Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
The Firestorm team, in spite of running three pass QA, let some problems get through. This just shows how hard it is to catch problems in software. Whatever, the blog now has an article up on the top 3 complaints and their fixes.
Top 3 Complaints & Resolutions for 4.4.0 Release Firestorm Viewer.
The article leads back to Lette’s article, updated, from a few days ago. I covered Lette’s article here: Firestorm Viewer Information.
A new version of an older KirstenLee Viewer has been released, which is surprising. The news comes from KirstenLee’s blog. It is a short one sentence announcement. I show the blog page as this first image.
KirstenLee’s last release was in September 2012 and a version S22. In December of 2011 Kirsten had to stop viewer development when his (RL)/her (SL) family was dealing with health issues. See: The End of Kirsten’s Viewer, which describes the failure of a ‘CrowdFunder™’ effort to save the viewer.
There is a lot of things happening. More will be happening in the coming few weeks. Chances are really good that something you used to do a specific way is going to change. There is a good chance you will also be seeing some odd behavior in Second Life™. Things won’t work the same.
A great source of quick answers for Firestorm Viewer users is Lette’s Trivia and Trivial Stuff blog. Lette has a new article up listing the questions most heard by the Firestorm Support Group: Frequently Asked Support Questions: April 23.
If you have an ATI video card, there is a problem with black screens in Firestorm 4.4.0. They have the fix posted.
There is a longer explanation of the Height Offset that has been removed from the SL System, not just the Firestorm Viewer, in Lette’s article. The FS Team did remove the control. They expected to get lots of blowback from that and they have. But, it can’t be helped.
However, they did get Nyx Lindens quick fix for the problem added to their appearance editor. You can see how to use that here: Firestorm Height Adjustment. It sucks… not FS… the system fix. I wrote about the problem in: Second Life Avatar Offset. Check it for what you can do to get a usable offset back.
Can’t find some user interface buttons? The answer is there. The team made some changes and added the possibility to modify the user interface in new ways. There is a nice how to in Lette’s article.
I see today that the Kokua Viewer, the successor to Imprudence Viewer, has been added to the Second Life Third Party Viewer (TPV) Directory. You’ll find it listed in the second section of the list. The Kokua wiki page is here: Kokua Viewer.
The second section of the directory is for viewers that do not report crashes or do not have enough users to report a significant number of reports. So, it may move to the first section when enough reports are collected.
The Kokua team has announced the release of Kokua Viewer 3.5.1. The Release Notes are here. The notes are difficult reading. The Kokua Viewer Download is here. I only see Windows and Linux versions.
They also have a development viewer: Kokua Viewer 3.5.2.
I liked the Imprudence Viewer. But, it is far too behind the times for me to use it. But, that may change.
There is an article on Hypergrid Business by Maria Korolov: Work Resumes on Imprudence Viewer. Maria has news I had yet to hear. Seems a team is taking on updating the old viewer.
They will be avoiding the Havok Code Licensing. Unless a grid is going to implement Havok Physics and add Pathfinding there is no purpose to having the code in an OpenSim viewer. Plus few people even know what the code does or how to use it in Second Life. So, there is little point to adding it.
However, mesh, media on a prim and other parts of the SL tech will be added to the viewer.
It seems they will retain the V1 user interface. For a V3 interface one can use the sister viewer Kokua.
I wish them the best and will be watching how they progress.
OK, I’m surprised. There is a new experimental release of the Imprudence Viewer out. You can get more information here: Imprudence Blog.
I removed the viewer some time ago. At one time it was my preferred viewer for building in-world. For even longer it was my viewer for OpenSim grids. But, it was slow adopting mesh and AFAIK still does not support mesh.
As far as I can tell this viewer is not Sever Side Appearance baking compatible. So, it is good for from 2 to 8 weeks, until the Lab rolls out SSA.