Unreliable positioning bars

Haven't seen any posts about this...maybe because it is quite complicated to explain lol.

I have already posted about the difficulties I am having with the positioning tools for small prims...but there are problems with them for large builds too.

In the past if I used the positioning bars to move a prim into place, the positioning bars for each of the axes have been an aid to show how the prim was lined up with the rest of the build.

For example...If I have a set of six columns, and want a seventh column to be in line with them, then I could use the figures to set the positioning, or I could do it by eye, moving the column until the red positioning bar lined up with the centre of the next column. And this would stay in the same place, no matter where the camera was positioned.

Now, I find that if my camera is square on to the prim I am working on, the bars will show me how it relates position-wise to the rest of the build BUT if I move my camera, the line moves too. Thus if I have it exactly lined up with the next column, that will show by the red line extending through the next column, only if I have lined my camera up accurately - if I move the camera, the red line moves with it and makes it look as though it isn't lined up properly.

Because the tools don't look as though they have changed, and because it has always been necessary to circle around prims to check their positioning...and because a lot of builders use numbers to position their builds...I think people haven't noticed this properly.

Please tell me it isn't just me!
Cali

This annoys me too kinda, but in a different way. Not sure how to explain this, I'm moving glasses onto my characters face right? So you'd think just moving until the red line hits the char square between the eyes would align it pretty well, but the red line doesn't come anywhere near the head until I've passed it by about a yard! Instead of moving, the positioning bar seems to... rotate... very unrelyable, those lines are useless.

I can't align prims visually to save my life...

Yeah, I've noticed this same thing. I think it's been since 1.7 or 1.8, really. I used to use the techniques you describe all the time, watching where the axis lines intersect something to line it up. Now, it seems like some weird kind of perspective warping is going on or something.

Hi!

What you're describing sounds to me like it is hard to tell when the axis lines (red, blue and green lines that extend out of your prim) intersect an object, or go through it. We've talked it over and we're going to make the lines dotted/dashed/stipled when it is behind or inside another object.

If this isn't what you were talking about, please post some screen shots so we can further look at the problem.

It's partly what I am talking about. I am attaching some images, which I have deliberately left large so that you can see the detail....ACK...cannot post attachments? OK Ii will describe what I mean in detail. If you will tell me where I may post attachments, I will post the screenshots.

What I did was to line up a totem pole with an area of carpet which I am editing, before I started. I then simply moved it away from the carpet and left it in that position for ALL the photographs. You'll have to rely on my word that it was centred and remained that way, because you sure can't tell that from the photographs.

It is partly that the extension of the positioning bars through/within the object no longer tells you accurately where the line penetrates...but it is also that the appearance of the positioning bars and where it passes through or around objects depends upon your camera viewpoint...and it used not to be that way.

Thus in some of the photographs it looks as though it passes around the totem pole on the left, on others as though it passes on the right, and others as though it passes through the centre. All that has changed is the camera viewpoint. It used not to work this way.

In the final picture, it demonstrates that the handles and the lines sometimes become separated, and sometimes in editing small prims, the margin for error is so great that the positioning bars are way off centre.

Currently, I am finding the positioning bars useless for most purposes while building.
Cali

Caliandris described the problem perfectly, and I don't think I could do any better. I just want to put in my word that I agree with her explanation, and that it changed at the 1.7 release, I believe.

Caliandris, please drop those pictures on my profile with full permissions (so I can save them locally). We had to stop allowing attachments for the time being because the forums server was running out of hard drive space!

We're also going to try to bring up a 1.6 server/viewer, and we will compare it to the 1.8 server/viewer. Hopefully that will shed more light on this problem

Doing everything he can,
Brent Linden

A not well known but very useful feature for lining things up is the "reference" grid mode. In the edit tools, there are three grid modes: local, world, and reference. If you choose reference, and then select "Use Selection for Grid" from the tools menu, then the guide grids for the positioning tool will be aligned to the currently selected object.

For example, if you wanted to line up one totem pole with another along a wall, you would select the wall, set the grid mode to reference, and hit shift-g (shortcut key for "Use Selection for Grid". Then you would select the first totem poll and align it to the grid XY (shift-x), then select the second totem pole and do the same thing. The guide lines should trace along the grid and clearly show that the objects are lined up. In fact, this was the original justification for making the axis guide lines visible inside objects (so you could see where the lines meet on the guide grid). Unfortunately, the visual difference between "inside" the object and "outside" the object is not very distinct. The dotted lines Brent mentioned make the point of intersection much more clear.

The obscurity of the reference grid mode is indeed a problem, and something should be done to make that feature more visible. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this feature and see if something jumps out at you that would make it a snap to recognize without being told.

Thanks so much for all the helpful feedback!

Awesome! This is how things get done!

Cali, thanx for ramping this up--and also, external imagelinking is enabled in this forum. So even if you can't upload attachments, you can use a free photohosting service like:
which I've both used myself around these parts.

Hi Runitai....

did my best to follow your instructions here, but I am doing something wrong despite keeping to them exactly. Pressing shift-G and shift-X, whether with a prim selected or not, and whether in reference or not just gives me a cap G and a cap X in the chat bar.

I am not a stupid person, but I find the reference mode confusing and it doesn't appear to help with lining things up, only with spacing them out...unless I am missing something.

It would help ENORMOUSLY if there was documentation in game for the features that are in the build tools...but they would need to be simple and understandable...and updated when the tools change....
Cali

There is a better documentation (HELP F1) project on the way... it's been too long.

Well, yes. Those shortcut keys don't work if the chat bar is open. If it ends up spaced out, you just need to move it using the axis handles or planar guide handles like you normally would, but the difference is now the grid will be aligned with whatever the reference is.

Yes, it is very cumbersome to use and takes getting used to, but once learned, it is the ideal tool for aligning things. Suggestions for making the functionality of this tool more obvious would be greatly appreciated. Better documentation is clearly a step in the right direction, and we're working towards that, but ideally, the functionality of the tool should be apparent just by looking at the interface.

Actually it's not the ideal tool for lining things up, at least not as it currently works. It's so close, and yet so far. The problem is that grid-snapping (in any mode) snaps the center of the bounding box of the entire selection, not the prim-center of the root prim. This means that if you have any object that's more complicated than a couple of cubes end to end, the bounding-box-center is a pretty much useless place to snap. You go and snap the object to nice even numbers, and then you look at the coordinates in edit mode, and they're completely weird.

It'd be FAR more useful if snapping was done by the prim-center of the root prim of a link set, or the "root" of a selection (the last object selected) for an unlinked selection. Snapping to the bounding-box-center is almost entirely useless. I can't think of a good use for it. Snapping to the center of the root prim might also not be useful in all situations, but it's far more likely to be useful, from what I can figure. If you'd like, I can give you several examples of things that SHOULD be nice and easy to line up in grid mode, but aren't.

Also, while I'm on the subject, and while you folks are comparing 1.6 to 1.8, I believe 1.7 introduced another feature that's annoying. If you turn on local axis mode and select a link set, the axes now seem to be lined up to the bounding box, or maybe it's the center of mass, or something. I think they used to line up to the root prim's local axes, and I'd prefer that. Bounding-box stuff seems entirely arbitrary and confusing.

Excellent point, Lex.

I agree aligning sets is a pain. A relatively easy fix for this would be adding a "Use Selection for Alignment" button alongside "Use Selection for Grid". That way, you could select your linked set, check edit linked parts, select the prim you want to align to, click "Use Selection for Alignment" (or hit the handy hot key) and have the axis handles stay where they are relative to that prim until the selection is cleared (the axis handles being the thing that is aligned to the grid).

I just noticed that "Use Selection for Grid" in reference grid mode doesn't behave the way you'd want it to when edit linked parts is checked. That's probably a bug.

That suggestion would help, yes, although I'd venture to say that using the root prim for alignment should be the default mode of operation. I can't stress this enough, I just don't see how the bounding-box center could have any practical use, even as an option someone can turn on. It definitely shouldn't be the default.

As to the thing about edit linked parts, I think that's bugged me in the past, but I didn't sit down and toy with it enough to bug-report it.

To get back at those xyz axis lines, before v1.7 they behaved as 3D objects, interacting visually with prims, like going through them and disappearing when behind the prims. It gave you a visual feel for lining up distant objects by eye.

Now they behave as 2D lines on the screen, always in the forefront, totally useless is lining up anything.

Will try that grid thing tonight...I think I tried those before 1.7, but was so proficient just eyeballing with the lines then that I never used ref grids.

Just a question to whichever Linden thats seeing this.

Is it ever possible to have 'nudge keys'? So that you can select some object and use the keyboard arrow keys to nudge it to move in some preset increments. Sometimes when lining up things zoomed up very close, you can't get a grab on the axis widgets. Hitting the arrow keys seems more convenient.

Thanks.

OMG ... Yeah. I want that too. Too bad I don't create the code! Hey Runitai ...

I have now had a variety of responses to my posting on the forums. It does show that LL is listening, but it would be very useful if all the Lindens were singing from the same songsheet....

Torley and Brent think I should look at the preview to see the changes that are coming in 1.9, and I did do that although it was difficult for me to judge how well or badly the positioning bars have been fixed as the handles vanish into the prims...an issue which is being fixed.

Kona has now sent me two emails, blaming my "ancient" video cards. I play on a variety of computers (especially at the moment while my own is in a coma) and some of them have video cards which are more than two years old! Gosh! So it's all my fault if I have graphics issues as I insist on playing on such old equipment.

Well...maybe. As I pointed out, I haven't always had these problems. And I have friends with newer graphics cards and high end machines who have the same problems.

But I should say this is why I have become less and less enthusiastic about reporting bugs and engaging in discussion about them. Because the party line seems to be, whatever it is, it's your fault. Your build, your equipment, your connection.

Trust in that answer is undermined when a new version of the software solves crashing issues that were blamed on the build (as happened to me in Numbakulla) or a new version solved recently introduced problems, even those which were blamed on low end equipment or old video cards (nearly every other problem I have pursued).

I know there are some people who can afford and do buy new computers every few months, but that is certainly not what I can do. But in any case, from the short conversation I have had with Brent, I don't think that is really the issue. I think you borked the positioning bars, and I just hope they do get fixed in future.
Cali

Hi Runitai,
I know this seemed obvious to you, but it wasn't to me, and it is oneof the problems with some of the instructions out there. As a mentor I am often amazed by how difficult it seems to be to get proper step by step instructions for simple things in SL, which don't miss out any of the steps for a new person.

I have often had to retrain people who have already been told how to do things like get stuff out of boxes, missing out a vital step of the process. In that case people often forget to tell new people to drop down the bottom part of the edit window by clicking the more button.
I will work on using this to see if I can understand how to make it work, but on first glance it seems overly complicated for the non-techie builder like me, and hence my preference for working positioning bars.

thanks
Cali

Just to make this clear: this is not just caliandris' video card. My computer does exactly what she describes, and my dad's does too. I found out how to easily reproduce the problem we're seeing just last night:

1. Create a box
2. Align your camera so that you're directly facing one side, about 2-3 meters back, and the box is above you.
3. Move the box in whatever access is left-right on your screen.

Watch the forward-back axis line on the box move... the far end of the axis line seems to always stay glued to exactly the same point (the vanishing point, it looks like). This isn't how it used to work.

Yes, it is overly complicated. Any suggestions on making it simpler would be greatly appreciated.

As per your concerns about crash bugs being blamed on builds, as far as I know, when we say a particular build is causing a crash, what we mean is that the system doesn't properly handle something about the build. The build is triggering a bug. Ideally, it would not be possible to create a build that causes a crash, and the underlying bug needs to be fixed. However, bug fixes take time, so it's often helpful to identify the build that is triggering the bug and modify it rather than wait for the bug to get fixed, sort of like turning off the water while you wait for the plumber to show up and fix a leak.

Yes, video cards are often blamed for problems they don't cause, and problems caused by bad video cards or bad drivers are often blamed on us. It's a love hate relationship, and sometimes name calling ensues.

How about giving us an option to have chat in a window, just like IM, so you can have chat convenient and visible without it acting in a way completely differently from every other window in the system...

Perhaps move it to the History window if the History window is open?

That would solve a lot of these "shortcuts not available" problems!

In the meantime, it'd help people to explain things in terms of the menu items they select rather than the shortcuts for them

I use the up/down arrows in the XYZ sections of the Object pane for this, but it only really works on either a single prim or a single linkset. It should move the whole selection, not just whatever random prim or object happened to be most recently selected (even if that's what's displayed).

We have a design convention that states that you should always be able to chat, no matter what you are doing, as long as the focus isn't explicitly in another text/input field. This is why Ctrl-Z fails if you end up typing while editing an object. The fix is simple: click off the object, then back on (reestablishing the focus on the object, not the chat bar). For this reason some shortcuts just don't work with the design.

That said, there's nothing that doesn't say we can't change the shortcut . This has been the case with other single-letter shortcuts such as property lines. If you think this is a good idea, please let me know, and I'll enter a task to have it done.