Viewers
Nothing exciting. Third Party Viewers are catching up with features in the Linden made main and RC SL Viewers. A few are adding their own special features. But, most of the updating is bug fixes and catch up…
Second Life Bits Week 28
SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series
The Linden made series of viewers
Second Life: Experience Tools Released
Tuesday (6/30) at about 11 AM PT the Lindens announced the partial release of Experience Tools. I write ‘partial’ because they are only fully released to Premium Members. This afternoon the 3.8.0 (302622) Jun 12 viewer automatically downloaded and I installed it.
This is also the main viewer now. Look at the download page.
That is a Jul 2, 2014 video.
The announcement is here: Experience Tools Available Now For Premium Members!
All users can get the viewer and use it. My understanding is only Premium Members can build experiences with this viewer, but all users can enjoy the experiences.
There is a knowledge Base article that helps you get started creating experiences. See: Experiences in Second Life. This is for both those wanting to participate in an experience and those wanting to create an experience.
There is a forum section the beta testers and early adopters used. It is now open to all. See: Experience Tools Forum.
You can find experiences to play in Second Life™ here; Resident-created experiences in our Destination Guide and the Linden Portal Parks.
Second Life Viewer Problems
Slow Render
I’ve been seeing slower rendering of scenes in Second Life™ for some time. It’s like taking 4 steps better-forward, 2 worse-back, 1 back, 1 forward… changing often with each viewer release. It is hard for me to tell if it is me/my-computer or actually the viewer changing. Now others are mentioning that things are taking a long time to render, which suggests it is more the viewer than it is me. Enough so that a developer asked at the Third Party Devs’ meeting if there had been any changes to the interest list processing that may have slowed things down.
Oz Linden answered there have been no deliberate changes to the interest list. He also points out that as complicated as the SL system is other changes could affect the interest list processing. So, Oz wants to hear about misbehaving render.
Second Life Viewer Update Week #25
Last week (#25) was the Third Party Developers meeting. We have interesting things to talk about from that meeting. Since I am doing short periods of writing between my Norco inspired naps that news will out in a series of short articles.
Viewers
RC Second Life VMM Viewer version 3.7.31.302677 is out. (NMM = Viewer Managed Marketplace) The comment in the release notes says, “This viewer allows Merchants to manage inventory associated with Marketplace Listings from within the viewer. In addition to making management of Marketplace Listings easier, sale of items that Merchants do not have the right to copy will now be supported with Viewer-Managed Marketplace.”
Second Life News Week #25
Servers
This week the main channel got an update and roll. This package ran on the RC channels for 2 weeks. There isn’t much to say about it. The changes are to server logging and how member lists for large groups download.
Since there is no new package running in the RC channels, we are unlikely to see the main channel get an update and restart in week 26. Hopefully there will be something new for the RC channels in week 26.
Second Life’s Legacy Viewer
In an odd twist the Lab has made available a legacy Second Life™ viewer for those running obsolete, unsupported operating systems. That means Windows XP and Mac OS 10.7 and earlier. You may know that current releases of the SL Viewer will not install on these older systems.
You can get a copy of this viewer from the Official Alternate Viewers Page. Official name: Second Life Obsolete Platforms Viewer version 3.7.28.300847.
This viewer will NOT update. There will be no updates and while I am not sure about the auto-update feature I suspect it is disabled.