Viewers

General Viewer Information

Milkshake: a New #SL Viewer

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When I find a new viewer I’m always nervous about using it. Since I approve all comments posted here I saw Sven idyll’s comment in the Exodus Viewer review. Feeling sad that we have lost Kirsten’s viewer, I’m curious. I have an Alt just for testing such viewers. Time to get him out… my guy is brave.

Milkshake? Logo

TPV Directory

The viewer is not listed in the Third Party Viewer (TPV) Directory. That doesn’t mean a lot for security. Viewers registered there are self certified. The Lab only removes them or refuses a listing for a known or obvious cause. So, there is little difference between a listed viewer and those not listed in regard to security.

One has to make a judgment call in regard to the safety of a viewer. There is no way to know, short of reading the code and compiling it yourself. So, one takes their chances, which is why I used an alternate.

Facebook

The viewer has a Facebook page. For whatever that means. Cinder Roxley created the Facebook page for the Milkshake Viewer.

Web Site

It is sort of mandatory for a viewer developer to have a web site and blog about their viewer. If there is a web site for the viewer, I did not find it. However, Sven idyll did blog about the viewer. Sven is Swedish, so I have to use Google to translate the blog. Such translations are not perfect, so I sort of get the idea. See: Milkshake?

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The End of Kirsten’s Viewer

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Today in world The Official Kirstens Viewer Group got a message from Sylvia and Lee aka Dawny and KirstenLee. The end of the Crowdfunder effort has come to an end and we are about 79% short of the goal. Lee will be closing the group.

Bye Kirsten

There is a farewell message on the blog. And Finally…

There are some interesting and in some ways disturbing statistics in the article. It seems there were 3,000 to 4,000 regular users per month. The average number of downloads were 6,000 to 8,000 per month. But, only a couple hundred of us chipped in to continue the viewer. Sad, imo.

The Niran Viewer is based on Kirsten’s Viewer. It is very different from Kirsten’s and as best I can tell has a different feature set. But, it may work for you.

My best to Sylvia and Lee.

 

 

NiranV Releases a Prerelease

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I’m confused about what ‘prerelease’ means. Whatever, another version of the NiranV Viewer is out. This is a short review of it. The download is only 33mb, but the download took 10 minutes. Testing my connection I find it has slowed down. My download speed has dropped from 31mb/sec to 2mb/sec. :/ I’ll have to sort that out.

Niran's Unique Login Screen

Download and Install

Other than being slow there is nothing special about the download. You’ll find it here: Source Forge Nirans Viewer Download.

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Dolphin Viewer 3 Update

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Lance has a new release of the Dolphin viewer out: 3.2.1.22181. There isn’t much new in this release. The download is the same. Performance is the same.

Inventory

A fix from Firestorm has been adopted. It has to do with how Tool Tips work in Inventory. Tool Tips are the popup messages we see when hovering the cursor over an item for a few sections. The SL Viewer has an annoying trait of popping up a tip that contains an inventory item’s name and hiding the item below. The colors in SLV are such it can be confusing.

The Firestorm fix limits the popup to long names that do not fit within the inventory window. So, unless an item description runs out the right side of the panel, there is no popup, which is really nice, IMO. Plus the coloring is better.

Languages

Lance has included translations. Lance is fluent in German (native) and English. Those wanting other translations will need to help out. If you want to help, post a note in the Dolphin Viewer Forum.

Exodus Viewer Delayed

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I hadn’t seen any new posts from the Exodus viewer. Taking a look at the Exodus blog I find that Ayamo Nozaki, the lead developer, had a hardware failure. Ayamo’s video card, an nVidia GTX 470, died. Until Ayamo can afford a new one, development is delayed.

If you want to help out, visit the blog: ExodusViewer.com. At the bottom of the post is a place to donate toward a new card for Ayamo. GTX 470’s go for US$150 to $250. A GTX 570 goes for US$240 to $350.

#SL Texture Loading Freeze

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SH-2738 – Texture fetching freezes due to LLcurl. If you have seen textures refuse to download and/or rez completely you may be having a problem described in SH-2738. (There is no link because the JIRA item is one of the Lab’s private items. I should point out the JIRA tends to make items in some topics private, unless the Lindens remember to override it.)

Whatever the reason for privacy, this fix was included in an SL Viewer 3.2.5 build. Presumably it is in the Beta version of the viewer (246559) and later, but I can’t be sure. If you are having texture loading problems you may want to try the Beta version of the viewer.

Remember. The Beta is a beta and there is no guarantee it will work. It is a testing viewer, which means no whining about it. If you have a problem, file a JIRA report and send in your crash logs.

A related texture problem SH-2512 – Some avatar textures in welcome area never load on first visit. Could also be in this Beta release.

SH-1912 – Shiny metal texture characteristics entirely lost when Lighting and Shadows turned on. This fix could also be in the 3.2.5 version. Runitai made this fix in the Shining branch about 2 weeks ago. I see where it made it into the Dev Viewer (branch) about 12/12.