take away upload fees

I think lindens sould take away upload fees or make them 1L and not 10L cuz if you mess up on something in photpshop or anyplace else u have to apy again for it

Remember that you can actually preview your uploads, albeit in a small window.
If you're making clothes, you can preview it on a generic avatar.
Notice the drop down menu where it says 'preview image as' before you click upload?
You can change it to wrap the texture on a mannequin to see if everythings ok.

I think instead of removing the upload fee completely, LL should implement a way to remove uploaded content from the database. The preview window is meaningless a lot of times, especially for animations - I actually have to see it on an avatar. Yet, I end up with 10 copies I don't want while I am refining it. I should be able to remove the bad copies and refund back the upload fee for them. I know it is a bit tricky because once an upload is used in an item you can't remove it, but it would still be a nice feature and would help to remove clutter from the db.

No.

I think it would be quite fun to sell a few items with the anims on it, THEN remove them from the database. Heh heh heh.

Use the preview grid for your test uploads. ^_^

Please, please, please... please try to use proper english. Even if you are foreign, I think you know the difference between 'u' and 'you'. Yes, the message got across, but please, it's only 2 letters and less than 1 second of your life.

Edit: Sorry, it's one of the things that bug me (I'm not even close to perfect either)

Oh, one other thing..

Why, oh why, can't we get at the animation properties window after the animation is uploaded?

It is such a nuisance to have to upload it again just because I need to change the priority or something..

https://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=1139

here is a proposal to scale the upload fee based on the size and type of texture ^^
the upload fee shouldn't be removed, nor refunded

Upload fees are vital to the health of the SL economy. They provide a "sink" by which money is removed from circulation. Such sinks are necessary to keep inflation under control. Without them, $L would quickly become worthless. Remeber, every one of us gets a free salary of at least $L50 a week (more for premium members), which means without sinks in place, our supply of $L would be endless. Nothing that is unlimited can have value, period.

If you doubt that the fee is a deliberate sink, ask Phillip. He talks about it whenever economy/inflation questions come up.

Anyway, there are lots of ways to previw your textures for free. If you're talking clothing/skins, you can preview them in the preview window, in any 3D application (Poser, Maya, Blender, Tattoo, etc) by downloading the avatar mannequin files, or right on your own avatar by replacing a few files in your SecondLife/character folder. Here's an exerpt from another thread in which I outlined how to do it:


If you're talking about non-avatar textures, then the most common preview issue has to do with making sure your alpha channel is right. This is simple to do. Just copy the alpha channel to a layer mask.

You see, Photoshop (and other raster editors) don't automatically inrerpret alpha channel data as transparency because alphas can be used for all sorts of things. Most 3D and video apps (like SL) do consider a single alpha channel in a TGA file to mean transparency by default, but technically it could mean any one of thousand different things from transparency to specularity to reflectivity, etc, so good raster editors like Photoshop treat alpha channels just as extra data with no definite purpose. Layer masks then are good tools to serve as "interpreter" to tell Photoshop that you want to see how the alpha will affect the image as a trasparency map. If you're not sure what all that means, head on over to the texture forum and ask away. I'll be happy to explain in more detail.


To summarize, once again, upload fees are a necessary sink to keep the economy healthy. Removing them would be dangerous and irresponsible. However, you're right that they can unduly add up if you don't use any of the multiple free previewing tools at your disposal. So, use the tools, and you won't have to worry about ever spending more than $L10 once for each texture.

That is a super-fantastic idea! THanks for the tip, Argent.

Just a moment. Let me get my... Hmm. Where did I put that thing?

...

Damn. Not in there. Ah! Here we go.


Now that that is out of the way...



Well said, Chosen. Awesome tips, too. Didn't even think about the layer mask idea. That's brilliant! Not much to add, beyond a technical observation: if there's no reason not to upload anything and everything, everyone will upload anything and everything.

And that's obviously not sustainable. It's important to throttle the growth of the asset cluster somehow. This is one of the better models I see for doing that, as it gives everyone a decent amount of freedom with a limitless inventory while providing a sink to boot.

The upload fees are a neat solution. As Enabran stated above, they inhibit unsustainable growth. They distribute uploads efficiently to where they are needed most. If you need to upload a lot, you can, you just got to pay. However if you have no need for uploads, you're not paying for someone else's directly or indirectly.
And they are a great way to remove money from the economy.

I really don't think we need the fake money sink crap anymore. It made sense when there were more ways to get Lindens out the system, but since almost all of them have been removed, and the amount that people are getting are minimal. Also this isn't a game anymore (don't start that, "but it was never a game", dude it was totally game like but they took that aspect out), so all these fake constrants are not needed anymore. The real value on the Linden is based more on consumer confidence than anything else.

Eboni, respectfully, I think you're missing the point. It's not about being a game or not being a game, and sinks are not "fake". They are a necessary part of any economy. The ones that SL has removed were ones that either were trivial, or esle were attached to functions that are no longer practical for other reasons (like ratings). Sinks in general will always be necessary as long as new money is being pumped into the economy, and uploads have always been the biggest one.

Sinks are necessary in RL economies too, by the way, so your argument about SL not being a game (whether it ever was or not) is even more reason sinks SHOULD exist. It's hardly a reason they shouldn't. In the US, for example, one of the primary functions of the Federal Reserve is to pull money out of the economy. They do this for the same reason SL does, to curb inflation as new money is created. It's a process as old as economics itself.

You're right that the value of the Linden Dollar is based largely on consumer confidence (Just like the value of the US dollar), but you're missing the boat when you imply that that's all it takes. You can be as confident as you want in something, but if there's an unlimited supply of it, it will by definition be worthless. In order for something to have value, whether it's currency or guns & butter or anything else, it has to be scarce. Sinks provide that scarcity. They have to exist somewhere, and upload fees are as good a place as any. The alternative would be to bring back things like land taxes, and I think I can say with total confidence that none of us want that.

And why can't we get at that window for full-mod animations we've bought that we want to (for example) run at a lower priority?

I agree and the price is more than fair. It's a small price to pay for what we get in return.

April, I don't think that the upload fee should be done away with. I'm sure part of the upload fee goes into bandwidth costs, extra storage space, etc. However, it would be nice if you could store files on your own server and not even have to upload them onto LL's servers. In that case, you could have the option to pay LL L$10 to upload the file onto their servers or store the file on your own server/website for free.

When an inworld web browser is in place, can one actually stream in web pages as a kind of dynamic texture for prims?

While this would be nice, if you think about it, this would never work for the reason that textures have to remain in game for as long as SL is still in operation. For example, you buy a couch today from the Hoffman's where the textures used are linked from their own server, but tomorrow the host they are using goes out of business and this link is no longer available. The result is your couch is instantly rendered worthless.

I say base the texture upload fees on the total area of the texture uploaded. The greater the texture area, the more you're charged. Perhaps this would discourage people from using large numbers of 512x512 and 1024x1024 textures all over their builds.

But I'm no expert, so take the above for what it's worth. *shrug*

1 USD = 280L.

1 texture upload = 10L.

Texture upload = 3.6 cents.

I rather think it's easy to find a penny on the floor here and there. And by the Gods, a quarter when you mess up. I think I pay more for single SMS messages than an entire outfit.

check a bit higher my proposal about scalable texture fee

HEY good idea! Thanks!
:edit: The preview upload section though would be faster still it seems.
I wish we had a more realistic way to use it. Like previews on a prim. Maybe allow us to shape it or use a prim in our inventory for a template. Would sure help.
The preview grid would work I guess. I dunno.
It just feels out of the way.

Texture uploads are way too cheap. They should be more like L$1,000 per texture, maybe L$10,000. It is rediculous how much money people make off of content for absolutely no measurable monetary expense. Maybe to offset mistakes, you could upload as many textures as you want for free, but they'd all vanish 5 or 10 minutes after the upload. Then once you get the final, you could right click and pay your fee to store it permanently.