Here Comes Mesh

In September 2011 Avril Korman reported on the recent progress of Mesh integration into Second Life. The article appeared in the website Search Engine Watch and is called Mesh & the Tyranny of Size: How Mesh Might Change Second Life Culture.

Mesh technology is a big update for Second Life. It means a much better graphics quality, graphics speeds, and far more graphics options for Mesh developers. Mesh is a 3D graphics technology that uses point to point connections, faces, and edges to form objects. In the past you could only use a certain amount of Prims to create an object and you could only create from a few basic shapes. This sometimes meant that in order to make a rather simple object many details would be needed and thus greater load times. With Mesh those objects can be made more easily without having to resort to a series of programmer tricks and those objects can process more easily on the user end.

Since Mesh is new to the SL world, there are many major incompatibilities and bugs that will need to be sorted out. The major concern for SL enthusiasts in particular is user-friendly object creation and customization. Until now SL users have been used to great measures of editing possibilities in SL with nonMesh objects and the interface for those adjustments have been rather simple to use. In many ways customizing is a kind of thesis in Second Life, what allows users the levels of creativity that makes this 3D world unique. Mesh will require SL users to develop on complex tools like Maya or 3DSM. Another issue is copyright issues. The amount of Mesh objects online is huge and SL developers are concerned with copyright issues from importing objects freely from the web. It will take years before SL can be fully updated and the rules for user friendly object creation sorted out.