Viewers

General Viewer Information

#SL Mesh Uploader Change

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Runitai Linden has released a pre-QA version of a modified viewer. The mesh upload function has been changed to solve some problems. The primary problem being SH-3055 – Cannot upload any model (*.dae) file; “xxx failed to upload, see the log file for details.”

Runitai announced the release in a comment in the JIRA.

Download Second Life Test Viewer

REMEMBER: This is an untested build so it likely contains other unrelated bugs.

If you find problems with the viewer’s mesh upload, post the information in SH-3055. This should be a JIRA item open to all SL users.

Second Life Render Metadata

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You may have noticed the item in the Develop menu labeled Render Metadata. At this week’s Content and Mesh Creation user group meeting Zed Tremont asked about getting more information for items in this menu. Nyx Linden provided some insight into these items.

Second Life Viewer’s Render Metadata Menu

If you have not noticed the item look in the top menu try: Develop (Ctrl-Alt-Q – Advanced has to enabled in some viewers to see it Ctrl-Alt-D)-> Render Metadata.

These tools are more for developers than ‘for creators.’ But, creators can use some of them. Unfortunately most of the items are not explained in the Second Life™ Wiki. Nyx says, “…at the moment our documentation around this *is* the source code, most of these displays are mostly used by our graphics engineers, they’re not intended to be general-use displays (hence the lack of documentation).”

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#SL CHUI Quick Review

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This is my first experience with the new Second Life(TM) Prohect Viewer: New #SL Project Viewer. Its just a quick look.

Download & Install

The CHUI Project Viewer is the standard download. The file is about 29mb.

The install places the viewer in its own program folder. The viewer has its own settings. So, you will have to run through the settings to get it the way you want.

However, my menu buttons came up just as my main SL Viewer. Which is kinda cool.

CHUI – Chat User Interface 10/2012 – Expanded Chat

Experience

The first thing I noticed is this viewer has the problem that first clicks on doors do not appear to open the door. It opens you just don’t see it open. You can see it the second time the door opens or closes.

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New #SL Project Viewer

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There is a new blog post up announcing a new Project Viewer: 3.4.1-266120 Project Viewer CHUI. See: The Second Life Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI) Launches Today. This viewer has some new features. I suspect these are some of the features that were being held up by the 3.4.x memory leak problem, which apparently is not completely solved… and thus resulting a 14±% crash rate, which is still way down from what it was.

Pictures to follow… Look here for pictures: #SL CHUI Quick Review

Conversation Log

This is a feature in CHUI that shows you all the conversations you have had in the last 30 days.

Conference Chat

You probably know you can already select multiple people in your friends list and open a conference chat. A new feature now allows you to add people to the conference after it is opened.

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New Info from the Firestorm Team

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No not a viewer release. Jessica has posted on the Firestorm blog about what is going on with Firestorm and their development effort. See: Status update.

New Firestorm Region in OSGrid

In my Kokua article: Kokua Beta Status & Review, I wrote about the rates that developers were releasing versions of their viewers. Jessica is explaining their release philosophy and how that will be changing.

Included is a list of coming features in the next release. Some we have seen in preliminary versions in other TPV’s. I expect the Firestorm release to have features with more polish and improved user interface.

The Team is also focusing on stability. Firestorm is currently the most stable viewer used with Second Life™. Jessica says they have even more stability fixes.

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Kokua Beta Status & Review

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Today I see a post on the Kokua/Imprudence blog. NickyP wrote about the problems added when a developer moves from a Beta release to a production release. They are the reason that the Kokua viewer is staying a Beta Viewer.

The Team is able to develop faster because they keep it a Beta release viewer, which is a good thing.

Kokua/Imprudence Viewers

Back when the Viewer Policies changed some developers were warning that development would slow down because of all the stuff they were required to do. Now developers are finding their way around some of the more tedious requirements.

Kokua and Exodus both release numerous beta versions. They release few production releases.

The Firestorm viewer is infrequently released as it mostly comes out only in production releases. The typical beta release for Firestorm is to their QA people or maybe we should call them beta testers. Beta releases when they are released are versions that are intended to be a future production version. Some other TPV Dev’s are releasing beta versions that are much more in the line of experimental viewers that have fewer restictions.

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