Kinds of "invisibility"

How many kinds of "invisibility" are there in SL.

Do you have to log in first to set these states?

Are there skins which make you invisible to view, but not to Radar (Emerald) ?

If you are invisible, can your friends see you anyway?

I know I must just have a suspicious nature, but . . .

. . . why do you want to know???

There is no invisibilty in SL.

As far as the status of your avatar being online or not, it can be seen in the following ways (there are probably more):

1) Friends list (inworld and via the web), but you can unclick the box for a person to see you online here
2) via your profile, if they are using Emerald and have the correct options checked
3) via any group that you belong to
4) via any number of 'avi detector' items that use scripts to determine an avatar's status
5) by IMing you

You can only control number 1 - not 2-5


There are prims that can be worn that will make your avi appear invisible, but I believe it still shows your name above your head - I'm not sure on that.

There are skins that will render you a cloud and could possibly be others like this.

I presume you're talking about an invisible avatar, not a transparent prim.

The only invisibility of this sort that i know of is associated with the bloodlines HUD. Vampires and blood dolls using this kind of invisibility still show visible name tags.

I hear you can make parts of your body invisible in Emerald. I haven't really tried it. I don't think there is a way to make yourself invisible to radar. You can cover yourself with an invisiprim too.

I think the Emerald viewer is supposed to have an option to make your avatar invisible, but it doesn't work real well.

http://modularsystems.sl/index.php?option=com_agora&task=topic&id=1028

I haven't tried it myself.

It's not really an Emerald feature but rather part of the work that was done in 1.23 to get us wearable alpha/transparency layers to replace invisiprims.

(It was also supposed to be the first step towards breaking invisprims altogehter - because they were hard to keep supporting - but I think they reconsidered that)

Aren't LL still intending to allow an invisibility option on avatar appearance layers?

How can you tell?

Pep (If there is, you wouldn't know it, would you? That's the point of it.)

It's almost certainly in Viewer 2.0. It's impossible to get a feature list for that version at the moment, and those who know are still under NDA, but it was so close to being ready before they diverted all development to 2.0, it almost has to be in there. (In addition to ridding us of those damned invisiprims for shoes and non-human avatars, the coolest part of it is that it comes with the ability to have multiple items on the same clothing layer, in user-specified stacking order.)

The tattoo designers will love this.

There is also Linden-mode invisibility. Linden employees can be on a sim, listening and observing, without being detectable by others.

I don't know whether all Linden accounts (i.e. any avatar with the last name Linden) have this ability, or just an authorized subset. Nor do I know whether their av would be affected by things that affect normal avs, such as being pushed around by other avs.

I can't even be sure if they're treated as an actual av on the sim, or are just a camera and chat listener, but I would expect so. If they're investigating an issue, they'd need to be able to sit or otherwise operate objects.

OMG. This should get the paranoids and conspiracy nuts a-shaken' . . .

Makes me think of "Topper" actually, but I never was a conspiracy nut.

LOL

Or "Harvey" perhaps?

You'll have a difficult time convincing some of our fellow residents that the invisible presence of Lindens is quite so benign . . .

They are avs on sims. Not all Lindens can do it - it's only those who are really shape-shifting, human-eating, alien lizards who can do it. I.e. it's not an official feature. Oddly enough, the number of Lindens who can do it does seem to be steadily growing. It seemed to start when M arrived. I'm pretty sure that nobody could do it before then.

They're like huge seed pods!

LL is working on a change to the avatar that will allow an alpha textured skin to render as completely invisible. And apparently this effect will somehow not trigger the alpha sorting glitch with prims or water. This will be a huge boon to avatar makers who are seeking to make non-Human avatars. Imagine being able to make a werewolf that has digitigrade legs, and has no invisiprims. Or a butterfly avatar that is decently small, without a scrunched up avatar nearby hidden with an invisiprim.

Of course, when they do that, I suppose an avatar could play "Invisible man", take off all clothes and attachments, and walk about invisibly. But their name tag would still show over where their head should be, and they would still be on the mini-map and map and be detectable by other means already listed above.

Some combat HUD systems make an avatar effectively invisible, by hiding the avatar way deep in the ground or way up in the sky or way off to one side. Sometimes this can hide the name tag, sometimes not, depending on how they do it.

But as far as just "vanishing from sight" at will, and being undetectable on the grid, that is not possible, nor is it desirable. Imagine the havok a griefer could cause if no one could detect their presence, but they could still affect an area...

Agreed. Or a stalker, for instance.

A tiny bit more about avoiding the alpha-sorting problem: it's done using a one-bit alpha mask. In other words, any pixel will either be completely transparent or completely opaque (so no gauzy veils, except by dithering, I guess). Linden plants have that, too, and you'll notice they don't trigger alpha-sorting problems (and look "cookie cutter" around the edges). If we had the ability to use 1-bit alpha masks on regular prims, we could have windows, etc., that were also immune from the bug.

I don't know if that more general ability is anywhere on the roadmap. I also don't know how one would go about specifying that mask: a separate texture, or at least a bit set on the texture or its application that specifies alpha should be thresholded? And come to think of it, I don't know how this will interact with clothing layers, if at all.

Invisible suits are out there with attachments for head, torso, upper & lower limbs, hands and feet. Makes life easier when my evil Rhein of Terror cuts off the arms of someone misbehaving. Like other wearables, the parts need to be resized for more of a realistic look, and if the 'armless' av crosses her arms via the AO, there's a weird blank spot on her chest, but cest la vie *evil laugh*.

but whatever the 'invisibility', your name is always shown above where you are anyway isn't it? Doesn't that defeat the point?, or does emerald and/or other viewers hide your name? I'm 99% sure the LL viewer shows the avis name all the time, but I'll stand corrected if wrong.

sure there is... it's called don't log in =X