Attachment 1.8.2 culling: Violating Freedom of Expression and COMPLETELY IMPRACTICAL

FINAL EDIT:
Okay, I over-reacted as to my degree of fervor for the post. I apologize.
If I could go back, I would:
- (a) Not bring this up to Lindens on a Sunday, and waited until Monday morning
- (b) Lost the ALL CAPS *chuckles*
- (c) Gone through my sinister FIC sources to get the skinny on the situation first. I may add, knowing what I know know, it would not have changed my decision to post about this.
- (d) Posted a picture of pie.

However, I do think saying that there is a freedom of expression issue at risk was warranted, and I do think that any non-trivial feature needs a proper discussion with the community and potentially a Preview.

Things like graphics settings greatly affects how every new resident in SL experiences SL, and a change may not be reconsidered for months - even years. I still believe there are potential bugs that can break avatars, and now that Preview is open, we can swarm into it and help out the overworked QA team to flush out things.

Thanks to Linden Lab for being so responsive, and taking expression so seriously. Thanks for the people in the forum who weren't afraid to mix it up in a heated discussion - your honesty keeps us all ... um ... honest.

Yeah.

-----


EDIT:

for those of you just tuning in, it is now up in Preview. Thanks LL to give us the opportunity to break your code!


EDIT:
check out
/invalid_link.html

for some screenshots so far.


Okay, I too want to get rid of the blingtards with 2000 prim jewelry ...

... but I also think that the 1.8.2 feature letting you tone down attachments stamps all over freedom of expression.

No one should be able to change what *you* want to show as your expression of yourself online - your avatar. At best, a person should be able to completely turn off / ignore an entire person's avatar, but not edit it.

This may seem trivial, but it is a HUGE HUGE mistake, and throwing our basic freedom of expression away.

Furthermore, as Second Life goes to the Metaverse, and this becomes an open platform, Linden Lab risks lawsuit in court and it will, I repeat WILL be reverse in court.

...

In addition, it's impractical:

Imagine Psyra's phoenix avatar, but you've turned down attachments so he's a headless, wingless turkey dinner?

Imagine the robot I'm staring at in the forums banner, armless and legless with skinny malnutritioned limbs dangling out.

Imagine Yadni ... a naked blue lanky smurf.

Ask Babbage Linden if he'd like people to be able to turn off his robot arm.
Ask Torley Linden if she'd like to be a headless unicorn.
Ask Nigel Linden if he wants to be a tiny-headed warthog.

The fact is that by making this patch, Linden Lab is basically letting people censor all the most creative avatars, and that is absolutely counter-productive to the goals of Second Life.

And the bottom line - this is not a feature that the residents have been asking for, and it was not discussed with the residents. Please immediately halt implementation of this "feature" and thoroughly discuss the implications with the community.

Okay, sorry, the first part was rushed.

Here's the problem. If I have an expression, you should be able to completely ignore it, but not modify.

Avatars are expression. Turning down prim rendering, while it seems like a good idea, would be the clunky way of dealing with lag.

Problems with this:

1. A person has no way of knowing what another person sees of them, and that poses a problem.
2. A person would be unable to control how another person views his material - this has been struck down in court, for instance, the web browser that allowed people to basically WIKI-fy any website that was successfully sued in the late 90s. If I have an expression, you should be able to completely ignore it, but not modify.
3. From a practical perspective, it makes it way, way more difficult for developers looking to provide games / other experiences to control that experience.
4. It destroys the most creative avatars. Anti-creativity? That doesn't sound like innovation to me.
5. It wasn't discussed with the SL community.

EDIT:
Background info for those who didn't see:
/3/cb/83614/1.html


1. Note it says "which" attachments, not level of detail that is scaled uniformly.
2. What in the heck does "mid-level detail" mean? Canwe have some numbers, please? Does this mean 10 prims or 1000?
3. Again, where is the discussion with this in the community?
4. Why not right-click hide-avatar?
5. Why not simply setting a hard upper limit for the amount of polygons an avatar can have?
6. Why not uniformly have a polygon-reduction algorithm affect the whole AV?
7. "At a distance"? What distance? Does it matter if it's 50m or more if someone has a giant dragon AV? Distance and size is relative.
8. Why 50%? Why not start it at 100% and let people tone it down?


EDIT:

/invalid_link.html



Good enough for me for now.

Thank you, Linden Lab, for taking the time to investigate this more.

Counter productive to the goals of Second Life? I wasn't aware that there *were* any goals. Care to share what you think they are?

Perhaps this capping is necessary because so many people don't have the first clue about prim conservation, and as a result of lag and other issues that harm every player's experience, action has to be taken - in this form - against the perhaps 1% of people who have excessive prims/whatever on their 'creative avatars'?

Lewis

I don't follow your reasoning here, Hiro. How is this taking away freedom of expression? You can still attach as many prims to your avatar as you want. Other people are just gaining the freedom not to have to look at it if it's killing their frame rate.

My guess the problem is that "you" can't force everyone else to look at you the way you want to any more.

Hmmmmm bit of a dilemma here... whose rights are more important? The avatar who wants everyone to see them the way they are, or the players who don't want to be lagged down with crap all over their screen?

Lewis

I'm not sure that I understand the weight of your concern here either, Hiro.

Honestly, if someone wants to 'dial down' attachments in order to acheive higher frame rates - I say more power to them - even if that changes my appearance from a cute white dog - to a headless white-alien looking thing.

For one, its a performance setting: When I 'dial down' Terrain Detail today, I fully expect the terrain to be, well.... less detailed than it is today. Its no surprise to me, because I chose it to be that way.

There's a lot of folks in SL, especially new residents, that have such awful performance that they can't enjoy our world at all. Surely this is only an optional minor inconvienience.

Of course, we haven't seen the full implications of this change yet. If it does truly end up being as horrible as you suggest it might be, we'll all see that - and I'm sure the community wont be silent about it.

Until then, I think the possible advantages of this new behavior are worth a wait & see

That was the most unreasonable and worst put together rant I've ever heard.

Well done.

I read the OP as applying the same absurd stance that LL has used for justifying doing nothing regarding Mr. Impeach to the act of denuding prim-avatars beacuse the asset system is in constant danger of collapse.

One could also say that the more extreme guesses about attachment culling will cause players to involuntarily violate the CS by being undressed in a PG sim. The player has no idea that they must be ashamed of their nakedness and thus hide, because to themselves they appear properly dressed.

I cannot speak for the OP, just guessing...

Can't we wait until there is at least a preview before we go off the deep end also?

My understanding is it's a fix for huge amounts of attachments rendering so far away that you don't really *need* to see them. I have a fairly crappy computer and get lousy frame rates but I don't have a problem drawing psyra when we are standing in the middle of the WA. Perhaps this will only affect that huge robot walking by in the distance?

Actually, if I'm not mistaken - Clothing (unless its prim clothing) is not considered an attachment, and wouldn't be culled.

If that's true, about the worst situation this would create would be a boon to the undergarment industry

I'm really not convinced anyone can hold strong opinions about this change until we've actually seen it. I'm not going to freak out yet, and if anything, I'm excited about potential framerate improvements. Please bear in mind that my entire business relies upon attachments looking really good on people. Just... calm down, man.

With that said, as usual, Linden Lab has given us last minute notice on a potentially significant change. They need to work on that.

So does the debug menu. I can disable thousands of polygons at the press of a keystroke! CIVIL LIBERTIES! CIVIL LIBERTIES! HELP HELP IM BEING REPRESSED!



So I can march around your land with a Hitler outfit, goosestepping on chairman mao while slaughtering russians like Stalin? Or what?

This isn't editing, this is Level of Detail rendering. Why aren't you screaming about cylinders turning into octagons when seen from distances more than 20m away? Where's the justice in forced polygon octagonal dictatorships?



Freedom of expression doesn't mean shit if I get a virtual slideshow.


[/B]

o rly.

"Your honor, Linden Labs knowingly culled my three-pronged techno-dildo!"

"..."

"I cannot perform the advanced art of Teledildonics until Linden Lab reverses its technological solution to our social problems!"

"Sir, you are a retard. Case dismissed."

...



Imagine getting more than 1 frame a second at clubs! Imagine camping chairs at 30 fps! Imagine the welcome area becoming useful again!


[/B]

Number one question asked in technical help: "How can I increase my framerate, this game runs like shit."

Answer: Turn off 400,000 polygon hair.

Technical answer: The game can't differentiate between hair and teledildo/steampunk arm/helicopter hat, so a prim is a prim is a prim. Hence, an optional ability to cull them from your screen.

What's so hard about this? Most people playing SL don't ahve Geforce 7800's and dual core Athlons. They're running on their Dells and their eMachines. Anythign that makes their game run faster (optionally) is good.


Won't somebody please think of the prim children?

Clothing and skin textures are already culled, so to speak. You don't see fully rezzed textures on avs at a distance.

A little bird told me their opinion...

These degradations to performance, like the sharp loss of texture serving as of 1.7, including this most recent "attachment culling", are indications of Linden Labs' conscious tradeoffs in favor of supporting increased population but at the cost of somewhat reduced quality of experience.

This reflects a fundamental weakness in the architecture of the Second Life platform.

Even for those without a technical background, what's going on here is more apparent from what LL is NOT saying than what they ARE saying about the problems.

The question is: Will this strategy of LL work to carry them forward to a new level of users that will financially justify radical architectural changes, or will SL wither, crash and burn due to the declining quality of the experience being insufficient to retain resident loyalty?

Yep, that's what the little birdie told me (cuz it's OBVIOUS these aren't MY words..hehehe)...I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on this opinion.

Okay, sorry, the first part was rushed.

Here's the problem. If I have an expression, you should be able to completely ignore it, but not modify.

Avatars are expression. Turning down prim rendering, while it seems like a good idea, would be the clunky way of dealing with lag.

Problems with this:

1. A person has no way of knowing what another person sees of them, and that poses a problem.
2. A person would be unable to control how another person views his material - this has been struck down in court, for instance, the web browser that allowed people to basically WIKI-fy any website that was successfully sued in the late 90s. If I have an expression, you should be able to completely ignore it, but not modify.
3. From a practical perspective, it makes it way, way more difficult for developers looking to provide games / other experiences to control that experience.
4. It destroys the most creative avatars. Anti-creativity? That doesn't sound like innovation to me.
5. It wasn't discussed with the SL community.

Totally different. It scales equally for all texture. The culling that the new feature would selectively remove parts of the avatar. A more ready comparison would be if someone suddenly lost their shorts at a draw distance.

Creativity. "Your world, your imagination".


and

and


I agree it's a problem, but this is not a solution.

A good solution would be:

right click avatar -> ignore avatar / do not render avatar.

You should definitely be able to choose not to see an avatar entirely, but partly censoring it is modifying their expression.

Way to go, Mr. 7 Posts Alt.

Sure they would. Just zoom your camera out while trying different settings.

Again, you should be able to turn off an avatar, but not "dial them down".

In fact, this is not the solution to the problem you posed. If I "dial down" attachments, I turn ALL peoples' down with the proposed change. So in your example, I'm now held hostage by your Hitler outfit and forced to turn *ALL* avatar attachments down. That's not a solution!


Again, because it's uniform. Unless LL can come up with some prim-reduction algorithm (like the 2.0) viewer - that simplifies attachments rather than eliminating them completely - then this is just not a good solution.

So I'm supposed to do that for every possible combination of avatar attachments? Every beverage, weapon, hat, piece of jewelry?

That's silly. There's thousands of permutations to go through, completely impossible.

I just don't really see the issue here. Isn't this going to be distance based? I really don't need to see what you have attached to your av if you're 75 meters away from me. If I'm standing next to you I'll still see you the way you want to be seen.

Because we're out of things about which to be hysterical, Chip. The vacuum must be filled. Karen is very thoughtful to provide us this amazing opportunity,

This is the second time I've been called an Alt. Can someone please explain what the hell that is?

Okay, let's have some examples of what people would see with the settings low:

1. I have a polar bear avatar. Someone comes on, maybe the paws don't render, maybe one paw renders and the other doesn't, maybe the head attachment doesn't, and I appear to have a tiny head.

2. Psyra - will look like a dilapidated turkey.

3. You come up with this kickass robot avatar. But now, it's legless, and you appear to be a floating torso with arms, and little waify legs sticking out the bottom.

4. Tinies / floating orb robot AVs (like Chris Linden has) - so if someone has the settings down, they'll look like scrunched up balls of human flesh. NICE!

5. Vampires - sans teeth.

And this is just for individual expressions. This is even more of a nightmare for developers of say ... games.

Imagine Darklife, and people are rendered without armor.

Imagine walking into the Bedazzle / Eric Linden machinema set, and the cowboys lack the hats and guns?

What about people with prim-clothing, and suddenly they will have naked parts showing? This is the kind of thing that will in fact happen.