Hara Surya

I'm wanting to make a beer stein for my barmaid to hand out to people while on no-Rezz land. I got a bunch of full-perm objects and got everything working and oriented, but the moment I had it to another person it's facing in a totally different direction. So how do I make it so when I hand another player this stein, it rezzes with the handle in their hand? And if the answer is "Load it in Blender" then this has been a complete waste of time and money.

MoltenVK is more of a kludge for Vulkan and Apple officially doesn't recommend it. (Apparently, there's a lot of weirdness in feature compatibility between the three big graphics APIs.) If MoltenVK requires pre-compiled shaders, as opposed to dynamically recompiling them, then it's a no-go because the last way I'd describe the graphics on Second Life is "optimized." Either way, if they're using an engine that can output native Metal graphics then that's the way to go. If it's being built on Unity I'd imagine its a near-total ground-up rewrite of big parts of the client. A lot of Second Life is built on Intel-only binary blob middleware that'll have to be replicated on an ARM native version. On the one hand, a lot of those blobs have newer ARM-based versions, on the other hand that doesn't mean they're even remotely compatible. There was talk back in the day of converting from Havoc 2 to Havoc 4 and part of the issue was that a lot of Second Life was built around weirdness and bugs in Havoc 2, so dropping in Havoc 4 meant stuff would break unless they replicated said weirdness and bugs. (I have no idea what happened, that was like 12 years ago and I stopped paying attention.) Of course, that's all assuming they didn't drop Unity over the recent unpleasantness about licensing.

Pretty much says it all in the title. I get mid single-digit frame rates with Sim Ping times a hover around 200ms, but only in my Linden Home. I go to any other parcel, even ones with vastly more people and things are fine. I've had multiple friends comment on it and it happens across three of my devices with CPU/GPU architectures, operating systems and on different networks. (One of the networks being ethernet connected gigabit fiber with single-digit pings to some servers.) It's only started in the last few weeks.

I'd love to try it on my M1 MacBook Pro, but keep getting a security error. I've heard the proper response is to basically "ignore and force it." I'm sorry, but as a former IT worker that's just dumb and engrains horrifically bad habits. If I got a similar error on Windows I'd uninstall and run away while scanning my computer with every antivirus I could find. Is this really the advice you give Mac users? Ignore malware warnings and force it? Do you realize how stupid that is? Is this really "word of God" advice from Linen Labs? Ignore security warnings and force it? Is this actually how Linden Labs views security in general? Ignore warnings and force it? No wonder Second Life user numbers aren't just in the toilet, but well into the sewer system nearing the discharge vent into the nearest body of water. This is just dumb. I walked away from Second Life for nearly a decade and only the plague brought me back. At this point I see no reason to come back. I can't trust even the official client for being free of malware. And the required license to remove that warning, on both Mac and Windows, is a trivial cost. The fact Linden Labs can't be bothered to pay it just shows they simply don't care, at all, about the security of their users.

Total nonsense to you, but that's the facts on the ground. Second Life is roughly comparable, in system requirements, to Fallout 3 (actually a bit higher on recommended settings). That's not me BSing, that's the listed system requirements. (Even the 1.23 viewer recommended it.) A major "con" reviewers have had for Second Life for years has been "high system requirements". Like it or not Second Life is a high end 3d video game from 2010. It's not a web browser. It's not a instant messenger. It's a 3d video game and it behaves as such. The other facts are that while people from all over the world can be found on it a vast majority come from the US and Canada, Europe and the wealthier parts of Asia. You complain about marginalizing users, but you're talking about a video game like it's a human right. It's a freaking video game. Like World of Warcraft. I doubt someone living hand to mouth in Somalia or on house arrest in Bangladesh is terribly worried about playing a video game. Seriously. Get real if you think Second Life is anything but a video game to a vast majority of its users, too. If you do, if you honestly truly do, please come to my hometown. I have a couple of bridges I can sell to you at a low, low price.

So you suggest - and Linden Lab too - I must change my pc only to connect on SL using V2???? Sorry but this is a non-sense!!! With my old pc, that is ok for my real job, the only viewer I can use is Cool VL Viewer in version 1.23. I can building and scripting only with 256 MB of ram.!!! I can also use voice!!! This I call a good viewer!!! Yes, I and everyone else I know who plays PC games does exactly that. When a significant upgrade to a PC game comes out it's not unusual to need a higher end computer to play it. The only people who really complain are the people playing casual games with low-end computer. The problem is that Second Life is a casual game with fairly high-end requirements. When Sims 2 and Sims 3 were both released fans of the previous version complained that the newer version had such higher system requirements that EA had done a terrible thing and ruined their game. Then they went out, bought or upgraded a computer that could handle it and the complaining stopped (at least for that part of it). My PC can handle nearly anything I throw at it just fine (even Crysis), but chokes on SL. It's not as much the viewer's fault (any version because they can all be slow and have lag) as the inherent design decisions that Linden Labs made way back when the game was first written. Those inherent design decisions make SL what it s. Yes, maybe you think right, but I'm a web developer, from analisys to ended product and I know that adding one or more fields on a table is very easy: is the use of theese new fields - and the logic behind it - that can generate an enormous variety of new bugs in the system. I do development, too. In fact my major is focused directly on managing development projects. And I'm sure you know any change you make to a computer system can introduce bugs, even if you're "merely" fixing another bug. Fixing one bug often uncovers another and can just as often be the direct cause of an entirely new one Honestly, I'd rather have a root canal on every tooth from Steve Martin (the actor, not his character in Little Shop of Horrors) than have to do debugging because it is so maddening. Yes, I know, but try to explain it to new SL users, and hope they remember it!!! They'll know that's the case from day 1, how could they forget?

You're playing a frigging 3d video game, if it wasn't running at 100% CPU I'd be worried about how well it's running. "An enormous amount of memory" is very subjective. On a system with 1GB SL uses a lot, on one with 8GB it's using next to none. When it first launched Viewer 2.0 had a memory leak and would crash even just standing around as it approached 2GB. Recently I've not seen it, but it (or another) could still be there on a different system configuration. (I've only used it on Vista 32-bit, Seven 64-bit and Ubuntu 64-bit on the same hardware.) The search... Yeah, it sucks. I can't find anything useful anymore. But your call to fix known bugs is still that old non-developer misunderstanding that every programmer is identical. A database programmer (which Display Names is a part of) knows little to nothing about an OpenGL, networking or game logic problem (which are many of the open bugs). And the impersonation is a strawman. There are plenty of ways to find out who the user really is (it simply takes a single click on the person's name in chat) so how is adding a single step (if any at all) so much more difficult? You're suggesting an attack that is 1) yet to happen "in the wild" and 2) is superficially easy to circumvent. (How many times does it need to be repeated that the actual user name is displayed along with the display name? Just below it in fact. I could even provide a screen shot if I felt like it.)

You're having what they call in the technology world a PICNIC Error, which is by far the most common and insidious error in all of computing. Specifically you turned on "Avatar Imposters" in the graphical settings and haven't turned it off. The larger issue might be another variation on the PICNIC Error in that not all computers are created equal. My 3 year old laptop has little trouble using the 2.3 viewer, but it was designed from day one to be a high-end gaming computer. A brand new bargain basement computer with low-end specs might be lucky to even run MS Office half the time, much less what's arguably and oddly one of the most demanding 3d games on the market.

You know people, if you dislike this company so much and they can do no right then just stop playing. It's that simple. You've invested a ton of money? That's your fault. Even if you're not a paying customer you're adding value to their product by logging in. So just stop playing and let the people who actually enjoy this stuff and were actively wanting many of these changes "live" in peace. There are about two dozen competing products out there be it a game-oriented MMORPG or another virtual world like Second Life. Heck, there are tons of alternative servers to log a Second Life client into. Go, have fun bitching about your pet bugs somewhere else and give my ears a rest... I was asking for a way to change my name years ago. Is this perfect? No, but as someone who knows database development I understand why it was done. The user names were probably previously a two element primary key that pulled double-duty as a displayed screen name. Changing a Primary Key isn't something you do a whim like many users (like myself) want to. It's a process than can easily break an entry in the database if it's not done right and with a system as complex as LL runs with many, many interlocked databases the chance of failure is too great to risk. Instead they turn those two-element primary keys into a single-element and add two fields to act as a display name. Personally I'm a role-player. When in one "costume" I want to use one name and when in another I want to use another. Considering I log in only a few times a week it's unlikely I'll find myself "stuck" with a name I dislike for more than a couple sessions and even then my user name (shown under my display name in my client) is still visible. Considering you can click an unknown name in chat and bring up the user profile connected to it how exactly are griefers going to abuse this system? You can still ban/punish them by their user name so what's the big deal? People worried about "they could use my name" need to deflate their egos. Even if someone walked up to me saying they own a store, for example, and then say something abusive and their user name is different and their character was made 2 hours ago then maybe someone who's not a total moron might figure out what's going on.

You've scientifically polled Second Life users and found this "9/10" to be a fact or is it you just blustering based off of your own opinion?

So Lindens Labs should get involved in the nightmare that is changing login names? How many other online services allow this and keep all of your information? Can you easily do it in World of Warcraft? How about Playstation Network? X-Box Live? Electronic Arts Online? No? Thought so. Each of those companies could buy Linden Labs with the "rounding errors" in their accounting ledgers and are leaders in their respective industries. They don't because it is an absolute nightmare to do and only leads to even more problems that aren’t worth the effort. Your login name usually becomes the primary key for your account in the database. Changing the primary key isn’t the least bit simple and often involves changing many, many other entries in the database. The end result is that it’s easier to change the name shown on the screen than change what identifies the user inside the database. You might want to say “then they should do what’s hard” but that would probably involve taking their entire database down to rebuild it, which means SL would have to shut down while it’s processing. Even then there’s no guarantee it’ll work and they might just have a ruined database in the end. Seeing how it’s in their best interest to keep the grid running I doubt they’d want to do that, so adding an entry to the user’s entry that contains a “Display Name” then developing a client that can access and show those entries make much more sense.

It annoys me when people with no understanding of software development go ape when a company implements a new feature without fixing their pet bug. Software development is usually divided into teams - networking, graphics, logic, etc. - which often includes sub-teams for new features and a team fixing bugs. Because of object oriented principles a change in a method related to, say, graphics is totally unrelated to one for, say, networking. In addition programmers tend to have different skill sets, so a database programmer might know little to nothing about networking outside of how it relates to their field - doubly so with graphics which often involves a totally skill set (and often a different degree) from more mainstream (networking, database, etc.) programming. So adding Display Names (a database change) has nothing at all to do with many of the graphics bug people have mentioned. Personally, I'm looking forward to display names. I enjoy role-playing and would prefer to have the name above my head match the character I'm playing at the time. Others have expressed the desire to follow tradition and change their name to match their spouse. Other, like myself as well, are just tired of the name their using and want to change it up a little. This whole argument about X-feature being "wildly unpopular" is a joke to anyone with even a passing knowledge of sociology because the most active and vocal members of any community are often in the minority. Most "rank and file" users/players/voters, etc.are happy enough with how things are going as not to bother and often see the same vocal people as being more of a problem than a help. Seeing how Second Life is still up and running and Linden labs has enough money to develop new features I don't think there's any kind of mass emigration elsewhere hurting their bottom line. Of course, that doesn't stop those of you who ARE up happy with things are going from leaving, but chances are you'll keep on playing and just gripe the whole time.