Nalates Urriah

@Madelaine McMasters - Appliers are easy enough. An easy tutorial is here: Tutorial 2017: How to Make Slink Nails. Yesterday I was making progress on my sort of mission to fly around each continent. I land at various places like the one below and landmark them. Prim full regions, security orbs, and ban lines are such a pain. They crash or freeze me and I have to restart. So, it is nice to have a 're-start' point near by. It is those instant eject and <15 seconds orbs that are such a pain. The 30 to 60 seconds until eject I can deal with. I've been flying Kelly Shergood's EC-135. Kelly has made it as realistic as she can. It has a ground effect and SL wind pushes it around. That makes it really hard to land in tight places or so I think at this point. So, I'm way happy with this landing.

I went Premium. I was buying L$ before I got Premium. So, there was a net savings for me. I LOVE getting into crowded events.

Black Desert, WoW, and other games have combat. I find it rigid. True some don't have lag like SL. But, those that offer less rigid and more free form combat, like Eve and Star Citizen, have horrendous lag as the number of players and action increases. The problems are similar to SL’s. The basic complaints about SL come when people compare SL to other games. Making an equitable comparison isn’t easy and those that want to complain ignore the technical differences when making their comparisons, or simply don’t understand the tech. WoW’s combat tends to be player verses AI bad guys, as does BD. We do not have good NPC’s and AI is painful to develop in SL. But, users get to totally control it, have great freedom in design, and simplicity. The MMO vehicle games I know of are ALL limited to professionally designed vehicles and environments. Most are limited to 8 concurrent players for any given combat/competition. A user can’t get out of their car wearing clothes they made and dance a victory dance they animated nor have role-play-sex with the trophy girl in the backseat using 600 different animations. SL’s flexibility comes at a cost and should be part of any comparison. The top 5 MMO vehicle games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fapcgilpZxs In SL things are limited more by the user/designer than the system, which does have problems. For instance, most helicopters use simple SL controls and are easy to fly. SL basic simple vehicles are basic and simple. However, one doesn’t have to stick with the system’s basic and simple. Shergood has built their own movement engine to provide much more realistic flight than any other helicopter in SL, at least that I’ve seen. So, users can make better things and get better results. But, for a generic all-purpose game engine, SL has had to make compromises that dedicated narrow purpose games don’t. SL trades some performance for flexibility. Most other MMO’s reduce flexibility and user control for performance. Most of the top MMO’s using vehicles limit users to 8 per server/shard. Limit the SL users in an area and fill it with ONLY professionally developed content and vehicles and what kind of performance do you get? Most of us here are arguing opinion and not bothering with the facts and actual technically equitable comparisons.

Tablets don't 'run' SL viewers. But, they can do a remote desktop thing or Bright Canopy. Meaning another computer runs the viewer and the tablet accesses the other computer. You might find a used PC for US$100-150 that would run SL. Probably not well. EBay is where I would look. I suspect you'll have to be in teh $250 to $350 range to run SL on medium to low settings. For general Internet the Chromebooks work well and they are cheap. But, unfortunately they won't run any SL viewer.

Bolding is mine... Over my time in SL I've seen this said many times by many different people. The idea that a high end PC is required isn't true. SL can lag a new top-end game machine as well as it can a 10-year old computer. It isn't the viewer that is the problem nor the servers. It is the content. Novice designers just don't optimise their creations. If we had ONLY the optimized content seen in professionally built games, the SL engine would provide amazing performance. There are things the render engine could do better. It isn't newest tech. It doesn't use the newest video card features. The reason is the Lab is making it possible for more older systems to run SL. Hardly anything to do... all my possible responses would be so derogatory. If one hasn't flown across in SL in a plane or sailed in a boat, they have no idea how much stuff is here. I'm trying to fly my helicopter around all the continents. It is taking some time as there is so much stuff I'm curious about and I keep stopping. People with boats collect on islands and dance and talk. A whole crew of people play Get the Freight Out using planes, copters, boats, and trucks. There is a ton of combat games for the shooters and strategists to the role players and mechanized robots. The dancing, singing, music, karaoke, custom competitions, photo contests... There is way more to do than anyone can list.

Yeah... SL is soooo kinky...

There is no good way to copy a mesh avatar. The classic avatar can be exported. While it is possible to rez all your mesh body parts and piece them together for a statue, you will be missing the SHAPE. Some mesh makers add a script to keep their work from being rezzed in-world. It can only be attached. So, that may not be possible. To get a statue that looks like your avatar wearing its mesh body parts... not happening for now. Those dev's attending the Content Creators meetings are asking for animesh that uses shapes. I expect to get that feature just before we get mirrors. Even if that does happen, it still may not work as we would like.

It isn't clear exactly what you are experiencing. Can't walk... that comes in several forms. There is one form where you are sort of stuck in place. You can spin but not move. This usually is a sign of an incomplete login... not to SL but incomplete to the region. The servers didn't hand you off to the nest region as well as they should. Relogging is the solution. This can be a connection problem on your side or a problem with the region on their side. Lost packets can cause similar problems. If you login in and see it, immediately log out. Look at the summary in the viewer log to see if you had a high rate of packet loss. I suggest the quick logout so you can catch a bunch of packets only lost in the login sequence. This is when the server can get confused and have trouble connecting. Check your script load. Hopefully <3MB. Flying a helicopter with a large avatar script load results in some really weird hangups crossing regions. I'll think I've recovered only to find I'm stuck and can't really move. They are working on making region crossings better and have making some changes in the crossing code. I used to be able to survive a double crossing. Now a double crossing is almost a certain fail. (Double crossings are when you move out of a region near the corner of 4 regions, clip a tiny part of the second then pass into the third. Crossing code gets you from one region to another, walking flying, or teleporting. If there is a hiccup, things get weird. Find a place where you can reproduce the problem each time. Then describe in detail where, when, and how you are entering the region.

I would like to BoM handle materials. But, that is REALLY complicated. Consider what normal maps should pass through to the surface and which shouldn't? VPL or not? The same with specular maps. Then if an upper layer is transparent, what does that do the normal and spec maps? How do you bake multiple normal maps together? What if specular maps in partially transparent areas are different colors? My opinion is for this all to work well,the designers will have to supply a lot more information to the baker about what to do. I see no easy way for it to work in a generic way. So, any way they go we'll have painful restrictions. The hurry... the point of BoM is to provide a pathway to eliminate the onion-skin bodies and heads, with some hope of eliminating the HUD's and scripts. So, to reduce render load on the viewer and scripting load on the simulators. In the classic avatar days it was easy to have an outfit with no scripts. Now it have trouble keeping it under 3MB of scripts. With a mesh head I'm near 4MB. Appliers can just apply normal and specular maps. So, skin could be BoM system items and an applier could handle the material. But, how do we adjust the amount? We are back to some scripts in the attacments. I think this is one of those cases where the Lindens don't really understand what it is about fashion-area mesh that we like. They may surprise me and it may be me that has missed how this will turn out. But, for now I am skeptical.

If one is not selling into a specific market segment it is hard to know what is happening. We guess a lot. But, I would say my empirical information is Hourglass has more stuff. I did buy an Hourglass body recently to try some Scandalize and other clothes made for Hourglass and not Original. But, I can't get past that wasp-like waist. It looks way too cartoony. The Slink recommended workflow is to make stuff for the Original body and then only minor tweaks are needed to adapt for Hourglass. So, I'm not sure why some are skipping Original. BoM... I am ambivalent... I like the materials property of mesh bodies. There are no materials for the classic body. So, the bake engine doesn't bake materials. We will still be able to use appliers to add normal and specular maps. So, we can still have wet skin with water drops. But, then it will be a mix of BoM and applier. That may be more complex than what we have now. Lingerie and swimsuit appliers are making use of materials. Some shirts and pants made to be worn under a jacket or other clothes do also. So......... we may not see the final version of BoM for some time. Will it take off before they figure out how to handle materials? I don't know. I'm hesitant to jump on this wagon.

One of the interesting things about shapes... if you have the perms, you can export the shape settings as an XML file. There is human/machine readable text file. So, there is a line in the file about 'Body Fat', an appearance setting, and a value that is what you set the Appearance slider to for that attribute. All the sliers are listed in the XML file. You can use a text editor and modify the file. For me it was an experiment to get the head and body slider values separated into a head and body files. I found that an incomplete file, some settings left out, can be uploaded and used. No problem. Now I can use the head-maker's shape file and overlay it with my body shape.

I was surprised nobody knows you on Flickr. Too cute an avatar to hide.

Rolig is likely right about it being a feedback problem. This issue can go beyond the viewer and be a Windows or local computer settings issue. So, Google for computer microphone feedback. If you want to get the newest version of the Linden viewer with voice updates see: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers Second Life Voice Viewer version 5.1.8.518310 This is an RC version so it should be OK for everyday use.

I think the technical possibilities have been eliminated. So, maybe it is human error. I don't mean any disrespect, but these are your first posts and if you friend is as new... The viewer now has over 3,000 controls. So, everyone has human error problems sooner or later. So, it is a logical next check. Have your friend send you or post a screenshot. See if they are looking in the wrong place. Have your friend remove their viewer's settings file. This will revert the viewer to the default settings. If the settings file is 'moved' rather than 'deleted' the settings can be restored later. We have a number of posts here, in the forum, on how to do that.

Fishergate had 3 restarts about 45 minutes apart.

Oh, WAY cute...

Oh... WELL... that breaking eggs thing obviously had to go...

I think what the problem is, is well described. But, what does one do about it? So, as to what can be done about it... In the marketplace are free script... scales... counters. A free one is here. Third-Party viewers also have a counter in the avatar's right-click menu. These will help you know what you are wearing. Then there is the matter of how hard are the scripts working and which are the memory hogs. To see that info you need to right-click the ground, not the floor, select About Land and then Script Info then Avatar. You'll see a list of scripts with memory use, name, and attachment point. You Do Not have to be in the land where you click the ground, any ground will do... within the region you are in. Next is the matter of eliminating scripts from things. Most of the tutorials I know of were made in 2012 and 2013. I wrote mine here. Nothing relevant has changed since then. You'll find it isn't hard to remove scripts from Mod-OK items. I explain how in the article. The No-Mod items are the pain. Generally, if there is no option to do so provided by the maker then they cannot be removed. That makes it important to check the demo before buying. Check whether Mod-OK and for an option to remove scripts if No-Mod. The No-Mod thing has a twist or two. Unfortunately, most clothes and shoes are truely No-Mod. So, nothing works. But, some things are are Mod-OK with No-Mod scripts inside. The result is the overall status of the item is No-Mod. But, you can open (rez then edit) the item and drag the scripts into inventory effectively removing the scripts from the item. Turning scripts off... technically that is setting a script to 'Not running'. But, you have to have Mod-rights to do that and most scripts are provided as No-Mod. Fortunately, most things with scripts are idle. They sit quietly and listen. Decently made scripts listen on quite channels (there are like 2 million channels for listening), so do almost no work except when the HUD is talking to them. It isn't an issue. The problem of concern is the memory they require. They use server resources. They complicate teleports (regions crossing of any kind). So, less memory use is better.

Our Windlight will change in the next 2 maybe 6 months. The EEP (Enhanced Environment Project) is in viewer Interface Design and backend services are being changed. Once those are updated we will have a new Windlight that behaves differently and I think only uses the existing saved Windlight settings as things to import. How Windlight works will change too. As it is now we have Linden Windlight and Firestorm Enhanced Windlight. The result will be a more flexible Windlight that can be scripted for individual avatars and region zones (altitude: o-999m.1,000-1,999m etc). So, it will have aspects of Firestorm WL and some RLV like controls for region appearance.

In most cases the viewer simply finds the controller and it works. You have to tweak some of the values to adjust sensitivity to your preferences. However, having more than a mouse and keyboard connected before you hook up the XBox controller can confuse the viewer. The Xbox should be no more than the third thing. If you have more than one joystick-like device then the viewer chooses whichever it thinks has the higher priority. AFAIK there is no way to control that other than disconnecting devices. If Windows cannot find the device, the viewer won't either. Use Windows' Device Manager and look in the Human Interface Devices. If it is not showing, you'll need to Google how to get it working with Windows.

Display names with odd characters in them often get reverted to the previous name.

@sthashan I'm not clear on whether you have a laptop or desktop... From what you've said and specs, I am thinking laptop. But, one does not change the 'graphics card' in a laptop. In laptops the NVIDIA graphics is a chip mounted on the motherboard. So, replaceable only with same model of chip. So, what are "they" saying? Also, you did not mention if you set up an NVIDIA game profile for your viewer. That leaves some of us wondering if the NVIDIA chip is in use or the HD Graphics in the CPU. From an earlier post I think you are running on NVIDIA. Presumably in any other game or app the color is OK. So, it is not a general hardware problem. Other viewers do this, so not likely software or settings. So, we have eliminated everything I can think of... hardware - server and client, software, connection... You might setup an Alt for the techies to use and see if a local shop can figure it out.

Wild Orchid makes some mesh, applier, flexi gowns. Some are gorgeous.

Still a big jump between 6 and 8... I would check it a few times a day. Preferably in the SLT AM. I would bet that line 7 is Level3.net router is still having problems. Save your results. If it doesn't clear up talk to your ISP's support and Linden support. Let them see where the slow down is and they will likely get it fixed. I am guessing between 6 and 7 is the handoff for crossing the pond. So, that 130+ms add could be normal...

Glad it fixed. The Windows update probably didn't fix the issue, but may be. I suggest you run the TRACERT again and see what it shows. Lines 2 and 6 are common for routers that do not send back ID info. But, line 7 shows a problem. So, there was a problem in the Level3.net service. That single point was adding 130+/- ms to your parket travel time. Plus it appears it was dropping packets. I tend to suspect they were the problem.