New World Notes

Does the SL Community Care Enough to Clamor for Well-Optimized Mesh?

Pictured: Slink Redux body bundle, a rare example of popular SL mesh avatar content that's also well-optimized

Last Friday I wrote about the new Black Dragon viewer update which checks whether a mesh avatar is well-optimized or not. Reader "Down With Underboob" (LOL) tried it out in SL over the weekend, to see how much mesh content was poorly optimized, and came away shocked:

So I took Black Dragon out for a spin at a fairly busy club. There's only one avatar in the place who is "decently optimized" per the report. This guy is wearing a system avi and system clothes... I like what BD offers, but please get real. Nobody wants to go back to looking like an avatar from 2008. Photographers like to use BD's capabilities, but again, they're not going to use system avatars to pass these complexity tests.

Show me some mesh bodies, heads, and clothes that pass these tests and don't look like they're from 2008, and I'll consider trying them. Does he think we're all going to run around bald? I don't want Warcraft hair in SL. Until then, I'll stick with what I have. I'm satisfied with the 15-20 fps I get at this club and I can get upwards of 100 FPS when I'm hanging out on my platform at home in Bellisseria.

I'd also point out that he's tilting at windmills if he thinks designers are going to start posting complexity/triangle counts in their vendor ads.

I'd say it's the responsibility of the many SL bloggers and YouTubers to report on the complexity/triangle counts of the content they feature, warning them that high poly items will likely cause lag. Failing to do so would be like a real life fashion reporter failing to mention the clothing items they're recommending are made of toxic materials.

As to her request for optimized mesh to try out, Slink is among the few mesh body creators well-known for optimization.

But is there a market for good optimization in general? Reader "Seph" thinks not so:

Seraphim Secrets: How a Second Life Fashion Blog Earned 60 Million+ Views

Seraphim, the massive Second Life shopping blog, recently opened a Cuban-themed shopping sim in SL itself -- click here to visit.  This virtual island is a long time coming since the web site launched in 2011, going on to become the largest user-run SL blog by far. Raking in nearly 61 million reported pageviews since then, currently on track to exceed over 12 million in just this year alone, Seraphim is, as I've noted before, more popular than many professionally run MMO news sites. (New World Notes, for instance, has only attracted a distant ~15 million views!) With pageviews like this, it's likely that well over half of Second Life's ~600,000 active user base visits Seraphim on a regular basis.

Or to make another comparison: Seraphim SL gets about as many visits as Fashionista, a top real life fashion blog.

Despite this wild popularity, Seraphim founders and co-owners Kess Crystal and Awylder1 still hold full-time jobs in real life -- in the healthcare sector, Kess tells me. "So 2020 has been particularly challenging for us," she notes, "both managing Seraphim and dealing with the ramifications of COVID... we have an amazing management team in place and we simply could not do it without them."

But if you think those millions of pageviews translate into millions of dollars in profit, you may be mistaken: 

"We're often amused by the wildly optimistic assumptions we've read on social media and our reaction is often 'I WISH!'," as Kess puts it, when I ask her about Seraphim's revenue. "We are a cost heavy business in terms of payroll and the amount we have to pay for hosting such a resource heavy site is not insignificant either. As business owners, we reinvest monthly into a fund for new services, scripting, innovation and then draw a salary from the remaining profit."

Kess shares some Seraphim secrets to becoming so big, and future plans with the sim, after the break:

This Halo Lights Up If a Second Life Region You Visit Has Migrated To The Amazon Cloud -- Or Makes a Womp-Womp Sad Trombone Sound If It's Not

Second Life is finally, gradually being migrated to the Amazon cloud, region by region -- but is your region part of that "Uplift"? Now available in the SL Marketplace, the free Fourmilab Cloud Halo cleverly comes to the rescue:

To use the Cloud Halo, simply add it to your outfit. It is an attachment, worn on the head, which has the form of a halo floating above it. The halo is not normally visible. When you arrive in a cloud region, a glowing gold halo will appear above your head, sparkling for a moment, and an ethereal harp will play a few notes. When you arrive back in a non-cloud region, a dull grey halo will appear and a “Sad Trombone” will play. 

This is a seriously fun way of checking for cloud deployment across the virtual world grid, even turning it into a game. For server geeks, here's how the back-end works:

Second Life Registrations Down in 2020 Despite COVID Concurrency Bump

Recent SL sign-up stats via Tyche Shepherd's Grid Survey - click to embiggenate

Talking to Second Life data expert Tyche Shepherd about the Carmen King bump brought up another set of data points that aren't as fun. While it's true, as Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg said back in March, that "[w]e are seeing an increase in new registrations and returning residents during this [COVID] outbreak," that increase didn't last last very long. 

"Trend in signups is down," as Tyche tells me, sharing the chart above. "There was a boost in late March-April but these have been declining since May and there is no significant change in September... Overall this implies that any growth in concurrency is more likely explained by more frequent usage by existing accounts (either lapsed returning or longer online times by active users or a combination of both) rather than new users."

Also the decline in registrations is part of a longer trend: "It also looks like signups have been significantly lower than last year," Tyche adds.

And while SL concurrency did see a COVID bump, that didn't last long:

Get a Special 20% Discount on a Versatile Couch from Dutchie Design, Legendary Virtual Housewares Brand and New Media Partner!

I'm thrilled to welcome Dutchie Design as a new media partner to New World Notes. As you probably know already, Dutchie is a venerable brand that's been creating high quality virtual furnishings for all variety of social scenes and roleplay for over 10 years. 

 

As part of this partnership, Dutchie is offering a 20% discount on this amazing and versatile couch. (Pictured above.) Here's how to redeem it:

Slink Mesh Bodies Are Well-Optimized for Second Life Avatars -- Here's How

Slink, a popular virtual world brand for avatar enhancements, produces what's basically the Tesla for mesh bodies in Second Life -- not just sleek and stylish, but energy efficient and good for the environment. This is because their creator, Siddean Munro, painstakingly optimizes them to have the least number of triangles without hurting visual quality.

This is an important update to a much-discussed New World Notes post from 2018, where I included Slink among the list of mesh bodies found to be poorly optimized, a key source to virtual world pollution -- i.e., lag and non-displaying avatars. Ms. Munro disputes Slink's inclusion in that post, so I will update it accordingly. And since then, in any case, she has updated her mesh bodies to be more efficient.

"I do work hard to make sure all my meshes are as optimal as they can be, use as few textures and scripts. as possible and that they are also laid out and written efficiently," she tells me. 

As evidence, she offers this image below:

Linden Lab Needs to Punish Poorly Optimized Mesh -- Or Reward Well-Made Mesh (Comments of the Week)

Good reader thread responding to my somewhat tossed off remark that, "While you should definitely encourage users to customize their avatars, you also want to impose optimization restrictions so avatars don't become a bloated lag-inducing disaster like they have in SL."

The problem, as Alicia observes, is the company behind Second Life has enabled (encouraged?) poor optimization:

Linden Lab has set the maximum for textures at 1024x1024, and most creators end up making their textures too damn big (any texture size over 1024x1024 max), which then will be forced to the max of 1024x1024; but, remember that LL never set limits on how many verts/faces a mesh item should have. The textures issues, on the other hand, can easily be fixed if people simply went with the allotted sizes (64x64, 128x128, 256x256, 512x512 and the 1024x1024 max) SL can manage.

Also, knowing how to keep the MB down on the textures also helps if the person knows what their doing in GIMP, PhotoShop, or any other photo manipulation program. When it comes to mesh, you still have mesh hair that shoots an avi's complexity near or past 100k, and the same thing can happen with jewelry, clothing, etc. Verts/faces counts also increase/decrease when you resize any mesh object (trees, shrubs, etc.) All of these individual issues ultimately becomes a huge problem that never gets handled as LL only wants to continue working as is...

Everyone knows that LL will never impose restrictions on how maximum number of verts a mesh item can have.

Pulsar argues that Linden Lab should set out rewards and/or restrictions around mesh:

SL's Top User-Run Shopping Site Larger Than Many MMO News Sites

Estimated visits to Seraphimsl.com via analytics site Similar Web

While Second Life might be smaller than many other virtual worlds, do not underestimate how passionate and engaged its core userbase is. As an example of that, consider SeraphimSL, one of many hundreds of user-run sites and blogs advertising SL fashions and housewares. (And Seraphim is probably the very largest, at least in the English-fluent Internet.)

According to SimilarWeb, Seraphim rakes in over half a million pageviews a month. As I was telling someone else in the SL business recently, that's more than enough eyeballs to make a six figure income in real dollars, via advertising.

In terms of unique eyeballs every month, 500K+ probably translates to roughly 100,000 actual people. (Way back in the day, unsurprisingly, metaverse expert Gwyneth Llewellyn estimated 100,000 as the approximate number of SL's most engaged community members.)

The number is pretty impressive even when you pull outside the userbase of Second Life: Seraphim's page views are larger than many news sites about virtual worlds/MMOs, like this one. It's even about as large or on par with some fairly well known tech news sites and blogs.

What's this mean?

Want to Understand What Linden Lab's Acquisition Means for Second Life? Ask the Owner of a Top SL Virtual Content Brand

Above: Mishi IRL and her Blueberry brand on Facebook

While the SL community's opinion over the world's new corporate owners is decidedly mixed, I put a lot of stock in the analysis of Gizem McDuff, owner and founder of Blueberry -- which has been, since its founding in 2012, one of the most successful and popular virtual style brands in SL. As such, Mishi has some of the best insights on SL's economic operations and Linden Lab's relationship to it:

I see a lot of speculation and fear over Linden Lab's acquisition.

First, Lindens want you to know that nobody is even considering touching the adult content on SL. The new future board members are very aware that SL comes with adult content and they are just fine with it. They do not want to mess with anything that's working. That includes adult content. It would be cool to give them a warm welcome when they are officially on the board.

Let me explore two chief concerns with y'all.

1: SL will be dismantled and shut down.

2: SL will be milked for what it's worth and shut down.

Mishi goes on to break down these scenarios in-depth:

Fifty Linden Fridays This Weekend: Ice Cream Fans from Astralia & Other Adorable, Sexy, Stylish SL Offers -- Click Here to Shop, Teleport, and BUY

Linden Lab's future may now be up in the air, but the legendary and miraculously sustainable Fifty Linden Fridays for Second Life shoppers goes on. Here's this weekend's offers, starting with this face-punchingly adorable item above: Ice cream fans for the blistering Summer from Astralia -- click here to get them at the store.

Not cute enough for you? Then how about these holdable plushie with a complimentary crown:

This pair from Cosmic Dust: Click here to teleport and shop.

Many more FLF fashion, housewares, and other random coolness offerings below, with teleports to take your consumerist avatar ass there: