General Viewer Information
You probably know that the server updates come through 3 releases channels; Blue Steel, Le Tigre, and Magnum. This is sort of having 3 Beta versions running at the same time. It allows 3 different sets of code be tested at the same time. The best performing of the three gets promoted to the main channel.
New Viewer Channels
The result is the server code update at a pretty fast pace. In fact so fast that several server updated features are waiting on the viewer to update.
All the blogs are covering Fantasy Fair, the fund raiser for Relay for Life. So, I’m not saying much, figuring you are hearing plenty. But, if you haven’t been to Fantasy Fair, get over and check it out.
There seems to be lots of things happening in Second Life. Daniel Voyager wrote about Tribute City Fashion Week 2013 that starts May 31. It looks fun.
SL10B is coming too. Important dates are:
Not much news. The SL Beta Viewer 3.5.1 (274588) is the Lindens’ test viewer for SSA. The Beta version has to pass before they can seriously think about rolling out SSA. Once we see the SSA code roll into the main viewer release, it will be some time before SSA goes live. How little or much time is dependent, in some measure, on how fast people upgrade to the SSA capable viewers.
Friday a new version of the Materials Project Viewer was released: 3.5.1 (274847). I am away from home this weekend, so I won’t get to play with it until Monday.
I have a link titled SL Materials Post QA that leads to the Alternate Viewers page where you can download a copy.
Niran has released an SSA compatible version of the Nirans Viewer. Niran is wanting feedback on some aspects of the new release. See the announcement: Nirans Viewer 2.2.0 Alpha (2656).
The download is on Source Forge: Nirans Viewer.
I haven’t tried to run it. So… you are on your own. Well, there are about 500+ downloads of this version as of 3 PM SLT.
The Firestorm team, in spite of running three pass QA, let some problems get through. This just shows how hard it is to catch problems in software. Whatever, the blog now has an article up on the top 3 complaints and their fixes.
Top 3 Complaints & Resolutions for 4.4.0 Release Firestorm Viewer.
The article leads back to Lette’s article, updated, from a few days ago. I covered Lette’s article here: Firestorm Viewer Information.
A new version of an older KirstenLee Viewer has been released, which is surprising. The news comes from KirstenLee’s blog. It is a short one sentence announcement. I show the blog page as this first image.
KirstenLee Blog Page 2013-17
KirstenLee’s last release was in September 2012 and a version S22. In December of 2011 Kirsten had to stop viewer development when his (RL)/her (SL) family was dealing with health issues. See: The End of Kirsten’s Viewer, which describes the failure of a ‘CrowdFunder™’ effort to save the viewer.
There is a lot of things happening. More will be happening in the coming few weeks. Chances are really good that something you used to do a specific way is going to change. There is a good chance you will also be seeing some odd behavior in Second Life™. Things won’t work the same.
A great source of quick answers for Firestorm Viewer users is Lette’s Trivia and Trivial Stuff blog. Lette has a new article up listing the questions most heard by the Firestorm Support Group: Frequently Asked Support Questions: April 23.
If you have an ATI video card, there is a problem with black screens in Firestorm 4.4.0. They have the fix posted.
There is a longer explanation of the Height Offset that has been removed from the SL System, not just the Firestorm Viewer, in Lette’s article. The FS Team did remove the control. They expected to get lots of blowback from that and they have. But, it can’t be helped.
However, they did get Nyx Lindens quick fix for the problem added to their appearance editor. You can see how to use that here: Firestorm Height Adjustment. It sucks… not FS… the system fix. I wrote about the problem in: Second Life Avatar Offset. Check it for what you can do to get a usable offset back.
Can’t find some user interface buttons? The answer is there. The team made some changes and added the possibility to modify the user interface in new ways. There is a nice how to in Lette’s article.
I see today that the Kokua Viewer, the successor to Imprudence Viewer, has been added to the Second Life Third Party Viewer (TPV) Directory. You’ll find it listed in the second section of the list. The Kokua wiki page is here: Kokua Viewer.
Kokua/Imprudence Viewers
The second section of the directory is for viewers that do not report crashes or do not have enough users to report a significant number of reports. So, it may move to the first section when enough reports are collected.
The Kokua team has announced the release of Kokua Viewer 3.5.1. The Release Notes are here. The notes are difficult reading. The Kokua Viewer Download is here. I only see Windows and Linux versions.
They also have a development viewer: Kokua Viewer 3.5.2.