Second Life's New "Avatar Maximum Complexity" Feature Illustrates Paradox of User-Created Content

Linden Lab just posted a Second Life feature update with many items, including the WebGL/Valhalla project I mentioned last week. Next item most interesting to me is something called "Avatar Maximum Complexity", which is this:

A new *Avatar Maximum Complexity* control lets you prevent expensive-to-render avatars from lagging you; any avatar over the limit is displayed as a solid color rather than rendering in full detail. A default limit is set based on the rendering performance of your system. You'll also get a notice when your own rendering complexity changes, and an indication when you're over the limit of too many of the avatars around you.

So another words, if an avatar is wearing a boatload of intricate and/or poorly textured items, you can opt to display them as a featureless figure. If it's implemented well, this could be an important feature to improve overall performance. At the same time, the very fact that it's necessary makes me sadly smile, because it reflects a paradox with user creativity in Second Life that's existed from the beginning:

By making Second Life as open a creative platform as possible, Linden Lab unleashed incredible amounts of inventiveness that continues to be impressive (if overwhelming). At the same time, because it is so open, there's also abundant opportunities for creativity which is overly complex and laggy. (In fact, many creators compete with each other through complexity, trying to out-do each other with the intricacy of their avatars.) Making Second Life a showcase for creativity -- with a lot of creativity many users can't even see.

Update, 2:40PM: Reminds me of how founding Linden Hunter Walk described the problem for my book:

“Second Life is supposed to be about limitless opportunity,” Walk remembers them thinking, “but you can’t be a 10,000 foot dragon. We stood back and we said, ‘Wow, this is Prisoner’s Dilemma.’ Like the first time somebody wants to be a 150 foot giant, then everybody’s going to want to be a 150 foot giant, so all of a sudden you’re in this out-of-whack world.”

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Comments

[zz bottom]

It is a easy way to avoid having to spend a lot of bucks on new servers, processors and so on, sad times are coming till the end:(

[Cube Republic]

It's more to do with the inadequacies of a nearly 15 year old system. I don't say this in a mean way, it's just as it is. There's no way to wear clothes without alpha layer work round. Some of these mesh onion skin avatars are made of a tonne of triangles to work round these problems. Mesh avatars are often comprised of multiple parts (head, feet, nails, weener etc) which all cause extra draw calls. The shaders are poor, so there's a trend towards geometric detail rather than using bump maps. This is compounded by a non uniform experience across the board, so what runs well on someones geforce is making someone suffer on their intel HD graphics, because all the heavy work is being done client side. There is something in poorly optimized content, but to be fair, without triangle counts (rather than Li), there's little incentive for some content creators to learn low poly skills.

[Ciaran Laval]

One of the problems with user generated content remains that one man's meat is another man's poison.

With issues like avatar complexity, there are people whose systems will handle them just fine, so they won't see the issue, well to be fair, to them, there isn't an issue.

Therefore, where do you draw sensible baselines, especially as technology improves and people are able to render more complex creations more easily.

I'm sure Linden Lab will have picked up some tips and tricks for Project Sansar, but it's difficult to put them into Second Life.

Putting these solutions in the hands of individual users is the right thing to do.

[Jessica Pixel]

I am looking forward to Jelly Babies. I think they're hilarious!

[Harper Beresford]

Didn't they have this same thing in the ARC and then people were running around policing each other? Yikes!

[Iggy]

@ Cube: Weener lag.

@ Jessica: Jelly Babies.

Where but in SL?

[Cube Republic]

lol weener complexity. It's not the size that counts, it's how well it performs.

[Nalates]

ARC and ACI are very different. ARC was hidden and we had no easy control over whether a high ARC avatar rendered or not.

ACI is more of a free market fix. We are all free to adjust our limit for what we will render. That leaves everyone free to wear what they want. No cycles off my CPU.

The viewer gives you info like Consumer Reports does. So, I doubt we'll have ACI Nazis like we did with ARC.

[David Grizzly Smith]

I have (a) a very capable graphics setup in my laptop, and (b) the same avatar in much the same clothes a friend helped me create in 2009. So, to you former Fido folk, I will neither be excessively annoying or excessively annoyed.

At least about this issue. ;-)

Griz

[irihapeti]

what Ciaran said

if I had a 980 I don't think it would be good if I was platform-capped to a 560 or less

+

also what Perrie Juran said over on the SL forums

that what would be useful is the object LI being available to us before we buy it

[lord]

Personally, I don't think this feature will have the impact LL is hoping for and that they wasted too many resources to bring it. The one factor that LL always seems to forget is how the user uses SL. Nobody wants to see jelly babies...that isn't what they are in SL for. They want to communicate with one another in bodies that they find interesting. Jelly babies aren't interesting and while some might at first turn this feature on, it won't take long before they turn it back off. Instead of using their resources on band-aids, they need to spend their money and resources on fixing the base problems with the platform...which I understand they think Sansar will take care of, but unless they figure out a way to port SL as one of the many experiences available on the Sansar platform...it isn't going to happen without a significant rewrite of SL.

[Voice]

To Lord

Second Life does get ported over in 2022.

The world is wiped out in 2034 by a rock the size of Texas slamming into the south china sea.

A good decade of success at one point with high fidelity successor & linden virtual inc. offering touch gates between systems for those plugged in.

Both systems go on to be global leaders with linden moving its Headquarters to London UK.

while Philips next CEO moves the company to an island in the pacific to become its own country.

[Amanda Dallin]

" . . . so all of a sudden you’re in this out-of-whack world.”

Really.. will never happen in SL. *poker face*

Second Life wouldn't have lasted 2 years without user created content.

[gabzo]

people stop criticizing it.

This has nothing to do with ll's servers but user generated content.

The idea is not to limit people but to be more considerate, and if you're not you're not going to be visible so others can enjoy sl. That's it, that's all.

I for one loooove this feature.Most people I will render normally but the feature is for those who exaggerate. Ones who's avatars are so laggy it lags everyone on the sim

and not because the servers can't handle it because they can just fine but because it's so laggy that peoples computer can't handle it (ever heard of grapics crashers).

The point is to be less obnoxious and to allow users to not have heads that are lag heavy. To make content creators more aware. ANy game will optimize their mesh and sl has to as well.

All this does is makes it more sensible and makes it so you can avoid over the top laggers. as technology gets better and we have better computers we can move the number up and makes less optimized models without worrying as much.

[Sunny Windstorm]

I have to ask why they started mesh in the first place if it was going to create such a mess for all of us.