Echelon Alcott

I appreciate the spirit of the Improve Graphics Speed functionality, and the attempt to provide us render time in microseconds as an alternate metric besides ARC to determine avatar cost in terms of rendering and viewing, so we can put together avatars that cause less lag. Having played with it for a bit, and gone to a couple of sims populated with a number of avatars, I noticed that the time to render an avatar is proportional to the distance to my camera. An avatar that had very high render time when my camera was close to him/her, dropped in the list when I moved my camera away, closer to another avatar in another part of the sim. It seems like in order to fairly measure avatar speed time with this tool, all avatars in question should be equally distant from the camera. If my observations are correct, it reduces the practical use of this functionality, and might mislead people if they don't truly understand how this tool works. Kudos on the work done. Now people just need to educate themselves and understand how it works, to use it fairly and correctly in its current form.

Am I doing something wrong, or is the Improve Graphics Speed window fixed size? I wish I could resize it.

I'm exploring the new "Improve Graphics Speed feature. Can we trust that "Avatars nearby" and "Your avatar complexity" offer better metrics that the previous ARC algorithm? What is your experience with Autotune?

Hello Jennifer. Unfortunately I do not have an answer to your question, and the only contribution I can share at the moment is that I've been experiencing the same as you reported, very slow time to detach things from my avatar at times. I also have a 1 Gbps connection (although my actual bandwidth is around 940 Mbps), and experience it even when I'm by myself in my full region island with no packet loss.

In addition to previously mentioned Mudskin, I'd suggest Avarosa [SLurl] as well. hope this helps.

Let me see if I can help making things more clear. When you get a mesh head and head skin, it generally comes with a shape (for the head part) that is an optimal starting point for that particular head skin. You can use the head portions of the shape as a starting point to customize your mesh head looks. Usually the body part of that shape is not optimal, as the creator does not know what mesh body you are going to use the mesh head with. When you get a mesh body and a body skin, it generally comes with a shape (for the body part) that will generally speaking look fine, and it will again be a good starting point to customize your mesh body shape. Again, this shape will usually not work well with your mesh head, as the creator does not know what mesh head you are going to use the mesh body with. So how do you solve this issue, with two different shapes, one that works better for the head, and a second one that works better for the body? @Unwashed Bohemian provided the solution for this issue above in this thread [link]. Just to recap, write down the parameter for the body shape, make a new copy of the shape that came with the head, and merge the body parameters into your newly create shape. The end result is that you'll have the shape of the head that you like and the shape of the body you like in a single new shape. @Rowan Amore is trying to share with you is how she selects the head look for her avatars. BTW I do the same and would recommend this approach. Go to head skin stores and look for a look that you like. Get demos and try them, until you find the one you like. Once you've done that, you can buy it and use the approach Unwashed Bohemian shared above to merge the head shape with your preferred body shape. If at the moment you prefer to use free mesh head and free skins, that is perfectly fine. Do not feel pressured into buying anything. Do what you feel comfortable, and most importantly, enjoy your Second Life. Hope this helps.

The houses are all on 256x256. Three of them are on a homestead (1 ground + 2 in sky) and the fourth is in the sky on a separate sim.

Due to circumstances, I've been living in the sky. But I try to create the illusion that my houses are on the ground as much as possible. What I miss the most about living on the ground is linden water. Recently I've been able to have a house on the ground.

Hello Jennifer! Hope all is well. As a seasoned player, I'm certain that you know this, but for the benefit of people who are new to Firestorm, "Favorite Wearables" [link] is a great feature to make HUDs easily accessible. I use it and based on previous posts in the forum, I understand that many others use it as well.

OK. Now I understand what is going on here. First, please, let's all take a step back, take a deep breath, and de-escalate this situation. My apologies if by any chance I gave the impression that I was calling others point chasers. That was never the intent. I wanted to be respectful to all the suffering and deaths taking place due to this terrible war. As I mentioned above, I did it for an excess of caution. I'm repeating what I said above, forum drama was the last thing I'd like to see. I understand that we are all living under a lot of stress. But have faith in humanity. There is still some goodness out in the world. Please do not make assumptions and jump to the worst conclusion you can think of. Peace.

For an excess of caution. The situation is terrible for all involved. Forum drama is the last thing I'd like to see.

I used "Overcast (night)" sky setting from ColeMarie's Windlight Set [Marketplace]. Hope this helps. Thanks!

HONOUR, VALOUR, BRAVERY In support of those who defend their homeland. This is NOT about scoring some likes. People are suffering and dying.

Hello Niran! Hope all is well. Yes, I'm using the latest version. I just installed Black Dragon on my computer. Here is what I see when I change moisture setting in Black Dragon, and how it impacts the atmosphere. Moisture set at 0.600 shows blue in Firestorm and standard viewer, but red in Black Dragon. However, if I change moisture to 0.000 in Black Dragon, it looks more like what I see in the other viewers.

First, welcome to SL! May I suggest you go to Builders Brewery [SLurl]? They offer classes [schedule] where you can learn the basics and familiarize yourself with the terminology that you are not currently familiar with. In addition to the classes, you might also want to consider joining the Builders Brewery group for community support along your journey. Another avenue for reaching out to the creative members of our community is the Mesh forum [link], which congregates many experienced members. Hope this helps! P.S.: having been in SL for just over a week, as a new SL player, I'd like to offer you a piece of advice; please familiarize yourself with the market you are trying to get into, have an understanding of the major players, how it works and its complexities, before embarking on your creative journey. Wish you a great SL experience!

After hearing so many good things about Black Dragon, I finally installed it. I'm impressed with Poser and Machinima Sidebar. Great job, @NiranV Dean! A few minor things do not seem to work as expected (e.g., unable to remember user on login screen, unable to remember flying state at logout under Login Options), but the one that is troubling me the most is how in a particular case EEP behaves differently between Black Dragon and Firestorm/SL Viewer, and I'm wondering if anyone would be able to shed a light, and maybe share EEP best practices to ensure that builds will look consistently across different viewers. This is how I created and tested EPP for one build in Firestorm and standard SL viewer: Here is what it looks like in Black Dragon: After investigating this, tinkering around the EEP settings, I found out that if I drop Moisture Level down to 0, the sky in Black Dragon looks blue like in Firestorm. Any ideas why Moisture Level has such impact? Any other things that we should know when using EEP? Or do I have an incorrect expectation for same results for an EEP setting across different viewers?

Hello Jack Hope all is well. The three ways I unpack objects are: attach object to HUD, click to unpack (sometimes the unpacker auto-delivers) attach object to avatar, click to unpack (sometimes the unpacker auto-delivers) rez object on the ground, click to unpack (sometimes the unpacker auto-delivers) rez object on the ground, right-click it, select Open, click Copy To Inventory One of them should work. If none of them work, view the contents of the object and see if there is really anything inside it. Hope this helps.

I also love to be surrounded by greenery, views, or both. And in the off occasion, I have a living room that breaks all the rules. \

I love to welcome friends with comfy seating and food. Maybe it is a cultural thing, but we always offer food when people visit.

According to "Accessing Adult land and content" [link] knowledge base entry, "by default, new Residents aged 18 or older have access to General and Moderate content, and Residents aged 16 or 17 have access to General content." If you want to view adult content, the configuration is done in the viewer. Go to "Avatar > Preferences > General > I want to access content rated" and then select "General, Moderate, Adult". According to "Age-restricted content" [link] knowledge base entry, "when you register for Second Life, you provide your birth date, because you are required to be at least 16 years old." If you are being defaulted to General all the time, LL believes that you are aged 16 or 17. I wonder if somehow your date of birth (DOB) got corrupted in the SL database, and somehow it indicates that you are aged 16 or 17. I'd suggest you reach out to LL and confirm that your DOB is correct in their records. Hope this helps.

Maryanne, I'd like to share my experience, so you don't make the same mistake I made. When I upgraded my main computer, I got an i9. Later I upgraded my secondary computer, but kept it on an i7, at a considerable lower cost. Surprisingly, the i7 chip I got performs noticeably better compared to that particular i9. When I checked the benchmarks for both processors, I confirmed what I noticed using the computers. So be more careful with your selection of processors than I was. You might get a better bang for your buck on a good i7 compared to an i9.

Sorry to hear about the issues you are experiencing. My migration to Win11 was fine. I took care myself of making sure my computers were upgradeable. However, I decided to use the services of a trusted (Canadian) computer store chain to actually perform the upgrade. It cost a bit of money, but they do that day after day and have tons of experience. I believe it was money well spent, as they did a good job and my computer is working fine. You might want to consider taking your computer and have it evaluated/inspected. Good luck!

In addition to the great resources that both Silent and Rowan shared, as a new player, please be aware that Second Life is different from commercial off-the-shelf games, in the sense that all inworld content is user created. The implication is that it is not optimized in the same way when game studios create their products. Which in turn might have an impact on how long it takes for things around your avatar to appear (keeping things simple here, without going into any technical details for the benefit of OP). Welcome to SL and wish you much fun!

Actually, what I enjoyed the most about this build was to rekindle my knowledge of LSL scripting, which I had not worked on for more than 13 years. The build has a quad bike rezzer. In order to deal with griefers who drive all over everything, I created a script that unsits them from the quad bikes in case of abuse and notifies avatars - whose names are in a configuration card - of the incident. It was wonderful to collaborate with other members of this community, such as @Rolig Loon and @Quistess Alpha (just to name a few), who were so kind and helpful sharing their thoughts when I was stuck. I'm grateful to be part of this community, where we help each other when in need, to make SL a better place for all.