Nalates Urriah

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.

Abuse reports are not your only option. Depending which state, or country you live in there are RL bullying laws that can be brought to bare. There is the problem of finding the RL person for authorities to take action against. But, you can a para-legal to help you get LL's attention and the user's information. Even if it is only an IP address that can get the legal process in motion. One then has to go after the ISP. It is rather tedious and time consuming and requires lots of documentation. Then there are extra legal processes for obtaining the IP address and user information. The trick is staying safe and going there. One can reach the dark side of SL via Google. What you are going to find here is heavely censored.

When you upgrade to Phoenix (725) you should see this problem less often. If you continue to use Snowglobe, create separate caches for your viewers. BTW, Phoenix (725) now uses a separate cache as part of the default install. Read the information now on the Phoenix blog. How inventory and attachments are handled changes between Phoenix 373 and 725 (December release). Phoenix has upgraded to more of the SLV2 code for inventory and attachments. The differences between series 1 and 2 viewer code has been causing problems for several weeks now. One is almost guaranteed eventual problems when using series 1 and series 2 viewers. Try to stick to series 2 viewers, or at least ones using the series 2 avatar multi-waerables and inventory. The fixes and explanations of the problems can be found in these blog posts: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth and Lost Inventory and Missing Inventory Fix

I'm doubtful uninstalling Phoenix helped... but I can't argue with results. I suspect TPV's viewers are registering DLL's and that is adding to viewer problems. I know SL registers DLL's. So, an un-install of all viewers should unregister all the DLL's. I think when one installs a new viewer and other viewers stop working it is a good indication something in the DLL's or other shared files got wacked.

Separate your Phoenix cache from the SLViewer cache. In Phoenix it is in Prefs, Network... which you probably know. If you are using multiple SLV's uninstall ALL of them. Just redoing one doesn't get it. Then manually delete all the SL forlders in Program Files, AppsData, and Roaming. Reinstall and you should be good. I review viewers and play with them to see what neat things developers have created. Basically there is no one viewer that does everyting I want to do. So, I quest for the perfect viewer... What I have learned is the TPV's tend to share parts of the SLV's and stash stuff in the SL folders.Testing one new release of a TPV broke all my SLV's. So, once again I had to do a large reinstall. Several viewers all use the same setting files in the SL folder. Most viewers now have various different settings. Mixing them into a single settings file is probably not a good idea. Some times clearing out the settings (user_settings) folder in roaming fixes probems with several viewers. Hopefully that will fix your problem.

The fix depends on your computer and connection. So, what works for one may not work for you. Also, the appearance of your friends is more complex because it also depends their computers and connections. You can look through these tips: Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth

Or… there is an easier way to remove the squish. Since your window size is 1680 x 998 just divide 1680 by 998 to get 1.68 (close enough). Size a prim to 1m by 1.68m and splat the picture in the prim. It won’t be the absolute best resolution but it will have everything in the correct proportions. If you want the best image render, you will have to resort to GIMP, Photoshop, or Paint.net (Free) to crop the image to 1x1 or 2x1 proportions, like 1680x840 which SL will then compress and crop to 1024x512. SL only stores images in certain sizes as Peggy says. You can upload images larger than 1024 pixels but SL will resize them for storage and their resamping for image reduction is not that good. GIMP, Paint, and especially Photoshop are way better. So, resample and reduce your 1680x840 to 1024x512 before uploading. Put it on a prim 1m x 0.5m. Once you have a prim the right proportions press Ctrl-Shift and use the white handles to resize it. When viewing an image from inventory you can resize the window it appears in. If you do not want to do that you have to resize the image before you upload it.

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.