Viewers

General Viewer Information

CtrlAltStudio Updates VR Viewer News for Second Life

by

I didn’t notice this until today. David Rowe has explained that his Rift supporting viewer is not going to update until he gets his updated Rift headset. Reference.

✨ Energia ✨
✨ Energia ✨

He is also looking to hear something from the Lab on their Oculus Rift viewer. He tells us his code is more a quick and dirty to get something running. He seems to prefer the Lab’s code as being a better solution.

We know the Lab’s Rift viewer is an October 2014 version. It is being upgraded to current viewer code, of course. But, it also needs to be upgraded to the new Oculus code and enhancements (CV1). So, this is probably quite a bit of work. We don’t have any word on whether this version is just being caught up SL Viewer 5 code or also being updated to use CV1 tech. I would guess it is…

We also don’t know how much of a priority it is. I suspect while important it isn’t all that important. So, we have no idea when we will see an updated Oculus Rift viewer from the Lab or CtrlAltStudio.

Firestorm Viewer News Week 14

by

There are several bits of news out from the Firestorm Development team.

Checkmate
Checkmate

RLV – Jessica Lyon gives us some history on the development of the RLV code. (See: RLVa) Marine Kelly is the author and developer of RLV and RLVa code for all third party viewers. Plus having a RL job she is having health issues making it difficult to sit and develop RLV for new viewer versions.

Read more

Second Life News Week 14

by

Servers

There is no roll to main server channels this week.

The RC Channels all get the same package, a maintenance fix.

Nothing there that will affect most of us. But, we probably use something that uses the llHTTPRequest function, so indirectly we are affected.

❉ I❤Flowers ❉
❉ I❤Flowers ❉

Viewers

The main viewer from the Lindens is version 4.0.3-312816, aka HTTP RC or co-routines. This is a change from version 4.0.3.312684 of last week. I didn’t notice the update as I have been using the RC HTTP version of this viewer for some time. I found it to be an improvement over the previous default viewer. 

Read more

Second Life: Windlight Tutorial

by

Daeberethwen Arbenlow has a 20 minute video (3/27/2016) on controlling your Windlight settings for photography in Second Life. She uses the Firestorm Viewer and the Photo Tools feature it has. Those using the basic Linden viewer can accomplish the same changes to Windlight, just not as easily nor will the video help you learn how to use the Linden viewer, just the Firestorm viewer.

Daeberethwen does a good job of explaining all the settings and what they do. Along with the verbal description is the video example allowing you to see the changes.

Firestorm has the best set of features for photographers and machinigraphers (or is that machinamists?). 

Read more

Second Life: Rendering Speed Up

by

Hamlet has a tip he got from Trinity Dejavu over on Reddit. See: Simple Trick to Speed Up Second Life Rendering.

257
257

The ‘trick’ is to turn off avatar rendering when you first arrive in a crowded place. (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-4) One press turns off avatar rendering and a second press will turn it back on. B turning it off your viewer can concentrate on rendering the ‘area’. Later when you render avatars they ‘seem’ to render faster because the viewer just has to render them as all else is already rendered.

This doesn’t make it any faster or actually reduce render time. Actual time to a final render is probably longer. But, psychologically we break the wait time into two parts with each being less than the single pass render but added together… more. Basically it is just easier on our patience.

But, I haven’t put a stop watch on it yet…