This is a brief round up of the Third Party Viewers for Second Life that I find interesting. Not in any particular order. The popular feature to be adding is: Restore to Last Position. I explain that in the section on RLV.

RLV 2.9.15 Update

Marine has updated the RLViewer she maintains. She is adding in the feature from Firestorm and Kokua: Restore to Last Position. This is a controversial feature the Lindens have omitted from the Linden made viewer. It apparently generates too many support calls.

The controversy centers around a problem the feature creates. Imagine you have a parcel in, say, Fishergate and it is in the northwest corner of the region. You build and rez stuff into that parcel. You then take them into inventory. You go to a different region, say Furball, and get a parcel in its south central area. When you use Restore to Last Position to rez those items they will poof away. You will most likely find them rezzed at the 0,0,0 point in the region.

What has happened is the region grid being a 0-256×0-256×0-4,000 cube has saved the items position based on the region grid coordinates. For an example I’ll say the item was last rezzed at region 75,200,21. Over in Furball that location is owned by someone else and you don’t have rez rights there. Even if you did, imagine your parcel at, say, 120,50,30, where you are likely standing, and you rez something using Restore to Last Position it is going to appear 150+ meters away. And if that other parcel is a mountain with the surface at 75 meters, your object is going to rez at 21m, that is 54m below the surface.

Marine warns the viewer does no checks for region name or rez permissions. So, if you don’t remember this and Last Pos rez something it may seem to be lost. If it is no copy, that could be serious.

If you know what you are doing, Restore to Last Position is a way handy feature to have.

Marine has fixed a problem with some attachments not showing up at login. This is an old problem seen in many viewers when the connection is laggy.

There are some other fixes too.

UKanDo 3.8.6 Release

UKanDo viewer was updated to add the latest Linden updates. That it is 3.8.6 suggests that this version has the new Notifications changes. They don’t explicitly say that in the release notes. But, they did make a Tweet that the Notices change is included.

I tried the viewer with RLV. I had problems. I used the tkPBA(110x), which upgraded to tkPBA(200c) and then to DEM Relay HUD (200d). It basically doesn’t work with KanDo. I tried the same HUD in Firestorm and it works as expected.

By not work it did not allow RLV objects to capture me or run animations. I tried to lock and unlock items and could not get the item menus to open. The same ones opened or captured and ran in Firestorm.

Black Dragon Viewer Update to 2.4.4.3

This viewer updated 10/17. It adds the Chromium Embedded Frame work. See: Black Dragon Viewer – Update 2.4.4.3 “Get Chromed”. I haven’t used this version yet.

Cool VL Viewer-1.26.14.11 Updated

This is a V1 user interface viewer. That means I generally don’t use it. Cool VL Viewer-1.26.14.11 Updated 10/24. The developer takes this viewer down a road less traveled. Its a good road.

Singularity 1.8.6.6x

This is another V1 user interface viewer, which I seldom use. It is popular with some of those leaving Firestorm and those that have older hardware. The Singularity Viewer has not upgraded since February 2015. The user group is active.

Firestorm

Firestorm is still the most popular viewer. I find it laggy on my computer and crash prone. Don’t let that stop you from trying it. It runs differently depending on your hardware and drivers.

Currently version 4.7.3.4x. This viewer updated in August 2015. A new version is planned for mid November 2015.

While this is no longer ‘the’ cutting edge viewer it is the power users viewer of choice and I think the most feature rich. I’m not going to be counting features in viewers to back that opinion, but you are welcome to.

I tend to use Firestorm when playing with RLV or doing photography. I get horrible lag when using the SpaceNavigator, so I don’t like it for machinima, which creates a dilemma of annoyance. But, that problem is more a factor of my hardware than it is the viewer.

CtrlAltStudio

This viewer updated to version 1.2.5 Alpha Oct 3, 2015. This is the Oculus Rift viewer for Second Life. I don’t have a VR headset… yet.

The Linden made viewer is way behind this one. So, if you know someone that wants to use a VR Headset in SL, let them know about this viewer.

Alchemy

I reviewed this viewer in a separate article. See: Alchemy Viewer 3.8.5