Nalates Urriah

Your having several odd problems. The environment and clothes are not related parts of the viewer. The first thing to try is rebooting your computer and DSL/cable modem. Clear the viewer cache and then try logging in. If that fails to solve the problem... As suggested, remove your Phoenix Viewer. Run the unisntall program. Then manually clear the cache and settings. You will find Phoenix folders in C:\Program Files\ and C:\users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\. The need to be deleted. The file C:\users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\user_settings\settings_phoenix.xml needs to be deleted too. In the Roaming folder are chat logs and other stuff. Several viewers place files in this folder path. Pay attention to what you delete. The Roaming folder has the settings file, which is often a source of problems. Sometimes just deleting it and restarting can solve problems. All the files in the Phoenix folders need to be deleted. Before installing Phoenix, reinstall an SL Viewer 2. This will place any missing files into your system. Then install Phoenix. If your Phoenix is still not working, you may need to do a clean install. Read through Second Life Clean Install and see if you have done all the steps to fix the problems without a clean install. If you have then there is nothing left but to go for a clean install. The article gives detailed steps for mult-viewer uses that SL and Phoenix leave out. You will likely have better luck if you reboot the computer each time you run into viewer problems. Then start the next fix and retry in a fresh computer. Good Luck.

As suggested we need to know more about what you are using. Click Help -> About in the viewer and copy paste the information here. Read through these fixes and explanations to see if you have missed any: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth

You don't say which viewer you are using. If you are using a series 1 viewer you are likely to have more and more problems as time passes. Both Tateru and I have blogged about those isses and quoted what the Lindens are saying in regard to series 1 viewers. SL is undergoing a massive upgrade. For years people have complained about bugs that have lasted for years. In 2010 Phillip shifted that. Each day more and more of those bugs are fixed. Many reveal flaws in the foundation of SL software. Those flaws can be bugs or design concepts. Those that are design concept problems are being fixed too. Changing them to fix the problem and improve performance reveals other places where the changed concept has an effect and then those areas of the software have to be changed too. Some simply cannot be anticipated because the older SL software was not that well documented. Four years ago they knew the related issues would surface and create problems. So, rather than fix them they tended to create work arounds. Now, they tackle the problem and create real fixes. So, in some ways things are worse and some things are better. Region crossings and rez time along with general lag are being address. If you haven't noticed it getting better, get yourself a series 2 viewer and check it out. I've only been here a little over 3 years. But, things work better now... most days. The last two weeks have seen unusal problems and the roll back of server updates. Some complex issues are on the verge of being fixed. Each attempt moves the process farther along. With any luck some of those fixes will roll to the main grid next week. Click the link to my blog in my signature and read up.

If you didn't save the previous downloaded install file, which is a good idea just for cases like yours, you can get an earlier version on the Download page: Second Life Download Then look down the page to MORE VIEWERS. That takes you to the wiki and more options. It is hard to find older versions of the standard viewer. It is easier to move farther forward. There is a Beta version, Development version and Mesh Project version. I suggest you try any of those. But, when you get to some of the actual download pages they have lists of previous versions.

If one thinks Linden Lab (LL) is holding mesh back they’re not keeping up with events in Second Life. The ideas that content creators will wait for adoption of mesh viewer are certainly out of touch with the creative community. Just to get some numbers into the discussion, viewer stats showed far less than half of the viewers in use were the SLV 1.23 version. Just post Emerald Scandal stats (Sept 2010 New World Notes): Imprudence = 27% Non-TPV Directory Viewer = 18% Kirsten = 6% SLV 1.23 = 14% (At poll time the standard viewer) Snowglobe = 6% RLV = 2% --- End poll. Guesstimate: Emerald 27% (at poll time many were abandoning Emerald) The recent increase in new signups leads to even more users using SLV2. Third Party Viewers (TPV) use by the 2010 numbers was around 75%. Over the past 6 months that has been turning around. Last I heard Lindens say TPV and SLV’s were about 50/50. SLV 1.23 use has steadily decreased. SLV2 has steadily increased. I suspect between 50 to 75% of residents are using mesh render capable viewers now. The mesh upload menu items hide in Mesh-Off regions. It isn’t the mesh that is the big problem in series 1 viewers. It is clothes, outfits, and the failure of series 1 viewers to correctly render avatars wearing physics layers. Seeing a lot of Ruth’s lately? That Linden Lab has not updated 1.23 for clothes and physics problems I think shows it is near the end of its life. Releasing mesh will likely push a huge number of people to update to SLV2 tech. It will likely move people off series 1 viewers to series 2. If a TPV is not supporting mesh, users will change to those that are or the SLViewer. It’s in LL interest, on several levels, to release mesh as soon as possible. We are supposed to hear by the end of this month about mesh specs, costs, and roll out date. Then we can stop speculating. Then we’ll find out which of us have it backward. As to resident creators not supporting mesh until a majority adopt SLV2 tech… clueless. Visit the ADITI grid where mesh is live. Most creators have a warehouse full of mesh waiting for release. Creators are begging for a release date. The Lab is not holding mesh back. There are performance and technical issues that are delaying things. A lot of work is going into a Mesh Import Wizard so that novice modelers have a chance to learn how to use mesh. That Wizard is not a simple deal and appears to be part of the must-have-requirement for the initial release of mesh. Many have not noticed the massive upgrade SL is undergoing. I can easily write 2k to 3k words per week on the week to week changes to SL. I am amazed that the Lab has allowed SLV 1.23 to remain on the grid this long. However, the discontent with SLV2 is massive, so they are trying to allow series 1 user to change over on their own (and that is happening). It is costing them time as they have to support the new stuff and legacy stuff (UDP Texture Get vs HTTP Texture Get). Still, the foundations of SL are rapidly changing. Lots of these tidbits of information come from office hours meetings and the mailing list exchanges of the various project teams. One can read Daniel Voyager’s and my Nalates blogs and keep up on developments in SL without having to wade through the chat logs and geeky boring emails. Plus both blogs update you more often than the Lindens do.

We've been promised more information and a mesh eta by the end of the month.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by nothing... How you fix it depends on whether you are in Basic or Advanced Mode. Most of these problems will need to be fixed in Advanced Mode. You can choose mode when you are about to login. Unfortunately, the changes to the setting only take effect on the next start of the viewer. So, change and restart the viewer then login. Arrow keys can be used for movement only or for movement and chat string editing. In Preferences you will find settings for controlling the behavior to have it work the way you prefer. Preferences (Ctrl-P) -> Move & View ... look for Arrow Keys Always Move Me. I'm using the SL Viewer 2.6.9 Development (229908) May 13 2011. Many of the setting that used to be in Preferences are now hidden away in Second Life Debug Settings (toggle menu item on/off: Ctrl-Alt-Q). The SL Wiki explains what most of the settings do. When you use the arrow keys to help edit chat, it is not unusual to see the cursor stuck in the chat window. There is a setting that allows one to have Enter/Return open and close chat. Debug: CloseChatOnReturn Also there is a control that determines how your number pad behaves. So, if you do not have separate arrow keys, common on laptops, you need to consider that setting. Debug Settings: NumpadControl - 0 = Like the normal arrow keys, 1 = Numpad moves avatar when numlock is off, 2 = Numpad moves avatar regardless of numlock (use this if you have no numlock) In the future you can get more precise answers by letting us know which viewer you are using and whether you are on Windows or Mac.

SL has been having problems with products not being deleivered. Deleivery can be complicated if the recepient is not online. They may find the product in their Lost & Found folder. Or they may just not have received it. THe fix is to go into your account, by going to your Dashboard. There is a link in the viewer from in-world. Otherwise, log into the SecondLife.com site. Either way, once logged in you should be on your Dashboard page. On the left are links. One is ACCOUNT and within it is TRANSACTION HISTORY. Open the T.H. and set it to show transactions over the period when you made the purchase. You will see the transactions, provided they completed. If Linden $ was transferred there will be a record. Copy that information and then send it in a note card to the merchant you purchased the items from. Explain what has happened. Request a resend. Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are NOT good days to buy and send gifts. The Grid Status page advises one not be making purchases during this time, or the specific times for the current update process. The simulators are being restarted with updated software on those days. Usually by 9 or 10 AM PST/SLT the roll outs are complete and the grid is running as well as possible. If you are going to be transferring substantial sums of L$ in-world, whatever substantial is for you, it is a good idea to check the grid status.

Chat has problems and group chat is especially problematic. I too am so tired of getting chats bounced back because they can't connect or arrive out of order when they do arrive. Linden Lab knows about it. A whole new chat system based on XMPP was built. The system was rolled out for testing on the ADITI grid. Support for it has even been rolled onto the main grid. Some TPV's even have support for it (Kirsten's S21(7a). The problem is the more it was tested the more it was obvious it was not going to fix SL's chat problems. So... the whole thing is a huge disappointment... to us and to the Lindens. Rather than give us something that doesn't work, they went back to the drawing board. However, it is not a total loss. The Lindens learned a lot about the chat bottle necks and accumulated lots of stats. A new plan is in process. The Lindens aren't saying much about chat, which in my experience means they are not confident they have a solid solution. Everyone knows it is a problem. Linden Lab sees it as a priority. I suspect that since chat is such a common computer task the Linden's may have underestimated the problem. Or may be not. Whatever the case is, SL chat is a more complex creature than any of the other social net chats I use. I suspect they have a number of people figuring out a system based on the new knowledge.

The word from the Linden PR machine is that we will have an answer by the end of this month. We will have more details on mesh and a roll out date. Several people here have made good speculations. But, they are speculations. I predicted in my blog that we might see mesh this or next month, another speculation. But, this week they are changing the mesh object's data format. The reason given is performance. As they can study and analyze mesh on the ADITI grid, they find performance bottle necks. Apparently they found some that could only be fixed if they changed the format. So, they are doing that. The format change is like moving from a round peg to a square one. All the holes it must fit in have to change. So, there is a lot to change. Hopefully by the end of next week those changes will be complete and modelers will be testing the changes in ADITI. If you have not been to ADITI, it is worth a trip to see the new mesh stuff. If you want to follow Mesh Devlopement, read http://blog.nalates.net/

Good point Void.

Placing a request in the forum to have the Lab roll back an update is non-productive. Filing a trouble ticket is more likely to have an effect. However, the response here shows that the problem is wide spread. To see if the Lab knows what is going on check: Second Life Grid Status Reports » In this case the problem was found and has since been fixed. See: RESOLVED] Asset and Region Issues

LoveAngel gave some good advice. I suggest you read: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth This gives you most of the fixes and explains some of the complications from using multiple viewers, if you do. A quick fix is to change groups. Make a different group active. Sounds dumb and doesn't alsways work, but often it does. Another is to change your bald. Just wear any other bald in your inventory. Picking a Linden bald in the invenotry library assures you get a known working bald. Clearning cache is more complex but is often the fix for a persistant problem. Often forcing an inventory load by opening inventory and searching for something helps, then once loaded (you see a number of items increasing at the top of inventory) pressing Ctrl-Alt-R (?) the rebake command, waiting a minute (60 seonds at least) and repeating 3 times fixes the problem. For persentant problems the article has more things to try and explanations for why it happens.

ATI Cards have some problems. It is very important that you are using the right version video driver, not just the latest. The story around the forum is in some cases the newest driver creates more problems than an older one. There are ATI and OpenGL problems on the Mac side. Search the forum for Mac and ATI to find more information on the problems. On my nVidia card I had a number of problems with 2.6.3 versions. I have since been using the development viewers in the 2.6.8 range and having way less problems.

Or... you may just need to reboot the computer. It is possible that the cache has corrupted files, so the suggestions to clear the cache are good. If clearing the cache and rebooting do not help, try clearing your settings. There is a settings file hidden in: C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Roaming\SecondLife\user_settings\settings.xml If you are using more than one viewer, you may need to re-install the problem viewer. Also, if you use more than one viewer each viewer needs a separate cache folder. Having more than one viewer, at least viewer brand, using the same cache is a really bad idea and leads to lots of problems.

I suspect no one has any idea what limit you mean. I use a free account and other than not being able to own land, I have no limits. The only thing I can imagine is that you have the new viewer with Basic Mode and Advanced Mode. If you are in Basic Mode you will appear to have lots of limits, like no inventory. You can change mode at logon. Just change Basic to Advanced. Close and restart the viewer. The only other limit I know of is Age Verification. In Preferences -> General there are settings that must change to work with the verification.

We are assuming your are usnig the std SL Viewer. It helps if you click Help -> About and copy paste the info with your request for help. Some third party viewers (TPV) have AO's built in. If they are active and you wear an AO, things get confusing. Use only one. Some shoes have animations included. If they are Mod, you can remove the scripts and animations. Some shoes have two right or left shoes, one with and one without animations. Check you WORN items for anything that might have an animation in it. Detach it and see if that solves the problem. Some times animations get stuck when you tp to a new region. Top menu -> Me -> Movement -> Stop Animating Me. In animations shops there are objects that will stop all your animations. Some shops give them away for free. You sit on them and they clear all the animation privedges and animations. Some times just sitting on something will do the trick. Some times removing the AO, TP'ing to a new region and then putting it back on will sort of reset the AO. Some AO's have a 'reset' you can click to restart them.

We are assuming your are usnig the std SL Viewer. It helps if you click Help -> About and copy paste the info with your request for help. Some third party viewers (TPV) have AO's built in. If they are active and you wear an AO, things get confusing. Use only one. Some shoes have animations included. If they are Mod, you can remove the scripts and animations. Some shoes have two right or left shoes, one with and one without animations. Check you WORN items for anything that might have an animation in it. Detach it and see if that solves the problem. Some times animations get stuck when you tp to a new region. Top menu -> Me -> Movement -> Stop Animating Me. In animations shops there are objects that will stop all your animations. Some shops give them away for free. You sit on them and they clear all the animation privedges and animations. Some times just sitting on something will do the trick.

As far as I know there is no absolute way to control where you land when your target location is unavailable. You can find various places in SL that will allow you to set them as your home location. I forget if SL then uses your home as the default if Last Loc is not available. The setting is in the top menu -> World -> Set Home to Here. You can also set your viewer for PG and Mature. The setting is in Preferences -> General. Then you should only be TP'd to PG/Mature regions.

There is a setting for that... Assuming you are using the SL Viewer, you must be logged in to change the setting. It is in the Advanced menu item. You can use Ctrl-Alt-D to add and remove the item to/from the top menu. The setting is labeled Quite Snapshots to Disk.

Glad you got the problem fixed. Since you are using multiple viewers you should read through: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth You may realize that you have some conflicts between the viewers that need to be cleared up to avoid the problem repeating. Also, there are simple tricks one can try to get an avatar to render. Oddly one is to change your active group. It is an old SL trick from way back that still often works.

Of course check your Lost & Found and Trash. Also, we are assuming you are using the std. SL Viewer. It helps if you click Help -> About and copy paste the info into your request for help. There is Lost Inventory which you have to have the Linden's help you get back. There is also Apparently Lost Inventory that you can get back. The process can be a bit complicated as many things affect what you need to do, ie, the viewer version, whether you also use a third party viewer (TPV), your connection, and the region you are in. The simple fix is to clear your cache and then log into a deserted region, Pooley or another Linden regions with few people and things. In Preferences -> Setup there is a Reset button to clear the cache. Click it and then restart your viewer. You can check Show at Login in Preferences -> General to allow you to type in locations at login. For all the details read through: Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix – Help If you are using a TPV, you may need to switch to the SLViewer to clean up the problem. Several Inventory API's have recently changed. Older versions of viewers do not use the new API's. Also, SL Support insists that you be using an SL Viewer to ask them for help.

It may be something in that region that is the problem. To be able to log into a different region you need to look in Preferences -> General and check Show Location at Login. Then you can type in a new location. Pooley is a Linden owned region with very little in it, so it is a good palce to sort out problems. It is also helpful to tell people which computer and viewer you are using. You can click Help -> About and copy paste the information into your rquest for help. A common problem is a corrupt cache. Something you downloaded may be causing the problem. In Preferences -> Setup there is a RESET button. Click it and close the viewer then restart it. You do not have to login to clear your cache. Many other problems are caused by an out of date video driver. Be sure you have the latest update for your video card, unless you are using ATI. Then search the forum for more info on ATI drivers. For some cards an older driver is needed to use Second Life. If you are using the main production viewer for Second Life, you may want to switch to the Beta version as it has more fixes and that could solve your problem. If you use multiple viewers, the install order and shared caches could be a problem. For solutions to those issues and instructions on how to do a reinstall see: Second Life Clean Install - I wrote this blog post to include information on using and reinstalling multiple viewers. It works even if you just use one viewer.

Mesh will change this week. Which day is unknown. The data format is changing. Read the latest on mesh here: http://blog.nalates.net/ A new article on mesh will publish at 6PM SLT today. At the link given for the viewer there is more than one viewer for the Mesh Project. You are looking for a nightly build to get the latest fixes and changes. The development or snapshot viewer will do. These are pre-beta viewers so you may have problems. If so, try tomorrows viewer or get a little older version. The Wiki on Mesh lags actual developements. So, lots of things are changing and the wiki may not be accurate. Once you have a mesh capable viewer, you need to log into the Preview Grid, ADITI. There are Mesh Sandboxes there where you can upload mesh. Search the MAP for mesh. There are 3 types of mesh servers running. See the article for more details. Which one you try to upload to will make a difference. Also, the Kirsten S21(7) RC3 viewer will upload mesh. ...it may not after the coming data format change. Look through the Mesh section of this forum for more information. There are some infomrative threads here. You can search and find threads about AutoCAD and Mesh. The Collada format SL is using for mesh is popular open source format. Various programs support differently. Blender 2.49b does a good job and the 2.57 seems to do [retty well but has problems. Sketch up seems to work but with some issues. You may find ACAD has some problems. If so convert to another program and try their Collada export. Good luck.

A place many like is Free Dove. They have nice free skins and shapes. You can search on Free Skins... Search is not working real well right now but you will get something. If you have been in SL less than 30 days, there are new resident offers. You can usually get L$300 to L$600 hair for free. I got my first free from GuRL6 and have bought several from them since. Ask anyone in-world for which places they think have the best freebies. Many of us have list of places we made for our friends and I know I share mine when asked. If you want to find really nice stuff for free, look on the blog Daily Look - The Fashion Blog Most of the stuff there is on the expensive side. But, many of the merchants have weekly or monthly freebies of really nice stuff. You have to watch close to find them. Also many require you join their group. But, the stuff is free.