Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Dolphin Viewer Information
Both Firestorm and Dolphin have released fixes for some problems in their recent releases.
See Firestorm Mesh Beta – optional update – the update is for estate managers and those using the Metaharper skin. A performance fix is included for those that find FPS dropping when they have several chat groups open.
Dolphin Viewer 3 has a teleport problem. It sends the request for tp twice. That is fixed. A user inface something is fixed. Chat toasts are wider.
Another third party viewer (TPV) releases a mesh capable viewer. Dolphin 3 Viewer is the latest. See the announcement on the Dolphin Viewer blog.
The article lists the features now in Dolphin Viewer 3. Some are features that have been in the SLViewer 2 and 3 for a time. Some are Dolphin features not in the SLViewer. The current combination of features makes Dolphin Viewer 3 one of more feature rich power-user viewers.
I’ve seen a number of people complaining about not being able to login. This is a problem thought to be in the Linden Lab code for version 3 viewers, basically mesh capable viewers. Once one runs into the problem it seems to be very difficult to get around it and get logged in. This problem is not Dolphin Viewer problem. It is an SL problem.
Lance provides a work around for the problem. He suggests logging in with a non-mesh viewer. Once logged in, you can log out and come back with mesh enabled viewer. Why this works probably has something to do with the mesh up load enablement flags, but that is a guess on my part.
The Dolphin Viewer 3 will render mesh. It will not allow you to upload mesh. Uploading requires a special set of calculations handled by the Havok Physics Engine. A TPV developer must purchase a license from Havok to use the same software the Lab licensed from Havok and uses.
A new version of the Dolphin Viewer2 is out. The viewer is based on SLV 2.5 version code. There are a number of fixes and a couple of new features. Version are available for Apple, Linux, and Windows.
Download file size is about 24mb. Download Dolphin Viewer.
The only option in the install is which folder to install to. The install apparently wipes out the previous viewer settings. It seems to have kept my color settings.
The install also takes over the Windows setting controlling which viewer is used for SLURL’s. I need to update my article on how to reset Windows to use the viewer you prefer for SLURL’s. See: Emerald Viewer vs SLURL (Emerald… that gives away the age of the article.)
Today the Dolphin 1 viewer made it to the top of the Linden Third Party Viewer list.
This list is ordered by crash rate. The viewer at the top of the list has the best (least) crash rate. Dolphin has not been in this list because crash reporting is optional and the Lindens lacked the data to rank it. Some minimum number of reports and logins have to be received to be ranked.
The ranking is:
Dolphin 1
SLV 1.23
Phoenix (probably 1050 – 1102 is too new)
Imprudence
SLV 2.6.3
Singularity
SLV Beta 2.6.8
Firestorm (pre-alpha)
Emergence
Ascent
Kirstens
A new version of the Dolphin 2 Viewer is out. The released planned for this slot was to be a 2.6 version. But, things change. Bug fixes, features, and the load of changes coming out of the Lab seems to have pushed this release out the door. It may be several weeks before we see the next release. There is lots to upgrade going into 2.6. The Development viewers are coming out in 2.7 versions.
There are some nifty changes and additions in this release. The Dolphin Viewer Download.
If you have read my other reviews, you’ll know I’m not a big fan of the media filter because it is so annoying to use. The result is most people are just going to turn it off, at least I do. Only the paranoid people will put up with the pesky popups.
Dolphin Viewer 2 now has what I think is an important change in how one can use the media filter. Now just domain names can be used in white listing and black listing sites rather then complete URL’s. This should make use of the filter much less annoying. One can now white list “.shoutcast.com” and all the various URL’s based on shoutcast.com will be white listed. You will stop getting pop ups on any parcel using shoutcast.com. Be warned: that leading dot is important. Without the leading dot the entry shoutcast.com will match badguyshoutcast.com and igotushoutcast.com. Be careful how you enter list entries.