Dolphin

A new release of the Dolphin Viewer is out: 3.3.5.23763 “Fellini.” This release gets a new graphics floater panel. The idea is it can be used by photographers and machinamists.

The Dolphin Viewer also gets the ability to click a worn item in inventory to edit it. This will be way handy for moving those belly, lip, and nose rings that rez inside the avatar.

A feature to allow clicking a land mark in inventory to open on the world map has been added.

The Mesh Deformer control could previously be found in Preferences -> Dolphin Viewer 3 -> UI. The control is gone, so I assume the deformer did not make it into this version. It seems there are some problems with the Deformer code causing crashes. Also, there is a Linden factor in that Oz says the Mesh Deformer is a TPV Policy 2.k item. This means developers can’t put out their standard public release of a viewer that includes the Mesh Deformer. It can only appear in test viewers.

Download & Install

The download is standard and quick. The install is typical. I did not need to clear the cache or settings before installing. It seems to work just fine without those steps.

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Dolphin has another release out. Lance says this one come quickly after the 27000 version because 27000 was a rush release to get a working Merchant Outbox out. This release includes features and fixes from the planned 27000 release that were skipped to get out Merchant Outbox.

Mesh Upload

This version has the Kokua Mesh Uploader. I have yet to try Kokua’s and Dolphin’s uploaders. I don’t know if they have the ability to create the convex hull when asked to create the physics layer. In Linden Viewers the task is handled by a feature in the Havok physics engine, a proprietary package. On my next trip to ADITI I may try out Dolphin’s and see.

I tend to make my own physics layers to minimize Land Impact. So, whether it does or doesn’t have the ability to do convex hulls isn’t an issue for me.

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Today we got a new release of Dolphin Viewer 3. If you have an ATI/AMD video card, you may want to avoid this release or read carefully before attempting to use the new release.

Texture Compression

A new feature was added to help those with lower end graphics cards, those with less video RAM. Just as textures are compressed for downloading to save on bandwidth and storage space, so too are textures compressed as they are placed into video RAM.

If your card has less then 512mb of video ram, compression will be turned on by default.  If you have an ATI video card, keep it turned off.

Preferences->Graphics->Hardware settings.

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