Kwakkelde Kwak

Coby Foden wrote: My understanding is (from what I have read) that on the server the shirt texture is still 1024×1024 size. So every time that shirt texture is applied to the avatar, the system has to do that downsizing (causing unnessary extra work and lag). Therefore uploading avatar textures in the wrong size should be avoided. True, as long as you don't confuse the original texture with the baked one. Both are stored on servers, but only the baked 512x512 one is sent to viewers as avatar texture. Every time your new texture is baked, that could be by manually doing so, when changing clothes and possibly even when logging on or teleporting, the big texture has to be processed by your own viewer. It's not that big of a deal really, but unneccecary nonetheless.

If your model is rigged in 3ds max, the most obvious two things are these: - Your dae file doesn't have all the bones specified - If your file does have all the bones, you possibly forgot to check the weights option in the uploader. (there's one for preview and one for actual upload) In the wiki there are a couple of ways described how to fix the first issue, the second doesn't need any extra info I guess.

From what I've read and experienced first hand, it's only the forum that doesn't always log you out. This can cause serious privacy issues and a potential ban from SL, but your payment in any form should be safe. Neither transactions or payment information can be accessed from the forums.

solstyse wrote: Also, I think that the gaming crowd's desire to spend one time a decade on hardware is contributing significantly to the slowdown of x86 performance gains. Who said the gaming crowd desires to only upgrade once a decade? If not needed, they would never upgrade, I know I wouldn't. But the reality is I buy a new computer every five or so years and often buy some minor hardware upgrades in between. My software use, I'd say, is probably 50/50. I spend more time using my phone than my pc. And I work in an a pllace that encourages that. We have multiple wifi networks, computers that are slower than our phones, so when someone needs a quick answer, we're actually told to use our phones. A phone is faster than a PC in some cases. If both are turned off and you need to send some e-mail, a phone will be faster. When you need computing power, you have a seriously fast phone and seriously outdated computer if the phone is faster. You can't compare the two. You and I disagree about the idea of making more hapen serverside requiring a complete rewrite, unless I'm misunderstanding you. I think over the course of years, almost nothing would be the same anyway. So as time goes on, if the migratioin to server-side is gradual, it wouldn't feel as extreme as what you're describing. In a way, if they just start making the new code serverside, then it'll happen eventually nomatter what, just through natural evolution. I think compatibility is key in this economy. I don't see how you picture this "just start making new code server side". Some things can be done server side, some are preferrably done server side, some can only be done server side. We already have inventory storage, (most) script and all physics calculation done server side. This simply can't be done in a reasonable way at the user's end. Now LL wants to move texture baking to the servers. This doesn't need any real change in the architecture of SL. We already download textures. These textures are sent from the server, then on our end the ambient occlusion and shadows are baked in for example. That can be done server side and we could download the baked texture. Not a big change really. The real challenge for the end user's computer is the processing of textured geometry (Texels/Triangles). Moving this process to the servers isn't easy by any means since unlike physics, inventory, textures etc, it's not shared between even two people. It certainly can't be done using the software (and LL hardware) currently available. Not only that, even the baking has some potential pitfalls. Moving this process to the servers reduces load on (lower end) systems, but also ignores the potential of high end hardware. Baking in the shadows means draw distance won't affect shadows from objects in the sky anymore. If (for testing purposes) I raise my draw distance to 512 or 1024, every single skybox or platform will cast shadows on the ground and it doesn't look pretty. Again, if the picture LL produces is as nice as the picture my PC can produce, I'm all for it. If it means lower quality, for me it's a big nono. What can't be done server side at all is producing the final image (Pixels on screen). I probably overlooked or forgot something, but I think I pretty much covered what the viewer does at this point. The main point is you can't simply move everything that's viewer side to the server by changing a couple of lines of code on both ends, secondly, most processes are already done server side. Your definition of exodus is a bit more severe than mine. There was a while when people were saying that PC gaming was dead. Obviously, they were wrong. But there was a reason why they thought that. And from what I have seen, for the more "hardcore" games consoles are still the weapon of choice. Now that the current generation is so old, computers have a chance. And gamers will never abandon the PC completely. I guess to me the move to consoles was significant enough to fit the word exodus, while to you it wasn't. Ok, that's clear, maybe you should call it "a significant shift years and years ago" rather than an exodus, which implies it's huge and ongoing, then. Typically, I think that computer costs should be about $125 per year in hardware, if you average it out. So if you spent $500, you should be happy with your performance for about 4 years. Of course, that isn't always perfect. And more of these laptops have the graphics right on the cpu, which doesn't help. Computer replacement should happen only if either you've tried everything else, or you're generally unsatisfied with it. Not just for sl. And a wired connection isn't necessary. Wifi technology has come a long way. The thing I despise though is those people who will just repeat the "upgrade your hardware" mantra and then berate the person who said they can't or won't. That invariably is followed by a lecture about the direction that technology goes in. It's the same tired idiot script, and it tells me that the responder is more interested in flaming than in answering. That, and being misquoted. I tend to become a bit irrational when that happens. What your personal opinion on computer cost is (or mine for that matter), is rather irrelevant. Anyway, if you spend $500 on a desktop, it will probably last you 4 years without any issues, if you spend that on a laptop it might not, depending on what you use it for. People should think before they buy a computer. I understand lots of people already have a computer when they start using SL of course. LL should keep their minimum requirements low to keep their potential market as wide as possible. As I said before, the recommended requirements are really low compared to any other real time rendering program I know. As for what Lumiya does with 1024 textures on clothing. I actually use that "bug" to my advantage. After I make something, I'll log on with my phone to make sure I don't look naked. lol. Not that I make much, but I want what I make to be optimized. now, if these textures were to, say, automatically reduce at the time that they're stored on the asset server, then they wouoldn't have to scale down for delivery to the viewers every time. If LL can make the grid, they can make that an automated process. I don't think they can make everything perfect, jjust better. Because you're right. It's the people who make sl unique. The textures you see on an avatar are already stored on a server, they are stored on the server running the region. Nobody will ever see three 1024x1024 or 256x256 textures on an avatar or even download them from the server. They are always 512x512. The server sends these 512x512 textures to all viewers, I suspect even your own viewer, which would explain the delay in sharpening your body after a texture rebake.

Ayesha Askham wrote: OK Kwakkelde What part of "We are doing it right" are you failing to comprehend? Let me share with you my attempts tonight: Attempts 1 & 2 : Error 400. Attempt 3: redirected to the "Help" page of the main site, when I navigate back to the forums I am still logged out. Attempts 4 & 5: Same. Attempt 6: Direct attempt to log in to "reply" on this thread: error 400. attempt 7, same as 6: redirected to "help" page. Attempt 8: successful. Now this is not normal and it has nothing to do with being logged in on any other related page. If I say I don't have these issues it doesn't mean you are not doing it "right", I never said that. I'm not failing to comprehend anything, you might though: The help page is part of the SL homepage. Logging in there does not log me into the forums either. It logs me into my dashboard and marketplace though. That's what I described. Whether the process makes sense is another matter. So again how it works for me: Log into the forums (successfully) and I am also logged into the marketplace and dashboard Log into the marketplace and I am also logged into the dashboard, but not the forums Log into the dashboard and I am also logged into the marketplace, but not the forums If I log out of the forum and it says I am logged out, I am logged out...I cannot "relog out" Perrie sees this, I see this and so do many others who attempt to use this forum. It reduces the ability of SL residents to rationally present issues to Linden Lab, because with such a process, you end up (as you will have seen by my initial comment) feeling more than a little wound up!! This is WAY beyond merely being annoying.:smileyfrustrated: First of all, if you want to present issues to LL, this is the wrong place. The forums are user to user, even if there are any Lindens posting here. If you want to present issues, use the support channel. Anyway, if the page says you are logged out and you sign in again, do you need to type in your password again? If so, you are at that point logged out. If not, you can "relog out". If you really are logged out and you are logged in the next day, something is obviously very wrong. All I ment to say is you can check, check, double check if you really are logged out in the first place. This is a way to do that. I can imagine if it takes you 8 times to log in, it also takes you 8 times to log out successfully. By "annoying" I described how it works for me, not the situation anyone else is in. Having to double check is annoying. If you double check and you are really logged out at one point then logged in the next, that would be more than annoying of course. I use firefox btw, if that might make a difference.

solstyse wrote: The thing that makes Win8's requirements on par with Win7 is actually the tablet-style functionallity. See, I put -style. Meaning "not, but similar to." It is changes to the task manager that make it behave more like what we've seen from tablets than the win7 and previous desktop environments which keep it's requirements low. See? Again, I said "behave like." Not "is one." In fact, when multitasking, Win8 is actually easier on Win7 resource wise. It is true that the minimum system requirements lissted for both operating systems are the same. But the way that Win8 handles background processes and multiple processes is more efficient than Win7. In other words, each application or instance of it that is open in Win8 actually uses less of your computer's ability than an application with the same exact functionallity as Win7. Whether Win8 is as heavy on a computer or slightly less doesn't make a difference I think. The question is "why?". I can think of another very good reason besides the tablet compatibility. There just isn't that much to improve graphics wise. Look at the steps from DOS to Windows, from Windows 3 to Windows 95, from 95 to XP, from XP to Vista. Those were leaps turning into little steps. So to me it only makes sense Microsoft focuses on other aspects, such as user friendliness or resource demand, especially after the Win Vista debacle. I do agree this means computer power doesn't have to improve as much as it did in the past. And this results in a lot of people buying lower end hardware since, like you say, it will run pretty much anything they want to run. I really didn't miss the point you were making with that. Licencing and use may not be the same, but they are inseperable. There is always a licence to agree to as a prerequisite to use. Now, whether or not you stick to the terms of the licence is on you. Now, all of your software can be run locally, if all you use is desktops or laptops. You have a choice that tablet users don't. But the point is that you do have an option. Your software doesn't have to be all local, if you don't want it to. Why do you think a microsoft account, which is all but required for win8 comes with 7gb of free cloud storage? Now, to prevent another misquote, I must again clarify. I said, "all but required." which is the same as saying, "almost, but not quite." Windows 8 will work without it, but there are certain features which require it. Most if not all software I use I can only run locally. Some small features can use "the Cloud", but by no means everything. Cloud storage isn't the same as Cloud use. Replacement for hard drive space and having your files available at any time and place is not the same as running your actual program from a distance. Office 2013 will be available as a local application. That's true. But there is a full cloud based option. Look up Microsoft office 365. Here's a link. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/faqs.aspx I especially call your attention to the answer to the FAQ "What do I need to install. According to Microsoft, the answer is nothing. Read it for yourself on the official page Ok, that was not what you posted earlier, but there is a Cloud driven Office then. Didn't I say earlier that offering a remote SL could be an option to lower local requirements? It would mean higher internet traffic and it would mean a complete rewrite of both server and viewer code. It would also mean a huge expansion of the LL server grid, possibly as much as more than double of what they have now. I don't think that's going to happen, nor do I think this is the time for LL to invest all their resources. And what exactly did that Tom's hardware article say? Was it: Console software revenue is flat, floating between roughly $21 and $24 billion, yearly, while revenue generated by the PC gaming market balloons from $13 billion in 2008 to a projected $23-ish billion in 2015. Nvidia breaks it down even further, showing that the bulk of PC games revenue is coming from digital downloads... ? Yes... Yes, I think it had to be because I used copy/paste on the italicized bit. I'm a huge fan of the graph that shows that current platform sales are still higher than pc sales. This is despite the clear disadvantage that consoles have, with the PS3 being released in 2006, and xbox 360 in 2005. Just what turn do you think that chart is going to follow when the next generation of consoles comes out? The chart also visually represents the exodus to consoles that you're asking about. It's there. For years people have been buying more console games than pc games. The author talks aobut PC games being reduced to a single wire rack. Then there's this quote: Nvidia doesn't break down its data according to genre or service, but much of this newly-discovered cash is coming from the social gaming crowd, as well as from new business models. There's no denying that Facebook games like The Sims Social and micro-transactions in more "hardcore" titles like World of Tanks and League of Legends are pushing revenue streams and profit margins up for many developers and publishers... I wonder what this could mean. Maybe, that the games that are popular for PC's aren't really all that demanding. Facebook games. Hmmm. I wonder how demanding apps that don't even require a PC are. We might have different views on what "exodus" means. English isn't my first language, but I'm pretty sure "exodus" means the same in English as it does in any other language. It means people are migrating by the bulk until there's nobody left. How can you conclude that after reading the article and seeing the graphs since it shows the exact opposite? Just the fact NVidia and AMD are still making big improvements on the gaming market tells me the high end PC game market is far from dead. The next gen consoles will bend the curve no doubt, but that doesn't mean theres an exodus of any kind. Now, a new low end laptop will run SL. But, referring to my original response, and the whole reason I got involved in this, a 4 year old laptop could end up struggling. It is owners of those machines that frequently catch the "Upgrade your machine or get out" flame. I really feel that someone needs to stick up for them. It's tiresome. Kwakkelde, you and I seem to disagree with just about everything the other has said on this thread, but I know you're right about people not needing to buy a new computer just for sl. That's why I'm so disgusted with reading it. I'm sorry to say we even disagree there then, although not completely. a four year old low end laptop without any dedicated GPU will probably more than struggle with SL. But those things are worth maybe 100 bucks and can be replaced with something very affordable (< $500) that will run SL. If the computer really won't run SL, I'd say replace the hardware. A cooling pad, computer maintainance, making sure not to much is running in the background, running with a proper connection (wired?), keeping the power plugged in and lowering your SL graphics will probably go a long way though. Plenty of people know this and happily offer help on these forums. The "new hardware option" should be a last resort, yet still "a" resort. I'm not only arguing here on the threads. I'm also experimenting with viewers, so that I can start a posst with serious advice for those who have slower machines. I will make upgrading a part of it, but I spent quite a bit of this week comparing viewers, turning features on and off, etc. But the laptop I'm doing the tests on is a midrange that's only 3 years old, so I don't know if my tests will go far enough. I hope they will, plenty of people have old computers that will run SL as long as they're set up the right way. Good luck. Now, a less resource hungry sl is slightly within the user's power. But improvement on LL's part wouldn't require an entire rewrite of the code, either. There are simple things they can do. they can turn off hte ability to upload things that are not maximized, such as textures that are a higher resolution than sl can display. They can impose a limit on the size of scripts. As time goes on, the newer, more efficient content will become more common than the old. It's not groundbreaking, but it'll be helpful. For those who's machines REALLY struggle, maybe allow as options some of the limitatiions that Lumiya has. Like I said earlier, SL is SL because of how it is set up. It has always been a struggle for LL between performance and user creativity, both of which make the user experience. It's not as easy as it sounds to impose limits without restraining content creators. One can use a single 4096x4096 texture in a more efficient way someone else uses a bunch of 512x512 textures. One can write a single script that creates more lag than 200 other scripts. Memory use is also hard to measure, the same goes for script time. Imagine the servers would have to monitor everything for everyone, in every script at any time. We wouldn't be able to walk. LL has tried limiting script use a coupe of years ago and the moaning and whining and complaining still echoes in my head. We also can't rely on the creators, since most of them think it's better to use a 1024x1024 texture on a hairpin and preferrably a baked one so the next hairpin needs another 1024x1024 texture etc. The system does what it can to reduce the load of these textures by mipmapping. It's just how SL works. Users make the world, users make the lag. A lot of limitations the Lumiya viewer has can be used in a normal viewer. Simply dial down your draw distance and detail. Lower the maximum of avatars to be fully rendered. Don't run SL at HD resolution. Of course this results in quality loss much more visible on a 15" laptop screen than on a 4-5" smartphone screen. While you can blame the computer manufacturers for all the cheap, handicapped computers out there, and even say that they now see the error of their ways, the fact remains that those machines are out there. And they're something that all software companies are going to have to deal with if they want to sell their product. Let's agree on that then, as long as it doesn't affect people with a more powerful computer in a negative way. The 512 limit on avatar skin/clothing is something that can be done because everyone uses the avatar model. It's the only object that's shared between all users. Uploading a 1024 isn't that big of a deal though, since it will never end up on anyones screen. The skin, underwear, tatoos, makeup etc are downloaded from the server to your local machine and will be cached. Your viewer will then bake a single 512x512 texture from those files. That file is sent back to the server which in turn sends it to all other viewers. I'm not saying everyone should use 1024's, since it will take longer to upload and longer to download to your viewer and longer to bake into the smaller combined texture without any quality gain, but it won't lag any people in a graphical way.

So again, check check double check if you are really logged out. It's annoying, but not a "showstopper".

Perrie Juran wrote: Three services....The Dashboard, The Forums & The Marketplace. Signing into one could result in you being signed into another...but it has always been hit or miss with no rhyme or reason. But the really bad part is that signing out of one NEVER signs you out of the other. That's not my experience. Signing in to the forums also logs me in to my dashboard and marketplace, but never the other way around. Logging out of the forums also logs me out of the dash. Closing the browser logs me out of my dash and marketplace (where there's money to be spent/stolen, so that's good), but it doesn't log me out of the forums. I'm the only person using this computer, but on a shared one this could lead to very nasty situations. Might be a good idea to check after signing out if it actually worked.

I don't know why you get the error, I have never seen that and I have never been redirected. What I do notice, always, is that logging into the forums allows me to go to my dashboard without logging in, but not the other way around. Not sure if it is supposed to work like that.

Ayesha Askham wrote: Oh, and while I'm here, this idiotic software let me in to post without my needing to log in. No, I am not logged into any other of the SL webpages. Make sure you sign out. Unlike the dashboard page, the forum doesn't log you out when you close your browser. Maybe that's what happened.

Spinell wrote: Now, I'd like your opinions: *Should I get rid of the details and just go with the simple dress? *Or do you have any suggestions on ways I could reduce the vertices and keep the details? Unfortunately I'd say neither. If adding some details will push the vertexcount over the maximum of 64 000, your dress is probably way too heavy to begin with. The proper way to handle this would be to start over. Use a high poly model to bake your textures for creases and folds to suggest details where there are none. I know you didn't want to hear that, so this is what is seriously NOT the way you should do it, but could help you out. Split your model into seperate pieces and rig them both. In SL the linkset would appear to be one rigged item. Specific ways to simplify your model without losing all the detail are a bit difficult to provide as long as you don't show a wireframe. Btw, if your dress is very simple (you could post a vertex/triangle count), forget all I said and lose the roses and ribbon you have now. It does look like the vertex density of dress and roses are a bit out of tune.

solstyse wrote: Windows DESKTOPS are moving to a mobile STYLE ui. DESKTOP computing is more reliant on the cloud, due to the INFLUENCE of tablets. FEWER DESKTOP APPLICATIONS RESIDE ON THE LOCAL MACHINE. Style and actual use aren't the same. I can honestly say all of my programs are run locally. I could render my 3D images in the cloud, but that's it. Microsoft office 2013 will be available not only as a local application, but also as a SUBSCRIBTION SERVICE in which A SINGLE PURCHASE will licence MULTIPLE PRODUCTS on MULTIPLE ARCHETECTURES. Are you calling the largest software developers in the world wrong? Licensing and actual use aren't the same. I have bought several licenses. This allows me to legally install the licensed software for a certain period, on my local machine. Office 2013 will have some Cloud services, but it will still be on a local machine. Gamers have moved to platforms. Hmmm wonder why. Maybe because to them, buying high end video cards every single year is just a little too... ninety's. If buying gaming PC's is too 90's, I guess history, as usual, is repeating itself. PC gaming dying is as much of a myth as SL dying, we've heard it for years and it's just not the case. Some figures from NVidia (Yes NVidia, so take the figures with a grain of salt as stated in the article) Tom's Hardware Article Plenty of other articles on the subject, just google around a bit. OPERATING SYSTEMS as well as OTHER SOFTWARE is TRENDING TOWARD EFFICIENCY. as is the latest X86 HARDWARE. The very latest Intel and NVidia changes can't be called a trend I think. It could be the start of one though. Still performance went up with these changes, not down. The EXODUS OF HARDCORE GAMERS TO PLATFORMS SUCH AS XBOX AND PS3, combined with the INFLUENCE THAT MOBILE PROGRAMMING is having on DESKTOPS will cause the trend of LOWER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS FOR MANY OF THE SAME FUNCTIONALLITY., EVEN IN DESKTOPS. Which will in turn cause FURTHER DEMAND FOR LOWER COST MACHINES. What exodus and what lower requirements for the same functionality? Even the requirements for Win 8 are virtually the same as those for Win 7. Now, does all the capitalizatioin make it clear that mobile platforms have a serious economic and technological impact on every computer, including desktops? Can you finally understand that is what I'm trying to say? They are no longer seperate, and the future will be that mobile and desktop computing will only grow closer? Now, it's perfectly okay for you to keep living a decade ago instead of looking at current and future trends. It won't hurt you. But LL is a corporation, so they don't have that luxury. Growing closer? Yes. Are they close to each other? Not by a mile. This means it's impossible to make a viewer that does everything the current viewer does for a tablet. Should LL put a lot of efford into making their viewer available to the tablet market? I think so, but with their current open source model, they already kind of do that. TPV's can run on tablets, but those viewers are lacking a lot of functionality. Should LL keep their eye on the mobile market? I think so, but who says they aren't? We can't look into their kitchen. FACT: Desktops are now the smallest and fastest shrinking segment of computing. Low end laptops are the largest and fastest growing. This leads to a stagnation in what technology is considered mosst common. FACT: Non-local software, which BEGAN with smartphones and tablets, has migrated to the desktop environment. FACT: The shrinking divide between ARM and x86 archetecture is driving the sales of low to midrange x86 machines, while the migration of gamers to machines that are less volatile is harming the sale of high end machines. Fact 1. A low-mid end laptop should run the current viewer just fine. I think LL does a pretty good job making the viewer available and functional for the entire spectrum, from low to high end. For systems that perform even lower than low, including tablets, there are TPV's because LL made their code available. Fact 2. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. Fact 3. Again, shrinking? Yes. But ARM technology is at a 2003 PC level, that's a full decade ago. True gamers didn't and don't migrate to ARM devices yet, for the simple reason those things don't run demanding 3D games, at all. Now, if I was to go to your Battlefield 3 forum asking, "How do I optimize my existing hardware so that I can keep playing." I'd probably get something better for an answer than getting the bashing that seems to invariably come with that question here. My point is, and always has been, that NOBODY NEEDS A LECTURE ABOUT UPGRADING THEIR MACHINE. It's as if deciding that when SL is the ONLY thing it can't do, it is most economically viable to wait until there is at least one other thing that they wish it would do better is somehow being called the less responsible decisiion. That's like saying up is down and left is right. And as time goes on, and people use low draw apps on.... you guessed it, THEIR DESKTOPS it will become more and mroe common for SL to be the ONLY thing that makes them unhappy. And most people will sooner just replace a program than a whole computer. BERATING THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE OTHERWISE SATISFIED WITH THERI COMPUTER, EVEN THE OTHER 3D GAMES THEY PLAY, WITH THE SOLE EXCEPTION OF SL WILL ONLY MAKE THEM MORE UNHAPPY WITH SL. It's a simple concept. It really is. Furthermore, the only way that sl will be even remotely close to 3d gaming technology is if, just as developers of 3d gaming technology have done, they optimize their software. If it makes it to that level, then the only way to stay there is to do as they do, and look to the future, not the past. People don't have to upgrade their machine to run SL. A Pentium 4 with decent GPU will run it. Demanding a lower resource hungry SL is asking for a change of SL completely. It's not the engine, it's not the servers, it's not the architecture or anything LL offers that makes SL what it is. It's user created content. That content makes SL SL, both in uniqueness and resource use. The only way to make this available to tablets is (currently) what Lumiya does. Ripping out functionality, lowering visual quality (which isn't top notch to begin with) and accepting very low framerates. I don't think that will do SL any good. At the current pace I figure tablets and low end laptops will be able to run the current viewer in a year or two. So it might be a good idea if LL kept their requirements the same for that period. Something they pretty much did for the past 5 years. Why would they invest everything they have in lowering the load on a system if the market, as you say yourself, will catch up, in less time than it would take to rewrite SL?

One can't deny the portable market is growing fast compared to the desktop market. What I ment to say was the difference between the two is so big, it's impossible to make a cross platform viewer that offers everything we have right now without changing the entire architecture of the system. To illustrate the difference I looked up some numbers in the cross platform CPU benchmark "Geekbench". The A5X in the iPad 3 scores 770, where my pretty high end i7-3770K scores 14000. A 2002 high end Pentium 4 even scores higher than the iPad, with 1150. The difference in graphics processing isn't even taken into account in this benchmark. They're a bit difficult to compare, since the architecture of the GPU's is not the same for a tablet and PC, but looking at the numbers, the difference is staggering. The SGX543 in the iPad3 can process 35 Mtriangles/s, where my (again high end) GTX670 can process 3660. (the 35 is measured @200MHz, while the iPad runs @250MHz and I don't know if the 35 is per core or not, also I don't know if the overdrawing of pixels makes any difference, maybe someone with more technical knowledge can shed some light on this) The iPad will draw 1000 MPixels/s, the GTX670 will draw 30 000. (I'm pretty sure the overdrawing of pixels makes a difference here, so the difference might be 3 times less, but still). The iPad will do 4x6.4=25.6 GFlops, where the GTX670 does about 2500 GFlops. Bus width 64 vs 256 bit. These figures seem to confirm what I suspect. A tablet will do a good job drawing a nice picture on screen, but it is pretty much incapable of doing any serious processing of textured 3D space. Btw, the benchmarks also show the much faster improvements on tablets over PCs. The iPad (jan 2010) scored 470, iPad 2 and 3 (march 2011, march 2012) scored 770, the iPad 4 (oct 2012) scored 1780. It's hard to say how long this will continue. The tablets already draw HD pictures, sharper than I can see on tv from my couch. It all depends on what the manufacturers and market want more out of them. Moving processes from your local machine to the LL servers might be a first step to lower the strain and make it possible to run SL on tablets a bit sooner. But moving all processes except drawing the picture on screen to the servers means LL has to setup the hardware to replace the power of 60 000 users, it will have to completely rewrite server and viewer code and we'd all need a pretty fast internet connection to stream our personal server produced HD movies. In the end I don't care how the picure ends up on my screen, as long as it ends up there smoothly. If that means streaming instead of processing raw data, all I'd need to upgrade is my internet connection, which will be quite a bit faster in a couple of years. I just don't see it happen anytime soon. As for mesh being harder on the network, this is just my own thoughtprocess. I can think of ways to "package" the shape of an SL box or a sculpt that take only a couple of kB, where the information for every single vertex, UV point, vertex skin weight, face, normal etc that define a mesh shape is a whole lot bigger. I don't know the compression rate in SL or its internal format, but a set of dae files(with pretty much only relevant information) for a single shape can be several MB's large. One might notice it on a full mesh sim, I don't know.

If you can log on to these forums, you can also log into SL. Everything is stored on the Linden Lab servers, so don't worry, your account and all your content are still there.

solstyse wrote: Riiight. So the cheap laptops that have far eclipsed the sales of those high powered professional rigs aren't what sl should be developing for. The most common machines out there are the ones that Second Life, of all things should be completelly ignoring. It would be much better if everybody just used professional level computers with graphics cards that cost as much as most full computers sold. That would be great. It really would. Except that development should be for the platforms that are out there. Oh, and everyone NEEDS multiple monitors for SECOND LIFE too! Reality is that for most of us, second life is, well, SECOND. Making SL available to "the masses"? I wonder how you picture this. First of all, a pentium 4 with a high end GPU from the pentium 4 days (6800 Ultra or something) will run SL just fine. Same for a 5 year old medium range GPU (a 8600 GT or something). The 8600GT is about as "powerful" as the current Intel CPU graphics thing, the HD4000 ( a bit difficult to compare, but as far as I can see they are very similair). Of course you can't max out the display settings and you can forget about shadows and other fancy stuff completely. Anyway, you really do not need a high end computer to run SL, try running a modern game or fancy 3D software on those older machines. In order to make SL run on machines with not even the oomph of a 5-10 year old machine, just to make sure the lowest end laptops on sale can handle SL, LL would have to seriously lower the possibilities we have now. If your computer can't handle SL as it is now, either do some serious computer maintainance or (yes I'm going to say it) get some better hardware. Better hardware could be as little as some extra RAM. And as for sl not being a resource hog, Adobe Creative Suite CS runs better on my machine. SL runs slower since the introduction of Mesh on my computer. But my phone, which "ignores" mesh in Lumiya, and has less than half the processor allows me to walk around much easier. Of course SL is a resource hog, that's the very nature of how it's set up. Eliminate everything that makes SL a resource hog and you'll have textures no bigger than 256x256, a draw distance of 32 meters, no tori, spheres, cylinders, sculpties, mesh, but only boxes, maybe even no way of creating things at all, since it's not the objects, but the way builders use them that make SL laggy. Btw, mesh never slowed my SL down, not as far as I could ever tell. SL was laggy before, SL will stay laggy in the future. At least it's ten times better than a couple of years ago. As far as I can think, mesh is only more demanding on your connection than other objects, on your graphics card it is a whole lot friendlier. For example, an SL box has 108 faces to render on its highest LoD, where a mesh box only uses 12. Lumya ignores a whole lot more than just mesh. It's nice for what it is, but you can't seriousy compare it with a full viewer. Furthermore, had my comment about mobile devices been taken in context, OS developers are bringing mobile features to the desktop environment. Ubuntu is adding ARM support. Windows 8 has a mobile style ui, replaces "widgets" with mobile style apps, and is designed to "park" processes not in use so they dont use resources. Intel is focusing on processors that use less electricity (yes, even in desktops) to make use of the same clock speed. Not more, the same. This is all in preparation of ARM's quick development, quick increases in clock speed, and the fact that most ARM devices are subsidized, making thier bi-annual replacement more of a reality to the consumer. So as "retarded" as you think it is, it is set to have a massive effect on computing for the masses. If this is the case, I'd rather wait for the ARM processors to catch up with desktop CPUs and GPUs than seeing LL lowering their requirements AND SL's possibilities. That will take a good couple of years if not decades though. I've said it before in another thread, I think it would be good for SL if LL can make a viewer that will run on mobile devices just as well as it does on desktops, but the two are so far apart, it is not really an option right now. Look, if you're doing professional work, then yeah. Get a professional computer. If you're a hardcore gamer, odds are you're playing a hardcore game, not second life. If you're asking "why does sl suck on my computer," then you're not looking for an answer like, "Upgrade the machine that does every single other thing you use it for well." You're looking for a way to bring the performance of sl to the level of other things you are doing. I think that last statement goes both ways. People who use their computer and therefor SL as a social thing, rather than a graphical one, should accept the fact SL doesn't run at computer game framerates and doesn't have computer game appearance. If you turn down the settings, a lot of cheap laptops will run SL just fine. On the other end people with high end computers should be able to get the most out of SL as possible, with long draw distances, lots of detail and high framerates. If LL limits the creative possibilities in SL, it won't be SL anymore. over the years we have seen "competition" rise and fall. The market may not be that big, but in that market SL is standing out. I'd also like to add I think it's pretty amazing what LL does. My midrange 5 year old computer can run SL fine, my half year old high end computer can be pushed pretty hard by SL, with the resulting graphical enhancements.

Drongle McMahon wrote: My driver version appears to be 9.18.13.697. Just as lazy as I am huh? Anyway, that's what I have installed, one or two versions behind?

You're very welcome and yes fiddling with the render settings and post production enhancements can take just as much time as making the objects.

The only way to get your inworld sculpt looking like it does in Blender, is by using a grid in Blender. Unlike mesh, all sculpt's vertex coordinates are limited to whole numbers between 0 and 255. If a coordinate in Blender is not on this grid, the sculpt exporter will move the vertex slightly. There's nothing you can do about this, since sculpts use color channels. What you can do to make your life easier, is importing your sculpt map back into Blender. You should have the exact same model as SL will show. (Don't forget to use a lossless format). Then scale your object to 255,255,255 meters, inches centimeters or any other unit. Now you can move the seperate vertices one unit at a time. When you have a smooth result, you can scale your object back to see what the result is. This last step makes no difference for your final sculptmap though.

I see the same results. Never noticed it before, probably because I don't use cylinders that often and probably because if you apply a texture to the walls it's not nearly as visible, if at all. If it's any help, I'm running the official viewer, gpu is an NVidia gtx670.

I don't think the occlusion method used in SL can take normals into account at all. I don't know a whole lot about the subject, but I found this: Wikipedia SSAO It doesn't hold all the answers, but it is pretty informative I thought.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Either way, they viewer ao appears to ignore the normals. I haven't tested this, but for occlusion there are different rules than the shading where the normals are important. Did you upload a model with very few sides? The less sides, the sharper the corner between two adjacent faces (I suspect this angle is the main factor in occlusion) I'd expect to see some occlusion then. If it also happens on a cylinder with "many" sides, who knows how many "many" might be, I would call it a bug. With all set to solid shading, the inside ao has ribs, and the outside is completely smooth, as I expected. When I set it to all solid shading, the inside becomes completely smooth, respecting the smooth shading, but now the outside has very faint ribs! Surely that's not supposedv to happen? I suspect you mean "smooth" where I made your "solid" bold. What you describe doesn't make any sense to me, the second part that is, it might be a Blender bug. EDIT This is in 3ds max, it's the viewport so the quality isn't perfect. The two left cylinders (or tubes really) are set to smooth on inside and outside, the one on the right had no smoothing groups (same as "solid" in Blender I guess) when I baked the occlusion. The far left one looks like one would like it. the one in the middle has the effect you noticed on the inside, but not very noticable. On the right it's very clear, there's even a light line across the face where the quad is triangulated. (the black zigzag is not on the map, that's a viewport shadow effect). On the outside all look like one would expect though. I suspect the bake is bugged in Blender. For SL, I think it's what one can expect in a realtime environment. Even the maps here which took a good couple of seconds on a high end computer aren't perfect. For baked maps you can do "the usual", add a subdivision modifier when baking your textures to get a better effect. MORE EDIT There are some AO settings in the debug list, called "RenderSSAO". Maybe you can play with those a bit.

Make sure to use the 2013.2 or higher fbx plugin. As far as I can remember my 3ds Max Design 2013 came with 2013.2 as default exporter, but 3ds Max 2013 had an older version. Versions 2013.0 and 2013.1 won't work.

All there is to know about exporting unrigged mesh is in the very first section of the wiki, the part with the version numbers. Different versions (of the autodesk fbx plugin) give different results. The 2011.3 version should work for all 3ds Max versions up to 2011, the 2013.2 or 2013.3 should work with 3ds Max 2012 and 2013. Read the part about the material and object names for the 2013 plugin, although as far as I know if these cause issues, you won't be able to upload at all. Going by the fact the LL (Beta) viewer showed no issues with your model (Did you use the beta viewer? I now read you used the beta grid, but you don't say what viewer), I'd blame Frestorm. Another possibility, although less likely, is the dae conflict is solved in the beta release. Without knowing the version number of 3ds Max and its fbx plugin and without knowing if the official release of the viewer lets you upload without issues, it's a bit hard to say anything specific.

Not the best tutorial for two reasons. One, it's not a realtime environment with a baked texture. Two, I don't think the render in cycles will let you bake any textures, NVidia iray (which as far as I know kind of works the same) won't do it anyway. Nice glass though. I think a better way to fake a bottle texture for SL is by not using a render at all. Probably easier to take some pictures of a real bottle and make the texture in photoshop or gimp.

MasterDiabolique wrote: it would be VERY VERY VERY appreciated if someone could do a step by step quick guide of how to succesfully export/import mesh from 3DS max over to SL... or point me to a guide you know about. Wiki About the difference between the LL viewer and Firestorm, for mesh uploads I always use the latest official release by LL. From what I've heard Firestorm gives issues every now and then, some of the the most anti-LL viewer people use the official one for mesh uploads.