Trying to understand ghosts

Not really. They have no names.

[9:45] Radar: has entered chat range.

Try this and you may get to see the ghost.

Watching your mini map, line yourself up with it vertically. Then fly away till its dot is no longer visible on the mini map. Do an about face and fly back. When the ghost is within your draw distance, it should appear.

Thanks to Marigold for teaching me that trick.

Reasons why SL isn't RL #23 - when someone gives you instructions on how to see a ghost, you go try them, and they work.

By chance I discovered that if a green dot ghost is going to appear, instead of all the pallaver of flying out and back into the draw distance of it, simply face the direction of the green dot belonging to the ghost and change your group tag. Voila!!!!
At this moment in time, (until the rolling restart or a SIM reset at any rate), you can practice this technique on the ghost at Shinda 87,124 ground level. She walks down the road very beautifully.
Also, a lovely flying ghost will appear when you change your group tag at Bildad 242,140,33.
Happy Hunting!!

Actually, its easy to understand. Ghosts, like most problems in SL, come from data not getting where it's supposed to. In the kind where you still see the avatar on the screen, but it's off the minimap and radars, what happened is the message from the sim to your computer to remove the avi from being drawn was lost. When it's the kind where the avatar is stuck logged in, and the owner cannot log in again, it's the message to the login server that got lost.

For those who don't know, when you first log in, you are talking to the login server, which checks your name and password, and then you are handed off to whichever region simulator you are arriving at.

Somehow they keep track of who is logged in, and where they are, so that friends online status and IM's can be sent to the right place. If that is done in the login servers, then during a TP or logout, if the data gets lost, your status will be wrong. Obviously, it will not let you log in if it already thinks you are logged in.

Similarly, other problems you run into - TP failures, "cloud" avatars, group chat failing, are all due to the right data not getting where it's supposed to. And between the various back-end databases (login, money, inventory), the front end (the servers running the simulator program you usually talk to), the internet, and your PC, there's a lot of places for data to get lost.

Must be the week for digging up old posts

Hmm

Thought you couldnt die in SL?
Would an eject work instead of a sim restart?

Thanks for posting this update Marigold - I missed the thread first time round, and thanks to you I've now seen a ghost!

(The Bildad Flyer ... seems the rolling restart beat me to Shinda).

It seems not even garlic or nuclear attacks will shift SL ghosts; often exorcism in the form of a sim restart is the only way.

I met myself coming backwards today. That is to say, I had what appeared to be a temporary ghosting. See what you all think.

My main account and my alt both have the exact same home log in point. This afternoon I logged in on my main account, but just as the system was loading me, the progress bar visible on the screen, I decided I wanted to use my alt instead. So I pressed QUIT. Immediately the Second Life window disappeared from my PC screen.
I began again to load Second Life, got the log in screen up on my window, input my alt details, waited for it to load.
So I had just the one viewer open on my PC.
As my alt arrived in world, it stood face to face with my main avatar! My main avatar stood there for a good minute or so before my online tool told me "Marigold Devin is offline" and then disappeared from the screen.

I guess this must have happened often before, but I never actually saw it happen, because my alts had different logging in points. But sometimes I'd been quizzed by friends, who asked me if I was running multiple avatars, just because the system took 2 or 3 extra minutes to close down one avatar, and would not believe me when I said I was not. I "love" how these SL "glitches" can cause such ridiculous misunderstandings between friends sometimes.

Meeting yourself while switching avatars. . .

Now THAT is an intriguing idea.

a semi ghosting happened with a mutual friend, DWR... she wanted to show me a broken sim crossing. she flew off as i had a momnetary freeze. as she allows me to see her on the map, i TP'd to her that way, landing on her head, of course. then the "Join me..." TP invite came in from her. she was two or three sims away from me, yet there she was with me standing on her head. i took a picture, and, when i reached her, said "i took this picture when you sent me the TP invite". so ghosting doesn't even have to happen when/after you log off...

Current ghosts are at the following locations.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Katja/204/185/59

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Montara/128/1/59

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Leda/212/76/104

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dogberry/141/252/28

All these ghosted avatars have been contacted by either myself or one of my ghost seeking friends, but can either log in currently and do not have a problem with their ghost presence, or maybe didn't get the messages to their out of world email.

However, if you've never seen a ghost before, you might be interested to go look. And if you have any contacts with the Linden "Gods" maybe you'll want to be kind and have the ghosts removed.

It would be fun to have SL Ghostbusters who find ghosts and then get a Linden to do a god tp or restart the sim or something, as an official thing like the DPW.

i was ghosted, at LEAST once. had been having trouble logging in, etc. the only way i knew i was ghosted was when i started getting IMs from someone asking me "what are you doing on my land?". i replied "i'm not on your land, i'm on mine in _______". she then sent me a pic of myself, eventually a TP. which didn't work too well... she had to take down her banlines in order for me to reach her (let's NOT turn this into another banline thread...) i never got to see myself, though. it seems that the two of us cannot exist in the same universe. what i'm getting at, if the people who have been ghosted go to where their ghosts are, maybe they can make them disappear. unless the ghost is stronger, then maybe the people will disappear...

maybe SL can be the setting for the next M. Night Shamalamdingdong flick...

... it would have to come from a Linden, though, because when I first used to find ghosts, I would automatically always just submit a ticket through SL Support and mostly the Lindens would simply do a SIM reset and send me notification they'd done so, but then a couple of the Lindens told me that if anyone was having difficulty logging in then they'd have to contact Support themselves and 4 of my tickets got closed without the ghosts being cleared first.

Its why when I now find ghosts, I send the location information off to the avatar ghosted in the hope they receive messages in their inbox. Its been really great though because I've met some terrific new friends, and they tell me they've also met some new friends too this way. We've had some fun creating the paradox if they've been able to log in and just TP across to clear their own ghost, and now there are a few more ghost seekers out there.

I saw a ghost tiny last night.

It was just sitting there, except it vanished when I zoomed in, so I walked up to it and when I got close the real avatar appeared behind me.

Someone should make a scripted LED emf meter

"Please, talk to the green light."

{edit, okay, put my money where my mouth is}

Okay, whoever wants a n00b ghost-hunting-widget IM me in-world.

Free, full perms, and possiby buggy! But look, blinky lights



{/edit}

Looks like you're really getting into the spirit of this thread

I tried be be true to the soul of it.