Viewers – Page 172 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Second Life Viewer 2.7.2 (232036)

2011/06/05 by Nalates Urriah

The Development Viewer is an Alpha level version that users can test. A recent release of it has a couple of changes to the cache. Cache size has been increased to 10gb. There is now a real Cache Clear button that actually clears the cache. The operation of the previous Cache Reset button was confusing. … Read more

Second Life Translators Dying

2011/06/102011/06/04 by Nalates Urriah

Many if not most Second Live Viewers have automatic language translation features. Those translators depend on Google’s translation services. The viewers use a Google API (Application Programming Interface – basically a protocol for asking a question and getting an answer). Google has announced that as of December 2011 the service will be turned off. (Reference) Google’s translation page will remain. But, the door to the service which SL viewers use will close.

Effective immediately, the service is being ‘throttled’. A limit is set on the number of requests an application can make per day.

Why?

Google sited their reason for closing the API part of their translation service as abuse. It seems it was too popular. As it was a free service the ‘abusive’ load on Google servers was a financial drain.

KirstenLee Lee Viewer S21(8) RC 1 Release Review

2011/05/31 by Nalates Urriah

KirstenLee has the new release candidate of S21(8) out. This one has 3D. This is anaglyph 3D, the red and blue shift image one looks at using blue/red glasses. 3D is not the only change, but it is the big change you can see on your screen.

Second Life 3D

3D in Second Life

We are seeing more 3D in theaters and 3D TV’s are on the market. There are several types of 3D. Anaglyph was first used in movies in the 1950’s. Eclipse, Interference, Pulfrich, Spectral, Lenticular, and Autosterioscopic with all except the last two requiring some type of glasses to view. Anaglyphic glasses are cheap running from US$0.03 (Amazon) to $10. Glasses for Eclipse (shutter glasses) are typically over $100.

SLV 2.7.1 Development Quick Look

2011/05/282011/05/27 by Nalates Urriah

Once a week or more often I upgrade to a new version of the Snowstorm Development Viewer. It is one of these versions that eventually becomes the next Beta Viewer. This version has a couple of features I’ve been expecting.

Update: The SL Viewer 2.7.0 Beta is out and the 2.7.1 version is the same.

Graphics

Kirsten’s viewer has had dynamic shadows revealed as Preference settings for some time. Now this version of the SLV has the settings out where users can turn them on and off. In the left column of settings in the Graphics tab you’ll see the new settings.

Lighting & Shadows – This setting will be grayed out if your hardware does not support it or if Atmospheric Shaders are disabled (another setting in Preferences). Turning this feature on should engage deferred rendering. You should see little difference in the render, but the image should look better. The impact on Frames Per Second (FPS) while using medium power hardware should be small if even noticeable. There is a major improvement on the number of lights rendered. Previously 6 or 8 was the max. It is unclear how many can be handled now. In the past months we have seen over 200 render in tests. (See: KirstenLee Viewer S20(40) Released) The quality of Avatar Impostures improves. You probably won’t realize when your viewer is or isn’t using impostures. Shiny and Bright should look better.

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Second Life Basic Viewer

2011/05/26 by Nalates Urriah

I suspect most of us ignore the Basic Mode in the SL Viewer. However, the Lab isn’t. They are studying and figuring out how to change the viewer to make entering #SL easier for new users. A recent change…

Voice

The Basic Mode Viewer in its latest incarnation has voice. It is disabled by default. There is a microphone button that is clicked to popup a menu allowing one to enable it and select input and output devices. It replaces the Speak button we have in Advanced mode.

Destinations

The Destinations Guide at the bottom now shows the number of destinations in category. Once a category is selected the number people in a region is displayed.

New Second Life Search Beta

2011/05/25 by Nalates Urriah

Today Linden Lab announced a new search has been rolled out and is in use. This new search has taken longer to arrive because the Lab elected to make a large change rather than a series of smaller changes. A test group has tested this new search and found that it gives better results than the search we are using 75% of the time. Really?

Where is this Search?

Didn’t notice it in your viewer? That is because it is not there. One must get the Search Project Viewer to see it work. Download: Search Project Viewer Oh boy, another install… In Windows it installs the viewer in: C:\Program Files\SecondLifeProjectViewer-Search. This means it should NOT affect your other viewers. This version is: Second Life 2.6.9 (230635) May 23 2011