Patting each other on the back on an internal forum isn't going to make SL better

Sorry, Snow -- blaze only deals in Google links and that's rarely conducive to more than trolling, as we find demonstrated nicely here.

Wake me up when you have more than 'freshly pulled from your ass' information, m'kay?

Thanks.

Here's a factoid:

In the last 3 days we have grown from 44K to 46.5K and peak numbers have not changed one iota.

June 22, 2005 = 2,116

July 13, 2005 = 2,507

August 18, 2005 = 2,631

August 30, 2005 = 2,806

Last I checked these are facts too! Can you PROVE that the numbers are fake? Maybe 2k of people signed up, but they have not been on very much? Many a lot of non-peak hour users have signed on? Or maybe a lot of alts have been created? With this free signup I know a lot of new players will be coming on board. 3 days of data is not enough to show anything.

And you are still ignoring me, why do we need 60+FPS?

You know as well as everyone else that the sudden surge in those numbers last three days are due to free accounts, most of which get started for curiousity never to be used, and absolutely do not represent the long-term consistent growth rate.

Please don't throw at us your Red Herring factoids, which are as meaningful as saying "look my coin flipped heads 10 times in a row in the last one hour, so it's not a 50:50 chance!". I can suggest you various references on statistics if you are interested.

I want to see at least last three months of data, do you have that or you made that BS statement based on your little factoid above?

now THAT made me laugh

Mon Aug 1 16:35:01 PDT 2005 2672

Growth to 2806 is about 130 or 4% growth in the last month.

blaze,

Your writing is evolving. It's good to see your writing style improving - you're focused and organized in this thread, and you're addressing a problem rather than a people.

As for your comments -

- I think you're dead on with your criticism of the whole "let's make groups to fix SL" thing. I think when you have groups responsible for something, the general people get complacent and allow that group to basically dictate; then you have a true elitist situation.
- I think LL is definitely already focused on speed. 1.6 saw a huge increase in FPS in crowded areas, for one. LL is also working on a new priority-of-rez list for sims, mono bytecode, HTML, direct object-object communication, and a new viewer that does shape-reduction. These projects promise huge lag reductions.

As for the numbers, I think there are a few things to consider:

- Summertime is generally slower for signups
- WoW has taken a huge chunk of the MMO market, ourselves included, but there's talk (see Terra Nova blog) that WoW is just plain running out of content.
- While giving away accounts can be seen as a desperate attempt to gain users, realize that: (a) Free accounts are less likely to turn into active ones since there's less invested. (b) Ultimately, SL is supposed to be the Internet - this means free access. (c) This shows that Linden Lab is more confident in taking higher numbers of users because people can log onto SL on a whim.
- Probably the biggest measure of SL's growth is land bring released. The map is steadily growing - I think that's a good sign.

However, some suggestions to improve performance:

- Allow landowners more options to restrict user lag. How about restricting particle effects on attachments, for one?
- Inside / outside bounding boxes - logical objects that do not display, but change the draw priority list so that while inside, things inside draw first and things outside load slower and only if FPS are available, and when outside, the same thing is true with outside.
- Time - remember Moore's Law. Computers in 18 months will be twice as fast.

Are you kidding? I think groups to fix SL are a GREAT idea! People assembling and socializing inworld is what it's all about.



What about fixed caching and optimization?

If a SIM rarely changes, then SL should be able to cache a lot of the info about it on the client side, enough to speed up FPS significantly.

Compile a BSP TREE or whatever. Do what it takes

I was referring to your back-patting comment - let me clarify;

Good idea: Small groups talking and socializing inworld to help come up with new ideas to fix problems
Bad idea: Large groups that are highly publicized in the forums and claim to be some fix-all group.



I'd love to see a "popular site" list, where a user could designate a particular build as one of their favorites, and force a cache, even beyond the 1 gig limit. ... though the cache is wiped every time LL patches the sims, so ... *sigh*

I think allowing landowners to allow incoming ports to their land would be a big help too - then you're not wasting bandwidth when you have to fly over places in between telehubs and your destinations.

Does the ground really change all the time?
How often does the ground where you spend your time at change?
I think claims the ground changes all the time in SL are basically false.

.

ok, *deep breath* here we go..

-

first, the FPS issue.

i agree, we could definitely use better FPS rates. that's just common sense. lag is one of the biggest gripes about SL. the fix? better frame rates. now, here's the good part.. they're getting better with 1.7! LL has already identified this problem, at this point you're preaching to the choir. a new rendering engine, Havok 2, etc.. upgrades in performance are always passing through our updates and forever shining on the horizon.

edit: caching, not quite as easy as WoW. our content is dynamic.. all of it. games like Wow have a fairly static environment and many pre-rendered animations/costumes/etc. SL doesn't enjoy that type of ease.. as a result, we have a much richer culture. i'm glad to have that trade-off, personally.. and i believe it will also be an issue of the past someday.

second, rate of new members/residents.

first, this is steadily growing. nowhere near as much as new accounts, but still.. it's climbing. 2+ years after it's release, SL is climbing.. and it's still in it's infancy. true, we may not be growing like WoW or whatever else, but as previously mentioned.. we're a completely different creature. quite unique in totality. and as such, should be looked upon with a unique vision. our growth has no modern contemperary to contrast itself against, so for us.. up is good, no matter what the angle of inclination is.

secondly, part of the reason our growth isn't as exponential as "other MMOs" is (again as mentioned before) is due to marketing. we don't really have any. for us, our main marketing tool is of the "viral" kind.. word of mouth. while this inherently means slower growth, it also means we have a stronger "customer" base. most of the people who come to Esselle (love that term!) come here with stars in their eyes.. not due to empty promises, but because they know the future when they hear it.
we're not a slew of gamers just looking for something new to kill, we're a society of (mostly) intelligent residents who are working towards an amazing future of limitless possibilities. we don't stay because we want to earn our next level, we stay because we're literally building a world of our iamgination. we're helping develop an online world, not an MMO.. as i've called it before, we're (VERY) early Beta testing the "Betaverse".

i'll take a slow, but solid, growth for Second Life anyday over a quick "flash in the pan" game. they talk about the dedicated WoW base, but for how long? sure, they're huge and adding content all the time. heck, my friend is playing it right now a couple feet from me.. and he's hooked to it. but i'll guarantee you he won't be into it as much two years from now.. you know, how i am with SL?


third, bugs.

sure, we have a bunch.. but, LL is continuously working to fix them. maybe not as fast as some people want, but still.. it's getting done. almost every release has some fix or another, and many have multiple. this is another case of preaching to the choir. LL knows about bugs and they're doing what they can to smooth them over. like i said, even though it's fully public, SL (in my opinion) is still very much in a Beta stage. seriously, compare the Esselle of today with the Esselle of my youth.. back in Jan/Feb of '04. what wonders have we seen?!? how many fixes have come to pass? how many times has LL listened to us and acted on our observations/suggestions/requests? compare, no.. contrast, that number to A-N-Y other MMO.. i bet SL trumps them every time.

what we can do though, is to spot check. after an update (like say, after 1.7), try different things. stretch the limits in specific ways. watch the FPS while trying different scripts, different combinations of scripts, and so on. stretch, twist and mangle prims and see what happens.. what about alpha textures? what about higher quality textures? what happens when you use a lengthy custom animation while wearing some prims scripted to twist, bend, etc., themselves at the same time? try crazy ideas to try to pinpoint what things might need attention to better inform LL. you know.. kind of like Beta testing? *wink wink*


last, for dessert..

i firmly believe the future of Esselle is in good hands. i mean that in regards to both LL and SLers (Essellians?) alike. the technical growth of our world has been amazing, as well as our virtual one. i wish i could relate to all of you what Second Life is to me, but i always seem to have a hard time putting it in words.

this impossible dream is where my daydreams took me as a child. a miraculous land of infinite construct. a land built upon everything from our whims to our best laid plans.

when i urge people to work towards the future of Esselle, i truly yearn for us to hurdle over our current conceptions of what's on the horizon and keep our eyes focused on what's beyond the horizon. look at our wilderness over the past 2+ years and what has been accomplished in that short time. (heh, short.. just about any other MMO is on it's way out by that time, while we're just barely starting to gain popularity.. just starting to take root.) imagine what Esselle will be like in TEN years! even one year from now will be dramatically different!!


thank you LL.
thank you SLers.
we have all helped each others dreams come true.

/bow

Last time I checked, Havok 2 was removed from the 1.7 list. No official statement of when it will occur has been made, to my knowledge. Of course, this isn't to say that it is the only improvement in 1.7 for lag - they did an overhaul to the render priority list, for example.


Absolutely, though I think more static-content will come in time.

As for your other comments, I think you have a lot of valued points.

"Esselle" sounds too much like "Edsel".

..and what's so wrong with "Edsel"? lol..

Hiro, sorry for not making my point more clear. i was referring to Havok 2 and new rendering as two different entities.

if i'm not mistaken, in 1.7 our rendering engine is getting a face-lift.. and whenever Havok 2 comes out (has it been "coming soon" for over a year yet? heheh..), i understand our physics engine will get better. which would be completely different, even if our lag would be furhter reduced by a better handling of physics.. but, a better rendering engine in 1.7 will do squat for calculating collisions, et al.

i'd also like to imagine we could get something static, say.. Nova Albion? the land and roads there could be considered static. LL content like, bridges, railroads, roads, etc., could also qualify at some point, no?

and thanks for pointing out that you agree with some of what i said, it makes all that typing *whew* worthwhile.

Ok this has been bugging me for some time.. have you ever been standing someplace.. on ground or prim.. and the floor seems ... unstable? like it keeps moving up and down but tiiny bits?

Oh, I agree these both will be improvements, and I pointed them out to blaze as well, however the rendering engine upgrade, as I understand, is largely priority-list updating. The "face-lift" upgrade is due for 2.0.

In other words, as I understand, the thing that tells your computer what to download will select items in a more intelligent manner, however the way they are displayed will remain the same for now.


I know! hahah... I'll be reading the forums, agreeing with people all the time ... and then I'll make comments and wonder fruitlessly if anyone agrees or not. Usually it's only during fierce debate that people go out of their way to point out who's wrong - and who's right.

/chuckle

that's like the first time a reporter wrote

he was quoted as saying "shoot the effin' guy!"

so, Hiro.. i understand now. while we're getting an upgrade of sorts to the rendering engine, it's not quite the facelift that we saw the screenshot of? but that's expected in 2.0 ..which, still, is pretty cool.

..or at least will be.


and trust me, i hear you loud and clear. as a matter of fact, i've written long posts that i thought would result in at least a comment or two, but just end up either passed over as the thread continues or it just ends whatever thread it was in or started. lol..

the forum.. she is a cruel mistress.

-

and, Blueman.. true, but honestly, it's the best suggestion for what to call the mainland that i've heard in all of our discussions. it's apparent where the term comes from, while at the same time lending itself better as a name for a landmass.

No.

However I have been standing still and a bunch of prims will jump up, like the benches people are sitting on. Then move back down.

Where is all this back patting activity going on anyway? I see back stabbing , maybe kidney punches and kicks, possibly an attempt to perform an unauthorized epidural, but patting?

*pats sue's back

Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it? There is no way we can force or require that people take off attachments, and besides, even naked avatars cause a heap of lag.


Chinatown was around for months, but it was invisible... it was always meant to open for only a month. And that month cost Foxy a bundle. Bedazzle is not a corporation, or has ever made a dime of profit from its various projects. Bedazzle is a group of friends who build stuff for their own enjoyment, and the fact that you can also enjoy it is not a right, but a privilege. This goes for pretty much everything in SL and outside it, but you know how it goes, this is the "me" generation, never before in history have people been so self-centered and so endowed with a sense of entitlement.
I'm sure if you put up some cash for a sim and manage to talk her into it we can bring back Chinatown pretty quickly.
Besides, you're ignoring some basic facts and premises of SL: everything is temporary, people are fickle, their interest is lost after a while.
Much like a website, a simulator must keep churning out fresh content and events in order to attract people. Chinatown was not a beginning, it was the end - the latest and greatest of three scenarios created for the "UnrealL" game, the other two being a tropical sim (Jamaica IIRC?) and a snowy castle (Abraxas).


Well, IMHO, Chinatown/UL was an unmitigated success. The fact that you still remember it is proof enough of that.
If you can wrap your head around the notion that people are not here to work for you, but rather to enjoy themselves, it will be much easier to understand the full extent of its success.

(Edited to add: my opinions are my own, this is not an official bedazzle statement etc etc )

First of all let me cover this right off. Yes I'm new to SL. If that means you can't take what I have to say seriously then so be it, but I do feel I have some valid points to add here. In no particular order:

"there are just as many female gamers now as there are male..."

This is simply and utterly false. I could go and find all sorts of data to prove this to you but that would be like digging up data to prove the world is not flat.


"2+ years after it's release, SL is climbing.. and it's still in it's infancy."
"imagine what Esselle will be like in TEN years!"

I'll preface this reply by saying that I really enjoy SL, and I wish what I'm about to say were not the case. That being said, the concept of time you are using to discuss this game is not realistic. If SL is an infant at 2+ years of age, then you are using a time scale roughly equivalent to the human life span. I'm sorry, but SL does not have 70 some years to live. In reference to the second quote above, it more than likely does not have even ten. If you want to prove me wrong, please just provide an example of a MMO which has survived for 10+ years. And please, use common sense, I don't mean sequels, I don't mean complete company changes, and I don't mean entirely new and different manifestations. Such examples are like saying "um... Ninja Gaiden is still around!" because an essentially entirely new game with that title was produced for xbox.


Again, save us all some time and skip the "oh well you're new so you automatically have nothing to say" posts. You don't have to be a SL veteran to know basic facts about the way gaming works. Yes, SL is different than other MMOs, but not different enough to break every single industry rule since the creation of this type of game.

Actually, Snowcrash - those numbers were friends of mine from two different WoW servers coming over to see Burning Life on free accounts. See, WoW members also believe in community, teamwork, thinking, strategies, goals and "doing the best." I never should have shown my WoW friends the pictures on Snapzilla of Burning Life.

Many of them are high-end scripters, thinkers and believe-it-or-not, designers of websites, strats, UI interfaces, etc. Once they saw the cube and how it could be manipulated into one of Cubey's airplanes, they were sold. We're not all mindless clickers as you mentioned earlier. However, I did lose two of them, those naughty MALE gamers, once they found the strip club was opened.

I already have a sig quote, which I want to hang on to. But somebody really ought to snap that one up.