[Legalities in terms of creating and selling.]

Also keep in mind that "other people are doing it" shields you from nothing.

[Realistic clothing physics, if only....]

Why do we keep getting into these arguments where people who don't code try to explain it to people who do?

[Realistic clothing physics, if only....]

People just won't accept that the whirring heat-producing device they spent $4000 on to run games still cannot fully simulate everything everywhere all the time.

[Lower LOD levels]

They could keep the LOD generator but remove the ability to tweak it, just have it auto fill the unspecified LOD levels with the 50% formula.

[HUD UUID]

On 5/30/2023 at 1:43 PM, Innula Zenovka said:

But llGetAttachedList can't, by design, see HUDs.  That's the problem with HUDs.

Right right right, I keep forgetting about that, can't really see why that's a thing either.

[HUD UUID]

the object_rez event is probably what you want, (assuming that you are rezzing the hud before it attached)

the alternative is llGetAttachedList, and finding which one is your hud.

[Blender to SL: Boolean cut interior faces not importing]

I just want to add, what's really going on is that blender, and most modeling softwares tend to be far more tolerant to weird/messed up geometry than sl or other dedicated game/realtime engines.

Modeling software are designed to avoid breaking in those cases because they expect that it is an intermediate/temporary/unfinished models. What you see is what you get, so long as your geometry is made of 3 or 4 sides polygons (because 4 sided polygons convert very reliably into triangles), anything with more corners, you are taking a gamble on how it will be resolved on upload.

[Multiple faces/materials vs just one... does it matter?]

Less is always better, but you have to balance it, sometimes separate surfaces allow you to make huge texture usage reductions for instance.

[Help with trigger splash particle script when floating]

have a look at llGetVel()

[Meshes high in vertices,triangles and polys]

On 3/21/2023 at 8:12 PM, DulceDiva said:

@Saucey SinisterThat's an interesting fact, I have never thought of that. Indeed, they seem to release new stuff very often. At some point I was wondering how they do it, since it takes a lot of time! The least it took me to create a piece of clothing,skin it,and bake its textures from the high poly model was 1 day. Finished it the next day as I was tired after that whole process (I am still a beginner).

I can't say who does or doesn't, but there is a non-zero amount of creators in SL who are either a team, or more than likely purchase/contract modeling work from other people.

[Blender to SL: Boolean cut interior faces not importing]

You can't stack a bunch of modifiers and expect a the model on the other end to be suitable for import. Apply your modifiers, switch to edit mode and clean up the result.

[Scam Alert Posted to Twitter - Multiple User Reports]

I really wish I didn't find this so funny...

On 4/10/2023 at 3:07 AM, benchthis said:

We need a notificaion if pop up is not official and could be dangerous. Official pop ups, vetted popups, and non vetted popups. Someone is always going to figure ways around things but currently there's no around anything they are just doing it.

Official messages do not use the scripted popup window. Why on earth would LL ever ask for your password withing the client, if they need you to re-authenticate they will just kick you offline.

[Should more game elements be added to Second Life?]

So here are my two cents:

All virtual worlds combined, SL effectively has the best capabilities out there, regardless of how poor response time typically is due to SL being a thin client, there is simply nothing like it in terms of capabilities.

There really are two places where it is sorely lacking:

• The inability to run code and effects purely client-side.
• The inability to have a fully controlled environment.

The first point is what tend to make SL sluggish and laggy when doing just about anything, a normal multiplayer game does most of the heavy lifting locally on the client and then broadcast to other peers (through a server or vial p2p) the information they need to know. On highly dynamic games this means a steady stream of highly optimized "game state" updates is all that is being exchanged. In SL, the server does everything and broadcast to our clients every minute changes from object positions to texture changes. That's a lot of data that sometimes arrives out of order, and more often than not, late.

The second point is that Linden Lab hasn't made much concessions in how avatars share resources in a region, we will more than likely never be given the amount of control on visitors to a region that is required for a tightly controlled game experience. As a result, most popular games in SL tend to be individual in nature and scope limited, delivery games, finishing minigames, puzzles, things that do not require much "control" outside the game pieces themselves.

Habits & behaviors

Warning, this is a very subjective take.

The SL population is aging, if not old. The platform hasn't died the way people expected it to more 10 years ago, but the mindset is still there, in the unconscious of residents and creators alike. That there is not much point to start anything ambitious or get into something time-consuming because our days are numbered.

• For residents, it means focusing on the friends they have and the places they know, rather than the friends they could have and the places they have yet to discover.
• For merchants, creators, and other content peddlers, it means milking the golden goose before it dries out, quick overpriced projects that will never be updated that can be immediately cashed out.
• I grew up on computers that could only handle a single task at a time, for a lot of people, SL is a background process that we AFK in, waiting for something to happen. Hell, I myself am tabbed out as I'm writing this wall of text. But the result is that a large chunk of the SL population is trying to avoid activities that require too much focus or attention.

The Libertarian nightmare

SecondLife is a wonderful platform for me, it is where I've spent my entire adult life at this point, but it is by no means perfect and bears the scars of someone's idea of a libertarian utopia.

Money is everything, government involvement in the resident's well-being is skeletal at best.

We are pretty much expected, creators and residents alike to make the product worth using and if it fails to attract it is effectively our fault because we did not care enough to invest hundreds of dollar and thousands of man-hours crafting the captivating experiences the platform is capable of. We are expected to shoulder all the risks, while the lion's share of the reward isn't for us.

[Meshes high in vertices,triangles and polys]

The answer when it comes to how much "X" should I use in my model/textures, etc., is always "as low as you can safely get away with."

I also want to add that whether something is properly accounted by LL's LI/complexity for instance is irrelevant, there is only so much memory and so much processing power on the computer of the end user.

A lot of the things I make tend to hit the low mark, I consider 5K to already be worrisome, examine your object at the distance it is meant to be viewed at, see if removing this or that makes any difference.

There are diminishing returns after a point.

[Yes, another post about computers able to handle Second Life...]

With the addition of PBR the forward renderer becomes problematic, simple because under physically based rendering, there is no such thing as a "diffuse" texture, it is replaced by "albedo", which represents the "true" color of surface and isn't meant to be shaded or with any kind of pre-lighting.

As a result, any texture designed for the new PBR system will look like hot garbage under forward rendering.

Diffuse <--- | ----> Albedo

 

[Humans complaining about heights]

That escalated quickly.

[Humans complaining about heights]

Here is my hot take.

Of all the places I've been in SL, those that have those weird "you must be this tall" restrictions simply aren't worth the trouble.

It is far simpler for me to go somewhere where visitors are welcome, typically a better place.

[LODs - A picture pretty much says it all]

On 11/12/2022 at 6:35 AM, Chic Aeon said:

The mesh board is almost inactive these days. I can remember when there were dozens of post a day and some really stellar information shared.  

I got bored of repeating the same things only to be ignored. Now I use that time to play videogames >_>.

[Target upload costs for rigged meshes?]

A lot of us have been in favor of a hard cap for resources on models, an option quite a few people have been firmly against it: out of a fear of some kind of "loss of freedom" but also because it would push some creators out.

[Low poly fur]

On 12/14/2022 at 1:04 AM, DulceDiva said:

Hello. So I looked at different Blender tools/modifiers/techniques, but couldn't find an answer.Therefore, I'm open to tips/advice/suggestions.🙂

How can this style of messy fur be achieved in a low poly version? Or is it even possible? 🤔

 

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/HairTechnique

Have a look here.

[Another pet peeve - no inside faces on clothing]

Why is it so difficult for creators to "cap" their models?

Takes maybe 5 minutes.

[New Second Life terms and conditions]

7 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

Again, understand that you came to LL because you wanted to be in SL. They didn't ask you to come. You didn't vote for them and they don't represent you. They owe you nothing. And if you look at this quote from ToS carefully they basically say; We can just delete what you created or bought and we can decide to no longer provide you with a service and there is nothing you can do about it. Is this harsh? No, that's a business protecting itself from being sued.

Contract law is a little more complicated than that thankfully, and varies from country to country. You might be used to be taken advantage of to the point of seeing it as a normal occurrence, but not everyone is.

 

[New Second Life terms and conditions]

53 minutes ago, CaithLynnSayes said:

You never had rights. As Ive stated before, you are in SL's house and LL can at any given moment kick you out and they don't need to give you any reason.

It's really important that users of a service understand that you have no rights. It is in a company's best interest to serve you well, but they don't have to. You can go to another company/service if you don't like what the first company offers or allows you to do. That's about the only right you have, the right to leave.

I don't mean to sound harsh, just realistic and it's important anyone using a service understands this.

We don't want much:

LL expects us to settle any outstanding debt in their favor, we expect them to do the same when it is in our favor.

[Sorely Limited ISP Selection]

On 10/29/2022 at 1:36 AM, Charalyne Blackwood said:

Just signed a lease on an affordable apartment but the ONLY wired internet service runs at a lousy 50Mbps, which I know is awful for SL. What is the actual lowest speed I can connect with?

Far lower than this.

["Linkset Data" is coming.]

On 10/20/2022 at 5:52 PM, Lucia Nightfire said:

I think the argument is too one-sided.

Would you, in-turn, want other creator scripts you chose to leave intact in your objects or were unaware that existed in your objects to also delete your own protected keys as well?

There are two scenarios where this will typically be an issue:

1. Other-creator objects already containing other-creator scripts being linked together and said scripts being maintained for the sake of functionality/convenience or because the object owner lacks the skill/knowledge to achieve the same functionality with their own scripts.
2. Users directly placing other-creator, no-mod scripts in their content for the sake of functionality/convenience or because the object owner lacks the skill/knowledge to achieve the same functionality with their own scripts.

Without including delete protection, the protected keys feature is incomplete and would only lead to an increase in no-mod content, in-turn, making protected keys redundant.

There is no 100% best way to deal with it. The nuclear option of wiping all data is a "hopeful" deterrent to allow for good actors to work together in the same environment.

I get that I'm just worried of some scripters doing the whole "dog marking their territory" on the linkset datastore rather than trying to be cooperative. We have no shortage of creators with a god complex.