Moni Duettmann

I don't think you could say that. On this particular school, that focuses on technology, stage design is not considered a school subject, but an additional curriculum, educated especially for the touch down presentations at the end of the studies.

I have been teaching stage design at the University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria. In 2008 I decided to include Second Life in the student's experience as a developer tool. So I asked them to all join, which they gladly did. They had no difficulties learning how to use it within less than a day. My idea was to develop a stage design based on objects built with cardboard covered with printed surfaces, which I thought would offer a good way to combine Second Life and the real stage later. For starters I built a model of the actual hall, where the stage would be built in real life, a convention room of the university. Now everybody could get a realistic idea, where things would really happen, once they were developed in Second Life. The purpose of the stage was defined as a presentation for other works the students had made in that semester. They developed a theme with a steampunkish design and started working on it online in Second Life. The big advantage of the method was, that not only everybody could practically work on the objects simultaneously and communicate about it, but it was visible how it would really look, before efforts to build it would be carried out. The result was a virtual model that looked exactly as the later built with cardboards and prints. Even some simple animations were included in the design, later translated into electrical fan action. The other big advantage of Second Life was that the textures the students used in the virtual model could be used directly for the prints later. So once the model was finished, all that had to be done was calculating the real sizes and start a lot of printing. Then the prints were glued on cardboard, cut out accordingly and put together exactly as planned in Second Life. The result was stunning: The real stage looked exactly as the model in Second Life. The students even added some rotating parts and real steam, illuminated with green light, that made it seem almost virtual. They also developed a presentation show, where they included the Second Life theme. The moderators started as real persons on stage, then vanished in the steampunk machine they had built and appeared on a big screen as their avatars to continue the show with a prefabricated video, made in Second Life. There also was a virtual interview with their professor. It was all very well done and the presentation counted as one of the best ever performed on that university.

My problems have been solved meanwhile, but I don't know what happened. I didn't really change anything. So either the upgrade of Yosemite did it or this thing about Yosemite is true, that it is a really delicate system, reacting unpredictably. In general I'd say that Yosemite is good for your graphics. Things are much faster. But I played on 10.6.8 before, so not sure if the differences will be that great if you come from a newer system.

Just starting with my new computer on Yosemite. It's awful. Nothing seems to work. Textures don't load at all, the curser keys don't move my avatar - or with a delay of a couple of seconds and I'm constantly locked out of SL, including being locked out of my internet connection. I never had experienced something like that before. I still run SL on my old computer on the same line, so please don't assume, my line isn't ok. It's some kind of combination of SL with Yosemite. I really regret the update from Maverick. I shouldn't have done it, but I thought it's the best I could do, since everybody seems so excited about Yosemite.

Ren: I'd be super-happy, if that's the case. I remember this problem happening even in early times, like 2007. Then it disappeared as if being solved, but it returned more than a year ago. @Qie a.o.: I don't think this is a problem of corrupted textures. I *once* had a corrupted texture, that had to be replaced, so I know what a corrupted texture is. This is different. Textures do load, but then they unload and get blurred again. As for the hardware suggestion: In another forum someone suggested that it could be related to the graphics card, resp. driver update. Since I am using one of the most ordinary cards, which is built into many Mac books, Mac Minis et al, and using the actual system update (which includes graphics card driver update on a Mac), I don't think it's that. Actually with the same Mac I didn't experience these problems two years ago. The bug came back after this little wave of viewer updates related to the introduction of this new avatar rendering thing (forgot how that was called), when all Viewers, incl. Phoenix, Firestorm et al had to relase new versions. One of the recommendations you regulary get, when reporting a bug is, that you should extend your RAM. It's one of those things that at least for me never made any difference, neither in resolving bug probhlems, nor in general increase of framerate or else. It's just one of these things people say. I often hear: lower your draw distance. Hm. Of course I can do that, but it doesn't help with the texture bug. I mean, when I am in a room, where all walls are not further than 10m away, the textures already don't load, no matter what my draw distance theoretically enables behind the walls. The only thing that you can trigger with toggeling draw distance, is your frame rate.

I'm writing this, because I wonder what others think. I have always been a "good" Secondlifer in the regard that I have been joinng technical discussions on the JIRA website, reported bugs, tried to provide to solutions for years. Yet I think that fewer and fewer questions are answered, bug reports get "closed" although no solutions are yet provided. In this case it's about an old old issue, the rezzing of textures, which stiil in all my current viewers doesn't work properly. Some texurues don't load at all until I click on them, others keep switching between steps of uncomplete loading, some get blurry again after having fully rezzed before. On the jIRA website I see many reports about this, but no changes happening. Most reports have simply been closed without solution. This happened to my own report as well. When looking at the few answers that went in before the closure, it makes me angry. Users and Linden staff are seriously trying to help with suggestions like "did you try to clear your cache"... oh my... Before I even take the effort to file a bug report, I have been going through all the standard procedures designed to bring possible soultions. BTW: those never do. At least I can't remember a situation where "clearing the cache" solved a problem. Still this is all the support that is offered. To me this is so frustrating. Second Life without textures is just not possible. This should have been solved years ago. So where is real support? I don't see it! I still pay my 72.-$ every year (which is more than to any other internet service I use), but I hardly use Second Life anymore, because this way it just doesn't make sense. Wonder what other people think about this!

Just checked the download page of Firestorm out of curiosity: the current viewer there is still named "beta".

At least 4.5.1.38838 works for me, unlke the version before. But some extremely annoying bugs have still not been killed. Like the blurring of already fully rezzed textures. That sucks epic. Very sad: now Firestorm stopped supporting moving trees. SL now looks kinda dead. I really miss that feature!

"The current version of Firestorm is 4.5.1.38838". I am using this as the beta-version. Is it alpha now? Do I have to upgrade?

I recently discovered that the Singularity viewer works for me. For anyone who is into meshes and those formats needed to be up- and downloaded, Singularity is the only viewer anyway, because it has those features. I discovered heavy texture loading problems with Firestorm recently, but am unable to tell, wether it comes from the viewer or other problems. All in all I remember easier times with Second Life with overall less problems. It seems that the data come slower from the servers these days. My general frame rate is worse than ever.

Well... to me to use a viewer, "because it is the thing to do", regardless of what the viewer really does, is stupid. And I doubt you'*ll find many to which this would account.

Phil Deakins wrote: I don't know about media stream buttons because it's extremely rare that I make use of media. To be honest, I have the strong impression that most users of TPVs users use them just for the sake of it, or because someone suggested it, and not because they are any better for them. See? I guess there are a few other things, you dont even use, and that drive me crazy. As for your assumption, people use TPviewers out of oppotunistic reasons, forget it! That just says you think of them as being stupid. Even if there are some (I don't know anyone), why should someone take the effort to do that, if s/he's perfectly happy with the Linden viewer? That does not make sense. You seem to ignore the fact that MOST people use TPviewers, which certainly is not a sign of trust reg. the Linden viewer. It all started with V2, when people all over the communities begged Linden, prayed on their knees, cried bitter tears, to stop that madness. Since that time, I went for the viewers that still provided the V1 Ui structure, tried them all and arrived at Phoenix as the best. I always tried the new Linden viewers regulary, they were never better. Sometimes they would simply crash, sometimes they had ridiculous issues, sometimes they would just drive me mad with their unintuitive UIs. Unfortunately Phoenix now times out due to changes in the technical infrastructure of SL.

LL's V2 was absolute garbage, but their V3 is excellent. Perhaps you haven't tried it? It does everything that a viewer should do. Yes, I tried it. I try every new version. But I don't see essential differences. The menu is still somewhat confusing, but I guess I could get used to it. It still has ONE button for both audio and media stream, f.i. There is no way how you can explain to me, why that is better than two. In the last version the textures would constantly swap between blurring and sharp; it was an issue, reported in the JIRA, but it wasn't fixed. Since I'm making films and photos in SL this was a showstopper. There were other issues as well, that drove me crazy, but I forgot which they were, because after 3 days of tryihg I gave up and went back to Fs. Besides that V3 seems to run quite fast, admittedly.

I would love to discuss Firestorm in a Firestorm forum, but if I'm not mistaken, there is none. I was a huge fan of Phoenix, mostly because it avoided the horrible V2 surface. However it technically timed-outed, so moving to Firestorm was inevitable. I needed a lot of time and effort to make that work on my computer. In the end I was quite satisfied, although there still were issues and I couldn't go any further than sky settings graphic-wise, no shadows, no depth-in-field. There were still some severe issues, like sound-streaming problems and texture blurring, but those happened in the Linden viewser as well. Now I was setting all my hopes on the latest Firestorm version, but it turned out a huge disappointment. Not only didn't it solve any of the issues, it provided a worse framerate than what I had ever experienced before. So now my SL experience has come to a first halt after being a constant user for seven years. Neither will I use the horrible SL viewer, nor can I use an alternative viewer. My prediction, that SL would kill itself, if the company running it wouldn't concentrate on improving the viewer experience instead of going into all kinds of coul-de-sacs with fancy "game" features et al, seems to come true.

There is no Firestorm forum, is there?

You're probably right. I was thinking of maybe getting an email address of the owner, as to contact him in RL... I'm sure I could explain the situation to him.

The problem is this: In our community next to my own land there is a parcel that obviously hasn't been used for years. Frankly, the sight of it is rather ugly. It's not the only one like that. So, is there any way to change that? Is this user still paying a premium account? Is it still possible to contact him/her? I tried IMing him, but no reply. IMHO he just isn't in SL anymore. I guess he must still pay for a premium account, otherwise he couldn't have his land. So what's with this problem? I wish, there was a policy, that users have to log into their land at least once a year to keep it or sell it within a certain time.

I usually run SL on the highest value of 10.000, which would still be less than my personal bandwidth. But if you say, the connection is throttled anyway, this doesn't really make sense. Also interesting to know that HTTP runs outside that bandwidth. Thx.

"BUT maximum 1500 whatever speed you get." Why is that?

V3 is really a desaster. I got the same texture rezzing problem as you. Meanwhile I can't even open the client anymore. My report was closed without solution.

"That's because the sun and moon are on the same crystal sphere and, therefore, they orbit at the same speed/rate. Therefore they are always in the same positions with respect to each other, which means that the sun always shines on the moon from the same angle. To have phases of the moon, it is necessary for the sun to shine on it from different angles; i.e. to orbit the world at a different rate to each other." I'm sure a middle-talented programmer could do something about it! ;-) So let's summarize this interesting thread: We need: • Moon and sun on seperate orbits resulting in actual moon phases. • Stars BEHIND the moon • atmospheric modifications on the single moon orbit: brighter and perhaps with an increasing shift to 10% red, the closer it comes near the horizon. • land on a real moon as part of the SL grid (no water, no windlight, less gravity, heritage-protected public site of first moon-landing).

Another thing that makes me wonder: why is the moon always full? If we get 6 days per day, we should have a full moon circle every 5 days!

Thanks for helping me to understand Second Life from a technical point of view! :manlol: The thing with the breeding area would be interesting...

That's interesting. I have to keep my eyes on that!

I'll try...