Why can't I see floating text?

Last night I had a most disturbing experience.

I use floating text on little markers to denote who is getting what land on maps of upcoming sims... it's really important to me.

So for whatever reason, I can no longer see floating text. Other people can still see it - it's just me.

The computer I was on at the time has a... I think it's a 7800 graphics card and it's a dualcore P4 system, a Dell.

I fussed with my preference settings but couldn't find a thing... did I miss something obvious?

Rarely see you asking for technical support Desmond so I guess it has really stumped you.

Two or three comments.

1) Windows is constantly (and deviously) updating itself in the background from the Microsoft support service. Maybe it "did" something to your graphics card drivers

2) In SL the colour of floating text is set by a script. The default seems to be white but other colours are available. Check if you can see other colours by creating some - thought - is the floating text transparent by some mis coding malady

3) Give up. When all else fails de install and reinstall the SL program

4) Ditto Windows (MUCH more painful, like a region roll back)

5) Do a "Basil Faulty" to the computer. Tell it you are boss (That is an English actor who took a hammer to his car when it would not work) Ditto computer

Friendly regards

John

I'd go with the uninstall and reinstall.. although a search of the forums results in (besides a headache) the fact that the floating text rendering has had issues since the 7th of this month.

/327/9e/195797/1.html

I haven't noticed this myself, however, and I've tried everything I can think of to 'reproduce' it, including using the debugging settings.

Thanks for the help - yes this one has really had me stumped!

I scripted the text to be white myself - it's a very simple script that just tags a prim, and hasn't changed in 2 years.

Basil Faulty indeed!

have u try a script reset?

Since 1.17.3 I have noticed floating text randomly disappearing as well - sometimes it vanishes from some items and remains visible on others. A relog usually fixes it for me. I haven't figured out what causes it yet... For me it mostly happens on one of my HUD attachments - and it's in a script I wrote myself. The script continues running and does everything else normally, but its floating text has gone and won't come back without a relog.

-Atashi

It gets even stranger....

I have one alt that *can* see floating text, and one that cannot, both being run from the same machine and same SL installation

Wish I knew why...

As if that weren't enough, I have a login ritual that consists of several keystrokes to set to noon sun, disable clouds, disable fog, set to always run, etc.... One one av, the "Disable fog" keystroke is CTRL-ALT-6, and on the other it is CTRL-ALT-F6. I have no idea just how the hell that happened, but it is driving me CRAZY!!!

.

I have had reports of this happening with my HUDs since 1.17. And I sometimes experience it with an alt, but never with Keiki.

One person said that resetting the scripts seemed to fix it, but I didn't necessarily find that to be true.

It's a new bug. Has anyone reported it to jira?

hmm so that would explain why i`m having issue`s adding/removing floating txt from scripts and suddently it dies for no reason on state change, setting the floating txt back even with just an space " " and it works again

This is the bug for it on jira. Please vote for it, if you have not already. Also if you can find a way to reliably reproduce it, post it in the comments there.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1448

In my case, I tried a number of things.



Clearing cache: no help.

Facing the sunrise and chanting: "Begone, foul bug!" while logged in: no help.

Sacrificing a prim chicken in a ritualistic manner: no help.

Various curses: no help.

Hiring an exorcist: no help.

Complaining on forums: no help but I felt better, like after the chicken thing.

Simply waiting: no help.

Reinstallation: no help.

Crying like a little girl and giving up: oddly, I started to see floating text again.


So there's your Resident Answer, folks. Based on hard-earned experience, too...

rofl, choking on my lemo......

Oh man, if I had known that crying like a girl and giving up would fix things in SL, a lot of bugs simply would not exist for me any more!

Sometimes I cry like a boy, but that doesn't work either. What I've found that works is a nice pour of single malt scotch...

Into the mouth, and not the computer, I hope.. otherwise, that's a waste of a scotch!

Have you tried hopping around the dungeon...?

One of my favorite lines from a text based adventure game...

Well there's one shot for me, and then I pour another shot into the votive altar cup that I keep in front of my computer to keep the demon gods inside there happy.

ahhhh.... This is what I was looking for an answer for Darn it anyway...where can I get a prim chicken? *wanders off to cry like a little girl in private*

Related to https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1448 perhaps?

I've noticed that one too. I was using my alt to test a couples animation and in one window I could see the hover text above the pose balls, but not in the other. This was running two instances of the same SL client with my alt logged in on one of them and Deira in the other.

The most disconcerting thing is that I have appeared "ruthed" in one window but ok in the other!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this bug still around? I've been happily free of it since... well, roughly whatever the post date was.

Never did find out what fixed it.

The main bug causing this intermittent problem (VWR-144 has been fixed internally for the last month or so, but for some reason has not yet made it into a viewer release. Maybe we should get Simon Linden to give his fix to Nicholaz so it can see the light of day

See this thread:
/327/9e/195797/1.html

oi just noticed, Fluf already posted the pointer to the bug above.

I still get it on occasion with child-prims. When the root prim has floating text and the child prim also has floating text, the text on the child prim will, at random times, vanish.

It does not appear to be a problem with the prims, it is a problem in the client itself. In other words, when the child prim float text vanishes for me, it vanishes from every child prim with float text. Both on HUDs and on in-world objects.

However, I can get it back by taking then re-rezzing the object(s) in question. That seems to get the client to wake up and recognize that there is float text on the child prim. But while the bug seems to affect everything at once, the fix only works for the object(s) that I take and re-rez. The other fix of course is to relog.

Finally, I have noticed that the problem will sometimes manifest as soon as I log in, other times I will log in and it's fine till I teleport. It might happen on 1 teleport out of 10.

-Atashi

Minor and slightly weird info for you...
I went back to using the official released Linux client since I wanted to make sure the crash logs got sent to LL. But have come to realise the versions of the client I compile myself from source seem faster and a bit more stable, so went back to my compiled version today.
Oddly enough, float-text (so far) appears to be in the right places 95% of the time.
With the official viewer it was more like 50/50 chances.
Strange but true!