SLV2 to 7 Series

The Linden made series of viewers

Second Life: Third Party Viewer UG 2016 w38

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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.

✧◦ Waldelfen ◦✧
✧◦ Waldelfen ◦✧

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%. 

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Second Life Changes 2016 w38

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Thursday about noon the Lab announced some of the things that will be changing in Second Life™ viewers. We know viewers will change. But, never exactly what change is coming. See: Important Viewer Evolution Update.

Most of the changes mentioned, we know about.

Dark and Red
Dark and Red

The viewer’s built in web browser is changing over to Chromium Embedded Frame work. So, it is basically a new browser, like Firefox or Chrome. This affects lots of things inside the viewer, search, profiles, etc. Most importantly it is part of the frame changing how streaming media is handled. There is an RC version of this change on the Alternate Viewers Page.

The avatars are changing and the RC version of the Project Bento Viewer is out, also on the Alt Viewer page.

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Second Life News 2016 w38

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Servers

This week there was no rollout to the main channel. We did get a new package for the RC channels. All 3 are getting the same package: 16#16.09.14.319788.

The release notes describe it as; Minor internal changes.

Kath 2.0
Kath 2.0

Viewers

The main viewer is now version 4.0.8.319463. Formerly this version was the Visual Outfits Browser RC viewer. The previous version was: 4.0.7.318301.

RC Second Life Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.319688 – Last week Bento was running on a project viewer version 5.0.0.318969. This version is now a RC, Release Candidate, version.

RC Second Life VLC Viewer version 4.1.1.319856 – This version has updated from 4.1.1.318504. I suspect this version has just added the VOB features and some bug fixes.

There are no project viewers this morning.

Summary

We know from various user group meetings there are some changes and improvements in progress. I expect to see a new RC viewer version and possibly a VIVOX project viewer this week. Also, there is a 64-bit viewer in the works. I have no clue when it make make it to Project or RC status.

While it may seem quite, there is stuff happening.

Second Life: Visual Outfit Browser Released

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The Lab announced today that the Visual Outfit Browser viewer has moved from RC to main viewer. See: Visual Outfit Browser is Live!

Linden Lab's Visual Outfit Browser - Sept 2016
Linden Lab’s Visual Outfit Browser – Sept 2016

I like this feature. I started writing about the VOB Viewer in early July of this year.

New Visual Outfits Browser Project 2016-06-07
New Visual Outfits Browser Project 2016-06-07

Learn more about the feature in the SL Knowledge Base.

Access the feature via your inventory. You’ll see a new tab. (Top yellow arrow.)

Unless you have an image already in inventory you’ll need to upload an image to use… that costs L$10. So, I’ll be particular about which outfits I put into the image catalog.

You probably notice it isn’t purely an alphanumeric sort. It sorts outfits with an image ahead of those without an image. It is alphanumeric in the groups of with-images and without-images.

 

I’ve written about VOB before. I also expect to see more articles on it now that it has released. It is intuitive to use. So, I don’t see any point in repeating instructions on how to use it. You can search on ‘VOB” or ‘visual outfit browser’ in the upper right to find my articles.

It will be interesting to see if third party viewers make any BIG improvements.

Hardware: Disk Performance Compared

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I just getting to where I can use my new computer for most of my daily tasks. I am still researching what aspects of the new computer most affect Second Life™ viewer performance. One of the more effective things one can do is look at data storage speed. Here is what I find.

RAM Disk Performance - New Computer
RAM Disk Performance – New Computer

I used Crystal Disk Mark to measure storage performance on both the opld and new machines.

RAM Drive

The above image is the benchmark for my RAM Disk in the new computer. I purchased DataRAM’s RAMDisk software. I devoted 5GB of my 32GB of RAM to a RAM Drive.

It automatically writes the contents of this drive to my Western Digital hard drive at power down. At startup it inserts the data back into the RAM Disk. 

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Project Bento Update 2016 w37

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No video this week. I recorded one. But, it is too much of a mess to try and clean up.

Wetcat | The Book of Daniel - Fund-raising event ♥
Wetcat | The Book of Daniel – Fund-raising event ♥

There is a new Bento Viewer out: Second Life Bento Viewer version 5.0.0.319688. This is the one that came out earlier this week. It is in RC stage now. If you login with your ‘old’ Project Viewer, it should automatically update. If you log into the ADITI grid and update you may get a second update when you log into the main grid, AGNI. It will be the same viewer version you already got but, the viewer is confused so it updates again. Some people have seen their viewers update twice. 

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