Why don't clothing makers develop a priority system for attachments?

[Jennifer Boyle]

I am thinking of a system developed by mutual agreement of a group of creators that would be open for any interested person to join that would work like the organizations that develop voluntary standards in the computer industry. The incentive to make products conform to such a standard is that, when they do, they are more desirable for users.

I visualize a set of scripts that would allow one attachment to tell another attachment to become invisible. There could be, e.g., four values of a variable; one could be underwear, two and three could be ordinary clothing, and four could be outerwear.  if users could designate body areas, e.g., A, B, C, etc., it could even be more useful.

Example: I am wearing all fitmesh clothes, but my panties show through my pants, my bra shows theough my shirt, and my shirt shows through my sweater. My panties are labeled at 1A, my pants are labeled as 2A, my bra is 1B, my shirt is 2B, and my sweater is 4B. My panties autohide when I put my pants on and unhide when I take my pants off, etc.

Such a system would not be perfect and would fail in many cases, but it would work well in many cases, and, therefore, could be valuable.

[Tazzie Tuque]

I think this idea would be a whole lot of work.  Given that scripting of clothing items would be required, and rather complex scripting at that.  Which of course would increase the amount of work put into any one item, which in turn would increase the cost to the buyer.  For me the solution to under garments sticking out through pants and shirts is simply to use BOM under wear or just not bother putting anything on under my pants and shirts if it won't be seen anyhow.  BOM has made it much easier to deal with the poke through issue.  And it is a solution we already have.  Sorry but I cannot see mesh creators wanting to do this, much less coordinate with other mesh makers.  Wild idea but probably not workable in SL.  

[Wulfie Reanimator]

4 minutes ago, Tazzie Tuque said:

I think this idea would be a whole lot of work.  Given that scripting of clothing items would be required, and rather complex scripting at that.  Which of course would increase the amount of work put into any one item, which in turn would increase the cost to the buyer.  For me the solution to under garments sticking out through pants and shirts is simply to use BOM under wear or just not bother putting anything on under my pants and shirts if it won't be seen anyhow.  BOM has made it much easier to deal with the poke through issue.  And it is a solution we already have.  Sorry but I cannot see mesh creators wanting to do this, much less coordinate with other mesh makers.  Wild idea but probably not workable in SL.  

To be fair, the same could be said about any standard. Developing anything is a lot easier when you don't have to worry about compatibility with other things.

[Orwar]

   The fewer scripts in clothes, the better. There's also no reason to wear a piece of clothing that you're going to have hidden anyway, it just bloats your avi scripts (and complexity, though I'm unsure on the effects of invisible clothes and rendering costs).

   Getting dressed in SL isn't a very demanding task, getting people to descript to avoid unnecessary lag is a chore. 

[Jennifer Boyle]

4 hours ago, Tazzie Tuque said:

I think this idea would be a whole lot of work.  Given that scripting of clothing items would be required, and rather complex scripting at that.  Which of course would increase the amount of work put into any one item, which in turn would increase the cost to the buyer.  For me the solution to under garments sticking out through pants and shirts is simply to use BOM under wear or just not bother putting anything on under my pants and shirts if it won't be seen anyhow.  BOM has made it much easier to deal with the poke through issue.  And it is a solution we already have.  Sorry but I cannot see mesh creators wanting to do this, much less coordinate with other mesh makers.  Wild idea but probably not workable in SL.  

What I have in mind is standard scripts that could just be dropped into meshes; once the scripts were developed, the work associated with using them would be min imal.

2 hours ago, Orwar said:

   The fewer scripts in clothes, the better. There's also no reason to wear a piece of clothing that you're going to have hidden anyway, it just bloats your avi scripts (and complexity, though I'm unsure on the effects of invisible clothes and rendering costs).

   Getting dressed in SL isn't a very demanding task, getting people to descript to avoid unnecessary lag is a chore. 

"Your world, your imagination."

My world, my imagination.

One of the things I particularly enjoy in SL is dressing my avatar. I used to not care about wearing underwear, but I have come to not feel fully put together if I don't wear it when appropriate. Because of the limited resolution of BOM clothing, it seldom, if ever, has really good detail. In addition, it often looks painted on because it is, well, painted on. I know that many people don't care about wearing items that don't show, and I know that there is a resource cost. Nevertheless, I do care, and I expect that there are many other players in this wonderful, enormous game of dolls who care, too.

[Ezbeharra]

I think clothing makers have every incentive not to do this, and instead make their clothing all rigged to fit together, and then it's very easy to get dressed provided you're only buying mega-packs from Bumbleberry or whatever.

Anyway, you're absolutely right that it should be better than this and in layer clothes days, it actually was, but there's probably no solution that anyone will actually take the time to implement. For modesty, I find c-strings or panties that let you turn off the waistband to be sufficient (there are some good cheap ones on MP and available as group gifts at a few places). The much more vexing problem is outerwear. Imagine having a jacket you don't have to wear with one specific shirt!

Edited January 24, 2023 by Ezbeharra
removed some snark

[Rowan Amore]

1 hour ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

What I have in mind is standard scripts that could just be dropped into meshes; once the scripts were developed, the work associated with using them would be min imal.

"Your world, your imagination."

My world, my imagination.

One of the things I particularly enjoy in SL is dressing my avatar. I used to not care about wearing underwear, but I have come to not feel fully put together if I don't wear it when appropriate. Because of the limited resolution of BOM clothing, it seldom, if ever, has really good detail. In addition, it often looks painted on because it is, well, painted on. I know that many people don't care about wearing items that don't show, and I know that there is a resource cost. Nevertheless, I do care, and I expect that there are many other players in this wonderful, enormous game of dolls who care, too.

Zaara has some lovely undies.  LeeZu! also has some that I love.  She doesn't have an inworld.store anymore but has a few BOM things up on the MP.  

[StarlanderGoods]

Clothes would require a lot of alpha cuts, underwear with straps that can turn on and off exist, but it would be nearly impossible for things like trousers with a belt, fitting every lenght of shirt or sweater/jacket.

If there was a set of standards, and it would be a HUGE list, it "could" potentially work, but at the same time it would limit creators a lot if you have to stick to a number of specific lenghts and shapes.

I think that clothes sometimes clipping, is something we just have to live with.  Most male clothing already has to hide the whole body because creators cant rig to save their life, asking them to also follow a standard of compatibility with other clothes creators, when they cant make their creations compatible with ONE body is asking a lot.

[Maitimo]

22 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I am thinking of a system developed by mutual agreement of a group of creators that would be open for any interested person to join that would work like the organizations that develop voluntary standards in the computer industry. The incentive to make products conform to such a standard is that, when they do, they are more desirable for users.

I visualize a set of scripts that would allow one attachment to tell another attachment to become invisible. There could be, e.g., four values of a variable; one could be underwear, two and three could be ordinary clothing, and four could be outerwear.  if users could designate body areas, e.g., A, B, C, etc., it could even be more useful.

Example: I am wearing all fitmesh clothes, but my panties show through my pants, my bra shows theough my shirt, and my shirt shows through my sweater. My panties are labeled at 1A, my pants are labeled as 2A, my bra is 1B, my shirt is 2B, and my sweater is 4B. My panties autohide when I put my pants on and unhide when I take my pants off, etc.

Such a system would not be perfect and would fail in many cases, but it would work well in many cases, and, therefore, could be valuable.

Why would you even need to wear something that is invisible, if no-one wll see it anyway? All it does is increase the number of mesh triangles you're wearing, which increases your avatar complexity, and increases the lag you're causing to yourself and others. If your panties are getting turned invisible everyone can see what you've got anyway, you may as well just take them off.

[KathrynLisbeth]

I totally get what you are saying with using a mechanism like this.

      First though you Really Don't want a whole bunch of 'Interlocking visible / invisible clothes' because of the Real rendering performance.   The Avatar Complexity metric is inaccurate.  While you can set up test cases that is composed of wearing a whole bunch of mesh clothes to see what the Avatar complexity says,  the actual impact is higher.    So end result is like wearing a mesh body with extra Onion Layers, not just a Maitreya with the tattoo layer, underwear, and clothing layer.  More like wearing 5 or 10 of each one of those layers.  You can somewhat infer this type of performance hit when comparing the load time of a complex strippable outfit item (multiple meshes that toggle their invisibility) with just a single item. 

     If you were able to get people to have a standard to reduce clipping,  one with a more minimal impact on performance could be a set of standard waist heights.  Example would be a high cut waist v/s mid cut v/s low cut.   Thus can partner a high cut top with high cut bottom,  making it look like shirt is tucked in.           

     However in some limited uses,  your system does work.     I implemented a set of scripts that I use to turn on / off some jewelry and sections of jewelry, things like piercings or part of a necklace.    It is analogous to how the Maitreya cuts system works, so is a remote toggle (inside mod item, or a microprim on the same attachment point as a no mod item)   But the reason is that I keep it limited like that is combination of render cost and need for wearing it (example invisible jewelry that has additional scripted function).

[KathrynLisbeth]

47 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

All it does is increase the number of mesh triangles you're wearing, which increases your avatar complexity, and increases the lag you're causing to yourself and others. 

And you hit enter while I was still typing.   😁

[Orwar]

18 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

One of the things I particularly enjoy in SL is dressing my avatar. I used to not care about wearing underwear, but I have come to not feel fully put together if I don't wear it when appropriate. Because of the limited resolution of BOM clothing, it seldom, if ever, has really good detail. In addition, it often looks painted on because it is, well, painted on.

   There's plenty of very good-looking BOM clothes out there, I'm practically always wearing some BOM clothing - including underwear (mostly for modesty when things are loading, but also because I quite like the sense of realism added by having bra straps showing when wearing tanks or loose-fitting sweaters), I have hundreds of BOM tank tops and T-shirts to wear under jackets and sweaters. System layer clothing which is shaded properly doesn't look 'flat' or 'painted on' unless you're zooming in at an angle.

18 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I know that many people don't care about wearing items that don't show, and I know that there is a resource cost. Nevertheless, I do care, and I expect that there are many other players in this wonderful, enormous game of dolls who care, too.

   That comes off a bit like a common argument for smoking; people know it's bad, but they still want to do it. And, if people smoke where it harms no others, I don't care. But when they smoke around other people, exposing people to second hand smoking, that's ethically questionable - if you want to lag down your own SL experience you're free to do so, but exposing it to others is nothing but selfish and stupid. 

[Ezbeharra]

8 hours ago, KathrynLisbeth said:

     If you were able to get people to have a standard to reduce clipping,  one with a more minimal impact on performance could be a set of standard waist heights.  Example would be a high cut waist v/s mid cut v/s low cut.   Thus can partner a high cut top with high cut bottom,  making it look like shirt is tucked in.          

This by itself would be a huge improvement. If even a few shops did this together, it would be a big selling point for me.

[Jennifer Boyle]

On 1/24/2023 at 1:03 PM, Orwar said:

...if you want to lag down your own SL experience you're free to do so, but exposing it to others is nothing but selfish and stupid. 

For some months now, I have experienced essentially no lag in spite of wearing underwear a lot of the time, although I do intermittently observe very slow loading of textures. Certainly, for me, lag has decreased by at least 98 percent from what it once was. Therefore, since there is so little lag anyway, I question whether doing things that supposedly increase or decrease it is actually important  anymore, even though it once was.

It appears that, in your eyes, I am stupid and selfish because I value different aspects of the SL experience differently from the way you do, and you think I and everyone else should do things your way. If I am selfish for wanting to experience SL in the way that I most enjoy, you are equally selfish for wanting me to sacrifice my enjoyment to maximize yours.

[Tazzie Tuque]

25 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

For some months now, I have experienced essentially no lag in spite of wearing underwear a lot of the time, although I do intermittently observe very slow loading of textures. Certainly, for me, lag has decreased by at least 98 percent from what it once was. Therefore, since there is so little lag anyway, I question whether doing things that supposedly increase or decrease it is actually important  anymore, even though it once was

I am happy for you if you do not experience lag.  But I fear you are in the minority there.  Yes, lag has improved some over the years but by no means 98%!  Most of us  do have lag, especially in an area with a lot of avatars.  So I don't think many would agree with your statement on lag here.  I think it is up to all of us to be aware of what causes lag and do what we can to not contribute to it.

[Orwar]

25 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

It appears that, in your eyes, I am stupid and selfish because I value different aspects of the SL experience differently from the way you do, and you think I and everyone else should do things your way. If I am selfish for wanting to experience SL in the way that I most enjoy, you are equally selfish for wanting me to sacrifice my enjoyment to maximize yours.

   It appears that you've drawn a rather awkward conclusion through an inability to distinguish between your own person and (an analogy of) the idea which is the subject of this topic. I shan't concern myself with your choice to get hurt in the feels because of an extrapolative error on your own part. I can however acknowledge that your feeble attempt to twist the perceived insult 'back' at me has only served to achieve truth to your erroneous inference. You go, you.

38 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

For some months now, I have experienced essentially no lag in spite of wearing underwear a lot of the time, although I do intermittently observe very slow loading of textures. Certainly, for me, lag has decreased by at least 98 percent from what it once was. Therefore, since there is so little lag anyway, I question whether doing things that supposedly increase or decrease it is actually important  anymore, even though it once was.

   Avatars are, generally, the most complex things you'll have to render at any given time in Second Life. I usually run somewhere around 200 FPS in my own home when I'm standing around by myself, even if I'm dolled up to the max - add some photo props and it usually won't have any major impact on the framerate. Throw in a friend and it starts coming off in chunks. Have a couple of more avatars around and suddenly you've got a framerate low enough to cause your average shooter-gamer to back their keyboard through their monitor. 

   And your proposal isn't just about upping your avatar's performance impact (it's easy enough to derender avatars that are a graphical strain on your system), it's about systematically handing out bad decisions to people who would sell their grandmother for an ounce of convenience; and that's where it all starts to come together to form an almightily bad idea. 

[Ezbeharra]

People flying into nerd rages over invisible underwear makes me want to add some myself.

So many dudes walk around with a hidden Aeros, that's what, a dozen invisible dicks? But a woman wants to do something with clothes and all of a sudden it's "MUH FRAMERATE! ALL THOSE TRIANGLES!"

lmao

How much hair comes with style HUDs now? Pretty much every major hair creator has them. How do you think those work? Oh, but invisible panties! The triangles!

How do you think clothing with strip stages works? B-but... panties! Framerates!

Edit for clarification: I'm not defending any of these invisible attachments, it's just funny to me which things people decide to get mad about. Funny how it's always women's bodies and women's clothes that are problems for some nerd's very important frame rate number.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Ezbeharra

[Wulfie Reanimator]

1 hour ago, Ezbeharra said:

People flying into nerd rages over invisible underwear makes me want to add some myself.

So many dudes walk around with a hidden Aeros, that's what, a dozen invisible dicks? But a woman wants to do something with clothes and all of a sudden it's "MUH FRAMERATE! ALL THOSE TRIANGLES!"

lmao

How much hair comes with style HUDs now? Pretty much every major hair creator has them. How do you think those work? Oh, but invisible panties! The triangles!

How do you think clothing with strip stages works? B-but... panties! Framerates!

None of the criticism in this thread has been gender-specific. Only one person has made a direct response to OP's example of panties. You are the only ragey voice here.

[Rowan Amore]

I wish creators would work more on BOM layered clothing.  I'd love to have a lot of options in layering.  In this picture, I'm wearing a bra from Zaara on the bra layer, a shirt from LeeZu on the shirt layer and a mesh sweater over all of it and a mesh skirt.  I use less attachments than if all those layers were mesh and parts hidden.  Some of the older system layer clothing is awesome and it's nice to be able to wear it all again.  Plus, performance won't take a hit...

 

[Tazzie Tuque]

2 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

I wish creators would work more on BOM layered clothing.  I'd love to have a lot of options in layering

Thank you for that comment.  That was the point I was trying to make early on in this thread.  That we do have a system using BOM that works very well.  I have made some BOM clothing, and thanks to your comment I will work on more.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I'm thinking that the issue of hidden/invisible avatar attachments impacting performance is way overblown and more theoretical than real.  I did some experiments in which I wore an ordinary outfit that ordinarily includes a number of invisible and hidden items including, God forbid, fitmesh panties. I teleported to a few different sims, some picked because they were heavily populated, and observed frame rates when I was and was not wearing the hidden and invisible attachments. There was no appreciable difference.

Certainly, some BOM creators do an amazing job of making the best possible products, but what is possible is limited by the resolution of the textures that can be used. One must use a single 1024x1024 texture for the whole upper or lower part of the body. That is not high enough resolution to sharply show detail of ,e.g., lace underwear.

[Ezbeharra]

42 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I'm thinking that the issue of hidden/invisible avatar attachments impacting performance is way overblown and more theoretical than real.

Overblown or not, that ship has definitely sailed, but that won't stop some people from getting their panties in a bunch over invisible underwear. Meanwhile, every major hair maker:

[Wulfie Reanimator]

50 minutes ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

I'm thinking that the issue of hidden/invisible avatar attachments impacting performance is way overblown and more theoretical than real.

In most cases the viewer (LL/Firestorm) doesn't spend rendering time on invisible objects. Flexi prims do take up time even if they're completely invisible.

This can be confirmed by using the Performance Tools (under the Advanced menu), by looking at the rendering time of your attachments while you're wearing things. This is a real measure of what's impacting your FPS the most, unlike Complexity (which doesn't get lowered for invisible objects). For other avatars, you can only see their total render-time, not individual attachments.

[Jennifer Boyle]

16 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

This can be confirmed by using the Performance Tools (under the Advanced menu), by looking at the rendering time of your attachments while you're wearing things.

When I display my Avatar attachment complexity while wearing a typical outfit, it rapidly fluctuates in the range between 234 and 485 microseconds. is that good, bad, terrible, great, or something else?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

2 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

When I display my Avatar attachment complexity while wearing a typical outfit, it rapidly fluctuates in the range between 234 and 485 microseconds. is that good, bad, terrible, great, or something else?

The fluctuation is normal, and your framerate will do that constantly due to many factors within the viewer.

Whether the amount of time is good or bad is relative, since the time is entirely dependent on your computer and graphics settings (and camera distance). A slow computer will have higher numbers in general (higher is worse, since it's taking longer to render that thing), but you can still look out for "spikes" which indicate that something is really slowing things down compared to everything else.