Fluffy Sharkfin

Clearly adopting the same nomenclature as the RL metric system is a source of confusion for many due to the discrepancies between the scale of SL and RL. I propose LL solve this problem by immediately renaming the unit of measurement in SL to more appropriate terms like SLeters, SLentiSLeters and SLiloSLeters, that should clear up any misunderstandings (although we'll probably just end up with threads complaining about mispronunciations instead)!

@EliseAnne85 Perhaps an example will help to clear things up? First I generated a set of PBR maps in Filter Forge using this filter Barrel Generator PBR (I tweaked the roughness & metalness a little to better illustrate the effect) This is how the sphere looks with just the Albedo map If you add the other Surface Property maps (Roughness & Metalness) you can start to see the "shiny" effect on the metal as the light moves around the object if you then add the normal map you can also see the light reflecting off the added Surface Detail as the normal map alters the angle at which it's reflected So, an albedo map will contain all the colours present on a surface, whether those colours represent wood or metal or rust or freckles or strawberry pudding doesn't matter, the other properties such as how polished or rough it is or how much it reflects whats around it are all handled by the roughness and metalness maps.

Technically the "pattern" you're referring to is just a combination of colours so it's essentially the same thing. For example a leopards skin texture consists of a pale cream/yellow colour on the belly ranging to a browny orange colour on the back with black spots of varying strength on different parts of the body and limbs, so all of those colours would appear on the albedo map.

Nope, not even the most miniscule smidgeon of a highlight or shadow! If you're using PBR materials (which you absolutely should be by the time reflection probes are implemented) then your base colour/albedo map should contain no information other than the colour of the objects surface. Your roughness, metalness and ambient occlusion maps alongside the reflection probes and dynamic in-world lighting should be left to take care of all of the rest since it can generate all those highlights, shadows and reflections dynamically based on light and camera angle rather than having them painted onto a static texture. ETA: The above applies to more photorealistic objects, if you're aiming for a more stylized aesthetic then adding fake lighting is almost mandatory since SL doesn't have the custom shaders necessary to simulate the required "cartoony" effect.

Naturally mirrors are the first thing that springs to most peoples mind when they hear the term "reflection probes" but aside from the more obvious and visually striking uses like highly reflective surfaces reflection probes should also go a long way to increasing the overall visual quality of Second Life. Like materials they're another step away from the decades old practice of baking all your lighting and reflections, etc. into a single colour texture and slapping it on some polygons which, along with forward rendering and bad lighting, is one of the main reasons SL often looks so dated. Hopefully once they're introduced we'll finally be able to bid farewell to one of the few remaining excuses people still use for painting static reflections into their base textures because "shiny" won't equal "ugly" in SL anymore.

Essentially you place probes around your build (the viewer also places some default ones) and the probe automatically generates an environment map based on all the stuff within its boundaries (similar to how the 360 snapshot feature works but with a limited draw distance). Anything reflective within the area of a probe will use the environment map generated by that probe for its reflections.

Since you brought the topic up, allow me to repost one of my favourite geometry optimization tips... Using this method on spheres and hemispheres can potentially reduce your triangle count by 50% with barely any visible difference in object profile. ETA: You can find additional info (along with other tips) on this page Sphere Topology - polycount

As Wulfie points out Second Life doesn't have support for imposters, so you basically have to cheat and make them manually by creating flat planes and generating 32-bit textures to apply to them (either by baking the information from the high LOD model or simply rendering low resolution images from different angles). You'll probably need at least 2 or 3 intersecting planes and, depending on the item in question and what it's going to be used for, you may want to make the planes double sided by duplicating them and flipping the faces/normals. It's helpful to set up a separate material for the imposters so that you can adjust the properties separately from the other LOD models. Bear in mind that these imposters are only ever seen from a distance so you really don't need a lot of pixels for the textures. If the texture for your high LOD model already has an alpha channel then, with a little creative arrangement of the UV mapping, you can probably sneak the imposter textures into some of the wasted space. It's a good idea to set your alpha settings to Alpha Masking for the faces on your imposter models (also if you decide to add an alpha channel to your main texture just so you can incorporate your imposter textures on the same image and the textures for the higher LOD models don't use/require transparency then change the alpha settings for those faces to None to avoid any alpha swapping issues).

Of course the alternative would be to just reduce the mainland to a size necessary to accommodate the amount of truly useful Linden content that serves an active purpose.... in which case I'd say about 5 or 6 regions will suffice!

I don't disagree with any of what you just said but the point of relocating and reusing that old content wouldn't be to safeguard some rare and precious jewel so much as to fill space with a few unique builds to break the monotony of all the procedurally generated content surrounding it (while at the same time clearing more old content off the old mainland to make way for better things). Of course it would be much better if LL were to build all those points of interest themselves with content created using the latest features but can you really see LL creating ten or twenty genuinely unique, interesting and/or useful full regions of content, and even if they did how long do you think that would take them? Additionally, In the context of what I was suggesting (i.e. a large low-lag environment for people to explore using vehicles with a few points of interest to make it less repetitive), you wouldn't want those points of interest to be insanely popular locations that attract throngs of visitors since that's just going to adversely impact performance. Better to have mildly interesting curiosities that are worth a casual glance and perhaps occasionally exploring. You can argue that hosting old content is simply a waste of space and resources and technically I'd agree with you, but it's no more wasteful than the countless regions housing one or two parcels filled with old content surrounded by abandoned land and at least the resulting regions would have some continuity and be more aesthetically pleasing as well as serving some purpose, even if that purpose is just to decorate an otherwise repetitive procedurally generated environment. Bear in mind the theoretical (and wildly improbable) continent in question isn't a proposal for a new version of mainland or a replacement for anything but merely an example of the type of thing LL could do to try and bring the reality of SL in line with what their promotional material is offering. While it would be nice to have a virtual world where all the activities were on offer across the entire grid the reality is that in order to provide an experience similar to the one that LL are currently marketing Second Life as they either need to wave a magic wand and make the lag disappear (as well as turning all residents into professional content creators and level designers) or start finding ways to mitigate it like providing new areas and infrastructure that are better suited for the various popular activities they promote.

This is why I made a point of mentioning "historic content". Preserving some of those older builds as legacy content to be explored and placing it in pleasant low lag surroundings equates to consolidating some of the more unique and interesting pieces of SL history into a smaller area to serve as a sort of virtual tourist attraction so that the remaining junk can be discretely swept aside and replaced with better alternatives. I'd rather not see large swathes of mainland disappear in favour of some new scheme or project that may or may not work out but I don't think trimming away a little of the excess land mass would really hurt that much and at the end of the day does it really matter whether they reclaim the land and try something new in the same location or simply repurpose some of those excess regions and move them to another part of the grid to form a new separate land mass? The result is the same either way, you keep some of the more popular legacy content and start revamping and repurposing the regions and content that isn't worth preserving and then adapt your approach according to which new content/areas/centralized hubs prove most successful and/or popular.

It's certainly fallen behind over the last decade or so but it still holds potential and with the addition of things like the new PBR system and reflection probes I think SL could still surprise a lot of people if enough creators can be encouraged to not only adopt the new features but learn how to use them properly and effectively without obliterating everybodies FPS in the process. Given that there are issues with the complexity of the new user experience and the ever-dwindling attention span of said prospective new users perhaps LL should be concentrating on trying to find ways to more quickly connect new users with the types of experiences that they're led to expect. I'd imagine that's at least part of the reason behind their plans for the introduction of the new "centralized hubs" but I'd like to see them go further and attempt to improve the quality and availability of some of these virtual activities, either with the introduction of new features or by simply providing a better venue/infrastructure. As an example, lets take exploration and vehicles (land, sea or air). It's been pointed out recently (and repeatedly) that a lot of people enjoy sailing and flying around the mainland, either to explore or simply for the pleasure of travel. It's also been pointed out that this activity requires a fairly high draw distance that can impact performance heavily in some areas and that upcoming changes could negatively impact the user experience of those partaking in these activities even further. So here's my "radical" solution to this problem (and a couple of others besides): LL creates a new continent, complete with roads and waterways, made up mostly of homesteads and a few full regions scattered around strategically (so that there's never too much content in a concentrated area) and populates it with well-optimized efficient modular content on the homesteads then creates points of interest to explore on the full regions. Since LL isn't in the content creation business they could always choose to cut corners and preserve some of the "historic content" that people are always talking about being endangered which would give folks some interesting things to explore if they wish to get out of their vehicles. They could even offer limited amounts of residential space similar to Bellisseria but with sparser population in order to provide some community areas to explore without the performance impact of densely populated areas. As I said it's a radical solution and not something I really expect LL to attempt but there are ways to populate a region with content that don't actually require manually building it all by hand so it wouldn't technically have to be a mammoth task. It would provide a better environment for people to explore and enjoy popular SL activities, at the same time it would allow LL to showcase a large scale environment that utilizes the latest features while providing reasonable performance and additionally it would give new users an experience that's at least somewhat aesthetically closer to the pretty screenshots they see on flickr. Last but not least it would earn LL some brownie points from the "old-timers" for giving a nod to some of the much-loved content that came before. Anyway, wild hypotheticals aside, I guess the point I'm meandering around is that LL can keep inventing new levels of premium account and tacking on new benefits and trying to cobble together features to improve the platform and make it look more modern but if they want to address the disparity between the shiny virtual eutopia they're offering and the crazy, weird world that people are actually signing up for then they're either going to have to be more honest with their advertising or put more effort into helping to provide the content they're promising people because there are a lot less people eagerly building their world for them now and the ones that are left can't do it all on their own.

This is definitely a huge part of the problem with the new user experience. The number of competing systems and products available can make things confusing even for experienced residents, and the fact that you have to pay for the majority of them probably doesn't help either. Of course we can always hope that LL do such a good job with the NUX avatars that all the other creators adopt their system as the universal standard and begin creating compatible content that follows the same principles... and then we shall all hold hands beneath a giant rainbow and sing songs about peace and happiness and all that other good stuff!? 🤣

Absolutely, adding new features selectively and ensuring that they provide benefit to existing users and potential new users alike while not negatively impacting the users or the platform as a whole is of course the ideal way to develop SL. The problem is that sometimes LL try to introduce new features and their efforts are instantly met with a wave of negativity and residents vowing to boycott said feature before they've even begun developing it. To borrow your railroad analogy it's like a rail company deciding to add windows and comfy seats to their railway cars only to find that their customers are all clinging to the outside of the carriage because "they didn't ask for windows and seats and they never needed them before so why should they be forced to sit in them now?!"

I think this partly comes down to marketing, which is where I agree with previous posts that make the point that the new user experience does not match the way in which SL is presented to prospective new users. I was already heavily into coding and 3D graphics long before I discovered SL in 2004, and other than having read a bunch of crazy stories about various goings on in SL I had no idea what to expect but I knew that you could create 3D objects and script your creations to make them animated and/or interactive so that's what I signed up to do. Back then most people I met seemed very innovative, creative and pioneering and everyone knew that the platform was weird and buggy and worked around the quirks as best they could and every new discovery was an adventure, even if that discovery was that you'd teleported somewhere and your shoe/hair was now sticking out of your butt. Second Life does take a lot of perseverance, I'm just not sure that's a quality that a lot of prospective new users have in abundance anymore. After all we live in a time where TikTok is becoming increasingly popular because apparently 10-15 minutes is far too long a duration for a video to hold the attention of some people, if it's not under 60 seconds they'll probably end up skipping the end.

Fine, I didn't like the driving analogy much anyway. Let's take a practical example of LL introducing new features to bring SL more in line with industry standards, the PBR materials system. They're essentially trying to adopt (at least part of) the same workflow as is used to import assets into Unreal Engine. I can assure you there are far more reliable resources available that detail how to import assets to Unreal than there are on importing content to Second Life. The notion that learning to create content for Second Life is hard purely because it's such a complex and highly skilled endeavour is false, learning to use 3D software is never simple but navigating all of SLs idiosyncrasies while not being able to utilize many of the advanced techniques or variety of improvements that have been made to content creation tools over the last two decades is what makes the process far more complicated, laborious and frustrating. ETA: For the record, I really like Viewer 2 (okay not the original incarnation because that was a buggy, seizure-inducing nightmare, but once they fixed all the issues I quickly got used to it and now the mere sight of a pie-menu gives me PTSD).

I'd imagine that by conforming to industry standards they would essentially be enabling new drivers to utilize a much wider selection of potential sources from which to learn, rather than forcing them to seek out and rely upon the expertise of a handful of people still well-versed in archaic technology.

Pretty much this, but yeah at least they're trying. Until we get AI trained to do retopology and make LOD models there's not going to be any solution that produces results as efficient as doing it yourself so spending development time on features designed to encourage bad practices seems a little counterproductive. For now I'll stick with Polygon Cruncher for those times when I'm too lazy to make my LOD models by hand. The results you get when working with static organic models like rocks and trees are more than adequate (especially when combined with 3D Coats Autotopo tools), it has some nice little options for preserving UVs/edges, etc. and sliders that let you preview the decimation in real time and while it may not be free the time it's already saved me more than makes up for the price.

Okay perhaps I was being a little vague with my phrasing there but allow me to emphasize the point I was trying to make... and, as you yourself just pointed out, they did have many creative people who understood very well what was required to create good content and yet we ended up with which just goes to illustrate how little value LL places on creative input. It's not my intention to bash any of LLs employees or imply that they lack talent, but to point out that if the resources that their talent and knowledge provides isn't utilized or even considered relevant when developing the platform then that just goes to further illustrate what LLs general attitude towards those in the creative field is and how much they value their contributions. I'm not so sure it would be. I suspect that there are a lot more people searching YouTube for tutorials than there are visiting these forums for information or help. I 100% agree with you on needing official documentation, along with a comprehensive list of best practices and a directory of recommended learning material (I'm not going to suggest LL try to create their own comprehensive library of tutorials for creating content for Second Life for reasons I've already expressed elsewhere).

The only acceptable use for the old hubs would be if they strapped them to a large prim rocket and fired them into a giant particle sun as part of the opening ceremony for the new hubs!

Well from a purely practical perspective I suppose they're probably at least partially right. Given how few people actually use these forums you'd probably have a far wider impact on SL content creators if you spent your time creating tutorial videos and posting them on YouTube than you will providing free customer support here. LL have always been very clear about how much value they place on creatives. They created a product that relies entirely on 3D content but didn't even hire anyone with a creative background to provide input and then not only did they leave it up to their customers to create all the content for their virtual world for them, they also charge them for the privilege of volunteering to do so. It's a pretty sweet deal for LL when you think about it, "the more of our world/platform/product you wish to create and maintain for us, the more money you must pay us" is quite the machiavellian business plan. Given their track record over the last two decades it's difficult to muster much surprise anymore even when they voice their contempt publicly.

Where did I advocate for any of that? I was simply pointing out that there's a difference in the rules and moderation between Bellisseria and the rest of the mainland. As for my comments about lag I wasn't referring to mainland (or any other type of region/estate) specifically but Second Life in general, and yes that's just as much the fault of LL and content creators as it is the residents that buy and use their creations. When I said that lag was an unavoidable by-product of SL, it wasn't hyperbole. The reason I'm not advocating for any of the things you seem to think I am is because I don't believe there's any way to solve the issue of lag in Second Life, at least not without fundamentally changing the entire nature of the platform. You can take steps to mitigate it but you'll never really "fix" it. Also I'm not sure how you reconcile these two points... It seems a little self-contradictory to suggest that LL should have enforced tighter restrictions on creators while at the same time warning against limiting creative freedom.

I'd argue that Belli shouldn't be counted since, while it may technically be classed as mainland, it has an entirely different set of rules and level of moderation and is essentially a standalone LL run community project rather than the traditional "Badlands" mainland we all know and love, but I will concede that the definition of mainland can be subjective and from an external perspective I could be perceived as splitting hairs. As for inciting hatred of Mainland, I'm actually a big fan and for almost half a decade maintained a region and a half of mainland which was host to various builds surrounded by a large forest (not that you'll remember, but you yourself once visited and awarded me a rare Prokofy positive rating for my efforts ). Mainland has its problems but it also still has potential. A virtual world, by definition, needs contiguous spaces but if those spaces are aesthetically unappealing and/or cause excessively poor performance then that's a significant problem for SL as a platform. Unfortunately it's not a problem which can be solved by simply planting a few more trees or changing the covenant. Combining shared virtual spaces with unfettered creative freedom is a recipe for chaos and, with so little restriction on the amount of resources individual residents can consume, lag is simply the unavoidable natural by-product of a platform like Second Life.

This is valuable advice! There is a huge and often overlooked difference between learning from how to videos and learning from a collection of structured tutorials designed to teach you the fundamentals. Learning from how to videos may seem faster at first since you just have to memorize a specific workflow but the problem is that if you wish to create something outside the scope of that workflow then, unless you can find another tutorial which builds on the limited knowledge you already possess, your only option is to find a new tutorial and learn an entirely new workflow which may or may not be compatible with the workflow you're used to, which in turn can lead to all sorts of headaches when you try to combine what you've just learned with what you already knew if you don't have a solid understanding of the various tools and features you're using. In comparison, working your way through an entire manual or compilation of tutorials will take you far longer initially however by the time you're finished you'll have a thorough understanding of all the tools and features available and how they can be combined to create any workflow you may need. This means that not only will you find it a lot easier to understand and retain the information you gain from watching/reading tutorials, you'll also be less reliant on tutorials in general since once you understand the full capabilities of the software you're using it's a lot easier to work out for yourself the necessary steps to complete a task. Additionally, having a solid foundational knowledge of how a piece of software works and what all the tools and features are capable of means you can more easily transpose tutorials designed for other similar applications and adapt the workflow to suit the software you're using. For example, a lot of the more advanced sculpting techniques I've learned in 3D Coat have been from Zbrush tutorials (since there are significantly more tutorials available for Zbrush) however, having taken the time to learn the majority of the tools and features available in 3D Coat, when I see someone use a certain tool or feature in a Zbrush tutorial I can usually recognize what that tool is doing and easily identify the equivalent tool in 3D Coat. In essence, once you learn all the fundamentals of the various tools and features of a piece of software then learning new techniques and workflows becomes a lot easier and far less frustrating and your creativity will be free to flourish far beyond the boundaries of "how to" videos.

The problem is the sheer amount of relevant information available given all the various commonly used workflows and tools. Some folks spend 3 or 4 years at university just to gain a solid foundation upon which to build their knowledge and skills and will continue learning and developing those skills throughout their professional career since the software and techniques used in the content creation process are continually evolving at a fairly rapid pace. Sure the vast majority of SL creators aren't interested in creating content professionally but that doesn't make learning to do it properly any easier in the same way that wanting to be a brain surgeon "just for fun" doesn't makes brain surgery any less complicated (thankfully the stakes in content creation aren't as high, you may burn out a few GPUs but you probably aren't going to kill anyone). I would like to see LL provide more resources for creators but I think it would be more impactful if creators were encouraged to expand the scope of what they learn beyond how to make stuff for SL. All the necessary relevant information is already available online but only a small portion of it is covered in tutorials that focus purely on creating content for Second Life, so a lot of creators end up just learning the bare basics of 3D modelling along with a few SL specific skills like exporting and uploading mesh to SL, rigging mesh for specific bodies and how to make a mesh with a land impact of 1 (even when it should be higher 🙄) rather than actually learning all the important do's & don'ts of creating content for platforms like Second Life.