Invisible Avatar

If you are unable to see your avatar, it could be due to several reasons, including your graphics card, drivers or internet connection. Here's some handy steps to help diagnose the problem:

What graphics card am I using?

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Click on the Help menu at the top of your screen, and select 'About Second Life'. In the window that opens, your graphics card type and manufacturer are listed about half way down.

Second Life supports medium to higher end nVidia and ATI cards. Support for Intel graphics (which is a chipset on the motherboard designed primarily for 2D graphics) is not available.


Am I using the latest graphic card drivers?

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Even brand new PC's often ship with outdated graphics card drivers. It is highly recommended you go to the site for your graphics card and download and install the latest graphic card drivers.

ATI cards: www.ati.com
nVidia based bards: www.nvidia.com


I've done all that, and I am still blank!

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Open up preferences (ctrl-p) and click on the following tabs:

Graphics Tab:

• Change 'Draw Distance' from 128 down to 96, and click 'apply'
  

Graphics Detail Tab:

• Locate 'Avatar Vertex Program' under the shaders section and UNcheck it -

click apply
if it is unavailable it means your graphics card does not support it

• Make sure the 'avatar mesh detail' slider down the bottom is in the middle

setting.

Adv. Graphics Tab:

• Disable AGP graphics (if selected) by unchecking it.
  
• Increase Graphics Memory to the maximum available (if not already selected)
  
• Click Apply
  

Network Tab:

• Maximum Bandwidth - this setting should be changed to a speed lower than your

internet connection speed.
Suggestions: 768 Kb Internet speed, set to 400 kbps
1MB/s Internet speed, set to 500 kbps
1.5MB/s or greater, set to 1000 kbps

• Increase Disk Cache size to the maximum (1000 MB)
  
• Click Apply
  
• Still under the Network tab, click the 'Clear Cache' button. then click OK
  

Log out of Second Life. Log back in


Whew! That worked! Thanks a lot!

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You're welcome :)


No, all that didn't help!!! What now?

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It's possible your firewall may be preventing transfer of some data - try disabling your firewall temporarily and relogging in to Second Life. Should that not assist, please contact our tech support department via support@secondlife. listing your system specifications, and the steps you have tried (as above) to correct the issue.

 

Contributor

Kilmarac Drago