animats
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Posts posted by animats
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Is there any way to organize a marketplace store? Departments? Grouping? Something.
I can't even find a way to bring items which are just different sizes of the same building component together.
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6 minutes ago, Honey Crisp said:
Ahhh, so you're the one responsible for Cindi. I "met" her today and have been searching for info on her ever since. Can you tell me a little more about her? What is a NPC? Does she do anything besides run/walk and say hello?
A NPC is a Non Player Character. Common video game term. A character controlled by the software, not the user.
Cindi is one of my experimental NPCs. There are some at a few GTFO locations. Right now, yes, all they do is walk around and say hello. At this stage, the goal is to have them do that very well - not crash, not get stuck, go around avatars, deal with obstacles, get out of the way of vehicle traffic - what's needed to live in the SL world. They need to both survive and not be annoying.
Next stage will be to give them jobs. They run "behavior" scripts, controlled by a priority scheduler. The ones you've seen so far have three behaviors.
- Avoid, which avoids vehicle traffic.
- Greet, which heads for any avatar not seen recently and says hello
- Patrol, which goes from one preset point to another. The next point to visit is random, so they take lots of different paths.
Avoid can preempt Greet, which can preempt Patrol. If you're being greeted by one of these NPCs and a vehicle comes along, the Avoid behavior detects that, preempts Greet, and gets out of the way. After the traffic has passed, Avoid goes idle, Greet resumes, and things pick up from where they left off. That's how they can survive a busy GTFO hub without being in the way.
The behaviors don't know about each other, so new behaviors can be added without modifying existing ones. Future behaviors will probably include waiter/waitress, salesperson, quest/hint giver for roleplay, etc. They may play a part in newer versions of GTFO.
(Not doing sexbots or zombies - those have been overdone.)
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The Fantasy Faire builders did a beautiful job. Visit while it's still up. Well-executed whimsey on a huge scale.
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Go to Server User Group, which is in Denby sim, every Tuesday at noon SLT, and complain. We need to keep the pressure on LL to fix this.
It's a really hard bug. They'll probably need to hire some really good people to work on the server code to fix it. The entire server team is tied up on the move to the AWS cloud for the rest of 2020. So fixes are not getting done.
Now that Sansar is gone and SL is the future of Linden Lab, LL needs to staff up more on the technical side of SL.
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11 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:
Yes, SL ran better back in the day.
Yes, SL was less complicated back in the day.
No, graphics weren't better back in the day. This is an objective fact. We have the potential for more detailed content that is easier to make and is more common. (That content is also the reason why SL runs worse today, and is more complicated.) What you're experiencing is nostalgia. It's common for people to have fond memories of the past, such as remembering that a game looked/felt/played better than if you were to experience it again.
They were, however, faster.
SL has an elephant in the room - the frame rate is too low to be acceptable to new users. Gamers today want at least 60FPS; SL sometimes struggles to achieve 20. There are a long list of reasons for this. The big one, though, is denial. Denial by creators. Denial by developers. Denial by top management.
As I've pointed out before, the technical problems are fixable, although not cheaply or easily. Much more cheaply than the Sansar debacle. The big lesson of Sansar, High Fidelity, Sinespace, Facebook Spaces, VRChat, Sominium Space, Decentraland, Open Simulator, etc. is that gaining a good user community for a new virtual world is very hard, very expensive, and usually fails.
It's far easier and much cheaper to speed up SL than to acquire a million users for a new system.
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OK, got it to work.
Successful mesh upload with solid physics model, using Firestorm for Windows under Wine on Linux.
That's a relief. I'm not stuck trying to get a new Windows machine capable of running SL. Which is tough with lockdown and the computer dealers closed.
Sadly, I probably shouldn't say publicly how I did this without clearance from SL, because it relates to the anti-griefing ban system. If you really need to know, IM me.
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12 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:
Ok, to confirm what Animats has found, I installed SingularityBeta32-bits under PlayonLinux on Lubuntu 18.04, could connect to a local standalone, but got the identical message when trying to connect to SecondLife. I doubt it's a blanket ban, I suspect more it's a contradictory set of data saying "I'm Windows but I'm Linux"
Yup. Turns out that Firestorm for Windows under Wine on Linux works just fine. On OSgrid.
OSgrid viewed with Firestorm 6.0.2 for Windows running under Wine emulating Windows on Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS. Works fine. Even has good performance. This area, by the way, is the OSgrid new user experience. Basic, but effective.
13 hours ago, CarlaWetter said:Not an expert in SL bans but it's likely a ban on the VMs MAC address. You may want to try redefining the MAC of the VM and see if that helps. Certain virtual machines default MAC address classes seem to have gotten a blanket ban for SL.
Agreed. This seems to be collateral damage from SL's banning system. SL doesn't like whatever machine ID info the Wine emulator sends them. Other grids don't care. Sent in a support ticket, and will look into how Wine does such things.
Ah, workarounds. So SL.
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Here's what's missing on Linux:
On Windows, Step 2, Convert to Hulls (optional) has options other than "Default". It has "Solid", which means the object is broken up into convex parts for efficient and accurate collision detection. That's done by some auxiliary function in proprietary Havok code.
Do all the viewers use the Havok code, or does somebody use open source code for this such as the code from the Bullet library?
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12 hours ago, Fritigern Gothly said:
I have successfully uploaded mesh to the Beta grid using FS in Linux (Kubuntu 19.04 at the time), I don''t know why you are having issues uploading mesh but there is no reason why it shouldn't work.
Sorry, I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Upgraded several months ago. (Was having a bad night last night. Old Windows desktop used for occasional Windows-only work totally died; won't even power up. I have backups for everything, but the only remaining Windows machine is a tiny EeePC running Windows 7 Starter, far too weak to run SL. I do all my real work on Linux.)
If I try to upload mesh with Firestorm under Linux, the SL-only version, I get this message:
This is not Firestorm for Open Simulator. It's the SL-only version. The only options at startup are SL and SL beta grid. I need mesh upload with physics (which in the viewer is just the convex hull decomposition thing in the uploader, apparently something from Havok, with licensing problems.)
Is there a viewer that can do mesh uploads with physics on Linux?
Usual Firestorm config info.
Firestorm 6.3.2 (58052) Sep 28 2019 09:32:20 (64bit) (Firestorm-Releasex64) Release Notes You are at 191.8, 34.9, 42.1 in Vallone located at sim10177.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.49.43:13006) SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Vallone/192/35/42 (global coordinates 462784.0, 306979.0, 42.1) Second Life Server 2020-04-24T20:13:35.540928 Release Notes CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570 CPU @ 3.20GHz (3284.91 MHz) Memory: 7916 MB OS Version: Linux 4.15.0-96-generic #97-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 1 03:25:46 UTC 2020 x86_64 Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Graphics Card: GeForce GT 640/PCIe/SSE2 OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 440.64.00 RestrainedLove API: (disabled) libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.25.0 J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.10.7 Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.00.03 Dullahan: 1.1.1320 / CEF: 3.3626.1895.g7001d56 / Chromium: 72.0.3626.121 LibVLC Version: 2.2.3 Voice Server Version: Vivox 3.2.0002.10426 Settings mode: Firestorm Viewer Skin: Firestorm (Grey) Window size: 1853x1025 px Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi) Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt UI Scaling: 1 Draw distance: 240 m Bandwidth: 1500 kbit/s LOD factor: 2 Render quality: High (5/7) Advanced Lighting Model: Yes Texture memory: 1024 MB (1) VFS (cache) creation time (UTC): 2019-1-20T19:26:8 Built with GCC version 40902 Packets Lost: 84/8246 (1.0%) April 29 2020 12:00:34 SLT -
I'm trying something unusual here - running the Windows version of Firestorm under Wine on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. (Why? Because my Windows machine just failed completely, getting it fixed during lockdown is going to be tough, and I want to upload mesh, which doesn't work on Linux. I know it's going to be slow; all I want to do is upload mesh objects. I can run Firestorm under Linux normally for everything but mesh uploads, which don't work from Linux for licensing reasons.)Amazingly, this works well enough that I get to enter a login and then get "Second life cannot be accessed from this computer". That's apparently some kind of security issue.I can run Firestorm directly from the same machine and log in without problems. Same IP address. So Its not an IP ban.Tried the official LL viewer under Wine too.
Tried a cold start with a new alt. No good. But the LL viewer will start under Wine on Linux. -
10 hours ago, AyelaNewLife said:
A much better option to either of those two extremes is to lower the "max non-imposter avatars" setting. Imposters look like a low-rez clone of the normal avatar with jagged animations, but they are considerably better than jellydolls to look at - barely distinguishable from normal avatars at a glace. And as you move the camera around, the non-imposters will swap, so you'll always be focusing on full avatars while the crowd takes up fewer resources.
Yes. That feature should be set to a much lower number by default, and tied to the big "Graphic level" slider. Few people know to use it. It's by far the most effective way of dealing with places full of avatars.
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Go to Cocoon and look around. They have a cyborg community. Don't know where the avis come from, but you can get an out-of-character visitor tag and ask.
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Still no sign of her. Her "Dad's Garage" in Heterocera is still there.
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Me, in RL. Doing yard work at home.
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5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:
Thinking about creating something original is a good thing!!!
Yes. I'm always looking for animesh characters I can use with my NPC system, which makes animesh move around more or less intelligently. On Marketplace, the available human-type animesh models are mostly
- Star [Wars|Trek|Gate|Craft|Citizen] ripoffs.
- The Marvel Overextended Universe
- Gorean slave girls.
- Zombies. (Way too many of those.)
When I find something that isn't one of those, it usually turns out to have been ripped from a video game.
I'm looking for low-poly characters similar to typical SL human characters. I have one good one, and need more for variety. I could use "shopper in mall", "cashier", "waitress", "airport ground crew" types, under 30 LI as dressed animesh. Preferably bento.
So, if you're up to making ordinary humans, talk to me.
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3 hours ago, Ardy Lay said:
Our decorator bought some lovely flowers but the only people that can see them are looking from within a couple of meters. She was upset by this and asked the seller what we are doing wrong, why do we have to be close enough to take a bite to see the flowers. The reply was that we are using the wrong viewer to view their products. We are using Linden Lab’s release and release candidates.
No, that means the flowers have a poor lower level of detail.
Before you buy something, see it in world at lowest level of detail. Use Firestorm, open the Firestorm menu at the lower right, and slide the LOD slider all the way down to 0. Many objects will disappear, or turn into a mess of loose triangles. Buy the ones that don't.
There's a big garden center in SL from someone who gets this right.
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I'm over on the beta grid, uploading escalators in different sizes. They're all the same, except that the center part has been stretched in Blender.
7m, 3m, 30m, and 60m escalator frames. The dimension is floor to floor.
Land impact Height Land impact 3m 10 7m 16 30m 116 60m 205 These all have exactly the same number of triangles: 5040 at high LOD, 92 at medium, low, and lowest LOD. This is a linkset of two objects, uploaded together. The LI for the 30m and 60m escalator frames is enormous.
Here's the upload estimate for the 60m big one. (No, I don't really need a 60m escalator, that's just for testing.) The cost is mostly "Download". Which is strange, because the mesh data isn't any larger just because of the object size.
The big 60m upload was very strange. The escalator frame became thinner. It's normally 1m, but somehow it shrank in width during upload. The wood cube is 1m^3, for a size reference.
So what's the deal with download weight going up this fast?
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Beat Saber is one of the best VR applications, because you stay in one place. So, if everything works right, the real and virtual worlds are locked together and there's no nausea from the user getting mixed signals from balance and eyes.
Freely moving around in VR not locked to the real world makes somewhere around 5-10% of users barf. This is called "simulator sickness". This is the real reason VR didn't catch on.
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Properly, you can't see below the horizon. The world is a dome over infinite flat water. That you can see below the horizon from a skybox is a bug.
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21 hours ago, Eleanor Anderton said:
Even though Bellessaria has more rez zones this spring, this is good to know how just to push your boat into the nearest ocean, lake, river, or pond!
In Bellessaria, the rez zones are marked. I'd like to see that on more of mainland. Zindra has a nice ocean but there are few rez zones, and even fewer know where they are. Hint: the south side of the river at the Port of Kama City has some rez zones. Good sailing practice to get down the river and out to the ocean on sail alone.
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The Atlantic (!) just published a long article on, of all things, Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing is having a boom during lockdown. What's interesting is why.
"Amid social and economic chaos, with most people holed up inside, the days having melted into a shapeless slurry, Animal Crossing serves up unexpected consolation by offering surrogate habits—a structured, if fictional, alternative to normal life. ... Animal Crossing is a political hypothesis about how a different kind of world might work—one with no losers. Millions of people already have spent hours in the game stewing on that idea since the coronavirus crisis began."
Somewhere in there is a marketing opportunity for LL.
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For non-avatar objects in SL, the problem is that the LOD creation pipeline is terrible. The display side in the viewer is OK.
For avatars, LODs barely work at all. The mesh uploader's mesh reducer makes meshes with holes in them if you ask for too much reduction. Creators overuse that feature. So, if you show clothing at a lower LOD, some of it disappears. Not in an attractive way.
So, to keep that from happening, avatar LODs for all worn objects are set to the same LOD as that for the highest LOD on the avatar. Wear a bracelet with fine detail, and the viewer draws all those little triangles on an avatar 50m away.
This comes up occasionally at Creator User Group. Nobody has a simple answer that won't make users scream about their expensive wardrobe being broken.
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You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.
That's an issue. I've thought about trying some things which change what you see beyond your draw distance, so we could see the Big World. SL has a huge world, but you can never see very much of it at once. That could be fixed.
SL map, from an angle, using my map viewer. This is sometimes called a "slippy map". Phase One of Big World.
This was done in a web browser. No reason this can't be done inside an SL viewer. Beyond the draw distance, for non-water areas, show the map. So if you're really at the seaside, you see nice water. In the distance, you see a bit of the next land, and can steer your boat better. Not distant mountains, though. This is just a 2D world beyond the draw distance.
Nice for flying. You can see the airport before you're on top of it.
Google Earth, from a low viewing angle. It's 3D nearby, but 2D on an elevation map in the distance. SL could look like that.
This would be phase two of Big World. Project the map tiles on the the elevation map, and display region size or larger, but low resolution, meshes beyond draw distance. Now you can see distant mountains.
This isn't expensive in terms of performance. It's one object per region. For distant mountains, one per four regions, 16 regions, 64 regions, etc. Like the 2D map tiles.
Not clear if Linden Lab would disapprove. You're seeing roughly the same thing you'd see if you turned your draw distance way, way up and waited while it all loaded.
(If we're still in lockdown all summer, I might implement Big World Phase One just to see what it looks like.)
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“There are no tears here. Just joy and companionship—No mean coworkers and bosses, no anxieties and self-doubt about your personal life. Here you are accepted solely for who you are. Let all your problems melt away in the warm embrace of Animal Crossing.” - The Onion
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Avatar Walking Issue
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Your avatar's head follows the mouse cursor. Is the mouse cursor at the bottom of the screen?