Nine Years of SL Evolution, as Seen from Shipley Sim
This is what the old Second Life simulator of Shipley looks like, in 2003, 2009, and 2012 (last night, to be exact), as seen from my small cliffside property there. I took the SL photo in preparation for a talk I'm giving next week, and to my surprise, the latest update to the official viewer works fairly well with my Alienware. (Which is often not the case.) But I was able to turn my graphics settings to Ultra with 300 meter draw distance, get some nice dynamic shadows and depth of focus action going, and while frame rate fell to just a few per section, I didn't crash. (Small victory, but a solid one.)
Love this view, even though it's changed so much over the years. However, note the nightclub (owned by an RL jazz singer called Sinatra Cartier, I believe) has stayed just about the same in all that time. Click below for an embiggenized version of the latest photo:
Hey is that guy in the photo wearing the same clothes as in 2003? ;)
glad to hear your machine is finally playing nice with SL!
Posted by: Val Kendal | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 11:33 AM
Well, nice-er. Still pretty sputtery!
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 12:29 PM
Don't worry Val, they get washed every time he falls in the water. ;-)
Posted by: Bixyl Shuftan | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 12:50 PM
Um, I owe you an apology, Hamlet. I didn't click through all of the links in the other thread and leaped to a conclusion I shouldn't have. I'm sorry.
Posted by: Archangel Mortenwold | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 01:47 PM
No worries!
Posted by: Hamlet Au | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 01:53 PM
It's really interesting to see how things have changed, and how the appearance of SL has also changed. Thanks.
Posted by: Hitomi Tiponi | Monday, September 17, 2012 at 02:21 PM
WB to the party!
Now grab a bike and do some cross sims on mainland, ill bet you will find it much smoother then on old times:)
Posted by: foneco zuzu | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 03:17 AM
Oh yes, Foneco, as sailor and biker in SL I can confirm that sim borders have lost lots of their horror lately. I do some kind of lenghty tours along continental routes and find it pleasantly smooth.
In sailing I did a long tour around SL's northern mainlands (Nautilus, Corsica, Gaeta V) of several hundred sims and there it's the same. Only dangers today are stupid n00bs with their banlines up and overzealous security orbs.
With the useless pathfinding crap now it became a bit worse again. In typically LL fashion they just can't keep the grid running without problems. It's against their developers nature or something. "It's running too smooth, fellows, now let's surprise our customers with the next showstopping invention! That'll teach 'em not to trust in LL ever again. Harr harr!!!"
Posted by: Orca Flotta | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 03:31 AM
Hamlet, what was your draw distance in 2009?
Can you get the shot on Ultra at 512 meters distance out of your computer?
I'm curious about what happened to the mountains in the distance and the huge castle that are missing in the 2012 shot.
Posted by: Chimera Cosmos | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 03:59 AM
We're still trying to pry Ham out of that ice-cream suit. I think he has plans to be the next Tom Wolfe (giggle).
I remember Sinatra Cartier from my early days in 2007-2008, when he often sang at Frank's Place. Good to know he's still around. (Lord, in less than a month, I'll be 5 in SL.)
Posted by: Harper Ganesvoort | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 06:16 AM
Path finding did made terrible things, but most of the bugs of it are finnaly being fixed!
The problem is:
How many will optimize their regions as LL wants?
How many will use its resources?
Still some things are good now.
No more problems when crossing from a region that has it disabled (Most Private sims as most of the Land Barons that keep the juice floading just didn't wanted the hasle of the 1st weeks of the path finding rollover and did wqaht we did on our regions, just disabled it!) to mainland or blake sea, where at least one LAnd Baron keep it enabled!
So now, at least since 2 weeks ago, cross sims are back almoat to normal, even if i dare to say, it has as much to do with rhe viewer any uses then with path finding the problems some find (See Yordie strugle!)
On that i can testify, as i did several trips of hundreds of sims crossed, that only 1 viewer works for me and My love with full graphics (Hamlet droll if i tell you we both use ultra settings, 256m draw distance, shadows and deferred rendering, tone mapping and high precision gamma and still got 40 fps on.... as a example, the Spirit exibition last day! Only one way to go, NIran v 1.47!)
Posted by: foneco zuzu | Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 08:19 AM
rember Sinatra Cartier meet him singing , he join before me 22 days .
Posted by: fire cartier | Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 07:34 AM