Mesh

Oskar and Charlar Linden have made and been editing an SL Wiki page titled Mesh Volunteers. The page appears to have been created July 14 and has been getting their attention almost every day since. So, what is it about?

Actually it is hard to place in context. The cookie crumb menu only leads back to the Wiki home page. So, I’m speculating some. Word is out that mesh release is only days away. But, adding mesh to SL is a foundational change to the system. Any change this big is likely to have unintended consequences and unexpected problems. So, the roll out of mesh is proceeding as a very cautious roll out. This new page is probably in preparation for that roll out as it explains some aspects of the roll out that I have not heard.

One of the page’s sections is titled, What are the limitations in this release? The words ‘this release’ strike me as interesting and suggest, at least to me, the page is for the initial roll out.

What are those limitations? It seems some of the roll out plan may have changed. It is hard to tell for sure. But, it warns that not all regions will be mesh enabled and that attempting to move mesh or wear mesh clothing from an enabled region to a mesh disabled region may break the mesh. Ugh! And broken permanently. Ugh Ugh

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Mesh development is continuing. There is almost no discussion of anything new. The focus is on getting mesh working and the import and cost calculations worked out. The Lindens are concentrating on bug fixes and getting this initial roll out working.

You can see in the image a couple of Tiny’s. These are tiny tiny avatars. Both are way cute.

Physics Weight

Experiments by Drongle McMahon brought him to the conclusion that for objects under 0.5 meters the physics shape silently converts to a convex hull. Charlar Linden thinks that is what the system does, but will need to confirm with Nyx to be sure.

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A new step in the mesh upload process has been revealed. One must be registered to upload mesh. I saw mention of this on Danial Voyager’s blog. I posted about this coming tutorial and test in early June. See: Second Life Mesh Enablement. It has finally arrived.

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We still don’t have a cost for mesh upload or prim equivalency. But in Monday’s meeting mesh cost was still a big issue. Mesh making residents are upset that mesh costs too much. Did I mention that the Lindens haven’t set the cost yet? So, we don’t know what it is going to cost, but it’s too much. Sounds like politicians arguing.

Latest Mesh Cost Information

The equation for calculating simulation weight, streaming weight, and physics weight to get prim equivalence cost is pretty well set for the first release of mesh. However, the constants and multipliers aren’t. The upload cost is still in flux. The equations in the wiki are a mix of up-to-date and out-of-date. Jeremy Linden made a bunch of changes to the Mesh Pages in the wiki today.

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Mesh cost is still an annoying topic of conversation. It is still undefined. But, we are getting closer to a cost and we are learning more about the reasons for the costs. The Lindens are definitely being more open about the Linden costs. That hasn’t done much to improve the manners of residents participating in the meetings. 🙁

Mesh UUID Swapping

This subject keeps coming up. Kyrah Abattoir  asked the question in a new way. Quoting, “Figuring out a sane and conservative way to implement “set by UUID” for Meshes, builtin delay by link set for example, to prevent excessive mesh swapping/animating attempts, yet allow loading and unloading a mesh for legitimate uses. It seems to me this question assumes a swap can be done and that it is frequent swapping that overloads the sim. Originally many hoped that mesh could be animated as sculpties are.

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