Avatar rendering cost, as blogged yesterday by Pastrami Linden in his own stylish way is a good move in my opinion. Inevitably a Linden blog has rubbed some people up the wrong way and some of the wording isn’t exactly tactful but in the wider scheme of things, the underlying message is a good one.
People have mentioned before that residents should take some responsibly for issues in Second Life, back in early february Dandellion Kimban urged people to reduce the clutter from their inventories to reduce load on the asset servers, an ecology drive it was described as, but the message was similar to the one Linden Lab are encouraging.
After that I attended an office hour with CG Linden where the issue of alpha textures was raised, with a sigh, that too many people employed them. My point then, which is the same view I hold now, was that education was required. Many photoshop tutorials mention alpha textures and many people therefore believe they must be included. I’m not a clothing designer myself, but I do believe there’s an issue with a white chalk line feature if alpha textures aren’t included, but I’m not sure exactly what the issue is, hopefully one of you bright readers can help me out on that issue.
The blog by Pastrami is a step in the direction of education and it should be welcomed. I know there’s an impression of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted and I don’t think implying that residents will be able to restrict visitors using this scoring method is helpful for the community at this point in time, but educating the community regarding the implications of their creations is important.
This is a timely intervention from Linden Lab in light of the current debate about traffic, with camping being blamed for all the woes of the world in some quarters it’s important to expand the issue. Do you really need to upload a 512 x 512 32 bit targa texture? Well do you? I’m genuinely asking, I know I generally don’t but most of my textures are just words, rather than anything funky. I’m hoping advice will be forthcoming on this too.
I’m hoping this issue won’t prove divisive and that instead it will be embraced as an environmentally friendly drive. There is no need for a witch hunt and pointing fingers, as the blog points out, loading the tool also creates stress, so running around with it on all the time to find those who aren’t as cost effective will make you as guilty, if not more so, than the person you’re pointing the finger at.
I hope Linden Lab will follow this up with advice on cost effective ways for all sorts of uploads, I’ve looked previously in the knowledge base and I couldn’t find a guide or advice for such issues.
I know there’s a view that Linden Lab should fix the issues with lag and such like, but I believe that by pointing people generally to good advice on how to decrease problems with their creations, that Linden Lab are acting responsibly, without imposing restrictions. This is a sensible step, now if they’d just make the resources easily available regarding tips on textures and scripts we might see improvements in performance and that’s good for everyone.
*EDIT* In typical, you couldn’t make it up fashion, I logged in right after this blog, I got ruthed, I had trouble teleporting and I couldn’t buy a telly!*/EDIT*