Rick Nightingale

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.

Agreed on the freebies aspect. That's different to selling a product. I've done that myself for group Christmas gifts; given away a special version of a product with no-mod set. Otherwise, it's effectively giving away the full product to everyone and I don't make enough money to do that. I've occasionally done them as demos too; fully usable but only as-is and no-mod. Making things your own is just it! That's what I love doing and have from day one in SL. ----------------- There's also the practical aspect to mod vs no-mod, with clothes and just about everything. For example, My wife has no end of trouble with auto-alpha scripts in Lara (and LX), and always has. If the clothes were modifiable, it wouldn't be an issue to remove the script and use an alpha mask. At least now, most (all?) sellers of LX clothes are using v5 of the script, so it can be removed by command. A huge amount of her items though are v4, including ones bought from well-regarded stores right up to the release of LX despite her repeatedly asking them to upgrade the script to v5 (it was available years ago!). So, those clothes are nothing but a pain. The makers seem unconcerned that it has frequently meant no sale to us because we are sick of making one-off versions of the body, pulling the scripts out of it, just to use yet another no-mod item of clothing reliably. Things change in SL; scripting, rendering... if things are modifiable we can change them to account and continue to use them. With the introduction of PBR and the fact that there is both more opportunity and more need for purchasers to be able to modify things, there was an opportunity to take another look at the system. LL being LL isn't interested in that though, I guess.

Off topic

I noticed that too

Yeah... done it myself once or twice. I once had a build that was linked, in several pieces, all to the maximum 255 links. Yep, one day I unlocked it and accidentally hit delete. My most often made boo-boo though is to click 'select face' in the edit tool after selecting a big linkset, then forget to actually select the face when I apply the new texture. Suddenly my house all goes pink like the flower petals in the vase I was trying to change. These days I put the coordinates and rotation in every linkset's description field; just make sure to update it if the root changes. Then I take a copy and keep it in my Archive folder. It's come in handy several times., including when SL itself somehow deleted half my build during a restart. By the time the ticket to do a rollback had been processed, it was too late.

It's worse than that. The matter was brought up by someone once, very politely and not even being critical, in the Blueberry group. We watched it all unfold. The amount of vehemence against the few people who were pro-mod perms from so many others was shocking. It was along the lines of a group stoning, against heretics who dared suggest that something made by their favourite creator could ever need to be changed in any way. The attitude was that no-one should ever need to, or be able to, modify a product. The gentle suggestion that those who don't want to should still allow those who do, to do so, was equally shot down by the majority of idiots. And I use the word idiots very deliberately here. It's one of the many experiences that's made me realise over the years why I don't like most people. I wasn't even involved, by the way. I probably would have been a lot more direct than those unfortunates who were in the firing line for daring to suggest mod perms in the group, and got myself (or rather, and worse, my wife's account) banned. As it was I managed to stay out because I could quickly see it was going nowhere good.

You smoothie you...

Locking the build (it can be locked before packing - the lock survives) would alleviate that. At least the owner would be warned before they could do anything to it.

That's how I look at it, or at least have learned to. It is true (for some definition of 'true' I guess). No-one can actually make me feel any thing; I (should be able to) choose how I feel regardless of what someone else might say or do. I've said for years that if someone insults me, it doesn't bother me in the slightest because anyone who would do something like that is not important enough to me for me to care what they think or say. If someone is worth caring what they say, they wouldn't do that to me. Edit to add: Also, being autistic, I completely miss most insults or aren't sure about them anyway, so I always work on the assumption that I'm not being insulted. I guess that helps. Today I learned that is a word; I thought you had made it up at first. That might be linked to me being one of those who is somewhat triggered by it though. As soon as anything related crops up, I just switch off. My experiences of such things and people have been some of the worst I've had.

Funny you should say that because we were saying it only last night. It applies to a lot of things my wife and I (although being a 'typical' man according to a recent thread here I don't buy clothes often) have demo'd. They come from events and sometimes from stores. It's been going on for a while and seems to be getting much more common over the last year or two. It's getting silly, the number of demos she tries that are supposedly fitted for LaraX (although it's been happening long before LX even launched) that clip so badly that I'm sure they aren't. Or at best were fitted by a blind chimpanzee. Needing to use an alpha to hide such bad fitting doesn't mean it is fitted in my opinion. Good stores make clothes that don't need an alpha at all in most animations; at worst they might need the armpits, elbows, shoulder points or crotch hiding for some. A little clipping in some animations is always expected. That's the way it is. A lot of what we are seeing though is very bad clipping even in simple animations. Some clip in a T pose; some clip as soon as you move out of the T pose; some have the entire buttock area or shoulders/shoulder blades clipping through immediately. That is not fitted!

My wife and I really like VS's stuff, except that the designer insists on not having inside materials. Stand to the side of someone wearing it and look at them, or when the wearer sits down and the skirt/dress lifts, and you can see daylight where you should see cloth. It's really off putting, but saves me a ton of money. ----- GGVG has a new group gift out. Modelled here by my lovely wife. Has sheer and opaque versions and a texture HUD as usual:

Yes, scripts are the exception, but one thing I really wish makers would do is reveal the HUD channels and commands for things. It's not like that's a security risk or gives away anything secret or proprietary in most cases. Any script should be checking the source of what it hears first so no-one can make an object which interferes with someone else's. Some products are different of course, where items need to communicate with those owned by others or reprogramming with a different chat source might give an unfair advantage (competitive HUDs, some RP items etc.). A few makers do this; furry types again particularly. Edit: that's straying off topic though.

I was running out of available LI at the time. Since the (mostly) decrease in mesh LI though, I might have a few more to play with now. And yes... yes you are 😈