What is the goal of the changes at the Welcome Area?

What is the goal of the changes at the Welcome Area?

Less laggy is the goal.

I'd rather just have them leave it as grass and a hill like they had it when I joined.. I rather liked that..

What changes?

edit: Just went and saw. Geezus, they gutted it wholesale. Two wings are gone, and the remaining wings have been low-primmed and de-textured.

It looks like an asset monster rampaged through it.

I remember when the then-new "rustic" WA went up last year. Watching it under construction was beautiful, but at times, uncomfortable--because I had grown so used to the previous version, a "twin" of which can be roughly seen by the Lime Infohub.

And yes, the intent is to have "less lag" and more efficient usage of textures, in addition to functioning as a more productive community space with a more open center. This includes smaller textures and not so many ones with alpha-channel transparencies, which do put a hit on your graphics card.

You will sometimes see Brian Linden hard at work onsite. Zoom into those triangular signs he made, they have a rather fitting texture.

I love the extra seating. It's been needed for a long time.

It's a shame that they do these things and don't ask for volunteer input, or even make a competition out of suggested redesigns.

I'm sure there are many talented designers - and people like me - who have ideas and would love to 'make an impact' on the landscape for the benefit of everyone.

Lewis

I've not seen the new builds but the WA definitely needed help. It was pretty, certainly, but slowed everything down to a crawl, which is not what you want to be showing new residents, particularly before they've had a chance to tweak their graphics settings. I can (or, rather, could) barely cope now - I have to stand very still and not try anything fancy like, say, moving the camera or turning around.

If they want to reduce the impact on FPS. They need to ban women!! They're to blame!! No women in the welcome area!!! Unless they're lesbian with shaved heads.













I'm so going to die!!

Having an art gallery there was a nice idea but it also added to the lag. Cut, twisted prims are are not lag-friendly. I think they're wise to renovate, I love the WA too but if textures and twisted prims are what's making it lag, then they'll have to go. "Pretty" is really quite useless if you can't move.

The other problem might be the excessive amount of bling and attachments people wear to the WA. I see people wearing 400 prim boots and twisted tori hair hanging out to make some kind of pixel fashion statement. Can they not just go bare foot and for a while while they're there? I find it inconsiderate. But then again they might be completely unaware of the impact their primy attachments are having on the sim. I think a guideline would help though, maybe posted somehwere publicly around there.

How do you know they didn't? The previous Welcome Area was actually not built by Lindens, but by someone with a wonderful eye toward aestetics. The problem was, while it was beautiful, there was absolutely nothing done to make it efficient. As I told the Lindens:

(1) The transparent flower textures used were 1024x512 pixels. I think 64x64 would have sufficed with repeats; 1024x512 is basically NEVER needed for anything other than animated textures with multiple frames included in a single texture.

(2) Many other textures used were far larger than necessary, chewing up tons of video card space; most were 512x512s, when a max of 256x256 was really necessary for anything there, any 128x128 would have sufficed for most of it with no discernable difference to the viewer.

(3) Every texture used - regardless of size or need for a transparent layer - was uploaded as a 32-bit targa. The inclusion of the alpha/transparent layer ever on solid textures causes the client to "think" they're transparent, and requires a lot more math to figure out how to "layer" each frame. This causes a lot of lag, as it takes significantly longer for each frame's math to complete. If you know that the object in front from the camera view is solid, no math is required to compute what's behind the object, or "blend" partially transparent textures. This ended up happening at the old Welcome Area even though it was completely unnecessary.

Regards,

-Flip

Interesting. I was always careful about saving texture which didn't require transparency as 24 bit, just in case, but I was never really sure why. Sounds like was doing the right thing. It's really tough to get your head around what can negatively impact a sim, especially for people starting out.

You all missed it when it was all free to copy and movable. I'm suprised no one moved it across the grid onto their lot.

Reduction of lag is good.

Have to check it out.

Yeah, its something that isn't obvious, but an important question to ask any potential professional builder you could hire. Unfortunately, LL itself hasn't been the best example to follow as far as using minimal texture sizes goes, so I'm not surprised they didn't check this work before making it live. I cringe when I think of how many people may have shown up at the Welcome Area, gotten 3 fps, and left forever simply because of its construction method. Its a shame, it was gorgeous.

I've been meaning to do an "efficient building" guide with tips on how to minimize lag without compromising artistic vision...but there simply aren't enough hours in the day, and I don't know all the answers, either!

Regards,

-Flip

Scalability would be a novel idea.

I for one am very happy they took out the Evil Fountain of Doom, but I miss the old old Welcome area when I first started. It may not have been all fancy pants but it was pretty lag free.

*squints at Starax*

cast fish
cast bicycle

You, young whipper snappers, have no idea what lag is!
Reducing lag=good.

I liked the old welcome area before they made this one, much friendlier design and less of a big glom of people. The current WA spanning four corners makes it possible to cram in more avatars, but it just encourages everyone to stick around the fountain in the one spot, the old one broke things up a bit.

And for those of you who have just joined us, this is what Dianne is talking about. This is actually the WA in Lime but it is an exact replica of the old one that used to be in Ahern.

I love this thing, I would hate to ever see it go. No touchy LL.

You know what? The old Ahern / Stage 4 in Dore set up just worked better. Bring it back and do something with Lime / Plum!

Regards,

-Flip

Whoa Nellie... Plum is just fine the way it is, my favourite sandbox. And SL wouldn't be the same without the old WA in Lime. You young kids with your crazy ideas and longing for change.

it had more narrative to it but aesthetically it's a step back. and the social area was very unclear. bad idea.