Ten Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was New

Chey When She Was Brand New in October, 2006

Written 10 October, 2008

Ten Things I Wish I Had Known When I Was New

1. Hitting the space bar will stop your fall.

Well, it doesn’t actually STOP you, but it does slow you to a snail’s pace. When you’re on the ground, you can hold the space bar to move slowly on the ground. It’s useful at the edges of cliffs and such.

2. You can suppress the typing animation.

Hate the way your fingers move and you emit keyboard sounds when you type in Chat? Go to the Debug submenu under Tools and set Suppress Typing Animation to TRUE. The animation will remain suppressed even after you relog.

3. You can fly in no fly zones and see music and media URLS on any parcel.

Sound to good to be true? It’s not! Go to the Advanced Menu and turn on View Admin Options. At one time this survived relog, but lately it must be turned back periodically.

If you don’t have an Advanced Menu, CTRL-ALT-D will turn it on and off.

4. You can zoom your camera far away from your avatar.

Go to the Advanced menu and turn on Disable Camera Constraints. You’ll be able to move your cam far away. The limit seems to be draw distance; the higher your draw, the further you can see.

5. You can see invisible objects!

CTRL-ALT-T puts a red haze around invisible objects. How handy to find that alpha prim you just rezzed but can’t see!. Hit CTRL-ALT-T to turn this feature back off.

6. You can use Edit on the attachments of other avatars.

Yes, you can! Just click on one of your own attachments (your hair, maybe) and Edit. Then, with the Edit menu still open, click on an attachment of another avatar.

You can also use the Inspect feature in the pie menu to look at another avatar’s attachments.

7. You can use Edit to track down objects you see and would like to buy.

Just click on the profile of the creator and go to the Picks tab. Nine times out of ten, you’ll find a store listed. If you don’t find a store, you can IM the creator.

8. You can zoom in really close! And you can zoom really far out!

Hit CTRL-0 to zoom in and CTRL-8 to zoom out. And REMEMBER THIS: CTRL-9 will reset your view to normal.

9. You needn’t be stuck with the cheesy dances in the dance balls at clubs.

Visit Sine Wave Island or Abranimations and pick up some dances you like. You can locate them in inventory in your Animations folder. Open them and play them in world—or you can buy a chimera which attaches to your body and will let you and your friends choose dances at any location which is not set to no-script.

10. Muting people gets rid of their chat, voice chat, sound spam, and particle effects.

Can’t enjoy Burning Life because of a particle attack? Can’t hear the music due to the audience’s excessive wooting? Mute the avies responsible. You can also mute annoying objects like store greeters and ‘sploders.

If you can’t find the source of a particle attack, go to the Advanced Menu > Rendering > Types and turn off particles. They will stay off until you relog or turn them back on.

Bonus #1. You can “tear off” submenus. Just click on their header and the submenu will detach and remain open as a window until you close it or relog. How handy! Now you won’t have to dig through menus to turn those particles back on!

Bonus #2. You can chat while in mouselook!

When in mouselook, just hit enter and the chat line will open. You can then chat without leaving mouselook. You won’t be able to send IMs, but you can see incoming IMs if you have your Preferences set to show your IMs in chat (don’t worry; others can’t see them. Only you can).