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Phoenix Viewer Hour Week 38

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A new Phoenix Hour has come and gone. Here is my index of the video.

The video is here: The Phoenix Hour – Sept. 20, 2011

Phoenix Hour

00:00 is zero minutes and seconds.

01:30 – Introductions end. Vacations for the Firestorm-Phoenix (FS/PH) Team are over now that holidays are past. So, work should progress faster.

02:00 – FS has some render problems. The problems are in the Linden code. Once the Lab fixes their GPU problems the team plans a new FS release ASAP. In the mean time effort are under way for Windlight problem. Windlight settings are reverting to defaults on teleport and relog. The contacts list has been displaying two columns of names, display and login. That is a bug.  Spell check will be in the next release.

03:15 – The Inventory panel has a really annoying problem. You see it when working in the inventory panel/window. The list suddenly jumps to the top entry. The team has set that as a high priority and hopes to have it fixed in the next release. Hope is the keyword.

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Phoenix with Mesh?

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Today I’m seeing Plurks and Tweets about the Phoenix Viewer getting mesh. Looking at the Phoenix Viewer site, I find they are adding mesh support to Phoenix. Interesting.

Henri Beauchamp, of Cool VL Viewer fame, has back ported the render engine from SL Viewer 3. He is allowing third party viewer developers to use his work. One of the Firestorm-Phoenix team made the conversion to Phoenix, Ansariel Hiller.

A new release of Phoenix is coming soon. You can read the details on the Phoenix blog (link above).

So, it seems series 1 viewers will be getting the ability to render the new free style models we call ‘mesh’.  Jessica explains this viewer version will probably be more crash prone. Also, that Phoenix is on its last legs. She makes a point that the ‘team’ did not make this addition. A couple of team members made it as a personal project. Now it is being added into the Phoenix Viewer project.

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Second Life Viewer Problems

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As much as I use different viewers, I miss lots of the problems. Lance Corrimal, the Dolphin Viewer person, pointed out some of the problems in SL Viewer 3.x. There are a couple of gotcha’s.

Speed

SL Viewer 3 and viewers based on version 3.x code are slow. I’ve been using the SL Development Viewer for so long I expect it to be slow. If you are just moving to a 3.x based viewer… well prepare yourself. It affects the SL Viewer and third party viewers based on version 3 code.

Outfit Problems

We usually see these problems manifesting as problems with alpha layers. If you are wearing multiple layers then an outfit replacement only replaces one layer. That results in layers left behind from the previous outfit.

A work around is to remove the current outfit then add the new outfit. This does leave you nude for a few seconds. So, you need a changing room… or not, if you are an exhibitionist.

Crashing

If you attempt to teleport more than one person at a time, you have likely run into this problem. Inviting more than one person to tp crashes the viewer.

#SL Dolphin Viewer Release

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There is a new version of the Dolphin Viewer 3 out. It is version 3.0.5.20427. There are few fixes. One notable is the change to a separate cache. Most third party viewers (TPV) now use their own cache.

The RLV enable switch in preferences has been renamed.

Whispering is now mentioned in the chat Tool Tip…

The Linux builds have been fixed to work with older Linux versions.

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Hope for Kirsten Viewer

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Hamlet Au at new World Notes posted an article on saving the Kirsten Viewer. From information coming from Dawny and Lee the problem is a change in their income from health issues. Hamlet put together that if the money comes from developing the viewer, development could continue. Duh! Why didn’t I think of that.

See: Kirstens’ Viewer Development Could Continue – If Kirstens’ 8500 Users Donated $6 Each!

Composite of DieselDemon & Migasun Images - Flickr

I’m not buying the $6 per year average. Hamlet basis his number on the 8,500 downloads of the Kirsten S21(9) viewer. That is a recent development. The typical download is 2,000± per version. I think it more likely that there are 1,500 or so devoted fans of the viewer.

The recent increase in downloads is likely due to the fact that until just recently, Kirsten’s was the only mesh capable viewer, other than the Lab’s. Capable not just in the sense that it can render mesh, it also uploads mesh. AFAIK, it is the only TPV that can upload.

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Firestorm & Dolphin Release Fixes

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Both Firestorm and Dolphin have released fixes for some problems in their recent releases.

See Firestorm Mesh Beta – optional update – the update is for estate managers and those using the Metaharper skin. A performance fix is included for those that find FPS dropping when they have several chat groups open.

Dolphin Viewer 3 has a teleport problem. It sends the request for tp twice. That is fixed. A user inface something is fixed. Chat toasts are wider.