Andred Darwin

I can mostly speak for myself about what made me stay in SL. A friend ( He was running a mall with shops for rent and a t-shirt, quite successful ) told me about the game and invited me to join, he basically let me use some land ( 512sqm more or less ) for a couple weeks, he sorted through and gave me a nice set of freebies (2007) to play with, showed me the basics on how to unbox, place in-world, change my avatar, etc. At that time, it was quite common to see and meet “real” people around and that was fun (ladies with flexible skirts, lol, and all the guys with the same "shape" but some very weird hair! hahahah). I think in summary, having something to do (interact, build/place items in-world), with guidance, see that I was not alone learning it (basically learning together), was great! There was no fancy walkthrough, the viewer became somewhat simple to learn the basics (was very easy for me to learn the hotkeys for building, moving, editing prims, etc), those first 2 weeks were really important, and definitely, what made me stay (SL crashed a lot on the computer I used at the time, lag was just “normal”) . Fast-forward to 2022, I'm still here... and many of us probably had a similar story, and are still here... If I could wish something ( 2022 ), would be to have an area similar to "Belisseria / Bay City / Shermerville" (maybe even connected) or sort of.. curated, with restricted access to new players and mentors where new players (using age verification as a method to make sure they are "new" in SL), can keep a small plot of land (apartments, homes, skyboxes, etc.) for a period of time ( maybe a couple weeks ), with a "nice" set of freebies available ( not in a viewer library, something they can choose and "buy" for $0 lindens, how many of us spent countless hours in freebie malls!) with avatar accessories, clothes, furniture, decor and other experiences or communities, ("nice" meaning that they look awesome, "picture of the day worthy", showing the potential of how their "piece of SL or avatar" can look like, not a bunch of “historic” items or weird starter avatars… let the user “build them”). Add to that, a team of people (mentors) that can be available and teach players how to do things ( SL University videos? ), FS has a help team in-world, why SL doesn't have a sponsored and organized one? Add to that, a section showcasing their achievements during that period of time... ( Blog or Flickr group showing pictures/avatars/etc, premium signup bonuses, etc) Anyway, something in these lines, would give new players a chance to really try and learn the viewer, it's not that hard to "learn the basics" if you give yourself some time to learn, ( you also don't need to learn how to edit EEP on your first week, a “simple” UI could be available as a switch at the viewer ), try out things without pressure, in a somewhat "safe" curated area with “real people”, according to the experience chosen (human, furry, travel, landscaping, academic universities, etc), before even noticing how big and how many experiences SL can offer. Well, SL never "really invested" on the new player experience other than the recent nice walkthrough, but the walkthrough is not enough, if you tried it recently, after a few minutes, you see yourself alone in a huge “world”, with quite a few areas blocking you from visiting (some for a reason..)... 27k regions for 44k average players online with quite a few of them being bots (Zindra, online games and alike)... It's great to see the recent improvements, server and viewer, the new ownership did inject some adrenaline to SL! I look forward to what comes next! (Hopefully new player experience and lower land maintenance pricing!) PS.: Sorry, this became way too long...

Agni, 2002!

I think the best thing we can do, is to report when we see something that we feel is against the TOS (like what the OP mentioned LL tried to cleanup)... if LL does not do anything about it (which I don’t believe its case)... shame on them! All the TOS does is give them legal coverage and basis to take actions when needed… I also believe, as of SL reputation (and TOS compliance), at least from my in-world experience... it improved a lot! There are quite a few of really impressive builds everywhere, even on mainland (Flickr, Destinations Guide, are full of examples )... and how many times we see communities where all it took, was one resident to come, work on their land and see that work spread around, new people with sort of the same goal in mind coming in... contagious... (my point is, you will/can get what you look for…). I believe we are responsible for SL's reputation to an extent... considering performance and viewer speed (SL viewer, Cool VL for now) improved a lot, I think the biggest barrier is the cost to maintain those nice areas, friendly areas, communities, etc... which probably helps build or balance a good reputation. ( to the OP’s point, the XXX play reputation in SL is not that expensive from a user/visitor standpoint… no maintenance costs, a basic membership with age verification is all it takes… although the issue mentioned specifically should have no place anywhere .. ) Maintenance cost is too expensive, land is already expensive to buy, but maintaining it is way more expensive … 512sqm, 1024sqm, 2048 sqm has its place ( people do seem to enjoy Belisseria alike, etc ), but it’s quite small to fully enjoy, all those really nice places to visit, which makes SL really cool to explore, builds a “good” reputation for SL, are many multiples of that… and rarely they continue to exist for a long period of time… there is also a reason why those pilling skyboxes do exist (cheap!). It becomes a “snow ball”… too expensive, I like to see but I can’t build mine…, people leave or it becomes a once in a while thing…. this is “kinda puzzling”… with all that abandoned Mainland as an example ( which you need a premium subscription to “own” ), a server is online doing nothing… of course we don’t know the break even ratio, but there might be a point where, in an analogy, would be better to have 10 sales at L$500 than 2 at L$1000… not to count the economy snowball effect… (land requires effort, decorations, buildings, clothing, avatar accessories, furniture, etc…). How many more “nice” places could we see if all that abandoned mainland would be maintenance wise affordable or at least people could use more space for the same? How many “nice” places would not only continue to exist, but improved on? How many new players would SL be able to attract and retain? ( Bjoyful as an example created a community in a somewhat ugly area in the Mainland with high mountains in part, that attracted, kept growing… contagious… How many people with the same skills are out there? ) I hope SL will work its magic to make “land maintenance” more affordable along with current improvements (things are getting better!) , so people can come, create, retain and build on the great ideas, communities, which are the “motor” of what SL is today… (and also shapes SL’s reputation).

To the OP's point... I think It’s hard to "re-invent the wheel" , even though “SL's wheel” has been quite "squared" for a long time. I think it's great to see the current improvements to the server and viewer, it's the first time I can "brag" about the SL viewer being 3x (or more) faster (It’s a huge difference) than the Firestorm viewer which my partner uses... (at least until the FS team has a chance to implement the new code... lol… )... communication and script performance on the server improved a lot ... so I think finally some things are changing... and it’s great, I believe if they continue in that route SL will be fine and maybe even grow again, if not growing already (at least continue to have people coming back to the platform)... the same cannot be said yet for the Web team though… Search, Marketplace…. Every meeting, lots of ideas, lots of “working on it” … time to deliver!!! I hope they will also tweak a bit the mentality of just profiting over the current users... the new Premium Plus, based on my opinion and hearing from quite a few folks in-world… was a huge disappointment ... SL is already expensive, way too expensive, nothing wrong with creating a plus package… but at the very least the features in that package… ideally would work as intended! Hopefully they will work their magic to bring costs down, lower the price and market the appealing features to new audiences (Not just a commercial!) and bring new people in. Anyway, I think overall at least is moving forward! After quite a few years in SL, I still enjoy it very much and will continue to do so for as long I can….

Thank you for that one! I got an extra 20fps in average by enabling it for the viewer! (On my machine its called Threaded Optimization under Manage 3D Settings... For what its worth, I agree with the OP... viewer performance sucks! It's tolerable ( 2022 ) if you use 64sqm of viewing area... with less than 5 avatars in a scene! I hope they continue the work with the Performance viewer, and add more effort into improving the viewer (same as it was done with the simulator when it comes to script performance...) and less effort adding new stuff.... (the snowball keeps growing, at one point, will need to deal with it!)

Just tried and indeed, its a fast viewer! Great job! I can only imagine the hours you put into it, porting things, etc... Your viewer is a keeper, quite nice to see the UI as it used to be! Maybe would be nice to start a thread or a couple of threads (Windows, Mac, Linux), sharing machine specs and fps readings from a specific scene in-world ( let's call it "neutral zone" lol with a pose stand, etc. ), shared in a simple formatted way, could be useful to anyone looking to upgrade or just choose a newer graphics card ( not necessarily new ) and not over spend... ( I know that any newer card would do a good job, but it's nice to get some info on what to expect.. from a SL standpoint ) We could share some standard settings to be used for the fps readings, with and without shadows... ( which could allow us learn a thing or two as well ) For a neutral scene, could maybe use some at Bay City, Nautilus, Horizons... with some water around..., whichever would include a bit of all components within rendering... maybe @Patch Linden could work his magic and donate / build a small area for that purpose. I think you ( Henry ) and maybe other viewer developers, could set the settings that would better fit the purpose ... and lead the threads...

Yes, I was comparing the official viewer with this performance viewer, with the same settings (draw at 128sqm, as high as possible everything else except depth of field, and unchecked V-Sync), sincerely, in some areas the performance improvement is over 100%, looking at the same direction, same position, same scene, 2 avatars... I have never seen a viewer running at 170 fps looking at a scene ... it's really nice to see it moving that direction. V-Sync would cap the fps to match your monitor, but at the same time, makes it feel really smooth turning (provided your video card can keep up with your monitor frame rate). I'm a big fan of Linux and pretty much what I use at work ( latest Debian, servers, etc... ), but this test machine is a Windows 10 machine with RTX 3060, and an old i7 6700k 64gb memory... today, I also tested on another machine with the same base configuration but with a GTX 1080... the results are very similar, the 3060 performs faster than 1080 for SL, 5% to 10%. Would be nice if it gets to a point where everyone can see that kind of improvement allowing a larger draw distance and maybe bumping up a bit the default LOD factor (I use 4 when not building and 2 when building, seems like 2 is the default in Firestorm, and a very ugly 1.125 in the official viewer). I know there could be a long conversation about LOD factor, but reality is that in-world today, anything less than 2, and most items will only rez if you are close to them, ugly ..., I'm lucky that the system I use, can handle the LOD set at 4 with a draw area of 128 sqm, and performs reasonably if there are less then 10 avatars within the draw area..... One thing though, after installing the performance test viewer, I could not use the official viewer anymore, the selection highlights while editing were just "borked" ... but fixed itself after uninstalling everything and installing the official viewer again... Anyway, would be great to see some Linux love too, but I'm pretty pleased with what they are doing with this test viewer.

https://releasenotes.secondlife.com/viewer/6.5.2.566967.html This viewer is fast! Please keep up the good work! At a couple locations , this viewer is anywhere from 25% to 50% faster than the latest official as of today... even cranking RenderVolumeLODFactor to 4.0 (as a test), all settings at max except depth of field, this viewer managed to keep 140fps constant! (Same machine with current official would stay around 100 fps). To see the max fps you may need to uncheck Enable V-Sync in preferences... There were a couple issues I noticed: - When you tp a new location, leave and come back... no object shows rezzed.. leave and come back again, all good.... - Some issues with lights too... Great to see it moving forward!

Just had a restart at one mainland region today ( Saturday 8:31am, 18 days, 45 minutes after the last restart ), anyone else seeing restarts? Anyway, I was not seeing any issues before the restart, whatever hardware the vm's are running, seems to handle the simulator much better, and for much longer... in the past, after 10 days it was quite common to notice issues...

I agree with you... I just think there is opportunity in this specific case... its not easy to deal when there are no rules.... ( which I believe its the reason why SL is still alive, and at the same time the reason why its stuck for so many years. )

Again, part of me agrees 110% with you... but looking at the past 18 years ... how many times SL actually intervene? (Gee, there are avatars with more scripts and polygons than entire parcels! ) Also, some people would just leave when approached that way... you are dealing with something they like SL for, they spend money in land and pets , which they would recommend the system to others... although sound.... it will be a nightmare to implement... all for just a "set" of all items available in SL that people actually like with a risk to just lose that revenue... ( its not they're fault... ), it's much easier to own it... with limits and allow people continue to enjoy SL ...

Part of me, agrees 100% with you Lucia, but I interacted with a few of those players, and they "freaking" love those (I mean, they really enjoy breedables), and there was no way for me to just say (neither my place to it), "hey, your freaking breedables are a drag in this region... " , I just think its an opportunity for SL, people love it.... why not have an option suited for them... LL will not intervene on how an item is scripted... we can't help, bad or good scripts are subjective... its a fact, that whenever they are present, performance is most likely affected.... so why not own it and try to make it work... (regions tweaked for it, maybe with some sort of covenant... hopefully same price, everyone happy.... ) Anyway, that was just a thought.... again, I think what you mentioned makes total sense.... but I also think could be an opportunity for SL... and would not require a huge effort... (a few AWS clicks using a suitable machine specs and a few blog posts... ). I'm sure the couple users I had contact with would be very happy to see their pets functioning better ... and I would love to see the region running without them....

The performance improvement is quite noticeable, comparing to what it was a few weeks ago (and welcomed! Thank you for that!). I think its also true, the script performance is way lower than what it used to be before the cloud move, and by a lot... the cloud move from a user standpoint, brings a huge improvement due to the network speed provided by AWS... but, from a script performance standpoint, the chosen virtual machines just cant handle the same as it used to be. I looked at a few regions, where a few friends use parcels and the ones I where I use parcels... and the biggest issue for me in this topic, is that the ones that shows low performance metrics, its mostly due to one or two users, that probably without even knowing, are "sucking" most of script time available to the region... I'm going to use the Brown as an example... one user has more scripts in 2 small parcels than all other users together in the region (in fact almost triple in size)... and in another region, after the "upgrade/update", a user simply doubled the number of objects (scripted pets) bringing the region performance to be worst than what it was before... So... my point is, by increasing performance of the region without some limits available to users, you are just pushing the problem a few weeks/months further... (sincerely, seems like its the management tactic)... It's more than overdue to add such limits or at the very least invest in educate the players on simple things they can do to get the most of the experience SL can provide... like watch script counts... don't overload a small area with too many high poly mesh items, you don't need texture changing trees with listeners open when you dont change that texture that often... , you don't need 1000 furniture pieces with 100 animations each, when the only one using it, is yourself, etc... Also, people that enjoy breedables, deserve a set of regions that can handle such objects demand, where they can be together with other users that enjoy it, etc... (Brown as mentioned above... guess what the user likes to do...) Current metrics, even not being the best way to technically measure performance as you mentioned, they are comparable when looking at the same region, in a short time frame (a week as an example) as long as there were no major change in scripted objects, etc... at least in my case and most of friends, regions below 90% in script run with close to zero spare time suffers the most, less than 80% is downhill... and that is reflected in what matters the most, which is user experience... Monty, its great to see that you come and comment at the forums, thank you for that, but what you are hearing is user experience, and most don't care about the technical explanation or right measure of performance... LL gets paid for it... It doesn't matter the performance improvement if in most regions, players still put the simulators under stress (and usually one or two per region, and in most cases breedables impacting scripts run or boats, furniture impacting script events per second... )

Nailsworth - Old Teen Grid (TSL)

Meanwhile....

I use quite often the SL official viewer, and I think these changes are quite welcomed, specially at the "Places window"... thank you for that! If I could add something (although not really UI related), would be to implement the options available at the latest Firestorm viewer for "Dynamic Texture Memory" in Preferences, Graphics, Hardware Settings tab... its like night and day to be able to make use of more memory in systems/computers that would allow it, (even on a Nvidia 1050 makes a huge difference), "texture blurring" on SL Viewer is quite irritating!

Got 2 parcels on a deal, beach/ocean area, both can be above or below water, I really have no use for them. 2048sqm - L$7950 http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pearl/78/175/21 1536sqm - L$5950 (There is land available at one side - Abandoned today!) http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pearl/51/165/32 They are clean without any decoration yet. Feel free to reach out in-world with offers or questions! Thanks for looking!

No lots available as of 05/07!

Pricing: L$ 2250 / month (Equivalent: $ 524 / week) 4 lots available.

Thank you for your kindness, I really appreciate it, was a pleasure to talk to you and Doc!

Premium area, private and protected, home of outstanding views on both sides, primarily residential, for commercial or other usage, inquire in-world. Quiet, peaceful and beautifully decorated with access to navigable river and road that spans several regions. Park common area and docks to enjoy with friends and family. Visit for more information! Monthly fees (same day each month), no weekly fees, currently divided in 4 lots of +-1800sqm (each) spanning from the walkway to river, flexible, so it can be combined. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nailsworth/91/147/51 Here are some screenshots of the park: Visit in-world! http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nailsworth/91/147/51 Andred