Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
I’ve been out of it with pneumonia, 103+ fevers, and some really messed up dreams. Just as the Lab was releasing Alex Ivy, the project name for the 64-bit version of the Linden viewer, I was getting sick. So, I’m just getting around to trying the new project viewer.
The download package is about 80MB. Firestorm releases are about 20MB larger.
You can download a copy here: Alternate Viewers.
How do we tell our computer which viewer to use when we click a SLURL in a web browser? I’ll explain what happens and show you how to make the change (at least for Windows – Sorry, I’m not an Apple person). Plus, I’ll give you the link to the way easy tool for this task that the Firestorm peeps made.
The Firestorm people are aware of the problem and made a tool similar to Firefox’s process for handling protocol settings. You can find it here: SLURL Proxy.
Install this program. Drag and drop your viewer icons in it. Select one for your default choice. Once setup, when you click an SLURL the program will use the default you have selected.
Run the program again to make changes. Easy.
I thought we would be in the no change window all this week. But, the Lindens have decided to roll last week’s RC update to the main channel… or they automated the forum posting like they did the status reports… naw.
The package rolling to the main channel is listed as having ‘improved internal server logging’. So, it makes sense to me that there is little likelihood of new bugs being introduced by adding and changing logging features. The week in testing probably revealed no performance change problems for this package. So, why not roll it out?
Oz Linden tells us they are making progress on the 64-bit version of the Linden made Second Life™ viewer. Also, they are cleaning up a lot of stuff in the process.
There is a small possibility of having a project version of the 64-bit version out before the full no change window break.
The new voice update is likely after the first of the new year. It fixes some things and improves voice diagnostics.
Lots of people are saying the new Firestorm Viewer 5.0.1 is faster than previous versions. My personal experience is it is. But, what I really want to know is it faster than the default Linden Viewer 5.0.0. Here I find the results a bit mixed.
The image shows my front porch where I did some of the testing. In the image starting on the left I have 3 Firestorm and then 3 Linden viewer numbers. The first FPS from ground level at my house is labeled FS 5.0.1 and shows an FPS of 78.3. The number was bouncing between 75 and 84 FPS.
Yesterday in my SL News I mentioned the rumor that the Firestorm Dev Team would release version 5.0.1. The viewer hasn’t updated since August 2016, four plus months. It did release late Tuesday. Once word spread the Firestorm site overloaded, I think, and has been down on and off ever since.
You can expect that behavior to continue today.