Can you be completely invisible?

[Maggy Hazelnut]

The question of the day is can someone be completely invisible in SL including having no name showing? And if so, how is it done? At the place where I work & live in SL we've had a minor but annoying griefer for months now & we believe we know who it is. Last night our suspect happened to have on a particle emitter that made a subtle cloud of tiny multi-colored bubbles coming from her. At first I saw the cloud of bubbles & wondered wtf it was because it floated around the room yet no name was visible on radar or the minimap & no name was above the floating cloud. While this cloud floated around things happened that our griefer is known to do (what was done has no bearing on my question). A few minutes later our suspect showed up as her avatar with that bubble emitter on. We've suspected before that she's able to be around & do things while completely invisible. I believe that this time she forgot she had that bubble maker on as she did her thing. Does anyone have experience of someone being able to do this & know how it's done?

 

[Grandma Bates]

An old griefer trick is to apply invisible textures to the av and play an animation that offsets the AV to a large height. This can make the name tag shift up to where it cannot be easily seen. Then add an attachment with a large offset, and you can play these kind of games.

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

Thanks! But that wouldn't make you invisible on the radar & minimap too would it? This person doesn't even show up on the sim when these things happen but there have been too many incidents over the last year tied to her for it to just be a coincidence.

 

[Grandma Bates]

Thanks! But that wouldn't make you invisible on the radar & minimap too would it? This person doesn't even show up on the sim when these things happen but there have been too many incidents over the last year tied to her for it to just be a coincidence.

I am not sure. Having been a land officer at NCI we have seen people do things like sit on an object with a huge offset and also do the animation trick described above. How it appears in the viewer and radar seems to depend on the viewer and has changed over time. They should show up on the sim, but I am used to dealing with this on the mainland where the tools available to help are more limited.

 

[Kalel]

I use to admin a mech combat sim We tried this with a mech that could turn invisible... however it was impossible to hide on the mini map. and there also specially designed viewers for SL combat that we can't control. Lots of functions to enchance and keep track of people on sim.. but nothing to hide.

At one point we considered making the system use RLV to Hide the mini map.... do fun screen actions.... it would of also helped security wise to keep people from attaching hiding Dash scripts in a 0.1 prim hidden on their bodies and modifying their mechs with hidden weapons you didn't see.

The entire community backlashed against it.... we even promised to show them the codework but no budge... they didn't trust us taking their controls away and it's association as BDSM thing was impossible to get rid of.

this was before the whole SL experience thing came to the grid.

it was still released and allot of fun cause if you not focused or too focused people have successfully sneaked up on others..

 

[WolfEyes]

Sounds like someone has figured out how to have access to godmode in their client.

Linden Lab employees may use "God Mode" for many reasons, including the privacy granted from being invisible to sensors

God Mode - Second Life Wiki

 

[Daffy]

This device : https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/INVISIBILITY-CLOAK-HUD-HEAD-SITTER-Hide-Avatar-Hide-Name-Tag/6447741

makes you invisible enough, still shows up in radar and mini map, but in the minimap while sitting on someones head it may
not be visible for the target in the minimap when both "Dots" are located in the same spot

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

That Head Sitter thing sounds like she might be using it in some instances but last night it was the cloud of bubbles floating around without being attached to any avatar (or floating name) that I first noticed. There was no one over there for her to sit on. The bubbles moved around the room in areas where there were no people & no one in that area was on the minimap. Then a few minutes later she walked in with with her visible avatar with a cloud of bubbles around her. No one else had the bubbles around them & I've never even seen them before. Just seems too much of a coincidence. It's looking more & more like some type of godmode cheat.

 

[Adeon Writer]

If you use official viewer, it's even easier. The nametag behaves differently and follows the avatar's head, so...

 

[Han Held]

If you use official viewer, it's even easier. The nametag behaves differently and follows the avatar's head, so...

That's on your viewer; how does your avatar show up on folks using FS, etc?

 

[Adeon Writer]

That's on your viewer; how does your avatar show up on folks using FS, etc?

It would look the same to anyone else on official.

On Firestorm, it would also look like that on Default settings, but Firestorm has an option for "Legacy Nametags" which remain locked and don't move with animations. If someone has elected to do this, there's nothing you can do about it.

Since legacy nametags aren't supported by official viewer anyway, any method of hiding them is not considered an exploit to LL so if there are ways to hide it, LL doesn't really mind. It's easy enough to hide official viewer nametags anyway.

 

[Kalel]

That Head Sitter thing sounds like she might be using it in some instances but last night it was the cloud of bubbles floating around without being attached to any avatar (or floating name) that I first noticed. There was no one over there for her to sit on. The bubbles moved around the room in areas where there were no people & no one in that area was on the minimap. Then a few minutes later she walked in with with her visible avatar with a cloud of bubbles around her. No one else had the bubbles around them & I've never even seen them before. Just seems too much of a coincidence. It's looking more & more like some type of godmode cheat.

maybe it was a LL server quirk and the avatar just wasn't fully loaded yet? there have been times back in the day when i was using singularity where i log in and my connection is so bad. it took forever to load i see parts of my avie load in before the main body even comes into view.. like an invisible ruthed... i odn't know how thier data works but there have been times the armor around me loaded before the body did. and during the moment maybe that person doesn't appear on the radar cause it's still trying to retrieve the details.

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

Kalel - this is a person that's doing it on purpose to get away with griefing others. It's not an accidental thing that just happens now & then. This has gone on for about a year with this person.

Adeon - I'm not sure I understand how you're doing that & what you mean. Is that an additional thing like the Head Sitter that was mentioned earlier or is that something that's an option with the official viewer? I'm using Firestorm & have both display names & legacy names turned on. Does that mean I should be able to see someone's name if they're trying to hide them while they're using the official viewer? Sorry to be dense about this. haha

 

[WolfEyes]

If you use official viewer, it's even easier. The nametag behaves differently and follows the avatar's head, so...

Now wear a particle emitter and move around while still in the static pose.

That anim has been around for years and as I recall you can't do what Maggie described as you will pop back up as soon as you move and still show on the minimap. Her description points to two things. 1) LL employee godmode or 2) some sort of server/software glitch. Since the suspicion has been there for some time that this person has been griefing, that pretty much eliminates #2.

There is a third possibility. The person is running what amounts to a copybot viewer.

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

Btw this person also has about 30 alts that they use & many times use several simultaneously from other sims to send repeated IMs to people harrassing them. Most times the person being harrassed at the time has no idea why someone's IM'ing them & doesn't connect it to the original person. I don't see how or why it would be Linden. It's more like 12 yr old attention griefing. They've been banned & ejected from many clubs & sims but then it's a process of whack-a-mole as they make more alts & run the circuit from place to place.

 

[Adeon Writer]

Now wear a particle emitter and move around while still in the static pose.

That anim has been around for years and as I recall you can't do what Maggie described as you will pop back up as soon as you move and still show on the minimap. Her description points to two things. 1) LL employee godmode or 2) some sort of server/software glitch. Since the suspicion has been there for some time that this person has been griefing, that pretty much eliminates #2.

There is a third possibility. The person is running what amounts to a copybot viewer.

My animation is priority 4, so it sticks around even when you walk, unless your walk is also priority 4. You only need to avoid priority 4 animations that animate your hip, and you stay invisible.

However, I do not currently know of any way to hide your name tag from firestorms‘s legacy name tags.

I know it was possible to do at least nine months ago, but recently some of my toys got broken into firestorm update.

Firestorm really doesn’t want you to be able to do this, I think.

If someone is still able to do it, it’s worth reporting to the firestorm Jira, though as I said Linden won’t do anything about it since legacy nameplates aren’t an official feature anyway. They have super easily hidable name tags.

 

[WolfEyes]

My animation is priority 4, so it sticks around even when you walk, unless your walk is also priority 4. You only need to avoid priority 4 animations that animate your hip, and you stay invisible.

However, I do not currently know of any way to hide your name tag from firestorms‘s legacy name tags.

I know it was possible to do at least nine months ago, but recently some of my toys got broken into firestorm update.

Firestorm really doesn’t want you to be able to do this, I think.

If someone is still able to do it, it’s worth reporting to the firestorm Jira, though as I said Linden won’t do anything about it since legacy nameplates aren’t an official feature anyway. They have super easily hidable name tags.

Then report it. In the meantime, it still does not stop you from showing up on the minimap which Maggy has stated that this person does NOT show on the minimap. No one has ever succeeded in removing the green dot(s) from the minimap that others can see, to my knowledge. Maybe on their own minimap but not the ones that are on other people's clients.

 

[Free]

I've heard that if you don't log in, it keeps you completely invisible in SL.

 

[Adeon Writer]

Then report it.

Report what, exactly?

 

[WolfEyes]

Report what, exactly?

Did you forget your own words?

My animation is priority 4, so it sticks around even when you walk, unless your walk is also priority 4. You only need to avoid priority 4 animations that animate your hip, and you stay invisible.

However, I do not currently know of any way to hide your name tag from firestorms‘s legacy name tags.

I know it was possible to do at least nine months ago, but recently some of my toys got broken into firestorm update.

Firestorm really doesn’t want you to be able to do this, I think.

If someone is still able to do it, it’s worth reporting to the firestorm Jira, though as I said Linden won’t do anything about it since legacy nameplates aren’t an official feature anyway. They have super easily hidable name tags.