Second Life Viewer 2 & 3

This is my collection of articles about the Second Life Viewer (SLV) 2 & 3. In 2013 I started to include information about the viewer in some Second Life News articles. You’ll see those articles mixed in with articles solely about the viewer.

Many residents detested the 2.x version viewers (V2) released by Linden Lab. As best I find out, sometime in 2009 the Lab decided a new viewer was needed to improve user retention. An outside consult was used to create it. Apparently the Lab wrote the specification for the viewer and the software house created the viewer. Unfortunately the programmers had no clue what SL was or how the viewer was used. This resulted in a user interface that existing residents found unusable. The change failed to improve new user retention rates.

The current viewer 3 (V3) is a revised version of the V2 viewer developed after the V2 release by Linden Lab.  After the rejection of the 2.0 viewer in mid 2010 the Lab took over viewer development. The SnowStorm Project was the Lab’s project in 2010 and 2011 to fix the viewer and reshape the user interface.

The Second Life Viewer has been undergoing continuous change since the start of Project SnowStorm with 4 significant versions released in 2010. Ending the year with version 2.4. In the Rod Humble as CEO era viewer development advanced at a rapid pace. Oz Linden, a pro open source manager at the Lab, over saw the change to a parallel Release Candidate style of development. We now see almost one new release of the Second Life Viewer per month.

As of February 7, 2014 we are on release: 3.6.13-285995.

Firestorm Viewer Performance Numbers

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October 22, 2024 the Firestorm Team released a new version of their viewer: 7.1.11. I am running 7.1.9, their initial PBR release. I’ve had a few minor problems and it is a little slow. But not so slow as to be frustrating. If I were still playing in SL’s combat games, I would probably be … Read more

Catching Up in Second Life

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I have survived CoVid-19. It took me down for about 15 days. Still recovering, I easily tire. My four-mile hiking is down to a half-mile. What I learned about CoVid-19 is there is more confusion, contradictory information, and horrible reporting. The worst information and often deliberately injurious information is coming from California and New York. … Read more

Second Life: Moving/Positioning Avatars

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In 2013 Strawberry Singh posted a couple of articles (here & here) about positioning and moving avatars when setting up snapshots. This was needed for those areas where you do NOT have rez rights. Over time viewer upgrades broke those processes. Every so often I would check to see if the problems with those processes … Read more

Second Life: What Improved Camera Controls?

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The Linens have released Second Life Release 6.4.2.541639 – Camera Presets. See the Release Notes for all the details. It took me a second to figure out which camera they were talking about. Well, there is only one camera in the viewer. There are a number of ways to look at it. So… Graphics Settings … Read more

Second Life Viewer News 4/23

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There are some interesting bits of news floating around. Nothing spectacular. Viewers We now have Linden viewers with controls and intelligence for the new Premium Levels and EEP. The release of EEP is a big deal as it has been holding other viewer releases back. With its release we will see new versions of the … Read more

Second Life EEP Coming… coming… soon…

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The Second Life Environmental Enhancement Project (aka EEP) has taken way longer than anyone at Linden Lab thought. I suspect the reason for that is the old render engine. It is an ancient (in computer time) engine and the original programmers long ago moved on. Some problems encountered in the project lead the Lindens to … Read more

Second Life News Week #42

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General Second Life News BoM See the feature… change… request BUG-227585 – [BOM] Display the new Universal wearables between the Skin and the Tattoos ones. Gael Streeter (of GA.EG products) has pointed out a possible problem with the use of the Universal Layer added with BoM, Bakes on Mesh. As it is now, most are … Read more

Second Life News Week #39

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General News Blender 2.80 released a few weeks back. I am waiting for AvaStar to update before seriously trying to use it. And now I see a version 2.81 is planned for release in November 2019. Blender Nation is doing a series of articles and videos that show the planned new features in 2.81. Look … Read more