Viewers

General Viewer Information

Emerald Viewer DEAD!!!

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Updated 10:30 PM PDT – Various revisions and additions that change the tone and meaning of several points previously made.

Today there is a new post on the Emerald blog announcing the end of the Emerald Viewer, a final release version and then the coming blocking of the viewer by Linden Lab.

See: The End (dead link)

It’s over. Bummer.

The current in progress viewer is going to be released. We can see what the team has developed and added. That should be interesting. But, they are hinting that at some future time LL will block Emerald Viewers. We have no idea when that may be or even that it is for sure.

Jessica Lyon posted her resignation from the Emerald team here: My Resignation from Emerald

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Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2587 Beta Released

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Emerald Viewer
Emerald Logo

Emerald has a new beta version of their viewer out. There are some interesting items on the opening page of this version. Today the four News & Announcements links contains a item asking for those interested in being an Emerald developer to make contact Jessica Lyon and get involved. There is also a link to a post about the interview by Phaylen Fairchild on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues for my take on the interview and links to the 115 minute video. Plus the link to the new code base repository.

You can download the new Emerald Beta Viewer here: Download Link to newest Beta for Windows? They have yet to get the blog moved to the new domain. They are not going to use WordPress for the blog so that slows the move. This means the links are hidden in the forum. 🙁

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Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 3

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Part 1 – Part 2

Is there an advantage to the Windows 64-bit version over the Windows 32-bit? 64-bit has some performance advantage.

Does Emerald have any commercial interests? There is currently no Ad Sense accounts. Emerald is not currently raising funds. Arabella is currently paying for servers out of her pocket.

What was the point of the data mining project? It was for a private project of Fractured’s to provide a product for SIM owners to assist them in identifying griefers by IP address. It was always separate from Emerald. No data is collected by the Emerald viewer.

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Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 2

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Part 1 – Part 3

Will Snowstorm affect Emerald? Most definitely. It will affect every viewer. The new SL 2.0 viewer is the product of a software specification contracted out to a third party development team. It is typical of what happens when marketing types or any non-programmer types write a spec and gives it to the egghead geeks to build. Lots is lost in translation. Now the Snowstorm team is racing to fix the viewer and make it into something useful to residents and third party developers. From what I have seen so far, I have some hope.

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SL Viewer Changes – Snowstorm

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Snowstorm Viewer
Snowstorm Project

If you have checked some of the video from SLCC 2010, or got to attend, you know lots of changes are coming to Second Life, especially to the Second Life Viewer. This article is about the goings on in the Snowstorm team, the group responsible for changing the Second Life Viewer.

Esbee Linden has office hours on Wednesday 8AM-9PM SLT (PDT). One can read transcripts of the meetings in the Wiki on Esbee’s page. User:Esbee Linden He is designated as the Business Lead and Product Owner for the Second Life Viewer. Q Linden and Oz Linden are also Snowstorm project leads. Q is the tech lead and Oz is the open source lead.

Oz Linden made one telling comment in one of his office-hours meetings, “Q was instrumental in recruiting me into LL. Without him convincing me personally that LL needed to do a better job of open source, and that he wanted that to happen, I would not be here.” I think this speaks well to real change coming to Linden Lab.

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