Simulator User Group/Transcripts/2011.08.02

Simulator_User_Group
Prev 2011.07.29	Next 2011.08.05
== List of Speakers ==
Acheron Gloom 	Andrew Linden 	Arawn Spitteler
Bourne Denimore 	Bronson Blackadder	Charlie Navarathna
Eddi Decosta 	Helena Lycia 	Imaze Rhiano
Kadah Coba 	Kaluura Boa 	Kelly Linden
Kirsten Kiergarten	Latif Khalifa 	Leonel Iceghost
Liisa Runo 	Mercille Linden 	Morgaine Dinova
Opensource Obscure	Pauline Darkfury 	Qie Niangao
Rex Cronon 	Simon Linden 	Slatan Dryke
Techwolf Lupindo 	 	
== Transcript ==
[12:00] Imaze Rhiano: hi
[12:00] Morgaine Dinova waves
[12:00] Arawn Spitteler: Time to start recording our conversation about other games.
[12:01] Eddi Decosta: hey Andrew :))
[12:01] Andrew Linden: Hello.
[12:01] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Andrew :-)
[12:01] Imaze Rhiano: not much innovation in MMORPG games developement in last couple years
[12:01] Kaluura Boa: Evening...
[12:01] Helena Lycia: Hello (sorry I was putting the oven on)
[12:02] Liisa Runo: hi everybody
[12:02] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Liisa
[12:02] Andrew Linden wonders what was deployed to the main channel today, if anything...
[12:03] Kadah Coba: I heard something about mesh yesterday
[12:03] Liisa Runo: the channel got rolled, so prolly something
[12:03] Simon Linden: I think it was Monty's asset pipeline work
[12:03] Mercille Linden: 6070 I believe
[12:03] Kadah Coba: Oh yay
[12:03] Mercille Linden: Yes, apache server work
[12:03] Kadah Coba: I'll have to test that
[12:04] Liisa Runo: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Server/11
[12:04] Andrew Linden: Yeah, that's right. Monty's HTTP pipeline improvements.
[12:04] Kadah Coba: :>
[12:04] Rex Cronon: hello everybody
[12:04] Helena Lycia: Hiya Rex
[12:05] Rex Cronon: hi helena
[12:06] Andrew Linden: Well, I've been working on parcel resource accounting in the mesh project, just trying to make sure resource counts are correct.
[12:06] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Rex :-)
[12:06] Charlie Navarathna: Hi Rex
[12:06] Andrew Linden: Fixing bugs and making sure it is hard to go over limits.
[12:06] Andrew Linden: So not much interesting news from me.
[12:06] Andrew Linden: Simon, Kelly, or Mercille? Any news?
[12:06] Rex Cronon: hi morgaine, charlie
[12:07] Simon Linden: I don't have much to add ... have been helping on an internal performance problem, and was out yesterday
[12:07] Kelly Linden: Just fixing bugs myself. Nothing exciting.
[12:07] Simon Linden: But things are shifting and I have 3 or more bugs lined up for now
[12:08] Andrew Linden: I'm going to try to be better about publishing the transcripts from these meetings.
[12:08] Andrew Linden: I updated the wiki on Friday and back-published about two weeks worth.
[12:08] Andrew Linden: I'm going to publish more later today.
[12:08] Leonel Iceghost: why don't you make it automatic
[12:08] Morgaine Dinova: Andrew: Resource accounting is an interesting topic. Are you feeding back to the mesh team that when you increase the side of something by 2, you don't use up twice as many server resources, so the Prim Equivalent should not be twice either?
[12:08] Rex Cronon: isn't there a script to do that?
[12:09] Leonel Iceghost: that way we would have some transcripts of other meetings that are not updated ever
[12:09] Andrew Linden: Yeah Morgaine, that is a very interesting topic.
[12:09] Kadah Coba: Mesh PE accounting is ugh.
[12:10] Simon Linden zones out
[12:10] Latif Khalifa: Simon, is zoning out company wide phenomenon? ;)
[12:10] Andrew Linden: Increasing the the side of an object by two doesn't necessarily use up twice the abstract resources (CPU and memory in particular) in most cases.
[12:11] Imaze Rhiano: politics are involved with mesh PE counting?
[12:11] Simon Linden: No, I'm just going to work in another window if the topic becomes mesh and prim accounting ... I have nothing to add
[12:11] Helena Lycia: I can see the need to be fair with accounting but the system seems overly complex. Maybe, dare I say it, perhaps the system should be slightly less fair but a lot more simple?
[12:11] Andrew Linden: In some cases the CPU cost does indeed increase, in particular large dynamic objects cost more than small ones on the physics engine, when they are bumping around.
[12:12] Andrew Linden: Also, larger objects are more visible, and get streamed to the viewer more often, in general.
[12:12] Pauline Darkfury: Hi folks, sorry I'm late
[12:13] Rex Cronon: hi
[12:13] Andrew Linden: I agree, the system seems overly complex from the outside. The truth about CPU, memory, and network costs is even more complex underneath.
[12:13] Latif Khalifa: andrew with the new accounting price of hosting my simple example throne increases to $8 USD a month. as 22 prim object gets counted as 200+ prims. In what world does a 22 object updates cost $8 USD/mo?
[12:13] Rex Cronon: luckly u can make a sculptie 64m and still its cost is only one prim:)
[12:13] Morgaine Dinova: Andrew: but only when they are bumped around. When they're static, large meshes can easily save the sim physics effort. It depends entirely on complexity, not on size.
[12:14] Kadah Coba: "Overly complex" is putting it lightly,
[12:14] Leonel Iceghost: Andrew, and prims bumping in ground I think lag a lot more than prims bumping in other prims.. maybe there are some bugs, not just plain CPU usage
[12:14] Kadah Coba: By comparison, learning a dead language is easy.
[12:15] Andrew Linden: Latif, how does your throne change cost going forward? Is it using mesh?
[12:15] Latif Khalifa: no, i did it for test changing physics to none on one of the prims. if i change physics to none to all prims but 1 box the cost still goes up 2 prims
[12:16] Andrew Linden: Ah.
[12:16] Latif Khalifa: so in the existing calc colliding 22 prims is cheaper than colliding 1 prim in the new accounting
[12:16] Latif Khalifa: net increase in cost 1000%
[12:16] Helena Lycia: My concern is that I know a lot of content creators who are artists rather than technical. They are going to have an uphill struggle dealing with a highly technical accounting system. Especially one where the PE changes when scripts are added (I know several content creators who just add scripts written by others to their creations). TO me SL is a wonderful creative, artistic environment and I think it would be wrong to drive away artists by making everything too technical
[12:16] Charlie Navarathna: Hi Slatan and Bo
[12:16] Rex Cronon: if u set the physics mesh to a cube or a sphere its cost should drastically
[12:16] Slatan Dryke: hello Charlie and everyone ^^
[12:16] Rex Cronon: hi
[12:17] Bourne Denimore: hello slatan everyone:)
[12:17] Slatan Dryke: Bo hello :)
[12:17] Latif Khalifa: bottom line is this: you cannot use mesh ro the new physics for anything that is rezzed on the land without incurrong 100% - 1000% tier hike
[12:17] Kadah Coba: I have the feeling that mesh is going to end up the same way as scuplties; using a collessed norml prim linkset for phys and phantom/no phys on the visiable parts.
[12:17] Andrew Linden: I definitely don't think the cost formulas are perfect right now. No one thinks that.
[12:17] Morgaine Dinova: Agree with Helena. Quite apart from the magnitude of the PEs, the complexity of it is a major problem.
[12:18] Pauline Darkfury: Apologies if this was mentioned before I arrived, but what's the status on object return if an object suddenly bloats sufficiently to put the landowner over their sim-wide quota?
[12:18] Latif Khalifa: Kadah, you cannot do that, they you swithc to new accounting and Liden Lab charges you for "streaming cost" of regular prims as if prims were converted to meshes server side and then streamed to you
[12:18] Andrew Linden: However, whatever they are when we first release them... we will never be able to *raise* any costs on objects that use the new features.
[12:19] Andrew Linden: Which is why they are higher than they should be right now.
[12:19] Helena Lycia: Trouble is prims are limiting when creating a nice physics shape for ground vehicles. I added a 2 PE mesh sled to a vehicle and the PE went to 450
[12:19] Kadah Coba: I thought the original plan was to make a cost system was easier to understand that being a more accurate for actual resource cost. It seems that the current system is neither of those.
[12:19] Andrew Linden: Some people will figure out how to use mesh to drastically reduce costs for some objects, while other meshe replacements will be too expensive.
[12:19] Kadah Coba: s/that/than
[12:19] Latif Khalifa: yes that's the problem i'm talking about. you cannot use the new physics in vehicel since each prim will cost you an arm and a leg resultin in 30 prim wehicles counting as 400
[12:20] Andrew Linden: I believe we'll eventually reduce the resource costs to be more reasonable, maybe even more correct, eventually.
[12:20] Rex Cronon: it would a lot easier if there were example of how to reduce cost:)
[12:20] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, the fundamental problem is the notion of charging for "streaming" cost of regular prims if you link them to mesh or use new physics
[12:20] Latif Khalifa: chargin as if mesh was generated server side
[12:20] Kadah Coba: Latif, so they force the new accounting system on newly made normal prims?
[12:21] Latif Khalifa: this prevents the use of the new physics at all or linking meshes
[12:21] Latif Khalifa: Kadah, if you use new physics features or you link to a mesh
[12:21] Kadah Coba: Latif, I was talking about using collessed objects, not linked.
[12:21] Bronson Blackadder: it's starting to sound like I wont be using mesh for anything
[12:21] Latif Khalifa: so say you have a 50 prim houser, and link a mesh dor knob. Now your 50 prim house is 1000 prim house
[12:22] Helena Lycia: I can also see a problem where someone creates a wonderful building, finishes it without adding scripts. Then adds scripts to the doors and windows and suddenly finds the PE cost rocket
[12:22] Rex Cronon: and to thihnk that some people wanted to reacreate the death star:)
[12:22] Rex Cronon: think*
[12:22] Rex Cronon: recreate&
[12:22] Andrew Linden: Yes, all of those are problems. I think it will indeed put a damper on actually using the mesh feature set.
[12:23] Kadah Coba: Dynamic rezed mesh is going to be very limited.
[12:23] Qie Niangao: But Latif, I don't understand. The only thing that matters for a vehicle is that the *physics* weight be under 32 total. Or are we worrying about the road having enough spare prims for the whole PE?
[12:23] Kadah Coba: Mesh houses seem all but impossible at this time unless you have a 1/4 sim.
[12:23] Latif Khalifa: With the cost like this i doubt anyone would use mesh or the new physics features. Except for attachmetns perhaps
[12:23] Andrew Linden: LL will either have to modify the costs, or accept the mesh feature set as partually broken, IMHO.
[12:23] Pauline Darkfury: What is the status on object return if the sudden bloat puts the land over max prims?
[12:24] Andrew Linden: I'm pretty sure we'll modify the cost formulas. But what the final number will be... dunno.
[12:24] Kadah Coba: LOL, Andrew
[12:24] Kadah Coba: Yeah, that will have to happen I bet...
[12:24] Eddi Decosta: oh , i see one picture the last week, i never understend how its possible to see 57,000 prims in an homestead..
[12:24] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, counting regular prims as meshes in terms of streaming cost is just.. well I have hard time finding PG word for it ;)
[12:24] Helena Lycia: Isn't there already an inequality with priims? Aren't some prims simpler for the server to deal with than others? If we've already got inequality for the sake of simplicity, why not continue with it. and just put in a simple accounting system that just makes the cost go up for overly complex objects?
[12:24] Pauline Darkfury: If Latif's example of a 50 prim house suddenly becoming 1000 prims is even half-feasible, that's going to be a grid-wide disaster
[12:25] Pauline Darkfury: (if it causes random return)
[12:25] Andrew Linden: Pauline, I've been working on code that checks the "hypothetical future cost" of an operation on the server, and prevents it if it would push the parcels over their limit.
[12:25] Andrew Linden: It is mostly done for scaling an object, and linking across parcel boundaries.
[12:25] Latif Khalifa: Pauline, try it youself. I tried with my throne chair which went from 22 prims to 212 prims when switching to new accounting http://i.imgur.com/Khzfo.png
[12:25] Andrew Linden: But there is more work to be done, and there are known holes in the system at the moment, through which someone could accidentally go over their resource limits.
[12:26] Pauline Darkfury: Ok, thanks. Is it being considered a critical feature before mesh hits normal RC?
[12:26] Bourne Denimore: so mesh is going to be ready on time without too many glitches?
[12:26] Rex Cronon: if u could see the nr of prims each object is made of while is still in your directory...
[12:26] Andrew Linden: Pauline, is what being considered a critical feature? An air-tight cost checker for all operations?
[12:26] Eddi Decosta: loll Latif, i understend the thing now .. thanks
[12:26] Kadah Coba: Something easy to understand.
[12:26] Pauline Darkfury: Ensuring that mesh & new-physics-cost can't cause return of innocent objects
[12:26] Morgaine Dinova: I think the general approach is incorrect, i.e. the "PE" concept is wrong altogether. The only thing you want cost accounting for is to control resource exhaustion, and that's not static but dynamic. You've got the static part, the unit prim, now all you need is costing control above the prim count, which could be done dynamically similar to LoD.
[12:27] Pauline Darkfury: I was concerned enough about objects suddenly doubling in cost, but 10x cost on a mainland rental is catastrophic if the sim is close to full
[12:28] Andrew Linden: Pauline, it is considered important to block the biggest holes, but not to be air-tight for RC.
[12:28] Latif Khalifa: Pauline, write in big letters in your rental agreements: DO NOT LINK WITH MESH OBJECTS
[12:28] Latif Khalifa: it will increase 10 fold your prim usage
[12:28] Andrew Linden: One important part of the changes will be that if any particular object pushes a parcel owner over their limit... the simulator will try to return the offending object, rather than innocent content on the side.
[12:28] Kaluura Boa: Somebody reads those rental agreements? Seriously?
[12:28] Helena Lycia: And don't put scripts into mesh objects unless you know what you're doing
[12:29] Latif Khalifa: yes a pose script in your mesh chair can do 2-10 fold prim usage increase too
[12:29] Andrew Linden: Morgaine, that is an intersting idea... resource accounting via LOD simulation
[12:29] Kelly Linden: That is not correct Latif.
[12:29] Helena Lycia: I really do think this is going to be a nightmare. I know so many builders whose brains just switch off when you talk about technical things. They understand prim counts and that's it
[12:29] Pauline Darkfury: Yeah, I know to do that, but I could do hourly notices, and about 50% of my tenants would still act surprised when it all went horribly wrong because they ignore everything
[12:30] Andrew Linden: I haven't thought it all the way through... but I see complications there.
[12:30] Andrew Linden: It would be hard to visualize where the LOD's are kicking in.
[12:30] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is half over
[12:30] Eddi Decosta: Latif, right if i understend your picture .. you can never build one mesh on a 512sqm land like the linden home lol .. its a big trouble ..
[12:30] Andrew Linden: And to tell the truth... we already have a number of LOD enforcement systems in the physics engine that kick in when it is under heavy load.
[12:31] Bronson Blackadder: I'm a prim builder and pay attention to alot of the technical stuff but this PE crap is making my head hurt
[12:31] Helena Lycia: Also. Isn't there a danger if we start counting streaming costs on things other than meshes, is there a possibility in future that malls will face a problem as the cost of changing textures and the like might one day factor in to how many items can be rezzed in a parcel?
[12:31] Kadah Coba: From what I've seen so far, you wont be able to have 2 mesh cars in the same region on a linden road >_>
[12:31] Bourne Denimore: hmmm
[12:31] Morgaine Dinova: Andrew: Preventing things from "pushing sim over the limit" is fine, but that's not what you're doing. You're erecting a totally fictitious ceiling through PEs, and causing things to happen when that ceiling is reached despite it being very poorly related to resource exhaustion.
[12:31] Rex Cronon: they r too heavy:)
[12:32] Arawn Spitteler: How about passengers on a mesh car? Will they still be counted as so many links?
[12:32] Andrew Linden: No passengers won't add to the object's current cost.
[12:32] Imaze Rhiano: Does rigged mesh avatars going to have PE limits?
[12:32] Kadah Coba: Specially if the road only goes through a corner and there isnt other Governor land in the sim
[12:33] Arawn Spitteler: Going through a corner, you're alr3eady in trouble
[12:33] Andrew Linden: Avatar outfit costs are not regulated at the server level. The ARC is computed for viewer side feedback.
[12:33] Leonel Iceghost: also attachment won't penalize streaming right? maybe a way to slow down some "tasks" if they become expensive would be better than PE
[12:33] Pauline Darkfury: One thing to bear in mind (much as I despise the creators that do this), but unintended returns can have a RL cost for people, on the stupid scripts that die if not taken into inventory cleanly (certain breedables, etc)
[12:33] Andrew Linden: ARC = Avatar Resource Cost (I think)
[12:34] Morgaine Dinova: The 'R' used to be rendering I think
[12:34] Kadah Coba: It is as far as I know
[12:34] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, I always though of that as Rendering, not Resource
[12:34] Bourne Denimore: yes avatar rendering cost
[12:34] Imaze Rhiano: sooo... you can make pretty much zillion polygon avatars - great :P
[12:34] Andrew Linden: Latif, do you have a copy of your throne you could give me? I'd be curious to examine it later today to see how the costs are being computed in the two cases.
[12:34] Latif Khalifa: The people that make LL pay salaries, the land owners, get penalized the most with this new accounting. Free accounts wearing bazillions of vertices are unaffeced
[12:35] Latif Khalifa: sure
[12:35] Kadah Coba: ARC numbers are pretty much random atm
[12:35] Andrew Linden: You say you picked one prim and made it use "no shape" (collisionless).
[12:35] Pauline Darkfury: could be a new market for bots, just get them to wear your house & furniture ;)
[12:35] Leonel Iceghost: Andrew, I mean if a prim is slow for the physics, isn't there a way to slow that prim alone.. and keep the rest with 45fps?
[12:35] Bronson Blackadder: lol pauline
[12:35] Latif Khalifa: the throne costs 22 prims in the existing scheme, it costs extra 2 prims with physics off on all prims but on a single one simple box and over 200 prims with normal physics
[12:35] Kadah Coba: Pauline, except you can sit on attachments, unless they re-enabled that.
[12:36] Imaze Rhiano: mesh house bot!
[12:36] Morgaine Dinova: It will happen, Pauline. Where there are silly restrictions, they will be bypassed. It's been happening throughout SL's lifetime.
[12:36] Latif Khalifa: yeah imaze, i'm going to make "garden bot" taht will wear your trees and flowers :)
[12:36] Bourne Denimore: lol
[12:36] Andrew Linden: Ok, maybe I
[12:36] Imaze Rhiano: ya... and furniture bots too
[12:36] Andrew Linden: Ok, maybe I'll make my own 22-prim throne later today.
[12:37] Pauline Darkfury: can work around the no sitting on attachments with a few pose balls or invisicubes
[12:37] Kadah Coba: SL: Its the history of a group of users find ways to do more within the silly limits, restrictions and bugs imposted by the operator. :P
[12:38] Latif Khalifa: andrew, i will have to relog to mesh sandbox with the mesh viewer to reproduce the exact thing i did and then i will send you examples
[12:38] Kadah Coba: Bots also allow for animated mesh, so that would be cool.
[12:38] Latif Khalifa: the crux of the problem is adding "streaming cost" for regular prims as if their meshes were generated server side and then streamed to you
[12:39] Andrew Linden: Huh, there is an intereting idea... bots wearing furniture that animates via mesh attachments.
[12:39] Latif Khalifa: it's going to happen
[12:39] Kaluura Boa: Yeah... For sure!
[12:39] Leonel Iceghost: that's easy actually!
[12:39] Kadah Coba: And it wont cost anything >_>
[12:39] Latif Khalifa: yep
[12:40] Arawn Spitteler: What good is a mesh attachmnet? I thought Mesh was for server side shapes?
[12:40] Kadah Coba: But will cost even more on simulator resorces
[12:40] Latif Khalifa: PE cost has very little to do with simulator resources
[12:40] Latif Khalifa: it
[12:40] Pauline Darkfury: 38 attachments * 256 prims = 9728 prims, on a 512!
[12:40] Latif Khalifa: it's mostly ficticious surcharge on land owners
[12:40] Leonel Iceghost: that's why you need to control expensive things slowing them down.. not making them restrictive in alien ways
[12:41] Kadah Coba: Agents require a lot more sim resources than an object, lol
[12:41] Eddi Decosta: question like that you know if a region surloaded on mesh could know a big lag isse if you get 30 agent and more?
[12:41] Eddi Decosta: issue* sorry my typos* :)
[12:41] Rex Cronon: will we now have to go around naked?
[12:41] Helena Lycia: How is PE going to affect the "prim economy" (where people rent land based on a cost worked out on how many prims the land will support)
[12:41] Helena Lycia: ?
[12:41] Rex Cronon: if our mesh attachements/ bodies cost too much
[12:42] Kadah Coba: Helena, its going to make it very confusing.
[12:42] Helena Lycia: Most economic markets don't do well when there's confusion
[12:42] Pauline Darkfury: Well, as a landlady, I'll still be pricing things per prim if that's still my main way of measuring the proportion of my sim-wide resource they are using
[12:42] Eddi Decosta: cause in theory the server do the gestion of sculpty load for each avatar, i bet its the same for the mesh loading..
[12:43] Andrew Linden: Actually, the "number" that a parcel supports is probably not going to change, so it will always be an easy number to which to tie rent.
[12:43] Morgaine Dinova: I think you need 1 mesh == 1 prim, and control resource exhaustion some other way.
[12:43] Helena Lycia: Yeah
[12:43] Leonel Iceghost: yes
[12:43] Andrew Linden: However, the "number" that an object costs will "change" depending on if it uses new features (such as mesh and no-collision pieces) or not.
[12:43] Helena Lycia: Whatever limits put in place will cause people to complain but at least people will understand 1 mesh = 1 prim
[12:44] Kadah Coba: What might have been less confusing is making resource cost a second accounting number on parcels and apply it to all objects. Give it a value high enough to cover 95% of existing rez'd content and simply require that objects on the parcel be below both the prim limit and the resource cost limit.
[12:44] Latif Khalifa: and they will especially not understand stuff like put an pose script to increase your cost and if you resize your tree from 5m tall to 8m tall you have to pay more for the exact same data
[12:45] Helena Lycia: Hmmm
[12:45] Pauline Darkfury: Personally, I really don't care if a mesh costs 1 prim or 100 prims, as a landlady. My single concern is that one tenant can't cause another tenant's objects to be returned (and to a lesser extent, if there's no return, that a tenant doesn't fill the sim then logout before they realise their error), so it's the sudden and unexpected changes in cost that concern me
[12:46] Morgaine Dinova: Particularly when a 2X scaled up mesh can cost the sim less in physics than two 1X meshes.
[12:46] Qie Niangao: Yeah, the real impact is just whether Mesh is adopted or not. If you don't use mesh, you don't care about the equivalence distortions.
[12:46] Helena Lycia: Doesn't this variable cost of objects create new possibilities for griefing? If you can make an object that suddenly changes it's PE then you could rez it in a sim and leave it dormant. then activate it later, if the parcel goes over its limits then all newer objects will get returned
[12:46] Pauline Darkfury: That 95% being ok, means that 1500 regions worth of land get sudden object return, if you implement that, Kadah
[12:46] Leonel Iceghost: x2 size cost more Morgaine, but it could be fixed giving the prim less physics time..
[12:47] Latif Khalifa: it does not cost more
[12:47] Leonel Iceghost: it has to calculate against things more far away
[12:47] Andrew Linden: I agree with Qie. The costs won't affect legacy content, but will very much influence whether the new features are actually useful or not.
[12:47] Latif Khalifa: especially the amount Linden Lab is charging
[12:47] Rex Cronon: there is another problem. u might have a tenant that has a nice house with nice things inside and a nice garder, and that tenant has found the right place for everything. if that tenant rezes one heavy mesh and if other objects r returned, than that person will not be happy to rearange everything that was returned
[12:47] Kadah Coba: Pauline, it wouldnt have to return anything, just prevent anything more from being rez'd till it was lowered, sort of a "grandfathered period"
[12:47] Andrew Linden: The possibility space will be bigger, but there are confusing obstacles that fence off some of the new stuff.
[12:47] Morgaine Dinova: Leonel: it's less work to calculate collisions for one big mesh box than for two half mesh boxes.
[12:48] Imaze Rhiano: there should be 2 point systesm - 1 for server resource cost (CPU, bandwidth, space requirements, etc) and 2nd for viewer resource cost. Parce resource cost should be used for parcel like these days - viewer resource cost would be more like informative for users - and possible way to filter content viewer side
[12:48] Andrew Linden: It is up to LL to make those obtacles less confusing, and lower in height.
[12:48] Pauline Darkfury: Yup, that would be the way to do it, still not ideal, but the intro of something like that would have to be non-destructive
[12:48] Kadah Coba: Call it like "sim resource points" or something. lol
[12:48] Bronson Blackadder: it's damn near looking like LL doesn't want the new features being useful
[12:48] Pauline Darkfury: It's still 1500 region-equivalents of land that suddenly have a big hassle tho
[12:48] Leonel Iceghost: Morgaine: a floor don't cost more.. because all are standing there anyway.. but a wall 100m need to be calculated against all agents while the same made of 10m prims not
[12:48] Helena Lycia: I really do worry that LL is forgetting KISS
[12:48] Bronson Blackadder: or hoping that people will be willing to pay for it at all costs
[12:49] Andrew Linden: KISS = ?
[12:49] Latif Khalifa: As I said, my throne chair would cost me $8/mo in tier cost. For that much money Netflix will stream to me unlimted number of bytes in movies. And they make truckloads of money
[12:49] Bronson Blackadder: keep it simple stupid
[12:49] Helena Lycia: Keep It Simple Stupid
[12:49] Kadah Coba: ^
[12:49] Imaze Rhiano: Keep It Simple Stupdi (or Small)
[12:49] Latif Khalifa: because people lovse simple billing schemes
[12:49] Arawn Spitteler still questions the utility of Wind Laugh.
[12:49] Bourne Denimore: seems to me mesh will be limited to a monority
[12:49] Bourne Denimore: minority*
[12:50] Arawn Spitteler recalls a film: The Monotony Report
[12:50] Rex Cronon: kiss=a programming law that everybody shoudl follow:)
[12:50] Kirsten Kiergarten: a minority until some idiot puts it in a breedable
[12:50] Latif Khalifa: People need to be warned in strong terms not to link with mesh objects.
[12:50] Helena Lycia: I hang out with two communities, one is highly technical and will make use of meshes, the other isn't technical and just won't be able to cope
[12:50] Bronson Blackadder: or make it impossible to link with mesh objects
[12:51] Morgaine Dinova: Leonel: it's less work to calculate collisions of 10 people against one mesh than 1 person against 1 mesh for 10 different people-mesh pairs.
[12:51] Leonel Iceghost: you don't need to calculate to 10 if they are 20 m away in the first place...
[12:51] Pauline Darkfury: Even for highly technical folks, we kinda like to make max use of our prim quota, so prims & sculpts are going to be the tools of choice for rather a lot of stuff that could be mesh
[12:51] Leonel Iceghost: but again, it could be fixed giving some objects less fps
[12:52] Morgaine Dinova: leonel: same applies to the 100m mesh, if people aren't next to it.
[12:52] Andrew Linden: I'm not sure I understand the "less fps for some objects" idea. Sounds hard to implement.
[12:52] Leonel Iceghost: Morgaine, make big walls and inv ite 30 people, and test it yourself...
[12:52] Leonel Iceghost: 10m prims are better
[12:53] Leonel Iceghost: when I way big walls I mean make 30 big walls around
[12:54] Rex Cronon: this is kind of illogical. if u have a nice sculptie that u convert it to a mesh, it can have less vertices and it should have the same cost or even lower than the original sculptie
[12:54] Morgaine Dinova: Having more data to process can't be better. When you don't change data, it's cached, and locality gives you great gains.
[12:54] Kadah Coba: Using render costs is kinda silly, different hardware will render same geometry at different rates.
[12:55] Kadah Coba: As well as OSs
[12:55] Leonel Iceghost: Andrew, why is it going to be hard.. when a script wants to calculate 2387498 operations it can? or it gets passed along
[12:55] Latif Khalifa: Rex, everything about PE is illogical. 22 colliding prims is cheaper than 1 collding and 21 non colliding
[12:55] Andrew Linden: Render cost should just be a feedback metric. Not something enforced.
[12:55] Meeter: Timecheck : User Group is almost over
[12:55] Andrew Linden: It is the "relative" values of render cost that matter
[12:55] Andrew Linden: comparing the cost of one object to another
[12:55] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, ask Runtail Linden about geometry cost calculted in PE
[12:56] Kadah Coba: Having alpha over alpha is a much bigger load than anything pretty much.
[12:56] Latif Khalifa: LL is charging land owners for the work my GPU does
[12:56] Acheron Gloom: Yeah, I hate when people use those sculpties that are a bunch of alpha planes to create shadows.
[12:56] Acheron Gloom: I have to derender all of them/blacklist them.
[12:56] Kadah Coba: I got a single regular prim that will cause my video card to overheat pretty quickly
[12:56] Morgaine Dinova: Andrew: exactly. And you only need that metric to control resource exhaustion, which is dynamic. Applying a static cost isn't really justified, and when it affects your prim-based pricing model, things get really bad.
[12:56] Andrew Linden: Hrm... I didn't see render costs in the server code yet.
[12:56] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, resource costs which are entirely client side have no business being in the PE
[12:56] Acheron Gloom: I can stare at a 64,000 triangle mesh and be fine but if you rez a 'shadow sculpty' it makes me lag horribly.
[12:57] Andrew Linden: But I can ask Runitai how render cost is computed and used.
[12:57] Latif Khalifa: Andrew, for regular prims "streaming cost" is geometry cost. Runtai Linden explained that for prims streaming cost is charged as if mesh was made server side
[12:57] Eddi Decosta: yeah what the render costs exactly??
[12:57] Pauline Darkfury: I can't rally say if there's a client cost or not in the current PE, so defer to the more knowledgeable on that
[12:57] Acheron Gloom: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh/Mesh_Streaming_Cost
[12:58] Helena Lycia: Why not take streaming cost out of the PE calculation and smiply make objects rez slowly if they need to stream a lot of data?
[12:58] Qie Niangao: hmmm. but a more complex model (more verts) will take more download resources. it just happens that it will also warm the GPU a bit more, too.
[12:58] Pauline Darkfury: to me, PE should only be the data size and physics cost
[12:58] Eddi Decosta: ty Acheron
[12:58] Helena Lycia: Delay the calling of the on-rez event until the end of the rezzing?
[12:58] Andrew Linden: Ah yes, "streaming" cost. I haven't examined the formula that computes it yet, but I'll probably eventually have to understand it.
[12:58] Latif Khalifa: Qie, for the prims the streaming cost is exactly the same no matter how complex the resulting geometry is
[12:58] Helena Lycia: Once the data is on the sim sever the streaming cost isn't so important
[12:59] Qie Niangao: for prims, ... well, not exactly, but close.
[12:59] Latif Khalifa: yet LL will charge you more for more complex geometry
[12:59] Acheron Gloom: The main thing I see with mesh that people complain about is that A. turning it physical costs more, B. adding a script makes it cost more, and C. increasing its size... makes it cost more.
[12:59] Pauline Darkfury: yup, prim data is approx the same size blob of data for all prims, within a small-ish error bound (but the number & size of textures can vary wildly)
[12:59] Latif Khalifa: Qie, object update is an object update when it comes to construction data
[13:00] Helena Lycia: And then make it simply a case of a mesh that is physically complex as a cut twisted torus counts as a PE of 1
[13:00] Qie Niangao: they're probably trying to avoid the disastrous bandwidth problems that sculpties caused. But... on prims, you're saying a torus is just as much bandwidth to update as a sphere?
[13:00] Meeter: Thank you for coming to the Server User Group
[13:00] Acheron Gloom: Objects shouldn't cost more bandwidth, prims are just parametesr
[13:00] Latif Khalifa: yes
[13:00] Acheron Gloom: by objects I mean prims in that sentence*
[13:01] Latif Khalifa: Qie, geometry contrustion data if all prims is about 100 bytes
[13:01] Latif Khalifa: for all*
[13:01] Rex Cronon: i am sorry but textures r the ones that eat the most bandwidth:)
[13:01] Latif Khalifa: Rex, by far
[13:01] Helena Lycia: Yeah
[13:01] Helena Lycia: That's why malls are a pain
[13:01] Acheron Gloom: Things like particle systems, text, multiple different faces, and things like that will increase the object update size. But textures are still largest, yes.
[13:01] Andrew Linden: Well, maybe it would eventually be possible to optimize the simulator, and put on faster cheaper hardware, such that the "cost" of meshes could be reduced until equivalent to a hollow-cut-torus
[13:01] Pauline Darkfury: yeah, for prims & scultpies, the bulk of the download is the textures
[13:01] Leonel Iceghost: they say that prims get rendered from fartest if they are bigger.. but what I see is that if I put distance vision 50 meters I don't see the floor... so I don't know how is that true
[13:02] Andrew Linden: then we could also reduce the cost of less complicated legacy prims, and 15k "prim units" might be equivalent to 100k boxes or something.
[13:02] Leonel Iceghost: that is why they justify streaming
[13:02] Morgaine Dinova: Streaming cost is quite a joke, since just fixing the viewer cache to be large and persistent would reduce asset loading volume to a trickle, reduce LL's bandwidth requirements, reduce rez time and lag, and give the whole of SL a better user experience.
[13:02] Helena Lycia: Andrew, you mentioned that PE costs can't go up once fully live. But there is a danger if they go down later also. You could put land renters out of business
[13:02] Pauline Darkfury: look at it the other way around, Leonel. 0.5m prims 50m away won't exist in that scenario, until you get closer to them
[13:03] Acheron Gloom: isn't the viewer cache limited at 10 gigabytes now? I think 10 gigabytes is quite enough >.>
[13:03] Helena Lycia: If the PE costs of objects goes down over time then it will become increasingly difficult for sim owners to rent land and break even, let alone make a profit
[13:03] Acheron Gloom: Then agian, if theres no adverse side effect... I might want a larger cache.
[13:03] Andrew Linden: How is that Helena?
[13:03] Helena Lycia: Well if I rent a plot of land to someone and they need 1000 prims
[13:03] Andrew Linden: Helena, I don't understand how the land renters would go out of business there.
[13:03] Pauline Darkfury: Not really, Helena. That side of it doesn't scare me at all as a landlady.
[13:04] Helena Lycia: Then later on, if the PE calculation changes downwards and it turns out that they only need 750 prims. So they only rent 750 prims from me
[13:04] Acheron Gloom: You would think you'd get more sales since they can fit more items on the land without having to buy their own sim, and the like.
[13:04] Pauline Darkfury: If my tenants can do more with current prim counts, at the same cost, that sounds good to me
[13:04] Morgaine Dinova: Today's disks are 1TB or more and cost peanuts. Why do you want to keep downloading the same things over and over again? The meme for 2011 should be "Never download an asset more than once".
[13:04] Andrew Linden: Well... they need 1000 prims and also room to hold whatever it is they are building.
[13:04] Helena Lycia: If my renters needs less prims over time then I have to try and squeeze more renters into my land
[13:04] Rex Cronon: u can sell the 250 prims to somebody else:)
[13:05] Pauline Darkfury: As it is, I have a few tenants on 120-150% of the prim count for their parcel size, if they got pushed back to 100%, I could get extra tenants on the land that has to remain unrented to support that
[13:05] Andrew Linden: Sometimes they need much more square area for the number of prims than their "house" or whatever would take up spacially, true.
[13:05] Rex Cronon: i mean rent
[13:05] Techwolf Lupindo: The http texture GET project was supposed to reduce bandwith by having textrue cache by ISP and so on. But NNNooooo...they made the http texture GET compleaty incompatibable wiht ISP squid proxy cache and I had to figure out a hack to get it to work.
[13:05] Latif Khalifa: you don't get more sales by taking prices into heaven. you get stagnation and downward spiral. pity mesh could have stopped the stagnation trend, but it looks like it's going to accellerate it
[13:05] Kadah Coba: Mesh costs is quite the hot button it seems.
[13:05] Pauline Darkfury: I also have tenants who pay for more prims than they need, to get the larger parcel they want
[13:05] Helena Lycia: I do too
[13:06] Latif Khalifa: Kada, trouble is it's not only mesh. Is anything linked to a mesh or utilizing new physics. Now I have to be extra careful to check that I don't link something that has mesh in it
[13:06] Andrew Linden: I suspect lower costs in prims will not spell the end of the land rental industry, but that is my speculation.
[13:06] Acheron Gloom: I agree with Andrew
[13:07] Helena Lycia: Why do I get the feeling that this meeting could carry on 24/7 on the PE/Mesh topic? *giggles*
[13:07] Pauline Darkfury: That's something I'll happily agree with, Andrew, at least for now
[13:07] Andrew Linden: In any case... we're a ways off from performing that simulator optimization and cost reduction scheme of mine.
[13:07] Morgaine Dinova: What Latif says is true. You shouldn't tackle your high costs by raising prices (PE), or you'll lose custom. You need to tackle your high costs by reducing your costs.
[13:07] Acheron Gloom: Any conversaiton involving Mesh goes on forever.
[13:07] Acheron Gloom: at lest mesh costs
[13:07] Pauline Darkfury: it will change things, but I certainly don't see it as a falling sky issue
[13:07] Simon Linden: I think the mesh conversation costs are too high
[13:07] Acheron Gloom: I agree with Simon.
[13:07] Rex Cronon: haha
[13:07] Mercille Linden agrees with Simon
[13:07] Helena Lycia giggles
[13:07] Andrew Linden: Thanks for coming. I've gotta go.
[13:07] Qie Niangao: hehehe
[13:07] Kadah Coba: lol
[13:07] Rex Cronon: tc andrew
[13:07] Opensource Obscure: thanks andrew
[13:07] Qie Niangao: Thanks Andrew, all
[13:07] Helena Lycia: Take care Andrew... I IMed you about something
[13:07] Kadah Coba: Seeya
[13:07] Pauline Darkfury: Thanks, Lindens
[13:07] Latif Khalifa: Finally a Linden with some sense of proportion when it comes to PE lol
[13:08] Pauline Darkfury: HAve a good one :)
[13:08] Latif Khalifa: thank you Simon :)
[13:08] Acheron Gloom: can someoen throw me the log of the meeting?
[13:08] Acheron Gloom: just put it on pastebin or something
[13:08] Acheron Gloom: I got here 40 minutes in :(
[13:08] Morgaine Dinova: Simon: That's exactly what Lindens said when V2 was about to be released, complete refusal to listen to objecttions. And you paid for that dearly.
[13:08] Kaluura Boa whispers: Wake up, Liisa, it's over...
[13:08] Opensource Obscure: thanks mercille, simon - bye, everbody
[13:08] Pauline Darkfury: They are listening, I think
[13:08] Latif Khalifa: Pauline, I see no evidence of that
[13:08] Latif Khalifa: over the past two months they increased the cost
[13:09] Pauline Darkfury: they just have a rather tough set of decisions to make, and some tech challenges before it is safe for it to go onto main RC
[13:09] Rex Cronon: tc all those leaving
[13:09] Latif Khalifa: by adding regual prim streaming cost + adding scripting cost
[13:09] Latif Khalifa: so if anything they're making it worse as the time passes
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