Ceera Murakami

Draco Gumbo wrote: I'm sorry, but is this new? I thought all those were in place for some time? They did it for Non-US accounts a while back, when they introduced a new third party payment processor. But in America, we only had the ability to have one payment method filed, and used for any payment types.

You should be able to go to the billing information page and remove it. There is no charge for that. In the USA they are halfway through changing the billing information page. On the old page, if you have payment info on file, there is a button to delete that info. The new page allows multiple saved payment methods, and each has an "x" after it for removing it. I don't know how it works for non-US members. You won't get banned unless you are a Premium Member, and your dues lapse because you have no longer got valid payment info. If you are Premium now, you would first need to get rid of any Mainland parcels that you own, and downgrade to Basic, before removing the payment info.

Also note, this doesn't seem to be rolled out to all accounts yet. I just tried to update one of my newest alts, and got the older page, that doesn't have the new options. But be patient, and I think this will get rolled out for all of us. I suspect these are the same expanded set of options they piloted in non-US accounts recently, fine-tuned for payment methods that work in the USA. (Edited to add: In fact, I can only see this new method with my main account? This is odd, as I have several alts, and many of them also had payment info used status, so I see no reason why my main account gets the new method, and not others. Maybe because I am in the Solution Providers program with my Main?)

Woah! Good news! I was just looking at the Billing Information page, to check an answer that I was drafting for someone on the Forums, and it has radically changed! New options for US Residents! We can now save MULTIPLE billing methods, like having both PayPal and a Visa Card on-file, and can switch at will between them for : Making L$ purchases from the webMaking L$ purchases in-worldIncreasing US$ creditor for "Buy Land, Premium, recurring fees".Four independant categories for what get billed! And best of all, it seems they abolished the entirely arbitrary "five times in a lifetime" limit for associating a PayPal account with any avatar account, ever! They used to refuse me the ability to put my Main back on PayPal as my payment method, because over the years I had used PayPal 5 times before to set up Payment info, including for my Main, but I had later changed my main to VISA to make one purchase. But today, they finally let me change it back to Pay Pal, no problem at all. Kudos to whoever at the Lab finally fixed the payment method registration! This is GREAT! (See? When LL does something right, I'm happy to give credit where credit is due.)

I recently noticed that some Estate Manager functions are not working for me, as well. I am an Estate Manager in several sims. I have, in the past, been able to use the Estate Manager tools to return all prims owned by a designated avatar. I can not do that now in those sims. The function exists, but fails to perform the task. I suspect a recent server code change may have damaged some Estate Manager capabilities, but I have not had time to investigate further. === Bonjour, J'ai récemment remarqué que certaines fonctions ne sont pas Estate Manager travaille pour moi, aussi. Je suis un Estate Manager au sims plusieurs années. J'ai, dans le passé, été en mesure d'utiliser les outils Estate Manager de retourner tous les prims appartenant à un avatar désigné. Je ne peux pas le faire maintenant dans les Sims. La fonction existe, mais ne parvient pas à effectuer la tâche. Je soupçonne un changement de serveur récente du code peut avoir endommagé une partie des capacités Estate Manager, mais je n'ai pas eu le temps d'approfondir.

Hummm. Yes, in version 3.0.1.22525, it hasn't got the upload mesh code all the way implemented yet. I see I can only get as far as calculating the weights and upload fees, but that calculation fails to work, with a message stating it isn't implemented yet, and so I can't get past that point to an upload button. Still, it will allow people who just want to see and use existing mesh stuff to do so. I was able to rez a mesh doorway that I had already uploaded in V3.0, and had added scripts to, and it worked fine, and rezzed almost instantly.

Your Private Virtual Home - True: A Linden Home, on a 512 M2 parcel that can't be made larger or granted more prims. Many restrictions apply. Not available if you're under 18. Debatable how "private" it is, with often 4 or more other homes packed in near enough to yours to be in chat range. No more "private" than any other home in SL, and less so than a home on a non-public priavtely-owned sim. Weekly Currency Rewards - True: L$300 a week, paid back from what you pay them in real money Exclusive Virtual Gifts - True: Recently a free furniture set, that was no mod and no transfer, 40+ prims Premium Only Sandboxes - True: Though they fail to mention they are all G-rated, and limited to simple scripts only. Live Chat Support - True: Your mileage may vary on how useful it is, but it's available to Premium only. Mainland Building Rights - Badly worded. Only means you can buy Mainland parcels and build there. Everyone else can still build anywhere that build is enabled on the Mainland, including public sandboxes. Sign-up Bonus - True: Paid 45 days after you sign up. Access to Adult-only areas** - Very deceptively worded. True, to the extent that having Payment Info used automatically grants access to most Adult sims, if the Resident is also over 18. But falsely implies that this is the ONLY way - any Basic member that is 18 or over can also get this "perk", simply by stating their age in the age verification area on this website, and/or by adding their own payment info and purchasing $2.50 USD worth of L$.

The latest Firestorm Beta now supports Mesh. I just downloaded it and so far, it looks fine. Still essentially a V2/V3 viewer, but they have resolved a number of the UI problems that people have complained about in V2 and V3.

Mesh as implemented does not support any sort of facial expression. If you do a single-mesh avatar, the face is as immobile as a porcelain mask. With a seperate mesh for the head, you could, perhaps, more easily script texture changes to at least create some illusion of facial expression and eye movement.

Unfortunately, that effect is not possible. A transparent surface isn't an invisibility field. It will still show what is on the other side, including the textured interior surface of a hollowed prim that is 100% alpha on the outside. The only solution I can offer is you might try placing an invisiprim texture on the outside, instead of the 100% alpha setting, and set the interior starfield texture to 1% transparency. That will make the invisiprim texture mask the interior alpha texture. But an invisiprim also will mask anything else inside that space that has an alpha texture, and any avatar skin surfaces. What is inside will look strange from outside.

I don't want Group Chat tied in any way whatsoever to any external website. I want them to FIX the in-world group chat functionality. Most of the web-based profiles approach is a FAIL in my book. It forces critical infrastructure elements to a non-SL, out of the virtual world, web-based service that is exposed to the whole Internet. Their 'feeds' and the ability for others to post their random junk to your web-based profile is something that still can't be opted out of 100%, short of eliminating all the Friends on your Friends list who use those posting features. Don't force Residents to use Facebook, Twitter or web-based service similar to Facebook or Twitter to do things that ought to be possible in-world. Stop forcing us to leave the virtual environment just to stay in touch with each other. PLEASE.

The hardest part with that will be obtaining a decent-looking and properly sized avatar with a suitable animation overrider for toddler-like actions. The default avatar slider changes can't make anything younger-looking than a 6 to 8 year old child. You just can't get your body small enough. To get smaller requires some sort of "tiny" avatar that scrunches up and/or completely hides your real avatar, replacing all or part of it withprim attachments, and controlling all of it with an animation override so you crawl, or walk with a child-like gait, etc. . That isn't going to come cheap, because a lot of work is involved in overriding the defaults to make something the simulator was never designed to reproduce.

The problem is most likely on LL's end, and is also extremely unlikely that they will fix it for you. You are almost certainly going to have to use some other form of payment info, like AMEX or MasterCard or Visa. Once LL decides you can't use PayPal, you're well and truly screwed. LL does some incredibly stupid things with how they process PayPal. The worst of these is that they arbitrarily place a five time lifetime limit on associating a person's PayPal info with any avatar accounts. So if you have five accounts, you can assign each one to PayPal for Payment info. A sixth account would fail, just like it does on a credit card. BUT, with how LL handles PayPal, it is a lifetime counter, that doesn't decrement if you take PayPal OFF of an account. If you had one avatar, and on five occasions changed your payment info from PayPal to a credit card and back again, you would burn up all five of your allowed associations for PayPal, and get a message just like you are describing. With credit cards, however, they only count that 5-account limit to how many accounts currently are associated with that exact payment method. I could have 5 alts all on AMEX, take one off AMEX and put it on MasterCard, and put some other account on the AMEX, or restore AMEX as the payment method for the one I switched temporarily to MasterCard. No problems. Why they don't allow that in their PayPal processing is something they have never explained, and believe me, Residents have complained about it and asked for explanations for years. I had that happen to me. I had a main account and 4 alts all on PayPal. I took my main off PayPal and switched to Amex so I could buy L$ for a purchase larger than my PayPal would have handled. When I went to switch back to PayPal, I was refused, with precisely the same message you're getting, and LL absolutely refused to fix the problem. Their only solution was, "You'll have to use some other form of credit card." They are still perfectly happy to allow me to use PayPal for the four alts, and to allow my main to cash out to PayPal. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with my verified PayPal account, which I have maintained in good standing since well before Linden Lab went into business, and which is a merchant-class account. The problem is entirely on LL's end, with their short-sighted and inadequate handling of PayPal.

Only the V2 and V3 based Viewers have shared media. Be aware however that many (hopefully most) Residents disable shared media in their Viewers, because the way it is implemented it presents a major security risk. It will, by default, load content onto your system without you having any say-so about what does and does not get loaded, and there is absolutely no way to filter out malicious server sites, or to apply security patches to the internal viewer code that displays the media.

There is no SL "Space". The simulator does not re-create effects for that level. SL was originally designed with a build height limit of 512 Meters, with particle clouds at roughly 200 Meters up. You couldn't quite reach those clouds by flying, without some sort of scripted flight assist. They eventually increased the build height limit to 4096 Meters, though many aspects of the environment, like ban lines, were never modified to increase their limits. The max ban line height is stil only 512 Metsrs, even if you explicitly ban someone by name. Because of that initial environment plan, the simulator stops trying to create a decent horizon effect after you pass 512 Meters or so. From there on up, everything is blank white/blue, or at night is black. But it has no details to speak of. They never re-wrote the simulator code to display anything appropriate for the surface horizon at those altitudes, because the max official draw distance is 512 Meters. The way that "Space" is simulated in SL is to place your environment within a large box or sphere, and texture the inside of the enclosed space with a star field. That can be done at any altitude - even a box sitting at ground level. My building workshop is inside a 70 M diameter megaprim sphere at 3000 Meters (to keep it low lag and out of sight from the historical-setting builds on the ground), textured on the outside to look like the moon, and on the inside to look like a starfield. At one point I had a nice little space station floating inside that sphere, which I used as a lounge for entertaining friends in a futuristic setting.

Peewee Musytari wrote: Probably not a popular opinion, but here goes anyway Premium membership costs $72 if you pay it yearly. Current stipend of 300L is $62.40 for the year (+$4 bonus the first year) Which leaves $5.60 for the year, for which you get full support & tier free 512 (or Linden Home) If you get the older stipends of 400L or 500L, LL is actually paying you to be Premium!! So why do people gripe about the lack of benefits??? I certainly would gripe about the "Benefit" that if for any reason a Premium member is unable to make their dues payment (overdrawn credit card, LL banking error, whatever), you could lose your account and all your inventory. That is a risk Basic members don't face. I have two accounts that are old enough that they would both get L$500 a week stipend, if I made them Premium. (They never have been). Let's suppose I cash out once a month, getting $7.50 per month for the sale of those L$, minus a dollar per month for sending the money to PayPal. So I can get back $78 USD over the course of a year, if and only if I cash out all of my stipend, and never spend any of it. A profit of $6 USD over my $72 USD dues fees. Odds are very good, however, that I would actually spend some of that, instead of cashing it out. Risking permenant loss of the inventory I have accumulated over the last 6 years for a paltry profit of $6 USD a year seems a pretty bad deal to me.

Tommy Rampal wrote: @Ceera. Can't LL treat a % of premium payments as a static upload cost (e.g. an automatic US$ to L$ transfer, then instant L$ payment), but the user doesn't see it? The money you pay for Premium dues never goes into the in-world SL economy. That goes straight into Linden Lab's profits. What they give you as stipend isn't 'paid for' by anything. They don't buy those L$ from residents cashing out, and recycle them. So there needs to be a steady "L% Destroyer" that removes money from circulation as fast as thge Lindens "print" new L$. The only time that LL buys L% or sells them is when they are managing the rate that the L$ is selling for ow being bought at in Lindex, and they only do that when the value of the L$ sharply nosedives or sharply climbs for too long a period. Upload fees are a drop in the bucket for most people, even if they create content. I'm a texture artist, and I upload hundreds of textures at a time when I am releasing new texture packs. But that set of upload fees is nothing compared to my cash flow. I wouldn't even notice if they weren't being charged any more. However, a lot of 'drops in the bucket' can add up. There are a LOT more non-Premium residents than there are Premium Members. The majority of SL residents don't get a stipend from LL at all. But they sure do take like to take snapshots, and those are also upload fees.

Actually, the upload fees that they charge exist as economic 'sinks' to counterbalance the stipends that pump freshly-minted L$ into the economy. If they eliminate upload fees, they would need to 'tax' something else, or we would have rampant inflation. Stipends paid out are money from nowhere - the Lindens printing new L$ that never existed before. Fees collected are L$ destroyed. The Lindens don't sell them - they just go into the bit bucket. I'd much rather see an incrementally larger allocation of 'free' land tier based on how many years you loyally remained a Premium Member in SL. Something that directly rewards people for longevity, and can't be 'farmed' with disposable accounts, like the old First Land program was. Imagine if for every year that you remained a Premium member in good standing, you could get free tier on an additional 512 M2 of land? You still have to buy the land, but you can keep it, tier free, as long as you keep paying your dues. So at 2 years, you get 1024 M2 free tier, at 4 years it's 2048 M2. Soon it becomes a very strong incentive to keep active and keep your dues paid.

I don't believe any of the sites that offered the legacy name format account creation still function. A few of them may still be up, but as far as I know, the creation attempts all fail now, because LL turned off the linkage at their end that allowed those accounts to go into LL's databases and be valid.

The free Linden home is optional, and you have to explicitly request it. If you request the free home, you indicate the home type that you want from a list of curently available types, and they assign you a home of that type at a random location in a random sim offering that type of home. The parcel itself is free and also has no monthly maintenance fee beyond maintaining your Premium Membership dues in good standing. There are restrictiuons on what you can or can't do in a Linden Home, and they are not available to 16 and 17 year old Residents, since all Linden Homes sims are rated Mature. If you don't choose the free home, you can still get free tier (no monthly maintenance fees) on a 512 M2 parcel of Mainland that you choose to purchase, in any Mainland sim that is NOT a Linden Homes sim. You pay whatever the current owner wants for the parcel, and you are not limited in size to 512 M2. Going that route allows you to own more than 512 M2 of land for your parcel, with you paying the tier only on the land area that exceeds the first 512 M2. Normal Mainland is only restricted based on the sim rating. 16 and 17 year old Residents can purchase Mainland parcels in G-rated sims only. If you are 18 or over, you can also do both, having the free home in a Linden Homes sim, and elsewhere having other Mainland parcels in other sims. In that case, the free tier on 512 M2 of land applies to your total Mainland holdings, including the Linden home parcel.

Take a good look at that sign in the pic of a Premium Sandbox, and note the restriction on the last line: * Simple scripts only. Okay, I guess there's very little reason for a scripter or a pro builder to consider building anything there then. Add a few scripted access-controlled doors and some centrally controlled windows to a house and you can't build it in these 'Premium Only' sandboxes? Who decides what is "simple" for a script? If I had any notion to go Premium to use those sandbox areas, they just flatlined it. They probably wouldn't even allow my furry avatar in their high-falutin' sandbox. The scripts in my avatar are far from 'simple'.

Is it possible that the sim you tried it in was not yet Mesh enabled, or the sim owner turned off the checkbox for allowing Mesh objects? Try in a few different sims, and see if you get the same failure. Viewer 3.0 should allow you to see Mesh even if you are not approved to upload Mesh.

I expect they will result in a lot of existing Premium members tiering DOWN, because they can build in those elete "Premium Only" sandbox areas, presumably away from griefers, and no longer have much reason to maintain excess prim count to be able to build on their own land. For example, I keep 400+ prims free on my home parcel, so I can build a new house of customize a furry avatar without having to delete my current home or work in a public sandbox while fighting off griefers and IP thieves. If I had access to a "safe" sandbox with very limited access, where the griefers couldn't go without risking losing a Premium account that is much more tracable to their real ID, then why would I pay for that extra land to build on? Why not pay less tier and build in those safe sandboxes? For potential new Premium members, it also reduces the incentive to get lots of land so you can build in peace. As for the free furniture, what was the prim count on that stuff? It looked pretty primmy to me in the images. Would it even fit in the scant 117 prim limit of a Linden Home? Premium members who have normal parcels most likely already have far better furniture, and wouldn't use the freebie stuff. Free furniture would appeal mostly to the newbies living solely in a Linden Home, and so should be very low-prim.

Actually, I rather imagine the free access to "Premium" sandbox space, which presumably will be less crowded and less prone to assault by griefers than the many public sandboxes, is likely to have an overall negative effect on land sales. Looking at this from my own perspective: I'm Basic, and am renting about 1/4 sim from a private sim owner. About lalf my land I own solely to allow me to have enough prims free to build things at will. At one point, I was renting over 1/3 of that sim, but I had to cut back because my in-world and SLM sales were no longer covering my land costs. If I got a Premium membership because of this set of new 'perks', you know what I'd most likely end up doing? Drop my Private land, use only the free 512 M2 parcel, or at most a 1024 M2 parcel paying the absolute minimum montyhly tier, and do all my building in the Premium sandbox, instead of on my own land. So yeah, they get my dues, which they mostly pay back to me as my stipend; my current landlord loses a 1/4 sim tenant (possibly causing them to abandon the whole sim); while LL gains a free-tier or maybe minimal-tier resident. Net loss of roughly 1/8 sim of land that someone had been paying the full tier for, because I no longer need to keep 400+ prims free on my home parcel to do my building. I'd need to pay for 1750 M2 less land if I was going to do all my building in their 'Premium-Only' sandboxes. I won't go Premium, though, because my private sim landlord gives me one thing LL refuses to give to anyone who isn't a private sim owner - My home sim is not public access. I NEVER have random griefers in my home, because those griefers can't even access my home sim. If LL wanted to really give Premium members a benefit, how about letting any Premium member purchase a stand-alone homestead sim, at the Atlas tier and set-up rates? (The price breaks they give the mega-landlords). Then every Premuum member could have the one thing I have heard most Residents clamoring for since well before I joined almost 6 years ago - real privacy.

Yes. The practical limit is that 5 accounts can share the same exact payment info. Premium or otherwise doesn't matter at all. Got more than 5 accounts? Each valid credit card can support 5 accounts with Payment info. PayPal works a little differently. For some reason known only to Linden Lab (and probably only to some Linden staffer who was fired ages ago), PayPal has a 5 account lifetime limit. After you have associated your PayPal with an SL account 5 times, they will never accept PayPal from you for future Payment info, even if you took it off an account just to make funds available from a credit card, and then put the PayPal info right back onto the same account!