SL Should Adopt VRChat's Avatar Rankings -- And SLers Should Be Less Like Barbie, More Like Elizabeth Warren (Comment of the Week #2)

Great conversation in this post praising VRChat's new avatar optimization rankings (from Excellent down to Very Poor, for avatars over 70,000 triangles) -- including this great comment from reader "Finni Graves", who agrees with reader "Cake" that Second Life should adopt these rankings:

I've invested a lot of my SL esteem in the whole crazy avatar adornment scene. Then one day, after trying to navigate a horrible shopping event, I've got to stop being so selfish and hogging so much resource. What's the point of looking good, if I don't feel good? These ridiculous mesh bodies, heads, hair. clothes, and accessories are literally sucking the life out of our SL. We must simplify ourselves because this whole hamster wheel isn't working.

Cake is right. All of us need to be graded harshly and it is our duty to ask ourselves, " do I really need this?". It's also the duty of content creators to make consumers aware of the optimization of their products and to guarantee it. They should have to be graded too, at least on Marketplace. 

Finni says SL's many fashion bloggers should advocate optimized avatars and stop promoting resource heavy avatars which degrade the performance for everyone around them. And then, notably, likens these reforms to the plans put forth by the US Presidential candidate who's leading the charge to reform the American economy by penalizing people whose greed hurts society and the environment:

Bloggers may be one of the most important links in our chain. It's time they "just say no" to wearing and promoting these incredibly selfish products. They need to take their cue from Cake and start being consumer advocates and stop being playground pushers of these terrible products. We must start seeing ourselves less of Barbie and more of Elizabeth Warren. Cake has really taken a brave step to lead us to better optimization and it's our duty to follow. I look forward to the exciting optimization resource that [Cake's SL fashion blog] Juicy Bomb has become. We all must become the change we want to see.

Most. Unexpected. Elizabeth Warren reference. Ever. 

But it's not incorrect: When I asked Ebbe Altberg why Linden Lab doesn't do more to encourage avatar optimization, he kind of shrugged and said "Users are going to do what users are going to do." Imagine Elizabeth Warren's response if a car company CEO said that about users of his gas guzzling, polluting vehicles!

In another comment, Cake argues that this kind of reform which not only not hurt the virtual economy, but create a new market for it -- while also adding another level of fun for both creators and users.

Yes, there's a market for avatar creation and optimization. People offer services for uploading avatars for those who don't want to do anything with Unity (a few clicks will earn you $50 basically), or a full custom avatar rigged for $300.

That avatar I created in the picture [above] was done with a free program called Vroid. It's very popular with Japanese VRChat users especially. They sell clothing (or give away free ones) on a Pixiv-controlled site called Booth. The hair you see there, I custom created it. The program is also something you can use to create hair AND export it into SL on its own. It's a hair creation program for SL avs too!

I could learn to optimize my avs further, but at most I concern myself with combining the materials and coming up with costume design. That's where I have the most fun.

So... Green New Deal for Avatars 2020?

Comments

[yasmeen]

thank you
this is cool

[irihapeti]

i will say it again. Relying on social approbation is doomed. Green New Deal (environmentals) in any world relies on regulated control

people who are concerned with impacting the environmental experience of others don't need limits, they already limit their excesses. People who don't care are those who do need to be limited

a way to do this is Avatar Impact allowance. Yes you can wear those pieces with high impact that you love, you just have to fit them within your total allowance

Elizabeth Warren would get this. Elizabeth Warren champions regulation to curtail excess

[AmandaMagick]

I once saw an avatar who was 8 million max complexity. It was almost like she was a virtual black hole sucking in everyone's frame rates from within about half a sim LOL I blogged it because it was too funny!!! https://magickthoughtssl.com/2016/12/28/%E2%9D%A4firestorms-maximum-complexity-running-scripts-and-you%E2%9D%A4/

[Aislinn]

When I read and seen the example avatar, I admit, it sounds like what is being asked here is that we roll back the avatars to the state that they were, back in 2005. Yes, there are avatars that are literally massive resource black holes, as Amanda mentioned. Awareness on how to avoid that level of resource hogging would be great, but at the end of the day, consumers demanded more detail, more realism, and more versatility for their avs, and creators complied with those demands. I'm not going to disagree with Ebb's view either because he is right. The consumers are going to do what makes them happiest and if that means using a mesh body, and mesh head that is more demanding on the system, they are not going to think of the system but of how happy they are on the way their avatar looks. Would I like to roll my avatar back to the 2005's and have painted on hair and look more like a cartoon? No, I will never do it. As for this rating system, it sounds like a system that has the appearance and the feeling of being very judgemental and controlling.

[Shadowhaunt]

I think people better get themselves familiar with max complexity setting in their viewer. And maybe consider upgrading their computers.
Seeing potato quality avatars hurts my eyes much more than well detailed ones hit my viewer performance. It's 2019 now, c'mon.

[Penny]

Just think, what if all of of this beauty we imagine we are indulging ourselves in is nothing more than our version of a gold toilet?

There was a time when we all imagined ourselves beautiful with a much simpler life. Everything about us worked. Our clothing was more fun and creative. We were more free. Do you even care what other people look like? Does their layers and layers of mesh make you happier? Is this all simply about our own excess?

There is a very pretty woman tucked inside of Elizabeth Warren if you really look at her, but she's not concerned about being a doll baby. She turns her energy outward, not to a mirror. It doesn't make her any less beautiful, but it sure makes her a lot more powerful.

Maybe we need to start asking ourselves what it means to be a SL woman? Is our best selves really nothing more than gigantic lumps, smooth lines, and a good coat of shellac at the expense of everything else? Is it beautiful or vulgar?

[JohnC]

Whereas allowing people to make money from the creation of clothing and accessories for an Avatar is essential. LL should always have retained control of the Avatar itself.
They should have responsibly, from the very start, had a dedicated team that constantly upgraded and made sure the basic avatar was as good as it could possibly be, not the abysmal joke it always has been.
They have always acted as if the avatar is an add-on to the the product, when in fact the avatar is all that most people care about, as I have found to my cost when creating sims that just get ignored in favor of Fashion events.
There was nothing stopping LL from doing this at any stage
Even when they did finally wake up to the fact that they needed better avatars, they made them impossible to make assets for.
It seems for all the world is as if LL are being paid by the top mesh body creators to not compete with them.
Unfortunately they have allowed 2 or 3 badly optimized top bodies to become the standard. And now people have bought into these products, spending crazy amounts of money on them, they are not about to switch to something inferior out of the goodness of their hearts.
And why should they, when it is the responsibility of LL to provide a top quality Avatar and sort out the lag for themselves, not leave it to the community.
As far as I am aware, lag does not bother many of the top fashion designers and wearers a whole lot. Its a kind of occupational hazard. They do not care much if it takes a fortnight for anything to rez. All they care about is the fashion shot they get once it has.
And as much as people moan about this, the only way it will change is when these top body creators have their monopoly taken away from them by the creation of a superior optimized mesh body. And the only people who can and should do this, and should have done it long ago, are LL.

[Take control of your SL]

Graphical lag is totally user end; being more informed about how that works and the capability of their PC is all anyone needs to optimize their own personal experience.

Why exactly is it "selfish" for a person with a good machine to have a complex avi and not considered selfish that people with obsolete machines want to take away all the beauty in SL just because they can't see it properly? The reason people buy all that mesh is because they like it; most residents would lose their shit if LL proposed a return to fugly system avatars, or forcing use of their awful mesh defaults, in the name of "optimization". The few that wouldn't probably can't afford all the things they want and would be relieved that they would no longer look so bad compared to everyone else.

You know what's really selfish? Being willing to render all the real world money spent by people with good mesh avis wasted and useless just because you're too lazy to learn what graphics settings work best for your PC.

SL has provided a way for residents to control their own graphical lag in displaying avatar complexity and setting a limit for themselves. No one with a avatar they worked hard on cares if people running SL on a potato see them as a "jelly baby" or if they get derendered.

Making this a question of some kind of deeper happiness is silly; you could ask if anything non-essential we buy makes us happy, and frankly the answer is usually yes it does. The people who can't buy what they want are the sad ones. The people getting ignored because they can't/won't update their avi are the sad ones. I smell their jealousy under all of this.

[Clara Seller]

I think that JohnC is making a very convincing argument, but I'm a critical person who doesn't always believe what she's told. I'd be intolerable in the official SL forum.

There's a lot of LL positive guidepost voices making videos, hosting talk shows, and smacking your knuckles with a ruler, when you stray from the path of righteousness. Be positive. Consume. Conserve. Pay your dues. Don't question that which you cannot understand. He who serves and believeth will find everlasting life and love in San Francisco.

How do you avoid the head-on collisions with yourself when following the path of the newly-appointed angel of consumption leads you to the wrath and scarlet letter of the angel of optimization? What do you tell the angel of productivity when the angel of development is taking your resources? How are we supposed to believe in the "always listening " ears of the angel of concern when her bolt locked doors are guarded by the sound cannons of the angel of compliance?

Maybe the true believers are right that everything is fine and it all makes sense in the big picture. I would appreciate for a true believer to make their case for LL in what our SL existence is about anymore. I really don't know. Is the path before us for living or for dying?

[Cindy Maloney]

These folks with sky high complexities are usually people with very high end systems to begin with. Its not the people on 'potato pc's' I would surmise.

Also, creators can kinda just say their stuff is optimized even if its not. Kinda like Warren lied about being Native American to benefit financially, when she is in fact whiter than white bread. That brought it full circle huh?

[Amanda]

SL had a ranking system that was voted on by the residents when I joined in late 2006. It was in the process of disappearing because very few liked it and it was gamed by some to get high rankings. The whole thing was a joke.

SL already has ways to check on your complexity. It can be improved but we don't need new systems. JohnC is right. LL messed up the SL avatar. They should have control over the avatar, not a few mesh body makers. The example given in this article is as bad as the 2006 system avatar. Very few SL users will ever go back to that but if LL came out with a new system avatar that was better optimized but looked as good as my Maitreya I'd certainly try it.

[montecore babcock]

There's a solution of course. If you're being lagged by an avi, derender them.

[NataliaNatasha]

and why would anyone want to look like the avatar on the picture its Sl not IMVU !

[a person]

uh just derender people if you need to
no need to police something that the user can police themselves

[Pepper]

It's clear that there's a large portion of fashion appetite that loves everything cooked in lard. New customers are not going to be impressed with the menu.

The world isn't traveling lightly because they're poor or jealous of that tank you're strapped to. I think there's a market for an adorable fun size avatar like in the picture. She's lean, mobile, and has aspirations beyond derendering heifers at the latest Krispy Kreme events.

[Pulsar]

"Folks with sky high complexities are usually people" ... who have no idea of what they are doing and they use obsolete and/or horribly poorly made stuff. And this is why information is important. Apart that the complexity number isn't reliable, almost any product made after the jelly-dolls system went alive now has a relatively low "complexity".
Do you know why? Because the makers did adjust to it. And they look as pretty as before.
Now I hardy ever go above 40-50k complexity, even with earrings, rings on almost each finger and all the clothing on my Maytreya body, plus bento head, hair etc. The only time I'm above 80k is when I have a ton of roleplay accessories.

Now, yeah, I couldn't care less: after all I have my gaming computer, right? You couldn't care if other people's computers melt down, and say: "hey buy a new one just to chat in SL and admire this unnecessarily wasted million of walking complexity". You could laugh at your friends who keep crashing (instead of trying to help them with their settings and to not be too heavy yourself). And maybe then you blame LL and SL when in crowded places even your gaming rig loses FPS, because... nobody cares.
Also what's the point in going around with 1 million complexity if you end up derendered or jelly-dolled by almost everyone anyway?
But if you use SL only to post your virtual selfies on the forum or Flickr, sure, go on.

I don't think it would help to make SL more popular though.
Neither to who has a "potato computer" nor to who uses to play modern AAA games smoothly on their computer and then sees it suffering with a 2003 thing with a poor graphic to today standards.

[Pulsar]

As for the complexity number I'd add this. Not only, as it was noted here other times, that complexity number is even "optimistic" (it doesn't say so much, that formula could be better, it's easily circumvented and those numbers don't reflect how heavy your avatar actually is) and the polycount is more reliable.
The mesh bodies from Maitreya, Belleza etc is just a portion of the issue.

An example: few days ago I was checking a pair of boots before to buy them: they showed a low complexity number, as low as another pair of boots I have; but when I checked the amount of tris... eek! Those were 700k vs 40k! And 40k would still be kind of high for just the shoes of a game character, not even counting the textures.
With hair sometimes it's even worse.
So, despite the complexity number, there are some avatars that go around with likely several millions of polygons.

Sure, SL doesn't take advantage of modern multicore CPUs; sure, it works differently than how typical games work, etc. but that's not a reason to make it even worse... wasting resources and going around with so many polygons that's like rendering 100 game characters for just your avatar, when it would look the same with much fewer.

While I appreciate that Linden Lab leaves as much as freedom as possible, I think JohnC and others have good points. After all you have a limit of how many prims you can have on a parcel and I think we accept that's not inifinite; so it doesn't seem a bad idea to me too if they could cap the avatar as well, in a similar way, possibly by limiting the polycount and textures (those maybe in Mb).

[Blaise Glendevon]

You can have my adornments when you pry them out of my cold dead hands.

[Cake]

This is super weird. How did my suggestion for adopting VRChat's avatar grading turn into people thinking I didn't want them to dress up? Don't be silly.

My idea for converting this into less lag for SL would've been cool. It just involved sending avatar stats to a sim you join before people render you, so if you exceed the user's set render threshold, you don't render in at all. Not even as a jelly.

Maybe someone'll read my idea that's a dev at the Lab and agree with me. Who knows! It'd definitely save on performance.

[JohnC]

I dear say there are many sims that wish they had the problem your idea seeks to solve.
I am not sure there are that many sims around that would wish to apply such aggressive tactics to thin out their already fading clientele.
Personally, I like nothing more than seeing beautiful avatars in my sims, even if they are lagging the hell out of them. I think it all works far better if you allow individuals to render and de render as they see fit, which they already can do. Applying it in a blanket fashion to a sim I imagine would only be useful to people who had a real problem with the whole lag thing. And at what point do you set the limit. Like tax thresholds, limits tend to effect most those who only just fall outside. The most lag I see are at Fashion events, and I am sure these are the last places in SL that would set any limits. But I could have your idea all wrong and be talking rubbish again, which I often do :)

[The More You Know]

Nothing super weird at all. Actions have consequences. You can't advocate for restrictions and expect that people won't need to sacrifice. Also, as an advocate for restriction, people are naturally going to look to you to lead by example. It's not just everybody else who is going to be judged.

[Cake]

Me? Actually, I practiced low avatar complexity once I read an earlier blog entry on NWN on the subject long ago. New World Notes has been advocating the same sort of mindfulness for a long time. There are several blogs that were made about this subject in the past year alone. Thanks to this very site, I've halved my complexity and hardly go above 40k. I usually hang around 36k, fully dressed, with a nice mesh head!

[JohnC]

It is crazy to think that all those pointless body polygons are carried around under clothes the vast majority of the time. In just about all other games clothes are not applied over the mesh body. They replace it. Not only that, in order to facilitate this already bad idea, bodies have 4 or more layers, just as complex as the base layer, just to carry tattoos etc. In the majority of cases all people need are feet arms and chest. The full body should be just another outfit you put on when want to do what SL is supposed to be famous for.
Now I don't want to keep kicking LL all the time. But if they really cared would it not be better to simply spend a few months sorting this comparatively easy problem out. I mean, if I wanted to create a new mesh body to sell I could do it without having to alter code or anything in the main game. Of course in the currant climate I would be a fool to waste my time, because no SL user can break the total monopoly of the top body sellers. But LL could commission a nice new optimized official Avatar, created by an industry professional character creator who really knows what they are doing. This Avatar would be free for all to use, not like now where a body creator has a bad day, or falls ill and decides to not to hand out creator kits any more, or only hands them out to people they like. Then we would be back to where we were in the beginning, where anyone and everyone who felt the need could create stuff for a decent mesh Avatar.
As far as avatars go the Lunatics have taken over the asylum. And even though the original staff were pretty nutty themselves, they at least treated all us patients equally badly, and had some idea about what was good for the Asylum itself. And if you are going to waste polygons at least waste them on something you can see all the time like the head.

[Blaise Glendevon]

John C - there's no way a Linden designed mesh body could meet the needs of all the different people who wear them. Look at the broad spectrum between the bodies of women who wear the Tonic fine and the Sking body. Or the spectrum between the slender Slink male body and the Nyramith Aesthetic. Not to mention all the anthro bodies and their various parts.

And even if LL decided to try and please everyone (while pleasing no one), they're almost 5 years behind on the mesh body clothing designer arms race. They'll never catch up to Maitreya.

[Ian Darkstone]

I agree with JohnC. The Lunatics have taken over the asylum. What's laughable is even after all of the money and work a resident has to go through to get one of these mesh monsters to work, they still don't look as good as what you can find in many other games. I know a lot of Flickr fashionistas feel that they're something special, but the truth is that all of their distortions look pretty much alike to the casually invested viewer.

[Soda Sullivan]

Truly the weirdest Elsabeth Warren reference ever. The problem I have with a lot of these comments is it seems to be an "either/or" argument, when it does not have to be. With the proper knowledge and the right skillset, a designer can create a very pretty, very realistic looking mesh avi without using a gazillion triangles that chokes the entire system. Just look at.....well, just about anywhere online but SL.
The key is putting that knowledge and those skillsets in the hands of the creators. Until that is done, it is pointless to try and force creators to use knowledge and tools that you have not given them yet.

[Blaise Glendevon]

Ian Darkstone - We're not doing it for you.

[JohnC]

Of course there is room for extreme oddities in the mesh body market.
But there is not a broad spectrum in general. Maitreya totally dominates the mid range market that accounts for a huge percentage of users. This is the position a LL mesh body should occupy. Otherwise you get the sick situation we have a present where anyone joining SL who sticks around longer than a few days is almost forced to get one of the top bodies.
There is nothing at all special or unique about the top 3 or 4 bodies that would not be very easy to re produce better. It would just be pointless for anyone but LL to do it.
I think you would surprised how quickly a superior LL mesh body would catch on.
Unlike a head, a body is not such a big deal for most people. As I said above, most of the time its is covered with clothes. I am sure there are a great many people who have been turned off from creating clothes for mesh bodies simply because they are blocked by the top mesh body creators from gaining access to the meshes. Of course it would take time to catch up. But the alternative is that SL in reality is being run by the mesh body creators, who in turn dictate who the top fashion creators are. The Lunatics have not only taken over, they have pretty much mad it impossible to get the asylum back.