Should Mole builds be updated to PBR?

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Eowyn Southmoor said:

Broad suggestions that LL aren't doing anything when it comes to mainland are just incorrect.

Fair enough.

I'll be more precise: LL isn't doing anything about the parts of the Mainland where I personally live. And maybe there is something I can do about that.

The issue however goes beyond maintaining roads, removing blockages, etc. The Mainland is littered with garbage, much of which is on abandoned land that has been left open. (I've had serious problems with that in the past, when it's been exploited by griefers.) While there's not a lot one can do about the eyesores that actual owners put out (or leave out), even clearing away some of that, and perhaps laying down 5 or 10 LI worth of trees would go a long way to making it look nicer.

And some zoning rules would be good, just to prevent some of the more obnoxious excesses of glowing megaprims, etc.

None of this, btw, is a reflection on the Moles: this is about LL's priorities.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 hour ago, WeFlossDaily said:

Clearly, anything older then yesterday has got to go and must be destroyed.

No, not at all.

Crappy looking garbage has to go, and should be destroyed.

An awful lot of my build on my own land is comprised of prims, and none of it (as yet) uses PBR. But I've taken care to ensure that it looks nice.

[Qie Niangao]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Crappy looking garbage has to go, and should be destroyed.

I nominate the Linden Eucalyptus trees for grid-wide extinction-level blight.

I'm not a fan of most Linden foliage (including the dreaded palms Aethelwine mentioned above) but those Eucalyptus trees are misshapen regardless of LoD and worsen every setting in which they appear.

Any update to Mainland should include eradicating this species from all protected land.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

10 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I nominate the Linden Eucalyptus trees for grid-wide extinction-level blight.

I'm not a fan of most Linden foliage (including the dreaded palms Aethelwine mentioned above) but those Eucalyptus trees are misshapen regardless of LoD and worsen every setting in which they appear.

Any update to Mainland should include eradicating this species from all protected land.

I assume that it's policy for LL not to use commercial products for its landscaping -- although now I think of it, I am certain that Motown did.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the actual cost of a Linden tree is, compared to a 1 LI mesh tree, but there are lots of really nice available examples of the latter. Building dense forests is probably an unrealistic expectation, but it should be possible to spread around some nice looking foliage quickly, easily, and at a reasonably low server cost. PBR land textures would also help.

[Porky Gorky]

33 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I assume that it's policy for LL not to use commercial products for its landscaping -- although now I think of it, I am certain that Motown did.

So you are saying the owners of the largest virtual world on the planet does not have a licence for SpeedTree? 

Why am I not suprised!

Edited August 8 by Porky Gorky

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

So you are saying the owners of the largest virtual world on the planet does not have a licence for SpeedTree? 

Why am I not suprised!

Shame on you.

That would be CHEATING!

[Qie Niangao]

10 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I assume that it's policy for LL not to use commercial products for its landscaping -- although now I think of it, I am certain that Motown did.

Anyway, I'm not sure what the actual cost of a Linden tree is, compared to a 1 LI mesh tree, but there are lots of really nice available examples of the latter. Building dense forests is probably an unrealistic expectation, but it should be possible to spread around some nice looking foliage quickly, easily, and at a reasonably low server cost. PBR land textures would also help.

I imagine an active builder-Mole could tell us the current rules. After the original licensed ("SpeedTree" ?) Linden plants (arbitrarily set to 1 LI each), they seem to use in-house product. Protected areas of Belli are largely (all?) Mole-built landscaping, as were earlier projects, even back to pre-sculpty days. I don't know why they've always been so very high land impact. I suppose they have LI to burn, high expectations for LoD stability, and a lot of time pressure.

To do real landscaping would require some time and effort which could be warranted at high visibility locations, but there's a lot of those old trees scattered around the continents that might be auto-replaced by some product crafted to take their places regardless of scale and setting. (Many of those eucalyptus trees I fuss about were originally planted to screen microparcel ad griefing because Jack took forever to realize he was being played by the adfarmers.)

[Scylla Rhiadra]

4 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

I imagine an active builder-Mole could tell us the current rules. After the original licensed ("SpeedTree" ?) Linden plants (arbitrarily set to 1 LI each), they seem to use in-house product. Protected areas of Belli are largely (all?) Mole-built landscaping, as were earlier projects, even back to pre-sculpty days. I don't know why they've always been so very high land impact. I suppose they have LI to burn, high expectations for LoD stability, and a lot of time pressure.

To do real landscaping would require some time and effort which could be warranted at high visibility locations, but there's a lot of those old trees scattered around the continents that might be auto-replaced by some product crafted to take their places regardless of scale and setting. (Many of those eucalyptus trees I fuss about were originally planted to screen microparcel ad griefing because Jack took forever to realize he was being played by the adfarmers.)

Duh. It hadn't occurred to me to check what they're using in Belli. (A disadvantage of not having a LH is forgetting Belli even exists for long stretches of time!) I myself use Skye Designs (along with a great many other people, I'm sure): they look very good, have a good LOD, and are not LI-heavy at all.

Yes, there must be a way to automate some of this. And there are clearly areas that would benefit more than others, such as those by highways and the SLRR.

[AmeliaJ08]

Mainland has many dilemmas and the appearance of much of it is a big one. For many users its existence doesn't matter, many won't even know there is connected mainland of continents. You don't visit it much, most don't explore it.  Those who do will quickly find much of it would have looked dated even in 2007. There's little incentive to really use one of SL greatest (on paper) strengths - IMO - and treat it like a giant MMO.

Don't get me wrong I like some of the old stuff, I'm a 2017 intake that geeks out as much as I can about historical sites, takes noobies on tours of old stuff, even learned some of the lore etc. I'm not saying nuke it all and make it new (a project that would take decades) but it does feel there's basically nothing happening as far as even trying to improve the looks of the connected grid. I'm probably mistaken in my appreciation for the mainland given the trend away from it, clearly the users have spoken and the users stand around AFK and barely move.

I am generalizing of course, plenty do like the mainland and that's nice but I think you could probably nuke it and make every region a private island and a lot (most?) of users wouldn't notice any difference. That's a shame, it makes me wonder if a giant project of renovation would even be worth it.

Perhaps a bigger issue than appearance is usability, if you can't reasonably and casually travel mainland (and for the most part you can't, it's a chore to do so, I know there's exceptions and I've done it myself) what's the point in sprucing it up? there's more fundamental server issues that need addressed first.

 

Edited August 8 by AmeliaJ08

[Porky Gorky]

3 hours ago, Porky Gorky said:

So you are saying the owners of the largest virtual world on the planet does not have a licence for SpeedTree? 

I am now wondering if LL provide or pay for any creative software licences for their mole poeple to use. Does anyone know this?

[Love Zhaoying]

49 minutes ago, Porky Gorky said:

I am now wondering if LL provide or pay for any creative software licences for their mole poeple to use. Does anyone know this?

If not, does that mean we can legally rip LH Homes?

[Porky Gorky]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

If not, does that mean we can legally rip LH Homes?

Nope, probably means they are just using free software.

[WeFlossDaily]

10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Crappy looking garbage has to go, and should be destroyed.

Only if it is replaced with properly optimized less crappy looking garbage, though. Trading functionality for aesthetics will just result in high-lag and unusable land.

6 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

I nominate the Linden Eucalyptus trees for grid-wide extinction-level blight.

This is really, really funny. But we can't just replace everything on the mainland with piles of pretty alpha-blended trees and foliage and expect such land to remain functional.

[Qie Niangao]

11 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

But we can't just replace everything on the mainland with piles of pretty alpha-blended trees and foliage and expect such land to remain functional.

Now I'm curious: although those early "Linden plants" have always cost 1 Land Impact, do we have any idea what they actually cost to render? They have the advantage of using really minimal textures, that much is for sure, but… presumably there's some geometry to be seen in wireframe… I mean, they're not just sprites.

The groundcovers are actually kind of impressive in that they follow the terrain and reposition themselves in response to terraforming. That would be quite a stretch for resident-generated content. Maybe some special viewer magic is applied?

[Love Zhaoying]

7 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Now I'm curious: although those early "Linden plants" have always cost 1 Land Impact, do we have any idea what they actually cost to render? They have the advantage of using really minimal textures, that much is for sure, but… presumably there's some geometry to be seen in wireframe… I mean, they're not just sprites.

The groundcovers are actually kind of impressive in that they follow the terrain and reposition themselves in response to terraforming. That would be quite a stretch for resident-generated content. Maybe some special viewer magic is applied?

I bet it is "accounting magic".  Like, "They are all copies, so share resources.."

[WeFlossDaily]

4 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

Now I'm curious: although those early "Linden plants" have always cost 1 Land Impact, do we have any idea what they actually cost to render? They have the advantage of using really minimal textures, that much is for sure, but… presumably there's some geometry to be seen in wireframe… I mean, they're not just sprites.

The groundcovers are actually kind of impressive in that they follow the terrain and reposition themselves in response to terraforming. That would be quite a stretch for resident-generated content. Maybe some special viewer magic is applied?

The old plants and ground covers sound pretty efficient when you put it like that.

[AmeliaJ08]

The "Linden trees" are interesting, they can sway in the wind can't they? I assume this is implemented in every viewer.

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

7 hours ago, Porky Gorky said:

So you are saying the owners of the largest virtual world on the planet does not have a licence for SpeedTree? 

Apparently they've had one since 2005 and were talking of incorporating it by Q4 (of course they didn't specify a year, but I'm sure it'll be Soon™)

SpeedTree Licenses To Bizarre Creations, Second Life, More

Quote

Linden Lab has also licensed SpeedTreeRT for use in Second Life, its 3D digital world, and hopes to add the real-time foliage solution for its next generation client in Q4.

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

6 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

The "Linden trees" are interesting, they can sway in the wind can't they? I assume this is implemented in every viewer.

 

AFAIK they react to the same "wind" as particles and flexiprims. In the case of trees and flexiprims I've always assumed it was just a vertex shader which modified the vertex positions based on the speed and direction values of SLs wind.

[Ingrid Ingersoll]

13 hours ago, WeFlossDaily said:

And the cult of progress marches on, attempting to force all residents to adopt to the unoptimized beta tech that is PBR. Clearly, anything older then yesterday has got to go and must be destroyed.

In the case of mainland, it's more like "I can't wait to pay for this piece of mainland with pixelated ground textures and a really poorly textured lighthouse next door made from prims circa 2007". Secondlife is a visual experience and no one wants to pay for something ugly. No one is putting old prim mole builds in the destination guide for a reason.

I sold land just to be away from that. 

Edited August 8 by Ingrid Ingersoll

[WeFlossDaily]

19 minutes ago, Ingrid Ingersoll said:

Secondlife is a visual experience

that no longer functions in an optimized way that is accessible to everybody. Various problems need to be solved at the root before any sort of meaningful progress can be made. Requiring more resources from each and every single user is not a constructive path forward. Nor is destroying historical sites/sims in favor of some unoptimized beta technology like PBR.

Let me pose a question, if I may, not that anybody asked me. But . . . still . . . I think this is a good question. Has anybody built the kind of ultra pretty looking sim yet with PBR and 2k that they are arguing that the mole builds need to be replaced with? And if so, is this ultra realistic sim even remotely accessible to the average user?

[Theresa Tennyson]

17 minutes ago, WeFlossDaily said:

that no longer functions in an optimized way that is accessible to everybody. Various problems need to be solved at the root before any sort of meaningful progress can be made. Requiring more resources from each and every single user is not a constructive path forward.

It never did. Complaints about lag from 2005:

http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/8/9f/52367/1.html

[WeFlossDaily]

4 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

It never did.

Fair enough.

[Qie Niangao]

https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?search=speedtree for a long tale of woe

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?search=speedtree for a long tale of woe

So, they got a licence and never implemented it???