Its Been a Long Road... and Still Travelling

Summer 2009 I was tinkering with prims, learning the art of making things with Akemi, and I said to her “you know, I could build some horns.”

So I did and the very first horns I came up with were Temptress and Prometheus.

It seems so long ago now – six years.

In that time, Second Life has changed and so have my products. From the release of my basic colour change system, Unlimited 1 to Unlimited 2 which improved things even more, to Unlimited 3, giving utter control over the products. Each stage was a leap forward.

But some things didn’t change. Namely the horns themselves – underneath everything, they were the same products as I designed back in 2009, and with as many texture and technology changes I have made, under it all, the same primitive objects remained.

Summer 2015. I was tinkering with mesh in the lab and I decided to do some experimentation with Materials.

Now, many people don’t get what materials are. The truth is, we have always had materials of sorts. You will know them better as “Shine” and “Bumpiness”. On this level though they were basic and you ended up with a polished surface, or with sculpts a surface that showed off the irregularities in the structures.

Materials are simply ways of adding detail to what should be a flat surface, and shine to highlight things. However the Advanced Lighting Model Materials are very different. No preset choices here. You create your own.

Anyhow, back to tinkering, and I decided to test out putting custom materials on to my Prometheus Horns. First lesson learnt was don’t do it. My sim unexpected threw a fit and the horns vanished.

After trying to work out what had happened I learnt that there is a limitation with Materials. They do not like Torus prims – which also happens to be exactly what horns use.

To give you an idea, Prometheus is a complex set of horns – 250 prims. By putting materials settings on to just one prim on the horns, the land impact went from 250, to over 12,500. And they were then instantly returned... and also I did manage to return a many items from my sim too... oops.

This meant one simple thing – in order to get materials on to my horns, I was going to have to change my horns to mesh construction.

This process hasn’t been easy – reworking every set of horns I have created over the years has proved to be something of a nightmare and something I have been doing on and off since this summer.

During this process has come a whole new design style too.

Many of the Torus metal “Sleeves” that were prevalent on my products has now been replaced with advanced gem sleeves.

Going through each set of horns, where necessary I have reworked the items, improved the structures of the mesh to make them smoother and more integrated, and I have even introduced a new U3 option for Two tone designs.

But the reason for all this work was integrating materials on to them.

The results... well, that is breath taking.

Comparatively speaking, my horns have always been market leaders, although in recent years, they have struggled against their more advanced competitors.

The Reworked Tartarus Generation of Horns has brought our products back up to the very top of their game and once again, Violet Studios horns are some of the finest on SL.

However you have seen the "Long Road" pictures... make your own mind up...

Always working to improve things, always understanding the jobs never done.

Hemi

A Sorry State of Affairs

Over the last 4 months, I have it has to be said, been very concerned over the downturn Second Life has been taking. While I am a creator and I love what I do, I also run a business, and you see trends forming as you watch sales and how much money you are earning. Its fair to say my sales haven't been very good.

And as it seems, Linden Lab is the root of the reason why Second Life is declining.

Its has long been known Linden Lab has a serious problem.
They don't tell people things, they are awful at support and they are known to make awful decisions that affect the whole grid, and while often these decision are valid, they never explain them.

I will give you an example of their poor communications.
Back in 2009 Linden Lab announced that they were reorganising the rules over adult material on the grid with the creation of a new rating system for sims.
This caused an uproar amongst users and creators.
Linden Lab's response was their usual. Nothing.
Some time later, they imposed the new rules, which included verification of users ages. This was done via a strict and quite frankly overkill method that either you registered a valid credit card, or gave them a copy of a current drivers licence or passport to verify your age.

As a sim owner, I complied with their requests and I understood the rules.

Earlier this year, I was grumbling about the usual SL policing issues on one of my sims to a friend. Someone was coming to my sims on zero day old avatars and causing trouble, and I questioned "How on earth is this person getting past the passport / drivers licence rules" as they had no payment info on file.
She has been on the grid for a few years, and turned round really confused and said "what are you on about?" I explained what I have said above about the "Rules".
Her response was simple. "I didnt have to do that. I just ticked a box"

I was both confused and skeptical about this, and to just check this for myself, I registered a new account, logged in on it, and went over to my sims and went straight over to the one adult sim I have.
As I tried to cross the sim border, a box flashes up which said something to the effect:
"You are trying to access Adult Land. If you want to see explicit adult material, click okay"
Clicked okay and I am on the sim.

At some point, no clue when, Linden Lab relaxed the rules and went from a cavity search approach to accessing adult materials to simply asking a question.
Outside of the fact they put the grid through hell with this "Adult" switchover 5 years ago, it is massively annoying that they sneaked this through the back door, didn't say anything that I saw to explain they were relaxing the rules and merchants and sim owners were kept in the dark.


Anyhow. The point of my soapbox today does revolve around this lack of communication and something I found out by chance yesterday that has left me spitting blood.
As you may remember, some months back I created the Caldera Project above the main sims.
Caldera was designed to comply with the rules for Adult on sims, and I ensured that there were no explicit materials in order to maintain the Sims Moderate ratings. This included not including any related furniture which can often red flag a sim.
Yesterday I was going over to the sims to do some clean up work, adjusting the parcel keyword searches to include new features many of my products have.
I started with the Demon Studio. Did a quick search to see how well things were doing.
I got a bit of a surprise... I wasnt even in the top 200 listings.
My initial reaction was "good job I came over to fix this"
Then I did a little more indepth searching to see what other keywords would come up...
Nothing.
Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. I did a specific search to find what was going on and it was then I nearly fell off my chair.
It wasnt a bad search result. The Demon Studio wasnt on the search at all.

You know that horrible sinking feeling you get when you find out something serious. That was me, as I realised that the Demon Studio had been excluded from the Search.
And what was worse, the only major thing to have changed, was the introduction of Caldera. Which meant... well. Caldera opened in April this year and it was most likely that the Demon Studio hasnt been listed on the SL search since April. 4 Months ago.
I am still fuming over this. The only thing that could have caused the parcel to be black listed was a cave I installed that had adult animations on it. However... I was sensible. I deleted the adult animations from it making it PG and nothing more than a pretty feature.
Odder is the same cave is on the Pheadra sim too.. and the parcel that is on is, yes, still listed on the search.

Needless to say I was in a state of shock for a few hours, and the only thing I could do was to move the whole sim to adult. And lo and behold... the Demon Studio reappeared back on the search.
I still dont know what caused this though, hence the extreme measure.

Why I am angry though is simple.
For 4 months, a parcel I was paying for, every week, to be on the SL search, was not being listed. I never got a heads up from Linden Lab about this. They just blocked it out and left me wondering why my sales were in decline.
It was a matter of me checking my search results that alerted me to the fact.

What angers me more about this exclusion is it was probably based around the sims filtering system picking up a "Adult" feature (incorrectly I may add).
All I will say here is this.
There is a Moderate sim out there - its a big one, well known with massive footfall.
Its listed as Moderate. And it has a sex strip club on the sim, with naked women dancing in the window. It also has an explicit shop open in its mall area dealing with adult products and its no hold barred. Yet, this sim is getting away with murder, while I am struggling to understand why my parcel got blocked off the search.

Linden Lab - please, for the love of god. Sort yourselves out. Tell people if something doesnt sit right with you and why it doesnt. You could even make this an automated system.
Don't randomly block people off the search and give zero explanation for why you did it, yet still take their money.

I am now however reconsidering move both my primary sims to adult considering how much of a pitiful joke it is to access adult land. I could in theory now turn caldera in to a full on adult playground...
I will have a good think about this and I will be monitoring the Deaths Head sim to see exactly how moving to adult affects it. That said, with the epidemic situation over the how the grid is behaving of late (constant outages, database, asset server, and teleport issues), not sure it could be a fair comparison.

A rather pee'ed off Hemi

SL2 - Don't Panic.

As the Book Says “Don’t Panic”

I got something of a surprise yesterday as I logged in to see a message from a certain TPV maker to talking about “the Future of SL”.

A read later, I actually felt, much as everyone else who read the article, a little sick.

Cutting it down to a rather over dramatised sound byte.

“SL2 is now in development – it will be in the spirit of Second Life, but you won’t be able to take anything from SL to SL2 inventory wise and SL may have as little as 18 months left”

Before you start running around with your hair on fire screaming refer to the title... DONT PANIC

One thing I have learnt over the years is that certain communications officers for certain TPV makers really don’t have a clue how to communicate things clearly or logically, and while the things above were said, they were said out of context, and in a very very poor way that could easily incite panic.

Which over the last 10 days, is exactly what has happened with the web, forums etc catching fire with rumour, doom and gloom, and blind panic.

Honestly – after I read the article, my heart sank through my stomach with the thought “5 years work down the drain”.

However to learn more, I decided to check out a few places including Nalates’s blog which I have trusted for many years to give clear, unbiased information written in a clear, easy to read way.

Thanks to Nalates and the intense work that’s been put in by her to get CLEAR information, here is the facts.

Where did this all start?

Apparently at a TPV meeting Ebbe Linden (our new CEO of Linden Lab) made a classic Faux Pau and got over excited and accidentally slipped the SL2 was in development much to a shocked and surprised gathered mass.

From what I understand, he didn’t say a great deal about it outside of the fact it will be an entirely new platform, it will be in the spirit of SL and it would be separate to SL which the original would continue and have continued development.

Got that bit?

What happened next?

Said certain TPV maker posted up a second Faux Pau and in effectively a Chicken Little Style, wrote “The Sky is Falling” article, inferring to fill in the blanks over what had actually been said, and leaving very open ended statements that could then easily be construed by readers to be something else entirely. They have since this backpedalled over what was said, and tried to clarify the position and make themselves out to be champions of the new SL (which is Ironic considering the mass panic they caused amongst SL users).

What was the Aftermath?

From here, the discussions went effectively viral over the web, with forums and blog lighting up over this shocking news. Ebbe obviously by this point realised he really had put his foot in his mouth and surprisingly for a LL’s CEO, did some real time damage control, going to one of the largest Panic Threads out there, and actually filling in the blanks with what is Official Information.

So, let’s  actually get down to facts here and as the Hitchhikers Guide says, Don’t Panic.

The big question that’s got everyone foaming at the mouth is this.

What is going to happen to Second Life?

From everything I have read, nothing. It will be here for probably the next 5 years or more.

It’s not going anywhere, your inventories are safe, your sims are safe, there are no issues.

It will be developed further, improvements made and it will be continued to be supported.

This is not conjecture, rumour or me filling in the blanks. This is from Ebbe Linden.

What is Second Life 2?

SL2 is a separate development – a whole NEW grid based on vastly improved all new gaming engine which can finally break free of the constraints imposed by the prehistoric SL original software.

It is going to be developed parallel to Second Life – so as a user you will be able to use Second Life and Second Life 2, but you will most likely need to swap viewer to log in to SL2.

SL 2 is NOT going to replace Second Life.

Again, this is fact direct from Ebbe Linden.

Will SL2 be Sanitised?

One thing that people have been seriously worried about is will SL2 be a PG rated Playground. Ebbe Linden has confirmed that whatever you can do or is available in SL will be allowed in SL2. So adult products, Adult sims etc etc, all available. It will be in the Spirit of SL. Which is good.

Can you Transfer your Inventories between SL and SL2?

Right now, they are saying no although there is a caveat to this (see time scales). However it doesn’t mean that in time some transfer won’t be possible.

In addition, you are NOT going to lose your inventory.

Your Second Life Inventory will remain exactly as it is, as for the simple fact, SL itself is NOT going away. The SL2 Inventory will (at the time of writing) be a blank sheet which you will need to repopulate, however again as said above, in time this may change.

What are the Time Scales?

This part hasn’t really been commented on outside of saying 2015/2016 before release.

There is a good reason for this being so vague though, and it goes back to Ebbe’s original Faux Pau over letting slip that SL2 is in development.

Ebbe has only been CEO of LL’s for 6 months. I would guess from statements made and from the short amount of time he has actually been in the job, that the SL2 project is currently in its Embryonic stages – probably less than a few months old.

From what I have read, the software engine hasn’t been chosen, decisions over the scripting languages, Animations formats, etc etc etc have not been chosen .

What this says to me is this project is still in information gathering stages.

Having quite a bit of experience in large software development, we are probably a good 9-12 months away from a semi operational Beta and considering the mountain of features that SL offers that have to be adapted and ported over to SL2, the beta itself could be 6-12 months.

There are of course, commercial games engines they could buy in with ongoing support which may reduce that time down, but we are looking at a year to two years minimum.

But... Even when you have a live system running, you have to remember, this is a blank sheet.

No sims, No products to buy... Nothing. SL’s greatest selling point is the fact it has such a massive volume of products to buy, places to visit.

It is then up to builders like myself and many others to adopt SL2, build stuff of them and make SL2 a fun place to be. That process by itself could potentially take years to do before SL2 could even rival Second Life itself.

So realistically, designers and users shouldn’t really expect SL2 to be viable before 2018 and for SL2 to be fully established, think more like 2020.

In conclusion then, perhaps now people should think less “the sky is falling”, and more “Don’t Panic”.

Bring it on?

Hell yeah. I was talking with Addy from AW Design yesterday about this and she remembered the rumours of SL2 first appearing as far back as 2007. Of course, they decided to flog wheezing SL engine more and more, trying to add in more and more features, but the fact is, SL is a dinosaur only propped up by the sheer volume of creators that enjoy building for it.

I don’t think any builder on SL would disagree, SL as an engine isn’t fit for purpose compared to the other games engines out there and it takes rather large nuts to actually embark on this project.

Kudos to Ebbe Linden for making this move.

I personally can’t wait to see what they come up with, although it has to be said, while SL2 shouldn’t be built by user committee (as is being kind of proposed on certain sites), Linden Lab should engage with creators before they commit to things. I would recommend a board of creator advisers who could put forward ideas without the “mob mentality” forcing issues. Collaboration is far better and we do need to remember that even as creators, we are users, not owners.

We all want to see SL succeed though and the Lab should recognise the valuable input creators can put forward in helping to shape this new engine.

As a creator, I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with, and being able (I hope) to finally realise the products I would love to built, but I currently can’t due to SL’s Limitations.

Where do we go from here?

Well. Nowhere really.

The fact is we know something we didn’t know before. SL2 is now in build, but it’s going to be some time before we even get to see it, let alone use it.

Second Life itself isn’t going to change, is still going to be around so nothing changes there.

All we can do, is sit back, get on with things just like we did before knowing NOTHING is really going to change in the short or long term and wait to see how things take shape with the Second Second Life.

Getting more Fibre in my Diet

Its been a very long month here at Violet Studios and with quite a few changes.

In between the getting various larger projects built and tested I have other things going on including the building and restoration of a new Studio PC with more power so I can create better things.

However, as I reported earlier in the year, I was majorly upset with the state of my internet service provision.

For years now I have struggled with UK broadband providers.

My first Service provider was Sky who offered me “Unlimited” broadband. Who then because I used more than 40 gig a month, capped my usage and restricted my access.

I then moved to O2 who again promised me I could have Unlimited internet, only to throw me off their service saying I was using too much data.

Funny how the word Unlimited works isn’t it?

After that I had to quickly find a new provider and step up Talk Talk, who promised me Unlimited Internet too, and for a change, they really did and for near enough a couple of years I was very happy, right up towards the end of last year when things started to get problematic.

It started with a few niggles here and there.

Every so often, at peak times I found SL was struggling a little on download speeds.

Then rather than every so often, slowly by November 2013, it became struggling a little every evening and all weekend.

However as December arrived, the problem was getting alot worse.

My broadband was rated at 6 mbps however by peak times the figures were getting down to dial up speeds of around 0.5 mbps.

As I hit Christmas, the speeds were getting terminal and I was clocking speeds of less than 0.2mbps

Putting that realistically, I hadn’t seen speeds like that since 1998 on 28K Dialup.

This for me was unacceptable. I was paying for a service I wasn’t getting, and as someone who designs and works online, I need a stable connection all day. And that wasn’t happening. I was being forced to down tools at 4pm in the afternoon, and pack in work for the day, as I couldn’t use SL.

In fact if I crashed, there were times it took anything up to an hour for me just to manage to log back in SL because the speeds were so low, the viewer was refusing to run giving error messages.

So, I called Technical Support. Little did I know at the time this was going to be the start of four months of swearing, arguing and broken promises.

First few times I got ran through their standard scripts and was told that there is nothing wrong.

Third time, I got them to come out and look at things. Took them 10 days to get someone out and after he came, he managed to improve my connection slightly, but the peak time issues were there.

I called again, and this time I got an engineer from BT Openreach come out and finally I got the whole story.

Internet in the UK is slightly confusing in that there really are only two companies offering services in the UK. British Telecom, and Virgin Cable. All other providers are tied to BT who leases them services. This I already knew, as it was BT who imposed restrictions of data on both Sky, and O2 previously turning unlimited, in to limited.

As the Engineer explained, as he lived only a few doors away from me, the local telephone exchange hadn’t been upgraded for 15 years. And in that time, use of the internet had gone from 30% to 90% and there had been 3500 new homes built that it was serving.

The problem was not my internet connection. It was the Exchange itself trying to funnel thousands of Terabytes of data and not having the physical capacity to do it hence network bottlenecks and pitiful speeds.

The only ray of sunshine was BT was installing Fibreoptic broadband. Actually they weren’t. They had deemed the area I live in to be “commercially unviable” and had no plans to update the network so they could get the UK government grant to install it. Amazing considering the area has huge commercial viability and I don’t live in the middle of nowhere.

What surprised me, was September to December 2013, I had seen them on the street installing it, although at the time I had no clue what they were doing. So the lines were there, the boxes and hardwear were installed and all ready to go!

The engineer told me that this was only really happening because he and some others had gotten so angry, they had contacted both the local member of the UK government and the head of BT Openreach to come up and urgently look at this area and it had been deemed critical, and as a result of poor planning, they were having to bypass the local exchange completely as it wasn’t commercially viable for them to do the exchange.

So, at last, Fibreoptic broadband was on its way.

However checking the Openreach website my area was coming up as “Nothing planned.”

Back on the phone to Talk Talk asking one simple question. When can I get Fibre?

By the end of January this year, I finally managed to pin them down to getting an answer.

28^th Feb – so I put up, shut up, and bit my tongue and waited patiently.

As the time approached, I rang up to see where we were up to. They wouldn’t give me any more information and as March arrived, and no Fibre broadband I called them again.

This time I got a response. “Sorry, but we don’t have that information, we never have had that information, BT Openreach are in control of the deployment and whoever told you that should never have given you a date as they didn’t know.”

Or, if you want, they lied to me just to get me off the phone and stop me calling them.

Its fair to say I was fuming however checking the openreach website again, I saw that in mid March the partnership that was funding Fibre Broadband Deployment in my area was doing a “Public awareness” campaign with a local meeting so I booked that in my diary for mid March.

Perhaps I could finally break this Talk Talk Blames BT, BT Blames Openreach (ironic as its their own company), and Openreach has no contact details!

The meeting arrived, the website was still saying “no plans” and I got there only to find BT Openreach were too frightened to send any representatives leaving only the partnership staff to answer the maddening crowds of angry people.

So I asked them the question I had asked Talk Talk. When can I get fibre?

“oh, we arnt sure as it is openreach and it will be ready when its ready, but I would say you are looking at June”

Cue near enough Nuclear meltdown.

I got back in from the meeting spitting blood but the next day something changed.

Openreach’s Website says “coming soon”.

Called Talk Talk Support again to be as usual hit by the wall of ignorance and apathy.

But it seemed something was finally moving.

Over the next few weeks, I checked the Open Reach website until on the 5^th April, I logged on to find the words “Accepting Orders”

Finally... Its over. I can use the internet on an evening again!!!

Rang Talk Talk.

I had already checked their website and it said “not available” but it was probably due to them not being up to date.

Wrong. They told me they didn’t have fibre broadband end of story and call back next week – maybe it would be up and running.

Called up the a few days later to see what the deal was and if they had it.

Again I was told to go away, but there was something else I was doing at that moment. I was checking out their rivals out of curiosity to see if they had Fibre available.

Talking to the salesman on the phone, I went on to Plus Nets website, typed in my details and how odd... they were showing that they had Fibre broadband available.

Salesman tried to shrug that off saying oh they must have a deal with BT or something as BT own them.

So I checked Sky’s website while on the phone. Accepting Orders.

He didn’t know what to say.

I checked EE’s website – Accepting Orders.

Oh... errr. I don’t know. We should have the service too if they all have it.

He then confidently said to me “Right, I am going to raise this with our back office as a priority case and I am going to take personal ownership and responsibility for this. I will guarantee to give you a call back at the latest next Friday. I know that you have had so many problems with our service and this isn’t fair on you, but if you could give Talk Talk this last chance I will sort this out for you and get you a really good deal”

I can be stupid sometimes, but I took him at his word. I put the phone down, and I waited for a week off the back of his promise.

11am the following Friday – when he said he would call, I sat by the phone waiting eagerly.

Nothing

11.30am, I got sick of waiting and called Talk Talk.

Oh... I am sorry, but the issue was raised with our back office. It seems that because Talk Talk don’t have access to the exchange to put our own equipment in it, we arnt able to offer you Fibre Broadband services. Its simply not possible.

I ground my teeth and then asked these questions.

Why didn’t the salesman who promised me to take personal ownership on this call me back, when did he find out, and when did the back office actually give that information?

They actually answered honestly for the first time in four months, probably knowing already at this point they had lost me as a customer.

The guy had read the note from the backoffice 3 days before on the Tuesday. And the Back office had issues their response to this 7 hours after it has been put through – at 7pm on the Friday before.

As for the lack of response, they had nothing.

I cancelled my services with Talk Talk 20 minutes later, went back to Sky Broadband and although the transfer didn’t go smoothly, I finally, at the start of May, 6 months after my internet became unviable on an evening, moved to the basic package of 38mbps Fibre broadband.

The results so far have been stunning really.

Day or night, regardless of when you check, I have a stable speed of 37.5mbps

I could go for an even higher speed of 78mbps, but I decided to see how I get on with the introduction speed and upgrade if I need to but so far, I have acres of bandwidth to spare. SL runs like lightening, day or night, and I managed to download software patches for my daughters PS3 games in minutes.

Previously I tried to download a 1.2 Gig patch for a game, and it failed after 4 hours

The same on Fibre shockingly took less than 15 minutes to download and install.

I was needless to say a very happy camper.

This does mean a significant change though at Violet Studios.

For the last six months, I have been forced to down tools around 6pm, and go watch TV as SL was effectively unusable.

I couldn’t build, I couldn’t upload and at times I couldn’t relog in.

With Fibre, I can build, I can now upload at 9mbps (previously at max 0.3mbps) and I have a fast stable connection.

So... PC is upgraded and working at ultra fast speeds, broadband is stable and extremely fast.

Time to get back to working like a maniac.

The Mesh Investigation Redux - Has Fitted Solved the problems?

Over the last 4 months, I have been settling myself in to getting Fitted Mesh pinned down. Its never an easy process learning, and ultimately finding out what the restrictions and limitations of new technologies are.

In a way this is very akin to my initial investigations in to Rigged Mesh back in 2011 where I spent a very long time learning about Rigging, and what it could, and couldn’t do – with more emphasis on what it couldn’t do.

Fitted Mesh is a very positive progression from Rigging, and finally I have to admit, the idea of utilising rigging is a far more positive proposition.

The ultimate goal here is to lock, stock and barrel, replace the stock avatar with a new one and fitted does make this possible to a degree, but there are still too many draw backs in my books for Fitted to become a new standard.

Fitted Mesh – what is it really?

This is a serious problem really, because like it or not, Linden Labs really don’t have that much of a clue how we use Second Life as designers. Its nothing against them, but truth is, they don’t understand.

From our Perspective, Fitted Mesh should be a swiss army knife. It should do everything. Bodies, clothing, hair, banana ears, tails – the list could go on. The short version is, even if I am being tongue in cheek, the tool should be representative of what our imaginations are capable of, and that’s a tall order.

From Linden Labs point of view, this wasn’t a practical problem of how can they do “this or that”. It was half an ear listening to the needs of the designers, briefly passing over the forum comments and maybe an occasional conversation with someone in world.

I am not being disrespectful there. I understand that if someone was to sit down, and try to take all of what was needed onboard, it would be the scene from the Exorcist watching their heads spin round as they tried to grasp what was being asked.

Going back to the Lab’s point of view though. Fitted Mesh was simply a way of getting mesh clothing to fit better. That’s it – nothing more.

And before they even got it on the grid, loonies like myself were really pushing it beyond their scope.

So... How does fitted mesh work, and why does it work like that?

The first thing to understand about this is that Fitted Mesh isn’t based on the same system as the Avatar is.

The avatar uses groups of Vertices that move, stretch and deform in to different shapes – overall this creates the different shape files.

Fitted Mesh, while based on a part of the avatars skeleton, is different in that all it is, is a series of balloons under the skin that inflate and deflate when you use the shape sliders – putting in simplistic terms.

That means Fitted Mesh is an Emulator, not a like for like system. Those that know this, the Mesh Deformer project was in fact the like for like system, and that for all intent and purpose is dead in the water now.

The biggest issue with the fact Fitted Mesh is designed to Emulate what the avatar does, means that with the complex series of variable available to the avatar, while it does a good job, there are limits.

 New Mesh, same flaws

I have just spent some time reading through my original mesh investigation documents (they are on the site – just got to the earliest blogs).

Since I originally wrote that things have changed not just with fitted mesh but other areas too.

Removing the Physics, and the shape Sliders, and the Appliers (as ADV is now available and I did finally solve the applier system problems) you are still left with some pretty heady issues.

Fitted Mesh is a far more versatile solution with more configurational options and physics. But this isn’t perfect – there are still limitations and bugs simply down to the fact its an emulator.

Multiple clothing layers. Now, this is the show stopper in my books. Some years back I said the best thing to do would be to use the baked textures from the avatar and using scripting, let people apply those textures automatically to rigged / fitted mesh parts. The works already been done.

However as far as I know, this isn’t on the table at the moment. Why – no idea as it really shouldn’t be that complex to do really.

This way, all you have to do to change your skin, clothing etc, is wear the item, and let the bake files do the rest. In theory, this could even solve the problem over alpha masking too by using a mesh hide system or a unique mask for running with fitted mesh.

That said though, I know from all my experiments and testing, that the SL body texture system isn’t capable of handling everything, and the more extreme you push, the worse the system behaves. Not a good thing as you end up with warped, stretched and distorted textures.

Oh, and this could get worse, as SL bakes its files at 512, not 1024 so those distortions will get worse.

Now, realistically this is a shorter list than before, and at least one item on there is possible.

 Have things actually got worse because of fitted mesh?

Well, in one way, they have.

For years now there has been talk and even official JIRA about the AV2 project. A whole new avatar that would be theoretically based on the current SL clothing and skins.

However it would be radically cleaned up, much more configurable, and much higher quality.

However those kind of changes would require a whole new Avatar skeleton, mesh and Slider options. Which means... Rigged / Fitted Mesh items designed for AV1 wouldnt work.

After learning first hand how the SL textures behave with more shapely bodies I think they may even have to redesign the avatars textures too to be more adaptable on extreme areas.

So, in theory, the investment in fitted mesh, may have scuppered the whole AV2 project, although that hasn’t stopped Linden Labs in the past.

Finally, and I may be wrong here, but I was asked “Will Fitted Mesh work with Micro / Macro Avatar Bodies?”

Well... I have experimented, tested etc and even though I have not done this since I worked last on Blender 2.49, I can confirm that sadly, it doesn’t work.

In fact trying to do fitted Micro or macros causes all hell to break loose in world to the degree that on one worn session I had to relog to clear a major viewer error.