ChinRey

arton Rotaru wrote: Count me in to those some people. Sorry, way too many of them to count! Btw, the reason I asked was that I've been making these 64x64 m single sculpt plant fields of different kinds. In theory that means I can cover a sim using only 16 prims. But the fields are so dense I just have to use alpha masking to keep the plants from beain eaten by alpha bugs. That doubles the prim count though and I hate to see all that LI go to waste. I had some hope there was a solution hidden in this but if it's all about size, I guess not. Still some very interesting and informative replies here, I can see some real potential uses for sculpts I never thought of before. Thank you Arton and Drongle!

This is a long shot but if the seller uses CasperVend and the item is copyable, you can use any CasperVend redelivery terminal in any store, they are all linked up. There's very little chance the seller uses that vendor system but at least it's worth checking.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Yes and no. Hmm. I think you are stretching the meaning a bit there. I'd still call it a linkset even if one member is invisible. Yes but an option for a 1 LI sculpt with a normal map it is, no matter what you call it. Of course, some people may question the sensibility of a system where you have to add extra data to reduce the calculated load...

Drongle McMahon wrote: Yes. Sculpty download weights are size-dependent, like mesh. Although capped, they can be a small as 1.3. That explains it then, thank you! Makes sense but I thought they had to be really small for that. The sculpted Kitteh heads at the sacret location are about 0.5 m cubes, I didn't know you got lower download weight as early as that. But I did some tests and sculpt download weight starts to drop as soon as you go below 2 m size. Sculpt suddenly became far more interesting as a building material. Drongle McMahon wrote: but they can never be less than 2 LI on their own because of the physics weight, as you say. Yes and no. In a mixed linkset you'd usually want no phsyics for the sculpts anyway and that eliminates their physics weight completely. On their own... Add an invisible root prim to a 1.4 DW no-physics sculpt and suddenly you can add all kinds of modern effects to it whilst keeping the LI down to 1.

Drongle McMahon wrote: So it shouldn't ever have LI less than 1.8, however small it is Yes, I know but... Don't tell anybody but I managed to sneak into one of the most secret places in Second Life. I can't reveal it's location at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Inner%20Harbor/61/34/25 but I found this there:  The linkset is made from six prims for the crates and shadows and six sculpts for the content. The land impact is listed as 12 since is uses the old accounting but look at the download weight, just 8.9. The six prims contributes 0.36 to this and that means each sculpt has a download weight less than 1.42 - low enough they would actually count a 1 LI with modern accounting if it wasn't for the physics weight. And before somebody starts speculating in whether the Moles have some sercret weight reductin pills they feed their sculpts: no, they don't and besides, I have seen similar low weight sculpts by other builders too.

As others have said already, you can get the number of accounts logged on at any given time with scripts and on the startup page of many thrid party viewers. However, there are quite a lot of bots in Second Life and many users log on with several alts at the same time for various reasons. As far as I know, nobody has made a serious attempt to figure out how many actual people are logged on to SL, it may well be less than half the official number. Since Rolig mentioned Gridsurvey, please note that the concurrency data there hasn't been updated since 2010, so it's definitely only for a "historial perspective"

Theresa Tennyson wrote: However, Second Life's object/texture structure and procedures just aren't designed for the extremely high framerates needed to work well with a VR headset Not just that but the content too. I don't think I'm exaggerating if I say that on avaerage Second Life content is twice as data heavy and three times as render heavy as it needs to be. That seriously reduces the max. client side frame rate and can't be fixed with a software upgrade. (This is probalby the main reason why LL has told us we can't jsut take our Second Life belngings with us to Sansar btw.)

Under the new LI calculation method a sculpt usually has download weight slightly higher than 2 but i've seen some considerably lower, some as low as 1.5. Does anybody know what makes the difference?

Welcome to the world of Second Life mesh, Adam. Yes, building with mesh is a lot more complicated than building with prims or sculpts and if you want to do it really well, you need to understand a bit of theory. The first thing you need to know is that land impact is absed on three "weights", estimates how much load and lag the objects causes at different steps in the trasnfer from the asset server to our computers. It's the highest of these three weights that matters so to reduce the land impact, you first need to determine which of them that is and how to deal with it: The server weight: is the work the server has to do looking up stuff in the database. A linkset's server weight is 0.5 for each part plus 0.25 for each active script. To reduce it you have to merge several smaller meshes into fewer bigger ones. Unfortunately that usually icnreases the donwload weight so balancing the weights in a linkset is very important if you want to optimize it for max. efficiency. The physics weight is the work the sim server has to do to handle the object. This is all about the phsyics shape (since evrything else the sim server does with the item is minor by comparasion) so to reduce it, you need to simplify the physics shape. One really nice trick ehre is to create two dae files, one with a single triangle, and one with jsut a simple cube. Keep those two files and use the single triangle one as the phsyics model for all items that don't need any physics at all and the cube for all items that only need simple box physics. The download weight is the amount of data that has to be transferred and usually the largest of the three. It is based on the amount of (compressed) data for each LOD model weighed against an estmiate how often each model will be needed. This estimate depends on the item's size and that is why mesh can change LI when you resize it. There are numerous ways to control the download weight. Here are a few of them: Make all LOD models manually!!! That is rule no. 1. The uplaoder does have a function to generate LOD models automatically but jsut like the auto-splitting function Rolig and Chic warned you about, it's horribly bad at it. Even the most inexpereienced mesh maker can do far better LOD models than the uploader can manage. The only thing the autogenerated models can be good for, is if you want to "zero out" one or more LOD models. That is, you decide you don't need that particular LOD level at all, so you jsut set the value to 0 to minimize its LI. You don't want tyo do that with DJ equipment though. Give each LOD model the details it needs, nothing more and nothing less. The more vertices and polys a models has, the higher its download weight is. So you can save a lot of LI by reducing the poly count. But don't take it too far. I'm sure you have seen meshes that break down into a mess when viewed from a mdoerate distance - and the ones where you are asked to "increase your RendeVolumeLODFactor" to see properly. Those are meshes made by people who don't know how to make mesh. More specifically, they don't know how to control the LI so they just butcher the LOD models to get it down. You don't want to be one of those people. Try not to combine large and small polys in a single mesh. For now that is. Experienced mesh makers can get away with it, beginners can't. Balance the weights. I already mentioned that. Several small meshes will have a higher server weight than a single big one but usually much lower download weight. So you want to find the sweet spot where those two weights are about the same. Use the normals. The normals? What's that? To make a long story short, with a mesh you can have "sharp" normals where the edges between surfaces are sgrap and clearly defined, and "smooth" normals where the edges are smoothened out and look rounded. Some mesh makers will tell you you should use smooth normals whenever possible to reduce the LI but that's not quite true. Which of the options give the lowest LI depends on a lot of factors. Optimize for compressability. Or maybe not. We're into the advanced section here now. But I said the download weight is based on the compressed file sizes. You can save a lot of download weight by making the dae files as easy as possible for the server to compress. Typically you can get rid of 10-20% of the downlaod weight this way, sometimes even more. But this is where it gets a bit tricky. You need either a lot of practical experience or a lot of understanding how file compression algorithms work to really get much result here.

I nearly always start with prims. Even if I have to retopo completely in Blender to get the right shapes, I very much prefer to make a prim sketch as detailed as possible first. There are several reasons, the main one is that context is very important to me. You can't really see how a build fits in with an SL environment unless you build in-world. Usually, I convert my builds to mesh and modify them heavily in Blender of course but not nearly always. One thing most people seem to forget is that prims and sculpts are mesh. They are standardized versions of mesh with many parameters predetrmined. If whatever you want to build fits the prim system reasonably well, it's nearly always most efficient to make it with prims. (Same with sculpts although that doesn't happen that often.) One of my specialities is ultra-efficient builds with lower LI and lag and higher LOD than most builders believe is possible. Sometimes I try to take that to the limit, partly to test myself, partly (I have to be honest here) to show off a little bit. These builds are never pure mesh. Usually they're mesh/prim hybrids, sometimes they include a few sculpts too - and sometimes they're pure sculpts. Then there's the joy factor. Prim twisting is fun and you can discover wonderful shapes you would never have thought of on your own. I can "waste" hours just playing around with my prims. And of course, prims allow for far more spontaneity. Only takes a few minutes rez a few prims and cook up some nice thingy to adorn your place. Hours of tedious work if you have to do it with mesh. I tend to think of prim building as a kind of 3D modelling equivalent to haiku or blues. It's so so restricted, yet there seems to be no limit to what a true artist can create within the framework. Here are to brilliant examples that have inspired me: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Topaz%20Isle/126/129/49 and expecially: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Damania/128/128/34 How many vertice pushers and texture bakers today can match the prim and sculpt works of geniuses like Brice Bonetto and Damanios Thetan?

Kayle Matzerath wrote: The Moles made the Portal Park, the Cornfield (new one) , Winter Wonderland, the Halloween Tour, PaleoQuest, Linden Realms, Learning and Social Island and pretty much all the Premium Gifts. An Pyri Peaks, don't forget Pyri Peaks!!! And Rizal And the coastal waterways And... The list goes on and on and on. Short story for those who don't know already: The Moles did so much great work in their early years I doubt anybody has a full overview. Then they got hit bad by a series of ... incidents ... of course and went down fast and far. But eventually they made a recovery Lazarus would have been proud of and their back now!

Oct Oyen wrote: Game-ready stock models are growing by the numbers each year, I hope Sansar will have a strong content protection so we can take an advantage of stock models. Possibly. I wouldn't bet on it though. Apparently LL wants a Sansar scenario to be just as full of content as one in SL and still manage to maintain a VR-headset friendly frame rate. That's a tall order and I doubt you'll find much ready-made generic content that'll fit the bill. Actually, I think you'll find just about any content people can steal or borrow on the itnernet or from games on the MP already. There are many legal and technical problems with such content but not everybody are worried about that as long as they can get something for free and sell it.

I'm really disappointed with you all. I've heard about the Viewers Wars of the old times and thought I'd finally would get the chance to watch one. But this is tame. Where are all the true fanatics? Where are all the random insults? Where are the griefers sent out to harrass people usign the wrong viewer??? Anyway, the only proper viewer is UKanDo. It has everything the regular viewer has plus the most essential extras from the popular TPVs, the developer(s) has made a bona fide (although rather feeble) attempt to make a decent interface and it's even trying to fix the eternal camera position bug! Yes,it's also been very prone to texture thrashing recenly but that's a minor iss... noo, wait, that's actually a rather major problem. Maybe not UKanDo right now then.

Whirly Fizzle wrote: What do you mean by "random rendering failures"? What exactly isn't rendering correctly? Mesh, textures, avatars, something else? Any objects, really. A few days ago one of my tenant IMed me and told me she had managed to delete the door from her house. The door was still there of course, it was just that her viewer suddenly had stopped rendering it. I wrote this post when another friend of mine had a similar problem. He was working on a secret door for a game and suddenly it jsut vanished. I went and had a look and it showed up fine in my viewer, however, the ground at the sim didn't. It was invisible in my viewer. Both the doors here are mesh but I've also seen prims vanish the same way. So far no sculpts but that may just be a coincidence. Once gone, the only way to make the object reappear is to relog. This is old stuff of course, it happens all the time, but it happens far more often now than it used to. Thre three examples I've listed here are from people living in three different countries (Korea, USA and Norway) on three different continents so I think it's safe to rule out any connection issues as the cause. I'm using the latest official version of the SL Viewer, my friend with the secret door is on Firestorm. I don't know which viewer my tenant uses. Come to think of it, all those examples are from the same sim, Keswick. I assumed it was related to the problem with freshly rezzed objects that Pamela mentioned and/or the BUG-10391 baking issue and you get plenty of those two anywhere you go in SL. But this might be a completely different problem, realted to just that sim. Have to check that out.

It's a known bug in the viewer. It was introduced a few versions ago and LL hasn't gotten around to fix it yet. User profiles are fetched from the my.secondlife.com web page and displayed by the viewer's built-in web browser. For some reason that browser can't handle log-on data properly anymore, so you'll have to log on every time you want to view a profile. You can just click on the padlock symbol at the upper left corner of the profile to do it. If you check the "Remember me" box, you'll only have to do it once for each session. About half the time, the log-in process gets hung up so you'll ahve to close the profile window and try again.

I thought it was just my computer acting up but I've talked to several others who have noticed the same: there's been a huge increase in random rendering failures recently. has anybody come up with an explanation what causes it?

In addition to the risk factor Jinxui mentioned, there is also the matter of LOD. Second Life mesh is different from mesh used in other 3D environment in that it has a mandatory and fixed system of LOD models and you need a way to create those. The uploader does have a function for generating them automatically but it's so flawed it's all but useless, so to upload mesh of anything resembling reasonable quality, you have to make them manually. And once you have enough 3D modelling skills to do that, it's easier for you to make the main model from scratch rather than use stock content anyway.

Thank you, Arton! Yes, it turned out it was just the old problem with the viewer getting the numbers wrong. Once I had relogged, they all showed up at 2.5. I didn't think of that since I ususally do it the shift-drag way but this time I coudn't.

Has anybody figured out how the server weight for active scripts is calculated? I have a set of almost identical four prim objects, the only difference is the textures. Each of them contains two copies of the same script, some of them show up with 2.3 server weight, others 2.5 and I can't understand why.

That's a great initiative, Prokofy! We should get together and make a series of such guides to lovely SL places of different kinds. One of my tenants is planning a palce that should fit the list. I'll send you a landmark once she's finished it. And don't tell anybody but Inara Sugarplum has some really interesting ideas for a new sim she's working on. I have an good old village she's planning to include in her build rezzed at a secret palce on my land and it has an absolutely lovely little pub (do pubs qualify btw?) But this makes me wish even more that Aimee Weber had finished her Blue Butterfly. A decade or so after she left it almost but not quite finished, it still stands out as one of the loveliest, best designed and best constructed cafe buildings ever seen in SL.

Apart from the answers the others have provided already, GNC Berlin is laggy (and has been laggy for as long as I've been in SL) because the sim is so full of content and avatars. Even if you could have switched server it wouldn't have helped since you'd only take the problem with you to the new one. You could of course see if it's possible to simplify the build a bit but I wouldn't worry too much about it if I was you. Lag is just the price you have to pay if you fill up the sim too much. Usually it's a price not worth paying but GNC Berlin is an exception there and the sim's popularity proves that others agree with me.

With bugs like this, who needs griefers? Edit: Here's a little script snippet I wrote to fix the issue. Just create add it to a linkset and it should change all faces with alpha mode set to none back to alpha masking. Better make a backup of your build first though since the script have no way of knowing what alpha mode each face actually should have, it jsut assumes everything should be masking. integer x; integer y; integer linksize; list data; default { state_entry(){ linksize=llGetNumberOfPrims( ); for(x=1;x<=linksize;++x){ for(y=0;y<=8;++y){ data=llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(x,[38,y]); if(data!=[]){ if(llList2Integer(data,0)==0){ llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(x,[38,y,2,llList2Integer(data,1)]); llOwnerSay((string) data); } } } } llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName()); } }

Phil Deakins wrote: I am sure that it's a generic account that more than one of them can use, so it's not always the same person writing the posts. There is good reason for it because users have had a tendancy to get on their backs, to the extent that it's caused some to change their Linden names and carry on without us knowing it was the same person(s). With generic accounts it isn't possible to get on the backs of individuals. That's understandable. It only works to a certain degree since everybody have their own writing style, just as distinctive as, sometimes even more distinctive than. their voice. I think I recognised it this time

Prokofy Neva wrote: The Moth Temple is the Linden's own build, yet they won't put it in a "Chat Hot Spot" and won't consider our Moth Temple Preserve for the Destinations. Oh, that's too bad. You've done a great job preserving that sim and it's certainly a place worth seeing. Another inexpliccable omission is Pyri Peaks. The best game Linden Lab ever created and they don't include it in the guide! Prokofy Neva wrote: I have other builds in their destinations that were chosen by the Lindens, not submitted. I'm not sure if LL ever adds places to the Guide on their own inititaive. But if it's group owned land, any member of the group can submit the place and your tenant group is big.

That's strange. I did a fresh viewer install only a week or so ago and Danish was definitely on the list of language options then.