No sooner do I get back online than my mother has another fall...
She's OK, I think, but I'm snatching time to post this in a tiny bit of a hurry! Normal service will be resumed. Promise!
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Gagged!
Taking advantage of a brief opportunity (and a public wi-fi hotspot) to post something: my home Internet connection is out of action, hence my unusual silence! I'm hoping to be back to normal, or what passes for it, come Monday. In the meantime, I am stuck in reality. It's weird...
Monday, July 16, 2012
And, while I'm grumping...
... and inspired by a charmless buffoon who wandered into Oxbridge somewhat before I crashed last night...
If you are looking through the ToS and the local sim rules and plotting very hard to find some course of action which is not technically griefer behaviour - then that in itself is griefer behaviour.
(This particular guy was quite determined to pick some kind of fight. Fortunately, everybody there, including a sixteen-year-old anime fan, was too mature to fall for it.)
If you are looking through the ToS and the local sim rules and plotting very hard to find some course of action which is not technically griefer behaviour - then that in itself is griefer behaviour.
(This particular guy was quite determined to pick some kind of fight. Fortunately, everybody there, including a sixteen-year-old anime fan, was too mature to fall for it.)
More irritability
My feedback on the second support case I had to raise, to report that I couldn't access the first one.
You will notice that I don't feel my problem was solved, that I was very unsatisfied with the whole business, and - most damningly - that this was what I was expecting.
There are people who make unreasonable demands of LL on a technical level... but, come on, guys, I'm running Windows 7 and Internet Explorer, this is not some obscure custom system, and it is not unreasonable to expect the flippin' support web page to work!
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Belt and braces
A while back now I mentioned some problems we were running into with the keyframed movement system. While this is somewhat improved - possibly as a consequence of the impending arrival of pathfinding on the Grid as a whole - there are still issues, especially with region restarts. The lifts running up and down my tower in Burroughs still freeze when the region restarts, and are a little erratic in resuming function.
So, by way of experiment, I rigged one to sort itself out when the restart hits. Basically, this is run off the "changed" event, because one of the things it picks up is the starting up of the region. (I have an explosive device in Steam SkyCity, in fact, which counts the number of times the sim has restarted. And then explodes.) So, this one lift, now, when it detects a restart, shuts down keyframed movement, uses the old warpPos trick to go to its starting point, and then starts keyframing going again. In theory, then, the next time a restart hits, this thing should go right on moving as normal.
I mentioned all this to Tali, and she said, "WarpPos? You do know llSetRegionPos is live now, right?"
Well, this is why Tali is an accomplished creator and I am a dumb blonde; yes, I did know, but it had temporarily slipped what passes for my mind. So I turned back to the lift...
... and I thought to myself, hang on, this is an excellent moment to run some comparisons, here.
WarpPos is not an LSL function, it's a trick developed by sneaky programmer types; it works by calculating a number of steps between where you are and where you want to be, and using llSetPos to move an object along those steps - the trick being that, due to a quirk of the implementation, all these repeated calls to llSetPos are executed in the same physics frame, thus making the transition effectively instantaneous.
The newer llSetRegionPos actually does move an object, straightforwardly and simply, from point A to point B (if both points are in the same region). So there is not a lot of use for warpPos any more, unless you're going outside a sim... but...
The much-published warpPos user-defined function has an error margin of 0.01 meters. In the documentation, llSetRegionPos is given an error margin of 0.1 meters. Now, this may be simply LL covering their backsides with a generous allowance for errors, but - I thought - it might be interesting to see how the two compare in practice. So I edited a second lift and set that to use llSetRegionPos.
So, it will be interesting to see how the two compare. The ideal result would be for both lifts to handle the sim restarts normally - but it is possible that, with the wider margin for error, the llSetRegionPos one will drift, gradually, out of position over the course of weeks. (It is also possible, or even likely, that they will both hit an unsolved keyframing bug and fail to restart properly. Well, we shall see.)
An experiment in progress! I may have results in, oooh, a month or two.
So, by way of experiment, I rigged one to sort itself out when the restart hits. Basically, this is run off the "changed" event, because one of the things it picks up is the starting up of the region. (I have an explosive device in Steam SkyCity, in fact, which counts the number of times the sim has restarted. And then explodes.) So, this one lift, now, when it detects a restart, shuts down keyframed movement, uses the old warpPos trick to go to its starting point, and then starts keyframing going again. In theory, then, the next time a restart hits, this thing should go right on moving as normal.
I mentioned all this to Tali, and she said, "WarpPos? You do know llSetRegionPos is live now, right?"
Well, this is why Tali is an accomplished creator and I am a dumb blonde; yes, I did know, but it had temporarily slipped what passes for my mind. So I turned back to the lift...
... and I thought to myself, hang on, this is an excellent moment to run some comparisons, here.
WarpPos is not an LSL function, it's a trick developed by sneaky programmer types; it works by calculating a number of steps between where you are and where you want to be, and using llSetPos to move an object along those steps - the trick being that, due to a quirk of the implementation, all these repeated calls to llSetPos are executed in the same physics frame, thus making the transition effectively instantaneous.
The newer llSetRegionPos actually does move an object, straightforwardly and simply, from point A to point B (if both points are in the same region). So there is not a lot of use for warpPos any more, unless you're going outside a sim... but...
The much-published warpPos user-defined function has an error margin of 0.01 meters. In the documentation, llSetRegionPos is given an error margin of 0.1 meters. Now, this may be simply LL covering their backsides with a generous allowance for errors, but - I thought - it might be interesting to see how the two compare in practice. So I edited a second lift and set that to use llSetRegionPos.
So, it will be interesting to see how the two compare. The ideal result would be for both lifts to handle the sim restarts normally - but it is possible that, with the wider margin for error, the llSetRegionPos one will drift, gradually, out of position over the course of weeks. (It is also possible, or even likely, that they will both hit an unsolved keyframing bug and fail to restart properly. Well, we shall see.)
An experiment in progress! I may have results in, oooh, a month or two.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Recommended reading
As some people know, when I'm not shouting at my mother or trying to ignore her, one of the things I do is read aloud to her. We've been through a number of books over the past few months.
The one we're on currently is W. E. Bowman's The Ascent of Rum Doodle, a spoof on mountaineering which narrates - in studiously po-faced and pompous "Boys' Own Stories" style - the attempts of a hapless crew of incompetents to conquer the 40,000½ foot tall peak of the title. It's blessed with a foreword by Bill Bryson, who describes it as one of the funniest books he's ever read.
I mention it here because, for a sixty-year-old classic of humourous writing, it is weirdly little-known. It's been compared (not without justification) to Three Men in a Boat and The Diary of a Nobody, but those books are famous, and The Ascent of Rum Doodle, inexplicably, isn't. Oh, I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about it, but that means nothing these days.
Probably my posting this here means nothing much, too, but... should you chance across this one, give it a go. I mean, it's funny enough that both my mother and I are enjoying it. How often does that happen?
The one we're on currently is W. E. Bowman's The Ascent of Rum Doodle, a spoof on mountaineering which narrates - in studiously po-faced and pompous "Boys' Own Stories" style - the attempts of a hapless crew of incompetents to conquer the 40,000½ foot tall peak of the title. It's blessed with a foreword by Bill Bryson, who describes it as one of the funniest books he's ever read.
I mention it here because, for a sixty-year-old classic of humourous writing, it is weirdly little-known. It's been compared (not without justification) to Three Men in a Boat and The Diary of a Nobody, but those books are famous, and The Ascent of Rum Doodle, inexplicably, isn't. Oh, I'm sure there's a Wikipedia page about it, but that means nothing these days.
Probably my posting this here means nothing much, too, but... should you chance across this one, give it a go. I mean, it's funny enough that both my mother and I are enjoying it. How often does that happen?
Thursday, July 12, 2012
A pox on "standard sizing"
The mesh clothes I picked up at the fundraiser yesterday will just have to be considered as donations to the cause, I fear. At least the shoes, makeup and motorbike seem OK!
The problem, of course, is that they were all made using the "Standard Sizing", against which I have inveighed before... and my shape, though not all that peculiar, especially in SL, is way outside the permitted variation allowed in the standard sizes.
It's not a question of being too tall, or too thin, because the existing adjustments along avatar bones work just fine to accommodate that. The problem lies in the subtler interplay of proportions - and, I suspect, in what's currently fashionable in SL.
The problem seems to exist mostly for those of us who want a vaguely trim-and-athletic look. I don't want exaggerated curves and a pair of Zeppelins moored to the front of my torso, thank you very much, so the larger sizes, which cater to the voluptuous amongst us, are out. So, no problem, right? I just use the small sizes, and they scale up to my height, right?... Wrong, because the smaller sizes don't seem to allow for any significant musculature, or breadth (I have narrow hips and comparatively broad shoulders). The S and XS sizes seem heavily biased towards what my friend and fellow blogger CC Creeggan describes here as "Tableau girls". It's a popular look among the waif-like and generally gamine. It's not my look, though, or anywhere near it. Of course, I can just hide everything under alpha layers...
... except those don't adjust at all for body proportions, they are painted over certain areas of your avatar's surface, and if the lines on your avatar's surface don't match up to the ones on the mesh item you're wearing... tough. So, with the best will in the world, I find myself clipping through mesh clothes in unexpected locations. Forearms seem to be the worst - my arms are longer than many avi's, even though they are actually too short to be well proportioned in RL. And, wearing a corsety-type top, I found that, in all the sizes available, the breadth of my shoulders made for a visible discontinuity between the mesh and me - I suddenly broaden out at the point the mesh's corresponding alpha ends.
At best, I can only hope to conceal my entire lower body beneath an alpha, leaving me looking as if I've stolen somebody else's legs. In size XXS trousers, the legs of someone in the terminal stages of some obscure wasting disease. In size XL, the legs of someone whose bottom needs its own postcode. In intermediate sizes, an unlovely combination of the two.
Let's consider the tops... Well, since I have small breasts, anything above XXS leaves vast echoing caverns around my chest. Selecting size XXS, though, generally means my breasts clip through the clothing whenever my av physics kicks in, and sometimes even when it doesn't. I can't win.
I would post some snapshots, but they are just too, too, depressing.
I am more and more convinced that the "standard sizing" was based on a sample of commercially available shapes.... and so reflects what's currently fashionable in SL. I will stand by my previously stated opinion: for those of us who exercise our own creativity and make our own shapes, it is effectively useless.
And since mesh clothes continue to be a growth area, can we please have all the wrangling over the mesh deformer tool sorted out, so that I can actually wear some?
The problem, of course, is that they were all made using the "Standard Sizing", against which I have inveighed before... and my shape, though not all that peculiar, especially in SL, is way outside the permitted variation allowed in the standard sizes.
It's not a question of being too tall, or too thin, because the existing adjustments along avatar bones work just fine to accommodate that. The problem lies in the subtler interplay of proportions - and, I suspect, in what's currently fashionable in SL.
The problem seems to exist mostly for those of us who want a vaguely trim-and-athletic look. I don't want exaggerated curves and a pair of Zeppelins moored to the front of my torso, thank you very much, so the larger sizes, which cater to the voluptuous amongst us, are out. So, no problem, right? I just use the small sizes, and they scale up to my height, right?... Wrong, because the smaller sizes don't seem to allow for any significant musculature, or breadth (I have narrow hips and comparatively broad shoulders). The S and XS sizes seem heavily biased towards what my friend and fellow blogger CC Creeggan describes here as "Tableau girls". It's a popular look among the waif-like and generally gamine. It's not my look, though, or anywhere near it. Of course, I can just hide everything under alpha layers...
... except those don't adjust at all for body proportions, they are painted over certain areas of your avatar's surface, and if the lines on your avatar's surface don't match up to the ones on the mesh item you're wearing... tough. So, with the best will in the world, I find myself clipping through mesh clothes in unexpected locations. Forearms seem to be the worst - my arms are longer than many avi's, even though they are actually too short to be well proportioned in RL. And, wearing a corsety-type top, I found that, in all the sizes available, the breadth of my shoulders made for a visible discontinuity between the mesh and me - I suddenly broaden out at the point the mesh's corresponding alpha ends.
At best, I can only hope to conceal my entire lower body beneath an alpha, leaving me looking as if I've stolen somebody else's legs. In size XXS trousers, the legs of someone in the terminal stages of some obscure wasting disease. In size XL, the legs of someone whose bottom needs its own postcode. In intermediate sizes, an unlovely combination of the two.
Let's consider the tops... Well, since I have small breasts, anything above XXS leaves vast echoing caverns around my chest. Selecting size XXS, though, generally means my breasts clip through the clothing whenever my av physics kicks in, and sometimes even when it doesn't. I can't win.
I would post some snapshots, but they are just too, too, depressing.
I am more and more convinced that the "standard sizing" was based on a sample of commercially available shapes.... and so reflects what's currently fashionable in SL. I will stand by my previously stated opinion: for those of us who exercise our own creativity and make our own shapes, it is effectively useless.
And since mesh clothes continue to be a growth area, can we please have all the wrangling over the mesh deformer tool sorted out, so that I can actually wear some?
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