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.
Viewers
General Viewer Information
Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues – Part 1
New World Notes has an article about another interview with Jessica and Arabella on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Developers (Attempt to) Answer Your Questions on Rezzed TV on New World Notes. This video runs 115 minutes. The direct link to the video on Rezzed.tv: Rezzed.TV Presents Emerald: Your Questions, Answered
SL Viewer Changes – Snowstorm
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.
Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2573 Released – Review
A new release of the beta Emerald Viewer is out. I’ll be dusting off my Alt and trying it later today. It appears to be based on the Snowglobe 1.5 code base. They note that MOAP (Media On A Prim) does NOT work in this version.
The current official forum link is here: ! Emerald Beta 2573 Links The new official web site still shows Emerald Viewer 1.23.5.1636-1 as the main Emerald Viewer.
There appears to be no blog yet. I suspect the team is pretty busy right now. Their Third Party Viewer (TPV) listing has not been restored yet. That may take some time. Linden Lab is not blocking the viewer and you are allowed to use it.
New Forum
You can use your ID and password from Modular Systems’ forum to login at EmeraldViewer.net’s forum. It is probably a very good idea to change your password. When doing that realize that while the page says 6 or more characters are required, it is actually 8 or more.
Imprudence 1.3.0 Weekly Review
Each week more features and fixes are added to the Imprudence viewer. Many are considering using it after Emeraldgate splashed across SL. I’ve used it for some time as it has a great Grid Control System that allows me to easily login into OSGrid or SL. Plus it has build math built in.
It like most viewers has it’s peculiarities. Finding how to handle various settings can be a pain. Imprudence has a decent manual, wiki.
Update 2010-08-27: Imprudence 1.3.0 RC2 Released – Voice is now included in the package. OpenJPEG has a problem or two and you may see black textures in place of the actual texture. Do the llkdu.dll copy thing to fix the problem. With HTTP Texture Get on your AV may go clear/invisible, do a rebake to fix it (Ctrl-Alt-R). A volume control for gestures was added. Several RLVa bugs fixed. Clearing cache on OpenSim will cause AV to render as a cloud until you change your shape. Clicking ABOUT for an LM will crash the viewer on OpenSim. There is more info in the Release Notes.
Breasts
Imprudence has jiggly boobs. Or at least it has the settings for boobies. They are hidden in the Debug Settings. Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal the Advanced menu item. At the bottom of the drop down is the Debug Settings item. Type in Emerald, then click the drop down arrow to see the settings. I have yet to get jiggle to jiggle well in OSGrid. Others seem to have it working fine. It may be a physics thing rather than a viewer thing. I had less success on OSGrid than in SL.
The boobies settings are confusing. The default settings aren’t that great. EmeraldBoobFriction has a default value of 80 and a note to never set it above 1. Right… The recommended settings on the Imprudence forum don’t seem to work that well.
After a few tries I had invisible breasts, an old Emerald problem.
Emerald Viewer Update
The new team has the new Emerald web site, forum, and wiki up and running. Visit EmeraldViewer.net. Pay attention to which site you are on. Several knock-off sites use similar domain names.
Phillip Rosedale, Linden Lab CEO, has made a post on the SL Blogrum: Malicious Viewers and Our Third-Party Viewer Policy
I suppose it is about what one would expect. However, the last paragraph is harsh, as it probably should be.
If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.