Current Meshs soon to vanish?

[Christopher Vestel]

Now I dont know if I caught a rumor mill or what, but I am hearing current meshes will be useless since they are apprently recoding Meshs to be better, but the current meshes, will be considered legacy and not supported, anyone shed light on this who actually knows and isnt a rumor troll?

[Jennifer Boyle]

Should I say, 0#, $#!t?  I have been buying the ones that fit.

[Incoherendt Randt]

Nothing's gonna vanish, no! I think that this rumor started because LL redid the base format when mesh was still in beta, but they're gonna stick with the format they have now!

Meshes have a version number built in. If LL has to make any incompatible changes in the future, they'll just change that version number for new uploads. The worst that would happen is you'll need a new viewer to see the new style meshes, but the old ones will still work on the viewers already out there. Old mesh viewers won't be able to show future mesh versions, kind of like how the old versions today can't show mesh at all but old prims and sculpties are still OK. But the stuff you buy today will still be OK.

We had stuff like this before, there are different versions of classic prims and landmarks and animations and scripts, and there is backward compatibility built in that hides all that and makes it work.

[Tara Chester]

You're panicking. No such thing is going to happen. Enjoy!

[Jusden Jonstone]

This is rumor mill and there is no evidence from any reputable sources ourside or inside LL to confirm this. While its true the mesh asset format changed quite some time (many months) ago back when mesh was still only on beta grid and in testing, there have been no discussion I have been aware of or heard mentioned by LL or through the Lindens at Mesh Office Hours to give any credence to such a rumor. In fact, in recent Mesh office hours many of the Lindens have actually given more indication that the current mesh asset format is going to remain as it is and the main efforts for mesh in general is overall stability and also significant work going into updating the viewer to resolve some deprecated OpenGL bugs and other viewer fixes. You can read recent mesh office hours transcripts at the link below which should help reassure you that this is just a rumor and current mesh asset format is not changing. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Content_Creation,_Mesh_Import,_Scripting_User_Group

Best,

Jusden Jonstone

[Chosen Few]

[Christopher Vestel]

Alright, I feel better now! So my meshs will remain the same as far as looks, just the code behind them will change is what your saying?

[Nalates Urriah]

We are probably going to see some changes. Charlar Linden has posted that the Lab is open to mesh enhancement from the open source crew. 

However... the Lab does everything they can to avoid breaking existing content. In spite of that, no one knows what the future holds. If there is ABSOLUTELY no other choice, they will break content. It will have to be a horrible alternative to force the Lab to break existing content.

Qarl Fizz and Maxwell Graf have a mesh enhancement project underway that will affect mesh clothes. How this will affect existing mesh clothes is unknown. The hope is that the new features will work with all existing mesh clothes. Nor do we know whether the Lab will accept and use the enhancements. They are open to the idea of using them. But there is a caveat. 

The Lab has researched the possible alternatives for how to implement mesh deformations needed to make clothes fit our shapes. Now they are in some type of examination into how that may be implemented within SL. Their caveat is that they will not accept a less effective solution than what they decide is optimal for SL.

The problem that presents Qarl is the optimal solution for SL is not yet decided. Will Qarl come to the same conclusion as the Lab? May be. May be not. Is he waiting or proceeding? I don't know. 

If you used Emerald and then Phoenix you had the additional attachment points ahead of those using the SL Viewer. When the Lab added new official attachment points they were different. We got multiple attachments on a single point and clothing layers. Phoenix had to change. All our attachments still work. But, some people looked odd to to other people during that time. We may see something similar with mesh and mesh enhancements.

Mesh as it is now is planned by the Lab to be around for the foreseeable future. How long that will be is debatable.

When the Qarl enhancements arrive, we'll see what happens. They may only be available 3rd party viewers. In which case we will have an 'attachments type' thing going again. 

At this point we can't know.

If you would like to follow mesh development in SL check Mesh Related

[Charlar Linden]

Nal, and everyone else who posted, are correct. Thank you all for responding and killing a rumor.

To make it official: We have no plans to deprecate the current mesh formats.

We try very hard not to break existing content, although we do sometimes need to in order to correct significant problems or move the state of SecondLife forward.

Cheers

Charlar