Thecla
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Posts posted by Thecla
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I thought it was a very good piece, loaded with good information, and a bit overdue. I've been using the FS Beta since the first alpha came out and I have to say I absolutely adore it. I do have a pretty snappy machine though, seeing frame rates consistently over 80 except at parties and events. For me the overall better tonal value and color saturation is way more important, visually, than the switch from glossiness to shininess.
As far as future features go, I'm sure that the whole crew is pretty well worn out as this was a massive undertaking. In addition, FS depends on LL's viewer roadmap and if that is not well populated at this point, so it goes. There is the voice update and I'm sure more optimization to allow the viewer to use more cores.
EEPs are still a problem. I was at the Key West sim yesterday and the entire ocean was the color of Orangina lol. That said, I've been designing my own EEPs for awhile and have not had a problem, so I'm wondering if the issue is that some EEPs need to be redone to work with PBR vs. PBR needing some "fix".
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On 5/25/2024 at 7:49 AM, AmeliaJ08 said:
What version? wasn't aware of a Firestorm release for a while now.
There's the PBR betas of course but you're probably not talking about those. For the record though they perform very well, performance is so good in my experience it is worth using the betas despite the bugs.
You're probably having driver issues if you're only getting 4fps though. Without any information (paste contents of Help -> About Firestorm to give people a chance of offering support) there isn't much to go on though.
The OP has not been back, likely either a troll or new user.
Yes I've been happy with the Firestorm Beta and use it as my default. There are still kinks to be worked out with PBR, both display and editing, and each release (which has seen a pretty frequent schedule) has made improvements. In all other respects it's been rock solid for me. I've not done any serious performance comparisons because my machine is snappy to begin with so don't need to make that choice.
One thing I really appreciate, completely aside from the changes to surface materials, is the new rendering system's tonemapping. The tonal range is much improved all across the board but it's very noticeable in shadows with more detail and subtlety. It's really nice.
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On 5/24/2024 at 2:08 PM, sirhc DeSantis said:
About your thing for bots and AI... NVM
Glad you cut that short on realizing there's no correlation lol
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4 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:
I have about 12 chatGPT characters I set up with Pantera's script that has profiles, and I've tweaked them a bit but one of them has turned on me.
Ungrateful wretch.
I have exiled him to Siberia.
They are placed around various themed locations in the SL Public Land Preserve, and most are ok. I do find that if the sims are re-set they have to be re-set as well which becomes a chore.
I use BubbleBot which I've been very impressed with, in large part because of the dedication and responsiveness of the creator.
I don't have to reset the scripts after a sim restart. I also wanted to have two "characters" (robot bartenders named Medusa and Eurydale) that were sisters who did not like each other and would make snide remarks about the other. They started arguing incessantly, and no matter what tweaks I made to the prompt and the settings they would still end up arguing for hours.
The BubbleBot creator made some changes that allowed me to limit this behavior...they still throw shade on each other, but they quit after a couple of rounds lol.
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2 minutes ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:
Ive made it clear before in these forums that I’ll never report ***** , it’s not my job, and its not required by the TOS. I was wondering what others thought of the scenario.
Repeating however many times does not make it defensible.
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6 hours ago, Rick Nightingale said:
In all my time here I had never twigged that you worked on RLVa. I guess I need to pay more attention. Just want to say thank you for the most useful extension in SL 👍
I'll second that thank you. I don't participate in any BDSM/Kink/Whatever but RLVa has far more applications beyond that which make it super useful.
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4 hours ago, BilliJo Aldrin said:
Do we report every single suspicious activity to our masters?
Or do we just mind our own business.
If it was in MY group, I'd have banned them, if they were on my land, I'd have banned them
I'm not LL's police force.
Baffling nonsensical outlook. "It's bad but it's not my job to do anything about it, LL needs a police force, oh wait that's deep state *#& because surveillance will be required. Well it's still not my job, *&$% the community."
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I think human avatars can more usefully reflect something about the person behind the keyboard than say a dragon or a furry. We have a built in cerebral lexicon of what certain choices a person makes about their avatar...size, shape, skin, clothes, etc.... say about them. While not always accurate it's a start. I see a dragon and I see...well, a dragon.
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15 hours ago, Blush Bravin said:
The problem I see, at least for me, is that I don't trust the provider of that AI source not to use the data gleaned from my asking questions for ill purposes. So, while I can see the usefulness, I simple would not have enough trust in it to use it.
Yes, watch them sell it to insurance companies. You have a nice supportive chat with and AI chatbot about feeling suicidal and three weeks later you get cancellation notices from Blue Cross/Blue Shield and your life insurance company.
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45 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:
I'm really not sure how many residents require modifiable items anymore, aside from simple size changes for landscaping. In recent years I've even had people ask me what a prim is when I was helping them modify a landscape, and they never expected to build anything themselves but only assemble premade objects on their land. Most on the forum require mod items, but I'd guess the largest percentage of residents inworld these days never modify a thing.
You were that way once, once upon a time. One never knows when the fire of curiosity might get lit under a long-time user to finally start building. I've seen it many times. In truth I think it's the fear of getting started, of understanding the preliminary concepts, that keeps people from even trying, for the most part.
On another note I'm done with this thread given that it has run it's productive course. It's turned into a grist mill at this point. I'll just say I'm pro-mod, I respect the right of creators to make their stuff no mod, but am really irked when I run across something that is no mod but in my opinion should be, given my personal plans for how I want to use it..
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Way back when I was deeply immersed in Gor, in it's reputable hayday, I had a very successful store that paid for multiple sims and all that I wanted to buy in SL. I ran a well regarded roleplay group and was an active member of the community on many levels.
I had a stalker. I rebuffed them. And then the trouble started. They copybotted my avatar and all the products in my store, and ran around Gor maintaining that they were in fact me, and that I had stolen their identity. They taunted me with screenshots of reports to LL, of conversations with friends and acquaintances, etc.This was rather stupid, since all one needed to do was look at the creation date of my products and blam, truth laid bare, but it took me awhile to clean up and it was not fun. The amount of chaos and anxiety it caused me and the community, given the tenacity and ferocity of their tactics and stamina on the issue, was pretty intense.
They finally went away. Hopefully they found a good therapist.
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I think people are confusing or rather conflating the "discussion" that the OP had with the AI with the point of the post, which is the therapeutic value or potential of SL.The AI discussion was just a way of collating available information on the matter since the AI has basically scraped the internet for writing on the subject.
As for the therapeutic value of SL? I think that naturally varies on a case by case basis. I'm not a psychologist, but I suspect that living in SL as a simulacrum of one's lost love is not the most effective way of dealing with loss and healing the wounds associated with it. I certainly would not look to an AI for validation, particularly one that professes to be "truly touched by your openness and vulnerability". It's not touched by anything. It's an algorithm.
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There's no doubt that AI is a highly disruptive technology, and it's clearly already pissed off an endless list of communities, from artists, writers, gamers, etc. And the list is going to grow longer day by day...lawyers, radiologists, even programmers (oh the irony). But that's what disruptive technologies do, and complaining about it is so much tilting at windmills, for the most part. Funny anecdote. There was a rush into a new profession, "prompt writer", since there is some experience and skill required to do it effectively. And then they discovered that AI writes more effective prompts than humans. Doh! There's no running from this, no turning away and saying "Nope!" because it's going to be *everywhere* sooner than you think...and in ways you may not even notice.
The amount of focus, money, and resources that are being pumped into the field seems on first glance to be insane. And yet the progress, even in LLMs, is so breathtakingly rapid that it's hard to argue that all of it is misguided. In the gaming domain, John Carmack, the Godfather of video games, is focusing his time on AI. The naturalistic voice in the OpenAI/Figure One demo was nothing short of eye-popping. And clearly that was an integration with ChatGPT-4o which is a dazzling leap ahead of ChatGPT-4. Any game that is in-market with AI is essentially using antiquated technology. Any game that is currently in development, depending on the application and how well it's integrated, will be light years ahead.
But back to SL. I'm fascinated by the opportunities to use it creatively, more so than pragmatically. I mentioned a shopping assistant earlier. Yeah, that's gonna be great, but SL is a hotbed of creativity, at least in the circles that I inhabit, and I'm excited to see what novel ideas creators and builders come up with for the tech.
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Interesting that so many responses not only focus on the negative, but exclusively so, almost seemingly on principle. I personally am intrigued by the possibilities. I'm no fan of animesh, or NPCs, and don't have any in human form (well OK, one static sushi chef buried in a kitchen in the background) on my sim as I consider them to destroy the desired immersiveness of what I've built. However, the ChatGPT enabled robots are there to provide information and a bit of entertainment. I'll be blunt and say I think a sweeping dismissal of the technology betrays a distinct lack of curiosity and inventiveness, or at the very least just generalizing based on bad experiences.
AI has instantly rendered my bartenders infinitely more interesting than any NPC that you might converse with in Starfield after it's hundred million dollar, ten year development. I think that's a huge leap. While I don't consider SL to be a game, it is a virtual world with many parallels to various games on different levels. The fact is there are untold useful and creative ways that this technology can be used within SL. For example, I personally would love to see enabled assistants at many of the stores I visit to help me with questions, find products, etc. Another is writing a script for you based on use cases you provide. I've already had ChatGPT generate working LSL code, and that was awhile ago. It's only going to improve. And those are both pretty pedestrian applications.
At the same time, I'm concerned about how it might be misused, from persuading users to part with their lindens, or attach an object, visit a link, and other mischief. Every technology can be misused, or used poorly. There are plenty of luddites out there that think SL as a whole is a bad thing in and of itself. Aren't we glad they didn't get their say.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
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I recently added ChatGPT integration scripts into some androids in my sim. They are bartenders and their prompt gives them a personality, knowledge of the surrounding sim, and cues on how to interact with vistiors. I was amazed at the result and giggled. I was also amazed...and terrified...at the potential for expanded interactivity and abuse. What is the future of this? Discuss ideas of you have for positive, creative applications as well as pitfalls and risks.
An aside...there are two bartenders, sisters, and they don't like each other. It took some massaging of the prompts and script settings to keep them from arguing constantly. It was both hilarious and disturbing lol.
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Hit Alt-TAB. I ain't starting from scratch again lol.
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On 5/18/2024 at 11:26 AM, Rick Nightingale said:
If I irritated you by using the word 'precious' - the intent was not to depreciate your work. Did I say anything negative about your work in any way? It was a comment on the behaviour of some regarding their work, not their work itself. You have misinterpreted the point.
It was a gratuitously poor choice of words.
I suspect that the vast majority of texture ripping in SL that goes on is not by users seeking to modify a texture for reapplication to the product it came on, it's to rip a texture to add to their arsenal for use on other objects, either for personal use for for sale.
When I was a professional content creator that happened to me all the time, in addition to my work being copybotted and thrown up on the then SLExchange.
It's one thing to make a product modify. It's another thing entirely to have your proprietary textures (obviously tiling ones) pinched and resold. Those products where sellers include the textures are confined almost exclusively to UV mapped items.
I'm pro-mod all the way, and yes people will get textures one way or another. I do. The system is the system. But I don't abuse it for profit. And I have some respect for people that create textures and am not willing to throw them in some bucket labelled "All no-mod proponents are self-important twats."
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My desktop graphics card broke about a month ago, and I had to access SL from a 13" laptop. It was excruciating. Use SL on my phone? Fuggetaboudit, short of desperately needing to send an IM or something. Which means I'll download the app and use it once a year.
OF COURSE you're not going to be able to visit adult sims on a mobile viewer, that is the worst idea ever. EVER.
Someone visits SL on their cell phone, visits an adult sim, encounters some inflagrante action....AND PASSES THEIR PHONE AROUND.
If you think SL has a tawdry reputation now, just imagine where that would go if adult sims were on the mobile app. Could well spell the end of SL in a matter of months.
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In a world where 12 year olds have cell phones, and can stumble into or intentionally find content that would make an adult's hair curl, it seems in the grand scheme of things that LL's efforts are noble but so much virtue signaling...not due to their intent, but the reality of trying to address the issue while preserving the fundamental qualities of SL that make it what it is.
I personally thought Brett's comments during the round table were pretty reasonable. LL is trying to thread a very difficult needle, and from my perspective doing it fairly adroitly. I'm sure those who present themselves in SL as children feel differently. I saw more child avatars at the round table than I've seen during my whole 18 years in SL. It was like a nursery school playground. What was ironic was that many of them were running around acting like children...while the adult behind the keyboard was likely fuming at some aspect of the new ToS.
Implications for SL of broader efforts to curb online aspects of child abuse? None, other than LL periodically responding to the prevailing zeitgeist as necessary.
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12 hours ago, Yorkie Bardeen said:
2k textures might actually be really nice for normal maps (or whatever the new thing is) on aircraft and the like. The existing texture limit makes them look a bit low detail.
I think there is likely an upside to 2k textures in many applications. Using one diffuse texture for multiple faces for example, and terrain maps are two examples and I'm sure there are more. The big question is how, and if it's even possible, to prevent them being abused.
I've encountered endless egregious examples of "texture abuse" over the years. The one that stands out in my memory is a pair of ornate asymmetrical hair pins from a very well known and well respected creator. They were about 8" long, relatively speaking. Not only did each pin have four 1024x1024 textures, but there were EIGHT in total because the creator flipped textures before uploading them instead of simply inverting one set in the texture editor.
They were mod so I fixed them, reducing them in size, and using four instead of eight.The change in sharpness was trivial.
If practiced professional creators do this kind of stuff, what is the rest of the population going to do with 2k textures? I shudder to think.
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21 hours ago, Monty Linden said:
I seriously want you to start a cult with this as the core tenet. 2kx2k linear ramps are going to crush my spirit.
I'll do that. "The Cult of Appropriate Resolution" lol. I've heard snippets about the 2x2 textures coming and for the life of me I cannot understand why this is necessary or being considered as an option. Seems akin to giving toddlers access to nuclear weapons if you ask me.
I suppose it has some utility in the case of very large buildings or surfaces. Would be nice if there was a way to constrain it to some minimum size. If there is a good description/rationale of this "feature" I'd love it if someone could link it here.
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21 hours ago, Monty Linden said:
It's become hard to discover but there is a capture of old viewer help that is very stale. Some corrections are needed but it is still a useful guide: https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/index.php?title=Viewerhelp:Statistics
I've recently added a description of the simulator's main loop which is reflected in the statistics bar. It isn't well-linked but you can find it here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simulator_Main_Loop as linked from https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Server_architecture
Monty, thanks very much, although I have to admit that the second link is waaaay above my pay grade lol. I may frame a copy and put it on the wall in my office in SL so I look knowledgeable. I'll have to make up some response about flux capacitors to have at the ready if anyone asks me about the details.
While I think we all understand that "less is more" (less scripts, less textures, less objects, etc.) when it comes to sim performance, I want to improve my understanding of what can be done to optimize what I already have, and to identify any significant offenders.
One question...what is "simulation time" in the statistics bar? In the first link you sent, there is "sim time (physics)" and sim time (other)". Can I assume that simulation time is a combination of both of these? If so, is there anything specific to a sim build that impacts the "other" category?
Lastly, I'm wondering if anyone can confirm that with AWS, your sim may move around from core to core or server to server and from a hardware perspective there is no such thing as "old hardware" or "new hardware". I'm just curious.
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12 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:
Another quality post from this OP, I see.
Well they hang out in-world where there are lots of trolls. Usually only trolls do that.
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I'm hoping someone with familiarity with SL servers can answer a few questions I have about scripts and server performance.
1. I've been told that EPS (events per second) is a more useful measure of how the sim is performing than Spare Time and that "the lower the better". On my sim it hovers around 1000/sec, which I believe is very high, although the sim has a reputation for being low lag. My Spare Time hovers around 13 seconds when traffic is low. That number obviously plummets to zero when the sim is crowded with 60-70+ avatars during an event.
2. In the debug panel, I have as of right now 2700 scripts taking a total of 3.3 ms and using 6,700,000 KB of memory. However, only 1/4 of these scripts are using time or memory. The rest are at 0.000 and 192 kb. I'm assuming that these "passive" scripts are not contributing to the EPS figure?
3. Is memory use a relevant factor? Seven megabytes strikes me as trivial. Is it?
Are there other factors that impact sim performance? For example what is "Occlusion Queries Performed"? Is the server telling the viewer what objects/textures are occluded behind another? Is there anything to be taken from this that can lead to better performance?
Any other voodoo about how to read the Statistics panel and glean useful information from it is appreciated.
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What Justification Is There For No Mod Permissions?
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
In my experience that is entirely atypical at least for store OWNERS. I am always impressed at how responsive, pleasant, and helpful they are. Customer service people seem to be a different story and are often rude and entirely unhelpful. Maybe it's long hours and low pay, who knows.
I can't think of a single time where I've asked an owner for a mod copy of something sold no mod and been refused.