Project SnowStorm Veiwer 2 Nightly Build v.2.4.0.213450

It's Friday again, and the weeks cumulative results from the nightly SnowStorm builds is ready for a drive around the block. I have been attending the teams daily SCRUM meetings several times a week, and am quite impressed with the way they are handling the situation. So my current plans are to take the Friday build out for a spin each weekend. If you are a V2 fan ( user ) already, there is no need for a review of the current stable release, please remember that the nightly ( weekly ) builds, are not considered as stable releases, they are not even in a Beta status yet. If you are comfortable with Alpha software testing, by all means, download one and try it out. If you are not, I hope that my post's will help keep you up to date, with the rapid changes taking place with Viewer 2.

This particular version loaded very quickly, all of my settings remained in tack, from the previous build, I did not have to reload 6 or 7000 items to my inventory upon initial log-in. Frames Per Second ( FPS ) seems to have taken a hit in the performance department from previous versions I have tested, but are still on par with any of the 1.x series viewers. So I took it to one of the more busy Sim's I know of, "Bare Rose of Tokyo" Clothing.

Bandwidth was extremely high and steady, virtually no packet loss. FPS was rock solid, all textures rezzed almost instantaneously. Quite impressive to say the least.

So it seems that the SnowStorm team is very focused on the Fast portion of the "Fast,Easy,Fun" metaphors. Easy, well its getting better, albeit more slowly than I care for, Fun? a definite no in my opinion. I still do not care for the User Interface. One thing that really continues to bother me, is the weird way that V2 treats tear off windows, and that's just it, they are not tear offs. You need to un-dock and re-dock them from and to the sidebar, they have limited re-size control, couple this with a lack of semi-transparency as you move focus from one window to another, while the previous windows remain opaque, is just lousy design, that results in a total pain in the ass while building. And the camera control is still way over sized, and opaque as well.

All in all, I will have to say, this viewer is moving in the right direction, but still has serious UI design flaws that need to be addressed. I keep hearing talk in the meetings that that these issue's will be dealt with soon.

After 2 hours of use, I experienced no odd problems of any sort, and feel that if you are a V2 user this is a stable enough release to use on a daily basis until next weeks Friday night release.

JayR Cela :_)

The Phoenix Veiwer Team Gets Ready to Tackle Viewer 2 / Asking for User Input on Project FireStorm

Well Jessica Lyon ( former LL employee ) and head of the Phoenix Viewer Team, just posted "Your Voice, Your Choice" on the official blog http://www.phoenixviewer.com/

Basically she is saying to us, ( unlike LL ) the Phoenix team actually cares about its users, and would like some input while this new Viewer based on the Labs V2 code, is under development.

I admit that recently Esbee, Merov and Oz Linden of the SnowStorm V2 team, have been much more open to comments and suggestions, I sincerely hope that it's not a case of ~ 2 little 2 late ~ because they are making tremendous progress with the nightly builds.

Personally I am a very big fan of the Phoenix Viewer, and I admit to slowly warming up to actually liking V2 in its test build form. But I can hardly wait to get my hands on this new Project FireStorm from Jessica & Company.

Soon we will get a chance to see what V2 is actually capable of.

So fire up your E-Mail client and put your 2cents worth into the pot.

JayR Cela :_)

Imprudence Virtual Worlds Viewer / Experimental v1.4.0 2010.10.23 / Big Thumbs Down

July 30 this year I reinstated this blogg in order to offer reviews of some of the different viewers available for SecondLife and various other OpenSimm grids. During that time I have wanted to review the Imprudence Viewer, but never felt I could really give it a fair shot, to many bugs, poor performance, wierd feature set.

Well finally, today I decided to load the latest Experimental Build. The only visible improvement I can see is that they made the mini map re-sizable down to an acceptable scale. If you have a very fast high performance rig, and extremely quick internet connection, you may find it adequate for grid hopping. Other than that, there is no way I can recommend this viewer to anyone. I even spent an hour combing through the debug settings trying to coax some extra performance, but to no avail. If you are a TPV Dev. you may want to toy with the source code, but for casual use, total thumbs down.

It is plagued by blurry textures, an almost nonexistent FPS of 1.5 Admittedly this is an experimental build, and a new one is introduced every weekend. I'll give it another try in late November or early December. As it stands right now, they do have a stable 1.3 version available. But for the mean time I intend to spend more time following advancements made to Viewer 2 and the SnowStorm team.

I really do not enjoy having to post such a negative review, of any ones hard work, and devotion, but I am being totally unbiased here. If any readers have experienced different results than myself, I would appreciate comments and an opportunity to offer a rebuttal.

JayR Cela :(

SecondLife (R) Group Chat Broken Again / Do we Really Need to be testing 3 Different Server Versions Live ?

Well here we go again, group chat is seriously on the blink, LL is struggling with a balancing act to deploy 3 different versions of their server software on the back end. Will they ever wake up, I doubt it :(

SecondLife (R) Viewer 2.3 Beta goes Live / Beta 2.4 on the Loose / Display Names Feature is Garbage and should be Sent to the Trash where it Belongs

Wow the Project SnowStorm Team is really kicking some butt, with their release schedule. A lot of improvements have been incorporated, and I can see that quite a bit of functionality from the 1.x series viewers is slowly being incorporated into V2. Some of the new features however are completely worthless, Display Names is one of them. We don't need another worthless feature tacked onto a seriously flawed UI. Who needs it, what is its purpose, teeny bopper hysteria? 


I just came from Jack Lindens meeting today, Lot's of seriously pissed off people,especially from the merchants, search is still messed up beyond belief, magic boxes not working. Jack seems to remind me of the omnipotent Q from ST Next Generation. He just don't get it. At least Esbee, Merov and Oz have a firm grip on things. They are listening to people and incorporating changes as quickly as it is possible for them to do so.

I skipped the 2.3 Beta, and am using 2.4, Its pretty nice, everything loads quickly, the UI is gradually improving, and lets face it 1.25.x is a dead issue. I suspect by years end, all of the TPV's will have started development on V2 code base, albeit with different User Interface enhancements. Keep an eye on the Phoenix team. This viewer is headed up by former LL employee Jessica Lyon. I believe there their will be one more release of Phoenix based on 1.x then a V2 version with a completely revamped UI.

In closing, Jack Linden, why are you admitting openly in your in world meetings that resources are stretched to thinly at LL to tackle significant problems like in world search, a borked Marketplace, and you still want to stroke your pet puppy Display Names? It is a completely worthless piece of crap unnecessary feature.

SecondLife(R) C# to Replace LSL / Mono 2.6 UpGrade / Larger Prims

As I mentioned earlier things are really changeing at LL and with SL in general, I will just pass along a few things being rumored at the various LL meetings.
# 1 C# will soon be the scripting language in SL, the only problem is there are no plans to make it backward compatable with LSL, huge mistake on the labs part.
# 2 I guess that is where Mono 2.6 will come into play, Mono is an interpreted intermediate language. All this stuff is up in the air right now, all I can say is, if the amount of time learning LSL is simply tossed out the window in favor of C#, then the lab has really blown it. Hopefully the Mono 2.6 upgrade will ease the change.
# 3 The real big thing to look for is huge prims, no longer shall we be limited to 10*10m prim maximum size, this seems to be an unexpected side result of the Lab moving to using Mesh for graphics. For me this is a very welcome change, I have been using Mega-Prims for the past year, and they are very tricky to work with, so the ability to use a prim larger than 10meters will be absolutely fantastic.

JayR Cela :_)

SecondLife(R) Fast and Furious Changes Coming Soon / All For The Better

Welcome back to my rambling Blog :_)
Looks as if things are really starting to move forward at LL. The SnowStorm  team is very focused on improving the UI, I believe you will soon see a huge difference in V2, mainly on the preferences setup, easy and advanced.

This is a very welcome change for a lot of new residents. The current V2 is a pain in the rear to deal with when logging in for the first time. So the apparent plan is to group things more logically, this should be a big help for people introducing newcomers into SL with RL disability's.

If you are not involved and keeping up with the  SnowStorm project, I strongly encourage you to do so. This will be the viewer that eventually all of us will be using. There are only so many things that can be back ported into the 1.x series. And even the TPV's are all working on this. The 1.x viewer is pretty much dead, by 2nd quarter next year, everything will be based on Viewer 2

SecondLife(R) Phillip Rosedale of Linden Lab(R) Steps Aside Again ~ Is There a Method to the Madness ?

 For those of us that follow the current state of ongoing affairs at LL and SecondLife. I beleave there is a method here, we certainly have seen some radicalily differnt methods of problem solving taking place on the Labs part during the past 4 months.

1. Phillip Linden cam right out upon his return as CEO, and said that it was going to be temporary, until someone else could be found.
2. The pace of development on both the Server and Client side, would be increasing at a greatly accelerated pace, from the previous approach from doing things.
3. Get rid of some dead weight.
4. Fast, Easy and Fun seemed to be the mantra.

• #1 Phillips Blog Post today : Changing My Role and Searching for a New CEO : He has kept his word on this one.
• http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/10/19/changing-my-role-and-searching-for-a-new-ceo?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondLife+%28Official+Second+Life+Blogs+-+FEATURED%29 
• #2 The pace of Development to be greatly accelerated. He has also kept his word on this issue as well.
• Examples on the Server Side are 3 different version's of server code currently being deployed. LeTigre, BlueSteel and Magnum.You can read about them here.
• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Beta/LeTigre 
• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Beta/BlueSteel 
• http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Beta/Magnum

• Just take a look at the SL Viewer Download  page. There are 6 different versions, 2 of which are considered by the Lab as stable, the reaming 4 are in various Alpha and Beta stages.
• https://secure-web33.secondlife.com/my/support/downloads/?lang=en-US
• This does not even begin to include the number of TPV Viewers being developed, and involved.
• #3 Getting rid of some dead weight. Well the people or persons that headed up and maintained the main SL Web Page, and whom I believe also borked the Search feature, and may have also been responsible for screwing up XStreet and the new SL Market Place, and Viewer 2 are all gone now. Unfortunately a number of other employes that work on their teams were let go as well. Things are in a fix it mode now.
• #4 Fast Easy and Fun, I am not going to make a comment on this issue yet, because I am defiantly not a happy camper. When I have something good to say I will. You cannot expect overnight miracles to happen, when any organization or company makes such drastic changes.

I have been attending a number of the Project SnowStorm meetings as an observer only. I am not a coder, I am a SL user. I am also just beginning to work in the Film Industry as an  Audio Mixer, Production and Post Production, in that profession anything can happen, at any time, and believe me it does. I equate this to the current state of affairs at LL. And for me, it is very easy to be sympathetic. Everyone working on all of these differnt projects are giving it their best effort.

I have been a Sl resident since 2005, and have never seen anything like this happening before.

Phillip clearly stated that it would take at least 2 Quarters before any appreciable results could be seen, perhaps 1 year to work out and solve the mess created by the former CEO M Linden and his team. It has only been 4 months. What can you expect, this is a scramble to fix a number of issues.

I believe that as the SnowStorm Team digs SL out of the Viewer 2 hole, that never should have been dug to begin with. Things by this time next year, I am predicting will be much better. But it is not going to happen without people that truly believe in, and love SL, at least attempt to get involved. Attend LL SL meetings if and when you are able too. Not to rant or bash, and make un-constructive or belligerent comments. Be positive, keep and open mind. All of these people are working very hard and are extremely dedicated. Quite a few of them actually devote their work for free as Open Source developers.

The Project SnowStorm Wiki page is located here
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Snowstorm_Project

The Linden Lab SecondLife Office Hours calendar page here
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Office_hours

JayR Cela   :_)

Mesh Graphics - SecondLife - Blender & SketchUp ~ Free Software ! and a Warning !

So after nearly 4 years, of discussion and a lot of dedicated hard work. SecondLife is about to finally be able to import mesh graphics. Currently it is only available if you log into one of the special Beta Grid Servers with the Correct viewer. At this time that means using a LL modified version of Viewer 2, I have heard that several of the TPV's, are or will be bringing out their own Mesh capable viewers.

Now in RL I am a Audio person, my knowledge of computer graphics, and programs that allow talented people to perform near miracles, visually, is mind boggling to me. So I will not even attempt to sound as if I know what the heck I am talking about. LOL :_)

From what I can tell so far, mesh graphics will either make or break SL. According to several long time SL  friends. Mesh graphics may just bring the LL servers and the client to a screeching halt. I guess it depends on the person that designs the Mesh, and the Grid you are on.


Ya gotta keep in mind that all or most of SL, is user created content. So the amount of information that must be retrieved when your Client makes a request to the server, can either be good or bad, depending upon a number of different variable's. And how this new Mesh Graphics will play out, has yet to be seen. I do believe it is worth embracing the idea. However at this point, for me it is a wait and see situation.


I spent some time the past several days researching the topic. Here are a few links. Sadly I wanted to provide some screen shots, by dropping into the Beta Grid and take a look around. But I was unable for some reason to easily  find a Grid Region Name, until I did some poking around. The SL Mesh Wiki, and the SL Wiki Preview(Beta) Grid pages, should answer all of your questions. I would suggest you read both of these thoroughly!, as you may need to update your account and change your password. Based on my past experiences, I recommend that you use or create an Alternate Avatar ( ALT AVI ) that has very low amount of inventory. This way you do not really care much if it gets partially or worse case scenario, totally trashed out by logging into one of the Beta Servers. I stopped participating, in the Beta Server Grid Program 3 years ago. So things may be different now.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Mesh 
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Preview_Grid

If you are new to the topic of working with Mesh Capable Graphics programs, a few good places to start are here.
Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon_mesh.

The free Blender graphics program,
http://www.blender.org/ 
and Google's free Sketch Up 3D modeling software.
http://sketchup.google.com/


JayR Cela  :_)

Combat Cubed the SecondLife(R) Viewer for RPG Shoot em Ups

I not sure where I stumbled upon this version of the 1.2.x version of the SL viewer. It looks like a very nice choice if you like to go madly on your merry way blasting the heck out of Avatar's.

The opening log in seems to suggest it is Phoenix based.

There are a number of enhancement's that do strongly lean towards Combat Sim usage. And that's cool, if your into that sort of thing.
This viewer may be just what you have been looking for.

Personally I am more of a fashion oriented person in SL.


Its all about fun though. And the Cubed team seem to have accomplished that goal.


Here are a couple of screen shots, and the DL site. Oh yeah BTW it does have very respectable FPS, about 21 on average and rock solid steady. A lil bit on the slow side at loading textures, but that may just be my ISP having a crappy day.

http://merczateers.net/_downloads/

So for all the shoot em up lovers / have fun / enjoy / and please don't gun me down in a dark alley somewhere  :_)

JayR Cela

SecondLife(R) Dead or Alive ?

Well I will defiantly have to say alive, at least for the time being. how much longer will they survive ?

Hopefully forever.

The amount of work that LL has done for people with physical disabilities seems to have been ignored by the mainstream press. I cannot stress this point any more than I all ready have.  And I do not believe that the Lab recognizes the importance of this.

Virtual Reality is the future.

The ability for people to be able to imagine an existence beyond the physical realm, is a very important part of our progression to a higher level of well being.

And the ability to do things one is unable to do in RL.

Can make a huge difference

*bigg huggs* JayR Cela.

SecondLife(R) SnowStorm Monday Meeting

I gotta say this much, I really have respect for Esbee, Oz, and Merov Linden. I think it will do the Sl community best if I stop bashing thier efforts, on Viewer 2, at least for a while.

I'll revisit the beta on Friday

In the mean time I will find something else regarding SL and other Virtual Worlds to write about.

SecondLife(R) Esbee & Oz Linden Trying to make Viewer2 Actualy Useable

SL is such a wonderful platform for imigination, the ability to be able to walk, talk, meet with people, share your idea's and asperations.

Phillip Linden got it right, by creating this world that we all share and have come to love.
There have been some flaws and miss-steps along the way.

I do not seem to be making any friends on the Viewer2 team, but that's OK
Everyone knows it is a flop. The Code is great, just the User Interface is a complete disaster. And I will keep saying this until LL sues me.

Bring it On !! I'll give ya my lawyers name any time.

Or you can do the cowardly standard LL approach and BAN me, when one of your screwball, untrained employees gets upset with reality.


I like Esbee, she is doing her best, Oz, he is highly intelligent, but I doubt if he will last. The V2 project is such a disaster. His talents will move forward to another Virtual World. May it be InWorldz? I doubt that, Reaction Grid, maybe. 3rd Rock, I have not been there yet.

I am perdicting that Oz will start his own VW, I believe that is what will happen. He is way to intelligent to continue with this disaster called V2.

If and when / and I'm just making a perdiction here. I will be be there.Open Sim based, Hyper Grid compatable, and eventually it will Kick LL's Butt ! Hyper Grid is the future.

LL really needs to solve the permission problems. Folks have been complaing about this for years, and the Lab just ignores the issue.

Wow I just hit 5000 page views

Hi there everyone that reads, my random rants. I do tend to go off sometimes. This is just a thank you post, to all the people that are keeping up with my madness. It really does make a difference in my life. I don't really know how to thank you, besides offering an invitation.

On December 7, I will be renewing my SL wedding vows with Cathy Jackson, we will be celebrating 5 years of virtual reality friendship, respect, and love for one in other. The reception will be held on a private Island. Cristal Cove Island Estates, owned by our very dear friends, Dragger Lok and Razitra Artizar.

I will be posting a SLUR on December 6, we will have music, dancing, and some very nice people involved within the Virtual Reality community for development, and all the possibilities that exist for those with disabilities to overcome things, that present obstacles in RL.

Thank You
LordGregGreg , I hope your reading this.

*Bigg huggs* to everyone

JayR Cela :_)

SecondLife(R) SnowStorm V-2.2.1.211680 / Fast, Easy, Fun ~ NOT !!!!!

Ok I'm off on a rant again, and I will not stop. I can possibly be banned from SL. No real big deal, I'll just set up my own personal Open Sim world. Can I be sued for libel ? I am not using anyones Rl names in my post's, so good luck on that one. I just enjoy pissing people involved with the V2 project off.

Esbee Linden is doing her best to hold together a flawed and failed project. I certainly would not want her job.

Oz Linden, I give him 2 months, at whitch time I beleave he will become so fed up, and just move on to greener pastures, and I wish him all the best. He is a very intelligent and nice person.

To all the Open Source Devs working on V2, OH WELL, Love me or hate me, I'm going to express my opinions, and make statements that certainly do not exactly create friendships. But Blow this TURKEY off !! You are on a course of ruining your reputations in the OS Dev community, even being associated with this project. Fixing a complety broken piece of software, is a monumental task. The SCRUM and AGILE process, should be renamed SCUMM, it does not work ! At least not in this case.

Most really talented programmers work best when left alone.

If you really want to fix V2, just adopt Kirstens code, or backport features into the 1.2.x series.

Do not even attempt to tell me that this can not be done. Jessica and Henri, and a number of other folks have already proven LL is dead wrong on this issue. The lab seems to be in a state of death throw thrashing fits.

So i have a few pictures to share with you today, as you can see, nothing has changed much. The UI is still a cluttered piece of crap. How in the world this is going to attract and retain new users is totally beyond my comprehension.

This Log in problem has been around way to long !

Scrum that SnowStorm team.

 Wonderful example of a poorly designed User Interface.




I guess if you have a 40" monitor screen, this might actually be usable.








JayR Cela :_)

InWorldz and Open Sim about to Kick LL and SL into the Dust ? Not Quite Yet

This post has been a long time coming.
Not anytime soon, but give it about 2 years, SL will still be here, but the compitention is really starting to heat up. I have been dropping into the InWorldz Grid from time to time. Lots of stability problems there
Not really even worth your time visiting, YET !! But it will be.

I'm really fed up with the Lab.
Viewer 2 is a complete disaster, the SnowStorm team is seriously in trouble.

And I have no intention to stop bashing V2 until the Lab admits the screw up BIG TIME !!!  Just dump the whole dam thing, at least re-name it Viewer3, adopt Kirsten's mod's, witch are just sitting there in limbo, because they are so embarrassed, how 1 person can create such a superior product.

Ascent, Dolphin, Henri's VL Cool, Phoenix and a few other TPV's with their 1.2.x viewers are just blowing LL right out of the water.

Media on a prim is very cool, for education and white board meetings. But LL's recent decision to drop special discount pricing for educational institutions, is just beyond belief.

Is LL up for sale, Haaaa!

Why would anyone with a right mind, or sane head, even consider buying this mess.

Also recent legislation in California, for IT reform requires a 50% data center consolidation of space and a cut of energy use of 20% by July 2011 and 30% by July 2012

A Sun Micro Black Box or IBM Main Frame infrastructure, may become a necessity for the Lab.


Running a server farm is costly. They use untold amounts of energy, generate an incredible amount of heat, and that requires a very costly cooling infrastructure to be in place.

I am predicting here and now, within 2 years Open Sim will blow LL and SL right out of the water.

Sorry Philip :(
Until you accept the  fact, and remember that LL was the company that first proposed the Hyper Grid protocol in the first place, for inter grid tele-a-ports, tear down the walls, make a fix for permissions of Virtual Goods, so the merchants and content creators feel confident again

Bury V2, really deep, so far into the ground, it will never rear its hideous head again.

Or you could just use Kirstens as the standard download. It is so far advanced from the product the lab is putting out, its not even fumy.You should be ashamed, to have anything to do with this abomination. In my so un-humble opinion. Fire everyone involved with the V2 project and move forward.

SecondLife(R) SnowStorm Development Build 2-2-1-211582

Well it's Friday, and I promised a look at the latest SnowStorm Build. I have to stress the importance of removing any previous builds. Clean your registry, and be prepared for anything to happen, LOL :_)

For the most part it should be harmless, but I do highly recommend making a Restore Point before you proceed with installation, of any new viewer.

So I'm going to load this puppy up and attend the Project SnowStorm dsily M-F meeting, will be interesting to see if anyone actually shows up. I think support for this project is waning. I dont work for, or would want to be a LL employee, they are going through some ruff times. Open Simm is about to eat them for Lunch, within the next 2 years. The InWorldz grid is really starting to take off.  ( I'll be dropping by there later on this afternoon.)

Well it seems that finally most all menu items are tear off and resizable to a point, and the overall color scheme is a lil bit better. Inventory had to be force loaded, was extremely quick, but required several re-loggs.

I'm not sure what Henri did with his Cool VL Viewer, but that is the only client I have tested so far that did a complete inventory load, without having to log in and out several times.

FPS has really taken a hit with this latest build, I seem to only be averaging about 17,  it could just be my ISP.
 I have been told my microphone is causing echo problems, I dont even have a mic plugged ito this computer

Menu's are still not translucent. I don't know what the heck is going on here, Anti-ailaising is still not working.

This viewer is so chock full of flaw's it should be a complete embarrassment to any one involved !

Kirstens, Ascent, Phoenix, Dolphin, Cool VL, Imprudence, are all vastly superior clients. 

Don't waste your time with this piece of crap, because that is exactly what it and Viewer 2 are, GARBAGE.

Am I in a bad mood today, you bet your bippy I am. TAKE THIS PIECE OF S*** and stick it where the SUN Don't Shine LL

LL SecondLife(R) Servers Go On The Fritz / Phoenix Servers Hit by a DDOS Attack

If you were unable to log into SL today, and - or- getting odd messages when attempting to load the Phoenix SL viewer, all should be back to normal.

The LL servers are back up and running, the odd message being seen with Phoenix, that you are running a copy not produced by the Phoenix team, is merely a glitch. Log in anyways and don't worry about it.

JayR Cela :_)

A new Version Of The Phoenix Viewer

Hi there, thanks for returning to my madness reviewing  various SL and Open Sim compatible viewers.

Today I have been playing around with the newest version of Phoenix.Version 1.5.1.373
A slightly different log in screen. With some non-functional links.

 The first thing I noticed is that OpenJpeg seems to be absent. A complete search of my HD reveals that it is not included in this viewer. I suspect they have rolled their own .dll file, and renamed it.

FPS is a very steady 20 to 30, Packet loss is solid 0.0% even in an extremely busy simm, 

All textures and objects rezz quickly.

 This is mind boggling.

As the 1.2x series of Open Source Viewers continue to back port features from V2 at a very rapid pace.




( Something that LL denies is even possible )
I can see no reason, besides Kirstens V20(39) to even bother with Viewer2

As the Lab continues to move forward with their V2 agenda, it becomes, as I see it, a mater of self denial, a horribly flawed, failed project, and a huge waste of time and money.


Search is still broken,( that's a server side problem, and  has nothing to do with the viewer )

The new Market Place is borked. What the heck are these folks thinking?

I'll be testing the latest version of SnowStorm tomorrow, but I feel that LL is spitting in the wind. They really should give serious consideration to abandoning this V2.  Re-name it Viewer 3, get rid of the Sidebar, fire a few more people and move ahead.

I attend several LL meetings a week, and the arrogant attitude I see, is yes we know about Kirstens and Phoenix, and Dolphin , and Ascent and Herni's Cool VL Viewer, but we choose to ignore them.

Go figure that one out. I guess they are getting a paycheck by not making waves.


Whatever, Phoenix  works. Kicks the crap out of Viewer 2, performance wise, and makes a total sham out of the Labs feeble efforts to keep a seriously dead in the water project alive.

Not much else to really report on here. The newest version of Phoenix is a total Kick Butt viewer. It has all the features I have come to appreciate from the former Emerald team, runs like a banshee, and allows you to set up Open Sim accounts. ( bye~byee LL and SL ) OS-Grid and Open Simm are about to eat you for lunch.

As the Lab continues to be shamed by all the Open Source Dev's with superior products, I think perhaps is time they just get the heck out of the way!!





Sorry Esbee and Oz, I know you two are trying to fix a huge mess, but it is time to move on.

 Stop wasting resources on V2, Create a V3,  at least you will not have to deal will all the negative's associated with a seriously flawed client.
LL you have been SMOKED!! again. 


JayR Cela :_)

The Cool VL Viewer for Open Sim & SecondLife(R) by Henri Beauchamp

This is my second time giving the Cool VL Viewer a try, the installation is a bit differnt from other TPV's. It is a 2 step process, and you really need to read the instructions. Its not difficult, first you need to download or have the standard SL 1.23 installed, then you simply run the .exe file Henri provides. This will make several modifications to your main SL directory.
The Main SL DownLoad Page  http://secondlife.com/support/downloads/?lang=en-US
The Cool VL Viewer Home Page http://sldev.free.fr/

Now Henri is probably one of the first persons to make mods available for the SL viewer, and quite a bit of the code in Phoenix, Ascent and Dolphin were origionaly contributed by him. This viewer has nothing extrodianary about it, it is actually a step back to the old 1.19.x series. And I like that, I have never really been a big fan of the communicate tab. It is so nice to only have 1 mouse click to access Chat, IM, Friends and Groups, I wish more TPV's would adopt this approach.

Another thing that really impressed me was that my inventory actually loaded completely without having to re-logg a half a dozen times




 ( I have over 40,000 items )  it was agonizingly slow. But all the other viewers I have tested so far require multiple re-logg's in order to fully load. That in it's self is a huge accomplishment.
And it does not seem to suffer from the  continuous loop and freeze the application upon exiting. Witch requires me to do a 3 finger salute ( CTRL+ALT+DEL ) and force a shutdown.

Oh well, I been getting used to this problem. All the other 1,2x viewers seem to be exhibiting this same flaw.

This is very lean, mean, ready to go grid hopping machine.

It's radar feature I have come to rely on in several other viewers, is an option when you press

 CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+R and over all, I will give this a definite thumbs up, if you intend to explore Open Sim, or SL.
.
JayR Cela

SecondLife(R) The Imprudence 1.4.0 Experimental Viewer

It has been a while since I last looked at the Imprudence Viewer. It is a bit of a Hy-Bred version of the standard SL 1.23.5 offered by LL, unlike many of the other's that are based upon the last SnowGlobe build.
( That project, by the way, seems to have been discontinued.)

I believe that, Imprudence was the first to step away from the KDU.dll lib and to fully embrace OpenJpeg as the graphics engine. All I can say is, they must have done some serious tweaking here, because this new release is extremely quick at rezzing textures. Inventory load times, are very fast as well.

Imprudence is designed from the ground up as a multi grid hopping product, and come's with about a dozen differnt and most popular OpenSim world logins preloaded.
 

If you have not stepped outside of  SL, and tried Open Simm, now may be the perfect time. McCabe Maxsted and Jacek Antonelli are practically household words in the Open Sim community, and the Imprudence viewer has become the de-facto standard for grid hopping. It's easy to see why, this is a very straight forward product. Nothing fancy, just a lot of cool little tweaks available, to improve performance. It is definatly a must have VR client.

SecondLife(R) Viewer 2 TURBO-CHARGED / Kirstens S20(39)

Hey there, glad your back and reading my ongoing exploration of the various viewers available for SL.
 I originally started to write this post on Saturday, but was having so much fun using this latest build, it took me several days.
So today I will be showing you around the wonderful world of the Kirsten viewer, S(20) Build (39) This particular client is not intended for the faint of heart, or a sub par rig. My box is the last of the Pentium 4's, so it mimic's a dual core configuration. You will need at least one of the last P4's, or a dual core or better motherboard and CPU, and a good video card, in order to run this viewer properly. I do not think an intergrated video chip will fair very well. Sorry to most laptop owners. I may be wrong, and you can always try. It's either going to work, or it wont. Regardless, this is one Kick Butt version of Viewer2.

 There are tear off menus for just about everything, and they can be re-sized. The color scheme with the Azure skin is very easy on the eyes. All of the V2 properties are present, alpha and outfits, and a ton of WindLight customization features. This Viewer is geared towards the ultra high end. The ultimate that V2 is capable of achieving. And is a wonderful  choice for taking pictures in SL

If you have been following this blog, you are well aware, that I am no big fan of Viewer2, in my mind it never should have been released in the first place. But here I make an exception. And all of the Kirsten mods are in the official SVN. So if the folks involved with the SnowStorm team eventually WAKE UP ! and actually take a look, perhaps one of these years, some of these improvements will filter down to the standard viewer.
Don't hold your breath.

I have been watching the SnowStorm team, and I wish them all the best. My personal feelings are, if you get LL completely out of the picture, and move forward, Viewer 2 has tons of potential, but the process that has been imposed on the Open Source Devs by the lab is unacceptable. Just my own opinion, mind you :_) SnowStorm is a step in the right direction, there are nightly builds, and I plan on reviewing them every Friday, and we will see what happens.

Anyways Kirsten has really done it right, this viewer for SL ~ ROCKS, there are still a few bugs that need to be ironed out, Anti Aliasing is one of them, easy enough to fix by tweaking the extensive options available.Turning on Frame Buffer Objects solves the jaggies problem, but does take a hit on the FPS. Again if you are running a good caliber rig, this should make no describable difference for you.

So I think what I will do here today, is just put up a bunch of screen shots. Hopefully someone at LL will stumble upon this blog and take notice, Esbee and Oz Linden are you listening (reading) ?

As you can see the setup preferences menu's are quite extensive. Just about every aspect of this viewer can be tweaked to your hearts content.







It is available for Windows, Mac & Linux, I was not able to get the Linux version to load and run, but I believe this is just a problem on my end and the Linux distro I am using.

I think the coolest thing about the Kirsten viewer is the WindLight settings. If you are a SL photographer, 

this  is an excellent choice

You cant get any better, for ease of use. In a previous post I was demonstrating the Ascent viewers WindLight PreSets, and that just what they are, pre-set modes of the WindLight settings. With the Kirsten Viewer you have full access, and complete control over all the available options.  It can seem a bit daunting at first, but with some patience and experimentation, you will have the potential for really spectacular results.

It is very hard to find any flaws with this viewer.

Its Fast !

Its Easy !

And
Its Fun !












If you want all of the advantages of Viewer 2, I would not even bother wasting your time with the Official
V2 - 2.1.1.208043. that bloated turkey has been around for several months, unchanged. The Project Viewer with the Display Names feature, don't make me laugh, come on Jack Linden, cant you think of something more useful to do ? The Development Viewer, Project SnowStorm ? Well sorry to the folks working on this. But you have just been SMOKED ! Left completely behind in the dust, by Kirsten

JayR Cela :_)