Ernst Osterham

I really like this idea too.

This happens to me a lot with studio skye stone walls with alpha textured ferns on it breaking.

That’s a risk SL has going forward I feel, also. SL seems to be getting better performance, better graphics, some neat features, but it’s like there’s less to do in-world than ever before. I find myself daydreaming about creating, building, or even just shopping and putting together an outfit or environment but then realize there’s nothing to DO with it in-world anymore other than maybe take some photos. Maybe it’s just me being here too long but a big part of the magic of SL that drew me in was having a creative, inventive world to build, shape, and tinker with. It was like playing an MMO where you could just create your own mods in-game. Things that make that more accessible to residents in some form, even with an updated prim building system is great. Yes it’s better and easier to create in external programs but it also removes you from the actual world almost entirely.

PBR would be a nice addition so long as it: 1.) Doesn’t tank framerates 2.) Doesn’t break existing content SL has managed to preserve prior building techniques so far for the most part, so I’m hopeful. If it becomes a case of non-pbr items no longer visually blending in with the new pbr items it will be a major reduction in variety in SL. We have a lot of assets in world that are popular and used all over which are now pushing a decade old using the old SL rendering system. A lot of the creators have left SL, died, or simply can’t/won’t update their massive back catalog by completely retexturing them.

That’s somewhat LL’s fault about those animation script errors on sim crossings. LL changed how region crossings are handled a bit ago in an attempt to improve them and it unintentionally causes issues on some vehicle scripts. Some builders have updated them and others already were scripted in a way that avoided the bug. If you have that issue and the builder isn’t active and updating though you are pretty much out of luck at least with the current LL backend.

Maybe not mean spirited but it was sudden and essentially removed the option for people to enjoy her work from SL. I had the hands and feet, and also the male bodies on multiple avs and had no idea it was closing until it was gone. SL is heavily weighted towards the new and the now but it’s nice sometimes when old stuff is still available for people to enjoy even if only as part of SL history. The slink male body still fit a lot of clothes even ones not intended for it and there was a huge backlog of freebies and sale items for it. If it was available as a freebie like the legacy classic meshbody is I’m sure it’s use would go up and give male newcomers a great body option that has years of back support until LL releases NUX. Slink physique is also much less resource intensive or script heavy as the free classic meshbody so perfect for those running less than optimal computers.

I used slink physique forever on a couple avs and really liked the body. I wish her well, though I agree the quick departure with no warning is a bit annoying. SL is terrible for getting news and info in world and a lot of people in SL don’t use discord or Facebook or the SL forums etc. Having a redelivery terminal up for a couple weeks would have been nice for people finding out late.

Why can’t both alpha cuts and bom alpha masks coexist? It wouldn’t be difficult for body makers to include two versions - one with alpha cuts and bom and one “low lag” bom only, no onionskins version. Bonus points would be if these are modifiable to further customize as needed. Basically what belleza’s last old body update did. I used slink M on three avs until just recently and making alpha masks WAS a pain. Even with experience with PS and SL creation for years it was an annoying chore. But in terms of having a low lag av that was simple to dress with saves outfits it couldn’t be beaten. Alpha cuts do have one small performance advantage now too, I believe, in that alpha cut geometry seems to boost fps in a way that alpha masked does not. It’s like SL treated a masked body as rendering the entire body even if it’s all masked off except the head and hands, etc. Alpha cut bodies seem to get treated as only rendering the actually visible cuts.

Second Manji cars and the NTBI/GEMC/Lusch cars (they are all at the same auto mall sim which has demo rezzers to test, except for Manji which is on the mainland. Sumi has some great vehicles too, mostly motorbikes/scooters and all terrain stuff.

Hopefully this trend continues. If we get a mod legacy version that would be GREAT but I’m not holding my breath.

My guess is if a whole bunch of new hype and users appeared a lot would look just like it does now only with more people. It wouldn’t change the direction SL has headed. Sort of like how more people in RL doesn’t lead to more Amazons it just makes Amazon bigger and more profitable. Maybe if some new feature is added that fundamentally adds something to what you can do in SL it would be different, but that risks alienating the core userbase. I joined in 2008 and I remember when a 5 year old av was like a WOW moment. Now I routinely see 15+ year old avs and 10 years+ is commonplace. Before it always felt like SL was a big place with loads of people and places to meet and explore. Today it feels much more like a small town where you run into the same longtime residents no matter what activity or event you’re at. More people would help with that but without some reason for ithem to stay why would they?

This. There's no drawback to builders using excessive textures and texture memory as-is. Other than more 10L upload costs, and even those are gone with premium plus it seems. Excessive textures is even more than excessive geometry, a pure tragedy of the commons situation. Collectively we have an interest in using minimal textures, individually we have an interest in maxxing everything to get superdetail.

That’s true because no matter what the content there are fundamental world constraints SL has that games don’t. Just look at all the trouble MMOs have with lots of people in the same place, or creating persistent, large worlds. It’s not easy. I do feel content is huge though. When people talk about “lag” in SL most times they are talking about graphics lag or sluggish network retrieval and loading of assets. Those things are primarily content based. When Sl is built more like a game it runs ok-ish. Go to a sim like Drune and it looks nice AND runs pretty well. Go to 511 jazz and it runs like garbage.

SL performance and feature improvements always seem like they just get negated half the time because SL is almost entirely user generated content. It’s sort of like that traffic theory that widening roads lowers traffic which means more people use the road until it’s just as slow as before only wider. I’m not sure what LL can really do at this point but what holds performance back now isn’t LL backend stuff so much as SL is literally packed with unoptimized content mostly not designed with performance in mind. It even predates mesh; remember tortured prim hairs with maxxed out linksets and added on flexiprims to boot? Peope want their avs to look nice and stores need things to look nice in giant closeup ads so people buy them. Photographers and bloggers don’t even care about performance fps for their stuff anyway. People want to fill up their homes with decor that looks good up close. In the end everyone then wonders why SL runs like hot garbage compared to normal games.

This worries me too. I’m old enough in SL to remember pre-mesh building and it has a universal, democratic quality that made user content interesting and in-world building a social experience. Yes mesh is objectively better looks and (theoretically) resource wise but it also killed off that aspect of SL. What’s scary now is we have about a decade of mesh content that was made for the current rendering system. A lot of it is outdated and looks it but loads of it still holds up perfectly and is in constant use all over the grid. Many things also were made by people who have left SL or stopped creating or produce items very slowly as a hobby. Having that stuff broken by a change in rendering or physics would be catastrophic. Yes, new stuff would emerge but it would take another decade of building to replace what is lost (if ever) you’d have a glut of revealing clothes of the club fashions du jour, mesh body and hairs, whatever the normcore furniture and decor trend is and the rest would slowly if ever be replaced. Example: I’m involved in the SL aviation community as a participant and also a builder. Of quality, original mesh and scripted aircraft in SL I’d say something like 80% of them were made by people or stores which no longer actively build. These are things which if broken would Likely never be replaced anytime soon. There simply isn’t the builder base and market to support recreating it all. Planes take a lot of time to make and test and you have people using aircraft made in 2013 still on the daily because nothing else better of that type has been made since nor is it likely to be.