SL new user retention, expectation and usability

[Gabriele Graves]

1 hour ago, Coffee Pancake said:

SL realism is uncanny, there is no way of getting around that. It's also something we're oblivious to simply by virtue of investing time and emotion into this place.

Makes you wonder what that kind of conditioning is doing to our brains really.

[cunomar]

I had time and a sympathetic ear for everybody , never shut up in open chat just trying keep people entertained .

Until i got conditioned lol .

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

Makes you wonder what that kind of conditioning is doing to our brains really.

Especially for those who engage emotionally or sexually with other avatars, that's one SL study I wouldn't object to.

Avatar realism (and in world can be far more uncanny that flickr) could easily be one of the fundamental thing's we're doing wrong & train wrecking a new users experience in the first session without even registering as the cause.

 

[Love Zhaoying]

20 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Especially for those who engage emotionally or sexually with other avatars, that's one SL study I wouldn't object to.

Especially if we get to choose our study partners! *wink*

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

23 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Avatar realism (and in world can be far more uncanny that flickr) could easily be one of the fundamental thing's we're doing wrong & train wrecking a new users experience in the first session without even registering as the cause.

If that's the case then I think LL are in a catch 22 situation because if they make the avatars more stylized and less realistic then new users are going to instantly feel out of place once they start mingling with the general population.

I think a big part of the problem is that the standard SL avatar has hardly changed at all in the last two decades and most of the improvements to their visual quality are the result of innovation and hard work by creators/residents, the downside of which is that the majority of the avatar customization process is now essentially out of LLs hands, so even if they came up with a groundbreaking new system for avatar creation it will still have very little impact since there's no way to integrate the vast wealth of user created options available which are necessary to create the type of realism that you see in-world.

Personally I'd be surprised if avatar realism was an issue since the characters in BDO are arguably just as realistic and detailed as most SL avatars and yet people seemed to love the character creator and happily spent hours in it tweaking their characters (they even have a gallery where people can share their creations with other players).

 

[EliseAnne85]

I got to wondering how long new users are quitting after ten minutes.  I mean is this recent, a few months,  a year...what?  Ten minutes is not a very long time.   So, could it be the EEP not compatible with a lot of average laptops?  EEP is not a good experience on many computers and definitely not for integrated.  The Lindens knew how to make a viewer compatible with most computers.  People have expensive phones these days and their laptop not so expensive.  Also, computer chips may be changing again very soon because crypto-mining wants to go to more energy efficient chips, etc.  So, those super powered chips aren't going to be needed much longer, not for mining anyhow.  And, a possible prolonged recession could make new selling laptaps even more cheaply made and with less graphic quality than they are now.

If the new company could take a survey on how it's running for new users, that might be a good idea.  Another viewer for integrated chips is needed but it seems the new LL does not want to do it.  Windlights, imo, were far easier once you knew where the windlights were.  EEP is easier simply because it starts when you start.  But, that doesn't make it easier on or for machines.

Edited August 26, 2022 by EliseAnne85

[Ardy Lay]

14 hours ago, animats said:

(I wonder if this is part of the reason furries are popular in SL. Fur avoids the human skin lighting problem.)

This, and related visual issues, will be among the reasons given when people do tell why they have "furry avatars" in Second Life.  I came to Second Life after seeing some pictures and videos of many avatar styles and thought "That looks fun."  I nearly completely stopped watching television after finding Second Life.  Most of the human avatars did have some discomforting appearance issues and I found myself choosing to be in the fantasy world of avatars that caused me no instinctive discord.  I dare admit that the default camera position and resulting view of my own avatar had a strong influence on my choice of appearances.  Didn't take long to discover that most of their players were tech workers of various kinds in real life.  We irritated each other in ways we could relate, instead of with topics we knew nothing about.  Still, interest fragmentation forms subgroups, so, saying almost any generality about us is inaccurate.  In many cases, the only thing we have in common is we use avatars that are representations of non-human living creatures at least part of the time.  Conversely, sometimes the biggest difference between two greatly disparate cultural groups is the way they fold their napkins.

[animats]

27 minutes ago, Ardy Lay said:

Most of the human avatars did have some discomforting appearance issues and I found myself choosing to be in the fantasy world of avatars that caused me no instinctive discord. 

Interesting.

Here's what we're talking about.

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Please comment, especially if you're not a creator or knowledgeable about computer graphics, and especially if you haven't been in SL for years. It's the gut feel of the new user that matters here.

This technology has been in Unreal Engine since UE3, from about 2010. The high-end human systems such as Metahuman use this. There is a good chance it will go into SL as part of the planned GLTF extension. This needs careful collaboration between a good technical artist and the LL shader devs to get right. If done well, you'll be able to buy skins that don't trigger the human creepyness alert.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, animats said:

Interesting.

Here's what we're talking about.

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Please comment, especially if you're not a creator or knowledgeable about computer graphics, and especially if you haven't been in SL for years. It's the gut feel of the new user that matters here.

This technology has been in Unreal Engine since UE3, from about 2010. The high-end human systems such as Metahuman use this. There is a good chance it will go into SL as part of the planned GLTF extension. This needs careful collaboration between a good technical artist and the LL shader devs to get right. If done well, you'll be able to buy skins that don't trigger the human creepyness alert.

That can't be baked into existing skins?

[EliseAnne85]

I'm actually a computer dummie but some of the lighting is baked into skins like tip of nose and other places but that's about all I know.   I'm making this post for another reason because I just wanted to say Scylla that your avatar photo for the forums here is one of the best I've seen for realism, expression and lighting.  You have a beautiful skin and avatar and a gift for photography.  I was going to tell you that in a private message but I'm doing a bunch of things right now both RL and SL and running out of time.  So, I told you in this thread.  You did an amazing job!

[animats]

7 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

That can't be baked into existing skins?

You can make an existing skin look great under carefully chosen lighting. But it won't look right under other lighting. That's part of why SL has such good posed stills, but video looks much worse.

[Nalates Urriah]

1 hour ago, EliseAnne85 said:

I got to wondering how long new users are quitting after ten minutes.  I mean is this recent, a few months,  a year...what?  Ten minutes is not a very long time.   So, could it be the EEP not compatible with a lot of average laptops?  EEP is not a good experience on many computers and definitely not for integrated.  The Lindens knew how to make a viewer compatible with most computers.  People have expensive phones these days and their laptop not so expensive.  Also, computer chips may be changing again very soon because crypto-mining wants to go to more energy efficient chips, etc.  So, those super powered chips aren't going to be needed much longer, not for mining anyhow.  And, a possible prolonged recession could make new selling laptaps even more cheaply made and with less graphic quality than they are now.

If the new company could take a survey on how it's running for new users, that might be a good idea.  Another viewer for integrated chips is needed but it seems the new LL does not want to do it.  Windlights, imo, were far easier once you knew where the windlights were.  EEP is easier simply because it starts when you start.  But, that doesn't make it easier on or for machines.

I think you are bit confused. Windlight(TM) is a basic part of the SL rendering system. EEP is was the Environment Enhancement Project. It added features to the Windlight system, as in more controls, and made it so environment settings can be collected in an SL asset and stored or sold. Rather than have to put XML files into the viewer's program folder to add WL settings from another user by emailing or downloading files, we can transfer an environment from user to user like we do any other Copy-OK item in inventory. Plus we got the ability to change the appearance of the sun and moon in ways we did not previously have.

The amount of graphics rendering load added by the EEP changes is minimal. I doubt one can even measure a difference.

The Lab maintains graphics support for older machines. So the viewers do not use all the latest graphics enhancements. NVIDIA 3000 series graphics cards have features SL is not likely to ever incorporate while OpenGL is the base render tech.

The viewers when first run analyze the computer they are running on and its graphics capability. Then change all the settings to present what the Lab considers the best experience for that computer and its capabilities. So new users coming in have an experience tailored to their level of hardware.

The Lab is constantly monitoring how SL preforms on various hardware. They track how many use which viewer, what brand and version OS they are running, how often they crash and why. The JIRA reporting system tracks errors, problems, and fixes in near real time. The viewer has a built-in error tracker named Bug Smash (or something like that name - I forget) that feeds into the Linden tracking system. The Lab has a very good idea of how their viewer and system preforms on all levels of hardware.

The Lab is working on a viewer app for phones. The problem is phones lack 3D real-time rendering capability. Compare the computational power of a cheap desktop's video card to a phone's video chip. NVIDIA cards are 3 or 4 magnitudes of capability greater than a phone's. There is a reason that video card GPU's have been commandeered for bitcoin mining.

Because the SL system handles none optimized content few people realize it is one of the most efficient render and delivery systems available for real-time 3D rendering. While most games download as 10 to 20 GB of data, downloading SL would require 200+ TB of data.

We are spoiled.

[EliseAnne85]

9 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

The viewers when first run analyze the computer they are running on and its graphics capability. Then change all the settings to present what the Lab considers the best experience for that computer and its capabilities.

Ah yes, this true.  Lots of good information in your post.  Just wondering why coffeepancake said ten minutes and it's quitting time for many sign-ups.  So, I assumed it might be 'something' has changed and that something might be technical.  I was hoping some geeks might chime in here.  

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, EliseAnne85 said:

Ah yes, this true.  Lots of good information in your post.  Just wondering why coffeepancake said ten minutes and it's quitting time for many sign-ups.  So, I assumed it might be 'something' has changed and that something might be technical.  I was hoping some geeks might chime in here.  

Humans make judgements on first impressions all the time. We judge books (and other media, and everything else) by the cover (which is why book covers are coded so you can tell the genre at a glance). We pick food from a menu having never seen or tasted the items we're rejecting. We swipe left on awesome people based on a single picture. The same holds true for SL.

Nothing gets a fair objective shake. So looking at what SL is getting wrong from an objective perspective is mistaken. Grumpy SL users are still SL users. We lost the vast majority of people before they even had a chance to find something to be grumpy about.

The subconscious decision to reject something happens very quickly, almost instantly in some cases. However there can be some delay between that decision manifesting into "user closes SL and never looks back", we have to assume the user genuinely wants to try SL, and that does buy some time, but not much.

Which is the point of this thread - What can derail everything in those first few moments?

Human avatars looking uncanny and weird is very much one of them.

Others could include : Pressing a key to move and there being a stutter or lag. An old fashioned UI paradigm. Dogbag girl's bag defying gravity when in motion. Avatar body language (the supplied AO), a failure of expectations (came for the blue girl on the website, got disco man instead) etc etc etc etc 

[Lindal Kidd]

6 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

came for the blue girl on the website, got disco man instead

I laughed a lot at that one...but I bet it HAS turned off a lot of newbies.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

That can't be baked into existing skins?

Subsurface scattering is basically a lighting effect so trying to bake it into the texture works about as well as baked lighting or reflections.

A good real world example of SSS is the effect you get when you hold your hand up in front of strong sunlight, that red glow you see around the edge of your fingers is the result of subsurface scattering (i.e. light passing through the surface of your skin and scattering as it bounces around on the blood vessels, etc. beneath).  Obviously as you rotate your hand the glow continues to only appear on the edges of your fingers where the light can pass through.  Essentially the effect is "dynamic", which is why you can't fake subsurface scattering using the skin texture.

[Rolig Loon]

7 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Humans make judgements on first impressions all the time.

I recall a fairly careful study, done (I believe) by W. McKeachie at the University of Michigan back in the 1990s. He produced the rather startling result that there is a high correlation between student impressions collected at the start of the first day of class and student evaluations collected on the last day.  That is, a student typically makes a judgement about the professor on that first day and usually doesn't change it.  That's a very scary result.

[Cali Souther]

On 8/14/2022 at 5:48 PM, LittleMe Jewell said:

Due to the vastness of SL, it can sometimes be quite frustrating trying to find places that are actually alive with people and where those people truly share interests with you. 

Aside from the learning curve (how to walk, get dressed etc) - I agree this is the main reason so few stay.  It is VERY difficult,  even after years of being here,  to find places to meet new people.   The destination guide is a real crap shoot,  and the most crowded places are not necessarily the friendliest.    

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 hour ago, animats said:

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't like the look. Maybe a less saturated version of it might not bother me as much.

[Ardy Lay]

How much of a person's first impression of Second Life is based upon the chroma/luma calibration of their display system?  I've seen some really crappy results on 6-bit LCD panels.

[Luna Bliss]

I want to fly with the blue elf woman -- I've been looking all over SL today and I can't find her!

[Quistess Alpha]

15 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

2 hours ago, animats said:

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't like the look. Maybe a less saturated version of it might not bother me as much

I agree, The test image isn't really a fair comparison. I'd have to see a control using baked textures to mimic SSS' (perhaps only at specific viewing angles) or a more fair color balanced example. one on the right just looks redder.

Another (unrelated) technical thing, I've seen few skins try to use bump maps to imitate "skin pores", but the resolution is way too low and it looks really bad (to me). luckily my gfx don't usually like to load high-rez materials textures most of the time. IDK if body applier systems just don't allow increasing the texture repeats? on mod bodies I often add a shiny map of Torley Linden's "seuratski" scaled by a factor of about 32 with slightly pink shading. It doesn't look "realistic" but it looks better than flat lighting (to my eyes).

[Ardy Lay]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Interesting.

Here's what we're talking about.

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Please comment, especially if you're not a creator or knowledgeable about computer graphics, and especially if you haven't been in SL for years. It's the gut feel of the new user that matters here.

This technology has been in Unreal Engine since UE3, from about 2010. The high-end human systems such as Metahuman use this. There is a good chance it will go into SL as part of the planned GLTF extension. This needs careful collaboration between a good technical artist and the LL shader devs to get right. If done well, you'll be able to buy skins that don't trigger the human creepyness alert.

I have seen some real-world examples of the effect, caused by Caucasian faces with so much makeup on them that the subsurface scattering in Sunlight is not visible.  The lack of subsurface scattering on dark completions doesn't seem to bother me notably.  The theatre group had a long discussion about this when selecting a new makeup artist.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Ardy Lay

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Subsurface scattering example. How does your "creepyness" feeling react to this?

Lately, if an avatar skin has extremely realistic freckles, it sets off my creepy-meter.  Too unexpectedly real, as in "over-the-edge" falling into the uncanny canyon.

Just call me "canyon fodder".

"Hello, Fodder! Hello, Mudder!"

[EliseAnne85]

1 hour ago, Rolig Loon said:

I recall a fairly careful study, done (I believe) by W. McKeachie at the University of Michigan back in the 1990s. He produced the rather startling result that there is a high correlation between student impressions collected at the start of the first day of class and student evaluations collected on the last day.  That is, a student typically makes a judgement about the professor on that first day and usually doesn't change it.  That's a very scary result.

I know differing things about first impressions.  The worst may be in the music business. In the music business, you have about 30 seconds or less to impress a record producer/manager when he/she begins listening to the demo you sent said person of the music company.  I heard about this in a Jackson Browne interview.  I believe it was David Geffen who threw Jackson Browne's tape into the trash.  As the story goes, a secretary working in the office fished the tape out of the trash and said "I think you better listen to this again"...and the rest is history.  So, I know all that about first impressions and it's a short time span one has to make an impression. 

But, after that user sign-up for SL (it takes a long time - I always get a run-around with a name) to then once you are finally inworld to only take 10 minutes (and I took this literally but wasn't really sure if it was literal or not) to just quit seems ridiculous.  One is just learning to walk in ten minutes.   So, what coffeepancake is saying is this could be a day or less really and then people decide to quit.  To entice more people, I have no idea.  The majority of people I know spend a ton of money on their phone and don't have devices that would run SL.  

Edited August 26, 2022 by EliseAnne85