SLV2, 3, 4, 5, 6. & 7 Series – Page 97 – Nalates’ Things & Stuff

Second Life Viewer Update Week 23

2011/06/142011/06/08 by Nalates Urriah

Lots of things are breaking loose. New features are coming and new Project Viewers are being released. Some interesting stuff.

WindLight

A new Project Viewer is out that incorporates the region controls for WindLight settings. There is a SL Wiki page for the project: Windlight Region Settings Project Viewer. There are Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. Of course this viewer feature is only useful if you have control of a region. There is lots of information about the new feature and how it works on the same page.

Update: Lindens announce Project Viewer for Estate Windlight 6/13 Link

New Second Life Windlight Testers Group — New Windlight Testers Group

The purpose of this feature is to allow region owners to set the environment for their region. Residents that use the viewer’s default environment setting will see the region as the owner intends. So, you can see how regions with Windlight settings work.

The feature is incomplete. But, it allows some testing to begin. For those testing Oz Linden wants them to join the “Windlight Region Testers” group. With the newer viewers with updated search you can select GROUPS and find it. But, there is no link for use in chat or email. There is a cut, copy, and paste, if one right clicks, but they don’t work. Annoying.

The ability to set region Windlight is already in all servers on the main grid. For those that awnt to see a region with Windlight setting changes visit: BlakOpal region, Caledon, Hippo Hollow and Hippotropolis.

Second Life Viewer 2.7.2 (232036)

2011/06/05 by Nalates Urriah

The Development Viewer is an Alpha level version that users can test. A recent release of it has a couple of changes to the cache. Cache size has been increased to 10gb. There is now a real Cache Clear button that actually clears the cache.

The operation of the previous Cache Reset button was confusing. It has been renamed to better represent its action, Default Location, which resets the cache’s location to the default location.

The changes and new buttons have been moved from the Setup tab to the Advanced tab. Me→ Preferences → Advanced.

Chat Logs are saved by some residents. To facilitate saving logs there is a control to allow you to have the viewer use a location other than the default location. While it seems odd to me, the setting is on the Privacy tab. Me → Preferences → Privacy.

Search – The new search is in this version of the viewer. It still has some oddities. When searching for people use the People filter. Otherwise names and display names can make it hard to find a person.

The frame rates (FPS) are low on this version.

SLV 2.7.1 Development Quick Look

2011/05/282011/05/27 by Nalates Urriah

Once a week or more often I upgrade to a new version of the Snowstorm Development Viewer. It is one of these versions that eventually becomes the next Beta Viewer. This version has a couple of features I’ve been expecting.

Update: The SL Viewer 2.7.0 Beta is out and the 2.7.1 version is the same.

Graphics

Kirsten’s viewer has had dynamic shadows revealed as Preference settings for some time. Now this version of the SLV has the settings out where users can turn them on and off. In the left column of settings in the Graphics tab you’ll see the new settings.

Lighting & Shadows – This setting will be grayed out if your hardware does not support it or if Atmospheric Shaders are disabled (another setting in Preferences). Turning this feature on should engage deferred rendering. You should see little difference in the render, but the image should look better. The impact on Frames Per Second (FPS) while using medium power hardware should be small if even noticeable. There is a major improvement on the number of lights rendered. Previously 6 or 8 was the max. It is unclear how many can be handled now. In the past months we have seen over 200 render in tests. (See: KirstenLee Viewer S20(40) Released) The quality of Avatar Impostures improves. You probably won’t realize when your viewer is or isn’t using impostures. Shiny and Bright should look better.

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Second Life Basic Viewer

2011/05/26 by Nalates Urriah

I suspect most of us ignore the Basic Mode in the SL Viewer. However, the Lab isn’t. They are studying and figuring out how to change the viewer to make entering #SL easier for new users. A recent change…

Voice

The Basic Mode Viewer in its latest incarnation has voice. It is disabled by default. There is a microphone button that is clicked to popup a menu allowing one to enable it and select input and output devices. It replaces the Speak button we have in Advanced mode.

Destinations

The Destinations Guide at the bottom now shows the number of destinations in category. Once a category is selected the number people in a region is displayed.

Revised #SL Mesh Arriving

2011/05/242011/05/24 by Nalates Urriah

The viewer using the new mesh format should be out Thursday of this week. The ADITI grids should have the new server side mesh software installed across most of the mesh regions. Mesh in ADITI will likely vanish as it is returned. New versions of user mesh will have to be uploaded. We’ll see an announcement when the sims and viewer are ready.

Update: See warning below.

New Format

With any luck the new mesh format will be published on the Wiki this week. That means OpenSim coders can start making their changes.

SL Viewer Progress Week 20

2011/05/17 by Nalates Urriah

Lots of confusion and server problems this last week. New code being merged into the servers caused problems. For viewers the result has been problems and things not working. If you aren’t checking the SL Grid Status, you can’t tell if it is the viewer or the grid. Things are calming down and work is resuming on the viewer.

Region WindLight

More work has been done on getting controls built for setting a region’s Windlight values. The control dialogs are being arranged this week. Once that is done we’ll get a project viewer for testing. Of course, you can only test it if you have a region you manage (estate manager). If you are a region manager and willing to test the feature, get in touch with Oz Linden.

Oz expects the server side code to be on the grid by the time the Project Viewer Rolls out. So, I think we are talking a week or two…