Strange skin effects on demo mesh body avatars

[angeoco]

I downloaded some demo mesh body avatars and tried them on, but I notice that they all have strong shadows on the skin and/or "segmented" bodies, where the joins between body parts are very noticeable. Is this normal? Is there anything I can do about it? I'm using Firestorm viewer. Thanks a lot.

Edit after Rolig Loon's (thanks!) reply: Here's the Maitreya Lara demo (with my own head) as an example: http://imgur.com/a/BkVK1 . Most of the others are worse.

Edit to answer Whirly Fizzle (thanks!): In my graphics options, Hardware Skinning is ticked but greyed-out, which I suppose means it's permanently enabled.

[Rolig Loon]

Unless other textures are also looking odd on your screen, it's probably not your computer's fault.  However, it is peculiar that you would have gotten several demos that all have a segmented, shadowy look -- unless they were all made by the same designer, of course.  If you have access to another computer, try logging on with it to see if they still look strange.  If they do, I'd suggest shopping for other bodies.

[Whirly Fizzle]

Your image looks like you have Hardware Skinning disabled.  You must have hardware skinning enabled to view any of those onion skinned mesh bodies or heads correctly.

Avatar -> Preferences -> Graphics -> General -> Tick "Hardware Skinning".

Does that fix the problem?

[Alwin Alcott]

it sounds to me a little different than the other answers...

 

a mesh body will always show mismatch at own system heads because the skin doesn't match.

This isn't shadows but the skins not matching, the body has a basic set installed while you wear perhaps another brand.

You can always give this a bit, but as long youdon't use the same skin for mesh body ánd head it won't get better.

 

The darker parts on your body might be shadows from you windlight settings.

 

note... if hardware skimming is greyed out, it's permanently disabled, meaning your graphics doesn't support it. Mostly meaning you have a graphics card that is not able to make SL run on higher settings.

[Innula Zenovka]

As Alwyn says, it looks as if SL has detected your system can't run Hardware Skinning. 

This is what my Advanced Graphics Preferences page looks like: