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Nalates Urriah

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Posts posted by Nalates Urriah

    How Does Your SL Look Today?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1 hour ago, cirleen said:

    How about some devalued German marks from 1923? I could give you thirty billion marks. The price of gas and now this. I better buy it now before a doggie snack costs 5 souls. Where am I ever going to get 5 souls from?

    See if you can pass off shoe soles as freeze-dried souls... I mean how many really know what a unembodied soul looks like?

    • Haha 6

    Should I put my real-life gender in my woman avatars' profiles?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Nalates Urriah

    22 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:

    Hello all,

    I am a mostly straight man in real life who has avatars/accounts of different kinds (male and female, human and non-human, etc.) I do have woman avatars but I do not put my real life gender on them because I actually want other residents to think they are really women - even if I do not intend on pursuing relationships in virtual worlds. But after reading this forum, I'm beginning to think this may not be ethical. I'm curious if you think I should put my real-life gender on my woman avatars' profiles in order to deal with other residents in an ethical manner, or if it's okay to keep it hidden.  

    Where do you get your ethical concepts? If you want to know if "this" or "that" is ethical do you just ask the people around you? What happens when you ask an amoral person, a sociopath, or a simple nut?

    Is there some source of ethics in this world? If there is, what does it purport would be ethical in this case?

    In R Heinlein's book The Cat That Walks Through Walls, he includes a section on how the primary character comes by her ethics. There apparently was some discussion with her father about what was right and wrong in her early childhood. She was required to reason through why a concept was valid or non-nonsensical and be able to explain her thinking. If you weren't given a basis for your morality growing up, how will you ever know now?

    You are living in a RL world that in many ways has gone insane. You are taught via social media that diversity is IMPORTANT but no diversity of thought is allowed. Attempting to take ethics from the SL world, which is parallel to RL, seems rather risky. One has to decide if the people here really understand the idea of ethics. Notice much of what you'll hear here is mostly situational ethics and personal opinion... based in more emotional than rational thinking.

    If an ethical concept has merit, it will stand no matter the scenario.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 2

    Let me ask it this way…

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    On 8/7/2023 at 12:42 PM, Istelathis said:

    This is what sped up SL for me.  I have mine set to 2.5 gb, and noticed a massive increase in performance in SL ever since, even running on an older 1050ti card.  Previously, I had cache stored on a slower HDD and would notice huge spikes in lag where the viewer would become unresponsive.  I think with an SSD it probably is not nearly as noticeable for others, at least that is what I have been told by them.  I did find that trying to backup the ram drive every time I wanted to reboot my computer would lead to quite a lengthy shutdown process, so I just let it all clear on the rare occasion that I do need to reboot - it doesn't take long to fill it back up regardless when I am out exploring.  

    Snapshot_844.jpg.51ca7705275ea2621780640035bc97c1.jpg

    Not an ideal computer for second life, but I did want to contribute to the conversation just how much of a significance having a RAM disk made on my computer, which is now old.  I wander most of the time with a draw distance of 128m.  My frame rate is not great, but compared to before having the ram disk it is a significant improvement, before just camming around would freeze my viewer, with a draw distance of 32m.  

    I am looking forward to when I can eventually upgrade to a newer computer, and have some of those sweet FPS many of you enjoy - but at the very least I can get around and SL still looks decent.  I think when I do upgrade, I will still set aside a RAM disk just because I don't want to have data constantly shifting around on a SSD as I can easily go through 2 gigs in a couple of hours.

    There is RAM DRive software, some free, selling for US$30 that handles the saving of the RAM Drive at shutdown and reloading it at startup. No user attention is needed once set up.

    While SSDs can be fast, the motherboard can bottleneck them. The PCIe bus has to support all the devices using it. A video card uses a lot of PCIe channels. Other devices do also. Hard drives and SSDs are using the channels. The older boards were designed for the video card to be the only high-speed channel needed. The rest were designed to handle hard drives and their data rates. So often an SSD is handled at HD speeds by the motherboard. New boards have more and faster channels for SSDs.

    RAM drives are magnitudes faster than SSDs.

    • Like 2

    Let me ask it this way…

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    You haven't told us how you use SL. So none of the suggestions can be particularly specific.

    Those people that are especially tech-savvy will be in the tech section of this forum. Ask there and provide more information about what you want to do in SL, you'll get some specific answers.

    Intel processors are my choice. The title for best gaming CPU bounces between AMD and Intel. It is hard to keep up and know who is in the lead today. But, whichever one you buy, the other will soon be in the lead. :(

    Intel makes i3, i5, i7, and i9 CPUs and some other more exotic special-use CPUs. For gamers, the i5 is the sweet spot in performance and cost. For SL the i5 has enough parallel processing cores to be better than adiquit. The i7 and i9 are on the overkill side of things. While you might see a measurable, with a stopwatch, bit of improvement over an i5 it usually is not enough to justify the additional cost.

    Understand. If you turn the viewer's setting up and extend the draw-distance to max you can bring an i9 down to single-digit frame rates. So to get the best price and performance you gotta be a geek. I am trying to make the point that throwing money at the computer will not necessarily get you good performance in an SL viewer.

    I think the two most important factors for performance are CPU speed, faster is better, thus eliminating most laptops, and memory, which also needs to be fast and plentiful which requires a fast motherboard... see how quickly it geeks out? I consider 32GB a minimum.

    For max performance, you need a RAM Drive, a virtual storage system that lives in computer RAM and pretends to be a hard drive or SSD. This means you'll want 64GB of RAM or more.

    A dedicated video card is a must for performance. I prefer NVIDIA as they have provided better support for OpenGL, which SL viewers run on.

    Tom's Hardware and other geeky places give you the latest on computer hardware for gamers and recommend what is needed in a gaming computer.

     

    • Like 3

    Photography Questions

    in Art, Music and Photography

    Posted

    There are various ways to pose in SL. Black Dragon has a Poser that I think is the best in SL. The problem is only you can see the pose.

    PoseAnywhere makes a HUD that can be used to pose people or yourself. It uses SL poses. So it is not freestyle as it only uses poses available in SL (those you buy or make).

    Strawberry Linden long ago, pre-Linden, published a blog and gave posing style, and camera tips. It is still online. The tips are here.

    How Does Your SL Look Today?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Nalates Urriah
    added

    On 8/1/2023 at 4:51 PM, Istelathis said:

    Sorry for derailing the thread 😔 I was just having a little fun with another thread I had participated in, I did not mean to cause any problems in this one or that one.  

    Anyway, with the release of the Senra avatars, I have been working on the Mesh Head.  Outside of the mesh ruth head, I think this is the first one that I have had that I can modify so I've been going for a look I enjoy.  I'm not very particular on my avatar's appearance, often using a mishmash of whatever I find easily and inexpensively, but sometimes it is just fun to play around with the sliders and find a shape that I like.

    Snapshot_709.thumb.png.d7148f57ddfc36fa6e7cdf8c7c931322.png

    This is what I have come up with so far, an artist I definitely am not.  But I kind of like it it.  I think I will stick with this one for a while, I don't like spending too much time working on my avatar, I would rather be out exploring.

    You've done well. You have made an adorable face.

    Derailing... requires more than one person...

    10 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

    Returned to @Saskia Rieko's Vineyard at Natthimmel for another look around.

    Oh, important tip I learned today: Don't wear white to a vineyard.

    https://secondlife.com/destination/natthimmel

    Saskias-Vineyard-(SM)-Blank.thumb.png.30d55e8e56a70d48d7242cd3346a2321.png

     

    Your wearing white in a vineyard works well for us. You look good. We don't have to do your laundry.

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 3

    Motion Blur photos? Second Life photos, then Photoshop Elements?

    in Art, Music and Photography

    Posted

    There are various types of motion blur. In one the subject is mostly unblurred and the background is blurred. In another type, the subject is blurred and the background is unblurred. In another, both are blurred but the leading edges of the subject are unblurred.

    In computer game graphics the software is doing things to avoid blur as the camera sweeps across a scene. So capturing blur in-world (SL) is difficult.

    I tend to use one image for all types. All unblurred. Then take the subject parts of the image I want to blur or keep focused then copy them to separate layers. Often more than one copy and layer. Then say I want a blurred background and a blurred runner with focused/unblurred leading edges. I'll blur the lower layer of the runner, usually more than the background. I may duplicate that layer so the blur is more dense. Then with a soft brush, I'll paint out the trailing edges of the runner (alpha layer) in the top layer.

    In some cases, I'll paint in an additional blur of the highlights. Also, things like wheels often need attention to look realistic. So a circular blur. Then a motion blur. Depending on lighting and desired effect I may put some motion blur behind or on top of the wheel with the circular blur.

    Once you get the idea and learn what your editor will do it becomes a matter of patience and determination. Some of the really great images I like took the artist day or weeks.

    All photo editing is basic techniques you combine to make your image. Motion blur is just a type of blur. Learning to use blur is the basic tech.

    I like these two artists' tutorials for advanced techniques;

    https://www.youtube.com/@natsumixenga9384

    https://www.youtube.com/@NemanjaSekulic

     

    I'm new

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    6 hours ago, Bazzilla said:

    I'm Bazzilla and I'm new here. I've known about Second Life for many years, but only now have plucked up the courage to actually join. In the RL, I'm a musician and beatmaker and I'm hoping to one day build up to doing maybe a few shows in SL. I just thought I'd pop on here and say hi.

    P.S - apologies if there's a introduce yourself thread somewhere and I've posted in the wrong forum. 

    There is an 'Introduce Yourself" thread.... somewhere. I've seen it. But how new users are supposed to find it, I have no idea.

    Welcome to SL. :)

    Do NOT put much effort into figuring out what you are SUPPOSED to do. Do what seems reasonable and/or fun. Be kind and polite. Avoid the jerks... yeah block/mute. Explore and experiment. There is more to see and do than you'll ever get around to.

    • Like 3

    Alts in the forums

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    On 7/23/2023 at 7:34 AM, Love Zhaoying said:

    Even I had a 36 hour "ban" before. I wish that I understood why the possibility of this happening causes you so much concern.

     

    In a cancel culture era where the home office of LL is in the capital of Wokism, it is a rational concern.

    • Like 4
    • Confused 1

    How Does Your SL Look Today?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    On 7/18/2023 at 6:55 PM, Bagnu said:

    I really should have called the thread "How does your SL look over the last week". We can't always post the same day LOL!!!

    Probably. But I doubt anyone takes the "today" all that seriously. I know I very rarely get an image into the forum that I took the day I post. I suspect many of the others are doing the same.

    • Like 4

    what could it be??? problems after collisions or teleports

    in Your Avatar

    Posted

    Translation: what could it be??? I've already seen the pierced body of the avatar three times - some large yellow pieces and black sharp sticks - in the body - through, appears after teleport. Also, how can other people turn things on and off for me?? alpha, ears, how do they have access? after collision or teleportation.

    Sculpties and mesh can do this if they have not been fully rendered. The delay is usually in the download. Time usually corrects the problem.

    Sculpties contain their vertex positions in an image file. All images in SL are JPEG2000. In this format, there are multiple images. The low-resolution images load and render first. The sculpty completes rendering when the final Hi-Def image downloads. On occasion, the servers and viewer will get a bit confused and the viewer seems to think it has the whole sculpty-map-image downloaded when it doesn't, and the render stalls.

    Mesh will do a similar thing. All mesh in SL must have multiple models, LOD models 4 of them. The viewer asks for the LOD model it needs, then loads the others as needed. When something happens to throw the download sequence off, the item may mis-render. I have a couple of mesh attachments that from time to time mis-render when I TP to a different region. When entering a new region the server is making sure it is providing the right info to the viewer for rendering. There is a lot to go wrong in a region crossing. I think you are seeing the result. So often you can go out to another region and then come back and all is well. Sometimes an avatar re-bake or attachment refresh will solve the problem. Sometimes one has to relog.

    People can ONLY control your appearance when you are using RLV. However, they may see you differently depending on how well their system is downloading things.

    • Like 3
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