Viewers

General Viewer Information

Script Counts and Fun Hair

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Some weeks ago I was astounded when I saw some people wearing 800 to 900 scripts. Since then I have been watching my script weight. I even went to the Market Place and got a scale, so I could weight myself. That feature is built into some viewers. But, I use some viewers that do not have that feature. Here are some interesting things I learned.

Weight Conscious - Weight Your Scripts

Weight Your Scripts

Once I started weighing scripts (with a free scale) I learned that some of my jewelry was a bigger problem than my hair. Literally some of the jewelry’s sizing and coloring scripts number in the hundreds. I knew hair typically has hundreds of scripts. But, jewelry?

Also, some of the hair I thought I had cleaned scripts out of, still had a load of scripts. With my script scale, I realized that and went to work cleaning them out.

Neat Animations

Animation Overriders (AO) HUD’s have scripts. Several viewers now have built-in AO, so a HUD is not needed. Switching from viewer to viewer during the day and installing 1 or 2 new viewers, or at least new versions, per week it is easier to use a HUD based AO. I love my sexy runway walk and I’m not giving it up. With my nails, hair, AO, and other necessary HUD’s my script count is 8 with 272kb of memory used. Not bad.

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1185 Released Review

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Today (8/2) the Firestorm-Phoenix team released a new version of the Phoenix Viewer. The announcement says a new griefer-crasher fix has been added along with several bug fixes. The full list is in the release notes. I’ll cover the ones I find interesting.

Phoenix Viewer Download and Release Notes

Blocking Phoenix

The rumor persists that Linden Lab will block Series 1 viewers. It doesn’t seem to matter how often the Lab says they won’t. Some rumors say all V1 viewers will be blocked. In general those rumors come from people misunderstanding what has been said and what will happen.

Rate of Change Continues to Climb

Most Series 1 or alternately labeled V1 viewers will never render mesh. The changes needed to a V1 viewer to accommodate the mesh render pipeline are massive and complex. It is easier to just start over with V2 code and add V1 features. Adding V2 features to a V1 viewer require extensive rewriting and are time consuming, which is why we see the V1 viewers fallen farther and farther behind the V2 versions.

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New Login Screen Arrives

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Opensource Obscure has been warning us a new login screen was coming. It seems to be here. It came up in my SLViewer (2.8.3) this morning.

You can see what appears on the new screen here: http://viewer-login.agni.lindenlab.com/

The old screen can be seen here: http://secondlife.com/app/login – that may soon redirect to the new screen.

The New Splash Screen

Older viewers may still use the old splash screen and some Third Party Viewers (TPV) will too. The rumor is the URL redirection will at some point be set to allow the new splash screen on older viewers.

Some TPV’s will switch over from their own screen. Some will likely create custom splash screens.

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Imprudence-Kokua News

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The head of the Imprudence-Kokua Viewer Project, Jacek Antonelli, is… retiring. He has posted an announcement to that effect in the Kokua and Imprudence blog. See: Moving On. It is difficult to predict how the Kokua-Imprudence project will change after his departure. I am not involved in the inner circles of the team… or for that matter even in … Read more

Second Life Viewer Non-Update Week 30

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I often use the SLV Development viewer. I’m on one of the version 2.8.3 builds. So, I have a sense of how well it is or is not working. But, that tells me nothing about planning for the viewer. For that information I rely on the Office Hour or as it is now called the Viewer Evolution User Group meeting. Recently that meeting has not been happening. Actually for the last two weeks the Lindens are not showing up. This group was one of the most informative and communicative. Now it is one of the worse if not the worst. So, it is hard to know what is going on with the Linden Lab viewer.

Viewers to be Blocked

Opensource Obscure noticed in the wiki a note in the 2.8.0 viewer release notes about versions of the SLViewer 2 series being blocked. Viewers from version 2.1.1 to version 2.6.8 will be blocked at logon. As the Lindens have promised the 1.23.x viewers are excluded and will be able to login.

I think there are enough code changes and new features in Second Life that one needs a 2.7 or better viewer to get the most out of SL. The blocked viewers are using support services that will likely be turned off in the coming days.

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