Nalates Urriah

Mesh body parts are surprisingly interchangeable. So, mix and match bodies work well. With mesh heads designers matched the neck to the classic body, well nearly all of them did. Bodies were designed to work with the classic head-neck because so many of us started with mesh hands and feet then got a mesh body but, stayed with the classic head for some time. The point is almost any mesh head will work with most any mesh body. The only complication to mixing brands of body and head is skin. You have to find skin with an Applier for both brands. Fortunately, Omega covers the major brands and provides Omega Relays for smaller brands.

I had to do this with my old, couple of models back computer. It works well enough. Being able to save graphics settings as presets makes this way easier. Even now I have Draw Distance (DD) reduced sets of settings for shopping, exploring, and general use. I have some longer DD with varied LoD settings for photography.

At least you can see that perv-cam...

A worm farm?

Best Buy has a $500 unit that should actually be pretty decent. Lenovo - 330S-15IKB 15.6" Laptop. The i5-8250U is an 8th gen CPU with the current best HD Graphics available. You could drop back to an older CPU and cut a bunch off the price. Dell Latitude 3450 i5-5200u - 5th gen CPU. A 7th gen CPU is here: Dell 15.6" Inspiron 15 5000 (i5-7100u) You have to watch the number after the i3, i5, and i7. Sales peeps try to dazzle people with the i5 and skip the generation info. The 6th and 7th gen CPU's fall in between. The 5th gen is about as far back as I think you can safely go for SL. Coffee is right the amount of memory is important. HD Graphics has no dedicated video memory. It uses the computers general memory. I think 16GB of RAM is a minimum. But, SL will run on these machines with 8GB and if you have a loose interpretation of "run" then even 4GB. But, 4 is really going to suck.

This is a WAY interesting interview of two of Second Life's movers and shakers... The outline with time marks for subjects is here: http://blog.nalates.net/2018/06/21/oz-and-grumpity-linden-talk/

To accomplish what I think you want, one would likely need to run an Experience. You could then attach a HUD or scripted object. It could do the detection and teleport or move the avatar. You can poll avatar status to know what the avatar is doing using llGetAgentInfo. Stand is the default condition of the avatar. So, there is no event for it. Change events are limited to just a few.

You are observing and jumping to an unsubstantiated conclusion. You've been around long enough to know better (2012). Your inventory is a list of text information. The name of the item, some attributes, and the UUDI make up an entry item. The actual item and its data is in the assets servers. Looking at my 28MB inventory cache with 53k items suggests the average entry is 512B long. (SL Inventory API) Downloading a 28MB file is NOT a time consuming task. This file is checked at login and if you have logged in with another viewer and changed something in inventory a check or download will be run. When downloading a small inventory versus a large inventory one is talking 5 or 10 seconds different at most. This only happens at login. Lag in general is something different that happens after login. Other checks only happen after you open your inventory. As current internet speeds are rated at tens of Mb per second... Once downloaded the viewer and server only communicate about inventory when you are using it. Transfers at that point in time are minimal. There are a number of things that build up as you use your viewer. A couple are Friends List and Contacts. Work has been done to reduce lag from Contacts. But, the Contacts app does communicate with the servers to update who is online. So, there is more lag from Contacts than there ever will be from inventory. Years ago a common tip for improving performance was to delete Contacts. Changes to the viewer-servers has depreciated that recommendation. The Friends List is having its challenges and suffers from some bugs. But, it is checking with the server to see who is online, friends online, people in the region, and tracking the location of Friends with location privileges. So, it too is more a creator of lag then inventory. So, your problem opening inventory and making landmarks is NOT an inventory problem. Nor will those problems reduce by reducing inventory. BUT, you are most welcome to think inventory is the cause and continue to suffer from the problems. When your tired of the problems and willing to give up your belief it is caused by the size of your inventory, there will be people here willing to help.

The big money is in commerce and sex, like RL. Land is a lucrative business. But, the Lindens are working to drive down the cost of land. So that is a changing market. For some that spells opportunity. But, opportunity is a risk-reward sort of thing. Training is definitely a business field in SL. So, there are possibilities. Figuring out market demand to predict a return on your investment, time and/or money, is difficult. Try searching on terms people might use to find your planned training. See your competition and find out what they charge. Pay attention to the paid ads that come up on the right-side of the results. If you find schedules for the training classes check out attendance. Builders Brewery and Firestorm Viewer classes are probably the more popular classes and best attended. One-on-one training is probably more of a forum type job offer/request. There is a section in the forum for that. Check out those places and see how they are doing things and their results. Hanging out... the where depends on personal taste. Finding where people are isn't hard. In Destinations (web or viewer) look in What's Hot Now, Chat Hot Spots. In the viewer these are listings of where avatars are now that isn't too crowded to get into. Once a busy region hits max population it falls off the list. So, popular events are seldom in the list. Lag creates anomalies in the listing. On the web it is a raw list ignoring population. Linden Landing Hubs usually have 10 to 30 people. But, these tend to be rough places with newbies and griefers targeting newbies. I can't say definitively but it seems Linden Governance keeps a quick response time for these areas to reduce abuse. And they have a good measure of spammers advertising their 'business' to newbies. There are various Hubs. Use search set to Place and search on Hub. These are less popular but some are busy. Most are interesting.

Editing thigs is a basic skill for SL. There are a couple of tricks that save you from mistakes and allow you to learn. The more important being to edit copies. This means it is important you buy Copy-OK. The tricks to editing attachments are explained here - 2012. Things haven't really changed. You'll see sizing and movement/placement. Even No-Mod things can be placed. Only rigged mesh cannot be placed/moved or sized.

You aren't clear as to whether you are using the shape and skin with a mesh or classic body. How the tat is applied totally depends on which body you are using.

@Kytteh Wytchwood I like LittleMe's answer. You could try to coax a Linden into coming by this thread... File a trouble ticket... you'll have to fudge the category. Explain your question and point to this thread. Ask they forward your ticket to those Lindens running the contest and ask they answer here. Lindens tend to avoid having to answer questions person-by-person and favor answering for groups. Other options are looking to see which Lindens or residents posted what regarding the contest. Your looking for official-type postings. Contact them. Lindens are busy and hate getting tied up in squishy preference questions. So be clear and crisp and try for yes/no answers. From this thread you should get an idea what most of think. I suspect we are representative of SL, so it is reasonable to project our take on the community with a little salt. You could accept that and save yourself some effort.

A feminine-male wolf is swimming up stream. So, you have set yourself a challenge. People have pointed to brands and models that may help. But, no one has addressed the underlying challenge. People in general associate the look and shapes of a wolf as a masculine look. As you soften that look it drifts toward the appearance markers of the more feminine look people associate with a fox. You are running into that. Here you are dealing with stereotypes and other people's perceptions. You'll have to decide if you satisfy yourself and deal with people as they are OR conform to existing social markers and get the reaction you want... Since reality and the nature of people is what it is, your choices are limited when you try to meet others idea of masculine/feminine. Hopefully your talent for figuring it all out isn't so limited. Studying the things that make a wolf look wolf and which of those give the masculine and feminine look and creating feminine-male wolf look you want will hopefully give you a solution. I doubt any merchant is selling what you want or that there is a 100% successful look that will signal feminine-male wolf to everyone... but, you might find it or create it.

Yeah... the diversity in taste is amazing. Of course taste is a personal bias, but here in the fashion area we are free to dress as we choose and exercise those biases. Such tastes of freedom could corrupt several social-engineering agendas. But, it is too fun dressing up to stop.

Hair... I like ARGACE, Mina, Truth, rezology, Exile... and there are tons more Clothes... Blueberry, Adaams, [JUSTICE], KC, Layla, Blossoms, United Color, Ricielli, Scandalize, Just Because, Razor... Mesh body stuff... Slink, Maytera, GA.EG, Catwa... Shoes... N-core, BRII, Essenz... These are the brands I have been buying lately. But, new brands are popping up. To find stuff you like look at the http://iheartsl.com/ site. They are a fashion aggregator. LOTS of stuff fills their blog every day. Fashionista posts and designer posts make it into their pages. Events show up there too. In each of the stores you visit, look at the events they participate in and check those out. You'll find more brands. Get the What is she wearing? HUD. (list of the HUDs)You can see what people are wearing without bothering them. Also, a lot of people don't remember who made what dress without looking, which is tedious waiting. Open the marketplace and look. Apparel. You can see who is making LOTS of stuff. I take it as a decent indicator of who is good and selling. They make decent money they stay at it. Also, I look at a sort by RECENT to see who is active now. Also, check out the two popular threads in this forum for looks people are showing off. They often tell what they are wearing. and... There is so MUCH variety here and people tastes... well, that word 'taste' doesn't apply to some people... are wild. It is hard to recommend without knowing what look you are trying for... For really exotic looks you might start with Flickr. There is a huge SL community there. Find the SL groups and check those out. You'll find the artists/photographers/fashion chicks you like that are doing interesting stuff. Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and other social media have SL fashion communities too.

It is REALLY annoying when updates trash programs you use BrightCanopy is a retail service, monthly cost. There are programs like Google Remote Desktop that run on Android and iOS for free that access your home computer. I can run SL on my home computer from my S8 phone.

Prim stands for a parameter based object named Primitive. A primitive is a base object like a cube, sphere, cone, etc. They are built into the viewer. Press Ctrl-B to open the build panel and see the available prims. A prim's list of vertices is part of the viewer. The shape rendered depends on the attributes - parameters of the object and those are downloaded to the viewer. For a cube parameters are the X,Y,Z dimensions, color, twists, cuts, etc. A mesh object is a type of prim too. But, its list of vertices is NOT built into the viewer. We simply refer to those prims as mesh to distinguish them from the early prims built into the viewer. Mesh items have a list of vertices made in a 3D modeling program, Blender, Maya, something... The list or mesh as we call it is uploaded as a Collada file. We can make it any shape we want. Prim skirts could mean the system skirt or more likely they mean a combination of pants texture and prims. Some new dresses still use prims because they have a flexible attribute not possible with mesh. So, if the skirt swishes or moves in the wind, it is a prim skirt. Wild Orchid makes prim-applier gowns, Awesome. I don't have any pictures of a prim skirt. Short mini-skirts usually have a flap front and back to imitate clothe stretching across the legs. The flap us usually visible as it is a pain to get a color match. Mesh skirts are more flexible and form fitting. Almost always one piece. They are immune to wind and swishing.

On your search skills... it isn't you. Marketplace search is just lame. So, even if there is something unless you know the title of the product it will be hard to find and even then you may not find it via search.

Yeah... 'prim drift' is an over time thing. Not something you see in a day or two much less with a single click. There are posts here about how to deal with high altitude building and preventing prim drift.

That friend is obviously an alien logging in from an orbiting spaceship using a megawatt laser connection. That is the only plausible answer... The Internet is made up of literally billions of components. The SL system is literally made of hundreds of thousands of components spread across the continent. There are tens of thousands of people working on all those components making changes, adding new equipment, and replacing old or failing-failed equipment. At any given time 20,000+k to 50,000+k people are using some continuously varying combination of those components to connect to SL. Your friend may be lucky, a Linden Alt logging in from inside the LL network, live next door to the data center, or any number of other possibilities. Or like some people that mosquitoes don't bite this well known bug just skips biting them. We have no idea why that friend shows up. But the number times you have seen that happen and called it 'always' versus the number of failures we and the Lab have seen tells there is a bug in the system and it is region and connection related. However, the connection issue you are thinking of may not be what we are saying. There is the connection from the user to the server and the connection from the server to other backend servers within LL's network. Connection problems and time outs in the backend connection may be aggravated by user to server problems. There are too many possibilities to know and it would not be surprising to find exceptions.

...but there are dogs and cats living together...

Some key-strokes can get you into that problem accidentally. The answer to escape it has been given. But, there are things you can do with the camera you might not know about. See http://blog.nalates.net/tag/camera/ Depending on the viewer you use the Shift-ESC can do things a little differently. So, with camera problems try ESC a couple of times before pressing SHIFT.

Tutorials… there are loads of those for classic and mesh clothes on YouTube and Vimeo. Just pay attention to the date they were made. There is also the SL Wiki and the SL Forum Knowledge Base. I think they are both getting a bit out of date. But, I think they are generally the best starting points. They are a good source for file locations. Chip Midnight and Robin Woods made the most used clothing templates. A number of mesh bodies use a VERY similar template. Close enough they say in their dev kits to use those templates. Preview… There are at least two ways to preview things in SL. Most creatives use the Firestorm Viewer. With that in mind, when texturing stuff you can have the viewer render using a texture on your local drive without uploading it. It isn’t as automatic as dedicated preview software… meaning you have to do some viewer clicking when you modify a texture. There is the Preview or Beta grid named ADITI. You can login there and upload for free. Don’t get excited. We cannot transfer stuff from ADITI to the main grid AGNI. But, they do have free money… ☹ it too cannot be used on the main grid. Kits… Mesh kits usually come with .DEA (Collada) files that can be uploaded. This gets your name in the Creator slot so you get the support calls. Collada files can be imported to modeling programs and edited. Using them as a base for another product is controlled by the licensing agreement you agree to. Perception… As Alfred E. Newman said, “What? Me? Worry?”… Worry is optional. Being perceived is unavoidable. If you offend someone in the PC peeps crowd and other groups, you are going to see political/moral posturing as they rip on you in an attempt to bully/shame you into compliance. You can choose to submit those fascists or not. Region owners have control over who can be on their land. You will have to deal with their biases and bureaucracy. Remember. Only a very few region owners take such stances. You can’t know the percentage of the places you visit that have Kemono aversion. Suggestion… Go with what you want. Avoid becoming totally invested in a single look until you have enough first-hand experience to make an informed decision. Mods… Everything in SL can be a mod… Classic avatar had lame fingernails. We made mods… Mesh hands had great nails. We made mods… It is endless what the replacements and enhancements we have made. Texturing… There are the basic system clothes, a texture uploaded to SL and added to a system attachment, like a shirt. There are Appliers for mesh bodies and clothes. For those we upload a texture, capture the UUID, build a HUD, put the UUID in an Applier script for the target mesh, poke all that into an Applier. Skin… This is probably the most difficult item to make. It takes talent and a good understanding of the UVMaps/templates. For mesh bodies there is the problem of the custom mesh layouts and UV’s they use for their models. You have to get the various brands’ dev kits for skin. (Slink Kit Dev Info) Then you have to get their Applier kits and make those. Answering Questions… many of us are here to help. Answering a string of questions is no bother. Where I and people I see get frustrated with people is when they do not clearly state their question… (e.g., I can’t get in SL. What’s wrong? Answer: Do you have a computer?) Yours are clear questions easy to answer.

File a lawlawsuit... Carry a picket sigh and march in front of their store... ...every so often I do that, buy without checking the demo. Sometimes I even get away with it...

There are Classic and mesh parts. The base avatar we call 'classic'. It is all one piece. It is what you see when you take off everything that can be taken off. We started adding feet and shoes then hands. Now we have head, body, hands, feet, eyes, ears, wings, teeth... I think that is pretty much it. But, you'll find designers making various combinations of parts as a single body with the parts included. There is a lot of variation. So, you have to pay attention and try demos before buying.