Viewers – Page 131 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Kokua Viewer on TPV List

2013/04/24 by Nalates Urriah

I see today that the Kokua Viewer, the successor to Imprudence Viewer, has been added to the Second Life Third Party Viewer (TPV) Directory. You’ll find it listed in the second section of the list. The Kokua wiki page is here: Kokua Viewer.

The second section of the directory is for viewers that do not report crashes or do not have enough users to report a significant number of reports. So, it may move to the first section when enough reports are collected.

The Kokua team has announced the release of Kokua Viewer 3.5.1. The Release Notes are here. The notes are difficult reading. The Kokua Viewer Download is here. I only see Windows and Linux versions.

They also have a development viewer: Kokua Viewer 3.5.2.

More Info on Imprudence Viewer

2013/04/24 by Nalates Urriah

I liked the Imprudence Viewer. But, it is far too behind the times for me to use it. But, that may change.

There is an article on Hypergrid Business by Maria Korolov: Work Resumes on Imprudence Viewer. Maria has news I had yet to hear. Seems a team is taking on updating the old viewer.

They will be avoiding the Havok Code Licensing. Unless a grid is going to implement Havok Physics and add Pathfinding there is no purpose to having the code in an OpenSim viewer. Plus few people even know what the code does or how to use it in Second Life. So, there is little point to adding it.

However, mesh, media on a prim and other parts of the SL tech will be added to the viewer.

It seems they will retain the V1 user interface. For a V3 interface one can use the sister viewer Kokua.

I wish them the best and will be watching how they progress.

Imprudence Viewer 1.4.0.3 Exp 0 Released

2013/04/23 by Nalates Urriah

OK, I’m surprised. There is a new experimental release of the Imprudence Viewer out. You can get more information here: Imprudence Blog.

I removed the viewer some time ago. At one time it was my preferred viewer for building in-world. For even longer it was my viewer for OpenSim grids. But, it was slow adopting mesh and AFAIK still does not support mesh.

As far as I can tell this viewer is not Sever Side Appearance baking compatible. So, it is good for from 2 to 8 weeks, until the Lab rolls out SSA.

Firestorm Viewer 4.4.0 (33720) Released Review

2013/04/22 by Nalates Urriah

I got a couple of things wrong in the previous article. The idea it was only for the SL grid was not right. This release has a version for the OpenSim grids. You can see the highlights of that release on the announcement page: Firestorm Major Upgrade.

Another point on the announcement page is information about the effort that has been put into providing an upgrade path for Phoenix users.

[youtube sM3-yQVDEw]

This video runs a little less than 8 minutes.

The video warns that you will have a slow start because they have flushed all the caches.

Singularity 1.8.0 w/SSA Released

2013/04/22 by Nalates Urriah

One of the viewers growing in popularity is the Singularity Viewer. As Phoenix nears the absolute end of its useful life a number of its users are switching to Singularity. Often those with older computers prefer to go with Singularity for faster frame rates. Plus it has the look and feel of the SL Viewer 1.23, the V1 user interface.

Build 4114 is the version with SSA, Server Side Appearance, the avatar baking change planned to fix bake fail. All versions before this one will soon stop working, well stop rendering avatars. They will appear gray. So, this is going to be a required upgrade for all Singularity users. That’s required in the sense of, if you want to see avatar clothes then you have to upgrade. If you don’t care about that, never mind.

Firestorm 4.4.0 On the Way

2013/04/222013/04/22 by Nalates Urriah

Update: The viewer has been released as 4.4.0 (33720) today about 3 PM SLT or PDT. Download: Firestorm Major Update.

I’ve been hearing rumors that a new release of the Firestorm Viewer is imminent. Some expected it Sunday. Some are saying today. We will have to wait and see when it releases. I expect it soon, like today. But, that could be wishful thinking on several people’s part.

But, we do not have to wait to see what is in this release. As part of a release the development team builds release notes. The team tries to do things professionally and have everything ready for users, including the viewer’s release notes. It usually is not too hard to find those once one knows a release is imminent.