Paul Hexem

Basic browsing in online stores is to never use the Back button. Open links of interest in new tabs- then you don't lose your browsing spot, and don't need to use the Back button.

So, I'm decorating my parcel a bit, and someone I know decided they wanted to show me a store. When I got there, everything was a complete white-out. Almost everything was fullbright, and about half the stuff were light sources set to max. Rugs, walls, columns, pillows, some curtains... Even a length of fence was a maxed out light source. On top of that, the creator had rezzed out invisible prims and made them into light sources, too. The place looked terrible, so my immediate reaction was "Wow, this stuff is all freebie, right?" Which... The creator overheard and got upset. When I took a picture and shared it, I was immediately told that something was wrong with my computer. When I included my graphics settings and had metadata showing lights to show a picture of that, I was ejected. So why do people build on lowest possible settings, then refuse to see what their terribad builds actually look like on decent settings (in my case, Ultra+)? It almost makes me wish SL disabled building unless you have your graphics settings at least set to high...

As a Steam user, I can say I don't believe we have to worry. Valve does offer some free games on Steam, and technically speaking, SL is a free platform, with optional costs. Morso, there are F2P games on Steam that offer optional microtransactions through their own respective stores, independent of Steam. In the case of EA... EA is as greedy a company as they come, and would never give any games away free. Valve knows this. Any up front sales through Steam, Valve takes a cut, and EA simply didn't want to share.

Clearly LL wants to run the platform the way games are run. No public bug tracker, etc. Except... those companies are competent, with solid beta testing and active on community forums and actively investing in up to date server infrastructure... I really think LL would just be happier if they sold the platform to one of said competent companies.

I wish LL would just give up and sell the platform to a competent company already. I get the feeling they'd be much happier if they did.

Perfect example. If LL wants gamers, they're going to have to take their thumbs out of their assess and step it up a little.

Because that's the exception, not the norm. And it's LL's fault, really. Download any game off Steam and start it up for the first time. You get a high quality intro video showing you some cool features of the game, or showcasing the graphics via a flyover of some of the game scenery. Or both. Then you set up (often the game sets the highest possible graphics your computer can handle) and you're in a user friendly tutorial. But SL... Make a new alt with a fresh install of the viewer. No matter what your computer specs, the graphics settings default to some stupid setting with the best features (shadows, lighting, etc) disabled. No intro video showcasing the best SL offers. No preview of those cool looking locations. No flyover of the scenery showcased there. No quality avatar with rigged mesh parts. Then you're dumped in a stupid looking location with pictures telling you how to turn right and left, that take 2 minutes to rez. Of the two, which one gives the impression "Wow, the developers of this really want to impress me."?

I can push 115 FPS, depending on location. But I also sport a ridiculous self built gaming rig that people around here hate me for having.

Why? Why would anyone make things like trees and grass and rocks full bright? Walls and doors and hair? Why do people do this? More importantly, why do they do it inconsistently?

I smell... alts.

Except SL content creators =/= "graphics pros". 9 out of 10 computers over 1000 bucks are Macs because Macs are overpriced. It's a worthless statistic.

If you're using the web profile, make sure all the internal privacy settings are turned off

I'm going to echo what others have said. Bad build, bad setup. I run two overclocked GTX 570s that power three monitors, often running two or three veiwers at a time, and still keep everything within 10 degrees of idle temp- and that's without liquid cooling. Have the thermal paste checked and get it up where it can get some airflow.

See, now that's a good example of a compelling counter argument.

Oh, this is getting good. Peggy Paperdoll wrote: I'm not taking anything personally when you say LL is lazy or stupid or both...........but I do see some stupidity being placed here. And it's not LL. Insult the person you're talking to. Way to make yourself seem more credible there. At this point you could tell me the sky is blue, and I'd say "Maybe it is, but I won't take your word for it, **bleep**." Clearly you are taking it personally. Peggy Paperdoll wrote: Your Mac or Linux machine cannot use DirectX because the software package that runs your machine can't see DirectX.......and there's no way to make it use DirectX (not legally anyway). ... you can't install a Mac or Linux version on your Windows machine, or vice versa Hmm. Again... http://www.winehq.org/ Peggy Paperdoll wrote: The software determines which graphics rendering protocol is used (OpenGL or DirectX). In order to have both OpenGL and DirectX there would need to be two different software packages (one for OpenGL and one for DirectX)........two different software packages cannot exist on the same server. So you would have to have two separate grids (and neither would recognize the other). One grid with server code using OpenGL and one grid with server code using DirectX. It's not that complicated really. The servers shouldn't be using either API. The client should be. The servers should be storing the data the same way an MMO stores positional data. It might be more data, but the concept is the same. The viewer should be deciding which API to use to render it. If you're right and LL coded the servers to deal with the graphics information, then yes, LL really is stupid.

Peggy Paperdoll wrote: "... There's absolutely no reason for SL not to have DirectX support outside of "We're too lazy or stupid." --------------------------------------------- Too lazy or stupid? Well the lazy way would have been for Philip Rosedale to go with DirectX back in 2001. It might have even been a smarter way to go to tap into the Microsoft bandwagon and made SL a Windows only platform.........he didn't go the "lazy" way though. Going DirectX has a whole new set of problems due using a proprietory graphics rendering engine. Do you remember Blue Mars of a few years ago? You know that SL killer that was suppose to set the world on fire? Where is Blue Mars now? The went DirectX and limited their users to Windows only..........that persented tons of problems for the creators since everyone had to deal with proprietory software. It also stiffled creativity in such things as animations. As for using both DirectX and OpenGL on the same platform. Yeah that can be done.......with duplicate grids. The SL servers operate using OpenGL and that same set of servers cannot also operate using DirectX. A game that is housed on the users computer can choose one or the other (just install the one for your system). But SL is not housed on your computer (only the viewer is). You would have to have two separate grids.......and those grids could not mingle. So, who's being stupid here? Where do you get that you'd need two grids? There are MMO's that support both Mac and Windows, OpenGL and DirectX, and don't need separate grids. I can fire up WoW and group with someone on a Mac and someone on Linux while I'm on Windows, and all three of us see the same content on the same server. The SL servers shouldn't have to render anything for us. Hell, they shouldn't even need GPUs. They store the information. It's our machines that do the 3D rendering. Seems to me like you're taking it personally that I called the Lindens lazy. Or stupid. Or both.

No... That's definitely a connection issue. Try a different DNS server. http://www.plus.net/support/software/dns/changing_dns_mac.shtml https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using Either of those might help.

Peggy Paperdoll wrote: That's twice you've mentioned DirectX in this thread. Maybe you should read a little bit about DirectX. You'll find that is basically proprietory to Microsoft. That means it does not work or Macs or Linux machines. There's a very good reason DirectX is not considered by LL for Second Life. It's Windows only. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX That's a lazy excuse. A) There's plenty of games developed with support for DX11 and Macs. I can think of two right off the top of my head. B) Software can have the option for both DirectX and OpenGL. Some even let the user choose which they want to use. C) http://www.winehq.org/ There's absolutely no reason for SL not to have DirectX support outside of "We're too lazy or stupid." Amethyst Jetaime wrote: "Phasing Out" the older viewers would also phase out a good number of SL residents who cannot, for a number of various reasons, afford to upgrade their computers at this point when the economy is so bad. I know from some of your previous posts on another thread that you don't care about this, but these people are generally older residents who have been around for a while and spend money in SL and own a lot of public venues. Since we can't see who runs what viewer now you can't know for sure how many there are. However if you count all those people that still run Phoenix and other TPV based on snowglobe, I'm willing to be its about a third of established residents. The SL economy can't afford to lose these people right now and LL would be foolish to force the issue at this point. Don't get me wrong, I have a multi core running at 64bits myself and would love to see support for that; but I also own a couple businesses in SL and have a lot of friends using TPV and I am not willing to see new tech offered at the expense of the people still using snowglobe based TPV and not sure its necessary That's a fair point. But on the other hand, I'm not the only that's said to have a hobby, you should have the right equipment for that hobby. While I'm sure some people would leave, I think most people would find ways to upgrade their typewriters. Upgrading a computer doesn't cost thousands of dollars anymore. If you're smart about it, you can get your hands on decent computers for next to nothing.

JohnMiddlefield wrote: Given the ever declining SL concurrency, kicking out most of the SL users around this time should not make much difference. SL should be the place for all the hackers who have the latest and greatest. Besides, this would be completely in line with Rodvik and his illustrious team of programmer, and what they want, given the attitudes they have expressed.. Exactly. If he's gonna go, he might as well go full tilt. Nalates Urriah wrote: You should probably look through Inara Pey's and my blogs and catch up on what has been happening. The only mention I see there of Steam is with a new login option. A new popup, stop the presses, THEY'VE REVOLUTIONIZED THE INTARWEBS! But seriously. There's nothing in that blog about DirectX or SLI or CrossFire. So... Awesome job plugging some non-offical blog?

There's been a lot of talk about improving the grid for the coming of Steam, but I haven't seen anything about modernizing the technology. Currently the viewers lack support for multi core CPUs and SLI/CrossFire, there's no support for DirectX 9, let alone DX11. And more. A lot of Steam users will be expecting these things- they've practically become standards in 3D online environments. Wouldn't now be a good time to be phasing out this technology from 2006 and modernizing a little?

Make sure you're not comparing bits to bytes. My data has been matching up, for the most part.

I keep saying that. Except when I say it, people IM me in world to call me mean.

I wouldn't have believed people would argue over this topic as much as they did if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. This is a simple concept. LL introduced a bug that's going to have a significant impact on their users. There's a jira. Monitor your data usage. That's it. That's all that needs to be said. Three steps. Topic, evidence, solution. Granted, the word data should have been used instead of bandwidth, arguing over who has to pay for it or what bandwidth means or saying there's no issue because you can't replicate it is all a waste of time.

Innula Zenovka wrote: But my point is that is seems pretty improbable that it won't have occured to anyone at either Valve or LL that this might be an issue. I have no idea what's going to happen, but it just seems to me a bit unlikely that Valve and LL won't have discussed this at some point by now. Maybe they won't have; I dunno. Well, of course it wouldn't occur to anyone at LL, they're idiots. It's Valve I'm curious about. Either way, this thing should turn out really interesting. Czari Zenovka wrote: Nuhai Ling wrote: Anyone else old enough to remember the montra, "Second Life is not a game.... Second Life is not a game...." *Raises hand* I do, I do. In fact, I vividly recall if someone referred to SL as a "game" on the old forums (usually a new resident) all manner of hades would break out. In the last year or so I see the usage of the word "game" referring to SL on the forums regularly. *Sits back in my rocking chair.* Ah, the "good ole days." *Grins* Technically speaking, it IS a game. That is, it's a 3D virtual environment that requires the same kinds of equipment. I know when I refer to it as a game, I'm talking about the technology.

Darrius Gothly wrote: What new users they do manage to attract will find that the friendly face most game companies show their customers is absolutely not present in SL. Instead they will find a company that sucked them in, dumped them on the ground and left hurriedly to attract the next sucker. And with a group of potential customers as mobile and fickle as those that will come here from Steam, abandoning them on the doorstep is guaranteed to make them vanish AND bad mouth the platform even more than we oldbies do now. I can say without a doubt that you're absolutely spot on with this statement. If anybody thinks the badmouthing is bad now, wait until more hardcore gamers get a hold of this platform. Hell, these are the people that cost Sony untold amounts of cash when they hacked the Playstation Network and forced it shut down (one of the biggest data breaches in history- 77 million people affected), because they didn't like what Sony was doing. And let's face it, LL's security and infrastructure is nowhere near on the same level as Sony's.