Viewers

General Viewer Information

Dolphin Viewer Congratulations

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Dolphin Viewer
Dolphin Viewer

Today the Dolphin 1 viewer made it to the top of the Linden Third Party Viewer list.

Third Party Viewer Directory

This list is ordered by crash rate. The viewer at the top of the list has the best (least) crash rate. Dolphin has not been in this list because crash reporting is optional and the Lindens lacked the data to rank it. Some minimum number of reports and logins have to be received to be ranked.

The ranking is:
Dolphin 1
SLV 1.23
Phoenix (probably 1050 – 1102 is too new)
Imprudence
SLV 2.6.3
Singularity
SLV Beta 2.6.8
Firestorm (pre-alpha)
Emergence
Ascent
Kirstens

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SL Viewer Progress Week 20

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Lots of confusion and server problems this last week. New code being merged into the servers caused problems. For viewers the result has been problems and things not working. If you aren’t checking the SL Grid Status, you can’t tell if it is the viewer or the grid. Things are calming down and work is resuming on the viewer.

Region WindLight

More work has been done on getting controls built for setting a region’s Windlight values. The control dialogs are being arranged this week. Once that is done we’ll get a project viewer for testing. Of course, you can only test it if you have a region you manage (estate manager). If you are a region manager and willing to test the feature, get in touch with Oz Linden.

Oz expects the server side code to be on the grid by the time the Project Viewer Rolls out. So, I think we are talking a week or two…

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Phoenix Viewer 1.5.2.1102 Released Review

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The new Phoenix version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. This wasn’t planned. It is a bug fix, as odd as that sounds. The problem is that series 1 viewers started having problems rendering avatars wearing the new SL Viewer’s Physics Layers. So, Phoenix  Viewer users would see avatars wearing the new layer as a Ruth. Oddly the SLV2 people would see Phoenix users Ruthed too.

The details of the problem are in a JIRA report: VWR-25479

While one does need to upgrade their copy of Phoenix to the latest version, one is not required to use Avatar Physics.

I gather that the Phoenix Team had pretty much moved on to Firestorm. But, suddenly the realization the Phoenix viewer was not going to correctly render the avatars of those using the future Firestorm, Kirsten, Singularity, Dolphin, or any other viewer that used Physics Layers. This was worth a fix.

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SL Viewer Development

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I tend to leave previous downloads of the viewers on my computer. If the new install is bad, I can revert back to the previously downloaded version. Every so often I clean out the folder. I thought it would be interesting to see how fast things were happening in viewer development. I put the version build ID, which advances numerically, and download date in a spreadsheet. It may not be significant or particularly accurate, but it is interesting.

SL Viewer Development Rate

The information doesn’t directly say anything about features being added, bug fix rates, or much of anything other than some Linden felt another iteration of the viewer was ready to test.

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Kirsten Viewer S21(7a) Review Continued

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I’ve been able to use the viewer for a time now. My experience with it follows.

Download & Install

The download (29mb) and install is standard for the KirstenLee Viewer. It uninstalls the previous version in the process. The cache and settings locations are retained. The settings are kept.

Anna's Many Murders
Anna's Many Murders

Experience

No reboot needed. Viewer cranked up and ran well. In my cottage I get 27 to 32 FPS. In Celtic Myst I get 17 to 21 FPS. This is with Lighting & Shadows + Ambient Occlusion enabled and Sun/Moon shadows off.

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Kirsten Viewer S21(7a) Release Review

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KirstenLee S20 Logo
Kirsten S21(7)

Today (5/11) the release of S21(7a) or 2.7.8.7 came out. This is version 7a because the Lab alerted viewer developers that an exploit was found in the Second Life System. Unpatched viewers are vulnerable to the exploit. Kirsten’s 7a has the patch and is safe from this exploit. If you downloaded (7), go back and get (7a).

Build 7 has a load of new features and fixes. I’ll touch on those I find interesting. The list of them is here: Kirsten Viewer Release Notes. These are not necessarily the first appearance of these features. Some will be familiar to you if you have used the 7 RC’s.

Kirsten’s code includes SL 2.6.8 code items. My latest development viewer from SL only shows 2.6.7. So, this may be the most leading edge viewer available.

This version has Enhanced Avatar Physics. In other words; Boobies Bounce.

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