Anyone found static mesh items increased in LI?

[Rya Nitely]

Anyone found static mesh items increased in LI after these recent changes?

I have come across some items of mine that have increased in LI. The problem is I sell on MP (under Reid Parkin) and items that are advertised as 1 Li are now 2.

I only checked a few items. I think it might be the physics that has increased and therefore pushed LI up. I can fix it by changing items to convex hull from prim. But this won't work for items that need to be prim.

Do I now have to check every item I have for sale and then fix it, or increase the LI in the listing after I have checked all my items? This is a tremendous amount of work. 😖

Anyone else experiencing this or am I alone? 😢

Edited April 6 by Rya Nitely

[Jaylinbridges]

I had a build that was 24 prims that went to 44 prims after the recent change.   I traced the problem to 3 regular prims set to prim, linked to the rest of the mesh.  Changed the prims to convex hull and the build dropped to 19 prims.  So yeah you might have to do some work 

 

Edited April 6 by Jaylinbridges

[Qie Niangao]

Oh boy. If this is happening then somewhere, stuff is getting returned for exceeding parcel LI limits.

[BilliJo Aldrin]

There's always something isn't there? I'm glad I build with prims, because a prim is a prim is a prim.

But how many mesh object I have bought and rezzed are going to be affected?

Glad I never max out my land impact, I always keep a healthy surplus.

😁

[Marianne Little]

2 hours ago, Rya Nitely said:

Anyone found static mesh items increased in LI after these recent changes?

I have come across some items of mine that have increased in LI. The problem is I sell on MP (under Reid Parkin) and items that are advertised as 1 Li are now 2.

I only checked a few items. I think it might be the physics that has increased and therefore pushed LI up. I can fix it by changing items to convex hull from prim. But this won't work for items that need to be prim.

Do I now have to check every item I have for sale and then fix it, or increase the LI in the listing after I have checked all my items? This is a tremendous amount of work. 😖

Anyone else experiencing this or am I alone? 😢

I can rez what I have of yours when I log in. I do not have your stuff out in the garden now, but I have in my inventory.

[Henri Beauchamp]

6 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

I'm glad I build with prims, because a prim is a prim is a prim.

Well, you can convert a prim-based builds to the LI system, and it is usually very worth it in term of parcel prims usage: once converted to a ”convex hull”, a non-tortured prim land impact is reduced to 0.5; convert it to ”none” (child prims only, not the root prim), and you might even reduce the total LI of the object further (though, it usually only affects the Physics cost, which is still a good thing for the sim health, reducing the Physics engine lag).

The only caveat is that you must do the conversion in a place where you have plenty of unused LI (a sandbox is the ideal place for this), or you risk to see your object returned to your inventory should the LI algorithm go wild (it does happen, especially if the converted prim is a tortured prim) and suddenly causes the object LI to skyrocket (I have seen 30 prims objects exploding to a 200+ LI); for best results, ensure you start the conversion with the root object (changing its type from ”Prim” to ”Convex hull”), then continue with children, and as a rule of thumb (but there are exceptions too, depending on the prim actual usage/function/torture level) do not attempt to turn tortured prims to ”Convex hull” (but you may convert them to ”None” with many benefits, as long as you do not need them to collide with avatars). Sculpty prims, however, should not be converted (even as a child with ”None” type, they will always account for 1 LI and most of the time 2 LI or more).

Once the conversion done, you can see very nice benefits in term of LI (sometimes 50%).

Also, the LI is rounded in a 5/5 way (i.e. a an object with a 1.49 LI will account of 1 LI/prim in the parcel allotment, while an object with a 1.50 LI accounts for 2 LI/prims): by cleverly linking objects together (or on the contrary splitting some), you can lower your land prim usage, using this rounding to your advantage (i.e. maximizing the number of objects with a xx.49 LI)... 😜

Edited April 6 by Henri Beauchamp

[Marianne Little]

@Rya Nitely

I have bought plants from Reid Parkin inworld, from the Marketplace, and got some included with builds (From Maya's and more).

I have controlled the Marketplace purchases. I can not be sure where I got the other plants that has Reid Parkin as creator, they could be edited.

Stepping stones: All 1 Li except the longest one that's 2 Li. Same as MP listing.

Daisies pack: All correct, 1 and 2 Li as listed.

Rocks brown pack: MP lists Li 1-2 for single and clumps. All are 1 Li, so here 1 Li went down for at least one clump.

Climbing Rose pack white: MP lists 1-3 Li and archs 7 Li. The archs are 4 Li and 6 Li for the linked one - 1 Li down. The climbers (not archs) are 1-3  Li as listed.

Rose Bush pack: 1 Li each bush as listed on MP.

Wild Bushes pack: All one Li, as listed.

Geranium hardy white: All one Li, as listed.

Hibiscus tall yellow: 1-4 Li, as listed.

Climbing Ivy pack: All 1 Li, except the Tall size. Same as MP listing.

Hanging Vines long: All are 1 Li as listed.

Red blossom Vine: All parts 1 Li as listed, also the long fence.

-----------------------

So this did not increase in Li, instead 2 items dropped 1 Li.

 

Edited April 7 by Marianne Little
added one more

[AmeliaJ08]

The Lindens giveth and The Lindens taketh away

[Zalificent Corvinus]

A friend and I tested this earlier today, on one of her currently empty double-prim parcels.

LI is supposedly based on 3 values, download cost, physics cost, and server cost, and generally which ever is highest, determines the LI.

 

We found that larger objects, like buildings were more likely to show a reduction, and a larger reduction. One notable exception was a building some 40 m square, and 16 m high, which was 41 LI and is now 39 LI. Contrary to expectations this 2 LI drop wasn't due to the "15% cut in Download cost" as that had always been under 10, and wasn't due to server cost, also always under 10 on that item, in fact it's PHYSICS cost went down from from just under 41, to just under 39.

 

Smaller items, furniture, decor items etc., fared rather unpredictably. A decorative kitchen/dining item, a serving platter with an original LI of 2, was now LI 3, it's download weight had dropped from 1.9 to 1.8, BUT it's server cost WENT UP from under 2.0 to 2.8.

 

Items that went up were a minority, but there's enough of them that it raises some potential problems. Customers are unlikely to complain too loudly if a mesh house advertised as 100 LI turns out to be only 85 LI, but when a 6 LI sofa turns out to be 7 LI, or 2 LI shrubs end up as 3 LI, they WILL complain about this, and may well flag the listing as "product not as advertised", and when said products get de-listed the merchants are going to scream.

 

So, people selling smaller non-worn home & garden mesh items, will basically have to rez EVERY SINGLE item, and manually check the new LI, and edit their listings accordingly, to avoid getting their stuff flagged and de-listed.

 

Then there's the potential that LL having tinkered not just with the download costs, but also physics and server costs, MIGHT have done so in error, and might then "fix" this at some point, causing the merchants to have to re-test and edit the listings for their stuff, ALL OVER AGAIN.

 

That's assuming their "generous LI reduction" wasn't deliberately designed to claw back everything they "generously gave" us.

 

 

[Love Zhaoying]

Since the change to the LI calculation change is supposedly based on the "download weight", if the LI INCREASES - wouldn't that imply a bug in the algorithm for the "download weight" calculation?

[Whirly Fizzle]

I would file a bug report on Canny & give SLURLS / marketplace links to affected content: https://secondlife.canny.io/server-bugs

[Charlotte Bartlett]

I have to ask - why didn't just change region limits by the %.

Why was it done at the object level, any technical reason -  does anybody know?

 

[Rick Nightingale]

7 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

I have to ask - why didn't just change region limits by the %

I'm purely guessing, but that might have impact on renting if you rent by the LI, if anyone works like that. It might have made mine interesting.

Doing it on the mesh calculations to simply(!) change what people have rezzed avoids any complications like that, although clearly introduces a few of its own.

Edited April 6 by Rick Nightingale

[Charlotte Bartlett]

2 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

I'm purely guessing, but that might have impact on renting if you rent by the LI, if anyone works like that.

Doing it on the mesh calculations to simply change what people have rezzed avoids any complications like that, although clearly introduces a few of its own.

I would go the other route - doing it at the region level just increases each parcel by pct (much like you can pay extra to have 30K LI versus 25 LI on full regions).
Adjusting how every single object is calculated is an interesting alternative and effectively every single creator now would have to go and update each listing, each vendor ad work with the new counts...  (I am not going to do that unless something major so a few big houses).  But was genuinely interested in the methodology and rationale (beyond freeing things up for probes etc).

Edited April 6 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Rick Nightingale]

True; I can't be bothered with most of mine (only the big things) since they should be decreasing if anything. It's a bonus, not a problem for buyers. But then, I don't have hundreds of full-perm mesh items though that others can use in builds, and would have a chain-reaction like effect on totals which might make a bigger difference to prospective buyers.

I still tend to think the rental/LI issue could be a source of greater problems. Whatever, as usual in SL we get what we get and just have to deal with it, lol.

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

I have to ask - why didn't just change region limits by the %.

Why was it done at the object level, any technical reason -  does anybody know?

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15325-increased-land-impact-allowance-is-here/

It is all explained in their blog post.  Summary - PBR extra lights and mirrors will use extra LI, so we are cutting the weight for LI mesh downloads.

Some of the speculation here seems to not agree with the LL notice technical information.

Quote

We’d like to take this opportunity to remind residents that this allowance is being given for no charge and is intended to help offset any additional Land Impact spent on manually rezzed reflection probes and lights, and of course in anticipation of the upcoming Mirrors release.

Q.  How can I see what my meshes download weight used to be?

1. At this time you will only be able to compare it by rezzing an object on the Beta Grid (Aditi) running older server code, which will be for a limited time as we are constantly moving forward. Any Beta Grid regions running server build 2024-02-21.7995320426 should report the old Download Weight.

2. Q.  This is confusing.  Why didn’t you raise the region's prim (Land Impact) limits?

3. Download Weight effectively controls the scene triangle budget.  While the limit was appropriate when Download Weight was first introduced, it’s too restrictive by modern standards.  By adjusting Download Weight independently of other resource limits, we can avoid overloading other systems (such as physics and script time) that are already using appropriate limits.  Essentially, the weights were out of balance, with download weight carrying too much emphasis compared to other weights, and this change moves towards a better balance.

 

Edited April 7 by Jaylinbridges

[Marianne Little]

16 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

------------------------------------------- (snip)

Items that went up were a minority, but there's enough of them that it raises some potential problems. Customers are unlikely to complain too loudly if a mesh house advertised as 100 LI turns out to be only 85 LI, but when a 6 LI sofa turns out to be 7 LI, or 2 LI shrubs end up as 3 LI, they WILL complain about this, and may well flag the listing as "product not as advertised", and when said products get de-listed the merchants are going to scream.

 

So, people selling smaller non-worn home & garden mesh items, will basically have to rez EVERY SINGLE item, and manually check the new LI, and edit their listings accordingly, to avoid getting their stuff flagged and de-listed.

--------------------------------

Mm, it is moments like this when I am so happy to NOT be a SL merchant.

If I was a seller of smaller Li non-worn items, I would face the critics and reply to them: "Thank you for notifying me, I have repaid your money".

And call it a better solution than spending hours and hours of work for items that cost maybe 100L.

The loss of 100L would be better than all that work, and I could then correct the Li number in the ad. Check the expensive items first and foremost.

I do not know if LL will relist the stuff swiftly after the Li is corrected, LL has to know the workload is massive for the merchants. LL should not make it worse for them, but.... 🙄

Edited April 7 by Marianne Little
added a sentence

[Qie Niangao]

On 4/6/2024 at 3:19 AM, Jaylinbridges said:

I had a build that was 24 prims that went to 44 prims after the recent change.   I traced the problem to 3 regular prims set to prim, linked to the rest of the mesh.  Changed the prims to convex hull and the build dropped to 19 prims. 

The mystery to me is how it was 24 prims before the change. (I'm trying to understand more precisely what happened in specific cases led to higher Land Impact with this accounting change.) In this case, the prims were set to Prim physics which presumably was also true before the accounting change, so maybe somehow their proper Physics weight was being ignored in the object's total LI until this accounting change forced a recalculation. It would be fun to see what happens if the linkset were merely re-linked in the few briefly-preserved regions on Aditi.

(Although, come to think of it, do mere mortals have a way of forcing an update of their Inventory over on the beta grid? At some point, one could trigger that with an account password change and a couple logins, but does that still work??)

I'm also pretty mystified how Server Weight could change. It's a simple calculation on counts of links and scripts* that, to have changed, must be simply wrong either before or after the update. (That's in contrast to both Physics and Download weights that include in their calculations some quantities divinely revealed, so if those change we can at best discover patterns in the whims of the divine.) I guess a correct Server score of 2.8 could only happen with objects of 3, 4, or 5 links, with script counts of five, three, and one, respectively, but how could such an object ever have scored 2.0?

Hmm. I just discovered that a 4-prim linkset can have four scripts added and remain at 2.8 Server weight whereas that number should be only three scripts. That 2.8 is very volatile, though: take a copy into inventory and re-rezz it and it's 3.0, and changing Physics Type causes a proper recalculation, too. (I have a feeling this bug is reported already but searching Canny is hopeless and there's no telling what made it into the github jira archive.) It's not obvious how that particular bug would generate the 2.0-to-2.8 discrepancy, but bugs tend to be buggy.

________________
*Note in that wiki article the link to the "final" formula,  MIN{ (0.5*num_prims) + (0.25 * num_scripts), num_prims }

[Whirly Fizzle]

I filed a Canny bug, seeing as noone has filed this yet, so so it doesn't fall off the radar.

https://secondlife.canny.io/server-bugs/p/land-impact-of-some-objects-has-increased-in-server-version-2024-03-188333615376

If anyone has content that has the increase in LI, please can you comment on that Canny issue  ❤️ 

[Luna Bliss]

On 4/6/2024 at 2:19 AM, Jaylinbridges said:

I had a build that was 24 prims that went to 44 prims after the recent change.   I traced the problem to 3 regular prims set to prim, linked to the rest of the mesh.  Changed the prims to convex hull and the build dropped to 19 prims.  So yeah you might have to do some work 

 

Hmmm that is odd. I have some prims (set to prim)  linked to mesh and saw no increase.  What was your linking order?

[Maestro Linden]

Hi guys, can you point me at the locations of specific objects that have appeared to increase in LI since this change?  I would like to rez them in an old version on the beta grid, and get exact stats for how LI shifted with them.  There is an open bug report in the feedback portal based on this forum thread, at https://feedback.secondlife.com/server-bugs/p/land-impact-of-some-objects-has-increased-in-server-version-2024-03-188333615376

[Charlotte Bartlett]

On 4/6/2024 at 9:07 PM, Jaylinbridges said:

https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15325-increased-land-impact-allowance-is-here/

It is all explained in their blog post.  Summary - PBR extra lights and mirrors will use extra LI, so we are cutting the weight for LI mesh downloads.

Some of the speculation here seems to not agree with the LL notice technical information.

Thanks I had read, but that doesn't explain why at the object level versus region level to allow for the probe impacts.

[Jaylinbridges]

10 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Hmmm that is odd. I have some prims (set to prim)  linked to mesh and saw no increase.  What was your linking order?

This was not my build, but someone's early attempt at a mesh winter landscape scene I bought on MP for a very low price.  I'll need to rezz another original copy on the Beta grid to see what happened with it.  All I know is the LI dropped to half when I set a lantern shade prim to convex hull from prim, and there were 3 lanterns.  I need to confirm the original LI before the LL 15% change too, since I can't do that now on the main grid.