Bobbie Faulds

just watch your prim count. That's what's going to determine if you can use it.

http://meshbodyaddicts.com/mesh-body-reviews/mens-bodies/ lists the bodies available. The ones that are the most popular and have the most support are Signature Gianni, Belleza and Slink. Some have added Adam as well. Heads are listed on that site as well.

Check Blueberry and the other shops on those 2 sims. Snowpaws has nice gowns. Blueberry does as well.

For applier clothing, you don't need to worry about the alpha cuts as appliers go directly on to the tat/underwear/clothing layer. You only have to worry about the alpha settings if you are doing mesh clothing. Appliers will either use the body-specific applier hub or an Omega hud to place the texture on the body so the alpha cuts don't come into play. Skin, though it uses the SLUV template, is a bit different as the bodies all have the nipples and umbilicus in slightly different places and the Maitreya uses a different map for the fingernails. Same for the mesh heads. Though most Bento heads and some of the static heads are Omega compatible and use the SLUV map, there is a difference around the eyes and you can get some pulling of the skin there. Hope that helps.

Just an FYI, it's safer to set a number for your ARC and not leave it on unlimited. The newest griefing thing is for an avi to show up with a super high ARC in the millions. I have a picture form someone where the jelly doll shows an ARC of 10 million. This will cause most to crash out of SL from the overload.

The Tonic body and demos are available at the Tonic store. The Fine is very close to the Maitreya. I personally find that the Maitreya breasts are a little flat/squished. I use the Tonic fine most of the time with minimal problems. The Maitreya size in clothing fits the Tonic Fine with just a bit of alpha tweaking. There is also the curvy that is a bit fuller figured. Grab the demos and try.

Well, just remember to take off what you don't need to wear. Huds for clothing/shoes/hair/head/body/etc don't need to be worn after you have things set up. For stockings/socks/lingerie that you wear under you clothing, use applier rather than mesh. Look for shoes that you add both rather than a right and left. I regularly wear mesh body, left and right feet and hands, head, shoes, hair, clothing, jewelry, AO, radar, combat hud and attachment and rarely go over 25 attachments at the most.

BTW, you now have 55 attachment points with the Bento skeleton. http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/BentoSkeletonGuide

Maintenance has to be done to update things. At least they don't shut the whole grid down when they update like they used to. Also, they have to be careful when they do updates since some of the original coding is still around and the original coders are long gone and no documentation was done. Things buried have come back and caused major problems. For instance, the system that creates the UUID for things loaded into SL had a limit set for how many would be created. The original coders set it at a number that they never imagined would be hit. It was. So, when it hit that number, no one could upload anything until LL tracked down and fixed the problem. Patience is needed. I've been in SL 10+ years and have seen huge changes. Used to close the grid and kick everyone off on Wednesday mornings, supposedly for 4 hours. Sometimes went 8 hours. Then there was the time it was down for 3 days. Youhad one item per layer and no tat layer. When you TPd, everything from the neck up and ankles down ended up in the middle; ie, shoes, hair, jewelry, etc. If you were logged into a dance ball and didn't log out, you would still be dancing wherever you went to until you relogged. You used to have to pay to TP or rez a prim, though you did get the L back when you picked the prims up. You had to have a flight feather to fly above 1K. You regularly didn't get logged out completely and got ghosted. If you were lucky, it was on a private sim that could be restarted. I remember the day the grid first had 35K people log on and the grid crashed. Then there were the 2 days you couldn't TP and we're stuck where you rezzed in and if the sim you were on was down, you went to a hub or a random sim. I ended up on the island where Governor Linden had a mansion. I remember when homestead sims were introduced. I remember when sculpts and flexiprims were introduced and then mesh. There have been huge changes over the years with more introduced all the time.

FWIW, I have no idea how long you've been in SL. The "muzzling" occured after a 3rd party viewer called Emerald was found to have malicious code slipped in by one of the coders that allowed the computers of users to be used for denial of service attacks. That viewer was banned as were the coders responsible. The remaining team brought back the viewer as Phoenix and is now Firestorm. Thanks to that team we now have multiple attachments to the same point. They are also the ones that exposed a loophole that Red Zone, a program that was supposed to weed out griefers, used to collect ISP info. It's why you are asked if you want to play streaming media since if you do and it is a live DJ, that DJ can get your ISP address. All 3rd party viewers must now meet LL requirements and are listed in the SL wiki.

Also, in the future, be sure that you rez on land. You usually get that error when you try to rez on a mesh surface.

L&B (Lapointe and BastChild) has their jeans/ pants that have belts with the belts optional. You can get demos on the MP.

Truth has a hair with the hoodie

I take people as they are when I meet them. If they are in a male avi, they are male. Same for female. (Though, for the most part, makes on a female are fairly easy to spot since they often aren't proportional, ie large chest). I'm not interested in other's RL. I keep a hard line between my SL and my RL. For that reason I don't voice. I don't even have a mic hooked up to my computer. I have, in the past, relented on that and regretted it every time. I can remember in one sim where I role-play where the guy IMd me and asked if I was female and how old I was in RL. I am a RL female, but for role-play, it shouldn't matter. He only wanted to play with someone under 30. All of SL is role-playing for the most part. We are all who we want to look like and do things we'd like to do and often can't in RL. As such, as I said, I accept people as they are.

. Internet access should be treated as a utility, like electricity, land line telephone and water. In most cities in the US, cable/internet companies have an exclusive right and are the only one you can get service from. In Atlanta, we do have a choice of 2, AT&T or Comcast and a few areas also have Google Fiber. Since there isn't any real competition, so they should be regulated like any other utility. When I lived in Minot, ND, there was only one cable TV company that you could get internet from. You could get DSL through SRT, the local phone company. Fortunately, SRT was a local co-op, so costs were reasonable. As for self-regulation, that's why Net Neutrality was instituted. Comcast was throttling Netflix and wanted more money for their access. Netflix was already paying for the extra bandwidth. Comcast wanted more. Oh, and my understanding is that the Internet started life as the connection between the US and USSR during the Cold War so the leaders had a way to communicate after the near miss of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Not allowing free accounts to sell on the MP would be a problem since some creators make different things that they want different stores for. Since an avi can only have one store in their name, an alt with payment info on file is often used for that second store. No need to have a paid account for that unless they choose to be on mainland and want the group land bonus.

Vista and Body Beautiful have the best I've seen. I use the Akeyo hud. You can rez the other AOs on the ground and copy the animations then drop them in the Akeyo, no notecard needed. I also use some static poses. You don't have to buy a full AO but can buy individual poses and animations you like and build your own. Just watch the cost. If you like enough of the animations, it's sometimes cheaper to but the full AO.

I have a bunch of hairs from Deviant Kitties from before they became Ploom and went more conservative. Not in world to put one on and show it but they are still edgy.

I have all the main bodies. My personal preference is the Tonic Fine. It's similar to the Maitreya, in fact the Maitreya sizing fits it for the most part. IMHO the Maitreya breasts look a bit smushed in where the Tonic is rounder. I use the Maitreya and the Slink Physique regularly as well, depending on the look I want. It all comes down to personal preference, which is why you demo and find what you like.

Demo, demo, demo. Grab the demos and find the body that YOU like, not necessarily the most popular. One thing you do want is to be sure that what you get is Omega compatible. It will save you headaches when you go looking for skins. Maitreya is common but the Tonic Fine is very close to the same size. The Tonic is a bit more curved and the breast are more rounded. I own Maitreya, all 3 Belleza, both Slink, both Tonic, uLukie, GInc, and Violet Studios. My preferred is the Tonic FIne...demo and find the one you like. Each has strengths and weaknesses. They each have different alpha cuts. You have to find the one that suits you. Belleza doesn't have the Bento hands yet in the female but they are coming. Slink you buy the feet and hands separately. As for heads, again Demo, Demo, Demo. I have Bento Catwa, Lelutka, LOGO, AK, Vista, LAQ, Jenna and Mayreal. They also have pros and cons. Find the one that fits your budget with the features you want. Some are broader at the cheekbones, others are slimmer. Some have a more square chin that you won't be able to make it more pointed. Some have thicker, bee-stung, looks that you can't make smaller. Others have smaller lips. Find what you like. As for what Bento is, It's a new skeleton that SL developed in Sansar and moved to SL. Where the original hands had just knobs at the end of the arms, the new skeleton has individual fingers. The original head just had knobs at the top that allowed size and stretch. The sliders for the head weren't rigged to anything so that when the first mesh heads came out, you could only change the size and stretch. The Bento skeleton now has "bones" ie attachment point for the mesh to be attached to, that allow you to personalize your face, just about like the default head. You also got bones for wings, ears/antennae, a tail and an extra set of legs that can be used for avis like Centaurs. These bones allow animations to be made that can work with an AO. Hope that helps. Just remember...DEMO. Demos are your friend.

Catwa was one of the first that released a Bento rigged head and priced it at 5K. For me, Omega compatibility for skins is a deal breaker. You have price points in Omega-compatible heads from 999l with the Jenna to 5K for Catwa with prices in between. Mayreal is 1999L and has some nice options. AK has a variety of faces. Others include LOGO, Lelutka, LAQ, and the new Vista. Unfortunately, at this time, Genesis is only Omega-compatible for the makeup layers. If you don't need animations and don't care if the head doesn't react to animations, you can get the less expensive static heads. Bento-rigged heads are connected to the bones SL added in the head so you can vary the appearance, just like you can for the default head. It will also react to MOCAP or regular animations in an AO, just like the rest of your body already does. The default SL body isn't actually rigged to the new bones so you don't get the hand movements or facial expressions like you will with a Bento head. Demo, Demo, Demo. Grab the demos. You're going to have to play with your shape since the rigging of the heads makes the shape look different, especially with the chin. Find a head that your preferred skin has appliers for, hence Omega. Also, keep in mind the skins that the heads and your body often come preloaded with. For instance, the Vista comes preloaded with YS&YS, 7Deadly Skins and one other I'd not heard of.

I remember the first time the grid had 35K in at one time and the whole thing crashed for several hours. As for the dying off, LL made a huge mistake when it closed down the SL Mentors program and the original Orientation and starter islands and started dumping people in a spot with very minimal instruction on how to move or even open a box. Then they had TPs that supposedly sent them to an area they were interested...ie Shopping, Roleplay, etc. It would randomly dump the new players in the middle of a sim with no help. People gave up with SL...I set up an avi and tried the Roleplay and was dumped in the middle of the Insilco sim rather than some of the other active RP sims like CoLA or NoR. The Shopping dumped my avi into an empty shopping center that half the stores were empty. (I was making NPC's for RP in the sim that I admin in) At least they are bringing back the gateways where there are people to help. As for the mesh bodies, my understanding is that SL can't change the base avi without breaking all the content for avis...including hair, skin, clothing, etc. That would have players up in arms. The default mesh, if you look at it in wireframe, has few polygons and are oddly placed so you get peaks on curve surfaces, such as calves, arms, shoulder, buttocks and breasts. The current mesh bodies have higher polygons and have fixed that problem. The default avi also has flippers for feet with lines on them. The mesh bods have real feet. With the new Bento skeleton, courtesy of Sansar btw, the rigging allows for hands that move normally and allow heads that are rigged to the new bones that allow the flexibility of the head sliders in the default head. It also allows for better animation of the face, including motion capture, rather than the older poses. SL has come a very long way from the beginning. https://gyazo.com/e33b839f36b81aeb9d55c7e3531ee902 is what I looked like when I first rezzed. https://gyazo.com/be607611317c0f0d8dd04c085e747909 what I look like now with the Tonic Fine body, Lelutka head

to be fair, it's not SL's fault with the alpha layers. It's an Open GL glitch. It's the same one that, if you are using a texture on your house that has an alpha window in it, you will seem to have a tree limb from outside inside your house. The same problem shows up in any video game that uses Open GL.

That person is wrong. The ONLY way you MIGHT be able to get away with it is to set up ban lines so only certain people can get into the place, put the house in a skybox and set the land so only those on the parcel can see and speak to those on the parcel. Even then, the bed could be AR'd and returned. Better to go to a moderate or adult sim.