KirstenLee S21 Logo

This article covers more than just the S21 viewer review. KirstenLee’s S21 reveals some of the changes coming to SL. I touch on those as part of the viewer review. KirstenLee is working on the release of her cutting edge viewer S21, now out as a release candidate. Today Release Candidate 2 was made available. This version uses the new resident Profile System.

If you have not used KirstenLee’s viewers, the S20 and S21 viewers are series 2 viewers with a modified SLV2 User Interface (UI) and a custom render pipeline. The S21 viewer has additional UI changes. KirstenLee is making UI change to make the S21 more compatible with SLV2 skins. Of course making a better interface is part of the process too. For compatibility KirstenLee has put the sidebar control back on the right side of the screen.

The S21 is based on SLV2 code from Linden Lab’s Mesh Project Viewer. The viewer will render mesh. It does not yet have the ability to upload mesh. Only the Mesh Project Viewer has that ability. S21 also has Qarl’s patches… there’s more than one? The main one is the prim alignment tool. I’ll have to look around and see if I can find out if there are other Qarl additions.

Shadows & DoF

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KirstenLee S2

KirstenLee has released a new version of her viewer.  See: Kirstens S20(45).exe.

KirstenLee didn’t say much about this viewer and I’m not finding the (45) release notes. Her brief description of the changes is the adding of all the Mesh and Viewer fixes available from Linden Lab.

Kirsten also expects this to be the last release before a version change over to S21, which will have her new render engine. It will be interesting to see how it performs.  Continue reading →

Kirsten has released version (44) of the KL Viewer. There isn’t a lot I can say about the viewer. KirstenLee explained the changes in this viewer on her blog. I’m just downloading it.

This is a bloody bleeding edge viewer. You have been warned.

The big changes, to me, are in the render pipeline and image decompression. The render pipeline seems to be diverging from SL’s. You still get an image on your screen, so for most people the changes are too abstract. However, I think this is an exciting direction. Having features and different user interfaces is something users can see and feel. Having a new render pipeline could radically change the viewer’s performance.  Continue reading →

KirstenLee has a new release of her viewer out. This one seems to have run up against the lack of support Apple provides for 3D rendering. Users on Mac OS 10.4 and earlier will likely have problems. However the Windows and Linux versions are out. See: Apple Issues… :/

I’m downloading the viewer and will try it out later today.

The release notes show KirstenLee has upgrade the code for Mac OS 10.6. The Depth of Field feature the Lindens are adding as a by-product of fixing Anti-Aliasing has been added with user interface controls for it. The mesh object count has been updated. Some other techie fixes and upgrades.

Still no mesh upload. But, the viewer renders mesh.

KirstenLee Viewer

Update: 2010-11-03: Be sure to click more

I think Kirsten’s viewer is probably the most advanced viewer currently out. I’m not saying it has the most power user features. But, it has the most SLV2 features working, and working as well or better than Linden Lab’s SLV2.2. I’m just now downloading this viewer and have yet to try it.

See the first round announcement in Kirsten’s blog: KirstenLee S20 Build 41 (Release)

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Updated 2010-10-21

KirstenLee has a new version out; (40) . This version has lots of changes in user controls. It also is up to date with the Snowstorm Project.

It is a little hard to know exactly what ‘up to date’ means. (Kirsten commented below) In Snowstorm there is a stable viewer, a beta viewer, a development viewer and two project viewers. Kirsten says Display Names code is in the viewer. That is from a project viewer. But, nothing is said about mesh.   Continue reading →