Conifer Dada

There was a sort of 'dev kit' for the system avatars - the CMFF templates were essential if you wanted to make skins, tattoos or system clothes in Photoshop or Gimp and you had to obtain the templates, which were a private venture, not done by LL.

I haven't seen a fiery argument about whether or not Second Life is a game on these forums for a long time😁

Not sure that people have become angrier. I remember when there were a few notorious, permanently angry people who used to post a lot. There was a group called the Forum Cartel and they used to have events at the Forum Cartel Hangout. It's still there but it's always empty these days.

Thanks - I tried the knee extenders some while ago. They work well with bare feet and legs but not so goof if you're wearing shoes. From what I could see when trying them out, the extra length is achieved by lengthening the ankle and upper foot - although it doesn't look like that in the picture.

It would be good to be able to move knees up and down the leg. SL thighs are quite long in relation overall leg length. Not to the extent of being unrealistic but perhaps untypical of RL, at least for female avs.

I tried the basic LL Mid-day setting with RenderShadowBias set to 0.000 and it was much the same as the default setting of -0.004. There was a bit of 'disturbance' around some of the nearby shadows. I tried resetting to -0.001 and the disturbance disappeared, with little noticeable difference in the foot shadows from 0.000. However, if you set to +0.001, everything is in shadow, as I discovered by accident!

What I found, as someone who still uses a system avatar, is that the Jamie hands, arms, feet, legs and the shoulder / neck area are certainly better, but the tummy and lower body are worse, whatever one does with the sliders. The main criticism of the Jamie head (for me) is that the nose profile is concave 'pushed-in' baby nose and whatever you do with the sliders it's not possible to make a 'Roman' nose or even a straight one.

Maybe all they need to do is change the default value in debug settings!

I didn't know that. The day cycle I use on my land is similar to what we have in Britain, so the sun isn't close to directly overhead, even at noon in mid summer.

Today I learned something new and useful in SL. I'm lucky enough to have a good computer and internet connection so I usually have shadows enabled. One problem with SL avatar shadows is that they don't begin at your feet but a short distance away, giving the impression you're hovering above the ground. I played about with debug settings and found that setting RenderShadowBias to 0.000 fixes that problem. The default setting is -0.004. There's still a slight hover effect, but much less. I did find this fix before, a long time ago, but it didn't then persist so you had to reset it each time you logged in. Now, though, it does persist. Many of you might already know about this, but I learned it today - after 16 years in SL!

I've been back to the Beta Grid to try out 'Blake', the male NUX avatar, out of curiosity. I chose one of the Blake shapes and one of the Blake skins. This male avatar doesn't have any of the shortcomings I mentioned in relation to the female one. True, the standard Blake might not have the friendliest of facial expressions, but it wouldn't take much to change that (if you want to look friendly, that is!) I suppose one difference is that with the Jamie avatar, I wanted to see how close I could get to my present appearance, and didn't have much success. With the Blake one I wasn't aiming to look like anyone in particular, just a realistic man. The walk animations in the AO for both female and male are worse than the basic LL 2003 walk! The run animation is OK and the stand animations are passable, though. I am conscious that these might just be test versions on the Beta Grid and that Jamie and Blake might be joined by other avatar choices in the future.

I think the whole NUX thing is a good idea and just what SL needs. Unfortunately my first impressions of the new Jamie body and head, as found in Library while on Beta Grid, are disappointing, but concept is good.

Or it could go the other way. Clubs for Senra avatars only, a militant Senra resistance movement . . . 🤣

Slightly off-topic but has anyone ever encountered a working escalator in SL?

Another new profession might be a 'lag consultant', who could even have a store selling expensive 'quack' anti-lag remedies that don't work.😁 Re. new residents, when I joined SL many years ago, it was confusing, with lots to learn. But the thing that brought me closest to giving up as a newbie was poor performance of the game - lag, slow-rezzing and crashes. Although there have been big improvements since then, imagine how much more popular SL would be if everything rezzed instantly and all movement was smooth.

I logged in to the Beta Grid and I found all the Senra stuff was there. I tried the Jamie avatar and was disappointed as it was impossible to get near to my normal shape, which is slim and not very curvy. As someone who still uses a classic system avatar, I was hoping that the NUX bodies would correspond very closely to whatever shape the underlying classic avatar has, but it's nowhere near, and can't even be adjusted to come anywhere near. Even on minimum settings the Jamie body has an enormous butt! Maybe LL will release more NUX bodies. I will say that the NUX body has a smoother outline than the classic avatar, less jagged, it's just the overall shape is disappointing.

Maybe LL wanted to do a main grid test with a few people, using the main viewer and its inventory.

My Senra sub-folders are all empty too. I use the LL viewer and I cleared cache and tried again. I'm guessing the folders have been added in preparation for filling them soon.

I've aimed at the same look ever since I came to SL in 2006. Over the years I've improved the look, even doing my own skin a few years ago. I embraced mesh hair and mesh clothes but have stayed with a 'system' avatar, possibly because I'm quite skinny and not very curvy. I even have bare feet occasionally which, with carefully designed skin texture, look OK - except for close-up! Many times I've reached a stage where I've said to myself "this is my look" only to do another minor makeover. I think now I'm going to stay with my current look until the NUX avatars come along. Even then, I'll try to keep my look as close as to what it is now, but a better version.

If you want your avatar to look realistic (as in looking like someone in real life) then it's best to use pictures of real life people as reference rather than other avatars.

I made these system jeans a while ago because I couldn't find any good plain ones. All the ones on MP had very low waists, embroidery, rips, patches, big painted-on belts or were just not very well made. All I wanted was some plain jeans that looked fairly new! I also made shadow 'glitch' socks to make the jeans less unrealistic when seen from below. I also couldn't find any mesh jeans that fitted me properly. I'm hoping I'll be able to re-work the texture for these jeans to go on NUX fitmesh pants without too much trouble!

The two avatars in the snapshots posted earlier in the thread look disappointing but what will count is what you can achieve with the sliders and a good skin. As someone who still uses a classic avatar, I'm still looking forward to NUX.

To succeed, the NUX avatars need to: 1) Have a set of complete out-of-the box avatars for new users 2) Be fully customisable on sliders, as with 'classic' avatars, and also be further modifiable outside of SL in Blender or similar, for example if you want an obese avatar with rolls of fat! 3) To be compatible with existing skin templates. 4) To be realistic and glitch-free.

I stopped using flexi hair a few years ago because I didn't like the way the hair disappeared into one's shoulders at times. i did even make my own flexi hair style with two long plaits, which looked OK 75% of the time, depending on how you moved! I still use a system avatar and I'm happy doing that, although I'll certainly give LL's NUX avatars a try when they come along, but unless they come up with flexi mesh that doesn't disappear into my shoulders, I'll give flexi hair a miss.

I'm lucky because I can easily get out into nature for walks, bike rides etc. where I live in the real world. While the pleasing effect of being in nature in SL isn't as strong as in RL, I think I do experience it to some extent. I notice the effect a bit more when visiting a nice SL beach, as the real world sea is an hour and a half's drive away. During the covid pandemic, when we had lockdowns, the effect of being in nature in SL was much stronger for me. We were allowed out for limited periods for exercise but that was basically doing the same half-hour walk every time.