Macrocosm Draegonne

How so? I was just thinking having the water shaders in the viewer be updated, not necessarily a huge overhaul. Or do you mean if they made a proprietary water no other grid could use?

Geesh. people getting defensive and worried, I am not here to complain and troll. I am a long time resident and my remarks are intended as constructive, some people would rather complain about performance and play a blame game, we all know its not that simple, SL is a complex beast with a trillion variables to consider. My mind goes towards solutions rather than being caught up in the drama. Oh, and I speak my mind freely, I will not be cowered away by some negative nancy. There will be occlusion thingies! MMGA! Make Mainland Great Again! ?

An additional variation on a theme with this is an occlusion plane, similar but differently useful, the main commonality and benefit is the gain of performance. These two occlusion features may not be useful or necessary in all builds, but it could be extremely useful for gaming sims, event sims, people trying to VR in SL, screen archers, any that are trying to get performance & immersion high as is attainable.

If I wanted LL to listen, I would have sent them a direct message, or filed a feature request... this is a community discussion forum... lol... Some have jumped to wild conclusions about something essentially so simple, and that will work in the existing architecture. The main performance difference is that things you don't see will not load. The big feature is it adds an interesting tool & inner-space for those who would want it in their builds. Its all tied to the existing SIM and all its rules and regulations, unless LL feels more generous to give extra prim in hidden zones due to performance gains. Theres not much to be concerned with all that, I only mentioned the prims because it fits logically in the arc of progress, since LL is always looking for reasons to offer more prims and attachment points, etc, as they land more performance initiatives.

No, it has nothing to do with like or dislike, I have skyboxes and I love them personally, but im not trying to have a personal convo here... Segregated mini sims? Are you on the right discussion? I clearly said on several occasions what I am speaking of, and it has absolutely nothing to do with your remarks... Now you're just being a nasty *****, and for no damn reason lol, the entire frame of what you said is a false premise from the start... and its actually hilarious because you have completely taken what I said out of context, all in order to actually be what it is you're attempting to project on to me... now.... slither back to your snake pit with that venom.. I am not at all interested in such a discussion. I am here to talk about a feature I think is interesting, NOT to make demands, or cast judgment on other, and most especially not to have a pissing contest with angry people.

I dont think we need to over complicate things, this would be more of a tool that would be used by those who want it, but I would encourage it for skyboxes, and interior cells that have zero point rendering in the main realm. If people still want to they can, no big deal, its all about options and flexibility, and giving us an option to considerably reduce lag is a great thing indeed. And ill say it again, people are already doing this with skyboxes, except for the rare occasions that someone really wants to do a floating sky build, all that other garbled menagerie could be totally obfuscated. The usefulness, speed, and enjoyment will increase tenfold both in the zones and out of them. Most especially on the ground level, and ut most on crowded Mainland areas. I think its best if tied to the parcel, SIM, and their respective prim limits, but it would be nice to give some extra prims for obscured zones as they're lighter to the surrounding population, they rarely if ever see them or load them. Of course all the other normal server loads and issues will still be a thing and thus keeping it tied to the land, as is now, is best. My idea earlier about instanced external servers is really another convo all together, and it is coming to SL, you betcha!? The more I think about it id love to have this! An Occlusion Prim that blacks out an area and gives you an equally sized internal totally occluded and obscured (high performance) with its own lighting and camera positioning, its how games do immersion, bringing you deeper into the spaces and scene, not simply camming the whole sim and picking your nose lol! The main reason I want this is for making adventures and games in SL that perform really well and need these sorts of simple gaming techniques to give the end user that excitement at good FPS. The bonus is anyone could use this in any manner of ways that they can imagine, or not at all, but the main point is performance, and immersion. PS: I've played Sansar and I like it but I like SL a whole lot more, they're really two different things completely.

This is a great discussion, I have seen a lot of these items too, I cringe sometimes, one outfit has more verts than a whole sim would need lols, and it inspires me to try and be far more optimized with anything I build. I think it'd be nice if the marketplace (and also the object inspector) gave us a reading of tri-count & texture count, and also show a view of it at all LOD levels, people could choose products more wisely if they could see more details about it, also a product list date would be helpful for avoiding laggy legacy stuff. And big red warning sign on anything with Sculpties , alpha blending, or particles, those can just kill a whole area if they're around, not just visually, but also in performance too.

Cant say tp fail is much of a thing anymore, at least not for me in many many years, or see any reason why we would use the TP system for this, id prefer not to.

Exactly, SL needs to work with its own unique paradigm of course, and what I am suggesting would be a massive performance improvement for everyone, and users would see it as a really cool new feature too, whilst cutting server load too boot. ? You could walk in your front door in the most dreaded mainlaind lagzone, and bam 60fps with nothing outside lagging your viewer or the server. And... perhaps that mainland wouldnt be so laggy if all those prims and mesh laden interiors were just not there.

Instanced interior cells - these can be infinitely useful, folks use skyboxes to do it now, but that creates a lot of totally wasted load on the server and client when assets and such load from surrounding skyboxes, plus skyboxes look crazy all over. Why not cleanly put them in their own closed off space blocking out everything else not related to the scene? Basically these would be used for additional interior spaces in larger builds, and to end Sky-boxes that dont really wanna be skythingies. Due to the performance gains, you could even give extra prims in these zones (and be more restrictive on the ground level, especially mainland). (EDIT: Maybe provide a Prim-type that blocks off and blacks out a zone in the main exterior cell, which then has an equally sized interior that can be built out, or even allow the interior to be larger than that original exterior culling zone perhaps?) These internal spaces would have their own lighting controls set, use doors and portals to enter, they're just like in any other instanced interior in a video game. To further enhance it you could use the water trick you do by painting whats below on the surface, and give us a surface for interiors that shows the actual "outside", for interior space windows. lol... ? Why not? It could work in reverse too, so you have the outside of the window in the main worldspace showing the inside view if desired (only updating if being viewed of course). Same thing would make mirrors work too. Its all technically possible, and could be a boon to server performance due to cutting out an enormous chunk of what must load by viewers, or be served by infrastructure if someone turns up their draw distance, which also kills their FPS too. Almost everything in the air would poof? be gone ? except for things that actually want to be in the open air space, and at the ground level the huge highly decorated interior spaces would too, thus not loading at all when traversing the exterior cell. Plus they'd be totally "private" not cam'able etcetera.

I have to agree, it'd be great to utilize physics to its fullest thats achievable with havok. There's talk of client improvements, so I would imagine that is in the mix somewhere, with more dynamic fast loading lightweight LOD, and seamless region crossings lol. Also, if more optimized, the server side could use that extra room to detect more things for collision, and more efficiently moving things, obstacles, elevators, etcetera, which I really want to build lol. Why not also have more modern SL water? OpenGL can do some really neat (and even better performing) things with water these days. Have the diffuse, Normal, and Specular fade out on the water edges for a smooth transition , also add underwater caustics light effect lol, and ability for creators to use the water shader on a prim, so pools & skyboxes water is actually water.

Because it costs real money to run the SIMs, gobs of it for infrastructure, surely an enormous chunk of LL revenue must go towards it, and staff, bandwidth, storage, and everything else it takes to run the most successful virtual world in history lol. Im actually amazed the price isn't double for private SIM's, but with the new transaction fee's it seems LL has stemmed off and even decreased SIM cost which is brilliant. I am very tempted to buy one right now and I have to keep stopping myself to wait for the new price announcements. Once the marketplace is more modernized (Dear Gods, why aren't they using Drupal?), and animesh/meshbakes/grid wide gaming mechanics come in their revenues will increase moreso than land would have ever done alone. The increased transaction fees and land allowance are brilliant, one of the first goodies to come over to big mammas side from baby Sansar. Ive had two adjacent 1024 double prim mainland lots in Horizons for about a year, and my bill has actually gone down monthly since I bought it, really damn awesome move by LL! ? But soon I want whole sims to do all the crazy things I have planed heheheh.

the one that comes with the head for bento heads, and the one on the wall at main store for the old non-bento heads. You can also just use the omega developer kit too. Join the Catwa Friends usergroup and ask questions in there, everyone is very helpful.

Zimberlab (and others) have some excellent in-world full perm mesh building kits, so you dont actually HAVE to make the mesh to use mesh, unless you want. Why some textures look flat and others look dull... many reasons, but the main one is whether or not they've included a specular and normal map, the same is true of prims/sculps but they jump in LI and lag when used on them, whereas mesh takes them in stride thus SL doesnt add any li cost when using them. This free blender crash course is what helped me learn the in-outs of the basics of blender, it starts in a logical place and sensibly, patiently, walks you through 'all the things' via youtube videos, even has a free test you can take after each section of the course https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS24VPXMziw2bmTkMdgd0crwU2vYH5Bzu Also check out Blender Benders (and others) in-world, they have free classes with amazing teachers and friendly fellow students, with plenty of total beginner classes on offer too. GLHF!

LOVE IT!!! Im still learning to use it, but its great to me. Sensei Format is a free tweak of the blender interface, plus many additions ,to be far more sensible and usable IMO. I cant blender without it, it also works with his free zoro-brush-lite (which is included in Free Sensei format) & pro zero-brush addon, with this combo you can quickly go highpoly and in one click bake the normals back to the low poly model, among many other things... like hand painting directly on the model and baking complex matierials/textures etcetera with one click. Try the free Sensei Format with free Zero Brush, its nothing to loose, I eventually got Zero Brush pro (which is super cheap) to support him, and for the additional features.

In all the elevators I tested "seated" usually meant having the avatar stuck to the side of the car like a magnet on a fridge lol, and if you unsit you fall down the shaft to certain doom. I suppose that could be any sort of "sit" tho right? ...they could be visually standing probably, even accounting for a max capacity and offering several standing spots. In the elevator I chose (the gentek dev edition), my favorite by far, you just walk in and press the button, and it goes, even with 2, 3, or more avatars standing inside, and you can move around in there too. There's a demo in their mainstore you can try inworld, its actually excellent. The trick I found (suggested by the maker) was to use a slower speed setting to reduce the jumpiness and glitches, but that obviously reduces the distance potential and peoples patients for ride duration. He said it was a limitation of the physics engine and the keyframed animation technique, still it is the best elevator IMO, he really did a wonderful job on it. Still, I think you may be correct that a fixed position would be best, performance-wise, and more flexible in distance/speed. ....and, now I'm also really curious if we could sit on the animated mesh bits, that feature could allow for a lot of different interesting creations... now my creative mind is swirling again! lol

Yea I think I understand, that must be why seated elevators are generally smoother, the physics ones can be a bit jumpy, especially if set too fast, or there's lag. I still prefer the non seated ones, but I'll put the added teleports in my buildings anyhow, some people hate elevators lol. I suppose thats a lot for the server to calculate physics on a moving object, thats also moving multiple avatars, which aren't seated on it. I guess there is a potential here that an animated mesh attachment might be usable, but maybe not. Perhaps elevators, trains, subways, and other such non seated movement, might need their own unique class of physics, seems like a big task (and sort of low priority), but it could be useful someday none the less.

Yeah, it will be a nice surprise when we get more info, i'm sure it will be amazing no matter what, I was only curious about the potentials really, not making any demands or anything.

Yeah, the keyframed animation is a lot better than the old school elevators I remember, but its still jumpy for me, and has a fairly low speed limit before its crazy unstable, but even at a slow speed its still somewhat jarring, is it not for you? I have a fairly beefy system too. Plus, I do have the best elevator in MP, it uses the keyframe method, and its actually really great, but i have to keep it set at a slow speed. Yeah its so intriguing to me bento animates so smoothly, is it operating on the same physics setup as general world objects? Smooth fast non-seated elevators would be so sweet, and then all the obstacle course action type objects/enemies, architectural stuff, generally any interactive moving things right? I'm now thinking terms of bones to use for an interactive space, lol, strange headspace to be in, and probably wrongheaded too? lols... BTW I have little understanding of how this all works yet, but im digging in anyway! >.<

After being away for almost five years and returning recently, I had to go through this process, but it was fun lol. I had loads of old incompatible inventory (and ideas about how things work) to clean out too. I started with the Adam body as I hadn't found any other yet, it wasn't exactly what I wanted, so I kept hunting. Now i have Signature & Belleza too, which I love & use both: I got the catwa head first which im super happy with. Skin's & hair are another fun hunting process. This is one of the best "features" to SL, its not like an MMORPG where everything is so limited & predetermined, thus the creativity is through the roof here, I love it! I'm even making some of my own unique custom stuff now too. The more the merrier IMO, I love going to the club and seeing everyone looking completely different, it truly wasn't so diverse & detailed back in the day, all this competition (and incompatibilities) adds more flare and spice to the world, and will continue to do so exponentially. Customer service and outreach will determine which bodies are more popular, and supported by designers, catwa did a great job for me being almost a noob again, their help-group was always available, and helped me a ton.. and their products are excellent, so they get my repeat business & praise. That said, the free mesh avatars are not half bad as a starter, they should be plenty for a noob to get around and explore, it even overcomes the duck-walking by having an AO included lol. >.< The Mesh tex baking system that's coming seems like it will add even more goodness to this mix! Bring it!

This is exciting Could this help make elevators, escalators, moving platforms, obstacles, etc, more smoothly animated too? A bit off topic, but still in this video... The officially supported windlight/environment per-parcel controls is sweet! I love firestorm supports this already, LL doing this means we'll have a ui, and they could plug in more features, like time-cycle setups, trade, market use, ect. I hope they still allow the settings per elevation (as it is in firestorm), but smaller x-y-z sized zones than the parcel boundary could be interesting too. Definitely remove the 5 second delay, with system default to auto-windlight transitions on. Controlling the env lighting in smaller spaces with a zero LI impact is just too useful. It can then be scripted and animated too, right? >.<

Im not sure since ive yet to explore this aspect of creation, but dont you need to "fit" the mesh clothing to various body types? You'll need to get models of the bodies from those creators, if they offer them, if not ignore their bodies lol. Also there is the program addon for Blender called Avastar you may want to check out. https://blog.machinimatrix.org/avastar/ Good luck!

lol, I didnt see you mentioned masking above in OP... It's still important tho, you cannot control the environment avatars will be in , and there will be alphas, considering that blended lashes look far far worse than masked IMO. There may be a way to optimize the blockyness potential, I dont know, isnt that a matter of your texture resolution? Mesh eyelashes seem really interesting to me, ive been hunting for some good male mesh lashes myself.

Yes, what Alwin said, grab the Gianni dev kit, there is a kiosk in the (hard to find) store, you put your email and they send it to you, but also try to do the Belleza Jake, its the new bell of the ball so to speak, Adam stuff seems sort of less in demand AFAICT, and TMP is so old its already got tons of stuff available. Remember, people will appreciate you selling clothing fitted to multiple bodies, your sales will reflect that too im sure.

Also... one additional thing to note here, I use the Catwa Daniel head, which does the lashes/brows/makeup/and such, as you've outlined here. The thing is, if you keep all of them set to "Blend" mode, you will get the clash between brows/lashes/makeup, and when standing in front of alpha textures like windows etcetera. The Catwa solution, as per their user manual, which works great; to set the eyelashes to "Mask" mode. This may be a tweak you can employ here, also it has the benefit of making the lashes appear to be mesh like. Another solution may be to use mesh lashes on your heads, instead of alphas. Even if you sort the alphas as Arton outlined wonderfully above, you will still get the issues of your lashes clashing with any other alpha textures you may stand in front of, they should really be an alpha Mask only, or actual mesh, since they poke out so much... like old-school SL hair, it can really detract from your beautiful creations.