Nearly always a region problem, not a viewer problem. So many issues can be immediately resolved by choosing to login to a different region. When your login appears strange in anyway or outright fails, next to where you put your name and password on the Genesis launch page, is another box which asks where to login to? This is usually set to "home" or "previous location". If you have issues, try putting the word Sandra in there and login. Sandra is a water region and an excellent place to reload your inventory or fiddle with other settings. It is also a very good place to try to reproduce a previous error. If you cannot reproduce it there, then the problem is often the region you were on and not the viewer at fault.
On installation, Windows Defender blue box warning of the perils of installing!
Always download Genesis Viewer directly from genesisviewer.org only.
This comes down to your trust in us. You need to choose "Run Anyway", to begin the installation. This happens because Genesis and all other Third Party Viewers, are not 'digitally signed'. Signing is not only excessively expensive but removes all anonymity and would give open access to names, phone numbers, addresses and emails. Just like you, we value privacy. Please be assured that we would never do anything to undermine your trust in us. We cannot promise to be bug-free, but we can promise that we would never deliberately create any content that is harmful to your computer, or jeopardises your privacy. You can scan any file by uploading to https://virustotal.com a free online antivirus and it will be scanned against 50 AV engines and give results in minutes.
Additional note from Microsoft There's a possibility that the SmartScreen option is on that's why you're unable to install downloaded apps. Let's try to turn it off and see if it helps. See the steps below:
Open Windows Defender Security Center from your Start menu, desktop, or taskbar.
Click on the App and browser control button on the left side of the window.
Click on Off in the Check apps and files section.
Where is Wearable Favorites?
Open the Quick Preferences (Genesis logo bottom right). Choose Toolbar options
In the fifth column, 3 up from the bottom, tick "Favorites".
This will provide you with a quick button to the Favorites folder where you can drag inventory (except links) to that folder if you use those items a lot. It is also the same place where you put your landmark for the top of screen Favorites bar.
The Viewer doesn't open maximised
Right-click desktop icon for Genesis, click properties, and in the Run box change "Normal Window" to Maximised and OK it. You may have to do this on further new installs.
What is the optimum size for my cache?
We think, not more than 4gb. Imagine an encyclopedia with thousands of topics. You want to find a specific subject so you go to the index, but finding the information you want takes a long time because index is so massive. This is how your cache works. Sometimes smaller is better! Whitelist the location of your cache in your virus scanner. You don't want it scanning thousands of tiny cache elements constantly. If you have 16gb or more of ram, consider installing a Ram drive of 2gb and storing your cache there. Modern Ramdrives automatically copy the information back and forth on boot-up and shutdown without any user intervention. See our post on RAM Drives for more information.
How do I change from arrow keys to WASD for movement?
Go to Preferences > Input > Input & Movement, and under the movement options, enable WASD to control movement.
When disabled, typing a letter on the keyboard will open the bottom chat bar. If you do not want the bottom chat bar opening each time and you use arrow keys for movement: enable "Arrow keys always move the avatar" and "WASD to control movement"
You can still use arrow keys to move and typing a letter will not open the bottom chat bar.
Mouselook button appears for no apparent reason.
Then you are most certainly wearing a Vista AO.
Vista uses some funky code to get around land perms when scripts are disabled. A byproduct of this code is that it spawns the Mouselook button. Detaching and reattaching your Vista AO will remove the mouselook button.
Alternative solutions are to copy your AO config card and animations to another AO Hud such as the free Akeyo ones, or use the inbuilt AO in Genesis.
We are also working on a way to defeat this attachment from spawning mouselook in subsequent releases, but Vista AO is not open source so please bear with us. If you experience this on another type of AO, please let us know.
Sometimes old and slow (pre Shoutcast/Icecast) streams cut out.
This is not a bug but this setting may help you: Change Debug: CurlTimeoutLowSpeedTime from 30 to 100.
How to disable some, but not all Hover Tips
Top Menu > View > Hover Tips.
If you untick all options, you will no longer see any hover tips.
If you enable Show Tips, but untick 'Land Tips' & 'Tips on all objects' you will only see tips for:
Other residents - their complexity (render weight).
Scripted objects (non scripted will be ignored).
We will be exploring a way to to see if we can differentiate between Avatars and Scripted objects, which will hopefully allow you to turn off information on scripted objects and just see Avatar complexities.
I came from another viewer and now I have less inventory!
Genesis does not count links as inventory. If you have many saved outfits that use links, the Inventory count will be less than from another viewer. Nothing is missing.
Does Genesis work on other grids?
It might, but is not supported. To obviate the need to maintain multiple versions of Genesis Viewer due to Second Life proprietary routines, Genesis is tested in Second Life only and as such, we are unable to offer support, solutions and fixes, pertaining to other grids. Additionally much of the old OS Grid specific routines are gradually being deprecated to offer even more performance for Second Life.
These are all server side issues, affecting all viewers. LL hopes to have a fix for group problems soon<tm>.
For group chat issues, close the group and reopen it again. IMing a user who you know to be online will change their status to online.
From Linden Lab, May 15th, 2023: BUG-232037 “Avatar Online Offline Status Not Correctly Updating” – work is in progress on a further fix and will be included in an upcoming simulator maintenance release.
How do I render my Friends only?
Preferences > Genesis > Adv. Features and choose from:
Render avatars with complexity below the limit you set.
Always renders friends, regardless of complexity, Only render friends, Only render yourself.
Why didn't receive an offline friendship request or an object that was sent to me?
Anything that uses Instant Message protocol, i.e. Offline IM's, Inventory offers, Object spam, Group notices and Friendship Requests are all subject to being capped when you are offline and reach the total combined limit. The type of account you have determines your capped limit. Basic accounts are capped at 15 and premium accounts are capped at 80. SL Wiki Offline Message Limits
Therefore basic level accounts will be more prone to not receiving offline items, notices etc. This is a global setting by Second Life and will therefore work the same on all viewers. Basic accounts can receive a maximum of 15 offline
I teleported and my hair and shoes fell off.
They have probably not fallen off and are still attached and the vertex buffers needs to refresh. This can happen on any viewer. Go in and out of Wireframe mode (CTRL+Shift+R) to refresh your attachments, scenery or anything else. It is the ultimate refresh and only takes a couple of seconds.
I can't hear the media when I'm sitting in the back row of the movies
Media sound gradually tapers the further your avatar moves away from it. In Debug: MediaRollOffMax is the distance at which media volume will cut off completely. The default range is 30 meters. You can increase this, but don't go wild. You don't want to be listening to everyone's television at the same time!
How to Resync dances?
In chat type /resync (can also be accessed via top menu, Genesis > Resync dances).
How to make a blacklisted asset reappear without needing to relog or tp?
With camera constraints disabled, remove the item from the asset blacklist, wheel your mouse back until the region becomes just a dot... change your active group. Press Esc twice, and the asset will reappear (without needing to TP or relog)
Someone is wearing a face-light that has gone nuclear!
Mute then Unmute the person, it will turn their face light off on your end. Works on all viewers because it sends a kill command to the server.
I look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame when changing outfits.
Detatch your animesh pet before changing your outfit! This behaviour can happens on any viewer and is not limited to Genesis specifically. You can also right-click yourself and navigate to Reset Skeleton using the pie menu.
How to change windows from opening your previous viewer to handle SLurls when you are using Genesis?
You need to run the slurl proxy to fix this https://wiki.firestormviewer.org/slurl or you can uninstall the viewer and reinstall it. Windows always opens the viewer most recently installed for SLurls.
Note if you use Firefox browser: Open preferences, scroll down to Applications and you will see Second Life in the list. Next to that is a list saying the program assigned to it, you can hit the arrow drop down and select 'always ask' or point it to the Genesis executable in your program files folder.
How can I help with bug squashing?
After a crash or some inexplicable behaviour, your log files will probably contain information pertaining to the event. If you would care to share your log file with the Devs, here is what you need to do *before* you relaunch the viewer.
Navigate to c:\user\yourpcname\appdata\roaming\genesis-eve-test\logs and find genesis.log Grab it and drag it to desktop. Right click and open it in Notepad and check for any personal information that you do not wish to share. Typically this is when you named your PC with your RL name. Feel free to 'search and replace' any information like that with something else. When you are happy with it, please email it to genesisviewer (at) gmail (dot) com We will delete the log once it has been reviewed. Thank you.
How can I upload a profile picture for free?
Genesis supports the uploading of free profile pictures via our new Profile floater (which is not fully implemented yet). In Debug, change GenxProfileFloater to True. Open your profile and choose upload profile picture. Switching between legacy and new profile mode, does NOT require a restart.
How to have multiple different naming systems for people in screen floaters?
To customise your naming systems beyond those offered in preferences, you need to go into Advanced > Debug settings and search "NameSystem"
The following settings allow you to change your naming system for each floater:
FriendNameSystem
GroupMembersNameSystem
IMNameSystem
LandManagementNameSystem
LookAtNameSystem
ProfileNameSystem
RadarNameSystem
SpeakerNameSystem
Values are: 0 = Old Style, 1 = Display Names and Username, 2 = Displayname only, 3 = Old Style (Display Name)
Active Speaker list is not populating the names of everyone speaking
At the bottom left of the active speaker floater, press the refresh button. It takes about 30 seconds to repopulate the active speaker list. (The button next to refresh, will pause the list and is included for ease of use for administrators).
How to change the short date format from US to European format
To change from MM/DD/YY to DD/MM/YY go to (top menu) Advanced > Debug Settings and change: ShortDateFormat to %d/%m/%Y
How to change the length of time that Inventory considers and item to be 'Recent'
Inventory: By default 'Recent' items only show until your next login. You can change this to any amount of time.
Click the 'Recent Items' tab, then the tab "file" in the inventory floater, "show filters" and change it by hours and days for how long an item should be considered recent.
How to modify a saved outfit
Wear the saved outfit and make your changes. Use the inventory floater 'File' menu and click, 'Update Outfit' and this will apply the changes to your outfit, for the next time you wear it.
Top menu > Tools > Select only my objects. Left click the mouse and drag a box over the area to highlight only objects that belong to you. You can take them, move them or delete them. Don't forget to uncheck this option again once you have finished!
How to inspect what someone else is wearing?
You can use the built-in inspect option, but the quickest way is...
Right click the ground and choose Edit, then Left click on the item of clothing someone is wearing... you nosy parker you! It will bring up the edit window showing the name of the object/item and who created it.
How to inspect colours when creating and editing?
(Top Menu) Advanced > UI : Show color under cursor. Will display RGB values for anything you roll your mouse over.
Example: if you use BOM skin and it's an older skin, you end up getting these fingernail and feet fixers, they are white and need tinting. thats where the screen RGB thing comes in. Please remember, continually monitoring, can impact your FPS.
How to have Frame Rate constantly displayed on screen?
(Top Menu) Advanced > UI > Show FPS. Please remember, continually monitoring, can itself impact your FPS.
Why doesn't Genesis have a built-in movelock?
The movelock provided in other Third Party Viewers is via the bridge script object that automatically attaches to you. We don't want to use a bridge unless we absolutely have to and so far we do not. However, a Movelock HUD for Genesis is available on MP for the princely sum of 1L or available free from the Genesis Centre in London City
Therefore we recommend purchasing a move-lock on MP so each individual user can choose to have that feature rather than applying it globally to everyone.
How does EEP work in Genesis?
Genesis emulates EEP by applying a closely matching windlight and then injecting that, with EEP settings, into the rendering pipeline.
We do this because, unlike literal EEP, it should have zero impact on your frame rate. It is one of many reasons why Genesis is so fast and keeps your computer happy!
Also, in your "Settings" folder, if you have fixed day EEP settings you can right click them and "Apply to myself"
Graphics Gremlins and Unsupported Graphics cards
First, go to (top menu) and click About Genesis. After a short pause it will show you the information about your system. Check your Graphics driver version (OpenGL) against the most recent release available from your GPU card vendor, typically NVidia or AMD and update to the latest version if your current version is more than 3 months old. This is often the solution to the problem.
If problems persist, in the viewer go to Prefs > Graphics, (make sure custom is ticked) and choose the hardware tab underneath. Make sure you are not more than 75% of your total VRAM to the viewer.
If you are unsure how much VRAM you have, from the Windows command prompt type in DXDiag and check the screen tab. This shows you how much VRAM your system has.
If this fails to resolve your issues, in Advanced Settings: Change Debug > WarnUnsupportedHardware and ProbeHardwareOnStartup to True, restart the viewer and contact our support team with the information the viewer provides you with (or your log file) and we will look at it for you.
Press the Genesis button (bottom right) and click the icon that shows the sun and clouds to open the Windlight editor.
Click New, then fiddle around with the sliders and when happy, click Save.
The source code for Genesis is available on Github on an as-is basis. We do not provide support for compiling the viewer or issues resulting to your branch.
