This morning Linden Lab released Viewer 2.0 and opened the new resident Help Island. New World Notesgives you a glimpse of the new user experience. We old residents can’t visit there. It is supposed to be better and should help retain more new users. We’ll see.
The new Second Life viewer is very much like the Beta 2.0 viewer. The Lindens say lots has been fixed and changed. Other than the side panel not messing up my HUD’s I didn’t see much in about 30 minutes of use.
In announcing the new Second Life 2.0 T. Linden tells us what Linden Lab has learned from their research and what they are focusing on. See: Unveiling An Improved New Resident Experience
KirstenLee S20 (12) Viewer
KirstenLee has released another update on her S20 viewer now version (12). It has the new MOAP (Media On A Prim) feature. Her user interface makes more sense for existing residents. I still get those slow motion freezes where the Frames per Second (FPS) drop to 1 or 2 and ping goes to 50,000ms… If I get the region IP address I can ping it from out side the viwer and get a good ping, 80ms to 200ms. So, I doubt it is my connection. The previous version of Emerald and Snowglobe were doing the same thing.
She has fixed the chat and IM’s so they are more usable. In general it’s a nice viewer… and of course it does shadows.
New World Notes posted about this on a tip from Daniel Voyager. The chart is a Google Spreadsheet. If you are looking for a viewer with specific abilities, this chart is just what you need.
Update:2014-06 – WebKit remains a problem. For the latest information scroll to the bottom of a WebKit article and look for the tag WebKit (or click this link). Click it to f ind the latest articles. You may need to use your browsers ‘Find-in-Page’ search (usually Ctrl-F) to find the pertinent part of the article. – Apple seems to have abandoned QTWebKit. In general the world is moving to Chrome Embedded Framework (CEF) as a better HTML5 type replacement.
Update: 2011-08-25 – Be sure you read the comments. Additional recent fixes have been added by others.
Update: 2010-07-23 – The new SL 2.1 viewer is causing people problems. It is an old error coming up again. There are several threads popping up on the SL forums. See: (Second Life WebKit Fail / Error – Problem Again) – One new solution is from Jesica (see comments), which is to find slplugin in the SL install folder, right-click for properties, and set it to Win95 compatibility mode.
Update: 2010-06-17 – With the release of Emerald Viewer version 2165 several people are running into this or a similar issue again. Those not having a problem installed to a new directory/folder rather installing over the top of the previous install. Others have copied the WebKit files from Snowglobe to fix the problem. Others just added slplugin to there anti-virus/firewall white list. In my version 2100 MOAP (Media On A Prim) isn’t working otherwise the viewer is fine. More to follow once I upgrade my viewer, watch for a 2165 review update.
Original Post
A new problem with the Second Life 2.0 Beta Viewer and viewers based on the new viewer software. People are getting a popup error when starting the viewers. Some think it is the firewall, doesn’t seem to be. Somethink it is the anti-virus software, doesn’t seem to be. But, I have yet to find a solution.
Snowglobe users ran into this problem in October 2009… Its back…
The recent viewer update did not resolve the problem…
Solution
I added slplugin.exe to my Windows Firewall and told my anti-virus it is an exception. I checked my computer for older versions of slplugin.exe and replaced all the older versions with a copy of the latest. I rebooted the computer after the changes. After the restart the SL2.0 Beta viewer started without the error.
New versions of KirstenLeee’s viewer are coming out faster than any other. Check out her latest one. KirstenLee Viewer S20 – Version (4) is on the site now.
This viewer is based on the SL 2.0 Beta code. If you want the new stuff and not the cluttered interface, this is a likely choice.
There are now examples of what MOAP (Media On A Prim) can do. Linden Lab is billing the SLPro! conference as a coming annual event… or whatever cycle they decide. At this one they have people showing what they could do with MOAP. You can read their blog post: Residents Show Off Their Skills at SLPro! Visit the exhibits in: Media Sandbox West.
And another view hits the streets… See the 5/1/10 Update.
Imprudence did not advance as much as some of the other viewers did. However, it is still a favorite for those on the OpenSIM grids. You can see the Imprudence Release Notes.
