Drayke Newall

Good to hear, though if this was what they said from day 1 of the announcement, 99% of all issue with the with Tilia integration wound have been non existent. It sounds like they rushed the announcement like usual without thinking ahead about what the backlash would be and it took hundreds of posts to change their minds. Hopefully they have learnt from this. What am I saying, its Linden Lab... I give it half a year for it all to happen again.

Wouldn't surprise me, went under the radar pretty much everywhere. I only know cause was looking to go to the US for a holiday. Don't think I will now. Haha, wouldn't know either but as we all know, hypothetically an 80 year old would still be accountable for a mistaken post some media or government outlet found on a twitter account the said 80 year old posted 65 years ago when he was drunk, half a sleep and accidently typed with text prediction whilst trying to turn off his phone alarm.

Not to mention you now have to provide all social media accounts to the US Gov to get a visa or visa waiver

The difference is that whilst yes, you have multiple forms of identity, only one from what I can tell is needed to prove your identity. Here the point based system is usually made so that it is highly unlikely someone will be able to provide the total required 100 points from items in a lost wallet as it will require other documents that one generally doesn't carry around.

I'm sure there are others that feel the same. When it comes to peoples personal details or the creation of accounts for them by other parties without your input it opens a can of worms. We recently had a big to-do in Australia where the government wanted to automatically create an account for all Australians with our medical records on it accessible supposedly to only medical practitioners. As you can imagine it went down pretty similar to this announcement by labs and resulted in the government making it opt-out before a set date by which if you opted out in time no account was created.

That's just weird, but different countries, different rules I suppose. We have a different way of proving identity whereby its a point system and you cant rely on just a number or one form of document for identity. Means that a person has to have multiple documents reducing the risk of identity theft. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/art/Documents/100-point-id-check.pdf

Must be different for people not in the USA as all I have ever provided to Paypal is my bank account details then they do a debit check on the account "pretend to take $1 out then cancel" and that's it. Australia don't have a Social Security number but I suppose the equivalent would be our tax file number which even the government says you don't give out to anyone other than your own bank or super fund. Odd that the SSN in the USA isn't similar, seems to be treated like a credit card number instead of a tightly secured number.

Hmm, this sounds familiar... removing some of the financial viability of a large contributor to Second Life. Is Mark Kingdon back again? 😱

Having money processed through Tilia as it is now is vastly different to having an account automatically created for you, separate from your current and only account with Labs (although tied to) of which can also have its TOS changed independently from Second Life. For example, if now or in the future Labs or you ties your Tilia account to another game or service (if labs expand the Tilia Service to other games/services) and somehow something happens on that other game/service that gets you into trouble with Tilia and forces your Tilia account to be terminated, what will happen to your SL account which is separate from the before mentioned incident? Will it also be terminated, resulting in loss of potential income to those that use SL as a business outlet and not a game? If I lost access to paypal (i.e. banned) would I have also lost access to ebay when it was owned by ebay? No and vice versa. The TOS at the moment states that your Tilia account can be closed. Does this mean the account can be closed and still allow access to Second life? The fact that I need to agree to both TOS's on the 1st August makes me think no. But the TOS does not imply as such. You also mention US laws making a separation necessary, however if this was the case, linden $ processing, which is handled though Tilia according to that screenshot, would (I would have thought) be equally liable for the same separation laws and trackability. For example if I purchase a parcel of land and pay tier in linden dollars, in some cases I may be able to claim that tier as a tax deduction, given it is a payment necessary to ensure my business in SL runs properly. Wouldn't this also be subject to those processing laws? I'm not from the USA so don't know tax law but seems really odd to require one thing and not the other. Furthermore, if such a separation was required by law, why will the Tilia account be only accessible through the Second Life dashboard, there certainly isn't an option to login to an account through the Tilia-inc website... Additionally, you also state that I have a financial account with Labs by having a SL avatar account. I would beg to differ. If I have no payment info in file, how can I have a financial account with them? The SL TOS certainly does not imply that a financial account is created automatically upon creation and also specifically states that linden dollars are not a currency or financial instrument. I may, if I have payment info on file, pay them a single amount to get something in return i.e. Lindens, but nor does that imply a Financial Account. Do you have a financial account with your local supermarket? No, you are a customer paying a once of payment just like any other business transaction. A transaction is different to a financial account by a long way. It is easy for you to say its all roses, but when an independent TOS is agreed upon it can turn ugly, especially given the very vague legalise the Tilia TOS is written in. Either the TOS needs to be changed to ensure no misunderstanding can occur or the SL TOS needs to also be updated accordingly to ensure that both tie in together answering the very questions that are left open due to the vague nature of the document. Promises in forums or Town Halls mean nothing when such things can magically disappear. Sure the sky is falling on SL ATM and this is just another thing to contribute to such claims, but such changes without specific answers to questions when the service goes live in just over 15 days is terrible business planning. Not to mention that it uses the same password and username as your SL account a massive no-no in cyber security for different accounts. All in all, it should be opt-in and opt-in only when you process credit/cash out or specifically opt-in. I don't want or need an account with Tilia, but if I am reading things correctly, even if I don't agree to the Tilia TOS an account will still be created tied to my SL account without my permission as I have seen no indication of otherwise. That said, I'm playing it by ear but the RL business owner me (if I was operating a business in SL), says not to touch this even with a 10ft pole until there is real written clarification on what happens with accounts etc.

Shame you never tried SL Go then. I too live in Australia and whilst yes I agree things have certainly improved with the data centers, SL Go was on a whole different level of quickness. There was a slight delay due to ping from memory, but as far as load times go it was near instant. Thing people kept saying was "how can people run sl at full graphics on a Android tablet like that and not make it overheat" not realising that the tablet itself was doing no work at all. Its similar to running a steam game on one PC and streaming it to another pc on the same steam account. One machine does all the work yet the other gets top graphics streamed without any load on the receiving PC's graphics or cpu. Definitely looking forward though to the rest of Cloud being utilised though and perhaps it is a by-product of looking into SL Go, just a shame it has taken so long.

This is a little different than perfect hindsight. Whilst yes true and hence my previous post of wondering what SL would be like without all the cancelations and mishaps in SL over the years, this goes a little further. It is well known that second life on mobile has been wanted for years and even talked about but they never kept looking into it. It is well known that having to send data of individual textures over the internet and recompile them onto the viewer is a problem, but they never looked into alternatives other than recently with the cloud. Anyone that used SL Go saw the benefits of the almost instant load times of the render engine. There was no waiting or very little waiting for textures to load, mesh (sculpts back then) to render etc. It solved many of the issues that plague sl today, yet they never looked into it further. It is one thing for perfect hindsight, however it is another thing completely in not seeing the obvious and exploring it further and implementing it. Anyone that thinks the benefit of live streaming games is for online MMO or FPS playing is just silly and is not the purpose of it. Additionally once again that is beside the point. SL benefitted from it due to the way it handled rendering locally on the servers in full and streaming it perfectly to the user, no waiting for textures to load. Even if there was a slight delay it would be nothing compared to what we have now. SL is well known for people who run the program on low end systems that it has kept the minimum specs of SL low for years. This would solve that, the precise reason live streaming is good, to run high end graphics on low end systems without negatively impacting those that do have high end systems.

Whoever axed it is here or there, the fact Labs didn't reproduce it then or aren't now on their own is what's stupid especially given the push for live streaming of games etc.

VR was dead the moment it came out priced at the cost of a PC rather than for what it is, an accessory to the computer like a headset. The mere fact that an established company thought it was going to be a success to run an entire new project on it despite all the warnings of issues technically, price and health is laughable to say the least. Even if companies are still working on VR it is going no where fast if they have to reduce graphics quality to make it work. Sansar's graphics are so low quality it has no trouble running VR, the issue why it flopped was that no one had a VR headset to use it and that it seems to have monthly DLC's of things that should have been included from the get go. Mobile is where every game company is heading. Now if labs want to be smart they should find a way to run peoples SL experience on a high end server with full graphics and stream it to peoples PC and mobile devices like many other companies and even Google (announced this year) are starting to do now. Hey they could even add that as a feature to a premium account. OH WAIT, Labs did do that years ago before the trend (SL Go I think it was called) but axed it, great decision that was...

Sad thing is rather than giving what people wanted and what was needed - SL2 which, would have resolved many things and injected new life into Second Life, we got Sansar, the project no one asked for nor wanted and even though released recently has graphics so far behind modern graphics no one uses it.

No, they shot themselves in the foot by trying to be like Second Life and charging less rather than finding a point of interest. Marketing 101 - a competitor must find and implement a reason WHY people should leave one company and go to another. Its the same with second life which, has gone downhill due to no new meaningfull, workable or timely implemented features to keep people here. I always wonder what SL would have been like financially and population wise if Labs had listened to its users and added animesh/NPC support prior to when they did? Updated the avatar creation system (and body mesh) years ago when users were pleading to do so. Not have removed the teen grid forcing a new separate and emptier adult grid. Dealt with mainland and regions differently. Not killed off non-profit and educational sim discounts (a huge drawcard for users). Could go on and on. Yes some may have been non profitable however the backlash that followed many of the above was huge to the point where it gouged the userbase. Experiences and new sharable windlight is a whole other topic. The former promised to all but then implemented only to the unused mainland and the later promised to all with a carrot on a stick of "its coming". The fact of the matter is that Linden Labs has shot itself so many times in the foot, the only reason they survived whereas the others haven't is because they were the first and got that all important media attention in 2006 and have a loyal fanbase. That, was a time where everyone was on mainland and though it was more populated, it looked active and full all the time. People would actually use the roads to drive to events rather than teleport. This is what made SL appealing, a true definition of a second life. Now all we have is media or reviewers creating accounts and seeing nothing but emptiness reporting as such and leaving. Negatively impacting any advertising Labs do. You can only beat a dead horse so many times and its getting closer and closer for SL. These premium changes and multi tiered premium has been talked about by users for years to reduce tier prices with no response by labs, yet only now is when Labs decide to introduce it with a give and take attitude.

I haven't read all 52 pages so apologies if some of this has already been mentioned. Just read the change news. Firstly I used to be a premium member however stopped because quite simply, it wasn't worth it in the long run. Any savings made by using mainland with premium is met with non uniform parcels, lag, ugly builds next door and even owners of parcels not online since 2004. If this is Lab's solution to making people come back or choose premium then I don't know what to say... Great, take from the poor and give to the rich. If you think by increasing the process credit - this $20 saving is going to be passed onto the renters, you are dreaming. Additionally, even if it is, out of the hundred + dollars per month for a sim it is nothing. You herald "the cloud" Amazon servers are the saving grace, will help with lag, reduce fees etc.... still waiting. Might not have raised them but if you think you have added value once again your dreaming. New Linden Homes? Great, took you over 10 years despite people asking for it well before and now that they are here its going to take 2 more years just to transfer all current premium users over. Not to mention new premium members get what - old linden homes? Double Tier? you mean on mainland, the slums (now I'm going to get hounded for that) of SL where odd shaped parcels, parcels with holes in them, lag heaven, ugly builds and where users who haven't been on since they died or left still have land...? No thanks, not a benefit. Reduced mainland prices fit into this as well, not to mention, oh hey want a parcel near the sea? Pay me $4000 USD and you can have it. I'm sorry where's this reduced mainland price? Premium access - yeah... those sandboxes really do have an impact on the SLcreation, don't they. No one is ever on those sandboxes as there are a gazillion user ones and the beta grid. As for the gifts, some freebies on the marketplace are 10x better than the gifts. How about, you know, asking creators for help with the gifts, gives you a good gift and gives the store/creator much needed advertisement for free "Here's your monthly gift brought to you by John Smiths Stiff Hair Mesh Store". More offline IM's - don't even understand how this is a bonus, just negatively impacts on store advertising etc. More transaction history - This is seriously a bonus for premium? *shakes head* Such Value! More groups for premium? So much for that "groups are such a drain on the servers", but hey pay us more and we will give you more groups to troll & lag the basic users More animesh - Thanks, now of those only 500 odd avatar attachments that are animesh I can have 2! Experiences? The ones only on mainland and no one else can use? Gotcha SLB15 - anyone remember that post, you know the one I mean... "Hi second life users its been 15 years here's what we have planned: 90% still waiting for it. I'll believe it when I see it. I know its hard, all that code, the network blah, blah, blah, but there is only so much time people can wait for empty promises to be fulfilled. Region crossings: Hah! - You mean that problem that has plagued SL since year dot and still isn't fixed despite "were fixing it - promise, here's a new sandbox for compensation" Attachment reliability: once again how so? - its not like that's been promised before One day my avatar will just fully rez and not rez as an exploded rigged mesh monster upon sim hopping. Market place improvements: Great! Im looking forward for that new category this year- what was it last year - oh that's right, all hail the new gatcha category. How about some actual improvements like search functions for phrases or exclusions i.e. -gatcha (doesn't show any gatcha keyword items). Land Auctions: Wow - that's still a thing? Here's an idea how about just use the one you already have and don't use. If you think user auctions are going to end well and not be a linden grab for those beach front mainland properties you have another thing coming. I am in no way against improvements or changes in premium but, I just get the feeling your going the wrong way about it. For example you've stated now there will be a super duper premium … um if that's the case why not just keep current premium the same price and have the super duper premium the higher? Why not add meaningful and worthwhile premium features that will see people come back, re-sub, spend more? I've said it before, always to deaf ears, why not give premium accounts the ability to purchase a homestead parcel without the need of having a full region? Why this isn't a thing yet I still don't know. It adds huge value to premium, allows more income from land purchase's to labs, helps SL users who want to keep running sims that cant afford full sims or don't need full sims. Almost all improvements over the years and promised to come seem to just be re-hashes of existing features with no outside the box thinking. When a basic user buying lindens can get more out of SL than a premium member in SL you should know your doing something wrong. Until this is fixed SL will always be reliant on tier. Sorry for the long cynical post, however these changes I just cant see benefitting anyone.

Well considering they do the earthquake thing on sim resets something similar would have been nice.

Apologies I misunderstood your post but unless I once again am misunderstanding, if they earned $60mil 3 years ago (that's awesome good for them) but, if they earned an extra $8mil from then till last summer then you have proved my point then that in over 3 years they have only seen an increase of $8mil total. In terms of that size business and by historical data of what they used to see in profit increases then it is still a tiny increase. Add to that the fact of dropping land sales and user retention I cant see that figure pushing up more any time soon. Hence why they are looking at other ways to make money. That said, all that proves is labs is making money. I don't deny that, I want them to but, it still doesn't change the fact that they need to fix these mesh body issues with regards to market domination, clothing and system avatars as well as reintroduce in world building so user numbers can grow and not decline so that the economy can increase. Not in relation to your post Theresa, but (don't want to flog a dead horse) it is in labs best interest to reintroduce viable inworld mesh creation. At the moment the market constitutes a person makes a mesh item out of sl, uploads onto the beta grid fixing all issues and then uploads once to sl and then to the marketplace. In some instances other than uploading the product they don't even step in or stay in sl and have a website for support instead or other support people inworld. As far as profit goes other than marketplace sales all labs gets is 1 mesh upload fee and 1 uv maped texture fee. All other profit goes to the creator at more than 95%. Conversely, before they made the inworld creation tools obsolete the process was - buy a parcel of land or support your favourite sandbox, build on that parcel and stay inworld for hours building and chatting with other users helping new users build, upload multiple textures or buy multiple textures and other full perm items from another creator and then upload to the marketplace and many more people had an inworld store. This saw sl always looking full and active meaning new users saw activity instead of playing spot the dots on the map, helped new users who wanted to build, supported other sim owners, supported other creators buy buying their produces and driving them to make more and then also increased labs profits far more as far as upload fees etc goes. It also drove up user numbers and gave people a selling point for sl instead of a glorified chat program with pretty graphics and dress-up. All labs needed to do to make sl more viable is introduce in world texture creation and animation creation. Instead they removed (made obsolete) in world creation, removed inworld new user support, removed tertiary discounts, made obsolete system avatars etc. Sure they have added things over the years like bento, fitted mesh etc. but all this does not make non builders stay in sl and support it. Other than what Coby said it also meant a new user didn't have to spend a lot of money off the bat to have a decent avatar.

Well they are made of mesh, but crap mesh with far to few polygons. All labs need to do is look at adding more shape sliders as well as providing muscle definition and fix the face (I mean the nose and face still looks like someone got hit in the face by a moving truck and went to some cheap Taiwanese plastic surgeon to get a nose job) and it would be pretty acceptable/competitive. Having to use skins to show definition is just a bad idea in this day and age. That is all well and good, but that was 3 years ago. If a business owner structures their financial survivability on only one thing it inevitably ensures a bad business practice as well as a dangerous precedent in that, should the market turn they will loose potential sales or worse users due to their products becoming obsolete. We see this in labs for years putting all their eggs into the land basket only to eventually realise (too late) the unsustainability of their land pricing and now trying to regain stability in the profit margin by working out new ways to obtain the much needed cash only to see land barons jumping up and down due to potential loss in income. Whilst clearly when mesh was released there was a large intake of people buying body related things it eventually turned for the worse. Rather than having a market where people buy individual body parts such as feet, hands, heads and bodies (giving labs in essence 4 profit streams) we now have a market where basically 2 mesh body creators (hands and feet included) and 2 mesh head creators dominate the market (halving labs potential profit streams), which would in effect result in a downturn of the profits labs gets. This domination in the market has also meant that any new mesh body creators (potential profit for labs) have very little chance of gaining any sort of traction or sales and eventually give up due to the not being able to compete as they are at the mercy of clothing makers making products for their bodies which they wont as there is no viability for that clothing maker when everyone has the dominant bodies and heads. Not to mention in one fell swoop by not updating the default body created the dreaded neck seam. Then to top it all off, these said dominant body and head makers ensure that the cost of their products are so high that it in essence forces a user to make an investment as for average non fashionista users (fashionista's are NOT the major users in sl) or new users it is cost prohibitive to change once they have been bought not to mention they would then need to get an entire new clothing wardrobe to boot. I have no problem with mesh bodies (so long as they get rid of the onion layer lag fest ones) but with labs not updating and improving the system body, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Labs have forced upon the new users 2 options. Live with the crappy default avatar that as mentioned are a major turn off to modern users and now getting very hard to dress up in anything new or force new users to fork out over $40 to update their avatar. Both options do not result in user retention, never will and no new user would be willing to put a lot of cash into sl on first signup. They will test the waters and then see how expensive it is to play ken and barby dress-up and leave due to there now also being no good inworld creation as they screwed that up as well. To generate money labs need new users as it is these new users that buy the mesh bodies, clothes, build, upload etc. and also inject new life into saleable products. I don't know figures on how much profit the mesh body creators make but, whilst im sure they still make a decent profit, I bet it is going down as what happens when the 40k concurrent users all have their desired bodies and heads? You also cant deny that the multitude of mesh bodies a clothing maker has to make for is counter productive, fractured and ridiculous not to mention for potential customers.

Yeah, know they created those horrible mesh avatars. I meant the default system avatar, which would be entirely possible to update. The thing is labs is in a position where they could hire (or contract) a person to update their system body to something better. It doesn't need to be "OMG Good" just an update that at least is competitive and allows new users to be able to straight off the bat use the system avatar without being scared away due to how bad they look. Then when they delve more into avatar modding/dressing etc. they can buy the user made ones if need be. Even if labs took alternative steps. Is it not possible for them to have vendors on noob island of the various user made bodies? At least this will show potential users that there are alternatives you just need to buy them (DLC style haha). Even their older pre 2010 noob island had a store on it where you could buy or get for free various user made items.

I agree, so long as they look outside the box and see the potential possibilities in these new releases and how their userbase may use them. They have to be aware or at least somewhat aware of how people (not just those that go to their meetings) are going to use these new systems so as they can stay ahead of it and ensure optimisation and a reduction in lag is at the fore. I still am dumbfounded by them not realising that people will make mesh avatars over the default avatars if they didn't update the default ones, especially given that an update to the default avatar to a new quality mesh was requested for years before mesh was released. They even had time after the release of mesh and perhaps when the first users started to look at mesh bodies to say to the userbase "oh hey, don't go to far in creating mesh bodies as we are planning to update the old bodies". Sure technically it would have been a lie from them making people think they already thought of this (which they should have), but in doing so at least they would have stagnated mesh body releases enough to update their default bodies to something better and in the meantime ensured that at least the new user that comes in doesn't get stuck with a default body that would turn any perspective modern user away. Sure there would have been other bodies still released to use over the default one, however due to labs oversight, not only did they instigate and make obsolete the default body (I know some people still use it) and contribute further to the a lag by onion layer avatars they also now have had to push through baked on mesh when the default avatar already had all this in place. (BTW I am not saying mesh body diversity we have now is a bad thing or that baked on mesh shouldn't eventually of been released) When and if labs release new features, it is these kind of QA things that labs should be ensuring never happen again as their development schedules to fix other issues within sl get pushed back as they realise these shortcomings and try to fix the optimisation and lag issues they in themselves create by not fully exploring how people in world are going to use said 'improvements'.

I believe this is how Niran did it in black dragon viewer when I requested the feature to be looked at, by using the obsolete calling cards as the link with the favourites.

I'm not missing your point. I fully understand it but you are not taking into account that people are lazy. I know plenty of people who make things in an external program like blender or max and upload it into sl without reducing poly count. I've even bought mesh objects where unseen faces are not removed, not because they were missed but clearly because the person making them doesn't know. So clearly your perception of "in order to make anything at all in blender..." is somewhat flawed if we are even having these discussions. I also know how hard uv mapping is but once again its these things that make the lag less. Yes, and my rl contracts for my business show clients the project turn around time. Does that mean that if I clearly show that something will take 4 weeks im not going to get a phone call from the client 1 week later asking where there project is? No. People only see what they want to see or if they don't understand something skip over it and see that not optimising objects still upload fine into sl so continue doing it. And yet here we are arguing as to why people aren't uploading custom LOD files or optimising content. There is always an excuse. The wiki is to complicated, I don't understand the program enough, what's a LOD... Once again in perfect world it would work like you want where people read a wiki or spend a full week watching youtube tutorials on 3d modeling and optimisation but its not a perfect world so we get left with a mess like mesh is at the moment. And yet the lindens response to many things is sorry we cant do that as the coding for the program is so complicated due to multiple updates over old systems that a rewrite would be needed. And yet unoptimized crap mesh is within sl and does sell and has brought performance down so clearly you do need tool tips or other methods to reinforce all this. Additionally the tool tips idea is more about first time builders in sl. Not serious creators. Just have a tool tip option turn off in the options if serious creators know what they are doing and don't want to see it. There is a reason why Autodesk put in place hover tool tips in there programs that expand showing sometimes small video gifs on what things do. Because they realised no one read the manual on there site. Whilst I understand your acknowledgement and point expecting me post on every 3rd party viewer site asking for a feature is a little much. Perhaps if labs had a 3rd party viewer discussion forum here these kind of things could be picked up easier as its the one place most developers look at all the time. But never the two shall meet as far as labs sees. I also realise that 3rd party viewer discussion takes place in the second life viewer section but having a dedicated feature request forum section and not a jira would be better as then it is picked up and commented on by all users not just those few that look at the jira and provide labs some form of idea on the popularity of the feature. I believe niran has looked into it and put it in his viewer as I requested it. Not sure if it is still in though. As to cache is there anyway to have it so that you can set a specific sim you regularly visit to not have its cache files overwritten so as you don't have to keep reloading them because they were overwritten?

Of course if your a content maker you could make varying LOD levels. That's not my argument. My argument is how many creators know you can make the LOD levels or even at what point each LOD mesh needs to be i.e. what is the difference between low and lowest. You are assuming amateur creators know all this (or want to know/research this) when most only know how to do basic meshing and only want to know basic meshing to earn L$ on marketplace. It's the same as why people stick 1024 textures on small objects when an 8x8 texture would do. They don't know the difference. They just see 'oh I can build in second life', upload a 2048 texture, gets converted automatically to 1024 and use that, as the defaults labs have placed in the software allow for the systems to be abused. A lot don't even uv map their stuff. That's why I still believe a higher texture size should cost more to upload than a lower one as this would help show people that higher textures need to be used sparingly. By taking out in world creation and even not updating it they brought all this to the fore. Heck, you can even create a mesh box that has a lower render cost than the default box prim. If I remember correctly each face of a box prim has over 18 triangles and gives a display weight of about 400 as opposed to 2 triangles from a mesh box with a display weight of half that. Additionally when you provide creators with a secondary avenue that is flawed such as the LOD input method that allows them to abuse the numbers to get the lowest possible LI at the lowest L$ upload cost, why would they go to the trouble of spending extra time to create their own LOD models when labs have given them an easier way. If they updated their build/prim tools to create mesh inworld as I mentioned before all those people that want to do basic mesh creation would have all the tools they need and then labs can govern the LOD automatically without relying on creators to know how. Then labs could also allow 3rd party creation tools to be used but make it so that if you want to upload from an external program you have to upload proper LOD levels. Its a win-win situation. Labs gets more users staying in sl longer 'cause people can competitively build again and also ensures that only people that know how to properly do LOD create objects externally. That's why it's important, as halebore Aeon said, to look at the main problem and fix that first instead of using a band-aid. Its also why I mentioned the avatar render cost as an example. They tried to adjust the arc levels couldn't get it right 'cause they didn't think of anything else other than adjust arc values and so stuck a massive band-aid on it that resulted in something that only degrades the user experience and sees people leave because the experience has degraded. This means if I want a lag free environment I can have that at the cost of ruining my visuals. Did they even look at issues that users have raised for years regarding texture size on avatars, glow, full bright, particles etc and limiting these first? I assume no. Did they try looking at tying the arc values to each attachment point so each point can only have a set amount of an arc value? I assume no. They gave up and gave the jelly doll solution. Wiped their hands of it and said "there fixed". Sure somethings cant be fixed, after all the program is 15 years old and no one denies this, but there are still varying solutions that can help and allow more users to log in and stay in. It has always been an issue trying to teach people how to build things as well as making the first user experience and ui easier, but labs still fail to find the simple solution in things. Why are there no in viewer tutorials? Its been 15 years... Open up the build menu and a window slides from the side of the screen (like how their old viewer used to do with the people window etc.) and it has a written tutorial with inworld playable video on how to build in sl. Change the tab on the build menu and the slide window changes to context relating to that build tab. All modern games have in game openable help tutorials because it is easier and doesn't break the experience like opening a wiki in a web browser does. Why on the build tools don't they have a dynamically changing "build tip" on each of the build menu's? For example go to the upload texture panel and you see "Build Tip: did you know, the smaller your object the less texture size you need." Add varying texture size upload cost and it could read even better "Build Tip: did you know, the smaller your object the less texture size you need and it costs less too." A simple solution to help a larger problem, but after 15 years they still scratch their heads and wonder why no one is building properly or having their arc levels for the avatar high. Why does the favourites bar on the top only allow for landmarks instead of also people from your friends list? Having the option where I can add the people I hang out with the most up on that bar and being able to right click and teleport, im, pay etc. them directly from there rather than opening the people menu (clogging my screen with windows), finding their name in a large list and tping them from that menu. I could go on but the post is already big enough so sorry for the long post.

Don't want to come across as negative, but whilst i'm sure they will look into it, the very fact they aren't looking to alter the existing flawed core methods and have just come up with oh lets just increase the calculations doesn't inspire hope. They have a flawed method in place already as far as not fixing lod levels on upload and instead of fixing that first and trialing that to see if it helps to resolve the issue they instantly use a sledge hammer and increase the LI cost. Case in point, take avatar rendering cost. How many times have they attempted to 'fix' the issue by recalculations to the arc only to result in people still abusing it. So their final solution lets just make it so people turn into jelly dolls and let the user determine the value. So what happens some new person logs into sl for the first time it auto sets the value initially and if low you get their first impression as ugly jelly dolls or they don't know what the setting is leave it high and lag and leave. Labs need to first look at the core systems and get them right before further hampering sim LI costs it should be a last resort. As to CoffeeDujur's point regarding custom lods.. in a perfect world yes, but one again you are relying in amateur creators to know better which they don't and trying to teach them different is near impossible. It took almost a year of arguing with people just to convince them that mesh is far better than sculpts. Whilst yes I do agree custom LOD's would be better, by not having automatically calculated LOD values for those that don't do custom lod's is part of the issue that needs to be fixed. If labs are too lazy to do this then remove the option to enter lod values entirely and just make it so that you have to upload custom lod's otherwise you cant upload. You have to force the content creators hand. If that doesn't work increase the L$ value if you don't upload custom lod's. Just don't give them a secondary option that provides them with a flawed lod calculation that can be abused.