KirstenLee

It is getting a little complex keeping you clearly informed about KirstenLee’s viewer releases with terms that accurately convey a viewer’s status. It is hard to be clear about which is a production viewer, test or Beta viewer, and a Release Candidate. The problem is some of the code is Linden Lab code not yet in the SL Beta or Standard viewers, which sort of makes all the Kirsten viewers pre-beta viewers. The distinctions are blurred. Suffice to say to say, the Kirsten viewers are as bleeding edge as they come.

The S21(3) is KirstenLee’s official current release. It is available for download.

KirstenLee’s current release announcement is about S21(4) Release Candidate 1 or Kirstens S21 2.6.0.4 RC1, which is available as of 2/7.

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Today KirstenLee has released the first complete version of S21… well… one that is not a release candidate. I’ve been enjoying using the Release Candidate 2 version for several days. I’m happy to see this version out. My impressions of the viewer follow.

Install

The install program shows the version as 2.6.0.3, which shows the viewer is using the newest possible code from Linden Lab, who’s Development viewer is at 2-6-0-219259. The ‘3’ is KirstenLee’s development iteration as 219259 is the Lab’s. The Lab is averaging 68 iterations per day, which is pretty impressive. I suspect KirstenLee has far more iterations than the version numbers show.

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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.