Second Life Mesh Update Week 32

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This week the Mesh Upload User Group met in AGNI. Prior to now the group met in ADITI. The meeting filled up one region and we overflowed into a second. The location links for the meeting are wrong, but should get fixed this week. The questions being asked are getting more complex. Still, there is some interesting news.

More Mesh Avatars - Click Enlarge

Meeting Location

My understanding is that from this meeting on future meetings will be held in AGNI. I expect the new location to be the NW Corner of Mesh Sandbox 9. Right now one has to be a member of the Mesh Volunteers group. More information on that here: Mesh/LiveVolunteers. The Lindens will soon be removing that restriction. Then a resident may easily attend the meetings.

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New Dolphin Viewer2 v2.5.9.15037 Review

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A new version of the Dolphin Viewer2 is out. The viewer is based on SLV 2.5 version code. There are a number of fixes and a couple of new features. Version are available for Apple, Linux, and Windows.

Download & Install

Download file size is about 24mb. Download Dolphin Viewer.

The only option in the install is which folder to install to. The install apparently wipes out the previous viewer settings. It seems to have kept my color settings.

Pteron Region in Dolphin Viewer

The install also takes over the Windows setting controlling which viewer is used for SLURL’s. I need to update my article on how to reset Windows to use the viewer you prefer for SLURL’s. See: Emerald Viewer vs SLURL (Emerald… that gives away the age of the article.)

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nVidia Driver GTX 460 Problems

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It seems a number of people are no longer able to open SLViewer version 2.7.4 and newer. The problem apparently started in June 2011. So, what is the problem and what is the fix?

nVidia and Second Life Shaders

Some change in the Second Life render pipeline’s shader code has created a problem between the nVidia driver and the OpenGL drivers used by Linden Lab in the viewer. It appears the nVidia GeForce GTX 460 card with any driver newer than 260.99 has a problem.  If the graphics level is set at the default or on High or Ultra, the viewer crashes on login.

The problem does not exist in the nVidia driver 260.99 WHQL and presumably earlier drivers.

Updated 8/15: See TIMOTHY LOTTES‘ article NVIDIA FXAA.

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Second Life Statistics

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In April the signup process for Second Life changed. Since then we have seen a sustained increase in sign ups. Sign ups have gone from averaging about 10,000 per day to around 15,000 per day. It is a pretty good increase.

User Signups per Day

We don’t have any numbers on how many are staying after they signup. The empirical evidence I have says there are more new people in SL. Many places that I go now have new players. There seems to be many more new player questions in the forums. But, that is totally subjective and it does not give any idea of how long they may be staying.

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Phoenix to Firestorm Viewer Tutorial

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One of the impressive things about the Phoenix-Firestorm (PH/FS) team is the documentation they are creating for their viewers. From what I see being asked in the PH/FS group and SL Forum I suspect many PH/FS users are unaware of the documentation to be found in the team’s PH/FS Wiki.

Phoenix to Firestorm Migration

I suspect one of the most over looked yet useful articles in the PH/FS Wiki is the Migration Guide. The article is short, by my thinking, just 750 words. It does link to a YouTube video: V1’ify Your Firestorm Experience! The video runs about 12 minutes.

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The underlying theme in the Migration Guide is to tweak the Version 2 viewer Interface to be more like the Version 1 Viewer Interface. Having this flexibility built into Firestorm allows for a more pleasant migration experience.

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