New World Notes

How to Display Extremely High-Res Textures In SL's Firestorm Viewer

Click to embiggen: Catwa head texture displayed in normal, 1024K, and 8K (pics via M. Vanmoer)

UPDATE, 2/13: In Comments, some readers have pointed out that this hack might not necessarily work as described, or could cause performance problems for users -- so caveat SLer. (Then again, the top avatar mesh bodies sold in Second Life already have major performance issues.)  Also be sure to read Vanmoer's responses in Comments.

SLer "Frenchbloke Vanmoer" recently told me about a cool Debug setting in the Firestorm viewer that enables extremely high resolution textures to be displayed, with far more detail than is seen by default. (As seen above, and after the break.)

"It's not a bug as far as I know," he tells me, "just that it's hidden away in the Debug settings -- nobody looks in there properly... Some [creators] I have talked to were unaware it existed and were making all their textures for upload from up to 8K sources as 1K uploads."

He says making the change doesn't cause much viewer-side lag: "They are just the usual 1024 x 1024 textures as far as your inventory and viewer is concerned. The main difference is that it looks a lot nicer. It's the same principle as photo resizing as well as audio for broadcast -- the better the quality in, the better it will be when compressed. It's one of the first things you learn when using images -- best to start big and then scale down, than the other way around. I'm curious to see what mesh creators can do with this on uvmapped mesh."

As with any debug adjustment, user beware! Here's the Debug setting Vanmoer is talking about:

Cassie's Clips: How to Improve Your SL Performance Despite Heavy Mesh

As we've been discussing, Second Life mesh, especially the most popular avatar bodies, tend to be extremely resource heavy, causing you (and everyone around you) low FPS, unrezzed graphics, or what's colloquially called LAG. Unless and until Linden Lab starts curbing this excess, watch this great tutorial by NWN's Cassie Middles, who explains some tips on improving your SL performance. Top tips include:

Cassie's Clips: Walkthrough of Blogotex, the Online Management System for Second Life Fashionistas

Courtesy NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles, here's a hands-on walkthrough of Blogotex, the quirky name of a cool and useful web service for SL fashionistas, especially bloggers:

"Blogotex is a good alternative to blogger groups if you're ever low on group space in Second Life," as Cassie explains. "Even with a Premium subscription, I used to run out of room and would have to leave one group to join another. Aside from event groups, this is where most of my blogger items come from now. They list all new releases and normally what events they're for, or Flickr links. You can grab a limited amount and blog them, post your blog posts there to be able to grab more. You can also get redeliveries of items if needed." The delivery system, which deposits items directly into a user's SL inventory, is a particularly cool feature. There's also some new-ish features which expand on the platform's power:

Cassie's Clips: Previewing Genus Head's New Motion Captured Animations

Exclusive to New World Notes, Ms. Cassie Middles previews an ambitious new update to the Genus mesh head -- motion captured animations for facial expressions:

"Now the head has mocap and there's several resting animations, fluid moving animations, gestures, and eye, brow, and mouth phases of animations," she tells me. I'm impressed, because it's incredibly difficult to mocap facial expressions, since they involve so many muscle groups.

It's not 100% perfect, she allows, but still smashing: 

Cassie's Clips: How to Use Backlighting & Projectors to Make Second Life Screenshots Look Amazing Without Post-Production

Today NWN's YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles shows Second Life photographers how to use backlighting and projectors to create amazing, "in camera" effects: 

"So, backlighting is something so many bloggers requested to learn and use for their photos," as she puts it. "This is where there's a solar glow in the background but doing it without too much post-production work. With a few projector lights and a good WindLight, it can make something go from plain to ethereal, casting light into sheer moments and adding a unique flow to it that makes your avatar to pop out."

Part 2 below:

Cassie's Clips: How to Unbox Items to Use in Second Life -- A Common User Interface Confusion Among New SL Shoppers

Here's NWN video correspondent Cassie Middles with a helpful and very necessary tutorial for unboxing items in Second Life. It's necessary, because even though fashion and virtual shopping is essential to the Second Life economy, Linden Lab has allowed its user interface for owning and using items to remain incredibly counter-intuitive and user-unfriendly. Which is not only hurting the economy, it's frustrating newer users. As Cassie points out, many bad reviews in the SL Marketplace are actually about this confusion with the user interface:  

 

Cassie's Clips: How to Reduce Lag & Griefing in Crowded Second Life Spaces -- By Making Avatars Disappear

For your upcoming weekend events, here's some tips from NWN correspondent Cassie Middles on improving your Second Life experience in crowded spaces -- just make the crowd disappear from your view. 

Seriously: "There's several ways to de-render avatars in Second Life," as she explains, "from right-clicking individuals next to you, to using the people tab, and even just using the 'show friends only' tab. If you ever de-render and want to see someone later, make sure to only click right click, de-render temporarily." Her own preference: "I always go for 'show friends only.' it will also de-render anyone coming into your sim as well, so that I don't have to keep de-rendering new traffic every few minutes."

Watch Cassie do that above, while standing, stressed out, in the middle of a rude and raucous safe hub. (More like unsafe hub.)

Cassie's Clips: How to Become a Secod Life YouTube Vlogger

YouTube has attracted a growing number of Second Life creators who make a decent side hustle vlogging about SL content and activities (the queen likely being Strawberry Singh with 13,000 subscribers). NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles (who has a respectable following of her own) lays out some of her own personal tips for becoming an SL vlogger of substance and style:

"Find your original style, what makes you you and why you vlog.

"Remember, what we do in SL should always be fun, don't ever do things that stress you out or make it feel only like work.

"Get your basics if you can afford it: computer, editor, camera, and ways to make your graphics your best friend in SL.

"Depth of Field and Viewpoint also super help out with your vlogging, making you the sole focus when you want the video to just be focused on you."

Speaking of the last two points, catch Cassie's SL Hacks for technical tips:

Tutorial: How to Optimize SL Mesh Objects Through Level of Detail

Penny Patton, a RL graphics designer who contributed to Second Life's acclaimed Wasteland and Doomed Ship regions, has a longtime commitment to improving SL visuals. Her latest tutorial post is on creating level of detail for mesh objects, so that they look good when seen from various distances without consuming unneeded computing resources. The problem, as she points out, is many or most SL creators don't bother using LoD:

Of course, in Second Life, Linden Lab provides the option to let the mesh uploader automatically generate LOD models Unfortunately it's not very good at this, leading people to try and use their highest detail model for High, Medium and sometimes even Low detail settings, while sacrificing Low and Lowest to offset the LI increase. The results are not pretty, worse yet content creators often tell customers to increase their object detail to compensate for the poor LOD of their creations.

Bad optimization leads to lag and bad graphics for everyone, when in fact SL can look as good as a AAA game like Fallout 4. As with other tutorials, Penny is pushing back against the idea that nudging creators to optimize is not fair for amateur creators:

Cassie's Clips: How to Make Second Life Look & Work Better Than Ever

NWN YouTube correspondent Cassie Middles has this stupendously helpful tutorial of hacks that'll help improve your Second Life experience. Tips via Cassie include:

• Using View Angle: "To make your photography experience more realistic and less fish eye."
• RezPlat: "To create a platform easily beneath you."
• Ctrl+Z: "For undoing move errors."
• Edit Appearance Pose: "To make it easier to edit without that awkward pose."
• Camera Tools: "For better machinima style videos."

Got questions for Cassie? Post below or on her YouTube channel which you should definitely subscribe to.