Peux-tu me voir?

Dear Gudrun -

I feel like an old stick-in-the-mud... behind the times because I'm not mesh-enabled.  Almost every day in SL, I see an avi, with invisible clothes, or wearing some weird geometric shape.  Because of this, I fear that old viewers like SL 1.23 (mine), Imprudence, and Phoenix, i.e. viewers I am or might be comfortable with, will start to disappear. People see mesh and ask, What’s that odd looking thing? Then they realize what mesh is and that using an old viewer means they can't see everything others see. So their migration to newer viewers will be nudged along, and me with it.  What can I do???  -  Behind the Times

Dear En Retard -                 

You are not alone, hun.  Because of their underpinnings, old viewers like SL 1.23, Imprudence, and Phoenix will never see mesh.  Other third party vendors will add mesh.  But for me it's still too soon to migrate.

I guess the newviewer adoption rate is something like 22%, and I presume that most if not all of these people are motivated by the desire to usewant to be able use the new avi/clothing display features.   This means you're gonna encounter stuff you can't see, or stuff that looks like a big geometric chunk, in any large group of people.  I'm pretty sure that LL feels that these features will sell themselves and that people will willingly migrate. 

But ask yourself this:  How many invisible dresses or girder shaped avis do you see out there at any one time?  Noy many, right?  In my own case, I refuse to look like an egg or whatever while the majority of users (including moi) cannot see the new graphics.  Cuz what's the point?

The Lindens are making a significant effort to find out what keeps people from upgrading to SLV2. They hope to address the issues and motivate people to update. SLV1 users are not being abandoned, at some point LL will have to leave them behind or hold everyone else back.

I suspect many think the biggest problem for SLV1 users not adopting SLV2 is the user interface.  It is, but the other part of it is the relatively minor benefit of using a mesh-enabled viewer (unless, of course, you are a developer).  Mesh-enabled users happily wear their mesh, but since a substantial number of users can't see them, what's the point?

So, why mesh anyway?

Mesh is an improved capability for bringing 3D models, known as meshes, created in third-party tools, into SL.  (N.B ~ Mesh is a collection of triangles with a single transformation matrix, roughly equivalent to a "Prim" in SL.  A simple mesh is a mesh with a single face. It has a single color and texture, and can model a simple object in the real world. A multi-face mesh is a mesh with multiple textures.  A rigged mesh is a mesh with an internal virtual skeleton. Manipulating the virtual skeleton causes corresponding changes in the shape of the mesh, which allows the mesh to be animated.)

Benefits of mesh that prims or sculpts cannot match:

* Custom UV mapping (wrapping a 2D texture onto a 3D mesh) for up to 8 textures; selectable smooth or hard edges

* Custom collision shapes

* Rigged meshes that conform to your joints and motions and animate accordingly

* Fractional prim count for some objects, and lower count than some equivalent prim builds

Drawbacks of mesh:

* Mesh is not flexi

* Large or complex mesh can cost more than sculpts or prims for the same result

* Making level-of-detail versions and physics shapes is more work

* Mesh features are only at first release, some things were left till later by LL in this first version. (Note, SLV3 for mesh features.)

* Many people do not see mesh avis/clothes :=P

So it's really not about the casual user.  It's more about the ppl who create.  Allowing user-created, irregular, polygon meshes gives creators a greater level of freedom in not only what they create, but just how they create it.  This seems to be a response to gamer ridicule of SL use of prims vs. mesh, because from a basic control standpoint, SL combat sucks.  (Of course, SL is not about combat, except for some.  And the battle of the sexes does not seem to have been inhibited.)

SL had already been using irregular meshes, it’s just that the rest of us hadn’t the ability to create our own. The most obvious example of this is the Second Life avatar, an irregular polygon mesh created by LL to be especially good conforming to the user's wishes.  I have to admit I do not know the difference between LL mesh (visible in V1) and imported mesh (not).

I would like to see mesh, and have toyed with mesh-enabled viewers that have friendlier interfaces. But at the same time, I worry that I might inadvertently wear mesh without getting the warning I now get in SLV1, thereby adding myself to the weirdly shaped, partially invisible minority.

When mesh use comes to full fruition, we will all want to see it.  But in the meantime, don't worry about being behind. 

TC ~ Gudrun

 (NB ~ This item also appears in September's REZ Magazine.)