Break Legacy Content!

[Greene Paine]

Please LL, come up with new 2011 era accounting systems for ALL things that use resources. (scripts, attachments, normal prims, sculpts, meshes) Then toss out the old idea that one metric (prims) can mean anything useful.

To impliment:

a) Have all objects created prior to a certain date use the old accounting (copies of old objects count as new objects)

b) Or toss out ALL old accounting and simple give people a few months to expand or shrik their resource usage based on new accounting.

PROS:

A TON LESS LAG!!

CONS:

My old prim house will cost BLAH now instead of 10 prims. Boohoo.

[Ann Otoole]

I don't think destruction of millions of dollars worth of content owned by many thousands of customers would be a good move from the PR and Legal perspective.

As for lag? Get an empty region and add 20 or more avatars with no attachments and wearing only system clothes and you will have server side lag. This transition to over 20 avatars cause massive lag arrived with homestead sims. For some reason full regions began to perform like homesteads with the exception they allow more prims. But whatever. Just my observation over time. Something server side appears to have issues with lots of avatars.

If you are having client side lag issues then I recommend you upgrade to a GTX560 or better on a new type mobo with a new modern CPU and 4 GB RAM. Then when BF3 is released you will see what a real video game is like lol. Watch that 12 minutes of gameplay trailer for an eye opener. Would love to see SL perform that well.

You do realize that mesh is not a solution to all issues and that SL designers will push things to the max (as they will always do) with mesh resulting in identical performance issues but just looking lots better right?

[Greene Paine]

Perhaps I could agree with you if things actually broke, but they won't, they will just cost different. Also plenty of lag is created by unrestrained use of unmetered resources, like scripts, or attachments with 256 prims each.

[Ann Otoole]

Mesh is not going to satisfy the fashion business so people are going to make complex attachments anyway. However mesh will make it possible to make even more complicated looking shoes. And will help with some wigs. The issue with the zillion prims attachments is the obsolete resizers using a script in every prim. The solution for that is out there but will not do a thing about the hud systems for franken feet that result in shoes using 3 to 5 MB per shoe that are no mod so the scripts cannot be ripped out.

Imagine what would happen if LL suddenly declared the products of one of their showcase businesses (purported to have made millions of us dollars) unacceptable or required more payments to use. The legal ramifications are astronomical. The public relations nightmare of LL having heavily promoted one person to the point they mead millions and then LL declared the content that person sold persona non grata would be horrible.

If people want a game that has blocy content or WoW style turtlewear with kludgy textures then they have a choice. However games will be increasing in detail so people unwilling to upgrade to modern hardware are going to be left out in the cold. In the game business it has always been upgrade or die and this fact of life is not changing.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

The developers of WoW and other real games are wise enough *not* to allow user created content, or if, then monitored and revised and limited strictly. Of course meshies will find ways for arbitrary usage of mesh imports, just because LL still offers plenty of ways to do so -  instead of reasonably limiting and restricting mesh imports to the visual gimmick they *probably* can be (who needs fully scalable, physical and editable meshes, anyway? How will the to be expected IP theft be dealt with? Techies being overambitioned are the worst case scenario in IT development). As it is now they only are loading another burden on the environment without generating noteworthy advantages.

And Ann, who will be left in SL if THIS will require massive and costly hardware upgrades? For running something which never ever will be able to compete with those real games you mentioned, anyway? Don´t expect people to spend zillions on  hardware upgrades - as if Linden fees were not overpriced enough.

 

[Vivienne Schell]

"...if things actually broke, but they won't, they will just cost different..."

Any limit change of the once established accountance system will break existing content. And "cost different" isn´t a valid reaon for introducing a different accountance system.

Ann is absolutely right there.

[Drongle McMahon]

"without generating noteworthy advantages."

The noteworthy advantage that "meshies" would have generated if mesh had not been poisoned with selective peanalties would be similar things having 1/20 the triangle count, thus 1/20 the rendering burden, of the same content made with sculpties and prims.  This would have greatly improved the performance of low-end machines. As it is, everyone will continue to make the same gpu-crippling stuff they do now. In fact it will be substantiall worse because, just like meshes, the 10-64m sculpties and prims will stay at high LOD over huge distances, but unlike meshes, they will not be penalised for the extra burden.

[Psistorm Voxel]

---

Drongle McMahon wrote:

"without generating noteworthy advantages."



The noteworthy advantage that "meshies" would have generated if mesh had not been poisoned with selective peanalties would be similar things having 1/20 the triangle count, thus 1/20 the rendering burden, of the same content made with sculpties and prims.  This would have greatly improved the performance of low-end machines. As it is, everyone will continue to make the same gpu-crippling stuff they do now. In fact it will be substantiall worse because, just like meshes, the 10-64m sculpties and prims will stay at high LOD over huge distances, but unlike meshes, they will not be penalised for the extra burden.

---

this. there is nothing else to add, i just wanted to emphasize this post again for how true it is, and kudos to you drongle, for summing it up so well.

 

Regarding the topic: Ive suggested a system to that extent myself, with a transitional phase which would allow people to adjust their stuff. Though lets face it. certain objects would very much be broken. BUT those objects would/should be things like:

• buckle boots where every buckle, nay even the little holes for the shoelaces are modeled out of sculpts or torii
• little earrings or other jewelery items fashioned out of 50 prims or more
• sculpted hair with a color change script, which happens to be existing in every prim, rather than using llSetLinkColor() or other useful functions
• builds where every last detail is modeled out with torii instead of using sculpt or mesh to achieve the same look with a LOT less triangle density, and also a lot less physics complexity
• etc.

Builds like the above examples really are unnessecary and waste sim resources. Maybe not everyone has the skill to do it efficently. But lets face it. Secondlife lets you build wasteful right now, and there are NO hints or ramifications besides a rather un-noticeable ARC value, which is hard to interpret anyways. SL needs to make a user aware that jamming 50 torii together and wearing that as a necklace along with an avatar filled with those things will impact server and client performance. They shouldnt draconically limit everything, but there needs to be a certain treshold of things that really shouldnt exist.

Which brings the mesh debate up again. Mesh could do just that, allow for modeled detail without going overboard, if executed sensibly. But right now this isnt done, neither is an overarcing content measurement system planned, either.

[Vivienne Schell]

Oh, yes, another meshie myth. As if imported meshes would be soooooo much better for improving performance. They may have (if optimised for online games of course), some kind of advantage. But where will this "advantage" be if you allow the formula 1 imported mesh = 1 Prim Cube in the accountance system? There will be none anymore, just because a 512 sqm parcel would become overfloated by 117 complex mesh imports, which in their complexity will sum up to a total performance killer.

Additionally mesh does much more harm to bandwidth as any format in SL does.

Give me ONE example for a working online game, where user created, complex meshes are allowed unrestricted and are actually working.

And anyway: If all of you really were thinking of Second Life and not of yourself and your Blender skills and the Linden Dollar bling you´d favor a simple Prim/Linkset to Mesh converter. This would be efficient enough to change SL into a mesh paradise.

[Marielle Caerndow]

"If all of you really were thinking of Second Life and not of yourself and your Blender skills and the Linden Dollar bling you´d favor a simple Prim/Linkset to Mesh converter. This would be efficient enough to change SL into a mesh paradise. "

Meant sarcastic or ironic, I guess.

[Drongle McMahon]

"the formula 1 imported mesh = 1 Prim Cube "

Haha. I am quite sure even the most arduous mesh proponents have never suggested such an obviously ridiculous idea. (Although, when you think about it, meshes, sculpties or anything esle attached to an avatar are not even counted as 1 prim! How ridiculous is that?)

As for the prim->mesh converter, what's the purpose there? If you are right, that would just turn the nice efficient editable prims into immutable bandwidth hogging atrocities. Why would you advocate that?

[Greene Paine]

I really don't see why everyone is whining about this. You have -no- real argument. This is a good thing with no serious downside other than driving out stagnation in favor of innovation.

 

-My proposal-

Measure: Create systems to accurately measure the resources that -ALL- user-created content consumes in all its forms and uses. (i.e. scripts, attachments, sculpties, and normal prims.)

Inform: Display this information in a simple way to all users so that they can make intelligent buying decisions about what they choose to wear or rez. Also provide more complex breakdowns for builders who wish to optimize their content for max detail with less cost.

Limit: Limit what can be rezzed or worn to an amount that would still allow most avatars and builds that currently exist on the grid. NO ONE IS SAYING YOU NEED TO LOOK LIKE A WoW AVATAR! Creating -any- limit at all will create a pressure for content optimization where none previously existed.

Phase In: Give people time to replace things that are absurdly resource hungry. Inefficient is ok, but wildly uberly '256 undeletable resizers' inefficient? That stuff needs to go. It's unfair for creators to not give consumers the ability to choose anyway. Let them delete scripts if they want.

 

-Sticking Points-

Legacy Content: This is what most people get bent out of shape about, claiming that million dollar products will vanish into brokenness and the sky will rain fire blah, blah, blah. Well this would indeed be unfair if no tools were provided to create the same things more efficiently, but there are. This will simply change the playing field so that content creators who innovate and reduce lag while maximizing detail have the advantage. You already made your million dollars from your 2006 era shoes, that's pretty good! Now make 2011 era shoes and make another million.

Skill: "Well gee Greene, I can't be bothered to improve my skills and learn how to make things that don't lag up the butt hole." Well then frankly? You have no business making stuff, or if you do than it's going to clearly display just how inefficient it is and the consumer can make the decision about whether they want to use it or not.

WoW: "OMG, OMG, OMG!! I just broke free from Blizzard and now I'm here in SL with all the cool kids and I want to dis all efficient game design!!!" Ok first of all, calm the hell down. Limits does not equal WoW ok? Let's just dispel that right here. Good quality mesh design can make cool avatars that are highly optimized. Think Crysis, or Gears of War.

 

-Benefits-

Less Lag: Yeah sure it's not the end-all of all lag in SL, but it's a major, MAJOR one. If LL got this taken care of then they could snipe out the remaining issues.

Low End Hardware: Hey! All you people still rockin' your cassette players and trying to play SL on your Commodore 64, this is good news for you! Now you can get a higher FPS and have less lag as in the point listed above. Logical content limits imposed with equally powerful creation tools is a GOOD THING.

Moore's Law: Hey, that's the law that says every two years in SL I can fit twice as many tori chest hairs on my AV right? Yeah let's stop doing that. If limits are imposed than Moore's Law will actualy start resulting in faster FPS and less lag instead of just piling on more inefficiency.

Mesh: How can mesh expect to compete with systems that have no basis in reality? If LL did the same good job of limiting Mesh with all other content types as well, than each tool could be used for what it's best at instead of trying to 'compete' with each other. Let's face it, sculpties = organic shapes with lossy compression ok? Lossless sculpts = crude mesh hack. Let each creation tool do what it's good at.

 

-In Closing-

As a previous poster said the game business has always been upgrade or die. How long do you expect Linden Lab to kill its own cash cow so that a FEW lazy content creators can't go back into their legacy shoes their selling and replace the age-old resizes with more efficient ones?

As for avatar limits, I know it kinda sucks, but get used to it. We all have to look at your avatar so it impacts everyone. And derender isn't a solution, not when almost everyone has an incredibly inefficient avatars. Also where in this post did I mention mesh exclusively? Mesh is the one thing Linden Lab has gotten smart about, but sadly they expect it to compete with systems based in lala land.

We all want SL to be a less laggy, more detailed place. So let's drop off our old baggage that's holding us down so that we can fly!

[Nix Manx]

I have to agree here, me and a friend were discussing this last night, funnily enough the conversation came about because there just happened to be a 'prim + script' weighing machine in the shop we were in. I have 11 scripts and something around 30 prims on my avatar (and i still look as good as anyone else). My friend had 42 scripts and a shocking 298 prims on her scantily clad avatar, when she took off her shoes she went down to 79 prims!!

 

There needs to be a better prim limit to avatars and sculpties should be raised in prim costs, there is no excuse to making a pair of shoes with over 200 prims worth of sculpties, its totally irresponsible and an incredible drain on sim resources. Costs should be proportionate else noone is going to buy meshes when someone can build something with x amount of sculpties, have less prims and more load for less cost. It doesnt make any sence.

[Vivienne Schell]

Greene, you still fail to answer my question:

Where is the successful online game which allows uploads of complex user created 3D models, does not seriously check if the uploaded model is user created or stolen from somewhere, and is based on some kind of commercial object trade.

Is there one? No, there is none. If there were one, i am absolutely sure you´d be a millionaire. But obviously you are not, so why oh why?

"You already made your million dollars from your 2006 era shoes, that's pretty good! Now make 2011 era shoes and make another million."

Well, almost nobody ever made a million by content creation in SL. With an average of 500 people a year being able to make a *decent* RL by exploiting SL (which includes every possible exploit, not *only* object creation) and tenthousands making a few dollars for paying Linden fees your thesis is based on quicksand. SL is a hobbyist place, and hobbyists do it for the fun and not for making millions or for spending hundreds of working hours on creating the perfect online game 3D model. And anyway, not everyone able to handle a camera is a good photographer, and not everyone able to handle 3Ds is a good modeller.

"So let's drop off our old baggage that's holding us down so that we can fly!"

Oh, let´s drop all the inept hobbyists who made SL big and still keep it running. Right, drop them. And have fun with yourself and all your wannabe millionaire friends on your meshed up grid.

[Greene Paine]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. SL is not a game nor is it like anything else. It's honestly more like the internet, and that's completely user created.  Although from what I've heard of IMVU they allow user created stuff. (Oh I pointed out a successful game with user imported mesh. WHAT NOW? HUH?! lol...)

As for copyright issues .... listen, that's a big issue everywhere, not just SL. I'm not going to arrogantly pretend LL of all people are going to find the magic solution to that issue. Yet are we supposed to hold back technology until some Albert Einstein of copywrite solves all the problems? No. We move on anyway.

As for the hobbyists, I never said they had to go. I just said if they want to sell their **bleep** they're going to have to compete with each other on efficiency, and consumers will want efficiency if they know their resources are limited. If they are true hobbyists then they aren't in it for the money yes?

As for the millionaire thing, that was in response to other posts in this thread talking about breaking million dollar products. Perhaps you should read those before you wildly claim that I'm proposing this for all my "millionaire friends" or whatever it is you said.

[Vivienne Schell]

"Although from what I've heard of IMVU they allow user created stuff. (Oh I pointed out a successful game with user imported mesh. WHAT NOW? HUH?! lol...)"

IMVU does *NEITHER* allow complex mesh imports (they all are restricted and revised and converted into the platform format by human peers) *NOR* are users free to upload anything without getting checked for possible IP right violations by human peers.

As a result, IMVU actually looks *much* worse than SL looks right now. And it´s a static chat room, not anything close to Second Life or online games. The *only* advantage is that IMVU runs flawlessly and reliable on any computer. But it would *not* do so if they would listen to *your* conceptions.

[Greene Paine]

As for Nix Manx, yes I'm glad you agree and I see it the same way. I really think that by creating a pressure to optimize it would be a very creative and innovative force in SL. I really want to stir discussion about this from both sides of the argument, and god knows some of you out there are more technically aware of the hard facts behind this issue.

"But it would *not* do so if they would listen to *your* conceptions." 

Right because practical limits of resources is such a bad thing. You remind me of someone at a company arguing that a budget is a bad idea because it will ruin their ability to creatively spend money. You have no real argument and now your relying of 'pseudo facts' to make your case. Also I mentioned the internet, are you just selectively reading now?

 I've listened to what you've said, and that's one point of view. If you have some actual facts why my proposal would be bad I'd like to hear. You seem to talk a lot about IP but as I said before (and you didn't respond to) that is a problem bigger than LL. IP theft is real, and SL is not going to be able to both stop it and have user created content at the same time.

[Vivienne Schell]

One thing on the absurd proposal for breking legacy content by introducing limits:

If General Motors would sell a car to you and then, after a year or so, declare that it exceeds any technical limit and therefore sends some General Motors exec to destroy it, without any compensation for the loss.

How long would General Motors survive? A week? One day? One minute?

 

[Ann Otoole]

---

Greene Paine wrote:

...

As for the millionaire thing, that was in response to other posts in this thread talking about breaking million dollar products. Perhaps you should read those before you wildly claim that I'm proposing this for all my "millionaire friends" or whatever it is you said.

---

That is millions of dollars worth of content. Perhaps you skipped over what was written resulting in an increase in your hostility.

You came in here with what appears to be an aggressive attitude. You are aggressive towards anyone that does not agree with you. You are exactly what many predicted. Someone that wants to, in your own words I believe, drive off LL customers  and have the economy limited to a select few modelers. Do you honestly think LL wants you driving their revenue stream off?

LL is not going to destroy existing content. LL is not going to "drive off" anyone. It takes time to get everyone off of script in every prim resizers and I am certainly helping facilitate this process by distributing a one script linkset resizer. I chose to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem or monetizing the solution.

I expect the conversion to mesh to take 2 or more years. If LL comes after it's customers in the wrong way then LL will risk losing those customers. I have not observed LL to willingly break content and have instead observed LL to go to a lot of effort to avoid breaking content. I just don't see LL taking any draconian action against their customers.

Whoever makes a linkset to obj export will make a ton of money. It would be better if LL gave it to us in the client so a 200 prim shoe could be converted to a mesh with the components "welded" and unseen faces removed and polygons optimized. If we had this we could export our complicated linksets and then import them as mesh and send as free updates. Wouldn't that be nice?

As for the copyright issue? Don't worry. There will be plenty of people notifying IP owners when their mesh content is spotted in SL. To import mesh IP without a license into SL is to lose your rights to upload mesh. Won't take long for people to learn not to do that.

[leliel Mirihi]

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

One thing on the absurd proposal for breking legacy content by introducing limits:

If General Motors would sell a car to you and then, after a year or so, declare that it exceeds any technical limit and therefore sends some General Motors exec to destroy it, without any compensation for the loss.

How long would General Motors survive? A week? One day? One minute?

 

---

Bad example, GM did that in in 2002.

 

Anyway I think there is a way to make this work. Give prims and sculpties a PE based on the resources they use, but also increase the number of prims a sim can hold so you can fit exactly 15000 of the most costly objects in it. This way no legacy content will be returned but users will have a huge incentive to optimize their builds.

[Ann Otoole]

Can't wait to see some of the most complex and beautiful builds in SL closed and creators quit because LL blew their builds away.

 

Not going to happen.

[leliel Mirihi]

---

Ann Otoole wrote:

Can't wait to see some of the most complex and beautiful builds in SL closed and creators quit because LL blew their builds away.

 

Not going to happen.

---

I take it you didn't understand what I said.

[Greene Paine]

You're right. I am defensive / aggressive. I believe deeply about this subject and no one wants to debate logically on it. Everyone just spews psudo facts and no one at all has even mentioned what I said about phasing things in or having legacy content use the old system. We can't stay in the past. Perhaps if LL had done this much sooner SL would not have missed it's shot and exited out of an exponential growth curve.

Granted that's not too upseting because they survived and limped on to make SL way better than it was in 2006 when everyone and their dog was writing about it.

So who are the trolls? I made a long detailed post and no one has even looked at what I said. You come in here spewing venom. I'd like to hear a well thought out counter post from someone that was informed and factually supported enough as to be respectable. Also I'm sorry, but the world isn't going to stop so hobbiests can be at the peak of the ecconomic pyramid.

No one every said they would not beable to make stuff, I just said it should me measured and limited. So if you want to be naked so you can wear that 250 prim necklase then hey, go right on ahead. SL will die if it doesn't address this issue in some way or form. Every time LL makes a gain in lag, or computers make a gain in power, some 'artist' will make something 'beautifull' and were all suposed to clap and not pressure him to learn blender.

As for the linkset to mesh converter, that's a good idea actually. As long as enough optimization could be done to compensate for the additional load that 1 mesh would have vs x prims. See? I actually read your posts, return the favour eh?

 

[Vivienne Schell]

"Every time LL makes a gain in lag, or computers make a gain in power, some 'artist' will make something 'beautifull' and were all suposed to clap and not pressure him to learn blender."

Why should Picasso learn Blender, eh?

[Dain Shan]

---

Vivienne Schell wrote:

"Every time LL makes a gain in lag, or computers make a gain in power, some 'artist' will make something 'beautifull' and were all suposed to clap and not pressure him to learn blender."

Why should Picasso learn Blender, eh?

---

He cant, hes dead ....

 

And who knows, if he could, we might have seen something marvellous eh?