Each week more features and fixes are added to the Imprudence viewer. Many are considering using it after Emeraldgate splashed across SL. I’ve used it for some time as it has a great Grid Control System that allows me to easily login into OSGrid or SL. Plus it has build math built in.

It like most viewers has it’s peculiarities. Finding how to handle various settings can be a pain. Imprudence has a decent manual, wiki.

Update 2010-08-27: Imprudence 1.3.0 RC2 Released – Voice is now included in the package. OpenJPEG has a problem or two and you may see black textures in place of the actual texture. Do the llkdu.dll copy thing to fix the problem. With HTTP Texture Get on your AV may go clear/invisible, do a rebake to fix it (Ctrl-Alt-R). A volume control for gestures was added. Several RLVa bugs fixed. Clearing cache on OpenSim will cause AV to render as a cloud until you change your shape. Clicking ABOUT for an LM will crash the viewer on OpenSim. There is more info in the Release Notes.

Breasts

Imprudence has jiggly boobs. Or at least it has the settings for boobies. They are hidden in the Debug Settings. Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal the Advanced menu item. At the bottom of the drop down is the Debug Settings item. Type in Emerald, then click the drop down arrow to see the settings. I have yet to get jiggle to jiggle well in OSGrid. Others seem to have it working fine. It may be a physics thing rather than a viewer thing. I had less success on OSGrid than in SL.

The boobies settings are confusing. The default settings aren’t that great. EmeraldBoobFriction has a default value of 80 and a note to never set it above 1. Right… The recommended settings on the Imprudence forum don’t seem to work that well.

After a few tries I had invisible breasts, an old Emerald problem.

Building Dialog Bug

You may find new prims you rez never seem to appear. This can be because your default prim size is set to X=0, Y=0,Z=0. Press Shift-Alt-B to open the Advanced Build Dialog. Set the default size to something you like, may be 0.5, 0.5, 0.5.

Building Math

Building by the numbers in OSGrid is a requirement for me. In SL I can use Prim Docker and  avoid the brain damage. Imprudence has at least made it easier by adding a feature called Build Math.

In the image left just below the tabs you can see the blue button labeled Build Math. Clicking it opens the second image, a list of the constants and math functions that can be used to calculate building math.

There is a More Info button that open the Imprudence web page, Imprudence Build Math Expressions. It includes a bit of a tutorial for using the Build Math.

Build Math – Position a New Prim Tutorial

Getting new adjacent prims positioned so they just touch can be tricky, especially with odd sized prims. Build Math makes it easier. Since prims are positioned by their centers the width of the prims is a concern. To fit a 2x2x2 prim cube next to a 1x1x1 prim cube at x=100, y=100, z=20 we create the 1,1,1 prim and position and size it. We can just type the values into the build dialog. (Any size and position will work.)

To create the second prim press and hold the shift-key while dragging one of the three positioning arrows. This creates a copy of the original prim. You are actually dragging the original cube and leaving a copy behind. This is important to understand because of the next step. Press Ctrl-Z to return the moved prim to its original location. Both prims are now located at the exact same place.

Type in the new size (2m) or one can use Build Math to size the cube in relation to the original size. (Since the size is 1m we could type in _*_2 (with ‘_’ denoting spaces) and press enter. For an odd sized cube this could be handy.)

There is no way, that I know, to reference additional cubes to simplify math. But, I’m sort of a novice builder. So, building with even sized prims makes my life easier. Also, building on X/Y axis without rotation keeps things simple.

Part of the positioning math has to be done in my head or a calculator. I have a 1m and a 2m cube. So to position centers I know I have to move ½ the distance of each cube along one of the directions. In the example that is 1.5m (=1m÷2 + 2m÷2). Say I want to move my 2m cube to the east (or positive X direction), I type in _+_1.5 and press enter. The prims are perfectly aligned.

To align the bottoms I need to move the 2m cube up. The math is ((Z value of 2m cube) – (Z value of 1m cube)) ÷2 or 0.5m. I can type _+_.5 into the Z Position and press enter. Bottoms aligned.

The spaces I type when using Build Math are not required. It’s just how I do it.

You’ll see that constants are available for holes and all the various aspects of prims. So, the Build Math is very handy.

Imprudence Voice Chat

On the initial install of Imprudence you may not have voice chat. I don’t know if this has been fixed. The loss of voice is caused by legal technicalities with the ownership and distribution rights of the voice files. Copy SL’s voice files over and voice chat comes back. See: How to Re-enable Voice Chat

Imprudence Manual/Wiki

You can find more information in the Imprudence Viewer Wiki.

Miscellaneous

I find the viewer more stable than previous versions. It is not as fast as I would like. On OSGrid it is fine. In SL I turned graphics down to keep the FPS up. I understand it is based on Snowglobe’s render code, so it should be fast.

If you have not heard the SLCC 2010 lecture on Snow Storm I suggest you watch the video and read A storm in a glass of water by Gwyneth Llewelyn on coming viewer changes.