Can We Just Have OUR OLD SL back, please?

I just had my 1 year birthday yesterday, and while I don't have anything against the new features that have come out, I also have to agree that a year ago SL ran perfectly for me. I'd say that now I crash several times a day, frequent freezeups and it takes me forever to try out new clothes because they take so long to rez... never mind trying to change into an outfit on the fly in public. I think the only thing that I haven't had any major problems with yet (knock on wood) is logging in.

I agree with you, Jig. Forget Voice, WindLight and the fancy stuff of the past year (like, since 1.15) with their phantom "bumps" (where all of a sudden you're just not there and don't even know it for a minute or two, but it doesn't count as a crash) and bring back a reliable grid where we don't have to gnash our teeth and wonder what's going to be wrong with the new "update."

I logged in for the first time in december 2006... And yep, during some months my SL was soooooo cool (I mean the program), have no crashes, no lag... Would like to be again in that SL.

LL should waste the money we pay in servers, not developing programs... Yep, cool they want to offer more services, but please... OFFER THEM IF YOU ARE SURE THEY WORK!!

Grrrrr... *cries*

I think there would be more users if they didn't have to have higher end machine.
I have older machine with 2533mhz, to use SL I put in 6300 nvidea card and add bit more ram for 300 all I could afford last year was increasing memory to 768mb.
I really hope they don't make it manatory to have to use higher graphic system soon.
Windlight is pretty and all but at this point most of time I have to use graphic settings on low or be stuck with pretty low fps. I really don't need the reflection and cool effect right now.
I had some issues in 2003 and my computer wasn't even close to requirements but it was also very low populated then too.
I crash less since I quit clearing my cache and got new utility to optimize my computer called Speed up my pc perhaps the crashing less is imaginary. Perhaps its my ISP that is crashing less because I am on SL less.

I'm trying to imagine why. I guess baked lighting might need some adjustment, now that the lighting model does a bit more of that on its own. And I use a particle glow texture that would be obsolete if they ever got round to giving scripts access to texture glow. Other than that, hmmm... maybe they were hue-shifted to represent lighting conditions--kind of a low-end baked lighting? But I dunno, really, I have yet to find an exterior texture that doesn't look better in WindLight... and the interiors just amplify the desperate need for cast shadows that was there all along.

That said, to the main point of the thread, yeah, the priorities are certainly not mine. Until we get to the point where Inventory loss simply cannot happen--where it's all backed-up offline, and inventory transfers are actually transactional--the rest of this would be fine for developers to play with on their own time, but shouldn't be anything requiring more LL investment than perhaps including some of it in the build, as long as it doesn't require any other changes to the source.

I'll give them some credit: WindLight does improve some graphics algorithms that before were particularly ill-considered. And Havoc 4 has the potential to reduce some sim crashes and makes obsolete an especially silly class of "weapons" used mostly by griefers. And even Voice may eventually find some utility for a few business applications. And, to be fair, the inventory loss problem has been *reduced*--but not yet made impossible, which is really *the* prerequisite for this infrastructure to ever be taken seriously as a platform for the "3D web."

Actually, I couldn't. Every time I logged back on it would aske me to set my preferences, and my land setting always went to voice on even though it was turned off in the previous setting. So based upon that daily annoyance, and that despicable Comm Window, I was happy to find an alternative.

I can't damn or praise the addition of Windlight because frankly I don't understand much of what it does or why it does it. And i don't really care. If it is going to make SL better overall for most users, fine.

They also go up in price when they use a near identical engine and break system, but add new cup holders and a different seat upolstry. I'm not saying products don't get improved, but blindly trusting that every upgrade is a real improvement in the product is foolish. Like I said, I'm all for consumer goodies and products that one actually has a real interest in and desires. What I'm not for is merely repackaging or adding features that are more cosmetic than functional, as a means of tricking the consumer into paying more for the same thing. Not that I would seek to stop companies from doing this; that's their right. However, it also should be the right of people with brains to say 'No, I'm gonna wait and buy the REAL upgraded model or not upgrade at all until you give me REAL improvements." rather than get bullied by those who insist that to reject ANY 'upgrade' is being against 'progress'.

Windlight just makes my PC crash constantly. I hope LL don't make Windlight compulsory as it will prevent many of us po' folks from using SL.

I think the current release of all viewers is relatively stable. I'm having little problem running the standard client, and Windlight (WL however runs very slow, but that's to be expected on my old rig).

Don't you mean the good old days when Torley was a woman??

Windlight is kinda pretty for some things, the water is sure pretty anyway, but it makes everything that is set "shiny" look like it glows blue, which aint so pretty.

For me, Second Life runs about how it always has... "not as well as I want"

One year ago, two, three, now almost 4 years ago, and it still doesn't run any better, even with all the new bells and whistles and a really high-end computer. Time and technology and shiny new features haven't mattered much for performance and stability. One imagines they never will.

I think my computer is running on an elastic band, its so old; must get a new one. I tend not to download new things unless I have to.

Lets go back to 2004

By the way, FD, I love your art, do you sell it in SL and if so, where?

I use both the Bleeding Edge Nicholaz viewers regularly, s & t2, and have Windlight installed to stand and look at views) Knowing Nicholaz, he'll keep a non-Windlight viewer going for those on low spec machines and those who don't want the bells and whistles. His viewers are not affected by any mandatory updates brought out by Linden as they are registered as third party viewers now. So, I don't see what the worry is about Windlight becoming the official viewer) Unless when ALL the textures are finally changed they don't work without Windlight! BUT by then maybe they'll have Windlight working properly! So I don't worry about bells and whistles, or Voice. I just want sl to work properly before they add more extras. Today it looks from the Blog as though they have borked things totally and are finding it hard to solve this one!!!Worked overnight on it and still no fix. I don't want to go backwards, just no more pretty things till we have the basics stable and secure.

SL was never 100% stable, it's the nature of a constantly developing platform... it's nothing to do with the advances in client features, most of the problems are server-side which is a completely different kettle of fish. To be quite honest if you take a moment to think about it, it's amazing it's holding up at all.

I don't own any land, so I guess I don't have the concern about downtime. But I think it would or should work the same was as webhosting (since if you think about it, they are pretty much the same thing) most webhosting providers offer a guarantee of at least 95% service uptime - or you get your monthly fee back.

Windlight was well worth the wait, and the delays and the downtime, it add's so much to the client and is much more than just... *pretty sunsets*, but the truth of the matter is that Second Life is not 100% stable, it never has been and it will have a long way to go before it is, downtime is as an essential part of Second Life being maintained and developed.

..such as???

Such as making SL look like a current product instead of a holdover from 1995. One of the most common complaints I see in comments from people who tried out SL and didn't stick around is how awful the graphics are. I hope they keep pushing it forward until we can use shaders on objects, and normal maps, and we have better looking plants and trees, and volumetric clouds, and weather, and a hundred other things I can think of. Expect to buy a new graphics card every couple of years, and a new PC every 3-5 years. When was that ever not necessary to be able to run current software? Time and technology march on, and SL either tries to keep up, or it loses its ability to attract new residents, and keep old ones. A better looking SL is long overdue.

Not sure it's as revolutionary as all that, but it does do a few things new, and fixes some ugly performance problems from before (and introduces a few new ones). In addition to the shading stuff, water, glow, avatar imposters, and the consolidated Graphics preferences tab, this from the Release Notes:

* Faster, more reliable occlusion culling - occluded regions are discovered instantaneously, eliminating random bad frames due to the camera moving too quickly
* No geometry transform overhead on region crossing - results in region crossings being slightly smoother
* Faster frustum culling - less time is spent determining what's visible, thus giving better overall framerates
* No copy-to-texture for ripple water - objects under water are rendered to texture at half resolution, resulting in better overall framerates
* Faster sky updates - the non-WindLight (aka no-shader) skies update quicker - even faster than the pre-WindLight skies!
* Single pass shiny - making an object shiny will no longer require it to be rendered twice, which results in virtually free shiny functionality from a performance standpoint
* Single pass terrain - the terrain is no longer drawn in two passes, which, from a performance standpoint, results in virtually free high detail terrain for shader friendly cards (See the System Recommendations at http://secondlife.com/corporate/sysreqs.php)
* Improved object update code (less work for the CPU) - attachments are no longer added to the active list, which improves performance in crowded areas
* Better scheduling of Avatar LOD (Level of Detail) updates - Avatar LOD is now calculated every 16 frames as opposed to every single frame, which removes redundant work
* Better Avatar culling through more accurate bounding boxes - Avatar bounding boxes now match their current animation, resulting in more optimized culling of avatars that are not visible in the frame
* Better tree rendering (70% fewer matrix operations, no reliance on GL matrix stack) - results in improved performance for tree rendering
* Trimmed unused state in LLDrawable, LLSpatialGroup, LLOctree, and LLFace - results in memory savings
* 16-bit index buffers are now used instead of 32-bit buffers - improves memory bandwidth for rendering geometry

i love the new gfx. only the shiny needs to be fixed in my opinion, and the crashes.
when i turn off basic shaders it looks pretty close to the old version of the renderer and runs slightly faster than the old one on my computer.

when you turn off basic shaders and it still runs bad for you, i can understand why you are pissed, but on he other hand there are MANY people who just love it.

allways remember this is a beta client (for a beta platform), and the improvements to the first version of wl are awesome.
in my opinion this is the first client side improvement since i am in sl. make it run stable on all computers and many will be happy.
(oh and give us new avatars (whine whine my old textures will not work anymore), better sim border crossing and bones systems please when you are done with havoc, and maybe real 3d format import)

I do.

And the windlight light is too intense - renders things too orange at sunset; far too crisp and harsh in daytime.

I went to the Jira and found someone else complaining about that, but the issue was declared "fixed."

So, you know . . . what's the use.

coco

I call it the Mad Tea Party, with Philip as the Mad Hatter.

Every little bit he jumps up and declares that we are all moving one chair down!

Teacups slosh, everything's a mess, and no one really gets to drink their tea.

coco

Agreed! >

While it's not stable and I've been completely hosed the last few weeks with server stability on the sim where my store is, I just say to myself "at least it's working better than it was in August."

Or maybe I lowered the bar and it's working the same as it was in August...

Nope I briefly did but it stressed me out too much.
Sometimes if asked I make custom textures for cost of uploads.
On rare occasion I have decorate places.
I have been pondering with this new feature reflective textures but I have been pretty ill and
making textures for specific reflective spaces is bit too much for me right now since I don't want to update but I wouldn't mind for prim water with reflections of trees,etc.
My computer is almost 3 years old and video card about year old.

WindLight, Havok, voice and sculpties aren't things LL can even remotely be credited for. It's simply technology LL bought and integrated.

The things LL itself is responsible for developing are still balancing between bad and worse.

Because we're the ignorant cavepeople who need to be educated on how things are supposed to look.
In a few months noone is still going to be in awe of the pretty skies, but people will still be complaiing and needing to work around the problems that WindLight created. That's not progress, it's fluff.

Pretty clouds don't make SL look any more modern, we're still just as stuck in a graphically challenged world compared to the rest.

To run a more modern GAME? yes.

To run a Internet browser? No.

If SL has decided its a virtual World/Game again then they have some other changes they should be making and yeah we all need to keep up.

If its supposed to be a product for the masses? Not really.

Sounds like conflicting goals.

It always has been, but I keep hoping that one day LL will snap out of their "SL is the new web" fantasy and back into the "SL is a really cool virtual world" reality. The corporations who come and go from SL remind me of the ones that jumped on the VRML bandwagon back in the 90's. Everyone rushed to make their e-commerce sites 3d. They were clunky, inefficient, annoying, and now long dead and buried, replaced with far more sensible and efficient 2d websites. SL and virtual worlds in general will never be a replacement for the 2d web. Some things will just always be better in a simpler medium. They should stop trying to be all things to all people and get back to focusing on their strenghts as entertainment and communication platforms.

I've always thought that one of SL's greatest strengths, and one of the primary drivers of its economy, is the fact that it's a walled garden where even a hobbiest can find a bit of fame and fortune. I read about things like the joint venture with IBM to develop portable avatars and related assets that can travel between worlds and I see a future where hobbiest user created content is replaced by corporate owned, mass produced, Walmart-ian monopoly, where the VR content market belongs entirely to people with multi-million dollar advertising budgets and distribution channels. Then again, maybe I'm just a cynic who thinks Snow Crash was overrated.