Paul Hexem

You missed the point, Perrie. I'm talking entirely client side improvement. Things like DirectX and anti-aliasing support in the viewer, and more of the sorts of improvement they're intending on doing with the caching system. Why should we limit everyone to terrible graphics support just because some people can't or won't get decent computers? Let me rephrase that. Person A can run SL in ultra with ubersampling anti-aliasing and DX11 while Person B runs on medium with OpenGL, for example. No one gets excluded, and SL gets to take advantage of the ridiculous hardware that some of us have.

Terrible response. I spend more in SL than any of those games. You're right though, I should stop investing in this platform, then I won't want or expect improvements.

Why can't you have both? I've made good friends and joined nice communities through Battlefield 3.

I see that excuse a lot, and it's BS. The only bit of it that holds water is that the content isn't optimized. The graphics engine and options are terrible compared to most modern games, even if all the content were local. And having to download the content has no bearing on graphics. Most modern MMOs have to be downloaded too, the only difference is when you do the downloading. A good cache system would render that aspect moot. Edit: that's not the post I replied to.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033746/11-killer-games-that-will-bring-your-pc-to-its-knees.html#tk.nl_pcwbest That's a PC World article, "11 killer games that will bring your PC to its knees". One thing jumped out at me, in the intro blurb of the article; "In practical terms, if your rig is running anything less than a Core i5 processor, an Nvidia GeForce GT 440 graphics card, 4GB of RAM, and a 7200 RPM hard drive, it's time to consider upgrading" That made me grin, and I wanted to share this slideshow over here anyway. If you look at the linked slide show, bear in mind that all those pictures are screenshots of the actual games. Not movies or cutscenes or promo pictures. By the way, I have many of those games. I run them on the highest possible settings. The pictures don't do them justice, they look better than that. We can only hope that someday SL uses the same kinds of graphics engines, same levels of anti-aliasing, and DirectX support that these games do.

I have to say, if something looks BETTER with local lights and basic shades unchecked, that means it was built terribly. Somebody really screwed up on whatever you're looking at.

Dresden Ceriano wrote: Tarina Sewell wrote: SECOND LIFE IS NOT A GAME No one said it was... at least not in this thread. ...Dres Yeah, but now I kind of want to. Say it's a game, that is.

If I remember correctly, in DA2, you had the option to tell the guy to STFU when he hit on you. I don't see the big issue.

All things considered, SL runs shockingly well. Inefficient content creators combined with dynamic content combined with really bad techs and programmers combined with a terrible cache system, I'm sometimes surprised that SL can run at all.

It's not okay to make money off of someone else's work, even if you think it's just breaking LL's ToS, and doing that isn't a great idea either.

Chosen Few wrote: Gadget Portal wrote: How is it they can get away with obviously stolen content being uploaded and listed, and not do anything about it? Game characters ripped and uploaded, for example. "Get away with" isn't really the right choice of words, and it's hardly fair to say they do "not do anything about it". LL complies with the exact same set of laws as every other online service provider, in this regard. Here's how it works, for all OSP's, including LL, YouTube, and everybody else. If and when the provider is alerted to the presence of allegedly infringing content, via a properly submitted DMCA takedown notice, they take the content down. And likewise, if and when they are alerted to content that a user feels should be restored, via a properly filed DMCA counter-notice, they put the content back up. This is what the law requires, and it's exactly what LL, YouTube, and all the others do. In both types of cases, the provider is required to act without prejudice. When they take content down, they're not saying the accuser was right, and when they put it back up, they're not saying the accused was right. In each and every instance, they're simply complying with the terms of each notice, as is required of them by law, nothing more, nothing less. There are two important reasons why LL doesn't (and shouldn't) try to police these things in advance. One is technical, the other legal. I'll cover the technical first. There's simply no way for the system to be able to automatically determine whether or not a 3D model happens to look like any particular thing. That would require some really scary AI that isn't even close to having been invented yet. Now the legal, which is far more important. The simple truth on the ground is that LL has no way of knowing in advance what is authorized and what is not. If they were just to go around arbitrarily deleting stuff that looks like it MIGHT be infringing, they'd inevitably end up interfering with legitimate business. Over the years, I've done work in SL for CBS/Paramount, NBC/Universal, SyFy, Sundance Channel, and countless other companies, all of whom hired me to produce content that was highly recognizable as their properties. LL had no way of knowing that I had permission in any of these cases. Imagine if they had just gone around arbitrarily deleting stuff, on the assumption that I was infringing, when in fact, I was not. That would have been extremely bad for everybody. I probably would have sued them for it, and I'd imagine my clients would have, as well, since we all would have lost a ton of time and money. The bottom line is it's not LL's job to decide who might or might not be infringing. That's what we have courts for. LL's role, just like that of all service providers, is to remain neutral at all times, and comply with all legal notices they receive. That's it. Gadget Portal wrote: YouTube tries to detect movies at the time of upload, because they got in trouble for allowing stolen uploads. Why isn't it the same with LL? As far as I know, YouTube won't preemptively take anything down. They merely provide certain tools to help copyright holders to identify potentially infringing content. From there, it's up to each copyright holder to determine whether or not to act. In other words, when something gets taken down from YouTube due to copyright concerns, it's not because YouTube itself has decided the content has to go. It's because the copyright holder has asked them to take it down. The accused is free to file a counter-notice to have the content restored, just like with any other provider. The only difference between YouTube and LL in this regard is that LL doesn't and can't have the same kinds of tools YouTube has to help with detection. A 3D model isn't like a song or a video clip, that can be easily compared with an existing library of sounds and videos for analysis. Models are far more nebulous than that. There's no good way to automate the process. The actual legal processes for take-down and restoration are the same for both services (and all online services). The big hole in almost everythjng you just said: It's not detecting what a 3D model looks like. A lot of these people don't even rename it. They literally upload a model of Batman from the Arkham Asylum game, and name it "Batman from Arkham Asylum". Other games/platforms already auto-detect names at the time of creation (no matter what the content), to protect themselves. I just think it's odd that LL hasn't been made to yet.

So, I understand that LL requires DMCA reports to take down content someone stole/copy botted, but there's something I'm still confused about. How is it they can get away with obviously stolen content being uploaded and listed, and not do anything about it? Game characters ripped and uploaded, for example. YouTube tries to detect movies at the time of upload, because they got in trouble for allowing stolen uploads. Why isn't it the same with LL?

Buy a new Internet connection.

This should get interesting.

I'd love for everything in SL to be to scale. But it will never work unless some sort of standards are set up by a central authority, AND all creators re-release everything, for free, at that scale, or at least offer moddable updates. Vehicles in particular come to mind.

Guilliaume wrote: You do not make very much money, do you, or perhaps you are bad at managing money? I am only saying this because, no, even $295 a month is not expensive. My free spending money for the month is somehwere around $400 and my combined household income is almost $50,000, which is like the lowest tier of middle class for the U.S.A. Maybe Second Life is expensive for people who do not have the money, but in the grand scheme of things, the fees are really chump change according to average household incomes. Sure, you can buy a car for lower than some of the fees, but that point is also ignoring the fact that buying a car is not hard to do. My first car was only $1000 and my second was only $5000. I paid for my first car on the spot with cash and I paid my second car off in 25 months with $200 payments with no previous credit history. If you want to talk cars, then allow me to point out that gas and car insurance alone are more expensive than $295 a month. Do you think one basic necesity is expensive? Regardless of prices though, Second Life's fees are there to show commitment to your ideas and support for the company that allows us to use their virtual world. The fees themselves and whether you view them as expensive or not is purely objective and nobody is forced to pay them. In fact, there are plenty of ways out there to create your own free open sim. Ask anyone- I'm one of the first people to offer the advice of throwing money at a problem to fix it, but that's a pretty retarded post. As for the topic at hand, prices in SL ARE too high. Ridiculous high. For the same monthly cost of a full sim, I could build a computer, every month, with better specs than the server the sim is on. Include the setup fee, and I could have a small server farm in less than a year.

Here, let me show you what I mean. No mesh: Mesh that fits: Mesh with funky shoulders: And here's without the alpha, so you can see what's going on. The problem is, the bulk of the mesh I try is like that second option. It just looks weird. Sometimes it's even worse than that. At least that has rounded shoulders. One I tried had straight angles down from the collar to the arms, no shoulder at all.

To clarify, I don't have a bodybuilder look, and my muscle slider isn't higher than 75. The sleeves and waists generally fit fine. The problem with most of the mesh I try is that the shoulders are as thin, or thinner, than the bottom of the shirt. If there are shoulders at all. Sometimes they're there, but they're so sloped, it's just arms coming out of a coned torso. It makes me look like a bobblehead doll. I'll try some of those demos and see.

Is it me, or is the marketplace running like it's on an old 386 in Russia somewhere? Every page takes 60 seconds or more to load, assuming they load at all. Some just simply time out.

The search: Men's mesh clothes, that have demos, and are made for someone besides a skinny, shoulderless emo kid. Why is this so hard to find? Seems like all the mesh I can find is either ultra low, ultra skinny jeans that would be better for my girlfriend, or shirts with these oddly sloped shoulders that make my head look giant unless I wear the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man size, which then just looks ridiculous.

If it makes you feel better, LL also often takes L$ and never delivers items, too. So they just screw everyone over equally. Really, how long can this go on before we get the FTC in here or something?

I know a troll when I see it, and that's a troll post.

So, I got fed up and called my credit card company today. I've been issued a refund for the L$ purchased for that marketplace order. Likely my CC company just shrugged it off and paid me themselves. That's kind of disappointing, since it doesn't get LL to get off their asses, but at least now it's not costing me anything.

Right, you gotta give it time to settle down.

While you shouldn't rely on reported script memory to make your decisions, you can rely on script count and script time to be accurate, I've found. So if all three are high, it doesn't matter if the reported amount of memory isn't correct. You can still be fairly certain that it's not low. The problem with those boards is that they often don't consider all three numbers, and they're often set with very low limits.