I just tried out that Second Life Snowglobe Viewer. I’ve reviewed a few other viewers, Gemini, Emerald, MeerKat, RealXtrend… see the blog for those reviews. Snowglobe is a Linden promoted open source branch of the standard SL viewer. It may be known by other names like: SLDev Viewer. The real point of this project is to get 3rd party changes and improvements into the main viewer faster. I’m not seeing it… but I didn’t dive into the details either.
Second Life
Things about SL
Grendel's Children
In Second Life Grendel’s is one of my favorite places to shop. The store floats over four sims and is filled with loads of avatars (AV) one can buy from free to a few hindered Linden. Yesterday NPIRL (Not Possible In Real Life) Bettina Tizzy posted an interview with Flea Bussy, owner and creator of Grendel’s, and a Machinima by Nitwacket showing some of the amazing AV’s.
The four sims below the store are filled with a hunt and role play area. Join Grendel’s forum for information on the RP.
Look for the Avarian Expedition and The Creature Compendium in the North East corner on the entrance level, between Pets and Homes. These kits allow one to participate in the quest for free shoulder animals and pets that takes place on the ground below the store. One can buy the shoulder animals for L$100. The two kits are L$30 each. So, finding one shoulder animal pays for the kits. The quest is part of the RP in the surface, or can be. The RP is not required. There are fun things to make and find on the surface. Not all of the fun stuff can be purchased. Plus finding and making (as in find metal and stones then bake in kiln to get jewelry – this is NOT SL prim style make) stuff is more fun than waiting around on lucky chairs.
Gemini Viewer Review – Second Life
There are lots of viewers and more seem to be coming out. The Second Life Viewer named Gemini by Skills Hak is designed more for Role Players. Earlier I reviewed the Greenlife Emerald Viewer. The Gemini Viewer is very similar but with some differences.
One difference is the viewer skin. It is designed to work better with physically dark regions. After all it is made by one of the INSILICO people. If you have not visited the Insilico region, it is worth a trip. (Insilico Web Site) I am totally fascinated by the robotic spider they have at the primary LM landing point.
MeerKat Viewer Review
I made an earlier post about exporting from Second Life to Open Sim. Now I’ve had a chance to play with the Meerkat Viewer.
As I wrote, anyone that is creating in Second Life now has the ability to export things they created in SL to Open Sim. For instance I have a house I built. I do not own land in SL so, it would be fun to put it in Open Sim and landscape around it.
Travel to Other Virtual Worlds
Travel to other virtual worlds and look cool doing it. Cool as in wear your skin, shape and clothes. How is ths done? Answer: Dynamic Hypergrid Links or just Dynamic Links. Dynamic Links? What the heck is a dynamic link? In this case the Open Sim crowd means links between virtual worlds. The idea is a Second Life resident (player) can open the world map and select other worlds, not just regions.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIikPdQBsoI]
Export from SL to OpenSim
Anyone that is creating in Second Life now has the ability to export the things they have created in Second Life to Open Sim. For instance, in SL I have a house I built and a number of other things. I do not own land in SL so I really have no place to put the house. But, it would be fun to put it in OpenSim and landscape around it. I could make much better pictures, if I decide to sell the house.
I run my own little Open Sim world. But if I build something in SL, I have build it again in my Open Sim. If I could export it, I could build once and use twice.
Clothes I’ve made are not a big deal. Those I can easily take to Open Sim. But buildings and prim based things are a different story. At least until now. I’ll be playing with this over the new few days.
To export your builds from SL to Open Sim get the Meerkat Viewer.
See the viewer here: http://www.meerkatviewer.org/
See the Import/Export Instructions.