transparent texture not visible from all angles

I have a texture (tga-file), where theres only visible content in the middle -and the sides are transparent. Now after having attached the texture to a prim I realise that the visible content in the middle is only visible when it is viewed from directly from a front angle. As soon as the camera views at it from the sides, the texture turns entirely invisible. Why is that? -And is there a way?

There is probably another prim with an alpha/transparent texture behind your prim when you view it in certain angles. Its the famous alpha stacking problem, which exists for a long long time and hasn't been solved. Very annoying. Nothing can be done about it.

Could be the alpha sorting glitch, but it sounds to me like the prim is disappearing due to being seen edge on. The tga texture gets slapped onto one or more faces of the prim depending on what shape you use. The face has no thickness so the texture appears as a very thin flat image that will only be visable from the front. Depending on what you are using the prim for, you may be able to solve this by using two or three flat images and intersecting them in a cross or star arrangement. A lot of user created plants that you see in SL are made this way. Note, you will get the alpha sorting glitch if you do this, but it still works pretty well.

/what Sylvia said. would add thought that if that does solve the problem, you might want to make the thin sides of the prim(s) transparent, otherwise you'll see an outline around the object, as in the flattened/crushed version of the texture.

Actually it sounds like it's working as designed. You can't see a texture from the back side, even if the other sides of the object are transparent.

If you make a cube transparent, and then place a non-transparent texture on one face, you'll only see that texture while looking at that face. Turn the cube and the texture disappears. You can't see it from the other side.

Is that what you mean, or do you mean that the texture disappears when viewed from the front but at an angle? If the latter, then you have another transparent or partially transparent texture nearby and by moving the camera that second prim has its center closer to the camera than the first. The alpha sorting bug means that if two transparent or partially transparent textures overlap, the one on the prim that is closest to the camera shows and the other does not. This can be confusing because you'll be tempted to believe the texture with an edge that is closest will show, but that's not the case. The texture on the prim that has its *center* the closest will show.

Thanks all for your help. After having read the different replies - it could sounds as if this is the "famous alpha stacking problem" which is causing the problem -although I'm not sure. But it sounds possible. What I have tried to create -is a blackboard with small individual prims attached -acting as scores written with chalk lines. So the blackboard is made from a prim with a tga-texture and so are the individual score points.
I have solved it by making the chalk-score-prims as jpg's although the result is not as good as it could have been.