Nalates Urriah

I often use Google Chrome's Remote Desktop to access my main computer from an Android phone and my HP laptop. The app is free and works well. It is a little bit of a pain to setup and f umble through the first time. After that it is easy. I find that using SL on the laptop via Remote is marginally slower than just running SL on the Laptop. But, I can push the render quality up on the desktop and have a nicer image on the laptop than when limited by the laptops HD Graphics. There are other remote desktop access programs. I've used a few for my self and to support clients. I've pretty much settled on Google's Remote Desktop.

The Lab and some third party developers track crash stats on their viewers. 64-bit viewers have a much lower crash rate then 32-bit viewers. Using a 64-bit operating system helps 32-bit viewers crash less often. In general many viewer problems are memory related. 64-bit systems can spread out and use more memory generally avoiding problems longer than 32-bit systems. Having a lower crash rate does not mesn they have better performance. But, having lots of memory in the system can improve viewer performance. 32-bit systems are limited to a 4gb memory space. Taking out room for the OS the apps have 3.5gb to work in. 64-bit systems are generally only limited by what the motherboard can handle, typically 64gb. Taking out 0.5gb for the OS that leaves 63gb for apps. I don't know of anything the 32-bit Firestorm Viewer can do that the 64 bit can't...

Lots of info on the hardware... it all looks good. The viewer has various log files you can read to get an idea of what has gone wrong. Look at the log immediately after you crash or exit the viewer. Logs are replaced the next time a viewers starts. You’ll find the logs in: C:\Users\[Win_login_ID]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\ crashreport.log – This log is generated when the viewer crashes, the previous version of the file is overwritten. Rename this file if you plan to restart the viewer before examining the file. Otherwise, just read it with a text viewer (Notepad is good). debug_info.log – This file is internally formatted as an XML file. I never find it of much use. It is mostly the specs of your machine. SecondLife.log – This is the main log file. I find it the most useful. Start from the end of the file and work toward the beginning. Search for ‘WARNING’ and ‘ERROR’. With any luck the messages there will give you an idea of the problem. Recent changes have added section heading to parts of the file that can identify the general nature of the problem. There are lots of performance stats included. At the end of a non-crash log there are secession stats; Run Time, Average Packet Size, Dropped Packets, Resent Packets, etc. The file is replaced and recreated for each viewer secession. SecondLife.error_marker – I don’t know what information is inside. I don’t have a copy to examine as I write this. The presence of the file indicates where, when, and what error happened. I think this is a disaster backup file for crash reporting in which information about the crash is retained in the event the crash handlers are destroyed before they can create the other more complete crash files. SecondLife.start_marker – There is no information inside. The presence of the file indicates how far into the start process the viewer has gotten. Whether the file exists or not is the pertinent information. SecondLifeCrashReport.log – This is another file internally formatted to XML. It is created when the viewer crashes. I think this is the new version of the crash log. It is mostly text. stats.log – This is a short file containing network statistics. Similar information is in other log files. It is an easy to read set of stats that show how many packets were dropped and resent in a secession. I find the SecondLife.log is the most useful file for tuning and troubleshooting the viewer. It is verbose and reasonably easy to understand. There is a Debug Setting in the viewer that allows you to increase or decrease the level of reporting. Most of these files are erased when the viewer starts. If you plan to send the files in with a trouble ticket or bug report, place copies in another folder before starting the viewer. Marker files are temporary and may or may not exist at any given time. They indicate when the viewer died and stopped reporting. Entries in the files associated with errors and warnings are labeled as such. That makes them easy to find by searching. Warning entries are common and do NOT necessarily mean there is a problem. Some warnings are a part of normal operation. Some errors are trivial and do not indicate a ‘noticeable’ problem in the viewer’s operation.

I find your question a bit ambiguous. From the asnwers I take it others do too. Whichever viewer you are using, you can set the size of the snapshot when you are taking it. At this point ratio is NOT a criteria. You can use any raio you want. You just have to decide on the image dimensions. Ratio only becomes a problem when you want to display the shot in-world. We normally apply the image/texture to a prim. So, if we capture the image as 1024 wide by 512 high (2:1) then we need to make the prim 2m wide and 1m tall (also 2:1). The prim can also be 4m x 2m, 8m x 4m, etc. all being 2:1 ratios. The displayed image will look like what you captured, no proporational squish or stretch. While it is possible to use any ratio you want, the quality of the image when dispayed in SL can degrade if you don't also consider how the SL system stores images. The system will only allow power of 2 sizes... meaning 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and 1024. The system maxs out at 1024. Width or hight can be any of these dimensions. Larger images are down sized and pixels discarded, which translates to lower quality. If you use other dimentions, like 1024x450 (2.75:1), the system will store the image as 1024x256 (4:1) or 512 (2:1)... I'm not sure which but, I suspect SL will always down size. The problem with that is you lose pixels. So, if you size your prim to hold the 2.75:1 ratio you captured to make the image 'look' right the system has to 'interpolate' pixels and the SL system is not very good at doing that... loss of quality, fuzzier image. I think most of us take whatever image we want at whatever size we happen to like at the time. Then for those images we display in-world we use GIMP, PAINT.NET, Photoshop, or some other image editor to crop the image to a power of 2 size and the ratio we want.

A new version of the Linden Oculus Viewer has been released 7/2016: Second Life Project OculusRift Viewer version 4.1.0.317313. Also see my blog. Look in categories to find all the related articles.

To answer technical questions we need information about the computer and which viewer you are using. Open the viewer and before logging in click HELP->ABOUT... and copy paste that information into your post. Click OPTIONS in the upper right to get to the EDIT option. Have you tried logging into a different region? The problem may be the login destination region. Have you given it a couple of hours? Many problems in SL are transient and will self correct. Have you tried a different viewer? Have you restarted the computer and router/gateway?

You can enable and disable member-role's ability to open chat. So, if most are in the EVERYONE role, you could disable that portion of the membership from posting. But, I don't know if that will stop people that have essentually logged into the group by posting. I'm not sure what you consider out of hand. Presumably, there is someone fanning the flames. Most groups give the person a warning. If they persist, they ban/eject them. In most cases only a very few people create most of the problems. Once those are out the group tend to run smoothly.

The Linden made Oculus Viewer is now well over a year out of date and I suspect incompatible with the retail Oculus Rift. For several months the lead SL Linden has been promising an update. It isn't here yet... The only 3rd party viewer supporting Oculus has discontinued the viewer. That developer is playing in HIgh--Fidelity. So... those with a Rift wait...

As the question is your first post I'll assume you're pretty new. So, the long explanation is in order. There are two different types of avatars in SL. There are the sort of new starter avatars, which have what we call mesh bodies or we just call them mesh avatars. There are also the older avatars which we call classic avatars. The classic avatar skeleton and skin are the base avatar for both mesh and classic and have been around since the start of Second Life. When using a new mesh body the skin of the classic avatar is hidden behind it. As the classic body will poke-through the mesh body when animated the classic body is hidden using alpha layers. Clothes and skin made for the classic avatar are a texture/image applied to the classic mesh surface as a tat or shirt or other system clothing item. We call these clothes and skins classic, system clothes or skin. You can think of the images as being like decals stuck on the mesh surface that makes up the classic body's skin. If you use GIMP or Photoshop you are familiar with layers. The classic body and clothes system uses layers. In the classic avatar the skin is the bottom layer. On top of that we composite the tattoo, undershirt, shirt, and jacket layers. We can also wear ‘attachments’ on top of all those layers. Over the classic avatar body and those ‘system’ layers the mesh avatar places a new mesh surface, which is literally just another attachment. The attachment can be a head, hands, feet, body, all of them, or any combination. When wearing a mesh body and/or parts there are two similar surfaces which are so close to the same position we have to hide the classic surface as it pokes through the new style mesh avatar’s surface when the avatar moves. It’s a basic limitation of modeling and animating in all 3D worlds. It is just the state of the technology we have. Note, this hiding also hides the system clothes applied to the classic skin. The viewer always applies system skin, tats, shirt, etc. to the system or classic avatar’s surface. This is why when you wear a mesh avatar body and make changes to system clothes you see no change. The change happened on the classic avatar skin/surface, which is HIDDEN UNDER the attached mesh body/skin/surface. Special skins and clothes are needed for use with the newer style mesh avatars. With mesh clothes another mesh surface is placed over both the classic and new style mesh skins. A rigged mesh top should fit over both skins. A rigged mesh jacket will be another surface that fits over all the surfaces below/inside it. We use 'Appliers' (a HUD that usually comes with a skin or other item like a blouse) to place textures/images on the new surface that makes up the avatar's new mesh body skin. The HUD does for the mesh body what the viewer does for the classic body, put textures on it. Unfortunately, skins and clothes made for the classic avatar generally won't work with the new mesh avatar skin. The skin makers are modifying classic skins they made to work with Appliers they build, which put the skins on the new mesh avatars. We are seeing most new skins including both a classic skin and a mesh Applier HUD that works with various bodies. Mesh clothes can be used with the new mesh avatars and classic avatars. How well they do or don't fit each varies. System clothes can only be used with the system/classic avatar, unless they come with an Applier. If all this seems unnecessarily complicated... you're sort of right and the thinking is understandable. But, the necessity for it comes from the Lab's habit of making all new things as backward compatible as possible. Classic avatars came first. We are now in a transition to newer things. We expect these complications to be removed in the coming SL2/Project Sansar.

Bobbie's answer is a good first step. Also, use the Detination Guide or type in a region name for your login destination. The region you are atempting to log into may be having problems, which can result in odd error messages. Your first error message is about a connection problem. So, you, your ISP, or the Lab has a problem. Having a good Internet connection is not the samething as having a good connection to the SL servers. Before you start ripping yuor cmputer appart or yelling at your ISP, go through these steps to find where the problem is: http://blog.nalates.net/2011/10/26/troubleshoot-your-sl-connection/ SL sometiems has problems that last from minutes to hours. So, be slow to start tearing things appart in you computer. Add a second viewer and try that. Restart computer and routers/gateways. But, don't start re-installing viewers and clearing cache and other destructive things until you KNOW what is wrong.

SL is not going to be telling you what to do. SL is an exellent example of a free world. The Learning and Social islands are schools teaching basic skills. Using teleport is like learning to use a transit system. You learn all about he transit system but not where to go. Destinations are your choice. So, what you need is a list of destinations and ways to find your way back to places you like. The Destination Guide is the list. There is an in-viewer PLACES icon and web version of the Guide. To tell you how to use the in-viewer guide we need to know which viewer you are using. Since this is your first post we can assume it is the default Linden Viewer. Later you will need to click HELP-ABOUT... and copy--paste that info in with your questions. Pick a destination and start clicking... If you are on the web, you will find the viewer launching and you'll log into the destination. If the viewer is already open, you are asked if you want to teleport. If you use the in-viewer guilde (Places) you'll be asked if you are ready to teleport on selection of a destination. To be able to return to places we use LANDMARKS and Teleport History. You create landmarks by click the top menu's WORLD and then Landmark. This adds a destination marker to your Landmarks folder in inventory. Later you can click that Landmark (LM) to return to the place you were standing when you made it. Teleport History is in the PLACES Panel. The history is viewer oriented and each viewer has its own list of past places you have visited. The lists can be different as a place is only in that viewer's list if you used that viewer to go there. You can add a place to your Favorites so that the LM shows in the viewer menus. Where is dependent on your viewer but, generally in or near the top menu. You can also use SEARCH. Click the in-viewer or web search and search for places. The viewer and web search allow you to narrow your search to Places. Look to the right side of the search input field. You may type somethng like horse ranch. You will get a list of places related to your keywords.

When you ask a question about the viewer we need to know a bunch about the viewer and computer to answer with more than a generic guess. Start the viewer and before or after login click HELP->About... and copy that information. Paste it into your post using OPTIONS in the upper right of the post. I don't know of any viewer that offers the option to avoid 'unknown content'. All content in SL is known to the servers. Uploads to SL are virus checked and format verified. So, the possibility of something unknown being is SL is very small. But, most content in SL is unknown to the viewer until it downloads and caches it. Check you anti-virus program. A quick test is to disable your AV for 10 minutes and try entering the region that causes the error to pop. There are some third party viewers that block unknown music sources/streams because those come from outside SL. The main Linden viewer does ot have that option. With tird party viewers ask in the viewer's support group in-world.

You don't tell us which viewer you are using or anything about your computer. When asking tech or performance problems include information about your viewer and computer. Click the viewer's HELP->ABOUT... and paste that info into your post. Use OPTIONS in the upper right of the post to edit. When viewers crash you can look in the viewer logs to find the reason.

First, get us the hard data to make some decisions about. Open the viewer and before or after login click HELP->ABOUT... and copy paste that info into your post. Options in the upper right has the post-edit feature. Too get to a solution faster look at Firestorms tips for improving performance: http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/fs_very_laggy http://wiki.phoenixviewer.com/preferences_display_tab The FS Support people find the biggest problem is people setting their Draw Distance way too high. At max draw distance even the hottest game machines drop FPS into the 10 to 20 range and lower. Also, with lots of people in the area most machines will slow. Thus the new Avatar Complexity Limit setting in graphics preferences. Some avatars have rediculous render cost. When I am all decked out in mesh body and clothes I typically have an ACI <100k. But, in various places I see avatars with ACI >500k. The basic nude classic avatar has an ACI of about 1k... So, you may be having to render a scene with thousands of times more render cost than is reasonable and likely 10's of thousands time complex than GTA. So Avatar Impostures is an important setting. No one should have that set to UNLIMITED. A high value like 300k is good, when performance is NOT an issue. Using unlimited puts you at risk to video crashers used by griefers. Many people with a hot machine think it should run SL at top speed at max settings. But, GTA and other similar games' content is designed by professionals. SL content is designed by a majority that are novices and if they know anything about 3D model optimization it isn't much. So, perfoamance in SL is NOT comparable to other games becaue of who is designing the content. Your machine is way more than adequite to run SL well at good FPS... >20. There are people getting 100FPS with 970 and 980 video cards and i3 and i5 CPU's. But, no one is running Sl at the FPS rates they see in GTA and similar games. I suspect your biggest problem is your NVIDIA settings. See: NVIDIA Settings 2016

There is another more informative thread where Whirly and others are debating this topic. See THIS. Rather than delete the crash logger, delete everything in the Program Files->SecondLifeViewer folder. Then reinstall the viewer. This is NOT a clean install and will not change your settings or chat logs. The problem is an old version of the crash logged is hanging and never shutting down. When you install a new version of the viewer it cannot update the 'in use' file. There is no telling how old you crash logger is. The cleaning and reinstall I'm recommending, not a real clean install, will make sure the crash logger gets updated. I suggest you restart your computer just before deleting the contents of the install folder. That resets your computer and closes all processes.

3 or 4 versions back I saw someone saying cleaning out the SL program install folder and reinstalling the viewer would speed it up. I figured that was worth a try. I generally just install a Linden Viewer update. No uninstall, cleanup, or anything extra. I've done that for years. When installing I would see my viewer install popping errors. I learned I could hit ignore and when I got to the end of the install the viewer would run. Apparently files were in use during the install in spite of my viewer shut down. Thus the install errors. After I cleaned out the SL viewer program folder and reinstalled that problem of install errors stopped. And the viewr did run faster. This suggests to me that some part of the viewer was not getting updated. I suppose some similarity to this problem is why Firestorm recommends a clean install with each new version.

I was not able to get the cache location parameters to work with the Linden viewer. Of course, it doesn't matter now they have fixed the problem. It is good to know they work with Firestorm.

Wow... you are opening a can of worms. The Lab is currently in the process of completing Project Bento. They have added new bones and attachments points to the SL armature. So, EVERYTHING is changing. Next, the current avatar in use in SL has almost no bones in the head. Facial animation is handled by morphing shape. There no way to load in an animation or script that controls the morphing. All the 3D modeling programs provide ways to handle morphs. But, there is no way to get morph information into SL. The Lab's solution to this lack of user morph control is Project Bento. See the SL Wiki: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Project_Bento_Testing The first link to Bento goes to my blog. I have videos of some of the Project Bento user group meetings. Inara Pey at Living in a Modem World has audio and written summaries of the meeting discussion. For information on yur to rig in SL, refer to YouTube. Look for Gaia Clary and/or Medhue. They have video tutorials on rigging and related SL issues. Gaia is the maker of AvaStar and has the Machinimatrix.org site. There are free and retail classes offered. It is Blender oriented. But, rigging is rigging no mater the modeling program. It just becomes a mater of where the tools are in which menu. Cathy Foil makes MayaStar. I don't know if she has made any tutorials.

You are likely being caught by a scaling error in the SL download/upload processes. Otherwise your thinking is good. This article explans the problem and how to check to see if you are running into a scaling issue in upload: http://blog.nalates.net/2013/04/23/second-life-shape-export/

If you tried to login while they were updating the servers, you are likely to have login problems. Try another region and/or wait. Once the servers restart you should be able to login. Check grid status for the time of the rolling restarts. See: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/Status-Grid/bg-p/status-blog Rolling restarts star between 6 and 7 AM Pacific Time (also SL Time) Tuesdays and last 3 or 4 hours. RC channel servers are updated Wednesdays starting about the same time but only lasting 1 or 2 hours. Either day the entire grid is unstable and odd errors will popup. When a server restarts they place a lot of load on the other backend systems. If the problem is ACTUALLY your computer clock and the time displayed looks right, then check that you have your time zone set correctly. Most computer systems work off Universal Time and display time converted to local time. So, a wrong time zone can create a problem you can't see. I've no idea what a clock, firewall error is... You can test whether it is a firewall issue by turning off your firewall and attempting a login. Provided your computer is current with updates, the risk is small.

Mesh has probably changed the demand for textures. SL Builders have a greater need for textures they can use in 3D Max, Blender, and Maya than previously. Before mesh all those builders would be looking for their textures inside SL. Now they need textures they can legally use in modeling programs to make the texture maps they bring in. Most CGI texure sites have licences that prohit the texture's use in SL, because of the ToS the Lab uses. Basically the objectional part is that any texture uploaded to SL becomes the non-exclusive property of Linden Lab to use how ever they choose and that is forever. That creates a number of problems for people making and selling textures. While it can be argued that the Lab is not and never will be in the texture selling business, not knowing what the Lab may do with a texture triggers many people's fears. Also, those that may have a future need for exclusive ownership of a texture have a problem with the Lab's ToS. So, there is a market outside SL for textures that can be used within SL.

Open your viewer. Before or after login you can click HELP->ABOUT... and copy the information there. It tells us about your computer and the drivers you are using. We need that info have any chance of figuring out what is wrong. If you can't get the viewer to launch, gather the data using this info: http://www.howtogeek.com/205355/how-to-see-a-list-of-all-installed-windows-drivers/ Also, CPU-Z and GPU-Z will read the hardware and tell you what makes up your computer. Since we don't know what your using check the system requirements for SL. While SL will run on 32 and 64 bit Win 7, if you have upgraded the computer and have an older HD Graphics chip, you may not be able to start some viewer and just get the graphics problem.

Your RL name and user ID do NOT have to be the same. What we see, KellysKM, is the user ID. If you made it the same as you RL name, it is a problem you created. It is a gotcha, so don't feel bad. But, there is nothing to be done about it... meaning it cannot be changed. The fix is to open an ALT account, SL lingo meaning alternate avatar. It is common practice of users. Some have an Alt for business purposes. Others so they can get kinky. Others so they can be a pest. And others, like you, because OOPS, I didn't realize... Some use an avatar with payment info for business. They have a play Alt for other purposes and transfer money from the business avatar to the play avatar as needed. But, to take money out of SL, you will need to provide RL ID. That doesn't mean you have to use a user ID that reveals your RL name/ID. Sorry you got bit.

What do you mean the computer was OK'd by SL? The system requirements are here: https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/index.php? While there are motherboards that use two i5 cpu's, they would not be ideal for running SL. A more efficient and common system would have 1 cpu and 2 video cards. Duel cpu systems are typically a setup for a file server, not a gaming machine. Most of the duel cpu boards I looked at have very little or no support for duel video cards ans weak support for video in general. The requirements for Oculus are here: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Oculus-Rift-System-Requirements-Announced-71938.html Basically a single i5 and NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater.

You don't give us enough information to tell you why. We need to know which OS and what video card and driver. So, all we can do is guess. If you are on a laptop, do you have a settng in your video card's control panel to go into performance mode when running SL? Also, look at the system requirements https://secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/index.php?