Nalates Urriah

The posts here are right, something is wrong with your install. Also, all but a few updates are optional. One can ignore the update and just login. It is also possible to not be bothered by updates by turning on Automatic Update (Preferences-> Setup-> Software Updates). Or turn it off, I’m not sure which will work better for you. Also, it has been weeks since the last update. If you only use the viewer once a month, it might seem like they update all the time, but they don’t. You could use the Dolphin 3 Viewer which is very much like the SL viewer, but updates are mostly optional. Only on very rare occasions is a Dolphin update mandatory and that is usually because of a change in SL. The last Release Viewer got the new Pathfinding Tools. There has been a problem in the Beta and Development versions coming down the pipeline. That has plugged up the pipeline for several weeks. As soon as the problem is located a number of new updates will roll through Beta and into the Release Version. You can expect almost weekly updates for a short time. That should make your day. But, if you only use the viewer once per month, you may effectively get to skip some versions. A number of us want the updates and bug fixes that come with the new releases. They can’t come fast enough. So, while it is sad that you are annoyed… don’t expect us or the Lab to change… or care much. There really are solutions, so you can avoid the problems. A number us have done what we can to help you. Now it is up to you to figure out how to change your behavior to avoid annoyances.

The SL avatar with skirt is about 7,000+ polys. 50k polys is a lot for SL. Beautiful model. Adding normal maps to add detail is part of the Materials System that is in the process of being added. If you have not been following these developments, check out the articles I have on the Materials System. There are several articles/videos on re-topologizing (not a real word) models for use in game platforms. The Mesh Lab has tools to help with the process of reducing polys. As best I can tell, every process I've seen is so tedious it sucks. The best models I've seen pro's doing start with a high poly well sculpted model. They then start building a lower poly model for use with normal maps. This looks like the best option of Second Life models. Especially when one realizes they need the LOD models too.

I'm a bit fuzzy on who sees the Rebake Region button. But, it seems everyone sees the button and can trigger a rebake. Unless you are building and changing the region and need a Pathfinding Navigation Mesh (Nevmesh) Update to check the behavior of Pathfiniding characters, ignore the button. It's only effect is to update the Havok physics engine so it can provide correct navigation information to Pathfinding characters. Whether Pathfinding is enabled or disabled this button seems to appear. The Lindens are looking at changing who sees the button and whether it will display in a region with no PF characters.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. I have a JIRA item on the Dev Viewers failing on mesh model upload. The last couple or three of versions have had problems. However, the main Release Viewer would upload the same model. If several different viewers are having the problem, Drongle's question is very pertinent. If answered that all models are a problem, check you connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. I think this is the most complete SL specific step-by-step testing instructions available.

You are suffering from the blurry avatar syndrome... Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than rendering in the rest of Second Life. The idea with avatars is to save CPU cycles on users' computers and the SL servers. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a shape, skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp when that bake completes. Then your viewer uploads that composite texture for all to see. That saves others downloading all the individual textures and baking them. Your avatar goes blurry as it downloads and decompresses the composite texture you just uploaded and it becomes sharp when that process finishes. You are the only one that sees the double blurry for your avatar. If that process hangs or fails there is a problem. Where it fails affects what you or others see. You can try the old standby quick fixes for avatar rez problems: Change your active group or group tag. Press rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R) once a minute for 3 minutes. Change your bald. Change your shape. Move to another region and try 1 to 4 again. When those fail, check your connection as it is the most likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection There is a longer explanation of the problem here: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. More in depth fixes are here: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth. This whole avatar render process is changing now. It will still be some time before the process is replaced. So, we have to deal with it for now. But see: Second Life Changes Coming

Gaia, thanks for the video. That one clears up some points of confusion for me. On Ambient Occlusion... I doubt we will ever see that added into SL. AO is independent of lighting (it is from ambient light), so it can be pre-baked into the diffuse texture without detracting from the appearance. The specular effects can over shadow it to give it a more realistic appearance or at least in most rendering systems it does. Understandnig how Blender's capabilities work with SL is going to be the trick for making diffuse textures for SL. As things are now we bake the normal and specular maps into our textures to make the best illusions. But that only maintains the illusion if the object and lighting do not move. When we get the Materials System it will improve the illusion in dynamic scenes. I am really looking forward to that feature.

The available viewers are listed here: Third Party Viewer Directory. Please read the notes and warning on the page. The page does not list all the Third Party Viewers (TPV). A good current list is here. Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, have a number of viewers. The main viewer is called the Release Viewer. It has an automatic update feature that you can turn on or off in Preferences. By defualt it is on. So, if you have not changed the setting, you should be updating automatically. The Lab also puts out a Beta version of the viewer. It contains coming features and bug fixes. If you are having a problem with the Release viewer, you can try the Beta version. Beta version tend to have more bugs, but they are usually a different set of bugs, so it may solve a specific problem. The Lab also publishes a Development Viewer. This is a pre-Beta version, but I don't see it as an real Alpha version. This has new features and bug fixes that are even newer and less tested. But, it may solve a specific problem. Some of us use it as our main viewer. Right now it is too buggy for me to rely on it. Features If you are looking for more features then look to the TPV's. I think Firestorm is the most feature rich. It is the most stable (does not crash) viewer out right now. Niran's Viewer has the most inovative user interface and is good for photography/machinima. Exodus Viewer is another cutting edge viewer good for photography/mahinima and gaming. Dolphin 3 is my choice for a work horse viewer with a good set of enhanced features. Cool VL and Singularity are new code but old V1 interface viewers. They usually produce really high frame rates. ...and these are my opinions. You can read more on my blog. Find Viewers in the menu to read about specific viewers. If a viewer is not listed in the menu, look in the left column for catagories. It will probably listed there.

Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection Use the information in the article to troubleshoot your connection. If you start multiple threads on the same subject, you are going to have to read through the same answers over and over. Build on your first question with more information and the results of trying our suggestions. Then we will move on to the more complex answers.

Yeah... withuot knowing more all we can do is guess. You can try the standard: Top menu -> Me -> Movement -> Stop Animating me. There are scripted items to remove animations and deformations. Some times one of those is needed. Look in Appearance -> Wearing and see you are wearing something you aren't expecting to be there.

Think in another direction... Theresa Tennyson has the latest tech info on the problem. Memory leaks are often a combination of software (the viewer) and drivers in your computer. Since you did not give us the info from the virewer's Help->About we cannot see what version of what you are running. It is always good to post that info when asking a tech question. Without the information all we can do is guess what the problem may be. You are left to test each suggestion and try to find the right one. It will be much faster for you if you provide version info up front. The latest nVidia driver is 306.23. Since Firestorm is the most stable viewer connecting to SL right now, I would look at everything else before considering the viewer.

Rolig explained the connection problems and things to check. But, you need to make a few more checks before you start changing things. If the region or the server it is lagging, you can see poor performance like you discribe. In this article, Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection I explain how to tell if it is you, SL, or someone inbetween as well as how to tell if it is the region/server that is the problem. The quick check for a poorly performing server is to move to another region. If a region is really bad, you may have to log out and then log into another region like Pooley or Furball. You can select where to log into by changing your Preferences to allow a target region. Preferences->General - Start Location - Show on login. Or... just pick a location from the splash page's destinations.

Before you change your DNS service read through Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. It explains why you want to ADD the Google DNS servers to your system rather than replace your existing DNS servers list.

That is being discussed over on SLUniverse. I just posted there providing information for those trying to understand the button. See PF Post SLU. The button is a new notice introduced with Pathfinding. You can ignore it. I suspect one of two viewer releases down the road, that button will be less obnoxious.

When you ask about a symbol appearing in your viewer... we need to know which viewer you are using. Open Help->About... and copy paste that info into your post. The current 3.4.0 SL Viewer now has the PF Tools, buttons, and indicators. I suspect it is one of the indicators you are seeing. Without seeing the icon I can't be sure which indicator you are seeing and if it is PF related.

Probably not... you need a laptop with a graphics chip beyond the HD Graphics, which is optimized for video. NVIDIA provides better OpenGL support than ATI, which SL uses. Otherwise, the computer specs are pretty good. SL runs far slower than most other games. So, if you get great frame rates in other games, you are likely to be disappoint with performance in SL. What you need for running SL depends on what you like to do in SL. If you are into shopping, exploring, dancing, social activities, and creating products or services for SL a moderate computer is fine. Something with an i3 or i5 quad core CPU and an NVIDIA 400 series or higher. Even 200 series and up will work. 240 or 260... If you are into sailing or various vehicle use and photography you'll want more computer but can get by with moderate. When you start racing or playing in combat games, you'll want a high end computer. i5 and preferably i7 CPU with all the cores you can afford. Get NVIDA 500 series or better. 560 or 660 and up. The 60, 80, or 90 part is important. Whatever you get, pay attention to the memory speed. 8GB is fine, but SPEED is the most important. You want the fastest memory chips your computer can use. In Laptops it can be hard to swap out memory chips and expensive. In some models it is easy and cheap. You have to look at the manual to see if you have to disassemble the unit to replace all the memory. Some have easy expansion addon, but base memory is hidden deep inside in some cases. To get faster memory that often has to be replaced too, making difficult. Call sales if you are getting it online and talk over memory upgrades.

Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than rendering in the rest of Second Life. The idea with avatars is to save CPU cycles on users' computers and the SL servers. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a shape, skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp when that bake completes. Then your viewer uploads that composite texture for all to see. That saves others downloading all the individual textures and baking them. Your avatar goes blurry as it downloads and decompresses the composite texture you just uploaded and it becomes sharp when that process finishes. You are the only one that sees the double blurry for your avatar. If that process hangs or fails there is a problem. Where it fails affects what you or others see. You can try the old standby quick fixes for avatar rez problems: Change your active group or group tag. Press rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R) once a minute for 3 minutes. Change your bald. Change your shape. Move to another region and try 1 to 4 again. When those fail, check your connection as it is the most likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection There is a longer explanation of the problem here: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. More in depth fixes are here: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth. This whole avatar render process is changing now. It will still be some time before the process is replaced. So, we have to deal with it for now. But see: Second Life Changes Coming When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

Long explanation: Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than rendering in the rest of Second Life. The idea with avatars is to save CPU cycles on users' computers and the SL servers. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a shape, skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp when that bake completes. Then your viewer uploads that composite texture for all to see. That saves others downloading all the individual textures and baking them. Your avatar goes blurry as it downloads and decompresses the composite texture you just uploaded and it becomes sharp when that process finishes. You are the only one that sees the double blurry for your avatar. If that process hangs or fails there is a problem. Where it fails affects what you or others see. You can try the old standby quick fixes for avatar rez problems: Change your active group or group tag. Press rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R) once a minute for 3 minutes. Change your bald. Change your shape. Move to another region and try 1 to 4 again. When those fail, check your connection as it is the most likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection There is a longer explanation of the problem here: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. More in depth fixes are here: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth. This whole avatar render process is changing now. It will still be some time before the process is replaced. So, we have to deal with it for now. But see: Second Life Changes Coming

The other answers are right. No iPad app for SL... at least not one like what you want. One of the big problems for SL going mobile is the data demand for bandwidth. Another is the graphics demand. Apps tend to use HTML5. SL uses OpenGL. Both Androis and iOS support OpenGL ES, which is a stripped down OpenGL for mobile apps. ES tends to run behind OpenGL. Theoretically SL can get by with OpenGL 2.0... or could. The OpenGL ES 2.0 is similar toOpenGL 2. On desktops OpenGL is 4.2+. Some video cards in desktops cost more than an iPad or iPhone. My point is: the graphics on mobile apps is behind what is needed by SL. Both the GPU power and bandwidth needed are problems. Making getting SL on a mobile device unlikely. I suspect the new CreatorVerse tool for iPad is a serious step toward building tools and knowledge needed to port SL to a mobile app. I'm guessing it will take years for the mobile devices to mature and for the Lab to create a mobile app for SL.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. It is also important to tell us some of your history with SL. Is this a new problem? Is this you first login? Has it ever worked? Is it intermittent? This was a problem common to ATI video cards. If you are using ATI then It is likely the video drivers. Without information all we can do is guess. The problem is caused by the video card failing to properly index the textures it is trying to display. Or other video texture loading failures. Failures can come from a number of problems in the driver or a video card failing... usually over heating. Also the video card may be inadequate for SL. Without knowing if SL ran well previously or has always done this, we can't make that assessment.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. If the viewer will at least show the login screen, get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Otherwise, on Windows click Start and type DXDIAG, case doesn’t matter. That will open the dxdiag in the panel. It will give you your system specs. We need to now video driver version, OpenGL version, … I'm not sure of what the equivalent is on a Mac... You haven't given us much to go on. Has this this always happened when running SL? Is your video driver up to date?

The new Deformer code is in Cool VL Viewer. Expect to see it in other TPV's soon. Because of the Havok code needed by the viewer for Pathfinding, licensing restricts the viewers using the SL Havok code to the SL grid. So, the command line code was removed.

This is a known problem. There is an old (months) JIRA on the problem. For details see: #SL ADITI Fixed and ADITI Inventory Loss. Since I see others running into the problem and it is not possible for most to post a comment in JIRA SVC-7727 you will need to either file a new BUG Report and reference7727 or email WorkingOnIt Linden or Maestro Linden and provide your detailed information. Be sure to explain that you cannot added to 7727. It is really really important that you reference 7727 if you do file a new JIRA. If you do file a JIRA BUG please add the numbner and discription to the SLUniverse list of bugs. There is a not so quick fix. Change your password again and wait 48 hours. Test your ADITI inventory again. If that fails, repeat until it works. If you read 7727, you'll see that that is the work-around since the JIRA item was classed fixed.

I've recently not been able to open some Mod OK scripts, even some I created. Give it a day and also try with a different viewer. I can't search the JIRA for others having similar problems... so, I'm not sure if it is just me or not. Do you get an error message - can't edit? Or does it just never open?

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer and viewer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. Help->About... provides all the version numbers we need. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. There are a number of reasons your avatar will not render. Consider: Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than rendering in the rest of Second Life. The idea with avatars is to save CPU cycles on users' computers and the SL servers. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a shape, skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp when that bake completes. Then your viewer uploads that composite texture for all to see. That saves others downloading all the individual textures and baking them. Your avatar goes blurry as it downloads and decompresses the composite texture you just uploaded and it becomes sharp when that process finishes. You are the only one that sees the double blurry for your avatar. If that process hangs or fails there is a problem. Where it fails affects what you or others see. You can try the old standby quick fixes for avatar rez problems: Change your active group or group tag. Press rebake (Ctrl-Alt-R) once a minute for 3 minutes. Change your bald. Change your shape. Move to another region and try 1 to 4 again. When those fail, check your connection as it is the most likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection There is a longer explanation of the problem here: #SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars. More in depth fixes are here: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth. This whole avatar render process is changing now. It will still be some time before the process is replaced. So, we have to deal with it for now. But see: Second Life Changes Coming