Dean Haystack

Map rights means you allow a user to find you in world. When you look at your friends list, after the name you will have 5 check boxes. Friend can see when you are online Friend can locate you on the map Friend can edit, delete or take objects You can locate them on the map You can edit this friend's object You can only toggle the first 3 boxes, the description is self explanatory. The first will let that friend know when you come online, but fair warning even if you uncheck that to hide yourself there are other ways to tell if you are or aren't online. The second is the map rights, when you check that box that friend can find you on the world map and teleport to you directly, anyone inclined to stalk you can ask you for this and as a new user that doesn't know what they are doing you might check that box and then not remember how to turn that off. You can see this when you open the world map, there will be a drop-down select box that says My Friends Online, if anyone gave you permission to find them, that's where you go. The third one allows that friend to edit your objects, the text is a bit misleading, they can't "take" your stuff as in steal it from you. They can't edit your avatar directly either. You can give that to someone you trust around your house if you ever get to rent a parcel and get a house they can help you adjust your couch into place and things like that. The forth tells you if that friend lets you locate them on the map, again to do this, you open the world map, there will be a drop-down select box that says My Friends Online. The fifth shows you if a friend has given you permission to edit their objects.

SL doesn't have a steep learning curve, it has an abyss. It's like trying to present a space program to a civilization that just figured out fire. As a beginner you need all the help you can get, and then some, never turn down help from someone but be clever. Some people will offer help with good intentions, others with ill ones. Don't give anyone your map rights, if anyone asks that is a massive red flag. Be careful when any dialog box pops up, do NOT click accept on anything without reading first, you'll hear objects can steal your money, they can't, they CAN ask you for permission to take it but you are the one that has to give it, the dialog window even shows up in bright yellow and people still click on it without reading... Don't give anyone your password, don't click on any suspicious links but don't be paranoid either, someone trying to help you might send you a link to an image capture website such as imgur or gyazo, they do this because uploading a throw away picture would cost 10L$. I see that you understand SL is a visual medium, one thing you'll hear people constantly talking about is an avatar appearance, you will be judged by it remember that, building an avatar with personality is a substantial undertaking but also very rewarding. Avoid common pitfalls, don't buy anything at first glance. Take your time, this might take weeks or months, build it up with demos, you cannot try enough demos or for long enough. A good strategy is to do it over time, making your shape for example, you can work on it using demos and once you feel you had enough for the day and rather do something else, save your work and go do something else, come back to it next time.

As it has been said: Appearance. Profile. For appearance, unlike popular believe, you don't just throw money at your avatar and call it done, having a mesh head and body doesn't mean an avatar looks great or has any personality, people can have an avatar with neither of those looking more alluring when they know what they are doing. One of the most important elements in your avatar is your shape, most people in SL under utilize it, specially those with Bento mesh heads when they leave it close to stock, and that is what I meant when I said it's not about just throwing money at it. Think of it this way, I can go on Flickr and actually tell you the names of certain people just by looking at pictures, because they have made their avatars that memorable and with an actual identity that you can recognize them. This is far from easy, and it DOESN'T involve throwing a million accessories on, a lesson Aesthetic thought us well. It's a lot of hard work, but if you put it in you'll rip the rewards. As for profile, it's all about what you want someone's first impression to be, there's really no right way to do it it comes down to taste. But I will say this, you'll often see people using their Picks and as extension of their profile (I do this myself) the thing to remember is, Picks (not pics like it's so often referred to) were designed for people to advertise places that they like, and so when you press that New button it will automatically fill out with the parcel information you are standing on, including a teleport link to it. So do not make any while standing in your private house, I've lost count at the amount of people that asked me for help because someone was "tracking" them and found where they lived... Also take some time to consider your display name, the group tag you'll have on, or even the groups you have on display in your profile. When you have all that done and it's time to be social also remember the environment you are on. Finding the right place can be tricky, you'll be hard pressed to find anything good in the search result because a lot of places will game the system to come out on top, you can visit a couple of dozen of these find nothing good (trust me you won't) and then be under the impression there's nothing good in SL. I can tell you that the good places don't really rely on advertising themselves, because that would bring the wrong crowd, instead they rely on word of mouth, people that are on them will bring other people as they see fit if they judged them to be "good enough" call it elitist and it might very well be but it's no different than RL, you cannot demand to be part of a circle.

You have to remember your boat and your avatar are 2 different entities, when you sim cross you are being transferred from one CPU to another in the LL servers. You'll often hear people tell you to de-script as much as possible but this can be counter productive, imagine your avatar is full alpha with no scripts, it will get transferred quickly and be placed... ? No where, since your boat will take a lot longer to get there. That is how you get separated from your boat. Mind you the reverse can also happen, so don't go loading on scripts in your avatar just because. The take away here is, this will always happen and sailing in SL is only worth it for the social aspect and as a part of something much bigger than just that, there will be video games a lot better suited for the sport, in SL, do it for the friends and when you do crash make a joke out of it for a laugh.

Might be a long shot but if the stalker didn't mark them currently as restricted on Flickr you can try to report them like that, most people set those wrong. Other than that, I know you are here asking because your friend is quite upset so saying "no one cares" doesn't do much to help you and by extension her, so, best thing you can do is good old emotional support.

Forget accessories, that is a mistake that so many people do, they think if they put together the right combination of face piercings and mesh ears with a million earrings, then a scar, then a tattoo, then different colored eyes they'll look "unique." But they don't, they look like everyone else, only with different bells and whistles glued on them, same goes for makeup. Your shape and skin combination is what will give you that unique feel, the shape in particular. I know many people that will say "I've made my own custom shape" but all they did was make the lips every so slightly fuller and the nose ever so slightly smaller, you need to put in a LOT more work than that to avoid that familiar look of "I've seen this head before." Personally I just took a picture of myself, put it on a prim and placed it in front of my mesh head to shape it. You can try doing the same or use a picture of a celebrity. Another good trick is try shaping a head that you DON'T like, do that with the demo before you commit to buying it. The reason being, if you get one you like you'll resist moving away from its off-the-box look, if you try turning a head you don't like into something you to, you're gonna get far from that initial familiar look. This goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, avoid getting the latest heads banking on the fact they are new and there for unique, so "job done" that is another mistake I've known people to make only to hear them complain about the money they've spend on their dozens of heads that a few months later "everyone is using."

Make sure you don't have your AO overwriting the sitting animations. That's something that shouldn't be included on AOs today, since anything you sit on other than a basic box will have its own animations, and AO that tries to overwrite those is gonna put you too high or too low. Most HUD AOs have a the option to turn off just the sits, not the whole AO, look into that.

If you play video games often you might have opened some ports in your router, I haven't done enough testing to be 100% sure BUT, call it placebo or what ever you want, I have a feeling when I have ports open on my router I tend to disconnect on TPs. Maybe you can look into that if you find some free time in your hands but don't expect nothing from it.

You know one thing you can do is keep a list in your computer of the places you'd like to rez at. In the log in screen of your viewer you have Home or Last Location, but that is also an input box, so, if you type in there "Sim Name/123/45/67" (the numbers being the exact coordinates where you wanna show up) you will log in there provided you have access to that place.

Someone already told you how many in total, that you can sail I can tell you I've went on a boat trip that was over 1000 sims in one 11 hour sitting, if that is what you are looking for. Just remember you will crash, get disconnected, randomly ejected by security orbs, break your vessel by hitting a ban line and so on. So a word of advice, don't worry so much about crossing a large distance, you should make the best of each sim, and do it SLOWLY, there's no point on trying to do this fast you won't get any enjoyment out of your travels that way.

Nothing "needs" to be done, but it SHOULD be done. As someone else pointed out... I'm gonna give you some numbers, the Maitreya Lara mesh body (plus hands and feet) has 253,824 triangles. Belleza Jake, 179,545. Those are the bodies alone, add in a head, eyes, hair, some clothes, shoes, and you are looking at ~700,000 triangles. For reference, a modern video game will use ~100,000 triangles on their main character models, lesser ones can use 50-25,000. Your typical Sunday night clubbing avatar on Second Life is rocking 7 times more triangles than what's on display in a modern AAA video game. Not naming any names, but I saw someone on Flickr the other day commenting on how a wearable prop (something relatively small your avatar is suppose to hold in their hand) being sold at an SL event was built using 1,3 million triangles... for a prop... For textures, in a modern game a main character will use about 30-50MB worth of textures at the very high, while on SL, well... you are looking at 100-200MB on your average avatar, when not a LOT more in some cases. Then people wonder "why can I run games no problem, but SL struggles?" LL has said before they don't like to enforce hard limits since that hinders creativity, but it is clear that content creators on SL can't police themselves. Bakes on Mesh was developed in an effort to cull this, both triangles and textures, it will help immensely with texture memory BUT the mesh on these heads and bodies should be reworked as well to cut down on triangles by at least half since the clothes layer has some use, the tattoo and underwear layers on the mesh should be completely eliminated, only they won't. First, because that would mean work. Second, to ensure the product would stay retro-compatible they would probably have to ship them in 2 versions, and do you know how many people have complained about their Lara hands not working with the Bento AO when they were using the old ones instead of the actual updated Bento ones? Content creators tend to make their products fool proof for this reason, so they won't wanna open themselves to support requests by people that are wearing the wrong thing and can't take 2 minutes to read a notecard with all the answers to their questions.

The secret is to put in the work. I'm guessing you liked how the Tellaq Talisman looked and you grabbed it before putting much thought into it, and now you cannot really customize it or even dress it. Now the bad news is, as far as customizing it or even dressing it you really don't have any options. The really bad news is, if you want something that you can construct to have a personality and identity you have to buy something else. The good is, there are no good news, the hard work has just began for you as far as constructing an avatar. Even someone very good at making avatars will take hours and hours to make a good one, because you need to pick the right parts, the right appliers, and make the right shape, get the right clothes. The average user will take days if not weeks (might even take months or years of trial and error) to do make a good avatar, that means putting in the leg work, try demos, don't buy anything until you are certain and make sure you really are certain before you do. It's a steep learning curve, but if you persevere you can end up with a really special creation.

Here's an idea for eyes. Go on the MP and find some gacha ones. Eyes can be a few hundred L$ new, but gacha ones on the MP, specially if they came out a year or two ago can be had easily for under 100L$, you can even find top quality ones for as little as 20L$. Then it's only a matter of adjusting them to your head, which should be easy enough. Avoid anything fancy that tries to simulate iris opening and closing, those either warp the texture (which to me looks disturbing) or they use layers of mesh which will bug out with glasses, specially sun ones.

Try all the demos, and not for just a second.

Then don't hide it? It isn't anyone's business, you have the right to keep your privacy. Just like everyone else has the right to not associate anymore with someone they feel like wasn't honest with them. You see you can't have your cake and eat it too, if you don't hide it, then the onus would be on the individuals themselves to make their choice if they would like to associate themselves with you or not. Let me give you an example, I have a trans friend in SL that insists on buying pants and shorts with bulges on them, and when I asked her why does she care so much and even skips on clothes that don't have bulges, she said because other wise she might be sending the wrong message with her appearance and that way people can make an informed decision if they wanna approach her or not, which saves her a load of trouble. Now, different strokes for different folks, I'm not telling you to carry on a sign, what I am telling you is, if hiding that fact is causing you distress and costing you personal relationships, maybe it is time to rethink that approach as you seem to be doing right now, I'm willing to bet being honest will be liberating and it won't ever again cost you any relations when the truth is revealed.

I just wanna throw this out here, you might wanna consider just having a special moment for the two of you, exchange vows, do some pictures and just enjoy yourselves. Because think of the alternative, you are gonna bring in people you'll barely know to a very intimate setting, how exactly are you gonna entertain them? Are you gonna have a DJ there? And don't say either you or your bride can do that, you won't be able to multitask that and even if you do, do you really wanna spend that day focus on entertaining strangers? Not to mention they will have little or nothing to add, it's not like they will have stories of either of you to tell so at best you'll be talking about things neither of you were there for. Now think, why do you even want them there in the first place? To have an event with some people that will mark a special occasion? But how are they gonna add to that? They're not, and things will get awkward really quick at which point you'll just wanna leave and likely not talk to them much ever again, are the pictures you might take in a group really worth all that? Managing to get a sizable group there would be ideal, because then they would mingle among themselves, but odds are you'll get 2 or 3 there at best, which will be a very small number and make everything even more awkward. Trust me there is nothing wrong doing a ceremony where is just the two of you, in your head you might think it's a sad thing to do but it can be a lot more special than having some friends there, let alone strangers.

The hairbase has elements that influence a Bento Head, namely... Eyebrow> Eyebrow Size Eyebrow> Eyebrow Height Eyebrow> Eyebrow Arc Eyebrow> Eyebrow Points Needless to say these variables have a MASSIVE impact on the ultimate appearance of a Bento Head, even if the majority of people completely disregard this crucial element on shaping it. While I am at this, do make sure you don't simply alpha the basic hair, but actually shape it to be crushed inside the skull, other wise what you have there is a mesh object with 100% transparency that can mess up your avatar.

The Right Hand is the default attachment point for any new object created, for anything else you need to manually set it only content creators just leave it as is bag it and sell it. Yes it can cause a lot of problems, for example after a teleport some people on the region you land might not see some of those objects and yes you should manually make sure you are not wearing everything on the same attachment, it is good to have a strategy like OP does, although the Spine is (used to be more) a premium attachment point, that's because of how an avatar will move there are a lot of non-rigged objects you might wanna put there, so I would go for something like shoulders and other less used ones.

Here's some gifs:

For me is the hair before anything else, then everything follows. Even something like this is not quite there yet and this one is several levels above.

In SL? No, not even close, not even with all the latest skins that are made out of real pictures (the face at least) those would be the ones that could have a hope to come close but it all falls apart when you look a complete picture, even if it is a close up with a blurry back ground. Although I would guess different people have different levels of tolerance before they start experiencing that.

I find that the easiest way to find things in search is by looking on the Groups tab. Anything else will sometimes return no results, even if you copy paste the correct name, let alone if you only manage to get it close... In groups (for some reason) the search function works a lot better, when you find the right group you can open the profile of the creator and on that profile you often find the direct link to the place you wanna go.

Don't forget to mention the Default Hair aka Bald Hair aka Eyebrow Fixer (what ever the creator decided to call it) these have a massive impact on the shape of the eyebrows and wearing the wrong one can cause the eyes to look droopy and melted.

It's simple, these add ons change the shape of the area (ence why you are complaining) so if they make their clothes to accommodate this, those clothes will look poorly fit on people that don't use these addons. As is there are already leading mesh body brands that get things made for them and then every other body just gets a (often poorly) ported version, because content creators don't have the resources (or will) to port clothes properly. The idea they would start making a specific version of their clothes to accommodate both the regular mesh bodies and the augmented ones with these add ons is not something they would be willing to do. As many people here have mentioned, you should be detaching them when you are not using them anymore, that will make your avatar lighter in geometry, textures and scripts.

I can tell you the Belleza Jake body you can adjust foot size with the shape slider, and this will translate into the size of any rigged footwear.