How not to do a virtual fashion show
What happens if you run a fashion show in OpenSim with absolutely no prior testing
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Two days ago, on Wednesday, October 9th, I've been to my fourth fashion show, the third one where I wasn't a model myself. So I guess I know a thing or two about fashion shows in OpenSim. It was at OpenSimFest, and I've never seen a fashion show at OpenSimFest either.
As far as the shown outfits are concerned, it was a premiere again. The one in Alternate Metaverse in 2021 featured meshes imported from Second Life with permission from the creators, textured by Cataplexia Numbers. The clothes were made exclusively available to members of the Alternate Metaverse group at the event. The one in The Public World in October of 2022 where I was a model featured all kinds of OpenSim clothes, but at least the ones featured were all legal. It was half in jest, and it wasn't meant to actually sell anything. The one on Atlas-Grid in 2023 had over 150 outfits of, as far as I could judge, questionable legality. I think I had actually seen some of the clothes in freebie stores all over the place before. It wasn't connected to any particular store either.
This one was the first to only feature payware.
It was also the second one with manually-controlled avatars as models; the first one was the one in 2022 I was part of. AMV had avatars, too, but automated using scripted poseballs. Atlas-Grid had over 150 individual NPCs, one per outfit, which automatically rezzed inside a building, walked along the rectangular path and went back into the building where they de-rezzed. I think they started every ten seconds, so there were dozens of NPCs outside most of the time.
Another difference was presentation. This time, the fashion show which I was part of had pre-recorded voice presentation by Spike Sol. The whole show had a rigid schedule which may appear crazy, seeing as the show itself had no automation itself. But tests had shown how long it would take for a model to walk along the whole path. The other three were presented live by voice. This was my first fashion show at which nothing was automated at all.
Not only that, but the fashion show at OpenSimFest was obviously so understaffed that Emmalena Damour, herself fashion creator and shop owner, had to officiate and model at the same time. It was also the first fashion show I've seen with no male models and the first fashion show with dinkies.
What really struck me, however, was how much went wrong in only half an hour. The fashion show itself started with a delay of several minutes. The participants weren't sure whether to communicate via voice or local chat. Since the local chat was the means of communication of choice, and since the venue was rather small, everyone in the audience could read the chat behind the scenes.
The movements of the models on the catwalk were rather coarse. There were two golden stars on the catwalk, one at the front, one in the back, which were used as marks. The models partly stopped way too early before the front star or overshot it. Worse yet, they got stuck on the edges of the stars, one of the disadvantages of BulletSim physics in play.
Emmalena herself had to put each one of her few outfits together in the backstage, piece by piece. One of her outfits would have included a hat, but she couldn't find it in her inventory on such short notice. Then her mesh body HUD failed because avatar scripts were turned off as an anti-griefing measure. But since she firmly relied on that HUD, she had to teleport to her home sim, maybe even relog, to make use of her HUD, in the middle of the fashion show. When she finally stepped out onto the catwalk, everyone saw her as a cloud because her avatar hadn't fully rezzed yet. She can consider herself lucky that her avatar became visible while she was still on the catwalk. And then her feet were in the wrong position for her flat shoes.
I politely applauded after the fashion show, but internally, I could only shake my mesh head.
One thing was glaringly obvious: Nobody involved in this whole thing had any experience with virtual fashion shows, not in OpenSim, not in Second Life either. They hadn't even asked anyone experienced for help.
For if they had, they would have been told to take enough time and rehearse the fashion show, also to see what doesn't work and what should be done. Even only one dress rehearsal would have revealed so many problems with this fashion show.
The catwalk itself, for example, seemed completely virgin when Emmalena stepped out onto it for the first time. Nobody seemed to have walked on it before. Otherwise someone would have noticed that avatars get stuck on the golden stars and lowered them to just barely above the carpet. More test runs would have made this issue not only more obvious, but also more obviously inconvenient.
Also, why did Emmalena changing clothes in the backstage become such a disaster? Because she had never even tested that before. First of all, she actually had to detach and attach every piece of clothing individually, one by one. Worse yet, it seems like she had to search a big pile of objects in her inventory for the items she wanted to put on. She didn't even have these items in one subdirectory. But actually, she should have saved all her fashion show outfits as such, as full outfits, in her viewer.
Had she tried to change between her looks in that place before, on that sim with those settings, not only would she have noticed how long it takes and what an effort it is to have to search your inventory for the pieces of an outfit. She would also have noticed that the avatar scripts and the mesh body HUD she relied on didn't work. And it might have come to her mind that countermeasures against this issue would have to be taken in time.
I can't blame Shelenn Ayres, one of the OpenSimFest staff, for having avatar scripts off at that point when they were needed. Again, it was an anti-griefing measure. And Shelenn obviously wasn't even notified that at least one of the models would have to rely on avatar scripts.
I guess the wide-spread reliance on mesh body HUDs has made their use so natural that nobody even thinks about how they could malfunction until they try to adjust their alpha settings or their feet positions while on the Hypergrid or on a sim with avatar scripts turned off. At the same time, scripts in mesh bodies are mostly only used at home. Or how many times do you change your clothes in ways that require changing the alpha HUD settings while you're out and about? Or how many times do you ladies take your high heels off to go barefoot while on the Hypergrid, and how many of yours consider adjusting your foot position from high to flat?
Many would never expect their mesh body HUDs to refuse to work until they do so. I keep seeing again and again how people are completely surprised to discover that their HUDs don't work. I'm glad that I can handle both alpha blanking and foot positions without scripts, the former almost always, the latter absolutely always.
Even only one single test run would have revealed so many issues which the actual fashion show had and offered the chance to fix them before the real deal.
Team communication could have been secured by creating a group for the fashion show team which could have used the group chat.
The models would have noticed that they keep getting stuck on the stars. This could have been fixed.
Emmalena would have noticed that it isn't exactly smart to change clothes during a fashion show between two runs by taking off your top, taking off your skirt, taking off your shoes, maybe also taking off your underwear, searching your inventory for the right dress, putting the dress on, searching your inventory for the right shoes, putting the shoes on, searching the inventory for the right hat and then putting the hat on. Step by step. While also officiating for the other models at the same time. It's appalling to see how many have been in OpenSim for longer than me and in Second Life for even longer than that, and who still don't know a thing about saving and changing outfits nonetheless. And Emmalena has been in OpenSim since times before rigged mesh.
She would also have noticed that she needs avatar scripts to work to change her outfits, and that avatar scripts don't work on that sim because they're disallowed. She would have either worked around it or instructed Shelenn to turn avatar scripts on for the duration of the fashion show. Even if not, someone would have noticed Emmalena walking out onto the catwalk while still being a cloud.
Maybe it would even have come to someone's mind that running something as performance-critical as an automation-less fashion show with the catwalk pointing straight at the main event area at least partially within viewing range is not such a smart idea. The three stages, the decoration and especially over a dozen partially highly detailed avatars probably cut into the graphical performance of some models using computers with on-board graphics that their in-world experience was reduced to slideshows, and they could no longer control their avatars even halfway precisely.
I think I'll come back next Wednesday and see if the team has learned anything from yesterday. At least I may tell Shelenn to activate avatar scripts so that Emmalena won't have to teleport home and return as a cloud again.
As far as the shown outfits are concerned, it was a premiere again. The one in Alternate Metaverse in 2021 featured meshes imported from Second Life with permission from the creators, textured by Cataplexia Numbers. The clothes were made exclusively available to members of the Alternate Metaverse group at the event. The one in The Public World in October of 2022 where I was a model featured all kinds of OpenSim clothes, but at least the ones featured were all legal. It was half in jest, and it wasn't meant to actually sell anything. The one on Atlas-Grid in 2023 had over 150 outfits of, as far as I could judge, questionable legality. I think I had actually seen some of the clothes in freebie stores all over the place before. It wasn't connected to any particular store either.
This one was the first to only feature payware.
It was also the second one with manually-controlled avatars as models; the first one was the one in 2022 I was part of. AMV had avatars, too, but automated using scripted poseballs. Atlas-Grid had over 150 individual NPCs, one per outfit, which automatically rezzed inside a building, walked along the rectangular path and went back into the building where they de-rezzed. I think they started every ten seconds, so there were dozens of NPCs outside most of the time.
Another difference was presentation. This time, the fashion show which I was part of had pre-recorded voice presentation by Spike Sol. The whole show had a rigid schedule which may appear crazy, seeing as the show itself had no automation itself. But tests had shown how long it would take for a model to walk along the whole path. The other three were presented live by voice. This was my first fashion show at which nothing was automated at all.
Not only that, but the fashion show at OpenSimFest was obviously so understaffed that Emmalena Damour, herself fashion creator and shop owner, had to officiate and model at the same time. It was also the first fashion show I've seen with no male models and the first fashion show with dinkies.
What really struck me, however, was how much went wrong in only half an hour. The fashion show itself started with a delay of several minutes. The participants weren't sure whether to communicate via voice or local chat. Since the local chat was the means of communication of choice, and since the venue was rather small, everyone in the audience could read the chat behind the scenes.
The movements of the models on the catwalk were rather coarse. There were two golden stars on the catwalk, one at the front, one in the back, which were used as marks. The models partly stopped way too early before the front star or overshot it. Worse yet, they got stuck on the edges of the stars, one of the disadvantages of BulletSim physics in play.
Emmalena herself had to put each one of her few outfits together in the backstage, piece by piece. One of her outfits would have included a hat, but she couldn't find it in her inventory on such short notice. Then her mesh body HUD failed because avatar scripts were turned off as an anti-griefing measure. But since she firmly relied on that HUD, she had to teleport to her home sim, maybe even relog, to make use of her HUD, in the middle of the fashion show. When she finally stepped out onto the catwalk, everyone saw her as a cloud because her avatar hadn't fully rezzed yet. She can consider herself lucky that her avatar became visible while she was still on the catwalk. And then her feet were in the wrong position for her flat shoes.
I politely applauded after the fashion show, but internally, I could only shake my mesh head.
One thing was glaringly obvious: Nobody involved in this whole thing had any experience with virtual fashion shows, not in OpenSim, not in Second Life either. They hadn't even asked anyone experienced for help.
For if they had, they would have been told to take enough time and rehearse the fashion show, also to see what doesn't work and what should be done. Even only one dress rehearsal would have revealed so many problems with this fashion show.
The catwalk itself, for example, seemed completely virgin when Emmalena stepped out onto it for the first time. Nobody seemed to have walked on it before. Otherwise someone would have noticed that avatars get stuck on the golden stars and lowered them to just barely above the carpet. More test runs would have made this issue not only more obvious, but also more obviously inconvenient.
Also, why did Emmalena changing clothes in the backstage become such a disaster? Because she had never even tested that before. First of all, she actually had to detach and attach every piece of clothing individually, one by one. Worse yet, it seems like she had to search a big pile of objects in her inventory for the items she wanted to put on. She didn't even have these items in one subdirectory. But actually, she should have saved all her fashion show outfits as such, as full outfits, in her viewer.
Had she tried to change between her looks in that place before, on that sim with those settings, not only would she have noticed how long it takes and what an effort it is to have to search your inventory for the pieces of an outfit. She would also have noticed that the avatar scripts and the mesh body HUD she relied on didn't work. And it might have come to her mind that countermeasures against this issue would have to be taken in time.
I can't blame Shelenn Ayres, one of the OpenSimFest staff, for having avatar scripts off at that point when they were needed. Again, it was an anti-griefing measure. And Shelenn obviously wasn't even notified that at least one of the models would have to rely on avatar scripts.
I guess the wide-spread reliance on mesh body HUDs has made their use so natural that nobody even thinks about how they could malfunction until they try to adjust their alpha settings or their feet positions while on the Hypergrid or on a sim with avatar scripts turned off. At the same time, scripts in mesh bodies are mostly only used at home. Or how many times do you change your clothes in ways that require changing the alpha HUD settings while you're out and about? Or how many times do you ladies take your high heels off to go barefoot while on the Hypergrid, and how many of yours consider adjusting your foot position from high to flat?
Many would never expect their mesh body HUDs to refuse to work until they do so. I keep seeing again and again how people are completely surprised to discover that their HUDs don't work. I'm glad that I can handle both alpha blanking and foot positions without scripts, the former almost always, the latter absolutely always.
Even only one single test run would have revealed so many issues which the actual fashion show had and offered the chance to fix them before the real deal.
Team communication could have been secured by creating a group for the fashion show team which could have used the group chat.
The models would have noticed that they keep getting stuck on the stars. This could have been fixed.
Emmalena would have noticed that it isn't exactly smart to change clothes during a fashion show between two runs by taking off your top, taking off your skirt, taking off your shoes, maybe also taking off your underwear, searching your inventory for the right dress, putting the dress on, searching your inventory for the right shoes, putting the shoes on, searching the inventory for the right hat and then putting the hat on. Step by step. While also officiating for the other models at the same time. It's appalling to see how many have been in OpenSim for longer than me and in Second Life for even longer than that, and who still don't know a thing about saving and changing outfits nonetheless. And Emmalena has been in OpenSim since times before rigged mesh.
She would also have noticed that she needs avatar scripts to work to change her outfits, and that avatar scripts don't work on that sim because they're disallowed. She would have either worked around it or instructed Shelenn to turn avatar scripts on for the duration of the fashion show. Even if not, someone would have noticed Emmalena walking out onto the catwalk while still being a cloud.
Maybe it would even have come to someone's mind that running something as performance-critical as an automation-less fashion show with the catwalk pointing straight at the main event area at least partially within viewing range is not such a smart idea. The three stages, the decoration and especially over a dozen partially highly detailed avatars probably cut into the graphical performance of some models using computers with on-board graphics that their in-world experience was reduced to slideshows, and they could no longer control their avatars even halfway precisely.
I think I'll come back next Wednesday and see if the team has learned anything from yesterday. At least I may tell Shelenn to activate avatar scripts so that Emmalena won't have to teleport home and return as a cloud again.
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