I'm a newbie - somehow my avatar is invisible

Okay: joined yesterday, pushed and nudged my body into shape, decked it out in basic clothes, and went down the Newbie island path. I was visible, everything I tried at the various learn-it stations worked. Left the world last night, signed in again today and I am not visible (at least to myself). Tried to 're-clothe' my (invisible) self, but the system said I needed to load a body before I could clothe it (I'm paraphrasing the dialog box). I could still 'perform' everything just fine (move the beach ball, chat, etc.) but I can't see myself. Chatted up a few newbies and asked if they could see me and got ambiguous answers, I think because they're as clueless about SF as I am and weren't really sure who was asking (was it him asking? Couldn't be I can see him..., etc.).

So, help appreciated, and thanks much. (Maybe I should stay invisible -- seems like a valuable hack. Any thoughts?...) - mDab

First thing I would do is make sure you didn't recieve an object you might have worn that makes you invisible.

Might try to create a box (right click , choose create, click on the land, then right click again on the new box and select attach to, and stick it on a spot) and attach it to any point on your body to see what happens.

This will help determine whether your actual physical presence is missing from the newb isle. Let me know how that goes and if you still can't attach, try logging out, uninstalling and reinstalling.

There might be something corrupt in avatar presense codes.

This sounds like a assest loading issue, or a rezzing issue. Layman's terms is that the system is taking a severly long time to load data for your avatar. It's not a serious issue. It happens from time to time, usually after updates when everything needs to "reload" everything.

Couple quick fixes;
1) Time. Simply stand in one place. Perferably with little else there, and fewer people. Go get a coffee and check your e-mail *chuckles* I've heard of it taking up to 15 mins, but that is one of the worst case examples.

2) Go into EDIT APPEARANCE. The place where you changed yoru shape. Do not save anything when exiting this. Just go into the setting, then exit and choose "exit without sving".

3) If you belong to a group, change your group tags back and forth. ie, EDIT > GROUPS and set an new Group to ACTIVE. Active groups will be in bold.

4) Relog. This may, or may not fix the issue. I suggest rebooting after a powerdown of your own computer as well at this time. Sometimes you ISP puts you on a "slower" connection that doesn't work well with SL. By turning off your modem for a few minutes you wind up with a different connection.

If the problem persists, contact Support. Include full specs of your computer including drivers, vid card used, processor, etc. Also tell them what "fixes" you have attempted to help them narrow it down.

Good luck and welcome to SL.

~Jessy

If all else fails:

Hit the 'Search' button and enter 'Philip Linden' into the search bar. This will put you into contact with an NPC. Explain your problem as simply as possible, these NPC's have limited AI and don't respond well to complex commands.

Good luck!

Might try doing Edit / Preferences/ Network / Clear Cache, then exiting and restarting the program.

If you have made the Client and Server options appear you might have turned off the character display, if so, pressing Control Alt Shift 4 will toggle character display off and on. If you don't have the Client and Server options showing that couldn't apply.l

actually this is happening frequently to alot of us


even on our private island when I am running 60+ FPS

not only do we occasionally log in invisible, we get ominous blue boxs stating various body parts or whatever are not in the database. If you look at the pending downloads stat you will see it stack up sometimes as high as 60. once ALL those PDs clear a trip into appearance ususally fixes whatever didn't load.

But we have had it take up to 2 hours for PDs to clear

Its also possible you may have accidently bumped some wrong keys and rendered yourself invisible. Try ctrl alt shift 4 and see if you reappear. Good luck!

Ooops just saw it already suggested.

Well, it was a tempest in a teapot. Logged off to handle RL honey-do's, then came back and voila! my avatar was back in all it's Newbie glory. I am nevetheless impressed with both the speed and intelligence of everyone's assistance -- thanks again. After bumping into a few too many pimped out avatars with wings in Newbie land I wasn't sure what I was going to hear back from a post. Nice to see sanity prevails here.

...this is, I'm guessing, not the place for this request but it's the best I can do at the moment: I could really use a once-in-a-while mentor for in-world advice. Not how-to's so much (I LIKE reading user's manuals), more like new family in foreign country stuff like where's a nice quiet area in which to set up my residence, where can I get decent men's clothes and how are those defined here, and where's the best place to meet adults who see SL as a 21st century experiment in 'community' rather than some sort of jacked up computer game. Anyone interested? Any suggestions about how to proceed? Again, tnx in advance.

- - mDab

Give me a hollar tonight I'll be on around 6-7pm or so eastern time. I'd be glad to help you like ... Take you places to get some good clothing.. Heck I may have some good stuff to give you off hand and anything eles you would want me to help with ^^. If I'm not on when I said I will be just drop me a message and I'll be on asap ^^

Thanks for the offer of help, Leros it's much appreciated. I will *try* to reach you tonight but, sigh, I have issues...

First, I'm not sure how to reach you. I assume it would via IM in SL, but I haven't tried that yet in SL and never use it at all in RL. I plan to try to get comfortable with it today. If I don't get to you it's simply that I'm not yet up to speed on the process and will catch up with you when I am.

Second, I'm still in Newbie land. Once I get IM together I'll make the hop to wherever the first hop takes me in-country and, I suppose, lurk around the arrival area and try not to look too much like a noob. I also want to cobble up a presentable male body for my avatar. I've had a disturbingly enjoyable experience as a young hot pants hottie, flying away from all the young studs trying to chat me up on Welcome Island, but it's not my best foot forward, I think (but damn it all I WILL keep the outfit, ahem, just in case I need it).

'be in touch, and thanks again -- mDab

Welcome to Second Life mDab

To IM somebody in Second Life, use the Search button on the bottom of your screen. Click on the People tab, and enter their name, or a good portion of it (spelling is important here). Press the search button and find the person in the list of names presented. Click on their name and you will see their profile on the right. You should see a button labeled "Instant Message." Click that and you will be all set.

Sounds good infact I'll be getting on in a few mintues.. Hope to see you soon ^^

Plus I wouldn't hang around the newbie places very long. They attend to attract the worst element of bullies/griefers bugging newbies and showing off thier worst side.

Use that handy dandy search button to look for places. Bring up someplace interesting. I will give you a couple.... Try seaching for Midnight City (my first SL hangout and it has intersting ambiance and shops) or maybe Djork (a fun interesting place). There is an option to teleport once you find one.

You might also search for events and look for something educational. Slight warning the events listing is filled with a bunch of junk. It sometimes takes awhile to learn to find the gems from junk.

Best of luck. Have fun.

Again, thanks all for the help everyone. I don't know if this is the place (or even if anyone cares), but I'm thoroughly enjoying the feedback from you old hands and it's getting me up to speed a lot faster. If, however, this is not the right forum to continue this, please advise and I'll disappear into the night, no hard feelings. Again, as a newbie, I can't judge whether this is just mindless chatter from your end of the pipe. So, onward....

Two things of note for me today. First, IM offered me a 'filled-in' New IM form with the name of someone who, I guess, gave me a card early on. Took a while to get rid of him so I could actually send an IM to someone else. Don't remember the details, but getting him off my IM screen required deleting his name from at least two other places (Friends and Groups perhaps?) and it was not obvious how to do that and it was not mentioned in the SL Help screen on IM.

Second, after I made the leap in-country (avatar'd up as a mature male in clothes my Mother would have liked) I was surprised to see there was no one around! I expected to arrive at a busy metropolitan transportation hub -- excuse me, just pasing through, didn't mean to step on your tail -- but it was more like arriving at the surface in Resident Evil but without the death and destruction. Only thing missing was old newspapers blowing down the windy streets. Very disconcerting. So I walked the lonely streets, checking out what I'm guessing is low-end over-priced tourist-level sex and porn offerings. Eventually bored, I signed out to regroup.

Now armed with a lot of recommendations from you guys (and from Wired mag, and The NY Times article yesterday), I'm headed back, this time with a should-visit list of what I'm hoping will be energetic (dare I say exciting?) destinations in mind. - mDab