Can We Just Have OUR OLD SL back, please?

Possibly a gazillion...

I love improvements, but with Windlight I'm very worried about the huge contrast in lighting, which makes almost everything except water and sky look bad.

I opened a topic with a screenshot here: /333/55/224212/1.html but nobody seems to care lol.

I really hope that LL listens to the comments on Windlight and contrast, however bad the 'old' lighting may have been.

I have read these all through and am gonna give a serious comment - I own land, I own houses, I collect sl art (400 paintings and counting) so I am not a "fly-by-night". Sooooo, here's my comment on all this. Like a number of people typing in, I don't want to update to a new graphics card just to see pretty clouds and sloshy waves - yes, I know it is more than that. For some people, I realize that Secondlife IS a life they may not have elsewhere; for example, I spoke to a person with a dreadful illness that impeded movement etc. just the other week and sl was a relieving factor in his recovery. Thus, any improvement in the quality of the SL world is a plus for some (maybe numerous) persons.
But many of us come here simply to "get away" for an hour or so, maybe before bed, maybe before breakfast. These improvements just get in the way of a "normal" sl that may not sparkle with glittery waves and sharp shadows but it jogged along at a fairly steady pace. I think voice was quite unnecessary. I use cell phones and my voice enough in the day (and for my career) that yattering to a machine just doesn't "feel right." I think windlight is just another bit of fancy software production which is going to be temperamental and affect the general ambience of the whole sl experience. Detrimentally.
I know technology is going to move forward - after all, SL itself is a product of computer software engineering. But please let's not see windlight become a compulsory feature. I dont use detail on my screen, I have not activated any "blings", my in-world camera is equivalent of a kodak instamatic; I am technical enough in my real world without having it bite me back in my fantasy.
By the way, I am enjoying this discussion, which remains at a serious level because so many of us have been impacted by crashes and lags and rubbery legs. Thanks for listening. Now back to any further comments ...

I don't have the money to update either.
It gets pretty annoying sometimes when I hear people saying basically if you don't have
large disposable source of income you shouldn't be here.
They don't come out right and say it but they say it many ways.
I spent with tier and land this year about 1400 usd.
That was pretty difficult but it was choice I made.
I am disabled Artist who lives below poverty level in real live so spending another 300 or more new video card really hurts.

FD, I hate to say it, but spending $1400 on tier and land is a lot when you're below poverty level. I would seriously consider tiering down. Risking your own health and well being is not worth a bunch of "land" in Second Life.

Sorry, I meant the voice client... you don't actually have to use voice itself, just the client. And of course Brenda is right, Nicholaz offers a non-voice versioin of the client that still has the old chat and IM windows. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Nicholaz will also make a non-windlight version available when LL stops offering one.

Oh FTLOIA, you obviously dont remember all the build bugs back then that they only recently fixed!

A year ago people were complaining about how they wanted the OLD SL back because it WORKED.

And no doubt it worked better as one single sim with ten people on it throwing bombs to see what they could blow up. If this comment baffles you, try You Tube.

The bottom line is that these things are cultural to SL now. We're all in the same boat, we all end up with hairy shoe but, or bald at the wrong time in front of the person we'd least want to see us that way.

Frankly - sounds like you need to upgrade your PC and/or drivers.

There will ALWAYS be progress ... I for one understand that there will be problems each time but I'd rather have progress than stagnation.

And this thing is complex ... if everyone had the SAME pc with the same things on, it would be a lot easier. If no one created things, it would be easier.

BORING though.

Of course they dont design the internet to only work for people who have computers less than 1 year old.

The 3D internet shouldn't have to be either.


Should be aimed at the most reasonable target audience.

SL worked pretty well in 2005. In fact it worked better on my old computer than the current version does on my new one.

100,000 textures that no longer look right in windlight.
$1,000,000L to replace them.
Need I say more?

Wishful thinking.

They rather put out fancy and pretty things then to really fix SL up the way they should.

What good is it to have a pretty world if you're not around to see it because of the many, many problems and crashes? They feel coming out and telling the world look what new gimmicks we have is better for business then actually getting and finding competant people who actually know what the hell they're doing.

SL is at an all time worse right now. All you see are people complaining, constantly complaining of crashing and of all the many things that need to be repaired and repaired the correct way.

Then instead of working on the things already here which as we know are for the most part broken they add new content. And not going do they add but they add it when it's not complete and on top of it it's broken itself.

I don't see the logic in this. Well, I do but only in the way of just concentrating on making money and not caring about anything else.

Sad but definitely true.

Of course you need to move forward, to progress. This is the way things are done so there's no complaining there. But before you try to move forward, make sure what's already here is running the way it's meant to be. Don't try moving forward while you haven't taken care of what's already here.

Makes no sense and you will always be taking two steps back for every one you try to take forward.

They don't need to go back to the old sl, all they need to do is fix this one first before adding new things.

We are having to put up with a platform in its infancy. 5 years from now, there may be a version of SL or from a competitor that not only looks good, but works well. Until that time, I'm not recommending SL to anyone.

Why is it some folks see all additonal bells and whistles as 'progress' and not adding unnecesary frippery as 'stagnation'? Often, in today's world, add ons are merely a means to sap as much money from a consumer as possible. Repackage a cereal and you can charge another eighty cents per box for the exact same cereal. From what some Lindens have told me, LL didn't necesarily want Class 5 servers, as they didn't see the additions as a vast improvement, but LL had to take them cause the manufacturer of their servers chip sets discontinued the old ones, and LL needed new servers. LL had to pass on those extra, unnecesary costs, so new private sims are $295 per month in tier instead of $195. Charging more or adding features that nobody wants, when your main product is having service issues, is not 'progress'. Voluntary simplicity is not stagnation, it's only saving up for what is REALLY important, or at least the consumer goodies you REALLY want.

I was going to quote Ava, but since Kitty already did and also adds what I would have said.....


This is my main concern. I haven't tried Windlight yet, because as a rule I won't update to official viewers unless I absolutely have to.
However, from the comments I've read so far I'm thinking this could potentially be one of the silliest ideas ever.
While the world may look a prettier place, no-one is going to be able to tell what anything else looks like to anybody else. How daft is that?
Plus .... if it's going to fry the systems of the average resident, it's not going to help teh monkeys in the long run.
I for one wholeheartedly support the notion that this world of ours should be accessible to a wide range of people, not just those who can afford watermelon-enabled systems.


Just my 2c, IMHO, YMMV, etc.......

Shrugs. I work in online gaming. My partner is a computer game designer rl.

That's the viewpoint I come from. If I wanted simplicity, I'd go back to IRC because all the pretty in the world is as NOTHING compared to the written word, for me.

Linden doesn't run into a profit yet, yes, and you're right that the costs are high. I can't get back to where I was once before RL house moves forced me offline for three months. At the end of the day though, for all there are some people not wanting anything to change there are other people who are MASSIVELY excited by the potential that new developments bring.

Of course mostly they are not in this Forum - and intermittently when the negativity gets too much neither am I.

/me resumes simply seeking information again, because expressing anything POSITIVE in this place is generally to be pilloried and whilst I am a big girl and can hold my own - I have better things to do with my time.

You can also leave the Voice enabled box unchecked too I hear

Hmm LP's seem to need to be replaced in RL too.

Perhaps LL should set aside a section of Grid set up SL version 1.0 and let all those who hate flexies, music streaming, megaprims, groups, sound, teleport, search, sculpties, voice, windlight and Havok 4 buy some class 1 sims there so they can enjoy a C64 viewer at diallup speeds and regress to the 20th Century maybe even release a B&W version. Many here sound like they would even pay extra for the priviledge.
Yeah so many would be happy to let SL just stagnate into a skirt shopping world...............
One day if the opposition get their butt into gear you may even get the opportunity to buy 16,000 empty sims you could retro build to 2003 diaorama.
It's like telling World Of Warcraft you only want to be able to play barbarian fighters, a club as the only weapon option and only one set of missions to play.

Last November was really borked, we would go for days without ANYONE being able to login. People as a rule won't update but still complain that the same bugs on the version they run aren't getting better? LOL people here would keep running 18.3.5 and complaing of it's bugs when the majority are running 19.3.5.

Hmmm. Well I remember a year ago, and to be honest, my SL experience is the same or improved. Definitely not worse. (I shudder to remember all the copybot spam I got a year ago!) I think I added more memory in the last year but haven't upgraded my graphics card or anything else and SL runs just as smoothly as before, in fact perhaps more smoothly. The voice client hasn't made things worse, nor has sculpties (I think sculpties are way cool).

To be honest there WAS a time period, I seem to recall around winter last year where an upgrade took performance significantly backwards - I think it was version 1.13 (lots of failed TPs, took forever to log in nearly all the time, etc. etc.) but that has improved back to the point where my SL is fairly stable again, save for the occasional burps.

And I've tried out the Windlight, and it's just breathtaking... even on my lowly 6600 nVidia...

For me Second Life is working better than it did a year ago (despite yesterday being a nightmare!).

Windlight makes a big improvement to lighting and hopefully the glitches will be sorted before it goes mainstream.

To echo the above, SL is definitely a consistently smoother experience for me than it has been at, I think, just about any time in the past year since I've been here. This despite no hardware upgrades. Jeez, I can remember sitting with friends and all of us being frightened to move in case we crashed. That used to be a fairly regular experience. And then everyone being grey, walking through treacle, tp'ing and waiting 10 minutes for things to rez... that was SL sometime last winter I seem to remember.

Still get the odd glitch but just silly things. The occasional stilletto up the bum for example, but I'm learning to live with that

Yep cars went up in price too since they started adding unasked for features like more efficient engines and disc brakes. It's a scam................

I said voice CLIENT.

It had a major interface change, which many people don't like and which can NOT be reverted by unchecking the Voice Enabled box. LL no longer allows use of an official viewer with the old non-voice interface. This is what I meant when I said the voice CLIENT was mandatory.

That's a fair comment mate and I can understand where you are coming from.

Until about 2 weeks ago I was accessing SL with a computer that was nearly 2.5 years old. At the time of purchase the specs of the machine were just under "state of the art", but just lately SL had become almost unusable.

Today I have my new machine, quad processors, 3 gig of ram, half a gig of graphics, plus Windows Vista, it’s rated at 5.2 on a Microsoft scale of between 1 to 5.8.

Yet......in firing up SL the software together with Windows consumes nearly 60% of all computer resource, that’s way beyond ANY other program I use including live data streaming with quite a few windows open AND WoW running at the same time. My graphics settings in SL are not much different from default value (draw distance set at 125 metres is the only real enhancement)

Not everybody though can afford the money to upgrade computers every 2/3 years and the way things are going currently many older machines will be unable to access SL without major code improvements to enhance performance

A year ago I was running SL on my bog standard laptop - 512 core, low end graphics. When the login concurrency went above 10000 the performance got pretty poor. I was in the fortunate position to be able to afford to upgrade my machine last year - I doubt that I would have stuck with SL otherwise because it is very difficult to run SL on my old laptop now.

I seriously question LL's policy over intoducing new features - not that I don't like new features, but if they really do want the SL Grid to be a major platform, then they need to think "low entry". A system that will perform acceptably on a low end desk top, that many people can afford, would be a good direction to take. If LL want RL companies to use SL - just like they use the 2D internet, then they should think: "basic office desktop machine", and make sure that SL will run ok on that.

It is not only that individual users may not be able to afford an expensive kit - this affects businesses on a large scale. I work in a company with over 40000 employees - there is no way they can justify upgrading 40000 desktops/laptops to dual core/ NVIDEA graphics etc., even though there are many business applications to which SL could be a solution.