particle size

why is the particle size limited to five meters?

keep people from making low particle count particle bombs?

really? the only reason we can't produce larger particles is because people might use the capability to grief. i won't believe that ll limit tools and features just because somebody might abuse them. that's utterly rediculous. somebody tell me it isn't so and, while you're at it, explain to me the technical reason that particles are limited to five meter faces.

Believe it =)

Xylor

Are you being sarcastic?

tell me this. WHY would you need a particle to be larger then 5m? that is already crazy big
but also a reason could be that the system resources are eaten away with particles the bigger the more eaten, lag bomb anyone?

single - particle particletrees

... just a thought, but why not make the particle emiter rate become capped dependant on the size of the particle?

that solves the griefer bomb problem. if there are no other griefing possibilities and it no technical barriers, it's something to ask for.

oh and yes single particle projections. a tree is a good example. it's only one prim and, being client maintained, rotates with the camera so it looks 3d. then again...

Also lightning is a great example. My "Cloud Nine" vehicle's lightning bolt looks pretty wimpy at only 5m.

the particle count, not the size, actually is capped based on the particle rate.

The Wiki states the max particle size is *4*m.

Oddly, the min start size is only .03125--why not 0 like end size? Sheesh...

Because I think they are worried about people (accidentally or as a grief) making particles so tiny (or even at truly 0-size), that they are "invisible". Either you wouldn't know that you were flooding the place with particles; or you did and were being a jerk about it.



Sorry, but that's life! There are tons of bored malicious people out there with nothing better to do than hide behind the anonymity of the 'net and cause problems. The "social seperation" (i.e. non face-to-face contact) between them and the people they affect frees them to do whatever they feel like, without moral obligations or concern for others. As a games-industry veteran, I can tell you with 100% guaranteed certainty that if any system has an exploit - no matter how vague or minute - people will find it and abuse it.

The simple way to avoid that, is not allow people the chance to affect things. Of course, SL is all about users affecting things - so instead of that approach, it has to be one of "drawing lines in the sand" and setting limits to what can be done by individuals; for the good of the group.

As far as Particles for trees: "Billboarded" 2d sprites in a 3d space actually don't look that good at all, especially close up. Good trees are tough to do in any way, but using giant particles is not necessarily a great solution.

A bigger problem IMHO, is that big particles can block your line of sight to things. I hate people with attachments that send out gigantic bursts of particles when they Teleport into/out of an area... Makes it incredibly hard for me to see what I'm looking at or doing.

If their particle bursts stretched from horizon-to-horizon, it would be a nightmare.

Just my L$0.02.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

Still, being limited to such a large start size (vs. 0) restricts what I can create, like accurate-sized natural gas pilot lights, for example.

It would also be nice to have transparency and size interpolation be made up of at least 3 points so the particles could fade from full transparency into full opacity and fade out to full transparency.

I hate limits. If people abuse them then it is an issue with LL to deal with accordingly (warnings, bannings, even monetary damages for service disruptions: crashes, hangs, etc). Really, LL just needs to crack down on all the damn kids in SL--it's freakin' ridiculous how many of those punks get through the so-called credit card adult verification system...

Eep -

Set the start-transparency to be 0.0, and the start size to be the minimum allowed. Set the "end" size to be a bit less than you want your "flame" size to be, set the transparency to nearly 1.0. Set the life to only 0.5 seconds or something small; and the burst rate to around 0.01.... Lemme know how it goes!

Its a question of manpower and efficiency. They can set limits once, and only deal with bugs / workarounds... or they can spend TONS of time and money and man-power being a "police-force" and trying to affect law and order on every citizen of SL.

Let's do the math: In normal society, you want at least 1 officer per 300 people, according to most anti-crime organizations (and that's with normal society - imagine if in RL you could chuck gaint boxes or topple tall buildings or "grief" people as much as you can in SL?)....

So with 20,000 users, that equates to what, 67 "officers"? And who pays them? And if they aren't Linden employees, how do we make sure the system doesn't become corrupted? And what about when we have 200,000 users and need 700 officers?

All of LindenLab right now is about 30 - 40 employees. I can't see them paying another 50 or so to be extra "officers"... I mean, as a full-time job that's like an extra US $2 - $2.5 MILLION per year in expenses!

See what I mean? Limits are a pain in the ass - but they're a necessary evil with the current social and technological state of online computing.

The problem is the START SIZE, not the transparency. I need the end transparency at 0 or the flame doesn't look right--and even worse with such a short life (not as smooth looking). Thanks anyway though.

OK, played around with it a bit and did manage to get it a bit thinner but had to set end transparency to practically 0, so it looks barely there...not the effect I want, unfortunately. :/

But, come on, all you have to do is set ctrl-alt-t to see "invisible" particles if you needed to. Besides, since there's no limit on stard/end transparency being 0, someone could just do that if they wanted to abuse particles and make them invisible. The minimum start size limit is just silly. I can understand the max size limit, but not the minimum start one--it's just lame.

You're extrapolating too much if you think SL needs THAT much policing. I hardly see any Lindens on as it is and SL seems fine, for the most part. Weed out the underage users and most of the offenses will go away.

Sadly, I'm not, Eep. I used to be responsible for the majority of the multiplayer gaming servers at WON.net / Sierra Software. Games like Half-Life, Homeworld, Ground-Control, Tribes, etc. I was heavily involved both on the web & forum side, as well as the hardware side - for over 3 years.

Age does not equate to maturity or morality. I've seen frustrated middle-aged gamers act just as childish as 12 year-olds (as well as very mature and calm 12 year-olds at big noisy LAN-parties). Its true that there are trends and generalizations - but there are no ironclad guarantees - except with hard limits. And even there, you have people who will try to take advantage / break the system. I've heard of prims that have been "tortured" to be larger than 10m x 10m, for example.

Even in normal society we have to make laws and put limits on behavior - and back that up with threats of long jail-times and police-officers patrolling the streets. Now add in the pseudo-anonymity and innate "distance" that an online realm provides; and you'll see that people's tendancies track far more towards the "selfish" and "uncaring-about-others" than you'd even expect.

The Lindens are there - they're just discreet. And they have some effective limits and controls in place. They certainly could do better - but they're a young, fast-growing company; which always adds to the challenges.

I'm sorry to hear my suggestion didn't help - I didn't realize you were using a textured particle. I thought the start-transparency was locked to a minimum of 0.2 or some similar number? The minimum start-size may be totally unrelated to exploits; it may be a hard limit because of the way the system is designed - I can't say for sure. But I was under the impression that some of these limits were to discourage or make griefing harder.

One things for damn-sure: SL provides freedom and creativity that is far above and beyond any other multiplayer system currently on the market or in major development. There are bound to be limits somewhere - as with anything in life. I'm not saying there's no room for improvement; just keep a sense of perspective about it all.

Take care,

--Noel "HB" Wade
(Tread Whiplash)

P.S. Regarding the Underage users: Is there something in the TOS that specifically forbids under-18 players? You'd be appalled at the amount of "adult content" things parents let their kids buy with the parents' credit-cards... And some even give the kids their CC number without even asking what its for! You want to fix that, you're talking about trying to change all of modern society... Good luck, my friend!

Eep, if I wanted a particle smaller than the minimum size I'd probably try using textured particles. Y'know, like I'd come up with a texture that was a tiny white square or spot or raindrop or whatever it was on a clear background. So then the minimum-sized particle would be mostly clear, with that eensy-bitty spot (or square or whatever).

Hmm . . . gives me some ideas.

Yea, that's another option, Kim; thx. Silly limits...