Kokua Viewer Update 2013-25

The Imprudence-Kokua people have released Kokua Viewer version 3.6.0-28975. This version has the Materials System updates. Plus several other feature updates.

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

Chat got a rework of the newer Firestorm chat.

New Point-At and Look-At options were added. Top menu, Develop->Avatar->…

The Build Panel got Copy/Paste for prim dimensions, rotation, and location, which I think is a big thing. The base code for that feature came from the Zen viewer with tweaks from Firestorm added.

Customizable ‘where is…’ feature is included. If you viewer hop, finding features in the menu system can be frustrating. Adding the Commands menu item should reduce the frustration. Customizing is by Issue Tracker requests.

The feature has an odd one item for the SL menu system. Click top menu Commands->Chat Entered Commands. This is a sort of toggle. Initially it is an expanded section of the menu. Clicking the command closes the section and the menu drop down with no apparent action. Click Commands again and you see the menu panel has changed. This type of thing is usually handled by a pop out menu. So, this seem counterintuitive for a viewer menu.

But, apparently having the chat commands show in the menu enables them in chat. Hiding them disables them. As best I can tell there is no way to know this from using the viewer. You either read the blog notice or you don’t know.

Kokua includes a grid manager. That generally means a viewer does not include Pathfinding Navmesh rendering. The grid manager display at login seems too complex; well, the names are complex and likely confusing to new users. But, for anyone that has been around awhile it won’t be a problem.

The viewer also has prim export/import. If you select items that you lack the proper permissions to export then the export silently fails. Export/Import uses XML style file format.

The viewer uses a mix of V1 and V3 interface. It has the V3 buttons that can be arranged. The top menu is more a V1 style arrangement. I found myself looking in the wrong place for menu items. But, I have enough memory of the V1 UI that I can quickly fund things and it isn’t that difference from V3.

Download

Don’t use the download button at the top of the blog. That menu selection leads to the Imprudence Viewer 1.3.2. You will want this download page: Kokua Viewer Download.

Download size is 36 mb. It comes in Window, Linux 32, and Linux 64 flavors. No Mac version.

Install

The viewer installs in: C:\Program Files\KokuaViewer\. That appears to be the only install option, location.

The install remembered my settings from the previous install. That saves time.

Using

Once things fully rez and textures render I get around 40+ FPS. But, at SL10B I saw lots of textures that just never rendered. While textures are rendering I get about 16-20 FPS.

Using the Lab’s main viewer I did not have the texture render lag I saw with Kokua. I didn’t do enough testing to definitively say this is or isn’t a Kokua problem.

I have heard people talking about using Kokua to do materials in OpenSim grids. So, at least it is first hand hearsay. I have yet to try that on my OSGrid account. I know it takes a server side change to the objects attributes for that to work. But, some grids have made the change. I’m just not keeping up on happenings in OpenSim.

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