#Second Life Spell Check

From a post on SL Universe I got a lead to STORM-83 – As a user who cannot type of [SIC] spell to save their life, I want dynamic spell check for everything I type, so I a little bit more literate. 🙂 It has a total of 5 Watchers as I write this.

Several Third Party Viewers have spell check for local and group chat. But, not the SL Viewer. It seems that will soon change. Oz Linden posted in the JIRA to thank Kitty (Barnett? I’m guessing) for the coming spell check feature. I suppose Kitty has contributed the code to add spell check to the SL Viewer. If my guess is correct this Kitty is the Kitty that provides the RLV code used in several third party viewers.

Every so often I forget the SL Viewer does not have spell check and pop open Preferences to turn it on and soon have a Doh! moment. It will be nice to soon have spell check.

#SL Viewer 3.2 Keyboard Shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts in the SL Wiki have been updated to show shortcuts for version 3.2. This is the one with the new user interface. You could memorize them and remove all the buttons from your viewer setup. Not something I would do. But, there are some handy shortcuts. I’ll explain some of the ones I like.

The wiki page: All Second Life keyboard shortcut keys.

For User Interface (UI) developers there is a special page for working out shortcut keys based on operating systems. See: Shortcuts SL-UX.

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#SL Viewer Update Week 45

The main viewer has moved up to version 3.2.0-244443. The Beta viewer is now up to 3.2.1-244666 (someone have a sense of humor?) And today the Snowstorm Development viewer is at 3.2.3-244722. I mostly use the Development viewer. So, I’m always unsure what the main viewer is doing or what is or is not included in it. I’ll explain what the viewers are and where you can get them and what other Linden Lab viewers are available.

Second Life Viewer
Dev 244722 on ADITI

Other Viewers

The three SL Viewers listed above are the primary viewers in use by residents, excluding third party viewers. But, they are not the only Linden Lab viewers available. The above viewers are available from the main Second Life Download page. Under More Viewers (More or Alternate Second Life Viewers) is a link to the Wiki page listing the other SL Viewers and Third Party Viewers (TPV.)

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#SL’s New Attachment Points

Additional attachment points are always handy. We are apparently getting two more.

Neck

Those of us working with rigged mesh to make avatar bodies and clothes can see the neck bone in the skeleton. Even before a large number of people started looking at the skeleton and asking why can’t we attach things there, people were asking for a neck attachment point.

New Neck Attachment Point

If you are wondering how people knew about it… animators knew about it because the ‘neck bone’  can be controlled in an animation.

Now the neck attachment point is in testing in the Development Viewer. See  JIRA STORM-1672. Previously labeled VWR-26120. If you like the idea, vote for it by clicking WATCH.

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#SL OpenGL Fixes

In this week’s mesh meeting the topic of viewer fixes being stuck in the development pipeline came up. For some time we have been dealing with viewer issues from OpenGL.

Runitai Linden said this in the Mesh Meeting:

The GL compatibility pass that hasn’t shipped yet is still in QA — it’s a very large change and there are still several regressions that need addressing before it ships.

In regard to fixes not making it to the main viewer:

It’s really a side effect of having a rapid release cycle — not every release can contain all the bugs that have been fixed because integrating them takes time — we have to pick which ones go in first.

Some of the remaining problems with the fixes are performance related, taking the Mac side to 5 to 10 FPS on good hardware. Until that problem is found and fixed it holds the process up for those related fixes.

For those with serious OpenGL issues, try the Shining Fixes branch of viewer development. SL Shining Viewer Download – build 3.2.1-244115 today.

Also, the SL Development Viewer (build 3.2.1-244112) has a number of fixes in it.

Be warned these viewer will have other problems and probably new bugs and returning old ones. Its part of the development cycle.