What Would You Like to Remove From Second Life Permanently?

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

2 hours ago, Caitlin Tobias said:

Facelights, the ones with the force of 1000 suns.

Oh good. Mine's only 999 suns.

 

But hey - three point lighting for perfect photos right? 

Edited November 23, 2023 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

But, furries are much better than "humans".

Things to remove from SL :

 

Fursona Bigots who claim they are "better people" than people because they are so "tolerant" except when it comes to NON Fursona Bigots, when they are the most IN-tolerant...

[gwynchisholm]

6 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

so claiming people don't stay because "there's a common avatar base" is, in fact, utter nonsense.

That’s not what I’m trying to say, I am saying the opposite. SL having so many proprietary avatar systems is what drives people away. It’s such a hassle, you can’t just buy an item in the shirt category and have it work as a shirt, it has to be a specific shirt for your specific avatar type. That’s massively confusing for new players.

As you said, any other game, your avatar generally fits one specific “base”. You add into that, you can modify the base within reason, and everything is compatible with it inherently.

In SL technically everything is compatible with the base default avatar, but since people took the idea of the avatar and turned it into entire different standards, now there’s a bunch of stuff that only works with those specific standards. And since they aren’t inherent mainstream content (by this I mean LL created), they aren’t really filtered or sortable by their avatar type. So people end up struggling to find things that work with their avatar, or an avatar that works with the items they want to wear.

Trying to explain avatar bases to new players is difficult, it’s like trying to explain operating systems or phones to the technologically illiterate. Why it’s not just brands, why it’s different. That’s not something all people can grasp onto super quick, the sl avatars are no different.

Trying to explain to someone “oh yeah that shirt you like, that only works with this specific avatar type that’s an addition over the stock avatar, well more like an outright replacement”.

Don’t even get me started on appliers or items that you have to add textures to yourself. Anything that involves the edit window is an immediate no-go for most casual players of social world games. Even vrchat which tried to make it easy, most of their players just click once on an avatar they like and maybe adjust their size.

I don’t think it’s possible to change it at this point, and I don’t like it. But it’s just part of SL now. Maybe others view it differently, I can see some people definitely looking at it like a level of complexity they can choose to involve themselves in or not. But they’re still then presented tons of content they willingly opt out of using, for no reason.

[Nae Mayo]

I post this without reading all 5 pages of replies. Sorry if it is repeated.

1) Privacy screen from ground up till 500m. Because it destroy our SL experience.

2) Security orb from ground up till 500m. Because it causes lots of plane crashes in SL by removing the pilot from the craft.

There is no such thing as privacy in SL. Live with it or go hide somewhere in the sky.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Nae Mayo

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

54 minutes ago, gwynchisholm said:

That’s not what I’m trying to say, I am saying the opposite. SL having so many proprietary avatar systems is what drives people away. It’s such a hassle, you can’t just buy an item in the shirt category and have it work as a shirt, it has to be a specific shirt for your specific avatar type. That’s massively confusing for new players.

Well yes.

But not fully that.

SL had retention problems back in the days before rigged mesh too.

Up until rigged mesh - even in the days of early mesh you could buy almost anything and it would work for you. Yet people left then more than they do now. But for a wholly unrelated reason: we're on the far side of the bell curve of popularity. People left fast back when it was time for all the cool kids to find a new pet rock. Now they're all gone and it's just a trickle of leavers and joiners.

Given the growth of features and the fact that so many today are already used to 3D virtual environments - I don't know but I would guess SL is possibly slowly growing. But that's random guessing.

 

Yes - it would be really nice if we had a standard avatar. Like the standard mesh avatar we all have if you remove every single attachment. It's been "BOM" since 2003.

The problem of course is that it still looks like it was made in 2003. MMOs often just do graphics updates now and then and update everybody's old era cartoon action hero into a new era cartoon action hero - and then leave half their loot on the old graphics while updating some and handing out new stuff.

But here it's all user made outside of some seriously old stuff - and over time LL has been "strongly encouraged" by the user base to make crap.

And that's not an exaggeration. Anytime there's discussion of a new default avatar, there's a big concern about it "disrupting commerce" and "being unfair to content creators" so people insist it look only good enough for newbies.

That then keeps the old era standardization from returning.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[animats]

Some legacy technical features we could do without:

• Classic "Glow". It usually looks awful. Glow in PBR is supposed to be a side effect of a bright light interacting with the environment, and eventually SL should have that.
• Prim types Test and 33. So obscure I've found only one in world, using a tool that looked for it. And that prim was invisible.
• The built-in bump maps. There are some built-in bump maps. Some Linden trees use them for the dirt in the flowerpot. They're not used for much else. The built in hack modes to guess at normals from textures are not very good, either. Use Deep Bump, the Blender plug-in, for that.
• Different scaling for different texture maps (normals, roughness, etc.) on the same object. This is seldom used, but adds complexity to the UI. If it's used at all it's because someone really wanted to apply two texture layers at different scales to the same object, and tried to fake that with scale factors. Standard glTF does not support this much, but it was put into SL's PBR implementation.
• "Wear" (as opposed to "Add") for mesh avatars. Seldom if ever does it do the right thing.

[elleevelyn]

14 minutes ago, animats said:

Some legacy technical features we could do without:

• Classic "Glow". It usually looks awful. Glow in PBR is supposed to be a side effect of a bright light interacting with the environment, and eventually SL should have that.

i tend to disagree this. Sometimes we want the object to affect itself - be its own source of light. Here is a pic of my shiny neko. I haven't turned everything on (I just want to show the contrast between glowy shiny and not glowy shiny)

my tail is glowing, as are my chibi wings, and all the jewellery. When I add glow and shine to my body and clothing accessories I am really really glowy shiny

this coupled with my projector lights (the stars) turned in toward myself, it all gets super shiny

where glow also works is when making phosphorus-like bodies - ghosts, etc. Semi-transparent plus glow

[animats]

1 hour ago, elleevelyn said:

i tend to disagree this. Sometimes we want the object to affect itself - be its own source of light. Here is a pic of my shiny neko. I haven't turned everything on (I just want to show the contrast between glowy shiny and not glowy shiny)

my tail is glowing, as are my chibi wings, and all the jewellery. When I add glow and shine to my body and clothing accessories I am really really glowy shiny

this coupled with my projector lights (the stars) turned in toward myself, it all gets super shiny

where glow also works is when making phosphorus-like bodies - ghosts, etc. Semi-transparent plus glow

That's emissive, not glow. Glow is when the light comes from outside the object's boundaries. That's because the light hit the environment or the eye was looking at something too bright. Glow fakes that by having a light source outside the object boundaries. The whole point of PBR is that it does what light really does, not what you think it does.

[elleevelyn]

52 minutes ago, animats said:

That's emissive, not glow. Glow is when the light comes from outside the object's boundaries. That's because the light hit the environment or the eye was looking at something too bright. Glow fakes that by having a light source outside the object boundaries. The whole point of PBR is that it does what light really does, not what you think it does.

well is just that when you say glow then there is a property called Glow. Is a bit not understandable when you referring to something other than the property Glow

[Qie Niangao]

46 minutes ago, animats said:

That's emissive, not glow. Glow is when the light comes from outside the object's boundaries. That's because the light hit the environment or the eye was looking at something too bright. Glow fakes that by having a light source outside the object boundaries. The whole point of PBR is that it does what light really does, not what you think it does.

Except that is "glow" in the SL usage of the term. Well, at least the chibi wings are definitely glow, based on the (artifactual?) interaction with the sky behind the effect. I'd say it's a mighty good chance the tail is glowing too, and a darn near zero chance it's using emissive alpha because it's also blended alpha transparent, and pre-PBR SL has no way to encode transparency and emissivity on the same surface (which is a big advantage of glTF textures).

The SL "glow" effect is orthogonal to the emissivity, so it's preserved with PBR. It's not very realistic, but on the other hand, it's a very common photographic effect, so common we'd now see something wrong with candle flames that don't "glow". I'm fine with it sticking around. (And no amount of surface emissivity can emulate it.)

[elleevelyn]

16 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

 I'd say it's a mighty good chance the tail is glowing too, and a darn near zero chance it's using emissive alpha because it's also blended alpha transparent, and pre-PBR SL has no way to encode transparency and emissivity on the same surface (which is a big advantage of glTF textures)

yes you are right about my tail. SL Glow plus blended alpha transparent which gets shiny bright really quickly . And can become a a riot when use 20 flex cones as I have. I also have flex hair made the same way but don't wear it all that much anymore. Old school days still linger in my heart

but if we ever get flex mesh then all my Christmas will come and I be happy to lay my prim attachments to rest forever

you also right that PBR/glTF will change things for the better overall

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 hours ago, gwynchisholm said:

I don’t think it’s possible to change it at this point, and I don’t like it.

It was NEVER possible to "change it", the only way you get that kind of universal compatibility and standards, as a general rule, is if EVERYTHING is made by the game devs, and NOTHING is made by users.

That wouldn't be SL, and "there are only 20 official shirts, 15 official skirts, 5 official boots, all of which come in 10 official colours" would drive away even more of SL's userbase than "noobs today are too lazy and stupid to learn what we all learned".

 

Evan back in the system avatar only nightmare era of pre-2010, noobs gave up on the "hard stuff like figuring out how to dress". There have always been noobs who were "too lazy and stupid to learn what we learned".

 

[Zalificent Corvinus]

4 hours ago, animats said:

Different scaling for different texture maps (normals, roughness, etc.) on the same object. This is seldom used, but adds complexity to the UI. If it's used at all it's because someone really wanted to apply two texture layers at different scales to the same object

No, it's used when you don't have a specific normal map for a certain texture, for example, you have a nice looking floor tile diffuse map, but i's a flat-mtte-2003 style texture, 8 tiles x 8 times, bit you have a generic 4 x 4 tile normal map you can use with differential scaling. Or you have a smooth seamless marble slab texture, and you want to 'emboss' it with a normal map from some fancy looking texture pack, and you want the embossed detail at a different scale to the slab marble.

 

4 hours ago, animats said:

"Wear" (as opposed to "Add") for mesh avatars. Seldom if ever does it do the right thing.

No, it does exactly what it's supposed to do, wear/replace, I'm wearing Hare x, i "wear" hair y, hair x detaches, hair y replaces it, I don't end up wearing two hairs, or having to go bald for 5 mins between taking hair x off and finding hair y to add it.

It's not the fault of "wear" that you don't know how to use it.

 

4 hours ago, animats said:

Classic "Glow". It usually looks awful. Glow in PBR is supposed to be a side effect of a bright light interacting with the environment

That is NOT what 'glow' is supposed to be in ANY rendering system.

Glow is the glowing surface "giving off light" not reacting to light from elsewhere, white hot metal wire in a light bulb 'glows' , the surface of the sun 'glows', the burning beeswax vapour of a candle flame 'glows'.

 

surfaces reacting to incoming light is NOT 'glow', 'glow iis surfaces producing OUTGOING light.

 

Edited November 23, 2023 by Zalificent Corvinus

[Arielle Popstar]

6 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

It's not the fault of "wear" that you don't know how to use it.

Blame creators who don't realize there is more than just the left hand attachment point.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

6 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

It's not the fault of "wear" that you don't know how to use it.

 

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

there is more than just the left hand attachment point

RIGHT HAND...

Thank you for proving my point.

[Arielle Popstar]

32 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

 

RIGHT HAND...

Thank you for proving my point.

Ok yes the other left and thank you for agreeing with mine.

[Frionil Fang]

12 hours ago, animats said:

Different scaling for different texture maps (normals, roughness, etc.) on the same object.

Massive disagree. You can spruce up surfaces even without using custom-baked-and-matching material textures, and changing the scale independently makes that much more flexible. SL shouldn't become a "bake it in Blender/Substance Painter" system and retain its sandboxiness instead.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Frionil Fang

[Lewis Nerd]

Ban lines and "security orbs", especially those that eject you to home with no warning, with absolutely no indication that someone is paranoid enough to set their land to 'private' in the first place.

It's just a game.  There's nothing you can do in game that has any bearing on real life.  Therefore there's no need to aggressively ban anyone from flying around and looking for interesting builds.  If you've just got what looks like a Linden or marketplace home, it has zero interest to me, but given that you can use camera controls to "look inside" areas you are excluded from, the whole concept of 'security' is a joke anyway.

[Lewis Nerd]

13 hours ago, animats said:

Some legacy technical features we could do without:

• Classic "Glow". It usually looks awful. Glow in PBR is supposed to be a side effect of a bright light interacting with the environment, and eventually SL should have that.

Nothing wrong with 'glow', if used in a small amount, as it can represent neon signs or other lighting that would have a glow of sorts.  Full on, yes, it can look bad.  But as for PBR ... can't see why everyone is getting so hyped up over it.  Haven't seen any sensible use of it yet.

[LexxiXhan]

I would like to remove..

Everything I can't remember how to do in SL. It's been a while 😳

[animats]

2 hours ago, Frionil Fang said:

Massive disagree. You can spruce up surfaces even without using custom-baked-and-matching material textures, and changing the scale independently makes that much more flexible. SL shouldn't become a "bake it in Blender/Substance Painter" system and retain its sandboxiness instead.

Do you know of an in-world example of that done well? Usually, if normals, roughness, and albedo are misaligned, it looks pretty bad.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

15 minutes ago, animats said:

Do you know of an in-world example of that done well? Usually, if normals, roughness, and albedo are misaligned, it looks pretty bad.

I can't think of an example of using these misaligned, but I have used normal and spectral maps with a different diffuse map. The ceiling in this pic is an instance:

ETA: I just remembered I didn't use a blank diffuse, but rather a homemade tileable "plaster" diffuse map for this.

Edited November 23, 2023 by Scylla Rhiadra

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

18 minutes ago, animats said:

Do you know of an in-world example of that done well? Usually, if normals, roughness, and albedo are misaligned, it looks pretty bad.

Are we referring to just adding a different bump and specular than the main texture here?

I do that ALL THE TIME when I get things like metal jewelry or painted / plaster walls. I'd add one of the various bump and specular maps from texture kits I've got, and then scale it to how grainy I want things to be. I've got particular favorites I put on metal items that either lacked bump and spec, or had ones that didn't make them feel very "metallic" - and that's my most common case for this. I'll very often scale them different from the diffusion map as they're not even the same texture to begin with.

 

[Frionil Fang]

57 minutes ago, animats said:

Do you know of an in-world example of that done well?

I couldn't link you to a location, but as the above posters said... being able to mix&match material channels can be a very nice way to spice things up without having access to "professional techniques". Got a boring old prim thing with just a basic diffuse texture? Slap a subtle scratchy normal map and a perlin noisy specular on it and it suddenly looks a lot more real. Being able to scale said normal/specular maps on demand lets you adjust and match the piecemeal materials. I'd imagine with PBR it's not quite the same since the channels are no longer independent in their own separate textures in every case, but I sure would not like forcing things towards a "professional" workflow, when going outside the intended spec can also have nice results.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Do you know of an in-world example of that done well? Usually, if normals, roughness, and albedo are misaligned, it looks pretty bad.

Imagine you bought a copy mod furniture item, and it's flat., matte and boring

you replace the 512x512 wood texture from 2006 with a modern 1024x1024, but the normal and spec for that makes the slab wood look too rough for "nice furniture", so you add a differentially scaled normal map with some carved pattern, and a brighter specular map, so the wood looks like smooth French Polish finished wood with carved detail rather than a plain old flat slab of untreated wood from a lumber yard.

I regularly buy full perm materials textures for stuff like embossed metal and wallpaper, because I KNOW I can use it to spruce up slab marble panels, or wooden furniture, or turn a plain sheet steel texture into a cool looking repousse work decorative item.

 

People do this all the time, as mentioned by...

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I have used normal and spectral maps with a different diffuse map. The ceiling in this pic is an instance

1 hour ago, UnilWay SpiritWeaver said:

I do that ALL THE TIME when I get things like metal jewelry or painted / plaster walls

1 hour ago, Frionil Fang said:

Slap a subtle scratchy normal map and a perlin noisy specular on it and it suddenly looks a lot more real.

 

Just because YOU don't know how to use this doesn't mean it shouldn't be used.