Viewers

General Viewer Information

How To get a Faster Second Life

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Several people in the forums are asking how to get better Frames per Second rates and why their computer is so slow running SL. Several are asking about upgrading their computer for Christmas or getting a new one. So, I decided to write a HOW TO specific to Second Life so I could avoid repetitive forum posts…

Speed Hump? - Image by TheDarkThing - Flickr

Even if you never want to open the computer’s case, this information will help you know what to have your computer tech upgrade for you.

First consider what we are working with, other games have better graphics and performance than Second Life. When comparing SL with other games, one is wise to remember that most things in the SL world are made by novice content creators. Render efficiency is not foremost in their design goals and that shows in SL frame rates. Take a look at: Typical Second Life Frame Rate Performance by Graphics Card/GPU. The page was last updated in August 2011. It shows an nVidia 470 getting about 45 FPS.

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Firestorm Viewer 3.2.2.24336 Review

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The production release of the Firestorm Viewer is here. It has taken 15 months from the preview to this production viewer. The team has essentially combined the features from the Phoenix Viewer with the new Linden Lab Viewer and technology while giving it a custom user interface.

Significant portions of the Lab’s technology have been changing while the team was working. The team had a changing foundation to deal with as they built. For now, the team feels they have caught up with the Lab. Check it out. The following is what I found.

Second Life
New Firestorm Splash Screen

In February of this year we saw the first previews of the Firestorm viewer in a video, see: Firestorm Viewer Preview, and a preview version of the viewer. Since then releases of the Firestorm Viewer have been few and far between. I think that phase of Firestorm’s development is over. I expect to see the release cycle speed up.

We are promised another release of Phoenix. I doubt we will see any more development in Phoenix once it gets mesh. Once that release is out we will see all of the team’s effort placed into Firestorm. There will probably be some bug fixes on Phoenix, but Firestorm is the replacement for Phoenix.

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Firestorm Viewer 3.2.2.24336 Released

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The Firestorm-Phoenix team has released a production version of the Firestorm Viewer.

Download Firestorm 3.2.2.24336

Linden Lab has been making a number of changes to viewer graphics. Many of them have made it into this release. But, the team decided to make another release (3.2.1.24179) without all the new fixes. So, if you have problems with FS 3.2.2 download and try FS 3.2.1.

Download Firestorm 3.2.1.24179

I’ll be trying the viewer Monday. Once I’ve had some time to play with it I’ll write a review.

 

 

 

 

#Second Life Spell Check

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From a post on SL Universe I got a lead to STORM-83 – As a user who cannot type of [SIC] spell to save their life, I want dynamic spell check for everything I type, so I a little bit more literate. 🙂 It has a total of 5 Watchers as I write this.

Several Third Party Viewers have spell check for local and group chat. But, not the SL Viewer. It seems that will soon change. Oz Linden posted in the JIRA to thank Kitty (Barnett? I’m guessing) for the coming spell check feature. I suppose Kitty has contributed the code to add spell check to the SL Viewer. If my guess is correct this Kitty is the Kitty that provides the RLV code used in several third party viewers.

Every so often I forget the SL Viewer does not have spell check and pop open Preferences to turn it on and soon have a Doh! moment. It will be nice to soon have spell check.

#SL Viewer 3.2 Keyboard Shortcuts

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The keyboard shortcuts in the SL Wiki have been updated to show shortcuts for version 3.2. This is the one with the new user interface. You could memorize them and remove all the buttons from your viewer setup. Not something I would do. But, there are some handy shortcuts. I’ll explain some of the ones I like.

The wiki page: All Second Life keyboard shortcut keys.

For User Interface (UI) developers there is a special page for working out shortcut keys based on operating systems. See: Shortcuts SL-UX.

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#SL Viewer Update Week 45

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The main viewer has moved up to version 3.2.0-244443. The Beta viewer is now up to 3.2.1-244666 (someone have a sense of humor?) And today the Snowstorm Development viewer is at 3.2.3-244722. I mostly use the Development viewer. So, I’m always unsure what the main viewer is doing or what is or is not included in it. I’ll explain what the viewers are and where you can get them and what other Linden Lab viewers are available.

Second Life Viewer
Dev 244722 on ADITI

Other Viewers

The three SL Viewers listed above are the primary viewers in use by residents, excluding third party viewers. But, they are not the only Linden Lab viewers available. The above viewers are available from the main Second Life Download page. Under More Viewers (More or Alternate Second Life Viewers) is a link to the Wiki page listing the other SL Viewers and Third Party Viewers (TPV.)

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