Free image uploads for new accounts

I've seen several comments about new users not being able to try texturing because they don't have any Lindens to pay for uploading images.

Maybe new aocounts should be get a certain number of image uploads, or be able to upload images for free up till a certain account age, or something like that.

how to upload a texture for free:

Step #1: Sit in Camping Chair.

Step #2: Go out for Lunch, maybe see a movie.

Step #3: Upload your texture.

Image uploads should be free, period.

Why? Images are in the most case used to make content, which is what makes Second Life worth playing.

Without other players creating content, we'd just end up with empty land and infohubs.

Lewis

That's a horrific idea. Upload charges throttle uploading. Otherwise everyone would just sit there all day long and upload that 6000 pack of textures they downloaded from the internet. You think the asset server is slow now...

Nice idea, except people would just go 'Hmm, I have a bunch of textures to upload, instead of paying $$$ in upload fees, I'll just create a free acount and upload them all!

textures also suck down the most amount of resources, theres a quote around here somewhere saying "Some sims have upwards of a Terrabit worh of textures".

While that probally inflated, i also dont see anyone giving out free TB hard drives either

Hardware hash could be used to keep folks from creating new accounts to avoid uploading fees.

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No better way to thrill new arrivals than to get them into a camp chair.

That's why they get 250 lindens if they give away card details.

And projects like libsecondlife could be used to circumvent that, seeing how the wrapper can already send completely meaningless data on login and get away with it.

That said, if i recall right there's been mentions of people doing pretty much that, uploading textures for free thanks to discovered backdoors in SL protocol or whatnot. No idea how accurate it is, though.

The L$250 aint much of a test. Plus they might easily spend that in one purchase before they get to trying to design an outfit, since it's general currency instead of being specific to uploads.

Nothing to stop them making another alt that I can see.

Starting L$ 250 is handed only to people who provide their payment details. Suspect you can only get one account tied with specific cc, just like before new signup policy. So making another alt ain't gonna help to get more L$ for more uploads.

If folks can do it anyway by cheating might as well make it easy to do without cheating for people interested in learning how to create textures.


One could have the free texture uploads time out, like shareware software. Have to pay the upload fees to keep them around.

Free uploaded textures could arrive in no-transfer no-mod form.

I sat on camping chairs and picked money off money trees to get money for my textures. It's not easy to be sure and coughing up my credit card to get a few lindens would be a heck of a lot easier.

currently uploading any texture up to crazy sizes is the same.

Making it free would be a disaster for anyone who understanding how the asset server works, but lets look at some incentives.

There is a HUGE jump in lag for textures 1024 and larger. I think they should be 15L to upload. under that should be 10L, and 256 and under should be 5L. This would highly encourage people to use only the detail they need. Too many shoes have 1024 textures.

256 x 256 and under = 5L
512 x 512 = 10L
1024 x 1024 = 15L
higher... ? 20L

(not sure how non square would be charged.. maybe by area)

If that is true then we should try to reduce understanding of how the asset server works. In order to help prevent disaster.

The free texture uploading could produced time-limited textures, like sharware software. When the time comes, you pay the fee to keep them or they are deleted.

The free upload textures could be no-modify no-transfer, so people couldn't upload them and sell them.

The idea of charging more for higher rez pictures sounds good. I'd make the increase more dramatic than you suggested.

If you can't sell them, what good are they? You couldn't use them to make more lindens, so you would be right back where you started when your "free upload" time expired.

Yeah, a much proposed (and good) idea that Torley says they've been discussing at length at LL also. I had a neighbor with a rug store once, a couple hundred rugs on display on a 1024m parcel and all of them with 1024x2048 to 2048x2048 textures according to the owner. It slaughtered anybody within viewing range.

Then a much better idea would be to put client-side throttle so it loads data only to certain specified level, and sizes the textures to match that level. Then everyone can adjust the quality/performance point to where they personally like it and their computer specs allow.

The thing with charging 'per dimensions' is, due to compression a large file can wind up using quite less bandwidth to transfer than something small and intricate. Unless you charge per file size, but then it's back to issue of many large files still bringing one's gfx card to its knees.

I thought that all large textures were resized to 512x512 when uploaded? I've uploaded some 7mp images from my digital camera, had no idea they might retain that size inside SL.

The purpose is to let people experiment with clothesmaking and object texturing, to get to see how to dowload the textures and use a paint program to make clothes and textures to see if it's something they want to pursue.

If they conclude that this is something that looks worthwhle they could pay for uploading textures in the normal manner.

it will still kill your client, because the textures have to be uncompressed when pumping them to the graphic card

I'd say uncompressed texture(s) capped at say, 256x256 pixels client-side with just the right mip-map level loaded no matter if the original on server goes all way up to 2048x2048... would make quite a difference on client performance. Seeing how that's 64x less data to throw around, multiplied by number of textures you have on screen.

lets see why not try buying some linden $ like every one else does

HMMM

oh wait that would not allow you to play for free

never mind i know not what i talk about

*end sarcasm*

Let's not even talk about how broken the already-tricky economy would get if you remove one of the main L$ sinks...