Rick Nightingale

My wife got a ton of demos from a store recently, that she's admired for a while. The stuff is gorgeous, expensive, and they had a great sale on. She didn't end up buying anything. Why? ... Every item that she tried on, we could see through. At the hems, the cuffs, top, bottom, everywhere it was possible to see 'inside' the dresses a little, they were transparent. Or worse, there were 'ragged' scraps of mesh visible with gaps between due to the shape of it. Hardly anything had inside faces except for some of the skirts. Fine if the thing fits so closely that you can't see inside, but otherwise it just looks bad. I'm not talking about doing weird camming to try and see the issue; just looking at it normally with normal viewing angles and animations. If you're stood next to someone who's seated, looking down at them, and can see through the inside of their top through their cleavage as if it isn't there, it looks silly. On many items, things like metal fasteners on the clothes were solid and could be seen floating in the air from the inside. This isn't the only store where I've seen this done a lot. It's one of the things we always check for when looking at demos now and to my mind it seperates truly good designers from the rest. Some do the job very well. In many places it doesn't even have to be like a real sheet of cloth or have a continual face inside. It could just have a 'blocker' after a bit of textured cloth, like inside the cuff of a sleeve so you can't see inside (and out) when the animation moves the arm upwards. Likewise there's a well known mermaid tail that has a problem with being able to see through the avatar at the join if you happen to catch just the right (or wrong) angle of view. All it needed was a flat plane inside, coloured to match the texture at the join edge to solve the issue, but no. Well, it saved us (i.e. me) literally L$1000's but it's a shame. It's money I would gladly have spent on her.

If so I cannot find it. If not... I think I need to file a feature request. Just one Undo of a moved folder/object would do. The number of times I'm moving an item or folder, and the inventory window decides to go into 200mph scroll mode just as I release the mouse button drives me mad. I've just 'lost' a folder, and I've no idea where it went. I can't search for it because I was sorting event freebies and cannot recall what that folder was called and have no idea what was in it. It's in here... somewhere... Sorting inventory is hard enough without this, lol.

Finally got chance to do a Jira for the 'stuck LODs': https://jira.firestormviewer.org/browse/FIRE-32550 Shows some of the more obvious things.

Wow - things buried in deep memory! Yep - I recall those days too. Our CompSci department had some superfast line printers that could actually throw wide carriage fanfold straight up into the air as it exited the printer's top. The terminal room (which also soon housed the very earliest IBM PCs) had a glass wall with the mainframe on the other side and the lower ranks would stand with their noses pressed to the glass wondering what we were up to in there, humming the theme to Wargames. Want to feel older? BBSs... that's where ASCII (and, even more fun, ANSI, which most actually use but think it's ASCII) art started of course. With ANSI art you could make your art animate! What better use of a 300 baud modem and expensive telephone call could there be? Now we have Unicode art. Personally I limit myself to the occasional unicode character in a message (a 'thumbs up' or something), like I might us a 'LOL'. The ones that make your chat window scroll like those old superfast page printers...? Not for me, thanks, but I wouldn't want to take away the warm, fuzzy feeling of those who enjoy them.

I'm English... I meant the other one Anyway, since it's a greeting card thread, this is more my level. Ho ho ...oh!

I prefer, "Ah, BumHugs!" Season's greetings all!

Some places come to mind where you might find similar: Violent Seduction (current sale I think, but need to join (expensive) group for the discounts (I think). http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Violent Seduction/199/142/171 deviousMind http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/deviousMind/74/106/31 Sweet Thing http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/De la Lune/128/185/29 Aii & Ego http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Aii and Ego/123/164/1521

To add a very much related rant... ...those MP adverts which promise See item in Second Life ®... And guess what... all you get to see is another picture of the item on the vendor. No actual rezzed product at all. Argh! Waste of time again. There's a very prolific mesh maker that I often seem to find on the MP with something I might want... the entire inworld store is just pictures. Thousands of them! Useless. /rant. For now... Edit: At least all of this frustration has led me make more mesh for myself and not give L$ to people who can't be bothered to show you what you're buying.

They don't.

My wife recently resurrected an alt that had some stuff from there... got a similar lack of response when asking for updates (via the instructed channels) for the products which were not on the 'new' auto-redelivery system. Nothing for a month now. Not much we can do about it except vote with our L$. Such is (second) life.

I thought I made it clear in my post... I said I charge for only two demos (actually three, I forgot one), and as I said it's because they are fully functional and people could simply obtain hundreds of them and use them, just like the full product. They are a fully valid product in their own right. One, for instance, is a cigar. It's cheap, smokes once for the same length of time as the full product to demonstrate it, and I sell quite a lot as 'giftables' rather than demos. It's also a demo for the full product which comes boxed with more extensive options, and provides infinite cigars. Another is a sea mine, for target practice. Again, a valid single-use product in its own right as well as a demo. The full product is copyable and can auto-rerez after being destroyed. No matter what I did to that to make it a 'free' demo, it would still be perfectly usable as a target practice mine unless I removed the ability to see it destroyed - not much of a demo then. Every rule has some valid exclusions. Edit: In a nutshell: The reason to charge and then refund (once) is to prevent people using what is a perfectly usable, but single-use, product (because that's the best way to demo that particular thing) by 'buying' loads of them for L$0 instead of paying for the full product. By offering the refund on request, while I'm sure it puts some purchasers off (due to the ridiculously high proportion of unreliable adverts/sellers on the MP) it's the best compromise I can come up with. Edit 2: Some years ago I made my own vendor system that gave demos, some of which were restricted to one per avatar in case like the above. Then they were free. For various reasons I gave up on that though, the main one being it didn't fit in with putting demos on the MP, and I didn't like telling people on the MP they had to come inworld for a demo any more than I like that myself.

That's my standard demo-making practice for attachables. If I can be bothered it might even get a rotating "this is a demo" texture around it to be extra flashy. I'm fine with trying out other makers demos similary equipped. The only ones that irk me are where they put the demo prims over what you are trying to see, making it hard to tell if you like it or not. Just put it over the head. If someone is daft enough to walk around wearing a demo with a big red glowing ring around their head... let everyone laugh at them. I'm OK with that. Yeah, I despise those timed demos, except for very specific reasons. Likewise 1L$ demos... just no*. Neither I nor my wife has ever paid for a demo and had it refunded, although getting a 'gift' that sold for 1L$ in-world refunded seems common. My wife once bought six demos from one store, after finding them on the MP and having to go in-world to find the demos. The clothes looked amazing... and every demo proved them to be at best badly weighted, possibly not even weighted at all to the body they claimed to be. She felt scammed, and probably was! Might only be L$6... but it was her L$6. *I sell two demos for my products; the rest are of course free and almost everything I sell has a demo. In both instances it's because the item is fully functional, not marked in any way, and actually useful... someone could just get endless free demos and never need the full product. I also state clearly that I'll refund the demo cost (once!), full purchase made or not, and always do. As to the OP's point... I fully agree. Well over half of the things we find on the MP that require an inworld visit for a demo, we don't find one. Only yesterday I was looking for a demo... the inworld store had three locations and not one had the promised demo. Waste of time (yet again) and that store goes on my blacklist along with the rest that do that to me. Not to mention the ones that land you at a rental sign on an empty plot and you immediately get jumped on by a sales rep trying to rent you some land. My usual response is unprintable.

...and I should know, being the Devil. Just wanted to say this to any prospective meshers who might be reading here (and some old ones who should know better!). Yesterday I saw something I wanted to buy at someone's place... started searching the MP for it, then checked out the LODs... nope. Stopped searching the MP for it and felt miffed because I really liked it at first. It was made by a well known name that I won't say, but probably most here will have heard of them. The thing was lovely, at High LOD. All four LOD models were present at what looked like reasonable tri counts which got my hopes up at first, but when I viewed them they were obviously uploader generated and just looked rubbish. I (or anyone who cares) could have made the levels with that many tris and had the thing look indistiguishable from the High LOD at a reasonable LOD factor (like 2, not 4) and distance. Maybe even saved some tris and dropped the LI from 3 to 2. So please... newbie (and not so newbie) mesh makers... take the time to make your own LOD models. It matters. It'll look better, shouldn't increase LI if you do it right (maybe even lower it), and if I like it is far more likely to get you a sale. Uploader-generated LODs are the Devil's vomit!

@AmeliaJ08 There is already animesh hair out there. Not that I use any, but I've seen it around. It's all very well, but seeing hair moving around while the avatar is standing still doesn't really work for me. Some of it seemed animated reasonably well though; a good animator, coupling it with movement detection might be OK. The Medusa hair is pretty good fun (as in snakes on your head). Restrained use of flexi, augmenting mesh, is still better.

True story... when I was staying in university post-grad halls a few (ahem!) years ago, just before finals they decided to do some serious maintenance work on the building. I'm talking replacing concrete supports, things like that, which required big, noisy powertools that shook the entire 15-floor building. They were working on most floors and started work at 7am! Needless to say, a few of us weren't overjoyed. We talked with the management but got nowhere. I and a friend, who had been in the Navy for ten years and wasn't shy about doing what was needed, decided overnight action was required. The next morning, all was quiet. Students got to have a lie-in for the first time in weeks and actually work in their rooms instead of trying to find a seat in the library They eventually found all the big isolation transformers that they had left connected for the tools. At the bottom of the lift shaft. I guess someone anonymously tipped off the hall's management before things got too serious, with a warning along the lines of, "keep things quiet... or this is only the start." Peace remained until the end of term Don't think that's particularly relevant to the thread, but for some reason the above comment reminded me of it.

@Qie Niangao "Slam-bit" - that's the term I was trying to remember earlier. I have the advanced permissions turned on in Firestorm but forgot to do it when I tested this in the official viewer. I agree, I find it hard to believe this hasn't been seen before; it's why I posted here first. It isn't like the slam-bit thing I know about though. The objects in question have been set to full perms (default in the viewer settings) from the moment they were rezzed, and have been rezzed multiple times before finally being boxed up (in a rezzed, full perms box) and given to my alt. If my alt unpacks that box, the items inside remain full perm when rezzed and from that point onwards, as expected. No problems. So it's not the slam-bit having effect there. However, if the alt changes perms in the box, then unpacks it, the new permissions he applied are applied to him too, when the item is rezzed. Slam-bit in effect... but why when the items were full perm to begin with? The advanced permissions show: Box as given to alt: B,O,N,F all show VMCT, as expected. Test object pulled out of box into inventory (with no change to perms) and rezzed: shows as above. Test object changed to No-Trans while in box's inventory, pulled out into inventory (shows full perm in there), then rezzed: B,O,N,F now are all set to VMC. The alt has lost the Transfer permissions as well as the next owner when the item is rezzed. Whichever permissions I set while inside the box are set as above, not just transfer. I can make the item no-mod for the alt (while the alt has it) by setting it no mod in the box, pulling it out (still mod in inventory - I can rename it) and rezzing it (now gets no-mod). Weird, huh?

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-233063

Yeah, I think I will. Just wondered if anyone else had seen it. I reproduced in the official viewer.

I've seen this before, but had forgotten about it. I might file a Jira later if I can't find a pre-existing one. I made some mesh, and was passing it to my alt for listing on the MP. My mesh gets imported as full perm to save time mucking about. I checked... it is full perms as is all the texturing etc. Several copies (different texturing) of it went in a rezzed prim which I took and passed to my alt. The box was full perms too. My alt rezzed and edited the box, using the permissions change button in the box's inventory to set all the meshes to no-transfer, for sale. Then he opened and unpacked the box into main inventory. Fine - listed on the MP, I can pass a copy of the mesh to back to myself from his inventory but that passed copy is then no transfer for me, as it should be. I know what I'm doing with permissions However... if that alt rezzes a (supposedly full perm for him) copy on the floor to make a demo version, the rezzed mesh instatly becomes no-transfer for my alt! Even though it was most definitely passed to him as full perms and had been full perms from the moment is was uploaded. It's as if the permission change he made while the mesh was in the box, gets applied to current owner as well as next owner when the item is unpacked and rezzed. This is not the delayed permission change that happens if you change perms in main inventory, then put the thing in a box and give to someone else but the permissions don't change until the item is rezzed. It might be related, but is different. I did no permissions changes in inventory; the item stayed at full perms the whole while until the above change by my alt.

Just to confirm: you have manually deleted the entire cache folder, whcih contains the objectcache and texturecache subfolders and others, yes? If so, then I don't know what to say other than you need LL's help. My issue was due to inventory cache truncation caused by shuttind down the OS before the viewer had written the cache files. That is fixed by a simple inventory cache wipe though, followed by a relog and reload inventory. I had one instance some time back where even that failed and the only way to recover my full inventory was to wipe the entire cache folder. Never figured out what caused that, but again the wipe and subsequent reload fixed it. The rapid shutdown is easy to avoid simply by waiting a minute after closing the viewer before shutting down the OS. Your issue, while possibly related, sounds different and worse to mine. If a really clean install isn't helping... I'm stuck. The curious thing to me is that switching to a different PC worked at first, but then suffered the same issue. People will certainly suggest a network/internet problem at some point to you, if the inventory is failing to reload fully after a wipe.

I have a gun that fires frogs that hop around and chase you... I probably use it more than I should. Don't think they are the deadly sort though. If they are, I guess you'll croak.

I don't know of any sources for the method really, or scripts specifically for it. I just roll my own as I know many do, and other makers contract scripting work out if they don't want to do it themselves. There are some commercially available scripts for texture HUDs and appliers but I have no experience with them and they probably won't really suit your needs. Always better to have a properly targetted solution if it's anything more than the basics. I'll send you an PM...

@Beq Janus I do not use VSync, I checked and it is not enabled. I just use the Limit Framerate slider. I did notice however that VSync was enabled in the official viewer; pretty sure I've never touched any setting in there other than the Quality and Speed slider. I don't use the viewer at all except when testing something. That Jira you linked regarding the missing track etc, I'm sure I see that sort of thing. At shop and hop today I was walking on water a few times as the floor didn't render or, once or twice, actually disappeared from under me when I click-TPd around. I don't know if it's related to my issue here though, other than perhaps there being some root cause somewhere. Today I got an idea that perhaps the LOD level for an object was being incorrectly set by the smallest part of the linkset; so I unlinked the two most troublesome objects from the smaller parts that had much closer LOD switch points. At first it seemed to do the trick to the point that I started to file a Jira now I had something concrete, but then it happened again. It did seem to reduce the frequency of getting stuck at the lower LOD but that might just be coincidence or due to some other factor that changed because I was looking for something to happen. Red herring, probably. I'll IM you with a LM to the middle of my lawn where most of the excitement happens - hope you can get it to happen for you. If you stand roughly where my rabbits are, walk a few steps towards the hedge towards the house then turn around to look back at the bench seats, that seems to be the best way to get them to occasionally stick at low LOD. While you are doing that, you can spin around to look back at all the blue and white ground cover plants (bluebells etc) and see if they delay in rezzing for you like they often do for me. Edit: One thing I did get to the bottom of - my twitchy rabbit was because I had set my max avatars to 4 when in a busy place, and forgot. Oops... my bad.

I've just been trying to reproduce similar things in the official viewer... I can't. At least not in half an hour, yet in FS it's instant. In fact in the official viewer, spinning around in the middle of my lawn as quickly as I can (after waiting a good while facing one way) shows no delay at all in drawing what was behind me. It's the 'seamless' that I said it should be in my OP. Unlike when I do that in Firestorm and the ground cover plants take a second to show up as I cam around to them. In Firestorm (and official), my GPU VRAM usage stayed around 1.6GB. GPU load never above 30%. The issue is still happening in Firestorm after I relogged in that. Both those seats are currently triangles. The low LOD switchpoint is where they go to triangles - poorly made IMO but at least the medium LOD is appropriate. That is at 46m at my current LOD factor 2; the benches are 12m and 20m away from me. Everything around them is fine. If I take a step or two towards them or move my camera a bit, they'll show properly. Here's a snapshot (not) showing the bench seats - you can make out the triangles in the red highlights: I'll do some more testing, try some of the suggestions above, and probably get around to filing a Jira later.

@animats Oh, I have a Firestorm JIRA login, believe me It is different to the missing object bug; I get that too (just taken some snapshots of items missing even in wireframe that needed a relog to get back). I have determined that *this* issue seems to depend on what is linked to what... the dodgy statue I mention is linked to other things to absorb and reduce the overall LI. So are all the other statues, but each is linked to different things to take advantage of their high download and low server cost. It's not just that though. I might be wrong about this but I get the impression that the viewer won't draw something, when I turn around towards it, until either the root prim or centre of the root prim is in direct view. Could be just my imagination though. Yeah, I'll take a few snapshots when I'm in the mood. Although random, the issue is frequent enough that it won't take long. Most of the time, I just tend to hang around my land (slice of a homestead) and I don't think it depends on how long I've been logged in, but I'll keep that in mind and see if it makes any difference. I think I was a bit down last night when I posted my OP; sort of regret posting really although it's true. I know things are being worked on and I am impressed with the way things are moving. Fixing the viewer shutdown process is a priority.