![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lecs-destinations-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com\/img\/12649\/5328cc48022fc960398433.png?w=525\")
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Skin Fair 2014<\/h1>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Visit in Second Life<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The Skin Fair<\/a> is in full swing and will be running until March 30th. Script limits will no longer be enforced<\/a>\u00a0as 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 \u00a0realised 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Therefore fairs offer an ideal opportunity for Linden Lab to discuss the concepts outlined in their good building practices wiki guide<\/a>, they could even point organisers in the direction of Penny Patton’s Building A Better Second Life<\/a> guide. Penny has some brilliant suggestions around reducing texture sizes and using fewer and more efficient scripts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Second Life is a shared resource, encouraging more environmentally friendly practices is in the interest of everyone.<\/p>\n