Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Linden made series of 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.
We have new Beta and Development Viewer releases out.
The current beta viewer is: 3.5.1 (274264) Beta. This one has some changes;
The Development Viewer is: 3.5.2 (274345) Development. There are no published release notes, as it really hasn’t been released.
The Materials Viewer is still build: 274082. Be careful with this viewer. It can possibly mess up existing content. Users have reported it is reasonably reliable and usable. A couple of people use it as their everyday viewer. But, that does not mean they have done everything you may try to do.
As always use these at your own risk. If you have a problem that is unbearable, one of these viewers may have the fix for it.
The server updates seem to have gone pretty well. There are some good things and some bad things.
Region crossings are way better. A couple of sailors and pilots have commented in the Deploys thread about how much better things are.
[youtube t8IUxCMyElU]
With this rollout the problem of some items simply not rendering has gotten worse. If one clicks on them they show up. So, the server has told the viewer they are there. But, for some reason the viewer is not rendering them. It seems the problem is showing up in Linden and third party viewers.
In late February problems in ADITI were slowing down Third Part Party work on SSAB (Server Side Avatar Baking). Nyx Linden explained that some of the problems in the SSAB pile-on test were caused by inventory failures. The problem then becomes sorting out what is an ADITI Inventory issue and what is a SSAB issue.
In any event, some significant changes have been made to ADITI Inventory. Unfortunately the changes may not save you from problems if you change your password to trigger an inventory refresh. My experience has been to keep changing your password until it corrects. But, with these changes the Lindens are saying if a password change breaks your inventory, contact them and they will fix it.
Two new pile-on tests are planned for this week. There will be a test using the SSAB Project viewer, which you can download now. That test will be after the Server Beta meeting Thursday in Morris, ADITI. The meeting starts at 3 PM SLT. The test will start whenever the meeting ends, scheduled for 4 PM. But, meeting do end early. So, be early.
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.
I see that yesterday a new version of the Lab’s Development Viewer was released: Second Life 3.5.1 (270826) Feb 26 2013 07:22:18 (Second Life Development). There are no release notes yet, but that is normal. So, we can’t easily know what is different in this viewer.
I’ll remind you this is not a viewer the Lab recommends for everyday use. It is pre-Beta and likely buggy. So, use it at your own risk. So, far it has been working for me.
The obvious change is the Chat Hud User Interface (CHUI).
This change has been in development for weeks. We have had a CHUI Project Viewer for some time. So, we have gotten to see the new CHUI. Some people like it so well they have been using that project viewer as their primary viewer.