Penny Patton

They're related, yeah, but they're not exactly the same. There was a time when a lot of people were still using Phoenix, adamant that they wouldn't switch to Firestorm, but of course they eventually did. And it holds true with my point that the old always gives way to the new with enough time. Remember when Wowmeh was the most popular mesh body? Remember when Mutation Industries was making the most popular furry avatars? Or Luskwood? If LL hitched new content rules to new features, those new features would also build up over time making it harder and harder to resist the change, even among the most adamant hold-outs. Much like Phoenix users resisted Firestorm.

I've always felt that the "Premium Gifts" and Library content LL creates should be featured in a content creation blog run by them. Showing how the content is made. Showing why it's made the way it is. And making the content modifiable, scripts and all, so people can pull it apart and see how it ticks. Providing "building kits" like you describe would help in that, too. Illustrating how a package of assests can be sold to let people build their own creations out of it. A set of buildings and sim decorations that all share the same texture atlas to show how people can reduce their texture memory use and simultaneously achieve better looking content.

But LL already has with the change from prim counts to Land Impact. How can you say they won't do something they've already done. It's not the content-apocalypse you think it is. Wrong again. Animesh is appearing more and more around the grid, and people are learning that you can make low LI animesh that looks great. I'm reminded of when people said mesh was DOA because mesh content at the time had higher LI costs than sculpted content. The assumption that people will stick with something old and never desire anything new is fundamentally flawed. And you're showing the source of your flawed thinking here. "Punishing" onion skinned bodies. There's no punishment, just a push towards better made new content through a combination of new features and perks. Only partially right, but very short sighted. I remember a time when Kirsten's Viewer was the dominant TPV. Followed by Emerald Viewer. Followed by Phoenix viewer. Followed by Firestorm. Again, almost nobody is walking around in sculpted bodies thinking "This is fine. I don't need better than this." Change happens. Pretending otherwise is just crazy. Again, you're working on the flawed assumption that any change will immediately make old content unusable. I'm not talking changes that would have an immediate impact on the way people experience their content, I'm proposing methods that take years before the impacts are fully felt.

This is why I've always felt the better metric is texture memory, rather than the size of individual textures. If we had some tools that reigned in memory use LL could increase the maximum texture size without worrying that people will employ the same bad habits, just with much larger textures.

I'll add this to answer the OP's question. If the introduction of mesh has stifled creativity at all, it's only because of the complete lack of further developments with SL's in-world creation tools. And before the anyone falls all over themselves saying LL would be wasting money making the in-world tools as complicated as Blender, LL does not have to do that. There are plenty of ways LL could have incrementally improved upon the in-world building tools. More prim options. Simple, sculpt-like mesh editing. Sure, you still wouldn't be able to do as much with them as someone who knows Blender can outside of SL, but not everything needs to be so complicated and detailed and you'd still be able to create in-world content that was at least in the ballpark of content created in a third party program, the tools would still be simple and easy for anyone to pick up on. ETA to add that the rise of the "No-Mod plague" has also had a detrimental effect on creativity in Second Life. It used to be a lot more common for people to buy stuff, pull it apart, and throw it back together in new and creative ways. Modding is often much easier than creating new content from scratch, but these days there's so much less of it. People often wear clothing as it is off the rack and never change it, because they can't. They're not allowed to. You can really see the difference between the anime/furry communities, where most content is modifiable and even comes with PSDs of the textures/UVs for people to edit, and other communities where no-mod is more prevalent and everything is locked down.

Oh, come on now. This just isn't true. There are ways LL could introduce reasonable new rules for content creation while leaving existing content mostly unaffected. And you know this. I know you know this because I've given you examples of how LL could potentially do it. 1. LL could introduce new rules that only affect content created after a certain date. Linking older content to newer content would apply the new rules to the linkset. Much the same as linking old prim content to new mesh content. Otherwise, old content would be unaffected. 2. LL could hitch new rules to all new features. Want to use the shiniest new features? You have to adapt to the new rules. They've already done this once before when they changed from prim limits to Land Impact. If I were LL I'd retroactive apply the new rules to the most recent features, like animesh and bakes-on-mesh. If LL announced the change within the next 6 months or so, those features would still be "new enough" that it would not be too bumpy of a transition. The benefit of either of these two approaches is that legacy content is preserved entirely.The down side is that the benefits of the new rules won't be felt by most SL users for several years. However, new content always replaces old content with enough time. You rarely see people walking around in sculpted prim avatars or pre-fitmesh bodies anymore. Within a few years most people will have adjusted to the new rules at their own pace. Of course LL would still want to announce the new rules well in advance, and work with content creators to give them the tools and information they'd need to adapt. A third method LL could employ would be to provide a carrot and have people voluntarily adopt the new rules. New rules for rezzed content could come along with land-impact increases. All new sims would come with the new rules on by default. Old sims could switch over at the sim owner's request. Similar benefits could be offered to avatars. An attachment point increase, a small stipend increase, or something else. All of these methods would accomplish the goal, and simultaneously preserve legacy content. LL could even combine these methods.

Whenever the "SL is/not a game" debate rears it's tired head, I'm reminded that even back in the 90's, videogame developers were debating on the definition of "videogame", with many arguing that the term "videogame" was reductive and did not accurately describe all of the content that fell under that label. Many argued instead of "videogames" we should use the term "electronic entertainment", which of course does not roll off the tongue nearly so easily which is why everyone just sticks with "videogames" even though "Electronic Entertainment" are the first two "E's" in "E3", the largest "videogame" expo in the world. It would be so much simpler if we could all at least agree that when someone says "videogames", they mean "electronic entertainment" because 100% of the time that is exactly what is meant and all we're really arguing are the semantics.

I posted this in the Building and Texturing forum because I figure that's where most of the forum using content creators might see it, but it's worth repeating here because whenever we talk about content optimization you and a lot of other people really downplay what effect unoptimized content has on Second Life, so I want to illustrate it in a way that should make sense to everybody. I tested two computers in Second Life, putting them through the paces in some of the most detailed, yet optimized environments in Second Life. Environments that look like these: The first computer is my 10 year old desktop. It's videocard, which was upgraded in 2014-2015, is an nVidia 960 GTX. In these environments I enjoyed a constant 30+ FPS at all times. Running it at the near ultra settings you see here. Deferred rendering, shadows, projected lights, the works. At no point did I experience any texture thrashing, freeze-ups, or any other graphics related issues. And the scenes all loaded lightning fast. Second Life runs like a dream in these locations. The second computer is my Surface Book from 2015. No videocard, just onboard graphics. The Surface closer to a tablet than a true laptop in terms of performance, especially when it comes to 3D applications. I was still able to get 40-60fps in these environments on low settings. I was able to turn on shiny, glow, bump mapping, local lights, essentially SL at max graphics settings before deferred rendering was introduced and I was still getting a respectable, and consistent, 20-25fps. Still no texture thrashing, no freeze-ups, and no other graphics related performance issues. And even on the laptop's wifi connection everything still loaded fast. Two underpowered computers, both getting a better Second Life experience than probably most people on this forum with comparable hardware have ever managed to experience firsthand. You can read more about it on my blog where I go into more details, including links to optimization tutorials. None of it is super restrictive. Primarily, it's just about not being wasteful. Like packing a dozen mostly blank 1024x1024 texture maps onto a model that would look identical if you compacted them all into a single 512x512 because the creator didn't bother to take a few minutes to adjust the UV mapping. I agree that Linden Lab should dream big. And, again, I agree with all of the suggestions you make about better tools for us to create more game-like experiences. I even agree on changing how physics work so we can have better vehicles. (Which, incidentally, would break far more content than anything I've ever suggested would. Just sayin'. Because, again, the way I keep saying LL should tackle the unoptimized content issue wouldn't break anything.) If LL wants to dream big like that, making SL "Steam with avatars", reigning in unoptimized content has to be a part of it. Because if LL did that, then SecondLife would run great for practically everybody. Even the people using toasters to log in.

This is adorable.

I've noticed that whenever the topic of content optimization is brought up, a lot of people assume it would maybe have some positive effect, but not all that much. This is completely wrong, so I booted up Second Life on two different computers, one a laptop using onboard graphics, and ran around some of Second Life's best optimized locations. You can read the full article here. To sum it all up, if your computer was made in the last 10 years and has just about any sort of dedicated graphics card, you should be able to run SL at nearly max settings, getting 30-60FPS or better and never experience texture thrashing, graphics stuttering, long rez times, or any of the other numerous SL graphics woes you probably experience constantly. In other words, Second Life should run like a dream, even on a 10 year old computer. And it does, right now, in sims that have been optimized by people who know what they're doing. This is, of course, assuming your avatar is also far more optimized than the typical SL avatar. Most people are their own worst enemy in this regard and never even realize it. Avatars have gotten so much worse, even just in the past year or two. If I go to similarly high-detail sims made by people who don't optimize, I'm lucky if my computer doesn't crash before everything has finished rezzing unless I turn my graphics settings way, way down. And if you're running SL on a toaster, you'd experience an even more noticeable performance boost. Essentially, the less powerful your hardware, the more you gain from optimized content. On an MS Surface Book with onboard intel graphics I was getting 40fps with everything short of Deferred Rendering/Advanced Lighting Model turned on. And, again, no stuttering, no texture thrashing, and lightning fast rez times. And to be absolutely clear, none of these environments feature game designer levels of content optimization. We are talking bare minimum, common sense optimization. Well within what can be expected from any SL content creator. Using low poly content with well made LOD models. Masking alpha textures rather than using blended mode. Keeping texture use reasonable. If you're a content creator and want to know more about how you can optimize your own work, there are some links in the article you might want to check out.

And this is wrong, too, by the way. Optimizing SL content isn't difficult at all. If you have the skills to create SL content, you already have the skills to optimize that content. The reason nobody does is because few SL content creators know why they need to. LL doesn't explain it to them. There's nothing preventing them from uploading framerate killing content. It would not take much at all to nudge content creators into making better optimized content. You can do it without getting so strict it would drive people out of SL, but that's the boogeyman people always bring up. The analogy to broken AAA game releases isn't accurate at all. The reason you occasionally see a game released in a sorry state like that is due to said game being rushed to market, often while those working on the game are doing so under terrible working conditions including massive amounts of mandatory overtime. And the performance issues are typically due to problems with the game engine, not unoptimized content.

And when people have optimized avatars, I can have 10-20 or so avatars with me in these environments and still not see a serious FPS hit. Meanwhile, it only takes one unoptimized avatar to drag my framerates right down and bring back texture thrashing and graphics stuttering. Just one.

You are greatly underestimating the impact unoptimized content has on Second Life. To put it in perspective, I have a 10 year old computer, but in optimized sims and only rendering optimized avatars I can run SL at Ultra settings and get a consistent 30+ FPS. Frequently around 60FPS. That's with no texture thrashing. No stuttering. And the environments all load lightning fast. And these are not ugly or simple environments. My SecondLife looks that good, all the time and runs better than what most people experience with brand new computers experience. Even my laptop with onboard graphics is able to run SL relatively well in these environments. Not at these settings, of course, but still, it illustrates how crippling unoptimized content is for the average person. Meanwhile, if I go anywhere else in SL with those settings, aside from mostly empty sandboxes, I'm lucky if my fps is in the teens. Even with deferred rendering off, I'll still get constant stuttering and severe texture thrashing. And, of course, things take forever to load. If you have a computer made within the past 10 years, with a low to mid range graphics card, and you're not able to make SL look at least as good as the above screenshots while maintaining 30-60FPS THAT is the impact unoptimized content has on your SecondLife experience. What's more, if you try and shove unoptimized content into a brand new rendering engine you'll run into the same problems because it still has to work with the same rendering hardware.

There's a reason for that. The complete and utter lack of optimization when it comes to user created content. You want SL to run better? You want mirrors and other high end features? You want to be able to run SL with all the shiny turned on with your gamer PC that already runs AAA games at max settings no problem? Lightning fast rez times? Then content creators need to start optimizing their work. Simple as. In fact, you can have all the rendering performance improvements and faster rez times right now, if you know how to optimize the content you own and make yourself. The problem is, that is not going to happen unless LL makes it happen. And whenever anyone suggests ways in which LL can do this, even the most conservative methods that would allow people to keep all their current content and most SL residents wouldn't notice any change until years later when they were enjoying much better performance, the userbase throws a fit.

I think a big problem with a lot of SL's features is that you are required to know how to script to take advantage of them. Most creative tools these days (many since the 90's) have a "visual scripting" interface of some sort. Drop down menus to apply attributes to an object. Being able to draw a path for NPCs and apply it to a character. Building scripts via linked nodes. Tools that are much easier for those of us who aren't all that familiar with coding. Case in point, I was at the content creators group meeting this week and discovered that to apply shapes to animesh objects you will be required to create the shape via a script. It sounded like there were no plans to develop it further than that. LL needs to realize this mindset has severely hobbled their ability to draw in new users. (One of many issues.)

And if you're worried about the "do not distribute textures" clause of a full perm item, that simply means they don't want you passing out the texture itself as an inventory item. As an aside, it's also a dumb rule, anyone making such a clause for their resale content is being paranoid and showing a distinct lack of understanding regarding how SL works. There are plenty of content creators who don't only provide the textures, but the UV maps and links to downloadable PSD files. They don't suffer any loss of sales because of it, in fact they gain sales by creating a third party texture mod market that adds value to their product.

I thought it existed because the larger mesh content is, the greater the distance it holds its higher LOD. In any case, I agree that pressure needs to be put on the people uploading the mesh content. Like I keep saying, there needs to be hard caps on avatar resources and some sort of penalty for overusing texture memory on all content or most content creators will never optimize their creations. In an ideal world, these caps would have been in place right from day one. but they weren't and LL has kicked that can down the road for nearly 20 years now. They still need to implement it, all I'm saying is that they now need to do more work now to smooth that transition and prevent a user revolt. More education, better tools, actual communication and leading by example, as well as finding ways to work in these new caps without instantly tossing all of the content people are using right now. Before they do any of this, I think LL needs to hire people who actually understand these problems because I'm pretty sure at least those making the decisions at LL don't. Which is what happens when you only hire programmers to develop something like SL. You need people who understand asset creation, game design, social network platforms, etc. You wouldn't hire an aircraft engineer to fly a plane, you'd hire a pilot. You wouldn't send a plane design to the factory for mass production if it was never tested by pilots who'd then give feedback to the engineers. LL is all engineers and no pilots and they don't seem to see the problem with that.

I haven't heard anything in a while, and it wasn't mentioned at all in the last content creation meeting, is EEP on hold while the Lab looks for a new graphics developer, or is there still progress being made?

That doesn't sound like a bad idea, if feasible. I'm not sure I'd tie the object's LI to it's original scale. People would just upload things smaller in that case to get lower LI, then make it huge again after uploading. I agree. I've always said as much. The problem is, you're effectively suggesting information be withheld from creators because it will also be available to the end users and that might hurt someone's feelings. Not a good strategy. LL needs to be forthright about this kind of information. Not everyone may be able to make use of it, but the information needs to be out there for those who can. And if LL can make it instructional so more people understand it, all the better. Even if we limit the scope of it towards content the user owns, and the settings they need to adjust to deal with content they do not own, that's better than nothing, which is what we currently have. It's also worth noting that we still have sims that check people for script use. It has not resulted in the end of the world. The outrage and indignation over these things tends to be short lived.

The main goal is to just raise a general awareness of what causes performance problems and it's not that different than understanding "Land Impact". If you have another way, a better way, of conveying this information to users then great. If not, well then this is still the best idea on the table, isn't it? ARC fails because it's both too far removed from what actually causes performance issues (You can have a very low ARC score and yet be the single biggest framerate killer on the grid) and it entirely fails to communicate what that ARC score is supposed to mean, as in how it is affecting you, the user. It is not tied to any specific performance problems in a way people understand. ARC also has no teeth. It needs to be like Land Impact. A set pool of points people have to keep under. Better communication regarding the problem is just one part of the solution. Introducing (slowly and deliberately so as to avoid the content apocalypse people tend to assume will happen whenever the topic of resource caps come up) better LI calculations and some sort of avatar version of LI, is another part. First, no. I'm saying the information about your own HUD, avatar, what-have-you, should be more specific and more clear. But you knew that already because it's what you complained about in your first two paragraphs. As for "naming and shaming", you might have a point. Maybe. LL needs to tackle this problem somehow, if it's better to focus on what each individual user owns, then maybe they should do that. But if the environment or other avatars are the source of your problems, then people have a right to know what the problem is and how to fix it. We shouldn't be able to create framerate killing avatars in the first place, but that ship sailed long ago, didn't it? It will take a lot more to fix it now. But let's say we avoid "naming and shaming", fine then. Users should still get a message saying if the environment or avatars around them are the problem and be directed to some solutions, such as adjusting your ARC rendering cap, avatar imposters settings, object detail settings, etc. That said, people complained that the grid would be torn asunder from the "witch hunts" brought on by ARC when it was first introduced and yet that never happened. So maybe, just maybe, this concern is a bit overblown. But, hey, that's why it's good to discuss these things.

Actually, I'll add to this. LL should do the above, but it will take time to both implement and then more time before we see the benefits. So, in the meantime, here's what LL should be making a priority: Communication and education. When I'm experiencing texture thrashing, SL should pop up a message explaining why that may be. We already get messages telling us when HUD attachments use too many textures, take that further by tying cause to effect. Most people ignore the "your HUD attachments may be using too many textures", because they have no idea what that means. So how about when the viewer sees that a lot of texture thrashing is occurring it pops up a message: You seem to be experiencing a lot of texture thrashing. Here are the probable causes for this problem. Your HUD attachments appear to be using 52MB of textures. Click here to see the texture use of individual HUD attachments and try to bring that under 10MB. Your avatar appears to be using 278MB. Click here to see the texture use of your individual avatar attachments and try to bring that under 100MB. Your surroundings are using an excessive amount of texture memory. Click here for a list of objects you own and their memory use. Try to reduce the amount of texture memory as much as possible. 5 of the rendered avatars around you are using over 100MB of texture memory each. Click here for a list of avatars that may be impacting performance. Click here to open preferences and adjust your rendering caps. Similar messages could appear for triangle counts, script use, etc. All of the common SL performance woes and their causes. Also I'm totally pulling these numbers out of the air as examples, LL should put some thought into this and figure out the most appropriate goals. LL should add texture memory and triangle counts to marketplace listings, and encourage content creators to use it by encouraging everyone else to look for it. Listings that don't include such information should come with a warning about the performance pitfalls of content that uses excessive resources, and a link on how to inspect their attachments and rezzed objects. On top of this direct approach to explaining performance issues to the userbase, LL should be working on that content creation blog right now. Loads of tutorials showing content creators how to make better looking content using fewer resources. Holding regular contests to reward well made content. Pushing the importance of optimization every way they can, in ways that make sense to the average SL user. If they do this now, then however they propose to deal with performance killing content in the future, they should be able to introduce those changes at least a little more easily.

People will never stop, and the problem will continue to get exponentially worse, unless LL finally puts a foot down on excessive resource use. I understand that they don't want to destroy existing content or upset the userbase, but there are ways they can approach the issue while minimizing the negative fallout. Like introducing new resource caps but linking them to new features, or content created after a specific date, etc. Then let new content phase out the old content naturally, like it always does. Communicating best and worst practices to the userbase, through like an official content creation blog, and encouraging better made content through contests and free advertising, would help smooth the transition as well.

Huh. When I dared you to make less sense I did not expect you to take it literally. Look, I'm not going to debate arguments like "people will script their content to deliberately break, because of reasons", "Blue Mars execs thought their character creation was good, so it must have been amazing amazing enough to negate all the other stuff I'm ignoring because it doesn't fit my narrative" and "Fortnight held a concert and someone said this means it's the future of the metaverse, CHECKMATE GLOBEHEADS!". They're bad arguments for bad conclusions. I get enough of that when my mom posts politics on Facebook. I specifically suggested a way they could push new content to be better optimized without forcing people to give up their old content. I stand by this. New content will replace old content gradually and naturally, like it always has, and LL can afford to take the long view on this.

Or, in other words "Everyone already hates SL so LL should not even bother trying to improve their business." Your example ignores the fact that we already have a system that changes the LI cost of content. What you're suggesting is no different than saying Land Impact does not exist at all because I could script a mesh object to resize and get returned when it goes over the limit". To quote Milhouse, I dare you to make less sense. Those other platforms did not fail because "they are better designed", they fail because they lack features that have made SL relatively successful despite its shortcomings. Such as the robust avatar customization and the adult content. You're both making the "Ozone layer is depleting because there are fewer pirates" argument. Nothing I suggested removes any features from Second Life, you'd still be able to do everything you currently do in SL.

Coffee, let's say that Second Life is a boat. Right now the boat is taking on water because of leaks in the hull, and it's on fire. You seem to be suggesting that we should not put out the fire because the boat is leaking. Not a winning strategy. I'm saying that if LL wants to grow the SL userbase, tackling the problem of unoptimized content is one thing they need to do. One of several. Even if it were true that no one currently in SL would care if they got triple their usual framerates, load times were cut to a quarter, and lag almost entirely a thing of the past as you suggest, so what? I mean, I definitely disagree, but just for the sake of argument we'll say this is the case.The multitudes who won't even give SL a fair shot because it runs so poorly and looks so bad are the target here. Not the existing users who are already here and won't leave no matter what. And again, to be absolutely crystal clear, I'm not suggesting this is all LL needs to do. YES, they also need to give us the tools to create more engaging experiences and content. I'd also argue that SL's social tools are a mess and need a lot of improvements and added features. I can list a number of ways LL could make content creation more accessible to the average user. There are many, many problems that LL needs to get a handle on if they want to meet their goals. They can't ignore one set of problems simply because another set of problems exist. Nothing ever gets done with that mentality.