Jennifer Boyle

I am posting this here because I think that the people who follow the creation forums all know it already. I never made clothes because I think there's no hope that I could ever make nice ones. However, recently I have become interested in making alpha masks to use with mesh clothing and invisiprim shoes. I became acquainted with clothing/skin templates for the first time, and they were an enormous help. What did not occur to me until after I had spent may hours is that it would be much easier still if I wore the templates as clothing or tattoo while designing and trying on the alpha masks. I am somewhat embarrassed to post this and tell everyone how stupid I am. However, I think there may be someone else who would not realize that wearing the templates is so helpful at first, and I may save her several hours. The templates are here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Clothing_Tutorials

One thing I forgot to mention is a 64 bit OS. I have not tried SL on the same computer with a 32 bit and 64 bit OS, and I have never read any comparison. For a while I had a computer set up to dual boot 32 bit and 64 bit XP. Most program were noticeably faster and more responsive on the 64 bit OS.

Thanks for posting about Fab Free Blog. I didn't know about it.

I am not very knowledgeable, so take what I say for what it is worth, which may be what you paid for it. I can only tell you what my personal experience was. My old computer was a Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM and a GTX 8800 graphics card. Upgrading the CPU to a Core 2 Quad and doubling the RAM had no noticeable effect, but upgrading the graphics to a GTX 470 did produce noticeable improvement. That was with V2, I think, and it could have been V1. My current computer runs SL considerably better than the old one did. It has a second generation Core i7, a GTX 580, and an SSD; I don't know which part makes SL run better. If I had to guess, I would guess the graphics card. I did not notice any decrease in performance with V3.

No. It was a box containing a prim object I bought.

After working on it some, I think I made a mistake and used the wrong version of the texture.

For several days at my house I was seeing messages in chat every few minutes like this, "[11:23:18] Second Life: Can't move object 'Modular Plate Carrier 1.0 (Boxed)' to { 73.4843, 121.947, 20.248 } in region Sheepshank because of an unknown reason. [4194304]." I had rezzed and unpacked the object a few days ago. I just hoped they would go away, which didn't work. Support restarted the sim, which also didn't work. I finally got serious about trying to solve it. I noticed that the coordinates given were underground. I derendered the ground, and sure enough, there was the object at those coordinates. I "took" it, and the messages stopped. Can anyone explain how I managed to rez it underground? I am all but certain that I did not move it underground using edit.

I have been making alpha masks to use with my invisiprim shoes so that I can continue to wear them. Last week I mad one for a particular pair of shoes. I was diligent about making it fit exactly. Today, I wore the shoes with the alpha mask, and the alpha mask does not fit the shoes at all. Here is a snapshot: Does anyone have an explanation for this? The alpha masks take some effort to make, and if I can expect recuurent problems like this, it is not worth the trouble.

As far as I'm concerned, mesh clothing is mainstream in SL now. If people persist in using obsolete viewers that cannot render my nice clothes, that's their problem. I think the standard for what is mainstream in terms of ability to be rendered is the current production LL viewer.

If you must use that computer, you would probably improve performance by adding RAM, which is easy and cheap. Even if you don't know how to do it, you could easily find information about how to do it on the Internet. The documentation that came with it, probably on the hard drive, should tell you if the RAM can be expanded. You can enter the model of the machine on RAM manufacturers' Web sites and it will tell you what kind is compatible.

I guess you have to read the tag.

Not exactly. That sorta reminded me of teledildonics with a thought reader replacing the input device.

It's the CameraOffsetRearView setting. I have mine set to 0.250, 0.000, -0.200, which is forward and slightly lower than the default. You will also probably need to adjust CameraAngle, which contols the field of view.

Jesica Dragovar wrote: (just wish LL would bring back head tracking support in the viewers) Several weeks ago, I learned that there are debug settings that determine the default camera positions. Since then, I have had my camera just in front of my face. It takes a little getting used to, but it is more immersive and I like the way it feels. The device you describe sounds very interesting, and I want to learn more about it. I expect virtual reality to eventually progress to the point that it is indistinguishable from reality. Sound is there, Vision is almost there technology-wise, but the technology is not cheap enough to be widely used yet. I think touch will come, and, eventually taste and smell. I'll try them all when they are both good and cheap. One of the things I wonder about is what the social effects will be when virtual reality is so good we can't tell it's virtual. We could enjoy a world created according to our desires instead of having to make do with the real world.

Jackets are outside all other layers. Pants are outside underpants. Shirts are outside undershirts. Tattoos are inside all other layers. You can wear up to five of each item on V2 and V3 viewers; each one that is added is outside the ones that were already there.

Interesting. Thanks for posting the links.

Drongle McMahon wrote: Exactly. The grant of that license is implicit in making the upload. Everyone knows that because they all read the TOS and the policies it refers to, didn't they. The TOS is 11,544 words, 18 pages, according to MS Word. I understand that there needs to be a lengthy document written in legaleze for the hardcore business people in SL, and for their lawyers. There also needs to be a concise summary written in English for we SL hobbyists who have no lawyers.

Thanks. That does answer a lot of my questions. I confess to not reading the TOS for two or three years.

Anaiya Arnold wrote: The word "we" refers not to LL exclusively, but collectively to all residents. So, can LL contract in the name of all residents, and grant licenses for their IP?

That really doesn't help me. It does grant certain rights with respect to content produed by LL. It says, "If the content that you capture is subject to any trademark, service mark, trade dress, publicity rights, or other intellectual property or proprietary rights, you must obtain the necessary licenses and permissions to use the content, and you use it at your own risk." There is nothing that addresses my question, which has to do with what rights are necessary for snapshot under what circumstances.

There are object locators that can find objects in parcels if you can name them. I have one. I'll help you if you wish. IM me if you want me to. Have you tried zooming imn really close while in edit mode? Alson, you can select by surrounding and take them.

I personally would much prefer having one coalesced object returned instead if many separate objects that would be mixed in with my existing inventory and, thus, hard to locate. That would take a lot of time. All you need to do is rez the coalesced object and then take the objects, if you don't want them colaesced. That would not take a lot of time.

It occurred to me that there is one thing about virtual worlds that makes copyright questions much more complicated that they are in real life: everything is intellectual property that may belong to someone. For example, trees, grass, terrain, buildings, animals, roads, waterways, vehicles, clothing, and animals cannot be copyrighted in real life, but they can, and probably are, in Second Life. As I thought about this, I wondered about where the boundaries are that determine what kind of reproduction constitutes infringement. Consider an extreme case. I buy a copyrighted texture within SL and use it as decorative wallpaper in my living room. It certainly would be infringement for me to take a snapshot of the bare wall, crop it so that nothing but the texture showed, and distribute that. What if I make a snapshot of the room with the wall in the background, so that the texture is included, but other things are, too, that someone could crop to recover the texture? What if I do the same after hanging a couple of (also copyrighted) pictures on the wall? Would it change anything if my avatar was standing in front of the wall? What could I do that would make it OK to publish a photo of the room? My avatar consists of a copyrighted skin on a copyrighted shape wearing copyrighted hair, eyes, and clothing. Why is it not infringement to publish photos of her, even if I am the photographer/publisher, since I was not granted licenses to reproduce images of the things that make her up? Whenever a high-resolution snapshot is taken looking more or less straight toward a flat surface, the texture on the surface is captured pretty much intact. Are all such snapshots infringing (unless specific rights were granted)? If not, why not? You get the idea---when the whole universe is made of nothing but intellectual property that is subject to copyright, knowing what is permissible in terms of photography becomes complicated, at least for me. I would like to know what others, particularly those with actual knowledge of IP law, think about this.

Charity Colville wrote: Each computer has its own identity...perhaps just limiting the number of accounts that can be created from one dedicated computer? My husband and I live in the same house, use the same network, and different computers. There are companies that can clearly tell us apart. I am not a network engineer or all that brilliant, so I am not sure how it all works. I don't know enough to know what's feasible, but if the LL servers could identify particular computers and blacklist the ones that needed to be, it seems to me that that would go a long way toward solving problems with serial griefers, without the serious drawbacks of IP banning.

I sure don't have the answer. I think it would be very counterproductive for LL to do away with free accounts. I probably would not have ever tried SL if I had had to pay to just find out if I liked it or not. I don't know if requiring credit cards for everyone would work, as I understand that it is possible to buy a prepaid card for cash, enter a fictitious name and address for it on the Web, and use it to pay for SL. Also, I believe that in some countries it's not common for people to have credit cards. As for things like driver's licenses, the only way I can see LL checking them would be to require a scanned image be submitted, which I would imagine would be quite offputting to many people and would be very vulnerable to falsification through the use of altered images. And, as I said before, I think the people that need to be kept out because of bad behavior are going to take any measure LL puts into place as a challenge to be overcome.