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

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. … Read more

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…

Coming Second Life Viewer Changes

2011/05/09 by Nalates Urriah

I’m always curious about what new toys and fixes we are getting that makes a difference in how we use Second Life or at least the viewer. I don’t really care that a button is in the wrong place or some text is not highlighting correctly. But, I love learning about features that make something easier or solve a problem. So, what is in the tube?

Some of the following are being worked on, others are in the ‘Backlog’ of things to do. If you see something here that you would like to hurry up, visit the JIRA and add yourself to the watch list. Voting is pretty much depreciated.

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