Nalates Urriah

Unless you have an older video card, no, you should not have to change anything. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. If your card is old enough not to have the features needed to run at something above the LOW Graphics Setting, then you may have to change your graphics settings. Otherwise the question comes up as to whether you followed the FS/PH instructions to upgrade using a clean install? Second Life Clean Install

How long? I'll say you may not even get the majority of us by the time the sun burns out. As for the Lindens not rebutting your claims... Like I said else where you've fallen out of the boat. I'm not at all surprised that they are not taking the time away from work to respond. The idea that someone's inaction is proof is a logical fallacy. All it can prove is they haven't responded to you. That idea is an old debate tactic. People recognize recognize it. Another reason for not responding is possibly the Wackadoole Factor.

Princess and Cairan make good points. As yet the information as to how LI affects people is not common knowledge outside the builder's community. I'm not sure how many of them actually understand or are even aware of the change. The turnover in users is unknown to any outside the Lab. We do know that the typical user life expectancy of an SL user is about 2 years. (See: Retention in Second Life) This is a strong suggestion that the majority of SL users are new... or at least newer. That means all our promotional material needs to target new users. Adding prim counts and land impact explanations in many ways is a turn off. How to convey the information succinctly is the trick. Much of what makes sense to merchants and builders is over the head of customers and new users. When I go the prim route I say something like: 147 prims counting as 100 prims against your prim limits. In the MP field for prims I use 100. I figure this is the most explanatory since land owners are mostly using the term Prim Limit. Rental boxes and most other tools in SL have not made a change over. So, sticking with Prims makes for a bit more consistency. Until a more user friendly way to explain the complex idea of Land Impact is found and adopted, I'll stick with prim counting.

If you are running Windows, its a good idea to tell things like that, you can do a System Restore to just before the driver update.

Josh, you've fallen off the boat... As frustrating as DD is right now, Darrius is right. Anyone that has a high sales volume knows what a pain Magic Boxes can be.

I'm not sure what you mean by "bakes for SL." There is no special bake for SL.

Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than the rest of Second Life rendering. The idea is to save CPU cycles on your computer and the server. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp. 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 the composite texture and 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 likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

Depending on the kit you get different things will be included. Some kits like Redpoly's contain a copy of the DAE file. It can be used to upload the mesh so you will show as the creator. Most kits contain a template similar to the Chip Midnight templates as used for standard SL avatar clothes. These are known in the 3D modeling world as UVMaps. In SL for general reference they are often called clothes templates or patterns. When you have a mesh you need its UVMap to make textures to use with the mesh. Kits will have a UVMap included, but what they may chose to call it varies. To change the shape of a mesh you need a 3D modeling program like Blender. You can import DAE files into Blender. It is a way to understand how mesh works and is modeled. In Blender or other 3D modeling program, the UVMap is part of the 3D model. However, once in SL people referring to a UVMap are usually referring to the image file made from a UVMap. In Blender a UVMap is used to bake a texture/image. One feature allows the UVMap outline to be baked on the texture to give you an image that looks very much like the Chip Midnight templates. Once baked into an image these map/textures/templates are nothing special, just

With a good understanding of the Land Impact accounting and a number of tricks you can reduce your LI cost and fill the region with mesh buildings. The region Mayfair is an excellent example. It is the most mesh intense area I know in SL. You will see some fails in the mesh design, if you have your draw distance set to 128m or less. I haven't looked to see if it is mesh or sculpty that is failing in the render of distant windows. The build is nice and worth checking out. You can use the LI accounting to reduce prim cost using conventinal building with prims, if you can limit your self to cubes. See: Reducing Prim Count

Holger is right. Ask the FS/PH support team. This does sound like a viewer bug. You can reach the support group in world for an interactive answer. Look for Firestorm-Phoenix Support in SEARCH. Select groups only search. Their team is pretty helpful and nealy 24x7. The group may well provide the best help in SL. You might also try restarting your computer and taking the picture as soon as possible after restarting. There are some memory leaks and this would minimize their effect. You might also download the image to your computer first. Then upload it. The cost is the same as saving a snapshot to inventory. The only difference of a save to disk then upload is the image will show as a texture rather than a snapshot.

For now it looks like the Lindens are moving on to upgrading other parts of the system. The avatar and mesh is pretty much going to stay as it is until the current round of fixes and additions are completed. Direct Delivery, Pathfinding, Experience Tools, and additional things they are not talking about are in the works. While a better avatar, better morph/deformation, better materials (think bump), and other features are desired by many Lindens they are not on the near term list of things to do... While we can't get hard answers on any of these items, the leaks and dropped hints here and there suggest this is the case. You could find or create a JIRA for the features you want. When a JIRA feature request with an excellent user case starts to draw attention, it can sometimes change the Lab's priorities. If you can get enough supporters, you may get the Lab to consider adding your features.

Sparkes is right and wrong. There are sections of the forum that Lindens watch. But, in general posting and hoping a Linden will see it is hit or miss... mostly miss. A support ticket is much more likely to create quick action. Also, understand the people that work security and restart servers are a group that I suspect is far too busy to ever look at the forum. They are the ones that can take immediate action. A support ticket or phone call is the only way I know to reach them. The programmers working on problems and writing server code do spend some time on the forum. If they take an interst in the your problem and information, it will be for changing the server code. Any change will takes weeks to reach a server near you. It takes considerable time for changes to make it through QA. If there is an exploit greifers are using it is the programmers that will block the expoit. It is the support people that will get your region back up today. Week after next a server maintenance package with grieging patches should be rolling to the release channels. Post on the Tech - Server - Deployes for the Week of... thread. To have any chance of getting help from a post provide precise information. Include the server version and region name. You can get that from Help - About... in the viewer. It is most effective if you are the region owner. If not, give your DETAILED and well written information to the region owner to pass along. You need to be able to provide the times to the nearest minute (well plus or minus a few) that the server went down. The more information you provide the more likely the Lindens will look at your info and region. If you are having lots of problem events file lots of support tickets. You want them to reflect the level of problems you are having. If you spam them just to create volume, it may backfire.

Or you could try using MOAP (Media on a Prim). Depends on what you are trying to make.

When you ask a tech question include information about your computer. Our answers are different depending on which computer and video card. 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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. Make sure your video driver is up to date. Before logging in open Preferences and set your Graphics Settings to LOW. Then login. If that doesn't fix it, come back here. If it does, start turning your graphics settings up until you run into the problem then back off.

Rendering the avatar is a special case. It is a more complex process than the rest of Second Life. The idea is to save CPU cycles on your computer and the server. The idea requires your viewer to download all the textures that make up your avatar and its clothes; a skin, top, pants, hair, and shoes textures. The viewer ‘bakes’ those into a single composite texture. You see your avatar render nice and sharp. 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 the composite texture and 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 likely problem: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection

This is a common problem. There are some fixes. However, when you ask a tech question include information about your computer. Get the info from the viewer's Help-About... and paste that into your post with your question. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post. A quick fix for several similar problems is to install Safari web Browser. You don't have to use it. Installing it sets various values in the system that help things along. Of course that is a Windows fix. Also check Second Life Grid Status Reports to see if a grid wide problem has come up. It can take a couple of hours for a problem to appear there. So, keep checking while you try to resolve the problem. Problems with the web sites and Market Place are listed there too. To check if it is the viewer or the Search Tool that is the problem open http://search.secondlife.com/ in your web browser. If the web page fails, it is likely the Linden Lab servers. If it opens in the browser but still fails in your viewer, there is likely a viewer issue. We need more info before we go down that road.

Probably the most impact you can have on a region is your script count. The Market Place has Script Counters for free. Get one. When you sit/stand on it it will tell you how many scripts are attached to your avatar and that includes HUD's. It will also tell you how much memory your scripts use. Somewhere over 200 scripts a problem starts. I have seen avatars with 800+ scripts and I have heard of avatars with over 1,000 scripts. Memory use over 3mb starts to be a problem. For you the first signs of problems is difficulty teleporting. For others in the region and region owners the problem is a lag spike when you come into a region and an even larger one when you leave. Your prim count is less of a problem. Unless you are deliberately trying to cause a problem, it is unlikely you can create a prim overload case. The source of script proliferation is jewelry, shoes, and hair. Many of these have sizing scripts. Some people do not know those are supposed to be removed. Typically one sizes and colors the object with the scripts. Once just right, take if off and make a copy to wear. Remove the scripts from the wear-copy. There is usually and option in the size/color menu to do that. Check yourself on the script counter before and after you remove the scripts. Newer size/color scripts get by with way few scripts than older items. In the top menu in Advanced -> Performance Tools -> Show Draw Weight for Avatars (ADW) turns on a value for how complex your avatar is. This used to be Avatar Render Cost (ARC). Both are 'relative' numbers not actual units of anything. ADW is much higher values then ARC. So, don't try to compare ADW and old ARC values. You'll only find ARC values in old posts or from people not up to date on happenings in SL. Some people use the value to try and beat others up. We refer to them as ARC Nazis. You can use the value to see how well or poorly you are doing in creating a low lag avatar. But, don't freak out using a high cost ADW value avatar, unless you are going to a big event with lots of avatars.

LoveAngels recommendation at the link is to roll back to the previous version and turn off Auto-Update. Which is a workable solution. The idea is to run an older version until the Lab fixes the problem. If the problem is on your side, then you'll eventually run into the problem again when you do try to update. Staying in an old version is a dead end. But, if it works for now that is a big plus. If you get a working viewer using a TPV or older LL version, you may want to try the Beta version 3.3.0 (250306) of the viewer which is older than the current main viewer 3.3.0 (251182). Or the Development version 3.3.2 (251752). Both install in their own folders so they can be installed at the same time as the main viewer and not interfere with each other. Hopefully the problem is resolved in one of thsoe coming viewers. If you do install the Beta or Dev viewer do not use their 'uninstall' to remove them. The uninstall will break all version of the LL viewers installed regardless of the folder they install in. Manually delete the program folders. If you decide to run multiple viewers read Second Life Clean Install to understand some of the complications of running different viewers. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer. 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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

The first thing to check is Second Life Grid Status Reports to see if a grid wide problem has come up. It can take a couple of hours for a problem to appear there. So, keep checking while you try to resolve the problem. Next is to check your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. You can look in the Second Life log to see if you can get a clue to what is happening. In Vista and Win7 look in: C:\Users\[windows_login_if]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\logs\SecondLife.log You are looking for errors and warning at the end of the file. When you ask a tech question include information about your computer. 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. To add your info to an existing question use OPTIONS->EDIT. It’s in the upper right of your post.

Try another group and see if you have the same problem. Find a group with few members. One or both of you tp to another region and try again. This should give you clue about whether it is the group, region, or you.

There are undershirts, shirts, and jackets. They are layers just as in real life. You can WEAR a shirt that will cover up the undershirt. You can ADD four shirts will the last covering the previous. So, you could put on a long sleeve shirt and then a T. The sleeves of the first would still show. If you reversed the order, the T might be completely covered up. The under, shirt, and jacket are all decals placed on the basic avatar. If you press Ctrl-Shift-R, you can see the avatar mesh. Mesh clothes are worn over the avatar mesh. So, the mesh clothes will cover the under, shirt, and jacket layers. Another possibility is alpha layers. If your avatar is invisible or parts of it are, it is likely an alpha layer problem. Most of these problems can be solved by clicking the APPEARANCE button (looks like a T-shirt) and select WEARING. Remove everything that is removable. Then try to wear your clothes again.

Logoff the Market place and viewer. Once logged out, login on the MP and then the viewer. Your outbox should work. But, if you are Linux or Mac... its no go. See: Dolphin Viewer 3, Direct Delivery, and the Merchant Outbox.

You should probably read: Dolphin Viewer 3, Direct Delivery, and the Merchant Outbox. It covers all viewers and OS's.

If you are using Mac or Linux be sure you read: Dolphin Viewer 3, Direct Delivery, and the Merchant Outbox. The Dev has been working to get his viewer working with DD. There are some problems. Regarless of viewer and OS, everyone is having some problems.

I think using the test avatars is a last resort and may create uncessary work. First off, check your connection: Troubleshoot Your #SL Connection. If it is hichupping, everything sucks. Once you know your good make sure you are on a good SL server. The link above will tell you how to know. Ideally you will use a deserted and empty region. Pooley and Furball are good candidates. Log into one of those regions and see if your inventory will load. If not, ask in FS/PH Support how to turn off HTTP Get Texture. Niranv of Nirans Viewer says HTTP sucks. But, it is the protocol for the new inventory API. If it will work that is what you want to use. If it fails for you, turn it off and try the UDP protocol, which is what the viewer uses when HTTP is off. If that doesn't help, restart the computer and your internet modem and router if you have one. Try again. If your inventory is not loading that is the problem with the avatar not rezzing. Check the Second Life Grid Status Reports. With the change over to Direct Delivery there is lots of maintenance happening. If they are working on the inventory DB your going to have problems. You have to wait until they have the DB back on line. You may want to check and see if they were working on it when you had problems.