Viewers

General Viewer Information

Firestorm Viewer 4.6.1 to be Blocked

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

The Firestorm Team announced last Friday (2/13) that they will be blocking their viewer version 4.6.1. Versions 4.6.5, 4.6.7 and 4.6.9 will be the only versions that can log into Second Life. They strongly advise that you upgrade to and use version 4.6.9.

Official Firestorm Announcement is here.

An exception is being made for version 4.4.2 on the Mac side. The problems from Apple’s change to Cocoa have been the reason for this version being allowed to stay on the grid. The Linden position is the problems are from Apple’s upgrades and they are fixed in new Apple Operating System (OS) versions. I understand the updates are free, so there is little reason not to upgrade. But, old hardware can be a problem. But, some decent machines are going for US$200 on eBay.

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Second Life News 2015-07 2

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This past Friday was the Third Party Developers’ User Group meeting. This one was longer than recent ones and lots was discussed. Video:

Viewers

Project Managed Marketplace Viewer (VMM) version 3.7.25.298865 – A new version of this Project Viewer was released Friday. A blog post about it was being prepared Friday (2/13). A feedback meeting is planned. Brooke sounds like a politicians when talking about the meeting. It is going to be about explaining the feature and getting feedback. 

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New Firestorm Release Coming

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Firestorm Logo
Firestorm Logo

The Firestorm (FS) team is tentatively planning a viewer release for March, which they hope will have all the Linden updates and bring FS current with the SL Viewer. There is some concern about whether the Lab will have Viewer Managed Marketplace (VMM) ready in time for the FS Team to integrate it into FS for the next release.

The anticipated release for VMM is near the FS feature freeze window for the March release date for FS’ new version. That means the FS people  have to rush the inclusion or delay the release, if the Lab hits their early release date, which could happen. I wouldn’t bet on it. But, I also wouldn’t bet against it. 

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Second Life Bits 2015-07

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Unreal Engine

Jo Yardley has posted about the graphics available when world builders use the Unreal Engine. See: Stunning demo shows what is possible in VR graphics with Unreal Engine.

I am sure it will be pretty awesome to use the Oculus Rift HMD in a world like this.

Improvements

Ciaran Laval has an article up on his site that gives a good summary of recent changes in Second Life and coming changes. See: Linden Lab Ask Us To Check Out Improvements To Second Life. I’ve mentioned some of these weeks ago but he goes into more detail and collects them into one place.

Daniel Voyager has a similar article: Linden Lab publishes upcoming improvements to Second Life.

Directly from the Lab: Check Out the Latest Improvements to Second Life. 

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Second Life News 2015-06

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Servers

There was no Beta Server UG meeting this week. The Lindens were meeting to decide on which projects would be planned for implementation in 2015. With any luck we’ll hear what they decided, at least to some degree.

Slow render Feb 2015
Slow render Feb 2015

I am hoping they decide to work on the viewer’s caching system. I’m tired of coming home to a grey house, something I can do several times per day when I am in Second Life.

I am also hoping they get the Avatar Render Cost feature working. My hope is they will flash a value on screen when you add any new attachment to the avatar. I think it would be great to have that happen when trying on mesh demos. I think it would put pressure on designers to make more render efficient items.

Viewers

The main viewer is now version 3.7.24-297623. (Release Notes) This is the viewer with reduced pipelined texture and mesh fetching timeout. So stalled connections fail quickly, allowing earlier retry. The timeout value changed from 150 seconds to 60 seconds for textures, and from 600 to 240 seconds for meshes. 

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