PE Problem & Possible Solution

[Kellyo Mayo]

 I hadn’t done anything on the Beta Test Grid with mesh since the beginning of January so I decided to see what the fuss was about with the new PE or Prim Equivalence.

 

What can I say I was shocked.  A dolphin I made which back in January was 9 prim cost now was close to 50!  What the heck?  I know LL doesn’t want mesh to cause more lag than it saves but I don’t see how this is going to work.

 

With the current PE settings all mesh will be is blocky and not really an improvement over sculpties or regular prims.  Mesh is supposed to improve the overall look of SL so it can better compete with console games which have 1000 times better graphics than SL currently has.

 

I believe there is a much better way of dealing with the cost of mesh without handcuffing the creators who want to design and create incredible looking builds that will quickly be more stunning than those games out there.

 

Here is my suggestion.  Do away with PE all together.  Mesh will not count towards prim allowances.  Each sim will get a limited number of mesh objects.  The number may be relatively small say 15 or 20 but here is the kicker.  Those mesh objects can have a very high number of vertices in each object.

 

What this will do is allow mesh creators to design stunning mouth dropping mesh raising the over all look of SL significantly drawing in new accounts.  Since each land owner may only get one or two mesh object per parcel they will pick and chose what mesh is most important to them and their needs.  It may be a great building or cool car or boat.

 

Mesh will still sell because people will buy and keep in their inventory a good amount of mesh just that they will have to delete or take back mesh they currently have rezzed to be able to rez another.

 

Now if LL figures out how many of the most complex largest mesh objects a sim can have rezzed without causing a significant amount of lag and set that number as the number of mesh objects per sim mesh will never cause too much lag.  In fact most of the time a sim will have a mixture of big, medium and small meshes rezzed at any one time.

 

Now this is for mesh objects that are rezzed in world not worn by an avatar.  A similar system could be set up for worn mesh.  If you think lag caused by avatars is bad now I hate to think what avatars wearing overly complex and multiple mesh objects will cause especially since PE doesn’t affect items worn.  I can see a whole new bot industry coming.  Just attach a building to a bot avatar and have it sit someplace.  Use invisible regular prims to make it solid.

 

Yep mesh is going to be interesting.

 

 

 

[Monti Messmer]

:smileywink:From the early days mesh where introduced i wasn´t a big fan of all this. Content Creation was taken out of SL and with the possibilites mesh has no one would build with regular prims. (Not starting a new discussion thats all done)

But now with all this fuzz and limits it looks all have to watch very close where and when mesh can be used as an improvement - not for lag only for better content.

Monti

[Failed Inventor]

If LL was smart they wouldn't #1 do what you are suggesting, and they wouldn't do what they are doing now.

They say don't compare meshes cost to prim cost, well honestly follow your own words LL. Forget prims give parcels a triangle/vert limit, and same with avatars to. Why?

If you have ever render tested a scene you know that you have a budget based various factors within rez distance or within the rezzed scene.

I think SL should be looking at the budget of what is renderable for different lvl machines, tuning them correctly with various graphics settings, and giving parcels & avatars both vert and triangle limits.

Get away from PE, get away from punishing creators for using what is industry standard cause your platform's render tools are poor and under optimized.

 

*Waits for the linden fan boys with their torches and pitchforks to burn me at the stake for expressing non prolinden views.

[Runitai Linden]

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Failed Inventor wrote:

They say don't compare meshes cost to prim cost, well honestly follow your own words LL. Forget prims give parcels a triangle/vert limit, and same with avatars to. Why?

*Waits for the linden fan boys with their torches and pitchforks to burn me at the stake for expressing non prolinden views.

---

That's exactly what the "streaming cost" PE does, it just presents the number in terms of "prims" because that's what the existing accounting system is setup to handle.  It does exactly what you're talking about, it just converts the number to the same units the system is used to dealing with.

[Dain Shan]

Seems we have a different view on that matter.

 

[linkin Slate]

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.[1] This trend has continued for more than half a century and is expected to continue until 2015 or 2020 or later.[2]

The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras.[3] All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well (see Other formulations and similar laws). This exponential improvement has dramatically enhanced the impact of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy.[4] Moore's law describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.[5][6]

Guess Lindens haven't heard of this Law . they have there own law Called the Law of 15,000 prim limit per sim.

 this law of theres, insures no one will ever be happy with 512 plot and will force the never ending upgradeing of land. there main  sorce of income. 8years we have had the 15,000 prim limit, do you really feel this is a wall that cant be crossed ? lest not by choice on there count. Mesh is like a  round  peg  being driven in a square hole, by trying to make it work  under this  linden law of 15,000.

[Failed Inventor]

I have to respectfully disagree Runitai, it is what your PE attempts to do.

What it actually does is express that the Linden Prim, and sculpt are magically more superior in effeciency than industry standard models, though the magical LL prim and sculpt are made of that same element it is claiming higher effeciency over.

I fail to see how multiple wasted polygons, vertices and faces which are rendered but never seen is more efficient, than models which have the same or better shape without wasted polygons, vertices and faces. If this was true then every game engine, every visual application would be using linden prims and sculpts. 

Additionally I fail to see how most people using dozens upon dozens of 512x512 textures is more efficient than a single 512x512 uv unwrap.

I have read through the posts and the explinations with streaming cost. But if sculpts or prims were far more efficient then Pixar, Lucas Light and Sound, Blizzard, Bungie and Bethseda would all have their gamesand movies and all other visuals, in your super efficient platform on Second Life which would allow for huge waste and disregard to best practices for optimization, and a head in the sand attitude to why the fps is falling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Charlar Linden]

A common misconception is that the prim count associated with a given prim or sculptie has any direct relation to it's actual effect on our systems or the rendering engine. It does not. 

What you see with with prim equivalent values is an attempt to better match the actual weight to the prim count - as Runitai said. We're still tuning and tweaking, so examples and use cases are exactly what we need. 

 

Charlar

[Chodai Yoshikawa]

Hi Charler et al,

I think most of us are aware that the prim/sculpty  == 1 Prim is not a true reflectionof server/sim/viewer cost.  The point is that because you do not want to break current users use of these you will not increase the cost of these items to reflect true load as you have done with mesh. This creates a bias of cost away from mesh and back to prim/sculpt where the true cost is higher than the accounting cost == Prim count.    It's like saying lets tax solar power but still subsidise coal.

I hope that in upcoming ARC cost calculation changes you at least ensure that true costs are put into the calculation for all types : prim/sculpt/mesh to reflect an unbiased load.  Hopefully also you impose an ARC budget per avatar to promote the use of more cost (load) effective solutions to looking good.

Cheers, Cho

[Failed Inventor]

@ Chodai, thank you, and yes I agree, very well put.

[Charlar Linden]

Chodai - yes, many people do know about the subsidy, so I don't mean to tell you what you already know, but it doesn't take a lot of FUD to throw mesh newcomers into a tailspin.

And, your analogy is a good one, although I wouldn't say we were taxing mesh, We're just not hiding the true costs. 

Charlar

[Nix Manx]

The true cost?

The true cost is that residents have been adding content to Second Life for many years, without this content the grid would most likely not exist. Meshes are no different, why there needs to be a 'streaming' cost to the creator seems abit backwards to me and from recent posts its not going to be cheap to upload meshes.

There should be a set fee, like with sculpts and animations and images, this taxation seems to be something a few people have just resigned themseleves to have accepted as the standard yet no matter which way you spin it, its a creation tax.

[Chodai Yoshikawa]

Hi Charler,

Yes, perhaps the wording as Cost rather than Tax is a better way of putting it.  

In any case what can you say about the ARC? In particular ::

* When is calculation being updated to account for mesh (I assume that sculpt and prim are correctly weighted now)?

* Limiting the ARC level to promote sensible attachments (and encourage well made mesh)?

Cho

[Failed Inventor]

True costs, quiet a funny term coming from the person controlling the cost, as nothing about the cost is logical thus far. So far true cost is what you are telling us it is, and seems to change weekly if not daily sometimes.

But here is the thing, you acknowledge that prims are wasteful, and anyone with half a brain knows that sculpts are notorious fps killers, with horrible load times.

I find it disturbing that Lindens believe extremely wasteful sculpts are lower cost then mesh, or that just because you messed up the math 8 years ago, even again when sculpts came out, that the best policy is to make mesh higher cost to balance your mistakes.

Just like the tier discount you guys took away from nonprofit and educational communities, has server cost some how gotten magically more expensive over 8 years for same stuff?

I can have 100 concurrent users on my virtual platform for free with smartfox.

Minecraft I can have 96 people online for  70USD$ a month, hell that blows your 20 user homesteads and 80 user sims out of the water by 2x or 3x atleast if not worse!

( before anyone says well minecraft is crap, what does it use, square blocks, sounds like a prim to me. Ah and!! and!!! oh those blocks are made with meshes, just like Linden prims are!  Within draw distance you can have over 100k blocks easily, which means, guess what! 1,200,000 rendered tris! with the furthest draw distance. )

I don't know about you guys but linden prices kinda seem like oil and gas prices, first it was free to create, the we charged for textures, then we made sculpts which are textures, which make texturable objects, and now we have mesh.

Your platform is 8 years behind in performance, and looks as if it was from the days of Playstation 1, yet you charge pricing rates of tomorrow on platform capacity of yesterday.

So what is the true cost again?

 Yes I know the temp suspend account button probably seems a bit tempting right now, as I have had my account temp suspended before for expressing my disatisfaction with LL policy.