Viewers – Page 143 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

New #SL Project Viewer

2012/12/242012/07/31 by Nalates Urriah

Oz Linden has put up a link to a new HTTP Project Viewer. You can find it in the SL Wiki on the Second Life Alternate Viewers page.

Part of the Shining Project is improved client/server communication using HTTP. Redoing the HTTP coding in the viewer and servers is the project. The stated goal is:

The start of a unified approach to HTTP-based communications between the viewer and grid services with a goal of achieving reliability, consistency and a better overall experience on the grid.

This project viewer has some of the changes the Lindens think will improve things. They are looking for bugs, gathering data, and asking for feedback. The project viewer will allow people to help out.

Oz says:

…if you have had problems when you enable the use of HTTP, we would very much appreciate your giving this a try. We know that it does not yet solve all the problems, but we think that it solves some and provides the first steps needed for solving some more in the future.

If you are one of the people that have had problems with things rezzing slowly, inventory failing to load then this is something that may help you or, at least, get the Lab the data they need to fix the problem.

#SL Viewer Updates Week 30

2012/07/29 by Nalates Urriah

We have new updates to Linden Lab’s viewers. I haven’t had much time to play with them. I’ve only been on a couple of hours in the last few days because of RL work. But, I do have them installed and running.

Second Life 3.4.0 (262596) Jul 26 2012 – Second Life Development

I’ve seen some odd behavior in this viewer. I had problems installing it. Files like static_data.db2 failed to update giving an error: can’t write to file. I think there were 3 of them, all dot DB2 files. But, the viewer seems to work.

I have noticed that some mesh avatars and mesh objects disappear as LoD levels change. Oskar Linden wears an avatar (or outfit) that blinks in and out as you move away from it.

I am getting more FPS from this version which is nice. With L&S, Ambient Occlusion, and Sun/Moon enabled I’m staying in the 20’s tending to be around 28 FPS in my house.

Phoenix Viewer Closeout?

2012/07/23 by Nalates Urriah

There is an article by Hamlet, Future Phoenix Viewer Development in Peril?, that points to a post by one of the Phoenix-Firestorm developers, Tonya Souther. See: Viewer 1 is officially on borrowed time. The title says it pretty clearly. The writing is on the wall, Phoenix is a dying viewer with an expected near term death. While Hamlet focused on Phoenix, there are problems ahead for any V1 viewer. Well… actually any number of viewers brands.

Shining

Near the end of June an announcement was made about the projects Linden Lab™ will be working on for the next few months. See: Project Shining to Improve Avatar and Object Streaming Speeds and my article Second Life Changes Coming.

HTTP

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. If you’re curious about the more technical but simple definition read The Webopedia definition of HTTP. For an even more technical explanation see: What’s HTTP? Explain HTTP Request and HTTP Response.

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Second Life News Week 29

2012/07/17 by Nalates Urriah

Firestorm

Today the Third Party Viewer List was updated and the new Firestorm Viewer release has moved to the top of the list, being the most stable viewer in use, congratulation FS/PH Team.

Dolphin Viewer 3 follows Firestorm and is ahead of Imprudence.

I have yet to crash while using Firestorm… There are other minor annoyances, but crashing is not one of them.

More Phoenix users are changing to Firestorm. There are no numbers out on how many or how fast. They are rather secretive about those numbers.

Main Channel

This week the main grid is getting new software. The Lindens have decided the Advanced Creator Tools will be rolled out to the main channel. The Advanced Tools are also known as Experience Tools. These are the functions that were used to build Linden Realms.

Singularity Viewer Release 1.7.0 Review

2012/07/16 by Nalates Urriah

The Singularity viewer retains the V1 user interface while adding many of the new features found in the latest version 3 viewers.

The significant additions in this release is the feature allowing multiple items to worn on the same clothing layer. With that addition we also get a Current Outfit folder, something that will be needed for coming Shining: Avatar Bake changes.

The announcement page lists a number of improvements in this release of Singularity. See: 1.7.0 – Multi-Wear release!

Firestorm Viewer Follow Up

2012/07/12 by Nalates Urriah

I’ve gotten to use the new Firestorm viewer for a bit. I like the Firestorm default mode and have only been using that mode. It is nice. It is close enough to the Linden V3 interface I can find most things easily.

It has the debug settings for CameraOffsetRearView and FocusOffsetRearView, which I change on all my viewers to give a better camera position. See Camera Position Tips for more on that.

The performance of the viewer is faster than Linden viewers. I turned off Sun/Moon Shadows to get the skin color adjusted in my new N-Core Eloise ‘One Voice’ shoes. My FPS was hitting 40 in my apartment. Nice. My Core2 Quad and nVidia 560Ti are not as fast as I had hoped. But, this version of Firestorm is faster than the last.