Aeronya Arai

Amanda Linden wrote: As customers, your satisfaction and input is critical to the success of Second Life. However, we know that it has sometimes been confusing and difficult to communicate with us and we can always do a better job of listening. And yet here we are several months after being told that inworld group chat was going to be fixed 'soon' but with no updates posted on the status of that project. If we knew more of what was going on then maybe we'd be a little more forgiving about the delays in getting it fixed. But as it stands you're losing residents to other platforms because of all of the problems that we're not receiving updates about. It used to be that we'd receive notices on our login screen about inworld items, and we used to get gridwide announcement while logged in to notify us of various things that were going on and were being addressed, but now it's all on the often poorly updated Grid Status page. I really hope that's not an indication of how you're 'Improving our Lines of Communication with the Community'.

Myself I've had some success with using a Playstation2 controller with a USB adapter (I just lack the hand-eye coordination to really make the best use of it though), it's not as nice as the spacenavigator for moving around but the abundance of buttons makes it easy to set up special actions and the dual analog joysticks and directional pad make it fairly easy to use. By using a program like 'joy2key' (http://electracode.com/4/joy2key/JoyToKey%20English%20Version.htm a program that allows you to map your joystick so that the controls generate a corresponding keypress in response to button presses or movement) it's easy to setup macros like what Torley mentioned, and best of all these PS2 controllers are really cheap so if you happen to wear it out it's inexpensive to replace. Of course you can also use similar game controllers from other manufacturers (some of which look identical to a PS2 controller). Walmart used to sell a game controller adapter for connecting a multitude of different game controllers to a computers USB port, it had support for Playstation controllers, Xbox controllers, Gamecube controllers and the old PC gameport style controllers too if I remember right, I don't know if they still sell it but I'm sure you can find adapters like it online pretty cheap, I bought my Playstation adapter from Radio Shack about 6 years ago for less than $10US (I don't think they sell them anymore though). Additionally if you want to use an old Xbox controller you can hack the end off the cable and splice on a standard USB plug and with a special driver you can use the Xbox controller with a PC without having to spend money on an adapter, here's an article on making the necessary changes, http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=223, do this at your own risk though as it is possible that if you make the wrong connections you may damage your USB port or your computer, USB is only 5 Volts but that's still enough to fry a chip if it's sent in through the Data lines, most USB ports have a sort of circuit breaker to protect them but not all do. ETA: @Torley, I don't see the relevance of an article on Lifehacker about Notepad++ macros to SL. That article is specific to creating macros for Notepad++ and those macros cannot be used outside of Notepad++. A better site to link to would have been the site for the scripted macro tool 'Autohotkey' (http://www.autohotkey.com/) which can be used to create macros to automate many tasks. There is even a utility to compile the macros into standalone executables, the link for that utility is on the main Autohotkey website somewhere (can't remember exactly where, sorry). I was able to use Autohotkey in combination with a simple homemade infrared receiver and the program Winlirc to create a macro to allow me to control Windows Media Player and other programs using a Universal Remote Control (cheaper than buying one of those fancy add on remote kits).

Regardless of the reason they are yet another software developer that no longer supports Mac OSX 10.4, so again I say maybe it's time to upgrade.

While you're at it if you think you may ever have a need to visit an adult sim (not necessarily a sex themed sim), specifically any that might require age verification which is not the same as account verification (which you will gain once you become premium), then you might also want to check out the age verification process located in the account section of your dashboard as well. While account verification will allow you to access just about every location in SL, there are a few occasionally where the parcel owner/sim owner may require age verification as well, often times it's part of a precaution taken by the parcel/sim owner to help protect against minor/underage individuals being exposed to material that may be inappropriate for them. I know that US citizens can age verify (for free) by using their drivers license number (the method I use for each account I create, enter the number without any dashes or spaces) or the last 4 digits of their social security number or their passport even (if you have one that is), or state issued ID card (at least I think that's an option too).

Well, considering that even Phoenix has stopped supporting Mac OSX 10.4 it's not really that surprising in my book. Looks like it's time to upgrade.

No offense to you Torley, I know you actually do your best to help improve conditions for residents. But if someone had actually had the presence of mind to actually do some testing BEFORE they implemented the single name and display name features this would have likely been caught BEFORE it became a problem for people. But as usual the programmers at LL can't actually be bothered to test things before they push them on us.

Sorry too sound so long winded there, but after doing some more thinking I realized that there is one more thing that could be giving the symptoms you have described, and that is if you have overridden the 'recommended settings' for your graphics settings in your particular viewer and set some of the features above what the viewer itself recommended, in situations like this you might still be experiencing a problem with texture loading only this time it's not so much with the local cache but rather with the amount of graphics memory your video card may or may not have. If say for example you have your graphics settings manually set to 'High' when your viewer recommended setting them on 'Low' then you may be having a problem whereby there is simply too much texture data being sent to your video card and as a result it is having to 'push out' other texture data to make room for the incoming data in much the same way that a small local cache only gives you so much room for textures having a small amount of video memory (say for example 256mb, instead of say 512mb or more) also limits the amount of room for textures, though in this instance that is decided partly by the graphics settings, the higher the setting the more video memory required typically (enabling settings like anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering and turning mesh details up higher and setting particle counts higher and other things can increase the amount of memory needed to render what you see, meaning that it may either not be able to refresh certain things or may take longer to render certain things as opposed to lower settings which require less processing and less video memory). So before you dig into the network troubleshooting you might want to try resetting your graphics preferences to either the 'Recommended Settings' or just below that even. You'll probably want to clear your cache and relog after selecting the new graphics settings.

It's also possible that the lag that is causing this might be due to a problem with your network connection, there are a couple of tests you can try to help narrow it down. One is to perform a speedtest of your internet connection and look at the ping times reported, I'd go to http://www.speedtest.net/ and run several tests selecting a range of different locations a few near you and a few in say california (near LL's servers). If the ping times exceed 200ms then the problem is most likely either with your ISP or with a server between you and the server you tested against (another test called a traceroute would help to determine where the problem is), in particular if the ping times are high when testing against a server that is nearby your RL location then I would contact your ISP and have them send someone to your home to test your connection. Another way to troubleshoot your connection is to run a pingtest similar to the above speedtest, go to http://www.pingtest.net/ and once again run tests against multiple servers some near you and others a good distance from you, this test will give you an idea of whether your connection is having to resend packets due to packet loss or not, if the packet loss is above say 5% (mine tests at 0% packet loss but then again I've manually tweaked my network settings to increase the timeout settings so that packets are given a little longer time to try to reach their destination before being considered as having failed to reach their destination) for tests ran against servers nearby you then I'd recommend contacting your ISP to have your connection tested. If you want information about manually optimizing your connection you might want to do some reading on this site: http://www.speedguide.net/ specifically their 'Broadband' section, there you'll find information about various settings related to TCP/IP protocol settings. Including a program called 'TCP Optimizer' that can help you to customize your connection between you and your ISP as well as to help improve local network access too (if you have a home network that is). In Windows you can use the 'netstat' (without the quotation marks) command from a command prompt to tell you what servers your computer is currently connected to (including the name of any linden labs servers), with that you can then run a traceroute using the command 'tracert' followed by the server address to test against to help to identify where the problem is by looking at the ping times between each server. There is a graphical form of the traceroute command available in the form of a program named WinMTR available from: http://winmtr.sourceforge.net The above information should help you to track down whether there is a problem with your ISP or if the problem is somewhere further down the line.

As bad as my answer is going to sound, what you're experiencing is likely the result of a combination of network lag (I know, hard to believe there might be lag in SL isn't it?) and the fact that the display refreshes itself every so often automatically (fetching the texture your AV is wearing for a skin anew every so often just in case you changed skins), you might be able to minimize it's effects by increasing the size of your cache and reducing your draw distance settings (to help ensure your skin texture is kept current in the local cache and not 'pushed out' by the textures for other items that are possibly a fair distance from your AV, and thus does not have to be retrieved from the asset server on a frequent basis). Unfortunately I don't think any viewer really prioritizes keeping the textures for items worn by your AV over those of items nearby your AV inworld. I have noticed myself that if I rebake my texture occasionally that the appearance of my skin texture is more consistent and seems to 'blur' and 'distort' much less often (likely because by rebaking I am forcing the viewer to actively retrieve and apply the textures for everything my AV is wearing.). Hope this helps, good luck.

short answer: You can't. In depth explanation: Linden Labs (LL) views each account as being a separate entity regardless of whether or not you own multiple accounts (avatars). Benefits allotted to one account are not accessible by other accounts. So things like your Linden Dollar balance are not shared amongst your various avatars, likewise with Premium subscription benefits like Linden Homes and weekly Stipend, same with inventory, items cannot be 'shared' amongst accounts except by either copying those items that are copyable to the other accounts, or transfering those items that are transferable from one account to another.

Karina Tyrellium wrote: I did that but when I try logging my new avatar in at the same time, it logs out my first one. That's the way it's supposed to work actually, the only way to have more than one AV logged in at the same time is to run multiple instances of your viewer (multiple copies running at the same time), there's a command line parameter that allows you to do this if you are running the official viewer (many 3rd party viewers have this ability enabled by default now), the parameter is '--multiple' (minus the single quotation marks), you can get more information on using command line parameters at: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Client_parameters Perhaps you should have asked if there was a way to have more than one AV logged in at a time instead of asking "How do I make another avatar?" if that's what you were hoping to do. You also need to be aware that accounts cannot share a single inventory amongst them (ie. items in one accounts inventory are not accessible by another account regardless of whether the accounts are held by the same individual or not, you can however give copies of copyable inventory items to your other accounts/alts/av's and you can transfer transferable items from one account to another which will remove the item from the original owners inventory and move it to the receiving accounts inventory), additionally age/adult verification needs to be done on a per account basis, just because you age/adult verified one account does not mean that any other accounts you have are automatically age/adult verified, and lastly if one account is premium the others will not receive premium benefits unless you pay for a premium subscription for each individual account in addition to the first account's premium subscription. ps - if you are not familiar with what an 'alt' is, it is essentially a secondary/tertiary/quaternary/etc... (2nd/3rd/4th/etc...) account belonging to the same owner as the original account.

Kinkpot Shackleton wrote: K, Ms. Arai, I get what ur saying 2. As a recap, the money is simply trapped on the cotton-pick'n-frick'n-frack'n beata grid, and is only useable there *smh, CRAP!. Now all that is left is to understand my part in all that has transpired, and what I can do to prevent it from happening again. sorry to take so long to reply but technically it's not 'trapped' on the beta grid, the monetary balance on the beta grid is in no way related to any Linden $'s you actually got charged for purchasing. What has most likely happened is that you purchased L$'s at a time when the Lindex was having issues (happens sometimes much like the asset servers going down periodically), what you need to do is to compare your transactions in your account information on the SL website, viewable by clicking on the 'account' link on the left side of your dashboard and then clicking the 'Transaction History' link, on the screen that is then displayed make sure you use the dropdown boxes displayed to select a suitable range of dates going back to before when you purchased the now missing L$'s, you'll want to probably print the resulting list out so that you can have it to compare to the next screen I'm going to point you to. The next screen to go to is the Account History page by clicking the link on the left side just like you did to get to the Transaction History page, on the Account History page you'll want to select the statement for the month that the L$ were purchased in and quite possibly the month after that as well if it was close to the end of the month, using the combination of information from the Transaction History page and the information from the Account History page you should be able to go through and cross out each corresponding L$ purchase on each page until you find where they don't seem to match up, you may also want to include your credit card or bank or paypal transaction statements in this process as well, once you find out what happened you can then open a support ticket and supply LL with scanned copies of all of the relevent documents as attachments to the support ticket to help in getting things straightened out. Hope this helps

Kinkpot Shackleton wrote: If we are able to view $L's on the main grid with the dashboard and convert the monies bk n forth to USD, would LL's be considerate enough to make sure we have the same abilities to do so with funds we posses on the beta grid as well? And if so, is it fathomable to think I may be able to convert the funds to redeposit them on the main grid?No, because technically any linden funds visible in the beta grid are not 'real', and allowing people to transfer them from the beta grid would in essence allow anyone to do so repeatedly such that LL would in effect be paying that person real money for fictional currency, the linden funds on the main grid are backed by real world currency in so much as that you purchase lindens on the main grid using real money and can sell lindens on the main grid in exchange for real world currency. Consider the scenario this way: I log into the beta grid and 'buy' linden $'s on the beta grid, now since this is the beta grid my credit card or paypal account don't actually get charged for this currency because it's not 'official', I haven't actually purchased anything in terms of real world money spent (remember I didn't get charged for the linden $ I 'bought' on the beta grid), so it's unrealistic to think that LL would allow me to cash out linden $'s that I hadn't actually purchased or earned from interaction with other residents (tips, sales of products I made, things like that). Make sense?

If you're looking for a program that allows you to 'sculpt' by pushing pulling and such there are several available. 3D Coat (currently on sale for $235US dollars at http://3dcoat.com/) Autodesk MudBox (http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13565063, $745US) Zbrush (one of the more popular, http://www.pixologic.com/home.php, $699US) Sculptris (final beta before the author sold out to Pixelogics (makers of Zbrush) is still available as freeware, links posted in this thread) Sculptris doesn't support exporting to collada dae format but there are free utilities to convert from .obj to the collada .dae format. Sculptris also features built in texture painting capabilities that some of the above choices may lack. Sculptris has just about all of the features you requested, as does 3D Coat and Zbrush, can't say for sure about MudBox though having never used it myself. One thing to note though, Sculptris is only available for Windows as far as I know. ETA: forgot to mention that 3D Coat also has built in support for working with Second Life Sculpties!

I probably should have said "FOR" SL not 'IN' SL admittedly, however there are a few inworld sculpty creation tools if you'd bother to look, so yes sculpties are being made inworld (admittedly likely not very many, but it is happening). I'm sure that eventually we'll probably see inworld tools for mesh creation too, probably starting with utilities to convert prim builds to mesh and eventually tools to actually make meshes from scratch.