SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series

The Linden made series of viewers

#SL News Update Week 19

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Mesh Deformer Examples

It seems Inara & I are credited in some measure for getting the word out that mesh clothing examples are needed. Oz says a steady stream of examples are coming in now. If you want any say in how the Mesh Deformer works, get your samples to Oz Linden.

Server Beta Test Group

Spell Checking

Eventually the Linden SL Viewer will get spell check for chat. There is some user interface feedback to be handled and a couple of fixes. Then it can be merged into the viewer and begin moving through the QA pipe. No telling when the work will be completed.

The dictionaries to be packaged with the spell check are; US and UK English, Spanish Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

See STORM-83 – Interactive Spell Checking. Also get a copy of the Spelling Project viewer.

People Search

There is some cleanup work for display names that is incomplete that apparently affects people search. Hopefully the cleanup work make people search better. Until then you may find it works better if you type in a name and click the drop down to search for people.

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#SL Viewer News Week 19

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There are a couple of bits of news that I found interesting. First the stable SL Viewer is version 3.3.1 (254524) and the Beta is 3.3.2 (255742). The Development version is 3.3.3 (255954).

New Local Textures

To go along with the viewers we have the current “stable” nVidia driver 296.10. There are some problems with the driver and that translates into problems for those of us using Second Life®. With later builds of the SL Viewer the driver has worked well for me.

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Second Life Dev Viewer 3.3.2 (252228)

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The link to the latest build of the Development and Integration viewers seem to be wacky. Whatever is going on with them the Dev Viewer link, the Snowstorm Viewer page leads to a new 252228 build today.

If you don’t know about the Dev and Integration viewers, all you really need to know is: the viewers are from the testing pipeline. We expect them to have problems because they have not been completely tested. One resorts to using them only if the main and/or Beta viewers fail to run well on your machine. Of course testers run the Dev or Integration viewers to help with testing the viewers… or because of some kind of insanity.

Speed

With Sun/Moon shadows I get between 5 FPS in malls to 22 FPS in …residential… areas.

Memory

This version has its memory leaks. After may shopping spree memory use had grown to 1.2 mb and was still climbing.

Crash

The last couple of versions have been crashing on exit. This version does too.

Second Life Dev Viewer 3.3.2 (251752)

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The build process’ linking for the Development Viewer is not working correctly. So, the Snowstorm Page is not updating as it should. It is stuck on 3.3.2 (250772). However, there have been a number of builds and improvements in the Dev Viewer. We just can’t get to them.

However, you can get the latest Development Integration Viewer. This is not a daily use viewer. But, the current rumor is it is stable. I find it is only using 650±mb of ram. That is way down from 1.2 to 2.1mb I have seen in previous versions.

Another branch named Viewmaster is the branch the bug chasers are working on. It is said to be very very stable. Now if I can just figure out the link.

#SL Clouds, Grey, and Blurry Avatars

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We seem to be getting another round of poorly rezzing avatars. The particle cloud avatars we know about. That is often a connection issue. I write my fix-it article Avatar Render Problems: Ghost Cloud Smoke Ball Ruth in September 2010. But, something new is up.

The Problem - Extended Bake Fail

Blurry Avatars

For several weeks I have noticed when changing clothes I get a blurry avatar. My skin and clothes start blurry after a change, then rez nice and crisp once, then go blurry again and never seem to finish rezzing.  They stay blurry.

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#SL Development Viewer Update

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I have been watching for a Development Viewer update since February 6. Yesterday SL Dev Viewer 3.3.1 (250315) became available for download. See: Snowstorm. If you are not closely following viewer development it is hard to know what new features and fixes are in the development viewer. If you read ‘repositoryese’, it is easier. I’m not that good at it.

ADITI Receive Testing Area

Viewer related fixes and features from all the various projects make it into the Development Viewer before moving to the Beta Viewer. The Development Viewer is for those that like to play with the bleeding edge tech from the Lab and do not mind some problems. The purpose of the viewer is to allow SL users that want to help to test the viewer. For most users of the Dev Viewer it is mostly about running and using the viewer and letting it send crash reports. Filing JIRA’s to help explain problems is greatly appreciated the various teams. Bitching about bugs in the viewer is poor form that displays a lack of understanding.

Download & Install

The download is about 28mb and it’s fast.

The install is simple straight forward run and done.

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