Is Lindenlab choosing a doomed path for SL ? Tell us if the EEP and PBR introduction changed the way you play SL

[BilliJo Aldrin]

On 6/22/2024 at 7:28 PM, Arielle Popstar said:

Cheap to free and no problem for you to look similar to the pictures you've posted. As far as how many are there, well you only need/want one at a time right?

One at a time?

*checking Arielle’s pulse*

i spent a week one time in that popular virtual world that closed down a few years ago… think it was inworldz. I even bought myself a mesh avi, but it was dead, pure torture. I had to bring my bf along, even though i could barely stand him. 😂

Edited June 24 by BilliJo Aldrin
added stuff

[Phil Deakins]

22 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:

spent a week one time in that popular virtual world that closed down a few years ago… think it was inworldz.

I didn't know that Inworldz had closed, so I did a search on Google and found that it closed in July 2018. The next search listing was about Islandz opening up to replace Inworldz, and by the same owner. The 3rd search listing was about Islandz closing down. That was in January 2019. It was a potted history in the search results lol.

I think Inworldz and its brief successor, Islandz, were intended as commercial ventures, like SL, but they failed at it because of all the OpenSim grids, none of which had or have many users. The OpenSim grids were connected to the hypergrid, which Inworldz/Islandz didn't do. No doubt that was at least partly responsible for their failure.

To comment on one of your earlier posts, @BilliJo Aldrin, you are right that land is cheap, and it's often free, in OpenSim grids. I've had a 10k and a 3k in 2 of the grids - both free. I don't have any now.

Edited June 24 by Phil Deakins

[AmeliaJ08]

52 minutes ago, Thecla said:

I was on an aging (six years old when it was retired) Mac laptop until about a year ago and SL worked fine. Did it scream along? No not at all. Could I run SL with everything cranked up? No, certainly not.

As for "pretty high requirements" that's just not accurate, despite being a relative, subjective claim. If you could use SL on a cheap business laptop on hotel wifi, that's not high requirements. And I did that for many years, including in 2004. And trust me, my Dell POS did NOT have a dedicated GPU.

Model?

I've used SL on integrated Intel GPUs, it categorically does not work well with any of them. ALM tanked framerate to sub <20fps even in quiet scenes, I don't count that as usable.

Perhaps your Mac laptop had a dedicated GPU? some did.

>If you could use SL on a cheap business laptop on hotel wifi, that's not high requirements.

To do this you had to disable the lighting engine.

 

Edited June 24 by AmeliaJ08

[Love Zhaoying]

29 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

SL, a PC game, has always required a gaming PC to run well. That it ran at all on other machines was sort of a miracle, but that was never the intent, since a lot had to be disabled to make it work. The whole "not a game" mentality really misled a lot of people's expectations.

PBR is a reality check.

I was thinking recently, about how LL often says they test on PC's with various levels of power (CPU/GPU/memory).  I'll be they still do.

If PBR really had a higher "MINIMUM REQUIREMENT" (edit: removed "suggested") than pre-PBR, obviously LL would have been up-front about it.  I'll bet a lot of people with hardware-related PBR issues were already skating at the bottom of the "minimum-level" requirements.

Perhaps if enough noise is made, LL will confirm the requirements. Then, we can put a lot of this to bed and the answer will be: "Sorry, it's you" and point them to the "requirements" pages.

 

Edited June 24 by Love Zhaoying
Removed "suggested" from one instance of "minimum requirements"

[Love Zhaoying]

On 6/22/2024 at 4:44 PM, Istelathis said:

This may be an option for some of you looking to upgrade your computer, but don't have the money handy.  Look for a place that buys yer plasma, where I live there is usually a bonus for the first month.  I get $800, for I think it is about 8 donations, with being a new "donor".  I have setup my first session for next week.

Wait, what? YOU are the one who made this comment? (I saw it referenced in the Peeves thread.)  I bet you were kidding. I hope you were kidding.  Of course, $800 is nothing to sneeze at but 8 donations is a lot.  On the plus side, donations are sorely needed.  So, there's a paradox at work.

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 minute ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I'll bet a lot of people with hardware-related PBR issues were already skating at the bottom of the "minimum-level" requirements.

That's certainly the issue I'm facing but then I was aware of the possibilities of a drop in performance having kept a close eye on how testing was going on the beta grid so I was already resigned to the fact that I won't really be able to see the full benefits of PBR until I manage to upgrade my PC (or in my case get a better one since mine really isn't upgradeable).

It is still powerful enough to run 2D/3D apps and also just about good enough that I can log into SL, upload things and play around on my isolated little building platform above a mostly empty mainland sim.  So at least I still get to create random things for fun and send them to friends so they can appreciate them too.

[stlshayne]

2 hours ago, Thecla said:

Whether it's BECAUSE people can't afford a new PC is beside the point. SL has, relatively speaking, put put fairly low demands on users' computers, within the bounds of what is is, which is a world where you're constantly downloading unfamiliar content (as opposed to a world/game where content is static and planned). Whether it's because of scant development resources, investment in existing assets, or whatever, the point remains. SL has been pretty accommodating to older hardware.

As for your survey info, that factoid reveals nothing about WHY that percentage of older games remains popular, nor whether they have been updated since they were RELEASED. Counter Strike, Half-Life, Battlefield, Halo, Fortnite, LoL, GTA. were all released many years ago and remain hugely popular. Counter Strike was released BEFORE SL was even created, back in 1998...it's not the same game as when it was released, an none of the others are either.

Just because I called the OP a whining cynic for complaining that progress has made his SL more difficult does not make me a snob. Where does one draw the line on what hardware should be good enough? Is the OP the standard barer for this? How about Windows 98 on 286? Should SL run on that? Who decides?

It's actually a pretty interesting list of games! Nice mix of sandbox stuff that isn't resource heavy, franchise titles that are more intensive, and others.

via: newzoo

Edited June 24 by stlshayne

[Theresa Tennyson]

17 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If PBR really had a higher "MINIMUM REQUIREMENT" (edit: removed "suggested") than pre-PBR, obviously LL would have been up-front about it.  I'll bet a lot of people with hardware-related PBR issues were already skating at the bottom of the "minimum-level" requirements.

 

You'd think that. However, from reading comments a lot seems to be coming from people with high-end machines who didn't run ALM for various reasons and/or who have a framerate number/hardware temperature fetish. (It becomes a fetish instead of an issue if they're caught up in the number rather than what they actually experience in-world.)

And, beyond strictly hardware things, many of the others fall into the moved-cheese category.

One of the commenters who said his machine was actually choking had been complaining about his viewer choking on newer builds with the old viewer already.

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

However, from reading comments a lot seems to be coming from people with high-end machines who didn't run ALM for various reasons

Sadly, I never really used my previous machine much for higher-end graphics functionality provided by ALM.  It's not that it couldn't - I didn't try much - it probably could, I just didn't care about shadows and things that started with ALM. So, possibly I would have been one of those if I had cared about ALM.

10 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

and/or who have a framerate number/hardware temperature fetish. (It becomes a fetish instead of an issue if they're caught up in the number rather than what they actually experience in-world.)

Yeah, I've never been one of those. My old PC didn't have a very good graphics card, so the framerate "was what it was" and the fans ran.  (Never looked at the temperature.)  It is indeed.."interesting"..to see how people focus on framerate (knowing that the human eye can only see so many frames per second).

12 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

And, beyond strictly hardware things, many of the others fall into the moved-cheese category.

One of the commenters who said his machine was actually choking had been complaining about his viewer choking on newer builds with the old viewer already.

So..confirmed. You're not saying it, but: something new to complain about. 

Seems to be a lot of that going around!

 

[Paul Hexem]

47 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I was thinking recently, about how LL often says they test on PC's with various levels of power (CPU/GPU/memory).  I'll be they still do.

If PBR really had a higher "MINIMUM REQUIREMENT" (edit: removed "suggested") than pre-PBR, obviously LL would have been up-front about it.  I'll bet a lot of people with hardware-related PBR issues were already skating at the bottom of the "minimum-level" requirements.

Perhaps if enough noise is made, LL will confirm the requirements. Then, we can put a lot of this to bed and the answer will be: "Sorry, it's you" and point them to the "requirements" pages.

I include LL in my condemnation of people that set expectations incorrectly. They leave a whole lot out of their system requirements page.

System Requirements (secondlife.com)

[Love Zhaoying]

3 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

I include LL in my condemnation of people that set expectations incorrectly. They leave a whole lot out of their system requirements page.

Adding that as far as I recall (from multiple posts and threads over the years), the page isn't updated very often or consistently.

Yeah, CPU / GPU isn't there.  😞

ETA: Is "4GB minimum" memory really viable anymore?

Edited June 24 by Love Zhaoying

[Modulated]

4 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

I include LL in my condemnation of people that set expectations incorrectly. They leave a whole lot out of their system requirements page.

System Requirements (secondlife.com)

And this bit at the top of the page....

Your computer must meet these REQUIREMENTS, or you may not be able to successfully participate in Second Life.

With the minimums listed, you can participate in SL...if your only goal is to get logged in..lol No one is doing anything with that pretty much.

[RicDelMoro]

If hardware was the biggest problem, we coud just move some sliders down and unmark some options, so why  many people with up-to-date hardware are pissed ? Are they  all lazy ? Maybe it's because LL ruined its most recent toy, the EEP...First they implemented the EEP and we were forced to use it, now they come and say : "Oohh..We  changed our  mind...throw away your EEPs and start all over again doing new ones"...

Edited June 24 by RicDelMoro

[RicDelMoro]

And a final reminder : LL is a company and SL is a product , I have a paid premium account and I'm not satisfied with the service : I'm regretful to had renew my contract recently, next time I will downgrade to FREE '

[Paul Hexem]

14 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

And a final reminder : LL is a company and SL is a product , I have a paid premium account and I'm not satisfied with the service : I'm regretful to had renew my contract recently, next time I will downgrade to FREE '

Not modernizing is what has kept myself and others from being more invested. The more they modernize, the more customers they gain.

Losing a few that are on computers that are apparently astronomically beyond end of life by every conceivable metric isn't a big deal.

[Modulated]

24 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

And a final reminder : LL is a company and SL is a product , I have a paid premium account and I'm not satisfied with the service : I'm regretful to had renew my contract recently, next time I will downgrade to FREE '

That is well within your right. As a holder of a premium account myself, I am more than satisfied. It works both ways.

[RicDelMoro]

 

11 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Not modernizing is what has kept myself and others from being more invested. The more they modernize, the more customers they gain.

Losing a few that are on computers that are apparently astronomically beyond end of life by every conceivable metric isn't a big deal.

My PC is not as outdated as you suggest, it still runs SL PBR very well in medium configuration . No, I'm not against these updates, I simply think that LL is doing a bad job  !!!

Edited June 24 by RicDelMoro

[Love Zhaoying]

32 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

why  many people with up-to-date hardware are pissed ? Are they  all lazy ?

No, in some cases it is because "things look different".  People don't like change.

PBR will look "different", that's just a fact.

[Paul Hexem]

2 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

 

Yes, I said that, in the language of the subforum that we're on.

[Thecla]

26 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

If hardware was the biggest problem, we coud just move some sliders down and unmark some options, so why  many people with up-to-date hardware are pissed ? Are they  all lazy ? Maybe it's because LL ruined its most recent toy, the EEP...First they implemented the EEP and we were forced to use it, now they come and say : "Oohh..We  changed our  mind...throw away your EEPs and start all over again doing new ones"...

Yeah, no other game has bugs, no other game has teething pains when they update the core graphics engine. Nope, EA, Blizzard, et al, each with QA teams 20x the size of LL's whole development team, never has an issue. Wake the f**k up.

People with fast machines are pissed because they use Firestorm and didn't bother to use the Beta, probably 20 releases of it or more, with issues slowly being sorted out. Don't forget, almost everything in-world in terms of existing assets is backward compatible with the new engine. And that took a lot of work by a lot of developers.

Regarding EEPs, yes some are broken. I make my own, and have never had a problem. I've been to a few sims where they are broken and need to be updated. If you bought one, I'm sure the vendor will update it and give you a new one. If not, well, you bought from a sh*tty vendor.

As for losing you as a paying premium customer, I'm sure they will be devastated.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Yes, I said that, in the language of the subforum that we're on.

Can I quote you on that?

[Paul Hexem]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

Can I quote you on that?

He already did, before he went back and edited it.

[Love Zhaoying]

5 minutes ago, Thecla said:

As for losing you as a paying premium customer, I'm sure they will be devastated.

Well that's sad, I hope LL gets over it!

 

[Theresa Tennyson]

13 minutes ago, RicDelMoro said:

 

My PC is not as outdated as you suggest, it still runs SL PBR very well in medium configuration . No, I'm not against these updates, I simply think that LL is doing a bad job  !!!

So, you disagree with the person who started this thread?

[RicDelMoro]

For those who like to place bets, here is a link to a website that shows SL's audience daily :   https://e*****up.com/slstatistics/online-now-last-24hrs   we can follow along and see what happens