Nix Manx

Interesting Runitai, It really does bring into question the 'must fit all' ideology, those class 0 graphics card (if you can call them that) are the reason why PE is sky high? Isn't it possible to raise the minimum system requirements from 6-8 yr old hardware? I cant help but think that the policy of never breaking legacy content (scuplties) and the must be able to run on 6 year old hardware is creating a serious problem for SL, these are big limitations to anything that you guys will ever do and I can only imagine how hard your jobs are trying to ensure these 2 limits are never breached but there has to be some kind of solution. Expecting 65% of your userbase to be limited to the hardware constraints of the other 35% is worrying, not to mention I can not believe these class 0 users can cope with heavy scupltied areas, they must suffer alot too. Meshes should be in theory a graphics update, to be able to enjoy them should require a hardware update imo, especially if your still using 6 yr old hardware. There was mention of mesh + prim only regions, I think this should be seriously looked into and also consider the possibility of making these special regions have lower PE from meshes, make an announcement that to enter these regions will require an average computer, its a good solution! You guys wont have to break legacy content but residents can enjoy the full capabilties of meshes without being hindered by scuplties and low end users, it would stimulate the economy, be a great advertisment with the new beautiful meshes, encourage new people to join and encourage others to return. Other wise SL remains a 6 yr old game that will never evolve, its either that or make Second Life 2 :matte-motes-big-grin-squint:

Ann Otoole wrote: Runitai Linden wrote: ... The current budget of 250 thousand was used by examining the triangle count of various inworld locations and looking at performance characteristics and capabilities of target systems (which are slower than you might think). ... What are you "targeting"? Mobile systems? Tablets? iphones? Calculators?

Time is quickly running out to get PE right, just when it started looking like it was heading in the right direction they go and add another scale 'penalty'. :matte-motes-impatient:

Not sure what it will be like on the main grid but so far on the test grid meshes load extremely fast compared to scuplties, however I expect it depends how much other stuff is around you at the time.

Do the swords LODs ingame also relate to the LODs in the previewer? Looks like a bug to me. LOD 2 looks worse than LOD 0

I know what you mean, I've been knocking around SL on and off for a couple of years, hadn't really given serious thought to starting an SL business until about 8 months ago when they annouced they would be adding meshes to the grid, I expected it to be here alot sooner than it actually was but that aside its coming next month and so I have returned with the intention of setting up a mesh business, but when you start considering some of the costs it gets to the point where you really have to be committed to even stand a chance. To rent a tiny sim with 15k prims you have to pay LL $3540USD per year which imo is insane and that doesnt include set up costs then you consider the thousands of sims out there, other providers are able to charge between $480 - $1080USD in the SL clones out there and they dont even have a smidge of the resources LL has, to say land in SL is at a premium is an understatment, and its not even real. Then there are listing fees as you have mentioned, and then on top of that, sales fees if you sell via the marketplace, to top it off you also have upload fees, which is what im getting to right now. Uploading meshes is not going to be cheap (the minimum is L$150 even if its a mesh cube and it scales to insane costs as it gets more complex), as content creators we feed the creation of second life, without people like us making content LL wouldnt even have a business, they wouldnt stay leaps and bounds above the competition and they wouldnt be making any money at all, its shocking to see how LL can think up new ways of draining every penny out of you, if they could stop sucking people dry for even 1 year, i bet the population of SL would increase alot. One day an SL clone will come out and will be a huge success, its just waiting to happen.

I must admit im abit concerned with this, what would happen for example if someone were to fully create a TRON bike from scratch in blender and then import it? Is that classed as copywrite?

Pammymy wrote: Dear residents, thank you for responding. Still i think furniture builders etc. will be beaten by technology. Why would one design a 'weapon' or 'jewel' if they can simply get pre-moddeled ones from the web? Almost like sculptpacks you can combine for products. I think meshes will be used for converting game 3d models to SL in a more applicable way as it has been mass attempted with sculpts. Furniture builders will mostly be untouched to be honest, if you imported said weapon or jewelry via mesh you would be looking at, for example, around 10-20 prims, if you did the same with a scuplty it would be 1 prim regardless of how complex it is. That 7 prim scuplty dining table and chairs will be 20-40 prims in a mesh. It does have its restrictions even for unoriginal importers.

Its actually the other way round, prims for base mesh for detailed stuff but even that is debatable. Meshes will be prim equivalent, in other words they will be comparible to prims with the cost being attached to detail, scuplties are another ball game altogether, they will remain very useful for small objects like furniture etc however at a significant cost to performance, meshes will be able to compete in terms of looks and performance but not in terms of prim count. Mesh Pros: Looks significantly better than just prims Performs and renders better and quicker while adding 'detail' Will create a brand new sub market Great for avatars due to unlimited prim allowance Looks as good as scuplties without the insane lag Mesh Cons: Hard to create (have to know how to use 3D programs, have to create many LoD, and have to texture and understand physical meshes) Currently very very expensive to upload to the point it may result in meshes being completely unviable (may change if LL listen) Cant beat scuplties in terms of prim counts (Scuplty 1 prim/Mesh min 2 prims - infinity and beyond) Prim equivalents for large objects are very expensive (Dont expect mesh super structures or natural creations like rockfaces) Prim equivalents for medium objects will be comparative to current prim builds but with a great amount of detail removed as a result. In regards to copywrite, Lindens will be agressive on this no doubt and you will see lots of imported stuff but the quality and costs of importing will be enough to put people off, why pay $10 (not L$) to upload a few models if they dont sell? In addition because the minimum cost to upload is L$150 per mesh, to fill a sim with mesh cubes would cost around $4500USD (ikr) so small meshes wont be cost effective either. EDIT: Amazing LL listened and reduced the min mesh upload fee to L$10 \o/

Thats the difference between an open and creative way of thinking compared to an opportunistic control freak

have you tried rolling back your graphics driver?

Drongle McMahon wrote: If we accept that we are not going to get them to change the triangle limit philosophy, then the only thing that leaves for debate is what the target is; how many triangles and for what graphics setting. In my view the present choices are destructively constraining, but again, that is more likely simply over-cautious, rather than rflecting ulterior motive. I think the excesive restraint will not serve to increase income from mesh adaption, on the contrary, because it will strangle mesh, it must be destined to minimise any such income. *the present max_area effectively sets the draw distance of the low-end user, who the limit is designed for, to 181m, when the medium graphics setting that is supposed to be the target, is 96m. The effect of this inconsistency is about a doubling of PE, and disproportionate increase in PE for larger meshes, but I don't think that is it's intention. I think it is just a mistake. Interesting, I sincerly hope that it is a mistake and that current PE's are in fact around double to what they should effectly be. I must admit last night when dave did that test with the rockface pools, I was trying to figure out what the problem was, even with them filling the sandbox we were on i didnt lag 'in the slightest' not to mention my graphics settings are quite high and i consider my computer to be medicore at best. It seems silly to me to start basing PE's on low end users, rather than mid range users, just the fact that you need a graphics card for SL is enough for most people to know and understand about upgrading hardware not to mention sculpties blow all that out of the water anyways, they usually cause lag regardless of how powerful your computer is. Just to add further to support the halving of current PE limits, its not LODs, textures and tri counts that cause huge rendering issues, its shadows, AA and other graphics features that effectively doubles/triples/quadruples+ the rendering process just by turning some of these features down or off can increase rendering performance significantly.

Try 'REDGRAVE' in search, they have nice male skins that are not arnie-fied.

The only reason I can think of other than pure profits is to discourage outlandish meshes, however the PE is punishment enough for this, regardless of what the cost is to upload if your messy mesh is a resource hog you would have to sacrifice a significant number of prims to have it. And I completely agree with your pricing suggestion Gaia, L$10 for the mesh + L$10 per texture, its reasonable, fair and logical. Anything else is based on profits, and in this case when you start charging content creators.. well its nothing short of biting the hand that feeds you.

Doesnt sound too bad but I still think they need to be more forgiving on larger scaled objects, that townhouse I personally would be happy with it being around 50-70 prims without major LOD differences, its not furnished and its very basic in shape, meshes were suppose to allow us to have some details rather than flat square prims, when we start making our designs I think we are going to find that we have to spend 4x the amount of time trying to get it down to usable PEs at a huge cost to detail. Although its certainly a step in the right direction another 25% off would imo go a long way towards making mesh a sucess.

Then why would there be a scaling upload charge in L$? If upload costs are directly related to PE then we are being charged real money on the basis of viewer settings which is highly variable. I understand PE and its limitations on the grid, thats a given but L$ costs? As someone mentioned before with the new lower limit of L$150 and a scaling cost, they would need to pay around $200 (not L$) to upload thier model, that is beyond excessive and completely unrealistic. Then add in the mesh vrs sculptie comparisons (Scuplt costs L$10 + has drastically lower prim count and in some cases looks better) where is the incentive to upload any meshes? If they don't sell then the creator has not only lost alot of time and effort but they are also out of pocket. Something has to give here, let it be upload costs, make it a single set fee regardless of PE. Linden will still make money via the marketplace and extra L$ purchases.

This is the part I cant figure out, is it sim resources or is it viewer resources? Tri's I expect wouldnt make much of a difference for server resources, its a case of mathematics not rendering, a 10 foot tree compared to a 100 foot tree is a basic calculation in terms of sim resources. If its a factor of viewer resources then this doesnt make any sense at all because residents can change thier settings to accomidate thier hardware, if we are being charged more money because of this then surely its an added cost purely for the sake of an added cost. We are being limited due to a median based on a basic middle ground for computer hardware, its the same with LOD costs, these can also be controled independently via the viewer settings, its like charging people for shadows. Or do I have it wrong?

I believe its more to do with generating revenue than system or server resources. Could be wrong tho.

I guess we will have to wait and see what they say at Mondays meeting, but as of right now, it is not looking promising at all.

You would find a problem, just like you do in practially every thread you post in. Its obvious to anyone without a chip on their shoulder that Drongle was using it as an example.

I wouldnt open the can of worms Gaia, Vivienne has an unlimited supply of them. Sim/Land owners having more options in regards to meshes would be a great solution, as mentioned in other threads, if a sim/land owner can designate thier plot to be mesh only it should allow more flexibility in the amount of mesh that can be used. Not only would this be good for the servers or said sims but it would also go a very long way to making mesh much more appealing and give owners more control over how much lag visitors can inflict (the mesh only option could also have a sub option of applying to avatars aswell) It allows the community to determine what they want giving Linden complete freedom from the burden of imposing rules that could affect the entire grid.

The true cost? The true cost is that residents have been adding content to Second Life for many years, without this content the grid would most likely not exist. Meshes are no different, why there needs to be a 'streaming' cost to the creator seems abit backwards to me and from recent posts its not going to be cheap to upload meshes. There should be a set fee, like with sculpts and animations and images, this taxation seems to be something a few people have just resigned themseleves to have accepted as the standard yet no matter which way you spin it, its a creation tax.

Good to hear, quick question the exporter bug, thats just for rigged avatar meshes? Doesnt affect other types of mesh like buildings?

Just checked aswell, clicked upload model browsed to my mesh files and suddenly the region went down , arggh! When the region came back up the option wasnt there anymore.

Dain Shan wrote: . You will get used to Ann .. se always is that way. Same with Vivienne .. it seems she has the strong urge to look down on anyone who claims to wortk with Blender and actually can do stuff that use less ressources and look better I suspect some envy issues here. I guess your right, apparently I'm not allowed to have an opinion and I insulted the entire population of Second Life, must be a tiring job speaking for everyone.