A couple of gripes

I'd like to preface this message by saying that I think Second Life is great, and has enormous potential. I also understand that the gripes that I am airing in this post may be entirely due to user error, or due to the inadequacy of my computer. That said, on to the gripes.

1. Moving stuff. It seems to me that when I take something out of my inventory and place it in the world, I should be able to move it, especially when I'm on my own property. Unfortunately, this only seems to be the case part of the time. I was trying to make myself a home today, and was able to place and move my prefab log cabin to my heart's content. However, I tried placing a tree, and I couldn't do squat with it (aside from stick it back into my inventory). Tried again with a fence, and then a rug, and had the same problem. Lamps were no problem, though. Am I doing something wrong here, or is this just a bug? Or is it possibly due to lag/computer slowdown?

2. Lighting. I may be the only person having this problem, but it seems to me that light sources don't actually . . . light stuff up. I have two lamps in my cabin, both turned on. However, it's completely pitch black in there now that the sun's gone down. Thinking that I maybe had faulty lamps or something, I went to my favorite store to find some more. When I got there, I could hardly see anything at all because nothing was actually lit! It's a little bit frustrating when I have to log off because I can't see anything.

3. This one's more of a question than a gripe. Is there a way to just enter in a set of coordinates or something, and go there? As it is, I'm only really able to see the stuff that starts off landmarked in your inventory, and exploring hasn't yielded much. I have the coordinates for a store I'd like to visit, but I don't know what to do with them.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

Zel

Well, the moving stuff problems could certainly be because of tight bandwidth or lost pixels, etc. I know I have the same problems on my 860mhz machine. I'm replacing it tonight with something closer to 2.2mhz, so we'll see.

The lighting issues may be in the display section of your Preferences. There are a few check boxes at the top - two of which have to do with lighting. Be sure to turn on the check box for lighting. I don't know if you need the one for glow, but try it and see.

The coordinates can be entered in the bottom section of your map. You'll find the button in the upper right corner of the screen. You may have to expand (More) the map to see the bottom section. At the very bottom is a blank to type the name of the sim (region?) and then there are two smaller boxes for the numerical coordinates. When all that is filled in, just hit Go.

Let me know if I can haelp.



Kathy Yamamoto

hmmm, i've never had problems moving trees, etc... could be bandwidth or computer issues like kathy said...

as far as the lighting, the only check box you need to worry about is "local lighting"... it's turned off by default because most cards short of GeForce4Ti's and Radeon8500's will choke on it... even the GF4 & R8500 may slow down noticeably with it on... i'm willing to sacrifice view distance for local lighting though

another trick you may want to consider is the sun override option in debug... i don't know if this will still be in SL when it goes public, but for now you can press ALT+M (control sun with mouse), go into mouselook (press M), look straight up, press M again to leave mouselook, and then press ALT+M again... presto, high noon!

Hey, thanks for your replies!

I'm convinced that the moving issue is a bug that probably has a lot to do with the fact that I only have a 733Mhz processor. I found a workaround, though; I just edit the position of the object rather than moving it.

As for the lighting issue . . . I was afraid of that. I've already got my draw distance and graphical detail WAY down, so it looks like I'll either have to put the draw distance at minimum or take a performance hit if I want to be able to see at night.

As for coordinates, Kathy had the exact answer I wanted. I'll be sure to remember that.

Thanks again, Kathy and Phil. One thing I'm noticing the more I play this game is the sense of community present. Last night, my fiancee and I were playing and we got invited to a block party. Everyone was really friendly, and we talked to a guy named David Linden for about a half hour. He helped us figure some things out, and it's partially due to him that I found the workaround for the moving issue. At any rate, thanks Lifers! You've all been a big help!

Zel

don't forget the sun override trick!

it doesn't require local lighting to be on, just turns night into day for your client

But, if you want the sun to revert to the position that everyone else sees, how do you do that?

I don't think there's a position that everyone else sees. According to what I've been told, the position of the sun (and hence nightfall) is entirely client-specific.

I dont think that is true...I have watched a sunset and at that moment, someone else said "Wow, what a great sunset".

I tried out different positions when i've done the alt-n thing, but never saw much of a difference. So now when i log in i just do the Alt-B, Alt-N salute and viola - let there be light. I'm going to miss that if it gets taken out.

As previously mentioned, Linden turned off the lights for non-active objects, because people made far too many of them and it causes lag.
Even with local lightning on the light will only work if your object has physics on and/or is moving... but please don't enable physics on objects just because you want light. that will lag the server and the client