Category Archives: HINTS & TIPS

AMD Graphics Card Driver Updates Wreak Havoc

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Second Life residents who use AMD grphics cards are probably already aware of the ongoing issues with AMD’s Catalyst drivers. The most recent updates to these drivers conflict with the ability to see rigged mesh in Second Life. This problem is related to the 14.9.2 driver update deployed by AMD. The fastest way to fix this problem is to have hardware skinning disabled. There is an article on this bug in the JIRA that can be found here.

I am reposting pics from the Living in a Modem World blog that clearly show the problem on the left, and the fix on the right by disabling hardware skinning:

amd-14-9-2-hw-skinning-combined

In her blog, Inara Pey has written an article about an additional work-around for Windows users with an AMD graphics card.

In her post, Inara outlines steps that Yoho Waco, a contributing writer to her blog, came up with in order to get around this problem. AMD sends out these driver updates to the graphics cards automatically, and so one of the solutions is to roll back to an earlier version of the drivers to enable users to see mesh again.

But for those who wish to use the latest Catalyst or Omega drivers for their cards, this workaround should fix the mesh rendering issue. Yoko uses uses Windows 7 64-bit, but Inara’s article indicates that the basic approach should work with all versions of windows, 64-bit and 32-bit.

Like Inara, I have a Nvidia graphics card, so I was not able to test these steps. But if you have an AMD graphics card and have been experiencing problems seeing mesh, I encourage you to review the article and follow the steps found there.

The complete article can be found by clicking here: AMD Catalyst™ drivers: additional Windows workaround.

This is a perfect example of how Second Life residents come together to create a solution to a problem that benefits all. There have been and will continue to be a lot of negative things about Second Life. But I love how this community pulls together to help one another.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZoHa Islands Social Media

Linden Lab Seeks Input from Residents

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feedback
When asked “What’s the one thing Linden Lab could do that would have the biggest impact on further improving your Second Life experience?” residents responded with a resounding request to have a way to communicate suggestions for improvements or ideas with Linden Lab — from different approaches for the way things are done today, to brand new features that could dramatically improve their experiences, to seemingly small things that could have a big impact. As a result, Linden Lab has created a page on the Second Life website for residents to use to share suggestions.

The Feedback and Suggestions page (clickable link), allows residents to submit thoughts, ideas, and suggestions for improvement. You can also find this page by going to the Second Life website and clicking on Help and finding New Feature Suggestions in the drop down.

Just sign-in with your Second Life account, select the topic or category that is most appropriate, and describe your suggestion in the text box. Once you submit, you’ll see a confirmation page and receive an automated email as well. Linden Lab has indicated they will not be able to reply to individual suggestions, but that each idea will be routed to the appropriate Lindens and each one will be reviewed and considered.

Linden Lab is always on the lookout for ideas as they continue to surface in social media, direct conversations, or via JIRA, but this new page should make it easier than ever for any Second Life Resident to share suggestions directly with them.

Linden Lab emphasizes this is not a portal for support requests, bug reports, and other inquiries. Residents should continue to use the Support and Downloads page and the JIRA to report problems or get support (hover your cursor over the orange text and you can see the clickable link).

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager

Linden Lab’s Performance Improvement Plan

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Linden Lab has announced a new and improved Second Life experience, due to some much-needed updates and completion of projects that should make your Second Life experiences faster, smoother, and more reliable. Of course, using the latest version of the official SL viewer will ensure that you will see the benefits of the improvements, but I have no doubt that Firestorm and other TPVs (third party viewers) have already done so, or will catch up very soon. As you know the folks over at Firestorm meet regularly with the SL team at Linden Lab and work hand-in-hand with their technology.

We all knew they were working on something, because Second Life has been hiccuping and burbling more than usual lately. It will all be worth it, however, if we can see significant improvement to performance. Hopefully without having to run out and buy a new computer to keep up with the technological changes!

In an article posted in the Featured News blog on the Second Life website, Linden Lab indicated the following had undergone serious improvement. You will note one thing they worked on, which has been the bane of every group’s existence, is the quirky and unreliable group chat.

(the following is a direct quote from the article on the blog)

1. Speeding Up the Marketplace
If you visit the Marketplace today, you should be seeing a much snappier experience than in the past. We recently deployed infrastructure upgrades for the Marketplace, and the site has since shown some of the best performance we’ve ever seen from it. Even during peak usage periods over the weekend, when in the past performance would degrade, we’re seeing response times that average 70% faster and page load times that are 30% faster than before the changes.

2. Improving Group Chat
Last week, we also deployed new group chat server configurations. Our internal metrics are showing dramatic improvements in group chat performance, and we hope that you’re seeing that in your own experience as well. We are still seeing some cases in which performance for some groups degrades for shorter periods of time than before, and we are continuing to investigate and make changes; the project isn’t finished, but we’ve made a lot of progress.

3. Faster Texture & Mesh Loading
The entire grid is now using a CDN service for textures and meshes. This change means that textures and meshes should load more quickly, particularly for those who login to Second Life from places that are far from our US data centers. Our testing showed dramatic improvements: average download times for textures and meshes have been reduced by more than 50% on average, and the improvement is even more dramatic outside of North America.

4. Quicker Viewer-Server Communications
Another way we’re enhancing Second Life performance is through our HTTP project, which improves the way your Viewer communicates with grid services. With the HTTP Project Viewer out now, the faster content download times you’ll see thanks to the CDN change get even better – we’re talking 80% faster!

As you look for these improvements, please bear in mind this important note from Oz Linden:

“The CDN (and HTTP in those viewers that have them) improvements for texture and mesh data are improvements to how long it takes to download the data. Once they’ve been downloaded, your viewer caches them locally so the next time you need that data it doesn’t need to download them at all. What that means is that these improvements mostly affect how quickly you see new things: places and objects you’ve never seen before. You probably won’t see a big difference in familiar places because your viewer should be using cached data for those.

So… now’s the time to try checking out places you’ve never seen before!

The use of pipelined HTTP for the initial load of your inventory when you log in matters every time, since while we cache some inventory data locally we always make sure it’s correct by loading it all at the beginning of your session.”

So, How’s Second Life Performing for you? Linden Lab wants your feedback! Linden Lab recognizes that performance improvements are not as sexy as a new feature, but these changes will (hopefully) improve your experience in world and lessen your frustration. These changes directly impact all our Second Life experiences and our daily lives in world. If you are noticing these improvements, they would like to know in the Forums, on Twitter, or however you prefer.

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On a side note, thank you all once again for helping make our 7th Anniversary Celebration last week a success! We wouldn’t be here without you, our residents and merchants. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping make ZoHa Islands one of the top estates in SL!

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, Social Media Manager

Protecting Against Hackers

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While this article isn’t specifically about SL, it’s about keeping yourself safe from hackers on your computer, which is indirectly SL related.

I saw a news report this morning on TV from Mike Wendland who writes a tech blog called PC Mike. This caught my attention this morning, because he was talking about hackers. The news reports lately are full of the story about the Russian hackers who have hacked billions of websites, stealing logins and passwords. The solution? They recommend you change your login ID and password for every website you use.

Really?

I don’t know about you, but that is very, very daunting. I have a LOT of logins to a LOT of websites; I honestly don’t even know if I could find every single website for which I have a login.

One of the best ways to thwart hackers is to use long, complicated password like KQo=3oyB>VG^-6 or something like that. The experts tell us that in addition, we should have a different password for each site. I don’t know about you, but there is no way I could remember that many passwords, let alone a password like my example above.

So what do most of us do? We write down our logins and passwords, either in a document on our PCs or *gasp* a piece of paper in a drawer. Even though we know that is not a good idea and very unsafe, what else do you do? PC Mike reported on some online login and password managers on his most recent blog post.

PC Mike recommends that the first thing users need to do is use a password management program, such as Last Pass, Password Genie, and Dashlane.

Last Pass is an online program that manages all your passwords. It keeps track of your user names and passwords for you and logs in automatically with them. It creates passwords the way they would be… very complex. The program will generate these kinds of secure passwords.

Password Genie is another secure password manager. It stores and secures passwords on PC and Mac computers and Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

Dashlane has a form filler, generates secure passwords and has a very easy to use interface. Like the others, there are free and premium versions.

Here’s a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gce1hDjNo0o

PC Mike is a veteran journalist whose video “PC Mike” reports have been distributed weekly to all 215 NBC-TV stations since 1994, making him one of the most experienced tech reporters in the country. His tech stories and videos have appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, the Today Show, The New York Times, USA Today and in numerous national newspapers and magazines. In addition to the PC Mike tech blog, he also publishes the Roadtreking.com RV Travel Blog in which he travels North America in an RV reporting about interesting people and places.

My only question is…what if hackers hack into the login and password websites?? That way they would have instant access to every single one of your logins and passwords from one hack. PC Mike is a well-respected tech journalist, so I believe that he wouldn’t recommend something that wasn’t safe. But really, is anything safe online anymore? I would definitely do more research about how and why it’s safe to have a login and password manager.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Reducing Viewer Crashes

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Firestorm viewer smallestIt’s the bane of everyone’s existence in Second Life… the dreaded viewer crash. Naturally, viewers don’t crash at opportune times; they wait until you’re getting busy with someone, or in a wedding, or doing a crucial final touches on a build you hadn’t saved. Sometimes they crash and all of a sudden the viewer just disappears. Most times, however, you suddenly can’t move, then all sound disappears and then the screen dims, accompanied by the endlessly rotating circle, and the dreaded words “Not responding” appear at the top of your screen. Since oftentimes people use the excuse “Oh, I crashed!” when trying to get out of an uncomfortable circumstance, it never fails that the viewer will crash during something critical, like your partner telling you they love you for the first time, or something equally important, and that inopportune crash looks suspicious.

The causes for these crashes vary. Sometimes if you simply cam around too much, it causes the crash. Sometimes the sim is too full, a griefer is on the sim and unleashes a graphics crasher, or computer system is out of date and doesn’t have the resources necessary to run Second Life smoothly.

Click to make larger

Click to enlarge picture

I use the Firestorm viewer, and it asks to collect crash data each time you crash. You can either choose to do this manually, or changes the settings in preferences to allow the viewer to send crash reports automatically.

Click to enlarge picture

Click to enlarge picture

So you think to yourself, why should I do that? All I want to do is get back in-world to try and repair the possibly broken relationship, broken build or continue on with what you were doing, so taking the time to send crash data just adds to the frustration of trying to get in-world. However, what you don’t realize is that the people at Linden Labs and the people at Firestorm (or whatever viewer you use) take the crash data collected, and use it to create the fixes that help reduce crashing. This means that you are helping improve things by allowing your viewer’s creators to collect the crash data. I have set mine to automatic, and it only takes a few seconds for it to collect the crash data on the next start up, and doesn’t cause any serious delays.

So that begs the question: What can we do? Many users can greatly reduce their risk of Viewer crashes by taking a few steps to update their software outside of Second Life.

Oz Linden posted in the Tools and Technology blog, offering these tips to residents some steps they can take to help reduce viewer crashes.

“The nature of Second Life as a platform for user creativity means that the Viewer faces different challenges than client software for an online game, for example, which would just need to handle the limited and carefully optimized content created by the game’s developer. This can make Second Life a demanding application for your computer and can mean that if your operating system is out of date, your Viewer is more likely to crash.

The good news is you can take steps today to help this! Here are a couple of tips:

1. Upgrade your Operating System
There is a very clear pattern in our statistics – the more up to date your operating system is, the less likely your Viewer is to crash. This applies on both Windows and Macintosh (Linux is a little harder to judge, since “up to date” has a more fluid meaning there, and the sample sizes are small). Some examples:

• Windows 8.1 reports crashes only half as often as Windows 8.0
Those of you who stuck with Windows 7 (roughly 40% of users of our Viewer right now) rather than upgrade to 8.0 made a good choice at the time; version 7 still has a much better crash rate than 8.0, but not quite as good as 8.1 (now about 15% of users), so waiting is no longer the best approach.

• Mac OSX 10.9.3 reports crashes a third less than 10.7.5
OSX rates do not have as much variation as Windows versions do, but newer is still better, and there are other non-crash reasons to be on the up to date version, including rendering improvements.

Upgrading will probably also better protect you from security problems, so it’s a good idea even aside from allowing you to spend more time in Second Life.

2, Use the 64 bit version of Windows if you can
For each version of Windows for the last several years, you have had a choice between 32 bit and 64 bit variants; if your system can run the 64 bit variant, then you will probably crash much less frequently by changing to it. While we don’t have a fully 64 bit version of the Viewer yet, you can run it on 64 bit Windows, and statistically you’ll be much better off if you do.

• Generally speaking the 64 bit Windows versions report crashes half as often as the 32 bit versions.
According to the data we collect, a little more than 20% of users are running 32 bit Windows versions; most of you can probably upgrade and would benefit by it.

If you bought your computer any time in the last 5 years, chances are very good that it can run the 64 bit version of Windows (as will some systems that are even older). Microsoft has a FAQ page on this topic; go there and read the answer to the question “How do I tell if my computer can run a 64-bit version of Windows?”. That page also explains how to do the upgrade and other useful information.

We’ll of course continue working hard to find and fix things that lead to Viewer crashes. Even as we do that, though, you can decrease your chances of crashing today by taking the steps above.”

I hope this helps with some of your viewer crashing problems. I’m sure it will probably never go away, but please help by sending your crash data to the viewer’s creators when asked. This will help all of us improve our experience.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers
ZoHa Islands Social Media Manager

Second Life System Requirement Changes

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 Update post itAs we all know, having an updated operating system and other various computer hardware is key to having a positive experience in SL. The faster your processor, the better your graphics card, the faster your internet speed — then the better your experience in SL. You’ll experience less lag and less crashing, and faster rez times. Sometimes the technology for SL moves in leaps and bounds, creating a dichotomy. We want SL to improve itself, making avatars better, graphics better, etc. However, this also creates a problem where a computer can become quickly outdated. You can purchase the best of the best, only to find in a year or two that you are back to having the same problems. Every time a viewer updates, you both cringe and look forward to  changes. You cringe because you know your computer will be a little less responsive because of the updates, and you look forward to seeing the newest updates. It is a double edged sword.

Woman frustrated computerI personally used to have a laptop, and that worked for awhile, until it didn’t. Then I purchased a newer, better laptop, but it too quickly became outdated. Finally, in 2010 I got smart and purchased a desktop. While it isn’t portable and makes getting into SL impossible while traveling (that is, until they get the SL Go app from OnLive for the iPad), at least it is more easily updated. I have updated with extra memory here, a new graphics card there. I am sure it won’t be long before I’ll need a faster processor chip in a year or so, but so far I’ve been able to more or less keep up with SL. Not bad for a four year old computer!

man frustratred computerSL has recently announced a couple of important system requirements; one regarding dropping of support for both Windows XP and Mac OSX 10.6 operating systems. The other is an announcement about keeping up with Microsoft’s service pack updates.

Below is the actual announcement by Linden Labs regarding Second Life System Requirements. Windows 8 users want to pay particular attention to a requirement to update to the latest 8.1, otherwise the latest viewer update coming out soon will not download.

Read on, MacDuff!

by Community Manager Linden Lab ‎04-29-2014 11:50 AM – edited ‎04-29-2014 11:50 AM

We have made some changes to the Second Life System Requirements to bring them more up to date, and are making some related changes to the Viewer:

  • We have removed Windows XP and Mac OSX 10.6 from the list of supported operating systems. Microsoft has announced the end of support for XP, and it has been some time since Apple has released updates for 10.6. For some time now, the Viewer has been significantly less stable on these older systems, and the lack of security updates to them make them more hazardous to use. We have no plans to actually block those systems, but problems reported on them that cannot be reproduced on supported systems will not likely be fixed.

  • The Windows installer has been modified to verify that the system has been updated with the most recent Service Packs from Microsoft. While we will not block installation on Windows 8 at this time, we strongly recommend upgrading to 8.1 for greater stability. Our data shows that the Viewer is significantly less stable on systems that have not been kept up to date, so the installer will now block installation until the updates have been applied. This change will be effective in a Viewer version to be released in the next few weeks, so it would be a good idea to get your system up to date before then. You can find information on how to install the latest updates at the Microsoft Windows Update page.

I remain respectfully yours,
~ Suzanne Piers, ZI Social Media Manager