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Mesh + Script explanation please!


Medhue Simoni
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It seems to me that many are annoyed, shocked, or dumbfounded by this revelation. Can we have a bit more information and why. Currently, we don't even have a viewer that can calculate the memory usage of mono, but we are going to penalize those that use a script in a mesh. Scripts do many, many different things, is LL saying that every script has the same impact on a sim?

To make a small point here, let's talk about what we were told when mono was announced. We were told that mono script's memory usage could be lower than an LSL script. Many of us created our build in a way to separate out different mono scripts to only do the task that was needed, hence resulting in more scripts, but in theory, alot less memory. We got shafted and now, years later, we have to redo things because we still don't have a system that shows the memory usage correctly.

Now, we have mesh, in which many of us assumed that using mesh for builds was a viable thing. Out of nowhere now, we're told adding a script to a mesh will cost us. Where did this come from? Why was this not talked about before? How does LL even know what the script is doing? Is it right to put a blanket restriction on something that could be used in numerous ways? Again, I feel shafted.

Please explain LL?

To my fellow creators, please comment on your thoughts about this issue.

 

OH, and I would like to point out, that we already have restrictions on script usage on our sims. What is the point of adding another?

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Guess we will have to wait till this hits main grid then wait for the out cry. The not mixing normal prims and mesh now has me even more dumbfounded.

Basically LL would love to put all these restriction on all prims and sculpts but now is only being applied when a mesh is involved in the equation. All the years of careless adding of features has finally caught up and they are now trying to make up for it. At least this is my fealing.

I am affraid of building anything now. Imagine a new person building a mesh project then they add a Torus to the build.

Kind of hard to have prim budgets when you don;t know what the cost will be till you get the whole thing linked and script.

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My 2 prim mesh kettle, that should in my opinion count as only one prim because it is so low in triangle count, shot up to 3 prims when I added a script to make steam rise from the stew.

I am not a happy camper. I will defnitely remake this kettle as a sculpty.

What if I add my kettle sculpty with a script to a linkset with mesh? Would that sculpty script then add an additional prim?

What I would like to know is if script number or complexity adds to the prims, or if you get one additional prim count no matter how many scripts you add and how complex or long they are. What about in a linkset? Add a script or ten scripts or thirty, and they still would count as one prim?

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"What if I add my kettle sculpty with a script to a linkset with mesh"

Answer may be it depends. I just tried this - take a sculpty with a default new script. It has no PE. (it mas Physics weight 1.0, Display weight 26). Link to a mash cube that has PE=2 (physics weight 0.4, Display bweight 23), with the sculpty as the root. The linkset has PE=7.0, which does not change if you delete the script (physics weight 2.2, display weight 72). Now link thewm the other way round, with the mesh cube as the root. Now the linkset has PE=3 (physics weight 2.2, display weight 75), no change on deleting the script. Now start again. Take the same sculpty without its script, and link to the cube, with the cube as root. Now there is no PE, although the sculpty noow has PE=2 if you look at it with Edit Selected (!! physics weight 2.2, display weight 75). Finally add a new script to the sculpty.  The linkset now gets a PE=2 (physics weight 2.2m display weight 6 !!it's gone down??).

So, take your pick, 2, 3 or 7. :matte-motes-confused:

I think it may be a while before all this is working as it is supposed to. To be honest, I am too confused to know even what to put in a jira.

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  • Lindens

As documented here: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Costs_and_fees

Making an object that uses the new accounting system be scripted or making it physical will cause the object to be referred to as 'dynamic'. This means that we believe that the object is more likely to generate ObjectUpdate messages to the surrounding users, which impacts the amount of work the server has to do. It is a very rough calculation as it is not possible to predict how many messages a particular object is bound to generate over a period of time.

Please note that this means that the "server weight" of an object is not meant to approximate the amount of script time or memory that an object uses up, only how likely it is to cause changes that will impact the message queue.

Please note that whether an object (aka linkset) is "dynamic" is a binary value. It does not depend on the number of scripts in an object, or whether its physical *and* scripted or just one of the two. Also note that this will only impact the server weight portion of the computation. Thus, whether an object is scripted or not will not affect the "prim equiv" value of an object that causes more stress on the physics or download (streaming) aspects of the system. This is why you're seeing an impact with small, standalone objects that are not geometrically complex, but it is not affecting more complicated objects (linksets).

 

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Once this is all worked out and definitive mesh-weights are calculated reliably, I wouldn't mind if complex mesh and/or adding scripts did decrease the actual prim-weight of land.

But of course, to compensate, the standard land allowance should be increased to 1024, as SL land is virtually infinite.

It would be about time anyway... what.. with 64m prims coming too. My intuition says it may be gonna happen. What.. intuition lying again.. Oh well.

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Really trying to understand this, but I don't see how trying to combine script processing cost with visual rendering cost is anything but a bad idea.

Please tell me this isn't going to only apply to mesh objects? Because that would be actively discouraging efficient content creation by my current understanding of all this.

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Do we have a small parcel anywhere in the Aditi mesh enabled regions?  If not, could you make one?  I want to test what will happen as we do any of the following close to the prim limit of a parcel:

* Resize a mesh object larger, so the total prim count exceeds the parcel limit.

* Link example mesh and sculpt objects which are 25 + 1 prim separately, and 29 combined

* Unlink other example mesh objects which are 4 prims linked, and 6 prims unlinked.

What I expect will happen is stuff will be returned.  When applied to the main grid it will cause much gnashing of teeth, as right now users do not get stuff returned when doing resize, link, or unlink of items.

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

Why was this not talked about before?


 

Good question! Looks like they hide the "nasty" stuff untill to the last minute. And hey, what's the last thing we have no idea what it will be in the end? Right, the upload fee :matte-motes-big-grin-squint:. Maybe this will finally kill mesh anyway.

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It should not be more than $10 L per PE. If it comes in at 7 prims, then it should cost 70 L max.

That would be reasonable. But perhaps they want to put any company deficits onto mesh, just like they are trying to compensate for previous bad decisions with tori, scripts, and sculpts.

I would be very surprised at this point if the cost appears to be reasonable.

Is this is a test of just how much they can shove down our throats and expect us to take?

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This is a bit frustrating. Much like trout swimming up stream.

For a breif moment here, let's think about why SL might not be as exciting to people not like us. If you are just coming to SL looking for something fun to do, yeah, you can find some really fun things. How long will it take to find that? At least given your specific likes. Gamers and avid game players are looking for the excitement. When they come to SL, most of what they see is just pretty to look at. Very little in SL goes beyond sitting on a poseball.

SL can be much more tho, and I think alot of people are finding clever ways of adding in interaction wherever they can. Much of this takes alot of time and commitment. Plus, we also have the task of trying to keep things as simple and easy for the users, ontop of the limits we have for scripts on the sims. Adding another restriction to mesh, specifically around a mesh actually doing something, is penalizing us for trying to make SL fun. I mean, is that the whole goal of LL to keep SL a world of statues? Granted some really nice statues!:matte-motes-big-grin:

The reality of the situation is, that we are going to get double whammied on scripts whenever we try to use any, no matter how well we script the dang items. Me, ok, I'm not a coder, but I think I have a very good coder as a partner, and we have talked extensively about what we can and can't do in SL. Believe me too, he thinks there are many more things we can't do that I know we can. :smileywink: Why, cause almost everything is just a modified copy of another. 1 little change to a script and a totally different animation, and you have a whole new line of products.

And personally, I have no problems with the current limitations of scripts on a sim, and ...... the way I like to create things, I use very few prims. Right now, I own a mainland sim with 5 stores on it. Mine takes up the vast majority of the sim, and the whole sim is using just more than half our alloted prims, with a furniture store being the 2nd largest parcel. So prims are not an issue for me at all. But ..... it is an issue for almost every1 else.

Putting even a 1 prim jump in cost is going to push creators away from making their builds interactive. There are ways to make things to have almost no impact on the sim. Our current restrictions on sim, the biggest being LAG, is more than enough to keep us from going crazy with scripts.

I would also like to point out that 1 of the biggest complaints that I read about BM was "what can you do there". In SL, we have many replies to this, BUT WE NEED MORE, NOT LESS.:matte-motes-big-grin-wink:

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I am still curious as to when the PE is calculated. Is it only updated after a prim is updated in the linkset or the prims itself? Right now we have to change the size or re-rez it. Or will this change and update as soon as a script is added?

The reason I ask is something could be made interactive for a short time such as changing the color on a house. Then the script could be removed reducing its impact. I have not tried this yet and would take a little work to setup and probably more script than just to leave the script in there and set it to not running. Which brings up another good point. Setting the script to not running does not reduce its cost.

The part I find annoying if the script is added to one prim it should only effect the cost of that prim and not the whole link set. This would force creators to be more efficient with their builds keeping their script usage down even more. Right now if you add one script there is no stopping the person from adding more in other prims. Me I try my hardest to keep script usage down to one and now with all the link function it can be done very easy. But I still see people putting a script in prim to change its color and another for size and so on. Not all people understand scripting and just have packages of tools which in many cases are pretty horrible. 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

...Putting even a 1 prim jump in cost is going to push creators away from making their builds interactive...


This.

I'm not the most gifted sculptor or builder around, I can make better looking meshes than I ever could sculpting or playing prim-lego. Thats not my big deal though, every product I've sold I marketed on the merits of its interactive nature..  penalize me for scripting an item and why shouldnt I just stick with the heavier load on the sim (more tris) and worse looking sculpted solution to preserve the interactivity without the impact on my customers parcel primcount?

You have drawn a bead on your foot here, Nyx. if you can convince anyone in management not to pull the trigger I would very much advise that you do so.

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The idea of penalizing a mesh by doubling its cost for even ONE script (which might be as "intense" as opening a door on click every once in a while) is ridiculous.

As suggested in another thread, I can understand that the desire to limit excessive scripting is there. But then introduce a treshold. Lets say a certain number of scripts per prim on average (with a hard cap of say, 16 scripts) act as treshold before the prim cost starts to rise. So if you have a low-prim mesh object with one script in, hey, no problem. If you have a low prim object wit 50 bad scripts in it? problem.

These tresholds arent final, but just a suggestion. Even if that gets shot down, doubling the cost is wrong wrong wrong. A steady, decimal point increase is the way to go here. You are introducing this complex system, yet seem to rely on rounded prim weights. Lets just go decimal, and maybe have a script add +0.1 PEwts to an object. or maybe 0.25 or whatnot. This would, however, be easier to do if you had variable script  memory. that way, a small 4kb script could add 0.1PE, whilst a 512kb monster could add a full prim or two. There has to be some gratification for scripting efficiently.

With the current outlook, hardly anyone will bother with mesh, even though it can lower server load. And scripted meshes are dead in the water already by these standards. Enforcing standards to encourage more efficient resource use is good, but these numbers punish everyone, not just the wasteful builders, I´m sorry.

 

Take my line of work for example. I spent months perfecting a system for adult accessories, so that they use the fewest number of scripts, and not a single prim more than absolutely necessary. If i wanted to use mesh for that, my prim count would suddenly double out of nowhere. If i wasnt working on attachments, and rather say, furniture, i would be upset to say the least, to have my efforts tossed aside like this. Or take a look at my mate´s work. He has spent weeks leraning mesh, creating a nicely detailed, yet efficiently modeled table. It eats a whopping 16 prims, with sculpt torture, it could probably be brought down to 7 to 8. It would have 5 times as much triangle density, but it would still be cheaper. awesome, isnt it, how you encourage efficient building with this system? Sorry for the sarcasm there. I do want to be constructive, but some decisions do baffle me. SL is at the verge of a breakthrough, and it shouldnt end up being a negative one. So reconsider your decisions, imho.

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