UPDATE! 7/13/09
Skills Hak has announced that development of the Gemini is stopped. Version 7 will not be released. Instead that work is being added to the Greenlife Emerald viewer. Reference The new Emerald 1.23.4 viewer is out today.
Original Review
Earlier I posted Gemini Viewer Review – Second Life. Before that I posted GreenLife Emerald Viewer Review, which has pictures if you want to see some of the menus, which are 99% identical. I’ve added a couple of minor updates to the original posts. I’ve now used the viewer for a bit over a week in RP. There are some new considerations to look at and some solutions for role players. I’ve been using v5. Now V6 rc02 is available for download as of 6/26.
Flying
One of the big issues in some combat sim’s is flying. For realistic effect many simply ban flying and turn it off on the sims. Inadvertently flying is no excuse for flying in combat and Gemini if left on its default settings will have you flying at the worst times. Many people do not know that the standard Second Life Viewers have an over ride that still allows one to fly even in no fly sims (Ctrl-Alt-D and then Ctrl-Alt-V). But in games that prohibit flying this is considered at worst a cheat and at best incompetence. Gemini is set to allow use of the ‘E’, ‘Page Up’ or ‘9-number pad’ and ‘C’, ‘Page Down’ or ‘3-number pad’ keys to start and end fly mode. Note: The ‘Home’ key also starts and stops fly mode.
These settings can be changed in Preferences (Input & Camera ->Fly/land on holding up/down). In Gemini it seems very easy to inadvertently go into fly mode when using ‘E’ to jump. Uncheck this option to reduce the problem. It won’t completely solve it but it helps.
Every time one crosses a sim boundary it is possible to fall through the street, bridge or whatever. A slick little fix in Gemini pops one into fly mode to prevent that fall. Considering this viewer was made for Insilico which is hundreds of meters up in the air it makes practical sense. For use in places like CoLA and Land of NoR where RP occurs below 350m it’s just a problem. Hovering one’s finger over the home to panic drop to the ground once one rez’s in the new sim is one kludged solution.
In the menu item EDIT -> Preferences select the EXTRAS tab then the Misc tab. Uncheck Enable Always Fly. You may want to turn of some of the AV List postings to chat while you are there.
Another way to do the same thing, in the menu item Advanced -> Debug Settings… there is the item EmeraldAlwaysFly. Set this to False to turn off flying in no fly zones. This fixes most of the remaining fly issues.
However none of these fixes stop one from going into fly mode when crossing a sim boundary. I’m still looking for that trick.
Chat Bar
There is a debug setting (think of these as just advanced preferences one seldom needs) labeled GEMINI_UseChatBar. This only appears in versions after June 19. This setting allows one to turn on and off the chat bar or bottom menu. This forces text out of the chat bar and into the chat window. Pressing Enter or typing ‘/’ does not open the chat bar or place your cursor in the chat dialog.
Teleporting
There is a double-click teleport. In many sims point-to-point teleport is turned off. In those cases it simply does not work whither you turn on Emerald’s or Gemini’s double-click tp. If it is on, double-click on something and you tp there.
There is another setting which blocks teleport by left click. Menu EDIT -> Preferences then Extras tab then Misc tab. Uncheck ‘Block sitting on objects via left click’. Now you can left click on tp beams and pads and teleport again. This is a safety feature to protect one from some griefer tricks.
A nifty feature in Gemini and Emerald is Disable Teleport Screens. This makes the black screen and progress bar go away. You can continue chat while tp’ing. Very handy. Use menu EDIT -> Preferences then Extras tab then Teleport/Login tab.
Inventory
If you are looking for the Library folder in your inventory… well it’s not there.
Stability
I suspect this varies with which video card and drivers you are using. My 8800 GTS with a June 09 driver has run Gemini for over 10 hours with no crashes in I Land of NoR through combat and sever lag.
Skin
Emerald lets one pick from several. Gemini uses a charcoal grey one. The drop down dialogs that appear in the upper-right are the same charcoal grey. This makes it very nice for use in dark (low light) sims like Insilico and Land of NoR.
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