Way back in the Emerald Viewer days, like 2010, when I was only half as old as I am now… o.o Yeah, my wild and reckless youth… Emerald allowed gestures to be attached to any key. For my combat games that was a huge advantage. Well, it seems one can easily change which keys gestures can use in any viewer. This article is about how to do that.
Modified Gesture Keys
Read the entire article and pay attention to the warning near the end.
I’ve been using NVIDIA driver version 285.62 for quite awhile. I needed to update a clients machine and noticed a new update was out for my machine, 295.73. So, I got it and updated my computer.
The install has dramatically changed. Along with the drivers and Control Panel comes 3 add-ons for Photoshop; DXT Compression, Normal Maps, and Scripts.
Photoshop Plug-in
This is a Photoshop plug-in that allows Photoshop to open and save Direct Draw Surface (.dds) files. Simply said these are files used with DirectX to provide efficient textures, They are not much use for Second Life users, which uses OpenGL.
The Firestorm/Phoenix Wiki has a load of handy information for solving Second Life technical problems. I noticed today that they updated their wiki page on Anti-virus programs. See: Whitelisting the Viewer in Anti Virus Software.
Image by: SarahCartwright - Flickr
They tell you how to handle; Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, McAFee, Norton, and PC Tools Spyware Doctor.
They don’t say anything about speed gains or risk.
Anti-virus software can place a heavy load on your computer. The result is you lose Frames per Second (FPS). Not all anti-virus programs are the same. PC Magazine did a review of anti-virus programs for 2012: The Best Antivirus for 2012.
PC Magazine doesn’t say anything about performance. Most reviewers seem to consider the only performance criteria to be whether a program can find the virus. While that is important, it seems some anti-virus programmers have taken the approach that all the computer ever needs to do is defend against viruses.
Mesh Feet w/Deformer On
I was asked to help a person get some bare feet working with their Xcite Feet. The person was about 6 months old. First we had to get past lots of confusion. She had ideas about what Xcite was going to do and what bare feet are. The problems I ran into trying to get things sorted out show several reasons people probably give up on Second Life. Whatever that case is, I learned a lot about bare feet, which is what this article is about.
It seems someone figured out how to make a special cube that is invisible, even with Transparent Objects enabled.
The wonderful side affect is the cubes break the render pipeline and crash the viewer.
A work around is to turn off shadows.
Hopefully in the first quarter of 2012 the need for Magic Boxes will go away. Until then, we occasionally have to move them. That often creates problems with the items we have in the Market Place. But, it is possible to move them and avoid the problems.
Magic Box Move
To avoid problems you need to understand that everything rezzed in-world gets a UUID, a Universal Unique Identifier. I get confused trying to remember how an object’s UUID changes or does not change when we take it back into inventory and later rez it again. In general each time something is rezzed it seems to get a new UUID. Also, it gets confusing figuring out which things in the box have which UUID’s and how those match up with the items in the Market Place. Thinking that through is too much brain damage.
So, this is actually a tutorial on how to move objects and RETAIN their existing UUID. This process is not limited to just Magic Boxes.
Several people in the forums are asking how to get better Frames per Second rates and why their computer is so slow running SL. Several are asking about upgrading their computer for Christmas or getting a new one. So, I decided to write a HOW TO specific to Second Life so I could avoid repetitive forum posts…
Speed Hump? - Image by TheDarkThing - Flickr
Even if you never want to open the computer’s case, this information will help you know what to have your computer tech upgrade for you.
First consider what we are working with, other games have better graphics and performance than Second Life. When comparing SL with other games, one is wise to remember that most things in the SL world are made by novice content creators. Render efficiency is not foremost in their design goals and that shows in SL frame rates. Take a look at: Typical Second Life Frame Rate Performance by Graphics Card/GPU. The page was last updated in August 2011. It shows an nVidia 470 getting about 45 FPS.
The keyboard shortcuts in the SL Wiki have been updated to show shortcuts for version 3.2. This is the one with the new user interface. You could memorize them and remove all the buttons from your viewer setup. Not something I would do. But, there are some handy shortcuts. I’ll explain some of the ones I like.
The wiki page: All Second Life keyboard shortcut keys.
For User Interface (UI) developers there is a special page for working out shortcut keys based on operating systems. See: Shortcuts SL-UX.