Samm Florian

You're probably right, but I'd rather it was Linden Labs tellin' me that. And I'd hate to see any long-runnin' contests disappear because the hosts are afraid of what might happen. Or look at it this way: we're tryin' to help LL "debug" their policies by considerin' all the potential edge cases of their policy.

Does the term "game" include contests, such as building contests?

Oh that's ridiculous! I ran 3.6.6 just the other day and it was fine…better'n fine, the first release that actually did Advanced Lighting correctly! How 'bout leavin' it up t'us t'decide. Well, back t'Firestorm fer me.

Oh good! I was worried: I'm working with large lists which could theoretically reach the limit if the cruft weren't cleared away, and it's for a sale item where I don't want to have to go and reset everybody's products after 6 months. I will definitely add a memory check, but that bit I saw about "The heap never shrinks" scared me a little. Thanks! And you're right, I should do some testing…

So if the list is changing pretty slowly, like once a day, then garbage collection should take care of it with no problem?

I'm having trouble figuring out how Garbage Collection works in MONO scripts. If a script deletes items from a list, is the memory from those items released? More specifically, if I am adding and deleting objects from a list so that the list's size remains relatively constant, am I risking a stack-heap collision? I've seen some references suggest that heap memory, once used, is never reclaimed.

I'm having trouble figuring out how Garbage Collection works in MONO scripts. If a script deletes items from a list, is the memory from those items released? More specifically, if I am adding and deleting objects from a list so that the list's size remains relatively constant, am I risking a stack-heap collision? I've seen some references suggest that heap memory, once used, is never reclaimed.

This could be a big deal or it could be nothing. The question I have for LL is this: Are there any features in the current TPVs which violate this policy? For example, is RLV OK? Can Firestorm continue to show us which viewer another avi is using? What specific features did they have in mind when they wrote this policy, specifically the third one about the "shared experience"?

But why would the router allow me to go online in SL, but then block certain parts of the viewer's functionality? I could understand if the router stopped me from logging on at all…

Hi everyone. I have a question: recently I've been having a lot of trouble with Viewer 2.8: my groups wouldn't show up, music wouldn't play, and the little "Buy this Land" tag showed up in the location bar no matter where I was. (No, it didn't work; I tried! :) Now in the lists of troubleshooting steps I saw around on the web, I saw the suggestion to reboot one's modem and router, but I skipped that step because (a) my modem and router were upstairs at the time (lazy!) and (b) I couldn't see why it would matter. But nothing else I was doing worked. So today I'm using the internet away from home, and I decided to try out 2.8 here, and voila! Everything's fine. Which suggests that I really *do* need to reboot my modem and router when I get home. So my question: why the heck would that make any difference? It seems like total voodoo to me. Thanks! :)

You'd think 3D would be simple for LL to implement: give everybody two cameras a certain distance apart, pipe both views to a customized viewer, and display one in red and one in blue (or different polarized light, or whatever). Would make building easier too: I reckon every builder's positioned one prim so it appears to be sitting on top of another, only to change camera angles and find that they're really 5 meters apart.

I've been able to customize Firestorm so that it looks basically identical to V2 (with the Starlight skins)—no pie menu, no IMs in the local chat, etc; I'm still not sure whether I prefer it to V2 or not, but the customizability has made it easier for me to try it out.

I have seen this problem off and on for a while, maybe since January. What happens for me is that anything with transparency, including textures with transparency, shows up as glowing instead. Setting "RenderGlow" in the DebugSettings to false makes this go away. This happens with all V2 viewers (V2, Kirsten, and now Firestorm) but not Phoenix. I'm usin' a Mac, and it seems to happen after I've used the DVD player, and only rebooting my computer fixes it. I posted a JIRA on it in April, but got no response. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-25594 I reckon that it has something to do with the Graphics card, given how rebooting fixes it; but I don't know nothing about graphics cards.

I think I was having the same problem on my Mac: the program would open a window that was blank white, and then just freeze. My solution was to download the beta viewer, 2.7.2, which does not have that bug. Yay!

Hear hear about Viewer 2! But it's also good that there are a variety of third-party viewers as well, which foster innovation and let more people experience SL in a way that works best for them. It would be easy for LL to get into a "cold war" and try to force everyone into using the official viewer, and it's a very good thing that that hasn't happened. Also, remember that people join and play in SL for such vastly different reasons, that it's dangerous to make assumptions about what residents want. And oh yes, come visit the Steamlands, because they are the best! (Caledon, New Babbage, Winterfell, Steelhead, Steeltopia,....)

Yeah, I should have been more specific: since there's only two buttons I ever use in the Camera Window, I'd rather boil them down to a tiny little toggle button somewhere in an attached HUD, rather than keep the whole camera window open (because it is big). (And if the Camera window is closed, it takes two clicks to switch to Front View or Rear View.) But I haven't figured out how to script the camera so that it always stays in front of me and facing back at me, even when I move. (Oh, I could do it with a timer and a series of adjustments, I suppose.) Hmm, I wonder if the Camera window can be skinned?

The Viewer2 Camera Controls were a blessing for me, of sorts, as they encouraged me to learn how to control the camera via keyboard; using the control panel seemed like such a newbie thing to do. The only time I use the Camera window now is to get a "Front View", and if I could only figure out how to get that functionality in a HUD, I could banish the menu from my bottom bar entirely.

I use what I suppose is the original TinyCam, which is free (least, that's how I got it); it's handy for playing short humans as well as tinies. I upgraded it a bit to use a different setting when I'm seated or when I'm sitting. The Front View is great; it's the only button I use in the View menu. Is there any way for a script to emulate Front View (I can't seem to figure out how), or can it be given a shortcut via a skin?

Sorry; I know nothing about graphics cards. I've got a MacBook Pro with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, whatever that means. For posterity, maybe I should be specific about what it "fixed": if I'm in a building with semi-transparent walls, and create a semi-transparent cube inside, then that cube initially appeared invisible whenever the two textures overlap. When I checked "non-deferred", the cube became visible again. That bug was driving me a little nuts, and I never would have looked in the Develop menu if it hadn't been for your comment, so thank you very much!

Xavier, I never used the "fast alpha" option so I don't know how it worked, but try checking Develop > Rendering > Automatic Alpha Masks (non-deferred) This seems to fix the double transparency bug that *I've* noticed, anyway. I'd be interested to know if it works for you too.

Thanks Torley! A menu item will be much easier to explain to a newbie who needs to Rebake Textures or Stop Animations, than a preference or a shortcut was.

For people who'd like a little more configurability in Viewer 2, may I suggest the Starlight skins? http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Viewer_Skins/Starlight Smaller sidebar, draw distance slider on the main screen, different color schemes, inventory button in the bottom bar, some additional preferences and menu items...well, just go to the website and look at the list. It can't fix everything, but it is handy. (I also like to modify the skins so that "(no copy) (no modify) (no transfer)" are replaced with the shorter "!C !M !T"; if that appeals to anyone I can tell ya how to do it.)

Lag depends on so many different things-- viewer, sim, nearby avatars, network connection, what else your computer is doing-- and yet you're basing your judgement of the primetime readiness of 2.4, based on a single incident of lag? /me scratches her head. Oh, for the day when lag is so rare that a beta release can be dismissed because of it!

If someone submits an AR report with only the display name, then they are doing it wrong; it's like reporting someone by their group name. Usernames are how you identify people, and it is easy to obtain the username of anyone you see.

I guess it's sad, but it's how things work most of the time: competition spawns innovation. What *would* be sad would be if LL were trying to suppress the TPVs and there was some sort of cold war going on. But fortunately that's not happening, and I think the cross-pollination and the ability to choose are wonderful. (The corresponding Holy War, however, I could do without.)