[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

"People who stand to lose sims would find their time in here better spent on a solution for their situation."

No one will lose a sim. It will only become much more expensive. And it´s a clear sign by LL that they do not care much about attracting, sponsoring or maintaining the educational and non-profit sector anymore.

Most people affected do not really need to debate on this, because this is obvious.

Really? Tell me, how does a University that has a fixed budget for the cost of their sim and no chance of increasing that budget until September 2011 pay the additional price hike that is not in their budget? When the price doubles in January or so (depending on when their next billing cycle is, for most Education clients that is quarterly or every 6 months), where will they get the extra money from? Hold a bake sale? Fire a staff member? (No, firing someone won't work, since their salary and benefits budget is in a different account than the SL Project budget, and not transferrable.)

University budgets were cast in stone before the start of the academic year, a few months back. It is virtually impossible to go back to the well and ask for more funds. The well is dry now. Applying for a grant takes more time then LL has given them, so that is out too.

So they will either lose their sim, if they have only one, or have to close some of their sims, if they have more than one. Converting their sims to freestanding Homesteads is not an option, for any serious education program. They need every last prim and avatar seat per sim that they can get. And asking for one full-purpose sim to be changed into one to four Homesteads will require completely deleting and rebuilding what was in your full-use sim. Not an option in the middle of the academic year.

At least one of my education clients is already stating that if LL follows through with this, they will close four of their 8 sims to remain within budget. Quite a pity, considering the thousands of US Dollars they paid in the last year to build the content in those sims, let alone the set-up fees and money spent to obtain those 4 new sims. And it was a really high-profile project for them, one that the University President had been impressed by. Now it won't last a full year. How sad.

[Making Strides to Improve our Customer Support Services]

Yoz,

You only refer me to a JIRA where you claimed, without backing it up with any documentation, that the issue was resolved a year earlier. In what JIRA entry was it actually fixed? What LL policy or Knowledgebase articles clearly state that a Premium account "closed" by LL for delinquency will retain their inventory if they make good on the past-due fees and pay to reactivate their account?

According to the Knowledge Base, a delinquent Premium accounts gets closed after just 38 days, and if you reactivate a closed/cancelled account, you could still lose your inventory :

Look here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/What_happens_to_delinquent_accounts

What happens to delinquent accounts

Linden Lab will continue to try and bill the account for 7 days past the billing date. During that period the owner of the account can continue to login as normal.

On the 8th day, the account is put on delinquent hold for 30 days. Paying up the account during that time will reinstate it.

On the 31st day (or 38th depending on how you look at it), the account is closed, and the land turned over to Governor Linden.

And here:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/My_account_was_cancelled_and_I'd_like_to_reactivate_it._What_should_I_do%3F

My account was cancelled and I'd like to reactivate it. What should I do?

If you have cancelled your account, there is a chance that we may be able to restore it upon your request.

Depending on the length of time during which you account was cancelled, we may or may not be able to restore your account. Even if we are able to restore your account, there is a chance that the inventory, land, and/or L$ previously associated with your account may be unrecoverable. If your account can be successfully restored, we will charge you a US$9.95 reactivation fee.

 

The current documented policy still states that a premium account will be closed and could lose their inventory if they can't pay within 38 days. Please update the documented policy, if this has actually changed.

I can fully understand that a Premium Account that has gone 38 days without paying a past-due bill could, and should, forfeit their land, and remain suspended until they pay their debts. 38 days is sufficient grace period for most normal billing issues, like a lost or stolen credit card needing to be replaced. But as a content creator, I would need to have it in writing that such an incident won't cost me my inventory, since you offer NO way for me to back up my inventory.

There should also be some mechanism for negotiating uncontrollable circumstances. For example, a Premium member that owns a private island should be able to contact the Lab and request that their Sim be taken off line, but RETAINED INTACT, if they lost their job and were seeking new employment, and wanted to pay the bill off as soon as possible, and reactivate when they got a new job.

[Making Strides to Improve our Customer Support Services]

Premium accounts do not lose their inventory if they are delinquent and non-paid for several months.

Really? When did that change? Where is that documented, in writing?

[Making Strides to Improve our Customer Support Services]

Most of the topics that a Basic member can file a ticket on right now are things that can not be solved by pointing them at a 'self help web page', unless you plan to have features on that page like the ability to request a sim restart, or to restore a lost password. So what you're actually saying is that you intend to ignore even more customer support issues from Basic accounts.

I am a "land owner". I pay for about 1/4 of a full-purpose sim.

I am a business owner. I'm one of your rare 1% of residents that manages to cash out a profit every month. I create multiple region projects for my clients. I only sell in-world these days, and most of my work is contracted, large-scale stuff that gets paid directly in US Dollars, where the funds never need to go in-world.

I was a merchant on XStreet-SL, selling a variety of products, before that on-line service got so borked up that my on-line sales dropped to zero.

I am NOT a Premium member, or is it likely I ever will be, unless you make it a mandatory requirement for logging on to the grid. And that is in spite of my account being old enough that by selling the L$ stipend that I get each month (and which I don't need, because I am already cashing out L$ every month, and never buy L$), I would actually come out a few dollars ahead of the game over the course of the year. (But only if you don't take into account the lost value of that $72 USD per year that LL gets free use of, while they pay me back 1/12 of my dues per month over the year.)

Why?

Because I refuse to risk losing all my inventory and possibly even my account if for some reason my credit card happens to be a dollar or two too close to my credit limit when you bill my account for my membership dues. It is insane that a Premium Account risks termination, rather than a downgrade to Basic, if for any reason their funding source fails to pay on demand.

Because I have absolutely no desire to own Mainland. (My land is on a private sim. I don't pay LL direct for that land, but I pay as much money that eventually ends up in their pockets as any Premium member that owns 1/3 of a sim of Mainland.)

You really want to improve customer support?

Fire the outsourced script-readers that have never in their lives logged in to SL, but are expected to understand and resolve issues. Customer support requires actually understanding what you are supporting, not call center people that don't know a prim from a script.

[[GUIDE] What's a skybox?]

One handy tip: When building a skybox, start by placing a slender, tall prim at each corner of your parcel on the ground. Then edit the Z-height of each of those prims, to send them up to the altitude you'll be building at. This will give you a visible reference up there, for where the corners of your parcel are, so you don't accidentally overlap your neighbor's land.

[Two Important Updates on 2011 Land Pricing]

As someone renting close to 1/4 of a sim on a private island, I am glad my own rent won't be going up.

As someone who has several education clients, I guess I will be seeing them leave the SL grid soon. There is no way that a Homestead or OpenSpace sim can possibly meet their requirements. Doubling their overhead costs without sufficient time to get new funding will force a lot of sim shut-downs. You ARE aware that most educational organizations have budgets that are cast in stone for the entire school year? Double their pricing in January, and there won't be sufficient funds to make it through June. And they won't have a new budget until next September.

I am very glad now that my biggest education customer has already had me re-create half their SL grid sims on their own OpenSim servers. I'll get to work right now on the bid to re-create the other half of their SL sims there, so they don't have to lose those facilities when you double their rent in the middle of the school year.

[Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid]

Terrence, sooner would be infinitely better than later on delivering those specifics. The longer you remain silent, the more people fear and distrust your unknown plan. Even if all you can says is "We have a definite plan to address this list of concerns (list them), and as for this second list (list them), we're still working on the way to handle those concerns. But we won't implement this until the issues have been addressed." that would go lightyears in terms of reassuring us that you're not just sweeping our concerns into the dustbin.

LL's track record for actually listening to concerns and changing plans to address those concerns is abysmal. If you want to put out this fire and calm people down, say SOMETHING, ANYTHING, that indicates you have actually heard us and are taking positive actions.

(Sorry for the caps, but itallics and most other formatting on these blogs doesn't usually work.)

[Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid]

@Nyanka

Assuming you are between the ages of 13 and 15:

If your account is currently locked to a teen grid education estate, it will be locked to the same education estate when that get transferred, and you'll see no more of SL than you do now.

If your account can now access all of the non-education teen grid sims, you will be suspended until you turn 16. LL has not indicated that any non-education accounts will be transferred from the teen grid for the 13-15 age range. There will be no "Age 13-15 hang outs" outside of the education estates (and unlikely any in those). To join one of the education estates as a 13 to 15 year old, you would presumably have to create a new account, still chained to that specific education estate, just as you do today to join a teen grid education estate.

If you are in the age range between 16 and 17:

You will have access to all PG-rated sims, assuming the land owners don't ban you themselves for not being age verified. (Yes, they can do that, if they choose.) No doubt some "teen-friendly hang-outs" will either be built by the 16 and 17 year olds, or will be created by welcoming teens to certain existing PG-rated venues.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

Thank you, Masami. I hope LL actually implements that.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

No, it won't. Mesh upload requires payment info on file.

Masami? Can you cite a source that indicates PIOF will be required to upload meshes? That certainly isn't true for textures, animations, or sound uploads today. All they require is that you have an L$ balance to cover the fees.

So far, all I have seen is that it requires paying a fee in L$, which means a NPOF Alt could be handed money by their main account, do the ripped upload, and then pass the mesh to yet another alt, and delete the account for the one used to upload the meshes.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

That was a very promising introductory tutorial! Thanks for sharing that link.

[Viewer 2.2 Beta has Arrived!]

Well, last night I went ahead and tried this version. It is better than earlier 2.x releases, but still far from usable or friendly.

Tearing off the sidebar tabs is a good start. Not being able to eliminate them from the screen except by minimizing to a bar that is bigger then the tab they replaced, or re-docking to the bar, is rather bad. But at least I could resize the torn-off bar panels.

Tore off the appearance controls and tried adjusting my appearance. I minimized the torn-off floater, and after that was unable to get out of the "Editing Appearance" pose without relogging. The save button was no longer available, nor could I find any way to abort from a set of changes, nor could I find a way to edit my shape and do a "Save As", to save the new settings without deleting the original settings.

Being able to see the permissions for the people on the friends list again is nice, but why can I only make that visible for friends who I select or highlight on the list? Why hide that info at all? And why do I have to still tunnel two tabs further down if I want to change any of those permissions?

Yes, I can have multiple inventory windows. But only one of those is the original torn off tab. The others can be deleted, but not docked, and the original can be docked, but not deleted. Strange.

It's getting to the point where I could at least hold my nose and try to use this new viewer, but it's still a ways off before I would choose to do so.

[Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid]

Alice, there is no such thing as a "PG-Rated item". Prims and textures and scripts don't come with mandatory ratings.

Is that linkset of scripts and prims a G-rated couch, or a sexgen bed? How can you tell, without rezzing it in-world and a live person examining it?

Is that skin suitable for a Barbie Doll, or for a streetwalker? How can you tell, without a real person's eyes looking at it and evaluating it?

Show me the ratings flag that can determine that, and that is attached to every transferrable item on the grid. You can't, because no such ratings system for user generated content exists. Even if LL requires all content sold via XStreet-SL / SL Marketplace to have mandatory ratings attached, in-world sales have no such restriction, and neither do sales via third party merchant sites.

As for allowing the children on PG sims, have you ever been on the adult grid and the mainland? Have you ever been to a PG mainland sim, and seen the adjacent Mature sims? LL has no way to prohibit anyone in a PG mainland sim from camming across the border into a Mature sim, and being exposed to XXX content that is legal in Mature sims. And nothing to prevent an adult-verified account with an inventory crammed full of XXX content from visiting PG sims and rezzing or transferring that XXX content to the minors.

LL is right to keep the 13-15 year olds isolated on education-only sims. They in no way should be allowed on the PG sims, when Mature sims border them.

[Farewell, Avatars United]

And not even one fake crocodile tear of remorse for eliminating the site for the many AU users that were in no way interested in Second Life? Nothing at all to say to the people whose AU experience was not related to Second Life, before or after you bought their site, and raided it for technology, and then shut it down?

I'm sure all those WOW and Eve Online and Harry Potter Online and other game enthusiasts that were the majority of users on AU before LL bought it, and probably remained the in majority up until you shut it down, will have fond thoughts for Second Life and Linden Lab.

I agree that LL shouldn't be running AU. But you really should have sold it to someone willing to maintain it for the non-SL AU customers, that you just left out in the cold.

[Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid]

Adeon, it may be 'simple', but that precise capability, of making a Mature sim invisible from a PG-rated avatar in an adjoining PG sim, has eluded LL for years, and they say they believe it is impossible.

If they had any viable way to "isolate" sims by rating, and still leave them contiguous, there would have been no need for the forced march of Adult rated businesses to Zindra. They could have simply used the settings we all have now in Preferences for what ratings we wished to be exposed to, and if you selected PG (or were forced to PG because you had no payment info and no age verification), any non PG sim wouldn't render. If you selected Mature, the Adult sims wouldn't render.

Simple, elegant... and not at all what LL did. So, if it's really so 'simple', why haven't they done that? LL has stated that can't do it - that the only way to prevent someone from camming between Mature and Adult sims is for them not to be contiguous. If it's impossible for Mature vs Adult, it's equally impossible for PG vs Mature.

[Mesh Open Beta Begins on October 13th]

When will we see the documentation, and where, please? We need that BEFORE the open beta starts, so we can prepare usable mesh models to attempt to import.

From the many mesh discussions already on the forums, mesh as a body for avatars have severe limitations.

A mesh body is stuck with the rigging (bone structure) of the avatar that wears it. The designer can't specify bone lengths or joint placement. That means no digitigrade legs yet that bend in ways impossible for a Human, and no mesh jointed tails, and no quad avatars. You can't make extra long mesh legs, for example.

Mesh doesn't respond to sliders for things like breast size and chest size, and can't wear standard avatar clothing. Any clothes for a mesh body will have to also be mesh, or will have to be special textures designed replace specific materials zones on the mesh avatar, and UV-Mapped to match that specific mesh avatar. Odds are extremely good that any clothing designed for any one maker's mesh body will be completely unusable on any other mesh body, unless by the same maker and made with exactly matching parameters, because the vertices and materials zones won't match. (Try wearing a dress for the Poser figure "Jessie" on the DAZ V4 figure for "Aiko". It just doesn't work.)

Mesh hands and heads can't animate to match even the clumsy five hand position choices for standard avatars, or even the most basic mouth and face movement.

Mesh can't be flexi, so don't expect to see much use for it in hair or skirts.

What we probably will see right away are boots that flex naturally at the ankle, and heavy jackets that move with the avatar body (while covering the avatar-layer clothes beneath), and things like a mechanical arm that replaces one of the avatar's arms.

In building, there's an issue right now with meshes over the 10M limit. You can make them, but they get treated like megaprims if you try to resize them. There are rumors that building limits might increase for lall prim types to allow 64 M prims, about the time mesh goes into real use, to alleviate that limit.

And absolutely nothing with mesh will be usable if you don't have the specific mesh-enabled 2.x Viewer that supports it, or a not yet released TPV that back-ports Mesh capabilities.

[Welcoming Teen Grid Organizations to the Main Grid]

Well, I am glad that the legitimate education groups dealing with the 13-15 age range won't be locked out, and that the specific children's accounts that are currently restricted to specific education estates on the teen grid will similarly be restricted to those same estates when moved to the Adult Grid, and presumably not contiguous even with the PG sims of the main grid.

Will 16 and 17 year olds be able to access those restricted estates too? Will the accounts that can go to those education estates similarly be restricted only to those estates?

Will adults from the main grid be able to visit those 13 to 15 year olds on the education sims, or only adults who are in the sponsoring group's faculty? I once looked into what hoops I would have to jump through to build for an educational group on the teen grid, or to teach classes for one. The requirements were that I would have had to start an entirely new account and have it quarantined to that education Estate, and could only bring in the inventory I had at the time I went to that estate. Will that be relaxed now? And if it is, what will prevent someone from bringing XXX content in their inventory to those 'pristine' children's sims?

Will those 13-15 year olds on the Education estates be able to send IM's to adults on the mainland? That had better be 100% impossible, or you're going to have 13 year olds getting into sexually-intense text chat and maybe Voice chat with adults that will have no way to know they are chatting up a minor. Or receiving XXX content passed to them vis IM.

What of the many age 13-15 accounts that are NOT restricted to a specific educational Estate? I guess they are still placed in suspended animation until their Players become 16, and lose everything between now and then?

Has the very real problem of the 16 and 17 year olds in the PG sims being able to cam across sim borders into the Mature neighboring sims been addressed at all? I have yet to hear a single word from a Linden that indicates this has even been considered, let alone remediated. And likewise, those accounts that can't leave the PG sims because they are 16 or 17 should be prohibited from using Voice Chat or Text Chat to communicate with adults on the main grid, and should be prohibited from shopping on XStreet or any other 3rd-party marketplace.

[Saying Farewell to Avatars United]

The e-mail address applied to a forwarded in-world IM has a limited life. It expires after a set period of time and can't reliably be used for future e-mail from out-world to in-world.

Though I am sure that soon zenwarrior.fuosing@secondlife.com and dharma.galaxy@secondlife.com and joebob17206sy63.resident@secondlife.com will all soon be valid e-mail addresses, able to receive e-mail spam. That certainly looks likely as one reason for the lab's insistence that our "User Names" will be dropped to lower case and with a dot between the first and last name, as part of the new Display Names initiative.

[Saying Farewell to Avatars United]

I'm sure the vast majority of AU users, who were from games and virtual worlds not associated at all with Second Life, will be thrilled with this, and will have so many wonderful things to say about Second Life and Linden Lab. Such a wonderful PR move by the Lab! It is an action that is sure to make lots of friends and converts in the gaming community, and with other virtual worlds. *facepalms*

This is a major PR faux pas. It's akin to buying a major gaming store, trying to convert everything to one trading card game that never was very popular there, and then burning the place down out of spite when the gamers didn't flock to your product. Or did you already drive most of the original users of that site away because of your single-focus-on-SL approach as their new landlords?

The ethical thing to do would NOT be to shut AU down. It would be to find a buyer to take it off your hands, who was willing to undo the damage you have done to it while you owned it, and restore it to what it was before you bought it - a FaceBook-like site for GAMING avatars, from many different gaming systems.

As for the new "Resident Profiles" ... Will we also have the "option" that you took away from us in the 2.0 Viewer, and be able to choose NOT to see real world info on people when we look at someone else's profile? Many, perhaps the majority, of your customers DO NOT WANT to mix real life social networking with their SL fantasy life, but you just don't seem to get that.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

By the way, something to bear in mind for those of you who leap to be on the bleeding edge of this new technology. This came up in one of the other mesh threads.

Until viewers that have backported this Mesh capability are widely in use, only those few people using the LL 2.x Mesh Viewer will even be able to see  your pretty new Mesh creations, let alone benefit from them.

Anyone using a 1.2x Viewer, or a TPV that hasn't yet backported the 2.x code for mesh, will see you and your incredible mesh Furry avatar like you're wearing the Emperor's new clothes. They won't see the mesh components at all, except as little tetrahedrons that don't ever rez into anything. They will just see your prim and sculpty bits, and maybe a naked and badly deformed avatar that should have been hidden from sight. Your lovely 40-prim dream castle with soaring spires and flying buttresses? They will only see the prim windows and doors, and the prim and sculpty flags, and not the mesh parts. But they will bump into the collision mesh of the castle that they can not see.

Yes, the attractive possibilities of mesh will probably make a lot of people switch to LL's 2.x mesh Viewer, just to be able to benefit from Mesh, even if they utterly despise the 2.0 UI. Unlike tattoo layers and avatar alpha layers, this tech will be a game-changer that will be almost impossible to ignore. And no doubt a lot of the 2.x-based TPV's will rush to offer this capability, as soon as they can. I certainly hope that at least some of the TPV developers were in the mesh closed beta. Were there any? Or did LL shut them out, in hopes that the introduction of Mesh would force more people to adopt their unpopular 2.x LL Viewer?

But until the Residents do widely adopt the new Viewers as their standard, it's going to be like selling movies only on DVD, when everyone has video tape players, and only a small percentage of the consumers have DVD players. Few at first will be able to benefit from it. But what will be worst about the situation is that unlike DVD's, if you're not ready to get that new Viewer yet, for any reason, your experience will still rapidly become worse, as new mesh buildings and your friend's new mesh avatars become increasingly impossible for you to interact with.

[Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback]

New proposal in JIRA:

Second Life Viewer - VWR

• VWR-23039
  

Display Names: Retain a queue of previously used Display Names that the resident can switch between, and which remain visible in their Profile

[Changes to Display Names Based on Your Feedback]

Thinking about this, I would like to propose one idea that would be of benefit to several factions here.

Allow, no, force, the resident's Profile to show an "AKA list", showing the last 10 Display Names that the Resident has used. Those ten names could be switched between at will by the resident, with no fee, but new names could only be added to the list once per week (with or without a fee, or a requirement to be Premium, or other restrictions). That list would be searchable data, so even if the resident wasn't displaying "Trevor Bloodmoon the Werewolf" as their current display name, you could still find them in Search.

In use, the most recently used display name pops to the top of that list, and you always have the option of using none of the Display names, and showing your User Name instead. If you fill the list with ten choices, and add a new display name, the least-used name drops off the bottom and is gone.

This would make going from one roleplaying venue to another and changing your name to match as simple and painless as changing your clothes from an Edo period Japanese Kimono to Gorean slave silks. It would make it usable by roleplayers who RP in more than one venue in a given week, or who do not live 24 x 7 in only one role.

It will make it much easier for foreign-language residents, who could display their Japanese name in Katakna, Hirigana, and Romanji characters, as well as an English language nickname, and switch between them as the current group that they are interacting with requires. (Proper Japanese when in a Japanese-speaking sim, Romanji or an English nickname when at a general club venue.)

It would allow someone who was Partnered to use their Partner's surname socially, while still using their original or professional name for business. For example, I could have "Ceera Saito" as a Display name while socializing with my Partner, and readily switch back to "Ceera Murakami" when I am working as a Builder and Sim Architect, and both would be searchable names that would find me.

It would make it much easier to identify friends who changed their name, especially if they change them frequently.

It would make it much harder for a griefer to assume a name, create problems, and then leave without a trace, without abandoning the account (assuming you could only add new names and flush the old ones out by adding new names once a week). Noob griefers who try to impersonate several people would show a history of their past assumed names, making it easier to spot repeat offenders. (Of course, a serious Griefer would use a disposable free alt once, and then delete the account, discarding it like a thrown-away Saturday Night Special handgun used in one crime and thrown into the river.)

This doesn't solve all the problems, but at least it would make the names more usable.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

I hope you are right, Dante. I'm certain that future generations of furry avatars and all sorts of other products will benefit from this.

How will a physically large mesh get textured, and what limits will there be on the textures for them? Will it be possible to assign multiple textures to subdivisions of the mesh's UV map, and to assign a multiplicity of tiled textures with repeats to individual subdivided areas? What physical size limits will an individual mesh object have?

I am familiar with DAZ|Studio, and I know the mesh figures there usually had far more pixels in their surface texturing maps than can fit on a 1024 x 1024 texture. If we are stuck with no larger than a 1024 a 1024 texture, the maximum practical size for a mesh will be severely limited by its texturing limitations. Who wants to look at a mesh skyscraper with pixels half a meter wide on its surface? Take a look at a 1024 x 10254 texture applied to one face of a 50M x 50M megaprim. The pixels are ungodly huge.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

@Lightscribe

Your example, however, also shows just how easily a proven and popular product could be rendered instantly obsolete by the introduction of Mesh. Would you be so happy if your 243 prim gun was already perfected, fully functional and on the market? If it was one of your best selling items, and the introduction of mesh slaughtered your sales because someone else beat you to the market with a better-looking, two-prim version of your primmy gun? Would you like to compete against imported copies of the many exquisitely-detailed guns and other weapons already for sale for use with Poser and DAZ|Studio?

I make custom buildings for my clients, in huge, multi-sim builds. Just recently I completed one building that was well over 3,000 prims. It was an eight story dorm building, with every window and door detailed, down to the unequal, 'artistic' divisions of the panes of glass in hundreds of windows, exactly the way the architect had detailed them in their Autocad blueprints.

I can see where a talented expert with 3D mesh generation, like "Stonemason" on the DAZ products website, could probably make that same dorm building with less than 30 to 100 mesh and prim parts, including all the doors that need to be able to open and close. Just how much prim reduction is possible will depend a lot on how big an imported Mesh object can be, and how badly LOD screws up mesh at a distance. But if we were talking about a generic downtown city block structure, which product do you think would sell, and which would end up in the trash and deleted? Stonemason's imported 30-prim Mesh build, ported over from DAZ? Or my 3000-prim version? Take a look at how much the use of sculpted prims in furnishings has already slaughtered prim counts in furniture, and what sells well now.

Fortunately for me, the effort necessary to make a one-off custom mesh build, precisely to client specifications, is probably not worth it for the mesh pros. They will build their generic homes and urban scenes, and sci-fi set designs, and won't want to make a specific University campus, detailed exquisitely. Why would they, when they can expend the same effort and make a generic product and sell thousands of copies, instead of a one-off sale?

Can I learn to use Blender and other free tools to eventually make detailed Mesh parts for my custom buildings, and reduce my prim counts drastically? Quite probably. I've slowly learned how to make my own sculpties with Blender, but I'm light years behind the capabilities of the high-end sculpty makers that have programs like Maya at their disposal. It will take me years to catch up. And meanwhile, the mesh pros will become all the big name brands in the market.

The ones I really feel for will be the furniture makers. They are already starting to feel the pinch, as a 40-prim bed gets replaced by one made of one to six sculpted prims. With an almost unlimited source of pre-existing, high-quality mesh furniture out there, that has been created for DAZ and Poser modelers, the prim content makers will be swept aside, both by the actual legitimate creators of those models, and by the rip-off artists who grab stuff from Renderosity and import it, claiming it as their own.

It's going to be a very rocky road, for existing content creators. I believe a lot of them will not survive.

[Next Steps for Mesh Import]

Well, it certainly looks promising, I'll say that. I look forward to the day when a TPV that doesn't rely on the crippled 2.x UI backports the Mesh Import capabliities into a usable Viewer.

Will mesh be visible to the users of non 2.x Viewers?