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animats

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Posts posted by animats

    Prims multiply like tribbles

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    There have been some recent issues with weapons that do a lot of rezzing, especially when the gun sends messages to the projectile. There is no guarantee that a recently rezzed projectile will be ready to listen when the launcher talks to it. But until recently, that usually worked. Now you have to do a full handshake with the projectile talking to the launcher and getting a reply. This complicates weapons.

    Lucia Nightfire has been looking at this.

    You're probably going to have to go back to the weapon maker and get them to update it.

    • Like 2

    Looking for land

    in Mainland

    Posted

    Try Corsica. Much of Corsica is abandoned. There are abandoned roadside parcels.

    Land with no water or road access isn't worth much in SL. There's lots of that available, but you have to TP in and out.

    Big problems with SL viewer

    in Second Life Server

    Posted

    This is an error indicating that Google Chrome/Chromium can't reach the Internet. SL's user interface for ordinary web-like stuff is a copy of Google's Chromium browser built into the SL viewer. Windows Defender, in very locked down configurations, can cause this.

    See: https://www.techbout.com/err-network-access-denied-error-in-chrome-39594/

    The browser program used by SL is called "Dullihan", if you have to allow some named process or something. Further answers need to come from a Windows 10 expert. I use Linux.

    • Like 1

    Sim crossing and passenger ejection

    in General Second Life Tech Discussion

    Posted

    I'm encouraged. I look forward to seeing how well that works on the main grid. It looks pretty good on the AWS part of Aditi.

    The biggest remaining bug is region corners. Region crossing needs to be interlocked so that when a vehicle with passengers changes region, the vehicle cannot start a second region crossing until all the avatars have caught up.

    Mainland becomes more useful if you can travel it.

    • Like 1

    Being Harassed BY 50 Linden Rental

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Constantly rezzing junky stuff onto Linden roads is generally considered griefing. AR.

    It seems that the smaller the landowner, the bigger the signs. The people with FOR SALE towers tall enough to require aircraft warning beacons are usually holders of only a few parcels. The biggest landowners use something like a manhole-sized disc with their logo set in the ground. They don't want to run down the value of their other nearby properties.

     

     

    Usability testing for SL

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    56 minutes ago, Nick0678 said:

    I believe if they did now Second Life would be considered an obsolete application due to those corporations having different strategies on how to create profit.

    Right. That's what happens when Google acquires companies with minor products. If the product can't be grown to "Google scale", it's killed off.

    Crazy Developer Idea - Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by animats
    Fix bento text.

    In a way, animesh are the next generation of avatar system. They start with a basic nude skin mesh attached to a bento skeleton. Then you add clothing. There's no "legacy avatar" to hide. Nor is there a "dress layer" or a "coat layer". You can add texture clothing (classic SL clothing) or rigged mesh clothing.

    testiathippo02.thumb.jpg.ef4f67a4f59a22fbb4ed505a30e78859.jpg

    Animesh character with clothing. Most animesh characters in SL are built with fixed clothing. (Actually, most of the ones on Marketplace are ripped from games.) This one isn't. It's a body with separate clothing. It is a low-LI model, fewer triangles than most avatars, with a full bento skeleton. The fingers can be animated. Animesh, unlike avatars, are charged LI in world, so you have to simplify.

    • The body is the standard public Ruth model with some mesh reduction. UVs for the body are standard SL body UVs, and classic clothing textures will fit. They can't be applied in-world, because animesh don't get to use the baking service.
    • The hoodie and shoes are rigged mesh, custom made by Duck Girl. Those are added by linking them to the body. (Animesh don't have a "wear" function.) Rigged mesh clothing will work on animesh, but most stock clothing has a huge triangle count, so I had some custom clothing made.
    • The hair is a Marketplace full perm low-LI rigged mesh hair item from Meli Imako, again added by linking to the body.
    • Pants and shirt are texture clothing, applied in Photoshop to the nude skin model.

    So SL already has most of the the machinery for avatars which leave behind the legacy system. If simpler avatars are needed, this is the way to go.

     

    • Haha 1

    Usability testing for SL

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Nick0678 said:

    Linden Lab tends to work like a public sector company (or fictional Government if you prefer) so don't expect much, imagination and creativity is not their strong business card.

    That's a good thought. Linden Lab does a decent job of running a medium-sized municipality. They don't overmanage. The property-rights system gives users enough control to stop most local trouble. LL only has to deal with serious incidents.

    Linden Lab is underpowered on the tech side. The team that maintains the server side is very small for what they're doing.

    Now, if, say, Epic, the Fortnite and Unreal Engine company, ran SL, it would work better technically, but would be run like a fascist state. In Fortnite, user customization is limited by policy and tightly controlled. "Creators" can create levels and skins which have to be pre-approved and are made only from standard parts. (What Fortnite people call "creating skins", we call "getting dressed". It's just mixing and matching existing clothing and avatar items.) Fortnite's in-game store takes upwards of 90% of creator revenue. (It's hard to figure that out, because they have more than one internal currency.) People have reportedly been auto-banned for simply going in and sightseeing instead of fighting. (That "disrupts the game".)

    • Like 2
    • Haha 1

    Kitchens!!

    in Linden Homes

    Posted · Edited by animats
    Improve copy

    kitchen2.thumb.jpg.903c69616287892dd75ffd5415484720.jpg

    Kitchen. 15 LI.

    This is an Alderley traditional, the smallest one. I use it as a beach house, with a boat outside ready to go in the water. the beach. I've given the house a small, but complete, kitchen.

    The appliances and counter are one unit, the Vespetta small spaces kitchen. That's 5 LI.

    • Like 3

    Usability testing for SL

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Everybody talks about SL's usability problems. It's not clear that SL has ever run a proper test on this. We know that far more people sign up on the web site than appear in world.

    The idea is that you recruit some new users and pay them to run the test. Set things up so the screen, user audio, and maybe the webcam of the user's face are recorded. Not many users - 5 to 10 are usually enough.

    For SL, a first task would be:

    • Sign up for Second Life. Download and install the viewer. Go through the new user experience. Leave the new user experience and go someplace else.

    Someone then reviews each video and makes a timeline. This is the time-consuming part. It's sometimes outsourced to psychology students. What they're looking for is:

    • Check off steps along the way (signed up on web site, downloaded, first time in world, etc.) and when those were achieved.
    • What stopped the user from achieving a goal?
    • When did the user have to back up and try something else?
    • When the user appear to be frustrated or angry or confused?
    • When did the user give up completely?

    The last three are the important ones. Those are pain points that need to be fixed. Often, they're not where developers or experienced users expect. The people reviewing the video should assemble a "highlights reel", of places where users were happy, frustrated, angry, or gave up. Management, the dev team, and the marketing team watch that.

    Here's the process, as done in-person by a consultancy.

    User testing, the classic way.

    There are tools for doing this remotely. (They tend to be a bit too focused on web site ad clicks, though.)

    Another useful task would be "Inworld meeting". Complete the first onboarding task. Put together a human avatar in business casual clothing. Go to a meeting room such as Boardroom region. Watch a short presentation. Discuss the presentation with the others present. Leave and log out.

     

    • Like 3
    • Haha 2

    Sim crossing and passenger ejection

    in General Second Life Tech Discussion

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Anna Nova said:

    We went to the 'new' Blakes Sea (not Beta, the main grid) now that it has the latest updates.  Even two-up in a huge ship with complex scripts, we could not make it die at region crossings. 

    I tried zipping around the Blake Sea in my little speedboat, avoiding region corners, and had a fail on the main grid within 5 minutes.

    Blake Sea on the main grid is running "Second Life Server 2020-07-31T15:02:15.545966"

    Blake Sea on the beta grid is running "Second Life Server 2020-08-08.546452"

    Crazy Developer Idea - Discussion

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1 hour ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

    All contained under a single, common brand?

    That's called a "roll-up" by merger and acquisition people. It takes money to bring off.

    The closest thing to that in SL is perhaps NTBI, which was at one time the leading maker of modern role-playing items. Cars, trucks, emergency vehicles, phones, office equipment, furniture - everything you need, very well made. They have a mall with all their brands at "NTBI" region. But modern roleplay went into decline, and that business stagnated.

    Wait and see if the new owners of Linden Lab are expansionist.

    What are some more of your pet peeves?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    In SL?

    • Parking lots you can't park in. Ones where object entry is off, or autoreturn is too short. Give us a half hour of shopping time. Longer for female apparel stores.
    • Comic Sans on signs. No.  Just no.
    • Offering notecards or landmarks to people driving by. Pops up a dialog drivers have to dismiss. Usually by clicking "Block". That's a TOS violation, by the way.
    • Billboards advertising billboard space.
    • 4m wide parcels with 20m wide billboards.
    • Large groups of vendors with constantly changing images. It takes minutes after arrival before texture loading catches up.
    • Glow on objects with bad low LOD models. The effect is a huge glowing thing in the distance which disappears as you get close.
    • There's a very nice "god rays" effect, and some good rainbows, that you can buy. They look great during the day and terrible at night. They need to turn off after dark.
    • Like 1
    • Haha 2
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