Skin Fair 2014
2014’s Skin Fair is now open! That means lots of goodies from skin makers, makeup designers and more. Come see old favorites and find new discoveries in three sims of deliciousness. For more information, be sure to visit http://skinfair.wordpress.com/. At the Skin Fair, you’re sure to find something that tickles your fancy.
Visit in Second Life
The Skin Fair is in full swing and will be running until March 30th. Script limits will no longer be enforced as is oft the case with script limits, enforcement was causing upset. The usual reason for the upset is that people find themselves teleported home or find themselves booted out of Second Life because of teleport failure before they’ve even realised they are being informed they have breached a limit. The really bad part of this is that in many cases, the combination of a scripted device scanning new arrivals and then the teleport process of booting them out is actually causing more load on the sim than the visitor who is deemed to be too heavily scripted.
Ideally there would be a better way of doing this, some sort of arrivals area where people were kept until such time they had reduced their scripts. However that’s not an easily achieved goal in Second Life. Fairs in Second Life are often busy events and the organisers rightly want to minimise causes of latency. The problem is that all too often scripts are seen as the be all and end all, when there are many other factors, especially in terms of textures.
Therefore fairs offer an ideal opportunity for Linden Lab to discuss the concepts outlined in their good building practices wiki guide, they could even point organisers in the direction of Penny Patton’s Building A Better Second Life guide. Penny has some brilliant suggestions around reducing texture sizes and using fewer and more efficient scripts.
The Skin Fair organisers do have a clue about efficiency, the buildings use plain and smaller textures, therefore using less resources. However some of the participants are definitely using textures larger than needed. Ideally at such an event organisers should encourage vendors to use smaller textures, certainly a maximum size of 512 x 512 should be implemented here because if you’re enforcing limits on your visitors for the sake of everyone, then you should do the same for your vendors.
Then you have small prims with 512 x 512 textures, which will generally not be needed, a 256 x 256 or even smaller will often suffice. The thing is if participants can see that smaller textures do indeed work, especially for display boards, those participants can then take these good practices back to their home sims and then implement them there, for the good of all their visitors.
Visitors who have been teleported out because of their script usage will hopefully learn from it, but in many cases the script limits are too harsh, scripts sitting idle do use some resources, but they are unlikely to cause mayhem. People don’t realise that the scripts left in their hair and shoes are eating resources, but hopefully they will learn for future fairs that it’s probably more friendly to remove said items. I really don’t like the concept of teleporting people home, especially in such a short space of time and as I said earlier, this can often cause more problems than it intends to prevent, but this is the choice of organisers. By the same token, it would be good for content creators to become more educated about resource usage too and these events present that ideal opportunity. I’d like to see Linden Lab involved in this education because they really should be leading the efficiency discussion.
Now visitors, just because the Skin Fair has removed script limits, it would still be better for your sake and everyone else’s if you tried to adhere to some sort of script limit, still consider removing those scripted items before you visit, at busy events such as this it will help to create a more enjoyable experience.
Second Life is a shared resource, encouraging more environmentally friendly practices is in the interest of everyone.
It’s one thing to encourage good building practices for content creators, but I don’t think it’s fair to excuse residents from good building practices for their avatars.
Seriously, how hard is it to create a low-lag simplified avatar of yourself to go around and pick up demos?
-ls/cm
Agreed, that’s why I said even with the skin fair having removed script limits, visitors should ideally still observe them.
It wasn’t consistant, though- I came in wearing a system-layer bikini, generic flexi scriptless hair, no AO and *nothing else*, and still got a ‘too many scripts’ notice and booted. Took another hour or two of trying to get into one of the sims, and then another half hour trying to cross into the next. What they really need to come up with is a good queue system for when major event sims like that are full.
It’s a shame there can’t be a mini landing point which is off sim, but gives people time to sort themselves out in terms of scripts, which would hopefully reduce error counts and would then also place people in a queue for entry to the main event.
Very easy, if creators allow mod items, to remove no needed scripts (recize ones, hud ones and so on).
Almost impossible if all use the same builds from creators who only care about profits and have a high demand (I will love to see when all are using mesh heads and so on, if, unless Lolas breasts that are full mod, they dont even add a option on the hud to delete scripts!).
Besides that, there is a option of the advanced menu that is to see the draw eight of a avatar (good mesh is unbeatable compared to sculpts, flexi hair is so demanding).
So Yes i do blame a lot of content creators that by paranoia refuse to allow their itens to be mod in order to remove scripts or dont add that option on the hud!
Good point about no mod items but the average SL visitor to a fair doesn’t want to have to mess around with removing items, it should be easier for people to identify their own load.
When I have been to Fairs that have significant lag, its usually the build and design of the Fair that causes the problems. I can go to dance places and many well designed Fairs with 30+ people and move easily or go to some Fairs and be unable to move with fewer than 20 people.
Limit the creators to 512×512 textures or less on their display boards, use low-lag plants and landscaping, limit how much people can see by using walls, changes in level, etc. Being picky, each of those vendors contain a script too.
Before Fair builders blame the users, look at how their Fair is built.
The use of eject scripts shows a lack of customer focus and potential loss of revenue for the creators due to the bullish attitude of ejecting first without having an accurate measurement of how much lag that avatar actually creates.
Further, those Script Limits that eject people based on number of scripts are highly inaccurate at predicting how much lag an AV presents to the sim or viewer. I can switch on Show Render Weight and without changing scripts show as low lag (green) or high lag (red). Green when I am wearing mesh and mesh hair, far into the red when wearing Flexi-hair with a Flexi dress.
The Render Weight can be shown by the Viewer and is the most accurate measurement of lag that we have. No Sim-based scripts can get near that accuracy.
Agree with you on all points although I do think visitors have a responsibility too, however for visitors, they really need easier ways to identify if their own avatar is over loaded.
Script counts alone are not a good measure, that’s a very good point. If the scripts aren’t really doing anything, they will only be adding tiny load to the sim.
Builds are an important issue, and you make an excellent point about limiting what can be seen, that’s a very useful way of reducing latency. To be fair to the skin fair, the buildings themselves were low lag, designed for basic functionality, rather than to look pretty and that worked well.
I definitely agree about 512 x 512 being the maximum for a display board and even less for smaller boards, as it’s only a temporary event, this should be a goal within reach.
Just visited the Skin Fair and I would say it is well designed. There were 20 people on sim and we had no difficulty moving. The walls of the buildings meant we were not seeing the building interiors until we went inside which meant we were not loading the hundreds of textures on each wall as soon as we arrived. I loved the big pictures on the outside of each building which allowed us to see the quality of the skins before going inside, and they provided memorable landmarks for going back.