User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2010-01-28

== Topic ==
User Experience Interest Group Discussion for January 28, 2010.
Topic: Open Topic (Low User Retention Rate).
== Summary ==
We discussed the low retention rate for new Second Life users, and whether the primary cause was viewer UI complexity (as this article argues, and as LL seems to believe), or something else (e.g. users not sure what to do, movement controls, or lag).
== Links ==
* Viewer Complexity Revealed
== Transcript ==
[15:30]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Ah there
[15:30]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Hi Jacek
[15:30]	Mm Alder: 	And as you speak...
[15:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hi. Sorry guys, I got distracted and lost track of time.
[15:30]	Geneko Nemeth: 	It's fine, I just ranted for 30 minutes.
[15:30]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Ditto, I just arrived Jacek, Mm called me
[15:30]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hah. Jacek, I see you are using an Imprudence viewer!
[15:31]	Morgaine Dinova: 	What was the rant about Gen?
[15:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehe, I see you are too, Armin ;)
[15:31]	Mm Alder: 	I posted a note to the mailing list. I wonder if anyone would be interested in discussing http://www.secondeffects.com/2010/01/viewer-complexity-revealed.html
[15:31]	Armin Weatherwax: 	:)
[15:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hey Robin :)
[15:31]	Robin Cornelius: 	Interesting article
[15:31]	Robin Cornelius: 	but i don't think UI issues are the whole story to the 99/1% figures
[15:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Jacek, do you have a group invite for me ?
[15:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I've been using Imprudence almost 100% of time since 1.2.1 release. It's simply the most stable for 32-bit of all I've tried, and on OSgrid it's the ONLY stable one.
[15:32]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, I was talking of my incertanty of using Second Life (without interacting with someone) as the subject of my assignment of analyzing user interface by taping users doing predefined tasks.
[15:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	\o/ ©
[15:33]	Mm Alder: 	Robin, what do you mean by 99/1 %?
[15:33]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I'm dead worried though that Impru will become as flaky as all the other viewers when it moves to the 1.23 base.
[15:33]	Robin Cornelius: 	Mm in the article it says 99% of new users to SL download, login once and never come back
[15:34]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think ArminasX is mistaken about the 1% figure. I believe the figure has hovered around 10% for years, based on what LL has said
[15:34]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Maybe that's a different standard of measure, though. I think 10% is the number who make it past orientation.
[15:35]	Mm Alder: 	I think I saw a statistic that said single logins were 50%
[15:35]	Morgaine Dinova: 	The problem isn't that it's a mere 10%, or 1%. The problem for LL is that the loss rate matches the gain rate. Concurrency has pretty much levelled off.
[15:35]	Armin Weatherwax: 	Morgaine: dont be worried. Imprudence with 1.23 base will be stabe or stay on 1.22.
[15:35]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Which makes the idea of testing the reaction what people who have never touched Second Life rather interesting.
[15:35]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes, Armin is exactly right.
[15:36]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Armin + Jacek: you're forgetting something. All the other 1.23-based projects reckon that they're "stable". Yet they're not.
[15:36]	Morgaine Dinova: 	And that includes LL.
[15:37]	Geneko Nemeth: 	LL does have their statistics.
[15:37]	Jacek Antonelli: 	If people report stability problems, we will fix them. That's all we can go by.
[15:37]	Geneko Nemeth: 	But they might not be correct if not everyone sends in their reports.
[15:37]	Jacek Antonelli skims over the article	Jacek Antonelli skims over the article
[15:37]	Morgaine Dinova: 	They should try getting statistics for people WHO NEVER LOG OFF. That tells you if something is stable or not.
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	the most pressing issue with 1.23 for me is atm that on opensim textures are sometimes crash the viewer when having more than 4 components when they shouldnt
[15:38]	Morgaine Dinova: 	"Stable as long as you log out every few hours" is not stable in my book.
[15:38]	Armin Weatherwax: 	true, morgaine
[15:39]	Jacek Antonelli: 	If you have trouble, Morgaine, tell us, and we will try to fix it. Is that unclear?
[15:40]	Mm Alder: 	The point of the article that I referenced is that new users are scared away by the complexity of the viewer. Do you believe that is true?
[15:40]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Yes, Opensim is a tougher environment for LL-based viewers, no doubt about it. Why I recommend that it be used as a fuzz tests. If it survives there, especially in OSgrid, then it'll survive in SL.
[15:41]	Robin Cornelius: 	Mm no, it was ages before i poked with building and other complex areas of the viewer, i had far bigger issues that would have driven many away before that
[15:41]	Armin Weatherwax: 	the observation many people have is that 1.23 is crashing a lot while SG isn't.
[15:41]	Robin Cornelius: 	yea SG just deadlocks :-/
[15:41]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: yeah, I know you'd be interested in fixing reported bugs. But the point I'm making is that those bugs don't exist in the current Imprudence, and it's going to be a regression to add them with 1.23 and then fix them. LL screwed up with that increment.
[15:42]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Mm: I don't think the viewer complexity is the primary factor behind the low retention rate. But it's part of it, and a part LL can control. So, it may be worth the effort to improve.
[15:42]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I suspect that it's inevitable to rebase, but what I say is still true I think. It's a pity, and it will be a regression.
[15:43]	Geneko Nemeth sighs. 	Geneko Nemeth sighs.
[15:43]	Mm Alder: 	The interesting comment on that page is M Linden January 18, 2010 8:48 AM
[15:44]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Alright, I'm going to put a moratorium on Imprudence talk today. Let's talk about that article.
[15:44]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Reading it.
[15:45]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Hmm... nooblets? Hey, that makes perfect tasks for my assignment!
[15:45]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrmm, yes, interesting comment by M
[15:45]	Mm Alder: 	I get the impression that Linden thinks the UI is problem #1, then orientation #2
[15:46]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Yes, that's the impression I have as well. Maybe it's true; they have more data than we do.
[15:46]	Jacek Antonelli: 	All we have is our own gut feeling -- as people who *weren't* scared away by the interface.
[15:47]	Robin Cornelius: 	the problems i've always had showing people SL are first impressions i sit and twiddle my thumbs whist the world loads and textures rez slowly, after we have burned that bridge, its so what do you do here?
[15:47]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I agree that it's not the viewer UI primarily that alienates new recruits, although one issue that probably contributes is the fact that movement doesn't use the normal MMO mouse approach, ie. hold down right button to pan direction, and hold down left or middle to move forward. That's so common in MMOs that it'll annoy everyone who plays them. It annoys me :-)
[15:47]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I find "hold down left to move forward" to be kinda annoying, I'm more used to point-to-go-here.
[15:48]	Morgaine Dinova: 	At least they provided WASD, but not many players from MMOs use WASD, you can tell by the lack of strafing movement.
[15:48]	Mm Alder: 	So do you think the arrow keys or WASD are an obstacle?
[15:49]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Arrow keys only give very course movement. That's why right-mouse pan + a forward button exists, for fine-grain movement
[15:49]	Mm Alder: 	I always thought it strange that mouselook has different controls.
[15:50]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Plus MMO players typically move with one hand and perform actions with the other, concurrently. You can't do that with two hands on keyboard,they interact.
[15:51]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm. I'm not sure MMO players are the primary demographic for SL.
[15:51]	Morgaine Dinova: 	In the FPS case, they target and fire with mouse, and move with WASD. In the main MMO case, it's reversed, you move with mouse and cast spells and stuff with the keyboard.
[15:51]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: 3D game players are a natural attraction to virtual worlds.
[15:52]	Mm Alder: 	Not if there's no game Morgaine. :-)
[15:52]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Many people call SL a "game".
[15:52]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Mm: very true. :-) But they're still attracted, only to find that there's nothing to kill :-)
[15:52]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And even if it isn't one, how likely is it for new residents to have played games before?
[15:53]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Extremely likely
[15:53]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, there's time they could kill. <g>
[15:53]	Morgaine Dinova: 	lol
[15:53]	Mm Alder: 	I expect most people leave because they don't understand the "game".
[15:53]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Also, using control schemes from games is adapting to already evolved design.
[15:54]	Morgaine Dinova: 	The worst thing in the control interface is when you do *both* MMO or FPS *and* SL on the same day. Then the right-click pie menu coming up when you try to move is infuriating.
[15:54]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think that's quite likely, Mm. "What is there to do?" is (in my opinion) one of the biggest, if not the single biggest, reason people leave.
[15:54]	Robin Cornelius: 	+1
[15:55]	Robin Cornelius: 	i'm not actually sure what i do, other than debug code
[15:55]	Jacek Antonelli: 	hehehe
[15:55]	Geneko Nemeth: 	+1. I do nothing on SL
[15:55]	Mm Alder: 	It might make sense to have a MMO-type interface as an alternate UI "skin"
[15:55]	Geneko Nemeth: 	(Except looking at my own cute butt.)
[15:55]	Morgaine Dinova: 	It should be marketted as a place for wasting time.
[15:56]	Mm Alder: 	I had expected 2.0 would do an alternate UI, but it sounds like a clean switch.
[15:56]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And in fact, the day I dropped into to Orientation island I was like "there should be a newbie quest or something... where is it?"
[15:56]	Jacek Antonelli: 	In theory, the interface could improve that. Reducing needless complexity makes it easier to find the meaningful things. Plus, the UI could do a much better idea of helping users find things that interest them.
[15:56]	Robin Cornelius: 	i waste time, but mostly in a social way, chatting to people, interacting, be that here, AWG or testing at help island
[15:56]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Even those of us who live here probably see it as a place with nothing to do. I guess "make money" is the only real target, other than socialize.
[15:56]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Which is sad.
[15:57]	Jacek Antonelli: 	There are plenty of people who see it as a place to create things. That was my shtick, at least until I got trapped working on viewers :P
[15:57]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Squirrel!
[15:57]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hey, Squirrel :)
[15:57]	Mm Alder: 	That's the creativity of the code gods, Jacek.
[15:57]	Geneko Nemeth: 	What drove you here today?
[15:58]	Squirrel Wood: 	Nuts :p
[15:58]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Robin: me too, but curiously there is very little infrastructure for our kind of interest. Not even a whiteboard! No collaborative features in IM. So much is missing for group work.
[15:58]	Geneko Nemeth: 	There are no nuts here.
[15:58]	Jacek Antonelli: 	The code gods demand sacrifices! Sacrifices of your free time and creative energy!
[15:58]	Robin Cornelius: 	i actually spend more time in EFNet #opensl taking about sl than actually being here now
[15:58]	Squirrel Wood: 	Oh but there are nuts here
[15:58]	Jacek Antonelli: 	We're all a little nuts, Squirrel ;)
[15:59]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Oh no! It's the nutty grey goo!
[15:59]	Geneko Nemeth: 	... nutty goo?
[15:59]	Robin Cornelius: 	I find for collaborative work, i can get it done quicker and faster via IRC, pastebins and maybe some google docs, all with a faction of the bandwidth
[15:59]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I'm puzzled by the statement "staggering complexity of the viewer" in that article. Where? (Excluding Advanced of course)
[16:00]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Hrm. Imagine how different the orientation process would feel if the viewer asked you "Hi, which of these things look interesting to you?" and then suggested some first steps into those areas of interest?
[16:00]	Morgaine Dinova: 	It's not the viewer that's complex, it's the world.
[16:00]	Squirrel Wood: 	So what's da topic?
[16:00]	Robin Cornelius: 	its a little disorganised in places, but you can muddle your way through the UI
[16:00]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Normally the meeting should be already over.
[16:00]	Mm Alder: 	That was my take too Morgaine.
[16:00]	Geneko Nemeth: 	But it's fine, because UXiG never neatly ends at the one hour mark.
[16:01]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Squirrel: We're talking about the complexity of the viewer, and whether it's the thing that drives away most new users, as this article suggests: http://www.secondeffects.com/2010/01/viewer-complexity-revealed.html
[16:01]	Jacek Antonelli: 	(And as LL seems to believe)
[16:01]	Mm Alder: 	And I'm wondering if hiding more of the function down in lower levels of the UI will make it more usable.
[16:02]	Mm Alder: 	I think customization would be the real solution.
[16:02]	Squirrel Wood: 	Well, the solution is to reduce this all to a single button and label it "Win the game"
[16:03]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I think customization won't be an be-all-end-all solution.
[16:03]	Geneko Nemeth: 	You'll need a sane default, customization or not.
[16:03]	Morgaine Dinova: 	UXIG's discussed that many times. :-) My solution is presets, dead simple idea that satisfies everyone. The default preset can be the Newbie one.
[16:03]	Jacek Antonelli: 	You can never with The Game. You can only lose it. And I just did. Thanks, Squirrel. >_<
[16:03]	Robin Cornelius: 	I'm betting that with all this viewer 2.0 change its hardly going to touch the stats, what ever they may really be, that LL are worried about
[16:03]	Squirrel Wood: 	Lets just say that a new UI interface will not do. The "first experiences" need to be redone. They need to be shining examples of what is possible
[16:04]	Robin Cornelius: 	there might be a sudden interest peak due to the magic 2.0 number but thats about it
[16:04]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I agree with that assessment, Robin
[16:04]	Robin Cornelius: 	and i agree with what squirrel just said, thats the real issue here
[16:05]	Mm Alder: 	I was thinking that linking some Torley videos in context might help with usability
[16:05]	Mm Alder: 	I learned the UI from his videos.
[16:05]	Squirrel Wood: 	As for the menu complexity.. most people use only a few features and that's it
[16:06]	Morgaine Dinova: 	An alternative to presets might be UI plugins, not of the plugin-api media type, but simple UI extensions. But presets is easier for the mind to grasp.
[16:06]	Robin Cornelius: 	i don't know why LL can't do a texture pack with the viewer and build the orientation areas with those textures so you are not staring at a grey goo for 10 minutes as the world lags in around you, you notice the pile of other noobs sayign WTF is going on here, then you quit for good thinking that was pointless
[16:06]	Geneko Nemeth: 	They once did that I believe.
[16:07]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Robin: in my local community of techs / gamers / friends, the "SL is too laggy" is reason #1 why there are only two of us left here in SL, despite all of them having tried it.
[16:08]	Morgaine Dinova: 	None of my bunch finds the UI a problem (of course)
[16:08]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Just the lag
[16:08]	Morgaine Dinova: 	They're used to lag-free games after all.
[16:08]	Squirrel Wood: 	if LL would remove all the useless assets that have not been rezzed gridwide in the past six months...
[16:08]	Geneko Nemeth: 	There' still lag.
[16:08]	Squirrel Wood: 	the db would shrink to a more manageable size and lag would improve
[16:09]	Robin Cornelius: 	the db is not really effecting typical lag
[16:09]	Squirrel Wood: 	because as it is they run mysql servers way past the workload they are designed for
[16:09]	Robin Cornelius: 	sims have caches of all the data they need and that is transmitted to the viewer
[16:09]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Even walking you'll need to wait 100ms + frames.
[16:09]	Robin Cornelius: 	only newly rezed assets need to contact the asset server
[16:09]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Main cause of sim lag is LL's "sim must proxy everything" model.
[16:10]	Mm Alder: 	I think most "lag" is actually on the client side. SL is just too much for a laptop with an Intel graphics chip.
[16:10]	Robin Cornelius: 	this is the fundimental issue with a lag dicussion, what is lag?
[16:10]	Morgaine Dinova: 	When the sim must proxy everything, there's no parallism in the transfers at all.
[16:10]	Geneko Nemeth: 	The feeling of slowness.
[16:10]	Mm Alder: 	It's really the low frame rate that gets seen as lag.
[16:10]	Squirrel Wood: 	SL features user created content. Not only does much of it look crappy, it is also very not optimized
[16:10]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Which could be from the rendering to the backend databases.
[16:11]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, it can't be optimized if we have to build everything out of prims.
[16:11]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And worse the prims themselves aren't optimized!
[16:11]	Squirrel Wood: 	it can be optimized often by simply thinking before building.
[16:11]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Robin: data transfer lag and rendering FPS lag are coupled owing to the networking being done in the rendering loop, so can't disentangle them.
[16:11]	Squirrel Wood: 	And they gave you sculpties to work with ^^
[16:11]	Geneko Nemeth: 	If you have debug menu out, you'll be able to see how this spiral thing you're setting on is tesslaized.
[16:12]	Squirrel Wood: 	Also, you'd be surprised by the strickt polycounts game designers have to follow
[16:12]	Squirrel Wood: 	strickt polycount limits
[16:12]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Is it really necessary to use three strips on every face? Even the side ones? These tris can be repurposed to make the spirals more smooth.
[16:12]	Robin Cornelius: 	the biggest lag i see is textures, the world is often mostly a grey goo, 2nd to that is the rate at which objects appear as i am walking, then 3rd is the sim crossings themselves
[16:12]	Squirrel Wood: 	like, no more than x polygons of geometry visible on screen at any given time
[16:12]	Morgaine Dinova: 	The two best things they could have done with Viewer2.0 would have been #1) Fix cache + allow it to be big (that reduces transfer lag), and #2) Decouple the networking from the rendering loop (that helps both kinds of lag, as they're interpedendent.
[16:13]	Squirrel Wood: 	no more than y different textures
[16:13]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Also, sculpties. Does even that a small piece needs to be described with so many tris?
[16:13]	Squirrel Wood: 	when you tp into a sim you download literally hundreds of textures
[16:13]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Thousands.
[16:13]	Squirrel Wood: 	hundreds!
[16:14]	Geneko Nemeth: 	two thousand.
[16:14]	Squirrel Wood: 	Many
[16:14]	Geneko Nemeth: 	(Usually.)
[16:14]	Robin Cornelius: 	and that is a killer
[16:14]	Squirrel Wood: 	number one memory hog, yes
[16:14]	Mm Alder: 	I would really like to see each prim face come with a color that is the average of its texture so there would be color as well as shapes.
[16:14]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Robin: texture lag won't improve until they eliminate the "sim must proxy everything" model. And they have no interest in doing that until VWRAP provides alternatives.
[16:14]	Squirrel Wood: 	geometry data is nothing compared to textures
[16:15]	Squirrel Wood: 	http textures
[16:15]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Unless you're in Luskwood... (48MB of geometry data)
[16:15]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Squirrel: indeed
[16:15]	Robin Cornelius: 	Oh don't also forget that the local texture cache is undecoded so if you turn your back the textures get removed from GL memory then need to be redecoded from local cache
[16:15]	Squirrel Wood: 	local cache splits the textures into header and body parts.
[16:16]	Robin Cornelius: 	compared to decode that is trivial
[16:16]	Squirrel Wood: 	the client needs to find the appropriate header for each texture, then load, decode, display it.
[16:16]	Squirrel Wood: 	mind you, that is unneccessary overhead
[16:16]	Morgaine Dinova: 	But notice that going to HTTP for textures won't reduce lag (like it did with map tiles), but will INCREASE it, because there's more overhead. The reason why maps are faster is because tiles come via a parallel path from Amazon, without "the sim must proxy everything".
[16:17]	Squirrel Wood: 	Well, me being not in the states gets an extra 100 to 120ms of lag for the overseas connection
[16:17]	Jacek Antonelli: 	HTTP could significantly decrease lag, if they use caching properly.
[16:17]	Squirrel Wood: 	things are even slower here
[16:17]	Jacek Antonelli: 	s/lag/texture loading time
[16:17]	Squirrel Wood: 	my client barely uses 60% of the bandwidth
[16:17]	Squirrel Wood: 	because of high ping times
[16:18]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Maybe the client sees you have 10% packet loss and thinks you've set the bandwidth value too high...
[16:18]	Squirrel Wood: 	Packets Lost: 1/70243 (0.0%) ^^
[16:18]	Squirrel Wood: 	that's not it
[16:19]	Mm Alder: 	My lag meter always shows the client to be the culprit. What does yours say Squirrel?
[16:19]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Caches can help, but only for assets, not for any object that changes. It's academic though, since LL runs no caches, we talk direct to the sim.
[16:19]	Squirrel Wood: 	I don't use the lie meter
[16:19]	Robin Cornelius: 	SVC-3146 still does not help with texture download speeds either
[16:19]	Geneko Nemeth: 	It's useful... for newbies who won't use it.
[16:19]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Fast timers are best for indetifying your lag
[16:19]	Squirrel Wood: 	because it always blames things that don't run on my system ^^
[16:20]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Ctrl-Shift-9
[16:20]	Mm Alder: 	I know the causes are often wrong, but what does it say is the problem, client, server, or network?
[16:20]	Squirrel Wood: 	neither is a problem
[16:20]	Mm Alder: 	all green?
[16:21]	Squirrel Wood: 	yup
[16:21]	Robin Cornelius: 	anyway i'm heading to bed, i think our conclusions are the UI is a minor issue, inital user experience is the biggie and lag then what on earth to do here are the big issues for that experience
[16:21]	Squirrel Wood: 	all green most of the time
[16:21]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Morgaine: When they switch to HTTP for textures, LL won't have to run caches (although it would help, especially if thye set up regional caches in europe and asia). HTTP has its own caching mechanism which can work quite well. Object updates are not a significant source of bandwidth use, compared to textures.
[16:22]	Mm Alder: 	G'night Robin.
[16:22]	Robin Cornelius: 	snowglobe fully supports caches now so when http texture happens squids will just work
[16:22]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Ni ni Robin
[16:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	HTTP caching doesn't magically happen, you'll still need to set up caches.
[16:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	But they might make more sense than the current scheme...
[16:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	except!
[16:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Appearantly to get a texture, you need to request a cap.
[16:22]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Which kinda defeats the cache which operates RESTfully.
[16:23]	Geneko Nemeth: 	(i.e. keeps no state)
[16:23]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I hope I'm mistaken.
[16:23]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: it's still just one sim. Whether it's got a cache running or not makes no difference, there's still only a given amount it can shove out, whether the CPU is at any given time writing to network in the sim code or writing to network in cache code.
[16:24]	Morgaine Dinova: 	HTTP won't help with that unless there's a transparent cache in front of the sim
[16:24]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, instead of having the sim to cache the images, one could just have squid caches directly connect to the asset servers.
[16:24]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I'm not talking about the sim's private cache, I'm talking about HTTP caching. Squid proxies and such.
[16:24]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And all asset access won't go through the sim.
[16:25]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Geneko: yes, except that that conflicts with LL's "sim must proxy everything" design.
[16:25]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Morgaine: That's exactly the point.
[16:25]	Jacek Antonelli: 	For example, a company using SL behind a network could have their own cache on the local network, so they only need to download each texture once (in theory), no matter how many of their employees need to access it.
[16:26]	Geneko Nemeth: 	But I heard they are still doing that kind of design with HTTP assets.
[16:26]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Jacek: there is no such caching at LL, we talk directly to each sim. The only possible HTTP caching is ear your ISP end, if it runs transparent proxy cache, or if you've set up an explicit proxy manually.
[16:26]	Morgaine Dinova: 	s/ear/at/
[16:26]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Morgaine: It would make sense, then, if the viewers could be modified so that they talk to the asset servers directly?
[16:27]	Morgaine Dinova: 	LL *could" hook caches into the loop of course, but they don't currently.
[16:27]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Gen: definitely. And that's what VWRAP is putting in the spec. No guarantee that LL will use it of course. They like their "sim will proxy everything" model.
[16:28]	Mm Alder: 	I have to go, but before I left I wanted to ask Jacek whether we could invite developers and users of 3rd party viewers to talk about their UI features.
[16:28]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Oh, nice idea. If they accept :-)
[16:28]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Certainly, Mm. That would be a nice way to mix things up around here
[16:28]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Morgaine: Oh don't they. Even with HTTP. They just don't understand this HTTP thing, I guess...
[16:29]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Ah well. I need to work on my assignment.
[16:29]	Mm Alder: 	OK, I'll see what can be arranged on the mailing list.
[16:29]	Morgaine Dinova: 	They understand it fine, they're well clued up techies. But they have a few blind spots, like the the sim proxying thing.
[16:29]	Morgaine Dinova waves at Armin 	Morgaine Dinova waves at Armin
[16:29]	Mm Alder: 	bye
[16:29]	Jacek Antonelli: 	As I said, LL (or someone else) could set up regional proxies in Europe and Asia. Or home users could set up their own HTTP caches at home, which would help significantly if they access SL from multiple computers.
[16:29]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cyu Mm :-)
[16:30]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Bye Mm
[16:30]	Armin Weatherwax: 	hehe :)
[16:30]	Armin Weatherwax: 	bye mm
[16:30]	Armin Weatherwax: 	so weare finished?
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Yeah, I think.
[16:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	I think so, yes. Unless you want to sit around and argue about whether HTTP caching and squid proxies could help reduce texture load time
[16:31]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Looking a bit bare, unless someone hasa new topic
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Unless you guys would want to help me on my assignment...
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	but don't bother. I
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	I'm helpless.
[16:31]	Armin Weatherwax: 	yeah, i want, but i'm to tired
[16:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Geneko: Good luck
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	All right. Good night.
[16:31]	Morgaine Dinova: 	I didn't even understand it :-)
[16:31]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Sleep well, Armin!
[16:31]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Well, it's simple.
[16:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	Cyu Armin :-)
[16:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	nini :)
[16:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	see you next tuesday
[16:32]	Geneko Nemeth: 	You find some users, tell them to do some tasks some kind of program while thinking aloud, and you tape them.
[16:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	byes and
[16:32]	Geneko Nemeth: 	And hope they see what's broken in the UI. That's my assignment 1.
[16:32]	Morgaine Dinova: 	You record what's in their minds? :P
[16:32]	Armin Weatherwax: 	nini
[16:33]	Geneko Nemeth: 	Err, not really...
[16:33]	Geneko Nemeth: 	It's just interface testing.
[16:33]	Jacek Antonelli: 	Take care, all