Beginner queries

Hi, All.
Wonder if you experienced ppl out there can help with a few queries I have as follows - not in any order of priority.......
1) When I see someone wearing grey/white with 'missing .....' written over it is that because my pc is not working properly or the person who's not rezzing completely, or sl servers, and is there anything I can do to prod the system into corrective action?
2) I keep seeing system messages from objects, e.g. 'NADAS Comissions Vendor 50% gross 15 P.: NADAS "French Kiss"petrol - Top,Slip&Stockings - L$90' or, quite often, 'Crystal HUD v whatever'. Does that just mean someone near me is wearing an object which is broadcasting within my hearing range? Is there any way these messages can be switched off?
3) I don't seem to be able to leave the pc while camping (I need the cash, honest!) without it locking up. I've set my screensaver to off, I've deselected the 'Go Away/AFK when Idle'in the Client/Character Tests drop down but my pc always seems to lock me out - when I return I have to log out and reload sl. Other ppl nearby seem to be able to sit all night and rack up hefty sums. I'm talking Welfare Island and, in my defence, it appears to be quite acceptable behaviour. Am I missing something fundamental?
Thx for any assistance or direction to appropriate info source.

Welcome to the forums Hiam!

1) It's your computer having troiuble rezzing. You might try adjusting your graphics settings in preferences. Reducing your draw distance is the first thing to try.

2) I've never done this myself, but I understand that if you click on the text spam you can mute it, but that will involve doing for every single object, so hardly seems worth it unless you're being bothered by persistent aspam from one object.

3) The Mystitool and other gadgets have anti-idlers that supposedly prevent SL from logging you out. Again, I've never tried it. Get the freebie (well, L$1) version of the Mysti
tool at Mystical Cookie's shop. It'g great to have anyway. I'd certainly pick up the full version when you have enough cash ... from camping.

Good luck.

Hi Hiam, welcome.



I am not sure about your first couple of questions. As for this one, If you do not respond within 20 mins (ithink) SL will log you out. Deselecting the option in the client menu will only prevent the little animation thing where you head drops and you look like a zombie with the away next to your name. To prevent this completely you would need an anti-idle device. I'm not sure on these, I have never used this feature, but as chas has said the mystitool has this device, i would recomend it. Simply because all of the other features are amazing.

This problem can be caused by all three of the reason you mentioned. It was confusing to me early on when people would keep telling me to 'rebake' and I had no idea what they meant or why they were telling me that. I saw myself fine, but they saw the missing texture images on me. From what I have been able to piece together when an avatar rezzes their client is responsible for 'baking' all of the textures of clothing and skin that they are wearing into a single texture that is sent to you to display. This can fail because their client failed to sent it, or because SL failed to relay things, or your client just did not get it.

You can find the rebake command under the debug menus (ctrl-alt-shift D will display them). Then look under the client menu for the character sub menu and somewhere toward the bottom is rebake textures.



Those messages might be objects that are worn by others or some might be objects in world such as vendors. Some vendors whisper information as the person browses through them. The only way to turn the messages off would be to use the mute option in the chat window.




For this one go back to the same debug menu, client, character and I think the menu option is character tests. There is an option to turn off the AFK check in the client. Use this and not an inworld anti-idle device. Since the client does it fine there is no need to add another unneeded script that just adds to the existing lag.

The grey is your computer not having received the texture information yet. Usually it will appear, though it may take some time depending on the bandwith of your machine and the servers. Lowering draw distance may indeed alleviate this, but only because your computer has less to download before it can draw it; it is not an error as such.
The white “missing” image is an error. This means your client tried to get the texture, but it failed for some reason. It *can* be your machine failing, but usually, it is *another* persons computer screwing up, possibly in its connection to the SL servers. As mentioned before, each client is responsible for “baking” the avatars oufit into one texture and send it to the server so others can see it. If this for some reason has gone wrong, others will see the white “missing” image. *They* need to “rebake” to re-upload their look, not you.

The green object text is indeed others objects nearby spamming the area. I think it’s an attempt at advertising the brand, but for me it has the opposite effect: I do not want to be the one spamming an area, so I will avoid using objects which speak out loud.
Content creators: PLEASE use llOwnerSay, not llWhisper.

Tali, Innes, Claire, Chas,
Thx for replies.........
Understand the rezzing thing bit better. Guess I'll live with the ocasional white/missing if only to not hustle individuals to do the rebake thing.

Object text is als understood better. Just have to develop selective blindness. Was worried that ppl were scanning me without letting me know.

Anti idle still bugging me. It's the sl cut out after 20 mins, I suspect. I've already got the AFK switch set to off in the Client/Character/Character Tests menu, but getting up every 19 mins throughout the night is a bit of a scunner so I'll try the Mystitool.

If anyone has any further info that will give me an interrupted night's sleep it'd be appreciated haha

Ok, I have not seen the answer to question 1 which helps actually. I made the experience that it helps if the person with a missing texture goes into appearance and out again. Others might see this person correct, so you might need to ask this person friendly if he/she would do you the favor and go into appearance and out again to fix this for you. This helps often as well with not loaded shapes as well.

If you see many people like that and it is not fixed within a few minutes by itself, you should relog. Often this fixes it. And that applies to many failing things - try a relog if things are too wierd for you - like your friends list full of (waiting) and (hippo).

For yourself it helps often if you force loading of your inventory completely. I do that with opening my inventory and switch to recent items and back again. That starts the pending download of not yet cached items.

Editing appearance forces a rebake. The "rebake" shortcut from the client menu is just a way to do it without going into the "editing" T-stance.

you've done all the right things to keep your avatar active, and it sounds like the only thing you need to do now is never ever minimize your window. make it tiny, but don't put it down in the taskbar. if that doesn't work, then i don't know.

Go ahead and tell them they need a rebake. They look normal to themselves. Since part of the fun is having other people enjoy your look, walking around in white with "missing image" written all over you sucks.

I usually just send them an IM saying, "Rebake".

One other thing to look at if the disconnect problem is always occurring around the same time (~20 minutes) is to see if anything else on your computer settings is getting in the way. Turning off screen saver is one thing, but are there other energy saving settings that might be involved? Hard drive spinning down, network connection going into sleep mode, that sort of thing?

I had a problem a while ago where some background software I was experimenting with kept crashing around 3am and 11am -- when I was asleep or at work. Eventually I figured out that my network connection went into a sort of idle mode after 3 hours of inactivity. The problem was, the network connection was 'active' but the 'inactivity timer' was looking at mouse/keyboard/screen activity, so 3 hours after I went to bed or went to work, the thing went into low-power mode and crashed the background apps.

Anyhow, just thought I'd mention it -- sometimes the problem is in an unexpected and seemingly unrelated thing.

-Atashi

Ah! This might be it. If you minimize the window, SL will log you out. You'll have to keep the window open and just turn off your monitor to prevent pixel burn. Try that.

ORRRR ..... you can use the Nicholaz client, which for many months has fixed things so that when you have the anti-idle test turned off, you can minimize your client and stay logged in forever. Given the difference in CPU and network utilization between running in a window and running minimized, this is definitely worth doing.

However, as a relative newcomer you may not want to mess with it. If you do want to try it, it is at: http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/ . Use the most recent version (be-V); download link is on the right. Follow the install instructions, they're easy but a little unusual.

Nicholaz (aka "The Mad Patcher" is an open source coder who, after each release of SL's client, recompiles it with a selection of bug fixes from himself and others in the open source community. He also puts in some minor high-demand UI modifications. For example, he has restored the performance bars in the upper right of the screen. LL gave him an award at this year's Community Convention - his stuff is legit.

Once again - thanks everyone.
The minimising might crack it. I've already gone through everything on my pc - no screensaver, no background apps other than ZoneAlarm, no power down - ever!, no disk spindown, etc etc. Almost tempted to take an IR mouse to bed with me in hope that restless sleeping habits move it often enough!!
I'll check out the minimising and try to summon up the courage to suss out the Nicolaz thing.
Incidentally do you still get pixel burn with a LCD monitor? Thought that was history with CRT screens.

Incidentally, you do realize that you spend more money running your computer all night than you make at camping? You're probably going to stress a lot less if you just buy some L$. Don't forget that there are about 265 L$ for every one US Dollar. Just sayin...

The missing image one isn't usually a problem with your PC - it's with the _other persons_ PC. Like others said, going into edit appearance can fix this but I don't think it's very reliable - it's better to do the menu thing - Client->Character->Rebake Textures - or whatever the shortcut key is - ctrl-alt-r maybe?

See: http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/09/18/getting-technical-baked-avatar-textures/

Oryx - I'm in Scotland. The pc's cpu is providing the only trace heating in the house overnight. Collecting the odd L$ is a bonus!!

The four pc's in our house run 24/7. We never see any reason to turn them off.

You Scots are a tough lot! Brr..

Erm, could this be why California has a problem with power outages?

might explain why we're so b****y cold!

Hiam This might sound a little goofy but the idle issue... is the AFK checked or uncheck?

good point. but in my case I run my computer 24/7 anyway, so if I could be bothered to camp it would actually not necessarily make me money, just recover some of the cost of the computer being on. I don't camp because I'm too lazy to find good spots and because I prefer that people only think I'm there when I really am there.

By the way, speaking of camping, or of just doing other things while SL is running, is there any way to make SL flash the taskbar tab when -any- message arrives, whether it's an IM, a bulletin or notice, or even public chat?

Not that I know of, but that's a cool idea! I usually layer my windows so that I can see any incoming chat in the bottom of the SL screen.