Rhys Goode

Chosen Few wrote: .... Simply add an invisible triangle, a good distance away from the rest of the surface. If that triangle is, say, three meters away, the pin will now be considered three meters larger. Keep the physics model the same as it was, and the extra triangle will not affect the way the pins fall. I am still learning how to pair mesh and physics models. For me, the physics model seems to automatically scale to the size of the bounding box. So if I had the pins modeled as a cylinder say, just as high as the pin, then when I added an invisible triangle 3 meters above the body of the pin, I would expect the physics model to end up as a 3 meter high cylinder. Is there some way to prevent this, so that I would not have to do some tweaking of the physics model too? Actually, thinking about a bowling ball hitting a pin, I guess having the physics shape extend a bit too high would not be a problem, the ball rolls on the alley, hardly ever flies through the air. But I did not get the sense that that is what you meant.

I've been is SL for 6 years, and for me, the crash rate has never been better. When I do crash, it is usually clearly related to my internet connection. I log on from different locations quite a bit, so I pay close attention to the packet loss and ping times. With a good connection, in my mainland home sim, I get >100 fps, and yes that drops to as little as 15 in a crowded sim, but it rarely crashes because of that. That is not to say that some sims are not extremely overloaded, there are individual sims that are always very laggy. For instance, you can only run so many scripted vendors in a shopping mall before the server runs out of steam. Some places ignore that fact, load the sim to the breaking point, add a few temp rez devices to get around the prim limits, then moan about how slow the servers are. But there are a lot of well run sims, and its easy enough to avoid the artificial lag pits. And sometimes, even a well run sim has an off day, but show me a computer anywhere that does not need to be rebooted every now and then. Since the early 80's, I have gone through many different computers, I replace them every couple of years. They get laggier and laggier as microsoft upgrades the OS, and as I put more capable software on the machines. Laggier for general computing, that is, not SL in particular. My original DOS box would not be much good for streaming video, or Skyping my family. I recently cleaned out my basement, and fired up my old XP machine to make sure the hard drive was properly scrubbed before scrapping. What a pig! It was so slow, I got really impatient doing simple web browsing. I remember when it was new, and seemed so fast, especially running SL. But computer technology has changed a lot, and so has the bar for what constitues a good computer.

I have a premium account. One reason I do it to qualify for customer service. Not the best customer service in all the world, but better than nothing. And at least on the yearly plan, not very expensive at all. After taking into account the weekly stipend, it costs me about $1 a month. When I have had problems over the years, I have had pretty good help from customer service. They have not re-designed the entire game to suit my preferences, but they have been well worth that $1 a month.

You might try disabling http textures. You can uncheck http textures on the Develop menu (ctrl-alt-Q to display the menu). This often clears things up. For me, unchecking when I have problems has helped, expecially if I am using an internet connection that has packet loss issues. You can checik packet loss by selecting "about Second Life" from the help menu, it will return a report that lists packet loss on the last line.

Thanks for the suggestions, Ayesha. I am well aware of the issues with packet loss and wireless. For my home router, I typically see 0.0% when I try help about. But I often get onto SL from different locations, traveling in my RV. I find about 2/3 the public access wifi's I try are usable to some extent, the rest forget about it, even if they test high for upload and download speeds. Yes, lowering max bandwidth can make a fairly big difference if you are running a few percent packet loss, and yes, switching to an ethernet cable from wireless usually results in improved performance even if you are running 0.5% packet loss. Especially if you you have http textures enabled. I'll have to pay attention to the server version next time I see the problem My home sim is usually running LeTirgre, but I don't always look.

The beta grid has been messed up for a couple of months. My main avatar can occasionaly rez stuff, but not very often. And if I change my hair, or shirt .... next time I log in, I am wearing both. If I load the default avatar, I end up wearing all her stuff in addition to what I had on when I tried. Try setting to default again, next time I log in, I have two of everything. Including multiple skins and multiple shapes, something that is impossible when things are working the way they are supposed to. Changing my password worked once (tried it at least 10 times), but only for a couple of days. A pretty good "tell" is to try to delete something from inventory. If its gone the next time you log in, then things seem to work fine. If its back in your inventory next time you log in, then you are screwed, try resetting your password and cross your fingers. Meanwhile, I have an alt who has had no problems at all. I think the main difference is that my main avatar has over 11,000 items in inventory, the alt has only about 3700. Contactin support is no help at all. They do not support the beta grid.

Thanks for all the suggestions, but I am really looking for a simple way to see that the sim is having issues. When my clothes are really slow, I can go to another sim and change just fine. When I zap back and forth, changing clothes clothes in each sim and seeing my sim always be the slow sim, then it is pretty clearly a sim issue. SImilar but slower to test the grayness of the avatars in a busy sim, but its harder matching "crowded sim" to "crowded sim". But comparing behaviour in one sim to behavior in a similar sim is time consuming, and occasionally ambiguous. I would really like to be able to look at the statistics panel, check a few parameters, and not waste time trying to solve the wrong problem. And it is really a puzzle to me, why when I have a tested connection that supports 15 mbsp, max bandwidth set to 1.5 mbps (with my wireless rounter protected and isolated on my rather large RL lot) and half the textures in sight grayed out, the server still just dribbles out a measely 100 kbps as I sit and wait. They will usually peak out at 1.5 to 2 mbps when I first TP in, then settle down to slowly fill in the rest. It only seems to happen on some sims, not all the time even there, but on a given day, constant for that sim.

I've accidentaly invited someone to be a friend when all I was trying to do was look at thier profile, right clicking and using the pie menu. If I am a few pixels off when I try to click profile, I end up asking for friendship. This is one of the reasons I don't use the pie menu, when I can help it.

Do you have "adult" checked in your search preferences? If a person puts the wrong "naughty" keyword in the text of the main profile tab, the system tags the profile as "A", and the person willl be invisible to people who have not enabled search preferences for adult content. I use Firestorm, and the profile rating does not even show most of the time, only when I use search to find a person. Oddly enough, it seems to be no problem having your picks or your 1st life tab stuffed full of steamy adult content., the system will rate you "G" if you avoid the wrong keyword in your main profile. Oh, and there is no list of keywords to avoid, you just have to guess.. As far as I can tell, the only thing the profile rating does it to mask "A" profiles from those who have not enabled "A" in search preference.

When I am in a crowded sim, and notice that I am jerking when I walk, I will bring up the statistics panel, look at my brower FPS compared to sim FPS and time dialation, and maybe check help>about to see if I have a lot of packet loss. (I often use wifi, and usually see < 0.1% packet loss, but other days, there is external interferance) Looking at these, I can usually figure out if it is the sim or my browser that is slowing things down. Sometimes, in my home sim on the mainland, I log in, find the sim FPS right at 45, my browser is running over 80, but it takes forever (well, 1 minute or two) to change outfits. Or to change a shirt. Usually, almost instant. Is there a reading on the statistics panel that would tell me that the sim is busy (or not)? Similarly, if I TP into a crowded sim, sometimes the avatars all pop in very fast, other times some of them stay gray for 5 or 10 minutes. My browser FPS and the sim FPS both good, often only using 100kbps download, but slow, slow, slow. Presumably the sim is busy, but is there a reading that could tell me that on the statistics panel?

There might also be an advantage in LI. I have a shop, I purchased the building years ago, it was made of 52 simple prims. I recently made a close copy of it, it using mesh. I ended up with a building nearly identical to the original, but with LI 8. And if I make a simple mesh box, to use as a sign, and link it to the main building, the LI stays at 8. I have to link several simple mesh objects to it, before the LI goes to 9.

Ah, another reason my friend should bite the bullet and learn blender. No UV maps with the sketchup dae file. In my short career learning mesh I've encounterd several friends who said, "i'll worry about learning UV maps later", and are then shocked to see what happens when they try to texture it. Hehe, I did it myself. Now I start working on the UV map as soon as I start designing the main mesh.

You asked before if it was in world, that made me curious. So, I went back to the test grid, uploaded the model and rezzed it 3 times, using the current LL viewer. I now have identical objects with LI 12, 14, and 16! (I did not rez 6 or 8 other attempts, that rounded down to 12 LI). I do think there is something a bit squirley about this model -- what with all the extra verts and all. I've seen small variation in the upload costs before, but nothing nearly this large. At least now I know to blame the LOD generator, and try not to get fooled by the "noise" when I am tinkering with my meshes.

Yes!!!! Kwakkelde is right about making something phantom, I thought it was SL being inconsistant, but it was me, rezzing the building on my head! It puzzled me that I could relog, and the object would be fine, now I understand how to avoid the issue!

Thanks Chic I guess there was a certain element of "is it just me???" to my OP, thanks for verifying my sanity! "go with the flow", sounds like good advice here. :-)

Hi Drongle To answer your questions: 1: no LOD meshes supplied, the uploader generated them 2: yes, I had the same physics mesh in a .dae file, and used it for each calculation listed above. 3: On the physics tab I just chose to get the physics from file, and pointed to the same .dae file each time. 4: The figures are from the downloader, on the beta grid. 5: I loaded the model inworld only once, and changed the physics shape type to prim. The physics mesh did just what it was supposed to do. Non-deterministic up LOD generator would certianly explain the variation of upload costs. And that is what was really bothering me, I like it best when my computer produces the same gargbage out for the same gargabe in. I noticed something similar last month, on a different group of models I made myself. SL was always quite reproduceable, both DL and Phys costs, and always a bit cheaper, both in $L and DL, than FS. But they both got the same physics cost every time. The present model is the first where I've seen both DL and physics costs varying randomly.

I've been working with a mesh house model, making a matching mesh physics model. Tweaking and changing and trying get a better handle on how things work. My starting model was made by a friend, a dae file from Google sketchup. When I read it into Blender, it seems to have a bit more than half the verts duplicated, and I do not like the details of the mesh made by sketchup at all, but I am working with that model "as is". I needed to add a roof, and gin up a physics mesh, using a set of planes to delineate the floors and walls. I wanted to see what happens if I tweek the physics mesh, to see if I could change the physics cost for upload. But, if I take exactly the same model mesh and physics mesh, and repeatedly calculate the upload costs, I get a different answer each time. Here is what happened, first using Firestorm, next using the most current SL viewer. I pushed the same buttons in the same sequence each time and made no changes to the dae file for the model mesh or the physics mesh: FS: $L DL PH 13 11.150 4.72 13 11.076 4.56 12 12.593 4.72 SL: 13 13.640 4.64 13 12.936 4.72 13 12.636 4.56 I rezzed the model in world, saw there were some normals misplaced on the roof, and realized I had not joined the roof and the house to make a single mesh. I fixed the normals, joined the roof, and tried again (no changes to the physics file) SL: 12 12.699 2.440 12 12.727 2.440 12 12.540 2.440 FS: 12 15.365 2.440 13 15.092 2.440 12 15.230 2.440 ????! So, my questions are, why are the upload and physics costs variable when there are no changes at all? How can tweeking the model mesh, but not touching the physics mesh, reduce the physics cost nearly in half? And how can the physics cost vary for one model mesh, but suddenly become stable when that model mesh has been tweeked, with no change to the physics mesh? And why shoud it make a difference to upload costs using FS or SL viewer ... I thought the DL and physics costs were caluclated by the server?

I had a look, signed up, and ended up a bit disturbed. I registered as my avatar, used my avatar's email, but when I entered dio, I was greeted by my RL name and Google+ RL picture. I recently was shopping on the web for some nuts and bolts type hardware, went to a random web site and was greeted by name, with an offer to link to my facebook account. Makes me stop and think...

@dillon... OMG, the memories!

Yeah, a beta grid is a beta grid. It sure would be nice if they had a status page for it, though. Somehow, I would be happier if it came up "beta grid is down, hope to have it back tomorrow" (or next week, whatever), than leaving us to read the tea leaves when you can't log in at all. Thats the same symptom you get when your beta Avatar is messed up, but everyone else can still log in.

I strongly agree that wifi can have terrible problems running SL. But it really depends, in an unpredicable, and complex fashion, on the particular router and its surroundings. I have two wireless routers at home. The one that I got from my ISP tests out fine for up and download speed, and will run most applications just fine. But running SL there is 20% packet loss every time, and SL is so laggy and jerky, it is unplayable. I have another router next to the ISP's connected with an ethernet cord. It runs SL just fine, almost all of the times. But occasionally, it will burp, I'll get a few percent packet loss, enought to begin noticing, espessically if I am using HTTP textures. Plug that in with an ethernet cord, the problem goes away. In my case, what ever external source is causing the interfence is pretty rare, and rarlely lasts more than 10 minutes, so I almost always go with the wifi. I travel around a bit, logging in from my RV. Most campgrounds these days offer some kind of free wifi service. About half the time, they will run SL flawlessly. Maybe 1/4 of the time, not at all, and 1/4 distinclty so-so. And just because the wifi worked fine in a given campground last year, does not mean that it will in the same place same time this year. So wifi certianly has issues. For your router, in your environment, you may indeed need a hard wire connection. But it is far from impossible to run SL just fine. Today, I'm parked in my niece's backyard, running ultra, with no packet loss, and no issues, using the wifi router inside her house.

Its possible to make your own alpha masks, but probably not a good beginners project. Here is a link to a good tutorial on how to do it: http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/EasyAlphas.html I've made a few of my own, but first I look through a nice freebee collection, it ususally has what I need. https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Avatar-Alpha-Overlays-101311-update/2312783

I've had both 3G and 4G usb modems, and both ran SL quite well, at least when I use them where there is a good wireless signal. (Sometimes we park our RV where there is not even a phone signal). In contrast, I've had very mixed sucess hooking up to various public wi-fi conntections. A lot of them show too much packet loss to be useable, even though download speeds are high. I rarely see packet loss issues with the usb modem, unless I am right on the fringe.

I was playing with my alt today, testing some different outfits. And at one point it took a good 2 minutes for the two instances of FireStorm to agree on her clothing. It usually only takes a few seconds, took enough longer today to get my attention. I hope its not a trend. (My machine can run 3 or 4 avatars without too much effort, each avatar with a unique cache, etc, etc. I've done it before, it was much slower today)

Good to know that such ads and events are filtered for those who have not deliberately chosen to see "adult" search results.