Viewers – Page 135 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Second Life Dev Viewer 3.4.5 Review

2013/01/11 by Nalates Urriah

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)

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.

Connecting to Second Life

2013/01/06 by Nalates Urriah

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.

Second Life Deferred Render

2013/01/06 by Nalates Urriah

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.

CHUI Project Viewer Update

2012/12/22 by Nalates Urriah

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 … Read more

Astra Viewer 1.6.4.1 Release Review

2012/12/21 by Nalates Urriah

I keep wondering why I get so many hits on the Astra Viewer. My last review was in November 2011. The web site for the viewer seems to have disappeared. I had assumed that development on the viewer had stopped. But, it seems not.

One can Download Astra Viewer from Github: aurora-sim / Astra Viewer – Download. This version is 7 months old. I can’t really see where it is being actively maintained. But it seems to get updated every 3 to 6 months, which would suggest a new update may arrive at any time.

Save Some #SL Prim Count

2012/12/212012/12/21 by Nalates Urriah

Indi on Plurk pointed to an article by Bryn Oh, a well known artist in Second Life™ sharing tips on saving prim count (Land Impact) cost. Check it out: Prim reduction trick. This is about redoing prim counts for prim objects and mesh objects. Plus: Bryn Oh’s blog is pretty awesome and worth checking out.