Rick Nightingale

I had an RL friend, years back, who would buy any electronic gadget or computer type things that I bought or even talked about buying. This was back in the very early days of computing, when new and interesting stuff was coming out daily. After a while, I started deliberately mentioning things to him, just to see what he did. Without fail, he would have the thing within a few days. I nearly bankrupted him!

Could be. Maybe the system was more sensitive when I happened to try it years ago, or I was just unlucky. No matter - I was only seeing what it was.

I never understood how people could cheat with speed enhancers and the like in the Realms. The few times I bothered to play there, I would get chucked out on a regular basis - just by normal running and jumping around. Jump over a rock - get chucked out. Slide down a mountain... get chucked out. Just be mid running... find myself back home yet again. I never used or did anything to cheat. So how on Earth do cheaters manage? It got on my nerves so much I gave up. Besides, there are other 'games' which seem far more lucrative for less stress, not that I bother.

I've recreated the Slink Extra Alphas from the textures (what a pain, lol). You can grab it free here, or chat me up in world for a copy: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Slink-Free-Extra-Alphas-works-with-any-avatar/24509691 @LibGwen it will save you some work if you haven't done it yet I've made the pack no-trans just to stop unscrupulous types from reselling it for money.

I've just had to refund a customer who bought an item, and it was delivered and charged three times under three different order numbers. Now I'm trying to get a refund of the MP fee from LL.

Ditto both of the above. I use some Anna Erotica trees here to 'fill in' with more land impacty trees in front, and some Skye stuff. Skye has the best waterfall and river kits in SL I think.

Oh, you mean those that get locked? Well, I didn't intend it to be... I just found what I saw quite amusing so I posted it.

I'll tell you my answer... three or four. My wife and I are at a store, and she said why are there so many people on the radar, but it's empty? They are all on an empty floor just above the sales floor; just above the two of us. Sometimes the store really is elbow to elbow, but when it's empty, it's like this. Notice the dice-like five dots? There are three, but one is partial. Apart from two of the dots (me and my wife) and another two that are indicated higher up, almost every one of them is either 6 years and 6 or 7 months old, or 1 year 1 month, with a couple of outliers. All of them are standing still, most in a starter avatar outfit, no profile, picks or groups, not indicated as bots, etc.. The odd one has a bit of a profile (the age outliers as mentioned), as if it's an abandoned alt. I guess someone's playing the traffic game. So much for using traffic as a search criterion... is that still done?

Am I right that one thing we won't be able to do with PBR is have specular highlights of a different colour to the albedo? Like on my mer tails which are green, but flash with red patterns when at right angle to the light.

I was thinking that, but the viewer I was thinking that too, but the viewer can interpolate movement in-between server updates, and there are also purely viewer side things like llTargetOmega and particles. There's still no need for framerates beyond what is required for normally smooth viewing though. Higher framerates are craved by gamers for that extra 0.01 second or so they think gives them an edge in shooting or dodging... can't say I've ever been good enough to notice myself. It's useless in SL.

Hmm, that's odd since, as Animats says, it should be installed along with the viewer if it's not already on your system. And it not already being there would be a bit strange unless it's a clean Windows install. From the link Animats gave you, download and install both the x86 and x64 versions of the libraries. If that doesn't fix it... come back and we'll talk more. I did get a really stupid one the other day - trying to install a Microsoft application of all things! It outright failed to even install, and when I checked the error log it was because the VC runtime installer failed. That failed because... wait for it... the runtime library was already installed! Microsoft Muppets can't even get it's own stuff together. So, I uninstalled that library via Control Panel/Programs/Updates, then the app installed just fine including re-installing the VC library.

@benchthis I don't think you can in LL's viewer. There is Vsync, but not a software rate limit even in debug settings I don't think. You can probably rate limit your graphics card in its own settings though, and maybe set a profile for the viewer. If you have an nVidia card, you can limit the framerate through the nV control panel or the Afterburner bloatware. I have mine capped in Firestorm to 60fps - that's all my monitor will run at so no point heating up the GPU to do more. I really don't think high framerates are useful in SL anyway. It's not an FPS or racing game where it might make a difference if the monitor can go faster.

Not yet! Can't beat an old diesel that will run forever on raw vegetable oil

Yeah, I get your point. Try saying that though to some newbie who's just bought their first L$ and been ripped off with an empty box on the MP. We get them here occasionally and they basically get told to get over it because there's nothing they can do. I bet they feel it's pretty real though. And frankly so do I if I get ripped off. At the end of the day it does amount to real money at some point; paid in and paid out. Just because it's used for intangible* goods in-between those two points doesn't mean that isn't real. To me, the only difference is that governments are not 'noticing' us, largely I guess for the reasons you say but that doesn't mean there is any fundamental difference between my examples in RL and in SL. It's just a matter of scale. The L$ trading that goes on outside SL is of course nothing like the scale of bitcoin trading and wasn't even when it was LL-legal so there's no impetus for governments to care... not enough for them to bother stealing off us. Anyway... good debating with you *Edit: hey, there's a good word, at least I'm sure we can agree on that one

I disagree. People keep their L$ on sale at a high value, hoping to get a windfall if the price rises that high. Not much different to RL investing. Until it was banned by SL, L$ were traded elsewhere, and I know they still are although (for LL readers) I certainly don't have anything to do with that or the places that do it. I just know they exist. Bitcoin has no intrinsic value until you sell it for fiat currency. I think my point is that the digital age is redefining what we can call 'real'. Governments are slow to catch up with some of it, fortunately or not depending on one's view I guess.

But it's not real It's an example of a real world law being applied in a place where nothing is real, according to you (I'm not really arguing with you on that). How about another example: I buy a music download with bitcoin. The download is digital, it is no more or less real than the thing I might buy in SL, whether visual, audio, whatever. Someone created it, someone sold it, someone bought it. The creators has legal rights to their creation... so does that make it real as far as the law is concerned? Bitcoins are not real. They exist only digitally, just the same as L$. I can buy and sell and trade them, but I cannot hold one in my hand. Do governments consider them real? Too right they do... and they get taxed! What's the difference, really, between that and SL?

Playing devil's advocate... then why did gachas have to be banned? It's virtual things, traded for other virtual things in a game world and neither are real. Likewise loot boxes on other games. It's only 'not real'* because so far our governments haven't said otherwise. I truly hope it stays that way despite the drawbacks it brings mostly for consumers. *Edit: wrong way to say it... I mean it's only not attracting real legal interest, or something like that

I don't think you're missing something; laws have been made about or applied to other in-world 'game' areas (see Loot Boxes in particular, and SL's gacha machines). At what point does 'buying' something for 'game money' cross over into a real world transaction with real world laws governing it? Ultimately, it's all real money since it has to be purchased and can be cashed out. The UK parliament has a currently active bill to discuss such things as Loot Boxes and their legality and taxable status. At the moment most of this goes on under government radars. To be honest, it's not really an area I want explored too deeply - we get taxed enough in RL here! If you want to go down that sort of road though, my biggest thing is that I, a human, with legal rights and not my 'avatar' paid for my items in SL... I should be able to use them on any avatar I choose that is mine. After all, it wouldn't be hard for LL to link alt accounts together, especially if they all share the same legally identified payment details. Personally I think the alt situation would have been much better handled by having one log-in account for LL, under which numerous avatars could be created and logged into the grid. Let the sellers go bat-crazy over that one. Talk about wailing and gnashing of teeth! (That's just one of the many things that crosses my mind at 3am when I can't sleep in bed and I'm redesigning the whole of SL, along with in-world mesh creation, an overhaul or the permissions system to protect both creators' and consumers' rights...)

Why not just do as I said... right-click, open, copy to inventory. Three clicks and you're done. That's what the Open option is for.

Well if we're posting glamour shots... I just made my first PBR material using Blender, from a wooden panel model I made ages ago. It's applied to a flat panel here, as it is in the Medium and lower LODs. The High LOD model is the detailed 3D model that the material was baked from to use on the lower models. You can't see the change when it swaps from the actual, 3D panel to the flat one. It needs a bit of tweaking - the inset vertical slots at the top are a bit too reflective in the PBR version; in my old version they look darker and not reflective. Not a bad start though. and the 'real thing' - the detailed high LOD model, with the same PBR material on it:

Yes, there are alternatives. Adobe's offering is way out of my league. What I think would be useful from LL, rather than a "look at this shiny" video is a tutorial on using Blender to make PBR materials. It's a pig to get your head around, and having it explained step by step by someone from LL, so that it is LL specific, would be invaluable to many. Substance painter is fine for those who earn big bucks in SL already, but if LL just focuses on that it leaves many of the rest of us out in the cold and stumbling around in the dark.

Another point re. obsoletion of no-mod things... hair, and any wearables with alpha blending. Alpha blending order can now be reliably controlled by attachment point to combat the well known issue, if the items in question have a root prim with transparency. I modified some old hair for my wife a few days ago to make the central prim transparent (it also reduces render cost, so should be anyway but that isn't always the case). If that hair had been no mod, it would still be as unusable as it was previously, causing bad alpha glitching with the head's eyelashes. The very same thing applies to clothing. Mod perms = we can fix issues like this ourselves, even when the system is changed. No-mod = a useless or limited use product.

I think 'Mod' was referring to modify, not moderator. (unless it's a joke and I'm missing something... could be -> autism -> miss quite a lot, lol)

Yep, with one of them, if that's needed. I've been augmenting things with my own normal and specular maps for a long time... everything from building materials to clothing and even skins. No, it's not always easy with stuff that's UV-mapped intricately and has different types of diffuse on one texture... but that's not to say it can't be done and it's certainly no excuse to just say "no mod". Besides, there is a lot of stuff that isn't hard to do. Let those who can, do. If you can't, that's no reason to say others shouldn't. Dammit... I said I was done with this thread, lol.

I'll see you, and raise you a Quokka