Mindjunk is exactly what it sounds like: mental clutter that sits in your head and makes you more anxious and fearful, taking up space without doing anything effective for your life — or Second Life. It sells papers (or their virtual equivalent), but it isn't true.
Alas, while I mostly enjoy Hamlet Au's New World Notes, I'm not happy with repeated mindjunk like this:
As with WindLight, it's likely that dynamic shadows will only display optimally on the most powerful (and expensive) computers, threatening another balkanization of the SL experience. (Not to mention frustrating builders who've spent so much time figuring out how to add artificial shadows to their work.)
No.
- A computer that exceeds Second Life's System Recommendations can be bought for under US$500. Take any fair setup optimized for gaming/multimedia — glean knowledge here — and make sure it has a beefy enough CPU and RAM. An 8800GT, which is more than enough to run Second Life and many top-notch games on the market, can be had for under US$150, and even less if you shop around. And even then, there are cards under US$50 that will still show off atmospheric shaders (WindLight) in all their glory.
- "Balkanization" is also grossly inaccurate. Even though I appreciate colorful analogies, it isn't as easy to unite countries involved in political bloodshed as it is to click your mouse and toggle graphics options. This is no different from the many games and 3D modelers on the market that allow you to turn off higher-quality graphics in favor of increased speed. Second Life's not unique here — similar concerns were raised about BioShock, which has higher min. requirements than SL.
- "Frustrating builders" is entirely speculative at this point, and injects artificial fear into an experimental feature which is awesome to preview but clearly isn't intended for widespread release yet. Talk about wild analogies: do you scream at your baby for not being able to walk out of your womb or nurture it and encourage healthy development? And what about the upsides, like "freeing builders from the worry of painstakingly crafting fake shadows"?
Related, see "Lessons learned from WindLight".
Whenever something remarkable leaks, whether unwanted or deliberately, people talk about it. They can't help but react, and that's part of being human.
The great part: it builds buzz.
Teh suck: there are a lot of armchair critics who add to the noise, but don't contribute anything useful.
What I say isn't exclusive of problems. But it certainly is inclusive of what isn't being talked about enough.
If you've got an opportunity to speak up and make a difference about ongoing issues, no matter how controversial — or protroversial they may be: don't be a community bleeder, be a community leader.
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I bought my new laptop half a year ago, in order to have access to SL during my frequent travels. It's a rather sturdy IBM ThinkPad, with an nVidia graphics card. However, running Windlight on it is a pain, which is the reason why I mostly come online with the Nicholaz BE-v viewer that is based on SL version 1.18.5.3. It's reliable and fast and does not crash.
I can't afford a new laptop for 2-3 years to come. And even though I like eye-candy, a reliable SL with less crashes and loss etc would be more useful for me.
While I *largely* agree, I believe a lot of the "only runs on high end machines" comes straight from comments Runati had on the dev list. I know you've managed it though, as have many others — to stunning effects. However, my two month old iMac, as beautifully as it runs the current RC as well as the regular (windlight enabled) viewer, it can't use shadowdraft — there is no mac support.
I, of course, expect that to change eventually — or at least hope so!
Ironically, Windlight runs better on my older XP box than on my new vista box.
But ONLY because the windlight client on the vista box exhibits memory leaks like a sieve that a mac truck drove through, and crashes almost like clockwork every 2 hours or so. Nobody's seemed to give a rat's patootey about fixing the leaks. *shrugs*
Like others, I am also on Nicholaz BE-v - it's stable, it's reliable, and I'm not continually freezing. I can actually *gasp* get something DONE. Like, oh, building?
And the vista box, btw? Exceeds SL requireements - it HAS to, in order to run Vista…
Torley, I so agree. I can't stand to see people jump the gun on things that are in experimental phase. If once in place there are problems, sure I can see voicing an opinion with regard to an aspect that MANY find detrimental. But this is pretty unlikely to happen thanks to TESTING.
If on a broader scale outside the testing phase, the effect is troublesome for a few, you look into it and tweak if possible.
As for builders and their textures, I have for some time seen Windlight as a boon for those who may work with textures once WL allows region owners to dictate a default sky to enhance the overall experience. Perhaps you were to choose a blood red sky with deep purple clouds and then design your builds with textures that are enhanced by or add to the intensity of that lighting.. Were anyone to take a successful stab at ripping your textures, they'd probably find them unusable and/or they'd stick out like a sore thumb so that the theft would be very easily recognized. This would also come into play with Windlight providing the shadow rather than any shading being placed on the texture. You rip my texture, but you do not get the effect that I created because there are other variables involved.
Now the WL settings may be able to be yanked as well but if they were, those settings could only be implemented by a region owner (or at least that was the plan last I heard). So duplicating this effect with stolen textures and sky and shadow settings could only take place on a private region. Since this would make it very easy to pinpoint a texture thief, I think it is a sweet thing indeed.
Dirk
(slipping back into the shadows)
I would love to see everyone upgrade to modern technology levels.
The complaints about an individual's client side lag (such as ARC) would vanish.
btw the shadows prototype doesn't work on 8500gt on vista 64 so maybe it should be tested by a few more people to see if it is vista or card related. If card related then it is nVidea gpu 88xx and up. (as opposed to 8xxx and up)
Anyone been able to get this to work on vista 64 bit?
I'm sure if you look really hard you could assemble a computer for under $500 that meets the bare minimum requirements to run SL. The two MAJOR problems I have with this thinking are 1) Running on the minimum specs means your client will run like bloated jelly and 2) people who are tech savvy enough to assemble their own computer are not going to be running bare bones.
This is of course assuming your have the spare $500 to blow on upgrading the computer you only bought 12 months ago. Some of us don't have the luxury of the USA's cheap fuel prices.
I know a lot of people in SL who are very tech savvy and run IT businesses in RL or can do amazing things with Photoshop and what have you. I also know a lot of people in SL who wouldn't know what dual core was if it sat next to them in the office.
I *AM* a leader in my community. I try and avoid sticking my head in the sand and repeating the mantra of "it will get better real soon now". Shiny distractions like voice, Windlight and the latest distraction of 3D shadows do little to stem the cry of calls for greater stability. How many
asshatasset server failures are we up to for this week? When was the last time you went to search something on Google and it came back and said sorry the servers are down try again later?Your comparison to Bioshock is spurious too. Obviously I'm not wearing Linden coloured glasses but SL is not the game of choice for hard core game junkies. They're off playing Warcraft or Halo. SL is supposedly a more friendly environment, though Linden Labs seems to be unable to look at images of children without thinking they might be sexual. It's for people who are casually interested in an online 3D world.
Maybe I'm wrong and you think SL is aimed at hardcore computer gamers. If that's the case you're sadly lagging behind in the race.
Then again lag seems rather an appropriate term.
I need to disagree here.
1) Not everybody lives in the USA. There are countries where people pay 21% VAT on computers that are already more expensive.
2) You can run minimal settings then. Not lovely windlight reflections, lots of particles, … .
3) You need to be lucky with the graphics card it contains. Most low budget systems are pre-assembled, so you need to be on the lookout to find one with the correct graphics card. (Which is always still a bit of a guess.)
4) Lots of people need a laptop (or have one from work). Either they need a more expensive laptop, or a desktop system they don't really need.
5) It's nice to be able to run MORE than just SL at a computer at the same time. So, have mail open, browser open, SL open, …. .
As for the scaring builders, why don't you get us a 'turn rendition of shading off' button for objects, and an easy LL function that _all_ can understand, that locks a texture to a period in mainland time (noon, evening, morning, night) and shows the appropriate texture?
Torley did you click the link I associated with "frustrating builders"? It goes to my post about Neptune, a start-up company from two Residents that's developed (with much labor and investment) an impressive technique for adding shadows to existing buildings. If LL was to suddenly implement dynamic shadows to SL, their business would be destroyed. Do you think they'll be happy with your reassurance that they're now freed "from the worry of painstakingly crafting fake shadows"?
I must say that I have heard plenty of people saying with deep regret that they can't practically run the current RC, and that if Mr Nicolasz does not keep producing clients they don't know what they will do. These are not people unaware of the situation. Sometimes they live in places where they cannot get hold of the necessary parts; sometimes they cannot afford them. Sometimes both.
For that matter, none of them are neophobic either; I can't remember any great negative reaction to Windlight. The early Windlight clients were actually pretty impressive and in many cases faster than the pre-Windlight ones. But now, well, they aren't.
I myself simply cannot properly develop in SL on my preferred machine, a one-year-old iMac - a high-end consumer machine that is absolutely fine in every other circumstance. I work around this but that is actually more to do with my having access to a PC as well which does nothing but run SL really.
And this is just speaking of people who are pretty technically skilled and won't mind putting in a new graphics card if they can get one and their system can cope with it (it is certainly not always a case of just opening the case and plugging in the new one - I recently had a horrible example of this trying to upgrade the machine belonging to my parents). The average person with a Dell that they'd thought pretty okay, confronted with 5fps in SL, will not go out and fix things; they just will not come back.
There are other viewers that work which are Windlight Free besides the Nicolasz one, such as OnRez, or the increasingly buggy Able. And Yes, getting a Dell to play second life well is a battle. It took me SIX MONTHS to get it to not crash constantly the first time, and another three months and a new graphics card for it to work with Windlight.
While I agree in part with Torley, I also see a wide variety of experiences reported while running the SL viewer. Personally, I originallly ran SL on a Toshiba Satellite laptop with 1gb of memory and built in Intel graphics, it was slow but usable, ended up upgrading to 2gb of memory which helped but it was still slow. I didn't realize it was slow until I was able to run SL on my new HP laptop with dual core and 4gb of memory and a Nvidia graphics card. I can and do still run the current SL viewer on the Toshiba, and it's functional though without all the fancy graphics and stuff, but I guess I'm tolerant of the low FPS and lag.
Given the wide variety of hardware out there, it must be a nightmare to try to support it all with flakey video drivers and all the other junk that gets installed on a Windows PC. Though I am suprised that LL doesn't support Macs better since the hardware is more uniform.
I also believe that a lot of what gets blamed on the viewer is more the fault of the server side stuff, especiallly that asset server, the most ideal pc on the planet built just for SL isn't going to run well if the server side stuff is borked and I dearly hope LL is pouring money into uprgading the infrastructure behind the severs.
If I were advising the folks at LL, I'd tell them to either branch the viewer or incorporate into the current viewer obvious and explicit settings (one click) that gives people on low end or barely compatible machines an option with minimal graphics at the level available in the viewer about a year or so ago. Those that have issues with the production viewer, can go with the optional viewer and still experience SL.
SL can't stay stagnant and not advance the graphics and other stuff, not and survive as a company. I remember the graphics on the games in the 80's, remember how cool they were, and realize how awful they look in comparison to the graphics now. The same will be true of SL in 5 years vs SL now. Certainly, LL ought to support the existing older systems of its customers, and it's not doing a good job of that, I'd like to see them do a better job of supporting a range of system configurations so that folks with 4 year old computers (and that Toshiba I mentioned is about that old) can still run it, while continuing the push the envelope and creating some fantastic stuff that the newer hardware can run.
Big companies like Microsoft spend millions on usability studies and go through hell trying to maintain backwards compatibility, and they still fail quite a bit so I don't expect miracles from LL, but I do expect them to use common sense and common sense tells me that if you want to maintain your business you gotta support the lowest common denominator, that that's the average computer user that isn't a techie and doesn't know what kind of graphics card they have and doesn't really know or care how the computer works, just that it works.
If a person like Nicholaz can work with the source of the production viewer and create a version that works on more peoples PC's with less crashes and less grief, then certainly some one at Linden Labs can do so as well. So just do it. Or commission someone else on a part time basis to do it.
I'm a geek and sometimes geeks lose sight of the fact that not everyone is excited about techy stuff, they just want it to work. I think the folks at LL lose sight of this.
Wilst I appluad work on per pixel shaders and the shadow client it is a heavy feature which (though it'll become cheaper) will only be seen by those with the highest end machines. It also radically changes the look of a build.
At the moment we now have atmospheric shaders, but still no way to turn them on for a region. Torley's done well wih the romantic lighting presets, but as soon as atmospheric lighting is turned on everything looks so different and blown out that it creates another build problem. Until we have the server side switched on per region so we can tune this effect for a build (something which mainlanders won't have the benefit of
) they present a challenge to making things look right for all clients. (In case you didn't notice the plug: please please please turn region lighting schemes on - the presets make it impossible to unify a build for a mixed audience.)
The shadow client will persent another layer of tuning for us, and I expect to see a lot more locked sun and fullbright in high end builds once it's in…. oh well, I can live with that.
People access SL from many types of machines, and for it to fulfil it's function of a general purpose world those machines will include low end ones. Laptops - where it costs twice as much for high end technology, and extreme graphics, even if you have them, are a terrific drain on battery life. In case anyone's missed the fantastic sales of the eeepc and other cut down machines, the trend in computing is towards scaling back from these monolithic games boxes.
SL needs to be scaling in both directions, both up towards the most kickingest of asses machines, and down towards the more modest and utilitarian devices. (No, demos of sl on an iphone aren't proof it works, that's done serverside by proxies.) We may enjoy the sunsets browsing from home on our big gamer boxes, but at work we're probably on absolutely minimal machines, and on the road we're balancing graphic horsepower with problems such as the weight of our brick, battery performance, and most probably the cost.
One day I'd like to have a presence in sl using an eeepc, XO laptop, Nokia internet tablet, or at an extreme, on the screen of a smartfridge in the kitchen (not that i'd ever buy one of those sheesh). I understand that it would look comparatively feeble. In fact if it looked like habbo hotel drawn by a cat in crayon I wouldn't mind as long as there was an actual presence. Those with gamer boxes can game here, those with more businessy or social interests may be able to scale their experience down to a very low visual quality and still get the benefit. Like in snow crash, you could get in world on a public phone, and even though it looked crap you still had the benefit of presence.
This could be as simple as opening up the im system to jabber protocol hooks out world. Something like that would change/improve peoples experience in sl much more at the moment than shadows.
They are pretty tho…. just my two cents. Sincerely, Pavig Lok
I'm sorry Torley but you and Linden Lab are way out of line on your thinking here. World of Warcraft happily performs on computers that Second Life doesn't, world of warcraft is a game.
Take a step back and think about this, an e-commerce platform of the future requires higher spec hardware than World of Warcraft?
Bells and whistles are nice but you're not going to be a business plaftform with this line of thinking, no if's, no buts, no why's, no wherefores.
Two year old hardware is no ancient, most off the shelf computers don't come with the graphics card you're talking about.
I work in education, education is one of Second Life's leading sectors, I am about to spend over a quarter of a million dollars on hardware for the educational institution where I work, we won't be buying them with 8800GT graphics cards, I can assure you.
Linden Lab will score a massive own goal if they carry on with this line of thinking.
(1) Even if you disagree — thanks for taking the time to comment, because it helps present a more dynamic picture of individual perspectives. We all have something in common: we spend our first lives on Second Life and I'm immensely grateful you came!
(2) I'm a bargain-hunter at heart, so tips for more powerful, more accessible tech are ALWAYS appreciated. I can't account for price variances around the world, but it's always fantastic to share info with each other. Especially when one hot deal may make a difference between "buy" or "wait". Some may recall that when Second Life first came out, the GeForce 2MX was regarded as a fair consumer graphics card. We're far beyond that now at the same price point, not yet a decade later.
(3) Some of us treasure time more than money. (DIY enthusiasts and overclockers.)
(4) This isn't about being defensive or defending anyone, but considering possibilities which may've been overlooked.
I state the above, again, because they're not as often presented as many common (appreciated, but popular) views I see.
@Marianne: Runitai's (who rocks) advice was specifically about experimental shadows, not WindLight (atmospheric shaders requiring DirectX9). There's no inconsistency there.
Oy, I was over at many Mac forums and still see the same debates about Macs being overall costlier in terms of $ but cheaper in terms of TCO. People don't like to feel dumb so they adhere to their beliefs — for the record, I enjoy whatever platforms I need to get things done.
@Edward: It's not even "look really hard" anymore! And if you can't assemble it yourself, there are a lot of prefab options — maybe too many choices for some. To clarify any misunderstanding, I don't think SL is aimed at any one group, but that makes it difficult to come to an understanding about different needs. Thanks for thoughts and declaring your leadership! Share more with me about what you're doing inworld!
I mentioned Bioshock simply because the improving visuals of Second Life are catching the eyes of otaku who have hardcore gaming *expectations* of Second Life. Similar with Halo, not so much with WoW (which has had more of a direct transitory path).
@Vint: The international considerations are always important (incl. Euro & Asian markets, see #2 above), so I'm glad you mentioned that. Not to mention some countries are far ahead of the US in terms of broadband penetration, etc.
@Hamlet: Absolutely! But most aspiring content creators don't have the same proficiency as the Neptune work.
I advocate for a gentler learning curve to great effects (whether realtime or "frozen"), and at the same time, giving the most advanced experts plenty of room to tweak/control. That's at the core of many of my fave open-source products today.
Note what I blogged about originally doesn't *exclude* or *shun* manual shadowing options, nor would I give false hope about how to more granularly turn them off right now. Those important concerns will rightfully come up many times in the longer-term. I simply asked an *additional* question to consider.
@Ordinal, economic, and Sougent: I've blogged previously about some SL performance woes I've had, so I can relate to and appreciate your opinions. Whenever I see something about "light" versions of Second Life like the Vollee viewer, I get terribly excited.
What Sougent says also points to the need to be more transparent/helpful about specific problem points like differentiating viewer vs. server issues — exactly one reason why we introduced the Lag Meter.
The richness and challenges of Second Life are intertwined in its abundance of communities with different desires and problems to solve.
@Pavig: Totally agree about WindLight being a LOT more useful/tune-able when there are server-side controls. I'm hoping for that. You really articulated what doesn't get said a lot, specifically:
"People access SL from many types of machines, and for it to fulfil it's function of a general purpose world those machines will include low end ones."
The more portable being able to plug into (colloquially speaking) Second Life becomes, the more useful it is.
And the value of a communication tool (which SL includes) increases exponentially.
@Ciaran: Just me! "Linden Lab" didn't think this — my personal blog. And I don't necessarily disagree with you either, which is kewl.
I agree strongly it's awesome to practically run Second Life on computers without fancy-schmancy GPUs, but the *eye candy options* exist for those who do happen to have them.
I reckon I'd like to see another of these soon tho:
» http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/15/typical-frame-rate-performance-by-graphics-cardgpu/
I wish I had known all this before dropping over $500 on a piece of cr*A*p laptop at Wally world….about 8 months ago. it doesn't even have a (whatsitcalled?) dedicated graphics card'- it has some intel 945gm graphics accel whatever that is. No pretty skies, not even basic shaders available to me. bummer
Runitai's dismissive comments about the nVidia 7000 series cards put a lot of people's backs up.
The problem is that only a year ago the 7000 series cards were the best bet for a good SL experience. The 8000 series cards were about six months old, and a completely new rendering architecture with still dodgy driver support. Even now a lot of people are reporting problems with nVidia driver versions later than around 94, and those drivers don't support the 8000 series cards.
So the 7000 series cards aren't all "old enough to go to pre-school", and there's people who spent a significant amount on cards like the gf7950 only a year ago. We're not talking about people who are hanging on to gf2 or gf4 cards. Think about how someone who's recently dumped a thousand bucks or more on the best (and well researched) computer they could get for SL is going to see comments like that.
This isn't all just FUD about Windlight, there's people at both ends of the spectrum who are worried about the kind of treadmill they may find themselves on keeping up with Second Life.
You know, Torley, this actually infuriates me. Mindjunk? Are you seriously calling the complaints - the *many* complaints - of your customers *mindjunk*?
You know what happens to shop attendants who do that?
In regards to windlight. I am a geek. I've been online before the internet, ran a successful BBS and build my own PCs.
I don't like it. I don't like the glaring water reflections. I turn off all my shaders even though I have the latest graphics cards from Nvidia. Maybe for some it appeals to them. I run with hardly any crashes when the client is toned down, period.
The plus side I believe is that the client is more configurable now graphics wise. I can run SL on some pretty old machines with 128meg Radion graphics cards that on previous non windlight versions were a nightmare.
@Shani: That sux.
Often when people state a cost for something, they don't shop around enough. I'm an intense bargain-hunter and tend to have the best deals in mind when I recommend stuff to people.
@Argent: Source link to what Runitai said? I'll defer to him on GPU architecture for sure, but technology (outside of Second Life) moves quickly and I had similar feelings about games in the past. So I definitely appreciate you sharing this. I remember being so excited when I got a Ti4200, only to have that elation fade in months' time. But then I got excited about dropping costs of new tech.
@Laetizia: No, "complaints" aren't mindjunk — but confusing myths are. Please re-read the first sentence of my post before jumping to an incorrect conclusion, and suggest how I can articulate that clearer in the future. As I mentioned in http://torley.com/lessons-learned-from-windlight , there are important complaints.
@Blaccard: Each person sees things differently so it's good you took the time to share that. On a further note, some brilliant people (like Richard Bartle) prefer text environments to graphical ones. I don't agree with him, but he's passionate about what he loves, and I dig that: http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/tg280199.htm
It was a posting on the SLDEV mailing list, message ID , that I don't want to repost in its entirety. But "Responses that I will actively ignore: [...] Why doesn't this run on my ?" is the particular bit I'm talking about here.
This one and then this one seem the choicest offenders.