Viewers

General Viewer Information

Viewer Release Pipeline 2013-34

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This is week 35, but the news is from last Friday.

With the viewer release pipeline there is a slow down. Viewer code changes are kept small to reduce the complexity of debugging. That seems to create a number of possible release candidates. With lots of release candidates one either has to release a new viewer each week or it takes some time to get candidates moved forward.

To speed things up some candidates are being merged together. Since only one candidate can move forward there are two staying behind that have been tested for a week. They will of course be merged with the candidate’s code that moved forward and their package tested for another week. But, if the candidate was really looking good, it might be possible to save some time by merging in a new code set that would otherwise have to wait and be a candidate of its own.

That has currently happened with the Snowstorm and CHUI candidates.

There are more Project Viewers coming. Project Viewers coming are; more Snowstorm, another Sunhine round, HTTP, Interest List, and a couple of unannounced ones. We should hear about one of the unannounced ones in two weeks. Could that be Advanced Experience Tools? Probably not.

GPU Table & Performance

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The Lab rates video cards into 5 classes. They setup your default viewer graphics preferences based on those classes.

There is an update coming to the GPU Table, which is what the viewers use to figure out what class your video card is in and choose your initial settings. We should see it in one of the viewer release candidates this week or next.

The GPU Table has this information:

// Class Numbers:
0 – Defaults to low graphics settings. No shaders on by default Not supported
1 – Defaults to mid graphics settings. Basic shaders on by default Supported
2 – Defaults to high graphics settings. Atmospherics on by default. Supported
3 – Same as 2, but with lighting and shadows enabled. Supported
4 – Same as 3, but with ambient occlusion enabled. Supported
5 – Same as 4, but with shadows set to “Sun/Moon+Projectors.” Supported

You can find a copy of the GPU Table in the viewer’s install folder. Its secret name is: gpu_table.txt. You can look up your model of video card to see how the Lab thinks it should be supported. 

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Second Life Height Offset

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Third party viewer users are accustomed to have the a feature know as avatar z-offset or height offset. This feature allowed us to precisely control our avatars vertical position. Whether walking, sitting, or ground sitting we could adjust the avatar’s vertical position in relation to the ground or a floor.

The roll out of SSA broke this feature. It appears this is the thing most often asked about in various support groups since SSA rolled out. At least it is the question I see most consistently being asked. Well, that and temporary texture upload. But, temporary texture upload has been replaced with Local Textures for some time.

Today I see the Marine Kelly has an article out about a fix for Height Offset. See: RestrainedLove Viewer 2.8.5.3 with Z offset fix. Marine also explains how to use Local textures in her article. 

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Kokua Viewer 3.6.3 Released

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WARNING! If you are a Windows user, avoid grabbing a copy and just installing it. That will create problems. Read the notice on the blog. Some things have changed and this install must be done differently than in the past. See: Kokua 3.6.3. Once you have made an update to 3.6.3 the installs will work correctly… or so we think.

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers
Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

The problem comes from the Kokua Dev Team incorporating Automatic Updates. The addition required a renaming of the install folder from Kokua Viewer to just Kokua. A basic install will result in having two versions of Kokua installed. 

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Exporting Second Life

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Hamlet has an interesting article up today: New Singularity Viewer Lets SL Creators Convert & Export Their Prim-Based Works to Unity 3D & Other Top Platforms. Hamlet explains why this is such an important aspect of Second Life™. Hamlet links to the article explaining how to do the export from SL to Unity 3D.

[youtube lTlnKOYGFrk]

I am obviously not paying enough attention to Singularity. I like the viewer but care little for the user interface, V1 style. But, this export feature makes Singularity a must have for advanced users in SL.

Hamlet is excited about the advantage this offers educational institutions.

 

SL Viewer updates to 3.6.3-279564

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The release notes for this version of the Second LifeTM Viewer were published August 12th. There are about 33 fixes and additions. There are eight known issues that remain. Your viewer will automatically update to this version if you are using the default setting to automatically update.

SL Viewer
SL Viewer

If you have “Willing to update to release candidates” enabled, you may get a release candidate. I’m still flipping coins on whether that is a good idea or not. I’ve mostly decided I need to turn off Automatic updates for everything except the main SL Viewer and I have ‘Willing’ disabled on all my viewers. I do install release candidates, but manually.

This version of the SL Viewer Second Life 3.6.3-279564 was put into RC status Aug  6, 2013. Just yesterday it was promoted to the main release. This is the exact same viewer that was the RC, which is the point. 

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