bucky Barkley

Am helping a friend upgrade from a very sluggish ATI based laptop (Packard Bell TJ 75). We are researching decent NVidia-based laptops - middle price range. What would you recommend for SL? Should be able to easily do shadows and most photo effects...

Yep, great feedback Void, thanks! I do know that today's monster becomes a mere garden lizard in a couple of years

Yep, there is a level of planning for the future in it - today's overkill becomes a nice sweet spot in a year. I know I may start doing machinima as well.

[I'd posted this over at Kirsten's Viewer, but I want to reach a wider audience before I go order] Hello, I am seeking to replace a 2006 Intel iMac. Obviously almost any desktop I buy these days is going to be an improvement. I am thinking of: http://www.velocitymicro.com/wizard.php?iid=18 Although I would love to max out a new iMac, I am thinking that Windows 7, 64bit, is the way to go. Some of the hardware specifics are: 1200 Watt Velocity Micro® Power Supply - Nvidia® SLI™ Certified (+$110.00) EVGA X58 FTW3 motherboard with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s Intel® Core™ i7 processor i7-960, quad 3.20GHz cores, 8MB Cache 6GB DDR3-1600MHz Triple Channel Premium Memory with Heat Spreader (3x2048) (+$35.00) 1536MB EVGA™ NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 580 GDDR5, PCI-E 2.0, SLI ready (+$450.00) Genuine Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional 64-bit w/ SP1 (+$80.00) Specific questions: what to avoid? what to zero in on? I know the machine will be decent for machinima, but the primary goal is to get the best photography features from SL.

[sorry if this is a repost - this part of the web site seemed to swallow the first one] I want a machine, Windows or Mac, that can handle all SL graphics features on maximum, with a great frame rate... What would you recommend? I want to be able to take photos with depth of field, shadows, and blur. My 2006 iMac wont do these ... [ An Update -- thanks for the nod towards BOXX -- I am a diehard Mac fan, but am unsure as to whether a high end iMac is going to handle every graphics feature turned on -- the next step up from that is to go Mac Pro... on the other hand.. for that money I can really max out a Windows machine and know that there is a large pool of people in the same boat -- it is safe to say I am targeting 2000-3500 for this, if need be.. I want rapid fire snapshots to disk at high res w/shadows, depth of field, etc.. everything turned on. Working with my 2006 iMac is like having a photographic arm tied behind my back.. I know what is possible ( Hello there, Zonja C!), but I cant do it on my machine. ]

[sorry if this is a repost - this part of the web site seemed to swallow the first one] Which of the current crop of MacBook Pro or iMac machines will allow me to take full advantage of all available photo effects? I want to be able to take photos with depth of field, shadows, and blur. My 2006 iMac wont do these ... thanks! [ Just to be clear - yes, I know where the system requirements are. I am coming up on 5 years in SL.... my SPECIFIC question is really aimed at those who are currently taking advantage of ALL available effects on an iMac or MacBook Pro. I want to hear about their experiences.]

@ RR - Hiya Kim....although I would not use the web viewer as my default viewer, it would really be a big help to those of us in the Federal sector to have a web viewer that can run on IE6 and that is not seen as a threat by our security processes. The feds are still running IE6? Yikes. That's not good. It is true that MS is supporting it till 2014 (reluctantly).

@Enid - @ Kim Linden ....we are testing a number of approaches to bring new users closer to the richness of our virtual world.... Is this a way of saying: "We don't want our current users and paying customers to have a FAST, EASY and FUN time anymore, so we are offering you this in hopes that the older SLers will leave and or not pay us anymore becuase they complain to much mmmm, that's not quite it. Sure, Kim should have said "we are testing ways to bring everyone into SL, no matter their platform". That would have been more inclusive. She's still new... What's really going on is that LL is trying to deliver on a long sought out goal, and that is to present the experience in a browser. Although I was able to get in and look around, I dont agree with the approach that they took (Java, Flash, and JavaScript....) What they are trying to avoid is having to make the user install anything. Amazingly, even in 2010, many users balk at the idea of installing a plugin, let alone downloading and installing a standalone client. I maintain that using Unity would give them a far more flexible means of attaining their goals, and it would run fine on a wide range of end user machines. The downside is that it is a plugin, but the install of it could be made straightforward. I'm not sold on rendering things in the cloud - it means that somehow, the host for all that processing has to get paid (versus doing all of the rendering locally via a capable plugin, such as Unity). You don't get to completely reuse rendering for 40 people in a club - they are all standing in different positions with different view angles. That's a lot of distributed processing to do. What happens when you have a concurrency of 50,000 users? Seriously, where is all of the money going to come from to do all that rendering and maintain the fat data pipes to stream it all? It's a lot more data-heavy than the current LLSD stream... In the end, it doesn't matter what LL does. All of the puzzle pieces are there for the community to take things forward. If LL wants to continue to pursue the walled garden approach, that is their perogative. I think what we can do is watch with interest, note the things which do and dont work, and strive together in the realm of OpenSim to surpass the Virtual Worlds training wheels experience we have had here. There really is a parallel to what AOL was doing in the 90's with their approach (aside from aol.com), and what LL is currently doing with theirs. If you know your online history, take a couple of steps back and think about how certain things repeat themselves. There is a pretty predictable sequence of events to come.

@Tarina - They are working on the web viewer because eventually they will NOT have a seperate viewer. State your sources.

Wallace Linden says: The test won't be available to everyone, based on a number of variables, including bandwidth, system setup details, and other factors. I don't think cookies or repeated logins will make a difference. I don't have more information that that at the moment, though. If you dont have the system requirements available to you, that makes you look bad. If you know the system requirements, and aren't telling us, that makes you look bad too. Dont people bring predictable events up such as this in internal meetings beforehand?

@ CW - Does it take any extra effort to look at the unique user name of a user when they're wearing a group tag above it? Why would display names be any different? Do group tags get echo'ed in open chat? Do group tags get echo'ed in group chat? Do group tags get echo'ed in IMs? Do group tags get logged in files? Do they appear in the dashboard in the SL site? Do your homework and let us know what you find.

@Lee Ponzu SL is still part of the real world. If someone tries to take your DBA, then take them to court in the real world. No, not good enough. LL has all of the control here to do the right thing, which is to prevent ones name from being abused unless they explicitly opt-in. In the case you propose above, if someone has to waste their RL time, money, and effort dragging some griefer to court, guess how they will try to make up for it? They will sue LL for leaving open such a big gateway to abuse. It doesn't have to be this way, but LL seems to want to refuse to do the right thing.

@Ajax - In all fairness, lots people in RL have the same name i.e. John Smith. I have used viewer 2.3. You can't hide behind a display name, your unique name is still very obvious This is about the context of SL though. It is about LL changing the rules of the identity game mid-stream, and being blatantly deaf to the legitimate concerns voiced by many long and short term users. And it also goes beyond "Display". It has to do with what it is logged, and it has to do with people's reputations. The right thing to do is simple, allow your name to be used as a display name by others on an opt-IN basis only. If LL comes back and says "oh, we haven't done that work!", then withdraw Display Names until it has been done. There is a bit of a precendent here as well. You only allow friends to map you on an opt-IN basis, because it gets into privacy issues. Your own username is personal to you in the same sort of way. It should be *up to you* to grant access to it. Some will be happy to, and many wont. Without LL providing a control for this, they are putting themselves into a "we know what's best for you" position. And that will backfire on them.

@CW - If people want to steal someone's identity by the current definition, they can already do that with group titles, hence if there hasn't been mass identity confusion over group title abuse heretofore, it's implausible (to me) that display names will be a problem. Group titles dont appear in logs. There is much more to Display Names than just "Display".

One more item about "Display" Names --- "Log" Names... How are the log files named when you chat with someone? By user or display name, or both? What is displayed on *every* line of chat that is logged? user or display name, or both? See, the problems that people have mentioned go beyond display. If the username is not used as the name of a log file, it's not good enough. If the username is not showing up for everything that is logged for what they said, it's not good enough. If it is too easy for someone to lift quotes from log files that *only* show display names, it's not good enough. Think beyond display. Display is transient. The potential damage done by log files that hang around and give an inaccurate picture of what has transpired is something to be concerned about. If 2.3 addresses all of these issues, cool. My hunch is that it doesn't. And if the Lindens say "oh, just file an AR in case you have a problem with someone abusing your name", I would say to them: you've cut your support staff and your hours -- do you really want to deal with a stream of ARs? shouldn't you be addressing the problem, instead of the symptom? the documentation trail of people's concerns is a mile long on this one - do you really want to end up in legal trouble by not doing the right thing? There is a very predictable series of events here...

@CW - This got hashed to death a month or so. You can read the 50 variations for yourself as to why people want to reserve their own name for themselves. LL has chosen to ignore what many see as a pretty legitimate concern.

This is STILL in the FAQ: Can I prevent other Residents from using my display name? No, display names are not meant to be unique identifiers. Instead, if you notice that others are using a similar display name, feel free to change your own name. You are really going ahead with this? You obviously are not listening to the feedback. If someone uses my name, creates a mess, and I have to use my time and effort to straighten it out, dont be surprised if I sue for damages. This is an easily avoidable problem, and LL is showing that they are not willing to do the right thing.

@Shockwave - If you "preloaded" the nearest sim with the avatar's state when they are 4 seconds from crossing, then the simcross problem would be dramatically improved. This gets the server side into too much second guessing, and a lot of false positives. It could result in a lot of extra network traffic. There are a lot of sims where there is something pretty darn interesting right up on the edge. Predicting Avatar behavior is like herding cats It would be good to look at what OpenSim does with MegaRegions: http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Setting_Up_Mega-Regions This cuts down the problem of sim crossings by making for fewer instances.

@ Darien - I read your proposal for a permission bit. It is a good one! I note that OSSL (OpenSim) has had text and arbitrary image url to prim face loading for over a year now (osDrawText and osSetDynamicTextureURL). The functionality on that side goes a long way towards doing dynamic UI without having to depend on a full web browser.

@Viv - No one goes for SL for reading webpages on a prim. And that´s the onyl benefit. Yeah, it´s a nice techie idea. Heya Viv! C'mon, you know you like to zero in on the techie angle, and you dont really mean to use the word "useless" You know it can be used for a lot of UI stuff that is not possible any other way in SL (such as configuring an in-world object...). I could also mention art applications. We'll talk about this in-world. My point still stands - we really have not seen it exploited because few want to subject themselves to the 2.x viewer.

@Luisa - Media on prim didn't changed SL much besides, my recognition, media streaming from youtube vanished shortly afterwards. Placing a webpage onto a prim so far did nothing. Or nobody uses. It just doesn't feel like "inside SL" if it isn't. It is not. The data remains somewhere else. MOAP is indeed a great idea. The problem is having to use the 2.x viewer to see it. The 2.x viewer is such a turnoff, that not even MOAP makes for a convincing enough reason to put up with it. One should look at this as a chicken and egg problem.. why bother using MOAP if only a small % of visitors will see it? To me, it is pretty evident that the problem is not the tech of having web pages in-world, it is the delivery mechanism. We shall see if meshes will be enough to get people to switch to 2.x. This is another chicken/egg.

@eighthdwarf Checchinato said: I don't mind how it's able to be done: the next V2 should definitely get the UI of the viewer 1.x! Tell that to the Wizard of Oz Linden (Scott). You know, the one that had a whopping 3 months experience in SL at the time he stood up at SLCC and declared: “Don’t waste everyones time suggesting that we throw away Viewer 2, or that we revert the UI to Viewer 1. It is absolutely not going to happen, and any suggestion to that effect will be ignored.” True innovation is going to come from the Third Party Viewer and OpenSim communities. LL is in too much disarray, and keeps shooting itself in the foot. The notion that they aren't sure about whether the increase in the group limit to 40 will be permanent, should be very worrisome. The idea that the community can scream about how they are worried about Display Names, and that the Lindens do NOTHING to address the concern, should be very worrisome. The gall of cuttting off edu/non-profit discounts with less than 3 months warning should be very worrisome. If some of you are actually jumping up and down and patting LL on the back, you simply aren't paying attention to the big picture, or you just dont care. Linden Lab is fast becoming as valueable to the virtual worlds community as SCO Unix was to theirs.

@Doggie - . Once everyone is all nice and moved, transferred everything, and built up entire sims, networking and friends, they got you over the proverbial barrel and could easily charge $295 for a sim. You don't know what you are talking about. Lay off the reply button, research, and come up to speed before spouting such nonsense. The fact is, SL is the walled garden where you cant easily backup your own work and move somewhere else. The fact is, with OpenSim it is easy to back up your work and take it elsewhere. The fact is, with OpenSim there are multiple providers, and HyperGrid, and the situation is much closer to current ISPs and Web Hosts. There is as much lockin in the OpenSim scheme of things as there is lockin with a company web site. One takes their asssets, their domains, and they move.

@Yanni writes: Also, to all of you considering those "alternative" grids. Keep this in mind, that those low sim tiers are probably only introductory pricing and will also increase after the introductory/beta periods. So what I am saying is if you budget for those lower costs, you will again have to increase your budgets at the time those introductory/beta offers are discontinued. mmmm... prices are not going to go up for a while. It's going to be a wild west competitive space for the forseeable future. The best comparison is to look at what people pay for ISPs and Web Hosting. Sim hosting is not going to get too far adrift of that. Observe history, folks :-) Look at the AOL days of being a large walled garden, and what happened after that as people migrated to ISPs and web sites. There are many parallels. The one thing I would caution people on.. dont go for the cheapest alternatives. Someone running too many VPS instances on weak hardware for $10 month would be a red flag. Too much of that will give people the perception that something is wrong with OpenSim -- when in fact the problem is cramming too many servers into too little hardware on the back end.

@ Doggie Maybe in 2,3 or 5 years it will be big and great, but that doesn't help anyone in here TODAY solve their immediate problem, does it? It's fine to say that in a year "so and so" grid will be a major competitor to SL, but that doesn't help anyone today, and in a year's time "so and so" grid could also be a has-been-who-never-was if they go belly up. Vivienne knows of what she speaks with her IBM example. There are quality hosters out there today, and people are having their immediate problems solved. I'm not going to go into specifics on a Linden Blog. OpenSim is like Apache all over again. It reminds me of 1995, when none other than Brian Behlendorf explained the Apache project to me. History is repeating itself, just in 3d. Will there be Mom & Pop grids? Yes. Will there be high end corporate grids? Yes as well. Do not paint all up and coming grids with the same brush... it's much the same scenario as up and coming ISPs in the 90's.