Second Life: Third Party Viewers and Project Bento

I don’t cover the Third-Party Viewers as much as I used to. I think Project Bento is a change that will make any viewer without Bento capability obsolete. Some Third Party Viewers are already Bento capable. Here is what I have found.

{Meghindo's}

{Meghindo’s}

…and I may have made mistakes about which viewer does and doesn’t have Bento capability. If you see one please correct me. 

Alchemylast update June 25, 2016. No Bento support. Expect it in their next release. But, I have no idea when that may be.

Black Dragonlast update November 2, 2016. Second Life as Seen Through the Black Dragon Viewer – April 2016. There are 19 comments about BD at the end of the article. I like Black Dragon and Cool VL Viewer. I use neither because their user interface has diverged enough from the basic Linden UI I find it frustrating. If you have a newer computer and don’t mind learning the UI, BD is an interesting choice. NiranV’s blog is here. The current version of BD has Bento capability, not the latest but near enough.

The Snapshot panel in the Linden Viewer and most third party viewers is mostly from NiranV and his work with Black Dragon.

Catznip – last update January 2016. I am told there is a Catznip alpha version viewer in progress that has Bento. But, the site says alpha use is by invitation only.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.18.31 (stable) – last update November 5, 2016. There is a v1.26.19.33, which is an experimental branch with Bento skeleton support.

Firestorm 4.7.9.50527 – last update August 8, 2016. The team plans for 4 releases per year. So, by the schedule-goal we can expect a release this month. But, bugs, holidays, and a number of other factors influence the release date. Don’t hold your breath but, hope.

The next release of Firestorm will have Bento capability. You can join the Phoenix-Firestorm Preview Group and get the links to the test version. If you do, remember. The team does not support the beta version… the idea is you use the beta to support the team in developing it.

Kokua 4.1.1 – last update October 2016. No mention of Bento capability. So, I assume it does not have it. It may be Bento that is moving the developers to specialize their versions along separate paths for OpenSim and Second Life.

RLV – Restrained Love Viewer 2.9.20.1 – last update (NSFW) September 9, 2016. Avoid confusing RealRestrant with the RLViewer. The web site serves both.

I cannot find the latest release notes or any mention of Bento. So, I assume there is currently no Bento support.

Singularity 1.8.7 – last update June 16, 2016. However, they are making nightly builds, which isn’t every night, it’s just a name for a frequent type up updating. The last build shown is 2016-08-23 06:10:35. But, I don’t find any mention of Bento.

Asking in the group, I’m told no Bento in Singularity… yet.

UKanDO 4.0.2 – last update March 18, 2016. In June Connor Monaron announced that RL was delaying updates. No Bento capability. I don’t know when we can expect an update.

6 thoughts on “Second Life: Third Party Viewers and Project Bento

  1. I don’t use CoolVL on a daily basis but I beleive that Henri was perhaps the first 3rd party developer to include support for Bento and releases frequently, weekly or fortnightly.
    You can expect that his merges will include the latest bug fixes and I’d be very surprised if the Bento code wasn’t always the latest version.
    As for the UI diverging, that made me smile when you consider CoolVL and Singularity are the only 2 viewers using the ORIGINAL UI 🙂

  2. SIngularity has bento viewer, it in beta, so it alpha version, u have go downlowd and to source part.. so I been told.. my friend on it and see bento.

  3. There IS a Bento version of Singularity, but you may have to hunt it down, as it is NOT on their site. Not sure where I found it, but it shouldn’t be that hard. look for Singularity Viewer (64 bit) 1.8.7 (6915) Jan 11 2017 18:56:47 (Singularity Alpha). Make sure you get the “Alpha” one, and it is Build 6915.

  4. When this article was written Singularity did not have an Alpha Bento viewer available. I’m sure if needed Nalates will update if there’s a need. And the Singularity alplha IS available from their site. Just click the alpha builds link from the main page!

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