Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
The Imprudence-Kokua people have released Kokua Viewer version 3.6.0-28975. This version has the Materials System updates. Plus several other feature updates.
Chat got a rework of the newer Firestorm chat.
New Point-At and Look-At options were added. Top menu, Develop->Avatar->…
The Build Panel got Copy/Paste for prim dimensions, rotation, and location, which I think is a big thing. The base code for that feature came from the Zen viewer with tweaks from Firestorm added.
Latif Kalifa added a comment to my ‘news’ post this morning that Materials released just after my posting. The version for the main viewer is now: 3.6.0-277516. See the official announcement here: Get the New Materials Viewer Today! Check out Torley’s new video about Materials.
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Torley’s bear is the wrong color… for Torley.
There is a brief tutorial on using normal and specular maps in the video. More tutorials are here:
Viewer changes are picking up speed. As the new multi-channel process moves forward we will see more viewer projects moving forward. Some of these things are things I’ve written about weeks and months ago. Now they are coming to a viewer near you.
Inara has written an update on the SSA (Server Side Appearance): SL projects update 24 (5). See it for details. The summary of that news is simple. We are likely to see SSA enabled over the next 2 to 6 weeks. I expect it to SLOWLY creep across the grid. The server side code has already been rolled out to the main channel. Now it is just a matter of enabling it on the regions. But, there are concerns about problems and whether the new servers can carry the load. So, this will be a very careful roll out.
Do you remember the Experience Tools? Officially they were called Advanced Experience Tools, I suppose they still are. We have been hearing a rumor or two here and there. We have gotten a clue or two from Lindens in the User Group meetings.
The video below is an old one…
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Don’t try to join the group mentioned in the video. We have no idea whether this group will come back to life or not.
Back in March 2012 the Lindens released the above video on the tools (see: #SL Video of Linden Realms Tools). We know that a server change for experience tools was rolled to the main grid some time ago (in RC May 2013 week 19).
Today Oz Linden updated the wiki with new information on viewer repositories. One of the beta viewer projects is an Experience Tools viewer. So, we are getting closer to seeing what the tools are. (See: Linden Lab Official: Viewer Source Repositories. Unfortunately the repository is still set to private. So, we cannot see the viewer code or get a running copy of the viewer. But, I take posting of the repository as a step toward public release.
Strawberry Singh is well known for her personality and gorgeous pictures. She has a talent for posing an avatar and composing a great image. In the blog post Moving your own Avatar! she explains how to position your avatar. I mean to actually move the avatar.
One of the ways to move an avatar into just the right position for a photo is to sit it on a prim, play the pose, and make the prim invisible. You can edit the prim and move it wherever you want. Of course the avatar goes with it. But, things get much more complicated when you are in a no rez region.
That is when Strawberry’s tips will come in way handy.
The week of May 26 to June 1 Oz Linden checked and reported that 1,665 different viewer versions that logged into Second Life™. That is an approximation of the number of different viewers in use. The SL system records viewer version strings. Each version of a viewer is to have a unique ID string. But, this is open source and people do whatever they do. So, there is a probability some ID strings don’t get changed. Thus I say approximate.
Some of these versions are one user only viewers, meaning: someone compiles a viewer for their own amusement and use. They never distribute the version. They may or may not change the version string.
Then there are the griefer viewers. They try to imitate other viewers and may duplicate another viewer’s version string to hide.
The result is going to be more viewer versions than the system recognizes.