From the Third Party Viewer UG meeting we get a little news. It was another short meeting.
What The……! – by Simone Landers, on Flickr
Viewers
RC Second Life Big Bird Viewer version 3.7.29.301361 – This viewer has fixes for some attachment-related issues. The Lindens are not anticipating any difficulties with this viewer, so this one should be moving to promotion as the default viewer soon.
There are some server side fixes for attachment problems that are in the works.
RC Second Life Experience Viewer version 3.8.0.300963 – This one is waiting on server side work. It won’t be promoting until the Advanced Experience Tools server side completes. No ETA, but progressing.
RC Second Life Layer Limits Viewer version 3.7.29.301305 – No anticipated difficulties, so this should be moving to promotion as the default viewer soon too. I am betting that if things go well this version will promote before Big Bird, but… I could be wrong.
Second Life Project Importer Viewer version 3.7.28.300878 – has new fixes beyond those added in its last version.
Second Life Project Managed Marketplace Viewer version 3.7.28.300920
Second Life Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – This version should seen an update to bring it current soon.
Snowstorm
This is the viewer channel where many user contributions come in… more features than fixes. It currently has a problem with Render Muting aka Jelly Baby Rendering. Once that is fixed it will move toward RC viewer status.
The changes to the server side to report how many people are NOT rendering your avatar have been added. There are no popup messages in the viewer to use the information. But, some day people will know their over blinged avatar is not being seen by others.
I think this will help get people to consider there Avatar Render Cost (ARC). But, I would really like to see a popup that shows how much we increased or decreased our ARC as we add and remove attachments.
Snapshots
Sending snapshots as emails – This isn’t going to get removed, as previously said. The Lindens have changed their mind. They have found a way to make this work without looking like a spammer.
What is happening now is your email address goes into the Reply-To slot. The From slot has a ‘no reply’ Second Life address. This is supposed to avoid the appearance of the email being spam.
Unified Snapshot Floater
The Lab hasn’t heard any complaints about the new Niran designed floater panel. Most people like it.
Kudos to Niran.
There is a freeze frame problem, but that is not attributable to the panel. The problem with freeze frame is almost fixed.
VMM
Viewer Managed Market Place is going well. They expect to the VMM viewer into the RC cue in a couple of weeks. Another round of store migrations completed well. They plan another round of migrations to test the robustness of the migration process.
Timing for the release of VMM is still an issue related to the Firestorm viewer. The release of VMM will have a strong influence on when the next Firestorm Viewer release happens and when the FS Team can have that release ready affects when VMM can release. With 2/3’s to 3/4’s of Second Life users running Firestorm it is an important consideration.
Next Meeting
As schedules work out, the next UG meeting will be June 5th.