AyelaNewLife

Gotcha. Any idea why that works when I have RLV disabled on my viewer?

Obligatory "I'm not a scripter" disclaimer. I'm a simple girl. I walk through invisible wall, the lighting changes, including the sun angle on my windlight panel changing; I say the experience is changing my windlight settings. It's not a simulated effect, my windlight settings are actually being changed. I've watched this happen on two different viewers so far, over the course of several months. How exactly the sim is doing that, I'm not sure. But it doesn't show this behaviour with the sim experience blocked. If I had to guess, I'd say the sim was attaching an object which is scripted to change my windlight settings, then unattaching it a second or two later - if that's even possible? http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Mirage/21/217/3447 The windlight change triggers when you load, when you walk through the gap in the banister in the landing zone, and when you walk through any of the TP doors to another part of the sim, and whenever you stand up from a piece of furniture. Go play, I'd love to know how it's changing my windlight settings with the sim experience.

Yes, I just confirmed it by disallowing the experience and walking over the trigger point repeatedly - no windlight changes. Accepted the experience again, and it resets my lighting once more.

Oh no, I would never do that, don't worry. I just say that to myself

While I don't think this was aimed at me, I reworded bits anyway to make them a little less aggressive As long as the sim owner a) explains what the experience is for, and b) allows the sim to function with the experience blocked, then that's fine. The second example I use has experience-only TPing, so I don't have an option but to suffer the poor lighting choices of the sim owner if I want to actually use the sim. That's just poor sim design.

Very, very few sim owners are actually good at all aspects of building a sim. A now-closed beach sim I used to visit had one of the worst windlights I've ever seen. It was supernova-bright, the glare made it near impossible to see what things actually looked like, the colour of the light changed massively as the sim clock ticked over, it was a nightmare. But the sim itself was beautiful (with Midday 1 lol). Gorgeously terraformed, and well decorated. Sure I had to change windlight each time I visited, but with that one quick and easy change I was able to actually enjoy a gorgeous sim, and take a range of photos there - because there was no mandatory experience. Another sim I use for pics has a mandatory experience. And the sim owner... well, I'm not a fan of his lighting choices. The experience forces a windlight change every time you step through a door, or stand up off a piece of furniture (or pose stand), and that windlight smothers everything in a thick blue fog, both the indoor skyboxes and the outdoor section of the sim. It's totally at odds with the vibe of the sim, and totally useless for taking pics of any kind - despite this sim advertising itself as a "photography" sim. I can work around it by learning where and when the experience triggers a windlight change, but it's a pain in the ass. Which is a shame, because his sim includes some fantastic indoor rooms for pics, it's a great community resource, but that sim experience has put off more than a few photographers that I've spoken to at the sim. Sim owners are rarely as competent as you think you are. You'll make mistakes and make terrible design choices, because you're a hobbyist doing something for fun. Without experiences, that's totally fine, I can just make some minor changes on my end so that I can enjoy the good parts of your work - everyone is happy. Unless you decide that you know best (hint; you don't) and use experiences to force your decisions onto visitors. To borrow your own analogy; audio guides are great, and many people will choose use them to add to their visit. A sim experience is like making the guides compulsory, and having a security guard follow you around and beat you with a club every time you move the guide away from your ear. It's honestly at that level of obnoxious, there's no need for it, and will just turn visitors away for no benefit to you. Everybody loses. Edit: But I have no issue with an experience that just makes teleporting smoother than traditional TP pads. That's fine. Just leave my graphical settings alone.

I used to use Slink Physique, but have switched to Maitreya Lara because of the clothing issue. I can get very similar shapes from the two bodies, but Lara just seems to have a higher silicon content than Physique, which isn't ideal for me. I still swap between the two occasionally. From the surveys I've seen, rigging for Lara only means you cut out ~40% of your market. Which seems like a bad thing to do. Rigging for Lara, the three Bellezas and the two Slinks would cover ~95% of the mesh female market, according to those same surveys. Anything else seems to be a bit... niche, and probably not worth the effort.

Oh hi there

"Best" is a pretty hard thing to define, when so many (pretty much all) mesh heads will work with a Maitreya body. It comes down to personal preference, based on the look the heads give you. Catwa is the most commonly used brand; although most cosmetics these days have an omega applier that allows them to be used on most mesh heads without a problem. I personally love Laq heads, I think they produce the prettiest heads and have a good range of skins available. Lelutka and Akeruka are two other good places to look. Don't get the Catwa Catya head, you'll end up looking like a cookie-cutter clone of every Starbucks-sipping basic white girl out there. Any of the other newish Catwa heads are good options though.

Thanks, could well be what happened to my landlord's too

Can confirm that logging in at a different sim seems to have fixed it; I'll ask my landlord to restart her sim when she's next on. Any idea why the standard Tuesday rolling restarts didn't fix the issue?

I'm posting this here because I don't know if this is a bug, an unintentional settings change, or any other reasonable explanation; and it doesn't really fit any of the other categories. Over the last week or so, my friends list has been empty whenever I log in. I also appear offline to a number of my friends, although I'm not sure about the criteria for that yet. Anyone that logs in once I am logged in will appear as normal in my friends list, with no problems. If I IM a friend that I know is online, but is appearing offline because of this issue, then they will appear online the moment I push the IM button, and I get a "xxx is online" message in the IM window. The reverse is true too; if I appear offline to them, and they IM me, I will suddenly appear online to them. I'd never seen this in nearly 6 months of playing until about a week or so ago; and now it happens every time I log in, across three different viewers (official LL viewer, Firestorm, and Black Dragon). No one I've spoken to is experiencing a similar issue. Any idea what's causing this, and how I can fix this?

If I was "mic'ed up" so you could hear my reactions to when some idiot scatters fullbright around his "photogenic sim" or can see my crowdsourcing for replies to terrible chatup lines, that could be quite interesting; but just a camera would be pretty dull I think.

You're not going to get banned from Second Life purely for talking about politics in Second Life. That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences; it doesn't have to be "against the rules" for it to be a bad thing. Players don't need a reason to mute someone, group admins don't need a reason to remove someone, and sim owners don't need a reason to ban someone. They can do all that simply because they don't like the symbols on your name, and silencing "annoying politics guy" will be a no-brainer for many. Derailing threads here will lead to them being locked, repeat offenders may get warning points, which could escalate into a ban for the truly oblivious. Politics is an incredibly polarising topic that a great deal of people feel passionate about. That conflicting passion leads to arguments and hostility; something that the silent majority have no interest in at all. So keep it out of all unrelated groups, keep it out of local chat, and keep it out of IMs unless you know that your conversation partner is interested in that type of discussion. If you don't trust your own ability to read social cues, avoid talking about politics. Better safe than sorry.

It's a great sim for this kind of thing. If you like that style, then Everwinter is pretty similar, it's a "post apocalyptic theme park" but has the same sort of vibe. Rez rights are available for both, although I think Everwinter has a paid group for that.

I made this thread not to find the "best" sorting system, but to see a whole range of examples so that I could cherry pick the parts that I think will work the best for me, precisely for this reason. So thanks again to everyone that has given me ideas! I've hidden everything in my Clothing top-level folder, then into 15 categories from there, nothing ground breaking here. I've got room to split off some of those categories into more if they get too large. Where I think I differ from most is by having an "Unused" folder inside each category for items that I don't think should be deleted, but that I am unlikely to use on a regular basis (mostly gifts). I've also given the clothing item folders a consistent naming scheme, which makes it soooo much nicer to look at eg: I've not yet sorted out the folders of the 4 creators I shop the most at, nor have I touched my pile of random garbage, but I've gotten the smaller creators sorted into this new system and it is orders of magnitude easier for me to use. Plus I've also noticed already how lop-sided my wardrobe is, which is a nice added bonus!

I'm really not a fan of just linking this without any other advice in these types of threads. Many of the reviews are badly out of date, and don't really reflect the reality of the market right now. Realistically there are only 7 female mesh bodies that are viable; Maitreya, the two Slinks, the three Bellezas, and Kemono. Anything else, and you will really struggle to find skins and clothing (and you'll struggle at "mainstream" events for Kemono too, you're pretty much limited to the fairly niche Kemono-exclusive market). A newbie with no experience of the market could follow your advice, look at the reviews, and decide to buy the Eve or G.Inc bodies; and only then find out that they have cut themselves off almost entirely from the clothing market. That's a terrible thing to inflict upon someone that lacks the experience needed to make a better decision. The tutorials on there are great, and it's definitely worth pointing people new to mesh towards the tutorials for advice; but please, be realistic with your advice. Pointing to 5-year old reviews with no context is not good advice, at all. It's harmful misinformation. And yeah I'm speaking from experience here; while I preferred Physique over Lara for the shape, I made that decision without knowing the issues I'd have finding clothing, and have since had to swap to Lara. At least I didn't choose something like Tonic or Ebody, that problem would have been an order of magnitude worse.

.:::!!!@@~~~ShoesRUs~~~@@!!!:::. Athena - #9 It was infuriating just typing that out. At least you can rename folders; most clothing is no-mod and thus no-rename; but that's okay if you keep each item in it's own folder.

When you say outfits; is that something you put together yourself (eg this top plus these jeans)? Or an item of clothing that covers the entire body? (Same question aimed at Akasha) Also thanks

I need to pick your brains. I try to keep the various bits of my inventory organised, to make things manageable; but my sorting systems that I came up with as a three week old account with one set of jeans hasn't really scaled up that well. My 'great plan' was to make a folder for each creator, and simply dump that creator's clothing in there, with a separate folder for boxes. Something like this: Essential Extras is for a couple of bits like my glasses, those leg jewels that are in two thirds of my flickr pics, coverups to make dresses half decent. Loose Clothing is for unwanted free gifts from places I don't shop at, a few props and accessories, and about 40 things called "Cosmopolitan Group Gift" - it's a total mess. Now this worked great when I was brand new - less so now. To try and make things manageable, I only kept folders for creators that I was a regular shopper at in my main Clothing folder, and made a subfolder for other labels that I only had one or two bits from (same system, so Boxes subfolder under each creator). That worked great when I had 8 or 9 extras, and I could remember what was in each. I now have 37 folders here, and I have no idea what's in half of them. And it all looks like this: So yeah it's a mess. And it needs to change. Because right now I've effectively 'wasted' a few thousand lindens on perfectly good clothing that I don't wear because I never consider them, just because of my bad sorting system. How do you guys sort out your stuff? Does it help you choose what to wear, without falling back on the same 3-4 easy to remember combinations all the time because searching for that one top you think you might have from a shopping event in June is too much effort? Bonus questions: should I delete the boxes, and just assume that I'll never need to get another copy? I have both Slink bodies (never really wore HG, but wore Physique for months), and currently wear Maitreya; should I delete the Bellezas and the other body versions to save space? Should I only do so if the box exists as a backup? What about stuff I don't think that I'll ever wear (but isn't defective), separate dumping ground for that? Basically I'd love to read your essays on how you keep your inventory at least vaguely sane; not just the clothing section either. Teach me, oh wise ones!

On the off chance that you visit the forums again (last visited 1st April) or anyone else is after this advice; I'd strongly recommend the YS&YS skin, either one of their 2-3 Laq skins. It's fairly light on makeup, and looks gorgeous; plus the body skin is the best that I personally have found, with some great detail and depth to the skin - so you won't look like someone used the bucket tool on your body. As a heads up, their skin labelling system is quirky - I think it goes 1 -> 0 -> 2 (-> 3 etc etc) from lightest to darkest, as they added in a skin between 1 and 2 and didn't want to break their old naming scheme. Demo, demo, demo.

I've got a Laq bento head too, and I've not had any problems; would you be able to give us a screenshot that demonstrates the problem? I personally bought the brows addon applier from Laq, and I use a no-brows skin version, and add the eyebrows that way - but the HUD brows should work fine too.

What sort of photography are you interested in? A huge number of "photogenic" sims have no way to let the photographer rez things, whether through open rez rights (with or without an autoreturn) or restricting rez rights to a group, paid or otherwise. Without the ability to rez pose stands, photographing people is impractical, and for a great many shots impossible. If you search Places for "photo" or "photography", you will run into a huge number of sims that throw in that keyword to try and boost traffic, yet which lack this fundamental feature of a good photography sim. Others will include an impractically short auto return time, because the owner doesn't actually understand how photography in SL works. Some will look pretty, and are great for landscape shots; others will be clothing or sex sims that keyword spam to gain visits, and only a handful will actually be what you're after. If all you're after is landscape or building shots, then none of that matters. Not logged in right now so can't give you landmarks (but these are all easily searchable); here's a few examples of sims from memory that might be a good place to start, all of which have rez rights (although some will require joining a paid group): Midnight Glory - grungy nighttime urban, open rez but 5 minute autoreturn (which makes using light projectors almost impossible) Netherwood - overgrown foilage and weathered building textures Ironwood Hills / Everwinter - two "abandoned spooky theme park" sims Whimberly - rural countryside Athenaeum - currently redecorated in a Halloween style, but had a mix of forests and old stonework before Elysion - group of varied but beautiful sims, and the main sim has areas that sound like what you're looking for, but 1k group join fee (!!) The Bay - sorta half 18th century wooden port town, half ancient stone ruins

I treat it like a 'subscription' to the 'game'. I buy a set number of Lindens every month, and I do whatever the hell I want with those Lindens; but once they are gone, they are gone, with no exceptions or topups. I don't see it as "I'm going to buy these virtual shoes for $1", I see it as paying for a service that I get use out of; like a phone bill or my netflix subscription. I don't have a premium subscription because I see no reason to pay for 300 lindens a week when I could buy 700 a week for the same dollar cost.

If you are after legitimate counselling or psychological help; please don't rely on volunteer amateurs over the internet. Please get professional help. There's no shame in doing so. I know it sounds harsh, and I know that there are many well-meaning people that want to give up their time to help; but they simply lack the training to both provide you with the help you need, and to look after their own mental health in the process. If you just want to talk, and the "counsellor" understands that you just want to talk, then that is fine - but if it ever gets to the point where you are after help rather than just a chat, please seek professional help. I can't understate the importance of that. Source: I'm part of a suicide prevention group in another game's community. We had to introduce strict guidelines about the help our volunteers offer to those in need, as the enthusiastic yet unqualified were causing harm to both themselves and those that came to us. Mental healthcare is not something you can just make up or trust your gut with. @everyone else; the fact that he asked for "counselling or even psychiatrists" should make it pretty obvious that he means psychologists, as colloquially the two terms are interchangeable. No need to spend half a page arguing semantics.