Eren Padar

I've tested the new 7.1 FS for some time now, and have (as is my habit) picked up reports from other users... most of whom are techs. My experiences (and verifications): * #1 complaint: Crashing during teleports. I'm on a gamer system with a good GPU, yet have been crashing on TPS at least once or twice a day. I never used to crash on the prior viewer. Ever. * While there are claims that PBR is leaner and faster than the old system, FPS reports are significantly lower than the prior viewer. * Rezzing is slow. This may tie in with the lowered FPS; there seems to be bottlenecks somewhere. * Dark and super-bright. Graphics in general are much darker, and glows much brighter. This makes vendors hard to see if they're not on fullbright, and items with glow are almost blinding. For the first time ever... I have had to start using facelights on my avatars just so their faces don't look like they're hidden under a dark hood. My skins look much darker than they did prior... especially if I use shadows. As a result, I leave shadows turned off. * Shadows are unnatural and darken the entire scene. To get any semblance of acceptable brightness I have to turn shadows completely off. I recognize I can enhance the brightness of the scene in general (once this was called "gamma")... but that just makes the glow items even brighter and washes out lighter items almost entirely. * There's no way (that I can find) to turn off "reflections" entirely... and these DO slow down the system. We can turn off mirrors and even set reflections to manual... but I get the feeling that even the existence of the reflection engine slows the system. *When I leave mirrors OFF my movement is smooth as would be expected. When I turn mirrors ON my movement turns to glitchy "robotic" frames of movement, especially if I'm in front of a mirror-- as if the system is presenting a quick "slideshow" of my reflection rather than a smooth experience. And frankly, neither I nor anyone I've spoken to gives a hoot about mirrors. "Interesting special effect but no real value" is the most positive description I've heard thus far. * Regular textures and gamma of textures simply do not look the same, even if one WANTS them to look the same as they did. PBR is changing the appearance even of non-PBR items... something perhaps it really shouldn't do. This is just the tip of the iceberg of comments I've heard about PBR and my own experiences. For some people (merchants, creators) perhaps PBR is wonderful. For the average user... maybe not so much.

Something of interest to note in this: there are almost as many SL residents against this solution as there are for this solution. The population is fairly evenly divided. This sends one very clear message: This is likely not the best solution. When you have this many people against something, it often pays to re-consider possible alternatives. For example right off the top of my head... allow Gachas, but: * Have specific rules involved in their presentation and administration (for example, they're required to sell only different models of the same product, rather than "junk" along with "good stuff"). * The presentation texture must be very visible, accurate and obvious in what is being sold. (ie, "fine print" not allowed) * Selling items of a significantly different nature in the same Gacha is not allowed (for example, a Porche Ultra Sportscar and a cheap VW bug). I'm not saying these are "the" solution here. They're just concepts that come short of making Gachas illegal in entirety. On the other hand, making them entirely illegal will certainly solve the problem entirely... until someone comes up with the next unethical scheme to rip off SL users. Because you can bet your L$ that is going to happen.

Unfortunately LL has a long history of dealing with symptoms rather than the disease... and crippling legitimate merchants because of a few bad ones. I have mixed feelings about Gachas. On the one hand, they're no different than buying a sealed "Grab Bag" in real life... except in most cases we have some idea what might be in the bag. It's not "gambling". It's buying a product-- one just doesn't know exactly what the product is. Some Gachas are just fine. They sell a specific item in different forms-- say for example a sports car in different styles (some of them with rare and ultra-rare features). With such Gachas, people know basically what they're getting... and they get what they pay for. I have however, seen other Gachas that are absolute rip-offs. Why would a merchant even DO that? Do they think angry customers will improve business? Those Gachas... and such merchants... we could do without. The Gacha concept itself can be fun... and a way for customers to get a neat item cheap. It's the merchants who abuse that concept that give the entire industry a bad name. But merchants ripping off customers has been happening on SL for a very long time. That practice is not unique to Gachas. So I don't have a cut-and-dried solution. But I can pretty much guarantee this: the moment Gachas are banned, we will see something replace it that is just as bad (or worse) but manages to skirt the Gacha rule.

I've had nothing but problems with Direct Delivery... to the point I'm about to swear off Linden Lab and close down my store. Except of course, there appears to be no way to delete my store. The problems are varied and major: 1. The system can actually duplicate items with identical names. If this happens... you can't mass-delete the errant items. You have to delete them one... by... one. And with the lag on SLM... that can take hours. Or days. Or weeks. " There are multiple items with the same name. To list or combine items, please review and mange them accordingly." That is a royal pain. Why not delete en-masse and re-try ??? 2. Items that are showing up as errant... but cannot be deleted. I reported this bug to LL a long, long time ago... but of course it's still unfixed. 3. Although it is possible to edit the listing name... the item name cannot be changed (at least, not that I can see). 4. System keeps "resetting connection" when I try to access my Marketplace home. Not to mention the extreme lag. One has to wonder at LL giving us such a limited amount of time to convert our inventory. Do they have no idea how many merchants are involved in this... or how many items we'll be converting. This is a major pain in the tooshie that will never be worth all the work involved in moving from a simple prim rezzed on a piece of land.

Post deleted by user. Wrong avatar logged in. LOL.