PRETTY TICKED OFF RIGHT NOW... Priorty madness

also! I'd LOVE to see these shitty building tools fixed!!! How long have they been screwed up???? Let me tell you....Since Oct or Nov of 2004.....when you all decided that the rotation system wasn't ok at 180 degrees, you had to make it 360!!! wtf

Assuming this wasn't troll bait... there are lots of great uses for HUD attachments. It allows you to use all kinds of gadgets that would look silly attached to your body.

For example, want to play Yahtzee while you are dancing at a club? Try this HUD attachment. The same designer has adapted a number of other games too.

Cubey Terra has made a kewl HUD's which is an altimeter to use with his chutes.

Hank Ramos has a rather neat teleporter (a bit like ROAM) which includes a graphic interface on the HUD.

And this HUD helps you right scripts with particles... way too kewl, although a little out of my budget at the moment. And it would just be plain silly to attach it to a regular body point.

And take a look at this amazing car! It comes with a HUD attachment to tell you your speed.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I'll admit that there are applications for HUDs. It's a neat thing. The only point I intended to make... there were a LOT more things that needed to be done of far more importance than yet another SL gimmick.

For about the hundredth time, I was crashed yet again by being foolish enough to try to watch a movie screen (when will I ever learn?). I think that makes the point. We need LL to stop bringing out yet new toys to cause additional potential system problems... and fix the problems that already exist. HUDs were of minimal importance when compared to other system needs. And when LL tells us they don't have the time/manpower to fix major bugs or meet major user needs... then come out with something like this... it's bound to rub people the wrong way.

I don't pay $585 a month to play a PVP game or a game of Yahtzee. I pay it to have sims that are supposed to function correctly-- and they don't. That's what ticks customers off... when LL caters to stuff like this when it's the landowners that are providing their paychecks. These huds are used primarily by folks NOT paying the bills. When are the folks who pay the bills going to get the tools we need to make our lands/sims operate correctly?

HUDs are nice. Functional sims are nicer.

I guess that sounds okay. *lol* so I can attach, flip titles (can you see them?) and AOs to HUDs and they will still work?

There are a few things here. Flip titles (the name which is derived from FlipperPA Peregrine, I believe) are meant to be shown to other Residents, so it might not be the best idea to wear it on an HUD since you're the only one who'll be seeing it. Unless you're into that kinda thing. AOs will function, but they're especially useful if they have an HUD-optimized control. For instance, the Huddles Button Bar.

HUDs are personal devices, and while their effects may result in other avatars seeing them, the HUD itself will be visible only to you.

Which means that yes, club security is nullified and made impotent because you can attach a gun to each HUD point and walk on in—and they won't see you shooting until you actually blow everyone away. It's a bad bad thing to do, NOT something I recommend at all, but it's good to be aware of how we shape our virtual reality.

From: Torley Torgeson

There are a few things here. Flip titles (the name which is derived from FlipperPA Peregrine, I believe) are meant to be shown to other Residents, so it might not be the best idea to wear it on an HUD since you're the only one who'll be seeing it. Unless you're into that kinda thing. AOs will function, but they're especially useful if they have an HUD-optimized control. For instance, the

Huddles Button Bar.

HUDs are personal devices, and while their effects may result in other avatars seeing them, the HUD itself will be visible only to you.

Which means that yes, club security is nullified and made impotent because you can attach a gun to each HUD point and walk on in—and they won't see you shooting until you actually blow everyone away. It's a bad bad thing to do, NOT something I recommend at all, but it's good to be aware of how we shape our virtual reality.

Well that clears up a lot of things about HUDs but I'm still confused ovr the issue of the LL prioritizing on HUDs. Maybe it would be better if Linden would answer? I'm not a coder but somehow I'd be a lot happier if they can make things system wise running smooth again before they focus on the other stuff.

I do like the Huddles bar, sounds cool. I might give it a try given if I have enough cash. It looks like to be the only HUD item I can use (but I am checking some of the neat stuff Keiki has in his last post).

And don't worry, I don't frequent clubs so I won't shoot anyone or abuse it..not my kind of thing. ^_^

Probably because it was easy as all the more difficult stuff got left out (HTML, assets that aren't wildly borked, etc.) and you *can't* have a release that doesn't add features. Or, more precisely, a press release of the form "we just released version 1.7 which consists of nothing but bugfixes" makes marketing folk queasy so they had to add some featurelette no matter how trivial.

Examples? Concrete examples, now, not just hyperbole and opinion.



You keep brandishing about how much money you throw around, like it makes a difference. Does your opinion on how fucked up LL's policy matter more because you have infinitely deep pocketbooks? I pay 15 bucks a month; should they listen to you more than they do me?




And many many others realize we're in a game provided by a research company that is continually doing what they do most -- research. If you are uncomfortable paying more to SL than I make in a year at my RL job, by all means, stop paying.




Let me posit this. There are, what, perhaps 300 private sims? With maybe 220 unique owners?

SL has a population approaching 85,000 this week. You are part of a group of people that constitutes less than two tenths of one percent of the entire population.

You are an EXTREME minority. Getting lag out of the way is a lot more important to the rest of the community than getting more nebulous, buggy tools that you are always railing against in your threads. As evidenced below...



In three months, they'll be as indispensible as animation overriders. Which is to say, absolutely fucking essential to not look like a gimp in SL.



Yes. Devote more time to estate tools.

Do you have any proof of people leaving in droves due to these performance issues? Last I checked, SL has been gaining members at about 1000 a day, and the concurrent users continues to increase. Your oppressed group of folks leaving by the bucketload are more than likely impatient people that also get bent out of shape when a department store doesn't have the obscure item they wanted.




They have an obligation to convince you to part with your money. They did not sign anything guaranteeing 100% uptime, 100% bugfree operation, or 100% real estate tools. They take your money. That's it. They seem to be very successful with you, what with your infinite pocketbook and all.




People scream when new features are introduced. People scream when new features ARENT introduced. People scream when the stipend is changed. People scream when they get things for free. People scream when dwell doesn't run for a day. People fucking scream all the time. What's your point?



1.6 called, it wants its featurelist back.

Seriously, I haven't had Quicktime crash my computer since preview. I dont' think it's a client fault. You hate hearing this, but maybe it's on your end?




Or sim estate tools



They've had rounding errors in the building tools since beta. That's more dangerous to content creation than time dilation problems.

But that's my opinion, and has no more or less weight than yours.

Quite obviously, LLab's opinion is different than either of us. And it doesn't look like two users bitching on a private forum is going to make a lick of a difference. So... part with your money, or don't. Your choice.




Dude, most of the people at LLab could blow you out of the water. They have a fucking nuclear engineer on board, for Chrissakes.



1000 new users a day says otherwise.



I dunno, you seem pretty content throwing money down a hole.



They don't wonder, they simply get immune to it.

LF

Thanks for the valuable explanation! I had little idea what the HUD points were exactly, and no idea what they were possibly useful for. Since I have little interest in weapons, it's no wonder I was in the dark.

I would rather we didn't have them, and had 1.6 back. I realize the idea is to have them AND have things as good as 1.6. Just saying that 1.6 brought very little to me, personally, while at the same time, making my game about 30% less playable across the board.

That still leaves me 70%, though, so I'm still here.

coco

P.S. I pretty much agree with Wayfinder's astute analysis.

Weapons is just one use for the hud, another use is games, ie cards etc these can be kept on your screen and secret to only you, another use is vehicles, where infomation on speed and height etc can be displayed in a graphical format, like a speedometer attachment, maybe also a information type display like a personal infonet type viewer, with tours, pics, and with the hyperteleporter code it could even fly you there.

Yes! So I see, now that I have finished reading the thread! That car is some kinda damn awesome snazzy! (I think I saw it in the recent Ed Wood film festival. Which brings up - I love movies, too, even though they will eventually, if they are too long, freeze me.)

And the huddles thing is really, really great, too! (Though I'm not into dancing.) Cards? I would love that!

But the basic point Wayfinder brought up still stands - ain't none of this gonna do us much good if we can't move, see, or stay in the game even as well as we could in 1.6.

It's not the number of people joining up that counts, Lordfly, as much as it is the number of people who stay - and, especially, who go on to become premium members. Anyone can join - for free - and quit, after 10 minutes of seeing nothing and not being able to move around.

coco

Just to toss my coin into the stack--

Since 1.7, SL has been pretty-much unusable for me on my primary computer (a laptop with an ATI X300 chip in it.) Yes, there have been a few improvements, but for the most part, when I'm on and experiencing less than 1.0 FPS on my client... I just can't really effectively do anything anymore. When I've absolutely had to get something done, I've done so using my wife's computer (which has an nVidia 6800 card in it.)

How has this affected me? Whereas before 1.7 I would spend 3-4 nights per week online and creating stuff, I have connected (and stayed on longer than the 1-2 minutes necessary to determine that it is still effectively useless for me) only 3 times. All from my wife's computer. I have created nothing new in SL since 1.7. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that my vendors are still operational and selling things, I would already have left SL entirely.

SL used to have mind share with me-- I used to think about it a lot and anticipate connecting in the evenings after my day job. Now, it really has hardly anything to do with how I spend my day. If the client problems don't get fixed before the things I've created become superceded by competitors' products and my stuff stops selling... well, here's one SL creator who won't be creating for SL. (In fact, if one of my other projects gets to the point of having a lot of mindshare with me... well, I may never come back to SL.)

On a positive note, I've been getting a lot done in my other programming projects.

What does this post have to do with this thread? I dunno. Nothing really, I suppose. Yes, I agree with most of what Wayfinder has to say. I guess I just wanted to pipe in and say that I agree that either poor prioritization, failure to consider client needs or a poorly-implemented test and release system does have a real effect on the userbase, and in the long term, the survivability of the project.

If SL had any real competition... I'd be there already. (And on that note, anyone know of any real alternatives to SL?)

A couple of points before I go. I'm guessing that one reason HUDs were included in 1.7 is that it took very little development time to add them in. They behave almost completely like regular attachments, they are just displayed a little differently. At the same time, it's a huge improvement in terms of the possibilities it has opened up, even if it takes a while for people to understand/imagine all the kewl things that this makes possible. I think LL got a huge bang for their development buck with HUDs.

New tools for SIM owners like you are suggesting are new systems altogether and would likely absorb a lot more development time than HUDs and as Lordfly pointed out, directly affect a small number of actual users.

The problems that remain with the client and SIM server are unfortunate, but they were caused by LL devoting development resources to making client and SIM performance better. The ways that SL handles textures and scripts were obviously changed and worked on, not to break SL's performance, but to improve it. 1.7.0 was failure on that level, but for a lot of people, certainly all of my friends in game 1.7.2 is working very well.

Textures are much better than 1.7.1, but still need improvement. The SIMs could be more stable certainly, but by many measures the SIMs where I spend most of my time are smoother than 1.6 now.

The point is, they are working very hard to improve performance and the bulk of their development time is focused there. Picking on the HUD changes is just silly.

Perhaps I can shed some light on the seemingly whacked prioritization of a software development company.

In a team of developers like LL, there are a number of different kinds of developers: Some are physics engine programmers, some are interface programmers, some are render engine programmers, some are avatar programmers, some are script engine programmers, some are back end networking programmers, some are front end networking programmers, some are back end accounting programmers, etc. etc...

Because a large system like LL is so complex, no one person is going to know all aspects of the system well enough to actually work on the guts of everything. For instance, I may have the basic understanding of how a physics engine works, or how a render engine works, but that in no way means that I have a single CLUE about THIS one works, nor how I would go about hunting bugs in it. This doesn't make me any less good as a network systems engineer, nor does it diminish the fact that I am able to quickly and efficiently hunt bugs in a backend inventory and DB system.

When LL says they cannot throw more resources at a given problem, that means that it is not technically or economically feasable to hire another person with that particular technical expertise; there would be training time on the in-house system (Which takes resources away from the current bug-hunt, btw, since someone has to train the newbie) before the newcomer would ever even get time to LOOK at code.

In the meantime, other programmers on the payroll with different specialties are supposed to lie fallow and NOT produce new features?

That is what you are suggesting by saying you don't want HUD, you want Land Tools!
The two things take totally different kinds of programmers.

Now LL is a bunch of smart folks, and I am sure that each of their programmers can function in two or maybe even three differing but related fields within their system, but the days of the generic "Programmer" resource are LONG GONE. You cannot just take one kind of programmer, wave a magic memo and turn him into a different kind of programmer. Doesn't work any more. You gotta send 'em to school (Time away from other things) and in the meantime, while these other programmers are away at school to learn what you think they should be working on, they aren't keeping their skills up to date on what they originally were good at, so that department loses out too.

IMHO, you are way too wound up about how much money you spend. If it is that much of a strain, perhaps you should scale back. I am not saying go away; I realize that you enjoy this place and have a lot of emotional energy invested here. I am just suggesting that, if the money is all you are concerned about here (and that is the impression you give by spouting vulgar figures like you do), then you might want to re-evaluate YOUR priorities.

Wow, textures are better. Where was I? How is having textures blur every two seconds better? Even LL has acknowledged this problem, so you saying that textures are better is bull hockey. It's taking even longer on most computers for texture to rezz and on some it never does. I agree with Wayfinder, because since 1.6, Sl has become unusuable for me. I use to get great performance and then when the update happened I had to put up with the poorest coded software for Mac I've ever seen. It even caused kernal panics on my computer (hard to do, folks). There was a memory leak that caused cache to fill up in mere seconds and crashed the client (thankfully fixed). Now textures are so poor for me I can barely see. So yeah, unless you're on whatever outstanding, super computer LL is running, you're screwed.

Jessant,

I am on a low end system.
SL works fine for me unless I go to some of the busier sims.
I have all of my video options turned on except local lighting.

I am NOT on a Mac, however, so I cannot speak to your experience.
Nor can I address any of the experiences of the other Mac owners, except to say, "Wow. I am really sorry you are not seeing what others of us see."

Because you are on a Mac, you are not going to see what we see, though, even if you are getting clear images. The processes inside you rmachine are very different (Or at least they used to be... who knows nowadays?) and so the kinds of bugs you get will be different than the bugs we got on Windoze and Linux boxen.

I certainly hope our Apple kindred are able to have their issues fixed soon. I wonder how many Mac programmers there are on Linden staff?

If you read what I said. Textures are much better now than in 1.7.1 and they are, certainly better than 1.7.0. Texture loading is still not working properly, but it has improved dramatically since the first days of 1.7. Obviously some people, like yourself are having a worse experience.

From: someone

Dude, most of the people at LLab could blow you out of the water. They have a fucking nuclear engineer on board, for Chrissakes.

OMG!! I didn't know that...

Maybe LL should invest on a 'test worlds' to test their patches before they put into the "Main" worlds" It would help them in the long run to test and double test their updates. Where we come from any update has to go through the 'test servers' first, because if any bugs happened in our 'main servers' due to lack of testing, we have to give some kind of compensation.

pardon my grammar typing with a headache and cold... ;_;

(on a side note: I noticed this is my 100th post, the most number of posts I've ever done in any forum I've joined ^o^)

I think that was the best response I have seen all day. Thanks for cracking me up.

Why would someone pay so much money for something that doesn't work right? If it pisses you off so much, STOP PAYING. And yes, it IS that simple.

They do have a test grid, known as the preview grid available prior to the release of 1.7 which was available to everyone to test

Congrats?

That is true, but the test grid has 1% of the number of sims as the live grid, uses the same asset server, and people are paying to play, not be testers because LL won't hire more than a couple.

Moreover, the utility of a "preview" grid is rather moot when some of the most dedicated customer testers (like the one quoted above and others) post feedback saying in essence "I have seen defect X on the preview grid and expect that it is a showstopper" and get summarily ignored.

By contrast, I read the following from a real game company for whose patch will actually be tested by the company itself prior to release:And I believe that their 1.1 release will actually fix problems and not introduce new ones or exacerbate old ones. How novel!

Mew. Then it makes me wonder what the preview grid is for? Is it really a test server (is there anything that LL described the Preview grid as such) or just a product display of their new patches (without the glitches)? Because I find it so bizarre how something like this could have happened, if they were testing the patches thoroughly, then they would have at least forseen some problems that might pop up and that measures would have been done to do something about it. ^^;

But damage has been done, I just hope the last patch I just downloaded will fix some of the problems. x_x

I know it's shallow but I'm a lurker at heart, and it has never been my practice to frequent forums. The fact that my post even got to a hundred is sorta a big deal to me. ^^;

I wasn't being sarcastic. I was just uncertain whether it is ultimately a good sign or a bad sign.

Its to my understanding that 1.7 is a conversion steppingstone to much larger technologies and by publicy deploying it it allows for the servers to mull over all the resourses in preperation for major updates such as the Havok 2 Engine. I think the problem is clients bitch so mutch that its gotten to the point that LL is near in fear to make any more upcoming promises in efforts to keep the complaining down to a dull roar. Also, I dont really care if some one has hundreds or thousands of dollars invested into something. That sir was a risk you took on and will have to deal with. No one is making you own 3 sims and spend the majority of your free time on the system. This system was intended to bring entertainment and interaction between users. If there is a problem, report it, if the company cant get back to you imeadiately, thats life, they do have 80,000 registered users, and even if only say 20,000 of them are active thats still a load of people they have to deal with.

I say patients, if thats too much for you, well, I dont really care. You live and you learn. If your have "intelegent" rebuttle. Dont bother cuz I really dont care and all your doing is wasting server space. If your going to tear me apart for typos, grow up.

I'm really not a mean person but its the American theology(?) of bitching to get thier way all the time that bothers me. Quick, clean, consise, and nice wins the day.