The Little Black Cam Line...?

Can someone explain the demographics of this little black line related to camming? Sometimes I see it when I guess others are camming around...or not? My partner and I have tried to watch each other as we cam to see if the little black feeler draws out, but it doesn't seem to appear when we're watching for it. Other times, it's obviously stretched out there. What gives with this little line?

I have never seen this line. If you go into the client menu, and activate Character> Show Look At, you can see cross hairs for the camera, yours and others', but it's not a line.

Or maybe you're talking about taking SL vids? I'm ignorant of that.

Screenshot or video please.

I can't catch it in a snap or screenshot. It's very quick and it tends to pop back to the other avatars in the area after I hit escape to come back to my own avatar. Sometimes it's stretched out long and other times it's just a short black line that bounces back to the av when I come out of cam look myself. I normally notice it when I'm holding down my alt key and the left mouse button to cam around. And it's definately not the crosshairs if you're speaking of those that appear in mouselook.

There is a thing I've noticed when camming around where the floating name becomes separated from the AV but is linked to the AV by a black line. The names pop back to their normal positions above head when you come back to normal view.

Is that what you're referring to?

Yessssss! Why dat? What'sit?

In the Preferences (ctrl-p) General tab, just turn off people's name and title. As long as name and title are turned off, you'll get no black line, if that is, in fact, the cause of your problem.

Sorry, I've seen it but got no idea what it is or why it happens when it does.

The idea is that sometimes, nametags can't be rendered above the agents they're attached to. Maybe it's a super busy place, maybe your camera is moving between avatars and has just crossed from "in front of an agent" to "just behind the agent". In these situations, the nametags may "drift" away from the agent. The SL Client draws a "little black line" to try and say "this nametag belongs to this agent". The lines ususally "draw back into the agent" when the nametag is rendered again in it's proper place.

When you see these lines, look for the nametag.

Thanks for the explanation, been wondering about it for months.