Gor and Mesh .... whats it all about.

Ok ....  I've been loitering about SL  since early 2006 so I've seen many changes during my time here,  from flexies,  all the way through to mesh. and on each generation theres the pro and con camps.  Most of SL has adopted Mesh with open arms,  I know that to the most part there are issues ,  with sizing  etc.  but ive heard some various funny statements especially recently So i thought i would put some of those to bed so to speak. Of course some of what im saying could be wrong ,  but from the information ive gleaned through various sources ..  this is what i know


Mesh is laggy.


Ok ..  this one I find the most preposterous statement ive ever heard of, lets look at how things work in SL,  
Second Life essentially is allready all mesh ,  even the humble prim consists of a mesh item if you press Ctrl Shift R  you can see what Sl sees,  even the SL Primitive Cube has 16 vertices per side and 18 triangle " faces" on that side

As you can see from this picture...  Its really a mesh ,  just one that your viewer is pre-instructed to display,  so LL says render a cube ..  your viewer pulls it out of stock so to speak.














Now ...  with this in mind,  the two VERY laggiest things in the render engine is Alpha channel and Flexies,  despite them being on the viewer side of things ,  they will slow you down significantly.
Of course those 250 sculptie boots you might be wearing  when you consider that just a single sculpty is 1024 vertices thats 256,000 vertices you have on just ONE FOOT!!! couple that with the flexy hair or flexy skirt/kilt you have one ...  and then you add an AO,  with various script times, Weapons that dont JUST fire an arrow,  they also can virtually fire themselves and generate reports for all manner of hits,  now that data floods a sim with internal messages on a channel.   You may tell people they have to have low personal script times yet you fill the sim with trees ,  poseballed furniture etc,  all of which have render values that possibly are through the roof ....  A mesh item thats 3 prims and 2000 vertices most definately is far less intesive on the render engine than that 256,000 vertices boot.   




Mesh doesnt fit right


OK ...  how can i put this nicely .........  when has ANY item of clothing ever fitted right in SL, even your default AV is a rather ugly mesh,  and the way we texture meshes is something called unwrapping,  the Sl av is unwrapped in such a way  that it can be laid flat so the average developer can texture it easily,  yet in order to do that,  a large amount of distortion is generated in places like the shoulders,  the crotch etc. Even if we put that aside,  we have gotten used to things being a certain leval of unacceptable tolerance. A perfect example is textures distorting,  or not matching up and sculpties poing through or into your body,  flexy skirts dropping through chair seats exposing your legs etc. We have gotten used to these problems as being part of the experience.  And through that we have had the anti flexies,.  the anti sculpties ...  and now the anti MESH ...  Mesh doesnt fix everything ,  it can create with less prims,  it can give better results for texturing ,  and moves when the AV moves ..  rather than the " wind tunnel " hair and skirt when you walk. 
Of course with the deformer project comming to light ..  their willb e more availability to recitify a lot of these issues,  but making 6 standard sizes isnt the way ,  as I make clothes ...  and 96% of my clothes FIT!!!  because i bothered to know my business,  and e.g Gorean men come into two factors ....  Hulk ...  and Bruce Banner,  Woman tend to be harder ..  as even though the looks untill recently were either of woman ...  or 12 year old girls,  there was always things like boobs and bums..  and after all ,  if we just do basic maths ..  if we have 5 sizes for bums and 5 sizes for boobs, and each item needs to be in relation to another,  it becomes so completely cost prohibitive, its virtually impossible to cater for everybody and some alteration has always been necessary,  yet we do try as you are important to us.


Conclusion.


Mesh is here to stay ,  that's for certain,  its not laggy ,  and groups like Primus have done extensive testing on its mesh weapons to show its usefulness and proving by filling a sim with mesh arrows with over 60 people firing ,  and still not touching the lag that prim arrows cause. We understand the concern and fear ,  but also understand that the fear maybe due to certain factors such as
1. I cant build in mesh,  so i will tell everyone its laggy to extend my business 
2. I heard somewhere its laggy .....  so it MUST be true
3.  Mesh doesn't fit my AV and i refuse to alter to suit.


I believe that unless we are all prepared to stand there ..  in simpsons skin,  Linden Hair,  no sculpties or flexies ..  nothing scripted etc and no alphas .. we will ultimately put away our fears and start enjoying those new facilities that are available to us.


Thanks for your time on this extensive read.


Bray