The Dolphin Viewer 3.1.1.21151 : You Might Want To Wait

By Avatar JayR Cela

     I tested this viewer on 32 bit Ubuntu 10.04, and sad to say I ran into some rather odd problems. Of course originally it was built using SUSE Linux, so that may account for my difficulties.

    It does offer some additional features above and beyond the standard LL Viewer 3, but in my mind not enough to warrant installing it as a full time replacement viewer. More and likely better off to wait until the next release that will hopefully be built around the new User Interface currently under development by the Lab under the SnowStorm Project.

     Performance was typical on my machine, although slightly below the norm, only clocking in at an average 12fps. And as usual it suffers from all the same problems I have been complaining about for well over a year now in V2 ~V3, so there is no sense in repeating myself.

    I'll be looking forward to testing the next version, but for now this call's for immediate removal from my computer.

JayR Cela :(

The Rainbow Viewer 1.22.12.7 : Designed for Older Hardware and Open Sim

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Now this viewer is pretty unique, especially when you consider that it is not based on SnowGlobe code, but the older 1.23.x LL - SL Viewer. There are quite a number of features you would expect from a more up to date code base. Better Alpha rendering, Restrained Love 2.7, a login manager for multiple grids, focusing mainly on Open Sim. A media filter, Animation Overrider,  ( AO ) Teleport History, and Quarl Lindens Alignment Tool, Display Names, Multiple Attachment's, Inventory Links, Radar and a slew of other small under the hood enhancements.

    Perhaps the best part could be that it is specifically designed to run on older or lesser hardware ( NetBooks come to mind here ) is available in SSE and SSE2 optimized version's as well. So I decided to give it a spin on a Athalon 64 1 Gig Ram ~w/Nvidia 7300GT graphics 512mb Ram.

    You will need some Non-Redistributable Libs from the official LL SL 1.23.5.1136262 Viewer, so it may be a good idea to install that beforehand, or manually install them yourself.

llkdu.dll         Kakadu JPEG2000 library
SLVoice.exe Voice components
vivoxsdk.dll 

Decent FPS of about 11, everything loaded quickly, including my inventory in the back ground.

   

 

    I was so impressed I decided to take it down a notch and try it out on a P4 1.6 with 512mb Ram on a 256mb Nvidia 6200GS and got similar result's.

    During my testing I was unable to locate a Grid Manager ( it does come with 40 pre-loaded Open Sim Grids already ) or the Animation Overrider however. I do not have a lot of time to devote to 1.x based viewers, so it could be I just missed something along the way.

    The Developer Boy Lane claims that Rainbow is actually capable of running on Pentium 2 class computers, he may well be right. Would defiantly be a good candidate for a Net Book.

JayR Cela :_)

Dolphin 1.5.51.3627 Virtual World Viewer

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Time to take a look at yet another V1.x based viewer, seems as if this is yet another fork of the Ascent Viewer, which was 99% based on official  LL code. According to the developer Lance Corrimal.

    The remaining 1% of the code is what makes this viewer so much better and unique. This viewer includes patches contributed by (in alphabetical order): Able Whitman, Aimee Trescothick, Aleric Inglewood, Alissa Sabre, Blakar Ogre, Boroondas Gupte, Carjay McGinnis, Dale Glass, Gigs Taggart, Henri Beauchamp, Jacek Antonelli, JB Kraft, jcool410, Khyota Wulluf, Kitty Barnett, Lance Corrimal, Latif Khalifa, Marine Kelley, McCabe Maxsted, Michelle2 Zenovka, Mm Alder, Nicholaz Beresford, Robin Cornelius, Vadim Bigbear, Zi Ree, Zwagoth Klaar and other, unknown authors.

    Pretty much I consider it to be a darn good rock solid V1.x based choice for either SL or any one of the 38 OpenSim based grids already pre-loaded for you, plus the ability to access your own stand alone grid ( very useful for working and designing while offline ) The initial setup menu's are quite comprehensive and offer more than enough tweaks to keep most advanced users happy.

   

    Performance is only so,so but it does include some nice feature's including Radar and Area Search.
I was a little disappointed that no AO or Environmental Preset's are included.

 

    So is it worth the download ? Probably not, and I believe there are no plans for future development, as Lance has really been devoting his time to Dolphin 3.x ( more on that coming soon )

JayR Cela

SecondLife : Nirans Viewer : Kirsten Clone

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Well installing this viewer takes a little bit of extra work, #1 it does not automatically place a shortcut on your desktop, the default installation is in the Program Files Folder under Kirstens S21

     The opening screens are beautiful. I was unable to find an antialiasing setting, but that proved to be unnecessary. The default's for my computer worked just fine.

 Nirans Viewer 3.0.3 (3) Sep 13 2011 20:47:05 (Nirans Viewer)
Release Notes

You are at 248,852.0, 313,677.0, 21.7 in Cristal Cove located at sim8753.agni.lindenlab.com (216.82.33.176:12035)
Second Life Server 11.10.18.243270
Release Notes

CPU:               Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz (3391.59 MHz)
Memory: 3071 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600) compatibility mode. real ver: 6.0 (Build 2900)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 210/PCI/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 6.14.0012.7527
OpenGL Version: 3.3.0

libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: S21J Runtime: 2.0.6
Audio Driver Version: FMOD version 3.750000
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Voice Server Version: Not Connected
Built with MSVC version 1600
Packets Lost: 379/27,363 (1.4%)

 

    Over all, I have to admit quite an impressive achievement for one person working on their own to resurrect what many people had written off as a dead issue. Performance was respectable,  at a solid 15fps.

     Now bear in mind it still suffers from all the same flaws as Viewer3, notably the inability to mute group chat's or read legacy log files. But if you are a died in the wool Kirsten Viewer user, that more and likely does not concern you anyways.

     Niranv Dean deserves more than a pat on the back for his efforts and dedication to a truly advanced SL Viewer. If you are into creating Machinima, or a SL photographer I would highly recommend putting your support behind this project. With a little TLC this could prove to be a truly great viewer.
http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/2011/09/kirstens-viewer-continues.html

JayR Cela :_)