Kwakkelde Kwak

Sassy Romano wrote: As far as the desire for shared experience, why does LL care really if i'm seen with mesh that someone else can't see properly? We coped quite well while LL had mesh available in the viewer and the dominant TPV didn't. At the time that was probably the case, because for some reason the majority of the SL population is terrified of change. Nobody seemed to like the idea of mesh, except some creators who knew what it actually meant for the appearance and performance of SL. Mesh wasn't that widespread, it is now. If you can't see mesh at this point, you'll have a terrible time dwelling SL. More importantly, it's not one small non-shared experience feature that will break SL. When one anomaly is stacked on top of another, it's an entirely different situation. Such irony! Don't bother with the deformer, concentrate on SSA just to render heads and hands, oh wait, then someone uses mesh hands, feet and heads, don't need SSA at all there. That's not entirely true, the alpha masks shipped with all your favorite mesh clothing get baked correctly now, it's part of the SSA. The render bake really needed to be fixed. the last couple of months before SSA I was unable to wear tattoos and I was not alone. One of the three baked avatar textures always stayed blurry. I haven't seen that since the change. Plenty of things I don't like about how LL handles things, but fixing this issue before implementing "cool things" I really do appreciate.

Medhue Simoni wrote: I'll just point out that when LL did implement the avatar physics, it didn't take a year. It happened so fast, people were like, "holy cow, we have boob physics". It might have been a mess, but the concept was worked out and the 3rd party viewer showed LL how important it was to the community. I can say the same for all the other features that LL brought in from 3rd party viewers. Not a year for LL to develop, but months. Hmm, I'm not so sure about that. Emerald viewer, Look at the dates. Also the implementation was completely different, in Emerald you could control every boob in sight with the sliders, in the LL viewer you control only your own.

As I said, it's "stretchable". I sure wouldn't claim I could categorise all possible features. When done "right", specular and normal maps enhance the looks of an object with just a diffuse texture. If the object isn't usable without the extra maps (missing text you need to see to play a game for example), the object isn't made as it should. It's not the viewer causing the issues, it's the object. To me it's the same as objects built with rediculous deforming LoDs to keep the LI low, where people need to turn up their RenderVolumeLODFactor to 4 or higher. A good object to me is an object that looks at least acceptable on any (default) graphics setting. I have no idea how many viewers are out there without SSA support, but I'm pretty sure they will be fased out or abandoned by the population soon. If Linden Lab would implement the deformer, of course the experience would be the shared across all viewers supporting it. The thing is, LL doesn't use the deformer, so obviously the experience is not shared. I already said I can only guess why LL refuses to release the code in their viewer, but I'm sure they have a better reason than annoying everyone who wants it.

Medhue Simoni wrote: If I recall, it is the guys that make the Exodus viewer that kickstarted the Materials project, and helped LL with it. Of course, I don't even recall where I hear this stuff. My point is tho, that the 3rd party devs bang out all the major kinks, or how something can be done, and they have decent size test groups to try out the feature. LL doesn't waste any money trying out different things and getting nowhere. LL takes no risks. The 3rd party viewers take on all the risk and head banging crap. They also workout how the feature affects the UI and other things. After a year or so in the hands of the 3rd party dev, the feature has either proven itself to be wanted/needed/useful, or proven to be a waste of time. LL can then implement the best features and tweak them. That's not how I think the material system was developed. According to this page (might be where you got the info), LL was involved from very early in the process. The point I was trying to make was it's easy to propose something and make a proto version. According to the article, that took only a month. It took another full year to get it working properly, with several parties working on it. If LL hadn't been involved, I'm sure it would have taken less time, but the result would have been a mess. I'm not underestimating or trivialising all the work non-LL people have done, it's just that LL needs to get involved and the material project shows that when that's done, the project gets done. TPV devs can still work on and propose new features, as long as it results in "a shared experience". This is a very stretchable term. I don't think a feature like the material viewer would break any shared experience. A deformer however, making mesh fit in one viewer and not in the next, will break a shared experience. As I've said months ago, if it was easy to implement the deformer properly and all the work is already done, why on earth would LL not release it to the public? I don't appreciate the way LL communicates about this feature, but if they do not release it they must have a very good reason. Both merchants/creators and users will appreciate the deformer. If everything is coded and working, time can't be an obstacle either. So it's either LL picking on Qarl and all others involved, or it's something else. I bet it's the latter.

Medhue Simoni wrote: Heck, for mesh, they basically spent a year coming up with that whole Land Impact system, which every single creator in SL hates. I didn't know I hated that... The difference between the TPV devs and LL is that LL has to run a business. They can't just add all the "cool stuff" and forget about integrating it properly or leaving out the final touches. Remember the avatar physics from the Emerald viewer for instance? That was a nice idea but a total mess, I'm glad LL didn't use that. What TPV devs would have done with a material system I don't even want to think about.

I usually run the official viewer, but that sounds like a valid solution. I'll keep that in mind...thanks.

I was afraid of that, thanks anyway.

Does anyone know if there's a debug setting or something that controls the maximum distance to cast shadows? It's very ugly on the ground when there are lots of skyboxes hovering overhead.

If it is RAM failure, try to pinpoint it. Turn off your computer and turn off the power supply! If you're setup is 2x2GB in four slots, move the memory sticks to the available two slots. If that cures it, it's your motherboard. If your setup is 4x1GB, remove one pair and see if it's fixed, if it's not, remove the other pair. That way you can determine if one of your sticks is broken. If you only have two slots with 2GB sticks each, see if you can get your hands on some replacement sticks from a friend for example. If that doesn't work, well then it's eh..something else.

brujamai Jun wrote: Can not update the AMD Athlon (tm) XP 2400 + 2.00 GHz ...... I've been to a service technician. Unfortunately, that's the case. The socket on your motherboard doesn't have SSE2 instructions. And I can not spend 600 euros on a new cpu that is the price we have in my country a cpu new. I hope you mean a new computer, not a new CPU. From what I can find, computers aren't more expensive in Spain than they are here in the Netherlands. A new CPU should cost maybe 50-300 euros. Anyway, you don't need to buy a new computer or new CPU. Like suggested before, you can buy a second hand one. A dual core PC shouldn't cost more than 100 euros I think, if you're lucky you can pick up one for less, maybe even for free. Try ebay, offers like this (single core P4) are very common.

You can find the amount of geometry, both kTris and Kverts, under Develop (you might have to turn on this menu in preferences) -> Show info -> Show Render Info. That will bring up another console showing all kinds of render statistics. kTris and kVerts you can find on the third line from the bottom. One or two lines below that you can also find free video memory, which of course needs to stay above zero. The console will more or less half your framerate, so don't get confused by that. You can also select an object with the console open, in that case the console will show the amount of geometry for that particular object. If I'm not mistaken kTris don't show up for individual linked objects. kVerts do show though. The only (useful) way to put that into perspective, is by visiting various regions. In my experience, 300kTris is about as low as it gets. Even on my building platform, when it's more or less empty, there are 100 or 200 kTris, I think that's my avatar and the sky. I don't get out that much, but I've seen regions with over 3000 kTris, or (three million triangles!). From what I read that's about as much as you can get in high end games on ultra settings. The average computer won't be able to handle this of course. It's hard to compare SL to other games/game engines, anyway, I like the kTris under 1000, that seems to work very well for my computer on ultra settings (i7 3770k, GTX670, 16GB RAM).

Theresa Tennyson wrote: There is a whole range of possibilities between a ten-year-old computer and a brand new one. And even a lot of 10 year old computers will have SS02. If I'm not mistaken all Pentium 4 CPU's (and newer) have it. For AMD it's everything from AMD64 up. The P4 was introduced in 2001, the AMD64 in 2003. That's why I think it might be possible to just replace the CPU. If brujamai can pick up a free computer, that's of course a better option

Could you post your type of motherboard? With a tiny bit of luck you can just replace the CPU for 20 or so bucks. An old SSE2 processor can't cost all that much and should be easy to find on ebay. Only thing you need to make sure is your motherboard and the new CPU match.

I think you have a valid point. On the marketplace, people can buy with real money. So LL sells the merchant's products (or the right to use those items in SL) and gives the merchant tokens. In other words, merchants never sell any items. The fact that those tokens can later be sold for actual currency does not make any difference. LL does not own the IP rights though. The first paragraph of TOS section 2.3: "You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights you already hold under applicable law in Content you upload, publish, and submit to or through the Servers, Websites, and other areas of the Service, subject to the rights, licenses, and other terms of this Agreement, including any underlying rights of other users or Linden Lab in Content that you may use or modify."

TDD123 wrote: Wat is jouw naam dan in het Engels en is hij dan eigenlijk Bob de bouwer ? Ik bedoel : hij lijkt me niet een gevestigde naam binne SL . Waarop baseert hij dit alles ? Daarvan afgezien dat het nogal redelijk nutteloos blijft je ongenoegen hier te posten ... :robotindifferent: I guess my name would be Quack Builder....or just Quack for friends. Hmm no, Bob de bouwer is called Bob the builder in English, I have heard of a Tom Builder though, but he's a character in a Kenn Follet novel. An open letter is an open letter, this seems to be a good place for it. I just don't agree, as (quack) builder.

Nothing personal, BUT.... I don't know what all the commotion is about. A never supported feature is gone, that's what happens eventually. If the ratio dollar:lindendollar is 1:250, uploading an image costs you a whopping 4 cents. If you upload so many pictures the 4 cents a pop becomes expensive, that must mean you upload pretty much constantly, making use of server and network resources you're not supposed to use in the first place. Use the beta grid for testing, that's why it's there. You can upload mesh for free as well. Oh yes, I am a builder too.

Well, I visited and have to say I experience no lag at all. "GL Tot" in the texture console (ctrl-shift-3) shows over 400MB, which is more than my texture rich store (slightly over 300MB there). My video card shows over 1300MB of VRAM in use. Maybe it's just too many (high res) images. Other than that I see nothing out of the ordinary and I get almost 100 fps on ultra settings. Geometry looks fine, about 300 kTris to render.

The temp uploads were never officially supported, they made use of the old baking system. You can use local textures instead, in the "pick texture" window when you edit a texture, choose "local" instead of "inventory". You could also use the beta grid for testing.

Like Rolig says, according to the console there is no slowdown in simulator fps. So this can't be the lag people are experiencing. Lag appears in various forms, the three main ones being server, network and local. Going by your screenshot, it can't be anything server or network related, except if it's scripts not responding in a timely manner. Your scripts run at 97% at the moment of the screenshot. That number probably goes up and down. I wouldn't worry about the ping, 160 is perfectly normal for Europe and shouldn't cause any noticable performance drops. Chances are it's local lag, you might want to ask your visitors what they exactly are experiencing when they say it's "laggy". That might help localing the problem a lot better than just looking at the numbers. Could you also post the name of the sim in question? I could only find a region called "Corsica Island", but I don't see any objects there owned by you.

I understand you do not use Blender, but if your program of choice doesn't allow you to export single sided (like Sketchup) it seems to be the logical choice. You'd only need Blender to export the dae or to remove the inside then export as dae. If your program has a single sided modeling or export setting, you should use that of course.

Besides all the improvements that can be done by remodeling and optimising the upload settings, I think there's one thing that can make a huge difference. Some 3D programs, like Sketchup, export all faces twice. Once for the "normal side", once for the other side. This way a flat plane has a backside. The problem is you do not need the inside on any object with volume, since you'll never see it. Going by the amount of vertices on the cable, I suspect this is happening though. The cable is 97x6=582 vertices if I didn't miss a loop somewhere. I don't know how the plugs are modeled, but 3000 looks very high going by the cable itself. What you can do to test this is exporting a single triangle or quad. If it has a backside in SL, all your models can be halved in geometry. I'm not sure how to fix this in Blender, I'm sure someone else does. In 3ds Max it takes only a couple of clicks with an object this simple.

The only two things I can think of are the debug settings for your camera or a scripted object controlling your camera. The first is very unlikely, you would have known you fiddled with those. The second you should be able to pinpoint and fix by removing all your attachments one by one.

It looks like the normals are the cause of this effect, the direction in which light is reflected. On the left a section of the situation as is, on the right how to fix it. The red arrows represent the normals at the vertex (the points that make the shape). The blue arrows represent the normals in between, as calculated by the viewer, based on the red arrows. With sculpties. the red arrow depends on the shape, on the angle between the two adjacent surfaces. It sits exactly in between. So what you need to do is make sure the angles are correct. This can be done by adding some extra vertices near or even at the very top of the shape. The effect still occurs, (the upper blue arrows between the 3 green vertices at the top), but is minimised to the area between the vertices. The closer the vertices are together, the smaller the area that's affected. If the vertices occupy the exact same coordinates, the effect is not visible. You don't need three vertices btw, two vertices make a prefectly sharp corner, the normal direction depends on the angles of the surfaces and only one surface is present with two vertices in one place.

SL is progressively loading levels of detail, not exactly the same as a mipmap or parts of it. This is to prevent overload of the network, not so much your computer. I'm pretty sure you remember that correctly. We can see a bit more clearly what happens by looking at sculptmaps. As far as I know, sculptmaps are treated the very same way as textures (the variable for on screen pixel replaced with on screen size?), I might be mistaken though. Anyway, if this is the case, it's clear that the server sends a reduced resolution texture by sampling every other pixel, not an average which is done with mipmapping. The position of sculptmap vertices on lower LoDs is exactly the same as those same vertices on a higher LoD, which, like your shimmering effect, indicates that this is how the texture size is reduced. Again looking at sculptmaps, still assuming textures are handled the same, the viewer will use a lower LoD texture when you zoom out, not a part of a mipmap. If this was the case, sculpties would get scrambled or rounded if you zoom out of a fully loaded shape. Also, the shimmering effect would be gone. In other words, the lower LoD textures have to be stored somewhere, not replaced with a high resolution one. Another way could be the viewer downsampling the texture on zooming out, that doesn't sound as efficient as storing all sizes in cache or RAM or VRAM though. Both ways mean high resolution LoDs can be dumped from VRAM or even RAM, which is good news. (Whether that's done very efficiently is a whole other matter.) The viewer shouldn't dump everything not needed right away I'd think. When camming around, that would mean loading, dumping, loading, dumping of huge amounts of data. Maybe there's a delay, maybe there's some code predicting whether the texture will be shown at a higher LoD again anytime soon. I just don't know. I don't have time, nor the will to go through all of this, at least not now. I think most if not all answers can be found on the page.

Search for Blender, plenty of help right here on these forums too.