Nalates Urriah

The best fix is to wait 24 hours and get a new build of the viewer. After a viewer crashes the computer should be rebooted. Then try the viewer again. If it still crashes, look through the crash log for a hint of what is happening. You can also look in the settings folder and delete the settings file to force a reset to the default values. Each viewer has its own XML file for settings. You'll recognize the name for the Mesh Project viewer. Just the one file needs to go. Delete the cache at the same time. As an alternative you can try Nyx's viewer with the Render Complexity tool. Nyx linked to it from the forum in a post earlier today. Test Viewer Good luck.

I've found that my viewers work better if I just reinstall my primary viewer last. In another post in this thread I point out the problem of copying the older settings folder over a new install's folder. I think copying the folder over the new folder would probably be somewhat safer if one did not allow file over writes. Just restore the missing files. That would fix the problems with other installed viewers and not break the new install. Lots of stuff is changing in the Mesh and Snowstorm projects. I believe one should expect changes to these files with each update. I see no reason to assume they will always be compatible and work from version to version. There is a reason that the uninstall program wipes out all the files. Whether it is for compatibility reasons, I can't say. However, for a REALLY SERIOUS clean install most people recommend removal of all the viewers and all their associated and hidden files to get rid of incompatible settings and files. Since that approach works well, saving and restoring files to new installs would seem to be risky. The best reason for saving the files is, if one wants to save their chat logs. I would not recommend that you try to mix older versions of the chat log files with newer versions as even their format has changed in some viewer versions.

Changing the chat log and settings folders via Preferences is only possible in a few TPV's. One might find a control buried in the various XML files in the viewer installation and be able to change them. But, in general, there is no easy way. Also several TPV's use the SL settings folder to store their settings. A few create their own folders for settings and chat logs. Kirstens creates completely seperate sets of folders. Phoenix uses the SL Settings folder but its own cache folder. Firestorm creates it own seperate set. All the complexities come from many SL and TPV programmers assuming everyone uses just their viewer. Over the past year that assumption seems to be changing. Kirsten's and Firestorm seem to be ahead of SL and others. Until they all get together, backing up the AppData\Roaming\SecondLife folder is a must. Also, hoping to bring an old settings file back to a new install to save the effort of redoing the settings or writing an older SL Settings folder over an install's newly created one, is a dangerious idea. The information kept in those files changes over time. The reviews I write on viewers and the tutorials for installing, clean installs, and problem solving typically have to cover how to deal with all these messy problems. There is no simple easy solution for those using multiple viewers. The programmers have enough of a problem just getting the viewer to work well. Time for getting the install and uninstall working well is limited and seems a low priority for all programmers. Don't expect the issues to be fixed anytime soon. Most of us are pushing for mesh and better chat, which are where LL is putting their effort.

The Collada Expoerter in Blender is changing too. (See Letwory Interactive) If you use JASS or Primstar for sculpties, the Gaia Clary site Machinimatrix.org gives you a fix for the older Collada scripts in Blender to make them easier to use with SL. With Blender 2.49 a meter in SL is 100 units in Blender, which is very awkward to work with. With the patch the scaling on export to Collada changes the scale to +100 and makes it 1 unit to one meter, which is easier to work with. I haven't done 2.5x exports recently so I'm not sure what the new changes from Letwory have done. You can have both 2.49 and 2.5x installed. The easy install is to down load the 2.5 as the zip file and expand the content to a folder. The result is a stand alone Blender install that runs. If you use the install program things get... well... easier in some ways and more complicated in others. One of the 'others' is when you want to run multiple versions.

It is also possible to export your avatar, one that is the shape you use. See: Second Life Mesh Tutorial

Are you thinking a mesh setting? If so, I doubt it. The LoD control is in the viewer. The control affects all objects the viewer renders. See Debug Settings RenderAvatarLODFactor RenderDynamicLOD RenderShaderLODThreshold RenderTerrainLODFactor RenderTreeLODFactor RenderUseShaderLOD RenderVolumeLODFactor - Controls level of detail of primitives (multiplier for current screen area when calculated level of detail) As you can see several LoD factors for different objects are built into the viewer rather than the objects.

Unless you are using the Mesh Project viewer, you cannot see meshes. THey simply do not render. Second Life Mesh Project Viewer Also the Kiesten S21(5) Viewer renders mesh. When a viewer cannot render mesh one usually sees a flat triangle shaped thing.

Your item #1 has some limits, but the viewer does launch from an HTTP link in a web page. If you use the SLV2 the install sets the SecondLife: protocol type just as the HTTP: protocol is set. Browsers will open the SL Viewer. Not all of them. Some like Firefox have to have the protocol set manually. But Chrome and IE8 will use the system default, which the install sets. The limits come from the fact that users can set their computers to use whichever program they want with any protocol. Also browser makers can chose to handle non-standard protocols however they want. Users can also set specific browsers to use specific viewers with the SL browser protocol. Item #2 might be cool. Skylight is a version of the SL viewer running in a browser. It primarily used OpenGL and required no viewer download or install. The Lab is advancing that idea but its priority is unclear. Item #3, why would one want to use up more screen real estate displaying pictures and videos within the viewer window? Facebook allows links to display in your browser. Why would one not use the viewer’s browser that we have now for those tasks? As to uploading images, within SL that costs L$10 per pic. I can use Photobucket or Facebook for free. They don’t have the terabytes of data that LL already stores. I can’t see LL offering free image storage nor image storage being a big incentive to use SL. Item 4 we seem to already have… I’m not sure that stuffing the viewer’s browser in a narrow vertical sidebar is a good idea. But, one can click on web links and TP to places. Or do you mean something else? Item #5 – With MOAP it is possible for region owners to build such applications. But, it sounds like you are trying to turn the viewer into a replacement for a browser… For now most of the new stuff related to your ideas happen in Web Profiles and is limited. Item #6 – everyone wants controls they already know… Give me WASD and mouse steering, which most games do, and I’m happy. I used WASD/Mouse-steer in Myst Online and I use it in SL. Most of the games I’ve played have those options. WoW uses the WASD keys too. So, SL seems to have a pretty basic standard control interface option. Myst, WoW, and SL all games use different keys for tasks special to their software. Item #7… were you around for the recent change in login ID’s? Item #8… the Lab and about 2 million users beat you to the ‘make it easier’ idea. I gues you weren’t around for Phillips 2010 speech about fun and easy? Item #9… rather than impost larger text on everyone, why not use your browser’s zoom? Typically Ctrl + or – to change text size.

Looks like you should be able to. See: http://forums-archive.secondlife.com/111/10/305748/1.html

Its hard to say. I've seen this happen with several different viewers old ones did it and those since 2.5.1. Sometimes one has to reboot the computer and clear the cache to clear things up.Often the problem is a texture that the viewer is having a problem with. As the viewer decompresses the texture it sometime gets caught in a loop. Also the texture may have corrupted in either the initial upload or your specefic download. In some cases the viewer never reads an end of file marker and keeps trying to download a new copy. Several things can go wrong. Often you can get FPS back by tirning 90 degrees left or right. If turning back slows you back down, it is probably a texture. If the problem repeats after a reboot and cache clear, reinstall the viewer over the top of the previous install. It should save your settings. Reboot after the install. If the problem still repeats, do a clean install of the viewer. Remove the viewer using the uninstall program. Manually clear all the program, cache, and settings folders. There are lots of steps, considerations, and file locations so read Second Life Clean Install, which is a blog post of mine. There is lots of additional information about the process. The SL WIki has a Clean Install set of instructions, with Mac file locations, but they mostly ignore the possibility you use more than one viewer. Sorry the posts are for Windows users... but the ideas are the same for the Mac. The file locations are different. Also, if you use an nVidia graphics card make sure you have turned off multithreading. That is done in the nVidia control panel under Manage 3D Settings. One makes a profile for each 3D program. There are two tabs; golbal and programs. Profiles are in Programs. You will probably need to add the viewer program. When you click ADD a file open dialog appears. In Program Files->[Viewer Name] will be the viewer folder. You are looking for the EXE file, i.e., for SL = secondlife.exe or basically [viewer_name].exe. Click it and OK. In the settings list look for Threaded Optimization. Set it to OFF. Having this on Auto or On can cause crashes and FPS slow downs. You can see the actual dialog and settings in Graphics Tweaking for Second Life plus there are other settings you may want to check.

When I try to post here in the forum the Chrome browser crashes. The site's editor seems to break Chrome. Anyone else running into this problem?

I'm not sure I can see all the posts in this thread... things are out of order... Whatever, check your connection using a site like http://www.speedtest.net. If you were trying to login Tueday or Wednesday morning then the problem can be the rolling restarts and just bad luck on your part. But by 10 Am and certaily by noon those issues are gone. Try loging into an area like Pooley (Linden Land, little stuff there, few people, good toubleshooting login location). We are assuming you are using the current SLViewer. If you are using an older viewer you, especially a TPV, you may be getting bounced for using a blocked viewer. I'm not sure what error message one is supposed to get in that case. Also, we don;t know if you are WIndows or Mac. Either way open your sytem monitors to see how much CPU is being used. If the viewer is pegging the computer at 100% cpu use, which happens, the viewer is likely missing the handshakes for logon. Whenever a viewer goes nuts a computer reboot is a good idea. As already suggested restart the Internet Modem too.

The web profiles are slow to open in SLV2.5 and forward. There have also been some SSL security issues. Because of the security issues you may need to clear the browser cache. If you are using the viewers internal browser, you clear the cache from within the viewer. Me->Preferences->Privacy. If you are using an external browser you will need to clear the cache with its controls. Either way use a web browser to log into the web profile. That should get the SSL stuff sync'd. Then log into SL and try to see your profile. If you use the viewer full screen with an external browser, it may be opening the profile behind the viewer. That shouldn't happen, but it really depends on how fast you are clicking on things. Many of us are not happy about the change. The new web profiles take up to much screen space, they are slow, there is less control, less information... in general it sucks. But, LL is headed toward a more social connection to people and this is a way marker on the route. I doubt there is any chance to get these profiles dumped. However, we can probably get them tweaked into something usable over time.

I spent some time figuring out the dimensions and how the badge images work. The long story is here: New SL Community Badges. The image used in the page is a CSS background image and tiles the area available. A small image repeats until the area is full. So, the dimensions are a minimum to avoid any repeats. It also means the image fills the area from the top and left to the bottom and right. Clipping will occur at the bottom and right. The image is not resized if one uses Full Size. The part labeled 'background' in my image is just a part of the image I made. But it appears to be a background behind the name and rank. Because the image area can change and the corners are rounded, it is nearly impossible to make a border around the image look right. The bottom gadiant area is only needed if you haven't screwed up and selected a badge style. It lets one make the lower gray text readable. Once you pick a badge style the text goes white and the gadient is not needed. BayFog and Tokyo Madness are styles for the badge area more than they are images. Once one of these styles is on, there seems to be no way to back it out.

Most bald's use exactly the same settings, so they are interchangeable. Find one that works and use it with most of your do's. I have a folder in which I keep all the things that make up my naked avatar, e.i., skin, shape, eyes, bald. I can replace my current outfit with that folder, if I'm seriously not rezzing. For a time just changing my bald would do the trick. So, I went through and found a new bald. Since I've changed bald I've not had problems. But, experiementing I find the orignal blad does work. I don't rely on it and it is no longer my 'default' bald. So, whether there is something odd about that old bald or the server upgrades that have fixed a problem, I don't know. There are a number of things that cause or contribute to the problem of avatars failing to rez. The Lab says it is likely TPV's and the makers of the TPV's say it is the Lab's servers. What I do know is people using SLV2 exclusively have the problem too. I also know that I had lots of problems with my avatar failing to rez and clothes messing up and doing odd things when I had a single cache for all my viewers. I am convinced that mixing downloaded images using OpenJPEG and KDU in the same cache is a problem. All current TPV's use OpenJPEG and it is pretty well agreed that 1% of SL images will choke OpenJPEG and fail to decompress correctly or else never show a complete download. All SLV viewers use KDU. SLV2.4 and earlier use the old KDU and 2.5 and up are using the new version of KDU. Whether KDU handles 100% of the images uploaded with OpenJPEG... I don't know. To understand how to avoid the incompatiblities and find other possible fixes for your avatar not rezzing, read: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth

leliel is right. Something has been done. The Lab has been working on this for a couple of weeks. There is a fix testing the 2.5 Beta and Development viewers. If you haven't upgraded yet you may want to consider it. The reason for '???' appearing is a complex set of interactions, the Display Name (DN) cache, the DN API, and Name server over load. The newer code handles caching differently, more aggressive at clearing the cache, and has a fall back to the legacy name system when the DN API fails to return a name. Previously when the DN API failed it returned ??? which the view prompty cached. Once cached you were stuck with the name ??? until the cache timed out and it cleared. See: Second Life Viewer Status for information on other fixes and additions to the viewer.

Unless the maker tells you about the prim count and scripts, there is no way to know before you buy. For a clear understanding of 'what's a prim?' open the build dialog. On some viewers press 'B' and on others Ctrl-B to open the build dialog. At the top you will see all the primiative bilding shapes available. A script is a small computer program that causes something to happen. In SL some scripts are not so small. Scripts can be put in prims to make them do things, move, rotate, change color, etc. With some viewers there is a feature labeled S. Count that allows you to get a count of the scripts an avatar is wearing or that are in an object. But an object within a vendor can't be clicked on, so one sees the scripts for the vendor.

When your av does not rez you usually cannot edit appearance. But there are easy fixes to try before resorting to the Test Avatar. I think of it as more of a last resort. The quick easy fixes are to: Change your active group - why it works is unclear but often does. Change the bald you wear - open inventory and select any bald to wear. Using wear from inventory gets around the edit appearance problem. Wear a different shape, skin, or clothes. Use wear with clothes, not add. Try those 3 tricks in order. Hopefully you can avoid having to completely rebuild your avatar as a change to the default avatar requires. Getting a bit more complex, try these: Clear the viewer cache - in Preferences (Ctrl-P) on the Setup tab click Reset. Close then restart the viewer. It is ideal to login to a deserted region. But, it is mandatory you not leave whatever region before your inventory finishes reloading. Open your inventory and search for anything to see the load numbers. Press Re-Bake then in 1 minutes do it again and a minute later do it again. If the preceding tricks have failed, go for the default avatar. There are more tricks and explanations of what to do to rez your av and avoid the problem: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth

Objects de-rezzing is a server side problem. There is a JIRA and I've seen some discussion in the Snowstorm & Beta Server Projects. I think the fix is in the coming Tueday rollout, but I'm not sure of that. You can check to see if it is fixed in one of the Release Channels. Search for Blue Steel, Le Tigre, or Magnum iin places or destinations. There are Linden Sandboxes in each region where you can experiement. You can also visit ADITI to see the problem is reproducable in the pre-release channel software.

Do you use or have you every used any viewer other than 1.23? ...recently. If you have ever used a series 2 viewer, you could have attachments that you can't get to with the SLV1. You appearance is stored differently in series 1 and 2 viewers. When I switch to a series 1 viewer I often find I'm wearing my current hair attached in SLV2 and the hair worn using SLV1 just previous. If you have used an older version of Phoenix, you may have to use the new version to find the attachment. They had a collection of alternate attachment points. Your snow attachment may be attached as a HUD. Check which HUD's you may be wearing. Try to attach any object to your HUD. The pop up will show you what is on any existing HUD attachment points. If you cannot find the attachment or follower, switch back to the default avatar, a last resort sort of thing. In Advanced or the Developer menu depending on which viewer you try this in, go to Avatar -> Character Tests -> Test Male/Female. This will replace your avatar and return it to all its default settings and detach everything. Check and see if you got ride of the snow. If you did, rebuild your avatar's look. As you put things on do it one at a time and watch for snow. The persistant snow can only be from an attachment on the AV or HUD or from a follower. The no-scripts region suggestion is a good one. The only other possibility I can think of is an attachment that was dropping things. If you have rez rights in the places where you have snow, the attachment may have dropped off or rez'd a copy that dropped. Finding such things can be really difficult. The sim owner useually had to do it. But you can use Phoenix to find scripted items. They have a beacon system that will reveal scripted objects and highlight them. ...or it may just be snowing in your regions... (couldn't resist)

Assuming you are using the SLV2 and an nVidia graphics card without shadows on... The avatar mesh we have does a few odd things in the face depending on how you have it shaped. That is just the nature of mesh rendering. Try the face lights as suggested. If you are still seeing the problem, take a pictuer and post it here.

The pixelated borders sounds like 'jaggies' meaning the anti-alaising (AA) has failed or is off. For the last 3 or 4 months there has been a problem with AA in the Linden Lab's viewers. In general it hasn't been working whether turned on or not. Depending on your viewer version it may not be fixable. The 8800 GTS is still a pretty good card. Along with it comes the nVidia Control Panel where you can set various graphics settings. You can see how my 8800 renders with AA turned off in this image: http://s744.photobucket.com/albums/xx90/Nalates/Blog%20Stuff/?action=view&current=Kirsten42_002a.jpg - I was using Kirsten's viewer when I took the image. The resolution was 1920x1080 and was reduced to 800x?px before I uploaded it. Still you can see the jaggies on the elephant (in preview grid for mesh). Your screen should be producing something close. If the image is worse and you have replaced drivers, you may have turned your screen resolution down. Right click in any empty area of your wall paper and select Personalize. Then select Display Settings. Set the resolution to your display's 'natural' setting. That should get you seeing something close to the image of my screen. The nVidia Control Panel can be used to set your card up on a game by game basis. For more on that see: Graphics Tweaking for Second Life

There are different ways to go about getting SLURL's to work with various browsers. Read: Emerald Viewer vs SLURL - it is old but noting has changed. You need to change the name Emerald to what ever viewer name your using and all should work. It does require editing the registry. Each time you install a viewer, the install can change the registry and reset the settings for how SLURL's are handled. Chrome and Firefox have settings that tell the browser how to handle the SecondLife: protocol.

Just as web sites use search optimization to place well in search, so too do regions. Check this for more info and links: Second Life Search Frustration

Which viewer? If you are using SLV2.3... try clearing the cache and if that fails uninstall and reinstall. In between manually delete all the files, caches and settings. They are in C:\User\\AppData\Local and Roaming\SecondLife or SecondLife2. Once your cache is full the viewer slows down. It takes time to search for an old texture to delete then downloads the new texture, all of which uses up CPU cycles. You can also set your cache to use more disk space if you are in world for long periods and visit lots of places. If you mess with settings or use mutiple viewers, the graphics setting can get wacked. Setting something in one viewer can change another viewer. Also a viewer crash can mess them up. Some times just clearing the settings file and letting it rebuild is as good as a reinstall. Settings are in C:\User\\AppData\Roaming\Seondlife\user_settings. You can empty the folder. If you want to keep your chat logs, they are in Roaming. Also click Help -> About and see if you are in one of the release channels. You'll see something in the server info about Blue Steel, Le Tigre, or Magnum. If so, hop to a region not in a release channel and see if it makes a difference. If this is a sudden change and you have not upgraded or changed anything, it is highly probable that something in the network connection changed. It may be SL or your ISP. A speed test to San fran will tell if it is your ISP. Things are changing on SL's net and some days just suck. Another possibility is a Windows Update... look through your update history for recent changes. If you have not added programs to your computer or made other serious changes you can try a system restore rollback to before the last set of system updates and see what that does. It can be undone, so it is not a drastic measure. Just remember to undo it if nothing improves. Use Ctrl-Shift-1 to watch the details of your viewer and sim performance. You can also see ping time (but in many cases it lies) and lost packets (never lies). Most importantly you can see your viewer FPS and the SIM FPS and that tells you if it is you that is lagging or the region.