Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
Lots of Second Life™ people use the Firestorm Viewer. Creators are certainly part of that group. A number of people think the Firestorm Viewer is to blame for LoD problems in Second Life. Can that be?
Personally I think this is a case of a fascist mind set running the standard victim line and wanting someone else to fix their problems. See what you think.
Every so often I hit a point where my Second Life™ experience sucks from poor viewer performance. When that happens I start changing viewer brands in hope of an improvement. I troubleshoot starting with the easy and work to the hard. But, this time I over looked an obvious problem.
These days I mostly use the Linden made viewer and it is almost always one of the RC versions. I like being on the cutting edge. Over the years Imprudence, Emerald/Phoenex, Exodus, Kirsten’s, and Niran’s were the viewers to use, at various times, to be on the cutting edge. That has changed.
Maria Korolov has written: Bright Canopy’s viewer in a browser supports voice, uploads, OpenSim grids. She is talking about the Bright Canopy beta that is in progress now. This version runs in an Internet Browser using the FRAME system. She explains how it works.
One of the challenges in using a streaming service is that the actual viewer is running on a remote server. Your computer is sort of doing remote control of that viewer. So, saving files (pictures) can be a problem as the local drive the viewer sees is on the server, not your home computer.
Simon Linden gave out a note card at Tuesday’s Server-Scripting user group meeting in Second Life™. It gives us the Debug Settings we can change to improve performance at events with lots of avatars.
To get to the viewer’s Debug Settings you need to have enabled the Advanced menu. There are a couple of ways to do that. In the SL Viewer open Preferences – top menu: Me->Preferences then select the Advanced tab. Enable Show Advanced Menu. This will reveal ADVANCED in the top menu. Click Advanced->Show Debug Settings.
Inara is covering the update of the Black Dragon Viewer for Second Life™, version 2.4.2.5. See: Black Dragon 2.4.2.5: snapshot floater and cinematic camera.
The effect of the new Cinematic/Head Tracking Camera is shown in the video. I would have to play with the camera to see if I like it and think it useable, which has nothing to do with whether it is or isn’t. The effect in the video is pretty neat.
I may have to try it to see how it works with the SpaceNavigator, which uses flycam mode when controlling the camera..
NiranV is working on the viewer’s snapshot panel. NiranV designed the panel that appears in the SL Viewer distributed by the Lab. In NiranV’s viewer the panel is apparently evolving. That is S.O.P. for NiranV, which is the reason I like the Black Dragon Viewer but don’t use it. I like the innovation. I hate continually having to figure out how things work or what controls have moved to where with each update.
It isn’t as bad as I may make it sound. I think everyone that takes pictures or makes machinima in SL should try the viewer.
Marine Kelley has announced the release of a new version of the RLViewer. It has a couple of bug fixes for problems found in the previous version.
See: RLV 2.9.10.
