SL Customers Can & Should Convince Merchants to Optimize Their Mesh Content! (Comment of the Week)

If it's true that some SL merchants create poorly optimized mesh items to satisfy customer demand for "more detail", reader Chic Aeon makes the point that the opposite is also true -- that customers can make their preference for better optimized content known to to merchants:

There ARE designers who make outstanding items that are STILL triangle friendly and look just as good as the heavy mesh items.

From what I have seen the problem is twofold, and hence I don't disagree with the idea is sometimes choices made are just about sales. For SOME anyway.

For others? They really don't know or understand and there may be some "lazy" folks along the way because it does take more work to get "the look" and also the low triangle count.

For an instance -- with no names used -- last year on the main furniture posting spot on the SL forums, many of us were complaining about the OH SO HIGH triangle count of some creators -- one very popular creator in particular. I LOVED the items but the vertices numbers were heart stopping.

Chic and others started explaining on the SL Forum why excessive vertices were causing them a coronary:

We posted lots of examples and started showing examples of GOOD triangle count items that look fabulous, had good LODs (my personal pet peeve) AND creations that were low land impact AND low triangle count (one does not always guarantee the other).

EVENTUALLY (and we are talking half a year or more) one of the main brands with gorgeous but heavy mesh (and marginal LODs) started making improvements. And NOW many of us will buy their items where we we did not before. 

In other words, this merchant saw the customer demand for well-optimized mesh, and adjusted their output to better serve this market. I like how this was done by posting examples, not through personal attacks.

I also imagine customers could explain why it's personally difficult to rez heavy mesh on their property / avatar person / at an event, so creators can better understand the social costs of bad mesh. I.E., rather than insulting the merchant with poorly optimized content, simply explain their personal experience with it. 

All that said, I suspect Penny Patton is right, that Linden Lab will have to intercede on some level, to really change the overall ecosystem.

For instance, here's one idea that's more carrot than stick:

Allow SL merchants to pay to have their items in the Marketplace reviewed by Linden Lab, and if they're found to be well-optimized, their page is given some kind of "Well-Optimized" gold badge that also gives the brand better placement in the Marketplace. This would also enable smaller merchants a chance to compete with top creators who often have quite a bit of heavy mesh in their store.

What do you think?

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

Counterpoint: Framerate was never really a big deal for me in Second Life. I regularly had single digit framerates in big groups and it was fine becuase you smooth motion isn’t that important. You need to see the scene and where everyone js and what they look like, and at least for me, 8 FPS was perfectly suited for that. Second Life is all about looking good in a snapshot. That’s why people favor high detail above all else.

[Nadeja]

I really like that "carrot" idea!
And an extra point if the item also has the attachment-point set. Nobody even does that, but the few good ones. I'd like that, because else everything attaches to the default point, unless you set it yourself, but many costumers don't know, then you have a load of things all of them attached to your poor right hand, LOL!

[Spiffy Voxel]

Hard disagree with Adeon's comment above: If you're just standing around or dancing, 8 FPS may be fine, but if you're doing any activity requiring rapid movement and/or communication — roleplay, sports, racing, etc. — a laggy environment is going to make that next to impossible.

Well-optimised content is better for frame rates, but also better for land impact and visual appearance at a distance. Seeing buildings decimate horribly as you move away from them is one of my biggest peeves. Plus, buildings & furnishings that take up less land impact means you can have more stuff on your parcel before hitting the allowance limit. Yes, that would impact land sales & rentals, but buying more land then leaving most of it empty is frankly bonkers!

My 'carrot' would be to have greatly reduced upload fees for those who take the time to make their own LODs. Currently, letting Second Life handle that may be cheaper, but the results can be very broken meshes at the lowest LOD.

[Knute]

@ Spiffy Voxel

Both carrots combined would be great!

[AlexSm]

Allow customers to judge the quality of the product for themselves. No carrots. There are restrictions in SL - http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits. And those restrictions are an order of magnitude more complicated than Kratos, God of War. Read the source carefully.
====
The Kratos for God of War (PS4) has 80,000 polygons in total, with 32,000 for the face - 30x what we had for the PS2 models. Kratos (PS4) uses over 140 textures."

[Chic Aeon]

Thanks for posting about this. It IS important and I do feel we made some strides with our efforts and educated some some consumers along the way showing them how to inspect items (rezzed objects anyway.

I am also personally happy that I can now buy a few more "oh so pretty" items without feeling guilty (OR just not buying which was often the case).

So far as the LL Seal of Approval I strongly doubt that The Lab will put forth the man hours to impliment. What was talked about in SANSAR was putting the triangle count and texture use numbers IN the Marketplace listing. For awhile when I was there "I" did that on my own -- being one of two creator back then that were actively making "game assets" and wanting others to follow.

I honestly don't think the Powers That Be will add that important info to Marketplace listing either. It has been talked about and then apparently relegated to the bottom of the oh so long list.

Again, thanks for helping to get the message out. Appreciated.