Vulpinus

...and here, twelve animations out of VA's Sword AO (which of course I paid for) have been pulled out of my inventory. Not impressed.

For the record, as embarrassing as it is (I'm supposed to be good at this computer stuff)... It turns out it was my network after all. Having to rebuild and reinstall my main PC meant FTPing to my backup server up in the attic to get some backup data. FTP was erratic, saying it was OK but leaving me with bad files. Huh??? Long story short, I put wireshark taps in a few places and found that my public server was vomiting malformed broadcast packets onto the LAN. It only seemed to do this when fairly idle, hence why everything seemed to work when I checked things out by talking to it. I ended up swapping out the server NIC for a new one. The FTP problem and, when I finished reinstalling, the SL problems, vanished without a trace. Quite why this NIC issue seemingly had no effect on anything else on my rather large home LAN, other than FTP to that particular server and SL traffic everywhere, is completely beyond me. I could upload and download to the internet at full line speed all day long, and run any services I wanted. Except SL. I really would have expected some signs of it elsewhere. Oh well, I'm actually glad it was me after all. Now I can get on with enjoying SL. In fact, SL is running better than ever; quicker to render, no more 'stuck' textures and I think quicker response to things like land details. Looks like that card has been gradually dieing for a while and messing up my SL traffic. Edit to add: D'oh! Of course. The only time my public server is ever really idle (and hence had the NIC issue worst) is when I run SL, to make sure there is no contention for bandwidth. I deliberatley throttle the server back for that, and started to do so as soon as I thought things were a bit slow in SL. Made matters worse! In fact, that server has been downloading at full 20Mbps line speed all morning, and I've been on SL at the same time, and it runs better! You have to laugh...

I'll give Google's DNS a try. I usually use OpenDNS. I'll probably end ip filing a JIRA too, thanks for the information. It will have to wait a few days though. My system HD decided to die this morning, just after I had logged in to SL and was enjoying another good login. Typical! So, tomorrow I'm going to buy a nice 1TB SSD and rebuild my PC. In the meantime, SL will have to wait

Thanks, I'll try those suggestions. I am on viewer 3_7_21_296734 beta, which still has issues, although I think it is slightly better than Firestorm in this matter. Only slightly though, and I often end up as just a cloud with it. As luck would have it, I've logged in tonight with Firestorm and can actually see myself. Took about 3 to 4 minutes to get the system layers, but I got them this time. So I'm going to enjoy myself tonight, and try out the next beta etc tomorrow.

This has been going on for nearly a month now. Things worked fine previously, and I didn't change anything to cause the issue. System layer clothing and avatar skins are not displaying for me, I get just grey (or sometimes white). It is a little random, sometimes I'll get a face and legs for instance but no hands or torso. Often all system layers are grey. Occasionally they will suddenly display properly after bring logged in a long time (20 minutes plus). Sometimes I log in and everything works fine, but mostly, say nine times out of ten, I have problems. This is on my own avatars and others, in all regions. It happens in Firestorm and the official viewer, on all three of my premium accounts, on two different PCs. I have jumpred through hoopes for weeks now, the last week with tech support who have concluded that they cannot replicate the issue. I can replicate every day! I have tried everything like resetting my avatar, completely changing outfits, clearing my cache, even fully wiping and resinstalling the software. Given that it is happening on all my accounts and hardware though, many of those things really were clearly not the issue. I did them anyway, as asked by support. I have even been so far as to connect directly to my ADSL modem (it's a simple half-bridge router, no NAT or firewall) and give my PC a public IP address. No difference. I run a couple of servers behind the Cisco 1841 router that connects to the ADSL modem, with multiple services on them, and everything works. I'm a Cisco engineer, so I'm not exactly a newbie at this. I can find no reason why there should be issues with SL traffic on my end. So, after that long-winded post, is anyone else in the UK having issues like mine? All I can come up with is issues with the newish CDN system, since it was around that time that Istarted having the trouble.If it's just me though, then probably not and I need to take drastic steps like change my ISP or something, which would be mayhem because I have a very good service, routed /29 public IP block and easily make maximum speed on the 21CN ADSL line. Edit to clarify: everything else around me loads fine, and prim/sculpt/mesh clothing works, just not system layers. Yesterday, after clearing cache and resetting my avatar (as asked by CS) I relogged, still had a grey avatar 20 minutes later, while everything around me had displayed perfectly. I TP'd to a big store, and other avatars stayed grey while the entire store downloaded and displayed in a minute or so. Ten minutes later, still grey clothing. I gave up.

Yeah, the GTX970 is really doing well. I haven't tried overclocking it yet. I've managed to get the fans running faster though, playing Witcher 2 on maximum graphics options. SL on max everything and 256m view still doesn't make it sweat. Oooh... SSD for caching? I can imagine how quick that is (Don't have one yet, but I'm an electronics nut so I'm used to dealing with it at chip level). I keep thinking of setting up a RAMdisk for cache (got 16GB RAM), but I already have a few things going into RAMdisk on boot and adding another 10GB-worth of copying at startup and shutdown would annoy me. Plus, if I crash - much more likely cache corruption. How does the lifetime of the SSD get impacted by using it as a cache though? Last time I checked (a while ago I admit) SSD's were impacted hard by continual writing. The cells die off. Hmm... I might set up a RAID-0 for a cache, and see how that goes.

Completely agree, the tier is just too much. I'm not holding my breath either though. I had to downsize a while ago from a nice big plot to a measly 1680 sq.m. of mainland. RL issues suck. Now, if I still had the space and prim allowance, I would absolutely be buying lots more stuff and doing more in SL. I enjoy building and landscaping, which needs the space and costs money. Around me are a number of abandoned parcels, some of them from myself when I downsized, going to waste. What a shame. If the tier was half as much, I would probably be tempted to buy more land (I would probably not have downsized in the first place). It's just not worth it though unless I can afford a fair size. Such is (second) life.

Well, yeah - I'm in Gacha Alley Market now. That place used to drive my GPU to distraction and I really had to drop to quite low settings to survive there. It's a bit laggy now, at max everything, but certainly usable.

My previoous graphics card wasn't bad, an MSI GTX560Ti 448-core version, but I really like to pump up the quality setting. That's how I enjoy my SL experience. I tended to run the settings a notch below Ultra, with a few individual things tweaked up and others down. I like Hayabusa wind effect trees, and if I panned across a few of those, my display jerked badly and my GPU fans went up to take-off speed instantly. So, I sold a few bits on ebay and treated myself to an MSI GTX970 (twnfrozr, blah blah blah). While I can't say it's a whole new experience, the differences are considerable. I've max'ed out everything in the graphics options in Firestorm. Now, I can pan acorss those tricky trees with ease. The lowest my frame rate drops to with them in view, plus several snow particle emittors I have running, water animations and scripted flying bugs, is about 25fps. Plenty! Movies are only produced at 24. Oh, and the fans are as quiet as the older GPU and don't seem to increase in speed when looking at the trees. I've capped the framerate at 70, and it sometimes hits that cap/ I'm going to find some really busy places now, to test it out. I'm certainly impressed so far though. The 970 rocks! The only oddity I've noticed is that the "bumpiness" setting of parts of my build's textures seems much less noticeable. I actually thought it was not even working, until I clicked it on and off a few times and could just notice the difference. I use it on some wallpapers, set to "lightness", and it used to give a really good 3d effect like posh wallpaper. Now it is hardly different to normal. I'm betting that's more a driver issue though since I updated my driver at the same time as installing the new card. Oh well, nothing's perfect. I'll see what I can tweak... Now, if only LL could make use of more of the 4GB of memory the 970 has.

I know what you mean. I must admit not long after I posted, I started to think, "how can I add some character to this..." It does look better in world than in my photos (I'm no SL photographer, that's for sure) but it is still quite flat, as you put it. No regrets though - I can't put it down yet!

Heydra Mainstore too, male and female clothes

Yeah, JOMO is pretty good. Just spent half an hour there, male and female and it-doesn't-matter stuff. Spent three grand there too - good stuff! Has anyone mentioned michiGaNs ShAcK Mainstore? Lots of non-clothes things and tends to be quick turnover/busy.

Yeah, I suppose that info would help... xiaoduo Abbot, the store is JOMO Am I allowed to post a link? It's not as if it's mine... https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/JOMO-Cat-Man-ALL-4/6409214

I just had to post these pictures. I've not bothered with mesh bodies because of the clothing issue and, well, I just wasn't all that impressed really. Until I found this one earlier today... It's amazing. The photos really don't do it justice. And clothes simply aren't an issue - would you want to cover this up? Now I just want the creator to do a human version.

That's because I've just changed everything. Thanks for checking them out though.

Lol. Around where I live, they'd need to put more than just 'no peeing'. If they still had phone boxes, that is.

I see. I guess it's a job given to the newbie in the office to give them something to do. When I made a HUD to rapidly change carried or worn items, I learned that even mentioning RLV in the advert got it listed as Adult. It's not even anything to do the other uses of RLV, but it could be... Oh well, such is (second) life.

You know, it looks like someone has gone through all my adverts and recategorised them, and not according to the guidelines on that link. For instance, I have a simple battle hammer, no gory pictures or anything, just the hammer, which according to this: General Content Is For All Residents. Mildly violent content, including:Virtual weapons, depicted realistically or non-realistically.comes under the General category. As do some other things that are not even weapons (like my copper saucepan set!). They have been recategorised as Adult. This is daft! Yeah, a question to customer support might be in order. The cigars I understand, but not the others. They're having a laugh (possibly literally, lol)

Ah-ha - thank you! I was just in the middle of reading that very link. I had read the wiki article on smoking so didn't think the MP would be different. I'll change them to Moderate.

...or at least made Adult only? I have a number of cigar products on the marketplace, or rather I had. Suddenly they have all been deactivated and hence removed from the listings. Not by me! Also, a fire effect I made for the Wolfkin avatar got added into it as well. Given that everything else I have is still there, and it's only the above products that have gone, I'm assuming it has ben done deliberately rather than by some system error. It's not random. They were all listed as 'General', as it came up automatically when I created the listing. I have nothing against listing them as 'Adult' provided the many others on the marketplace are similarly restricted. So, is anyone aware of a change in policy on this issue?

I just found this thread in a desperate search for help. I've hardly been in SL for about a month. Everything worked OK (ish, it is SL after all) last time I was here but for the last few days it's been dreadful. 80% of the time when I log on, half of me is grey. A different half each time. Sometimes I have a grey face, other times it's the hands, sometimes both. It seems system clothing layers are worst; my sculptie and mesh clothing usually loads OK but the underlying system layers don't, or take ages. Changing outfits and even the entire avatar to try and get something non-grey does not help much as the same happens again. I've been through my own network and can't see anything amiss. I even went as far as to give my main PC a public IP address and route it straight to the internet (well, through a transparent bridging firewall set up in my 'real' Cisco router). Clearing my texture cache seemed to work at first, until I logged off again and back on. Back to normal (current bad normal that is), just with more to load when I move around. Packet loss is zero (it almost always is), Ping Sim is about 160ms (not great but shouldn;t be an issue), Time dialtion 0.998, etc. Everything looks OK in the stats. It just doesn't work!

I'm not so bothered about having a last name, but being forced to have 'resident' tagged onto my name really bugs me!

Since I'm very much a vampire movie nut in RL, from Bela Lugosi onwards, I'll toss in my thoughts. I've not been in SL long enough to have seen what Ceka Cianci describes, but I like the sound of it. I wouldn't touch the bloodlines game with a ten foot cattle prod with a string of garlic on the end. The 'opt-out' thinking is simply an invasion of privacy. I hate it in RL and SL. I strongly object to being interrupted by such things if I'm not in a place where it is specifically allowed like an RP sim. Make it opt-in; the group-joining method might be good but I don't know if it's possible to tell if someone is in a group if they don't have it active. I guess not. Anyway, that's a technicality. Make it opt-in! Personally I would love to play a slayer, not a vampire. I thought of that within a week of joining SL. The ideas already mentioned in the thread in that regard are great. I would gladly support, financially, a good game where something like that could be done. Hunting each other across sims, slyly insinuating oneself into the opposite society by seduction or whatever in order to score a big kill - wow! It could be so much fun. It doesn't have to be wholly restricted to RP sims either as long as we only RP with each other and don't really disturb the 'normals'. I've even designed my living accommodation already as a vampire slayer's hang-out! So, something like that would get my money. RP is the key though, not just a HUD-based, point scoring system. That's just a small part of helping to keep track of things. The technicalities should be there to assist the RP, not vice versa. Shy users? Well, I'm not exactly the most extrovert person myself, quite the opposite (and it's really nothing to do with being 'shy') but it's something that just has to be got over. As someone said somewhere, play a 'not shy' person. I think it would be quite frustrating for an RPer to be 'got' without even a little bit of RP. Frustration of that kind isn't conducive to keeping players. That said, I am one of nature's snipers... (in RL at least, and not RPing) Since it seems adult content has been mentioned, of course that needs to be part of it. Watch almost every traditional vampire movie ever made! Without that it would be just downright boring and would degenerate into a mindless point-scoring game. That's fine if you just effectively want to play 'assassins' with pointy teeth, but I grew out of things like that many years ago. People do, in general, I think. There needs to be more 'meat' to keep us interested. Just my two cents

Thanks Ohijiro. I'm hoping the next issue of FS fixes a few things that have been bugging me, like the flickering particle issue. The client-side AO is one of the main reasons I use Firesstorm; to save having a HUD and so I can quickly switch between different AO sets. I'll wait for the next release and see if it's any better. --- I asked here, btw, because I wasn't certain the issue was simply caused by Firestorm. I'm still quite new to scripting in SL and thought I might have been doing something wrong myself. Seems more sensible to me to ask that first, rather than just jumping and filing a bug report.

I've made an item that, when worn, periodically plays a sequence of the standard facial expressions using llStartAnimation. It does other stuff as well of course but nothing else involving animations in any way. As obvious from the title, I use Firestorm's client-side AO. When my item plays its facial expressions, sometimes it causes whatever standing animation is currently playing to freeze mid way, and my avatar sort of gets stuck in a combination of that, and the default dork mode that exists with no AO. His head starts turning like a moron's and his arms hang limply. I've only noticed this while standing still, and other AO animations like walking or running will still work normally if I move, but my standing animation is dorked. It's hard to say how often it does this, not often but it certainly seems to do it every time I relog and the facial expression is played the first time. Also just occasionally at other times, sometimes immediately after a transport. I don't know if that's coincidence. It's enough to be annoying the heck out of me though! Only clicking Firestorm's AO off and back on brings my standing AO back. I've tried putting an llStopAnimation in the code (which I didn't think I needed) but that made no difference whasoever to the problem. Has anyone else seen this - any hints? I could I suppose have the script toggle Firestorm's AO but that seems a little like brute force when I shouldn't have to. Besides, I've seen Firestorm stop responding to those commands on -8888 on occasion until reloaded, in another thing I made.