I first became aware of the Astra Viewer about 9 moths ago while I was on the Open Sim based OSGrid and was complaining to someone about how much I hated the Imprudence Viewer. She recommended Astra, and provided me with a URL link. She explained that it was still currently in Beta and had a few bugs, but she did not care much for Imprudence either and felt it was a definite improvement. Several days later I saw her again, and gladly thanked her for the recommendation.
Bear in mind that Siana Gearz is the team leader for both Astra and the Singularity viewer, so there a re a lot of similarities. Singularity is on the official SL TPV list, Astra is not, and there are good reasons for that. Open Sim is kinda like the Wild Wild West frontier in comparison to SL. So my speculation is that there are a few features the Lab may not want or even allow into SL that Astra supplies.
I have not used Singularity for a number of months, having totally migrated to Phoenix FireStorm, ( I see no reason to use a V1.x based viewer in SL any longer ) so I can not accurately do a head to head comparison off the top of my head from memory alone. Rather than waste a lot of time even trying to compare the two, I will do the same on this post as my previous one for Cool VL, a bunch of screen shots of the various set up pages, you can judge for yourself.
Did ya notice anything different ? Well I did, temporary uploads is one, the ability to always be able to build no matter what the land permission setting's are was another, and a few other's.
Let me say this, Open Sim is not Second Life, the ultimate goals are very different between the two. SL is a closed walled in garden, OS on the other hand intends to ultimately allow a number of, perhaps thousands of various Grids to interconnect to one in other all the while being able to take your inventory along with you, and that is called Hyper Grid. ( What amazes me is that the original idea was LL's ) but there is a huge hurtle to overcome before HG can actually become a reality, and that is Intellectual Property Right's. The days of this becoming a reality are not that far off. I'm going to make a guess here, and I could very well be wrong, but I think by the 4th quarter of 2014 it will become a reality.
Anyways Astra is another really Kick Butt Open Sim viewer, it does not have all the pre-configured OS grids as Cool VL, and some of the features are a bit different but geared towards similar users. My advice is, if you are either just getting started in Open Sim or a seasoned veteran, the Astra Viewer is hard to beat.
JayR Cela :_)
8 comments:
Last time I checked, Siana wasn't the team leader for Astra.
Astra is a viewer that originally started as Singularity and after that branched off and made their own decisions.
Astra 1.6.3 has been released on the 18th of March and if you check the last changes, none of those are hers.
Hi there Fly-Man thanks for your response to my post.
However if you look at the credit's listed under Help >About Astra > it clearly list's Siana Gearz as the team leader.
Not that it really makes any difference to me, I would imagine it could ruffle a few feather's in the Open Source World. Oh Well
Astra Viewer is developed and maintained by the Astra Dev Team ,Siana Gearz, Shyotl Kuhr, Aleric Inglewood and Narv Czervik, with contributions by Henri Beauchamp, Kitty Barnett, Thickbrick Sleaford, Zauber Parecelsus, Wolfspirit Magic and others. Astra is based upon Ascent source code. Credits for Ascent include Hg Beeks, Charley Levenque, Hazim Gazov, Zwagoth Klaar, Qarl Fizz, and others. Ascent is based upon the Inertia source code.
I don't know what else to say beside's *bigg huggs*
JayR Cela
BTW / whom ever is responsible for Astra, I think it's a great viewer, so that much being said, thanks again for pointing this annually out.
Regardless it is a very good viewer for Grid Hopping.
*bigg huggs*
JayR Cela :_)
Astra Viewer is developed and maintained by the Astra Dev Team: Andsim, Hippo-Finesmith, EnricoNirvana, CobraElDiablo, RevolutionSmythe, WhiteStar Magic and Fly-Man-.
Since the 19th of August 2011 Astra broke loose from Singularity and became a complete different product then Singularity is nowadays.
And yes, I agree that it's a perfect viewer for Grid Hopping :)
And what I miss in the pictures you shot, I added a set of new Windlight settings to the Viewer which makes the total count of WindLight settings inside Astra now: 728 Land/Sky settings and 45 Water settings.
Oh My
I was not aware that you were involved in the Astra Project, I was just taking screen shots of the various user configurable settings.
If you would like to use this blog as a place to display what you have been accomplishing with Astra, by all means, you are more than welcome to come here and let people see your work.
I would be more than happy have you as a guest blogger
as a matter of fact, I am just about to logg in
I agree, nice post! Well done. :)
Thank you Virtual Life for taking the time to post your comment here. I appreciate it very much. I will continue to do the best I can in order to keep people informed as to what is happening in SL and hopefully Open Sim, as much as I am able to. *bigg huggs*
JayR :_)
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