Linden Lab Officially Promoting Resource-Heavy Second Life Content That Drastically Hurts SL User Experience

The official Second Life Facebook page recently featured this post promoting a user-made video tutorial for the Catwa Bento Mesh head, one of the most popular and bestselling user brands in Second Life. Some SLers have called this company favoritism and free promotion for content that has competition in the virtual world, and that's a very worthwhile debate for another time.

Perhaps even more notable, however, is this question: Why is Linden Lab promoting mesh-based content that is so resource-heavy, it substantially degrades the user experience for nearly every Second Life user? As reported last year, the top-selling mesh bodies in Second Life -- Maitreya, Belleza and SLINK -- are extremely resource-heavy, and tend to degrade performance of everyone around them, including the users wearing these bodies.

They're so resource-heavy, in fact, a former Linden Lab engineer once told me that using them is effectively like launching a DDOS attack inside Second Life. And now, Linden Lab is effectively promoting those attacks.

But wait, this is just a Facebook post about the Catwa head, not a whole body -- just the head can't be that bad, can it? I asked SL graphics expert NiranV, developer of the acclaimed, graphics-optimized Black Dragon SL viewer, to take a look in the Catwa shop. This is what he found:

 

Click to enhance -- screenshot by Niran

82,000 polygons. Just for the fricking head.

 

"That's four times more than my entire body," as Niran told me in wonder. And the most popular SL mesh bodies, Maitreya and Belleza, have around 108k and 200K+ polygons, respectively. "Making it 180k minimum and 280k+" for users who have both.

 

That's an insane number of polygons, far more than in top AAA games. Niran again:

 

"Rainbow Six Siege has roughly 40k triangles, Fortnite uses roughly 20k, Division 2, one of the really good optimized games I played this last decade... has probs around 20k-40k max for a whole character.

 

"So even for today's standards, 80k is a lot. Sure some games use that much, but mostly games where theres only one major character, and the focus is solely on that character, and the rest is just trash mobs to kill or something. With good texture work you can make up easily for those 60k triangles.

 

"Peeps should just learn to use normal maps and specular maps better. Yeah sure, SL doesn't have 5 different textures for refraction, bumps, specularity, material type, sun absorption, metallic-ness, roughness and all that cool stuff, but SL wouldn't be able to handle that anyway, with people spamming 1024x1024 on everything for every tiny body part...

 

"We're already totally blowing up the GPU VRAM limits in Second Life."

 

Funny thing is, when I asked Ebbe Altberg about the problem with rampant poor optimization, he basically shrugged and said "Users are going to do what users are going to do."

 

But now, ironically, Linden Lab is effectively encouraging users to make things even worse. 

 

Hat tip: This Plurk thread, which has some interesting comments on the favoritism problem.

Comments

[DrDuh]

not only that, but ya fail to consider the mesh clothes and size of textures and scripts. that is also death lag for most people. but LL dont care, all they want is our money.

[Nara]

If ya all are going to whine, you're all welcome to go back to THE SIMS....

[Galathir Darkstone]

SL is not a AAA game environment. At all. In any way, shape, or form. Everyone around them is free to de-render avis that exceed their own margins of comfort, when it comes to avatar render cost. And yet, these kinds of products keep people spending money in SL. So, if I were CATWA, all I would have to say to any of these complaintants is: "You're welcome." If you don't like it? Don't buy it. If you don't want Hi_Poly people around you, set your complexity slider. There is absolutely no reason to compare SL content to AAA game titles. None. At all. AAA Game Artists are working for AAA Game companies. Not Creating Content for SL. And, I might add, that these people that enjoy these kinds of products are the ones that are making viewers like Black Dragon popular, since they are the ones that most want to take advantage of the amazing photographic potential there. So I'll come back around to it one more time: Why do any of you care? You can't seriously believe that SL is going to sit still and not advance, pushing the boundaries of what people can do with their avatars, can you? And LL has provided tools for you to limit how much this impacts your SL experience (at least when it comes to avatars around you). So, setting aside the discussion of brand favoritism, since that's now what this article is about, what is it, exactly, that you want LL to do? Put hard caps on what kinds of content can be brought into SL? Because I'm pretty sure (as in 100% positive) that those already exist. For the ones in the back not paying attention: IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT... DON'T BUY IT! IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE 50K+ AVIS RENDERED... DON'T! TURN DOWN THAT SLIDER. Speaking for myself? I couldn't give less of a crap about what the norm is for a AAA game when it comes to my SL experience. For numerous reasons, including the fact that SL isn't run any the same engine as ANY OF THEM. If you want to have more of a game platform experience? Go play a game. Or, hey, and I'm sure LL would back me up here, carry your silly backsides over to SANSAR. Someone sure needs to, because that platform... which is pushing to be more "respectable" like these much-vaunted AAA Games that are being pointlessly compared to SL, is DESPERATE for your attention.

[NiranV]

@Galathir
@Nara

You just don't get it, don't you?

It doesn't matter if SL is not a game, or a game experience. It doesn't matter what engine SL uses.

This whole things about about the ignorance towards the absence of optimization in SL. Regardless of whether SL is a game or not, whether it uses Unreal or CryEngine or its own, doesn't matter. SL, like any other platform needs to employ some rules, some guidelines for optimization and this has to be burned into both the user and the creator's head. SL could run so much better for everyone, it could be so much less laggy both client and server side if any given content was more optimized. SIMs lagging like crazy because a bunch of avatars are on them? Guess what it's because they are heavily scripted with a whole bunch of unoptimized scripts wasting unnecessary CPU cycles of the server which could be used for more important things. The SIM almost dying every time someone teleports in? Guess what, you are wearing way too many heavily scripted attachments. Your Avatar taking 5 minutes to load? Guess what, it's because your avatar consists of pieces each of which are probably 5-20mb worth of data to download. If that's not bad enough, multiply it by the amount of avatars around.

SL could be so much more by simply adding optimization to the equation. Optimization in content would free up resources, it would mean people have to download less, waste less time downloading, sacrifice less FPS, bloat memory less, lag the SIM less and all this while looking visually no different. Freeing up these resources would mean you gain them as available resources to use for MORE. If one tree kills your framerate like a hundred avatars, you're only going to put 1-2 of them down before you'll be unable to put any further down because your Viewer is dying, now replace this tree with one that looks identical but is optimized and takes 100 times less impact on your framerate, guess what you can now put a hundred or two more of them around before the same happens. This allows you to be more open and creative with your content in SL.

Also your entire point of "LL offers us tools to limit what we want to render" is pretty much complete bogus. While LL offers us tools, these tools are useless. LL doesn't offer us derender and LL's complexity calculatios are a fucking joke, they mean nothing, you can't limit how much polygons you want to see, how much VRAM you allow per avatar, nothing of these, all you get is a slider for an arbitrary number that means nothing because it is inflated by harmless object features that are basically free to render, giving people the impression that their unoptimized crap is fine in comparison to people who put thought and time into their content. Besides, LL is NOT interested in offering you effective tools for performance tweaks and neither are they planning to punish bad content creation aside from their stupid LI which is basically another useless complexity calculation for when you rez things on the ground, making it unusable for objects attached to avatars.

[Jabba]

SL's population has decreased over the years too, so everyone is just making up for all the ones that left. Average of 40k users online equaling 200k users in polygons... so its all good.

[Menion Azalee]

Ummm I tried my mesh avatar last night....i felt so not like Me and I left it behind. Classic Avi is so much better. Have a nice day!

[Galathir Darkstone]

Niran, I'm not gonna dig into all the nutty gritty here, but I do agree that optimization would be good. I disagree that there is any value in comparing tri counts between SL and AAA games... or SL CCs to game devs. I also think the road that you seem to be pointed down leads to way less user created content freedom... and that freedom built SL communities. Now if LL wanted to offer carrots to encourage solid CC? Great. But it feels a lot like people are asking for sticks instead... and I just do NOT believe that would help. I also happen to agree complexity is way too arbitrary, but it is the only measure we have to work with at this time. Dismissing it is silly. Also agree that scripts are a big issue. Sad they never delivered on letting us assign available memory. And darkness forbid you can't get everything in one script, because comms and event handlers suddenly grow exponentially. Frankly, however, it just seems to me that you don't want the same things from SL that I do. All this AAA title talk... those games are built by teams that work toward finite and fixed asset lists. That ain't SL. If you are in favor of limiting what we can create, vs encouraging better creation, then we just aren't gonna agree... and I'd feel compelled at that point to say you're the one that doesn't get it. The it being what grew SL into the marvel it's been.because that sure wasn't tucking in behind AAA games and keeping it simple. And while it isn't perfect, I'd rather have SL CCs going bonkers than some shallow pool of well regulated crap that bores anyone outside the clique that decides what is acceptable.

[Stuart]

I just gotta say I agree with what Galathir Darkstone and Nara say, I don't have the best computer in the world and I can still get sl looking as good as a lot of so called AAA games out there with avi's enabled and still get above 100 fps, yes, it may be better if things were better optimized but most creators aren't professionals like the people who work in the game industry so we live with what we have, and if folks do't like it don't us sl, simple. If you manage your graphics settings properly then sl can look gorgeous. Plus, I've noticed when my partner logs in with her maitreya body and mesh head and blueberry clothing, my fps barely drops by 5, how is that bad?

As for NiranV, the self professed Graphics Expert (love that ego right there), I've bit my tongue for so long. I've tried to use Black Dragon a few times and found it impossible to use. And the way he talks about mesh in sl and that his stuff is more optimized and better than the most popular bodies etc in sl sounds like more ego than anything, if he hates the way the worlds of sl are created by the users then why doe this graphics snob hang around and suffer and moan all the time? Go play in your own wee world NiranV, most of us get along fine in sl and are happy with the way things are.

[Gordon]

"Perhaps even more notable, however, is this question: Why is Linden Lab promoting mesh-based content that is so resource-heavy, it substantially degrades the user experience for nearly every Second Life user?"

Because they pursue a medium-term goal: Switch to Sansar or die with Second Life.

[Storm Karayan]

I will say I agree with Galathir Darkstone and Stuart.
If you don't like.. don't buy and.. derender what you can't handle. We all be happier if you do as you stop complaining so much then!
My computer handles SL pretty well but if it didn't i'd just have to slide some bars down and derender some people and it still would work good enough for me to enjoy it.
SL is not some AAA game. SL is so much more and it is all that we.. the people in it helped creating together. If LL would start tell us now that Nope you can't do this or buy that etc then most of us would leave and SL be as dead as their Sansar became. Sansar is slow, boring and uneventful to me. I rather have SL where we all can create what we want and explore all we want without LL telling us that we can't cos heaven forbid.. it's 'to adult' or 'it lagg some users to much'. If you don't like it.. there is Sansar for you OR you can use the sliders, derendering and all that and you'll be just fine.
Why should those with the lindens and with the creativity have to be punished cos YOU have a shitty computer? Grow up and stop bitching around!

[Heather]

If I wanted an eight bit pixelated graphics experience, I’d still be playing Nintendo NES. If people have a problem with it, they can adjust their sliders/settings. They get to determine their SL and sims that they own, and that’s it.

[Cedilla Thielt]

Could it possibly mean they are testing the limits of SL by encouraging the use of mesh? I get that yes we are invited to part with our money but, whether or not we buy mesh is ultimately our choice. The goal is to have a good looking avi and if it interferes with my pc's performance I make adjustments accordingly and then I let LL know. Be it how much we spend, how good we look or how our pc's and SL get along isn't it all just about metrics? Just saying.

[Isabelle Cheren]

Frankly
Secondlife aren’t promoting anything or showing bias.
They simply showed a video link on their page of a fantastic video the vlogger Novata did and this article comes out misleading everyone that Linden lab are showing bias about a head.
James you are misleading people with this article because as you know Second Life daily pops on its Facebook photos or videos done by residents to showcase the work they do. They aren’t showing bias of any sort.
Did you react like this when Strawberry did the same and her videos were included in their web page or Facebook?
You know as well as I do that Linden lab try and showcase residents to show what people do in Second Life. It has nothing to do with them thinking catwa is the focus. They were showing Novato great well done instructional video.
But you have turned a simple showcase Facebook update into conspiracy and favouritism.
But then I think you meant to do that didn’t you.
What head do you wear?

[Pulsar]

I'd like the "carrot" approach too, but... where would you put it? :D
I mean, already several 1 (one!) LI items are in fact poorly optimized, they just cheat the LI formula, e.g. by playing with the detail levels: full model for the max detail level and the other ones are all 1 triangle. In some case, because that, you cam away and the item just falls apart. Then some maker tells you to compensate by raising the LOD to the max... defeating the purpose and benefits of LOD entirely.

Do you see the mess here?

The avatar complexity is played around too. Ok, there is more margin here than 1, but in a 0-350k range you see a body rated 10k complexity when it comes with an half million tris. Now you have 10/350. Let's say you want to give the carrot and promote the optimization, 5/350? One, just by looking at these number, would argue: "but 10 is ok, is still low!" even if in truth the other one takes a fraction of the resources.
So because of this mess, there isn't must space left for carrots.
And whatever the carrot or stick, if the formula gets refined and the cheating prevented, the number will display the wasted resources anyway.

BUT....

I value freedom a lot too.
Rather than an hard cap for each item, they could implement better and more meaningful resource limits per parcel - There is a reason for the vague "land impact", else you would have to count the textures, the physic shape, etc. In theory the LI makes it simpler, but in practice the actual impact ends up misrepresented.

An idea is: in your parcel there could be a max amount of megabytes (like in Sinespace) and of scripts. This will promote texture and script optimization already. Still, if you wish, you will be able to make or to rez a more complex thing than (which doesn't mean lazy and resource wasteful), but managing your parcel capacity (we are already used to do that).

Maybe something like that could be done for avatars as well.
Now each region has a limit in how many avatars it can hold.
However, let's say you go there with a good avatar. Then another avatar comes and takes 10 times the resources than yours (scripts, textures, polygons):
that one is effectively like 10 extra avatars inside the region (except server-client data transfer). So let's say that avatar should count like, i don't say 10 extra avatars, but maybe 2 or 3.
Each region/parcel owner could be provided with better and more precise tools and be free to decide which limits to set. They are doing that already with the current avatar complexity in some event.
In your own region you will still be able to go up as you wish if it's for you personal use or selfies, but club managers, roleplay sim, shopping events and anyone else who owns a crowded place would be able to make it more usable and enjoyable for everyone.

[NiranV]

@Galathir

We tried the carrots for years. They didn't work and they will never work unless people are paid for it (which is the ultimate golden carrot). LL is not going to do that, the users are paying them for their content, since users don't care and buy everything they think look good, they are just "confirming" these bad content creators in what they do.

This whole "don't buy what you don't like" doesn't work like that. A few hundred people not buying something doesn't change anything. That's exactly why this kind of topic is coming up over and over. People need to be reminded, people need to be educated and people need to be slapped in their face sometimes. We are getting nowhere derendering these people either, it's a workaround for an issue that needs fixing, something we have been doing for far too long. (LL is VERY guilty of this for many years)

Also, we do have a way to limit memory limits for scripts, i use it for my own scripted AO (which is just one script and ~40kb). You should check the LSL wiki. I've been using this for years now so its nothing new either.

I'd rather have less but better content than more but shittier content. I can only speak from a furry point of view but with meshes, furry avatars have not had any quality drop, infact the quality increased many times while at the same time reducing optimization across the board, this didn't hurt sales nor amount of content available.

Infact, this whole "less content" thing is nonsense. Optimization doesn't mean less content, actually, it would mean MORE content, creators would be spending less time on their meshes as meshes would be simpler, less triangles means simpler rigging, less potential bogus vertices, faster upload, less upload cost and its only a one time thing. Seeing that most human mesh content has been created once and never actually updated (the CATWA head in particular hasn't been changed since it became Bento) further invalidating that "less content" statement.

People simply don't understand that optimization doesn't mean "less" which immeddiately seems to ring all warning bells. Optimization simply means making more of the available resources and SL really doesn't have much resources available at all but way more than enough to make good looking content without completely murdering everyones framerate around for no reason.

I've been complaining about this for years now because i've been using, making and visiting very optimized content many times already and there is simply no comparison to the usual junk we see. They look the same if not better and you can smack ten times more of them everywhere before you notice anything bad happening. This isn't wishful thinking this is simply a fact and a goal we should be working towards but with people showing simply no interest in doing so nothing will change, and the same people will simply continue complaining that LL should fix all their shit and make SL faster... or replace the engine or make SL2 or whatever.

@Stuart

I think you are just talking a whole lot of trash.

First off i know from several people with high end machines that you aren't going to get 100FPS especially not with people around unless you are running a good Intel CPU, a decent GPU and have most if not almost everyone derendered and your settings lowered. And i can tell you i can't even get more than 30 FPS with people around and thats with 95% of them being jellydolled. There is absolutely no way you are getting 100 FPS with SL looking like a triple A title. You don't even know what "looking like triple A" entails. It's incredibly hard to get SL to look "triple A" outside of still pictures because the content in SL is simply not made for it.

What stinks most however is that you think i "self professed" that "Graphics Expert" title. No i didn't. Infact i never ever even said i'm a graphics expert. That's just what everyone thinks because i'm the most vocal about graphics most of the time. I'm not a "Graphics Expert", just a "Graphics Fanatic". You don't need to be an "expert" to see that the vast majority of SL content is an unoptimized mess.

Even worse is your believe that me saying "my stuff is so much more optimized than yours" is an ego thing. It is not. It's simply a matter of fact. When you educate yourself a bit more on how SL works and what's good for SL and what isn't (which really isn't that hard to do since most of these things should actually be quite obvious) and you spend some time applying this knowledge to reduce any impact you may or may not have on everyone around you, then you can say "you are more optimized than them" because that's simply a fact, the probability that whoever hears it didn't spend a single minute on even THINKING about optimizing their avatar is 99%. So no, it's not my ego, i'm just saying how it is, i've spent a couple hours exporting and combining textures, removing invisible body parts, making sure no body part uses two different textures which look identical (due to uploading multiple versions of it), making sure my scripts are reduced to an absolute minimum (like not wearing a whole arsenal of weapons when i'm not on a combat SIM or something), stuff like that. It's really not hard and most of it should be so obvious that you should know how it works. Heck, i even detailed and wrote down the process how i optimized my avatar in a blogpost (sadly i had to make it private because it includes ripping off textures from your avatar to combine/reduce them, which could be considered copybotting).

----

Optimization is no magic or some status or something to boast with, optimization is a process, in SL a very simple process, to reduce the resource usage to an absolute minimum without visual impact in best case and with minimal visual impact in worst case. You should be striving for it not call out people who do it as snobs.

[Stuart]

And with that I rest my case, ego, snobbery, acting like you are better than everyone else as always.

You don't know what hardware I am running, and yes, I regularly get 100fps in sl, shadows, advanced lighting, a few avis in view. I'm talking about personal experience on Firestorm, now if I tried the same on your viewer, in fact when I Did try the same on your viewer, I got 7, maybe 8 fps. Maybe it's down to how you have built your viewer that you have so many problems in sl. Hell, even LL states that your viewer gives false complexity readings, now for me, I prefer to listen to the creators of the platform I am on rather than some jumped up moaning ego maniac that thinks anyone who doesn't agree with them is stupid and talking trash.

From the comments here I can see that I'm not the only one that is getting tired and fed up with your one man crusade against some of the most successful and popular creators in sl.

If you're not happy with the content in sl, like I said, go make your own version, put a system in place to limit what creators can and can't so, and for crying out loud, stop moaning all the time, you're like a broken record, because nothing will change and 99% of the users in sl are happy with the way things are.

[Pulsar]

A few notes:

Optimized doesn't mean 8bit pixelated graphics experience. It means that for the exact same visuals, you optimize and take less resources (AKA no pointless wasting of resources). Same look, but it runs much better.

AAA games are an example of what high quality products is possible to create with far fewer resources. Both the environment and the characters. To be fair, SL engine works differently than most games, games characters don't have "onion layers" and the mesh of the clothings aren't put over a body, but they replace the body part, usually.
But still there are ample margins of optimization in Second Life, both in modeling and texturing. Bloggers like Penny Patton have examples and tutorials in their blog.

It shows up that most most creators aren't professionals (not to mention the no-mod nonsense, or attaching anything including your hair to the right hands, and so on). They aren't blamed for not being professional or accurate (or shouldn't). We all are noobs at first and we don't deserve to be treated as stupid. But then we try to learn and to improve and to do it better. If you instead don't care and ignore that and/or you rather blame anything else from "potato computers" to who tells how optimization works, rather to accept how the reality is (it's a poorly optimized product), it is another matter.

It isn't that because one isn't a pro, what they make is ok as it is, else shut up and quit Second Life. The point is instead that who knows how to make better products raises awareness, shows where the issues are and that it can be made better (hopefully in a constructive way).

One of the first things newcomers learn in Second Life is "lag". Usually Linden Lab is blamed or is the client (Firestorm or whatever you use). They can have their issues. But to be honest and to tell things as they are, yes, the emperor is naked, and there is a big unoptimized elephant in the room.

If there was awareness, costumers would check the products out and favors the better ones. The market would then regulate by itself and we would have a better Second Life now. Instead there isn't awareness, many don't know, don't care... but then they whine that SL is "laggy", avatars are slow to load, things remain gray for long... except when someone mentions optimization, they cover their ears as they are afraid to lose their (elephantine) stuff (hint: you won't lose it, it will look the same, it will just work better).

[Galathir Darkstone]

@Niran we don't have the kind of dynamic memory allocation they once planned on (back before the big staff cut). I'm not talking about limiting memory for a single tiny script. I'm talking about more complex scripting and being able to set a single script to, for example, 70kb instead of having to run 2 at 64kb. Or even 1 at 64kb and one at 16kb. Because once you have to split what should be a single script, you burn resources in comms and event handling you shouldn't have to. As far as a few hundred people not buying something not working... that sounds a lot like you're saying that only a small percentage of SLers are even interested in "your way." If so? Then the userbase has spoken, and LL is doing their job by servicing most of SL the way most of SL wants SL to be. And you head right back to sticks again. Punishing content creators would mean less content. Period. Regions can already have more visitors with lower impact avis resulting in less server lag. Likewise for lower impact mesh. Should we have better tools to make that stretch even further? Yes. Should we start hammering content creators who make something you think is sloppy and unoptimized? Nope. Just nope. It would hurt SL. And it sounds increasingly like you want to aee things happen that would require. Massive change in the way SL is rendered and run anyway. I, for one, have always wanted to be able to build goegeoud vistas in SL. But you can't really do that when the average user visiting your region has a 32m DD. Because nothing LODs... nit in the way it does in a AAA game. And it simple vanishes outside the DD. I'd love to see that change. But 'im not holding my breath. And until thise kinds of changes happen to the rendering engine, there continues to be no comparison between SL and AAA games. SL is a different beast in form and function. And if you really want to see more optimized mesh, you have to give creators a reason to create it. You seem to be suggesting sticks arw the only way to go here. So... specifically, what are you suggesting? That wouldn't result in less?

[Galathir Darkstone]

@Pulsar I completely agree that awareness is the best thing that can happen here. That should lead to more competitive products that are better optimized, and that would put pressure on the less optimal, more popular products to improve their offerings. Frankly, not only do I think this is the best way, to approach this "problem," but the ONLY way. It has been working for lower LI stuff for years now. And at least some people have become much more concerned with script overhead (especially on RP regions and at large events).

As mentioned previously, I agree with the notion that better tools to create and identify better products would be great. I still disagree with the idea of punishing content creators for something that could be unoptimized, however. The focus would need to be on encouraging better behavior and better choices. And while I continue to agree that better tools would be great, I disagree that this "problem" is one that is growing vs shrinking. People used to run around piled up with sculpts before. Their ARC would be something like 500k-1M today, vs the average avatar wearing the kinds of mesh discussed here, that probably comes in at ~50k. And while ARC and LI are sloppy measurements, I'm not sure I can buy into the idea that those old 500K ARC sculpty-laden, classic looks don't impact the servers more than the 50k mesh looks. Progress takes time. And people to push the envelope.

And this is directed at Niran, too, or anyone else who cares to answer it: What, specifically, would you see Catwa do to 'optimize' their heads? Is this just about the TRIs? And while we're talking brands, is there a brand of Mesh Head out there you think is "doing it right?" Genuinely curious. I agree with the spirit of Niran's "make SL a better place that can support more content at one time" narrative, I'm just not sure I agree (at all) with the way it's being discussed... or how it should be approached.

[Bronwyn Ingrassia]

AAA games more than I play SL. In fact, describing what I do- what most people do- in SL as "playing" is a stretch. SLers either create to sell or buy to create, they don't play. It's not really a game. Whether we are creating a home, a landscape or av, we are creating. Many of us then take pics of our creations and all of that keeps SL in business. I don't do any of that in Assassin's Creed, Witcher, FarCry Fallout, God of War, Red Dead Redemption etc. What I'm doing in those games generally involves killing before I'm killed. Not exactly a static pursuit. If I want to clear a location of enemies, I play a game. If I want to take pics of the dreamscape of a dining room table spread I created yesterday, I log in to SL. I do not need to run fast and smoothly and reload without a hitch to do so.
The laptop I use for SL is an Inspiron 7000. Middle of the road. I wear my Catwa head and my Maitreya body. I derender everyone over 60k and leave shadows on at a draw distance of about 200. Rarely do I drop below 20 fps (like when I tp into a crowded event). Most of the time I'm over 30. I see the biggest drop in my own home, which takes forever to fully load because it's an unoptimized nightmare with huge textures. Beautiful scenes come at that price, but I would love to see that change with more effort from the builders of home decor. But I don't want to sacrifice beauty for it. Again, this isn't like a AAA video game where the world builders MUST consider the fact that people need to move fast and are part of a massive team being paid to make a user's experience trouble free. Linden Labs' business model relies on "user created content"; they aren't paying anyone to optimize what they build. They just profit from it.
I don't even understand from whence the whingeing comes. My Catwa and Maitreya aren't a problem for me, and ruthing myself out isn't going to address the optimization issues for the rest of the world. What is SL for if not to make pretty shit??? Making everything look "alright" in SL is a compromise akin to making fps "alright" in a first-person shooter.

[Bronwyn Ingrassia]

That should have started with "I play". Oops.

[Phillip Beeswing]

This is an obvious biased article. Anyone can say "so and so said" in an article. I believe this article as far as I could hurl the Empire State Building.

[Pulsar]

The SL crowd already expressed it and still does: complains about the "lag", that avatars load slowly, that textures take longer to donwload than it used before, and so on.
Other people pointed out that all that would be better with more optimization. Not just pointed out: some people like Penny Patton also wrote blog posts offering examples and teaching how to do that.

Will it "result in less"? Since repetita iuvant: optimized means that for the same visuals you have an optimized product that looks the same but works better. As Niran said too.

Will that "hammer the creators"? That argument doesn't match the evidence: Linden Lab already put limits etc (as the "jelly dolls") and creators simply adapted their products. Result: almost everything produced now is "low complexity". It worked pretty well.

Sticks or carrot? I'd prefer carrots, but since the formula could be better and it is also cheated, the poorly optimized stuff are already rated minimal (1 LI, 10k complexity): at this point how would you reward the good ones with even lower number to show it is better? There isn't so much carrot left to give out, unless you change the measurements entirely (e.g. Mb instead of LI). This is just logic. Period.
There are ideas and suggestions. You ask for more. But what are yours?

And yes, awareness helps and there isn't much, so it's good that someone tries to raise it. If people are aware, there won't be the need of any carrots or stick or regulations, because people don't like "laggy" stuff, right? It also helps with shopping: when one knows that a product is poorly made, usually they won't buy it. Unless they are masochist of course. Again, logic.

Nobody is born professional, but we learn. There are those who tells you how things works and how to optimize, for the benefit of everyone.
Who has a bigger ego, them or who happily hammers everyone else's framerate, not caring for others and rather telling them to upgrade their "potato computers"? Because, eh, you care of your pretty stuff and you are afraid that you are going to give that up (and again, no, you will still look the same when your stuff is well optimized).

But if one doesn't care, continues to ignore it, is attached to a product, would convince themselves that the problem is anything else but that product, bites who tells how things actually works, tells they should rather quit Second Life, believes that those bad folks want to turn your Lara into Super Mario... :D

Well, the reality doesn't change: we could make better products.

At most you can say Nyran didn't tell it nicely and diplomatically, but what he told is pretty right.

[Pulsar]

BTW I don't consider Maitreya Lara polycount so huge if you think it's actually 3 bodies tightly packet together (the onion layers), and 3 pairs of feet.

[Stuart]

@Pulsar, not sure if that was aimed at me but I'm not really biting at Niran because of the optimization thing, of course everything would be better optimized but not everyone knows how to do that, I'm biting because of how he goes about trying to "raise awareness", his attitude is completely wrong, I've seen him calling people idiots, slagging other viewers and major creators off in his own blog, and generally being unbelievably obnoxious and aggressive in the way he posts, if he changed his attitude and stopped being so high and mighty and confrontational and instead maybe tried to create some tutorials, educating instead of berating, then he'd maybe get some where.

[Galathir Darkstone]

@Pulsar If you suddenly said "that content you made that is over was applied, it would certainly result in less. At the very least, until previously released "un-optimized" content was re-released and optimized. This is why I asked for specifics. What do you want to see happen? If you don't think a carrot would work, how is the stick imposed? So far, this conversation has mostly been about the idyllic version of what SL could look like if everyone "did better" when they created content. But when it comes to practicalities, changing the rules on what can be uploaded into SL, or worn, depending on when you want to apply the Hammer/Stick to punish those "misbehaving" by creating or wearing whatever the new rules dubs "bad mesh" ... you would immediately get LESS. That's a fact that comes along with the stick. To deny that is pointless.

[Galathir Darkstone]

By the way... since people keep tossing out "the same visuals" ... that's just not true. Reducing tri counts means changing the visuals. In many cases, can it be done in a way that goes unnoticed in most situations? Sure. But it is, in fact, NOT the same visuals. If, for example, Catwa offered a versions of Catya that only had , then at some point, some blogger zooming in to take some close up pic of something on the face, would undoubtedly notice that the cheek isn't as smooth. That's a fact. Likewise, the shape sliders would not behave as well if there were fewer vertices to spread out those changes. So "the same visuals" translates to "very similar visuals in most cases." Now could that be acceptable? Probably. But to say "the same visuals" like it would be possible to optimize every mesh so it looks exactly the same to everyone all the time is just plain not true. Which is why I asked what it is that you want to see these mesh creators do "better."

[Galathir Darkstone]

One more comment... inre this blog by Penny Patton that has been cited. I haven't read it. I'm trying to have a conversation about this -here-, so rather than suggesting that someone else has good ideas, I'd like to hear, here, what the participants in this conversation think are good ideas. My suggestions? Give us tools to inform creators and customers and GTFO the way. I think the market will take care of itself in due course. New, stricter rules are a hammer that dulls the point of content creation. I don't think we need them. I think SL DESPERATELY needs as much content as it can get. As many attractions as it can get. Because THAT is what brings residents in and keeps them here. Lag or no lag. Would a less laggy SL be better? Surely. But not if content creators, and MANY are amateurs and hobbyists, suddenly cannot build their SL while they try to tackle the next hurdle in actually seeing their stuff in SL.

[Galathir Darkstone]

Ugh. I fubared that first comment there.

If you suddenly said "that content you made that is over was applied, it would certainly result in less.

was supposed to read

If you suddenly said "that content you made that is over [some new rule/limitation]" and that rules was immediately applied, it would certainly result in less.

I probably borked other stuff in those, since I guess greater than less than braces are a nono in the comments there. :P

like:

"If, for example, Catwa offered a versions of Catya that only had "

should be

"If, for example, Catwa offered a versions of Catya that only had [some acceptable number of tris]"

[Robert Camara]

If you can't handle the load.... I suggest you go to a better computer... Maybe try Firestorm...

[Chris]

I defender people that use that head anyway and since the creator likes to arbitrarily DMCA competition I a lot of people avoid like the plague anyway.

[Chris]

*derender

[Candy68]

The only problem I see here is somebody does not want to put any cash into life he wants to remain a noob . And the choice is up to you and yes the world is changing you have to go out and buy a real computer or real laptop it will no longer work with one that you bought 20 years ago such is life. Stop crying and leave the second life if it bothers you we will not miss you.

[Candy68]

Oh and another question who asked you to be a reporter on second life environment try going back to the real world being a reporter we really don’t need you in Second Life trying to mess it up.

[plonk]

There is a difference between:
a. Articulating with facts, evidences and logic.
b. Ignoring all of that, continuing to grasp at straws.
The irrationality of the arguments against optimization here say it all. A blatant pletora of straw-mans and other fallacies, hypocrisy and distortions. Cognitive biases. Clinging on your selfish wishes, ego and irrational fears.
If you don't know something, you can learn. If you miss something, there is who points that out for you. Else feel free to be arrogant and ignore everything. Then keep twisting it all, believe in what comes up in your mind without any basis, in the most delusional way.

[sirhc desantis]

That went well.

But Satan must have sharpened its skates again as I can agree with both Galathir Darkstone And NiranV. Hell, we have all been here long enough.

The tools are broken. We optimise the crap out of every thing and get hammered for it. Our mesher makes wheels and weeps if it goes over 0.5 LI. And can still show across the sim. Check out the market for vehicles. Very pretty til you get 10m away.

On scripts - hell I gave up on custom years back and stick to family and friends now. Tools are broken,

I have been dragooned into rigging stuff and I have seen pretty near all the mesh bodies - but the public wants what the public gets. Derender is a bugger of a hammer but yes it gets used. Whoever came up with the onion skin approach should be the first against the wall.

This is a company that can't even be arsed to post its own server rollouts on its own 'official' forum remember :)

So why stay - because it is still the one and only =^^=

(Do Not get me started about the whole 'shared experience' bollox - I mean Eep runs away)

[sirhc desantis]

Oh @Candy68.Resident Au may often be wrong but hell he has earned the right to bloody comment on SL for all his faults =^^=

[Jacques Mesrine]

...mostly, I derender ugly and edgy standard avs.

My machine handles heads by Catwa, LeLutka, Genus etc. + nice done bodies by Slink, Maitreya, Belleza, Aesthetic etc. pretty good.
The introduction of mesh to SL itself meant a relief for my eyes. No more shitty edgy standard crap. To me, SL isn't substituting an AOL chat room.

Again, if there's an "No Payment Info"-oldbie (I am myself an oldbie, with 12 years and 6 months) duck-walking in front of me: violá, one click and off he/she it goes.

[Bella]

Well if anyone would know about resource hogs it would be NiranV. His viewer is hard on even the best systems. It not user friendly and most people can't even set it up for taking pictures without jumping through hoops.

Not sure why you take someones word as god when he tests on his clunky viewer. SL has set it up to make user experience better over all with jelly dolls and friends only features. There is also a limit on polys. Until more is done to help people learn how to optimize their meshes this is where we are at. Rather than b#$ch and moan about the issue maybe seek a solution instead. This isn't the first time NiranV went in on a creator and I think its a really shit thing to do. So before he comes after this comment all but hurt he needs to stop and think about the way he is making other people feel when he attacks their creations.

[Blaise Glendevon]

This fear-mongering editorial stance towards mesh parts is getting more and more annoying as it continues. I guess if you play SL with a steam-powered typewriter, it's a problem. But that's what the modifications like jelly dolls and being able to de-render anyone not on your friends list are for.

[JohnC]

Its so silly. You can take away thousands of polygons from the top heads and bodies and it would not change the fact that SL bodies and heads would still look better than most AAA games. Its not about expecting people to except a lower standard in anything. It is just that a bunch of people with seemingly no idea at all about the basics of their own chosen platform have taken over the show. And the people who run the show don't give flying F..ck about it. That comment about people doing in SL what people do is so dumb he should be impaled upon it. And I should be shot in the head for still pouring money into SL so that it can be spent on Sansar. And comments that support badly made mesh bodies and heads is are like turkeys voting for Christmas.

[Quadstrike]

someone hasn't heard of LOD... no one runs around with 8 LOD going "why are my frames low?!

[J. Carl Henderson (Carl Metropolitan)]

LL is doing a cross-promotion the single most popular brand of mesh heads in SL? Shocking!

[Aliasi Stonebender]

It's not a matter of "steam powered typewriters", it's a matter of putting out meshes intended for prerendered, static scenes in a 3D modelling software as, effectively, game content.

"Get a better computer noob" is NOT THE FUCKING ANSWER. "Learn how to make good 3D content, noob", on the other hand...

[FYI]

FYI
In related news Prokofy Neva a long time Anti-Anime & Protester of High Impact Content is no longer in SL (possibly banned) after another content complaining thread on the official forums, she will be missed by many.

[Nop]

Here's another thing to think about:
The customer themselves are getting more fussy now that it is 2019, going into 2020.
As a creator, if you DO optimize your meshes and textures so that they run well, chances are you've had to sacrifice some texture or mesh quality to do so. New customers demand all the fancy looks of other engines, and leave complaints and low ratings on your store items.

Meanwhile, most creators have figured this out and are using multiple textures and high-poly mesh to secure those sales and ratings, so they contribute to all the lag and low fps as well.

Of course LL at the end of the day won't care, because they're making $$$ right along with everyone else.

There is NO incentive to encourage creators to optimize or anything. The same thing is now happening in Sansar - except world builders upload 1.2m vertice dinosaurs to their worlds for everyone to enjoy.
Looks the best, looks good on the market, blows away the competition who are ACTUALLY making optimized goods - and the customer will follow, not knowing they will contribute to future lag and unhappiness.

[Someone]

Has anyone made the comment that most 3d games have software that is built into the game by the very own creators of the game? You cannot compare SL to a game such as Cyberpunk where the creators are spending years modifying and beta testing mesh making against the game. Thus, you have to expect that within SL a sandbox environment, because that is what SL is. You will experience mesh models that have too many polygons are overusing resources. Couple that with an actual game platform that hasn't really been improved in the last 10 years and you will get bad performance from most PCs.

However, that being said, MOST gamers do have good enough graphic computers to at least handle a mid to semi- mid-range SL environment. I for one, and a gamer in my thirties that have a 2080 RTX card and can handle SL incredibly well. That being sad, if you are a casual gamer that just wants to use your regular laptop from a 2010 build, it will not cut it

The actual game itself will not perform. And being that mesh does make the game look better, it is a catch 22. I for one do not like the standard avatar that comes with the game, it was antiquated and should have been upgraded to an avatar similar to SL's mesh ones. Do I see that mesh can in fact be a rendering issue? Yes, to older computers. No, to newer ones.

As to Catwa being advertised. As much as I hate the creator for filing DMCAs and for making heads that for me for the most part look the same, and have child-like looks; her store is the number one store. Mesh is being sold within SL and will continue to be sold and promoted. So all of you that do not want mesh, guess what, you guys have to either accept that mesh is the future of SL as it is the current, or you have to deal with it or move on. After all, the great majority of you are more than likely no longer contributing financially to the game as much as the meshed up avatars that are buying mesh objects, clothes, and body parts from mesh creators. The proof? Most non-mesh creators are either going to only marketplace stores, or have faded from SL.

[Bet]

I've had max avatars at 1 and max complex is it? at 20,000 for years on a good machine just to get around.

I never see the fancy bods and sure save money never seeing clothes to buy. When I meet someone I'll slide it up- look- slide back.

My tier spending to Linden cut in half , my item spending down to maybe 10% if that. Maybe the photos are fabulous but it isn't a moveable lookable world for me anymore.

[Blaise Glendevon]

Prokofy Neva will only be missed because of the trainwrecks their forum posts invariably become. I'm sure another drama llama will rise to take their place.

[Fionalein]

AAA games have no focus on mimics ... SL has aspects that needs heads to be more detail - And why for hell's sake did you ask especially Niran for an opinion to post on the internet? That's just skirting with danger. His attitude is well known and people will react accordingly. Don't get me wrong he might be onto something - but he's just angry ole Niran and cannot stop being himself.

... or did blog views in summer drop so bad that this measure was needed?

[Soda Sullivan]

The amount if bias and sheer ignorance some people express in these comments is breathtaking.

First, shame on you Wagner for simply dismissing in your lead paragraph the fact that LL though it was okay to put its finger on the scales of the market and promote a single creator of mesh heads over all the others. The irony that they chose one of the baddest actors in polygon resource designs is ironic. It is basically a nice kick in the teeth for any content creator trying to make a less resource heavy product and get into the market.

Second, it absolutely makes perfect sense to compare SL to the technical aspects of AAA games. Not gameplay of course, but simple basic design and functionality. The fact that the two are often built on differant game engines is chosen distinction, but irrelevant for this discussion. The technology used in game development are the "rules of the road" that have been laid down by witch any virtual platform has to adhere. Both have to use the exact same rendering parameters put down by the GPU in your computer.

Third, Ebbe Linden's comment that "Users are going to do what users are going to do." shows the kind of bizarre lack of interest in their product that allows them to think promoting one of the most resource heavy creators on the market on their official page is okay. No Ebbbe, you Coprolite, when you lay down simple rules of the road, users are NOT "going to do what users are going to do" When you build a highway you set a speed limit and most people will drive withing that limit. When they don't, you give them a penalty and they will eventually fall in line. That keeps everyone happy and playing by the same rules and THAT is what LL should be, needs to be, focusing on.

[Mossky]

Wagner, please invite some content creators to give their opinion in an article and perhaps invite views from viewer debs that use the standard way , like LL of calculating complexity. Not that Niran is wrong, but, BD shows things differently, requires a higher spec PC to get good results usually (I'm sure he will jump in and say that's rubbish here) and although I use BD for photos it's not my viewer's off choice. I get problems with more than 25 avatars on a sim, perhaps that proves Nirans point, but I have a friend who had no problem with 50 plus Avi's in a club on her 1060 nvidia card yet her system dies anywhere with trees and grass. And I don't. She can handle avatars, I can handle scenery. Guess it all depends on content and settings as well as the individual system.

[Mossky]

Viewer devs*

Also, Niran has stated in the comments he is not a graphics expert so how about you change the article to reflect that?
It's a bit misleading.

[Miles Davison]

This is somewhat off subject, but who cares it is an old post and and mainly a diatribe.

Go to Opensim. Bullet physics engine. Much better, higher frame rate, less lag, no money needed in most cases to upload and finally, Physics for most all objects does not impact LI and they work without jumping through hoops. Just upload and walk on through with most objects. Avatar LI does not seem to impact anything there even in Mesh. Conns: Region crossings a bit off and less people to talk with.
P.S. As for the Ebbe Altberg, the best CEO that has happened to SL since Philip.

[Miles Davison]

Ohhhh and before I forget...
Catwa is pure crap in design. They all look the same and everytime I see one it reminds me of a song. If I Only Had a Brain. Google it. The song will stick in your head. Pun intended.

[Fazzy]

Hey, that header image is from my last sim, Idun and Jasper Point. Nice.

[Aaron Weingartner]

Why does anyone think "But you can see the jaggies up close." Is a remotely valid argument?

You can load up Unreal Engine 4, and drop any Metahuman model with their ~40k polys and find virtually no hard edges to their faces. Moreover because the engine isn't burdened with logging extra poly data it's free to use considerably better rendering and processing options that further elevates the assets.

Jacking the polycount into hundreds of thousands doesn't make a better or more functional model than a optimized one with some quality rendering.