New World Notes

Watch: How to Use the Black Dragon for taking Great SL Screenshots

Here's a fun and informative Black Dragon tutorial video from SL YouTube star (and occasional New World Notes videographer) Cassie Middles. Undaunted by an occasional barking dog down the hall, Cassie shows you how to use the third party viewer with a cult following among SL artists to take screenshots.

Black Dragon is significantly different from Firestorm, the most popular SL viewer, but Cassie tells me she likes both for different reasons:

Watch: How to Reduce Prim Count on Second Life Land (Kinda Sorta)

Here's a fun quick tutorials from SL YouTuber Luca on how to (kinda sorta) reduce the prim count on your SL land.

"Just make sure you don't link scripted and no-copy objects unless you know what you're doing," Luca explains. "The frames-per second doesn't get increased but the prim count of things that got linked does get reduced by 25-50%." 

In other words, you're not really removing prims, you're just tricking the system into thinking that you have. Right?

Watch: How to Use Black Dragon, the SL Viewer With Great Graphics Options But a Challenging User Interface

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer, has a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, but many SLers complain that its user interface for everything besides graphics is, well, challenging.

"It’s worth noting that while I think Black Dragon is unbeatable for visuals in Second Life, it’s not as easy for just about anything else," as blogger Mericat Ireland notes. "Communicating, getting changed etc. is all a bit more difficult than with other viewers (although entirely possible)." That in mind, Mericat shot this tutorial/walkthrough above, and opened up her blog to questions from other Black Dragon users.

It should be noted that none of the SL viewers, including (especially?) the official Linden Lab-created viewer, are user friendly, which is a key reason why roughly 99.9% of new users quickly leave. So really, we're just talking about which set of complex commands you prefer to learn/tolerate.

As for whether it's worth learning how to use Black Dragon, here's a sample of what it looks like in action, in a machinima created by Black Dragon creator NiranV:

Watch: How to Create Great SL Images Even on Low Graphic Settings

Here's a super useful tutorial from Second Life YouTube star Cassie Middles, who shows you how to shoot and then post-process a great Second Life image even with SL settings turned down low. Check out her levels and the resulting pic below:

Watch: WindLight Tutorial for Firestorm, Featuring Favorites & Notes from Cyberpunk Guide Ms. Ayla Pants

Ayla Pants, a fun and chatty YouTuber who explores all things cyberpunk in Second Life and other game worlds (as here and most especially here), recently posted this tutorial for people just starting out with Firestorm's WindLight settings. Here's some further tips and preferences from her:

"[I]t might not occur to newbies that changing your WindLight settings changes them only for you. Back when I had a system body with all of its awkward, angular features, I loved 'Nam's Optimal Skin and Prim' WindLight because it was perfect for just that, smoothing out the rough, crinkly angles and shadows the cropped up especially around the face.  However, it's kind of a bummer to realize only you are seeing your best face, and you can't force everyone around you to see you in that same (literal) light.  Like I say in the video, I also love this particular WindLight setting because it evenly lights up the ad boards that weren't set to full-bright in poorly lit shopping areas."

 

"Also, many WindLight settings will look different if you adjust the time of day slider. Results vary, though, and some WindLights do this better better than others."

Here's some of her own favorite WindLight settings, which as you might guess, tend toward the Gibsonian:

Why Optimization Matters: Even One Bracelet Can Drastically Hurt Frame Rate

Via New World Notes' Discord newsfeed and commentary channel (join here!), "Nadeja" recently posted this fascinating illustration from Second Life for why graphics optimization matters:

"Complexity, textures, triangles comparison." (Click to embiggenate.) "The first one has a Complexity of 17,000 and a huge texture usage: it remains gray for longer, but once it's loaded it has a negligible impact on the frame-rate. The second one has a complexity of 4000, a lower but still quite high texture usage, however it has a large amount of triangles (178,000!)" 

By comparison, whole entire avatars in AAA console games tend to have a total triangle count well under 100,000.

"When I wore it," reports Nadeja, "my frame-rate dropped from 45-46 to 41 frames per second. And this was a tiny element in the scene, I can imagine that multiplied by 20 avatars."

Part of the problem seems to be many virtual world users equate more triangles with better quality, even though that's not the case:

SL Tutorial: Penny Patton's Quick Tips for Optimizing Second Life Builds to Have High Frame Rate AND Still Look Great

Ever since I posted about "Nar Shaddaa", this beautiful Star Wars-inspired bar created by Penny Patton, two questions from readers kept coming up:

• Does this scene really have such a great frame as claimed -- even for older computers?
• How can I optimize my own SL scenes as well as Penny Patton?

Answer to the first question: Yes, if you follow the usage guidelines. But don't take my word for it, check out this in-person tour by Amanda Magick, using an old Mac.

For the second question, here's Penny Patton with some starting tips:

"Unfortunately," she begins, "there's no simple way to break it down. Linden Lab makes it extremely difficult to build optimized environments. There's no real tools for it. You just need to know what to look for and what to avoid."

Here's how:

Visit a Place in Second Life That Looks Great & Has Little Lag, Even On An Old Computer -- If You Follow Some Important Steps First

Last Tuesday we talked about how Second Life, when properly optimized, can look and perform as well as a AAA game, even on older computers. This weekend, you can log in and experience this first-hand, in a small place called Nar Shaddaa - Red Light District.

It was created by Penny Patton, the graphics expert and SL's most passionate optimization advocate,

"The theme is a Star Wars planet of the same name," she explains. "Kind of a Star Wars version of Las Vegas meets Amsterdam. Part of a network of Star Wars RP sims in SL."

Penny just visited it with her near-10 year old desktop computer to take these pics, and as she designed it to be, performance was still excellent: "I was getting a solid 35-45 frames per second. When people talk about FPS in SL they tend to ignore things like stuttering, where SL freezes up for a second or two as you turn the camera. I got none of that even on my aging desktop."

Before visiting, however, you'll need to tweak some settings to get the full effect:

How to Make Second Life Look Like This -- Even on a 10 Year Old Computer

Lots of conversation last week over this post on optimizing SL, with some taking issue that the sample video I included in the post only averaged 30 FPS. Fortunately, graphics expert Penny Patton is back from a blogging hiatus, and sets things straight:

You're assuming that this sim [in the video] is as optimized as a AAA game, it likely isn't. I've been able to get 30-60fps in SL on a 10 year old computer through optimization of content in the sims I was building.

I've even gotten SL to run respectably on laptops with onboard graphics.

Now, the SL engine might very well have its own issues (and it does) but for anyone who has a basic understanding of game design, there is absolutely no question at all, the lack of content optimization is a huge performance hurdle and SL can both look and run a lot better when content is optimized.

 The image above, for instance, is from a recent blog post (and build) by her:

If your computer was made in the last 10 years and includes a videocard, you should be able to run SL at around the max settings, never experience texture thrashing (when textures in SL are constantly going blurry), never experience stuttering (when SL freezes up for a moment), and if you have a reasonably decent net connection then everything in Second Life should load lightning fast. Second Life should look this good for you at all times [above].

And I'm not just talking you, by yourself, in a sim that looks as good as these screenshots, I'm saying you should be able to hang out in a sim with that level of detail, surrounded by about a dozen friends, and still keep your framerate around 30 FPS, if not better.  That's with deferred rendering, depth of field, shadows, and all the shiny features turned on.

In Comments, she also corrects a faulty assumption that "more polys mean more detail". Nah:

Watch Live at 9am PST: How to Use Mood Lighting & Post Effects in Sinespace

In this week's masterclass tutorial, Adam Frisby, founder of Sinespace (a proud sponsoring partner to NWN!), shows you how to create mood lighting and use the new Post Effects stack in the Unity 3D-based virtual world. (Also streamed live on Twitch.)

Questions? Post in Comments here, or even better, in Sinespace's Discord server for developers, which are most active on weekdays.