Rick Nightingale

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.

I'm sure there must be Jiras covering these things already, or I would file some. I know I'm not the only one. Examples: 1. I'm stood in the middle of my lawn, and turn around. There are two seats; one shows up, the other just as a triangle at its lowest LOD that I am much too close to be supposed to see, even at LOD factor 2 (I'm at that). Turn around again... one of my animesh rabbits 2m away is not there, but suddenly pops in as if it's just been shoved onto the scene like in those old movies where the actor gets pushed onto the stage from the side (probably the animation catching up or something). Also, some of my ground cover plants take a second or two to show up, leaving me with bare ground before they do. Turn around again... the other seat is now a triangle (and stays that way) and some flowers are missing. Oh, and the trees and shrubbery can't make their minds up either. 2. In my dungeon, I have a row of identical statues. Nearly every time one of them will be a lowest LOD triangle depsite that I should never see that within the room. Like the above seat, it stays like that until I've walked towards it a few metres or mess about zooming my camera in and out. My throne has a habbit of doing the same. If I turn around for a few seconds and back again... it's a triangle again. These are just two examples that have happened within the last ten mintues on my land. They are happening all the time and it is really starting to get annoying. The visuals in SL are what I enjoy, and this is taking that away and replacing it with the frustration of watching things slowly pop in, sometimes just as a triangle or not at all, just because I turn around. I understand the viewer doesn't want to waste time knowing about things I cannot see, but the developers have to find a better way to deal with this. The stuck lowest LOD thing, and sometimes just not being shown at all, are the most annoying. I could cope with a small delay, but it is too long and spoils immersion. Simply turning around, especially to see things only a few metres away that I was looking at only a few seconds ago, should be seamless. I've tried at a lower LOD factor of 2, and ramping it up to 4. Makes no difference that I can tell to the above. A final thing... the supposed framerate. While the FPS display at the top of Firestorm is telling me 52 fps (I cap at 50)... I can still suffer from a juddery display to the point that it can cause motion sickness. No way is the actual scene updating at 52 FPS. Maybe the display is, but with a number of identical frames, if you get me. It's really obvious when it happens and it happens a fair bit. It feels like the FPS number is lying, the way a government reports a statsitic that has no actual bearing on the reality of the situation. But the number looks good! I have a GTX 1080 Ti although on an older i7 CPU at 3.7GHz with 16GB RAM. That should be good enough to run at 1920x1200. This never happened before the 'perfromance improvements' or whatever they are called. The difference in number to perceived framerate, I mean. If it was juddery, it read a low FPS. The improvement to the 'real' framerate in some situations is fantastic. I can visit busy places that would normally be slowing me to a crawl and need me to drop to much lower graphics settings to keep things smooth, without having to do so. There have been great improvements. But the down side (I guess side effect of those) is bad. Frankly I feel it's a bit rubbish right now. Maybe I'm just being oversensitive because I so much want to enjoy what I'm making, but I don't think I am or that I'm alone in this.

Not just the beta grid - my wife just got it in Agni! Love the error message 🤣

I've also had another weird thing happen that might be related... I imported some mesh, two items linked together. Not huge, only about 10k tris in each High LOD. I rezzed and unlinked them. From that point, while I could see both parts, only one could be clicked on. It was as if the other did not exist, except visually. Trying to click on it clicked the thing behind it; I couldn't select it in any way, even by click-dragging a selection box around it. Nothing would make it usable until I TP'd out of the region and back again, when it behaved normally. That has happened now on several occasions. Mostly on the beta grid (which was why I paid it no mind two weeks ago when it first happened - just put it down to beta grid being beta grid) but it also happened in the main grid. As usual, it seems to happen only occasionally and randomly.

Whatever is causing this, it's getting truly ridiculous. This happened today... I have not changed anything in this build (or on my land) for a week, and this only started today. It's a typical example though of the 'missing things'. Before doing the below, I tried things like TPing around inside the region, toggling wireframe, clicking on the throne, pulling my camera far out and back... nothing helped. I went into my dungeon. My throne's seat was floating in mid air. My throne is a lot bigger than that, as befits my demonic status. See photo 1. I took a wireframe photo of it... photo 2. As you can see... only the throne seat is there. When I sat in the throne, a few more pieces showed up. (my camera view did not change). Photo 3. Still a lot missing. Photo 4 - a wireframe of the above. Still only the visible parts are in wireframe. Next I teleported out of the region. When I returned, it was nearly all there, but not quite. There was some animated fire missing. Photo 5. I did several more TPs and other things, the fire wouldn't come back. Finally I relogged. The throne was there in its entirety when I got back. Photo 6. Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Photo 5 Photo 6 - me looking rather dischuffed that my throne vanished.

There are other ways of making HUDs than linking one prim together for each option, and that sounds like a very easy way to make GPU lag on a big HUD. My usual way is to make a texture with a lot of the options on - a picture of one panel of your HUD if you like. Apply that to a plane, and detect touch position. The script needs to know what texture/tint that position corresponds to. A notecard can be used to configure that, or just hard-code it. The active plane is just switched into view in front of the others, if you need more than one plane (one texture) to hold all your options. Another option is a mesh with eight front-facing faces, and a lot of those linked together. 255 of those linked gives 2040 faces. The script detects face and link - in this case you could have actual textures on the faces and read them from there... but I wouldn't (GPU lag!).

Safe Waters Foundation - going strong with events, rentals, and just general socialising. Paste this group link into your viewer local chat, then click the group link it turns into to open the profile and join it: secondlife:///app/group/6c9fcb9e-979b-0937-d31b-7a0c4b8bc6c5/about I'm often a Triton...

Yeah, full perms on the script is handy. I'm currently modifying the AVsitter code to integrate my Experience into it, along with some other remote control ability from other scripts. Great fun! I just merged an animesh water horse, with a unicorn horn I rigged to attach to it, with a full AVsitter setup (pulled out of Libertine Stuffed Unicorn; any Witcher fans here?) so the animated horse unicorn can be used as wandering, riding or seating prop when rezzed. A bit of scripting manages the changeover. Adding in my Experience and some sequenced stuff is next. If you're wondering why I wanted it as a unicorn, I'm doing a Legend based dungeon (the movie with Mia Sara and Mia Sara* Tim Curry. Oh, and Tom Cruise was in it too.) *I like Mia Sara so much I typed her twice even as I thought 'Tim Curry', lol.

@PheebyKatz My issue is that the only way for two (or more) avatars to do something as simple as walk hand in hand needs a 'vehicle' that they both sit on; effectively mobile pose balls. I suppose what I really want is the ability to truly synchronise the animations between two avatars, without having to sit on anything. Given the poor implementation of the SL animation system to begin with (why no IK???), that's an even less likely ask to be granted than sitting on another avatar's attachment. At least if we could do that, then such things would be possible in no-rez places and those that disallow vehicle entry. Plus the sat-on avatar could still use their own animations and not be limited to what the pose ball has (like some janky walks I've seen on such things). Bonus points for the sat-on avatar being able to teleport with the sitee still attached.

I use the Oak swim HUD. It's tiny, can be turned on and off (and other options) and if just left on will automatically swim you when you enter water (with bouyancy control). I used to use it often when I was a pirate. Best of all it's full perms and free (there are pay for 'versions' on the MP too, no idea if they do anything different). The animations are... somewhat dated and jerky but could probably be replaced with something better. One day I might bother to do so. Most of my swimming time is spent as a Triton so no need for the Oak. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Thors-Oak-Swim-Animations-Test-Version-with-HUD/3308143 As to the OP... I especially agree on the graceful animation termination. In stuff I make for myself I try to have a 'moving away' animation to prevent the climbing or often just being launched vertically 20m into the air. What I would like to see? and I know I'm not alone... being able to sit on an avatar attachment! Wouldn't that make so many things easy? I guess we'll never get it, given how long people have been asking for it fruitlessly.

...and, I should note that the creator of the no-mod hair (Ginko613) replied to my plea for help with a mod perms copy of the hair. Nicely played!

The store I got my outfit from was "Process of Elimination" on the MP. It's mostly sci-fi related products and everything I checked had mod perms. Also looks really well made: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/74556