Marine has a new version of the viewer out. See: RLV 2.9.12.
> Snail Racers & Hedgehog Spectators
One of the interesting changes in this viewer is how you can control shadow render. Seems Marine got a Maitreya body and is wearing it. From what Marine wrote I take that it cut her FPS nearly in half in some scenarios. Looking at the Fast Timers (Ctrl-Shift-9) shadow render was taking more time to figure out how to render the attached mesh items. I wonder how many people check the render cost of that Maitreya body and compared it to other bodies? See: Second Life: Mesh Body Revolution.
Lots of people want to know when the next release of the Firestorm Viewer will be. I’m one of them. Well, Jessica has explained when. See: When is the next release?
Welcome To The Strange
The TL:DR is the next release is soon… feel cheated? Oh well…
NiranV has added a modified version of the Linden’s new Notifications Panel. If you read anything about the Third Party Dev’s (TPD) meeting this weekend you know the Lindens have a project viewer out with a Notifications feature change.
Look me into the ice…
Normally TPD’s leave project viewer features out of their viewers until the Lab stops changing them, which is usually when the viewer goes to RC status. NiranV is usually experimenting with user interface (UI) and panel arrangements to avoid screen clutter. Adding the feature early gives users a chance to see how a new feature can work and see a UI that might be better.
This version has more RLVa fixes.
You may not know that in most viewers shadows are rendered according to how you have your draw distance set. NiranV has added more control by adding a slider control that gives you access to the shadow setting. Read more in NiranV’s blog. There is an image showing the effect of the control.
The new shadow control also affects Volumetric Light, God Rays.
The version 7 release adds the Linden Maintenance Viewer version 3.8.1.303166 updates. A large collection of fixes. (Release Notes)
There are some known bugs in 6 & 7. One is the ability to accept animation permission requests and group join requests.. After the request fades you can’t accept. NiranV is aware of the problem and plans to wait for the Lindens to fix it. NiranV is playing with other stuff.
The Second Life™ Third Party Viewer Developers meeting was yesterday (7/10). It was another short meeting, 25± minutes. There is a bit of news, but not anything really exciting. There is a bit about when the next Firestorm Release will arrive.
The first 4 minutes are so were spent talking with the Lindens about when they were going to release the Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM). The release is problematic for Firestorm’s team. They want to include VMM in the next FS release and release as close as possible to the Linden’s release of VMM. But, the Lindens have to be done and stop making changes to VMM before the FS Team can finalize their work.
Nothing exciting. Third Party Viewers are catching up with features in the Linden made main and RC SL Viewers. A few are adding their own special features. But, most of the updating is bug fixes and catch up…
