Ghosting walls - Please Help

I have built a house from scratch and the walls disappear when I turn a certain way. The whole house is affected by this. I have tried building a new wall, but to no avail. Pictures on the wall and the wall sconces also disappear. Even objects that are placed on a table out from the walls will ghost when I turn, then re-appear when I turn back. I have put so much time and effort in this house and am totally frustrated! Could it be the sim because there have been houses built around me and now the people have moved on? I am having a housewarming this Saturday and would love to have this fixed by then. Any body have suggestions?

::Takes a stab at this::

where is the camera view pointing when this happens... if it's from near where the object is (like the wall) are you sure the camera isn't IN the wall looking out? this will do like you described about... also if you are outside the wall, is it textured? you can have a prim that is transparent on one side, and not the other (one way mirror effect)

both those are easy to correct, either move the camera, so you aren't looking out from within the wall, or add a texture to the side of the wall....

if it's not either of those things, you can try ctr+alt+t to see if there are any hidden objects that may have interfering textures... and checking you land for any objects that don't belong to you...

if it's none of those, I have seen it happen where sl will just "forget" to render certian objects... and won't register their presense with a right click or show transparent... but WILL still treat them as being there (you can walk up to them, but not through them)... usually re-logging solves this, occasionally having to hit clear cache before relogging is needed...

if none of that helps I'm at a loss...

First, a little clarification on terminology. "Ghosting" in SL is usually defined as objects or avatars that refuse to disappear when they should. It used to be quite common, for example, that when you would try to delete an object, it would delete only on the server side, leaving the client side copy still visible until relog. An object like that would be called a "ghosted object" or a "ghost prim". It also used to be common that when someone would log out, crash out, or teleport out of a sim, a client-side copy of the avatar would remain visible, stuck in place. The affected avatar would be referred to as a "ghost".

Most of these problems have been corrected, so rarely happen anymore. But the definition of the word "ghost" really hasn't changed. So when you say you've got "ghosting walls", most people would interpret that as you've got walls that appear to be there but really are not. I'd suggest you stop using that term, as that's not what you're talking about.

In any case, my guess is what you're seeing is the alpha sorting glitch, a phenomenon which affects all OpenGL applications, including SL. When two or more surfaces with 32-bit textures overlap in close proximity, the renderer has trouble determining which one to draw first. As you move your camera around, objects can seem to appear and disappear or to flip-flop with each other in 3D space as the order in which they are drawn from frame to frame changes with each new point of view.

It's common for those who are new to texturing to assume that "more bits" in a texture must somehow be better than "less bits", so they end up saving all their textures as 32-bit until they learn the hard way why that's a bad idea. If that's what you did, Rebecca, then there's your problem. It's imperative that you only use 32-bit texturing where you absolutely need transparency and that you use 24-bit textures for everything else.

If you didn't make your textures yourself, here's a quick way to test if they're 32-bit or not. Press ctrl-alt-T to turn on Highlight Transparent. Do your walls turn red? If so, then the texturing is definitely the culprit. Replace the textures with 24-bit ones, and everything should be fine.

By the way, one common reason for using 32-bit wall textures is to paint windows directly onto the walls instead of actually building the windows physically. While this does save prims, the unfortunate drawback is you often end up with sorting issues. Generally, it's best to invest the extra prims into your walls so you can use as much 24-bit texturing as possible, and use 32-bit textures just for the windows themselves.

Void - can't be camera because I have had several people look at this. Everybody sees it.

So I think it is the alpha sorting issue. The textures on the wall are common Library textures so I need to check them out. But I do have most of the front of the house as transparent windows. I need to check them also. I don't know what I used...I just found some stuff I liked and put it there. This has almost finished me as a builder!

Thanks to both of you. I will work on it tonight.

Rebecca

I would agree with Chosen re the Alpha sorting Glitch, it sounds more like it.

Depending also on what your design is and where the Alpha channels are coming through, you can in some case get rid of them by placing a prim with a 24 bit texture between the prims that cause the problem, this does not always work.

It really depends on what you have used for your design and the effects you are trying to create.

If you still have problems you can always IM me in world, I don't mind taking a look.

I want to thank each of you for helping me with this problem. Re-textured the floor and everything settled in to place. Now I can enjoy my house. I would have never figured it out myself.
Becca