Jennifer Boyle

Thank you, Wulfie and Rolig, the two most helpful people here.

So, why can't we have it all? I'm willing to invest whatever is necessary to have a better SL experience. All that I am lacking is the willingness and ability of LL to provide it. I have a fiber connection to the internet and a very capable computer. Neither of those upgrades made a bit of difference in SL's performance because the limitation wasn't on my end. The limitation is on LL's end. Why won't LL, for a fee, provide better performance? I am so effing tired of logging on and waiting, and waiting some more, for textures to rez.I am tired of so much more poor performance. I know this stuff is complicated and that a simpleminded person like me probably can't understand, but why can't LL give me better performance when I would gladly pay more for it?

My diet is completely sustainable as, like many other avatars, I don't eat.

The problem with relying on display names is that user names are so visible. It seems that scripted objects that send messages about avatars always use user names. I like to show only display names because it seems to me that people should be known by the name they prefer. I often find myself looking up to see which person that I know by a display name is the one that a scripted object just referred to as elfie5678, or some such. Can scripts access display names? If so, why don't they use them? If not, why not?

I did not question their right to do it. I asked how they can do it.

What is wrong with you, to be so gratuitously offensive?

Looking for? Explain in simple terms, please.

I have been wondering about this since last names again became available. LL makes a small number of names available for a limited time, periodically replacing them, never to make them available again. It's reasonable to assume that more choices would make paying to get a new last name more attractive to more people, making SL a little more attractive to users and giving LL a little more income. Why not make the whole pool of last names, including all that have ever been used and all that are on the list to be used in the future, available continuously, with only the limitation that first-name-last-name combinations that had already been assigned would not be available? This would be particularly attractive to people who want to share the same last name because of their relationships. It seems to me that such an expansion of choices for last names would have no downside. What am I overlooking?

How can unsophisticated SL users detect this?

So what is this all about? I thought, when I read that page and associated pages, which include discussion of integrating Google Translation into apps, that it would still be possible for a viewer, which is an app, to use it, but I guess not. It even says there, "Find out how Hyperconnect is leveraging Translation API to break down language barriers in video chats." Seems like, if it could work for video chat, it could work for text chat in a viewer. However, I certainly have nowhere near Rolig's level of understanding.

For a few years, I used the Google translator in Firestorm. It never cost over a few dollars per month, usually less than $2.00. I considered it to be well worth the cost. Some time ago, Google changed their interface and nomenclature, and I can't figure out where to find the code that I need to paste into Firestorm to make it work. I really wish I could find step-by-step instructions, but I have not been able to.

Nothing. As I already said, I was curious.

It's not my "business," and I have no right to demand an explanation from anyone, so I haven't and wouldn't. That said, I am curious, as I have every right to be, and I wondered what other forumites thought, so I asked, as I have every right to. During my first year in SL, it was an impartant goal to "support myself" by earning enough to pay all my expenses. I did "loan" my avatar $20 to get her started so that she could have a decent appearance soon. At the end of the year, I cashed out $23, having achieved my goal of having a self-supporting avatar. Back then, earning money was easier for avatars without specialized skills, and first-rate avatar components and accessories were a lot less expensive. Now, it's harder for all but people with real skills to earn money inworld, and it takes a lot more to fit out an avatar well.

I frequently see nice avatars with expensive components, e.g., Maitreya or Slink bodies, Catwa or Lelutka heads, Truth hair, Aadams clothing, etc., that have no payment information on file. How do they do it? Are they alts? Sugarbabies? Something else?

I guess "adult" doesn't mean what I thought it did. I wonder what it means.

Would that be permissible in the General Discussion Adult Forum?

My experience is that some clothing designers' clothes simply fit better than others'. I get tired of trying demos all the time, so I tend to keep buying clothes from the stores whose clothes I have found to fit well. No designer's clothes always fit perfectly, but some achieve a very good fit almost all the time. And, of course, for sheer clothing to look acceptable, the fir has to be nearly perfect. I suggest that in the example in the original post that a butt deformer might help. I have found a breat deformer to be quiter helpful for similar issues, so much so that even with opaque clothing, I often use it instead of using alpha masks or alpha cuts. I have a prim that says "Adjust Breast Deformer" on it that I attach to a HUD attachment point that I add to outfits to remind me.

I wish!

I can't answer your question, but I can tell you how to accomplish your objective with a Maitreya body. Use a tattoo layer, and apply your texture to it. Use the controls on the Layers tab of the HUD to hide one arm of the layer.

Ever since I started, I have thought that SL was very like a big adult game of dolls.

Looks like I'm late to the party, but I have a few comments about things I feel strongly about. There is an easy, proven way to have the equivalent of a fully-functional graphic viewer on a smartphone: run the viewer on a server and stream video to the phone. It's been done. It works. LL should take that approach if it wants to attract more new, younger users, and SL is nothing without graphics. Young adults are using computers less and less and their phones have become permanent appendages. If LL cannot attract more of them, SL is destined to slowly decline. The development costs a re bound to be far less than the cost of writing a client for phones. Next to the need to provide the full SL experience on tablets and phones, the greatest obstacle to attracting new users is the complexity of the avatar and the the amount new users have to learn before they can fully participate. LL needs to ditch their commitment to complete backward compatibility. They need to set a sunset date a couple of years ahead for the classic avatar, or alternatively let it continue, but make it possible to have a mesh avatar without an underlying classic avatar. We also need to get past this bizarre thing of having a separate body and head. That could be an option for those desiring it, but LL needs to incentivize production of good-quality, inexpensive, one-piece, i.e., simple, cheap, avatars. People need to be able to start having fun their first day in SL. I seriously doubt that I would have persisted if getting started had been as hard in 2007 as is is now.

I don't know how it works now, but I do know how it worked shortly after user name changes became available. Purely by chance, I happened to have an inventory window open with the Calling Cards folder expanded when a friend changed her name. I watched the name of the calling card change.

How big is the tattoo as it appears on the body inworld? The whole upper, or lower, body texture is 1024 x 1024, so, likely, by the time you adjust the size of your tattoo texture so that it appears to be the size you want, it is far smaller in terms of pixels. I recently made a tattoo using a logo that has a lot of fine detail. I started with a 2048 x 2048 texture. I just couldn't get the detail to work in a tattoo the size I wanted because the actual tattoo ended up being about 64 x 64 when it was the size I needed it to be on my avatar.

Great post, Orwar. It's the one I wish I'd written, but I am too lazy. I do want to add one thing. The image editor that I use is paint.net, which is a free download from getpaint.net. It is more than adequate and easy to learn. I've never used gimp; I have read that it is hard to learn.

Why would I ever want a smaller chest?