Ceera Murakami

"Flattening" a PNG image doesn't remove alpha. You need to explicitly save it as a 24-bit image instead of 32 bit to remove the alpha channel information. This is s very common problem with trying to use PNG textures in SL. With some applications there is a "Save for web" option that will strip out the alpha information and make the texture be 24-bit. As a texture artist, I find it much safer to change the image to tga format, which forces an explicit choice or 24 bit or 32 bit when you save the converted image. Then you never accidentally import what you intended to be a non-alpha texture that has alpha properties.

Sassy Romano wrote: amarock Amat wrote: It needs to listen to a commmand to sheeth or pull out Bascily image the sword setup and you draw it by having the alphas turn visible. and sheeth it by it turning invisible So the sword needs precisely one script and if the sheeth is a separate worn prim, that needs precisely one script too. But the question was 1 script or 4. If you have a sheeth which is separate, it could never have been done with just one but needs two. Yep. I believe he was referring to the effect on script count for the worn sheath and belt. The script for the sword in the hand could easily be one script anyway, regardless of linkset complexity, as it only has to toggle the alpha of the whole linkset. But for the sheathed copy, without llSetLinkAlpha, each prim that had to individually toggle alpha state needed a script that listened for a linked message from the command listener script. (It's possible to have the command script be smart enough to handle toggling alpha in the prim it is in, eliminating one script there.) The sword set that I made had three sheathed blades. A Katana, a Wakazashi, and the small Tatno knife. You could choose to wear the invisible Katana or Tanto in the right hand, and the Wakazashi in the left hand, and a non-zero text chat command set allowed you to draw or sheath the desired blade, toggling visibility of the required parts in the sheathed set and the ones in your hands. My set didn't do anytrhing else. They weren't scripted to do damage or to execute any combat move animations. They were just for looks. I really should update my set to use llSetLinkAlpha, but I only made them for my own use and my alts and household members to use, and we don't use them often, so it hasn't been a priority for me to update the scripting and improve script efficency there.

Sounds like you bought an "avatar customization kit". These normally assume that you already own a complete copy of some avatar that the kit maker intended their kit to modify. Do you have a link for that particular kit? There may be info in their ad that can explain better the prerequisites. I can offer some advice from a similar experience of mine, using a different avatar and kit. I wanted a "Bernese Mountain Dog" furry avatar. No one makes one at this time as an off-the-shelf item. But there is an avatar customization kit for adapting the KZK Husky Avatar and making it into a Bernese Mountain Dog. To use the kit, I also had to buy a KZK Husky avatar, and wear all the initial parts for it. That gave me a shape that fit the head and other prim parts. It wasn't my preferred body shape, but the shape was modifyable, so I could fix that later. I wore the KZK Husky, and the kit contained new textures for the existing head, new ears (which I didn't like, and ended up making my own, later), a new tail, a skin texture, and textures for the hand paws and foot paws and digitigrade legs. I had to wear the skin, and then rez copies of the head and other body parts that needed re-texturing, and apply those textures as needed to parts of each prim attachment. As I finished each piece, I re-named it, took it back into inventory, and replaced the Husky parts that I was wearing with the new Bernese-textured parts. Eventually I had a Bernese avatar, and it was femae, but she was too tall, and had the wrong figure for being "me". So I started adjusting my height, waist, hips, bust, and other shape settings, while leaving the head settings, hand size and foot size strictly alone. I saved that as "Ceera's Bernese Shape", and keep that with the avatar. I had to adjust the size of the lower leg attachment parts for the digitigrade legs, because they were too big for my now-shorter legs. Finally, I deleted the Husky parts that I wasn't wearing from the inventory folder, and re-named any re-used parts so they all indicated they were part of the Bernese avatar. Now I can wear it when I want to, and the figure is mine, the head fits, and the avatar looks great. === In your case, I think you may need to purchase the complete felis avatar, and not just the free felis head. Buying the complete avatar will give you the shape and other body parts, like the tail and paws. With that start, you should be able to apply what is in the "avatar customization kit", and get the results you want.

The problem with selling traditional art in SL is that you get virtually no profit from it. What people are willing to pay for a "framed picture" to hang on their virtual wall in SL is mere pennies in real money - rarely even a single US Dollar's worth of L$ for each "art item". So unless you sell hundreds or thousands of copies of the item, you simply don't make enough to pay for the time it took you to create an original work of art. Virtually no one will pay you a realistic comission for a custom "portrait" of their avatar in SL. Why should they, when they can make a "snapshot" in-world for L$10? Your art is good quality, and original. Maybe it would sell multiple copies in SL. Maybe not. But don't expect anyone in SL to be willing to commission you to draw a picture just for them, and to pay you more than a couple of dollars for it. In SL, you are only going to be able to import images as textures up to 1024 x 1024 pixels in size - not adequate for a very good quality real-world art print. So you don't have the added value that they could print the work and frame it at home. And SL Marketplace prohibits selling tangible, real-world merchandise, so you can't sell real-world art prints or higher-resolution jpg files to be delivered outside of SL. Anything sold on SLM has to be deliverable in-world, for use in SL. For most uses in SL, a 512 x 512 pixel texture or even 256 x 256 pixel texture is quite sufficient. Any greater texture resolution is wasted, because one rarely looks at the picture close enough to see that many actual pixels on the computer screen.

The difference? Altitude. A sky box is in the air, and doesn't touch the terrain surface, while a normal building does. There is absolutely no other difference. Both can be set up to spawn from a rezzer box, or could just be put in place from inventory. Both can serve the same functions, both are made the same way. They are subject to all the same rules for parcel prim limits and the like. I've seen houses on the ground that had exteriors that looked like a plain plywood cube. I've seen skyboxes with elaborate external decorations, including walkways among prim clouds, swaying palm trees and other plants and landscaping, or delicate foot bridges connecting floating chunks of rock. The appearance of either is entirely up to the builder / owner. A lot of people don't decorate the outside of a skybox, because it is so high that no one can see it from the ground, or fly to it reasonably from the ground. Why decorate the outside, if you always TP to the interior? Why make it look inviting to strangers, if you're seeking privacy? Others prefer the aesthetics of a fully decorated exterior. I made a skybox once that looked like a space ship, detailed fully inside and out, and put it inside a megaprim sphere that was textured on the inside to look like outer space, and on the outside to look like the moon.

I've scripted a sword set before, and what Sassy said is correct. you could use llSetLinkAlpha and have only one script in the sheathed version of the sword, and one script in the one attached to the hand that draws it. The script would listen for the /3draw or /3sheath command, or whatever you choose to use, and that one script in the hand-held sword's root prim could toggle alpha on all the prims in the sword in your hand, while the one script in the root prim of the sheath and belt set could use llSetLinkAlpha to make the specific prims for the hilt of the sheathed sword toggle invisible when drawn, and visible when sheathed. It's not like before llSetLinkAlpha existed, where for example the hilt of my katana and the katana's handguard prim and in the hilt of the wakazashi and the wakazashi's handguard prim each needed a script to turn just that one prim's alpha state on or off, plus a listener script in the linkset's root prim for the commands! Now, one script in the sheathed set 's root prim can both listen and control toggling any individual prims anywhere in the linkset, by their link number in the linkset, based on which command is detected.

All these discussions are why I opened this thread. My take on it was confusing as all get out, and it appears I am not alone. I'm wondering right now how I can even go about testing this direct delivery method myself. I deleted my magic boxes and quit selling on Marketplace about the time they started making noises about charging merchants fees to list free stuff that I was offering as a public service, like my megaprim kit. I could not, and still can not, directly list my own texture sets on SLM, because the system as it is set up is crap for selling things like texture bundles; the in-world store they are sold at isn't MY store, it is Textures-R-Us, and SLM policy only allows you to link to an in-world store that is YOUR OWN; and where I really would want to refer them for information is the TRU website, and THAT isn't allowed because it is a "competing merchant site". I had to rely on TRU's owner to create a master account for TRU, and to place all the freelance TRU artist's sets on SLM, with the appropriate profit sharing split between the artist and TRU. Now I get my share of those SLM sales, but I still can't manage my own texture items on SLM. Not without pulling out of TRU and setting up my own independant texture store in direct competition with TRU. I have an SLM Merchant Account, but I never set up a "Store" in SLM. Other than my textures, the products that I used to sell on SLM I don't feel are worth bothering to re-list. My furniture, clothes, wings, eyes, and other misc. items that I sold at one time or another weren't selling well enough any more to be worth the time or expense to maintain the in-world store, and my SLM listings got lost in the flood of featured freebie crap. And in light of the new Mesh stuff that will be flooding the market, which I have no skill at making competing products for, I'm not very inclined to spend time making new stuff to sell. Still, if I ever do decide to sell via SLM again, I would like to understand how the heck it is done. So, for the sake of argument, here's what I *think* I understand so far. I *think* there is no limit on how many products I can sell as individual listings. For each item I want to sell, I have to make a folder in my "Merchant Outbox", and put in that folder either the contents of the formerly boxed item, or the boxed product. That folder could potentially contain a heirarchy of up to 20 folders and a max of 200 items, with each "item" being either a texture or prim object or piece of clothing or whatever, or possibly a box of things. That will be a pain to do for merchants with a lot of already boxed stuff in their magic boxes, but I guess I see how that works, IF you hope to eliminate delivering boxed stuff. I send that to SLM, and then via SLM I can tell a new listing or an existing listing that the item is delivered without a magic box, from that uploaded folder. I guess if I want to update an item, like version 1.1 of a scripted door, I can make a new folder for "Door 1.1" in the "Merchant Outbox" folder, upload that, and associate the old listing with the new 1.1 version's uploaded folder, instead of the earlier 1.0 version's folder? When someone buys an item, they get a folder that contains whatever was in the folder that I associated with that listing. I guess its name is whatever name is listed for the item? And it can contain up to 200 things, suich could be individual content or sub-folders of content or boxed things? If I don't have a "store" set up now in SLM, can I set one up so I can test this on the Beta grid? Is it possible yet to set up multiple stores without using alts? For example, can I set up "Ceera's Furniture" and "Ceera's Textures" and "Ceera's Clothes", as one account with three SLM "stores"? Or must I use my main and two alts to do that? I'll likely have many more questions, but I want to quit now and eat my dinner. See ya.

In the Direct Delivery FAQ, it says: "For products listed on the Marketplace using direct delivery, the number of objects per folder and number of folders will be limited. This will require merchants selling large numbers of objects in the same listing to box objects within their folder hierarchy. The total number of folders is currently set at 20, and the number of total objects for each folder hierarchy (each set of items to list) cannot exceed 200." Is that the limit on what one "for sale" item can contain? Or is that the limit on a merchant's entire available infentory of products they can sell? Apparently for each item we want to sell, we make a folder in our "Merchant Outbox", which may contain boxed proiducts, or loose items, or possibly a heirarchy of sub-folders? We send this to the SLM servers, and in SLM we somehow turn each top-level folder that we sent into a product listing? Either way, these limits worry me. I sell more than 100 texture bundles on SLM, in affiliation withTexturs-R-Us, which has a heck of a lot more testure bundles in SLM, all under one merchant account. If we can only offer 20 items for sale, we are well and truly screwed. At the same time, if I wanted to offer my old free megaprim builder's set again, via SLM, that has over 300 items in it. If we assume the limits above mean one individual item can contain no more than 20 folders within its heirarchy, and no more than 200 items total in the heirarchy, I still couldn't sell that via SLM, unless I boxed it as a single item? This is very confusing to me. Can anyone clear up what this really means?

I would also like to know why "Vampires" is the only subculture in all of SL that is getting all this free publicity and preferential treatment. You don't see Tinies, Furries, Goreans, BDSM, Lesbians, Harry Potter, Star Trek, or any other popular subgroup getting their own forum sections, free promotions by LL of their events, or other perks. Why are Vampires getting this treatment? Did Rodvik Linden get bitten and join a vampire Clan, or what? If people want to do vampire roleplay in SL, I don't care, as long as they don't try to drag me into it unwillingly. At one point I even owned a store in a Vampire sim, and partied with them at their dance and costume contests, to be sociable with my sim neighbors and support their efforts. But I do not see where it benefits SL as a whole to highlight Vampire activities as if it was a primary subculture in SL, while ignoring the existence of so many other groups.

Yes. You can render the 3D scene as a 2D image in a jpg file, import that image into SL at a cost of L$10, and apply it to the surface of a prim, and put that prim on your wall. If you take a box prim, taper it a bit on X and Y, and flatten it on Z, you can get a nice picture frame effect, where the image can be on the center face and the four trapezoidal sides can be textured as the frame, while still being only one prim. Depending on what sort of 3D work you create, you might be able ot save it as a colada DAE file, and import it into SL as a 3D mesh, to display as a 3D sculpture. But most 3D rendering apps don't create very efficient meshes for import into SL, so unless you learn to optimize the mesh import, that sculpture could end up with a horribly high prim count.

Actually, I think the way they have it set right now, profiles and in-world checks for whether the person has PIOF or Payment Info Used (PIU), retain that status, even after payment info is removed. The point being that they indicate that at some time in the avatar's existence, you did provide valid payment info. I removed payment info from several of my less-important alts - a few of which did have PIOF status, and one was PIU. They all show their former status in the profiles and in terms of being able to go to parcels that require payment info on file. None of those alts ever use the payment info for anything, since if they need funds, my main account, Ceera Murakami, just gives the L$ to them. And it has been a long time since any of my accounts was ever excluded from an area for not having payment info on file.

I'm having no noteworthy problems with the Firestorm Mesh beta, on a Win XP system. Everything looks fine, and I get a good frame rate. It performs better for me than the Viewer 3 or V3 Development viewers do. It still has issues importing mesh, but therer's very little else that I have been unable to do with it.

I have been in SL for over 6 years, and have run profitable businesses in SL, and have never had sufficient reason to become a Premium member. It isn't a "necessity" for anything other than directly owning mainland, and gaining access to more categories of technical support. If you DO really want to own Mainland, then the cost is negligible. If you buy an annual subscription, the amount they pay back to you in L$ stipends each week over the year, plus the value of getting free tier on your first 512 M2 of land that you own on the Mainland, or on a Linden Home Parcel, is worth just a little more than what you pay. But you're really just paying up-front for L$ and tier fees that they dole out to you over the next year. Personally, if I need L$, I'd rather buy them as I need them. As someone else mentioned, one major negative with Premium Membership is that if you ever have a billing problem with your automated Premium Membership subscription, LL will suspend your account, and could even ban and delete your account for non-payment. For me, that one risk outweighs any possible benefits. I don't want to lose the hundreds of dollars worth of purchased content that my account has in inventory, or lose access to the account that runs my in-world businesses, just because LL develops a problem processing PayPal funds, or because my credit card happens to be maxxed out when they try to bill it.

The main reason for deeding land to a group, in a private region, is that there are certain group role functions that only work for the "parcel owner". For example, to set the multimedia stream for the parcel, only the parcel owner can do that. But if the parcel is deeded to a group, then a scripted prim that is also deeded to the group can allow anyone to set the multimedia stream, and group members with the appropriate role permissions can change the stream. About 1/3 of the group roles only work properly if the parcel is deeded to the group. The other group roles work fine if the parcel is only "set" to the group. In private regions, as you noted, there is no "group owned land bonus" for tier, and you don't do "contributions" to tier. You simply have a rental box or a PayPal subscription or some other way that one or more people in the group pays the sim owner directly, and then the sim owner in turn pays Linden Lab the tier on the sim. Private sim owners always have the ability to repossess a parcel. So unlike Mainland, where deeding a parcel to a group takes that land out of the original owner's control completely, on a private sim the sim owner can allow deeded land, and better land control rights, while retaining ultimate ownership of the land. People who rent out Mainland parcels can't allow deeding to the parcel resident's own group, because if they do, they lose the land. On the mainland, the landlord has to create the land management group, and retains ownership and control of that group, deeds the land to the rental group, and has to invite tenants into that group in limited roles. Then they can share most of the benefits of a group deeded parcel.

OK, here's a mini-tutorial from someone who has actually done this: 1: Yes, you can make a viable building and venue that spans multiple regions (sims). The Lindens do it a lot for their larger stages at the SL Birthday bashes and at several permenant settings. Spanning two or even four regions is possible, and you can have a full region's participants in each actual sim in the venue. They quite commonly set them up at the corner where 4 sims meet, with three sims for audiance members, and one for the stage where the presenters are. Everyone can hear both text chat and voice chat across all 4 sims. Everyone can see multimedia and hear the sound from all 4 sims. 2: As someone else stated, you need to have the land on each side have the same owner and be in the same 'Estate' for Voice and chat to work smoothly across the sim border. (That doesn't mean the sims or parcels merge. It just means that the parcels are all in the same management group in the Estate controls.) You can not "join" the land into a single parcel that spans both estates and shares prim count. 3: To build across a sim edge is easy. Build half the prims on each side. The prims in sim A are linked to a root prim in sim A, and the prims in sim B are linked to a root prim in sim B. Each section is subject to the parcel prim limits in its native parcel. You do NOT want to build all of it on one side, and push it over into the other sim, because any prims linked to a root prim in some other sim are phantom to you if you are in a different sim. So building all on one side makes half the build intangible. 4: At the sim edge, you do have a potential sim crossing issue. When you cross from A to B, there is a moment there while one simulator passes your avatar control off to the other, but hasn't yet had a chance to tell your viewer what prims really exist where in the new sim. This causes you to fall through the prims on the other side as if they were phantom. You fix this by adding an extension from the prims on each side into the other side, so as you leave, the system knows you still have a solid floor ahead of you for several more meters. Now, you can't link a prim in sim B to other prims in sim A. But you CAN link a prim in sim A to prims in sim A, and then "edit linked" to push that prim past the sim edge, into the other sim. As long as it remains linked, it will be part of sim A's linkset. So for the half of the building on sim A, make one extra prim for the floor (or several if the edge in question is more than the current 64 M prim size limit in length), about 5 M wide and as long as is needed for the sim edge in that building,and position it near the sim edge, but still in sim A. Link it to the sim A side of the building, clicking on this new prim first, and then on the linked prims, so you keep the original root prim of the linked parts. Now do an edit linked parts, select the extension prim, and push it over the edge, and down to floor height. Texture it 100% alpha, using the transparent texture from the library. Repeat this on sim B's side. Now, each half of the building has an invisible extension that the system knows about, and you don't fall through the floor. (Same trick is also used for making a bridge that connects two sims). If it matters to you, the same extensions can be done for the walls and ceiling, to prevent people from passing through the wall just as they cross the edge while moving at an angle, but that isn't usually enough of a problem to bother with.

I find I have much the same problem. There's loads of things I can do. But I've found that many of them are just not worth my time and effort to pursue, because I can't offer a sufficently different / better product in those areas than many others already offer. In my case, I ended up creating large-scale, multi-sim projects for specific clients. I don't have a 'store' at all, other than some textures that I still sell in partnership with Textures-R-Us, both in-world and via SLM. Instead, I create projects that require building, scripting, texturing, terraforming and landscaping skills, all at once, and a good eye for detail and re-creating the architecture of real-world locations, or creating what a client descrives verbally. Sometimes I even make custom clothing items and scripted HUDs for them. My answer for 'want should I sell' was to find something that used a variety of my existing skills. What works right for you will depend on your skills and interests. I really do think the best advice for any business in SL is "Do it because you enjoy it, and because you have some skill in that area. Don't do it 'just to make a profit'. Most businesses in Second Life DO fail. But if you're actually enjoying the act of creating the stuff you make, it's a win even if the store itself makes no money. If you enjoy it and it is also financially successful, so much the better." Without seeing what you already tried making, my guess would be that your earlier efforts failed because you didn't offer a sufficently different / better product than your competition already offerrd, or if you did, then you didn't advertise it well enough. Those are the two biggest reasons that I am aware of for business failure in SL.

You might want to hire someone to do alterations for you, just as you would in the real world if you needed tailoring done, but you couldn't sew well enough to do it yourself. Find someone skilled at building and/or texturing, and ask for their help. The trick to having someone else mod prim clothes for you is to follow these steps: 1: Friend that person who is going to help you, and give them mod rights for your prims. 2: Get a free pose stand, and stand on it. 3: Rez a copy of the item to be modified on the ground. 4: Wear a second copy of the item. 5: Move the copy you rezzed in-world until it pretty much exactly overlaps the one you are really wearing. 6: In inventory, detach the item you were actually wearing. At this point, you're locked in position, and the item you need edited, such as a prim skirt, is in the right position relative to your body, but is not actually being worn by you. This is important because others can not edit an attachment while it is attached to you. Your hired 'tailor' can now edit the prims of the object as needed, to fix it for you. When they are done, you can re-name the object (so you can tell it is the altered copy), take it into inventory, and wear it to make sure the alterations are right. ( Edited to add: This same process can also be used by yourself, to edit a copy of an item, and has the advantage that if you need to, you can unlink, remove or re-link individual prims. When I mod hair to fit my furry avatars, I do this, because you can't unlink a prim from an attachment you are actially wearing! )

A better question is to ask yourself what you, as the content creator, are capable of making, and interested in making, that may be good enough to compete against the tens of thousands of other would-be content creators in SL. A successful store in SL is one that offers unique products, a wide range of products, good quality, and a decent price. And the vast majority of the successful store owners got their success by first honing their skills and learning to make a product that they simply enjoyed making, before they ever decided that they wanted to open a store and sell that stuff. It's very hard to make a successful store with content made by others. If someone is willing to allow you to resell their content, then quite a few other people will probably be offering exactly the same thing, because they can sell it too. The grid doesn't need more stores selling stuff bought from full-perms kits, or 'me too' content that pretty much duplicates existing merchandise with a slightly diferent fabric texture or other minor differences. We have too many stores like that right now. So if the content in your store isn't your own unique work, you are starting out with two strikes against you - lack of uniqueness, and lack of any difference between your stuff and someone else's. To compete successfully, you need products that offer an advantage over the competition. Better quality, better pricing, better features... And finding something that you can create, and that a hundred other people aren't already doing just as well or better than you can, is a very difficult task. Not impossible, but difficult. You stand a far better chance of success if you aim for skills and interests that you already have, to at least some degree. If everyone who replied to your question answered "Clothing", what good would that do you, if you didn't already have the skills needed to make clothing in SL? Yes, you could then start studying how to make SL clothes, but you'll be trying to compete against a lot of others who already have far better skills in that area. Again, you would be starting off at a severe disadvantage. So my best advice, for a new merchant that wants to open a store, is first to get personal experience in SL, as a consumer of other people's efforts, and see what is already offered for sale. See what items you may have the skills to create, and that you like to work on, and seek a better way to make those things. When you can honestly tell yourself that your items are equal to or better than most of the similar items available in SL, that is when you want to go out and open a store.

Is it possible that there are invisible prims encroaching on your land? Try turning on "Highlight Transparent", and see if there are any unexplained red-tinted masses blocking you. Is it possible that you have some sculpted prim items in the room that are not phantom? Sculpted prims may have bounding boxes much larger than their apparent size, and can block you from entering their bounded space.

Well, with current build limits, you could make a 4096 Meter tall tower, up to 64 Meters by 64 Meters at the base, using just 64 prims at 64 Meters tall each. The top of the tower would be slightly above the 4096 Meter build height limit, since the water level is 20 M in most sims, and the lowest terrain surface is usually 21 Meters. So you wouldn't be able to place any prims on top of that tower and move them, without the prims snapping back to a max height of 4096 Meters. With prims that size, you probably couldn't link any of it together. But that is kind of a good thing, because if you could, you wouldn't be able to see the tower unless your draw distance was long enough to reach the center of the linkset. As unlinked 64 M prims, you would see every prim whose center was within your draw distance. If you used recently-created megaprims, you could use even fewer prims. Most of those had a limit of 100 Meters, so 41 would be needed to make a 4096 Meter tall tower. I personally wouldn't build with larger than 100 M prims, and would try to keep it to the new 64 M prim limit. The old Gene Replacement megaprims had some as big as 1024 Meters, I think. But as I recall most of those would need to be cut, sliced or dimpled to get the footprint to fit on a parcel, or even within the sim, because the really huge ones were either cubes or square planes. Cutting a prim back in visible size doesn't change it's actual size, so those really big prims can cause issues by overlapping on other people's parcels, or having their centers too far from the observer for the prim to be rendered. One other note. Since the LL viewer has a 512 M draw distance limit, many people would never be able to see all of a tower that was taller than 512 Meters. If they flew to the mid-point in its height, they could generally see a 1024 Meter tall tower, assuming that level of detail culling allowed them to see the most distant prims. Anything bigger, they will never see all of it. While some third party viewers allow a draw distance as large as 1024 Meters, most people never set their draw distance that high, because they lag too much if they do.

Using Viewer 3 with a quad-core system and 32-bit Win XP for my OS, with SL in the foreground one core's processes jump to about 75%, one is about 10%, and the other two are at 5% or less. So no, it doesn't divide evenly on all multi-core systems. Maybe with 64-bit Win 7, or some other 64 bit system, but I can't test that,

What they paid for it before the price of land crashed doesn't mean squat. I used to own land on a private sim that I paid plenty for. When I left that area I got far less than half what I paid for it. Today? I'd be lucky to get L$1 per square meter for the same parcel. The price of land tanked a long time ago. There are people still holding land that they paid for before the crash, who foolishly hope the price will go up again, while tier eats them alive. The only land that sells for decent prices any more are the double-primmed parcels in places like Bay City and Nautilus, (most of which are obscenely overpriced because of land speculators who paid insane amounts and hope to regain their investment), and land in the Zindra continent, simply because it is Adult rated, or because it is both Adult rated and double-primmed.

When did these get introduced, and what viewer supports them? I don't see these as existing in Viewer 3 (current release version) or in the Development version of Viewer 3.

Search in-world for "Ivory Tower of Primitives". Go there and examine every display. It is a free in-world builder's guide. Go to the Livingtree sim and check out the in-world texturing tutorial by Robin Jojurner. Also free, and absolutely fantastic texturing information.

To own mainland, you incur two ongoing expenses. For any amount of land over the first 512 square meters, you pay a monthly tier fee to Linden Lab. To own any Mainland at all, you must also pay Premuim Membership dues, which you can choose to pay monthly, quarterly or annually. Paying annually is the best pricing. If you fail to pay either your monthly tier on the land or your dues on the Premium membership, you will lose the land and could have your account suspended until the unpaid bills are paid in full. As I understand it, if you try to buy land and are not a Premium member, you'll get upgraded to Premium and billed for that (possibly defaulting to monthly dues, which is the most expensive rate). So if you're seriously considering a direct purchase of Mainland parcels, choose your rate explicitly and become a Premium member first.