Beacons
Revision as of 16:57, 2 November 2009 by Torley Linden (talk | contribs) (moved How to use beacons to Using beacons)
Beacons are colored locators which help you pinpoint special kinds of objects. For instance, if you lost a physical ball that rolled off somewhere, or if you want to know which prims in your build contain scripts. Beacons will also work for avatars when appropriate, such as when an avatar plays a gesture with a sound.
Open the Beacons window by selecting View > Beacons from the menus at the top of the Second Life Viewer.
Here's what the options do:
- Scripted Objects with Touch Only - When checked, shows scripted objects you can click to interact with. For example, you visit a museum with a box you click, which gives you a notecard with historical info.
- Scripted Objects - Shows all scripted objects when checked. It's quicker than the manual way: right-click an object, click Edit, then click the Contents tab and look for scripts inside.
- Physical Objects - Shows all physical objects when checked. Physical objects are subject to Second Life's gravity, and can fall when dropped from above the ground. To make an object physical:
- Right-click the object.
- Click Edit.
- Click the Object tab.
- Check Physical.
- Sound Sources - Shows all objects and avatars playing sounds. You can use this to narrow down the source of disruptive noises in an abuse situation so you can report it by selecting Help > Report Abuse from the Viewer menus.
- Particle Sources - Shows all objects creating particles, including avatars with particle emitter attachments. You can hide particles by selecting View > Hide Particles from the Viewer menus.
- Render Highlights - Makes objects which match the enabled beacon types glow in red. If an object already has a strong glow effect (you can access this by right-clicking an object, selecting Edit, and clicking the Texture tab), its highlight will be hard to see, but beacons will show.
- Render Beacons - Makes objects and avatars that match the enabled beacon types have 3D crosshairs through them: a long vertical line (Z axis) accompanied by shorter X and Y axis lines. Each beacon type has a different color to differentiate them on a crowded screen:
- Scripted objects - Red
- Physical objects - Green
- Particle beacons - Blue
- Sound beacons - Yellow
- Beacon Width - You can adjust beacon thickness with this slider, making them more visible. Units are measured in pixels.
Video Tutorial
This tutorial shows you much of what's described above. Since beacons are very visual, this'll help you make sense of how they work in action:
<videoflash type="vimeo">3578377|640|480</videoflash>
More Usage Tips
- Scripted Objects overrides Scripted Objects with Touch Only because it includes all scripted objects. You can only have one checked at a time.
- Either Render Highlights or Render Beacons (or both) must be checked. To hide all beacons and highlights, rather than uncheck them individually, simply close the window. The next time you open it, your previous settings will persist.
- To show beacons and save screen space, click the Beacons window's Minimize button to collapse it into the lower-left corner of the screen. You can drag it around by the title bar if you want to reposition it.
- The following Viewer menu options related to beacons are:
- View > Highlight Transparent - Shows invisible objects and any others with a degree of transparency, such as tree textures.
- View > Hide Particles - Hides the particles that beacons locate. This is useful for boosting performance in extreme situations, or simply reducing annoyances. Alternatively, while not usually needed, you can control how many particles appear by doing the following:
- Open the Preferences window.
- Click the Graphics tab.
- Check Custom.
- Lower the Max. Particle Count.
Related Articles
For more information, see the following articles about using beacons for specific purposes: