Seeing things differently with different viewers

[JeanneAnne]

I have a question .. If anyone cares to respond:

Why can my feet look perfectly good to me yet I get IMed telling me I have four feet or that my shoes don't fit right?

I'm mostly using the Firestorm Betav2.5.2.16922 because this viewer gives me the most fps. My shoes or bare feet look perfectly fine to me with this viewer. I assume that those who see my feet funny are using a newer mesh enabled viewer but don't really know which viewer they're using. Maybe Phoenix, probably not the official LL viewers .. not sure. Once when I was told my feet looked funny and they looked ok to me, I saw a guy dancing whose shoes didnt look right to me, so I asked if his feet looked ok to the person telling me about my feet, & she said his feet were fine. So it works both ways.

So is it normal for people to see feet & shoes differently with different viewers? (I'm not talking about mesh...) If so, what can I do to make sure my feet look ok to others when they look ok to me?

Thanks!

Jeanne

[Lukeh Ghost]

Shoes tend to come with Alpha Mask you put on your feet which remove your feet (well turn them invisible) so you can wear shoes and your feet don't stick out the side.

When you looked at the guys feet they may have been mesh because the Firestorm viewer you are using is a pre-mesh version "Firestorm 2.5.2.16922 (Preview 2, Non Mesh)" http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/doku.php?id=downloads

I know you said it's not mesh but this is just an option for you seeing other people's shoes funny they appear like they are wearing weird prims that are textured weird.

It could also be that other people have different LOD (Level of Detail)

I'm guessing that you are doing the best for your fps so you have your graphics on low? if you do by default your LOD is set to 1.1 so sculpted shoes that aren't near you will not render fully there for from further away will look weird, try zooming into them. And your friends see the shoes fine because they have a higher LOD setting so they render correctly from further distances.

To increase your LOD click 

CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S
type in 'RenderVolumeLODFactor'

and increase it to 2 or 4 see if this is any better.

[Theresa Tennyson]

When mesh viewers have "lighting and shadows/deferred rendering" on they currently don't support the old "invisiprims" that were used to hide things before alpha layers came out. If you are wearing shoes/feet that use invisiprims and you don't have an alpha layer on they can see the deformed foot part of your shape/skin.

You can get around this by wearing an alpha layer. If the shoes didn't come with one you can probably find a similar one somewhere. Boots and flats are easy, pumps aren't bad. Open-heeled sandals are usually a problem finding exactly the right "alpha" though.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Don't know if this would be the reason, but when I have shadows enabled, shoes are goofy

But, I see this in my viewer as well, no matter which one I use....

[Luc Starsider]

You could ask the person who do not see your feet correctly to take a picture and give you. You could then post it here so we could take a look. Perhaps it gives a clue to what is wrong?

- Luc -

[Innula Zenovka]

Invisiprims are broken in any viewer based on code more recent than November of last year if you have deferred rendering (aka light and shadows) enabled -- see SH-2720.   So it's not so much a question of what viewer you're using (though that might come into it with older versions of Firestorm and Phoenix; I'm not sure) as what graphics settings you're using when you look at invisiprims.

Alpha Masks (aka Alpha Layers) are the answer.  If you don't have any suitable ones, Imnotgoing Sideways has some free ones in the Marketplace (can't link to it since the MP seems to be down at the moment, presumably as part of the maintenance).   

They're not too difficult to make for things like boots (see http://www.brinksie.com/2011/04/07/how-to-make-an-alpha-layer/ and/or

 ) but they are a bit fiddly for detailed work.

 

 

[JeanneAnne]

Thanks to all who responded!

Yeah, my pc is old & i have most all the settings pretty low. I've noticed that my avatar & those nearby me can be pretty smooth but avvies across the dance floor can be pretty jerky & laggy looking. This isn't a mesh issue ~I know about mesh & have the Firestorm v4 & i have a mesh skirt i sometimes wear. But my fps are really low w/ the mesh enabled viewer so i seldom use it. My problem is prolly an old pc, low settings, & i dont have shadows on. I can understand how this might affect shoes but sometimes the problem is with my Coyote bare feet too. I have the thingie that makes the default avvie's feet invisible but once i was told i had 4 feet so i guess they could still be seen. We use2 dance on water & my sister showed me how to make the greenish thing on my shoes that showed against the water go away in edit (altho i've forgotten by now how to do it ~LoL) but that was just with one pair of sneakers. Guess i just need a new PC !!

Jeanne

[Rhys Goode]

I'm currently sorting through my inventory, and finding or making alpha masks for older shoes that use invisiprims.  I will likely toss some otherwise perfectly good sandles, the last custom alpha mask I did took an hour, just not worth the time.

Disabling "lighting and shadows" works fine for what I see, but the setting I use in my viewer, or the particular viewer I use has no effect at all on what poeple using up to date viewers see when they look at me.  And I dont like walking around with ugly looking feet.  I can edit the "wrappers" on prim clothes to be tiny and invisible, so if someone has a non-mesh viewer I might look naked to them.  Thats OK.  But I draw the line at ugly shoes with spurious fleshy looking heels sticking out..

[Parhelion Palou]

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JeanneAnne wrote:

<snip>

I've noticed that my avatar & those nearby me can be pretty smooth but avvies across the dance floor can be pretty jerky & laggy looking.

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What you're seeing is avatar impostors, a feature LL added awhile ago to ease the rendering load on viewers. The viewer will properly render nearby avatars and replace the others with crude representations of the actual avatars. You can configure the number of non-impostor avatars you see in the Graphics tab in Preferences.

I don't think there is any way to ensure that others see your avatar the way you do. It's fun to have several people take pictures of the same thing then share the pictures. You'll find that, just as IRL, we all see things differently.

[JeanneAnne]

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Rhys Goode wrote:

I'm currently sorting through my inventory, and finding or making alpha masks for older shoes that use invisiprims.  I will likely toss some otherwise perfectly good sandles, the last custom alpha mask I did took an hour, just not worth the time.

Disabling "lighting and shadows" works fine for what I see, but the setting I use in my viewer, or the particular viewer I use has no effect at all on what poeple using up to date viewers see when they look at me.  And I dont like walking around with ugly looking feet.  I can edit the "wrappers" on prim clothes to be tiny and invisible, so if someone has a non-mesh viewer I might look naked to them.  Thats OK.  But I draw the line at ugly shoes with spurious fleshy looking heels sticking out..

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I cant stand having ugly feet either !! Which is why I have the Coyote bare feet .. They are grey when i 1st log in but i've discovered that if i zoom on them they turn flesh colored more quickly .. Took me awhile to match their tone w/ my skin but i finally got it right! I knew that i sometimes had trouble with shoes but i thot that my bare feet were ok once they grey went away .. but the other evening i was told that i had 4 feet .. even tho i was wearing the thing that makes the default feet invisible .. I told my sister that i just wasnt going to care how i looked to others & she said that well .. she cared .. & i had to admit that so do i .. & its embarrassing when someone IMs "~psssst .. you have four feet~"  !! So i dont know what to do anymore ..

Jeanne

[JeanneAnne]

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Parhelion Palou wrote:

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JeanneAnne wrote:

<snip>

I've noticed that my avatar & those nearby me can be pretty smooth but avvies across the dance floor can be pretty jerky & laggy looking.

---

What you're seeing is avatar impostors, a feature LL added awhile ago to ease the rendering load on viewers. The viewer will properly render nearby avatars and replace the others with crude representations of the actual avatars. You can configure the number of non-impostor avatars you see in the Graphics tab in Preferences.

I don't think there is any way to ensure that others see your avatar the way you do. It's fun to have several people take pictures of the same thing then share the pictures. You'll find that, just as IRL, we all see things differently.

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Ah! Thanks Parhelion .. I'd seen a setting for number of avatar imposters but since i didnt know what that meant i didnt mess w/ it .. now i know !! Thanks!

I guess youre right about others not necessarily seeing my avatar the way i do .. which kinda sucks .. how am i supposed to know how others see me then ?!? I have brought an alt in before .. just to see how i look from the alt's perspective .. but running an alt lags me out & how my alt sees me may not be how other ppl w/ different viewers & settings see me anyhow .. i guess .. But yeah .. I've seen pics my sister has taken of me where my feet .. or at least my toes .. are all grey when they looked ok to me .. So I guess i see what you mean.. :matte-motes-sour:

Jeanne