Da5id Weatherwax

At least here in Scotland they are in deep brown stuff. The government and the various organizations that specifically look out for the homeless are scrambling to try and get something in place they can access, but right now it aint looking good.

Just a FYI - the use of an antimalarial drug in combination with an antibiotic only showed promise in treating a particular complex of secondary infections - those that moved in on an immune system already weakened by fighting the primary infection, the coronavirus. An antibiotic has no effect whatsoever on a viral infection. Nor, given its mechanism of action, could an antimalarial. Antiviral therapies - to treat an existing infection, rather than immunize you against it like a vaccine - are few and far between. They are all developed to attack a particular viruses lifestyle and reproductive cycle and do not usually have much effect on other viruses that are not in the same general family. For example, the anti-HIV therapies that have been developed are very likely to work on other retroviruses because these therapies target aspects of the viral lifecycle that are common to retroviruses. They won't touch a picornavirus(common cold, hoof and mouth, polio, haemorrhagic conjunctivitis, coxsackie endocarditis), a poxvirus(measles, rubella, smallpox), a rhabdovirus(rabies) or a coronavirus(do I really need to give a list, you only care about one).

@Skell Dagger Touche, my friend, touche. I confess that I welcome critique of my own choices and thus tend to project that upon others. I offer you my unreserved apology. Might a drop of this fine single malt I've been hoarding be an appropriate recompense?

bubblesort has compiled a pretty good list which they posted to the avastar discord and as a thread on VVO

You are aware, my dear Skell, that despite your honeyed words, that which secures your tie in this image cannot possibly be a full Windsor, or even a half. I am very much afraid that the angle it makes and the volume it occupies lead to the inescapable conclusion that your tie is secured with a four-in-hand which, while demeaned by the appellation of "schoolboy knot" certainly has its place in the vast spectrum that is "fitting the knot of a particular tie to a particular cut of shirt collar", is only appropriate in that proper place. It is completely inappropriate to that particular combination of tie and shirt. The proper knot on a gentleman's tie should be in proportion to the V of the collar and complement the angle of its cut. That knot with that tie is way too small for that collar and its angles are far too acute. I estimate that a full Windsor would be too bulky for that collar and so would strongly suggest a half Windsor when wearing that tie with that shirt again. You might also have a quiet word with your valet, Sir, and remind him that in forming the knot of a tie the final step after snugging it to the collar is to ease the fall around the knot so that the front is smooth and unbunched.

Scared? No. Aware that there is a new risk out there, sure. However, that awareness is coupled with the knowledge of how to mitigate the risk. I'm taking those actions, as are all of my family and most of my friends. There's no excuse for not knowing what are the appropriate actions to take so everybody else should be doing likewise. I'm aware that quite a few of 'em aint but I have no right to force them to change their behavior and I'd be breaking the "social distancing" rules if I were to go pound some sense into their heads anyway.... What I can do, I'm doing. As a result I can be confident that if I get it, it won't be due to me being daft and if any of my family or friends catch it, it won't be from me. And if, after all that, I do still get it? Well, Sic volvere parcas.

You can still only use one UV per model - but different materials are different "faces" when uploaded to SL, so can take different texture maps. Their UV layouts can occupy the same face without causing problems. If you were to look at the UV map for that snooker table you'd see the UV layout of the wooden bits overlapping with the one for the cushions and the one for the pockets - everything else is "one face, whole image" - since its either going to be a blank tinted texture or genuinely a single face like the line markings - and on the MODEL's UV map they all overlap - but as separate faces in SL they are textured separately and it works.

I can give another example - not a particularly good one because it is still a WIP but it's showing what you can do with minimal texturing and the right maps. This is a full tournament-size snooker table at 1:1 scale. It uses three 512x512 textures. a diffuse and normal for the wooden parts and one for the line markings on the table surface. Every other "face" of the model is a tinted blank texture for every place it needs a "map", letting the SL lighting make it "degrade gracefully" for lower graphics settings. Images were taken with the official viewer at each preset level, no post apart from adding the text and combining them into frames of a gif, no fancy tricks with a high-graphics viewer like Black Dragon The table LODs gracefully and has a LI of 35, not including the balls, each of which is a separate entity.

Chic is exactly correct. The size to use is "the smallest size that looks right" - this will vary depending on your design. Test 'em, either on the beta grid or with a viewer that lets you use local textures. Try the different resolutions and when you hit a level where you think "no, I can't use that", use the next higher one. Also remember that you don't have to use square textures. There are situations where it makes much more sense to lay out your UV map planning on (for example) a 1024x128 or a 512x256

Actually here you are 100% wrong. The resolution of the screen or the captured image determines how many pixels are used to display the skin and if the skins resolution at the size it is displayed exceeds that, all those extra pixels in the skin texture are wasted - they have no effect at all. In displaying them, they are averaged down to the resolution the image is displayed or captured at. A full-frame 4k cinematic display (or a 1.9:1 aspect ratio 4k snapshot - there are viewers can take these even if your monitor can't display it) is 4096 × 2160 pixels (DCI 4k as used in cinematic projection - slightly wider than the UHD tv standard). A 1024x1024 texture occupying less than 10% of that image is wasting data. On a standard HD display at 1920x1080 to not be wasting data that same 1024x1024 texture has to occupy nearly half the screen. Now, you'll get to this level with close up portraiture and will actually use most of the data in the visible parts of a models (multiple)1024x1024 skin texture(s) but you will never approach the resolution that would justify 2048x2048 textures in SL, or make any visual difference if they were used. Never. Not unless/until our viewers are rendering SL in resolutions far beyond UHD. This is why the "optimization hawks" - which admittedly, does include myself - rant so hard about the folks putting 1024 textures on things like jewelry that are displayed in an area only a few dozen pixels square at the very most, where a 128x128 would look exactly the same, because it is shrunk to match the image resolution anyway. I'm truly sorry to nitpick, particularly since it's kinda off-topic for your discussion, but it is a really important thing that way too many folks looking to make themselves "look good" in SL never think about. They get marketed ultra high resolution, memory-intensive stuff as "better" and never realize that they are actually just throwing more data at their hardware than it (or, indeed, any other available hardware) can handle at an acceptable framerate without any visual benefit whatsoever.

I use voice attack software in one game I play, that can do it simply by vox commands. Although it would seem a little "anime" to be shouting "FIREBALL!" or whatever at my computer to cast spells

How are you going to detect numbers 1-9? There are no CONTROL_* constants for these keys and they do not raise a control() event for your script. You have 9 controls a script can detect - 10 if you count the fact that the mouse button flags a different control depending on whether you're in mouselook or not. Forward, back, left, right, rotate-left, rotate-right, up and down (however the viewer has these mapped) plus the two flags for the left mouse button. You have no raw access to keystrokes. Now, personally, I would LOVE for scripts to be able to receive raw keystrokes or other control inputs such as stick axis values. The ideas I've had over the years that I could build if only this were possible are too many to count. It isn't possible, those ideas were discarded for this very reason.

Firestorm user, obviously. In that viewer the unloaded cloud is orange.

Short answer: No. Longer answer: The two render engines are fundamentally different. Sansar uses a PBR engine, completely different from the ground up. There is no "upgrade path" from SL's current material rendering engine to a PBR engine other than wholesale replacement - It would require a complete rewrite of the entire render pathway. Unfortunately, no object textured for the current system would look anything other than horribly broken if LL were to rework the render engine in this way. Since this means it would break every single textured object currently on the grid. LL will never do this.

My experience is with RL coding projects more than SL ones - although I have done custom scripts for folks in the past. Working on the basis of the legal requirements of the USA, where LL is based and under which they have to operate, the position is pretty clear. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, for the fine details you would have to consult an attorney and get an "official" opinion - I'm just a guy who has worked in situations governed by these laws in the past. There's two things to consider, mainly. IP rights and payment. Where IP is concerned, if you pay me to write you a script to your specifications, in the absence of any other agreement between us the default position would be that the script is a "work for hire" - YOU would own it and the rights to it. As a scripter I would usually explicitly acknowledge that fact in communications between us before the project started even though saying nothing about the eventual disposition of rights would leave it as the default. If I were to retain any rights to it or yours were to be limited in any way this would have to be explicitly stated up front. Where payment is concerned I would expect that the terms would be agreed in advance - whether that be a fixed sum for the final product, an hourly rate or some other arrangement. We would be two independent businessmen doing a deal between ourselves and could set whatever terms we agreed upon. Personally I feel that a fixed sum is often more open to dispute than any other because it's always possible for quibbles to arise over whether the final product fully meets the spec you set or not. Where an hourly rate is set I would expect you to require me to account for the hours spent and it would be wise and safest for both of us to agree a "not to exceed" figure which, if reached, would give me the choice of either completing the project at no extra cost or turning all work in progress over to you for a nominal portion of the agreed fee so that you could hire somebody else to finish it. I've actually had the best and "cleanest" dealings with folks in SL by doing stuff on the basis of "pay me what you think it's worth when I'm done" Sometimes that number is low, sometimes the generosity of the person I'm scripting for has astounded me. However, that is still a contract. It commits me to completing the project or getting nothing for any partial work. It states that whatever you choose to pay for it when I am done will be acceptable - even if that's one linden or nothing at all - and you will get the script and with it all agreed rights - full rights to it as a work for hire if we didn't agree anything different!

I can see one possible design which would work for combos and couldn't be done as gestures - press and hold mouse, hit control combo in the right order, release mouse. A combo always begins as CONTROL_LBUTTON(level==1, edge==1), consists of one or more CONTROL_*(level==1, edge==1) & CONTROL_LBUTTON(level ==1 edge==0), ends and is executed with CONTROL_LBUTTON(level==0, edge==1) However, there is probably no design that will be invulnerable to macros, only to gestures, because macros can happen outside the viewer and outside the scripts ability to dostinguish from ordinary control inputs. I have several programmable devices here, from the X52 I play flight sims with to the USB footswitches I use when performing to control my streaming software and (when performing in SL) activate lighting or anim cues without me taking my hands off my guitar to stab at the keyboard. ALL of them can have a sequence of mouseButtonDown,keystroke1,keystroke2,keystroke3 ... keystrokeN,mouseButtonUp assigned to a single control, or any sequence of key-down or key-up events in any arbitrary order. If a user can make any input, these devices can macro it and they are not all high-end hardware - less than 25 quid buys you a bank of three programmable USB footswitches, for example.

They don't have to be - if all you want is for "devices" to work on you all you need is a minimally scripted relay - it doesn't have to be a big script. Similarly if you don't want the whole "kink universe" you don't need the scripting in whatever attachment you set it up in to do things like manage a leash, have "wriggles" and "escapes" have all the other things that go beyond "auto-wearing stuff" and "preventing inadvertant detach of stuff" and can be dropped in anything you wear all the time that's mod perm. Implementing a "not kinky" subset of the RLV API need not be a script beast because most of the "beastliness" of the scripts is aimed at blancing the (almost conflicting, but not quite) goals of making the kink experience as immersive as possible while still being "mostly safe" These cut-down versions of the scripts could be dropped in any item you have and wear all the time - they don't have to go in a collar. I know one lass who is purely vanilla in her preferences and bought a full-perm ring template off the MP to hold a minimal RLV script for non-kinky purposes.

I've bought a few fullperm mesh items in the past - not because I want to use them to make products but because it's often the only way to get my hands on mod-perm mesh to texture as I want to wear it without having to just "get close enough" to my vision of the outfit I'm trying to create with the options scripted into it and because I totally suck at rigging. But I'm hearing a lot more of this kind of tale of folks being such wondrous bell-ends, and while I know the plural of anecdote is not data it has made me determined to not suck at rigging any more. To Hades with the whole boiling of 'em. If somebody makes exactly what I want, then I'll continue to buy it but otherwise I'll darn well make exactly what I want.

It is a non-euclidean manifold, with exactly which 3 dimensions project to provide the illusion of "space" at any point being different for every distinct block of regions- this being why you can't "see regions across corners" if that's the only point they touch - if there was a region connecting the two they would share the same dimension space and you could look across the mutual corner and see the other region. Exactly how many dimensions this manifold has is unknown and will only become known when it becomes impossible to place any further region on the grid without being able to see into another one. The number of dimensions can then be discovered by enumerating nR, the number of distinct region-clusters (a continent, a standalone private island, two or more private regions connected together each count as one region-cluster - if you can see into any region from another, they are part of the same dimension space) and d, the number of dimensions, will be found by solving nR=(d-1)C3. (d-1 because, inexplicably, all possible dimension spaces appear to have a unified time dimension so this single dimension is explicitly excluded from the calculation)

Yeah Christy's version has the tune tweaked and is cut down a lot and I modeled my version on that - I really should learn Kevin's original well enough to perform it too, but that's for the future, not for next weeks set list Christy playing his version - way better than I do it - is here... (although its the nature of folk music that my version isn't exactly Christy's either - no two folk musicians do the same song exactly the same)

awwww.... Thank you. I can't not do that one on a regular basis - my parents moved to the shore of Morecambe Bay when my brother and I were tiny and I spent so much of my childhood and young adult years sailing all around that bay and the Irish Sea with my dad. We both also volunteered at the local lifeboat station and knew the dangers of the bay all too well. The events of the song happened in February 2004 and a local songwriter from the south side of the bay named Kevin Littlewood wrote the original version of "On Morecambe Bay". Christy Moore, that giant of the Irish traditional music world, picked it up and reworked it some. The version I do is closer to his than to Kevin's original.

To some extent they are right - when a skirt is rigged to the leg bones it will maintain that relationship with them as the leg moves - including when you sit down. They have no "gravity effect", unlike the old style flexi skirts that had the opposite problem of gracefully settling towards the ground.... through your legs and body, resulting in more than one "unexpected overexposure" and the introduction of "glitch pants." If the skirts position when standing is close to the leg the rigged behavior is not going to look unnatural if the bone movement results in 100% of that movement transferring to the skirt. A fuller skirt standing further away from the leg in an upright posture is going to stay there as you sit down if it's rigged this way - giving the entire room a perfect upskirt flash, like you were wearing a full hooped crinoline and were sitting on the back of the hoops. It is possible to avoid the worst of this but it's a compromise. In oversimplified terms you do it by taking away a fraction of the "bone weight" applied to the skirt from the leg bones and applying it to the pelvis. It is not perfect, because if you were to take away 50% of the weight this way, the skirt would only move half as far as the leg does - you're introducing a limit in leg movement at which the leg will catch up with the skirt and clip through it and it will never eliminate the "fly up effect" completely.

If you want really really dark humor, hang out in a hospital pathology lab. Histopathology and cytopathology for the best examples. The same is true of emergency responders of every kind. When did humanity's best weapon against despair become something insulting? As a folk musician I sing about death on an almost daily basis - wars, shipwrecks, plagues, murders, industrial accidents, they are all in there, as are the songs about the old guy with the scythe himself, many of which are upbeat and almost dance tunes. This is so for the same reason you drink and make merry at a traditional Irish wake - it's not for the dead, it's for the living, to stick a finger firmly in the eye socket of that grinning skull and say "Hell with you, you bony old bastard, we're not dead yet!"

well, @Sylvia Wasp, I didn't know for certain you were skilled with a needle when I used the analogy (my wife was, extremely so - and we worked together on projects a lot although my RL sewing skill is limited to leatherwork and sailmaking, at least it was when we first got together - I learned a lot from her over the years) but, since you are, here's another analogy you'll like. LODs. When you're making a bridal gown you want the mere silhouette, the vague outline of the bride standing in the church door backlit and blurred slightly by the sunlight from outside, to make every man in the place and most of the women go "Wow..... " - That's low-LOD. You can't see any of the details, but what you can see is important. As she walks down the aisle you'll see more as she passes (medium LOD) but still not everything that the lucky so-and-so waiting at the altar will get to see - either once she gets really close or much later after the ceremony and reception. There are mathematical tools in blender and in the SL importer that can take detail away and lower the impact of rendering a model to make the lower LODs, but they cant tell what's important to keep - you can, so it's much better to remove the stuff that isn't important yourself, use those tools to help but not to direct the work, because when you let them control the process they almost always get it horribly wrong and your poor bride in the doorway will look like she's wearing a sack. When somebody walks towards you in SL and first steps into your draw distance, they are like that bride in the doorway as the first chord of the processional rolls through the place and every head turns. You want the good first impression, not the other one.

"templates" - as in UV maps that allow you to lay out skins and tattoos etc and have them properly positioned on the body are usually, as Chin said, readily available. What you typically get in the advanced kits are the "tailor's dummy" - typically a lower-LOD version of the body or parts of it that you can import into your 3d modelling program of choice and see that the item you're creating will fit properly. Ideally, this dummy model - while lower in fine detail - will be weighted to the standard SL skeleton and so in your creation workflow you can pose the dummy and your clothing, see that they move together properly without weird clip-throughs or - if you're using a tool that allows you to do it - that when changing shape sliders on the body the clothing properly conforms. Many of the smaller-market bodies make these available freely - because (so long as it doesn't look totally hideous) if there's a better way to have your body gain market-share than to have lots of good-looking clothes available for it nobody in SL has yet discovered it! Getting the advanced devkits for the bigger names or more paranoid creators is sometimes a bit like pulling teeth. They are much more protective of their "brand" and are more concerned with excluding "bad" creations than encouraging as many creators as possible to build for them.