solstyse

Well, one way is the way that you learned. MOST people will inform you before they do anything to report you. I rarely accept things that people give out in sandboxes because copybotted items can be accidentally recieved by anyone. The good news is that usually, as long as you stop using the item immediately after you learn it's copybot, people usually understand. Copybots actually cheat content creators, in multiple ways. Sometimes, the only one cheated is the person who created the items. But sometimes, that creator is using tools purchased by another creator that forbid "full permission" distrobutiion. Permissions are copy, modify, and transfer. This can be photoshop brushes, templates, or textures that were purchased by another secondlife resident. I personally use some of these tools, and when I do finally make something I'm proud enough to sell, I will be bound by the licence agreement that I must leave either copy or transfer unchecked. Ever wonder why so many freebies are "no transfer?" Even most people who make something "from scratch" will leave one of the two unchecked so that they can sell their items without their customers then copying and redistributing them for free. There are ways to try to catch it yourself. 1. If an item is both high quality and ful permission, research it before you trust it. 2. Sandboxes are a risky place to accept free items. If someone wants to give you something there, it's wise to just ask them where you can get it from an actual vendor. If it costs money there, then there's a chance it's copybot. 3. Sometimes the viewer can give a clue who to hesitate from accepting items from. Linden Lab never lists a copybot capable viewer. So if you see someone using a viewer that is not in LL's third party directory, then you may want to spend some extra time looking into items you recieve from the person on that viewer. i say research because often copy bot viewers do more to hide details about the user. In other words, make less of a "fingerprint." Privacy fanatics who do not steal may find themselves attracted to that feature. If you use the firestorm viewer (which is listed by LL as one that you can download and feel safe about, but is a bit resource hungry) then you hit ctrl-p, click the firestorm tab, click the tags tab, and select "all viewers." As time goes on, you'll learn which ones to trust and which to be cautious of. I'm sorry that none of these methods will actually tell you for sure if it was copybotted. I hope they did provide some help and insight though, and i hope that someone with more knowledge than I have will post here to elaborate, or to tell other methods. There are other things to look for when you inspect items. I just never learned because I only get my inventory items from people and sources I trust. And i got lucky enough to never trust the wrong person yet.

Nyll Bergbahn wrote: solstyse wrote: I think a lot of these answers are actually terrible. "get rid of....." or "Force people to....." Would do more to drive people out of sl than to bring them in. To be perfectly honest, I think most of he changes should be very difficult for us to spot. ...and yet you say: 2. Delete accounts that have been inactive for a period of one year or more. Clearly, these people have left. To come back would be like starting over. This would clean up room on their databases. Why? We know many people come back to SL after a year or even years of inactivity and are entitled to have their accounts still in place and fully functional. Actually, this surprises me. i thought a year without a single login was a good threshold. Guess I was rong about that. But I do think that there should be some point in time where inactive accounts are considered to just be clutter. i definitely think that keeping abandoned avatars indefinitely would be a waste of resources. But I could definitely have been wrong about how to determine if an avatar has been abandoned.

I think a lot of these answers are actually terrible. "get rid of....." or "Force people to....." Would do more to drive people out of sl than to bring them in. To be perfectly honest, I think most of he changes should be very difficult for us to spot. 1. Consider moving the corporate headquarters out of Cailifornia. This is nothing against the residents of CA, but that state is very difficult and costly to run a business in. Long term, there would be savings by moving. 2. Delete accounts that have been inactive for a period of one year or more. Clearly, these people have left. To come back would be like starting over. This would clean up room on their databases. 3. Set standards that would make builders optimize what they upload. For example, if sl can only display 512pixel textures, disallow 1024. As in they won't eveen upload. This would save space and bandwidth. 4. Conduct a study to determine the optimal price for tier. As far as I've seen, the only advantage that the open source worlds have compared to sl is tier cost. As in, for $40, you can have more prims in a "full sim" than what you get in sl for $300. Now, it would be unwise for SL to go anywhere near that low, because they ARE a business. They DO need to make profit. And realistically, for the amount of content adn the number of people in sl, it IS worth more. Plus, sl is more secure. Set tier price at whatever this study proves is the best mix of volume vs margin to maximize profit. 5. Wait until a new feature is perfected, or nearly so before releasing it. People will embrace the changes more if they know they'll work. 6. Get more involved in the forums, chats, etc. Get more feedback from the users. 7. Move storage of common Linden textures (like gound, water, roads...) from servers to the users PC's. Again, to free up server load. 8. Compete. As in, try to make the next viewer something that'll attract current users of tpv's back to the default viewer. Figure out why they want to use the tpv's in the first place, and give them the most common features that made them turn away. but still allow tpv's for those that remain loyal to their viewers. 9. An inventory "auto-sort" button. Something that can put all clothing in the clothing folder, etc. Expiring inventory, also, which doesn't auto delete, but prompts users about any item they haven't used in the past 6 months with an option to delete, remind them later, or "Preview then ask again." (What I mean by that is, you might wonder, "waht is that piece of clothing that it's asking me if I want to keep? Let me wear it and find out.") 10. Defrag the map. Still keep private islands and regions private. But a better mapping system is a must. 11. Improve search functions. And have in-viewer tutorials. Perhaps a question mark toggle that you can hover over an object or function. 12. An outright ban on griefer tools. With a very clearly defined line between what is a griefer tool, and what is something potentially useful that can be potentially misused. 13 Local backup for builders on their own PC's, to be accompanied with a ban on copybot capable anything. So basically, most of what I would do is make the "behind the scenes" work better.

wow. Just imagine how many things you wouldn't think of that you'd have to deal with. sometimes it seems tempting though. It would be cool to be able to teleport and fly!

This is just a guess, but since sl is 90% chat, wouldn't it be incredibly difficult to censor it? They would need a ton of real time filters, and i couldn't imagine a large chinese population all going to their various different crowded areas in second life without overloading whatever machine is designed to do all the filtering.

Oops. Dillon, I guess it was I that misunderstood you! But anyway, now the original poster knows he needs a 64 bit OS because of us, so some good came of it

Dillon Levenque wrote: solstyse wrote: (that seems small, but I can run FS on Windows 7 and my ram usage seems to top out at 3.8 used out of 6 installed, so the stock ram on the computer I'm talking about is plenty, at least for now.) Unless you have a 64-bit OS you can't actually make use of more than 4GB of RAM. Actually it limits at 3 something with a 32 bit OS so that might be why you're seeing it top out. You didn't indicate one way or the other, so if you already knew that just ignore this :-). I do agree that building from scratch is far from cost-effective unless you have access to stuff at wholesale prices. You misunderstand me. My fault. I guess I really didn't explain it well. I mean that I have 6 gigs available, but my usage doesn't go above 3.8 while I'm watching it. It very well might when I'm doing something intense. Waht i meant for the original poster to get from this, is that you DO want a 64 bit os (which I have.) And that while 4 gigs is dangerously close to what is required by sl, 8 gigs is more than sl is going to require for a long time, so 6 gigs is actually perfect to get a little memory buffer. And I said that because your first instinct is to go for as much ram as you can. But my machine won't render sl any better if i was running 8 gig than the 6 I'm currently running. It is, however, a slight bit better than the 4 gig I was running before I upgraded.

Why are you here? I don't mean that rudely, by the way. I mean, the sl experience is so different for each person, you really do need to think about what you wree hoping for when you came. When I see someone named Thief519 asking how to make friends, what I think is "This guy must be looking for a roleplay sim." I could be wrong. It's just a guess. But if I'm right, I can help you. I'll have a ton more questions before I'll have any idea which sims to direct you to though. And if that IS what you're looking for, then as your character interacts with other characters, IM's will start happening, and comraderie will develop naturally. The answer to your second question also depends on why you're here. What kind of events do you want to go to? Clubs? If so, what music style? Hunts? Well then what do you want in your inventory? your third question, building. As time goes on, there will be something you really want in sl, and you'll somehow find out that nobody else has thought of it yet. Or maybe you'll see something else you want, but it costs more than you have. So you can either build what you want, or you can make things to sell so you can afford something else. If you ever plan to run a sim, you'll find that quite a bit that's out there is close to what you want, but not quite close enough. And if you never decide to build, that''s okay too. Relationships.... You will find a mix here. Some try to get the same kind of attachment as you can in real life. Most realize how incredibly difficult that is. There will be people who form relationships for story (especially in the roleplay sims. Relationships there are often formed and broken up based on what makes sense to a larger story, not based on the emotions of the real person you're in that relationship with.) Then there are people who will form relationships basically as a way to get some pixel sex. It is best for anyone you get into any kind of relationship with that you are both upfront about what the relationship really means to you both. As for the technical stuff, the answers that others already gave you before I posted are the best. Just to give an example, though, clothes are 512 texture. Often, they're created in 1024, then shrunk down. In one outfit, if I forget to shrink one piece, but remembered to shrink another, then my clothes will appear at different rates. In a way, I think I'd rather if SL would just not allow the oversized texture. It would have spared me a $10 upload and a moment of accidental toplessness. (yes, the shirt was what I made 1024, so it rezzed slower than my skin.) And I still would have gotten my texture in, just by opening up photoshop, looking at the header, and saying, "Oh yeah. That's what I forgot to do." The bottom line is, what you do in second life is really up to you. This is one of the few places in the world where the answers really are what they want them to be? So, what answers do you WANT for your questions?

Don't build from scratch. That has gone from being one of the cheapest ways to get a good computer to one of the most expensive. with a budget of $1k, you can buy somethign that's "almost there" and upgrade it with better results, and probably more change left over. Personally, I'm a big fan of what HP makes. I saw a really nice setup at Staples. $575 for the computer, 20 inch monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers, all in one box. The computer as it comes stock is 6 gigs or ram, upgradable to 8. (that seems small, but I can run FS on Windows 7 and my ram usage seems to top out at 3.8 used out of 6 installed, so the stock ram on the computer I'm talking about is plenty, at least for now.) 500gb hard drive, quad-core amd processor (I forgot the exact speed. Somewhere near 2.2 gigahertz.) And Windows 7 is laready loaded. That means all of your remaining money can be used for a high end graphics card. From personal experience, I can tall you that the graphics make a bigger difference than almost everything else. My computer is a HP G42-230. It's a laptop with much, much better specs than the dinosaur of a desktop it replaces. But on anything texture heavy (like most of sl), or any picture editing software, the old desktop still performs better. All because of the dedicated graphics card. If you already have a lot of the stuff that's included in the computer that I would buy, then maybe spend the $575 on a more powerful "base" computer to start your build. Just need the tower? In that same price range you can find something with 8-10 gigabytes of ram included, upgradable to 16gb or more, a 1tb hard disk.... etc. And still have plenty of money left over to upgrade and make it your own. But to compare those costs to building one from scratch... The monitor, and Windows 7 will each run you about $200. Then a case, $100. That's half your budget before you even bought any real components! Usually a power supply will be included with the case, but you still have motherboard, chipset, optical drives, hard drives, ram.... Custom computers have gone the way of the custom car anymore. Sure, some people will build from scratch to say they did it. But it's much more worth your money to buy something that has most of what you want, and add the rest. Hope this helps.

walking around in Lumiya is unpleasant at best. you an bring up a 3d view, and try to navigate around what looks like an Atari world. But there's not much else that walking has to offer. Furthermore, when it's time to talk again, you need to revert back to the text screen. your best bet is to save anywhere you would want to go from a different viewer as a landmark and then when you need to go there in Lumiya, it's there, and you're not stuck trying to walk and guess what you're looking at. I think it's only a matter of time until someone comes up with something better than Lumiya, but Android was designed as a light duty operating systems for phones and tablets. The way that they handle graphics is way different than for a computer. I get the impression that anyone who designs software for Android really is forced to design for 2 year old hardware, and with how quickly the hardware that phones and tablets use is evolving, things will get better in time. But for now, I use Lumiya just for chats and IM's. I ask friends to teleport me a LOT.

Ever since I first came across that link, I can't even look at the default sl view anymore. I have noticed that when someone wants to show me something or I want to take pictures I have to sit down anymore.Otherwise my AO makes my character keep walking across my screen! But yeah, I played with the numbers too. The important thing is that the person who wrote that made the camera debug settings so clear that you can do anything you want with it.

The theory behind that system is that Pgup or Pgdown alone are like a toggle to activate the previous or next animation. Totether, they toggle between that original function and allowing you to move. When it works right, it's a very useful tool to prevent a petite avatar from hovering above furniture. But the movement in "change position" mode is very slight. I guess the theory that the person who wrote the script had is that if you're unhappy with the default position, you're going to want to be precise about it. Pushing up or down once or twice may nob be enough of a difference to notice. Try doing everything it says, then HOLD up or down, or whatever direction you want to go. I've noticed that somethimes you have to try pushing pgup and pgdwn together a couple of times before it'll work. I'm not sure why.

If you plan to take the watermark advice, then go one step further. make tthe watermark soething fully unique to your store. Then, if your customers start seeing that watermark outside of your shop, there's a chance someone may decide to tell you.

As one of sl's "fictional characters" I don't value first life info at all. I won't even click the tab to display yours unless you do something to call attention to it. when Il'm on a roleplay sim, the only thing I really care about is your character. If you are an sl builder or designer, then I care what you are capable in sl, not so much what you can do out of it. And even then, it's a matter of type what you want, display any picture you want.... For me personally, sl is all fiction. An individual avatar (and the profile connected to it) can be based as much or as little on someone's real life as they want, including the "first life" tab. I have seriously contemplated putting up a pic of a pet there just to be funny. *edit* I completely forgot to add, also, as a fictiional character, I don't want my views, actions, and opinions in sl ever coming back to haunt the rl me. And it does happen. There was some politician who recently made the news for having a World of Warcraft account.

The real question is what would bother you more? Using the old login name, or needing to rebuy skins, shapes, etc? To be honest with you, I've don the new avatar a few times, and found while I was doing the makeover I always found something that I like better than what I already have, and it always made the new avatar look very different from the previous ones. Since there are new things being made all the time, you may quickly find yourself losing the love for the old things you have. Maybe the best thing you can do is either use your old avatar to look at what's out there now, and decide whether the skin and hair you have are worth keeping the name that you don't like, or make a new free avatar with the name you like, do some shopping to give her her own look, and at the end of it alll decide which has the best combination of everything. your old account won't go away because you made a new one, so you can switch back and forth as much as you would like.

If you're using an intricate texture, it helps a bit to blur the seams, just a little. On the top layer, people aren't likely to notice unless they're looking very closely. Another idea is to work with the seams. Add stitching to make them look more intentional. If you want something completely seamless, then apply your base texture to the front, copy, flip horizontal, and move the copy to the back. you will need some points of reference to make it match exactly, and even then, there may be some imperfection. And the base texture should extend beyond the edges of the template.

Go to this link and follow the instructions. http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/A-Matter-of-Perspective-The-importance-of-camera-placement-in/td-p/971879

That is a TON of money for those shapes. I mean, a TON. I can understand how some people want a shape they can mod. Personally, what matters to me is that I like a shape out of the box. And several of the shapes I've seen for a quarter of that price look much more appealing out of the box. There's really no reason to get all hung up about realistic joint movement. The most important thing is how proportional the shape is. When someone with a low fps is looking at you, nomatter what you're not going to move realistically to them anyway. In my honest opinion, mesh still has a long way to go, in a lot of aspects before it catches up to what we already have. The exception is for furniture and buildings. Static objects don't rely on proportion and fit the way shapes, clothing, hair, etc does. For now, I'd stick with an "old fashioned" avatar, that can wear either old fashioned clothing or mesh, whichever you're in the mood for at the moment.

The best way to tell is if you like soething when you see it in-world. If you see something on an avatar that impresses you, then IM the person. 90% of us will give you a polite answer Create a notecard in your inventory, and just keep copying and pasting the responses you get there. Most designers are fairly consistent with their quality, so if you get a couple people telling you they bought from the same person, then odds are after you check the marketplace or the in-world store for that designer, even if you find a style that you like better than what those who recommended them are wearing, you'll know it's good.

The 3g internet connection will probably let you log on, but you definitely won't enjoy it. Imagine trying to watch a youtube video on a dial up connection. It can be done, but watching a five minute video takes an hour. If you really feel the need to log on to sl with one of those things, then you'll need a text only viewer. I can use Lumiya on my phone, and it works okay. But any form of graphics on one of those 3g things is a quick way to disappoint yourself.

That happened to me a few times on Phoenix, never on Firestorm. It seems like you need to run a character test. There are other ways around it, but they tend to get a lot more complicated. I'm not sure if the reason is the same for you as it was for me, but the earlier versions of Phoenix had something in your inventory called RuthHairFix. I don't even remember what it did, except cause the problem you had when it broke. naked Avi that you can't cover up So after the character test, which will revert you to a VERY new avatar, you'll have to rewear all of your skins, shapes, huds, and all the clothes you bought. Do a search for "dressing room." and teleport to one so you can be left alone for this. And if RuthHairfix is in your inventory, delete it. Now, rebuild your avi in steps. 1. Shape, AO, skin, huds you always wear and favorite hair. Then save this as an outfit. It'll be your basic nude look, so if you decide to buy whole outfits at a time, you simply wear this "outfit" and then add the new items. Much easier in the future than removing all your old clothes one piece at a time when you buy something new. 2. Clothes, along with huds that you only use once in a while. Like if you use a dance hud to go to clubs, but take it off to go to hangouts. 3. Repeat step 2 for all outfits you commonly wear. Now, every time you need to rebuild your avi, just click on whichever outfit you choose, and select "replace current outfit." If you do all this, then the only tie the characer test will be painful is the first. Remember, though, that any time you permanently change something (like buy better skin or hair) you'll have to change it for all outfits you want to use the new item with. While you're doing all that, maybe you should also take the time to clean up your inventory and get rid of unused items. It'll help reduce your loading time, and it'll make your life easier. But even after I said all that, the last time I was forced to run a character test was when I was on Phoenix. The latest Firestorm still takes more resources, but performance is still greatly improved over version 4.1 and earlier.

If you mean one of those 3g/4g thiings, then avoid it like the plague! I wouldn't consider going to an old fashioned text only website with one of those things, let alone something as intensive as sl.

The problem with any gray software or technique is that it can be used for both white hat and black hat purposes. Copybotting, as this is about.... Owners should have some method of locally backing up their own work. They made it, after all. Maybe Mesh will change this. With the old prim/texture method, which I admittedly am not good at, what I could save is the template and texture, both in 2d. For me, since I am not a merchant, this is something I can live with. Because I'm not looking to open up new markets at places like inworldz or anything. If I can't use SL anymore, then I don't need the 3d version. If I WAS a merchant, I guarantee I'd be on multiple grids. Expansion is key. And I certainly would want my own copy of anythig I create. So0meone here can probably tell a better way than a copybot. but is it as well known? From what I read about copybot viewers, they offer more in the way of anonymity than the average TPV. For me, not having any payment or rl info on file is enough security. But for a privacy fanatic, I can certainly see the draw to using a viewer that hides it's user. My personal take on it is that I trust LL not to collect data on me in a malicious manner, and I trust them more than anyone to screen tpv's to ensure they are not doing so either. In light of that, I use only tpv's that recieve LL's endorsement. Copybot viewers never will. In terms of Photoshop brushes/layers/templates... I read the eula's very closely, both before and after purchase. Any such products I buy must allow either copy or transfer permissions. If they include both, cool. But I so far make things only for myself. If I DO begin to sell, which I'm considering, then these agreements are actually things I would consider to be common sense not only for the creaotr of the brushes, but also for myself. If I make something both copy and transfer, then why would anyone pay? Why wouldn't they sell it for themselves? The DCMA procedures may be clear to merchants. But they aren't to everyone. Personally, I think sl defines intellectual property better than most of the web. They came up with three criteria for products (copy/transfer/modify) and let the creator decide which of those are allowed. Personally, I feel that whoever too the time to create anything here is the person who should be in complete control of those permissioins. With the addition, only for that person or group, if it's a groub build, of "local backup."

Lori492 wrote: Try updating to the newest version. It fixed a lot of bugs and, at least for me, runs better than anything I've used before. http://phoenixviewer.blogspot.com/2012/08/firestorm-update-42229837.html You can find the information about it there and it links to the download page. As usual, you need to do a clean installation, so be sure to get rid of all the old files before you run install. Hope that helps. I can vouch for everything Lori492 wrote. The only version of firestorm worth having is the latest. It is the most stable, and ver4.1.something had me about ready to completely write off firestorm forever with its frequent crashes. Saying they fixes a lot of bugs is an understatement. compared to version 4.2, all previous versions ARE a bug.

What viewer are you currently using, and why do you want to change? The best really is a matter not only of your hardware specs, but also your personal preferences.I have compared many, many viewers, and my personal favorite is either Neirans or Firestorm. My hardware specs are only slightly slower than yours. I tried Cool viewer, as the previous poster suggested. Not my cup of tea. I guess now that I have experienced FUI viewers, I just can't go back. Besides, performance isn't much better on my machine than when i use FS or Neirans. Now, since i prefer viewers that are admittedly resource heavy, I tried a couple of things within my OS and my hardware to boost performance. I recommend that you keep your resource monitor running in the background, so that during lag spikes you can see where your problems lie. Try to keep your RAM use under 75%. If it's any higher, go to the website of whoever manufactured your computer, get the model number, and look at stock ram vs maximum. Running Win7 with all the other programs I tend to open at the same time as I'm on SL, I was using about 3.5 gigs of ram. Upgrading my computer from 4 to 6 gigs helped a bt. My main issue, and I suspect yours too, is that laptop graphics chipsets don't hold a candle to the graphics cards of a desktop. So, nomatter which viewer you use, turning down the graphics quality slider will work wonders to reduce lag. So will routine mainenance of your machine. Download and run CCC cleaner. This will fix any registery errors, any conflicts, etc. It will clean up unused and obsolete files. It will reduce processes running in the background. Defrag Keep all your drivers up to date. Windows as it comes stock, is a resource hog. This can be easily fixed though. Do away with any fancy themes, pointers, shading, etc. Uncheck anything that animates icons or cursors. This helps more than most people realize. Also, uninstall (Don't just delete, actually uninstall) any of the junkware that comes with the computer from the factory. There is a utility within CCC cleaner to help you do this, or you can use control panel-add/remove programs. Use task manager to kill unwanted/unneeded processes. Use your resource monitor to determine your "disk usage" This isn't how much filespace you used. This is how much of the information from your disk is begin processed. Compare this against network usage. Then use what you're seeing there to determine your cache size. If you're pegging on your disk usage, then your cache is too big. If you're barely using it, then you can probably use a larger cache. So I din't really tell you which viewer is best. I told you my two favorites. But I hope what I wrote will enable you to pick a viewer for yourself, instead of for your hardware.