OK I've About Had It with SL Viewer2 "Because Part 4" Cluttered Screen~Menu Focus and Lack of Transparency

   It has been several days since my Part 3 installment, mostly due to the fact I started a new building project, and decided to give V2.4 a try during the project. Much to my dismay, I ended up using Phoenix for the majority of the work.  I started with a bare parcel of riverfront land, by marking off the perimeters ( View Property Lines ) ( using Phoenix ) with some tall skinny Mega Prims.

  
   In order to make this job as quick and painless as possible, I decided to use some linked modules from one of my previous builds.                

I will admit the new Build Menu is more intuitive then the V1.x series.












    But something is constantly being over looked by the Developers of V2. The screen is very cluttered, and with a completely screwball idea of what Tear-Off-Menu's actually are, and how they should function in a project development environment, tends to make things more cumbersome then necessary.

This tends to get tedious when trying to find objects or textures, and being forced to use a completely unintuitive menu structure. Not only that but the odd behavior of menu transparency as you change focus from one to another, couple this with a camera control that seems to have a mind of it's own. This really irritates the crap out of me, for one thing it is way too large, next is that it needs to be see-thru
( transparent ) not opaque sometimes and semi-transparent other-times, and why and the heck does it just magically decide to disappear for no apparent reason while I am building ?

   Needless to say, as far as building is concerned Viewer 2 is a complete pain in the ass, and I have serious doubt's if any of the developers actually look outside the technical aspects, and numerous UI flaws, that never seem to be addressed,  and actually try and design any SL content.

JayR Cela :_)

Temp Hold until tomorrow about Viewer 2 ( New LL CEO )

   Oh my, seems I got carried away moving different builds from one Sim to another, and the new LL CEO announcement today. I will resume my normal V2 bashing tomorrow.

Hope to see you then.

JayR Cela :_)

OK I've About Had it with SecondLife Viewer 2 "Because Part 3" Lost Chat & IM Log Issues

    OK Part 3, this is what really got me fired up to begin with. The past several months I have been doing my best to try and embrace V2 as a viable format to enter SL. I have been nice, polite and appreciative of the various efforts being made by the Open Source Community. But this issue just managed to pop my cork. I don't know what these buffoons are thinking, or trying to accomplish, but 1 step forward and in some cases 3 steps backwards is not my idea of progress. I have completely lost all faith in this project, it's only 2 merits are the Wardrobe-Outfits feature and Media on a Prim. Other than that, Viewer 2 is and should be considered a complete and total loss. I'm going to address a huge flaw here, loss of your SL chat and IM file's, or at least their location awareness from a viewer standpoint.
    I have been using SL for 5 years +, and my Chat and IM files are important to me. I don't keep my files located in the default area, due to the fact I run multiple Operating Systems, Linux and Windows. I am surprised I did not notice this problem sooner, I believe it surfaced in the V2.3 series. But dammit, this should be a total non-issue, and is beyond belief.
    Here is my setup for Log files.

As you can see, they are all intact,, so it should be a simple mater of pointing V2 to the approiate location. Haaa ! not so.

Take a look for yourself.

They have vanished !
Now take a look at a screen shot from the Phoenix Viewer, or any other 1.x TPV

Go figure this one out, I have poked around in various Debug Settings, no luck there, and this flaw is embedded not only with the official LL V2, it also rears its ugly head in the Dolphin and Kirsten versions as well.

    I'll be back tomorrow, I still have some anger to vent on this horrid piece of &*^% LL insists upon calling a finished product.

JayR Cela :_)

Ok I Have about Had it with SecondLife Viewer 2 "Because Part 2" Group Chat & IM Issues

    Have you ever wondered how to turn off overly chatty group IM's ? Well you can stop wondering, because you can't. Plain and simple, no mater what the Lab tries to do, or tell you for that matter. This simple little feature, and it's implementation seems to elude them.

    Does not seem to matter what check box you click or uncheck
Viewer 2.4 and the 2.5 Development version, just don't give a crap. Logging out and back in wont help you here either.

Ok is time for lunch, but I'm just warming up. There is so much more to come, I can't stop. I'll be back later with Part 3 the "Long Lost Log File's Mystery"

JayR Cela :_)

Ok I Have About Had it with SecondLife Viewer2 "Because Part 1" Login Issues

    Well I guess the best place to start is from the beginning.
#1 the Lab still cant get the initial login remember my name problem fixed.

\

    Now this problem has been around since day one, when this poor joke of a viewer was thrust upon SL Customers. Whats the problem? I filled in my name and password, clicked on the Remember check box, logged out and back in, and wallah just like magic, V2 promptly forgets them both. Give me a break please, this should have been fixed long ago in, "Intro to Computer Programming 101 class"
    But wait, things get much better, ( I'm being sarcastic here ) and if you get the impression I am about to rip LL a new A-Hole your 100% right. I plan on several running post's throughout the day and tomorrow as well. Check back later, this should prove to be rather funny.

JayR Cela  :_)

OK I Have About Had it with SL Viewer 2 !!!!!!

I have ton's of recently surfacing flaws in this ill conceived bastard project, cant hardly wait to document them. I apologize for my lack of blog activity recently, but I have been busy tracking this piece of craps numerous bugs. Check back Wednesday and Thursday.

I'm PISSED !

JayR

SecondLife Veiwer 2 SnowStorm 2.5.0.216735 "Getting Better Every Day ?"

    I continue to follow LL's Project SnowStorm, and attend meeting's about twice a week, usually on Monday and Friday.

A little dark, but there were 12 people

 I have to admit, although things seem to be moving a bit on the slow side, but this is a very well organized, and dedicated group of people. If you are not following the projects Wiki Page, I encourage that you do so.  http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Snowstorm_Project Here you will be able to find everything you need to know about the project, including downloads to the nightly builds. Thats right, monday thru friday you can download a fresh copy of the upcoming next version of the SL Viewer 2.

    Today I decided to play around with a few of the Debug settings available under the Advanced Menu Options. I'll just post a few screenshots and let you be the judge.

 The log in screen remembered my name and password.

Changed this value to 200 from default
Default is 500

Changing the AudioLevelMusic value prevents your audio stream from blaring when you first log in.

Render animate tree's set to true

    I was unable to find the animate tree's option in the Preferences Menu. The Debug WindLight setting's seemed to make no noticeable difference to me. You will notice that we now have some semi transparency when various menu focus changes. ShowNetStats returns the old style little network performance indicator in the upper right corner of your screen. UseAltKeyForMenus in my opinion should default to True, it allows for quick navigation of various viewer options, via the arrow keys.  Next up is VectorizeProcessor, you may have seen this feature in several of the 1.x TPV's as use dual threads, basically what it does is allow for optimum performance with newer CPU ( Later Intel P4's - and Dual Core  and up - AMD Athalon 64's and up ) SnapshotQuality allows for better JPG format pictures.

Choose SSE Performance

Edit the Sky seemed to make no difference for me

JPG format picture quality

Current Network Statistics not visable

Old Style Network Statistics

One thing I found as rather odd, is the apparent lack of a Clear Map function, to eliminate the red marker beacon.

All in all, things seem to be shaping up pretty well for the SnowStorm Viewer

JayR Cela :_)

Viewer 2.4 Pretty in Pink~The Catznip Viewer~With The Starlight Skin

The Catznip SL Viewer is currently being developed by resident Kitty Barnett, with some help from my dear friend Hitomi Tiponi of the famed StarLight V2 skin mod. And yes it does include a Pink and Silver Skin :_)

25FPS

Skin Selection in Preferences

Performance in FPS was excellent averaging around 25 to 28 and dropping to a respectable 15fps in very crowded Sims.

 This viewer is not listed on the official LL TPV page, but I would not be discouraged by this in any way. Catznip is really just a re-skinned version of V2 Beta4 with some nicely added touch's as well.
http://catznip.com/blog/2010/11/catznip-2-4-0-beta-3/

Catznip Features

http://catznip.com/blog/
  

Catznip Release Notes

http://redmine.catznip.com/projects/1/wiki/Catznip-240?version=25
The above links should be all you need to find out more.
All said and done, this is a great choice for a fun fling out on the town when your in a Pink mood. LOL :_)
Available on Windows & Mac platforms.

Have Fun Ladies

JayR Cela :_)