How much money do you spend on SL every month?

[Benjamin Opel]

I haven't spent any money in SL for over a year, but when I was more active, I think I used to spend around $15 a month?

 

[WinterRabbit]

About $20 a month or every two months. Its enough for me to live comfortably in sl. I really slowed down in my SL. I use to be a huge modder and spend so much money creating creative avatars, mainly furries. But then mesh hit and my interest now in it just isn't there.

I hope it comes back. I miss that creative side of SL.

What was different before mesh?

 

[Clara D.]

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

What was different before mesh?

Avatars made using prims attached to the base Linden avatar, such as Uchi Desmoulin's "Kani" rabbit avatar that looks particularly like your avatar here, were heavily modifiable. Mesh avatars are effectively no-mod no matter what the permissions on the actual asset are.

 

[OhSynclair]

What was different before mesh?

What Argent Stonecutter mentioned exactly.

I felt much more unique pre-mesh. My furry back then was pretty much my creation. I modded the hell out of it, swapped textures between parts easily, placed different avatars together, to get my unique looks.

Now, if I went back to furry, in order for me to feel unique I have to commission a custom mod. Which, I don't mind, but the fun of modding it myself isn't too much there anymore. Everything is now mesh and appliers. I could teach myself, but...eh.

Same goes with human avatars. I always made androgynous male avatars and that was so much easier pre-mesh body and clothing. I don't like a lot of the effeminate options, especially heads.

 

[Victorianna Writer]

What Argent Stonecutter mentioned exactly.

I felt much more unique pre-mesh. My furry back then was pretty much my creation. I modded the hell out of it, swapped textures between parts easily, placed different avatars together, to get my unique looks.

Now, if I went back to furry, in order for me to feel unique I have to commission a custom mod. Which, I don't mind, but the fun of modding it myself isn't too much there anymore. Everything is now mesh and appliers. I could teach myself, but...eh.

Same goes with human avatars. I always made androgynous male avatars and that was so much easier pre-mesh body and clothing. I don't like a lot of the effeminate options, especially heads.

Before Mesh LOTS N LOTS of LAG and everyone wearing everything they owned practically lol. That is what happened before Mesh and a lot of ppl always crashing.

 

[Sid]

There are places in SL wo have practically no lag, but there are sims as well where you can't set two steps in one time with no one on it, because of the lag. It depends on many things if there is lag or not. Textures used, with what other sims is yours on the same server, scripts running etc. And there are mesh avatars that lag the place, and not a tiny bit.

 

[Val]

It all varies how things are made. There is precisely two parcels and one sim that are worst offenders to me and one never loads - not that I ever stayed till textures appeared because could not even move cursor. From older sims, Babbage used to be a nightmare for me always and the older bits of it still are after few computer changes.

I agree on avatars - you could have modded anything if you so wished (unless someone did not play nice) and most stuff was unisex anyway. Never dipped into furry avatars back then but did look recently and would not even attempt since while there are cool ones - it would be impossible to find a body shape I want buuuut that can be said same in RL. RL is kinder on femme style than SL as my main avatar which is of course self-insert never can find clothes.

 

[Mondy Bristol]

Depend on tips and shopping splurges. If I earn a lot in tips I don't need to buy L$. If I don't go to the SL fashion events and get tempted then my L$ lasts a lot longer.
When I do buy L$ it's usually £20 worth at a time and that lasts as long as it lasts. Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Before Mesh LOTS N LOTS of LAG and everyone wearing everything they owned practically lol. That is what happened before Mesh and a lot of ppl always crashing.

Uh, wot? I get about as much lag in avatar-heavy areas as I ever did.

 

[Clara D.]

Uh, wot? I get about as much lag in avatar-heavy areas as I ever did.

Av's are the worst. Whole lot of un-optimized mesh with huge textures . . . moving around.

On my 'wooden' computer I get along just fine in SL if no-one's around, but if I'm in a club I have to keep "max avatars" near minimum, and tend to point my camera at a wall instead of the rest of the room.

 

[Victorianna Writer]

There are places in SL wo have practically no lag, but there are sims as well where you can't set two steps in one time with no one on it, because of the lag. It depends on many things if there is lag or not. Textures used, with what other sims is yours on the same server, scripts running etc. And there are mesh avatars that lag the place, and not a tiny bit.

Plus, you can have a killer gaming machine and still the lag is felt...I'm glad things are Mesh now, makes a HUGE difference.

 

[Victorianna Writer]

Uh, wot? I get about as much lag in avatar-heavy areas as I ever did.

You're still getting lag? could be places where not everything is mesh or ppl that are not wearing mesh but prims or have a lot of stuff on.

 

[Clara D.]

You're still getting lag? could be places where not everything is mesh or ppl that are not wearing mesh but prims or have a lot of stuff on.

Have you ever gone into wireframe and looked at mesh people? A lot of the clothing is so triangle--ridden it's almost solid. Then throw in "ALL THE 1024 TEXTURES" and people that never detach their script-bomb body-control huds and it can be horrible when there's a room of 20 or so people.

 

[Ashiri]

Have you ever gone into wireframe and looked at mesh people? A lot of the clothing is so triangle--ridden it's almost solid. Then throw in "ALL THE 1024 TEXTURES" and people that never detach their script-bomb body-control huds and it can be horrible when there's a room of 20 or so people.

I have looked at my avatars and it seems that the base mesh body is the biggest culprit*. I mean, I can't even rez the human mesh avatar on my 512 plot. Perhaps mesh baking will allow the base avatar to be far better optimised. If only LL had updated the system avatar instead.

* I looked at the instruction for how to upload and link the ruth 2 avatar... so many parts!

 

[Clara D.]

I have looked at my avatars and it seems that the base mesh body is the biggest culprit*. I mean, I can't even rez the human mesh avatar on my 512 plot. Perhaps mesh baking will allow the base avatar to be far better optimised. If only LL had updated the system avatar instead.

* I looked at the instruction for how to upload and link the ruth 2 avatar... so many parts!

For the sake of applier layers, there's basically several copies of the body overlaying each other and transparent...

 

[Ashiri]

For the sake of applier layers, there's basically several copies of the body overlaying each other and transparent...

And several parts for getting all the alpha to work. I unlinked my human avatar into 19 parts for the upper and 9 parts for the lower.
And so I usually stick to fox or bird.

 

[OhSynclair]

Before Mesh LOTS N LOTS of LAG and everyone wearing everything they owned practically lol. That is what happened before Mesh and a lot of ppl always crashing.

I had lag then and lag now?

And I've seen many people now wearing as much stuff as they possibly can, exceeding into the 500k complexity thing. I see no difference with that and the people who wore everything at once back in pre-mesh days.

I'm not anti-mesh. I just had an easier time modding avatars back then than I do now. Now I find it to be too much work and too expensive to be an active modder like I was.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Plus, you can have a killer gaming machine and still the lag is felt...I'm glad things are Mesh now, makes a HUGE difference.

Repeating the claim that mesh makes a huge difference to lag doesn't make it true.

I love my mesh fox avatar, it's the most glorious little critter, but there's no way I can tweak it into a terrier or something.

 

[Chalice Yao]

I have looked at my avatars and it seems that the base mesh body is the biggest culprit*. I mean, I can't even rez the human mesh avatar on my 512 plot.

Highly depends on the body. I had a post on the old SLU that listed many popular mesh bodies back then. They ranged from around 25k triangles, up to the absolute insanity that is Belleza.

The numbers are probably not up to date anymore, but there we go:

SLUniverse Forums - View Single Post - Mesh Avatars Currently On The Market

Post 2226940 - Second Life and Virtual world discussion forum and photo sharing community site

web.archive.org

Belleza has, by now, a lower-tri version. And by lower tri I mean like '600k' if I recall right.
Also note that Land LI usage is not a good measure, because LL made big boo-boos in regards to LI cost and lower LODs. It's easy to make an absolutely high-geometry mesh that uses almost no LI.

Okay, that said, given the numbers in that list...I have seen a loooot of attachments that are worse than bodies. By now I regularly see rigged *hair* that is in the 150k to 200k triangle range. It's horrible. Absolutely horrible. Measuring whole avatars, I regularly see some that have over a million triangles total - or worse.

Rigged, insanely-high-geometry mesh is the #1 clientside lag source these days, followed by gallons of oversized textures needing handling.

EDIT:
For reference, the max most characters in video games get modeled at - including their outfit, hair and everything - is 100k tringles. Usually less.
People who wear 160k SL hair are literally wearing two modern rigged Street Fighter characters on their head.

.