Theresa Tennyson

Okay, some history. In 2010 Linden Lab made a huge change to their viewer, adding some new technology but completely changing the user interface in the process. Also, when this new viewer, known as "Viewer 2," was released it was very buggy. Many users who were used to the old viewer hated (and still do hate) Viewer 2 like God hates sin. Phoenix is based on the same technology as the pre-Viewer 2 viewer with a variety of updates and custom features and many but not all of the features added in later Linden Lab viewers. It has basically the same interface as the older viewer. It works better on many older computers but the technology is older and even the people who make it aren't crazy about still supporting it. The same people make "Firestorm", which is based on the newer Viewer 2 technology but with user interface options that make it behave closer to the old viewer and it has many of the same custom features that Phoenix has. "Mesh" is a technology to create objects and clothing that is a newer technology that most other graphically intensive 3D programs use but was just added to Second Life in the summer of 2011. When they introduced mesh support Linden Lab changed their viewer's name to Viewer 3. If your viewer doesn't support mesh you can't see some new items and clothing properly. It's not a major problem now but it will gradually become more and more of an inconvenience if you can't see it. Firestorm uses newer technology and was able to be changed to display mesh without major problems. Phoenix was also updated to support mesh but it is sort of duct-taped together (which is basically how the Phoenix developers described the process themselves.) Linden Lab recently changed the user interface of their viewer and the new version starting with Viewer 3.2 is getting more acceptance. Personally, I feel discussions of viewers tend to become religious debates between followers of the "Conservative" (old viewer derivatives) and "Reform" (Viewer 2/3 derivatives) factions, not to forget the "Orthodox" who still use Linden Lab Viewer 1.23, the last official viewer before the heresy of Viewer 2. Basically, I recommend you try viewers until you find one you like best. Newer viewers will give you access to newer features that will gradually become more and more important but older viewers tend to do what they CAN do faster, especially on older hardware.

Nvidia's recent graphics cards use a naming system. In a number like 520, the "5" represents what generation the card is, sort of like the model year of a car. I believe 5 may be the latest; it's pretty recent. The "2", though, represents the level of performance within that generation, with higher numbers representing better performance. 520 would designate a fairly low-performance card. I've got a GT 430 in my computer (i.e. one generation earlier but one level higher in the performance scale) with a quad-core processor and 6 gigabytes of memory. I can run SL in "High" without shadows on in most places with pretty good but not spectacular performance. I can use "Ultra" with shadows if I'm doing something like taking a photo but not for anything wanting a smooth frame rate. I really doubt that you'd be able to set that computer to "Ultra" and be able to go graphically-intensive places with a frame rate that's not going to look like you're dancing under a strobe light.

By "in the sky," how far away do you mean? There are many objects where what you see is a shape that's been "sculpted" from a very different shape, and the location of the editing axes may be determined by that original, now invisible shape. The editing axes may also look odd because they represent the average center of several smaller pieces that make up the object and some of those smaller pieces may have been deliberately made invisible.

You can only get "pregnant" if you're wearing some sort of attachment that will create that state - "pregnancy" isn't part of the basic behavior for avatars. If you WANT to get pregnant get an attachment that will communicate with your boyfriend's, um, equipment and read the instructions. If you don't want to get pregnant you've got nothing to worry about.

Jennifer Boyle wrote: On the General tab, the radio button next to "Starts local chat" is selected, and nothing happens when I click the one to select "Affects movement." Everything else on the tab works. I just installed it, and it was this way from the beginning. I'm running Win 7 Ultimate. After testing on my viewer (and breaking it the same way) I found a JIRA that says that due to a glitch in how the menu is set up the point the button to "affect movement" responds to when clicked isn't actually on the button itself. Move your mouse around in the area until the button highlights and then you can click that point. I found it near the middle of the word "movement" in the button description but apparently it depends on screen size. Supposed to be fixed in 3.2.8.

Question 1 - probably not significantly, see.... Question 2 - Maximum internet connection speed means very little to SL. It runs wide-open only when loading a sim initially and in fact the default maximum bandwidth is 500 kbps. I just went to my house and the "cruising" bandwidth used was probably around 100-200 kbps once things loaded. The real factor for internet connection is consistency and reliability. That's why wireless is usually bad for SL. Question 3 - Graphics cards are MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more important than raw internet speed. The graphics card is probably the most important part of your SL experience. Then you want CPU speed, then system memory up to a certain point (currently SL has memory-release problems and I find it crashes by the time it uses around 1.5 gigabytes of memory for me.) I've had decent SL experiences with about the internet speed you're moving to if it's a hardwired connection.

People in SL do just about anything you can imagine. Think of something that interests you in real life, especially something that you have difficulty doing in your every day life because of time, money, physical impossibility or some other barrier, and try to find it. Chances are SOMEBODY has simulated it. Look for places and groups that do that activity in SL and meet some other participants. Do you want to know a dirty little secret? SL can be boring without other people to share it with. But when you find compatible people it can easily take the place of many other leisure activities. I almost never watch television any more because I prefer being part of the action in SL myself.

SL voice is handled by a separate company called Vivox and I heard that they were having server problems today.

There isn't much you can do on your end if you want to wear those clothes. "Alpha" textures are textures that have transparent portions and it's difficult for computers to determine which "alpha" to display first if one is in front of another so sometimes they display in an odd order that ends up in erasing something it shouldn't. Similar problems are caused by "invisiprims" that are sort of cloaks of invisibility for things inside them, which are parts of many older wearable items and cause similar things to what you're describing. They often cause minor glitches like this. There isn't anything permanently happening to your avatar though.

This appears to be a problem on some of the "Release Channel" servers that get code that's in the last stage of testing for general release - they release new software on a portion of the main grid to test it "live" before they update the rest of the grid.. They're introducing new server software that is supposed to help with region crossings but it's causing this glitch occasionally. The server people are aware of the problem and may "roll-back" to an earlier version of the software for affected servers. --||-

A couple things to try - first, try disabling voice and see if it helps. I hear the servers for voice have been having problems today. Also, as far as graphics, go into "Preferences" - "Graphics" - "Hardware" and unselect "Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects."

What kind of video card do you have and how recently have you updated your drivers? Second Life uses a graphics language called OpenGL and the viewer was re-written to use newer versions of OpenGL because recent video cards and drivers were failing with the old viewer. However, now older cards and drivers have problems. The entry in your task manager saying CCC says to me you've got an ATI card and they don't work as well as Nvidia cards with the new drivers.

I"m roughly 5'-3" by Linden Labs' viewers which measure agent height or 5''9" measured by a prim. I wear a "teen girl" shape and it was about that height when I got it when I started. Most "teen girls" in SL are somewhere in that height range, especially the ones who are "eighteen." As far as men's shapes go, I find that most of them look ridiculous. Many, many men are about eight feet tall and for some reason set their head size so that it looks like a walnut in comparison to the rest of their bodies. When I slow dance with a lot of male avatars my feet will be several inches off the floor. All shapes are based on the default shapes and sliders except for the handful of mesh shapes available. When you buy a shape you're basically paying for the maker's labor and manipulation skills - "materials" are free and the same for everyone. I've been noticing that some newer manufacturers are coming out with furniture that's scaled smaller than older furniture - Fuzzy Bee, what's next and LISP come to mind.

It sounds like you're doing everything right and I tested it with the current viewer to make sure that it's not broken. Did you click the green arrow-shaped button in the upper left? That's the save button but it's not obvious. Also, make sure that your textures are full-permission (can be copied, modified and transferred.)

See my reply to Marlette immediately above. It looks like you have exactly the same problem.

The current SL viewers are using fairly new versions of the OpenGL graphics language. Previous versions used older OpenGL commands that were causing serious problems with recent video cards and drivers. ATI cards seem to have problems with the changes in the new viewers, especially if their drivers are old. Check what OpenGL version the computers are supporting in "Help" - "About Second LIfe." The version should be at least 3.3. If it's an earlier version try updating your video drivers. Also, many ATI cards seem to be having problems when the "Use OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects" (VBO's) setting in "Graphics" - "Hardware" is selected. Try turning that off.

Try to get updated video drivers. Second Life uses a video language called OpenGL that's an evolving standard. The latest versions of OpenGL do things differently from older versions and the mesh viewers were re-written to use the new techniques. Your system is reporting OpenGL version 2.1 - the current version is around 4.2 and major changes were made around version 3.

Given that you're looking for a new Mac I assume you're currently using an old Mac. I've heard people who are still running Leopard have this problem. Try getting the latest available graphics drivers for your computer. You might also just roll back to an older viewer until you get a new Mac. The new versions of the Linden Lab viewer and Firestorm were recently re-written to improve compatibility with newer video cards and drivers, but they now have problems with older cards and drivers.

Hoshi Kenin wrote: I get the above error when trying to read profiles in v3. This is especially annoting because - much to my surprise - v3 is actually fast and good to use.......... but is spoilt by truly abysmal search and not being able to read profiles!! come on Lindens....you almost have a good viewer. Fix it so search works as good as it does in TPV's and profiles can be read without waiting an age for the error message in my header. I've had that problem in the past but it's always gone away on its own. Do you have anything blocking your computer from accepting "cookies"? You need to accept them from SL for the new profiles to work, I think.

Do you have voice enabled? I've been seeing reports of people having problems with it recently.

In general, try lowering your cheekbones and make your lower cheeks comparatively "well fed." It's all the lighting though. LAQ and other shops offer tips on re-setting the lighting to be more flattering. That's the way it works in the real world too a lot of the time; your brain sort of edits out the shadows when you're looking at a person's face "live" but you see them in a photograph so photographers use complex lighting. Also, all Second Life shapes are made from exactly the same mesh and sliders that you have access to when you create a new shape. Bear in mind that many shapes made by skin manufacturers are set up to give a certain look under a very controlled environment and they may not actually look good in the real imaginary world. Personally, I think some face shapes from major skin manufacturers would terrify small children.

Caitlyn Dyszel wrote: Hi everyone, I need some help understanding the workings of the V2 beast as I am trying to get optimal graphic settings to take pictures. A few observations; 1. When I turn on AA in SL itself it seems the 'further end in depth of field ' ( top 50% of the screen for example) suddenly has a light but ever so annoying blur. Any idea how this can be removed? 2. With all hardware settings set to 0 / off in preferences I noticed that SL V2 viewer seems to ignore the graphic driver (NVidia panel) settings, in particular regarding AA. Is this expected behaviour or am I doing something wrong? Running on a 4 gig quad core and a 460 GTX Any help is much appreciated:matte-motes-big-grin: Do you have depth-of-field (DOF) turned on? Depth-of-field would intentionally blur distant objects to simulate how a cameral lens focuses. As far as hardware settings and the video card goes, have you set your Nvidia preferences to use software settings or to override them? I think this is where you determine whether the Nvidia settings are used instead of the viewer settings. When you turn AA off and the Nvidia driver is using software settings, that'll mean you won't get anti-ailiasing even if your card normally gives you it.

Tommy Mulberry wrote: This is wierd but, ever since I put on a Hard Hat near a mine to check it out, I've had a yellow sliver on the back of my head. Someone pointed it out the other day. I've looked all over my inventory to see if I'm still wearing a portion of the hat but no. I zoomed in really close to see if maybe I can grab it, that didn't help but what I did see is that I zoomed all the way inside the avi's head, and there is a giant yellow blob in the head it'self, and a portion of it hangs out the back of my head. Does anyone know how to get the avi to re gen from screatch?, or to replace it wholesale? I have no way of getting to the blob to get rid of it and I cannot figure out what it is. Until I figure it out, I have to wear hats!.. Any help is appreciated. Tommy Mulberry It's your avatar's brain. Most avatars have very tiny brains, but you've probably figured that out already. Okay, sorry - I'll be serious. When SL started people used very simple hair that looked like a sort of helmet, but it could be resized using sliders under "Edit My Appearance." This is the thing all avatars wear called "hair." Over time, much better looking hair has been introduced and the old "hair" is only used to control the shape of the eyebrows. So the retro hair doesn't show, the helmet is usually shrunken so it doesn't appear outside the skull. The thing you see inside your avatar's head is that retro hair thing. You can make it disappear from outside your head by going into "Edit My Outfit," go down to "Body Parts," go to "Hair" and make sure that all sliders that regulate anything other than your eyebrows are set for 0 size. The eyebrow sliders are in their own section that's pretty well labled so you don't have to worry about messing them up. Or you could put on another "hair" meant to represent a bald base like others have suggested. "Hairs" have the symbol of a little head in profile with brown hair on it.

Second Life hs been having problems with ATI video cards since the OpenGL calls in the viewer were re-written. Make sure you're running the latest drivers (not just the ones that came on your installation disk). Second Life works differently than most graphical games so optimizations for other games may actually hurt performance with SL. They're still working on the graphics on the viewer so the beta version may work better for you. If the viewer lets you, go into "Preferences" - "Graphics" - "Hardware" and try turning off "Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects." If you copy and paste the information from "Help - About Second Life" into a reply here someone may be able to figure out other problems (you can access the "Help" menu without being logged in.)

Your video drivers look quite old. Try to get updated drivers from the Nvidia website. Both Viewer 3.2.4 and Firestorm had their graphics routines heavily re-written to use current driver technology and your video drivers may not support them right now.