MY SKIN IS A MESS!!!!!!!

[Bex Fallen]

Hello, i wonder if anyone can help me with a MAJOR issue!?! My avatars skin is a mess....and its not because its cheap or garish...ok basically My avi's skin will rez up fine then in a matter of one or two minutes after i log in it suddenly goes 'fuzzy' to the point where it looks like a block of one colour usally a vile shade of peach with greyish shadows for facial features (or as my friend so kindly said a dead noob with no eyes !!!)...i literally have to rebake every 30seconds in order for my skin to look good...this is a problem that has suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere has occured, nothing has changed with regards to my computer or any soft or hardware i have. i have tried the ctrl alt  F7 solution i read about on the SL bugs page but it has had no effect, ive bought new skins...spent thousands literally! in the hope that it was a product issue and that a new skin would fix it but nothing has worked ! i did notice it happens more frequently like every 5 seconds if i wear a tatoo layer of any kind...PLEASE someone help me! BEX 

[Jessika Rang]

We need more information to help you... it would be helpful to know your computer specifications and what viewer you are using.  Off hand it sounds to me like your graphics card is failing but I suppose it could be something else.  A picture of the problem might be helpful as well.  I doubt it is the skins themselves.

[Peewee Musytari]

Are you using 2.4?

Sounds like a familiar story with that viewer. You appear to have tried all the usual fixes too. The only others I can think of are to remove attachments, switch off HTTP Get Textures on the developers menu & if all else fails, go back to Viewer 2.3.

[Lola Longully]

Is it the same skin you are wearing all the time? If so it could be a corruption problem with the skin. I had that happen once (the head kept changing to a revolting shade different from the body) and the seller told me how to fix it. I don't think I have the instructions any more but if that's the problem the shop should correct it or replace it.

PS I assume you've tried usual remedies like cleaning out your cache files.

[Bex Fallen]

hey there im on viewer 2.3 beta, but i will try your suggestions ty

[Bex Fallen]

hiya...no ive bought 3 new skins over the past 2 weeks and each of them does the same thing...i even tried buying a different brand LOL incase it was that but still the same

[Peewee Musytari]

What graphics card do you have out of interest?

Another thing you could try is, save a copy of all yourself into a folder & name it whatever ya like so you can find it, then reset your avatar to default in:

Developers Menu (Ctrl Alt Q)>>Avatar>>Character Tests>>Test Female

Once you have been changed into a noob, drag the folder back onto your avvie to change you back to yourself again.

[Bex Fallen]

ill give anything a go thanx so muchfor the suggestion  okies ill try that now (with my fingers and toes crossed) as for the graphics card i have no idea, and no idea even where to look for the name of it !

[Peewee Musytari]

Bex Fallen wrote:

 

ill give anything a go thanx so muchfor the suggestion  okies ill try that now (with my fingers and toes crossed) as for the graphics card i have no idea, and no idea even where to look for the name of it !

 

If you go to Help menu, usually the bottom item "About...." (In my case it is About Phoenix Viewer) it should open a box with all sorts of info in it, including your graphics card.

[TC Short]

Have you reset your router/modem? I know it's helped with this issue for me and others in the past.

[Bex Fallen]

heya again wow ur full of awesome tips!!! LOL ok here is my graphics card info as listed on the about tab u navigated me too.....ATI RADEON X1200

[Bex Fallen]

i have yes...i tried that first and have done it around 3 or 4 times but still no change

[Aeronya Arai]

As bad as my answer is going to sound, what you're experiencing is likely the result of a combination of network lag (I know, hard to believe there might be lag in SL isn't it?) and the fact that the display refreshes itself every so often automatically (fetching the texture your AV is wearing for a skin anew every so often just in case you changed skins), you might be able to minimize it's effects by increasing the size of your cache and reducing your draw distance settings (to help ensure your skin texture is kept current in the local cache and not 'pushed out' by the textures for other items that are possibly a fair distance from your AV, and thus does not have to be retrieved from the asset server on a frequent basis).  Unfortunately I don't think any viewer really prioritizes keeping the textures for items worn by your AV over those of items nearby your AV inworld.  I have noticed myself that if I rebake my texture occasionally that the appearance of my skin texture is more consistent and seems to 'blur' and 'distort' much less often (likely because by rebaking I am forcing the viewer to actively retrieve and apply the textures for everything my AV is wearing.).

Hope this helps, good luck.

[Stormy Applewhyte]

I know this might not help your graphics card but when I was in Computer classes in college my teacher told me this program to get to help keep my computer clean and running better. It's called ccleaner and you can find the download link at www.ccleaner.com  on the cleaner tab I normally have every option checked but the wipe free space. You would not believe the crap it cleans off your computer and how much better it runs after that it improves performance it may even help with the graphics to help them load better. By what i've seen your computer has a powerful enough graphics card which leads me to believe that your computer is just running sluggish and needs a good clean up.

[Bex Fallen]

well ill definatley try what u suggest ty very much for the tips! however the amount of times im rebaking is by hitting ctrl alt and r is literally 15 or 20 times a minute and it also happens when im at my parcel where i have no lag at all, but thankyou very much i will definatly try what you sugest

[Bex Fallen]

thats great ty very very much ill do that now! even if it doesnt sort this problem im sure it will generally improve my computer performance! very much appreciated!

[Bex Fallen]

ok entered the develop tab and stumbled across an option to *full res textures* which i thought sounded interesting so i ticked the box and so far ive only rebaked 3 time is 20mins which is a zillion times better than before...so although it didnt solve the issue entirely it has spared my laptop going though the window pane and me hair being torn out in clumps!!! so thankyou so much for the pointers!!!  

[Peewee Musytari]

Thats the way to do it, fiddle with stuff hehe

Try different combinations of all the suggestions you have had here, for example with the one you now have on, try the HTTP get texures on and off, try adjusting the different sliders in graphics at different levels...Avatars high, terrain low etc....try different draw distances...eventually you will find the combination of settings that works the best for your computer.

Keep your ARC (avatar rendering cost) as low as possible without having to resort to looking like a noob. You can switch on a numeric display that tells you your current ARC, ideally you want it in the green on a low number like 400 but with prim hair it is very hard to get it uber low, just avoid it being like 7000 lol

Not sure where the display is in 2.3, in my viewer it is in Advanced menu>>rendering>>info displays>>Avatar rendering cost. Poke about in the advanced and developers menus on 2.3 and I`m sure you will find it, or someone might post directions for that viewer.

[Bex Fallen]

You are an absolute star thankyou so so much for all of your help and taking the time to offer your many suggestions ! seriously seriously grateful to everyone who offered help but especially  to you Peewee!!!! im a complete computer/technology idiot and really do appreciate all your guides to the the right places on my interface (heheheh had to say a word like that...sounds like im PUTER SAVVY) lol !

[Aeronya Arai]

It's also possible that the lag that is causing this might be due to a problem with your network connection, there are a couple of tests you can try to help narrow it down.

One is to perform a speedtest of your internet connection and look at the ping times reported, I'd go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and run several tests selecting a range of different locations a few near you and a few in say california (near LL's servers).  If the ping times exceed 200ms then the problem is most likely either with your ISP or with a server between you and the server you tested against (another test called a traceroute would help to determine where the problem is), in particular if the ping times are high when testing against a server that is nearby your RL location then I would contact your ISP and have them send someone to your home to test your connection.

Another way to troubleshoot your connection is to run a pingtest similar to the above speedtest, go to http://www.pingtest.net/ and once again run tests against multiple servers some near you and others a good distance from you, this test will give you an idea of whether your connection is having to resend packets due to packet loss or not, if the packet loss is above say 5% (mine tests at 0% packet loss but then again I've manually tweaked my network settings to increase the timeout settings so that packets are given a little longer time to try to reach their destination before being considered as having failed to reach their destination) for tests ran against servers nearby you then I'd recommend contacting your ISP to have your connection tested.

If you want information about manually optimizing your connection you might want to do some reading on this site: http://www.speedguide.net/ specifically their 'Broadband' section, there you'll find information about various settings related to TCP/IP protocol settings.  Including a program called 'TCP Optimizer' that can help you to customize your connection between you and your ISP as well as to help improve local network access too (if you have a home network that is).

In Windows you can use the 'netstat' (without the quotation marks) command from a command prompt to tell you what servers your computer is currently connected to (including the name of any linden labs servers), with that you can then run a traceroute using the command 'tracert' followed by the server address to test against to help to identify where the problem is by looking at the ping times between each server.  There is a graphical form of the traceroute command available in the form of a program named WinMTR available from: http://winmtr.sourceforge.net

The above information should help you to track down whether there is a problem with your ISP or if the problem is somewhere further down the line.

[Bex Fallen]

WOW! ok ill do exactly what you just said....after i print out the instructions! thankyou so much for taking the time to offer help !

[Peewee Musytari]

Aww..you are very welcome Bex....Just think when you meet someone else having the same sort of problems and you tell them how to fix it, you will be amazed at how savvy you sound then hehe

[Bex Fallen]

LMFAO hmmmm maybe! but methinks it be far safer for there avvies survival if i direct them here lol knowing my luck id give em a instant death command! hahahaha! 

[Ophelia Pelazzi]

Given the fact that the OP stated that his friend saw the difference as well, then the problem is the LL network, not his. So adjustments to the OP's personal puter won't really fix the problem.

[Aeronya Arai]

Sorry too sound so long winded there, but after doing some more thinking I realized that there is one more thing that could be giving the symptoms you have described, and that is if you have overridden the 'recommended settings' for your graphics settings in your particular viewer and set some of the features above what the viewer itself recommended, in situations like this you might still be experiencing a problem with texture loading only this time it's not so much with the local cache but rather with the amount of graphics memory your video card may or may not have.  If say for example you have your graphics settings manually set to 'High' when your viewer recommended setting them on 'Low' then you may be having a problem whereby there is simply too much texture data being sent to your video card and as a result it is having to 'push out' other texture data to make room for the incoming data in much the same way that a small local cache only gives you so much room for textures having a small amount of video memory (say for example 256mb, instead of say 512mb or more) also limits the amount of room for textures, though in this instance that is decided partly by the graphics settings, the higher the setting the more video memory required typically (enabling settings like anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering and turning mesh details up higher and setting particle counts higher and other things can increase the amount of memory needed to render what you see, meaning that it may either not be able to refresh certain things or may take longer to render certain things as opposed to lower settings which require less processing and less video memory).

So before you dig into the network troubleshooting you might want to try resetting your graphics preferences to either the 'Recommended Settings' or just below that even.  You'll probably want to clear your cache and relog after selecting the new graphics settings.

[Jackson Ushimawa]

Hi you probably already had your answer somewhere in world, but the same thing happened to me until i was told to uncheck HTTP textures. It worked for me. now i dont have to rebake ever freakin 10 secs.