Why do meshes have to render for non-compliant viewers? So awkward....

[Ashasekayi Ra]

If you want to drag viewer wars out until the end of the century (and into countless mesh-related threads), be my guest. It doesn't mean that I, or anyone else, has to play along. This specific Linden (Charlar that is) isn't responsible for the viewer interface. So, getting all out of sorts with him isn't exactly going to solve whatever issues you have with the latest viewer. 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Ashasekayi Ra wrote:

If you want to drag viewer wars out ...

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I don't. I seriously wish that LL would fix the official viewer (no more crashes, memory leaks etc., optional v1 style UI) and enable all of us to make the switch.

 

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So, getting all out of sorts with him...

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If an employee of the company that I'm paying hundreds of dollars per month compares me to somebody who is so backwards that he hasn't gotten used to "horseless carriages" yet, and tells me that he cannot speak to people like myself, who exactly is out of sorts here? 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

That is all nice and well, but it won't get LL off the hook. They need to give us a viewer that all of us can use, period. I won't switch to yet another half-baked third party viewer solution that will always drag behind the official viewer and is developed by anonymous people with questionable ethics.

After the Emerald disaster, I'd like to get back on board with the official viewer. LL need to fix that one, implement the changes that we've been asking for ever since v2 was introduced, and disable all third party viewers from accessing the grid in order to avoid this problem in the future. 

[Ashasekayi Ra]

If you want to get personally offended by a comment that wasn't personally directed at you, that is your right. The fact remains that unproductive threats and forum negativity isn't going to solve a single one of the issues in your post. It surely won't solve anything stating those issues to a Linden that doesn't work on the team that is responsible for handling the UI. Somehow, I would imagine general dissatisfaction with LL's viewer isn't going to be solved in a forum that is dedicated to *mesh* development.

But anyway, that's all I have to say on this derail. My apologies to the OP.

[Perrie Juran]

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Dante Tucker wrote:

The phoenix team is kinda looking like a bunch of dummies right now. They claimed it wouldn't be possible to add mesh to a 1.x based viewer. Well this has already been done in the newest private beta version of Astra viewer, and Sigularity is claiming they will be next.

So there will not even be a need to move to V2/V3 soon.

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When did they ever say that it COULDN'T be done? 

What they said was they were focusing on Firestorm and that if another TPV developer found a way to port mesh to a V1 based viewer that they would consider adapting it.

And let's compare that to LL who acted at first like we were all the ones who were crazy when V2 was crashing our computers left and right and also acted like it was not possible to make the UI customizable.

And while not everyone's experience is the same, let's compare that to those of us who find our rez time with Firestorm reduced 10 to 20% as well as averaging 10FPS faster when we are toodling about In World.

Isn't it kind of amazing that a group of volunteers who for the love of programing and of Second Life have been able to do what the company that we actually pay our money to has acted like it is impossible to do?

 

disclaimer:  I still support and believe, "Your World, Your Choice of Viewers."

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

@ Charlar Linden RE: " I can't speak to people who continue to ride horses down Main St. and curse at the those horseless carriages swerving around them."

Putting aside the rampant dissatisfaction with Second LIfe viewers by a large segment of residents, a lot of people simply can't run V3 because their computer is not capable of it and they can't afford a new one right now.  So should all these people, just stop paying their tiers, paying for their memberships, ie: stop spending money with LL and content creators and leave Second Life now ?  When new technology is introduced in real life, companies continue to try to accommodate their customers who are not in a position to adapt it immediately until such time as the technology becomes not only more affordable but is adapted across the board.  Why can't LL do the same? 

Your comment is just another example of the bad attitude I've noted toward customer service.



[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Ashasekayi Ra wrote:

If you want to get personally offended by a comment that wasn't personally directed at you, that is your right. 

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It was directed at a large group of people that probably constitutes the majority of customers, which makes it even worse. I took offense because I'm a member of this group.  

 

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The fact remains that unproductive threats and forum negativity isn't going to solve a single one of the issues in your post.

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Negative customer feedback should be a welcome wakeup call for any company. Not for Linden Lab though. They've always ignored everything except for things like "good one, Charlar". Be a good little fanboy or you won't be heard. 

 

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Somehow, I would imagine general dissatisfaction with LL's viewer isn't going to be solved in a forum that is dedicated to *mesh* development.

But anyway, that's all I have to say on this derail. My apologies to the OP.

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Look at the thread title. This thread is all about "non-compliant viewers". There's no need to apologize for being on topic.

 

 

[Nyx Linden]

Getting back on topic....

The short answer is that non-compliant viewers still show meshes as meshes are just special types of prims. They show up as prims because we couldn't go back and add code to all non-compliant viewers to tell them to not render meshes. We added code server-side so that non-compliant viewers would see a prim with the correct number of textures on it.

Whatever interface style you prefer, many viewers are adding mesh support. Hopefully the majority of users will be able to see meshes soon!

[Coby Foden]

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

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Ashasekayi Ra wrote:

If you want to get personally offended by a comment that wasn't personally directed at you, that is your right. 

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It was directed at a large group of people that probably constitutes the majority of customers, which makes it even worse. I took offense because I'm a member of this group.

 

 

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Ishtara, the intention of my post was not to offend nor ridicule anybody. I just pointed out some viewer and computer facts. That's all there was to it. My humble apologies to you and the majority of other users whom my post might have offended.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

I was only offended by Charlar's comment, not by your post.

[Coby Foden]

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Charlar Linden wrote:

if only to show that I don't do

only

mesh enablement workaround forum posts, I'll reply to this with some details:

• We show mesh objects as a Prim placeholder for non-mesh enabled viewers. The type of prim is based on the number of textures used, because we need faces to hold each texture. We had a fancy solution, but in the end actual features and bug fixes trumped them in priority.
• Not showing them at all is problematic for a reasons including naked avatars and invisible collision.

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I am planning to make a rigged mesh bikini. I suppose that I may wear it even on General region beaches? How about if somebody complains that they see me covered with couple of strange looking prims attached to wrong places leaving my "naughty bits" :matte-motes-agape: in plain view? Can I just say "it's your own fault, it's about time to upgrade your ancient viewer too" and go on happily with my own business? Or do I have to dress so that the poor person can look at me without getting overly shocked and embarrassed?

How about disabling all non-mesh compliant viewers from the grid? Yeah I know, there would be a war again if this was done... I'm afraid even to mention it here...  :matte-motes-dont-cry:

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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Coby Foden wrote:

How about disabling all non-mesh compliant viewers from the grid? Yeah I know, there would be a war again if this was done... I'm afraid even to mention it here...  :matte-motes-dont-cry:

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I actually like that idea. I mean, it makes sense from LL's perspective and it's consequential. Some people will grudgingly accept, others will see this as the last straw and leave SL. But LL doesn't care about either group anyway, so just do it already. Stop kicking us useless old horses over and over again, just pick up the cattle gun and get it over with.  

[Jennifur Vultee]

Here's what I don't understand Nyx...since everything in SL is already mesh why can't all viewers already see mesh when its imported?   Why is special code in viewers needed to see mesh?  I mean prims are mesh, the avatar is mesh, sculpties are mesh, the very ground and sky are mesh.   I can do CTRL + Shift + R and see the mesh that makes up SL...so why are user imported meshes so different that they need special code?

[Coby Foden]

1. In the beginning there was a prim. A prim is mesh all right. But it is a special kind of mesh with many limitations. You can tweak prim only to certain shapes. The viewer has a code by which it can translate how to render the prim mesh on the screen.

2. Then there was a sculpted prim. It is also a special kind of limited mesh. (Well, it is a bit more complicated, but in SL it looks like a mesh...) It can be tweaked more freely than prim to make nice shapes. The original code which knew how to render prim on the screen had no information how to render this new kind of mesh on the screen. So additional code was added to the viewer so that it could render also this new type of mesh.

3. Finally there was this thing called "mesh". One could call this a "free form" mesh as it hasn't got those limitations what prims and sculpted prims have. One can create any shape what the 3D program is capable of doing and then import it to SL. And naturally enough the viewer code which knows how to render the prim mesh and sculpted prim mesh on the screen had no information how to render this "free form" mesh on the screen. So new code was added again to the viewer which informs it how to render this new mesh.

That's about how it goes, me thinks...

[DanielRavenNest Noe]

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Jennifur Vultee wrote:

Here's what I don't understand Nyx...since everything in SL is already mesh why can't all viewers already see mesh when its imported?   Why is special code in viewers needed to see mesh?  I mean prims are mesh, the avatar is mesh, sculpties are mesh, the very ground and sky are mesh.   I can do CTRL + Shift + R and see the mesh that makes up SL...so why are user imported meshes so different that they need special code?

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Because the file format the data is stored in is different for each kind of "mesh".  Yes, the sky and ground are both geometric meshes, but the first is a fixed sphere, it never changes, so there is no need to ever read it's shape.  Terrain has two dimensions always the same (X and Y grids).  The points are always in the same horizontal position, and you only need to store the height data.  Prims are "parametric primitives", meaning the set of triangles they are made of always stays in the same order of what triangles are connected to what other triangles.  The edit window settings change the size and shape, but not the "triangle list".  The avatar also is a fixed triangle list whose size and shape can be changed, but not how many triangles are there, or which ones are connected to which others.

Mesh objects have none of those limitations, you can have any arrangement or number of triangles, so you have to download all the information about them.  Now, once things get out of the viewer, and into your graphics card, at that point everything is textured triangles, so it is all treated the same.  But what the Viewer has to do is take all the special object types and send them to the graphics card in a uniform format it can render.

[Maggie Bluxome]

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Charlar Linden wrote:

• Regarding lack of support for newer features (like mesh) in v1.x based viewers; I can't speak to people who continue to ride horses down Main St. and curse at the those horseless carriages swerving around them.

 

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This is the kind of uninsightful vision Linden Labs keeps presenting.

V1 is a horseless carriage.

V2/V3 are horseless carriages with steering wheels in the trunk.

There was no design reason to change what was already a perfectly working User Interface.

If Charlar is a voice for Linden Labs, I can only suspect Second Life will continue down the road of alienating paying customers.

 

[YT Upsilon]

The worst thing about mesh at the moment?  Turning up for a meeting of teachers to be told you have an egg on your naked behind.  (I never realised my avatar could embarass me until that moment).  So - if you buy mesh clothing, put your prim undies on.