Nalates Urriah

lol... Depends. I think it depends on lots of factors. The two big ones, how busy and who the moderators are then whether or not it gets reported. Basically a 'did the moderators see it'. There is also a reputation thing. Look in your profile and you'll see Warning Points and Applied restrictions. I suspect the points get your posts more attention. There are some vindictive people on the forum. I suspect that is why NiranV gets EVERY (well... lots) image censored. Niran has stepped on a lot of toes, some Linden, with a good number of those toes being in the development community but not limited to them That's nothing against Niran, it's just Niran being Niran and his avatar does have big feet.

I am catching up... They continue to work on REGION crossings. We don't do GRID crossings, except in OpenSim. BOM (Barbie-stuff) is an effort to reduce the amount of data that has to be transmitted from one server to the next when we cross regions. The amount of script code and data that has to be packed up and sent is the major part of that data. Slink made a huge reduction in their script weight. I'll have to compare the Maitreya v4 and v5 demos to see how they have done. I am probably reading more into the world 'stranglehold' than you intend. I think if they had a true stranglehold we would see body makers dropping out of the market. Slink made a video of how to make clothes for all their version of bodies. Done right, the process adds about 20 minutes to the design process. Excluding time for promotional materials, packaging, etc. I think those making for a limited set of brands are not all that well versed in modeling. They give up a lot to save a small amount of effort. I also think we are using the word 'monopoly' to denote different things. Maitreya has a large market share and appears to be the market leader. I think you are using the word to denote that. But, they don't have a monopoly. Maitreya's competitors seem to be doing well. I think 'sabotaged' is mischaracterizing what Maitreya is doing. But, your point is made. I do see Maitreya as giving people what they want in a way they prefer. If the customers reject a government's idea of a better way and the manufacturers cater to that it is just going with the flow of the market not sabotage. Efficiently... yeah. I find the system layers much easier to work with. Outfits using BOM and alpha layers are way easier for me to wear. Click done. Otherwise I was spending a minute adjusting the layer cuts. Then there were the times the body went glitchy with the auto-alpha and I had to toggle-all and detach/attach clothes to get the auto-alpha to work correctly. Easily... I think this really depends on the designer. Prior to mesh bodies in the mesh clothes era alpha-layers were a standard part of well made clothes. We thought that was easy and simple because we had learned how it works. YES. Beyond what you consider good points for eliminating alpha-cuts is the vertex count. Each seam (what Blender, 3D Max, etc. consider a seam) requires the vertices on the seam to be duplicated. Eliminating seams reduces the vertex count. As to most people not being able to make alpha-layers... you may be right. I hope not. I came to SL with a group from Myst Online. The huge majority of those could not build content for Myst. But, within a year they were building content for SL to replicate Myst here. (There are still some Myst places in SL.) Some have businesses in SL. I think there is hope we will return to more of the time when creating was more a part of SL life. I agree market forces are neither good or evil. But, they override even the best intentions of governments. Maitrey has won market share by giving people what they wanted. As long as they do a better job of that, they will stay in the lead. I think ARCTan will hit those making heavy-render items harder than ACI hit them. We will have to wait to see how that shakes out. When a better idea comes along, it tends to win. iOS was once the market leader. Android had 85% of the world market as of 2018. Leaders get challenged. All Maitreya has is the dominate market share. I don't see them as a monopoly. Nor do I see them having excessive influence on the downstream market. THAT is a choice of the designers. But, your points on influence are well made. I suspect Slink will stay with what they have. As ARCTan is a coming thing, their being the more efficient body is going to improve their position. Also, the system layer thing makes it easier for new people, reducing the learning curve. Give it a year and the majority of new people are likely to find Maitreya or any alpha-cut body too difficult to use.

I'm curious. If the shoulders aren't fixed then it is still a no go.

Then take it to IMs. Oh Berry, this is just awesome... thanks. I am trying out for a new job...

Me too....

I see a noticable difference between a Classic and Mesh body. It is especially noticeable when sitting. With mesh heads it is less noticeable. Mesh heads improved greatly with the advent of Bento. We now can create facial expressions with animations. The Classic head is limited to the predefined system expressions. With a Bento Mesh head the Black Dragon viewer's POSER can be used to tweak facial expression. That cannot be done with the Classic head. I point this out because the plan is to add the Poser to the Linden SL Viewer... someday soon... but, don't hold your breath.

Once you are SURE you have all possible things off that could play an animation... TP to a couple of different regions. Try the Stop Animations each time. Also walk a few steps, fly, run... these all force the playing animation to update, which hopefully will force the stand animation to change. Put your normal AO on. We are assuming you are using the Linden SL Viewer because your are new and didn't tell us which viewer you are using. Whenever you ask a tech question it is smart to include viewer/computer information (Help->About... copy-paste) Lots of bumps in SL can cause this. It is unlikely this is a griefer thing.

There are lots of pose and animation makers in SL. Search: animation. Then go shopping. Angelina pointed out different creators make for different purposes. Also, some creators make animations in different SIZES. The closer the animation is to your size the better it will look when playing. I disagree with janetosilio. I think most peeps in SL use animated stands. I use several stands in each of my different animations sets. I'll typically have 5 to 10 stands in a single AO set. I use Firestorm's built-in AO when using Firestorm. The new AO's, which I use in other viewers, I've seen tend to use about 500MB of ram. AO RAM is held on the server side. The FS AO is viewer side. It makes sailing, flying, and other region crossings less painful be reducing server side memory use. Older AOs like ZHAO II use older coding but work well and use much less memory that the new AOs I've tried. The ZHAO is usually free. Don't buy it... However, in regions that are overloaded and drop Scripts Run % to 5 ro 25%, the 'attached' AOs will have problems. You can still see a walk animation for a few seconds after you stop walking. (You can see Scripts Run % in viewer stats: Ctrl-Shift-1.) These days most animations are Copy-OK. So, you can put them in multiple AOs.

Remember. Most problems have already been encountered by residents. You are not likely the first, but it happens. You will often find the answer in the SL Forum Answers section. See the menu at the top of any forum page. Do a search in the section. You may have to phrase your question different ways to find the answer. But, if you find it... you have an answer with no wait, which is VERY much a thing for me. In the Answers section there are some knowledgeable peeps providing answers. They have been around a long time and seen a lot of problems. A search brings up those threads.

Now we have a thread... Also, Google will provide you a list of tutorials about how to use Black Dragon. Search: Black Dragon Viewer tutorials This is a test of BD's DoF. This type of image is difficult to do in post-production. It is easier in the viewer. But, never RL like. But, close enough. The far and near are out of focus, which is the point of using Depth of Field. I seldom will use DoF. I use the DEPTH MAP the viewers make and let PS handle the tedious part of making the lense blur. But, neither duplicates what a RL camera does well.

Remember. Google will provide you a list of the Black Dragon Viewer tutorials. Give it a day and this thread should show up there too. A FoxCity (the pose people) tutorial gives you the quick basics. Quick Look Black Dragon. Satomi Masukami, the owner (?) of FoxCity, recommends Black Dragon for photos in SL. In the video you will see most of the controls exercised. You'll get an idea what everything does. Photoshop and, to a lesser extent, GIMP do some of the things better. But, if you aren't into the tech of image processing, Black Dragon is certainly good enough.

You find the various limits of things in SL here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

Animesh is relatively expensive as an attachment. Animesh is an avatar, a thing with a skeleton. The Lindens did limit and optimize to reduce the render cost. But, for an attachment it is render expensive. Animating different attachments and keeping them in sync is difficult.

...and you can turn off the Slink nails... That leaves you with just the nails painted into the skin. There is also a tattoo by Slink for older skins that have the old classic style painted on fingers, toes, and nails. The tat fixes/hides the problem. I think there are some versions of it in the Slink package or at the store. With toes you can wear stockings and use Slink's opaque stocking toe (in HUD) to hide old-skin-problems.

Dean saw the problem. Those triangles with skin texture and that they appear and disappear with the HUD alphas on/off are evidence the mesh is not rendering fully. It downloaded, but the viewer is not putting things in the right place. The gateway/modem, computer restart, and relog are basic easy steps. Try these before you start ripping things apart and getting complicated. Switching to the Linden viewer tells you if it is a viewer problem or not. In your case the result pointed to your viewer. As viewers now have their own 'unshared cache', it also pointed to the cache. So, you should have been trying to fix the viewer-cache as likely problems. The usual easy steps while in the viewer are Avatar->Avatar Health->[Undeform, Force Rebake, Refresh Attachments] (do all 3). The next step is to zoom WAY OUT then zoom in super close. Zoom slowly, like 10 seconds out and in. Give a little pause at max out. You are trying to trip an LoD reset to force the mesh to fully load and render. You can try going into Preferences->Graphics->General->Level of Detail...->Object & Sculpts and setting the value to 4.0 (max). Do another zoom out and in. With luck every thing will snap back in place. Another step is to take the body off and rez it on the ground and edit it. Don't worry about No-Mod. You don't need to actually edit anything. Just get it in Edit mode to have the viewer see it a different way. Zoom in and out on it. The hope is this will force the viewer to correct the LoD loads. Hopefully the body will fully render sitting on the ground. Take back into inventory and wear/add it. With any luck... When all those fail move on to clearing cache. Do this after logging out from a deserted and empty region. Login into the same empty region, Last Location. Let inventory completely reload before leaving. This often fixes this type of error. Furball is a good region to try and there are others adjacent. There are other things to try before a clean install, but they are more time consuming and error prone than just doing the install. Go with a reinstall at this point. All the above are easy and quick. The fail to render like you saw is almost never a mesh problem. So, one redelivery is enough to eliminate that possible problem.

Along with reducing attachments and scripts try to avoid crossing at or near region corners. The idea is to avoid quickly passing from one region through a second region to enter a third region. Doing so greatly increases the chance of a problem.

Roll, yaw, and pitch are directions. Assuming the OP knows what they are saying...

There is a control that keeps the horizon horizontal. In Firestorm's Preferences->Move & View->Movement->Joystick Config->Auto Level (enable/disable) In Debug Settings in the FS Viewer find AutoLeveling: Keep Flycam level. Leveling has to be disabled to roll the camera. Joystick and SpaceNavigator...

For my phone access to SL I use a remote desktop app in the phone. I connect to my desktop at home and launch the viewer. A stylist and the Hacker's Keyboard are a must. The keyboard gives you the arrow keys missing from most phone keyboards.

The price changes are a mixed bag. Still for those making digital content the Linden fee is way less than most digital markets charge. The goal is to shift cost from land to merchandise. SL still has the largest market of any 'game'. On a good day OpenSim has 300 concurrent users. In SL at 3AM SLT there are 28,000+ concurrent users. I doubt there will be much push back.

Unpopular Opinion: Anchovies on pizza is great!

We have mesh clothes and bodies as of about 2013, if I remember the date. Mesh clothes can be used with the classic avatar or a mesh body. When fitting a mesh body the mesh clothes have to be made for that specific body. This means BEFORE buying mesh clothes you will need to decide on a mesh body. You can still wear the classic body and buy Standard Size mesh clothes for it. Other mesh clothes are referred to as Fitted Mesh. The Shape Sliders change the body and clothes when fitted mesh is worn. Standard Size clothes do not change shape with the Shape Sliders. Sculpty clothing and shoes are things of the past. Mesh bodies are the THING. BOM (Bakes On Mesh) is a new thing. Not many mesh bodies have been rebuilt to use BOM. BOM Mesh Bodies are more like what you are used to with the default (classic) avatar. ...there is way more for you to learn. I hope this is enough to keep you from wasting money. Take your time and learn. You can play with the DEMOS of these things to see how it works. Also, look through these threads to see what people say about various brands of heads and bodies. Or... spend between US$10 and $30 to outfit your avatar with a new body, head, and clothes.

There are some things you can do to reduce Texture Thrashing. A viewer restart is often all you need. Also, remove all the HUD's. Some HUDs use a huge amount of texture memory. In Firestorm turn off the images in chat. I don't remember if FS has fixed it, but those tiny images require the full profile image be downloaded. As these images appear in the User Interface part of the viewer it holds onto them forever, which is why a restart helps as it discards all those not currently needed. Windlight settings are XML files (fancy text files with a serious structure). They can be copied and moved around just like any file. The only tricky part is finding where your viewer stores the files. You might find the location searching for CalWL.XML. My FS-64 puts them in C:\Program Files\Firestorm-Releasex64\app_settings\windlight\skies Black Dragon uses the same folder with a name change in the path. Close the viewer before adding or removing files. Well... that's one way to get a date to open up... This is one of my PS play time images. I am not that happy with it. The muzzle flash just wasn't coming out as I wanted. I used 3 images taken with BD. It is nice being able to use the machinima sidebar to make quick lighting changes, world lights on and off and my attached projector lights on and off. The POSER was my main reason for using BD. I really like it. The Lab is supposedly working on including the poser in the Linden viewer. If they do, that means all the viewers will have them. What I hope is they add a way to send the pose into SL so other viewers can see it.

Use the SL JIRA to file a feature request. It will ask what the feature should be like, how the community would use it, and provide as much WHY as you can think up.

Too many interesting comments to respond to... There was a quote attributed to Mark Twain, "If you don't read the newspapers you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed." It sort of applies here. To be informed one has to hear both sides of news story. CNN & MSNBC both have a huge number of Pinocho slams and stay on the Left. FNC less so and bit more centered but they omit a lot and they are moving Left. The new kid OANN is way out on the far right-side of things. So, CNN and OANN would give you the stories and topic disagreements. They can't both be right. But, then you have to figure out who is lying. Something like Peter Schweizer's books is a good reference as he never has anonymous sources and provides the links to everything. His new book Profiles in Corruption is 368 pages with, I think, 1,100+ document references. It is a problem. But, standards at the start kills innovations and reduces our free choice. Stands are for late in the adoption cycle. We get to vote with our dollars until there is a winner. ...meh. More of an opinion than fact. It is funny. Reason and facts are not necessary components of humor. Depending on the profession or industry different units of measure are used. Oh! THAT is a winner for most unpopular in a number of circles. Sailors, flyers, and drivers are probably already taking up a collection to put a contract on your AV. Be careful how you say that. Polls already show more Americans identify with Trump than with any of the Democrats (26% say Bernie thinks more like them, 37% say Trump does, and they are the two leaders in one recent survey), while the "average GOP congressman" beats the "average Dem congressman" by an even larger margin, 41% to 24%. The "right track/wrong track" numbers (one of the best predictors of how voters will vote for President) are the best of his presidency, and are up sharply over the last 3 months, despite the impeachment parade. He's not very popular, but the Dem front runners are making themselves less appealing to voters than HRC was, and the party as a whole is losing appeal with independents. Trump has even eaten away at the Dem lead among African Americans; although he's only at 15% there, that's up from 6% in the 2016 election, an amount that would have evened up the popular vote nationwide. There is a reason the Dems are so desperate to impeach Trump that they shot themselves in the foot by trying to do it on the quick. If the economy keeps doing well, and most Americans tend to vote with their financial security, 2020 could become a route for Dems, and Chuck and Nancy know it. If the impeachment backfires on them the way it did the Republicans in 1998, the day after the election will not be pretty for the Dems. That isn't unpopular it is a Trigger 😂 But, it would win in some parts of SL. If you read Schweizer's new book you'll understand why the Dems are so desperate. When Clinton was being impeached the economy was improving and people were not going to tolerate his being removed from office. The unpopular opinion here: Trump will NOT be removed from office and is likely to win the 2020 election. - Of course this may be more trigger than opinion.