Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Linden made series of viewers
Updated: Nov 8, 2016
Kate Amdahl has posted an article titled: A Better Way to See in Second Life. It is inspired by Penny Patton’s articles on Scale and camera positions: The Improved SL Camera.
These tips came out in 2011. They inspired me to write my version: Second Life Camera Position Tips. I never run a viewer using the default camera position these days. I change them first thing.
RC Second Life VLC Viewer version 4.1.1.320331 – updated Thursday (10/6). This update fixes a problem setting volume. Moving the slider to MAX turned of sound. Oops. This version is in good shape and doing well in RC, meaning few crashes and complaints. This viewer version will probably to promote to the main/default SL viewer in week 41, likely Tuesday.
The RC Second Life Bento Viewer updated to version 5.0.0.320160 Friday. It too is doing well. But, don’t expect it to release this month. The Lindens are letting us use it hopping to find any surprises. There is a crash problem that is fixed in this version. Plus it Improves mesh upload and I think has the bone position lock. There will be Bento meeting in week 41. We’ll likely hear more. Be sure to check: Second Life: Bento Hands – Vista Animations Beta Out.
RC Second Life Maintenance Viewer version 4.0.9.320231 is also doing well. Last week I provided some of the details.
On quality any version could be next main viewer. But the VLC version is a security fix for those using QT on Windows. If you have QT, you should remove it from your Windows machines.
Friday in the Third Party Developer’s Meeting OZ and Troy Linden announced a new feature coming to Second Life™. It is going to be a quick 360 snapshot thing. If you haven’t seen 360 images, click in the image below and drag.
The image was made by Inara Pey, She explains how she made it using the Illiastra Panoramic Camera. (Version 1.3 L$999). See her blog article The Illiastra. Strawberry Singh has also written about making 360 images with Illiastra. I’ve written about the tech here, 360 Image. This is a new tag and it doesn’t pull all my 360 articles, yet.
There is a roll to the main channel this morning. The package running on the RC channels advances to the main software for all servers this week.
This is the package with ‘minor fixes’ and BUG-40565 “Significant script performance degradation observed in server version 16.09.14.319788” fixed.
There is no new package rolling to the RC channels. So, all regions will be running the same package.
Caleb Linden is taking some heat for announcing an update rolling to the Blue Stool [sic] channel.
The main channel is not getting a new package. The planned roll was held back to add a fix for slow script performance.
All three RC channels, including Blue Stool, are getting a revised package with Minor Internal Changes and Fixes BUG-40565 “Significant script performance degradation observed in server version 16.09.14.319788”
Oz Linden reviewed the status of viewer development. He pointed out that the Visual Outfit Browser (VOB) is now in the main release version of the Linden made SL Viewer.
They updated the VLC RC and Bento RC viewers with VOB.
Both RC viewers are doing well in the crash rate stats. Oz expects the VLC version to release to main viewer in week 39. That will leave the Bento RC as the only RC. Seems like the pipeline is emptying out…
Oz pointed out the Lab did block a few old viewer versions. Saying, ‘Only a few thousand users…’ would be affected. That number can sound bad. But, as a percent of SL users it is way small, likely way less than 1%.