Nalates Urriah

SL uses Havok 7.?... mostly it runs server side. Some parts of Havok are used in the viewer. For instance a part is used to calculate the convex hull for meshes prior to upload. The rest of it I'm pretty fuzzy about. You could search around the web and find out whether keeping the card is a good idea. But, for SL it is not going to do much. A good nVidia 200 series card gives one about the best performance available. Probably as important as the GPU is the speed of the CPU. There are new things coming to SL and the render pipeline is changing. So, what we can do in 6 months may change a bit. Rendering in SL is consider to be rather inefficient. The new pipeline is supposed to be improving it.

Since you asked 'why it keeps happening' read through this: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth Pay attention to the Nude section.

You may find additional tips here and some preventative steps: Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix

Here is a collection of things to fix the problem: Second Life Viewer Crashes While Starting This is almost always an install failure of some kind. But, changed settings in the viewer can also cause the problem. Some settings can be changed, but have no effect until the viewer is restarted. So, the next time you login, crash. The cache can get corrupted and that can cause a crash on the next login. Sharing the Second Life Viewer Cache with more than one 'brand' of viewer can corrupt the cache... from the 'other'viewer's viewpoint. So, if you use TPV's problems can be more frequent. Consistant use of one or the other viewer reduces the likelihood of problems. It is the switching back and forth that increases problems. Repeated viewer restarts can often fix problems caued by both of those issues.

Remember. Most skin tutorials were made before we had multiple-wearables. Make up is usually added to the skin in those tutorials. I am expecting a whole new market in makeup layers and skins without makeup.

We are assuming you are running, and only running, SLV2.2.0. If you are running multiple viewers or a different version, that changes things. So, let us know. Also, you may want to consider a System Restore to a time when things were working.

Without knowing the error message you get or what happens it is hard to help you. If it is not anti-virus or network problems then this may help: Second Life: I Can’t Login

Search your computer for secondlife (no space between words) or texturecache. Both are folders. When you find those files you'll have found the cache. Check this to see if there is anything you have not tried: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth

Your type of ghosting (actually logout fail) is a problem known to Linden Lab. Wearing scripts (Mono?) can cause the logout process to hang. Then you cannot login. HOWEVER, if you login to a different location, you can get back in and fix the problem. Not all these steps are necessary. So, open the viewer and do not login. In Preferences->General that is check box labeled Show on Logon in the Start Location section. Check it so you see it down by your login ID. This will let you type in or paste in destinations in the future. Close your viewer. Visit SL Destinations and pick a place you know is not location you were in when you logged off. Click to go there. You will see the SLURL in the new window. Login. It may take 2 or 3 tries. Give it a couple of minutes between tries. You can visit the problem location and your visit will force your ghost back to the spirit world and claer the region so you can logon again. Also, after the usual Tuesday restart, the problem should be gone.

For anyone that has persistant problems, these two articles are a good read. They also give you some information on how things work. Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth « Nalates' Things & Stuff Blog

How to self fix the problem depends on your type of ghosting. There is the ghost of a previous login that prevents you logging in and there is the ghost where one is a particle ball. Both problems have a number of solutions here. Search the SL blogum for 'can't login' and 'avatar won't rez' and similar terms. I have a blog post on avatar won't rez.

When you use different viewers you will run into a new set of problems. Most of these problems come from how the viewers handle the cache. There are some files kept in the cache about your viewer settings, inventory, and of course all the textures and stuff from various regions. Different viewers seem to do things with the cache that mess up other viewers. A couple of months ago I wrote about inventory problems and how to fix cache problems for multiple viewers. I currently have 12 or 14 installed. See: Second Life Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix – Help While most of the information is for recovering 'lost' inventory, it covers setting up separate caches for your viewers. Once you separate the caches most of your problems will resolve. Imprudence Experimental Viewer seems to have some caching issues, but I use it on OSGrid and SL. That could make is more a server side issue than a viewer problem.

Suspiria Finucane is right. The cache is the likely problem. Mixing SLV2 and SLV1 style viewers, whether LL or TPV written will create problems. If you use just SLV2 (SL Viewer ) and SLV1.23 I suggest you change the SLV1 cache location. In 1.23 that is done in top menu: Edit->Preferences->Network I currently use 13 different viewers because I review them for my blog (see nalates.wordpress.com). I use a separate cache for each and seldom have inventory problems or an avatar that refuses to rez. When I install a new viewer I change the cache location before I ever login. A corrupted cache can cause other problems too as the viewer settings can corrupt too. New installs can flush previous viewer settings We currently have SL 1.23.x viewers based on the oldest code. We could call those SLV1.2 code based. We have Snowglobe versions 1.4 and 1.5 and TPV's based on each. In general those are called the SLV1 viewers. Now LL is changing how they develop software and Snowstorm is moving quickly producing the new SLV2 series of viewers. (I like LL's Monday version of the Development Viewer) TPV's will follow soon. The thing is they handle inventory in different ways and it is hard to know which version is using which style of inventory and how well they handle the new SLV2 inventory features. Mixing their caches seems to scramble the cache.

Good reply Q. In dealing with people shrinks use a concept of 'mirroring' or technically; transference displayed as projection. People see their behavior in another whether it is there or not. Many posts reveal more about the one placing the post than the person targeted in the post. One can most often see this when people describe another’s behavior and motivations. They move off the topic issue and stop discussing whether the options are good, bad, necessary, or just evil. Instead they discuss things like the Lab being disassociated from customers. There is no evidence ever provided that is true, it is just opinion provided as fact. I suspect such people are unaware of the personal projects various Lindens have in SL. But, when one is projecting facts are irrelevant. On axes to grind… some do. Some people have agendas and past grievances. Others are just in their stuff and projecting. Their preferences and viewpoints are not met so obviously the Lab has no clue. While the Lab runs usability tests and reads through the forums, emails, OH responses, JIRA’s, backlogs and more the derogatory poster usually posts from a limited viewpoint. I've been around SL for about 3 years now. I like lots of the current changes in the development side of the Lab since Phillip's return. That you have taken the time to make this post is nice and I think it a good example of the new openness in LL development and communication. I read the Office Hours Meeting transcript where this came up. I thought it was clear then that options were not the first solution you wanted see and that better planning could remove the need to some option settings. Nor did I take it new options would never be added. Your OP seems to be consistent with what I read in the transcript. Unfortunately no matter what you do some are not going to get it.

There are 5 people at LL working on changing search. If you want a good update on how SL is doing search and what your parcels search info looks like check out: Second Life Seach which is about an article written by Darrius Gothly. He goes into much more detail and has built a tool now on XStreetLS. He also provides some free tools and links to other free tools. One needs to avoid spamming. But, we have a thing called BOOST...

Blender with CS3 is doable but not as easy as using CS4. CS3 and Blender can work together. Textures can be baked in Blender to get lighting effects. Those can be cleaned up or enhanced in PS. Using Blenders UVMapping has a high learning curve. If you are considering working in Blue Mars then Blender is a good choice. The Primstar (http://dominodesigns.info/project/primstar) add-on to Blender allows one to import/export SL sculpties. With the other file formats that Blender provides it would allow you to convert sculpties to almost any file format you need.