Rolling blackouts threatening SL

Hey everyone, long time no see.

and if you wonder why you havent seen me, chances are because of the serious energy crisis that has hit SL. Granted, those of you with flashlights or candles might have gotten a glimpse - but alas, hard to nail a fast flying av in the dim glow of a burning match.

What? you havent heard about the energy crisis? Oh dear! you must be one of the lucky ones. Well, friend, whatever you do - make sure you take along a emt crash cart (or at least a bottle of 'ludes) when your next power bill comes in the mail.

Ha, you think I'm joking? well let me tell you sumpin choomba. There is NO doubt that Linden Labs is situated in good ol' Kalifournighaa. (err california for those who were wondering) Why they must look at the price of shining our lights and think it's darn reasonable!!!!

but lets look at it cost wise...

Hmm I got me some lights... (of course, I AM a modern(ish) man).
two primes, linked - total of 6 linked items hanging up there on the ol ceiling..... with me so far?
ok.. now only 1 (yes 1) of the items is a light - the other isnt. (thats right - dont double it - it's only 1 per - so a total of 6 lights not 12).

ok now the fun stuff. 2 primes = 20 bucks to rez, and 2 bucks in tax a week.

so .... 120.00 to rez the lights and 12.00 a week in taxes. Hey that's a steal....

well hold on, the ride just got bumpy.

see, because one of the primes is a light, that said light shoots the tax up by 25.00 a week. Yep! that's right - a 10.00 prime (1.00 in taxes) costs 25.00 to light up!!!!

SO NOW, were looking at. 120.00 to rez, AND 162.00 a week in taxes......

Hmmmm. the lights cost MORE in taxes EACH WEEK, than the manufacturing of them!!!!!

HECK BOYS, the Lindens sure do have themselves a racket going on here!!!

why did you know at that cost, if I lit all my rooms, I would be paying more in light tax than I was in object and land tax combined!!!???!!!!!

ahem..

Lindens! I know things are tough in Kali (er cali) but COME ON!!!! if your gonna give us day and night, give us some cheap power for our lamps!!!! (and dont think to get off with just a candle in the window - I'm sure that candle costs about 20.00 too........).

Anyway, if ya all are looking for me, just listen to the sounds of somebody bumping around in the dark, stubbin his toe, and cursing like a sailor - chances are you found me!!!.

ps.. it's bad now... thank goodness I never made my SL air conditioning unit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (mutter mutter must think I'm a rockerfeller mutter mutter)

you forgot to mention they gave us something pretty darn powerful in return....the ability to move the sun to wherever we want it. if it's too dark don't reach for those expensive lights just swing the sun back around the planet and enjoy all that extra daylight.

hehe yeah DEBUG----> force sunrise woohoooo

your right, you can always move the sun (and I do for the sake of light during building).

but when your hosting an event............

not everyone knows about the swing the sun technique. And rather than a) individually explaining how to do it to each newcommer that complains about not being able to see, or b) posting instructions (complete with pics for those who are verbally challenged) of how to do it for the same group of people as in a, I would rather just have *lights* that dont have me knocking over SL corner stores for the cash to pay fo them.

That there's one o' the cutest complaints I've seen in a while I must say I find it hard to believe that a light puts so much pressure on the sim that they need to discourage it so intensely! Is it so much worse than, say, particles? I’d really like to know???

Love Ingie

Actually, Ingie, dynamic lighting puts a lot of load on the client machine.

Basically, unchecked us of light-emitting prims in SL would drive up the minimum/recommended system requirements drastically. This would not only upset many existing users whose systems can barely handle SL now, but it would severely cut into SL's potential user base.

Yeah I wrote up a post a while ago about how light taxes are inconsistant and seem to be out of whack, no really good replies though...

Perhaps implementing an on/off choice in the user options for dynamic lighting would solve this problem. Many games give such options, so they can be used by those who can enjoy them. Wouldn’t that be a good solution?

Love Ingie

There already is.. go to the Display tab in options.

Well for the people that turn it on, griefers can get to greifing without putting any detectible lag trace on the sim. THATS JUST GREIFER'S HAVEN! And for those who don't have it turned on, it's because there computers cant handle it. So lights will STILL lag their asses off.

Well, again, if the load isn't on the sim side, but on the client, why is it being taxed? and taxed so hard?

just asking?

love Ingie

Jaxiam, contact me in-game and I will probably get your taxes down significantly.

Because even though we have the option to turn dynamic lighting on/off, it's buggy.

Basically, dynamic lighting puts the power in our (end users) hands to dictate minimum system requirements for other users to be able to see our builds as intended.

One or two dynamic lights here and there is no big deal. A ballroom with a chandelier that had 1000 individual lighted crystals would slow the fastest client to an absolute crawl.

The high taxes are LL's way of allowing us to use dynamic lighting reasonably, whie making it difficult/expensive to accidentally or deliberately bring every client within 512 meters to its virtual knees.

In other words, if you really, really want/need lights, the option's there, but you have to decide if it's worth the cost. If you just want to have a lot of lights because it's "cool", it isn't worth the expense. The high tax is a way to discourage people from using client-lagging lights when they aren't critical to the build.

If you think it's critical, but not worth paying the tax on, then it's really not all that critical after all.

I think there may also be some sim-side effects, also. If you'll notice sometime, if you use colored lights, any textures on prims near the light are "tinted" by the lighting. This could be the sim modifying every texture on-the-fly before sending it to each client. If this is the case, the server-side impact of mass lighting would be enormous.

Grim, you're crazy, colored lighting has been a standard feature in graphics cards for ages. The server doesnt alter any textures, your card does.

Even with dynamic lighting turned off?

In FPS map building, when you compile the maps, the textures themselves aren't altered, but the tinting is permanently applied to the object OVER the texture. Even if SL does this on the fly (have to, because it's not permanent), it's still extra calculations on either the server or the client, and extra data per prim that has to be sent.

You seem to be in an unusually nasty mood this week, Eggy. (Not just this post.) What's bugging you?

Erm nothing Grim, I call ppl crazy all the time. Dont mean anything by it. Im sorry if you felt insulted or something

Understanding all the responces I have just one question. If everyone has a vote booth out it automaticly has a light in it. Automaticly whether we want it or not we have to deal with lights from the vote booths and again this probably does drag the sim down if you have 20 residents with 1 to 20 voting booths each. So the question is Can there not be a Vote Booth made to replace that has like an on and off switch to it? Just so that if we choose to ban together in a sim we can turn off the lights and wala no more lag.

Just thought Id ask.

ShadowWeaver

The server has little to do with lights, other than passing the characteristics of them (where they are, what color, how intense, etc) to the client - which is where they are rendered and where all texture/pixel shading occurs.

"Turning off" dynamic lighting still forces the card/client to do the work of shading textures and pixels. How could the server have anything to do with it? All rendering occurs on the client end.

Dynamic building enviroments like SL rely on alterable object databases, rather than compiled "maps." A server (sim) is not much more than an object database that tracks and interacts with clients and other servers.

As for lights and how they tax the game - this goes back to an earlier post I made about redesigning the way resources are allocated in SL. Instead of allowing so many lights, objects, scripts and so on PER SIM, maximums should be assigned on a much more distributable scale, perhaps per foot or per meter.

So, for example, SL could allow so many lights per meter - according to whatever the designers have found to be the most efficient range.

Using personal taxes as a way to control the distribution of resources in a sim still allows for abuses of the system, i.e. object hoarding, and still lets the wealthy people get away with more than other people. It is technically possible to build a chandelier with 1000 lights on it (assuming the sim doesn't crash in the middle of building it). This should NOT be possible, and my idea would solve the problem.

Not to mention the fact that in at least 2 other virtual world environments, a per-meter (or some other smaller, bite-sized chunk of area) maximum is how resource distribution is implemented, and I don't see anything wrong with borrowing a system that improves the overall operation of the game.

Per-sim distribution of resources, along with personal taxes, have become a serious pet peeve of mine. These are limitations I feel we, as paying customers, should NOT have to deal with. I'd rather read my FL weekly bank statements - they are way less confusing than my SL weekly statements. At least I can figure out how my RL money is spent and taxed.

There ARE better ways to allocate communal resources without taxes.

-J