Just days ago Marine released a new version of the RL Viewer. It had the replacement feature for z-Offset, Hover, Height Adjust, or whatever you want to call it. The problem is it had a gotcha Marine did not anticipate. But, that has been fixed and new version of the viewer is out.
This is a bit of a messy fix. Marine got it working. But, is not real proud of the hacky code needed to make it work. But, it works.
Also, it is not that easy or straight forward to use. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.
Third party viewer users are accustomed to have the a feature know as avatar z-offset or height offset. This feature allowed us to precisely control our avatars vertical position. Whether walking, sitting, or ground sitting we could adjust the avatar’s vertical position in relation to the ground or a floor.
The roll out of SSA broke this feature. It appears this is the thing most often asked about in various support groups since SSA rolled out. At least it is the question I see most consistently being asked. Well, that and temporary texture upload. But, temporary texture upload has been replaced with Local Textures for some time.
Today I see the Marine Kelly has an article out about a fix for Height Offset. See: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.3 with Z offset fix. Marine also explains how to use Local textures in her article. Continue reading
A new release of RLViewer is out. You don’t really need it… no, I’m being nice. There is a problem with version 2.8.5.0 and version 2.5.8.1 is sort of a fix. Or you can just follow directions in the announcement post and fix your currently installed 2.8.5.0 version viewer.
See: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.1. You need to copy 5 files from the SL Viewer install folder over to the RLV folder.
Or download the new RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.1 version here.
There is also a problem with Materials in the viewer. It breaks InvisiPrims… REALLY!!! I thought that had been broken in the SL Viewers forever. Whatever, Marine Kelley has been providing support for InvisiPrims because some RLV products need them to hide parts of the avatar under script control.
It looks like Marine is not going to be able to cobble up a working fix. Marine is planning to change the products to operate a different way. So, I guess start writing off InvisiPrims permanently.
We seem to be coming to a crunch point in viewers. The Lab is changing things so quickly third party developers have a challenge keeping up. Henri Beauchamp does well with Cool VL Viewer, which is a viewer based on V3 code with a vintage V1 user interface.
Image by Kitty Barnett
Niran seems to have leapfrogged the Niran’s Viewer to having all the latest Linden features by jumping to a recent SL Viewer V3 model. Niran’s Viewer is now Nirans Black Dragon viewer. Niran’s features from previous versions are being added to the new SL V3 Viewer code in Black Dragon. Eventually Niran will have Black Dragon on a feature par with his previous versions.
So, both of those viewers have materials. Firestorm 4.4.1 doesn’t and Tonya Souther of the Firestorm Team explains why, in a blog post: Tracking LL’s big changes, and why the 4.4.2… well now that there is an emergency roll out… 4.4.3 version won’t either. Continue reading
I have not been a fan of RLV until recently, not the viewer the feature. A friend formerly from Land of Nor has been showing me how it could be used to improve roll play and combat games. I was impressed and have sense been spending more time paying with it.
Marine Kelley posted about the recent update to the RLV viewer: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.4.1. Marine explains some of the problems integrating the CHUI changes to RLV. It took a couple of months to find bugs and resolve them. The fixes are done and a new version is released.
It has been a while since I took a look at a number of viewers. Rather than post them separately, I’ve lumped them together, except for Nirans. I had not used it for months, so I expected lots of changes.
The main Linden Viewer is still at version 3.4.5 (270263), pre CHUI (Chat Hub User Interface). I seldom use the Beta Viewer now. It is more of a fall back viewer for when a Development Viewer version has problems. This morning the Beta is at version 3.5.0 (271345). The Development Viewer had been at version 3.5.1 (270826) for about 10 days. Today it updated to 3.5.1 (271386).
I am still fighting with the CHUI update to keep it the size I WANT IT. Other than sizing problems I like the new CHUI. The new build 271386 seems to have some of the sizing problems fixed.
Image by AlannaRalph – Flickr
I seldom cover this viewer because I don’t use RLV to play in Second Life™. Marine Kelley makes the viewer. This is the type of viewer we used to have when I first came to Second Life. I started using the Nicholaz Edition because it had more bug fixes and crashed less often. Nicholaz was all about making things work. In this release that is what Marine seems to be doing, making it work.
RLV is currently in last place in the list of Third Party Viewers. They are ordered from the most stable to the least stable. So, with any luck this release will start to change those numbers.
I found Marine’s discussion of the problems and crash sources interesting. Again it is the open source JPEG2000 library that is to blame for most of the problems. Marine has been working to make the viewer and its use of the JPG2000 library more robust.
A new version of the RLViwer is out. They have added the new Spell Checker and Auto-Replace that we will see in Linden Lab viewers. Don’t confuse the meaning here to be that Linden Lab developed it. I think most of the development by Kitty Barrnet. Oz Linden did some coding on it. But, it get all confusing as to who did what when.
There are some bug fixes included.
Download the Restrained Love Viewer (RLV). This is a non-standard install. Click RLV in the details to the right to find other articles on RLV and how to install it. The site has instructions but if they don’t do it for you, may be mine will help.