Rick Nightingale

Ghastly hauntings occupy seance TEAMS

Legendary unicorns respond, endangering daylight D E M O N (Can't resist the reference to my favourite movie... and me! 😈)

Space invaders (hours 'wasted' in arcades in the 80's, lol).

Hmm... "Nature's most perfect food". (At least mine is, with added bacon layers)

I'm a hobbyist. I would not sell items of the poor quality we are seeing; I would be ashamed of myself. If somehow I did, believe me, it would be corrected within days and I would probably give everyone a refund too by way of apology. Besides, I'm talking about demos that come from established stores and well-known shopping events that are not easy to get a stall at. Those sellers are not merely hobbyists. Anyway... clearly we have different views and have made them clear so further arguing on that is pointless

I disagree. Demos are to see if we like a product; if it suits our needs; if the skirt matches the top we have; if it fits our 'out of average' shape or works well with our favourite dance animation. They are not to see if the creator bothered to make the product of suitable quality for sale that matches what they claim. That should be a given; they are charging money for it and making claims about the suitability. We should not have to demo to check the basics and if we miss something while demoing be blamed ourselves for the matter because we didn't spot the problem before buying. That's the whole attitude that allows this sort of thing to continue. Yes, the reality is the above is necessary, because so many seller are liars, incompetent, money-grabbing scammers, or just don't really care that much (probably the majority of such). Saying that is what demos are for though immediately puts it on the consumer to be responsible for that when it is not, it is the seller that is responsible. And yes, we demo everything too; and a high proportion of what we demo is rejected because it is substandard. That's the point of the thread - that so many things are sold making claims that the product does not meet. Not whether or not a buyer demos a product 'sufficiently'.

Standing together

Agreed; it's one of the things I was thinking from the other thread about badly fitting LX items. It's hard to make good animations; that is, ones that work well in SL with a variety of bodies and shapes, so we get the usual situation where many makers just do the minimum to get the product on sale. It's also why I rarely make animations except simple ones for a few of my products (or myself). I'm simply not good enough at it, and don't have the time or inclination to learn, to make a product I would actually be proud of.

While I agree contacting the creator is a good idea, it should not be necessary or put on the buyer to have to or they somehow share the blame. The maker should be checking things to make sure they are right; it's part of their job and what we are paying for, not ours to have to deal with their 'mistakes' and spend our time investigating the problem, contacting the seller, waiting, trying again, putting up with being told we're wrong and just moaning, jumping though hoops proving the issue, hoping it then gets fixed eventually... and in some cases right now still hoping over a year later... (I'm speaking from a lot of experience doing exactly this, for me and my wife) In the cases I'm talking about it should absolutely not have been made necessary. The 'fitting' is so bad that any maker worth the name wouldn't release them like that; in what I would perhaps describe as a literally half-finished fitting job at best. They are obviously not ready or fit for sale, at least not with a 'fitted for LaraX' logo on them making the logo meaningless. Contacting such a seller is likely a waste of time, as I have found out repeatedly to the point I no longer bother when it's like that. Mistakes are a different matter and happen to the best of us at times (even me!), and some sellers (certainly not all) are responsive if contacted. On occasion we've had a mistake corrected within hours or a few days (my own typical turn around for any mistake I make); unfortunately those are rather rare. We certainly remember the sellers in those cases. Some makers, even supposedly good and respected ones, don't give a hoot as long as most people don't notice a problem too soon and they get enough money in for the product. They've already moved on to the next money-maker. I've been told point-blank by one very well known seller that an error in their mesh (an actual hole in it which was blindingly obvious on the demo from the right direction) wasn't worth their time to fix since not many people had noticed it before buying. Obviously they lost the sale, but they knew they would and clearly didn't care.

Succubi love enjoying erotic pastimes T E A S E

Leaning on a corn HURTS I used to keep some many years back when I had two big tanks.

It's a bit spendy, but the very best way I've found to move the camera around, with no constraints at all, is a 3DConexxions SpaceMouse 6-axis controller. I have the simple wireless version now because it fits neatly on the arm of the sofa in the living room and just needs plugging in overnight to charge, but if you want more buttons for serious CAD work the bigger ones are excellent. It really is a revelation when you go into flycam mode! You can use it for moving the avatar around too but that can be a bit cumbersome. I used to use the SpaceMouse in sailing battles. One hand on the SpaceMouse, constantly moving the camera around to watch my targets, the other on the keyboard controlling the ship and firing. If you use Blender, the SpaceMouse makes that so much easier too. I wouldn't be without it. I also have a POS (point of sale, like they might use in shops) keypad; a grid of 6x5 mechanical keys in a slim case with transparent, removable keycaps for labelling the keys. That gets used for all sorts of things, programmed up and often used in conjunction with ATM Key Manager; like AutoHotKey but in some ways better.

Sole mio

Carrot cake

@Cougar Sangria I don't think we're talking about not demo'ing a product; that's not the issue. And yes, most clothing will need an alpha in some animations. We make our own most of the time and have since BOM started. If you buy only from sellers who do a proper job of skinning the clothes, great. Those need least alpha masking, sometimes none at all even when the maker provides one. The point is that there is a lot being sold now, from many other sellers, at high prices and at supposedly prestigious events, that is so far away from fitting the body that I don't even consider it to have been fitted for it. My wife tried one just two days ago, the fatpack of which was several thousand L$, and the buttocks clipped out far through the skirt even in an A pose. Another one, the shoulder blades clipped out in simple standing poses and the clothing clearly moved differently to the shoulder blades. No way was that properly weighted to the shoulders. I do some rigging, and skinning on Lara, LaraX and others; I know bad work when I see it and I'm seeing a lot of it.