Viewers

General Viewer Information

Greenlife Emerald Viewer Review – Continued

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Viewers are changing rapidly and there is lots of new information and mis-information. For Combat RPG’s some of the information is critical. (Continued from GreenLife Emerald Viewer Review)

Update 12/3/09: This viewer updates rapidly. I have made several posts here about the different features being added to Greenlife Emerald viewer and provided reviews. There is a trail of links you can read through to read them in order. Or you can click on the Archive page and select the Emerald Viewer Reviews to see all the posts that relate.

12/3/09: I’ve added an index to all the Emerald Viewer Reviews. See: Emerald Viewer Review Index

Emerald, to Lag or Not

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Emerald's Built in Radar

Most of the new viewers have a thing some call Radar and in Emerald it is labeled Avatar List (Ctrl-Shift-a or via menu Emerald -> Avatar List). In some other places in Emerald it is referred to as radar. In Emerald it is a handy floater listing all the nearby avatars and some handy information. See the image.

Once upon a time the mini-map was called radar, until Linen Lab renamed it for a better new player experience. But that is not the radar usually meant in comabt SIM’s.

Radar in Second Life previously was a script in a prim or HUD that used a SCAN feature in Second Life’s LSL scripting language. SCAN’s are notorious for creating lag. It’s just the way it works in SL. Good programmers avoid it as much as possible. Combat SIM operators simply ban prim/hud based radars or any high lag producers within their games. There are several reasons for the radar ban with lag being the biggest one. Since prim/HUD based radars were the only ones in existence, SIM operators never bothered to specify which types radars were banned or why, they just simply said radar is banned.

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Warning – Neil Life Viewer

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Update 10/5/09

Today Massively is reporting that a number of those using the Neil Life Viewer for IP theft have been banned. See; Linden Lab rounds up and ejects a bunch of copyright infringers

Original Post

New World Notes posted a warning about the Neil Life Viewer. The viewer is said to have been made by Gwyneth Llewelyn, it was NOT! This viewer may be a phishing attempt (steal your password). UPDATE 8/10: Massively has added their voice and a few details to the saga. See: Dodgy Second Life viewer doing the rounds

This viewer claims to have all the tools one needs to steal content in Second Life. News of the ‘new’ viewer is being distributed in SL via note card announcement. It appears someone took one of Gwyneth’s note cards (she has loads of full permission cards out there) and changed the content so it would look like she sent it. Obviously they think her name recognition will get them in the door.

Avoid the Neil Life Viewer and tell your freinds to avoid it. Most important of all… Please help Gwyneth as she asks, “I should say that my abuse report to Linden Lab (#1606110) might probably be ignored since I couldn’t identify either the creator of the spam item or of the “Neil Life” software. So I’d naturally appreciate if anyone gets the notecard, or any information related to the creators of the illegal software, and report it to Linden Lab as well, or, if you prefer, to let me know so that I can follow up on my own reports.“

Snowglobe Viewer Review Updated

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Update 11/29

Snowglobe Experimental Viewer Review Update

Update 8/6

Massively has posted an update on Snowglobe. They have a Snowglobe Review with a list of changes, fixes and additions.

Update 7/30

Something is happening with the new server updates… I am seeing ‘This Region is running a different version…’ notices. I’ll check that out once I have time. But the effect is I’m seeing Snowglobe lockups in just a few minutes. However, the Emerald lockups have stopped…

Update: The final half of the grids are in update (server 1.27.1) and rolling restarts as of this morning. Yesterday the first half were done between 7 and 10:45 AM SLT (PST).

Original Post

The Second Life viewer Snowglobe was updated to release 1.0.3.2537, July 21, 2009.

A even more recent version is Snowglobe 1.1.0.2558, July 23, 2009. Use it at your own risk. This is the newest, most advanced and the most unpredictable version. It too is available at the link above.

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Snowglobe 1.1.0 Update Review

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Snowglobe Viewer

It is always nice to know how many residents are using new beta software. It gives one a sense of how well people like something, assuming they continue using it is a sign of preference and satisfaction. For Snowglobe they have published some of that information. Snowglobe Meterics show about 3,500 Second Life residents using the viewer as of 6m/29d/09.

Torley has a video showing the new map zoom features. In the same blog post as the video they talk about under the hood changes. Snowglobe Features There are new texture download methods in this viewer. They say one won’t likely see much performance improvement for those changes just yet as they are only used in the maps. However, the maps do update much faster so there is promise.

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Second Life Dynamic Shadows

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Not long ago I wrote about Second Life and Dynamic Shadows. They are a feature planned for the ‘next’ viewer. Well… that got pushed back because the Lindens had sex on their minds… well getting sex out of the viewer… mmm… how about eliminating sex from the viewer? Whatever, the Adult content filter has displaced shadows.

A Second Life resident, KIRSTENLEE.CINQUETTI, was tired of waiting and decided to mix up her own viewer form Linden Lab’s open source code. SL Photographers have been using her viewer to take some nice images in-world. Now that viewer 1.23 is coming as Release Candidate she has baked a new version.

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Blender and Shrink Wrap for Second Life

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If that title makes no sense to you and you make sculpties then pay attention. There are some great 3D models spread around the Internet. The problem with using them in SL is there is no easy way to get them into SL. The only meshes we can bring in, for now, are Sculpties (4/09).

Sculpties have strict limits on the number of vertices a mesh can have and the number of rows and columns of vertices. You can bring in almost any arrangement of vertices. The problem is it may look like vertex vomit (I heard that somewhere). One must get the numbers right for it to look good in Second Life. Shrink wrapping is a way to turn those models into sculpties. One can take a premade sculpty mesh and shrink wrap it over another model. Presto easy conforming mesh.

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