Viewers

General Viewer Information

#SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 40

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There is good news coming from Oz Linden about the viewer. You probably remember I’ve been writing about a memory leak in the Beta and Development viewers. Their crash rates were way up from previous rates. Oz thinks the latest Beta Viewer 3.4.1-265434 has the problem resolved. Grab a copy of the viewer and try it out. They need as much testing data as possible. The data from over the weekend will give them good information on whether they have found the problem or not.

The Project Download Page

The problem has been difficult to reproduce. That means it is very hard to know what to fix. In #SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 37 I wrote about the problem in more detail.

The Development Viewer has been stalled at 3.4.2-265141 for about a week. The Lindens have been pulling updates and fixes out of the viewer code to narrow down the cause of the crashes. I suspect they are doing that work in a temporary code repository (repo for short) and using internal builds for testing. So, we don’t see activity in the Dev Viewer repo. The latest fixes are probably only in the Beta version.

If the problem has been resolved, development can move forward again. Oz says they have several interesting features waiting in the pipeline. He just won’t talk about them. So, what’s interesting to him, a  p r o g r a m m e r, and us may be different… But, there is hope there is something fun waiting.

Keep your fingers crossed and run a copy of the Beta Viewer. Use the link in the left column labeled SL Viewer Release. The Beta Viewer’s link is a little further down the page. I downloaded it yesterday. I’ve only used it for a short time. I will be using it more latter today. However, it has yet to eat my computer or crash

KirstenLee’s Viewer S22(1a)

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I thought I had seen the last of KirstenLee’s viewer. But, a couple of days ago a new post popped up on the blog and the code repository was updated 9/23/2012. Since then there have been over 14,000 downloads of the Kirsten Viewer. I was 14,695.

I am not sure how up to date the viewer is. My last download was 21(9) in July 2011, over a year ago. The current version is 22(1a). The install notes say there are only minor changes from 21(9).

I found the time to download and rez things to be long. Inventory took a couple of minutes to download. Of course my avatar would not rez until I had most of my inventory. I suspect the viewer is still using the UDP protocol for several services that have updated to HTTP.

Direct Delivery’s Received Box is there. Mesh is handled. The Interface is mostly Viewer 2, it has the sidebar. Menu buttons can be turned on and off but no button drag and drop.

It is amazing how little Viewer 3 has changed, interface-wise, from viewer 2 days.

The speed is good. I’m getting 25 to 40 FPS without Lighting & Shadows, Ambient Occlusion, and Sun & Moon.

I don’t know if this new release means Lee has time to work on the project or what the story is.

But, it is nice to see a new version of the viewer out.

#SL Viewer 3.4.x Week 37

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Linden Viewer updates are a bit balled up right now. This version got too many changes and fixes poked into one update. Somewhere in all those changes is a memory leak that crashes the viewer. This has caused problems. The Pathfinding Project’s formal release has been delayed, for instance, as have other viewer updates.

Third party dev’s have been splitting the various update items apart and implementing different parts of the 3.4 code in their viewers. Pathfinding Tools are mostly operational in Firestorm and their crash rate is still really low. So, the problem is not in the PF Tools. (You can now see those tools in more viewers, but not yet the official Linden viewer.)

The Lindens are trying to get a viewer version with just the PF Tools into testing with the 3.3 code. They feel that could pass testing and move to Beta and Release quickly.

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Radegast Viewer 2.6

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I’ve seen this viewer appearing in Inara Pey’s Viewer Round Up’s. She also did a good review of Radegast 2.2 in early August. I saw some information on the OSGrid forum that interested me so I did some checking.

Radegast Viewer Splash Screen

Between Inara’s review and the Radegast Wiki one can get a good impression of how the viewer works.

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Kokua Viewer Project Update

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You probably know the Kokua Viewer is the replacement for the Imprudence viewer. There are alpha or experimental versions of the viewer that you can use on Second Life and OpenSim grids.

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

You probably don’t know they are up to version 3.3.4.23807, which is based on the Second Life™ viewer code version 3.3.4 Release 3.

The Kokua blog is: Kokua/Imprudence Blog, not very original, but very practical.

The Kokua Viewer Download… looking for a link? There really isn’t one. There is no official release of the Kokua viewer. There is however an experimental version you can use… for testing of course.  Today’s current Kokua Viewer download is here. This will change as time passes. The link should remain live over time as it is into a wiki release notes page.

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#SL Advanced Modeling Tips

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3D modeling is sort of a new think in Second Life™. Now that 3DS, Blender, Maya, and SketchUp models can be imported we have a whole new realm of knowledge and learning to deal with. One of the tough areas is finding ways to handle the Level of Detail (LoD) aspects of modeling. LoD has a huge impact on Land Impact (LI) costs. So, we have lots of incentive to understand the concept.

3D Modeling Tips: Level of Detail

I watch for ideas and tutorials that will help me with that challenge. Indigo Mertel Plurked about a modeling expert giving out tips on 3D modeling LoD. So, I’m down with that. Her article and link to the tips is here: Expert games tips: Generate more effective level of detail models.

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