Vivienne Schell

"And who knows, if he could, we might have seen something marvellous eh?" So what he created is not marvelous enough, eh?

I prefer Stroker for Gaudi!

True, but a set to lower or higher than default LOD certainly effects overall performance, because they depend on shaders. Same for bandwidth settings and access speed.

Turbosquid.

"Every time LL makes a gain in lag, or computers make a gain in power, some 'artist' will make something 'beautifull' and were all suposed to clap and not pressure him to learn blender." Why should Picasso learn Blender, eh?

Drongle, you are aware of the graphic card impact on LOD? Such a survey only makes sense if you would add a table on how LOD is displayed by certain graphic card classes. After all you want to make your stuff for people who do *not* run the latest and greatest hardware and super-routers, which is the vast majority of SL users.

"GT440 card (mid range modern)" For some reason the recommended minimum cards are: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or better OR ATI Radeon 9500 or better OR Intel 945 chipset This is because the overwhelming majority of LL customers are not gamer animals. Nor 3D modellers. So yeah, the 4xx nVidia is last year´s model, but in SL it´s a top racer. From my pretty rich in-world experience i can tell you that the 8800/9800 or comparable ATI cards and the minor laptop graphics still are the average standard. Would be interesting to get some access logs from Linden Lab there. Probably the state of the world economy since 2009 makes most people without an outspoken 3D gamer and modeller cause keep their money in their purse if it comes to eye candy upgrades. 

One thing on the absurd proposal for breking legacy content by introducing limits: If General Motors would sell a car to you and then, after a year or so, declare that it exceeds any technical limit and therefore sends some General Motors exec to destroy it, without any compensation for the loss. How long would General Motors survive? A week? One day? One minute?

"Although from what I've heard of IMVU they allow user created stuff. (Oh I pointed out a successful game with user imported mesh. WHAT NOW? HUH?! lol...)" IMVU does *NEITHER* allow complex mesh imports (they all are restricted and revised and converted into the platform format by human peers) *NOR* are users free to upload anything without getting checked for possible IP right violations by human peers. As a result, IMVU actually looks *much* worse than SL looks right now. And it´s a static chat room, not anything close to Second Life or online games. The *only* advantage is that IMVU runs flawlessly and reliable on any computer. But it would *not* do so if they would listen to *your* conceptions.

Greene, you still fail to answer my question: Where is the successful online game which allows uploads of complex user created 3D models, does not seriously check if the uploaded model is user created or stolen from somewhere, and is based on some kind of commercial object trade. Is there one? No, there is none. If there were one, i am absolutely sure you´d be a millionaire. But obviously you are not, so why oh why? "You already made your million dollars from your 2006 era shoes, that's pretty good! Now make 2011 era shoes and make another million." Well, almost nobody ever made a million by content creation in SL. With an average of 500 people a year being able to make a *decent* RL by exploiting SL (which includes every possible exploit, not *only* object creation) and tenthousands making a few dollars for paying Linden fees your thesis is based on quicksand. SL is a hobbyist place, and hobbyists do it for the fun and not for making millions or for spending hundreds of working hours on creating the perfect online game 3D model. And anyway, not everyone able to handle a camera is a good photographer, and not everyone able to handle 3Ds is a good modeller. "So let's drop off our old baggage that's holding us down so that we can fly!" Oh, let´s drop all the inept hobbyists who made SL big and still keep it running. Right, drop them. And have fun with yourself and all your wannabe millionaire friends on your meshed up grid.

Oh, yes, another meshie myth. As if imported meshes would be soooooo much better for improving performance. They may have (if optimised for online games of course), some kind of advantage. But where will this "advantage" be if you allow the formula 1 imported mesh = 1 Prim Cube in the accountance system? There will be none anymore, just because a 512 sqm parcel would become overfloated by 117 complex mesh imports, which in their complexity will sum up to a total performance killer. Additionally mesh does much more harm to bandwidth as any format in SL does. Give me ONE example for a working online game, where user created, complex meshes are allowed unrestricted and are actually working. And anyway: If all of you really were thinking of Second Life and not of yourself and your Blender skills and the Linden Dollar bling you´d favor a simple Prim/Linkset to Mesh converter. This would be efficient enough to change SL into a mesh paradise.

"...if things actually broke, but they won't, they will just cost different..." Any limit change of the once established accountance system will break existing content. And "cost different" isn´t a valid reaon for introducing a different accountance system. Ann is absolutely right there.

The developers of WoW and other real games are wise enough *not* to allow user created content, or if, then monitored and revised and limited strictly. Of course meshies will find ways for arbitrary usage of mesh imports, just because LL still offers plenty of ways to do so - instead of reasonably limiting and restricting mesh imports to the visual gimmick they *probably* can be (who needs fully scalable, physical and editable meshes, anyway? How will the to be expected IP theft be dealt with? Techies being overambitioned are the worst case scenario in IT development). As it is now they only are loading another burden on the environment without generating noteworthy advantages. And Ann, who will be left in SL if THIS will require massive and costly hardware upgrades? For running something which never ever will be able to compete with those real games you mentioned, anyway? Don´t expect people to spend zillions on hardware upgrades - as if Linden fees were not overpriced enough.

Yes, very dull. Right, prims and sculpts are not penalized. But mesh is. Logic tells me that there cannot be the same problems as with mesh imports then. The conclusion is, that at the current state, Linden Lab tries to reduce some impact by penalizing the format. Which is not exactly the most efficient way to introduce an additional format to the environment. Importing problems and trying to reduce - not avoid - the problems by some wishiwashi penalty math, oh uh. Every other conclusion is illogic. So is yours.And you do not adress my simple suggestion at all. Very dull world, indeed.

Oh, it´s off topic when i discuss the reason for this thread? Yes, yes, the hen and the egg....

That´s not a joke. Mesh imports in IMVU are not editable at all. Why should they be? Simplifying a format to it´s favorable essientials (I think that the 3D creators here are mainly stressing the superior graphical quality of mesh imports) while not stressing the environment is a valid - and proven to be economically succesful - thought. It would make most of the math described above more or less obsolete, give you a simplified and much more transparent upload/calculation process and "bare" meshes still would do great as the desired visual enrichment. Or did i miss something? And Dain, i am penalized enough with prim count and workarounds, believe me.

"Even the original creator cannot edit the item" Right, but you have a desktop app you can edit as long and as much as you want before you upload your mesh. And if done correctly, i see no need for further inworld editing. I cannot edit my photoshop graphics in SL, so what´s the problem?

Obviously LL penalizes scaling up, scripting and linking meshes at least in some way. I conclude that there is a valid reason for this. Logic tells me that one can either penalize or simply avoid penalizing by removing the reason for penalizing. No reason, no trouble. There still are many workarounds for making "pure" meshes interactive, one must only want to work around. And i see no sense in adding additional burden to an already aching engine.

I doubt that a transition period would be acceptable. It only would give people three months to be forced to spend more real dollars on replacements and more real dollars for renting some server space which tey cannot use as advertised. That´s not a fair deal. It would be one if they were compensated for the loss in full scale. Which will never happen. Linden Lab should adress the real trouble with mesh imports instead spreading confusion and spur arbitrary ideas among the potential uploaders. For example: Why should an imported mesh be scalable and scriptable and linkable at all? Given the fact that these functions add a lot of bandwidth, physics and usabilty trouble. Allow fixed sizes, no mod, and done. Easy, fast, fun.

Limiting anything in existance, prims and scripts, might be a good idea basically, but it´s not practicable. Imagine what will happen when all the thousands of objects and linksets which will not apply to these new restrictions will be returned to their owners? If people who paid real dollars for scripted attachments and real dollars to Our Lordships for a license to kill cannot wear these attachments anymore and nobody knows which inventory items can be rezzed and which not anymore? As far as i understood it, Linden Lab only tries to limit the impact of mesh imports on the system *somehow*, which is a wise decision. While i agree with you that the recent mesh import restrictions and the math ping pong are an insufficient joke and won´t solve any problem.

Mr. ikura, i am not willing to test the other viviennes cup size against my cup size, and please remind the other Vivienne to stay on topic as well. And i made my points. If you do not want to adress my points, it´s your problem. But don´t try to impose your double standards on people who dislike the way Linden Lab handles Mesh in general and Mesh Imports in particular. And no, the current rules and regulations are by far not efficient enough to avoid a desaster (as long as scaling up a mesh is a potential sim killer the current rule is a joke in itself), nor is any other attempt to control imports by non-transparent, mechanical upload processes.

I had thes same discussion all over again. So lemme adress this in a few lines. 1. Comparison: Compare SL to IMVU. IMVU is a static Chat Room, but even there every single mesh import is revised and utterly restricted by human peers. Content in IMVU generally is much worse to look at as it is in SL without Mesh Imports. But IMVU runs on any kind of five years old laptop as a result. It´s not the existance of Mesh or "better" graphical quality what makes IMVU a success. It works! And it only can work if imports are utterly restricted, standardised and revised for platform compatibility and checked for IP license. A STATIC chat room. And i really don´t want to mention the fate of Blue Mars here, which has been reduced to a iPad Avatar Fashion Show - it simply never worked. 2. While prims are less efficient for rendering, Meshes will let the bandwidth explode. Ask any REAL professional on this, they all will tell you exactly the same thing. While Highly detailed meshes will not be decisively more rendering efficient than prims are, anyway. And you talk about "replacing" prims and sculots. How do you think this could work? 30,000 sims with zillions of prims and sculpties. Do you really expect these will be replaced within ten years? Who the hell will want to PAY for the replacements?

True, lol. But I did neither rip my prims from Bilzzard, Turbosquid or Google Warehouse nor did my prims exceed or violate any kind of reasonable technical limit. And I am all but a 3D game modeller. Not even a wannabe.

I am pretty sure that Linden Lab will do exactly the same. They are already hiring the Mesh Police, in case you did not check their enrollment list. But even the Mesh Police will not be enough. According to the thread: I think that i made up a reasonable suggestion related to the topic before. And, hey, you obviously feel offended by "wannabe 3D modeller". So i conclude that you are one.

I never predicted the "end of second life" when they introduced voice. Nor did i predict it when they came up with Viewer 2. And don´t get me wrong, suitable Mesh Imports *probably* would add a certain enrichment. But i am realist and not a wannabe 3D game modeller. I expect that Mesh Import, as predictably handled now, will only add tremendous technical and legal trouble which will not contribute to a brighter SL future at all. And,yes, it even could work out as a killer. Ignoring obvious problems isn´t a valid method to avoid these problems.