ChinRey

You're right of course. But SL is a free market which basically means everybody are allwoed to exaggerate and lie as much as they like. The only advice I can give is take a really good look at the parcel and - just as important - the neighborhood before you buy.

Umm, I do that myself. I try my best to speak English but I never get it quite right.

Yes but the results are inconclusive. One reason for that is that the formula for calculating render cost seems to udnerestimate the significance of flexible mesh quite a bit. Another reason is that the formula uses the nominal, rather than the actual size of a fitted mesh - that is the size the mesh was unploaded with, not the size it atcually has when it's fitted to an avatar. A third reason is that SL doesn't seem to handle worn alphas very well and a mesh body will always have lots of invisible parts. I good rule of thumb is perhaps to multiply the official render cost by 1.5. There is also the problem that SL doesn't really support AMD graphics cards and this is especially apparent with fitted mesh. How about shoes? I'm part serious actually. Much of the problems with mesh bodies and body parts would be solved if people only used them when they were actually visible, not hidden behind clothes. Reducing Draw distance and Objects & Sculpts LOD (aka RenderVolumeLODFactor) are the most obvious big savers. With an AMD card, switch Advanced Lighting Mode on when you're in an environment with multiple mesh avatars. That will actually drastically reduce your fps but there's lag and there's lag. With an AMD card and no ALM you get all those constant render failures with fitted mesh blinking on and off and that can be far more annoying than low fps. I honestly think that if Second Life can't support that setup, it has failed because it excludes so much of its potential user base. Oh yes but people in SL always forget about TAANSTAFL. Everything comes at a cost and the question is always, is it worth it? They could and they could but why should they? They're here to make money. Your first suggestion would reduce their sales, the second would add a bit of extra work and not increase sales.

If you mean apartments on different floors of the same house, no. There is no way to split parcel vertically.

It shouldn't? I tested two account names that don't show up in web search. Strangely, one of them shows up in legacy search, the other doesn't.

The people search in Firestorm uses an old search function that is not really supported anymore but it does show all registered accounts, including cancelled ones.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention FabFree. They closed down inworld long ago but the blog is still up and full of great tips. Also, if you search for freebies on MP, add "NOT demo" (without thequotes and with capital letters in NOT) to the search. That filters out most demos.

If you got a message that the parcel disn't exist, it was probably because the parcel didn't exist and that has nothing to do with what happened to you. Sims are temporarily taken down and restarted every now and then and if you only tried to get there ocne, that was probably what happened. If you tried several times and got the same message, the sim has clsoed down. It may still be listed in the destination guide for years, the destination guide isn't very well updated and it's full of places that closed down long ago - adn places so outdated nobody goes there anymore. I'm a bit confused there, did you actually get banned from the places or was it just those particles (that's what those bouncing pictures are named btw) say you were banned? If you are banned from a place, you are thrown out from it immediately and won't be able to return.

If you can find some item they own or made, you can check the profile of the owner or creator. If the profile is completely blank, they've left.

Hold down alt and ctrl. Click on your avatar and hold the mouse button down while you move the mouse around. Then use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in and out. There are many other ways too but that is a good technique to learn anyway since it works on everything you want a clsoer look at, not just your avatar.

Very hard to say. Ideally 50,000 or less but few people manage that - it takes a bit of planning and work to get a good looking modern avatar as low as that. The default cutoff limit for mid graphics on the official SL viewer is 80,000. If you can stay below that, you can be fairly sure most people can see you. 100,000 is also fairly safe. Above that fewer and fewer people will see you as anything but a colored silhouette.

Welcome back, Lipahlove! You're going to be overwhelmed by repleis from people recommending their own personal favorites but you really ought to give a little bit of details. Like which gender is your avatar and what general style are you looking for? My best advice to newcomers is do not spend a single Linden on avatar thingies the first month or two. I think that is good advice for people returning after a long time too - things have changed so much. Look at what the Free Dove has, then look for group gifts and MM board prizes and such and also of course freebies on the Marketplace. Unless you want a mesh body (they are never free) you can put together absolutely marvelous avatars with only freebies. Takes a bit of time and effort but it's fun.

Have you checked Eternal Limited? Edit: Thinking about it, a Gorean Free Woman outfits means you are covered from head to toe. Is there really any point in using a mesh body when it's completely hidden underneath heavy clothing? (That's a genuine question btw. I know of many people who always use a mesh body no matter how they are dressed and I've been wondering if there is some point to it that I've missed.)

You know, in the long run those weekly Nothing Specials probably add up to far more genuine improvement to SL than all those big revolutionary new features everybody talk about.

It may well be and if so, it means LL is working on it so hopefully all the problems will be over soon.

Any graphics card should handle ultra for quick photo shots. What damages the gpu is heat buiding up and there won't be much of that in the short time it takes to snap a picture. But it may be a good idea to stay on mid while you stage the scene and only switch to ultra when you take the picture.

Isn't it about time we put the "script lag" myth to rest now? Edit: On second thought, a club may have people tp'ing in all the time and that is the one occasion when scripts in general actually do cause lag. But even so, please stop that nonsense about scripts in general causing lag. Linden Lab sorted out that issue years ago.

I gave my alts nice comfy homes for me to borrow. They'll never notice because they're hardly ever online at the same time as me - I think we live in different time zones.

You can't know that, SL doesn't have one server for each sim. I think there is one virtual server for each four full sims although they may have changed that ratio since last I checked. In any case, the number of people logged on to the server shouldn't matter. Try a speed test to the Oookla server at Tuscon: http://tucson.speedtest.net/ (click on the "Your preferred server button). Tuscon is the Ookla server closest to the SL servers and it should give a fairly good indication whether there are any problems in the connection lines between your computers and SL. Bandwidth is usually measured in megabits per second, not kilobits, so yes, that must be rather depressing. Even so, try to increase the max bandwidth to the recommended value (1500 kps) and see what happens. You got nothing to loose, if it increases the lag, you can just reduce it again.

Yw

As Alwin said, "hacked" means somebody else has managed to get your password and has access to your account. Fortunately that's not what happened here. There are two ways griefers can do something similar to what happened to you. The most common was is the one Alwin mentioned and gave the solution to: they trick their victim to wear some item with an unpleasant script. The other way is to rez a follower. A follower is an object that isn't attached to you but - as the name says - programmed to follow you everywhere you go. There are several ways to get rid of followers but the easiest one is usually to teleport to another sim. There actually was one griefer group that specificlly targetted non-European avatars - I'm not sure if they are active anymore. But most griefers don't discrimintae, they harass everybody they see on equal terms.

Sure. Log on to secondlife.com, click on "Account" and then on "Change Email Address".

You definitely want a good rental system, managing rentals manually is far more work than it's worth. CasperLet is by far the most popular but there are other alternatives too. People are going to ask for security orbs so you might as well buy that right away too, preferably one that is compatible with your rental system so tenants are added to the access list automatically. It is important to note that ban lines don't work for sky boxes. If you are on mainland and a considerate SL'er, keep the skyboxes above 1000 m, try your best to keep them out of sight from open sky installations in the vicinity and please add a little bit of content on the ground - even a system tree or two is better than a completely empty plot. Keep the skyboxes at least 300-400 m away from each other You need a land group and deed the land to it. That's the only way to allow tenants to rez without opening the land to anybody. Recommended land settings: Object tab - Auto return: Probably 1-10 minutes (do not under any circumstance turn auto return off. Even if general object entry and building are disabled, stray objects can and will occasionally end up on the parcel). Options tab - Allow other Resdients to...: on mainland, everything. On an island you may want to switch off build for everyone Options tab - No Pushing: make sure it is on! Options tab - Avatars on other parcels can see and...: You probably want that switched off for rental land Options tab - Teleport routing: Anywhere (or the tenants won't be able to tp to their skyboxes) Sound - Restrict gesture and object sounds: keep it switched off if possible. Sound - Voice: Make sure it's on. Tenants will want to talk in their skyboxes Access: Anyone can visit.

That would help a lot, yes. As TorcaJarvis said, the people who have seen Sansar so far aren't allowed to say much but I suppose it's safe to say that game design experience from other platforms is far more useful in Sansar than SL experience is. Yes, the much basics are the same for all modern game engines. Second Life is the odd one out really. Very. Those two functionalities are really messed up in Second Life and Linden Lab isn't going to make the same mistakes again. Just a minor but rather crucial correction: you can make for Sansar but not in Sansar.

(Ignore this post - I was trying to correct a typo in an older post and for some reason the forum added the corrected verion as a new post instead)