om Piers

Bump. I never thought to ask this question! The only fix I know is to take something off/put something on. It would be great if there were a script ... but it would probably have to be in something you take off/put on ...

That's right admirable Mayalily. May the rest of your SL day be that which you desire.

I don't know what the new resident experience looks like now, but I don't think I joined the NCI group until a few months ago. Do they tell you about groups like NCI when you first get your avatar? Giving new residents the opportunity to join a group like NCI right off the bat is a great idea. If they don't already, new residents should also receive an email that has information and links for new resident friendly groups, the new resident's dashboard on secondlife.com, the forums, the KB and Answers areas, and that email should be continuously updated to ensure that the info is current. The other thing ... the dashboard for new residents should default to a "new" status when they first log in, and in that "new" status should show them where to go for all the typical getting started type questions. I've seen some great information on the secondlife web site and in the wiki, but it took me a while to realize how much was there. Edit: I meant to say that since I have joined NCI, I've found it to be very active just about every time I log in. The only thing I would worry about with new residents, if there were thousands joining every day .... the groups might be unusable. There's still some chat lag going on in the groups.

It is not the merchant's job to teach SL what PE is, but I'll bet a dollar to a donkey's knuckle that the merchant that spends a little effort educating his customers will have fewer headaches and a better reputation right out of the gate. Angry and confused customers generally yell at the merchants ... in the forums and in reviews.

Your points are valid. Though I will say that a 5m tree better be advertised as a 5m tree, and if it is modifiable, the product description must include information about the changing PE values as it is increased in size. I do like the idea of extra prim count range fields being added in the market place. That would be a good start. From X prims to Y prims. I wonder if mesh merchants might get together as a group and develop a customer page in the wikki that discusses mesh products and PE, and include a link to that page in the product detail page. Honorable mesh merchants might also include a sort of pledge on that customer page, and add their name to a list signing the pledge. The pledge would be to do some of the things we are talking about in this thread, honest representation, full disclosure of prim count ranges, customer education, etc.

"when for some, it clearly isn't" I agree Dogboat. As you indicate in your statement, perception is relative to the individual perceiving .... beauty, and reality, and probably an infinite number of other things.

I'm old and maybe slow. What question are you asking? The things you are pointing out that "bad" merchants can do ... those are true. But I, for one, will not be buying mesh products from unknown merchants that don't have a verifiable good reputation. It does not change the answer your original question "how are we supposed to market mesh prim count?" Market your mesh products honestly, and if they are of good quality and useful and compete in a substantial way with sculpties or standard prims, chances are that you will be a successful mesh merchant. "Honestly" means giving reasonable prim counts, and perhaps means giving a range of reasonable prim counts each associated with a particular object size, so that a customer knows what to expect. If the customer can see the object inworld to inspect the prim counts, so much the better.

Based on the discussions in this forum so far, it sounds like very large objects are not ideal products for mesh, at least at this time, because of that PE value. If I understand correctly, even linking a mesh item with other items or adding scripts to a mesh can change the mesh PE value as well. I got the impression that for the first roll out, mesh will be more appropriate for small products like jewelry and other attachments. Merchants that try to convert entirely to mesh for all their products, both big and small, might not have a lot of success. Marketing and honesty ... I would guess that merchants that deliberately mislead their customers would develop a reputation for that, and not be successful for very long. Obviously, the prim count a merchant provides should be the prim count of the object at the size the object would normally be used. It is subjective, but customers won't care much about 'technically accurate" statements and will be angry at being mislead. As a customer, I would remember not to buy from a merchant that mislead me in the way that you describe. Certainly, my reviews of the product would reflect that as well.

The 'is it a game' question has been asked before as someone pointed out, but as time moves forward, i enjoy seeing a new set of answers. It still seems split about the same. Must say, the relative civility in this thread is a good sign no matter what! Thanks Keli! People will approach SL as they choose, as a game or a life or a hobby or ..., because they can. There is no mechanism to force people to view or use SL in a particular way. For me, it is a form of entertainment, a way to pass the time, to have a good conversation from time to time, to learn something interesting from someone across one pond or another.

Here's another discussion from a day or two ago: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Wishlist-Wishpot-is-this-a-clever-scam/m-p/969375#M12722

+1

The most recent official SL viewer version has some bugs apparently. If you have an earlier version that worked for you, you might try uninstalling the current version and then going back to that one. A lot of people are having the troubles you are having. Do a search on the forum for "crash" and you will find plenty of company from the past week. An upgrade will probably come available soon that fixes the issues, so for the time being you just need a for-the-time-being fix I ran into troubles a couple of versions back, and I wound up trying Firestorm. I don't have a top end computer, but since installing Firestorm, I can actually see shadows for the first time. If an older version of the official SL viewer doesn't work for you, you might try that. Firestorm is listed in the TPV directory:http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory Don't give up just yet!

I typed in "roll dice" in the market place, under Recreation and Entertainment>Games, and a couple of dice rollers with traditional looking dice were returned.

Hello MissJessi, You may have better luck posting your request here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Wanted/bd-p/Wanted. People look in that area for jobs/gigs/work. Best of luck in your search!

I understand taking advantage of opportunities to market and advertise where you can, but sticking an av's name on a permanent list to receive spam marketing every week, or every day in some cases, is intrusive when it was not done at request of the av. Extremely so when the av is not removed from said list when he/she requests it. To stay in the range of courteous behavior, a merchant should instead just indicate in the product's page that you can join ABC group for special deals and discounts. That leaves it up to the av, and far less likely to alienate those who do not like getting 20 advertisements slammed at them every time they log in. At most, set it up so that the very first time (and only the first time) an av buys something from a merchant, the merchant sends a message inviting them to join the group to receive future notices about deals.

That's great Delynn! And thoughtful of you to acknowledge the merchant publicly.

Good question! I never thought much about it, other than I buy from a person or company that I believe I can trust. Reputation, integrity, honesty, good manners ... those are important whether I buy from a big company or small one. Honesty would mean accurately communicating the size of the business and accurately setting my expectations for customer service, as well as accurately representing the products. Big companies can manage 24/7 coverage, the small companies rarely can and I do not expect them too. When it comes to renting a sizable piece of land or buying an expensive tool, I might be more inclined to go with a larger company, with a longer history, because of the investment, but my transaction history says that I do not always take that into account ... and for the most part, have still been very happy with the purchase. As a shop owner ... when I chose a name for my shop, I used my initials in the name because I am a sole proprietor ... never thought to represent my store as a corporation. I am one person, not 10 people, and that means it is impossible for me to be instantly available to customers for customer service purposes. I always try to make it clear, in conversations and even in my profile I think, that I will respond to messages the second I am inworld and aware that someone has questions. But it can be even up to a day or two, depending on RL. I completely understand the folks who choose to buy from a larger, more stable and reputable company. LOL, I keep my prices low in recognition of that fact ... I can not provide the same value in customer service that a larger company can. 

I have had the same experience with 2.7.2 of the official viewer (earlier 2.x versions worked great, I think the last was 2.7.1 something), as well as Kirsten's which I also tried. I finally downloaded Firestorm, which is still in beta, and started seeing the same quality I had been getting with the SL viewer, with an added benefit of seein shadows for the first time. For me, those features were never enabled in the SL viewer. However, the experience seems to be different for different people. A lot of people aren't having any new troubles with the 2.7.2 versions.

Hey Ianto, I have seen several threads discussing the benefits/disadvantages between tga and png. There was something about PNGs causing more flickering. Here is one, but I can't find the ones that discussed the issue in detail (perhaps someone else can): http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Building-and-Texturing-Forum/Flickering-PNG-s-and-haloed-alpha-PNG-s/td-p/854203/page/2

So how many people have banners enabled anyway? It took me a couple of threads from these two to figure out what others were talking about. I haven't seen a banner in very long time. They were annoying, so I disabled them.

For targa format, I believe you need to create an alpha channel for the transparent areas. Robin woods has a good tuturial on making a clean alpha channel. http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/SL-Tuts/SLPages/WhiteHalo.html

I think you could use llMoveToTarget http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Move_to_target. Note that the LSL Library area is more for posting scripts that getting scripting help. Your post will probably be moved to here: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/LSL-Scripting/bd-p/LSLScripting

I will say, they do put a nice turn on it. In somewhat the same fashion as they tend to look far better in our shirts than we do :matte-motes-wink: This was meant to be a reply to Darrius.

This wiki page gives a darn good intro to the dialog menu: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/DialogMenus

In the market place, try this: in categories go to Apparel>Women's>Women's Outfits>Women's Business Attire