Torley Linden
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Posts posted by Torley Linden
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As you're getting into SL photography, it can be really useful to compare different graphics settings so you know how they'll affect the outcome of your shoot. Earlier, I did a help page on antialiasing showing why it matters to smooth jagged edges! This feature isn't turned on by default, even on high-end computers, so if you've got the power, switch it on.
Due to the curiosity in our advanced lighting and shadows finally being supported in the "main" SL Viewer after an enduring experimental tenure, our Documentation Team has also done a help page explaining lighting and shadows further.
I also did a comparison of our Graphics Preferences' shaders, showing how SL looks vastly different for someone who has no shaders on, compared to someone who has everything maxed out — a much more dynamic and nuanced world, visually speaking. Alas, antialiasing doesn't play well with the new shaders.
If you've done graphics settings comparisons, as I know some of you have included them in your tutorials and for fun, I'd love to see them! So, post them here!
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I dig the somewhat-retro vibe of your poster and the infinity-records design. Also, how you can turn infinity on its side and it looks like an "8".
DJ Xilion, is that "special mix" the one I'm thinking of?
Courtney earlier shared something with me, wherein I heard not only a familiar voice, but was touched by the Residents wishing SL a happy bday. I was totally smiling massive.Gotta represent, yo!
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Some churches and houses of worship can be found in the Destination Guide's Spirituality & Belief category. And because I heart how you guys are sharing pictures, here's a lovely one I found at Mikrokosmos:
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I remember some incredible skywriting achievements. Some clever Resis scripted objects that could translate a bitmap image into a face that covered a region. I had some examples that were fairly recent but can't find them at the moment, I'd welcome attempts to compile these into an album. I saw brief love notes on occasion.
My own island, aptly named Torley, has a simple 5x5 matrix showing my watermelon colors. Definitely influenced by what I saw before. And I have another island where terraforming is free for all — thanks to Marigold for this pic, how appropriate that she replies here!
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I miss when we could landmark a place before teleporting there. I used to build up grand lists of places to explore, one after another without having to clutter my screen with search and profile windows. In time after, the intermediary steps to copy SLurls were clunky as opposed to a one-click "add landmark to my inventory"-type thing.
It's often for this reason that I use inworld search sparingly compared to browsing the web externally and saving SLurls from Flickr and other sites I frequent, using my browser's bookmarks as an extended landmark catalogue— plus, it's a lot more visually expansive and rich. But I do like the new search test a lot more.
I was a part of Live Help, what Finrod refers to as "direct ingame support". It wasn't maintained just by Linden Lab Liaisons (anyone else remember that title?) but Residents as well. To this day, volunteers are ultra-important to a newcomer's first experience. This lives on both inworld and on these very forums. I know it's a big part of what got me to stay on in SL
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Peewee's observation is a true sign of real Resident experience.
I've been caught by the same problem before — Dana, despite you setting that option, I agree we should make Select Only My Objects (and related features) more obvious if it's silently blocking you from what you want to get done. This could be a simple first-run notification prompting you to disable it. Especially since even though your friend's objects aren't technically yours, you have been granted the ability to modify them.
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From my understanding (since I <3 taking photos with shadows and have been updated on recent developments), while shadows is supported in the main SL Viewer at last, it's still being actively worked on and tweaked as we measure performance. This has resulted in some interesting developments, like shadows finally working with Macs that have ATI graphics cards. Of course, it's not cool to have shadows stop working on cards you'd expect it to be fine on as in Dottie's case, and the 58xx range includes some pretty high-performance ones.
A few other suggestions for now, if reverting for the time being isn't preferable:
- Switch to a "future" Viewer instead: download the SL Viewer Beta and see if that makes a difference. You can always uninstall it if it doesn't work out.
- Go to Develop menu > Rendering and try to manually override shadows there.
- For the technically-minded, you may want to discuss this issue on OpenSource-Dev.
In some cases, features are shown as disabled in the main user interface, but can be overriden through debug settings. This happened the other day when I was on my wife's iMac, which could show shadows but not depth of field. So I manually forced that on in Debug Settings.
And! When diagnosing issues like this, it's always a good idea to go to the SL Viewer's Help menu > About Second Life and paste those lines into a forum post.
Thanks Nyll for the pointer.
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I got good info from some Lindens: if your GPU isn't recognized, please list it in this Bug Tracker issue.
Share this link with everyone who asks about related stuff in future forum threads.
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@Ariel Definitely see this video from your friendly Destination Guide editors, a variety of atmospheres from realistic to surrealistic, all awesome!
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I'm delighted that Oz & team have revived WindLight Region Settings and have made it a reality — and not just a virtual one, haha. Some of you veteran Residents may recall the running joke of bugging me every few weeks/months to ask "When's server-side WindLight coming out?" after the then-team made the declaration that 2008 would be the year. And being the keen believer in followup that I am, I made the promise of sharing forth when it came true. YES. NOW. While we haven't faced the marathon o' endurance that, Duke Nukem Forever has had, a la Poltergeist, I'll say: "WE'RE HERE."
@Penny Yes, the "easy override" is another specific feature that's be very useful for photographers and machinimatographers. Especially if you crash or need to relog, and are sick of having to reset your WL settings each time. I've been there lots.
Also note the side benefits in cleaning up the REGION/ESTATE window so Environment could live on its own tab.
What would you like to see in an improved default day cycle? I recall having to tone down the current one during its inception, as many Residents weren't yet accustomed to such dynamic range. Plus, we tested on different monitors with varying gamma settings and what appeared "rich" on one screen was "washed-out" on another. So it feels a little "flat" given the many other WL settings, including Resi-created ones, I've been using. Naturally, lighting and shadows further changes the dynamics, and as more people can experience those, that gives stronger reason to have them on when creating WL settings.
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Also, for future reference:
- yes, the System Requirements page is sadly outdated and has been for a long time (which I'm going to plead with my fellow Lindens about, again), but
- all supported graphics cards can't specifically be listed there... it would be a wall of text.
I do want clarity so you can make an informed buying decision, so at least, we should update the SysReq to show the current supported generations, including the AMD Radeon 6xxx series. And I'll notify the right folks to check that this particular graphics card is on our "lookup table".
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Yes, that's right, despite all its crashy foibles, I've braved the experimental graphics features that I hope will be commonly used by us in the future. Outside of Second Life, I am SO in love with tilt-shift and other forced-perspective photography that makes skyscrapers look like models! Combine that with nostalgic, lo-fi feelings of our collective childhood memories and there's loads of emotion in there.
So when Runitai Linden let me know about DOF, I couldn't resist but shoot some "toy sets". But yeah, those are real avatars shot natively inworld... it's your brain playing tricks on you! But that is exactly my intention to show them how you saw them, Kamilla. The login screen is the first thing you see, so I had the vibrant notion of making you EXCITED ABOUT POSSIBILITIES!!!!
Creatively, there is this metaphor of SL being a "playground" with its "sandboxes" and prims are like "Legos" or other building blocks. Playing with avatars is like dressing dolls! And especially since it's SL's 8th birthday soon, our virtual world has continued to mature, while Resident-created content continues to be at the heart of it all.
Thanx for noticing!
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@Melita OMG I would SO crack up over parody breedables! It'd be like what Garbage Pail Kids are to Cabbage Patch Kids... or if you dare, worse. I heart these kinds of inside jokes and cultural humor for those who "get it".
I saw an apparently rare Clover Meeroo, which makes me have some hope that if you crossbreed that with a pink Meeroo (do they exist?), you'd get a watermelon one! And then I'd breed those like singularity bunnies until I get ARed to infinity and beyond — sigh, I get carried away.
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I'm bumping this thread, as I regularly come across situations where someone would be well-served knowing Con Wylie's Script Generator and related tools exist! Con told me about the following improvements. In his words:
- I have updated the tool with a mobile (iPhone/iPod and iPad) webapp and created a downloadable offline program for Windows, Linux and Mac.
- To make it easy to see I have added a syntax highlighter for the code that updates on-the-fly.
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OMG OMG OMG... I LOVE cyber places in Second Life and when sound is used to enrich the senses!
Do you have specific SLurls to where these sounds are playing? I think I know which ones you're referring to, but they'd help others understand. I like me a hearty stew of whirrs, clicks, bleeps, and other digital glitches. Maybe we should start a compilation of coolest soundscapes in SL.
Ever used Advanced menu > Highlighting and Visibility > Highlight Transparent? That can help you find invisible sound sources, so you can contact the creators. Maybe some of them are sound designers that have extended versions (like MP3s) you can listen to.
It's such a keen thing for me, because I know how nature relaxation recordings are popular, but I like sci-fi sonic landscapes. I can continue immersing myself and thinking about transhumanism and what the future holds for us, even if that's a stylized, romanticized view influenced by the likes of Blade Runner and Deus Ex — both of whose soundtracks do have computery tones mixed with melodic lushness. In particular, the Deus Ex: Invisible War ambience is a fave. (The soundtrack is out there somewhere for free download; alas, the old link I had broke. But there's always
.) There are so many other sources of inspiration I could list, including Delia Derbyshire's gurgly early experiments, Wendy Carlos' seminal work with TRON, and the more playful antics of Kingsley & Perrey.I've also included cyber-atmospheres in my own music.
As I described earlier:
A boredom enforcement officer is tired of his cubicle and slumps in the corner. He hears droids chattering, sleepily smiles at the starfield unfolding behind his coffee cup, and maybe a better job opportunity calling during the recession. Reading self-help books leaks inspiration all over his worldview. Even the cleaning robots can't rouse him from this slumber, oh my! -
the ominous sound of a thousand prims rumbling from some eldritch vortex beyond my line of sight. "Could it possibly be?" I wondered, heading towards...
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Hey, that was rather serendipitous... when did that happen?
Last couple of days? I don't precisely know myself. After an internal request came my way, I submitted new imagery some weeks ago. YAYZERAMA FRESH SPLASH-LOGIN SCREENS.Anyway, this time around, after all the requests I got last time, yes, I kept track of the place and cool things featured. These were supposed to be linked to on the login screen itself, but I don't see that yet. I'm going to post attributions linked to the Login screen help page, so check that later if you're curious where they were... taken.
@Luc Alas, no change (yet) on that same thing I've wished for, for so long. An eventual (and natural conclusion) hope is that the login screen is integrated with the Destination Guide, which not only has more description about these lovely places themselves, but quite a few of the pics are Resident-submitted. That would tie up multiple loose ends.
@Linda More specific details please? I'm on a Mac and links are working fine for me on Second Life 2.6.9 (231165). For example, I click one of the blog links and it expands on the login screen itself with an (X) link to close.
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Nya, this is a known issue which I've experienced too on a 480 GTX. Do you also notice the Viewer window eventually turns black — and SL even crashes — if you keep toggling those preferences, or toggling the user interface?
For my own problems, Runitai Linden (who's been engineering these graphics features) mentioned this is due to OpenGL driver memory fragmentation, and the latest mesh-development build should "greatly mitigate" this issue, though you may still notice problems. I haven't tried that latest build yet but, if you're adventurous for 3rd-party viewers, I've had more stability in Kirstens Viewer for some reason. I continue to try these experiments out because I LOVE the enhanced visuals (the following is a raw snapshot, aside from a light cinematic-style grain pass):
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Thank you for your replies from experience! And the kind words, I love sharing.
I was in particular thinking about how newer Residents who start in Basic mode are already be accustomed to Double-click to Auto-pilot, as Opensource mentions. And in that way, it'd make sense to keep in on by default as they "graduate" from Basic to Advanced mode. Those of us who grew up on what's now Advanced mode at least know what our options are.
@Cinnamon Aside from being able to teleport fairly far as shown in my video, I haven't run into that message yet, so I'll need to test further. Both of these usability issues should be fixed — silent and puzzling failures aren't helpful.
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I advocate for smarter SL Viewer defaults, and as shown in this video and explained with text instructions here, there's a "Double-Click to Teleport" feature you may find to be a great time-saver:
Do you want this on by default? (No guarantee it will be, but at least I'll have your REAL opinion to show if/when I need to back this up.)
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Elite, did you say TRON?
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@verdale Also, do you have any USB joysticks or other controllers in? Those can be used to control Second Life, and can inadvertently move you around. For example, I have a SpaceNavigator that I leave on a tilted slope. On occasion, I've logged in to find my view changing just like you describe.
You can easily turn OFF these other controllers:
- Select Me menu > Preferences.
- Click Move & View tab.
- Click Other Devices.
- Next to Control Modes, uncheck Avatar (and Build, if desired).
Avatar is on by default, I think.
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Re: grid monkeys, there may be an inworld "easter egg" in the not-too-distant future.
Perrie, I wonder how they made that! (Whether it was recording both convos on the same screen, or separate screens and compositing. Given the independent typing unless some other editing tricks were involved, I'm inclined to believe the latter.) I'm enamored with showing two (or more) perspectives... and the ending message is a beautiful one. It reminds me of a book I read the other day called How Full Is Your Bucket?
Also, from Ramit Sethi: "Success in life is directly proportional to the number of awkward conversations you're willing to have."
I started a brief gallery of bizarre and wonderful imagery from Second Life... appropriately called SLWTF.
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Wildcat Furse wrote:Torley, beside the aesthetic aspects, low skyboxes cause problems for aviators in second life too, most pilots stay just below or just above the clouds and then get confronted with whatever is built up there. How hard you try to stick to whatever flightroute, the buildings can change daily ...., is it therefore an idea to create a 'no built zone' between certain altitudes? *meows*
It is worth noting that for people who wonder "Why doesn't Linden Lab try an experiment for land without skyboxes?", there's Linden Homes that specify "Land cannot contain sky boxes". Beyond starter land though and tied into zoned communities (since "no skyboxes" or a similar restriction would be a type of zoning"), that's a good question for Blondin Linden.
And, if anyone knows a Resident-run private estate that explicitly restricts skyboxes for aesthetic and aviation reasons, out of my own personal curiosity (as I'm an explorer), let me know the SLurl.
Courtney earlier shared something with me, wherein I heard not only a familiar voice, but was touched by the Residents wishing SL a happy bday. I was totally smiling massive.
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[TIP] How to change forum view, sort, and other board options
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
You may know that you can change a variety of options in your community.secondlife.com Preferences, but some of those features are also presented more upfront.
For example, when viewing any specific board, click Board Options. If you want to change from "threaded" to "flat" view, click Linear Format. Or click List by Topics to go back to threaded.
What I fancy is being able to show newest posts instead of newest-started threads. To do this, click Sort by Latest Post Date, as shown here:
At the bottom is an Edit My Preferences link that takes you to the preferences I mentioned.
Do you have any other fave forum tips that may not be the most obvious but more of your fellow Residents should know about? Share 'em here!