Viewers – Page 159 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Snowglobe Viewer Review Updated

2009/07/27 by Nalates Urriah

Update 11/29

Snowglobe Experimental Viewer Review Update

Update 8/6

Massively has posted an update on Snowglobe. They have a Snowglobe Review with a list of changes, fixes and additions.

Update 7/30

Something is happening with the new server updates… I am seeing ‘This Region is running a different version…’ notices. I’ll check that out once I have time. But the effect is I’m seeing Snowglobe lockups in just a few minutes. However, the Emerald lockups have stopped…

Update: The final half of the grids are in update (server 1.27.1) and rolling restarts as of this morning. Yesterday the first half were done between 7 and 10:45 AM SLT (PST).

Original Post

The Second Life viewer Snowglobe was updated to release 1.0.3.2537, July 21, 2009.

A even more recent version is Snowglobe 1.1.0.2558, July 23, 2009. Use it at your own risk. This is the newest, most advanced and the most unpredictable version. It too is available at the link above.

Snowglobe 1.1.0 Update Review

2012/05/232009/07/05 by Nalates Urriah

It is always nice to know how many residents are using new beta software. It gives one a sense of how well people like something, assuming they continue using it is a sign of preference and satisfaction. For Snowglobe they have published some of that information. Snowglobe Meterics show about 3,500 Second Life residents using the viewer as of 6m/29d/09.

Torley has a video showing the new map zoom features. In the same blog post as the video they talk about under the hood changes. Snowglobe Features There are new texture download methods in this viewer. They say one won’t likely see much performance improvement for those changes just yet as they are only used in the maps. However, the maps do update much faster so there is promise.

Second Life Dynamic Shadows

2009/04/24 by Nalates Urriah

Not long ago I wrote about Second Life and Dynamic Shadows. They are a feature planned for the ‘next’ viewer. Well… that got pushed back because the Lindens had sex on their minds… well getting sex out of the viewer… mmm… how about eliminating sex from the viewer? Whatever, the Adult content filter has displaced shadows.

A Second Life resident, KIRSTENLEE.CINQUETTI, was tired of waiting and decided to mix up her own viewer form Linden Lab’s open source code. SL Photographers have been using her viewer to take some nice images in-world. Now that viewer 1.23 is coming as Release Candidate she has baked a new version.

Blender and Shrink Wrap for Second Life

2011/08/312009/04/15 by Nalates Urriah

If that title makes no sense to you and you make sculpties then pay attention. There are some great 3D models spread around the Internet. The problem with using them in SL is there is no easy way to get them into SL. The only meshes we can bring in, for now, are Sculpties (4/09).

Sculpties have strict limits on the number of vertices a mesh can have and the number of rows and columns of vertices. You can bring in almost any arrangement of vertices. The problem is it may look like vertex vomit (I heard that somewhere). One must get the numbers right for it to look good in Second Life. Shrink wrapping is a way to turn those models into sculpties. One can take a premade sculpty mesh and shrink wrap it over another model. Presto easy conforming mesh.