The Techies and their Axes vs. the Shoppers and fashionistas, maybe we can work together.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

People judging what other people find fun, good and worthy in SL has always made my head explode and this is an example.

I'm responding to this more fully here and perhaps I shouldn't even be writing this at all. I have mixed feelings about this post and what I say in it.

Lets get this straight right off the bat, I run Linux, I run SL on Linux, and I shop, I shop quite a bit. I even used to fashion blog a long time ago and still post pixel vanity on my flickr now and then. So you might say I'm a techie AND a fashionista.

We've all seen them, nerds/techies with axes against parts of the "SL as it is now" Whether it's avatar heights and camera angles, or resource usage by mesh body parts.
They've got some good points....but they don't seem to be able to get the actual shoppers on their side.

Sure, most of the serious fashionistas don't go too tall, but I tried using the famous "properly scaled" camera settings and they simply DO NOT WORK in the majority of SL. Oh sure, their creator will say they DO work in properly scaled buildings with properly scaled avatars but that is a reality that does NOT exist in the modern SL outside a few places like Frau Yardley's Berlin. And no matter how long people have gone on about heights and scale, it's not changed much. We have to deal with the SL we have. My own height is a compromise that allows me to interact with shorter avatars and the more numerous taller ones without looking too much out of place with either. (though I am a bit on the tall side). And yes I do believe the Lindens are trolling one of the "camera angles and heights" people for a VERY specific reason.

And for those who don't like the high resource usage of mesh body parts. Well yes, it is high. I remember right clicking a body early on and going "Daaaaamn that's a lot of triangles" But most of the masses don't know about vertices and triangles. But do you think the masses and the businesses that sell to them are going to pay attention to a bunch of techy sandbox types who don't even use those body parts? Who are generally male, nerdy, often take pride in not-shopping and making their own usually non-human avatar/parts/addons. What has happened in regards to this issue is generally one part of the past of SL (the techy sandboxers) complaining about the present of SL (mostly female heavy shoppers) AGAIN! Like they've been doing ever since I joined SL back in 2006! Sometimes I feel like the techy sandboxers will take any opportunity to bash the "Barbies of SL". And yeah, the techies probably feel like their ultimate hiro protagonist/crash override fantasy world got invaded by a bunch of "girly girls" and feel a bit bitter about it and the changes that have taken place in SL since the old days. More commercialized and more focus on the masses than Linden hosted building events and tech discussions with the non-human-avatar'd Lindens of similar mindsets.

Now sure, the techy folks say they want SL to run better and they're technically very right. We all want SL to run better But the way they go about it isn't going to get the people they need to get on their side...on their side.

Continue talking about avatar heights, scale, and vertices. But think about how you present your arguments. Presentation matters when you're dealing with the masses. And need I remind you, that the most popular SL blogs are fashion blogs. And imagine getting those ladies on your side, they have L$, a LOT of it. Imagine strawberry singh using her influence with creators to get them to optimize more content so that it is less resource hungry, or heck, even Xiola Linden, she's not techy like some of the Old School hung-out-with-the-sandbox-crowd Lindens but she's COMMUNITY and she can be a gateway to the people techies need on their side.

And let me remind people of this, one of the reasons we didn't have rigged mesh for so long was because a single techy-sandbox-type Linden didn't understand why anyone would want to wear mesh and was opposed to adding it, didn't think it was needed. He had to have it explained to him by a girlfriend! She should get a medal. She served as an intermediary. That's what we need.

 

[Sean Gorham]

100% what Ms. CC said.

When I hear Penny talk about camera positions, I'm nodding my head.

When Vaelissa talks about avatar proportions, I'm taking notes.

When Niran complains about resource usage, I'm all "hell yeah!"

Could you please just pull a Voltron and become one giant SL Improvement Advocate?

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

I love making my own stuff and hyper optimizing it, but also get tired the constant bashing of popular aesthetic choices . The easiest way to get a rather condescending "beautiful hi poly frivolous lady avatars are ruining SL and are the entire reason why it sucks now!!!" dude to understand is by being a bit blunt back, "I already know how to make stuff! I don't need to be lectured on it! A popular slightly less optimized avatar/head/whatever brand helps me to enjoy what other people make ".

This is, of course, what has worked for me in the past personally. Especially in the unfortunate cases where it's like "of course you GIRLS don't know how to make good products" even when some of the biggest advocates of scaling, low poly, and etc have been women!!!!!! Some people may prefer a less confrontational approach.

 

[Free]

For this new kumbaya paradigm, do we still get to occasionally lob grenades? Because I love lobbing grenades.

 

[Khamon]

Alas yon Techi Wiki and Fashion FIC shall never see eye to eye.

 

[Govi]

I enjoy going to live music performances a lot in SL, which can be groups of as many as 60 avatars in a sim. Occasionally, I'll turn on the Avatar Health rendering score feature to see who's doing well at creating low lag good looks. It's not the result that people seem to think: that fashion forward female avatars are hogging rendering resources by creating avatars with high rendering scores. Instead, by my informal counting, proportionately more male avatars seem to have high counts, exceeding 100,000, than do female avatars.

When I look at high count males, it gets very confusing for me, because I don't see anything about the avatar that should cause high counts. This is puzzling of course. Is it that designers don't invest as much effort in optimizing their designs for men? It seems likely to me.

Next time you're in a group, look at people's rendering scores and make your own assessment.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

We've all seen them, nerds/techies with axes against parts of the "SL as it is now" Whether it's avatar heights and camera angles, or resource usage by mesh body parts.
They've got some good points....but they don't seem to be able to get the actual shoppers on their side.

It's quite simple: most people just want to enjoy and relax in SL having a good time, so they do expect a smooth enough out of the box experience.

So of course they don't bother in getting a PhD in SLims to change the default settings, wasting hours of their life fiddling around on stuff they don't fully understand for fringe results at best, and why should they?

It's not for the Jane and John Doe average resident to optimize this stuff on a global scale; that's impossible. That's the Lindens job to do it.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

When I look at high count males, it gets very confusing for me, because I don't see anything about the avatar that should cause high counts. This is puzzling of course. Is it that designers don't invest as much effort in optimizing their designs for men? It seems likely to me.

Highlight transparent and then you'll see.

 

[PandoraB]

Highlight transparent and then you'll see.

dont, you cant unsee!

 

[Chav Paderborn]

I don't think life-accurate height is that important to most people in SL. They just want to be the same height as everyone else, regardless of whether it'd save prims to be 5ft 3 1/2.

There, I said it.

 

[Penny Patton]

I totally agree with the sentiment that the average SL user doesn't care about being "life-accurate" height. They also don't care how much texture memory their new mesh head uses, or how many polygons their mesh body is using. None of that matters to the average SL user. Nor should it.

That's why I've always said that any real change needs to come from LL in the form of better tools, and features that incentivize optimization on the content creator's end, and features that make unoptimized content less acceptable to regular users.

That's also why I just share information, and don't make judgement calls on how the average SLer uses or ignores it. I'm a bit judgy on the content creators. They should know better. But at the end of the day, it's really LL's fault SL is the way it is.

 

[NeoBokrug Elytis]

Here's the problem: Competition in SL is fierce. Timelines to create content are too short. And content creators are not incentivized or punished for lazy content creation. I'm looking at you fashion and gacha creators.

I know there's content creators who do amazing work, but they're under a lot of pressure to keep churning out stuff to make a living in SL. I have also had content creators TELL me that they could make more efficient content, but choose not to because it's not worth their time to do so.

On the other hand I know people who treat content creation as their master craft, and work diligently to create hyper-efficient content for SL. They're few and far between, and work very hard for probably not the return they deserve. With scripts, I'm one of those people. If I can't fit it in one script with minimal script times and object updates, I better have a good reason why.

There's no easy fix for the problem, but the burden of the problem probably has to be put on the consumers. Education about content resource usage, combined with perhaps some new attachment restrictions may be the only step to take at this point. Only then will content creators try to bring their triangle counts and texture use down. I know project Arctan is in the works, and I haven't paid attention to it for a while. Even though it would be a big nerf for everyone, LL should step in and force people to reign in their resource use.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

I came here looking for a discussion of high tech axes. Titanium blades. Carbon fiber handles. Minimalist lightweight designs. The usual. I am a little disappointed.

 

[Amity Slade]

Resource hogging/wasting in SL is the same as environmental pollution in RL. If you care about the people around you, you care about preserving the space we share. Getting to the point where you do not care about preserving our shared space requires sociopathic indifference or active hatred for the people around you. For me, I don't dump my garbage in my neighbors' yards in RL, and I don't lag my neighbors in SL.

Apart from that, if you are an ethical merchant who believes in professionalism, then you care about giving your customers the best possible product in exchange for their money. That is true whether or not your customer knows enough about your product to truly evaluate how good it is from a technical standpoint. That is not so much a function of economics, as it is a function of caring about your customers as people and knowing that their money is valuable to them.

The problem with the unnecessarily bloated content is not so much technical or economic. It exists and perpetuates with the help of residents who lack conscience.

 

[Lance Corrimal]

When I look at high count males, it gets very confusing for me, because I don't see anything about the avatar that should cause high counts. This is puzzling of course. Is it that designers don't invest as much effort in optimizing their designs for men? It seems likely to me.

Complexity: 90383, 45487 if I take off my wristwatch. And that is WITH slink body, hands, feet (even though you don't even see them in the shoes), and catwa bento head.

And yes, there is a 45000 points watch in that saved outfit. It has a SLSA race timer built in. 'nuff said.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

There are some very high complexity mesh dicks out there. My highest ever witnessed complexity rating was coming from a man with a badly optimized mesh penis with hundreds of transparent dick sections for different movements.

 

[Tracer]

Hundreds? Is it like.... prehensile?

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

Funny I was gonna say "it might be their dicks" about the guys but sadly realised I've lacked frequent enough exposure to verify how complex they look, and also didn't want to look like a total perv for knowing too much....

I'm not going to pretend to be anything other than a linux geek, but this week I wondered ifwe need cheat sheets for this stuff, with a more detailed guide available somewhere too that explains things more fully/links to handy resources.

I think creators and consumers lack a quick, easily digestible guide for shopping or creating especially if they're not forum readers. Some quick videos wouldn't hurt too, eg to show how you identify good or bad meshes while you shop. One of the things I learned from SLU was that "people won't read things" which is why I'm thinking cheat sheets/video with a longer guide could help overcome that. Something snazzy enough to persuade fashion bloggers to post them up with linkage. Get the same distributable in world - if you could get that information into an info pack, drop it in a wee kiosk and it spread round the grid a bit, it could help educate creators/consumers who don't forum regularly. I'm sure we still have places in SL with building classes that would make an ideal kiosk drop point.

I remember following one of Penny's tutorials (I think) about making a nicely scaled avi and also the one she did about camera positioning, those would be really useful to include to help with avi sizes and exploring with a better camera so you can enjoy well-scaled buildings without concussion.

I realise complexity is erm complex, but is it humanely possible to make a guide to good/bad practice for creators to refer to, and also a seperate quick guide for shopping? Even if it required say a set of cheat sheets on the creator side, covering the main steps involved in making mesh and what you should or shouldn't do. I'm sure something like that would be understandable by consumers too, and giving them the info might be handy so they have the terminology etc handy to talk about complexity without feeling shut out by the techy language.

Another thing I've heard a few times - that low complexity/low poly is perceived as ugly and lacking detail. That might be a good mindset to challenge given that a consumer won't ask for efficient mesh if they think it'll be uglier. It would be good to demonstrate well-made mesh so folk can see the base mesh without texture and then the result of adding good textures and materials. I get the impression that some creators try and model details that they could have done through texturing/materials instead, but they may not have dissected builds to see what can be achieved. No mod content reduces the options for that too. But it would be helpful at persuading detail lovers that their world won't end through efficient building.

 

[EmpressOfCommunism]

Some people want more sex animations then what could possibly exist in real life.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Some people want more sex animations then what could possibly exist in real life.

See: tentacle hentai.