Problems with Linden Lab's plans to attract new users.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

11 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The do not look that good in person unfortunately.  The new flexi is not as well done as the old flexi.  It's like 2 completely different things, IMO.  

New...

https://gyazo.com/5675107261793acdd0a8017a2c52b4cc

https://gyazo.com/9358d7f867405bafd9177cacc867ac46

Old...

https://gyazo.com/48b28134b295c42eb739c52623b87991

Oh definitely. I consider it photography/editorial hair. Gorgeous if you can hold still forever. The clipping issues still persist.

As for the quality, I demoed some from Angelic some time ago. It was very well-made and super pretty, but I couldn't justify the cost if I was only going to be able to wear it in very limited situations. 

I do like short flexi styles and partial flexi for bangs and loose strands and things. It's a nice change.

It does seem rather popular, too. Just wish we had some sort of fix for the clipping issues.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

Just now, WeFlossDaily said:

Like:

No-mod items with no-kill scripts are annoying. Maitreya v5 can be deleted, though.

No mod items with unnecessary root-prims are annoying also.

Or:

Or the entirety of Sirens Isle . . . and all those high LI boats.

Stuff like that?

 

Not really.  Most scripts don't have much effect on viewer FPS unless they're doing crazy visual stuff like spewing particles, continually cycling textures.  As for high LI, land impact is a very poor metric by which to gauge performance.

I was thinking more about basic concepts like overdraw which is something that occurs when a renderer has to redraw the same pixel(s) multiple times. 

For example, say you decide to buy a nice prefab house with lovely large windows and rez it on your land.  Then you decide "Hey, it would be great to build a pretty garden with some grass and shrubs and plants and a few trees, wouldn't that be a wonderful view?".  So you decorate your garden and then stand in your house in front of your lovely large windows and look out on the wonderful view and it looks like a very picturesque slideshow because, thanks to overdraw, every single pixel of every transparent leaf/flower/grass texture that overlays over something else causes the renderer to have to test the alpha for that pixel and potentially recalculate and redraw it.  If you look through a semi-transparent window everything you see through it is being rendered twice and for every (alpha blended) transparent pixel outside the window, that pixel gets rendered an additional time (alpha masking is more efficient but there is still some overhead).

So, those awesome skybox scenes where you can stand in your home and look out of the window at the 10-20 "sheets" of animated rain texture with a handful of trees in the background may look lovely but you're sacrificing 75% of your framerate every time you look at it.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

7 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

I was thinking more about basic concepts like overdraw

I once encountered a build by a Captain Oldbie who described themselves as an "expert builder" ( yeah proud Blunders Brewery School of Fail-Build graduate ), who insisted that the prim wall she'd thrown up "reduced lag" because stuff behind it would not be rendered.

Problem was she'd ussed a 32 bit rgba texture on the wall.

so the poor old rendering engine in other peoples viewers, instead of going...

"Hmmm 24 bit rgb, solid opaque item, do not render what's behind it"

... instead went...

"Argh 32 bit rgba, alpha layer, some of it might be see through, CHECK EVERY PIXEL, and redraw anything alpha blended behind it or in front of it!"

 

She managed to build a skyboxed fantasy garden, that thanks to alpha blend, glow, and simple bad building skills class of 2006, lagged WORSE that a nearby region with 50 heavy scripted avatars on it.

 

[WeFlossDaily]

14 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

Not really.  Most scripts don't have much effect on viewer FPS unless they're doing crazy visual stuff like spewing particles, continually cycling textures.  As for high LI, land impact is a very poor metric by which to gauge performance.

I was thinking more about basic concepts like overdraw which is something that occurs when a renderer has to redraw the same pixel(s) multiple times. 

For example, say you decide to buy a nice prefab house with lovely large windows and rez it on your land.  Then you decide "Hey, it would be great to build a pretty garden with some grass and shrubs and plants and a few trees, wouldn't that be a wonderful view?".  So you decorate your garden and then stand in your house in front of your lovely large windows and look out on the wonderful view and it looks like a very picturesque slideshow because, thanks to overdraw, every single pixel of every transparent leaf/flower/grass texture that overlays over something else causes the renderer to have to test the alpha for that pixel and potentially recalculate and redraw it.  If you look through a semi-transparent window everything you see through it is being rendered twice and for every (alpha blended) transparent pixel outside the window, that pixel gets rendered an additional time (alpha masking is more efficient but there is still some overhead).

So, those awesome skybox scenes where you can stand in your home and look out of the window at the 10-20 "sheets" of animated rain texture with a handful of trees in the background may look lovely but you're sacrificing 75% of your framerate every time you look at it.

You described most of the scenes I've tried to build, right down to the rain-textured windows lol.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

1 minute ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Problem was she'd ussed a 32 bit rgba texture on the wall.

so the poor old rendering engine in other peoples viewers, instead of going...

"Hmmm 24 bit rgb, solid opaque item, do not render what's behind it"

... instead went...

"Argh 32 bit rgba, alpha layer, some of it might be see through, CHECK EVERY PIXEL, and redraw anything alpha blended behind it or in front of it!"

This is such a huge problem in SL (and so easily solved by using the None alpha option or even better not using alpha channels on absolutely everything).

Alpha masking does help to some degree (although the renderer still needs to test for an alpha in each pixel it doesn't have to do any calculation for blending) and @NiranV Dean wrote a very informative blogpost on the subject several years back that is still applicable today (The thing about Alpha Masking).

There are a ton of do's and don'ts that are considered common knowledge in the broader "game industry" but since there are so many self-taught creators in SL who have learned solely from SL-centric tutorials and so many residents who simply aren't aware of the impact certain things can have on performance the majority of the best practices used to avoid performance issues have never really been adopted by most SL creators or residents.

[WeFlossDaily]

2 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

This is such a huge problem in SL (and so easily solved by using the None alpha option or even better not using alpha channels on absolutely everything).

Alpha masking does help to some degree (although the renderer still needs to test for an alpha in each pixel it doesn't have to do any calculation for blending) and @NiranV Dean wrote a very informative blogpost on the subject several years back that is still applicable today (The thing about Alpha Masking).

There are a ton of do's and don'ts that are considered common knowledge in the broader "game industry" but since there are so many self-taught creators in SL who have learned solely from SL-centric tutorials and so many residents who simply aren't aware of the impact certain things can have on performance the majority of the best practices used to avoid performance issues have never really been adopted by most SL creators or residents.

I think I read that and struggled to understand everything exception for that I could uncheck object-to-object occlusion.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

This is such a huge problem in SL (and so easily solved by using the None alpha option or even better not using alpha channels on absolutely everything).

Yeah, well, when I suggested alpha mode none, she responded as if I'd suggested culling baby seals with her teeth.

 

Another similar "Blunder's Brewery Graduate" I ran into hadn't even HEARD of alpha mode options like mask and none. That one actually thought rezzing 3 copies of a blended tree on the same spot with the same rotation to "thicken the foliage up" was a "good idea, and refused to accept complaints from people who normally ran on Idiot Slider = Ultra, that her 20m square patch of woodland reduced them to running at 32m draw distance if they wanted to be able to walk.

 

[WeFlossDaily]

2 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Another similar "Blunder's Brewery Graduate" I ran into hadn't even HEARD of alpha mode options like mask and none. That one actually thought rezzing 3 copies of a blended tree on the same spot with the same rotation to "thicken the foliage up" was a "good idea, and refused to accept complaints from people who normally ran on Idiot Slider = Ultra, that her 20m square patch of woodland reduced them to running at 32m draw distance if they wanted to be able to walk.

I feel a little smarter now. Tree x 3 = Fail. I definitely am going to pay more attention to alphas types and read up on how they work and make sure I understand them completely going forward. It's too bad this alpha thing doesn't have a massive thread like the Firestorm PBR thing does. But then again, alpha are out of sight and out of mind to a lot of ppl, i guess.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

2 minutes ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Yeah, well, when I suggested alpha mode none, she responded as if I'd suggested culling baby seals with her teeth.

 

Another similar "Blunder's Brewery Graduate" I ran into hadn't even HEARD of alpha mode options like mask and none. That one actually thought rezzing 3 copies of a blended tree on the same spot with the same rotation to "thicken the foliage up" was a "good idea, and refused to accept complaints from people who normally ran on Idiot Slider = Ultra, that her 20m square patch of woodland reduced them to running at 32m draw distance if they wanted to be able to walk.

 

There are some pretty extreme cases of lag inducing content bombs (I even made a few myself back in the early days, but back then frames per second were far more bountiful and we squandered them with reckless abandon!).

The problem is that less extreme versions of the same thing exist all over SL and, since they weren't such obvious performance killers, people have continued to use them and create other, similar content using the same techniques.

That may have been fine when we had the option to disable ALM but now we're stuck with PBR permanently enabled and are being forced to shoulder the full burden of the "content-rich" environments we've created.  Unless LL have some magic tricks up their sleeves to drastically boost the performance of the viewer then residents may have little choice but to start adopting a more sensible approach to building and decorating in SL if they want to avoid potentially expensive computer upgrades.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

[WeFlossDaily]

3 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

There are some pretty extreme cases of lag inducing content bombs (I even made a few myself back in the early days, but back then frames per second were far more bountiful and we squandered them with reckless abandon!).

The problem is that less extreme versions of the same thing exist all over SL and, since they weren't such obvious performance killers, people have continued to use them and create other, similar content using the same techniques.

That may have been fine when we had the option to disable ALM but now we're stuck with PBR permanently enabled and are being forced to shoulder the full burden of the "content-rich" environments we've created.  Unless LL have some magic tricks up their sleeves to drastically boost the performance of the viewer then residents may have little choice but to start adopting a more sensible approach to building and decorating in SL if they want to avoid potentially expensive computer upgrades.

This is one of many reasons I don't believe PBR is a good idea. I don't like we are ready for it. MY understanding of it all is not as good as the way you understand the problem, but I know we are optimized good enough yet.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 minutes ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

start adopting a more sensible approach to building and decorating in SL

There is an idiot on the forums, who II won't name, who thinks that using tiled seamless textures is a 3D-noob thing, and that REAL content creators use "advanced UV maps" with loads of unused space between the UVBV islands, and therefore NEED 2k textures to get "quality".

 

That kind of attitude is too common, and won't go away any time soon. One of the worst I ever saw was a full perm ribbon choker,  the UV map was a 1024 x 1024, and the island for the ribbon's UV?

A 768 x 32 strip in the middle of the texture map.

 

[Istelathis]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

That's hardly going to help SLs population grow and, as has been pointed out already, it can only drop so low before SL becomes unsustainable.

This is why LL is introducing mobile, and touching up the desktop version.  I've made suggestions as far as mobile is concerned, and express my worries of how they will retain new users with the current expense of land, as they will be competing with similar platforms that offer it for free.  

To foster growth in Second Life, on mobile, they need look no further than their competition as that is the demographic they will be competing with on mobile.  What is also important, is how SL will remain profitable through all of this, they could boost our numbers by providing free property, but then the model which I believe keeps SL profitable will suffer.  It is being between a rock and a hard place, but if they want more population, then they have to put it in a price range that accommodates more people, which could result in the entire platform collapsing in on itself.

Ultimately, the only way I can imagine the numbers being boosted, is through heavy use of ads, just as most mobile apps use.  The mobile demographic of gamers, in virtual worlds such as SL, is heavily reliant upon ads, and of course free or much cheaper property.

This is why I think it would probably be better for them to just make an entirely new game, SL for mobile is great, I love it, but how is it going to be sustainable.  

SL hopefully will update the desktop viewer so that PBR is not so resource heavy on older computers, especially for people who rely on integrated graphics, to maintain as well as progress the current number of residents confined to older systems.  Perhaps port unity to be able to run on chromebooks, as that will provide others on a budget a cheaper alternative as well.  

 

 

Still with me 😋🪿  Anyway, I see platforms such as SL much like I do MMOs, they had their day in the sun, there are so many options out there, that we don't really have much to offer people now.  Back in its day, it was one of a kind, much like MMOs were, then new games came out, people started to branch off.  I think SL should try to stick to what it does best, be a jack of all trades, master of none, keep adding to what we have to attract people that enjoy this sort of thing.  Personally, I would like to see some voxel editing in SL, a 3d wardrobe, an interface to the marketplace to give us a preview of how outfits would look, the list goes on and on.. it also includes analog controller support, better gaming mechanics.. I could go all day.

 

But for now, I'm having some chicken

 

 

Edited July 25 by Istelathis

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

SL hopefully will update the desktop viewer so that PBR is not so resource heavy on older computers, especially for people who rely on integrated graphics, to maintain as well as progress the current residents

Are you hoping they will do that BEFORE or AFTER they, cure cancer, end world hunger, invent perpetual motion, and bring about world peace by enabling FTL space ships to export all the poor starving cancerous angry people to Alpha Centauri?

 

7 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I see platforms such as SL much like I do MMOs

Oh here we go again... 

7 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

they had their day in the sun

So, SL is an MMO, and MMO's are "finished"...

8 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

it also includes analog controller support, better gaming mechanics.. I could go all day.

So lets save SSL by turning it into an MMO FPS, like the ones you say have had their day.

 

9 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I could go all day.

Please don't.

If you want to play an FPS MMO, go and install one and stop trying to find "kewl" ways to destroy SL.

[Midnoot]

10 hours ago, Rufferta said:

 Lab probably doesn't make much of a profit on explorers, in fact, I sometimes think they are trying to discourage explorers by failing to provide more navigable waterways, airways, and roadways. It doesn't cost a lot to be an explorer

 

My son tells me that there are other 'virtual games' that provide 'home' spaces to players, so SL is not unique in this; however, the fact that it is a world where you do not have to be part of a larger 'game' to enjoy it is a plus.

 

 

 

 

 

Are you joking ? Us explorers just can't stop spending money on overpriced vehicles usually from. 3000$ to 15000$ . Average car prices for well known and high quality vehicles with realistic controls is 2500-3500

 

Planes 2000-3500

Helicopters in the same quality are 2000-4000

Boats on the small side average 3000-5000

Boats on the big side like yachts are freaking insane . Some 5000 ... A lot 10,000-15,000

 

Believe me , LL is profiting from explorers . And they would benefit greatly by improving the exploration experience .

 

Also just wanted to add that while other games have housing systems , they're hugely neglected . What's the point ? People barely socialize in mmorpgs , in their homes at least . They decorate them to show off but that's about it . They don't invite people back to have seggs nearly as much as second life's . So the home appeal is far higher in sl.

 

I do agree that they really seem to neglect the explorer side of second life tho. It pains me .

Edited July 25 by Midnoot

[Istelathis]

Just now, Zalificent Corvinus said:

 

So, SL is an MMO, and MMO's are "finished"...

So lets save SSL by turning it into an MMO FPS, like the ones you say have had their day.

 

/me offers @Zalificent a chicken wing

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

4 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

This is one of many reasons I don't believe PBR is a good idea. I don't like we are ready for it. MY understanding of it all is not as good as the way you understand the problem, but I know we are optimized good enough yet.

Well unfortunately the majority of people couldn't/wouldn't enable ALM so there was a huge divide between residents who could see materials and those who could not.

The irony of that is the use of either PBR or materials+ALM actually allows you to produce much more optimized and efficient content if you understand how to use them.  So, had everyone adopted the old ALM and materials system and started creating more efficient content with it we could possibly already have seein improvements to performance in SL.

PBR and to a lesser extent materials (because LL never bothered to upgrade the lighting or add probes prior to PBR) provide two very useful features that can be used to optimize content. 

First you have normal maps which can be used to "fake" geometric details on a per pixel level, which means you can potentially reduce mesh models from many thousands of polygons to a few hundred with hardly any noticeable visual difference.

The other is the metal/roughness maps and the lighting system itself.  Since PBR (and ALM) provide a far more realistic method of lighting surfaces it negates the need for large unique textures with baked in lighting and shadow and allows us to utilize much smaller seamless tiling textures to represent surfaces.  Since all the lighting and shadows are calculated in real-time you can potentially reduce the size of textures required for a scene by as drastic amount as normal maps allow you to reduce the geometry.

The performance of PBR is pretty terrible when dealing with most of SLs existing content, but that's less the fault of PBR and more a matter of content that was created in ways that at the time were necessary in order to create "better looking" content but are now counter-productive and in a lot of cases only serve to negatively impact performance.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

5 minutes ago, Midnoot said:

Are you joking ? Us explorers just can't stop spending money on overpriced vehicles usually from. 3000$ to 15000$ . Average car prices for well known and high quality vehicles with realistic controls is 2500-3500

But...

1. You don't pay LL for those, you pay the vehicle makers and...

2. There are nowhere as many rabid vehicle fanatics as rabid vehicle fanatics often claim.

 

7 minutes ago, Midnoot said:

Believe me , LL is profiting from explorers . And they would benefit greatly by improving the exploration experience

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

24 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I would like to see some voxel editing in SL

I was going to offer counterpoints to a couple of things you said in your post (although I agree with you on a lot of points) but you played the voxel editing card so I'm sold!

[Ksenia Elcano]

1 hour ago, Istelathis said:

SL should try to stick to what it does best, be a jack of all trades,

What SL does best is porn and providing an outlet for jacking off. That is its niche and what has kept it alive all these years. If SL improved the virtual sex experience, the platform would attract more users.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

21 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

What SL does best is porn and providing an outlet for jacking off. That is its niche and what has kept it alive all these years. If SL improved the virtual sex experience, the platform would attract more users.

Honestly, you should maybe get out of the dungeon for a bit! You know, stretch your legs, visit a music club or an art gallery, or a lovely nature region?

You'd be amazed at how many of us are not, as you so delicately put it, "jacking off."

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

Are you joking ? Us explorers just can't stop spending money on overpriced vehicles usually from. 3000$ to 15000$ . Average car prices for well known and high quality vehicles with realistic controls is 2500-3500

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

Boats on the big side like yachts are freaking insane . Some 5000 ... A lot 10,000-15,000

Don’t know where you live, but here in the US IIRC it cost about 5USD for 1000 Lindens. So L10,000 would be what, 50USD? I have no idea how many small landholders there are vs sim owners, but my understanding is that sims cost ~300 USD/month, on top the Premium account. How many boats or cars do most Explorers buy a year?

I am not trying to downplay what you and other Explorers spend, *****, I am just a Socializer apparently (had to look up that Bartle thing). I just upgraded my avi and wardrobe to the tune of about $50 (I didn’t need a new body so I saved there and didn’t buy very many clothes). When I am in-world I typically spend maybe L500 or so in an evening on tips and donations, maybe up to L1000. Even 30 days at L1000 is only ~L30,000 or about $150, and for sure I never spend that much (though I guess I spend a lot more than I thought I did!).

I have no idea how many spendy Explorers and Socializers there are compared with sim owners, but I would guess perhaps even the most spendy of use cannot compare with the money that sim owners drop?

Updated to include a point someone else made:

I didn’t think of this, but the money we pay vendors/creators does not go directly to SL like tier and membership dues. I just assume that the people who sell stuff here spend that money here and that like casinos and banks, LL profits from all transactions sooner or later.

However, I think a lot of vendors/creators take money out of SL, so other than whatever land they may be paying LL for, LL doesn’t make much if anything (knowing how ‘The House’ always works I would guess that LL takes some cut of all Lindens bought or money withdrawn from SL?). 

So in the end those of us who only spend and do not pay tier or memberships may contribute little to the financial well-being of LL. I dunno…

Edited July 25 by CaerolleClaudel
Add a caveat based on info from another post in the thread

[CaerolleClaudel]

34 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

What SL does best is porn and providing an outlet for jacking off. That is its niche and what has kept it alive all these years. If SL improved the virtual sex experience, the platform would attract more users.

Have you never heard of Porn Hub? Seems like that or other online porn would be a far better choice than SL? I am guessing there are far better virtual porn sites than SL, too. SLex does seem very popular though…

[Rufferta Mainlander]

1 hour ago, Midnoot said:

Are you joking ? Us explorers just can't stop spending money on overpriced vehicles usually from. 3000$ to 15000$ . Average car prices for well known and high quality vehicles with realistic controls is 2500-3500

 

Planes 2000-3500

Helicopters in the same quality are 2000-4000

Boats on the small side average 3000-5000

Boats on the big side like yachts are freaking insane . Some 5000 ... A lot 10,000-15,000

 

Believe me , LL is profiting from explorers . And they would benefit greatly by improving the exploration experience .

 

Also just wanted to add that while other games have housing systems , they're hugely neglected . What's the point ? People barely socialize in mmorpgs , in their homes at least . They decorate them to show off but that's about it . They don't invite people back to have seggs nearly as much as second life's . So the home appeal is far higher in sl.

 

I do agree that they really seem to neglect the explorer side of second life tho. It pains me .

You are correct that many explorers spend money on good quality vehicles and everything that goes with them.  I was thinking everyone was like me, using free sailboats, roller skates, and Hobo trains. My apology.

[lovestofu]

47 minutes ago, Ksenia Elcano said:

What SL does best is porn and providing an outlet for jacking off. That is its niche and what has kept it alive all these years. If SL improved the virtual sex experience, the platform would attract more users.

While most users use SL exclusively for those reasons, it is a double-edged sword, as SL's porn angle has become an indelible black mark on the Platform. Going by numbers alone, SL had the best years when it was catering to education and business, despite businesses treating the Platform like vaporware. Either way, it does appear that a wholesome reputation drives or at least enables organic growth. Besides, the porn market is likely dried up at this point.

Back on topic: What Second Life does best is present an Open platform. This is a unique value proposition of the Platform that has not been replicated. The Second Life protocol is an Open standard, everything in SL is in theory extensible. Given enough expert eyes, users can (and have) contribute to core components of Second Life's netcode,  Very recently, a prominent and respected user contributed an optimization to the protocol used for PBR. It is clear that with enough cooperation between users and Linden Lab, Second Life can improve infinitely. This level of openness makes Second Life legendary.

On top of that, Second Life offers a rich experience to each user if the user is willing to learn.  SL hosts your scripts, which are like mini servers or maybe more like AWS Lambda resources.  SL hosts all your prims, hosts mesh, textures, and other assets you upload to the Platform, all to provide a rich environment to bring a user's vision of interactive 3D creations to life. The Platform does this all at a very low cost to the resident, even providing decent income opportunities for the most ambitious content creators.

Furthermore, Second Life provides an rich 3D user experience where you feel like you are an interactive part of a whole.  Part of why the compulsion to drive vehicles or sail boats is so strong in many users is a sense of immersion. Second Life is also a single world ; there are no instances in SL, unless we consider private sims instances. Any two avatars can meet on mainland if they traverse enough distance. If someone in Europe decides to log into SL, that person is using in the same world as someone logging in from California, and they can in fact meet as their avatars.

Therefore when you are traveling through the Second Life world, you are traveling among many other world travelers.  It is beautiful, sometimes mystifying, and sometimes grotesque, but overall a very unique and compelling experience to wander through Second Life.

No other competing service provides any of this, and if Second Life ever dies, the way VC money behaves these days, there will never be another one.

Edited July 25 by lovestofu
un-corrected autocorrect