Cone of context sucks.

Cone of context sucks.

Is there a way to turn it of other than exiting SL?

What is a "cone of context"?

It's a black stretchy shadowy thing that stretches from the sub window (texture/color picker) to the box on the main window that it's changing... Basically, it's a silly graphical doohicky that does nothing, looks clunky, and someone at LL is probably very proud of having thought of and implemented. I'm sorry someone at LL, you're getting pent up frusterations unloaded on you because this is just the most recent target in the UI firing range.

Oh, well, let me devil's-advocate for a moment...

Isn't it a good idea to be able to tell what texture you're changing? It's possible to have more than one texture picker open at once, ie one for the build window, one for the appearance window, etc. Knowing which does what is nice.

The problem is that the 'cone of context' is a large and distracting feature, and obscures the workspace.

What they could do is borrow the code they use - when the display is crowded - to connect an avatar's label to the avatar, and use that to connect the sub-window to the main window if they're not adjacent. This shaded black line is an easily understood indicator and one that people are used to, and it doesn't obscure items in the background.

How about it, Lindens? Everyone wins!

I personally hate it/ I leave my edit window open most of the time. I have to be able to see through the floaters in order to see people wandering around. the "cones" are really just more garbage I can't see through.

I'm really glad to see we got lots of flickers, flashes, zooms, fades and cute little frames around the "Stand up" and "Release controls" buttons.. in exchange for things we actually used every day like the Home key and an easy-to-dismiss chatbar.

I don't see what the problem is exactly. I just tried it and I was able to click-through the cone without a problem. Am I missing something?

yeah.. it's OPAQUE

I do wish to disable this feature as well. This came along about a month ago... no one seem to complain then...

11/23/06
/310/e0/149461/1.html
and
12/10/06
/333/b7/153982/1.html

The problem is when changes Hits MG it is pretty much stuck with the way they want. LL tends to listen a little more to those in Beta and those that Test the Feature viewer. But there are so few giving them feed back. So when one person complains they think nothing of it. Complain early and complain often

I hadn't notice it till now, which means I haven't used the texture picker from when this was implemented until the date of my post.

This provides an indication of how little I enjoy building anything to the point of applying textures.

I stopped enjoying building when the "slide perpendicular to the direction you want to move to get to the the rulers every time you want to snap on one axis" was implemented. That and other problems, such as rubberbanding, failure to save, etc., make building be not much fun to me any more.

I guess my texturing had become limited to dragging a texture from inventory to a face from lack of building anything; now I will certainly not be using the texture picker again except perhaps to occasionally answer someone's question about it.

This sounds like graphics driver issue (and/or bad code) ... the cone on my screen is nearly translucent, fading out to full transparency near the place where the selected texture/colour would go.

Uhm... I have no idea what you mean by this. Maybe it's because I have chat bubbles turned off, and the opacity of the name background set to zero...?




Er, yeah, I'm not seeing it opaque either... it's very light to the point of being, largely, undistracting. If it's showing as a big opaque black blob for you folks, then I can see why you're complaining. I think you should bug-report that. I doubt that's intended functionality.

Yeah, it's not opaque on my screen either. I can see through it and click-through it no problem.


Here's a question, are you using an ATI card?

Just noticed this the other day. Didnt like it. Didnt know what it was called so I couldnt find a way to toggle it off in debug. So is it a 'FOCUS' or a "CONE OF CONTEXT" or what the hell is it? I believe I shall refer to it as " THAT PAIN IN THE ASS MAGNETIC SHADOW THINGY" Dont stick us with this thing if we dont want it, give us a way to turn it off.

Wheres Eep Quirk when ya need him...
-LW

Yep, the "Cone of Context" is way too big and opaque and distracting for the amount of information it provides. I want it to go away.

I would settle for a "Line of Context", but I've really never had the issue that this feature is intended to solve: I've never experienced any doubt about which texture I'm editing.

Rumor has it, that if you disable "can see my online status" in your friends list in SL, you still have the feature turned on in the "Online Friends" on the website. That kinda defeats the purpose of that feature? Has anyone else found that to be true?

Indeed.

I *have* occasionally found myself editing the wrong script. Perhaps we need a line-of-context (not, for god's sake, a cone) for the script window.

(only half kidding)

Has anyone found a setting to modify to make the cone not be displayed?

Yeah, that mistake I have made. I'm not sure I want lines connecting objects in world to interface elements...seems like it might be harsh on the metaphor.

It'd be nice if script windows included in their title the name of their object, or no name if you're editing a script in inventory. The "Object out of range" indicator is nice, but it could go a bit further.

Well, using strings again, there's something in there called "ContextSilhouetteColor" but what that MEANS, nobody knows who'll post about it.

Instead of stringsing the client try looking at the "Client" -> "Debug Setings" dialog, you can find things like that value and 400 others and then change their values! Ok, be careful

Though in this case, that value does not affect the cone of context.

About 1/2 th values are the same as exposed by the UI in other places. but not all the useful values are in the UI! I actually found a value to fix the horrible high frequency texture tiling on the landscape for my new video card in there.

No, but that does seem to relate to the active button hilight!

I am familiar with the existence of the Client Debug Settings popup list, and that changing the values from default will cause the changed setting to appear in the settings.xml. I recently started from the top and systematically read the names of each one in the popup list. I suppose I could try reading the explanatory text for each one. To date I have not found a way to eliminate the cone in contempt, err, cone of context. I suspect that for a user to eliminate the cone of context might require modifying the secondlife.exe program, a non-trivial task.

Hmm, wonder if I am obsessive enough to change every value from default in order to make as many settings as possible appear in the settings.xml file, with their explanation text in comments?

If anyone has a complete copy of all the debug settings, preferably with their explanatory text, I'd like to have a copy.

From what i can tell, there isn't a way to turn it off.
There just doesn't seem to be an option to turn it off.

ContextSilhouetteColor is not what you want in this case.


(Eep's status)