Linden Lab Needs to Punish Poorly Optimized Mesh — Or Reward Well-Made Mesh (Comments of the Week)

September 21, 2020

Good reader thread responding to my somewhat tossed off remark that, "While you should definitely encourage users to customize their avatars, you also want to impose optimization restrictions so avatars don't become a bloated lag-inducing disaster like they have in SL."

The problem, as Alicia observes, is the company behind Second Life has enabled (encouraged?) poor optimization:

Linden Lab has set the maximum for textures at 1024×1024, and most creators end up making their textures too damn big (any texture size over 1024×1024 max), which then will be forced to the max of 1024×1024; but, remember that LL never set limits on how many verts/faces a mesh item should have. The textures issues, on the other hand, can easily be fixed if people simply went with the allotted sizes (64×64, 128×128, 256×256, 512×512 and the 1024×1024 max) SL can manage.

Also, knowing how to keep the MB down on the textures also helps if the person knows what their doing in GIMP, PhotoShop, or any other photo manipulation program. When it comes to mesh, you still have mesh hair that shoots an avi's complexity near or past 100k, and the same thing can happen with jewelry, clothing, etc. Verts/faces counts also increase/decrease when you resize any mesh object (trees, shrubs, etc.) All of these individual issues ultimately becomes a huge problem that never gets handled as LL only wants to continue working as is…

Everyone knows that LL will never impose restrictions on how maximum number of verts a mesh item can have.

Pulsar argues that Linden Lab should set out rewards and/or restrictions around mesh:

The problem with the "laggy" content, instead, isn't mesh objects (a proper made and textured mesh object is quick to load and it isn't heavy to render), but the lack of restrictions/incentives…
[Mesh content in Second Life] is made by SL users (even popular ones) who have no idea or have the wrong one, or don't care at all about optimization.

Heck, most "creators" in SL don't even care to set the proper alpha mode for your clothes (so your clothes look funny and transparent under your hair), they don't care to set an attachment point (so you wear shoes and you get stripped off your dress. And if you use "add" instead, having a bunch of item attached to the same point becomes an issue at teleports and region crossings).

But when jelly Dolls have been implemented, creators quickly tried to reduce the complexity of their products.

So the trick is to impose restrictions, as Wagner says, or (since I prefer to offer bonuses rather than just nerfing) to give users incentives to make proper optimized things.

I tend to think both carrot and stick could be applied — similar to what VRChat does with optimization "badges". Another idea: Give creators free reign to poorly optimize their content as much as they like — but impose an extra service charge or "poor optimization tax" for items sold in the Marketplace that exceed a certain number of triangles.

Pictured: "Top-Selling Mesh Avatar Bodies Drastically Hurting Overall Second Life Performance, Says 3D Graphics Expert — Calls For Boycott Of Poorly Optimized Products".

Posted in Comment of the Week, Economics of SL, SL Mesh

16 responses to “Linden Lab Needs to Punish Poorly Optimized Mesh — Or Reward Well-Made Mesh (Comments of the Week)”

Adeon Writer

September 21, 2020

For what it’s worth, VRChat has a rating system of “Excellent, Good, Medium, Poor, Horrible”
Any avatar above 70000 triangles is considered Horrible.
For reference, most Second Life avatars are about 200,000 to 300,000 triangles.
Many Second Life avatars use more triangles in a single shoe that most AAA games use for an entire map.
People wonder why 20 FPS in SL is sometimes considered unusually smooth.

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Fionalein

September 22, 2020

The AAA game analogy is stupid. No AAA game design must live up to the expectations users have of SL avatars. SL avatars can have modelled genitals with minute detail and digital photographers use the highly detailed bento head so show some lifelike expressions. Wether it is portrait porn, or outfit porn or just ordinary porn, whatever gets SLusers happy they will want highly detailed. Most have more than one interest but only want one body for all of that. Whoever claims AAA game designers would produce something else for SL must have skipped their market analysis class in game design college… if they ever visited one at all that is…

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Alicia

September 22, 2020

“The AAA game analogy is stupid. No AAA game design must live up to the expectations users have of SL avatars. SL avatars can have modelled genitals with minute detail and digital photographers use the highly detailed bento head so show some lifelike expressions. Wether it is portrait porn, or outfit porn or just ordinary porn, whatever gets SLusers happy they will want highly detailed. Most have more than one interest but only want one body for all of that. Whoever claims AAA game designers would produce something else for SL must have skipped their market analysis class in game design college… if they ever visited one at all that is…”
Then explain how AAA games have much better overall performance than SL ever will? I can explain it to you easily. It’s a basic rule design artists get introduced to on their first day called K.I.S.S! (Keep It Simple, Stupid!). Game designers keep things low poly, yet highly detailed so they can maintain that balance between eye candy and overall game performance. When you follow the K.I.S.S! rule, you get a wider area of what hardware one needs for both the minimum, and maximum requirements to play the game at your machine’s best settings. That way, everything becomes much better in the long run as nothing is sacrificed for the sake of “looking good”.
Once you start to overly subdivide mesh objects, you continually add more verts/faces than you really need, and that’s what makes the overall game performance suffer. In short, the creator, at that point, has abandoned the K.I.S.S! rule the moment they ignore performance for the sake of “looking good”. Once that happens, the range of what minimum and maximum requirements one’s PC needs to play the game is drastically reduced to, quite possibly, the latest hardware requirements; but, even at that point you’ll still have a few performance issues.
You see, games that have the best performance most often have followed that very K.I.S.S! rule, while keeping the best possible balance between eye candy and overall performance; whereas, poor optimization, for the sake of “looking good”, breaks that very rule in favor of people simply not giving a damn about the overall performance of the game itself.
Should creators who have made their mesh correctly be rewarded for doing it the right way? MOST CERTAINLY!!!

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Adeon Writer

September 22, 2020

You don’t need triangles to make things detailed. Maybe in Second Life, because Second Life doesn’t have custom shaders or a proper material system, so throwing raw triangles at it is all you can do.
But in AAA games you don’t. That’s why they look so much better than Second Life, at only one tenth of the triangles.

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Robbi Nova

September 22, 2020

How can you tell if your mesh is good or bad. My complexity, fully dressed, is usually around 40 to 50k.

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Fionalein

September 22, 2020

KISS comes from software design… the stupid is not an adress of the message recipient but an description of the intended algorithm’s limited functionality… says a lot about game designers if they think it’s an address 😛
Have you ever wondered why the most popular downloads for almost all modable games are body replacers? Have you ever looked at the ugly faces in games of Rockstar or Bethesda games?
…get a medical checkup – maybe you need some glasses… 😉
Also: the content is out there now – and it has been for a long time. LL has slept through the phase where they had control over mesh quality. Force users to downgrade now and you loose them.
Ciao, Alicia …

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Adeon Writer

September 22, 2020

At the end of the day, SL will be used for the way it’s already currently being used, and nothing is ever going to change with it.
If you don’t like it, you could leave, but you already would have, so if you haven’t, you won’t, so no need.
Status quo lives on.

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yoow

September 22, 2020

I like the avatars of yesteryear

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Isabella

September 23, 2020

Yes!!!

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Isabella

September 23, 2020

“Have you ever wondered why the most popular downloads for almost all modable games are body replacers? Have you ever looked at the ugly faces in games of Rockstar or Bethesda games?”
how old are those games again??
Lets just see if the newer ones are better in every way than the mesh bodys in SL.. Oh yes they are.

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Jenelva

September 23, 2020

The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no going back. You people crying about it are peeing in the wind.

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Alicia

September 23, 2020

No, @Fionalein, KISS does not come from just software design. KISS is a standard in every design vocation.
Yeah, I have looked at the old games from Rockstar and Bethesda, but I also look at the performance. There always needs to be a balance between looking good and overall performance. But, then again, you simply neglect that fact.

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OpinionMan

September 23, 2020

you CANNOT compare AAA games with a virtaul world such as Second Life. AAA games are made with a DEVKIT for making a game that suits the specific consoles specifications. ( similar to how someone will use a devkit to make clothing for a specific mesh body ), Second Life is a Virtual World thats created mostly by its RESIDENTS. people like you and me who PLAY second life, not just its “bigshot creators” Isabella is right in saying those gams like GTA the characters are ugly, because its FACT. probably more than 90% of everyone in here #1 priority is Avatar Looks. and they want it to look GREAT especially if they invest their RL money into it. i’ll choose great looks and take a bit of a performance hit anyday.

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Cheesecake

September 28, 2020

“Force users to downgrade now and you loose them”
Maybe the newer ones that don’t know much about anything.
I remember Kahlene making really good mesh bodys with really good quality. She didn’t care about what the idiotic clients wanted (like an “all in one” so you have in one avie: 5 feets, 3 nipples, and so on..) and created a better looking avatar than the 3 top sellers.
“Ciao, Alicia …”
Why do you care? Are you a “creator” and you feel touched about this matter? Facepalm.
“Have you ever wondered why the most popular downloads for almost all modable games are body replacers? Have you ever looked at the ugly faces in games of Rockstar or Bethesda games?”
Yes, men make and download slutty female avatars. That is the only reason. They want a slut in the middle of a videogame that wasn’t made for that s*it. SL is all about buying and buying, and looking like a prostitute.

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NiranV

September 30, 2020

And it starts a new.
One side saying look at AAA titles, the other saying “but SL is not an AAA game and created by its residents”. VRChat is created by its residents too and brings a lot more optimization to the table than SL does, funny fact that. Also you do not need to be a professional to optimize your content. I’ve made meshes in the past too and i’m a total noob at doing so but even i have watched out for the most important thing: optimization. Optimization is not a super secret oath, it doesn’t require you to sacrifice your first born and it definitely does not require you to be a professional at all. Even first-timers can immediately optimize their content by simply researching the absolute bare minimum of information required to do. Everyone, absolutely everyone should know without looking it up that rendering more of anything always requires more resources, its a simple logical rule and with that and only that in mind you should already know what to do to optimize your stuff: Do less. Do as little as possible. Don’t do it if you can avoid it. Does your necklace really need 5000 polygons for that single link? It doesn’t. Everyone with common sense should know that and knowing that i cannot understand how the current situation can even exist unless they are doing it on purpose or are outright stupid (Spoiler: they are, given that they believe making things no mod prevents copybotting and no matter of logical or technical explanation makes them change their beliefs). Some people are simply stupid, ignorant and don’t care, its as simple as that, there is no denying it and there is no talking around it. I’ve already talked to a couple creators and they have proven it in the very first 2 sentences that reason and logic doesn’t work on them, i doubt it’s much different with most of the other big creators sadly.
Also lets address the elephant in the room here. One thing keeps coming up every single time this type of discussion starts and it basically just shows how stupid and ignorant some people are about this topic even without being one of these big creators. More polygons is NOT always better. As others have said, finding the balance between performance and quantity is key to optimization and is basically the only “hard” part since there is no rule or even rough estimate what’s good and what isn’t. You need some common sense and some imagination to figure out what is and what isn’t. Regardless though it is a fact that adding more polygons has diminishing returns when it comes to improved visual quality. Every time you double the amount of polygons (subdivide actually doubles, triples, quadruples or possibly more depending on what you are subdividing and how subdivide is being executed) you do not necessarily double the visual improvement and with each and every additional subdivide you are exponentially increasing the load while exponentially decreasing the visual gain. Generally speaking a single whole-object subdivide is already too much, doing parts selectively is a whole different thing though but here again i’d suggest using the cut/knife tools to A: keep the possibly nice topology you made and B: have much bigger control over the polygon count and maximize the increase in visual quality.
Also there’s random stuff being thrown around here like:
“Have you ever wondered why the most popular downloads for almost all modable games are body replacers? Have you ever looked at the ugly faces in games of Rockstar or Bethesda games?”
As avid body-replacer user in many games, not just Skyrim or Fallout (which are the most common and well known examples) i can totally and fully guarantee you that body replacers only serve a singular main purpose and that’s adding nudity. Secondary effects are obviously fixing possibly bad rigging, clipping, texture issues and so on and so forth. Especially in games like Skyrim there is absolutely no need for body replacers other than nudity because both as male and female character you’ll be running around in full covering armor at all times, why do you need a vagina or nipples or even nudity on the body? Of course for nudity, sex, fetishes and the whole lot of other pervy stuff. Pulling body replacers up as argument here is really weak, it’s not even an excuse anymore.
Saying “i’m not a professional”, “this isn’t AAA” and even saying “i don’t know any better” is also really, REALLY weak. You are saying that you are offering a huge product for years to come and reiterate on it several times and you never ever had the time to come up with common sense and basic knowledge anyone wanting to create serious content in any platform, be it SL or anything else, can easily get in mere minutes and is readily available all over the internet? Excuses. You simply don’t care, you don’t want to care, you just want to bitch about SL running like shit when its your own goddamn fault. Every single creator has the responsibility to make sure their content is in a good shape. LL is partly at fault for not giving incentives either but adding them is only an incentive, not a rule and adding restrictions won’t help either, people will find ways around it, they always have and they always will.
Kinda sad to see that a topic that should by now consist solely of agreement that the current state is bad and that content needs to be optimized, with discussion on how to best tackle this and encourage said optimizations still hasn’t gone past the point of some select idiots acting like idiots being ignorant and attacking people who bring up good suggestions repeat the facts to these idiots over and over. We should be past this already.

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Richie

October 25, 2021

Having a good graphics card solves a lot of “lag” problems. What most people do about lag is nag nag nag.

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