Imprudence Viewer Morphs into KoKua Viewer

The End of Imprudence Viewer

Today the Imprudence peeps announced that they are moving to the next stage of their viewer and naming it the KoKua Project. Kokua is a Hawaiian word meaning mutual assistance or helping out. Those formerly known as the Imprudence peeps got the KoKua name from Hamlet Au, the editor of New World Notes blog.

Version 1.4 of Imprudence Viewer will be the last. For now it is being developed in parallel with Kokua. The 1.4 version is planned for release late November or early December. Then all development will shift to the KoKua Viewer. 

Kokua Viewer

The project will be developing Viewer and Simulator software. As you may know the Imprudence viewer is popular on OpenSim grids. The Kokua is apparently going to continue the tradition of being highly compatible with OpenSim.Their primary focus has been OpenSim and compatibility with Second Life. The focus and compatibility with SL will continue.

New Kokua Web Site

You will find the web site getting a new name and living at a new domain. Groups in SL will be changing to the new Kokua name.

You can read more details here: Announcing the Kokua Project

Kokua/Aurora Simulator

In addition to the viewer there is the Simulator software, which will be an enhanced OpenSim branch. The Aurora Simulator is being renamed to fit with the project. I suspect someone was thinking of the problem of finding aurora simulator via Google/Yahoo. Try it. Most aurora simulators have to do with shinny lights in the sky and various radio controlled devices.

If you have ever setup a simulator for OpenSim, you’ll know it is anything BUT a click and use package. It is very much alpha software. Kokua plans to change that. They have Kokua Sim ready for use now. It still carries the Aurora code name. But it will soon change. It has a user interface rather than the OpenSim process of manually configuring the simulator through INI files.

There is a blog post about why the developer decided to make this a separate branch of OpenSim rather than merge with OpenSim. Read Introducing … Aurora (soon to be Kokua).

There is a huge list of improvements in Kokua that are not in OpenSim. It is an impressive list. See Introducing link above. One of the biggest is the working C#, VB, and other programming languages that are supported. It has LSL too and many improvements so LSL will run faster.

One of the most awesome features is the ability to set gravity to a point. This would allow one to make a small moon and walk on a spherical surface. With that ability it might be possible to reverse gravity and create a space station that simulated centrifugal force. I’m thinking of something like the Babylon 5 region in SL. Or Rendezvous with Rama or see O’Neill Cylinder.

Also there is a custom ODE physics engine. Many of the annoyances of OpenSim (I use OSGrid) is how avatars walk and some of the problems I have walking over terrain.

Some of the ‘console’ commands to control the simulator that we aew just seeing a glimmer of in SL are already part of Kokua Sim and will be in Imprudence 1.4 and future Kokua Viewers.

Inventory loading has been enhanced. Twenty seconds of prim-inventory loading has been reduces to something like 0.02 seconds.

In addition to Windlight there is a weather module. Rain and snow? I’m not sure. There are per parcel Windlight settings. I’m not sure how that will work with small parcels… but, it has possibilities. One can also vary Windlight settings by altitude. As one climbs into space the sky can get darker.

The list of sim management tools is huge… huge… really huge. If you own a sim there is stuff here that you never thought of but as soon as you read of the feature it’s an immediate, ‘Oh Yeah!’

Which Grids Support Kokua?

I don’t know. I can’t find any compatibility information. I’ve posted questions.

Update
Imprudence has a new post up explaining more. See: FAQs about Kokua

Update

And another update… Aurora will not rename to Kokua. It will remain Aurora. See: A Rose is a Rose

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