New computer - everything in SL is awesome except Avatars

I just bought a brand new system, mostly to enhance my Second Life experience. This system makes things work better & look better than I had even hoped - except Avatars, they all appear transparent. Not invisible, but see-through. All prims on avatars look fine, just the avatars themselves are affected.

I've searched and searched but can't get anywhere. I'd really appreciate some help.

Here's the specs of my new system:

Processor: AMD Phenom 9500 Quad-Core Processor 2.20 GHz
4 GB Ram
2 Saphire ATI Radeon HD3870 512 Mb Video Cards
MSI K9A2 Platinum Mainboard
Operating System - Vista (with the new service pack)

I run a similar setup, AMD quad core 9600, 4gb 800mhz ram and a pair of nVidia 8800GTX overclocked GC's in a SLi config, AsRock MB, OS Vista 32 and 64 both with SP1 installed, I do not see what you indicate.

Sometimes avatars can take sometime to propagate through the sim servers to each viewer on the sim and child (adjoining) sims, I have seen people TP in, and their shoes and hair arrive, then a grey mass some 2 minutes later, followed by the rest of them about another 2-3 minutes. As I also have a consistent 5-7mb connection, it maybe server latency (lag). Or is it the ATI drivers?

I'm starting to wish I'd gone Nvidia too.

I don't think it's lag, my own avatar is transparent as well and remains that way - both in standard viewer and windlight. I've noticed that I am not transparent when flying, also, there are times when I can see myself from a certain angle and I look normal, same thing with other avatars. But anyone on the ground is transparent 99% of the time. Here's a pic of me in my new transparent look:

That is really strange.

But what I can see looks pretty good!

I see dead people.


Wow, that is just weird. I'm sorry, but I haven't got a clue what is doing that. Just wanted to say that last week I was using a Dell D610 laptop with an ATI card and the drivers were as new as possible. I did not see the ghost effect you are getting here.

It's very frustrating. I see water reflections and colors that I could never before. Animations are smooth and SL itself seems way faster. Absolutely everything is perfect except avatars

I thought I'd enter a support ticket but apparently you can't do that for this kind of issue unless you are a premium account holder. Jeez, I own 4 lots of land in SL and spend way too much money in there already but I'd pay to have this problem resolved.

You can make a JIRA entry, or check if others are having similar problems and add your problem to their entry.
Link to the support page, click on 'Issue Tracker' left hand side and then click Issue Tracker again to take you there.

Who you gonna call?

There was a bug in Windlight where avatars were invisible at high altitudes, but it was fixed in 1.19.0 (79185) back in February. Actually, there have been a few invisibility bugs at higher altitudes.

What version of viewer are you running? and does this happen at ground level as well?
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Nika Talaj - This is happening at ground level in both these viewers:

Standard - 1.19.0(5)

Windlight - 1.19.1(4)

Flying I am solid and fine, on the ground, sitting, standing, walking, etc., transparent. As are all other avatars.

You've probably already done this: but to ask the obvious....

Have you downloaded a fresh set of Catalyst drivers for your ATI card?

I know its a brand new machine, but don't assume your drivers are up to their latest. Additionally, I wouldn't trust Windows Update™ to get you the latest & greatest either.

ATI Drivers can be downloaded here: http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

Hmmmmm - the new "See through" look - this season's 'must have'.

Check your drivers - or wear lots of prims!

Yeah I'm having this problem too with my 3870X2 (not quite the same as the OP's card, but close). I know that I'm using the latest ATi 8.3 drivers, and also tried the 8.3 hotfix drivers too with no difference. Also using 1.19.1(4) of the viewer. Checked out the Jira and there are a few tickets there. I think it's just because the video card isn't supported yet, hence why Hardware Skinning and Avatar Cloth are disabled in the options.

Someone will have a kink for invisible people ...

Have you selected Fast Alphas in the advanced menu of the client (Ctrl+Alt+D). I think that couch you are on is a sculptie (I could be wrong) they create a bounding box that holds the texture and refreshes it at around 12.5fps, SL's client with some GC drivers, could not seem to rendered stacked Alphas (which quite a lot of objects use, including Sculpties).

Check the GC control panel for Alpha settings and choose 'Let application decide'.

If you are using the RC client, uncheck VBO buffers, you will find that by pressing the Hardware button in the Graphics Tab, also Avatar Impostors. Although I suspect the ATI GC drivers to be the issue, they have not fully sorted out their OpenGL drivers.

Nika Talaj - This is happening at ground level in both these viewers:

Standard - 1.19.0(5)

Windlight - 1.19.1(4)

Flying I am solid and fine, on the ground, sitting, standing, walking, etc., transparent. As are all other avatars.

Just out of curiosity ... do you get the same effect with no clothes or prim attachments?
Not that I'm a perv (well, I guess I am but that's beside the point) I'm just curious about alpha layers with clothing and such.

I have seen strange things where skin picks up the clothing layer's texture so i am wondering if it is something to those effects but with just the alpha layer of some texture instead.

I'll check out Jira too. Maybe if they get more tickets on the same thing it'll get addressed faster

I do have the latest drivers for my card - Catalyst 8.3

I couldn't find anything about alpha in my GC control panel.

I got completely nekid and primless (bald!) but it didn't make any difference.

However, today I was doing a lot of teleporting around and noticed that at times I come back solid for a bit, in some areas I can almost always zoom in on myself at a certain angle and distance and even stay solid.

So what do you think? Am I waiting on SL for a patch or ATI for drivers?

I wouldn't think the clothes would be the problem, because she sees other avatars invisible as well, and they're pre-baked. THAT is the real puzzler to me ... the other avatars. There are lots of things that you can do if the problem is just your own avatar, but ALL avatars and nothing else? How would your graphics card know what's an avatar and what's not?

grrr. I am clueless, sorry.

Just to be sure it's not coincidental with the new computer, do you have another computer handy that you know runs SL? If so, try logging in the same account.
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I'm getting fed up with ATI. I've had two crashes related to ATI video card drivers since posting yesterday. And setting poses on furniture is pretty rough when you're see-through!

I'll see if I can get my computer shop to take these back and get me a pair of NVidias. So what's the best NVidia card going that will guaranteed work properly in SL?

The 8800s, I believe.

Either that...or sometimes rolling back the drivers to previous version has fixed certain issues.

Have you tried totally uninstalling then re-installing and starting a whole new account with a newbie avi?

I know it sounds far-fetched that something this simple might resolve your problem but you'd never know. It may have something to do with your current install and your skin or some other glitched attachment.

I might even recommend making funny faces while making these changes.

You'd never know.

Cheyenne, your idea sounded pretty far fetched at first but after tweaking every possible thing I decided to go for it. I couldn't actually bring myself to create a new avatar. I have become ridiculously attached to mine, she has become an extension of me. Anyway, I uninstalled, went into Catalyst (the settings for my dual ATI Sapphire Radeon HD3870 video cards) and changed every setting I could to "let application decide". Then I rebooted, bowed to the four winds and the gods technorati and started up the new version 1.9.1.4 - and it worked!!! And there are other changes too. I'm just oogling over all the textures now that are even better than they were before uninstalling and reinstalling.

The first time I started it up I was solid but SL was SLOOOOOOOOOOOW, I could barely move and it was pretty obvious that it was taking time for all 2659 prims on my property to load. I just let it sit there and then shut down and started up again. Ok, another nod to the gods technorati. It's working and everything is beautiful.

Thanks all for your help. Hopefully some day someone else will have this problem and find this.

That is what I suspected and hence my suggestion that you do that. The vast majority of GC's are setup by default for DirectX and not for OpenGL, so letting the application decide, would choose its defaults. Glad it worked. Now download and install the latest .NET Framework for your OS and you should be fine.