I keep wondering why I get so many hits on the Astra Viewer. My last review was in November 2011. The web site for the viewer seems to have disappeared. I had assumed that development on the viewer had stopped. But, it seems not.
Astra Viewer 1.6.4.1 Splash Page
One can Download Astra Viewer from Github: aurora-sim / Astra Viewer – Download. This version is 7 months old. I can’t really see where it is being actively maintained. But it seems to get updated every 3 to 6 months, which would suggest a new update may arrive at any time.
Indi on Plurk pointed to an article by Bryn Oh, a well known artist in Second Life™ sharing tips on saving prim count (Land Impact) cost. Check it out: Prim reduction trick. This is about redoing prim counts for prim objects and mesh objects. Plus: Bryn Oh’s blog is pretty awesome and worth checking out.
It is the Christmas Season and in the merriment some news is leaking out about things to come.
Avatar Baking
I think most of you have heard a public countdown clock is running on Third Party Viewers (TPV) being able to deliver this service. Those that don’t change over will render avatars as grey or clouds.
Yuzuru Driving to User Group Meeting
What is less known is the new service only uses the HTTP protocol to deliver baked textures. In most ways this is a good thing. However, a number of people in Japan are seeing problems with HTTP texture being slow. Most of the rest of the world outside of Asia is NOT seeing that problem. They see a speed up. So, if you are in Japan and you are seeing a slower HTTP delivery of textures, get in touch with Monty Linden. But, be sure you know it is not your computer and be sure you can add information to the discussion before contacting Monty.
Working with some new client computers I ran into some VERY annoying problems with the Google Chrome Internet Browser. There is an initial Sign In which seems hard to turn off.
Browser Market Share
In my search to find out how to turn off the annoying Sign In I learned several things about Chrome and Chromium. If you don’t know, The Chromium Projects according to Chromium’s home page are:
The Chromium Projects include Chromium and Chromium OS, the open-source projects behind the Google Chrome browser and Google Chrome OS, respectively. This site houses the documentation and code related to the Chromium projects and is intended for developers interested in learning about and contributing to the open-source projects.
While I knew about Chromium being the open source side of Google’s Chrome browser, it had not dawned on me that this was the place to get information about Chrome. Duh! Well… we all have our stupid moments… and I didn’t even have to go blond. It is not the end-all-be-all source and Chrome often does not work as Chrome does, has files in different places, and different or missing registry entries at least they have some information that can help. It is very much like Linden Lab viewers and Third Party viewers… the same but different.
WARNING:Update – I can’t say for sure, but this version seems to be having problems with SL Shadows.
nVidia has a new driver out. (Downloads) They released it December 17. This is version 310.70 or 9.18.13.1070, depending on how you write version numbers.
nVidia 310.70 WHQL
This version promises speed ups in a number of games. Second Life™ is not one of them. Plus there are a number of bug fixes too. I don’t know that any of them affect SL.
I’ve tried it, barely. But, it seems to work OK. I’m using the nVidia settings to override a number of the viewer settings. Turning off the viewers Anti-Aliasing (AA) and using the video card’s CSAA gives me a good performance boost, which just means I turn on more stuff and slow it back down…
Part of the thing with mesh clothes is alpha layers. Even with prim and sculpty shoes and other attachments alpha layers have become a part of wearing these items. Invisaprims are a thing of the past. There is a thing in Second Life™ Alpha Masks that has been over looked by many. It may come back to bite us if we don’t pay attention… or not.
Alpha Mask Edit Panel
Understand
We call them Alpha Layers and they do layer, but, they do NOT layer with clothes. The real name is Alpha Mask. The Alpha Mask has its own channel. That makes sense to you if use channels in Photoshop. If not, just understand that a channel effects everything associated with an image, like all the layers.
You can layer clothes and skin as they are in a texture channel. You can stack textures in a clothing channel like SHIRT. But the clothing layers are a bit like folders in the texture channel. You can’t change the order of the folders; Jacket – which is on top of: Shirt – which is on top of: Undershirt – which is on top of Skin stay in that order. You can add shirts and rearrange their order.
The Alpha Mask is a channel that affects all the clothes layers; Skin, Shirt, etc. We can add masks together. We can think of that as layering, but it is really more like ADDING transparency.
