Theresa Tennyson

I think rather than trying to simplify the user experience from the viewer side it would be better to create some sort of immersive guided way of showing new people how the existing tools work, like a game or quest. This should be optional and there should be a variety of these quests available. Perhaps your contest could be to have creators come up with these kind of experiences. I know that Linden Labs had some sort of training HUD around 2008 but apparently it was mandatory and many of the tasks didnt' work for some people. There are viewer changes that could be made that would help new people stay out of trouble, though. The skin editor, hair editor and "make new clothes" options are the equivalent of the instruction manual for a modern car still having instructions about how to start the engine with a hand crank and how to light the acetylene headlights. I've known a few new people who accessed these areas with the logical thought that this was how the typical person did things, with predictably scary results. These menus should be hidden better, especially the sliders that realistically are never used anymore.

To place objects on land with group restrictinons the group has to be "active" (selected with the tag over your head).

Try re-sizing them slightly using either builtn resizer menus or using "stretch" to edit them. Use the edit "move" command to align them as well as you can to the bottoms of your legs. Take a look at them when you're standing up with your AO off to make sure they're positioned neither too high nor too low. You may never get them perfect - that's why most of them have an ankle strap to hide that joint. All the alpha" does is hide your foot - it's like wearing a sock of invisibility. You might want to try a store called J's that has shoes that hve built in toes but use the foot and an\kle from your shape and skin. They won't look perfect either but I prefer them to the "built in foot" ones. They also work better with my AO because it tends to make me roll my ankles over and shoes with built-in feet can't follow.

It sounds like you're trying to play with the sliders you get when you "edit" your eyes, hair and skin. Those are for older technology that almost nobody uses anymore. They won't work with the parts that come with the default avatars and if you try to "make" new parts using them you won't look very good.

LAQ makes a nice skin but there are other makers that have skins at least as good. Personally I feel that some people buy LAQ because of the brand name and because of their gorgeous store photos that may not be what you're going to see in-world. In that price range you might want to look at Belleza, Redgrave and Curio as well. If Natural Beauty's sale is still on you can get an amazing deal on some very good skins, and Pink Fuel has great bargains if you're looking for a younger look. Skin tones make a big difference too. Some skin makers have trouble with certain skin tones. In short, if you like how something looks on you - buy it. If you don't, look elsewhere no matter what other people are buyng.

Do you have an ATI video card? They do not work well with the re-written OpenGL calls in the new viewers. Try updating to the latest drivers and turn off "OpenGL VBO" in "Preferences - Graphics."

All mesh viewers use basically the same code to display mesh and it isn't completely optimized yet so all mesh viewers are slower than non-mesh viewers. Phoenix with mesh will have the interface closest to Viewer 1 but even the people at Phoenix would like to see it phased out. Firestorm can be tuned to look similar to Viewer 1 and the latest LL viewer is quite customizable. Note that if you have an older computer, especially with an ATI video card, you ma\y not want to change at all.

The texture and stylie remind me of Alli and Ali/Ali and Alli (not sure which A[l]i comes first.)

Many people are having serious problems with offline delivery if they don't have anyone/anything on their "mute/block" list due to a recent server glitch. Apparently the server sends offline deliveries along with the block list and if there's nothing on the block list it doesn't send the block list (logical) OR offline notifications (fail). Sometimes adding something temporarily to the block list will release a whole stream of messages/objects, but they're capped at 25. I've been having major problems with Marketplace deliveries, especially of gifts, because of this.

Many people are having serious problems with offline delivery if they don't have anyone/anything on their "mute/block" list due to a recent server glitch. Apparently the server sends offline deliveries along with the block list and if there's nothing on the block list it doesn't send the block list (logical) OR offline notifications (fail). Sometimes adding something temporarily to the block list will release a whole stream of messages/objects, but they're capped at 25. I've been having major problems with Marketplace deliveries, especially of gifts, because of this.

Pussycat Catnap wrote: MP is free unlimited tier. Land can't compete. Thus no shops. Thus no places that are funded by having shops on their land. Thus no places to visit. Thus no one to meet going anywhere. Thus no reason to buy anything to look good visiting places. Thus no reason to use SL. Thus no reason to get a home in SL if there's nothing to do in SL. SL can't survive just being linden homes, a sandbox, and a couple iconoclasts hiding out in their homes rezzing prims and not talking to each other. Actually I've gone to, and spent money at, a lot of in-world stores that I first found when looking for things on Marketplace. Marketplace is a good way to see what's available and it's good for getting cheap commodity items but when I'm looking for something like a vehicle or good furniture I want to see it in-world. Not to mention that buying anything on Marketplace is a crapshoot a lot of the time.

dctyper wrote: thanks for the reply but im confused. where would i find the Open Help->About and look for the GPU information?? on what window/application? dc You can do it in the viewer. Go to the "Help" menu in the top bar and select "About Second Life." You can use cut and paste to copy that information and paste it into a forum post.

Your two questions are closely related. First of all, you can "play" Second Life ANY WAY YOU WANT. Just about any situation you can imagine has been modeled SOMEWHERE and the modeling was probably done by someone else in the "world." If you're looking for something goal-based that you can "win" you're probably going to be frustrated. However, if there's some situation floating around in your head that you've never seen a pre-made game about you can probably locate it and if you can't (and are willing to put a LOT of effort into it,) you can get to the point where you can make it yourself. SL is at its best in the social and creative end of things - "action" is possible and takes place in many areas but the engine isn't optimized for it. Which brings us to your first question. Most video games, even on-line ones, are built on a series of predictable situations that your computer will have some knowledge of beforehand so it can throw them at you quickly. In Second Life nothing is that predictable. The region you went to yesterday might be completely rebuilt tomorrow, and if you're fighting a dragon in an enhanted forest or in some sort of urban combat situation somewhere there's a chance that I might happen to suddenly pop in on the scene wearing leopard hoodie pajamas and clinging to the back of a flying Totoro (both of which I have.) This means that the entire world has to stream to your computer with very little pre-rendered and therefore it's not optimized for frame rate. Realistically, "Ultra" graphics are only used for photography and other non-speed-dependent tasks.

Frecilla - I'm afraid you have a perfect storm of graphics problems with the latest viewer - an ATI video card using old drivers running under MacOS Leopard. First of all, go to www.amd.com and under Drivers and Support download and install the latest video drivers for your system. If you have problems after that (and you probably still will) go into "Preferences - Graphics" and click the "Hardware" button. Uncheck the box that says "Enable OpenGL VBO's" or something like that. You may still have problems because you're running Leopard. Actually, in your case it might be simpler to download a third-party viewer from before mesh was introduced, like Phoenix 1.5.

I suspect that Heracles is avoiding killing the Hydra because killing off the multi-headed creature of the forum would be an act of suicide in his case.

Simple content creation tools would be great but I'm not sure that the client would be the place for them because the additional code and resources necessary for them would make the viewer balloon in size and complexity. Personally, I'd be interested in user friendly stand-alone applications that would allow you to make things and then import them into the game. For example, the house and avatar building tools in the Sims series games and Spore are simple to use and quite powerful. I'd be interested in similar programs for Second Life that could make use of subassemblies and pieces that could be bought from others like textures and sculpts are now. I loved building things in the Sims, but as I told a friend once in SL I can travel from one end of the world to the other in eight seconds but it takes five minutes for me to put a slice of watermelon in a bowl.

Are you still running Leopard? There were major changes needed to the viewer's innards recently, partially to make Lion happy, and people who still run Leopard are having problems. If you go into "Help" and cut and paste what is under "About Second Life" into a post we may be able to offer more advice.

There's no way you're going to get an acceptable experience with a mesh viewer on that laptop, I'm afraid. All mesh viewers use basically the same code to render mesh and even people with fast computers find it runs slower than pre-mesh viewers. You can still get Linden Labs viewer 1.23 but you'll lose things like tattoo layers, etc. You can also still get Phoenix version 1.5.2.1185, which is also pre-mesh and has more recent features like a tattoo layer and display names.

This is really clunky but it will work. Open the picture you want in the viewer and make it nice and big. Then hit "Print Screen" on your keyboard. Now open up any graphics program you have (even "Paint" if you're on Windows) and "paste" into a new file. You'll have your whole screen in there. Chop out your picture and save it as a .JPG or .PNG file - it'll look best if it's square and is 512 pixels by 512 pixels. Then you can put it in your profile.

The latest update changed a lot of things with the internal graphics structure of the viewer to make it behave better on new graphics cards. I see you're still stll running Mac OS Leopard - I've heard people having problems with Leopard and the new graphics. Also, your video drivers seem very old - your OpenGL version is 2.0 and the current version is 4.2.

If you have a desktop computer a video card will fit into a "slot" inside your computer that's a long electrical and data connector. (If you have a laptop it's really hard to change the video hardware). I'm guessing your old video chip is probably built into the main board of your computer but you should have a slot you can put a new card into. There are a lot of companies that make video cards but they'll all have "engines" built by two companies - Nvidia or ATI. Right now I'd only look at Nvidia cards for Second Life. ATI cards are having problems with the latest viewer. Even a cheap (under $100) one will be a lot better than what you have now. I have a card with a Nvidia GT430 "engine" and it was probably around $90 this past summer. I wouldn't spend a lot on a new video card for your setup because the rest of your computer will limit things. If your boyfriend is good with computers he can help find one, or if you have the specifications of your computer somewhere that you can print out you can take them to an electronics store and ask someone there for help. The minimum requirements for SL are under the "help" menu on the SL home page. I think you were just barely at the minimum before. Realistically, Intel graphics aren't good for any 3D programs no matter what they say. Good luck!

Second Life viewers use OpenGL rather than DirectX which is more common on Windows games. The OpenGL calls were recently re-written in the viewer so that it would use the latest standard of OpenGL to keep it current - previously it was behaving very badly with recent Nvidia cards and drivers. The re-writing is causing problems with ATI cards now though. Make sure you're running the latest Catalyst version and go into "Preferences - Graphics - Hardware" and turn off OpenGL VBO. If you have a choice between running "Compatibility Profile Context" or not with your OpenGL, DON'T run Compatibility. The re-writing was largely done to make the viewer not need compatibility mode.

Yuna Erin wrote: I do understand that LL wants our opinion, but I don't personally think going to another site just to tell them "what we think" is a very efficient way of communication between LL and the user. I've personally expirienced many problems with the new viewer since Mesh was introduced. It seems with the newer technologies they have implimented have only made it near impossible for me to have an enjoyable SL expirience. One of the major issues is that a majority of users use older systems, and those who have little to no knowledge of advance graphics are handicapped. It's not the fact that they don't know how to build, texture, or make mesh, it's just their computers can't handle the newer graphics. I don't particularly have money to go out and buy a $500 dollar graphics card. So in the end it comes down to two vital questions: Is this game for proffessionals as a practice ground for modeling, or a game that's meant for users everywhere reguardless of their modeling knowledge? At this point the game is becoming so complicated that it doesn't seem like much of a game anymore. So rather than a social playground, the game has become a portal for aspiring artists that crave to have their work critiqued and presented in front of real proffessionals and clients. I think most users with older systems prefer the older viewers because they are stable, and don't require much computer knowledge to play. However, the newer systems are more techy and end up very complicated and hard to understand, so much that it's sometimes difficult to diagnose a specific problem. SL's great strength and great weakness is that it is BOTH an environment for advanced builders and an environment for users everywhere. Almost everything you see on SL was made by someone else on SL. For every user who wishes the requirements are lower there is someone who thinks that SL is primitive and pathetic and should require MORE performance. I'm delighted with the performance I get with a video card that cost less than $100. I personally ended up learning more about computer graphics than I was expecting because the viewer is having some of its periodic growing pains. The viewers people now think are old and stable were once new and decidedly unstable and there are entries in support forums to prove that. If you have specific problems and ask questions here you'll probably find help.

If you're using the release version of FIrestorm it's all but identical to Viewer 3 under the hood. I assume you've got an ATI video card. Viewer 3 defaults to turning VBO's on and Firestorm defaults to turning VBO's off, I believe. ATI's OpenGL drivers and SL do not get along after LL re-wrote the OpenGL calls in the latest viewer to stop using outdated instructions like the viewer did before. UI crappiness is subjective so I'm not going to get into that. I'm sure you'll find many here who will be delighted to join you in that discussion though.

YEAH! Have a nice week, and many more, you two...