Snickers Snook

The granddaddy or grandmother of all HUD games in Second Life is Tiny Empires and its cousin, Tiny Empires 3000. They can be fairly addicting. http://tinyempires.com/

I agree with this postie. If Linden Lab spent even a minor amount of time improving the usability of marketplace, the net results in terms of improved (increased) commerce ($L spent) would be huge. LL takes a percentage off sales from SLM but nothing from inworld. IMHO, the poorly organized SLM pushes people to inworld or simply not at all.

Dittos to this Sassy!

OMG Dakota! Do you seriously think that's useful? It not only elminates demos but it also eliminates legitimate promos, gift items and other things. There are LOTS of $0L - $5L items that are quite good and NOT demos. IOW, they are useable, wearable, won't poof after 10 minutes, don't have the word DEMO written all over them or have boxes with DEMO that float over your head. Using PRICE as a criteria for elminating demos simply doesn't work. I myself sell several $1L items that aren't demos. No, the answer is to either ENFORCE a demo listing policy or actually have a "tag" that vendors are required to use that flag an item as a DEMO. Numerous suggestions have been made to improve the marketplace. Thngs that are the backbone of e-commerce like color selection, size selection and having the DEMO item as part of the actual item listing vs. making it a completely separate item. The SL Marketplace is so polluted with bad listings that it's become a chore rather than a fun adventure to shop there.

Callum Meriman wrote: As for your "not" word, doesn't work anyway. Try it with other things "bento not gatcha" or "bento not box" and you will get gatchas and bento boxes. Gatchas are clearly a much larger issue. The amount of them wrongly returned in search is making the MP unusable. The "not" term must be in all CAPS just like AND. It DOES work but not if the vendor is deliberately gaming search by concatenating DEMO with another word (DEMO_Red Top). Gachas are indeed a problem too. They need their own category for filtering.

A LOT of merchants have started incorporating the word DEMO into the title of their items in a way so as to get around someone using the "NOT" operator in searches. For example: "Ankle Boots_DEMO" or "Ankle Boots:DEMO" causes search to not see DEMO as a separate word so the search phrase "ankle boots NOT demo" will still inlcude listings like the examples. Wheras a merchant who correctly labels their product "Ankle Boots - DEMO" has their product filtered out. While not technically a listing violation, it sure ticks me off. Is this something that's worth a JIRA? Would Linden Lab even care? I should think merchants who correctly label their DEMO items would be ticked off too.

It's a pity that Linden Lab didn't tackle improving the base human avatar first so there wouldn't be such a huge need for human form replacement bodies and heads with all their add-on lag, HUDs, appliers, etc., etc. IMHO, Bento put the cart before the real horse. 95% of the avatars I see in SL (and not because I go to human places) are human avatars. The vast majority of them simply want to look good. They want perkier boobs; more defined chests; clothes and skins that don't look all warped because the triangles are weird in certain spots; more definition in the face, etc., etc. Yes some of that can be sort of addressed in Bento. But, wouldn't it have been nice to look as good as wearing a Maitreya body with a Catwa head using the stock SL avatar while being able to use the stock sliders and normal wearable skins? I'll say it again (yes I'm a broken record on this), all of this add-on stuff for human avatars is simply making SL needlessly complex, more expensive and increasing laggy. If I go to a busy sim, it can take fully 10-20 minutes of rezzing before I see everyone due to the mesh body overload. (And yes I have a good connection, fast computer and a fair amount of graphics power.) Sadly, a side-effect of Bento seems like it will "bake in place" the current SL avatar.

I just went through similar angst as you over getting a new video card but the card I was replacing was even older, a GTX 460. And at the same time, I also moved from an AMD to an Intel cpu. So I did a bunch of research and bugged friends in SL and RL about all this. My first mistake was buying a 4GB Radeon R7 370 because it "benchmarked" well and people told me AMD drivers were better in SL now. OMG that thing was slower in SL than my old 460. So back to the store the card went. And I started doing more research (I'm on a budget and can't just throw money at stuff). My second card and the one I'm now using is a 4GB GTX 960 SC so one step below your 970 but if yours is only 2GB, mine may be a little better and handling memory intensive stuff. Anyway, your card is fine. BUT, it's the rest of the system that may slow you down. Before I started to look for a new video card, I actually switched from an AMD 4300 FX (one up from yours) to an Intel i3 based system. OMG, right off I probably doubled my FPS over the AMD even though the i3 is hardly a powerhouse. But according to things I read, Intel does a much better job with two really efficient cores than AMD does with 4, 6 or even 8 inefficient ones. Plus SL apparently only uses 2 cores max anyway.You also may be using an older motherboard that's only PCI 2.0 x16 for the card which can be a small bottleneck. Next you could probably benefit from more RAM. I got a bit more speed in SL when I went from 16 to 32 gb (I do Photoshop) and I would think you would benefit in improving from 8gb. And lastly, when I got my new 960, Firestorm went from maybe 25 FPS to 50+ on average. Interestingly, I saw little improvement in FPS with Cool VL Viewer. It went from about 30 - 32 FPS to maybe 35 FPS. The developer responded that it was probably due to Firestorm being 64-bits and optimized for my 64-it windows and drivers vs. Cool VL Viewer which is 32-bits and optimized for older hardware. Anyway that's my ten cents. I'm no expert but I think I learned from my own similar search.

Gaia Clary wrote: Avatar. So why (why, why,...) doesn't the fashion creator community sit together and invent (or at least sponsor) the next generation Avatar, make it open and free to use for every attachment designer? Woudn't this fit best? Instead of letting LindenLab provide something on their own, just let the community provide something that fits best for them? And think about what additional features of the Secondlife system would make such a project become even better... Simply creating yet another mesh overlay with some intergrated HUD & slider system seems kind of like throwing the body and interrior of a Lamboghini onto a Yaris. Why? People thought "The Mesh Project" was headed in that direction but they decided to completely commercialize it and the whole idea splintered off into 20 different directions. Why oh why you ask? The same reason there are multiple standards for mesh feet, mesh boobs, mesh butts, mesh heads, mesh this, mesh that. The fashion community is not a community in the least. There are thousands of designers just scraping along making things becuase they love to. The big "design" houses have shown no interest in standardization probably because they hope THEIR mesh avatar becomes "the" standard. There are so many benefits for Linden Lab and Second Life if LL does Avatar 2.0. But we'll just end up with all that extra Load, scripts and crap because of SQUIRRELS!

Gaia Clary wrote: About a renewal of the System Avatar I honestly do not like the idea of defining an Avatar-2 at all. I would be much more happy if we can modernise the SL Character animation system to better support any sort of user creations. OK, here's my frustration as a clothing designer. I look at how the triangles are formed, spaced and sized. There simply isn't enough "detail" to make system clothing look right. But system clothing is what MOST wear. I'd love to do lace that actually looks like lace and not a blurry approximation of lace. I'd love that I could accurately compensate for places where the triangles are huge and places where they are small. I'd like the standard avatar to have, god forbid, nipples (male & female). I spend almost ZERO time worrying about facial expressions and super-accurate animations in SL. I just want my avatar to LOOK good, look as realistic as possible and wear clothing that is as realistic as possible. I'd love for all this accuracy and detail to be STANDARDIZED in the mesh we are all given as a base. I really could give a fig about most of what the new bento bones do since it seems to me from all the back and forth, the majority of the work is going to benefit maybe 10% of the core SL audience. I know maybe 5 people on a friends list of 80+ who spend even a small amount of time as non-human avatars. And they're pretty happy being mesh rabbits or cats that don't have a lot going on or need or want a lot going on. I think it would be nice to wear a skin that was 2x the resolution or 4x the resolution it is now. So on to your comment about making HUDs and mesh systems easier. It's not going to happen unless Linden Lab standardizes something! There are now about 20 popular mesh bodies often with 3 - 5 variants. Only a few are compatible with each other in how things get applied to them and NONE of them share HUDs unless they can use the partially standarized Omega HUD relay system. There are maybe 10 "head" makers. I mean jeez, you buy a separate "head" and animations for those. Heck the whole thing started with Slink Feet & Hands and Lolas Tangos boobs. Now it's a complete and unrecoverable mess. Does anyone seriously think about NEW people coming into Second Life any more? Or have all the creators & devs gone into "we don't care" mode? I'd hate to be a newbie in SL now because I wouldn't have a CLUE what was going on. (Why does she look so much better than me? Oh because she just spent $20,000L on a HUD-driven mesh body, HUD-driven head, full skin set, HUD-applied makeups, HUD-driven nails, HUD driven hair, HUD-driven mesh clothing and HUD-driven shoes that will take you a YEAR to figure out.) And how many scripts exist in all this stuff that are probably just making SL slower and slower. But thank god fewer people are in SL now because it might be really really laggy. Sorry for the rant but the more I think about this, the more annoyed I get with the whole direction of Second Life development or lack thereof.

Oh and I forgot, once you've save the outfit and then wear it the next time (clicking each HUD to applier or adjust something), you have to detach all the damn HUDs and appliers to get your screen real estate back and to minimize your script count. BLEH!

Gaia Clary wrote: So... in which way are mesh bodies "royal PITA" ? Maybe it makes more sense to improve that... Well let's see. for my Maitreya mesh body, I have to wear: alpha main body hands feet head (optional) HUD to control alphas, layers, nails, blend neck, select foot shape / height HUD to control head and apply layers Then the steps for wearing clothes could include: Wearing Maitreya compatible clothing HUD to apply texture to clothing layer on mesh body Wearing Omega relay HUD and Omega compatible clothing HUD to apply texture to clothing on mesh body Making sure you buy fitmesh type clothing that is tailored for Maitreya body (vs. Belazza vs. Slink Physique vs. TMP vs. whatever) Making sure attachment points of newly worn things don't interefere with already worn things (add doesn't always work). Animations for HUD for head. So now let's try to "Save" a complete outfit. You have to make sure you are wearing ALL of the necessary HUDs that would affect any changes to the outfit plus all the necessary parts to the outfit. Assuming you've remembered everything, the next time you "wear" that outfit, you STILL have to apply the textures and operate the HUDs to make sure the right layers are showing, alphas are in place, etc. I've been in SL since 2007 and have done my fair share of designing clothing. I just started on the mesh body thing about 3 months ago. I'm a fairly smart girl. It has totally been an "OMFG what have I gotten into" experience. I just can't imagine newbies figuring this out. And I really wonder if Linden Lab is doing the servers any favors with all of this extra junk being loaded onto avatars who really really want to look good. We are already blowing up compatibility with existing content since each outfit has to be tailored for each brand of mesh body.

So I have a dumb question. With improving the avatar skeleton, is there any direction toward improving the standard avatar mesh? I mean mesh bodies look so good but they are a royal PITA. Wouldn't simply improving the base avatar (ie doubling the triangle or something) and getting a few more sliders make a huge difference?

Hi, at the suggestion of a tech friend, I found that with Windows 10, increasing the core voltage slightly on my gtx 460 stopped the crashing. Maybe work for you too?

Totally agree with everything said. The Charlie Brown and the football analogy others have used is right on.

I'll simplify this whole thread. It's not search that's broken. It's the listing system itself. Fixing search (beta or otherwise) is the cart before the horse.

I used to be dead set against this but now I think it's necessary. The only way to reduce clutter on the marketplace is to put in place SOME system of recurring listing fees. It can be as simple as $1L per month (or something) per item. I'm really sick and tired of "merchants" selling 100's of iterations of the same badly made bikini or t-shirt where the only difference is color or some mismatched texture. More than anything search can do to clean up and improve the Marketplace experience, simply having a mechanism that discourages flood sales of the same item would do it. Heck some of these so-called "merchants" are just on freebie accounts hoping to sucker people into buying something cheap. If an item became a constant drain on the seller's account because it was bad or whatever, the seller would either pull it themselves or the freebie account with no $L in it would go to $0L and the item would be automatically delisted. An alternative would be that you had to have a verified "merchant" account to sell on SLM. Wouldn't have to be full premium...maybe something just enough to discourage people from selling junk. And yes, DEMO items need to be tagged out as such. Putting up something as a DEMO would earn you an exemption from the $1L recurring fee. However, you'd be required to tag it as DEMO. Same goes for Freebies. My issue is with the endless junk that crowds the $1L to $20L range. And no, searching by dollar amount doesn't automatically eliminate the junk -- it does just as much to exclude some seroius items that sell well but at low prices. If you have a good item at a low price that sells well, the $1L per month won't hurt you.

LOL Maddy. I beat you to the bug report. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-10311

I just went to that section too Lindal. While I finally was able update my forum avatar (the little piccy in the upper left corner), I got the same thing you did. I can't choose a custom profile card background from there. My profile card is like 6 years old. Time for an update.

Here's MY problem. I uploaded two new images I had intended to use as replacement avatar images. They show up in my own avatar album folder but they haven't shown up in my list of APPROVED BY MODERATOR images which are the only ones I can use for an avatar image. So by implication, they haven't been approved by a moderator yet. I guess I can try putting them in a different album or something. UPDATE: OK I found that IF I go to EDIT the photo from My Images, I can select an option for it to use as avatar photo. So that solves the problem of the small inset picture on the Profile Badge and elsewhere. But, Lindal is right, you can't edit your profile badge background. I could change it to one of the stock ones but the ability to upload and use a NEW one is not there for me. So mine is stuck on the 5 year old picture of me wearing one of my ancient designs.

Sassy, they are valid points for discussion. At first, I wondered the same things too. So here's my take on where we stand. 1. The mesh bodies I have (Maitreya, TMP and even Ohana) are much more realistic in shape than the system mesh. The breasts are much more natural (don't get me started on Lola's Tangos) and the hands & feet are just much better done. No more cankles either. You also get the option of wearing insanely high feet like Slink's for ridonkulous heels. 2. Paint-on clothing for mesh (aka system type) ends up looking more realistic because the layers are actually physically separated from each other. So clothing layer sits a bit further out than underwear which sits a bit further out than tattoo which is on the same physical level as skin. This actually gives 2D clothing some depth that it wouldn't have otherwise. I'm often surprised at how much more realistic an applier outfit looks on mesh than the same outfit looks when it's on a standard avatar. 3. All this goodness aside, mesh bodies are a royal PITA. I have to save each outfit wearing all the right body parts PLUS the appliers themselves AND if it's an OMEGA applier outfit, it also has to have the OMEGA relay attached too. Then you have to apply the clothing to the right layers. Oy. 4. Mesh bodies don't always work correctly with mesh clothing. Usually something is popping through and turning on the appropriate alphas for a mesh outfit is, again, a chore. Much easier to simply wear a mesh outfit with the standard avatar provided your shape is in-range and the designer has included a properly made alpha (many don't make good alphas). Now for YEARS I've been screaming at LL to improve the base avatar. Seriously we have so much better hardware now that doubling the vertices and tweaking the sliders should be pretty straightforward. Make the layers do exactly what the mesh body layers do -- set the physical distance away from the avatar. Another idea I've thought of is that LL could provide a true ADULT avatar. One with more realistic bits. I'll bet a lot of people would check the appropriate over 18 boxes and pay extra for one. Right now the load on the servers has GOT to be heavier with all these unoptimized and scripted monster mesh avatars running around. Wouldn't SL be better off with a much improved standardized avatar? (Think I'll copy this to my blog lol.)

Just wondering. I want to change my Profile avatar. UPDATE: Since I can't respond to the answers (who designed this idiot format anyway), I have to edit the question. Th?is is what I see when I got to try to change my avatar photo for the "Community" side of SL. "These are your approved images. If you don't see any images, it means that you don't yet have any images that have been approved. If necessary, go to your My Images page (the link is on your profile page) and upload a new image. After you upload an image, you must wait until it has been approved by a moderator before you can use it as your avatar." So I uploaded two new images two days ago. Neither has appeared in the list of "approved" images. With all due respect Lindal & Rolig, it appears there is an approval process avatar images must go through but maybe Linden Lab has abandoned doing so?

I decided to do a series on my blog about inexpensive mesh applier outfits and clothing just for fun. My goal is to feature 3 - 4 items per day that I find either inworld or on SLM for under $100L. The first four pieces are all dollarbies. Let me know what you think of the approach and content. Thanks! http://snickitty.blogspot.com/2015/09/cheap-mesh-applier-clothing-part-1.html

No mad meshes going on. See my SOLVED post for the fix.

OK, a techie friend of mine suggested (similar to one of the posts above) that I muck with the voltage settings on my graphics card. So per his instructions, I installed MSI AfterBurner and upped the GPU core voltage slightly from like 950 to 960. Wow. No more crashes in Second Life with either Singularity or Cool VL Viewer (I haven't tried the official viewer). After verifying the lack of crashes, I made a slight change to the fan profile so it kicks in sooner as well -- just to be safe. I really have no idea what I'm doing lol. In sharing this in the NCI group, one seemingly knowledgable person speculated that because Windows 10 uses a later version of DirectX (which is running all the time) and it places more demands on the GPU, that the voltage increase may have been the right fix. I have no idea. Anyway, it had nothing to do with the driver version or other stuff.