Questions Questions...

Well, as Firestorm hold the grid back with their unreasonable month delay in getting Fitted Mesh on the grid, leaving business and users in Limbo while they delay the adoption of fitted mesh, I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday this cropped up.
As I dont know where it came from, I wont include the names...

"Won't take long for TPVs to update to it. it's just copying two files over.
You can even do it yourself. In the viewer install directory there is a folder called 'character', copy the avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml from LL's 'character' directory to the TPV's 'character' directory.
And that's it. There are a few changes for AMD cards to fix some bugs, but overall this all that needs to be done for most people."

Now I wouldnt recommend actually doing this as all sorts of things may go wrong.
However.

[2014/02/20 15:50]  ********* *****: just tried that myself, on FS and seeing Fitted Mesh just fine

So... lets just get this straight.

1/ Go in to the firestorm directory on your PC, copy and back up avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml from the Characters folders.
2/ Download and install the official Linden Lab Viewer. Find the character directory and copy avatar_lad.xml and avatar_skeleton.xml, then go back to the Firestorm folder, and paste them in to the character folder.

Fitted Mesh now works? Apparently it does.

I have had a separate conversation with someone in the know since then, and I was told in a round about way, this is actually how it is. Patching over the AMD card bugs isnt difficult either and the whole process should take a few hours at max. It just a matter of sending out an update.

This leaves me with a large and concerning question.
If users can technically update their own viewer by copying across two files (for the majority to cases) and apparently its a few hours work to convert a viewer to Fitted Mesh, then why is it Firestorm are delaying the release of Fitted Mesh on the grid by an entire MONTH?

I will leave you to try and work that one out as to me, it doesnt make any sense at all unless they are deliberately doing this.

A seriously arrogant error of judgement

Earlier today I had a good rant about the seeming lack of action from Second Life's most used Viewer - Firestorm.

I say this with almost bile in my throat that today, buried somewhere deep in the transcripts of Satudays Firestorm meeting is this quote.

"The next release of Firestorm will be out around March 9th – possibly a little before, possibly after."

I was partly joking when I said it could be weeks or months...

This leaves me in a very bad place for Violet Studios, as it also leave many other mesh creators in similar places.
Fitted Mesh is here, and apparently many TPV makers are now adopting it.
This is a critical update to SL - without Fitted Mesh, you cant see the many things people are designing.

And the makers Second Life's most used viewer are effectively snubbing their users, supporters and even Linden Lab by saying "they really couldnt care - we will get it out when we feel like it".

I have been hearing today that several companies released Fitted Mesh products the moment it was released and over the coming weeks, Fitted mesh will become a popular trending product on the grid.

This is a dilemma.
Wait for Firestorm to do what they do, or get my products out and tell people to stop using Firestorm as "it isnt up to the latest Second Life Standards".

If I wait, I risk being left behind commercially.
If I release, I risk people shouting at me because they are still using Firestorm.

Sadly, considering the sheer volume of time we are looking at here, I dont have much choice really.
I have to do whats right for my business, not for Firestorms user figures.

I have no choice but to advise people to stop using Firestorm as its outdated and doesnt feature the latest critical Second Life updates.
I am sure when they see their user figures dropping through the floor, they may actually have a quick rethink about their pedantically slow release time table.


Sorry Firestorm...

Waiting for the buses... The Fitted Mesh Legacy

Since its announcement in November last year, many designers and builders in SL have as I have said previously been chomping at the bit, gagging for the technology to be developed, tested and deployed.

And its not been an easy wait. Near enough a month back I reported my issues over the official Linden Labs DAE files being borked - now it seems that people have finally noticed this only in the last week.
The simple fact is, I was hoping for Christmas time when Fitted was going to be released, even if I was knowingly being unrealistic over it.

I was guesstimating that Fitted Mesh would arrive on the grid at the end of Feb 2014, and I had my build program in place for this, with new products being tested, built and even boxed up ready for that day.
Imagine the coffee spillage and jaw on the desk, when out of the blue Linden Lab officially released Fitted Mesh last monday. This was unexpected.
I had been following the JIRA on this, watching for issues cropping up, and while it had been quiet and had slowed up during January, occasionally a show stop issue was cropping up.

So... its GOOD NEWS!!! Fitted Mesh is here, its released and is ready for use...
No... its not.

This has left me with a bitter taste in my mouth, as Fitted Mesh isnt here really. The simple fact is, Fitted Mesh requires users viewers to be up to date.
Some people may resist the urge to update to the official Linden Labs Fitted Mesh viewer and personal choice is one thing.
But physically being unable to update to fitted mesh as its not available on your viewer of choice means that officially releasing fitted mesh is nothing more than a joke.

There really are two kinds of SL changes when it comes to technologies and viewers.
There is the minor changes - stuff thats nice to have, features that make life easier, or improve your inworld experience, but they arnt essential.
Then there are the major changes which are few and far between. In fact in the last 3 years I can only remember 3 such instances. Fitted Mesh, Project Sunshine, and surprisingly, the original Mesh.
What constitutes a major change is the fact its an essential and the world will not render correctly if you dont upgrade.
For Mesh - without a mesh capable viewer, the thousands of objects in world using mesh will be broken.
For Sunshine, without a viewer capable of sever side baking, you will see Grey people everywhere.
And for Fitted Mesh, any mesh using the new bones will appear on none fitted mesh viewers as a spagetti string being dragged into the bottom corner of the sim.

Back in late January, the team behind the Singularity Viewer (a frankly excellent Viewer 1 based viewer which is as good as, in my books at least, any viewer 3 viewer), released their Version 1.85.
That viewer offered dozens of fixes, upgrades, clean ups etc, but shockingly, and surprisingly they jumped the gun and integrated in Fitted Mesh.
At the time I questioned if this was a wise move as the JIRA for Fitted was still throwing up bugs, however hats off to them. Not only has that idea worked, but actually found some more bugs for the official project to fix therefore making a positive contribution to the development of fitted mesh.
It also allowed me to do beta testing on Fitted Mesh items without having to use the Test viewer form Linden Lab, which in itself is extremely positive for me.

Now with the official release of Fitted Mesh, and seemingly no changes to the operation of Fitted Mesh, Singularity is much like the Official Viewer, Fitted Mesh ready.

The problem is, Singularity is a Third Party Viewer, and for all its bonuses and smooth operations, its certainly not the biggest.
However, lets just get this straight.
Singularity is based on the original Viewer 1 - Not the latest generation of viewers. And the fantastic team there managed to retroengineer the Fitted Mesh system from Viewer 3 code, and fit it in to a Viewer 1 code, and it works perfectly. That deserves respect.

However, while two major viewers have adopted Fitted Mesh, the largest user base viewer on the grid, Firestom, hasnt got fitted mesh.
I will say fair enough - I got a surprise when it was released, and I was estimating a few more weeks before it arrived. However this isnt another "Facebook" feature - this is serious. This should have been planned out, tested and been ready for release. After all, Firestorm is based on Viewer 3, and the official Viewer 3 has fitted mesh. I know its not a matter of drag and drop, but considering Singularity managed to retroengineer the code and released it weeks ago in their viewer, why have Firestorm been caught with their pants down like this.

Firestorm announced last week that they had delayed their monthly meeting for a week and "Exciting news" would be coming.
Many builders saw this as either something major is going to happen, or, they were going to release the fitted mesh capable version of Firestorm.
This meeting was planned for this last Saturday night (UK time) and I logged in to the Firestorm site on Sunday morning to see what happened.
Short answer was, nothing. There is no new press releases or viewer releases.
In fact its now monday and the firestorm blog is still devoid of information and I had to go over to Nalates' blog to see what the crack was.
After trawling through all the information, it seems Firestorm is still "testing" their viewer. They are being deliberately vague over any release date and this is not good at all.
It could be released tomorrow, or next year for all they are giving us.

And for the first time in quite a while, I am very sad to say, Second Life is now outside of Linden Lab's control. They have officially released a new technology, but the actual practical release date for creators isnt what Linden Lab says it is. Its being dictacted by Firestorm. As the largest user base viewer on the grid, they control which technologies can and cant go "live".
Am I being a drama queen over this? Not really if you think about it.
Can I release any full fitted mesh products using the new bones?
According to Linden Lab, yes I can. The technology is in the official viewer.
Practically though, I can't. Firestorm doesnt have fitted mesh, and may not have it for weeks or months.
If the largest user base viewer on the grid doesnt support Fitted Mesh, then a large percentage of users cant see fitted mesh, other than pointy spagetti. That means practically, I cant release any fitted mesh products until Firestorm updates.
I suppose I could do, but the vast majority of the SL population will not accept having to move back to the official viewer or Singularity, and all I will get is bombarded by angry customers who cant see fitted mesh.

So... I guess we are stuck waiting for the number 22 Fitted Mesh bus to arrive in Firestormville.
I will post more when or even if there is news from Firestom.

Being a perfectionist on SL is hard work

When I first joined SL it was like a giant creative playground for me and using the limited technology available, I am pleased to say I did some pretty amazing things.

However during the time I had many friends say to me that Linden Labs were ruining SL.

I never really understood what they mean but today I kind of get what they mean.

Mesh behaving badly part 2

I am quite stubborn when it comes to things, and even though I effectively went in a circle in my last post, I didn’t give up, working on new theories to see if I could get rigged mesh to behave itself.

After lots of brain storming, some inspired ideas and thinking outside of the box I carried on testing all sorts of weird and wonderful  methods.

The result though, as usual, was crap.

Experiment  one was extending the mesh upwards to include part of the upper body.

The result was no change. I thought that just using the lower body had created a cut off angle for shading – an absolute cliff to fall off. Sadly though, it wasn’t that.

I then realised while local lighting was causing issues, it could also solve them too. So I built a body light system and brilliant part... it worked. Right up to the moment you put ALM on and the world washed out in an over exposed flash of brilliance.

Finally. I thought Face alignment issues could be the root cause. One thing I had spotted was the tummy seam wasn’t causing problems. However after straightening out , smoothing and realigning the stomach and back joints to be equal in angle, the test again proved pointless – the seam was sticking out like a store thumb.

My aim here was to find a “fool” way to make the texture seamlessly blend that would work no matter who was looking at you and available from Mid Graphics setting upwards.

The result is its possible. However its flawed in sooo many bad way that its not practical.

The fact of the matter is, Rigged mesh does not behave like the avatar body with Windlight. And that creates the tone differences.

No matter how good your repertoire of tricks is, the result is, fail.

The only way this can be solved is to make rigged mesh behave in the same way the avatars body does.

However, as many mesh creators know, this issue isn’t the only problem with rigged mesh.

Soft deformers not working, Liquid Mesh still in limbo, LL’s hinting that they are again working on some kind of soft deformer project.

Add that to the huge issues with texturing, clothing, appearance, etc etc and you get back to a conclusion I reached in late 2011.

Rigged mesh is effectively useless. Its not fit for purpose. Its bugged, half built and doesn’t do what it should have done from the start. And while designers are still sitting here waiting for something innovative to pop up to the solve the problems, its not happening. In fact in the last 2 years, I have not seen one single improvement or change to production mesh for rigging.

Static Mesh, as I concluded before, is fit for purpose.

Rigged Mesh though is not fit for purpose, its half built and while I am gagging for the day its going to work right, its slowly dawning on me that its not going to happen.

Which then brings me back to another wonderful invention that is starting to bleed its way in to the viewers at the moment.

The Long awaited Materials system.

Wow... now this has been on the wish list for years. We all wanted it. Advanced Shine, Bump maps etc. Finally we can do surface texturing that actually matches what we see in other 3D packages.

And its here now! Woo hoo!

Okay... no its not. As always there is a catch.

In order to use Materials, you have to have the Advanced Lighting model running.

All due respect, I still get customers today contacting me about their VSX products not displaying the particle functions. In fact usually 2 people a month, and lord knows how many read my explanation over it and fixed it themselves.

What I am hinting at here, is the fact the only reason particles are turned off in a customers viewer, is they are on the Low Graphics setting.

Seriously.

Over the last few years, SL has been advancing at a rapid rate, with new features being added.

However as you add more features, you also add to the graphics load to the point you are at 4 FPS and wondering why you seem to be watching a 1920’s film.

From what I can see, and from straw polls I have done with friends and customers, only 20% roughly of people are running the Advanced Lighting Model.

In fact I don’t run the ALM on my system as it taxes the system too much for building.

So, we are back to the problem here of being “fit for purpose”.

Materials – brilliant.

Commercially viable – is it heck.

A Scenario. I build some sparkly new product using all the features of the Materials system.

I put it up for sale, with marketing showing the effect Materials is having on the sparkly new product.

Customers see it goes “wow” and buys it, unpacks it and wears it.

However when they look at it, and then look at the marketing they don’t look the same.

This then comes back to lots of shouting at me from customers.

“Your product doesn’t look anything like it does on the box.”

Unless they have the ALM running, they see the flat version, which doesn’t look like the ALM Materials version.

It gets worse. Even if they buy it and they do have ALM running, 80% of people on SL are not using ALM, so they don’t look right to them. And thats not a good advertisement for a designer.

So. Materials get a big thumbs up from me. Shame its a waste of time and effort because its not fit for commercial purposes.

This brings me back to what I originally said about my friends comments.

The thing I am mostly seeing from Linden Labs with Second Life is positive. New technologies are the life blood of the system, however with so much happening at such a pace, there really needs to be a someone to do a “sense check”.

I have listed just two examples of excellent technologies that epically fail to deliver on their promise.

Creators are the life blood of Second Life, and without us, SL would be a yet another empty grid, with no products and ultimately nobody to buy them, as people would leave.

Giving creators tools to make better things is great, but if the tools come with condition, bugs, flaws, and omissions that render them useless, then they do nothing for the Second Life.

At the moment, Linden Labs usually sees fit to “inform” the users and designers on SL of new technologies when they have actually finished the job. There seems to be no method from creators to give feedback and input. In fact its fair to say over the last two years the method that we did have to give feedback have been removed or limited.

The sad thing is though, without us being able to give the feedback, the result will always be new technologies that are not fit for purpose. Its great to get them, but without actually knowing how these technologies will be used by creators, then there is no way Linden Labs can make a product that will work.

So all said and done I am back to square one. A meshed up and no place left to go.

Sunshine havoc - The Viewer 2 Legacy, Long live Viewer 1?

In the past I have been pretty outspoken about how Linden Labs insane changes to SL are detrimental to how SL itself works. However, like many other users and creators on SL, it all got to a point where trying to talk some sense in to Linden Labs was beyond a joke, and I gave up, settling myself in to just inworld grumbling, however thanks to “Project Sunshine” which has now been rolled out grid wide, I have felt the need to sit down and grumble in public again.

First off, I think I should, from a users perspective actually quantify what project sunshine is.

According to Linden Labs

Project sunshine take the baking process away from the viewer and the user, and does it server side to speed things up, and cut out the “blurry” avatars.

To understand that though, you need to understand what baking is in the first place otherwise for all you know, making cheese toasties are now done server side rather than with the user.

Baking is a process of making a combo pack of the various textures you are wearing, and creating 3 images of it.

So... you have a skin on (3 textures), a shirt (1 texture), Pants (1 texture), alpha masks (upper and lower body – 2 textures), a Tattoo (3 textures).

So... with that you are wearing 10 textures. Each of those textures will need to be downloaded by anyone who sees you in world. Obviously thats a hell of a load to work with.

This is where baking comes in.

When you first wear an item of clothing you will see it appears on your avatar. Roughly 30 seconds later, the avatar goes all blurry and then comes back. The blurry bit is you actually baking.

After a set time, your viewer (as in the one on your computer) takes the 10 textures you have on, and merges them in to three – the Head, Upper Body and Lower body.

It then uploads those textures to the Second Life Servers as a temporary bake files.

Now, when someone sees you in world, they only have to load 3 textures, rather than 10.

I use 10 as an example because its convenient, but its not unheard of for some people have to have 30 or more textures on their AV, so the benefits of baking are very apparent.

Now... where does sunshine come in to this?

Well, the basics of Sunshine are, it takes you out of the equation.

When you wear an item of clothing now, rather than your viewer doing the baking work, a server at Linden Labs bakes the textures and stores them. The result is, things are faster, and less bandwidth and errors will occur. In addition, this is supposed to speed SL up, as there is a database of items that will take various textures, and store their bake permanently so if you and another user have the same outfit on, it wont need to bake – you get the texture.

Sounds great doesn’t it.

However. What really are the benefits of Sunshine?

SL to me has worked perfectly for years – never had issues and even with sunshine, I am still seeing half baked people.

But, what about this faster database of stored bakes?

Yeah... thats just about as dumb as it gets. How many times, realistically, do you see someone wearing exactly the same skin, with exactly the same clothes as you?

Answer is never. There will always be something slightly different about you.

In fact there is only one occasion when this will help.

You can now see noobs faster.

Now, lets cut the crap here. Project Sunshine is a step forward, but is it the brilliant thing its made out to be. I would say not really.

This is sadly typical Linden Labs – big project, big noises, little inworld impact and massive inconvenience to users.

Which does kind of neatly bring me back to the point of this article... why’s Hemi on the soapbox this time?

Well, it all comes back to one of my other major gripes about Linden Labs over the last three years. The next generation viewer – also known as Viewer 2 / 3 what ever it is this week.

I remember the utter disbelief and backlash against Linden Labs when they proudly showed off Viewer 2 to the users.

Basically everyone with a few small exceptions hated it. Passionately.

I remember vividly though the comments posted were not rude, unfounded or harsh. In fact they were very constructive, and tried to help.

Linden Labs after this consultation and testing of the new viewer then said effectively “thank you all for your comments, we don’t care, its going ahead as it is”.

In fact I know of at least 5 personal friends of mine who actually said “If this is the future of SL, then I don’t want anything to do with it..” And shortly after, they left SL.

Sadly Linden Labs didn’t back down on the new viewer format, and it was taken on board by Third Party viewer makes to try desperately to clean up the mess Linden Labs made and produce a viewer that people could use, rather than what LL’s were forcing down their throats.

In fact today, its almost laughable that the current Official LL’s viewer is being beaten in to the floor by TPV projects like Firestorm.

About a year ago, with new features being pushed in to SL, and with the official Viewer 1 from LL’s getting the chop, as well as the sad news that viewers like Phoenix getting axed too I decided as Viewer 3 was now almost useable, to move on to Firestorm.

It was a move that unsettled me as I tried to get my head around some of the serious building usability issues that had been pushed in to Viewer 3 such as the mental methods of skin and clothing construction that increased the production time by three (yeah – I timed this. If you took at day to build something, with Viewer 3, it will take you 3 days).

However, I bit the bullet... and forced myself to get used to Viewer 3, although technically working on clothing and skins, I continued to use Phoenix.

I have to admit by this point I had almost resigned myself to the fact this was SL now but I still had options.

That is, until Sunshine arrived.

As Sunshine changes the way the viewer behaves, unless you are on a Sunshine capable viewer, you cant see SL. Just lots of grey people.

Well... shouldn’t be a problem. Just update Firestorm.

That is kind of where my problem started. I updated Firestorm, and by the end of the day I had to roll back to Version 4.3

The viewer was effectively unusable for me.

So, what was the problem?

First and foremost was the viewer throwing a fit every time it saw an alpha texture. Not the actual rendering of it, but if you cammed on to it.

The viewer would for no reason at all, freeze solid for 10 seconds.

My first reaction was, check my graphics card driver software – I did, updated it.

No fix.

I then went on to the Firestorm Wiki, and spent over an hour running through ever single graphics glitch hotfix I could find... nothing worked.

The only solution I found for the problem was unacceptable. Setting Graphics to Low cured it.

However working on a PC that has been running on Ultra on 4.3, sorry – not putting up with Low.

So in the end, I had no choice but to roll back, and hope that Firestorm would release an update before it got critical.

Well, Sunshine went live on Tuesday, and with no update, I had to put back the glitched release and in fact I found even more issues since the reinstall.

1/ Loss of connectivity – effectively without warning, sim ping times were in to lag out mode, with 1500ms being the average. This was all sims too.

2/ Avatar blinking in and out – the avatar would just disappear for a second without warning.

3/ Freezing on camming around a sim – as the viewer tried to load in the sim, the whole thing would freeze up regardless of first load, or even being at home with everything in cache.

4/ Menu freeze up – open inventory, preferences, etc, and the viewer would freeze up for 10 seconds or more.

5/ Cam to semi transparent object would freeze the viewer up for anything from 10 -20 seconds.

Which I suppose brings me back to Sunshine.

Which is better for your company? A viewer that allows users to actually use Second Life, or improving Second Life’s loading times and making a viewer that is at least for some of the population, unusable.

In a laughable way though I found a solution to the problem though.

I have moved back to Viewer 1.

Over time, while the better known viewers like Phoenix have perished, a small hardcore group have continued to push viewer 1, and I am very thankful that TPV’s like Singularity decided to stick with Viewer 1 and build software that can offer what is for people like me, essentials.

Singularity is fast on my PC – in fact it seems to be running circles around Firestorm in terms of FPS rates. It also is much kinder to my PC – its operational load cost on my CPU and memory is a third of Viewer 3.  Its also stable – everything that should work, works flawlessly.

Its more useable for builders – as it still has the older Edit Appearance system, it means faster production times for clothing and skins compared to viewer 3.

It seems to have all of the “unique” features that viewer 3 has.

The only thing I really still have to test and work on is mesh uploading, however I assume that these issues have been cleaned up since I last used it.

Well. This is awkward as I think its about time I asked a question here.

Way back when Linden Labs unveiled their amazing Viewer 2 we were told by Linden Labs that this new viewer was the way forward and that it was a necessity as the technology Linden Labs was developing for Second Life in the future required this new viewer.

Today in near enough three years on from that. The new technology Linden Labs was developing, is mostly here now and there new viewer has gone through massive development in that time.

But as a user of Second Life, all I can see that has happened is this.

The new viewer is still an overweight, cluttered, messy design with a GUI that has had to be adapted to look like the original viewer in order for it to work right. Its memory and CPU over intensive and has from my point of view, become an untenable and unusable piece of software thats throwing out multiple errors all the time.

The irony of this though, is that viewer 1 base systems like Singularity, based on tried and tested software is faster, more stable, less memory and CPU intensive and gives equal or better FPS rates than the new viewer does.

And here is the serious point. We were told the new Viewer was a requirement due to the new technologies coming. And yet, today, Singularity has effectively integrated ALL of those new technologies in its build and seems to be running circles around the new Viewer.

I don’t really have much more to rant about so I will sign off with this.