it allows you to deform a cylindrical prim by selecting the vertices or vertex points and then moving them to bend that trunk into a different shape.

That is my point, not making a tree look like the one in the video or have the same triangles, but similar tools to allow people to build that tree you made in Second Life not outside of it.

Edited by Drayke Newall
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9 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

You are missing my point entirely. I am not saying to replicate that tree in the video I posted but instead to allow in SL similar methods such as shown in that video.

But it's the method that is the problem. CSG meshes will nearly always be that "dirty" and often even worse so it is not a suitable tool for inworld building.

However, with that being said, one of the main ideas behind the prim system was to emulate CSG but with much simpler algorithms and it actually does that amazingly well. Back in 2002/2003 they had to keep it very simple since computers weren't nearly as powerful as they are today. But it is possible to expand on the basic principles with more profiles, more paths and more "prim torturing" parameters. Even a few simple additions - like the hexagonal profile you hinted at - would greatly increase the possibilities of prims with only a fairly small increase in the computing load and I'm convinced that would be the way to go to create a modern, flexible, user friendly and high performance inworld buiding tool.

 

21 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

For example, the tree you made has a bent trunk and that trunk is one mesh piece. That is impossible with the current prim system and you made that using another software.

...

That is my point, not making a tree look like the one in the video or have the same triangles, but similar tools to allow people to build that tree you made in Second Life not outside of it.

It wasn't a good example because neither mesh, scultps nor prims are really suitable for making plants. You really need a special algorithm and asset class for that. This is why LL added the system plants. Unfortunately this is something that has been even more neglected than prims and what was cutting edge in virtual plants in 2003 is sadly outdated today.

There are several more modern plant generators today, like SpeedTree and Tree[d] (I believe Tree[d] is the one the Moles use btw) but they all generate very high poly, heavy plants that are not really suitable for a virtual world. It doesn't have to be that way though. My plants are created manually of course but I deliberately make them with a system that would be relatively easy to emulate by a computer run algorithm. This is actually one of the reasons why they are so much more efficient than plants by any other makers.

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