Second Life University

[Sid Nagy]

I didn't post my post above, to blame people who de-render others when out there.
The blame is on a certain company, that isn't capable to handle a few of the basics of a social platform.

We live our virtual lives on a social platform, where it is impossible to walk around at an event properly, talk with each other in groups properly, accept friends requests when not both online at the same time.
Pretty much basics for a social world with customers from all over the planet in my book.

Sounds like a platform that is still in early stages of development. A free beta release maybe.
But nope.... almost two decades around and charging a pretty penny for it.

And then, when you go back to a basic account, they ask you if you would recommend SL to others.
Really?
On top of that they try to get a piece of the metaverse cake.
Really?

Before you try to market your apartment building, better fix the plumbing, the locks, the lights and the AC before you put an appartment on the market for sale or for rent.

Of course SL has a lot to offer, otherwise nobody would be still around.
But the points above are really basics, just like having legs.

It annoys me, that LL doesn't even try to improve those basic necessities.
LL should start an internal university about those flaws and how to fix it swiftly and not as a project for the 50th birthday please.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Sid Nagy

[Mollymews]

9 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Would be nice if one could only render those within a certain range like say 10 meters, so there isn't such a load and could see them to walk around rather then through them

i really like this idea

two settable draw distances.  One for objects and the other for avatars

i would definitely use this myself, pretty much all the time. Would be great!

at the moment I keep my draw distance to 128m (sometime less when is avatar heavy).  With this I be able to go to 256m for objects pretty much all the time, and about 20m (chat distance) for avatars

[Orwar]

9 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

The blame is on a certain company, that isn't capable to handle a few of the basics of a social platform.

   That's not entirely as straight-forward either. 

12 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

We live our virtual lives on a social platform, where it is impossible to walk around at an event properly

   I've strolled about at many events with friends, it's usually no trouble at all unless you've entered via TP hammering at peak hours on its first day of opening. Also using a graphic setting which isn't your 'Photography Ultra' helps.

   What's causing the lag then is mostly just that there's too many people (usually with no shortage of script pollution), plus that the server is probably still being constantly bombarded by TP requests from dozens of other people also trying to enter via TP hammer. And yes, if you don't choose to derender all the people around you, you'll have a high amount of textures and meshes to render, especially since any given vendor may well have a couple hundred textures in their booth for all their single colour vendors of their different products.

   Is it LL's fault that people use TP hammers even though many event organizers beg you not to? 

   Is it LL's fault that people are too lazy/dumb to descript and lighten their avatars before going to shopping events even though it's been common knowledge among the userbase for ages, that scripts add up fast when there's a lot of people in any one place?

   Is it LL's fault that people run around with their genitalia shrunk/'hidden' but still attached rather than detaching it whilst out and about in public? 

   Is it LL's fault that creators have largely decided to release new stuff exclusively at events, that concentrate a flipping huge amount of people at one region, and that they do it in herds to stack up the fanbases of dozens of stores all at once?

   If you drive a car off a cliff because you have decided that it should, ideally be able to fly, is that the car manufacturer's fault when it doesn't? 

   I'm not saying that SL can't be improved upon, but it's not as easy as to just write a line of code with something like "Allow_unlimited_mesh_faces=True" (and no, I'm not a scripter!), and any change in the system can cause other, unwanted changes to any system connected to the systems wherein things were changed - and then people will be demanding that those new issues are resolved and whine that 'LLs new changes will kill SL dead!'. And even if they did, would all creators immediately go re-do their entire mesh bodies' functions to re-designate every face and fuse them together to a single mesh? And would people immediately update? 

49 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

talk with each other in groups properly

   Properly, according to who? Group chats breaking down are yet another function of people not using a feature as LL intended way back when they designed that function. Groups weren't intended for a few thousand people to communicate through, or for you to send out advertisements with every 30 minutes; groups were intended for land management and access.

   It's not the groups that 'broke', it's our norms for communications that changed. 20 years ago most of our communication via ICQ and MSN messenger was 1 on 1 conversations, then came Skype with a very shaky conference function (which periodically barely worked with 4 people on the line), and then came Discord and changed everything. But even Discord has had its issues with large communities, even when communication is the one thing they do. You expect SL to just casually implement a Discord-level communication system on top of everything else it has?

   Don't get me wrong, I think that'd be great. But it's not uncomplicated. Besides, people are already using Discord to compliment their SL communications, so is there really any demand for it?

59 minutes ago, Sid Nagy said:

accept friends requests when not both online at the same time.

   Yes, that is an annoying thing that has broken down in the system, and yes, fixing issues like these takes much too long. The world map broke the other year, and it took about half a year for it to be fixed. But in comparison to that issue, this one doesn't strike me as quite as 'game breaking'; you still can add people, if you're both online - so 'just' arrange that both you and whoever you wish to add are online at the same time for those seconds it takes to add each other. 

   A lot of people aren't even aware of the issue yet, I reckon because most people who add each other do so as they meet in-world. It's only really an apparent issue to people who meet via the forums, Discord, or some other external community. 

   Should it be fixed? Absolutely. Will it be fixed? I'd be surprised if it wasn't. Will SL die overnight if it isn't fixed like yesterday?! Unlikely. 

48 minutes ago, Mollymews said:

two settable draw distances.  One for objects and the other for avatars

   You kind of have a feature a bit like that already. It doesn't not render people, though, rather it makes people beyond X render in low-fi. 

   Neph from Mina's viewer. And yes, unlike the jelly dolls that often somehow feels heavier to render, this actually bumped my framerate up by around 25 FPS! 

   You can find the slider for how many avatars to be fully rendered in your graphics tab:

   And it's based on the distance from your camera, rather than your avatar (except your own avatar is always fully rendered), so if you're camming around somewhere you can still perv people if you so wish. 

[Mollymews]

4 minutes ago, Orwar said:

 

   You kind of have a feature a bit like that already. It doesn't not render people, though, rather it makes people beyond X render in low-fi. 

   Neph from Mina's viewer. And yes, unlike the jelly dolls that often somehow feels heavier to render, this actually bumped my framerate up by around 25 FPS! 

   You can find the slider for how many avatars to be fully rendered in your graphics tab:

   And it's based on the distance from your camera, rather than your avatar (except your own avatar is always fully rendered), so if you're camming around somewhere you can still perv people if you so wish. 

yes

I struggle tho with how imposters look. I get why it is that imposters look like what they do. Same with jelly dolls

i would much prefer not seeing them at all myself. As an option. When option is off then don't render anything. If I do want to know who is nearby-ish then I have the green dots on the Nearby minimap 

[Drayke Newall]

I'm sorry, but I must be the only person that doesn't seem to see any point in these video tutorials. 

What is the point of making video's explaining what the guide book and destination guides are when these are discussed on noob island in the tutorial (or at least should be)?

Are you (LL) that unconfident in your already provided 'new' inworld tutorial system that you need to make a video tutorial as well discussing identical things when no new person to SL would even know these video's exist and would have decided if they like SL from the inworld tutorial?

Seems unproductive and counter intuitive to me.

Why isn't time being spent in updating the viewer instead to utilise better tutorials, hover tips etc?

No new user is going to sit and watch a 34 minute tutorial for that long on random unspecific and unhelpful things. Hell even I didn't. I am sorry it was a boring tutorial. That is why video tutorials are specific and short.

Why does Second Life need to be different to every other program out there? It's help system doesn't need to be unique. Do you see Microsoft or Autodesk (just as complex if not more so programs) creating half hour long tutorials to upload to Youtube?

No. They have their help wiki up to date and have the videos on there specific to the help topic the user searches for. Second Life's wiki hasn't been updated in a decade.

Refer below pics on what SHOULD be in the viewer.

Hover on the button for a short time and it gives the one line description shown here under curtain grid. Hover longer and the hover tip expands and shows a short but relevant gif tutorial and better description. Press F1 whilst the hover tip is active and it goes directly to the help wiki shown in the second image below.

Its not rocket science. The wheel doesn't need to be re-invented. Make the tutorials relevant, quickly accessible, informative and short. Make them in viewer with links to an updated help wiki.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Drayke Newall
edited pics

[Nalates Urriah]

On 4/6/2022 at 5:04 PM, Rufferta said:

Don't forget Happy Hippo, Dreams, Virtual Ability, Ross Infohub, and all the other places that work inworld to help residents. I will assume that Linden Labs (or whatever we call them these days) would have sought input from these groups, but you never know...

They could check the forums/reddit/Discord/etc...for 'questions most commonly asked about Second Life' and work from there.

The Lindens do watch what developers are doing in SL. I am not sure they always understand the why. For instance when the Lab was developing Mesh-prims we could not convince them its primary use would be for clothes and avatars. So, fitted mesh and Bento were much later additions.

The Lab is very aware that users talk about whats and whys of SL and how people use it. The problem is we often are simply voicing opinion based on severely limited personal experience and few if any facts. The result is the Lab does A-B testing, and they are the only ones that have the stats to do that, to sort out what actually works with new users. Unfortunately, stats often hide the actual reasons and/or causes or at the least distort the causes.

A good example is the idea fat in American diets is bad so remove them from most foods. There are excellent correlations in the data to suggest that would be a good move.  The result 50 years later is increased obesity, dementia, and cardio degeneration. Oops. So basically the stats suggested something, it was A-B tested - meaning some eliminated fats and some didn't, so cholesterol lowering statins were developed and things got worse. Those eating fats gained less weight and have few cases of dementia. However, the food industry realized those eating few fats ate more food, which upped sales so they did what one would expect to increase sales.

The world and SL are way more complex than most of us seem to think.

So in SL we saw this stats suggested idea play out with last names. Oops.

On 4/6/2022 at 5:15 PM, Lindal Kidd said:

I see they're going to post these episodes on YouTube. That's good...seems to me they are once again going to do videos like the ones Torley used to put out. Those were great, but they're somewhat dated now, so a new batch is a great idea.

I suspect the age of Torley's videos is a big reason for making the new videos. I've looked at my tutorials and they are showing their age. Blender, Avatar, and the viewers have changed a lot. This puts a new user in the position of having to figure out what we were doing to make something and then having to figure out how to do that with today's tools/viewers.

[ST33LDI9ITAL]

7 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I didn't post my post above, to blame people who de-render others when out there.
The blame is on a certain company, that isn't capable to handle a few of the basics of a social platform.

We live our virtual lives on a social platform, where it is impossible to walk around at an event properly, talk with each other in groups properly, accept friends requests when not both online at the same time.
Pretty much basics for a social world with customers from all over the planet in my book.

Sounds like a platform that is still in early stages of development. A free beta release maybe.
But nope.... almost two decades around and charging a pretty penny for it.

And then, when you go back to a basic account, they ask you if you would recommend SL to others.
Really?
On top of that they try to get a piece of the metaverse cake.
Really?

Before you try to market your apartment building, better fix the plumbing, the locks, the lights and the AC before you put an appartment on the market for sale or for rent.

Of course SL has a lot to offer, otherwise nobody would be still around.
But the points above are really basics, just like having legs.

It annoys me, that LL doesn't even try to improve those basic necessities.
LL should start an internal university about those flaws and how to fix it swiftly and not as a project for the 50th birthday please.

-----------

100% This! ^^

Fix. The. Performance.

And stop trying to shift the blame to content creators making poorly optimized things. And stop trying to shift the responsibility to the community for the viewer. That's also a byproduct of the issue at hand... LL is supposed to be the enabler of tech that allows content creators to make things easier, more enjoyable, and fun to do! We already have to optimize the ever loving sheet out of mesh to the border breaking point of it to appease the broken LI system and cost associated with it.
 

The viewer, the client. It needs to either be refactored majorly or scrapped and new client to take it's place. There needs to be a movement and joint effort between TPV devs and LL to achieve better performance standards. To which, plennnnty of people have many great suggestions and feedback on how to improve performance. I know I certainly have a list... There is absolutely no reason why the viewer has to be as terrible as it is.

The issue is SL is just clunky. Everything about it is clunky af. And that gets old, fast, to people that have better standards of games, apps, etc in this time. There are so many things LL could do to enable us to make better content and make SL more fun which would then draw more people in, more user created and shared content, more community sharing and word of mouth. But most importantly... if you make it more enjoyable then it will RETAIN people and keep their interest!  LL needs to catch up to modern times. You're supposed to be a tech research lab.. not archaeology research.

Another thing to do with LL enabling tooling is try to keep more things in the client rather than having to export to do minor things in some external app. Expand on LSL api, and better physics interactions. Give builders simple constraints and joints to make contraptions. You shouldn't need to know trig or linear algebra to make basic things interact. Give us the ability, a crude/small editor to make changes to textures ingame.. Better sound manipulation...  and how about a simple skeletal animator something like Blackdragon is trying to achieve for animations?? What about expanding gestures to be more of a general macro system and able to do more simple actions like attaching things and what not.

40k pop. Average numbers. Of which... who knows how many are bots. Those numbers don't lie. They are published, and they are sad. This is a huge world! It should not be that empty. What's LL to do when people get tired of buying the same ol clothes? Best believe there isn't much time till a worthy competitor comes along and creators jump ship. It's already been happening for awhile now.

(Sorry to derail thread Strawberry, your stream was great and yes SL does need something more to get new users into it because it's not intuitive at all. So I applaud your effort and it's nice to see more videos being made and community effort from LL..thanks. But seriously, there are much more needed efforts and apparently LL is just not hearing the community that's been screaming at them for years.)

Edited April 9, 2022 by ST33LDI9ITAL

[colleen Criss]

How did we get to here?  We are oldbies arguing like we are on a wheel! 

The tutorials are not intended for us as much as they are for newbies. I assume. IF we follow/watch we might even learn a new thing or two.  I like the idea of the SL University none of us have to even watch it or follow it.

Fix as much of your own performance as you can, you all know how for crying out loud. De scripted , remove your HUDs, your private parts, lose the flexi hair, use 128 to render anything and  derender everyone, wear a full body alpha, no one cares what you look like at shopping events. Shoppers are caming products and 9 out of 10 times people in  clubs are caming themselves.

Edited April 9, 2022 by colleen Criss
to add text

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, colleen Criss said:

Fix as much of your own performance as you can, you all know how for crying out loud. De scripted , remove your HUDs, your private parts, lose the flexi hair, use 128 to render anything and  derender everyone, wear a full body alpha, no one cares what you look like at shopping events. Shoppers are caming products and 9 out of 10 times people in  clubs are caming themselves.

This ends in users trying to be good, breaking their stuff accidentally and those who don't get the memo shamed for using SL as provided - we have been in this exact boat before.

This is not an "us" problem.

This is a systemic platform problem.

Avatar processing is sequential and happens on the same thread as everything else. The more avatars, the more work has to be done. The less time the viewer is spending on rezzing things. Get a lot of avatars together and the viewer is in a hole before it even tries to load and display anything.

This is most frustrating when shopping as we're trying to accomplish the one task the viewer is suddenly least capable of doing.

It's not a new problem, it's how the systems has been designed and the only fix is to redesign those systems. Getting users to take extraordinary measures and creating a social dynamic where we blame each other is not acceptable.

[Rufferta]

Nothing to see here - just move along to the next comment. 

When this video was first posted, I could not find a captioned version so I was not able to follow along very well. Now that I found it with closed captioning I took the time to sit down and watch it all the way through.  My notes, in no particular order. These are just my own personal views, and I'm sorry if anyone thinks they are confusing. My super talent is "ignoring the obvious".

- Without true lip-synch avatars should keep their mouths shut. It would be more canny.

- I would like to see more close-ups of the tools discussed, less of the avatar.

- I was glad to see the avatar was dressed conservatively.

- Closed-captioning I saw was fair, but Linden Lab might be interested in doing their own subtitles to avoid viewers using closed captioned versions seeing text like "drost distance" and "seduction destination videos".

- Torley's videos were shorter. Does the current generation have longer attention spans?

- Now I see why everyone was complaining about the suggestion that you should de-render everyone else at a shopping event. Me, I just try to wear a classic avatar when I go to a crowded shopping event. I have poor navigation skills, so I bump into things and people a lot. I do like watching what people wear to the shopping events, though, although at first my viewer shows them all naked.

- Some tools (Advanced viewer) and phrases (alpha) seem perhaps a bit advanced for a video focused on newcomers.

- I read a mention that there were time stamps showing what subjects were covered at different parts of the video. Couldn't find it.

Note: I am using Firestorm Viewer, but I am glad to see that the SL viewer is being improved, and also applaud the fact that The Lab is making an effort to make SL more accessible to newcomers. The Destination Guide has improved tremendously, and this video project is a worthy project and I look forward to seeing future videos and improvements.

Suggestion: Perhaps there could be very short videos discussing just one or two toolbars, and have a link from that toolbar to the video?

Toolbar with all the options showing.

Toolbar with the default tool items greyed out. 

Another suggestion: Just a video on the basic camera controls. Strawberry takes wonderful photos, and perhaps a separate video on how she does it.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Rufferta

[colleen Criss]

3 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

This ends in users trying to be good, breaking their stuff accidentally and those who don't get the memo shamed for using SL as provided - we have been in this exact boat before.

This is not an "us" problem.

This is a systemic platform problem.

Avatar processing is sequential and happens on the same thread as everything else. The more avatars, the more work has to be done. The less time the viewer is spending on rezzing things. Get a lot of avatars together and the viewer is in a hole before it even tries to load and display anything.

This is most frustrating when shopping as we're trying to accomplish the one task the viewer is suddenly least capable of doing.

It's not a new problem, it's how the systems has been designed and the only fix is to redesign those systems. Getting users to take extraordinary measures and creating a social dynamic where we blame each other is not acceptable.

What you are saying is not lost on me, but we also know LLs is not going to rework this platform , I get it. I still do not understand how one video for SL UNIVERSITY brings all this up. It has nothing to do with the content/context Strawberry was giving basic instructions. That was her task. She did it well. 

Everything else is everything else. It seems to me a ton of these kind of threads turn into off topic conversations and we are not even helping a newbie who might wonder into these forums with off topic posts.

[colleen Criss]

On 4/6/2022 at 5:57 PM, bigmoe Whitfield said:

"viewer basics"  they need to cover the SL viewer and Firestorm, since that is basically the basics and has been the standard for a long time. 

Not really, LLs is only responsible to make sure the user is familiar with their viewer. I would not expect them to explain any other view tbh. Firestorm has their own set of staff and they do a great job repping their own viewer. 

After all we all started with LLs viewer I assume. I did. Then I learned Firestorms.

[Coffee Pancake]

28 minutes ago, colleen Criss said:

What you are saying is not lost on me, but we also know LLs is not going to rework this platform , I get it. I still do not understand how one video for SL UNIVERSITY brings all this up. It has nothing to do with the content/context Strawberry was giving basic instructions. That was her task. She did it well. 

She also complained about the lag and crashed trying to teleport away from an event.

As this is content for new users, setting a good impression is an essential part of the guide.

SL .. the OG metaverse, and its laggy and crashy, but look we're so used to it happening we don't even blink.

[Rowan Amore]

Setting a realistic impression with things as they are now, is more important.  Don't sell them on something that isn't the reality.  Or don't bother selling it at all IMO.  Should LL have edited out the crash?  It's what happens sometimes.  

[diamond Marchant]

1 hour ago, colleen Criss said:

we also know LLs is not going to rework this platform

That is likely true. When SL as we know it no longer available, I will consider this to be the golden age. All the stuff I like to do here can be done on the platform as is. And I usually don't have to worry about other avatars consuming MY cycles.

Second Life is like Xerox PARC (1970s reference), a place where forward-thinking people figured out how humans might use personal computers. Things like WYSIWYG word processors and Mac-like interfaces were stolen from PARC. SL will be that for someone else.

That someone will build a new platform, the primary feature being that it will be SCALABLE. Second Life University is just fine for what it is and I love Strawberry but it is evidence that SL has a significant barrier to entry.

Edited April 9, 2022 by diamond Marchant

[Coffee Pancake]

I think the perception that SL is what it is and we're just here till it dies is the exact attitude that bogged the lab down for so many years.

SL is something really special and it deserves to not only survive, but thrive. Part of that future is not only making the platform as it stands run better, be more approachable, accessible and reliable. But advancing the platform to keep it relevant, attractive and interesting to new people coming here to make and experience content that they can't make anywhere else.

Right now we're still coasting from the innovations made in the early formative years, the last big technology movement of the dial was mesh and that was 10 years ago.

We still have the userbase, we're back in the list of acceptable industry buzzwords and we all have a second chance to make a go of this, an opportunity that platforms almost never get (and none of our fallen competitors ever got).

Best foot forward and all that.

Which is why I'm somewhat critical of the University concept, good guides and tutorials across a range of media are always a good thing, but unless we can get some attention on the core platform and it's problems it's all for nothing.

[Drayke Newall]

8 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

Setting a realistic impression with things as they are now, is more important.  Don't sell them on something that isn't the reality.  Or don't bother selling it at all IMO.  Should LL have edited out the crash?  It's what happens sometimes.  

There is a vast difference between showcasing a realistic impression and completely gimping your advertising/tutorials to new users.

This 'basics of the viewer' is clearly aimed at new users, no one denies that. The trouble is, it is showcasing the negativity to a new user from the start not to mention millions of potential users seeing it on YouTube.

In what business universe does a company show off that their viewer/program crashes due to some unknown reason - likely because it cant handle its own programming to TP out of a stressed server? Yes sure it happens, but it puts forward the wrong impression. Likewise talking about derendering avatars.

I just cant agree that the video was worth it let alone a tutorial - sorry Strawberry criticism needs to be harsh sometimes. Some points to take note of:

1. For 20 years LL, TPV creators and all those people that have been around for years, the one thing they have always said to new users is either NEVER or as a last resort use the Advanced (not to bad) and Develop (um no?) menu as the wrong click can cause issues. Yet here we have a Linden saying to tick both and freely start unticking things...
2. SL is laggy - as a basic tutorial on increasing performance what does Strawberry Linden tell users to do first to reduce lag?
   Does she first go to preferences and change the graphic quality (number one step) in any technical help on graphics? No.
   Does she tell people to lower the draw distance as a first or second step? No.
   Does she go to shadows (a prime reason for lag in SL - keep in mind she is on ultra) and tell them to turn them down or off? No.
   Does she tell them to turn water to opaque due to LL in ability to have water not render under objects? No.
   Does she tell users to reduce the Max number of non-avatar imposters? No.
   Does she tell users to reduce the Max avatar complexity? No.
   Does she tell them to to untick render attached lights (face lights)? No.
   Does she tell them to close the chat window floater she has up to get 5-10FPS? No.
   etc., etc. No.
   
   She goes straight to the advanced menu and tells them to completely derender all avatars INCLUDING a users own avatar. Second Life is advertised as a social platform where a person can create their own avatar to look at and meet (see) other people, but who cares about that! Just tell all those excited new users that the best way to stop lag in a place where there are ACTUAL people is to GET RID of the number one reason people play Second Life. 🙄 
   
   Great advertising. I'm sure that new user is bound to spend all that money in SL buying clothes, skins, animations etc (supporting creators) for their avatar when Lindens are just telling them in tutorials the first step to reduce lag is to derender all avatars to see those nice clothes.
3. Here's a basic tutorial for new users on how to do things. "You can change your environment settings here, but dont worry we will cover that in another video". Then WHY even mention it.
4. Here is our support page where it has lots of good articles on how to do things, but sorry a lot of it is outdated due to the speed on which things are updated in Second Life. Linden Lab updating things speedily?.
   
   Lets see Knowledge base article - How to improve viewer performance... Make sure to update to the latest Windows 8.1 as our statistics show that users crash less often on a 9 year old end of life operating system! Geez, no wonder I crash a lot, I'm using too newer an OS being on windows 10!
   
   Never mind though, LL are so busy updating they dont have time to change an 8 to 10 on their knowledge base according to Strawberry Linden.

As you say though, "Setting a realistic impression with things as they are now, is more important". The realistic impression a new user gets with this tutorial is, why am I going to play this when I am told I have to derender the number 1 reason for playing to reduce lag, experiences crashes or  support a company that doesnt have the staff to quickly keep upto date critical help infrastructure etc. That is the impression this tutorial gives, well to me at least.

Ill end with this which should say it all about the professionalism of this tutorial. Second Life is known for adult content, here's a tutorial for you...

Edited April 10, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Lindal Kidd]

While I completely take your point, Drayke, I think that your statement here...

9 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

...either NEVER or as a last resort use the Advanced (not to bad) and Develop (um no?) menu as the wrong click can cause issues...

...is too strongly worded. LL does suggest using these "hidden" menus with caution. However, I've never encountered anything in them that will cause serious issues. About the worst that can happen is that something on your screen will look goofy until you remember to check in those menus for something that's gotten clicked by mistake.

I always advise my students to enable the Advanced and Developer menus. They're far more useful than they are dangerous.

[Coffee Pancake]

46 minutes ago, Lindal Kidd said:

I always advise my students to enable the Advanced and Developer menus. They're far more useful than they are dangerous.

There is a lot of latent utility in those menus, however they are often broadly unpolished and might not do what they say on the tin.

Some, such as the texture console, while useful, do have a meaningful impact on how the viewer functions while processing textures.

Ideally, that utility should be broken out and crafted into viable user friendly features. Such as how hiding all avatars was the starting point for more practical avatar derendering seen in TPVs.

I do however draw the line at debug settings, that's a true wild west populated by land mines and dragons and can result in a bricked viewer.

[Drayke Newall]

1 hour ago, Lindal Kidd said:

While I completely take your point, Drayke, I think that your statement here...

...is too strongly worded. LL does suggest using these "hidden" menus with caution. However, I've never encountered anything in them that will cause serious issues. About the worst that can happen is that something on your screen will look goofy until you remember to check in those menus for something that's gotten clicked by mistake.

I always advise my students to enable the Advanced and Developer menus. They're far more useful than they are dangerous.

Whilst I would agree with you in that the advanced menu is generally safe to use which is why I stated in brackets that it is not to bad,  the developer menu should not in any way be fiddled with by a new or beginner user as it will just cause more misery to a new user if they click the wrong thing.

Also as Coffee said, the debug menu of which is accessed through the advanced menu can brick the viewer if something is misclicked and a new user or even a beginner user has no place fiddling in their let alone LL actually recommending a person to freely access an area where that is located as a fix to reduce lag.

As to developer menu, whilst yes there are some cases where an option in the developer menu can help in troubleshooting, there is nothing generally in the developer menu that will help with lag at all which was the reason Strawberry stated it should be toggled, so why even suggest opening it to a new user in a "basics of the viewer' tutorial?

I still remember the days when people were telling others that clicking on use plugin read thread in the advanced menu reduces lag.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Drayke Newall

[Rolig Loon]

I agree , Drake. I use debug settings carefully myself,  having learned over the past 15 years which ones are safe to mess with. They can be a  minefield for a novice, though. If I am advising someone one on one,  I may tell them that a specific setting is OK to use, but I would never advise anyone to just experiment. 

[Coffee Pancake]

37 minutes ago, Drayke Newall said:

I still remember the days when people were telling others that clicking on use plugin read thread in the advanced menu reduces lag.

They still do this. 

They even clam that it magically makes makes SL use multiple cores.

It doesn't matter what a dev says on the subject, some random friend told them to do it and their word is gospel.

[Coffee Pancake]

26 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

I agree , Drake. I use debug settings carefully myself,  having learned over the past 15 years which ones are safe to mess with. They can be a  minefield for a novice, though. If I am advising someone one on one,  I may tell them that a specific setting is OK to use, but I would never advise anyone to just experiment. 

I would be interested in the list of debugs you're comfortable in tweaking ... they could be broken out into actual UI and coded to make sure they do the correct thing.

Debug settings come in three flavors. 

• Setting in preferences that have UI and supporting code.
• Internal settings that don't.
• Interim dumping ground for 18 years of developer variables that may be misnamed, frequently do more than one thing, have no checking for correct values and in many cases probably shouldn't exist.

The only way to know what they do is to look at the code.

[Drayke Newall]

24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They still do this. 

Wow thought they had stopped that rumour.

24 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

They even clam that it magically makes makes SL use multiple cores.

Forgot about that one. Made me laugh the first time I heard it. Would have thought after so many years it would be something people dont say anymore.

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 minute ago, Drayke Newall said:

Wow thought they had stopped that rumour.

Forgot about that one. Made me laugh the first time I heard it. Would have thought after so many years it would be something people dont say anymore.

 

It's why I've pretty much given up on helping people. Once they get something like that into their heads it's game over. They won't listen and I just end up making myself feel like a fool for trying to help when they don't want it even after asking for help! 

Sometimes you have no choice but to walk away.