I am finding there is a wide variation in how well fitted mesh fits. Some brands work very well. Others only look good if you stand still. Others have noticed this too. I just saw someone on Fab Free comment that when trying demos you needed to walk around, sit down, and jump to test the demo fully. Good advice.
If you are thinking about fitted mesh, Gaia has one of better explanations of what it is here:
Gaia is working with the ideas of giving AvaStar away free and charging for the tutorials or charging more for AvaStar and giving the tutorials away for free. I have no idea what Gaia will decide. I wish Gaia a profitable business whatever is decided.
To the left (in red) are pieces of the viewer. To the right (in blue) are simhost/simulators and other backend services. And at bottom (in green) are new CDN services.
Solid lines with arrowheads are communication paths, either UDP or TCP/HTTP. Dashed lines indicate legacy communication paths that are now or soon will be deprecated, obsoleted and/or deleted.
Ball-and-stick objects between a communication path and a text label indicate a viewer debug setting and the communication path or paths that setting influences. These, too, are in solid and dashed flavors. The latter indicating obsolescence. And as always, at least one error crept into my diagram. In this case, the ‘HttpPipelining’ setting only influences mesh and texture communications. Inventory is currently unaffected by this setting. [Image has been corrected – ed]
Generally, things are moving in the direction of simplification and less resource conflict. The mesh and texture HTTP traffic, which is usually the greatest load, tends to part ways with the UDP traffic a few network hops after a user’s router or modem. Lacking TCP’s throttling mechanism, UDP often wins in a fight (give-or-take the efforts of fairness algorithms along the path). Allowing UDP to overrun the path between viewer and simulator does still degrade the experience and the bandwidth setting remains an effective tool for avoiding this problem.
Other settings should generally be left alone. A lot of bad advice was spread around in the community in an effort to work around throughput problems. We’re trying to undo that history and get back on track with more typical (albeit aggressive) HTTP patterns.
A couple of things have caught my interest this past week. The Linden Monthly Meet Up held at Basilique and the discussion about the Altas Obscura article.
Antirrhinum @ The Alchemy by Brattilicious, on Flickr
I find the Meet Up fascinating because of the chaos and ambiguity of what was going on. What happens at a meeting where the agenda is to say, ‘Hi’? No one ever just says Hi… you can’t eat just one potato chip… or in my case Cheetos.
From the Third Party Viewer UG meeting we get a little news. It was another short meeting.
What The……! – by Simone Landers, on Flickr
Viewers
RC Second Life Big Bird Viewer version 3.7.29.301361 – This viewer has fixes for some attachment-related issues. The Lindens are not anticipating any difficulties with this viewer, so this one should be moving to promotion as the default viewer soon.
There are some server side fixes for attachment problems that are in the works.
I like to question my thinking, prejudices, biases, and beliefs. Too many in our society have no skepticism and to be non-PC; are simply gullible. So, I really question what I hear people saying. When Hamlet says we have all these pornographic regions devoted to sex and violence…. Do we?
125 Reflecting in the gloom by Erika Xaron, on Flickr
Ricco Saenz wrote an article that is right in line with the irreverent questioning I enjoy. See: A pornographic tour. Ricco takes a look at many of the adult regions that Hamlet pointed to to support his statement that sex is big in Second Life™. Ricco provides a deeper look at Hamlet’s porno regions. I think it will revise your thinking on how pornographic the adult regions are… well, aren’t.
The meet up has come and gone for this month. Did you go? Could you get in?
Sur La Maison de Ville Balcon by Connie Arida, on Flickr
I went a bit late, 5 minutes or so after it started. I did make it in. I had decided to use the Firestorm viewer. I lasted about 15 or 20 minutes before the viewer poofed. I didn’t try to get back in. There wasn’t much going on when I was there. Three Lindens were hanging around. People were chatting away everywhere. So, it was pretty chaotic while I was there.
