ChinRey

Nalates Urriah wrote: Well, there is the head, upper body, lower body, hands, and feet. That could be 7 items for 458,752 vertices. Oh, there are more. A mesh body is a jigsaw puzzle of small faces that can be made invisible individually and you can only have eight of those on each mesh. (Edit: Forgot to mention, a mesh body isn't actually just one body, it's three or four on top of each other, one for the skin layer and one for each clothes layer.) Nalates Urriah wrote: When the viewers publicize the render cost of items we wear, I think we will see people change their buying habits and that will push designers to change their design habits. I can't see that happening to be honest. There's strong evidence suggesting that LL deliberately underestimates the render weight of fitted mesh to make it look better than it really is. And even if it turns out to be an oversight, there's hardly any chance they'll ever get around to correcting it. As for consumer awareness about lag - well, the nice thing about lag is that you can always blame it on somebody else. One of the saddest parts of this is that there are many fitted mesh designers who really try their best to make their products as low lag as possible but with no support or reliable info from LL they're basically working blind. And they get precious little in return for their work. Every maker can claim that their works are "low lag" and "high quality mesh" whether it's true or not and those phrases never were very good sales arguments anyway.

Derek Torvalar wrote ETA HiFi is only in Alpha, for about a year now, and it is still in Alpha. That's a very good point. With all respect to LL's development team, I find it hard to believe they're able to work faster and more efficiently than the HiFi guys. Realistically we're probably talking two or three years of alpha and beta testing before the first "finished" version of such a complex project is launched.

Oh, I see. Can't help you with the problem, maybe somebody others can, but one very simple workaround would be to provide a texturing script. You really made me curious here though. Usually when you distribute a mesh build as dae it's to allow people to modify it before they upload. but that is obviously not the case here if the end user is supposed to even use the same textures. Can I ask you the reason why you want to distribute your work in such an unconventional way? (And no, you don't have to answer if you don't want to )

Maybe I misunderstand the question here but if the problem is simply that you upload a mesh with textures and the textures end up on the wrong faces, why not just reapply them after uploading? The textures are all in your inventory and unless the UV mapping is messed up too, all you need to do is drag them from there onto the right faces.

It's not just mesh bodies, it's fitted mesh clothing in general. When it comes to rendering weight and lag it doesn't really matter if the fitted mesh covering most of your avatar's body looks like a second skin or like an evening gown. There is actually a limit to how much "weight" an avatar can wear. It's not something LL is keen to tell us about (for obvious reasons) but wear too many or to heavy items and the computer will automatically switch over to a lower LOD model for them. The problem is that it's all based on calculated, not actual weight, and the formula does not take into account how much heavier fitted mesh is to render than regular mesh. I have two mesh bodies made by creators who actually are concerned about the rendering issue and try to keep their products as light as possible. One has a calculated render weight of about 4500 (which is nothing really), the other even lower - somewhere between 3000 and 3500. The problem is that the actual weight is much much higher. How much? I don't know but those bodies are clearly far heavier to render than my 40 000+ render weight flexi hair. Best guesstimate: multiply the official render weight by somewhere between 25 and 100 to see how heavy fitted mesh really is. Coventina Dalgleish wrote: no idea why one would need to traingulate a circle Beacuse the triangle is the only geometric shape that exists in SL. Every prim, every sculpt, every mesh, the ground, the windlight - it's all triangles.

That's an interesting question. There are lots and lots of mesh breasts on the market and I can't see any reason why you can't use them on a male avatar if you want to. You'll need some of the old style regular mesh ones though. The modern fitted mesh breasts can't give your avatar boobs, they can only emphasize what is already there

Artur Trill wrote: So I am wondering, now these days - is it still possible to make money on content creation? I hope so. But it is much harder than before and it's getting harder every day. SL as a commercial market isn't shrinking but it's stagnant and all the obvious market niches (and a lot of less obvious ones) are filled up with far more supply than demand. The average SL commercial venturer makes less than 10 USD in RL money a year so obviously you have to perform a lot better than average if you want to make money here. The key here is visibility. It doesn't matter how great your works are if nobody knows about it and it's extremely hard for a newcomer without an established name to be even noticed in the market (and yes, I speak from bitter experience here ) My best advice is forget the Marketplace. There are about 170 000 registered sellers there and about three-and-a-half million products for sale. New listings are placed at the very bottom of the default "by relevancy" searches, behind an endless list of competitors and even more keyword spammers. The ranking is almost exclusively based on previous sales figures and those dubious customer rating stars. In other words, you can't really marekt a product effectively on MP unless it's already sold quite a bit there. Mesh bodies is one of the latest Big Thing in SL and I think it's worth noticing that the two most popular models are not available on MP at all. These are made and sold by experienced content creators who know what they are doing. They didn't just "forget" MP, they deliberately chose to ignore it. One of them even has a fairly well established MP store. It wouldn't have taken her more than an hour or two two lsit her mesh body there but she still didn't bother. (Actually for all I know she may have done it now but not until after her mesh body had become a success and her customer group had reached a six digit number of members.) It's much better to spend your time and effort inworld. Attend sales events, join the right groups, get to know people and get to be known, etc., etc., etc. Oh and since you probably were going to ask, yes, my forum signature and profile are both crammed full of links to my MP stores so obviously I use it msyelf. But even if it can be a useful sales channel, it's not suitable for marketing. You can sell on MP if and only if you can get people to go there specifically for your products.

Lord Derryth wrote: The death of SL I suppose. Not really. By all accounts LL's New Project is so different from SL it won't have any direct impact at all. The people who like SL probably won't be that much attracted to this new virtual world but hopefully other people who don't find SL interesting will be. No matter what happens to this new world, LL will continue to run SL for as long as there are enough users and paying customers here to make it worth it for them. High Fidelity seems to have a concept much closer to SL's but it too seems different enough it won't be a direct competitor. From what I've heard and seen (I'm an alpha tester there), they seem to focus more on the IMVU than the SL segment of the market. The indirect impact the New Project will have on SL is harder to predict. There are obnviously both positive and negative implications. On the plus side: Even though the two virtual worlds are very different, there will laways be some solutions LL develops or buys for the new one that will also work well for the old. Working on the New Project broadens and strengthens LL's competence in several key fields. The New Project will offer an alternative outlet for variouos LL empolyees' misplaced creativity so we should expect to see fewer headless "improvements" in the future. We already see that effect. The updates LL has done to SL recently seems to have been much more focused on genuine improvements (as opposed to buzzword driven solo flights) than ever before. The New Project will give LL a broader and more solid economical and organisational base - if it succeeds that is. The New Project will offer at least some SL content creators a bigger and broader market to sell their works. On the minus side: LL will have les time to focus on SL. LL is bound to try to implement soltuions from the New Project in SL even if they don't fit. LL might make the mistake of believing the New Project can replace SL (although the leaders there at least seem to know better by now). The bottom line is, there are already dozens - maybe hundreds - of interactive virtual 3D environments of different kinds and one new one shouldn't really affect SL much even if it happens to be run by the same company.

lawrencesnape wrote: I want to buy a great male avatar. But I don't know what is good or not. How can I know a really good looking avatar? I can spend until L$2500 How long have you been in SL, lawrencesnape? If looks are important to you, you have to be prepared to go through quite a few avatars before you find the right one. nahladahl wrote: Did you try the demo to see if you liked it? The demo is for free and should help you decide if you like the skin and shape. Yes, demos can be very helpful here. Alwin Alcott wrote: yes it's ugly, they recommend facelights, the most horrible thing to use to look good, when we would need to be a lighthouse LL would have build a lamp in our heads. That's true but sometimes avatar makers recommend facelight even if their products are good enough they don't need it. No idea why. Lack of confidence in their own skills perhaps? Marianne Little wrote: I could not find the review. The merchant flagged it and got it removed? Or he may have relisted the demo to get rid of a bad review. Marianne Little wrote: I don't trust one star reviews unless they have a reason. Same with five star reviews. There are so many reasons why people may leave incorrect, or even deliberately false, star ratings. you can't really trust them. Not unless they come with very good explanations or a listing has dozens of them. I often look at all the reviews the seller has received, not just for that listing. That can give a much better idea of the quality. And if it goes all wrong and you end up with something you're not happy wiht, you can always remind yourself it's less than 8 US dollars after all

Drew Bhalti wrote: the lowest tier range which they could possibly handle right now and not have to change or do things ot make SL survice would be the 195.00 USD tier they have on the grand father sims, which is basically 100 USD off the current full sim pricing. That's not correct actually 195 USD is the monthly tier for all Mainland sims. All regular Mainland sims that is. The Heavy Metal sims cost about 650 USD a month each but nobody ever actually rent those of course so that price is just a meaningless number. (It's possilbe there are a few other extra expensive sims too but I've never hear of any.) StenMystique wrote: Perhaps it's past time they revisited this Way past and that's part of the problem. Tiers were set back at a time when server costs and hosting services in general was much more expensive than they are today. Tier is actually amazingly low by the standards of that time. But for some reason LL, who is usually very good at long term strategic planning, completely missed the boat here. They didn't notice that everybody else's pricing were slowly creeping downwards and they didn't understand the long term negtaive implications of keeping a price level way above the market standard. When they finally woke up, the difference was simply too big for them to fix it in one big step. Of course, they could have done it step by step but that's just not how things are done there. It's all or nothing at all, no half measures. StenMystique wrote: Add to this all the abandoned land about doesn't exactly add to Linden's Labs profits. So do all the DOA projects that was never closed down. I've already mentioned the Heavy Metal sims. There are remnants of other simiar projects all over SL. Each doesn't cost much to maintain but they add up. Not nearly enough to explain the inflated tier though. Perrie Juran wrote: None of us know what SL's profit margins are. Some folks think they are insanely high. Personally I think they are high but not insanely so. They have to be. Second Life is a small fish in the financial market but not so small it would go unnoticed if it performed significantly better or worse than the average. But that leaves one important question. Everybody agrees that tiers are too high. Even Ebbe Linden has said so officially and so did the previous LL CEO. So the prices are high but the profit margin isn't, where does all that money go? I think the answer to that is that LL actually looses money because of those inflated prices. It's not about abandoned land really, it's the total number of users and sims. LL could have made more money if they lwoered the prices and increased the volume and they know it. Easier said than done though. Qie Niangao wrote: Is there a recent Mainland Census available? Because the last I saw was from June 2013 (with the 14% Abandoned figure), and appeared to have a pretty grim trend. Last I heard was it was down below 13% again and slowly but surely sinking. That's my impression to from the parts I know. When I bought Coniston in - actually it was June 2013, the month that 14.2% number is from - most of the sims around were abandoned. Today there is hardly a single abandoned parcel in that area of SL.Can't say for sure if that's typical for Mainland SL. The landowners here have spent quite a lot of time and effort to improve the area as a whole sicne then and that clearly has made it more attractive to others too. Even so, when I travel around on Mainland I think I see less abandoned land now than back then. Sassy Romano wrote: What they really could do with at this point would be servers that ran scripts, servers that sent assets, a different group chat architecture and so on, an architecture where say a prim could have a script in it and still execute on a script server, while letting the empty land sim completely shut down. I agree completely with you there. That's how it should have been done. It's way too late for SL though, it would essentially mean rebuilding the software from scratch. What does surprise me is that LL doesn't seem to have thought about it for their new project and nor has High Fidelity. StenMystique wrote: I know just getting around mainland it seems I fly through alot of abandoned land. Just the little I see makes you wonder about a mere 14 percent I don't think there is a direct realtionship between abandoned land and inflated tier. People didn't leave SL when they abandoned Mainland, they moved out to the islands and the tier there isn't any lower. Abandoned land does add to the running cost of course but hardly enough to explain a tier as high as what we have. The abandoned land plague has a completely different explanation. Linden Lab neglected their duties as the real landowners of Mainland for a long time, allowing most of it to deteriorate into a slum nobody wanted to live in. They did eventually take action but it's a huge task and not finished yet and of course, it'll take even longer to get rid of the reputation than to get rid of the filth.

Oh that sounds like fun! Wish I had time to do it myself. But really, you should post this at the "Inworld Employment" section, not here in the Q&A. Much better chance people who are interested will see it there.

I'm not sure if I can help you with the core problem here but I'll try to give some partial answers at least... But first to clear up a misunderstading, this is not "our" game, you'll never find anybody working for Linden Lab here. This is a forum where us users try our best to help each other. (Oh, and quite a lot of people will tell you Second Life is not really a game either but I think we should keep that discussion out of this thread.) Having to restart before you can delete a dmg file is quite common hardly ever a problem in itself. A dmg file is essentially a kind of "virtual harddisk" used for storing and transferring files. Sometimes the computer gets a little bit confused and forgets to mark files as "not in use" when it's done with it (this happens far more often with Windows than with Mac btw). This problem often sorts itself out after a while and always after a restart. The dmg file issue shouldn't be a problem in itself but it may be a symptom of your real problem. On a Windows computer, you need a special installer porogram doing lots of fancy things. On a Mac it's much simpler: you just select the files on the "virtual harddisk", the dmg file, and drag them over to a folder on your real harddisk to copy them. It is possible that something went wrong during the copying so it was never finished properly. That would explain why you couldn't delete the dmg file and also why you got lag spikes. And you wouldn't see that on the list of open applications since this job is done by the Finder and the Finder is always open anyway. What I suggest you do is first delete the dmg file (no wait you've already done that!) and the Second Life Viewer file. Then downlaod a fresh copy of the dmg file and install the program again. This time, check you can delete the dmg file before you try to open the SL Viewer or any other program. As for your question if the Second Life app is meant to do this on a Mac, the answer is of course no. Second Life isn't exactly Mac friendly but it's not that bad. I've been running it on different Macs much smaller than yours for two years now and never had any problems like that.

Sassy Romano wrote: Doesn't really matter, both are trivial to circumvent so not much point. It is but at least it'll slow them down a bit. Slows them down quite a lot actually. Griefing isn't a major problem in Second Life today. It's bad when it happens but if LL hadn't had good routines for dealing with it fast, griefing might well have been so bad it would have threatened the survival of SL. It's easy for a griefer to just start a new account when his first is deleted. But open a new email account, use it to register a new SL account, go through the whole welcome process, go find some good griefer's tool - over and over and over again. That's not fun, even by a griefer's rather unusual definition of the word. Besides, there's always a chance you make a mistake so LL can identify your main account an delete that one too with all your precious inventory. Blocking by IP address is tricky. There's never a guarantee you get the right guy that way. He may use roaming access or a proxy server or a public access computer. Should LL block an entire collecge because one student misbehaves in the computer lab? Fortunately most griefers are like lightning, they never strike the same place twice. A new unsuspecting victim is always more "fun" and an easier target than somebody who's already been hit once and is better prepared next time.

It can often be hard to get LL to act on abuse reports but griefing reports are one of the exceptions here. As far as I know they always act fast and efficiently on those. You shuoldn't have to worry about those two guys anymore. More info here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Griefer

Drongle McMahon wrote: It is based on triangle counts for each LOD that are not actual counts but are inferred from the byte size of the LOD data and an assumed bytes/triangle (16). This is so that it can take account of byte savings on compression (needed for download resource estimate, but not really accurate for rendering load). ChinRey wrote: Linden Lab clearly hasn't spent much time or effort on it. I rest my case. Drongle McMahon wrote: However, there are some adjustments for the overhead and for a minimum byte size. The effect of the minimum would be to make all LODs for meshes with less than a certain level of complexity have the same download weight, and therefore the same non-texture component of the rendering weight. So that's the 0.06 download weight you can't get below no matter what you try. That would explain why the 8 and 12 triange models have the same render weight, they're both at minimum. My 16 tri model has a download weight of 0.083 though. The same may happen to the resized prim I mentioned too although I didn't check the exact download weight for that. So it seems increasing the download weight slightly above the 0.06 minimum will reduce the calcualated render weight. That actually answers the question I started this this thread with. And since it's only a nominal not an actual difference and too small to have much effect even on the nominal level, it's hardly worth pursuing further. Drongle McMahon wrote: As far as the textures are concerned, in the source code it looks as if it should do exectly what's stated in the wiki - that is 16*(h/128+w/128) per texture. That's what I found out too. Drongle McMahon wrote: I'm not sure, but I didn't notice anything that would include the extra textures for normal and specular maps, and adding them didn't have an effect inworld. I didn't get any render weight changes when I added alpha masking or normal maps either. Didn't try specular maps. That is rather worrying. I can understand why LL won't spend a lot of time fine tuning the render weight calculation but they really should have remembered something as obvious as this. And of course, now I'll always wonder if this was a genuine oversight or a deliberate attempt to obscure the actual cost to the users of their pet projects. They've also grossly undervalued the added render weight of fitted mesh and we already know from another thread they are willing to deliberately mislead to make normal maps seem more effective and useful than they really are... Drongle McMahon wrote: That then leaves 269 - 8 = 261 as the 'minimum' mesh non-text cost. That would fit roughly with your 404 if your texture was 1024x1024, give or take a bit of rounding. It's 512 actually which should have given a render weight of 397 - close enough for jazz. A 1024x1024 texutre should increase RW to 525. Drongle McMahon wrote: Where I come really unstuck is with the alpha texture. This only chages my flower from 325 to 340, while the code seems to be clear that the whole weight should be multiplied by 4. I must be missing something there. Seems the multipliers use the actual triangle count rather than the estimated one as their basis. Makes perfect sense. There's no need to make things simpler than they need to be. I found this article on the web explaining how physics weight is calculated: Second Life Physics Weight Maybe they use some of the same method to determine the other weights too?

Dresden Ceriano wrote: As far as signing up for beta on the new platform... I've no idea. But you can rest assured that I'll be one of the first in line once it's announced. I think it's invitation only. In any case it's clear that they only want content creators working with Maya for this first stage. (That doesn't mean content for the new platform will be completely Maya dependant, just that they've chosen to start there.) I want to emphasize Vivienne's point: This new platform is not a successor to Second Life. It's a completely different product with completely different features and targetting completely different users. Ebbe Linden has made it clear that LL intends to run Second Life even after the new platform has been launched. He didn't say for how how long but I think we can safely assume that SL will survive for as long as LL makes money from it and that should be a long, long time still. Vivienne Schell wrote: Mr, Altberg (a.k.a.Ebbe Linden), Linden Lab CEO, made perfectly clear that SL inventories will not be available on the "New Platform" (They have not named it yet). Do you have more information about that, Vivienne? Last time I saw an official statement about this, Ebbe Linden was talking about some content being transferable some not. That was a year or so ago though and lots must have changed since then.

Drongle McMahon wrote: I tried some flower thingies like yours Thingies??? You have to stop discussing with me, Drongle - I'm afraid I have a negative influence on your usually impeccable mastery of the English language. Drongle McMahon wrote: I don't know if the code for this weight is in the viewer or server. Me and Hattie Panacek once did some informal avatar render weight tests. Very simple, We just switched on the Show Draw Weight function and tested different outfits. Some really interesting results and we both learned a lot from it. One thing we noticed was that we didn't always get the same readout so that value at least has to be caclulated client side. Drongle McMahon wrote: well, yes, but Im prefer tp rely on common sense about what will be costly rather than on the figure given to us. Me too but inexact as it is, render weight is the only tangible measurement me have. Drongle McMahon wrote: I think the most interesting thing is the multiplication factors for alpha (4x) and flexi (5x)*, which emphasises how costly those are. Not to mention textures! Render weight really illustrates how costly texture abuse really is and that alone justifies its existence. Drongle McMahon wrote: So flexi-alpha hair is 20x. Whereas fitted mesh is only 1.2X Right now I'm wearing a fitted mesh body with a render weight of less than 3500 and a flexihair with a render weight of more than 70 000. It's easy to see that my mesh body is far harder for my computer to render than my hair.

Drongle McMahon wrote: There's a wiki. Not clear this is for static objects too, It's the only information we have though. Using the formula there render weights for the four models should be 392, 396 and 400 respectively. Drongle McMahon wrote: and may be out-of-date, although it was last edited this year. Both the page and the formula are clearly out of date. The page is out of date because the information there is obviously incorrect. This is easy to demonstrate. Rez a cube, check render weight, it's 404. Scale the cube up to 64x64x64 m. According to the wiki info this should increase the render weight slightly but in fact it reduces it down to 389. The formula is out of date among other things because it does not take into account new materials. Faces with alpha masking or normals maps do not add to the render weight although it's not hard to see they add to the actual render cost. (I didn't check specular maps but I assume it's the same there). It also seriously underestimates the effect of rigged mesh (and yes, the page says "rigged" not "fitted mesh ) My favorite part of the text on that page is in the introduction: "It does not affect land impact, but high render weight values may result in low visual performance on some hardware." No, mr. Linden Lab, render weight has a significant impact on visual performance and quality of experience for everybody in Second Life, regardless of their hardware! Whoever wrote that line should be a politician. Drongle McMahon wrote: Not sure what you mean by "full LOD". Does that mean all LODs same? Yes. Drongle McMahon wrote: Assuming the texture is the same on all faces, that would be the same for all of the models. That is correct. Drongle McMahon wrote: On the other hand, the smaller "radius" of the three-plane version should make the triangle cost lower. Usually yes, but not in this case. The number of triangles of the different LOD models are weighed aganist each other but since all LOD models are identical, that shouldn't be a factor. The average of 12, 12, 12 and 12 is 12 regardless of what "weighing factor" you add to the equation. Drongle McMahon wrote: Hmm. I have never bothered with render cost because it doesn't really affect anything. Actual rendering cost is one of the most important factors influencing how we perceive Second Life every time we log on to the grid. But there is a question how much value the rather inexact estimate the render weight offers has. Linden Lab clearly hasn't spent much time or effort on it. This is of course partly because it doesn't affect server performance so there's not much incitement for them to do so but also for the much better reason that actual render cost depends on so many unknown variables the render weight can never be more than a rough estimate anyway.

Hi, sorry I'm late! "As we all know, inventory clutter has been a major problem for many of our users for long time. Linden Lab has always been keenly aware of this and two years ago a team consisting of our foremost content experts was founded to find a solution. After studying the matter closely it was determined that our inventory system, created long ago for a much smaller grid with much less content, simply was unable to handle the sheer size of the inventories most of our users have today. Once the cause was identified, the team went on to find a solution that we are proud to announce today: From April 1st 2015 the maximum number of items in a user's inventory will be capped to 100. This turned out to have unexpected consequences since the treasure we all share, the Library Folder, alone exceeded that limit. To solve this, we have pruned the Library Folder of all unnecessary items, reducing it down to 99 carefully selected treasures of the past. Now we understand that this will leave each user with room for just one item in their inventory in addition to the library content and some may feel that is not enough. So we have added an extra quota of 50 items as an extra benefit for premium members. This allows us to offer premium members an extended Library collection with no less than 148 items and still leave room for not one but two freely chosen additional objects. Two known issues with our new inventory system is that it will not be possible to keep a friends list, since each friend requires two copies of their calling card to be stored in the Calling Cards folder and it will not be possible to wear any items or clothing since each of these needs to have an alias created in the Current Outfit folder. We are working on solutions on these issues but we are sure everybody agree they are minor inconveniences compared to the huge improvements of inventory management this new system offers. And the best thing? You don't have to do anything at all. We have already deleted all superfluous content from all inventories so the next time you log on to Second Life you will find your inventory wonderfully free of all clutter."

Look at this picture: Three lovely bunches of irises. Just regular "plant stars", nothing unusual about them at all except for one detail. The one to the left has two sheets angled at 90 degrees (8 tris) and render weight 404. The one in the middle has three sheets angled at 60 degrees (12 tris) and render weight 404. So increasing the triangle and vertice count byt 50% doesn't affect the render weight at all. The one to the right has four sheets angled at 45 degrees (16 tris) and render weight 389. In other words, doubling the number of triangles and vertices actually reduces the render weight! Apaert from the number of faces, they are identical, same dimensions (except the three sheet one is shorter along the y axis since there is no sheet following that axis exactly), same texture, samle physics model and they are all full LOD. The difference is so minute it doesn't really matter but even so, how can adding triangles and vertices reduce render weight? (Sorry about the sandy background btw, I'm afraid my work platform got hit aby a hitn of global warming last week and hasn't recovered yet)

Oh you mean uploading all pieces in one go? I thought you were talking about doing the entire landscape as a single mesh!

Yes I would recommend uploading meshes like this as one piece too. But for a full sim, how do you upload a 256x256 m mesh to SL?

arton Rotaru wrote: Keep in mind, if you split the mesh into pieces you may want to unify the vertex normals along the object borders. Or you will have to deal with shading seams if the split is on non planar sections of the mesh. Hmm, I've never noticed that. I did a full sim landscape in Blender, split into 64x64 m pieces and reassmbled on the beta grid. Didn't notice any seams at all - except for some misalignment caused by SL's lack of precision. Maybe it was masked by the textures I used?

Rucy Byron wrote: I don't think this is the same problem. I didn't really think so either but it was worth asking if only to eliminate the possibility. Rucy Byron wrote: After some more testing it seems the issue is with Firestorm. When using the LL viewer the problem seems to be fixed with Nvidia GPU at least, using LL viewer with AMD GPU the problem persists. I plan on testing a little more and putting a JIRA into the Firestorm team if this result stays the same! OK. That seems like it's not specifically an ALM problem but rather the total client load. Firestorm is of course a considerably heavier program to run than the SL viewer, after all those extra features come at a cost. That should be cpu laod and shouldn't really affect rendering but I've noticed that I have to keep the graphics setting a little bit lower with Fs than with the SL Viewer and there are several indication that rendering capacity for SL is not jsut a question of raw gpu power. And by all accounts Nvidia gpus are able to handle SL more efficiently than AMD. Maybe your computer is right at the limit of its capacity and ALM isn't really the cause, only the last straw? Have you tried reducing some of the other important graphics factors? Draw distance and RenderVolLODFactor may be the two most likely ones to test here. Edit: Two important questions I forgot to ask is: what si the render weight of your items and are they fitted mesh? Edit 2: oh and a third: what is the land impact?

Qie Niangao wrote: I'm certainly not "Mr. Linden Labs" but FWIW, my take on this is that the "free to Premium" implies "only available to people who have given us current payment information, one way or another" which somewhat limits the exposure. Will LL also willing to take it away from people who try to abuse it? Qie Niangao wrote: There however may be a concern with resource use, specifically with the Key-Value Pair storage, once every Premium is using it as their own private associative database. We'll see. Oh, I'm sure the SL servers are powerful enough to handle that. Shouldn't be a problem at all! Actually, my first thought was about sailors and pilots and other travellers having to accept a new experience key for each and every parcel they pass through. And of course, that lovely new search function they've made especially for experience key isn't really dimensioned to handle lists as large as that. Strictly speaking it's not even an effective search function for the number of experience keys we have today. Qie Niangao wrote: (Oh, regarding "exclusive gifts" -- something can be "exclusive" and still be junk. Maybe they mean "exclusive" as in "rare". Build an item so badly hardly anybody will want to keep it and it soons become very "exclusive" indeed. Edit: I have to say that even though I joke and complain about all the ridiculous premium memebership "benefits", I'm still quite happy to be a premium member. There are more than enough actual benefits in addition to all the silliness and with a yearly subscription it hardly costs anything at all once you've deducted the weekly stipend from the membership fee. The live chat support alone is worth the price and more. The guys there are the stars of LL, always helpful, friendly and professional. And one often underestimated benefits: Imagine a house where you can be left in peace, all by yourself. No neighbours, no intruders, no passer-bys no other avatars at all for sims around! That's what you get when you choose a Linden Home. No, I'm not joking! I know it wasn't meant to be that way but it is and it is great for those moments you want to be left alone.