Second Life Graphics Issues

The Problem:

I continue to experience random graphics issues with SL. Most recently, my avatar has transformed back into the headless shadow-man. I was able to get him back after changing the settings back and forth. Strangely, the gamma setting has affected my 19” Westinghouse monitor by somehow changing the gamma setting on my GPU… Even when the game was not running.

The Fix:

I was able to correct the problem temporarily by going into the Catalyst Control Center and resetting the GPU gamma settings. This was accomplished by selecting “Color” from the sidebar drop down lists, then clicking on the “Reactivate ATI color controls” button. When it is reactivated, the button will remain grayed-out. Once my gamma was corrected and before I could see my avatar, I gave myself all white clothing, just to make sure I was still clothed in public.

My First Second Life

After reading a little about Second Life and looking at Torley’s island, I decided to give it a try. It was free, so I thought it couldn’t hurt… I spent most of my time trying to configure the graphics so that my GPU would stop freaking out–Huge spikes of random rendering kept obscuring my view, especially inside smaller rooms… And sometimes my avatar became a headless shadow-man (an effect I would consider keeping if it weren’t a glitch). It took some time but I think I narrowed the problem down to the following feature in the graphics menu:

Edit/Preferences/Graphics/Hardware Options/Enable VBO

For whatever reason, my ATI X1800XT 500MB GPU hates this setting. I haven’t had this problem since it was unchecked. I am still messing with a few of the parameters to get things just right, but I looked at Torley’s tutorial to help me configure things. A very useful tutorial (below).

I spent a lot of time editing parameters that were available to mess with for my… self. I ended up deleting my default clothes and now look terribly rendered. For a short while, I was stuck completely naked in public. Somehow, I accidentally deleted my hair during my experimentation, and now I am completely bald. The only other problem I had was when I started dancing and couldn’t figure out how to stop. This led to the interesting discovery that one’s avatar can dance while sitting down… Or doing anything for that matter. Trippy.

So after all this, I walked around New Berlin for a while and talked to a few people. The first thing that I noticed was that a lot of people like to dress their avatars like h**kers. Does this imply people are seeking their inner h**ker in second life? Who really knows? I saw only one female character dressed modestly and immediately assumed that she must be a lady of the night in real life. That was probably wrong of me.

The next observation made was that everyone just seemed to be standing around. Many of them were speaking in foreign languages, and I became paranoid that they were talking about me and my pathetic looking clothes. Then this little cardboard box robot kept running into me for fun, which was a little insulting. Plus, I had to wonder how a robot can be made of cardboard. I asked it, “What are you?” It responded, “I am a robot.” “You look like a cardboard box,” I said. “I am a robot,” it concluded, bumped into me again and ran off. Deep. (Please note the h**kers in the screenshots. I am the guy in the black shirt… And no, I didn’t talk to her)

So, bored again, I commented locally on the fact that people seemed to be dressed like h**kers. …In order to cause controversy. Instead, they acknowledged this fact and stated that it was because everyone dressed their avatars with clothes they could get for free. I don’t know if I buy that… Which leads me to my next observation.

What’s with the paying real money to buy cars and stuff? I hate paying for things that seem like they should be free. Well, at least $8 for a car! I can see a small fee like 50 cents or something, but $8! I would have stolen the car if the game would have let me. I’m not saying I want to stop playing the game yet, but I ‘m going to have to learn more about the game before I go buying real estate .

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. The concept of creating one’s own world and character is very intriguing and will no doubt keep me interested for a while. Some avatars out there were very creative, if not a little strange… But I love the creative possibilities and wonder if I will spend 90% of the time creating worlds and messing with my appearance rather than playing the actual game. Or is it “living my second life?” Oh, so much to learn and so little time.

As I was typing this, I was in SL taking screenshots for this post… I ran into a guy dressed as a Star Wars bounty hunter. He offered to show me where to get one and took me on a little tour. He even showed me the costumes before alteration and offered this advice:

“If you’re going to buy one, be sure to select the male model, if that’s what you’re after.”

I replied:

“Thx. That’s good advice. I don’t think I’d look good with bounty hunter boobs anyway.”

He seemed to think that was funny. (Female imperial model in picture to the right)

I think maybe I got my first real second life experience. I feel renewed, excited. Like a new avatar… Maybe this will be fun after all. Especially after I get out of my pathetic wardrobe and into some cool Star Wars threads.