Nalates Urriah

The default classic body built into the viewer has about 7,000 polys.

So... in SL we measure attractiveness by the number of IMs one gets while in a club? I suppose that has some merit. I tend to think it is more a measure of who looks f-able and easy. I am convinced that at some level good looks are counterproductive for dating. Which if true, reinforces/supports my idea that it likely isn't a simple matter of looks that attracts males to females in SL Is the OP trying to find the best, most attractive body BRAND? Because what one does with a body after they buy it would seem to be more a factor than the brand it self. So, what would be a good measure of attractiveness?

@Cinnamon Mistwood Robert has pretty good taste... the darker looks better. I prefer well saturated colors. The second is too washed out looking for my taste. However, it does provide a very different feel for the moment. So... better depends... I think this is my oldest friend in SL... awesome Role Player and great region builder. And she has a really great looking butt...

I seem to run into this type of guy. I now try to stay away from those with avatars they have obviously put little effort into. Conversations... guy's ask what I am up to... usually something, sailing, flying, shopping, trying on demos, making outfits (as much fun as playing with dolls ever was), exploring, doing a photo shoot... then and what about you?, I ask. What are you up to? Answer: nothing.... Its like wow dude, that's boring. These guys are usually one's that have made it through the first round getting past my filters. They offered enough intelligent and interesting conversation that we ended up friending. Yet... they have no real SL life... If they said "I am out chasing chics. Are you available?" then There would be lots to talk about. Where are you? Are the girls pretty? Are you striking out? Do you have your pants on? 😆 I need conversation material. Otherwise it is just boring. If all they are doing in SL is me... I've been hanging around with me all day... I am ready for some change. As to the OP... I am pretty sure females get hit on more often than males. I think in any of the blatant meat markets that is going to be true. But even there I seldom get random IM's. I do note the places where I have more interaction with people, more IMs. I arrange my club land marks by which places have chatty people. Unfortunately... it changes by the day.

Yes... sort of. You have to give up your home and pick a new one. There is no way to do a trade or exchange.

You are conflating several things. In that thread I agree with Baloo. The server is going to provide updates on what is happening in the simulator. But only 45 times per second. So there technically is noting for the viewer to interpolate to after the latest frame arrives. The viewer takes an average of recent movement in past frames to guess (extrapolate based on history) where moving things will be to render what I will call the in-between-frames and show smooth movement. Often when the next frame arrives the viewer corrects it extrapolation of past frames and we see the avatar snap to a new position. Or do a huge rubber-banding thing in extreme cases. As the camera moves the render engine can provide in-between-frames that work well because the buildings don't move. This isn't extrapolation. The viewer knows where the buildings and camera are. Things only jerk to a new position when the camera is moving with the avatar and a new server sent frame updates the avatar to a location different from the viewer's extrapolated location. Often when we loose connection to the server side we can spin the avatar around. Everything moves but the avatar is stuck in one place. Animations play, rotating objects continue to rotate. Animations do run on the viewer side. Object rotations run on the viewer side. So the viewer can create in between frames and the server is not going to update that information. So the viewer is not extrapolating animations or object animations, like a rotating sign. I doubt most people can notice a difference in an animation running on a screen with 30, 60, or 90 FPS regardless of how many frames the card is generating. While the computer screen usually updates at 60 fps some screens update at 144 fps or to be more technically correct 144hz. If one wants to use a VR headset or NVIDIA's 3D glasses they need a card that can render 90 fps or more. In the cases of the glasses 144hz to provide a frame for each blink of the glasses. The card has to provide left and right eye renders. If I remember correctly the same frame is rendered twice in these cases but from different camera positions. So while the video card is rendering 144 fps we see 72 FPS and literally get by with 72/45=1.6 original frames per second. The fractional frame is the reason the viewer uses the video card's ability to handle vertical sync to avoid screen tearing when things are moving quickly. Since few people ever use SL this way it is moot. The only people that this type of discussion matters to are the combat gamers in SL. They are generally more interested in generating more frames viewer-side for keystrokes and clicks so they never have a viewer signal missing a server input window. In general we get by with 30 FPS for most of the video we watch. So most people can tell no difference between 30 and 60. To spend hundreds of dollars more to get tech most cannot see is foolish. Oz Linden thought SL was playable at 10 FPS. In general he was right. But no combat gamer in SL will agree with that idea. The serious ones turn their graphics way down turning off most of the viewer candy to allow the fps to skyrocket.

Few here understand how viewer graphics work. Nor are there many that understand how the viewer uses the computer. I'll give you some of basics. SL Viewers are multi-threaded, meaning they can distribute their work among separate CPU cores. What this means to the non-techie is that multiple cores or needed. An Intel CPU like the i5 is ideal. The i3 will work but but it will bottle neck at times. The i7 and above is more than is needed... but that is as in needed for SL. So depending on what else you do i7 and up may be justified. While SL Viewers run multiple threads (parallel tasks) the render thread in the view is ONE LARGE CPU CONSUMING THREAD. All other threads basically feed that thread. So faster CPU speeds are WAY better. I think CPU speed is the most impactful single feature. I consider 3.5GHz a minimum. But viewers will run on 1.5GHz laptops. But things will be slow. I overclock mine by 20% to 4.1GHz. Memory... you need lots of FAST memory. 8GB is a minimum by the Lab's thinking. I think 16GB is more like the minimum. I prefer 32 or 64GB. Memory comes in different speeds. The faster memory is the more it costs. So, you balance performance and cost. You can look at the motherboard's specs to find out the fastest memory your motherboard can handle. That is the ideal speed. Data storage... there are some misconceptions as to what is fastest. SSD's (Solid State Drive) are considered best. But, they aren't the fastest and if your motherboard has ePCI bus limits you may find an SSD is no faster then the less expensive mechanical hard drive with a fast disk because the PCI bus is overloaded. All these components have to work together. For the absolute fastest storage performance buy extra system memory and use a RAM Disk. Video... NVIDIA has been way better at supporting the OpenGL system that SL uses. Apple/AMD is moving toward their own proprietary system and has poor support for OpenGL. So even if you ignore Apple's ties to the CCP and slave labor, Apple/AMD is a restrictive choice. OpenGL, and SL in particular, do NOT support many of the great new features in NVIDIA's 3000 series cards. NVIDIA 1000 series and in particular the 1060 and 1080 cards are more than adequate. This is another performance vs cost balancing act. Newer is better overall. A 3060 is better than a 2060 than a 1060. But once a card gets you to 45 FPS in SL you have reached the system limit of what SL can use. While the viewer can render more than 45 frames what is being used to make the render can only be updated 45 times per second (Server FPS - frame rate). If you buy the hottest game machine going and set your Draw Distance to 1024m in the viewer, depending on where you are standing, you are likely to see FPS in the 10 to 20 range. In other places you may see 150FPS. So in my opinion what you buy depends mostly on your budget because my OLD i5 6th gen machine with a 1060 video card gets 10 to 120+FPS depending on where I am standing.

The rest of us are not having that problem. And the SL password process is as difficult to hack as any bank's login process. This has me wondering what you are doing that has made you a target? Ans then there is the matter of how you are catching them? How do you know you are being hacked? In most cases a hacker figures out a password and logins in and takes your L$ before one can even know there is a problem. So what happening? And Sam is right. This is a user-to-user forum. Occasionally a Linden staff person reads the forum. But if you need help, contact Support. Right at the start you begin with threats. You also admit you are into abuse. That tells us a lot about you... which likely is the root of Nick's response.

This one of those grey areas. Adult conversation is pretty much acceptable anywhere in the forum, provided it is not lewd, raunchy, or explicit.

One of the tech gotchas in SL is the shift between mesh and classic bodies. The modeling concept of shape is different with classic bodies and mesh bodies. They both use the same sliders but but with the classic body the sliders adjust the percentage of morphing between built-into-the-viewer preset shapes. For mesh the sliders are adding or subtracting an amount of displacement for whatever vertices a designer has supplied and tied to a given slider. With classic bodies clothes were designed with the idea that people would adjust the body to fit the clothes. With mesh bodies the idea is the clothes are designed to fit a specific body and displace at the same speed as the target body... thus avoiding poke-through. Regardless of which body one uses, if you attempt to use clothes not made for a specific body, you'll run into problems. It can't helped. In some cases you can find a work-around. In others cases, not.

I lament the lack of eye-roll and Doh! emojis.

The 3D art where we see awesome avatars with amazing skin and skin texture is usually NOT made in a real time render. Blender, 3D Max, and other modeling systems can take hours to render a single frame. In SL the system renders a frame every 22ms... if things aren't lagging. Blender and Max both have features to link their rendering process into a render farm... a situation where multiple computers share the task of render a sequence of frames. Sort of like drawing a picture on each page and then flipping pages to see an animation. While Slink did try to move us in the direction of better performance and ultimately better looking avatars, that does not seem to be working. Unfortunately a large part of the problem is Slink's departure from legacy compatibility. What do you mean I gotta get all new clothes and make up? I think this illustrates why the Lab has always made legacy compatibility a major factor in their development criteria. ----------------------- I've played with C&C. I have a look for my avatar that I like. So, I tried to use my 'shape' asset with the body. That was a mistake. I could never get a decent shape. When I started with the default shape supplied with the body, I was able to make what I wanted. So my opinion is it is very easy to make a bad looking body with C&C. The odd way shape sliders work with the C&C body makes problems for people and turns them off. Understandable. This is a place where other tech excellence just doesn't matter. Most bodies can have breasts shaped to whatever one wants. So whether one wants very perky or the more natural look, its possible. If there isn't enough adjustment in the body, Birth makes Deformers that allow one to go to extremes... and add not-so-lady-like animations and jiggles.

How long it lasts is very dependent on your health, previous infections, and vaxx status. It also depends on how you treat it. We have 2 or three good antivirals. Nasal rinses Zicam are highly effective with Omicron. Using the Z-pack for prevention and treatment is providing great results. So... hours to weeks. When I had CoVid-A and was 7-days in I was asking the Kaiser doctors, how L O N G? The best answer they had in September of 2020 was: weeks. Now with more knowledge and experience with long covid that answer might be hours to months. Cough and loss of energy (being tired) while not necessarily indication of Long-Covid are typical symptoms. There are doctors treating those symptoms and having good results. The treatments used a century ago with the Spanish Flu are working very well, fresh air and sun. The fresh or outdoor air carries away the viral load that builds up indoors. Shedding the virus and then breathing it back in slows recovery. Sun will kill virus on skin and clothes and simulate vitamin D production. You can look up how FLCCC (Front Line Covid Crisis Care) and CCC (Canadian COVID Care Alliance) both will give you ways to treat and avoid covid. WARNING: they are controversial sites. I strongly suggest you look at the success rates they have versus the official American and Canadian medical establishments before deciding on any change in how to care for yourself. Avoid snap decisions.

I remember when I first saw Sculpty Feet built into the shoes and they came with Invisa-prims. That was long before I saw the Slink feet. Prior to BOM clubs were limiting script load to reduce lag. Bodies and heads were loading the system to the point it was difficult to move. The Lab's improvements, especially BOM, have greatly reduced those problems.

No. Elise doesn't make a distinction between what is a viewer feature and what is a back-end or system capability. -------------------------- The idea that someone is going to make a billion poly body and a viewer is needed for that is simply not understanding how things work in SL. The idea that porn production people in SL want a better body doesn't fit with what I observe. Photos from people into the porn seem way more interested in the pixel sex than the visual image. SL porn videos are horrible. Still images are only marginally less horrible. I doubt the number of people engaging in SL pixel sex and the number buying nice bodies has little if any direct correlation. I suspect a significant number of guys only buy what they need to improve their chances.

When discussing right and wrong we usually fail to define what we mean. Spock's saying that grew into a pop culture quot, The good of the meany versus the few... is one way. But the idea defeats the philosophy of individual freedom and diversity. Sort of a worker bee versus a DC Comics hero thing. The Lab's engineers focus on technical excellence. So we can often define good as things that improve performance. There is also a factor of popular acceptance and preference. If more people like or want something then providing it, even with some loss of performance, will likely make SL more attractive to more people and that insures the continuation of SL, which while debatable I consider a good thing. But if you can not explain a GOOD THING to people and they cannot understand it... what good is it? And does it lose its goodness? Do people actually decide what is good or bad? Can people's opinions actually change what IS good or bad? Or should they be saying "like" or "dislike"? I think Gabriele's wording mistakes what is "technically performative"(the Lab's design) versus "what people LIKE" as right and wrong ways of doing things. I don't see it as a Good/right versus Bad/wrong thing. So as SL is developed I expect opinion from the users and technical evaluation from the Lab to continue to shape SL. Sadly for me, that seems to mean Slink's technically excellent C&C body is going to be ignored by users.

There is a huge amount of misinformation out and about. Time is the factor that confuses people. I had [insert whatever problem here] and cleared my cache and the problem went away. The fix was likely the required relog. During the time needed to relog the Internet changed... at least the part carrying your connection to the SL servers. Inventory in the viewer is a collection of pointers to stuff in the asset database. An inventory entry is in simplified parlance the name you see and an UUID. The viewer and SL system use the UUID to fetch the item from the server side storage. The inventory entry is just a few bytes of information.... something ~256... You can use MemHistory, a free app, to check and see how much memory the viewer uses when using an account with a large inventory and one with a small inventory. If you want to OPTIMIZE your computer, read something Optimize my PC. AVOID those apps that offer to clean and optimize your PC. In some cases they help. If you use any exotic software they can destroy it. Currently the best thing you can do in WIN10 and 11 is open a Command Window (type cmd) as the Admin and run SFC /scannow. (System File Check). It will repair and damaged files. If your computer is OLD, run CHKDSK /R in a Command Window as Admin. These two will get you the best the most improvement for the least pain. The Lab has revamped the viewer cache system. I think all the viewers have adopted and implemented the new caching system. So, the best cache size is the max. The cache is an indexed system. So finding the right file among millions of items is trivial and requires only a few CPU ticks of the 3 to 4 billion happening per second. The computer's ability to find, open, and load a file into memory is HIGHLY optimized. The slowest part of the process is file downloading. If a file is not in the cache, then the viewer has to get it from the CDN server, if it is not in the CDN server it has to get it from the SL back-end. Then the download to the CDN then to you has to happen. So clearing the cache puts a load on all of the SL system and forces you to wait. Fortunately all this is rather quick. But an empty cache sucks and causes us all to see a slower system. DO NOT CLEAR A CACHE unless you KNOW you have a file corruption problem. and even then CHKDSK should be your first troubleshooting step and clearing the cache the absolute last step. People will tell you, clear your cache. They age ignorant of what they are saying. But it is all they know to do. Most often while you are clearing your cache the system is self-correcting the problem you saw. You could have logged off for 5 minutes and got the same result. As to holiday traffic... that is a real thing. Credit Card processing this time of year often lags. But we also have ongoing cyber-warfare. So I suspect there is a lot of intermittent problems. Relogs and giving things a few minutes solves most of those problems.

Yes. I use FS 6.6.3. I got used to the 'viewer didn't render' thing. So, if a bridge I knew was there from previous visits didn't render, OK its just invisible so go ahead and walk across. It will render at some point. Doing that now I fall in the water below and it it never renders. I see this more often now and almost never see the 'just didn't render but there' problem. This is a new thing for me. So it has been more of a surprise and an anomaly that something I tracked for a bug report.

It appears FB/Meta is... dying, devolving, being abandoned... their income is down and stock prices have dropped. One can pick their favorite reason for the massive decline. But there is a reason or reasons. Your #1... I'll have to disagree. Plenty of people thought it would be a GREAT thing. But a load of people thought it would be a MAJOR disaster for civilization. I am not sure how you think it is isolating. I have friends scattered around the world that I keep in touch with via Social Media (SM). Additionally, governments have gotten involved in controlling the information flowing through SM. Freedom of information on SM is a major problem for the propagandists. America's founding fathers understood misinformation and lies are best countered by more information and discussion. While propagandist do try to drown out facts with noise, people debating and looking for facts help each other on SM and point people to facts. Soon people recognize who is telling what story. Your #2... This has been tried. Open Sim explored moving from world to world with the same avatar. So far the problems have been insurmountable. The result is there are a few hundred people playing in OS compared to a few tens of thousands in the closed proprietary worlds. Why that is is larger than fits in this discussion. Your #3... You are probably right. But you need to provide a specific definition for how you think of the metaverse before that can be debated. --------------------------------------------- If SL were to take over the world how would things change? We would likely have to give up electric cars to have enough power for our computers... We should probably define what we mean by CHANGE. More people staying at home, likely. Less disease? No... surprisingly studies coming out now show masks and lock-downs were WAY ineffective and apparently accelerated the spread, counter-intuitive as that seems. Less political distention? That is obviously never going to be the case. And this bring up a major omission in this thread: human nature. No matter how many people enter a meta or virtual world they are still human with all their failings, prejudices, and weird ideas. Entering SL does not change them. Meeting and talking with other people may. They may get information in here from parts of the world that are censored. But humans have been talking to each other for millennia and we are still a mess. I see no reason for that to change of we mix in a virtual world. The best thing about being in a virtual world is there is no true physically violent crime. Emotional, perhaps. The one thing I think a meta-verse could do for the world is increase art. The possibilities for art within a computer are amazing. I think a meta-verse provides a way for like minded people to meet and gather. But like RL the virtual has all the same problems and abuses because we are human and wherever we go, there we are.

Sorting through masks... and below... I think Slink remained popular until Maitreya began competing. The way Slink incorporated BOM is the way the Lab designed the original clothing system for the Classic avatar. It was the simplest and most versatile way to handle hiding parts of the avatar. It was during the two years of pre-BOM mesh bodies and appliers that confused the process. The use of alpha-cuts controlled by a HUD departed from the original intent and way of doing things. It added render cost, greatly complicated body design, added the need for a HUD and a ton of scripts, people had to learn about appliers, and it was ridged. Clothes makers had to conform to the body's alpha-cuts and it was use the cuts or forget it. During this time I remember not buying clothing items because they did not work with the alpha-cuts. And there was no way for the typical user to make alphas that worked with an applier body. When Redux came out it used the Lab's original alpha layer process and drastically reduce render cost and script load. Which is what the Lindens planned on being the point of BOM. The Slink bodies remained the same appearance-wise. The tech changed. In the two years of the applier era, designers stopped making alpha layers. Understandable. They weren't needed. With the release of BOM I thought they would start including alphas for the new clothes. A few do. I don't understand why not. But that they haven't has without a doubt hit Slink hard. That designers didn't include alphas confused the new people that came in during the applier era and were ignorant of original way if doing things. They considered it simple to click a cut in a HUD and move on. I thought getting out the HUD, finding the right cuts to enable/disable, then making an Auto-Alpha (which didn't always work right) or making a copy of the body with the cuts set to save as part of that outfit was WAY more complicated and tedious. Adding the alpha that came with the dress was way simpler. But if I had to make an alpha... I was bask into the mess. So I very carefully check the demos. Lindal is right about the hassle of sorting through alpha-masks to find the right one. No fun. I've done some serious organizing to reduce the tedium. Keyword being "reduce." I've had to make many masks. Fortunately I learned long ago and have developed a system for making new ones now. But it still takes me 10 or 15 minutes. So... if a demo shows I'll need a mask, I likely won't buy the item.

It appears Slink has definitely lost popularity among the forum crowd. It seems reasonable to extend that thought to the whole of SL. However, like most things in SL it is very hard to know what is actually happening across all of SL. Even the Lindens have problems figuring out what we are doing. But it does appear Slink is losing market share. One can know what they see. But no one sees all of SL. Thus the problem. Add to that the fact that few of us put effort into quantifying what is actually happening and the result is we decide based on opinion not facts. So in one's circle of creatives it is likely true they are shifting away from Slink and that is all one really needs to consider. Several of the new bodies are way popular. But there are creatives still making Slink Original and Hourglass. It is hard to say of the number of creatives is decreasing or just changing. Oh, by the way... Slink Physique is the old body with the alpha cuts HUD. Physique comes in Original and Hourglass. Slink Redux is the newer BOM body without alpha cuts and comes in Original and Hourglass versions. Clothes made for Physique fit Redux. Clothes for Original will NOT fit Hourglass and the other way around. Most people are confused about Slink naming, which says something about us. I collect the names of shops that offer Slink clothes; 2LOVE, Alienation, Allure Couture, ALTER ..:: ALTER ::.., Baiastice, ErotiK, Floyd Shop, GGVG, LC Fashion, LUaR, Mely Melo, MOW, Next Door Designs, Nyssa , Pink Love, Pixel Doll, S&A Taylor Designs, S&B aka SLC, Sands Design, Serina Lacave Collection, TO.KISKI, Uni-qu3, Vannies, Yo Unique, Zoom (= ~29 shops) That is not an All-Inclusive list. Addams supports Slink and I just didn't get around to adding them. I add a shop to my list when I buy something from them. Plus there are some that I omit because I didn't like their work, fit was poor or there was some other problem with their stuff. The Cinnamon & Chai bodies, and the other Slink bodies, are excellent technical achievements. All other bodies are less technically. C&C is the next step in body evolution within SL. EVO made the first step in this evolving direction that steps away from the old UVMaps. But the technical expertise/ability in SL appears to be declining. People mess up with EVO all the time and like, "Wow... that didn't work." We are STILL explaining BOM. So... Slink, the most well made, may disappear. But that is typical of SL. Most of us are not really interested in the tech side and thus are blindly complaining about performance without understanding how we are impacting performance.

It is possible to link the two drives so your laptop sees them as a single drive. It is way geeky and will add complications to your computer life. Once you have a non-typical setup... there are lots of apps that have no idea how to deal with the oddities. However, the viewers for SL won't have a problem. If you want to go that route search like this. Talk to a computer shop about replacing the 100GB with a 1 or 2 terabyte drive. There is software that can move your drive's data and setup info to a new larger drive. It is a common upgrade. New 2 and 5-terabyte drives are under US$100. Your laptop may have a C:\ drive that is SSD. You'll have to talk to a tech and see what it would cost for a larger SSD and if your laptop can handle it. I see some 1TB SSDs for $125. ...and it is possible for you to make the upgrade. Most laptops provide decent access to the storage and memory devices. Moving the data to a new drive is explained on the web. But there are lots of gotchas for the inexperienced.

Yes. Years of them...

The Release Candidates, Beta versions, Alpha versions and other versions team members work and play with tend to be conflated into "BETA" out here in forum land. I suspect only the team members can keep it straight which is which and which versions have additional debugging code. That 6-didgit number after the "8" is there for a reason. But, I tend to lump all of them into Beta when I could be more precise. But, you are correct and more precise when you refer to Project Viewers as Beta. Release Candidates are typically farther along the development path and less buggy that all previous versions. I don't keep up with viewer development like I once did. So I have no idea how many are using the FS Release Candidates nor how much or little debug code the team is using in the candidate. I am sure it varies from version to version. But as I recall they have groups for those helping with development. The groups are likely where you can get feedback from those using "8". In the forum I suspect most of us are using "3" and so can't give you good feedback as we are talking about "3"... as Aishagain points out above.

Yeah. While Oz was still here they decided to stop developing for Linux. The idea is they would add whatever third-parties contributed. Not sure that has gone well.