Second Life

Things about SL

SL Viewer Development

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I tend to leave previous downloads of the viewers on my computer. If the new install is bad, I can revert back to the previously downloaded version. Every so often I clean out the folder. I thought it would be interesting to see how fast things were happening in viewer development. I put the version build ID, which advances numerically, and download date in a spreadsheet. It may not be significant or particularly accurate, but it is interesting.

SL Viewer Development Rate

The information doesn’t directly say anything about features being added, bug fix rates, or much of anything other than some Linden felt another iteration of the viewer was ready to test.

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Mesh and OpenSim

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Myst-Uru Guild Hall
Mesh is Changing

The Lindens have reasons to change how mesh is handled in Second Life. The changes are format changes to the mesh data set. The reason given is performance and compatibility issues with the existing SL software.

For those of us that are not up on C# or C++ and object oriented data that doesn’t tell us much. Suffice to say mesh is sort of changing from a round peg to a square peg. That means all the holes for mesh have to change too. The place in the asset database where mesh information is stored must change. How the physics engine deals with mesh has to change. The inventory handlers, the build/edit dialog, render pipeline, and other parts of the viewer handling mesh must change.

This week the movers and shakers in OpenSim have been looking at how this change will affect OpenSim. Justincc has a post up on what is known now. His post is probably the most authoritative words on the subject for OpenSim. See: Warning: Don’t rely on meshes uploaded to OpenSim (just yet)

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SL Community Forums Update Week 19

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It seems the worlds greatest pass-time is complaining. The new Answers, Blogs, Forums, and Knowledge Base are certainly something residents complain about. Often with good reason. There are a number of things that are being corrected and changed on the AnBlorumledge… eck… forum.

One thing is those pesky emoticons. They are displaying wrong, mis-positioned, and that delayed a number of other fixes being rolled out, which sounds odd to me. But, whatever. I don’t work with Lithium, the forum software.

Answers

You may have noticed there is a place for comments in the Answers section. It seems those are not supposed to be there. They managed to get rid of the comments button but not the comments box. So, I suppose we should avoid using comments in Answers.

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Kirsten Viewer S21(7a) Review Continued

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I’ve been able to use the viewer for a time now. My experience with it follows.

Download & Install

The download (29mb) and install is standard for the KirstenLee Viewer. It uninstalls the previous version in the process. The cache and settings locations are retained. The settings are kept.

Anna's Many Murders
Anna's Many Murders

Experience

No reboot needed. Viewer cranked up and ran well. In my cottage I get 27 to 32 FPS. In Celtic Myst I get 17 to 21 FPS. This is with Lighting & Shadows + Ambient Occlusion enabled and Sun/Moon shadows off.

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Kirsten Viewer S21(7a) Release Review

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KirstenLee S20 Logo
Kirsten S21(7)

Today (5/11) the release of S21(7a) or 2.7.8.7 came out. This is version 7a because the Lab alerted viewer developers that an exploit was found in the Second Life System. Unpatched viewers are vulnerable to the exploit. Kirsten’s 7a has the patch and is safe from this exploit. If you downloaded (7), go back and get (7a).

Build 7 has a load of new features and fixes. I’ll touch on those I find interesting. The list of them is here: Kirsten Viewer Release Notes. These are not necessarily the first appearance of these features. Some will be familiar to you if you have used the 7 RC’s.

Kirsten’s code includes SL 2.6.8 code items. My latest development viewer from SL only shows 2.6.7. So, this may be the most leading edge viewer available.

This version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. In other words; Boobies Bounce.

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New Singularity Release

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Singularity Viewer is now out in version 1.5.7. It came out a couple of days ago. I’m behind on viewer reviews. There is too much new stuff to play with.

Singularity is based on Snowglobe 1.5 code and User Interface. However many of the series 2 features are being back ported to this viewer. One is boobie bounce… officially known as Enlightened Avatar Physics, which is totally NOT a sexy way to say it.

Also this viewer is supposed to be OpenSim compatible. Recently this has been problem for many viewers used on OpenSim. So, this is a big deal for OpenSim users.

Download Singularity Viewer

I’m not sure when I’ll get time to review this viewer. So, user comments are very welcome.