Fluffy Sharkfin

If LL added support for vertex colours and a very basic paint tool for terrain meshes then they could implement texture blending by vertex colour which would allow users to assign specific textures to any part of the terrain regardless of height and give more control over how textures are blended in specific areas. It wouldn't be as neat as voxel terrain but it would at least be an improvement over the way in which land textures are currently assigned, especially if they increased the density of the terrain mesh to allow for more precision in terraforming/texturing.

I'm not disputing any of those facts and I'm sure a discussion of that subject would be both compelling and informative but I personally wouldn't choose to risk having that conversation cut short by discussing it here.

While that may be true, it seems a little unreasonable to presume that anyone has ulterior motives for avoiding talking about certain topics when it's been made quite clear that those topics are not appropriate or allowed on this forum.

That's not really surprising given that attempting to discuss the real world prejudices alluded to in the article is likely to get this thread locked for not being directly related to Second Life.

There are some fairly obvious societal norms at play which are beyond the capabilities of any social platform to address effectively, but there are some aspects which I think may be unique to virtual worlds, etc. There's the fact that avatars are merely digital representations of ourselves and despite the realism which some manage to achieve we are all essentially a culmination of polygons and textures on a screen no different to the furniture and scenery that surrounds us, which probably, for some people, makes avatars a lot easier to objectify than their flesh and blood counterparts. Perhaps as technology advances and avatar appearance and movement becomes more convincing/realistic it will be harder for people to dissociate avatars from the humans behind them, but as long as there is an element of anonymity involved you'll most likely still get plenty of people who are just mean because they enjoy being mean. Another, probably less common, factor could be that one of the appeals of Second Life and similar platforms is that they offer an escape from reality and for some people that equates to the ability to become something they're not or to change aspects of themselves over which they have little to no control in the real world. I'd imagine that while it could potentially be a very positive experience to see others who are not only accepting but almost envious of physical traits that an individual personally dislikes about themselves in RL, for some it could also be unsettling to be confronted on a daily basis by a celebration of the very thing you come to SL to escape. I don't think there's any way to address an issue like this, it's simply a case of accepting that in a world where anyone can be anything they like there will always be some who choose to be something that others may find distasteful.

With all this talk about how much additional power the new ALM only viewer will consume I'm just curious as to how it compares to the power consumption of the time machines y'all are using to travel to the future in order to test this new viewer which they haven't even finished writing yet?

The Joker? 😲

I'm not entirely sure which post you're referring to but assuming you mean the OP then I would imagine the responses would depend very much on the context under which they're posting it. If, for example, the intent of the OP was to elicit responses in order to learn more about the topic of the article by asking fellow residents about their own experiences and subsequent thoughts on the subject so that they may gain further insight into the issue which they may lack since they aren't female then I suspect that most people would appreciate their interest in educating themselves about issues that don't personally impact them and therefore I doubt the responses would be all that different. If however the OP included a diatribe "mansplaining" why the article was wrong and insisting that the issue was a figment of the collective imaginations of a "bunch of feminist snowflakes" or other similar sentiments then the response they received would undoubtedly, and most deservedly, be very different indeed!

That would essentially turn the block feature into a form of censorship that each user could impose on anyone they choose in order to hinder their participation in specific threads/discussions, which sounds more like a handy tool for trolls than a way to discourage them. The block feature is meant to allow each user some control over their own experience on the forum, allowing users to impact the experience of others would be disastrous.

If you're looking for a really "retro" gaming experience (and enjoy ASCII art) you could always try the notepad version of Doom 😅 Doom Running In Notepad at 60FPS Is Now a Real Thing

For sure! Whenever SL gets mentioned there's always a lot of dismissive hand waving and waffling about blockchains and VR and other overhyped "advances" but you can bet that behind the scenes they're all scratching their heads trying to work out how SL has kept going for two decades when they can't even attract enough users to sustain their platform for a couple of years.

Apparently not that great since (according to leaked memos) they're now attempting to force their own employees to use the platform "at least once a week".

Sadly I spend far more time watching other people play games on Twitch than I do playing them myself, it's a lot cheaper when someone else is buying the games and I can get on with more productive things while the streamer does all the "hard work" (not to mention my potato PC wouldn't even run most of the latest titles 😭). I've squandered about 1500 hours on Skyrim according to Steam but I'd bet that Shirley Curry has forgotten more about the game than I've learned in that time, she's become such a celebrity in the Elder Scrolls community that Bethesda are apparently planning to immortalize her as an NPC in Elder Scrolls 6. Skyrim Grandma Will Be an NPC in The Elder Scrolls 6

I certainly wasn't, fortunately my brain continued to absorb and retain new information long after the first decade or two. It's interesting to see how some folks view this seemingly innocuous preference for certain key combinations as a divisive generational issue rather than a simple case of different people having different interests. If you play a lot of fast paced games that require manual camera movement then you're more likely to prefer using one combination, if not then it's understandable that you're more familiar with using a different combination. I've never really understood the animosity and contempt that some people have for "gamers", especially given that they're as diverse a group of people as you could possibly hope to find and range in age from toddlers to grandmas like Shirley Curry.

I suspect that one major reason that the WASD configuration became more widely used is that once online first person shooters started to become popular people quickly discovered that those using a mouse to aim had a considerable advantage over those using keyboard only, at which point people started to rethink using the cursor keys in favor of keys more naturally accessible to the left hand.

I'd imagine that, as you said in your previous post, seated avatars won't have access to the data within the object they're sitting on... but the imagery amused me none the less.

And will sitting on random objects cause angry scripters to come running out of their houses with pitchforks screaming "GET OFF MY PRIMS! YOU BE STEALING ALL MY DATAS!!"?

Personally I'm a little curious as to how this will work with functions like llCreateLink and llBreakLink, i.e. will llCreateLink attempt to merge existing data from both objects and similarly will llBreakLink clone the data from its parent?

I remember when I used to use regular headlights, then I bought a pair of these... ...okay, not really since I mostly ride motorcycles and the melted wax would just drip everywhere when you lean into a corner 😂 WASD may seem like an odd, unintuitive combination for movement keys but considering how common it is in a lot of games it's clearly working for the majority of people.

I started off using arrow keys when playing first person shooters but it was pointed out that using WASD instead makes it easier to have multiple key bindings and also provides easier access to the three most common modifier keys (shift, ctrl & alt) which are commonly used for things like run, crouch, etc. I used to play a lot of fps games and eventually got tired of wearing out my WASD keys so ended up buying one of these... while it doesn't get nearly as much use these days it does still work perfectly, which is pretty impressive after over two decades considering how many regular keyboards I've gotten through in that period.

I'm all in favor of automatically generated billboard style LOD models, as long as they're optional. There's no single workflow or solution for generating LODs that will produce the ideal models for every type of asset since what works best will rely to some extent on the assets intended use and while automatically generated billboards are obviously more preferable when compared to random floating triangles I'd still rather have the ability to make my own custom LOD models than be limited to auto-generated LODs simply because some people can't be bothered to do likewise.

While I'm definitely in favor of LL updating the viewer and making some much needed changes in order to improve performance there will always be benefit to be had from encouraging creators to use common sense when determining what resolution their textures need to be. In fact it's not just creators that would benefit from learning a little more about texel density. Whether you're decorating your living room, putting together a new outfit or building an entire region paying attention to the comparative texel density of the assets you're using can substantially improve the end result. As this quote (from the article Texel Density – What is it and why is it so important?) puts it I'm definitely looking forward to the new features and improvements! One new feature that was mentioned briefly but hasn't been discussed much is the ability to flag meshes (and hopefully individual faces) as being double-sided. This may seem a little trivial at first but I'm guessing it will make a big difference to creators of landscaping items like trees and other items that make use of "leaf cards" since it could substantially lower the number of polygons required. Another area in which double-sided faces could have a huge impact is in the creation of "billboard" LOD models since it will essentially halve the number of triangles required to make the low/lowest LOD models, perhaps it will even allow some creators to make mesh that utilizes proper LOD models and yet rivals the low land impact of mesh that doesn't.

I'd argue that almost every object looks "better" with 1024x1024 textures, but it's nothing compared to how amazing objects look when you use PBR materials with 4k textures. However since we don't live in a world where hardware resources are unlimited and some residents are struggling with the requirements of SL already it makes sense to limit the available texture size to something less excessive. Unfortunately when you limit image resolution it seems a lot of people interpret that limit as the "recommended size" and subsequently upload every texture at the maximum possible resolution, which is unfortunate because better texture optimization would do wonders for those on low-end hardware who are struggling with poor performance. Nobody is saying creators shouldn't be using 1024x1024 textures, just that they should be using them responsibly where appropriate. The term "lag" is so loosely defined that it's almost meaningless in regards to SL. There are so many factors that can cause poor performance and so many different types of performance related issues that using the term lag to try and describe all of them is an extreme over-simplification and serves only to confuse people. For example, scripts run on the server-side and each script will take a certain amount of resources and if enough of them are running at once it can cause the region to "lag" so that everything slows down however even when a regions performance slows down so much that it's about to crash you can potentially still be getting a solid 120 frames per second from your graphics card. Random, but okay... I'm sure they miss you too! Since LL have already stated that they're only going to remove forward rendering if it doesn't adversely impact the majority of residents it seems like your concern is unwarranted. As for absurd LOD, that's entirely out of LLs control and something you should be taking up with the people that created the mesh in question.

On the other hand it's kinda quirky and some people might find that appealing? (this lil fella did it all the time and everyone seemed to think he was adorable... even Drew Barrymore!) 😅

This looks quite similar to Corel Painter (originally created by Fractal Designs aka MetaCreations who were collectively responsible for Poser, Bryce and all the fun Kais graphics apps before Corel gobbled them all up faster than a Borg drone can say "Resistance is futile!" 🙄). Unfortunately the minimum requirements for this seem about the same as Painter so it's not going to run on my old Windows tablet (which would be my main incentive for buying a more lightweight Painter-like app) but even so given how low the price is I'm very tempted to get it anyway. One of my main gripes with Painter is that you can't export the "Impasto layer" (Painters equivalent of a depth/height map which it uses to calculate the relief on its natural media effects) in order to convert it to a normal map which would allow you to recreate the same simulated depth on 3D surfaces, so if Rebelle allows you to export the equivalent of a depth map which captures the height data used by its natural media effects then I'm sold!