Why are some prims invisible until right-clicked?

[Jennifer Boyle]

Often, a prim will be invisible until right-clicked and then will instantly become fully visible. I have observed this for years.

What is going on?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

It seems to be caused by network confusion.

There's a few recent threads on the forum discussing it (eg. this), and this Jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233107

Edited February 12, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[animats]

26 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It seems to be caused by network confusion.

There's a few recent threads on the forum discussing it (eg. this), and this Jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233107

That's a different problem. Here's a taxonomy of SL "object not showing up" bugs.

• You can walk through it,  and you can see it. - either the physics model made by the creator is no good, or you're at a region boundary and walking through something in the next region and very close to the edge before the next region takes over control of the avatar/vehicle. As a rule of thumb, don't build walls or fences within 2m of a region boundary if you want them to work as obstacles.
• You can't walk through it, you can't see it, and you can't click on it - usually an interest list bug, per BUG-233107. Collisions are server side, so the server knows, but the viewer didn't get the word.
• You can't walk through it, you can't see it, but you can click on it - usually a mesh object where the mesh didn't load. This can be either the viewer not asking for the mesh from the asset servers soon enough, or the asset servers being unable to find the asset.
• You can't walk through it, you can see it, and you can click on it, but it's grey. Either the "material" asset or some texture asset hasn't loaded yet. Same problem as above with asset loading order. but for texture and material assets, not mesh assets.

"Avatar stuck at pink cloud" I don't understand yet.

These are all bugs. They're not inherent in the SL architecture. All can be fixed. Some are getting fixed. As some get fixed, the remaining ones show up with more clarity.

[Henri Beauchamp]

4 hours ago, Jennifer Boyle said:

Often, a prim will be invisible until right-clicked and then will instantly become fully visible. I have observed this for years.

What is going on?

This specific bug is a race condition between the interest list data sent by the server and the rebuilding of spatial groups in the viewer render pipeline; it is normally ”seen” (no pun intended) happening after login, a TP, or a sim border crossing.

Some viewers (TPVs, not LL) got workaround(s) for it (usually ”manual” ones, involving selecting a ”Refresh visibility of objects” or equivalent item in a menu); the Cool VL Viewer implements an auto-refresh of objects visibility for the three cases when such an issue might happen (login, TP, sim border crossing).

For viewers not implementing any specific workaround, the most reliable way to make such ”invisible” objects pop into existence, is to toggle the wire-frame render mode on/off.

 

As Animats wrote, there are other possible issues that can lead to ”invisible” objects, but the one you described is only due to what I just explained.

[Nalates Urriah]

Its caused by computer goblins...

Put out rat poison and peanut butter.

[Kathrine Jansma]

On 2/12/2023 at 10:04 PM, animats said:

"Avatar stuck at pink cloud" I don't understand yet.

On reason that happens is when some mandatory body part is lost from the restored outfit.

E.g. shape, eyes, the old style hair. Once you put it on, the avatar rezzes fully. Maybe viewers could double check that the mandatory parts of an Avi are restored on load and offer some help when that fails?

But thats probably not the only reason it can happen.