Coby Foden

Camera control while walking: • Method 1 (two hand operation): Left click your avatar and hold. Start walking pressing W-key. Then slide the mouse: forward - camera goes down, backwards camera goes higher. Slide the mouse left, avatar turns left. Slide the mouse right, avatar turns right. All this available while the avatar walks. Wherever you walk you can see clearly any obstacles on the way. Note: you don't need to use all the WASD-keys. Just holding down the W-key is enough. Very easy and convenient way to manipulate walking. • Method 2 (single hand operation): Left click your avatar and hold. Then click also the right mouse button and hold. The avatar starts walking. Yay! Then slide the mouse: forward - camera goes down, backwards camera goes higher. Slide the mouse left, avatar turns left. Slide the mouse right, avatar turns right. These both methods work at least in Firestorm viewer. I haven't tried them in the Linden Lab viewer. Personally I find method 1 easier to use than method 2. In method 2 when sliding the mouse, I tend to lose keeping down both mouse buttons. About your RL vs. SL comparison (again): Even though SL and RL are totally different worlds as you say (what a surprise, nobody knew that! ) there is a very good reason for consistent sizing of things. What better way there would be for consistent sizing reference in any virtual world than to use real life measurements? None at all. Using "avatar average heights" as a reference is not good method. Every designer might have their own idea of the average heights. Which is quite evident when looking the creations in Second Life. Combine that with creating content by eyeballing and guesstimating and we have the mess what we have in SL.

1. I like that Second Life is a world with lots of interesting places to visit and to do something. 2. One wish? Please LL upgrade the system avatar. The sooner the better.

Most of this situation (lack of clothing and incompatibility of clothes between mesh bodies) could have been prevented if Linden Lab had upgraded the default body to be as good as the mesh bodies are. The situation will turn even worse when there will be more and more new mesh bodies and mesh heads - again incompatible with anything else. This is a bad path leading to chaos in avatar accessories. Linden Lab wake up. It's never too late to turn the boat for better course.

I have noticed that body and head skins match often well at the back and on sides of the neck. The problem area often seems to be in the front. I have exactly the same skins from the same designer for mesh body and mesh head. In some lighting conditions there is no visible seam. However in some other lighting conditions there is a slightly visible seam in the front, under the chin. Nothing very disturbing though.

About to go for evening sailing. At sunset the sea looks amazing.

The point is that giant avatars need bigger rooms than realistic sized avatars. I'm sure you understand this. Real life sized avatars are happier too in slightly bigger rooms than what we have in RL. But for them the RL sized furniture works the best. No need to make them oversized "to fill the void" because the room is not massively oversized as it should be for giant avatars. I have tested many items which obviously have been creating just by eyeballing and 'guesstimating'. Those do not not work well. Here I ordered a glass of wine, and I was given this - a bowl of wine! It's too big even for the tallest SL avatar what is possible to create. The fact is that real life sized things do work in SL when the avatar is not a giant. In Sansar the content and avatars are created to real life sizes and it indeed does work well. Cheers! (When I've finished the bowl somebody needs to carry me home.)

You already know how to adjust your view while walking, don't you? You can look down, look up, turn, thus you will see where you are putting your feet. No sore toes. But maybe you find that kind of walking too difficult? It might be due to the walking speed of avatar, which is constant. It would be great if we could vary our walking speed. In general SL avatars walk too fast. It's ok outside and in large buildings and houses. For smaller interiors we would need slower walking speed. Just like in real life, we walk slowly inside our homes, outside we usually walk faster.

Default is just what the programmer decided to be the default. In many cases it might not even be the best setting. The default camera position in the viewer is really bad one (I would refer to it as a view of the world from the top of a tree). For many years I have used better position for the camera and it works extremely well - anywhere in SL, whether the place is built oversized or if it's built with realistic (i.e. close to or exact real life dimensions). So, there is no need to constantly change the camera position "to accommodate things" because the better camera position works well all over SL. And it really gives a better view of SL. I would never ever go back to the default camera position. My better camera position "just works" too - and better than the default. - - - - I have heard some whispers that the viewer might have later some easy controls to change the default camera position. Which would be great because now the settings are kind of hidden in the debug settings what lots of users might not even be aware of. - - - -

While shopping I noticed this FOR SALE sign. I edited it a bit (don't tell anybody).

Beaches are among the favourite places in SL where I like to hang about.

This might be unisex zipper? Zip, zip, ziiiip...

If you really, really want to make an avatar with prims there is one available in SL. Go and get it. Wear it and study how it's made. Primitar (The Prim avatar) is available here, can be bought with 0 L$: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife//229/151/33

While exploring places this looked like a perfect spot snap a selfie. Actually I took about ten and selected the one which looked the nicest - the rest trashed. One shot is never enough when the animations are playing. When taking many you can then select the best one. With bento heads the faces have sparked to life, you need to catch the perfect moment.

My sailboat leaks even if I turn ALM off. But it happens only when sailing fast and when the boat is tilted a lot to one side. I guess your yacht has invisiprim which hides the water inside the boat (naturally it does so only when ALM is off).

Exercising. This is one way to keep the avatar in good shape. Do it daily so the shape sliders don't start to drift away from their preferred settings.

Well, I have not taken anyone's RIGHT away to view SL in any way they choose to. Of course everybody is free choose what pleases them. I was just pointing out that very strong highlights on clothing don't look great and I said there is a better way to do things. (i.e. use very subtle highlights, then add materials for even more pleasant looks.) Maybe, I should have added "if you are able to use the feature". Then this clash of opinions and possible misunderstandings would not have happened. - - - - - Avatar accessories is a huge business in SL. Why is it so? Obviously most people want that their avatars look nice. What other reason there would be if not that one? If they didn't care how their avatar looks then avatar accessories would not be big business. So in this respect Fionalein's "me, me, me!" reply looks rather odd. - - - - -

Hmm... Is there something inherently bad if we want to see ourselves and others too looking great in our viewer? It's nothing to do with "me, me me!" Your'e totally wrong in saying so. Windlight is not a cure for bad looks. I almost always use region default Windlight just to see how the owner wanted to the place to look. I change Windlight sometimes for a specific purpose, like for example when wanting have some special effect on snapshot.

I would be interested to hear where you got that information? Is the information recent and is the source reliable? Materials came to SL already 5 years ago. How long we should wait for all to catch up? For example in Firestorm it's possible to turn ALM on with very low graphics settings. Already when "Quality and Speed" slider is between Low and Mid. Even quite modest computer should be able to run that. I do know that. There are even some Windlights (all Windlights for "optimal skin looks" for example), which totally kill material effects and shadows. But who in their right mind would use those Windlights all the time and thus stare at very cartoonist looking scenery? Anyway, I mostly dress for myself, I don't care much if there are some who don't see the materials effects on what I wear. And, my idea was not to encourage the OP to create bad looking clothes with extreme highlighting, in spite of that they might like it. There is already too much bad content in SL, why to create more similar stuff? Rather I told that there is a better way to make really good looking clothing.

For a change exploring mainland. I saw this not so common bridge design. Created by: Vanity Mole, on 3 August 2009 Location: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Fishers Rest/32/70/23 Mainland has vast empty land areas, but there are occasional nice surprises among the emptiness.

Umm.. strong painted on highlights are not gorgeous. They actually ruin the looks of otherwise nice looking clothes. Personally I try to avoid buying clothes with very strong painted on highlights. If there are painted on highlights then they should be very subtle, almost unnoticeable. Then you can add materials and end result will be great looking. By using materials without any painted on highlights will look great too. Forget the painted on strong highlights; instead learn to use materials skillfully. There are designers who use materials excellently, but there are also those who still need to learn how to use them properly. So there is some learning and experimenting to do on the way to become an expert.

Hey! I saw what you're doing... (We we're supposed to be dancing.) I new that this dance animation was coming, so I kept my camera ready.

I think I still have one ancient freebie rabbit avatar in my inventory. All others are humans.

Today I was measuring avatars in one ball room. My avatar is 1.93 meters tall with my 0.15 meters extremely high heels on. With bare flat feet my avatar is 1.78 meters tall, which is still rather tall and uncommon for RL women. (In RL Gigantism is a serious condition that is nearly always caused by an adenoma, a tumor of the pituitary gland. Gigantism occurs in patients who had excessive growth hormone in childhood. The pituitary tumor cells secrete too much growth hormone, leading to many changes in the body.) But what caused overgrowth in SL? My guess is that the Primitar (the prim avatar) is the faulty one, it was made two tall in the very beginning. Then the polygon body, which was the next step from Primitar, was made about the same height as the Primitar was. And here we are now, still suffering from that great mistake. (Or was it a secret design decision by LL? "Psst... Let's make the avatars too tall so we can sell more land.")

Where I live it will be 1 L$. First amount, then currency symbol separated with space from the amount. That's how we mark prices with any currency. It looks weird for us if it's any other way.