Alazarin Mondrian

I don't think so. The body shape for the Blue Galaxian Feline and Solarian are different. One of my friends bought a Blue Galaxian Feline and gave up trying to get *anything* to fit her mesh body. The frustration was compounded with Blue Galaxian's decision to not support classic avatars in any way. In the end she bodged the skin problem by using a latex outfit from Liquid Mind as a replacement 'skin' or an off-the-shelf skin from Fallen Gods and just the head, paws and feet from her Blue Galaxian Feline avatar. She was able to use most of her wardrobe or clothes [classic, sculpted and mesh] without it looking too incongruous. Bottom line is: mesh avatars look great. No doubt the Bento ones will too. Be prepared to ditch your entire wardrobe and start all over from ground zero. And it will get very expensive very quickly.

Here's a low-end login

I have mixed feelings about mesh avatars and clothes. Yes, they can look great. Even mesh bodies and outfits can suffer from the 'Frankenstein' effect. My biggest gripe about mesh, though, is that it's a money pit. Just spent a small fortune tricking out your avatar? Guess what, you'll have to junk the lot and start all over again at an even greater expense just to stand still socially. And then there's the avatars with their fat legs a yard apart with hips and ass that look more like a table and back-breaking watermelon boobs. Or the beefcake gorillas with impossibly chiselled abs, arms like tree trunks and mile-wide shoulders. But at least mesh [and sculptie outfits to a lesser extent] don't suffer from the pants painted up the crack of your ass effect which only looks good if you're going for the 'tight pants' look. But seriously, folks, is it just me with my limited experience of mesh or is it always the case that mesh clothes and bodies allow the user less control over their shape than system clothes and avatars? What I would like to see: 1] Standard Linden Lab mesh bodies that respond to a full range of shape slider controls and are fully user-moddable. But made non-transferrable so as not to compete with existing content creators. 2] A utility that would allow users to remap their system clothes, skins, etc onto a mesh body. Again, so as not to compete with existing content creators, the utility would only work with the standard Linden Lab mesh bodies. 3] A better way of making mesh clothes respond to body size so that things like boob size, body build, etc., don't change from outfit to outfit.

KongWubba wrote: If you "have to" cough or clear your throat (PS if that's a frequent issue maybe you shouldn't be performing)............MUTE THE GD EFFING MIC. Or at LEAST make an effort to muffle it, turn your head, etc. It's amazing to me that this actually needs explained, but I'm running into it with a LOT of performers. It's insanely annoying and inconsiderate of your audience to do that, at such an amplified volume no less. So please. Get a clue. Don't be a moron about this like so many others out there are; it could put you a step ahead of the competition. TIA. Just for you I'm going to compose a symphony out of sampled coughs, shiffles, wheezes, grunts, groans, burps, belches, throat-clearing and maybe even a fart or two ;-P

I'd like to thank everyone for their comments, advice and input. I've been able to get the GTX 660 to work acceptably and will stick with it for the time being.

Ah yes, the old ATI vs Nvidia arguement. Having used both my observation is that the ATI cards handle the antialiasing better while the Nvidias handle the water better. For some reason the Radeon would refuse to render the water in adjacent sims properly. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages.

@ Chic: Actually I had considered that it might be a power supply issue. The computer in question has an EVGA 750-watt PSU that used to be part of my son's bitcoin mining rig until two of its output sockets melted. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but I did repair the power supply and it ran my system with a power-hungry HIS Radeon 7950 graphics card faultltessly up until the day the Radeon card decided to go full 'pinstripe'. I did swap it out for an XFX 500 watt power supply which normally resides in my video encoding computer [which also runs another Radeon 7950 which was also part of the aforementioned bitcoin mining rig] and it made no difference. I've also got another 5 power supplies in the cupboard at various ratings from 300-watt up to 650-watt [so it says on the label!] but none of them really inspire my confidence. I probably will have to replace the EVGA power supply some time in the near future but for today it's holding up. I can't put the other Radeon 7950 in my main computer because it won't even wake up on that mobo & PSU combo, so it stays in the video encoding machine.

I need to buy a new graphics card as my HIS Radeon 7950 burnt out. My son gave it to me after he moved on from mining Bitcoins at home and it served me well for over two years. Being on a limited budget [welfare] led me to try out a few second-hand cards I bought on Ebay [Nvidia GTX 460, GTX 560 and GTX 660] with unsatisfactory results. It seems that buying second-hand graphics cards is just buying someone else's problems so I think I should go for a new card instead. A replacement Radeon 7950 or its present-day equivalent is simply beyond my means. I saw these on Ebay [it's new] but I'm not sure: XFX AMD Radeon R7 360 2GB VTX3D Radeon R7 370 2GB Would they be up to the job? I'm not 'gamer savvy' even though I am a system builder. I tend to rely on the Passmark benchmark website for GPU & CPU comparison My needs aren't just simply 'gorgeous graphics' although that's nice when I'm pootling around the grid or building stuff. I perform live music in Second Life and have built up a little band of alts for my show. Three of them run in somewhat low resolution on the same computer along with Cubase, Windows Remote Desktop and Oddcast [audio encoder] which the Radeon 7950 handled swimmingly until it burnt out. The fourth band member runs on a separate computer which also runs WireCast Play to stream our shows on YouTube. The Radeon 7950 handled everything swimmingly until it burnt out. The GTX 460 ran hot and was simply not up to the task. The GTX 560 runs hot but seems to be OK [not stress tested yet]. The GTX 660 appears to be faulty and causes the audio stream to break up as well as frequently failing to initialise on bootup. Even the on-board Intel HD 4600 graphics ran faultlessly for our shows althought our avatars managed a 'whopping' 5 FPS each ;-) So I need to look elsewhere and, as I mentioned above, I am on very limited means so I need to get the most possible bang-for-your-bucks. I've got an Arctic Accelero II cooler that I bought for the Radeon 7950. It's currently on the GTX 560 to keep it from overheating but I can just as easily put it on another graphics card if it fits. Any comments or advice is welcome.

Paris Cloyd: He has a repertoire of his own original material and some covers. Great player. Visual presentation is a bit minimal. Option Y: Bizarro prog / art / punk rock accompanied by totally OTT light show.

Hi Nalthya! Yes, I build my own computers too. I tend to buy and sell stuff on Ebay. I didn't know Craigslist operated here in London. I'll check ot out.

Hi Sassy! How do I adjust the frame rate in Firestorm? I've never used it before.

Hello Qie! I tried your suggestion and installed Firestorm. I launched it on the monitor which is attached to the GTX 460 and.... ... it reports the Intel HD 4600 as its graphics device and the GTX 460 is definitely still quiescent. It's a Palit GTX 460 which comes with their little overclocker utility called 'Thundermaster'. [Yeah, lol!] Anyhooo... it tells you how hard the graphics card is working, GPU speed, memory speed, GPU temperature, fan speed etc., and the card is doing no work! GPU @ 50 mHz, Memory @ 135 mHz, GPU temp @ 32 C, Fan @ 48%.... that's less than when it's idling with the main screen connected to it. I hate to say it but even though the onboard graphics has a lower frame rate, it's preferrable to the GTX 460.

Hello Alwin! I have tried using both monitors connected to one card but it didn't really work out. 1] Both monitors connected to the onboard [intel HD 4600] graphics: gets sluggish once all avatars are loaded up plus Cubase & audio stream glitches started happening. 2] Both monitors connected to the GTX 460: GPU temperatures in excess of 70 C, fan blazing away like a motorcycle, avatars movable but sluggish and occasional audio stream glitches / breaks. The most reliable setup was to connect each monitor to a separate graphics device. Well that's what worked best for me since I started using dual monitors. Prior to that I used separate computers: Cubase + audio encoders on one and my avatars on another.

This is a slightly complex issue so forgive the preliminary info dump: Computer spec: i7 4790 [Intel HD graphics 4600], Corsair liquid cooling system, Gigabyte Z97-D3HF mobo, Nvidia GTX 460 1GB RAM, 12GB RAM, 128BG SSD HDD + 2 X 1TB HDD. Main monitor 1920 X 1080, secondary monitor 1280 X 1024. Graphics card connected to one monitor, on-board graphics to the other one, both graphics devices enabled. Scenario 1: GTX 460 is connected to main monitor, onboard graphics to secondary monitor: I launch SL viewer on the main screen and the graphics card picks up the load [GPU speed, temp and fan speed up]. SL Viewer says that the GTX 460 is the graphics device. I drag the SL viewer window over to the secondary monitor [connected to on-board Intel HD 4600 graphics chip] but the graphics card is still processing it [fan blazing away!] and on-board graphics is asleep. SL Viewer says that the GTX 460 is the graphics device. I launch SL viewer on the secondary screen [connected to the onboard Intel HD 4600 graphics chip] and the graphics card picks up the load [GPU speed, temp and fan speed up]. SL Viewer says that the GTX 460 is the graphics device. Scenario 2: onboard graphics [Intel HD 4600] is connected to main monitor, GTX 460 graphics to secondary monitor: I launch SL viewer on the main screen and the onboard graphics card [Intel HD 4600] picks up the load. SL Viewer says that the Intel HD 4600 is the graphics device. GTX 460 is quiescent. I drag the SL viewer window over to the secondary monitor [connected to the GTX 460] but the Intel HD 4600 is still processing it and the GTX 460 graphics is asleep. SL Viewer says that the Intel HD 4600 is the graphics device. I launch SL viewer on the secondary screen [connected to the GTX 460] and the onboard graphics card [Intel HD 4600] picks up the load. GTX 460 is quiescent. SL Viewer says that the Intel HD 4600 is the graphics device. Does anyone know what's going on here? To my mind it seems to defy logic as it implies that one graphics device is outputting through the other other one or am I missing something here? Right now as I type this I have two alts logged in on the screen connected to the GTX 460 but it's showing minimal load and both viewers claim to be handled by the Intel HD 4600 graphics chip even though I launched both instances of the SL viewer on the monitor attached to the GTX 460. If the monitors were hooked up the other way around it would be the same in reverse with all instances of SL launched on the screen connected to the onboard Intel HD 4600 graphics chip reporting the GTX 460 as the graphics device. I use the dual monitor setup when I do shows in SL. I put my avatar and band alts on one screen and Cubase, remote desktop and audio encoder on the other which makes for a very smooth glitch-free setup. Previously I used an ATI Radeon 7950 but because it was more powerful and quieter I never noticed this issue. Unfortunately the Radeon burnt out and now that I'm using the cheaper, noiser and hotter Nvidia card this issue has come to my notice. I would get another super-duper graphics card but my budget doesn't go that far and I have to make do with what I've got. Soooo.... what I need to know is: Is there any way to force or lock a monitor to a graphics device so that when you move an app from one screen to another the graphics processing is handed off to the other graphics device?

one of my observations with mesh especially as regards avatars is that it will be reduced to a small selection of cash-cow mesh avatars that all look the same. For all its sins, the basic avatar is instantly modifiable by anyone. Goo luck doing that with a mesh avatar without spending shedloads of money on mods and other add-ons. Clothes? Hah! Incomaptibilities galore. At least with prims. sculpts and 'system' clothes it was fairly easy to come up with something unique and original on a budget, you've got no chance in a mesh environment. Sure it all looks fantastic so now we end up with yet more social stratification: those who can splurge out endless on mesh avatars and those who can't. You know I wouldn't mind the mesh avatar thing so much if there were at least freebie base mesh avatars supplied by Linden Lab so as to provide a cosnsistent standard for both content creators and consumers.

It's been a long time since we had this kind of malarkey. Then twice in a week. Something's broken

Does anyone know what happened to SL Evolution / Hermes audio? I have been using them to sell my music in Second Life and when I went to upload my new recordings to their website I hit a dead end. Are they still in business?

Wow, thanks for the Object-object occlusion tip. I had to turn off 'advanced lighting model' because the constant water flickering was making my eyes hurt. I use a Radeon 7870 grpahics card which is pretty good but suffered from the object occlusion issue. My eyes thank you.

Jerilynn Lemon wrote: I think facebook is going the way of MySpace. Actually the new-look MySpace is a million times better than the old flash-cluttered crapfest and is totally cool with pseudonymous accounts. Sadly it has lost its critical mass and that looks unlikely to return.

Freya Mokusei wrote: Facebook is a way to turn people into money, and avatars aren't people. Total rubbish. Avatars have spending habits. Even if you use a pseudonymous account for everything you do on the internet, that pseudonym still has spending power, purchasing patterns, etc. All the stuff that data-scrapers want and abuse. So the argument that pseudonyms are anathema to corporate monetisation of the internet fails at the first hurdle.

I am a musician / performer in RL & SL. Take it from me: venues in SL are a money pit and in the nine years I've been in SL I can count the number of venues that actually made a profit on the talons of one paw. Venues will do their utmost to come up with every excuse / wheeze / scam / fib to avoid actually paying performers, never mind their staff. If you approach 99.999% of SL 'jobs' as role-play you won't be disappointed. If you're looking for a real-world type of income, you're looking in the wrong place. The answer, I found, was to set up my own venue and run it on a non-profit basis. Minimal income, minimal expenses.

It would appear that the problem / issue is fixed. I was able to list some more shows without any spurious warnings. A big thank you to whoever works behind the scenes.

Whew! It's a good job I managed to list my shows well in advance before things went pear-shaped.

Hi! I decided to list some upcoming shows I plan on doing at my venue in SL. However when I clicked on the button to 'Save Event' I got a warning that my listing referred to adult material which could not be listed as my venue is on General [PG] land. This is odd as I have held the same parcel for several years and have been doing shows there 3 times a week. Nor have any of my listings ever been flagged up as 'adult'. In the past some of my listings were flagged up as 'dupicates' even though they weren't. Here's a screenshot of my failed listing. As you can see there's nothing 'adult' in the listing text. Furthermore my shows are not x-rated in any way. Our music is instrumental [no pornographic lyrics!] and our avatars are fully clothed and do not indulge in lewd and/or sexually suggestive behaviour. I can't find anything 'adult' about my listing. Can you? I've even used exactly the same heading & text for previous listings many times over and never had a problem with it. So why now?

Hi! I decided to list some upcoming shows I plan on doing at my venue in SL. However when I clicked on the button to 'Save Event' I got a warning that my listing referred to adult material which could not be listed as my venue is on General [PG] land. This is odd as I have held the same parcel for several years and have been doing shows there 3 times a week. Nor have any of my listings ever been flagged up as 'adult'. In the past some of my listings were flagged up as 'dupicates' even though they weren't. Here's a screenshot of my failed listing. As you can see there's nothing 'adult' in the listing text. Furthermore my shows are not x-rated in any way. Our music is instrumental [no pornographic lyrics!] and our avatars are fully clothed and do not indulge in lewd and/or sexually suggestive behaviour. I can't find anything 'adult' about my listing. Can you? I've even used exactly the same heading & text for previous listings many times over and never had a problem with it. So why now?