SL Mesh Coming Very Soon, But in Very Limited Fashion

Mesh objects are likely coming to Second Life very soon, in "Days, rather than weeks”, company developer Oz Linden reportedly said, but the release will be a very limited one. I've heard this personally from several sources, and just today SL blogger Nalates Urriah found a Linden Wiki page looking for volunteers to test mesh. (Click here to see it.) The limitations to this release to be tested are many, to wit:

If you move rezzed mesh objects from a new mesh-enabled version to a sim running the current release version, they may be destroyed or broken permanently. This applies to attachments as well as objects like vehicles, etc. If you attempt to rez mesh objects on a regular sim, it may rez invisible or look like a regular prim. During this phase of the rollout, we may alter the Prim count for mesh objects and cause returns. The returns are not guaranteed to be mesh objects, they might be anything in the parcel. We may do rollbacks and deploys with little or no notice; our focus is not short-term sim stability but rather long term code stability as we prepare to deploy this grid-wide.

So for quite awhile, mesh will be a rare and alien creature on the SL grid, gradually emerging over time (if technical problems don't impede its appearance.) But when it finally arrives to stay, it will be grand. Check out this video by mesh beta tester Timmi Allen, to see:

Video via Mal Burns' Vopod stream.

Update, 12:45PM: The Lindens just published another mesh update here. Among the requirements for mesh developers: "[I]f you have never given us billing information, you'll need to enter it into your account... [it's] an important step in establishing direct relationships with content creators who will be working in mesh."

Comments

[jo yardley]

Nice but as you say, Mesh is something that will take a while to come to everyone and then it will take an even longer while before I can even try and figure out how it all works.
I am more interested in bigger sized prims they have been predicting to come out at the same time as mesh.
But when o when?
Bigger prims is something I can work with right away and that will change my sim within hours, freeing up more valuable prims for me to build with.

[too-Poo-of-a-Cat-for-Maya]

I'm with Jo on this one.

Us regular folk, down here among the masses, we'z be want'n the big prims. Dat der mesh-stuffz; dats fer U folk's can work wit dah complimacated programs like blender or afford dah $10,000US for Maya.

We peasants lack such luxuries, and just want bigger poseballs. :)

[Jjccc]

i have been downloading the mesh beta pretty much daily while it has been developed i have sent in loads of jiras loads of forum ideas on it and it still doesnt work properley if it is realeased with out fixing a few of the major errors in the system there are going to be alot of angry ppl calling the mesh viewer a waist of time right from the start and it will flop out of the starting gate, ok fix runtime error memory leaks, fix the ability to be crashed at the will of any griefer, fix voice by being able the level out all red linning voices at the hit of one button, fix the wind light so you can toggle from on sky to annother as you can do on bottom right in phoenix viewer, then fix all the other problem to because it is far from being ready for release. if a job is worth doing do it right and dont try to flob a lame ass attempt on us as we wont appreciate it. But i guess you will anyway and we will have to endure it

[too-Poo-of-a-Cat-for-Maya]

@Jjccc: Your comments about Voice, Windlight, and griefers - have any relation to something special with Mesh or announced as coming at the same time as Mesh, or just general unrelated concerns?

I'm guessing meshes are causing the runtime memory error you refer to?

[Ann Otoole InSL]

2011: Lawyers attack SL this fall.

[Adeon Writer]

In related news, the new 64 meter Max prim size for prims, sculpts, and meshes is here. RIGHT NOW. You'll need to go to these mesh regions to make the larger prims, but after pocketing them to inventory they can be smuggled to the rest of the grid with no issue, were they will currently behave as custom sized megaprims.

[jo yardley]

Ooooh exciting! Which mesh regions?

[Brookston Holiday]

From the wiki page linked to, under DONT'S:"Specifically, don't drive vehicles between the micro-channel regions and other regions. It may not work as expected, and will go away with full rollout. "

Does that imply that with full rollout you won't be able to drive mesh vehicles across regions!??!? Anyone else have a better read on this?

[Nathan Adored]

I think they might be trying to say: Don't drive a mesh-based vehicle off a mesh-enabled sim to a neighboring non-Mesh-enabled sim, or crazy things might happen.

As for making custom megaprims, I actually did that today. I have a set of catwalks in my skybox that I couldn't get existing megaprims of that exact size and shape at the time I originally built my skybox (large chunks of my skybox are still made with megaprims, tho...), so I'd had to use 10 meter sections instead to make those catwalks, both platform and guardrails. So today I went and determined exactly the X, Y, and Z I needed to replace all those 10 meter sections, and then went to one of those Mesh Sandbox ## sims to make them. I have now replaced the platforms part, and will tackle switching out the guardrails with their already-prepared replacement prims probably tomorrow.

Probably save me 30, maybe 40 prims.

[Danielle]

A mesh avatar is already for sale on the Marketplace (and probably other stuff I have not discovered yet), but at this time it only works on the Mesh Sandbox regions on the Main Grid and Aditi (and any other main grid regions that have been added to the mesh test):

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Full-Body-Mesh-Avatar-Female-Boxed/2500129