Second Life and Virtual Worlds
The Linden made series of viewers
If you have not yet tried the Chat Hub User Interface (CHUI) take a look at Loki’s review: LOKI vs CHUI.
I like first users’ impressions of things. Nice review and lots of pictures of the interface as it is now.
Loki’s opinion of it and how he does nearby and group chat and IM’s is interesting. His feeling that he is likely to change how he has been doing chat to get the benefits of the new CHUI speaks well of the new interface.
A new version of the Development Viewer came out yesterday: 3.4.6 (269073) Jan 15 2013. I figured this would be a good viewer to use for testing the Interest List improvements running in Blue Steel and Le Tigre RC channels. It is an interesting change.
To try the Interest List you need to find a shop in an RC region (Second Life RC LeTigre 13.01.04.268719). I tried:
Then I compared to a standard region in the main channel without the Interest List improvements.
I find it interesting that this viewer is running at 15 to 75 FPS and probably averaging in the 30 to 40 FPS range. It did that in all three regions. I’m running one setting under ULTRA with Draw Distance at 128m.
I see there is a new version of the Chat Hub User Interface Project Viewer out. Version: 3-4-4-268981.
Download the viewer here: CHUI Project Viewer.
The Second Life Viewer is getting lots of changes. Even more are to come in the next weeks as the Materials System that allows the use of normal and specular maps. The 3.4.5 version is currently in pre-beta stage, Development. You can download a copy by looking in the left column for: SL Dev Viewer DL.
Second Life 3.4.5 (268856) Jan 9 2013 13:53:27 (Second Life Development)
The file size when downloaded is 29.6mb. It is fast. The viewer installs in its own folder. So, you can have it and other SL Viewers installed without conflict. It also uses its own settings file. It won’t up set the settings on your other viewers.
People have been having problems connecting to Second Life™ for as long as I have been using SL, probably longer. As the viewer is shifted to use more HTTP protocol services some are seeing better performance and others worse performance. Whatever the case, more use of HTTP is coming.
Monty Linden has been working on the communications library used with Second Life. In general we know that work as the HTTP Library. The library is a file that contains all the code to run the HTTP communications channels for the viewer.
There is a problem with Deferred Render (L&S = Lighting & Shadows) crashing some viewers. The Firestorm Viewer team thinks most people cannot run L&S. That may say more about who is using Firestorm and Phoenix rather than SL users. But, as far as I know there are no good stats to answer the question of how many people can run L&S, at least not in regard to SL users.
As we move forward this will be a more important issue. It certainly makes a difference in how Second Life™ appears on your screen.
Deferred Rendering is a high fidelity render of lighting and in some systems shadows. There is no limit to the number of lights that can be rendered, which is a big step up from the 6 or 8 lights we could previously render in SL.