Socially|Mundane

I've been thinking about my favorite pet-peeves of Second Life for a while now. No, I don't mean all the Linden Lab SNAFUs or the Second Life Viewer bugs or the general wonky nature of the Second Life Grid.

[Note that this image is just a random portrait from my flickr stream and not intended as being directly related to this article. —Ari]

I'm referring to those things in-world, usually the cause of which are residents themselves. So I am going to work my way through my top-ten pet-peeves list. But rather than just plop a bullet lists here, I'm hoping to elaborate on each, so you know why it's a pet-peeve. And that if any apply to you directly, you'll understand why it's a pet-peeve and so irritating not only to me, but likely many, many others who come into your presence.

Number eight in my list is "Blingie-Poofs".

Particles in Second Life are one of those cool graphic features that help with environmental looks such as fire, fog, smoke, sparks, water spray and so on. When created to look like a light-sparkle, it is affectionately known as 'bling'. When a large particle is made with a large texture and made to "explode" outward, it is called a 'poofer' for the "poof" effect is appears like.

I love particles because they are practically no-cost with regard to sim or system resources. They don't use any of your prim-allocation, they don't use any script recourses once set (the script is run once and dies, the particles keep going.)

Of course this is just to create the particles. There are scripts to add function to change them or turn them off and on and so on, but I'm not referring to those scenarios. The only real problem with particles is that they are completely reliant on your own computer hardware capabilities because it is your viewer that is creating and presenting them to you, not Linden Lab servers or anything else.

So what is a 'particle'? It's a texture. Often one that is so tiny (perhaps a single pixel in many cases) that is renders (rezzes) very quickly for a temporary, predetermined length of time before it deletes itself. The effect is dependent on the number of particles and properties such as speed of 'birth', speed of movement and direction, changing properties such as size and color and 'death' of each particle. This is taxing on your system, primarily with your graphic card and CPU capabilities, which can determine your experience with them.

The thing with particles is that they move and change properties over time, such as color, size and opacity and eventually die (delete themselves very quickly.) Several particles are generated at once to create the intended effect. Several hundreds, sometimes thousands. This could tax your computer system dramatically. Thus, poofers are frowned upon by many people who do not have the latest, cutting edge computer hardware because they feel your are forcing "lag" upon them (when it really isn't lag, it's really system 'bog'.)

Second Life "bling" is created with particles. That flashy, blinky, light you see emanating from diva shoes or bracelets or hair - whatever. It doesn't cause any lag, thus the only real issue with 'SL Bling" is that it can be irritating to the highest degree.

Okay, allow me to clarify...

It's irritating when done improperly, which unfortunately is about 95% of the time I see it. The usual purpose of bling is to emulate a sparkle which, if done properly will give the impression of "ooh, shiny sparkly thing!"

The problem is that 'bling' is way too often overdone. It shouldn't look like a strobe light. The 'bling beams' shouldn't be larger than the product that is supposed to be the 'shiny sparkly'. It shouldn't be an eye-magnet.

If done properly, there might be one blink every 10 or 15 seconds and it would be a very tiny blink. Just enough to catch your attention, but not draw your eye to it. It's the oh-so-proven-to-be-successful "less is more" paradigm.

It really does work, creators. You should try it.

I don't find SL Bling to be all that irritating. It's not as prevalent as it used to be so I just ignore it, unless it's in an inappropriate environment, say a role play area themed around cavemen and women for example and the blingie is a set of strobe-light earrings.

No, the pet peeve has to do with poofers. Poofers also are particles, but each particle is large and the poofer is set to "explode" these particles outward from you. Often, instead of each particle simply dying, they usually return to you as though to a magnet.

Fortunately poofers are nowhere near as prevalent now as they were in 2006 and early 2007. Poofers are interesting and I can see the fun in them. People who use poofers are usually making some kind of statement. Good for them. It would just be better if they were triggered on demand rather than every time you land in a new location after a teleport.

I don't know if they simply are falling out of favor or if it's the saturation of merchants in Second Life that makes poofer-creators harder to find.

The act of a poofer poofing doesn't bother me at all.

The issue I have with poofers is that the creators do not optimize their particle textures for poofers. A poofer particle lives for 3 to 5 seconds at most. So the irritating thing is when someone teleports into your vicinity and their poofer automatically goes off.

But, the poofer particle textures are not rezzed, so the whole area is blinded by hundreds of grey squares. It doesn't really cause a lot of lag as many will whine about because the poofer is only one new texture that is being rezzed. Though that is one texture along with all the other textures of the person arriving. So all these textures take time to download to each witness - the poofer rarely has time to rez it's texture in time for anyone to see them. Thus, almost all "telport" poofers poof nothing but grey particles when you land and that's on a lag-free sim.

The irritant for me isn't the poof. it's all those grey squares flying all over the place.

And whatever it is Linden Lab did to the asset server, they need to undo it. Regular haunts have suddenly taken a nose-dive in texture-rezzing time. What used to rezz in about one to two-minutes can now take a full five and sometimes even ten minutes to finally come-in. I know it's not me: same viewer, same hardware, and same ISP - no changes anywhere.

Anyway, to summarize, the "evilness" of Second Life blingiepoofs aren't the bling or poofer per se, but rather the ugly grey squares that fill the sim until the un-optimized particle texture finally rezzes (usually just as the last of the poofer particles are dying away,) and badly set bling that act as horrid eye-magnets, which create irritation for anyone that is forced to gaze at it for more than five-seconds.

Poofers should have a simple setting to turn off the automatic nature of them. I enjoy poofer-on-demand types because then the poofer can be used at just the right time to help create entertainment. And, since you and everyone else are likely already rezzed-in, the poofer will rezz very quickly and have the intended effect. Such as the mega-nuclear-sim-wide boom I like to set-off once in a while.

But that one is on-demand. I use it maybe once every couple months. I can see Linden Lab banning me from Second Life after all the abuse reports on me if it went-off every time I landed somewhere after a teleport.

This completes my top-ten Second Life pet-peeves. yes, this is number 9. I had prewritten number 10 and it published prematurely. If you haven't seen it, you can find it here.

So, is there any bling or poofer you like at all? Even a little teensy bit?