If, like me, you’re not the kind of person that subscribes to ATI’s or nVidia’s RSS feeds and immediately jump to the nearest computer shop as soon as the latest graphics card is released, and spend thousands of dollars every year purchasing the latest and greatest to squeeze more performance out of your computer, read on. A few simple tricks might give you that extra bit of performance that might make the difference on your current computer, and finally convince you that SL 2.0 is not as slow as you thought — it just has the settings shuffled around and assumes too low settings as the default.

Texture memory

In the olden days, SL would detect how much video RAM your card had, and use as much as it could, and that was all. Then the clever LL programmers found out that OpenGL (the rendering framework used by all versions of the SL viewer) supports the notion of “virtual RAM” for textures. What would that possibly be good for, since virtual RAM, as we all know, is always slower than real RAM?

When you upload a texture to SL, no matter what the original format was, it gets tightly compressed to JPEG2000, which is a reasonably good standard, specially for highly-compressed images. Having them taking as little space as possible is crucial for virtual worlds like Second Life®, where a user is constantly streaming hundreds or thousands of images all the time during the whole session. So it’s not really a question of storage — disk space is cheap these days — but really downloading time. A huge 1024×1024 texture can eat up to 5 MBytes, but be compressed to a dozen KBytes (with luck!), which transfers rather quickly.

Of course, there is a trade-off. The more you compress an image, the more time it takes to decompress it. And your graphics card requires fully decompressed textures to display them. So this means that the lovely compressed 1024×1024 texture you’ve just downloaded at a wink of an eye now will eat up 5 MBytes of your card’s RAM. Even if you’re blessed with a 512 MB card or higher, this means that you can only store 100 of those textures (actually, a bit less, since SL also uses the graphic card’s video RAM for other purposes). The remaining ones have to be stored on disk, on the cache. This cache stores the compressed textures, so, even though it’s “only” up to 1 GByte large (LL has capped it at 1 GByte for mysterious reasons), it can, in fact, keep quite a lot of textures in it. And I really mean a lot.

The trouble is that it also takes “a lot” of time to load those images from the disk cache (disks are around 100-1000 times slower than regular RAM; video RAM is quite faster than regular RAM) and decompress them again to feed the graphic card. So if you have a very old graphics card (which is my case!!) with, say, just 128 MB of RAM, it means that not many textures can be held there. Every time you move the camera, and you need more textures, the VRAM has to be flushed, and the new textures, hopefully all downloaded by now, have to be decompressed and put into the VRAM again. Every time you move around, this happens again and again.

And yes, of course, you have guessed: this causes lag. A lot of lag. It’s just client-side lag, but it’s nevertheless lag
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I have to confess, I’m quite excited by the tremendous possibilities of the recent announcement by Linden Lab that XStreetSL now allows easy L$ transfer between the website and the avatar L$ account, without a fuss, and not requiring in-world ATMs at all. And it’s not just because a lot of more people will start to shop at XStreetSL from now on; no, it’s really because of the underlying technology, which might finally unleash the possibility of turning the Linden Dollar into a real L$ microcurrency for premium content outside Second Life.

Nowhere!

In ‘A Tale Of Two Avatars’, Wagner James Au reports on the discovery that there are two ‘Hamlet Aus’ on the social networking site ‘Avatars United’. Like many things to do with life on the screen, a superficial consideration of this discovery leads to a clear-cut and simple conclusion: There is the real Hamlet Au, and then there is a fake Hamlet Au. However, again like so many things to do with life on the screen, this clear-cut and simple conclusion may not hold true in all cases.

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One skin designer (Namssor Daguerre) and 6 years of the history of skins, on my other blog

Watch never-released-pictures of Awful Gwyn in BSSE (Before Second Skin Era)

[UPDATE] My interview with Namssor Daguerre on Ana Lutetia’s blog, which is the #10 most read blog in Second Life. Thanks for letting me publish it there, Ana

I had started to write this in mid-October but never finished it… and the database crashed at some point while I was in the middle of writing it, losing almost all of the article In the mean time, the recent interest in this topic, as well as M Linden’s announcement that they would allow people to register avatars with their real life names, as well as Wallace Linden’s strange article on linking real life data to your avatar, seemed to make everybody write what they thought about this subject, even my dearest friend, Extropia DaSilva. At the same time, the world apparently is moving towards having all your life posted to the public at large with Facebook leading the way, and this is seen as a Good Thing... with only the Alphaville Herald disagreeing. To make things even more interesting, Linden Lab just bought the social networking tool Avatar United, a Facebook clone where you’re not forced to use real names to register and which supposedly will (one day, perhaps) link your profile with your avatar name.

So, well, I recovered what I could from that 3-month article and rewrote the rest… enjoy (or not!)

The recent subtle push to increase enterprise and academic acceptance of Second Life® (even though we have to be honest here and remember that SL is 99% residential use, and will very likely always remain like that) has pushed the focus again on identity and privacy; more recently, M Linden’s comments that 2010 would allow people to register avatars with their real name, Wallace Linden’s strange article on real life identity, some SL forum polls, and Linden Lab buying Avatar United, pushed the whole issue back into the foreground — again. It looks and feels like 2007, when Linden lab started to introduce third-party age validation.

Not surprisingly, the stance taken by Facebook on “revealing your real self” might have been a strong incentive for Linden Lab to re-evaluate their policies. Or… perhaps there is more?

One of those reasons has been the push to validate Second Life merchants, in order to turn content theft into the much more serious crime of identity theft or credit card fraud, which — hopefully — will be a stronger deterrent and limit piracy.

The other reason, however, has been for long the “need” for businesses to have an idea with whom they’re dealing with. Also, a few have expressed the idea that relationships can only be formed if you know who’s on the other side of the computer screen. The latter, as said, is not limited to Second Life.

And there is a third reason, which is a bit more obscure and will probably happen “under the hood”. Again, we can point at Facebook and see what it entails.
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As Linden Lab prepares the last round of bug-fixing before launching the brand new SL 2.0 viewer (will it run on Apple’s iPad? lol), I did a few movies showing off how good Snowglobe actually runs on way old laptops.

This is pretty much a personal discussion I’ve got with NetAntwerp, who refuses to believe that LL’s viewer is able to get reasonable performance on old hardware.

NetAntwerp remains unconvinced. You decide!

This time, we get a short essay from Extropia DaSilva… but one that is quite close to my heart Enjoy! — Gwyn

“Trussssst in me/ Jusssst in me”- Ka from Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’.

When H+ Magazine published Stephen Cobb’s article ‘Real Discrimination Against Digital People’, someone wrote the following response:

‘I fully respect online personas, but expecting me to implicitly trust anonymous avatars is pushing it’.

Many people seem to think that ‘digital people’ and ‘anonymous avatars’ are one and the same thing. But this is just not true.

An anonymous avatar is one that A) carries no real life identification and B) has built up no in-world reputation.

In stark contrast, a digital person is somebody that HAS built up an inworld reputation. A digital person considers his or her identity to come entirely from how he or she is perceived by the online communities they are a part of. From this fact, we can take the logical step to the assertion that a digital person wants to become as familiar a figure in their online communities as possible. After all, the more people become familiar with the name and personality of ’Extropia DaSilva,’ the more ‘real’ that digital person becomes. We can also logically assume that a digital person seeks not just wide familiarity, but a POSITIVE reputation within online communities. This is because if you gain a BAD reputation, you increase your chances of being ejected. For a digital person, having your account suspended or cancelled is almost a fate worse than death!

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Uh, right. Well, there are indeed a few ways of doing so

Seriously!

2009 comes to an end, and after the traditional snowball fight with the Lindens, where residents redefine the concept of physics-induced lag by shooting everything in sight with utter prejudice, it’s time to relax, rethink about what went wrong in 2009, and how 2010 will look like.

Keeping in tradition, I’ll try to get my 2010 predictions for Second Life (which are more likely “wishlists”) and see if I can match any with reality (usually I’m far too optimistic!). Some are easy to predict, but, oh well, at least I’ll be happy to get a few of them right… although I didn’t fare too badly last year, I think I got 9 out of 10 right

1. “Second Life 2.0″, LL’s newest viewer, will be released. Possibly during the first quarter, more likely “late summer”, but this is what it’ll have: dynamic shadows; uploadable meshes; seamless integration between SLURLs and landmarks; HTML-and-clickable-Flash-on-a-prim; and a “dumbed-down” mode when launched for the first time (not unlike the OnRez client which had no “Build” button). I don’t expect anything else but a few minor tweaks and slight interface changes (with possibly a new skin/template engine to make skinning far easier). Everybody will be disappointed, except for new users, as well as content creators, who will love it, even if it means starting to rethink if shadows ought to be baked-in on their newly uploaded meshes…
2. XStreetSL will be rebranded. I’m quite sure that after the launch of the SL Work Marketplace for Second Life Enterprise users, the next step will be simply to merge both things and rename it “Second Life Marketplace”. There are so many excellent marketplace-construction kits out there (like Drupal’s eCommerce solution, and we know that LL uses Drupal for most of their sites) that it’s simply silly to continue to invest time on the outdated clunkiness of XStreetSL (sorry, Apotheus!). The new website will probably have better search features and delivery options, and LL will allow content from Gold Merchants (analogous to eBay PowerSellers) to be resold to Second Life Enterprise customers as well. Internally, LL will also launch a beta programme for delivery to some OpenSimulator grids, but we’ll not know much about that until it’s launched…
3. Interop will become a reality. Don’t expect miracles before the year’s end, though. Starting just after June 2010, when the interoperability communication protocol among grids becomes an Internet standard, LL will work together with at least IBM and Intel (and possibly some large OpenSim grid co-location services — which will exclude most of the OpenSim grids people usually talk about) to allow Gold Grid Providers full interoperability with Second Life Grid. This will probably happen in a very controlled environment and involve even more complex contracts than most people expect, but it will finally allow you to shop in SL and teleport to a third-party grid with the full content — without having a single intellectual property issue. (Yes, it means that all content in SL will have an “interoperability flag” on it too.)
4. VastPark and other similar virtual world platforms will join the OpenSimulator Foundation. Following the lead of realXtend, the companies seriously investing on VW technology which are going through an existential crisis will figure out that their last hope to survive is to make sure that at least their own VWs will not silently disappear and become footnotes in history. This will naturally make the OpenSimulator group even more powerful, add dozens of new talented developers to their teams, and push even harder for interoperability. Blue Mars will believe to be able to continue to be the “outsider” and probably silently disappear in mid-2011 or so — but all meshed content created for BM will then simply be imported to SL/OpenSim by then, and connected to the “metaverse” anyway, so the investment by content creators will be safe.
5. Linden Lab will experiment with new avatars but not release them yet. Following the lead of realXtend and Blue Mars, LL will start tinkering with avatar meshes, create attachment points for animations, and deal with meshed clothing that folds naturally around avatars. This involves retrieving Ventrella’s code from the freezer and will require so many changes to the existing viewer (including some sort of client-side physics engine) that LL will ultimately deem it’s too big an effort to make it widespread — which would perhaps break 2 billion outfits in the process. Still, machinimists and other specialised uses will possibly use that experimental viewer a lot — and get server-side support from a patched OpenSim.
6. The “Account Dashboard” will become more and more Facebook-y. This is hardly a “prediction” — the Lab already hinted they’ll will be taking that route. It’s not surprising, since that’s what Kaneva did from the very start. It will allow residents to continue to interact with their SL contacts… without logging in to SL. Technically, it’s easy to implement (again, there are lots of “cookbooks” for doing that using Drupal, and even a few books on the subject; I’ve got a rather detailed PDF on the subject as well). The big issue will be if SL starts to lose interest while people are happily “socialising” on the Account Dashboard instead of logging in to SL…
7. The European Grid opens. Once interop is in place, a problem gets finally solved by LL: how to have multiple grids with separate asset servers, while giving everybody the feeling they’re in the same grid? So probably the first internal usage will be to have separate asset servers on the Texas and California co-location facilities… and add a new grid co-located on one of the central hubs of the European Internet, namely Amsterdam, where LL already opened offices. The Zindra continent will be immediately pushed to that grid and probably gambling will be allowed… but residents will complain because European regions will be way more expensive
8. Validation/registration will slowly become more widespread than anonymity. I know my immersionist friends will kill me because of that but it seems to be an unavoidable trend. We’ll still get many options not to publish our RL data, but LL will know it — and use it to deal with issues like third-party viewer releases, ‘bot releases, Gold Merchants, and the like. The new motto will be, “if you’re a real person you’re not a criminal” (which is one of the stupidest lies ever created, but that’s the world we live in…) and this will be encouraged more and more. Meanwhile, people will continue to use anonymous ways to buy L$ and possibly move over to the European Grid which will, by local law, need to respect privacy more (not less!), specially if it’s based in Amsterdam.
9. Raph Koster will give up his company and start developing virtual worlds in OpenSim. Hah Well, I need to put in a few predictions that will not come true…
10. Philip Rosedale will finally assume that his new company is really just a front to look busy, but in reality he’s back in SL doing what he  likes. Namely, developing complex virtual music instruments — his latest abandoned project in that area is from 2003, and it’s still delightful to play!

Happy New Year everybody!