Viewers

General Viewer Information

Mesh Building 2013-3

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Drongle McMahon is into mesh and does lots of experimenting. When I see his posts in the SL Forum I usually check them out to see what he has to say. I learn a bunch. The more I learn the more I cut from the cost of my mesh objects. So, while this article may get geeky it can save you Lindens.

Second Life Mesh Physics Problem
Aquila Kytori’s Illustration of Drongle’s Experiment

Recently he has been seeing oddities in the physics model’s cost affect on items using prim type physics, which you may need to use for some objects like walls with doors. There is a thread titled: Triangle physics weight – Cautionary tales, episode 2.

His post points out some problems with physics models and how one of his went from a Land Impact (LI) of 7,671 to 0.5… why is worth knowing and understanding. 

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Cool VL Viewer v1.26.7.5 Released

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This is an experimental version of Cool VL Viewer just released. Henri  Beauchamp posted in the comments for the SL News 2013-2. I want to point out that Experimental Cool VL Viewer v1.26.7.5 has  server-side baking support.

The feature is only available on the ADITI grid. But, using the viewer will test its ability to work with the legacy system on the main grid… well… legacy sounds a bit odd in this context. But, it soon is to be a legacy system… about February.

In the ADITI/Beta grid you can test it on both types of servers. See: Project Sunshine-Server Side Appearance.

 

Second Life Dev Viewer 3.4.5 Review

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The Second Life Viewer is getting lots of changes. Even more are to come in the next weeks as the Materials System that allows the use of normal and specular maps. The 3.4.5 version is currently in pre-beta stage, Development. You can download a copy by looking in the left column for: SL Dev Viewer DL.

Second Life 3.4.5 (268856) Jan 9 2013 13:53:27 (Second Life Development)

My Home
My Home

Download & Install

The file size when downloaded is 29.6mb. It is fast. The viewer installs in its own folder. So, you can have it and other SL Viewers installed without conflict. It also uses its own settings file. It won’t up set the settings on your other viewers.

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Connecting to Second Life

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People have been having problems connecting to Second Life™ for as long as I have been using SL, probably longer. As the viewer is shifted to use more HTTP protocol services some are seeing better performance and others worse performance. Whatever the case, more use of HTTP is coming.

HTTP Library

Monty Linden has been working on the communications library used with Second Life. In general we know that work as the HTTP Library. The library is a file that contains all the code to run the HTTP communications channels for the viewer.

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Second Life Deferred Render

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There is a problem with Deferred Render (L&S = Lighting & Shadows) crashing some viewers. The Firestorm Viewer team thinks most people cannot run L&S. That may say more about who is using Firestorm and Phoenix rather than SL users. But, as far as I know there are no good stats to answer the question of how many people can run L&S, at least not in regard to SL users.

As we move forward this will be a more important issue. It certainly makes a difference in how Second Life™ appears on your screen.

What it is?

Deferred Rendering is a high fidelity render of lighting and in some systems shadows. There is no limit to the number of lights that can be rendered, which is a big step up from the 6 or 8 lights we could previously render in SL.

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CHUI Project Viewer Update

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Ciaran Laval has an article about the recent update to the Lab’s CHUI Project Viewer. (CHUI = Chat Hub User Interface) Checho out the article: CHUI Project Viewer Gets An Update.

There are some new features and a bit of a change in organization of the Hub. I think it is getting beyter.

One nice feature is the access to past conversations. I’ve been using Notepad++ and digging through the hard drive to pull up conversations and transcripts of user group meetings. While I find that easy and don’t really need the feature, this will make the chat histories available to new users and those not into hard disk geekdom.