Second Life

Things about SL

#SL Milkshake Viewer 3.2.6(6) Review

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New Milkshake Logo

A new release of Milkshake came out January 5. This one has Qarl’s Mesh Deformer. I suspect this feature is based on Exodus’ work so I think it would have a enable/disable feature. I can’t find the control to enable or disable it.

Somewhere in the updates process the logo changed from a cupcake to a cow with I think daisies for a hat.

The viewer is now using newer code. This viewer is basing its update on the Catznip Viewer updates. There are imports of ‘graphics tools’ from Exodus.

The Snapshot and AO panels have been updated. However, the post to Feed feature is not yet working.

I think I’ve posted one image to my Feed. However the Post to Feed is a way around the L$10 upload fee. Need to share a quick snapshot of something with a friend? Save it to your Feed. This is a great work around for newbies that have no Lindens. Unfortunately they have no way to learn about it.

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Animation Overriders

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More and more Third Party Viewers (TPV) have built in Animation Overriders (AO). A huge problem for those of us that use multiple viewers is the problem of each viewer having unique AO folders. There is no standard AO folder. Milkshake names their AO folder Milkshake, Phoenix’s is named Phoenix, Firestorm’s is Firestorm…

New AO's

If you have walk’s and stand’s that are no copy, you were screwed. You were forced to have different animation sets for each viewer, which sucks. This is the main reason I still use my ZHOA-II HUD. It is available in any viewer I choose to use. Plus I only need to set it up once.

AO Animation Configuration Tool

I also avoided using built-in AO’s because I have a couple of favorite animations that are no copy. Fortunately more and more animations are provided as copy-ok. The super cheap (L$10 mostly) animations in Kuso are copy \o/. Eventually I’ll find replacements for my no-copy fav’s. (I was new when I bought them.)

AO’s Change

I haven’t been keeping up on Viewer AO’s. When they first came out I played with them, ran into problems, and stopped using the built-ins. At some point things changed. While playing with the Milkshake Viewer I decided to try the built-in AO for one of my Alt’s.

New Milkshake Logo

Milkshake has a nice AO system. I like it and was surprised several times. I’m not sure who wrote the code or which viewer had the system first, that just doesn’t matter to me. Sorry programmers, no offense or diss intended.

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Qarl’s Alignment

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I found a post by Innula Zenovka on SLUniverse that says Qarl has donated his prim alignment tool code to Linden Lab. I wrote about the tool in October of 2010: Qarl Fizz Prim Alignment Tool. I included Qarl’s video about how the tool works and have copied it to this post too. The original development announcement can be found on Qarl’s blog as: setting things straight. Check out the JIRA links at the end.

[youtube 7UCeU8ItZGA]

You can see Qarl’s blog post about it here: thank you, back. Qarl links to Tateru’s article:  How to send Qarl money. It seems someone sent Qarl some money. As a way of saying thanks to whoever that was, Qarl donated the code to the Lab.

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Cool VL 1.26.3 Release Review

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There is a new version of the Cool Viewer out. I haven’t been keeping up with it because it uses the older V1 User Interface. But, I wanted to check it out. I’ve learned a few things that should be included in any review of Cool VL Viewer and may be about any V1 viewer. I’ve covered several points that affect all users regardless of viewer used, so you may want to skim this even if you are not interested in Cool VL. But, you are sure to learn some surprising things about Cool.

Get V1, V2, and V3 Right

In Second Life we have our own jargon when talking about SL. For instance the whole virtual world is mesh. Press Ctrl-Shift-R to see it. But, we call only some things mesh. We mean the new things we can make with ‘mesh’ models made in Blender and 3DS Max or Maya.

Cool VL Viewer 1.26.3 - Me Wearing Mesh Top

Our references to viewers and what code they are based on tends to be via shortened version numbers, thus; V1, V2, and V3. The problem now is that we no longer have viewers based purely on any one version of Linden Lab’s code.

Cool VL was based on Snow Globe code. Technically Snow Globe is version 1.5. However, that was a beginning point for Cool VL. It is no longer made from pure Snow Globe code. Code from the Lab’s version 2 and 3 are now part of Cool VL.

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Dolphin Viewer 3.2.3 (22899) Released Review

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A new version of the Dolphin Viewer 3 (DV3) is out. This release includes code from the Lab’s Shining branch and version 3.2.6. The fixes from the Shining branch should correct OpenGL compatibility problems for those with newer graphics cards.

Shadows in Dolphin Viewer 3

The compatibility issues have been around since mid 2011 and became a serious problem for those using nVidia 460 cards. See: nVidia Driver GTX 460 Problems. As more people updated to new 400 and 500 series cards we saw more problems. I think since the 3.2.3 versions we have been seeing fewer problems. But, there is supposedly more of the shining fixes in 3.2.6 than any of the previous versions. Whatever the case, I’m not having problems with my GTX560.

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#SL Viewer Performance

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Inara Prey recently wrote an article on Comparative Viewer Frame Rate performance. It is a handy reference. It took lots of effort to collect those numbers, which is why I seldom do rigorous tests.

Somewhat surprisingly it is the Linden Lab’s 3.2.5 viewer that is the fastest in the comparisons. I use the Development viewer 3.2.6, which is a little faster for me than 3.2.5.

The Lab’s viewers have not updated over the holidays. We may see some updates today or tomorrow. I suspect the Lindens are just getting back from the holidays and getting back into things. Also, it is a new year. People are fresh from a break and we may see some things change as they look at things with fresh eyes. Time will tell.

The main viewer is now 3.2.4. The beta version is 3.2.5. And the development viewer is 3.2.6.

The 3.2.6 is said to be the release with most of the Shining branch’s OpenGL fixes and changes for compatibility. I’ve been using a 3.2.6 version since December 12th (246465) with four updates; 246560, 246813, 246889, and now 246959. Of that series the 246959 version is the fastest, but not by much on my system.

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