Second Life and Virtual Worlds
General Viewer Information
I’ve been swamped with work this week, which is good. So, I haven’t had time to enjoy Seccond Life™ or keep up on the goings on. Today I’ve taken some time to catch up on the new Firestorm Viewer release 4.7.5. The announcement is here: Firestorm Update 4.7.5-47975.
Inara has her review here: Firestorm 4.7.5: something for everyone.
Last Friday (11/6) was the Third Party Developers’ meeting. We got some news. I’m just getting around to it. I’ve had my head in php parts of a gambling site that didn’t work. My head hurts… sniff… sniff. Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m having ice cream for dinner… 🙂
Oz Linden told the group that a new version of the viewer will be coming into the RC group. A maintenance version, which usually means a collection of fixes and often some third party features. He thinks this version may actually pass the other RC version and make it out ahead of them.
At the Third Party Developers’ meeting Jessica said the viewer is on schedule for a November 16 or 17 release. That of course depends on whether a serious problem is found or things work as planned.
This release will also be caught up with the Linden made viewer. I think that means the Linden version 3.8.6-305981, which is the current default viewer as I write this.
If you made it to the Firestorm Halloween party you have seen the Firestorm gateway regions. The Halloween celebration was also a launch party (reference) for the gateway build. Some well known designers/builders have helped. One being MadPea.
This Kokua Viewer update adds version 2.9.15 of RLV and brings Kokua on par with Linden viewer version 3.8.6, which I think means it has the Quick Graphics and Avatar Complexity features, but with out the build number… it may be the Notifications viewer updates. Whichever, The Dev’s need help testing this update.
See: Kokua with RLV 2.9.15 and code update to SecondLife 3.8.6 — Request for test.
Areas of the viewer they are asking be tested:
This is a brief round up of the Third Party Viewers for Second Life that I find interesting. Not in any particular order. The popular feature to be adding is: Restore to Last Position. I explain that in the section on RLV.
Marine has updated the RLViewer she maintains. She is adding in the feature from Firestorm and Kokua: Restore to Last Position. This is a controversial feature the Lindens have omitted from the Linden made viewer. It apparently generates too many support calls.
[Good facial expression]
This week an Alchemy Viewer 3.8.5 update was released. The developers are busy will real life money making. So, updates are coming slowly. It has been almost 3 months since the last update. This update brings Alchemy to a level with the Linden 3.8.5 version. The current Linden version is 3.8.6.
This means Alchemy has the 90+ fixes the Lab added with the promotion of the Maintenance RC Viewer. Plus Alchemy fixes. But, it will still lack the new Notifications Handling released in Linden version 3.8.6.