Astra Viewer V1.6.3 Another Great Open Sim Grid Hopper

By Avatar JayR Cela

    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 :_)

Cool VL Viewer V1.26.4.6 Taking Viewer1.x To The Max

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Let me just start off by saying that Henri Beauchamp just amaze's me. He continues to push out a new upgrade every week like clock work. And I'm not talking goofy screwed up Beta's here, these are all very stable and bug free. Admittedly the changes are usually small incremental, well planned, thought thru improvements, but to continue to do this on a weekly basis is an amazing tribute to a truly great programmer.

    Rather than try to describe all of the small little things that really add up to a big difference in the long run, I'm just going to provide some setup screen shots. If you need a larger view just click on the pictures.

   
    As I had mentioned in the previous post, in my opinion the Cool Viewer is an excellent choice for Grid Hopping, providing you with approximately 40 of the most popular Open Sim grids pre-configured and ready to go right out of the box, batteries included LOL :_)

JayR Cela :_)

5 New Viewers~2 For Open Sim~3 For SecondLife

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Yes that's right 5 new VW viewers, to me the most notable are the 2 geared towards Open Sim, the Astra V1.6.3 and Cool VL V1.26.4.6. But then again Henri updates Cool VL every week, so that should really come as no surprise to any of the regular users. But the Astra Viewer produced by Siana Gearz ( Singularity Viewer ) does not get updated on such a regular basis. Both of these viewers will work just fine in SL but are really intended ( at least in my opinion ) for Grid Hopping on Open Sim. Both are V1.x based, and for good reason LL's V3 does not really work all that well on OS based grids. I know I keep saying I will be offering more coverage of OS, but it's just not quite ready for prime time, beside's there is virtually nothing to do socially on most OS grids YET !!!


    As far as SL goes we have Dolphin V3.3.1.23706 released April 1, The Starlight Skin V3.3.1.0803 released  April 2 and The Zen Viewer V 3.3.2.2 April 1. As far as I know none of these are capabable of allowing you to experience the new Path Finding Games recently introduced by the Lab for SL, you will need to download the correct Project Viewer from LL in order to experience that.

    Now I'm a pretty big fan of both StarLight and the Zen Viewer, both are improvements over the stock version from LL, nothing fancy, they are just better designed in the UI department. As far as Dolphin is concerned I have not downloaded Dolphin in at least 2 months, so I can't really make any comments. There is also a 6th viewer, Nirans V1.32 released March 27, I can no longer review The Niran Viewer because it is strictly 64bit and intended for extremely high end gear. :(

    All of the download links are listed here on this blog, just below the Popular Posts section on the right hand side of the page. Have Fun ! and as always *bigg huggs*

JayR Cela :_)

InWorldz Grid Turns 3 This Week

By Avatar JayR Cela

    Oh my how time does fly, it was just about 3 years ago a good friend of my first told me about the InWorldz Grid. In case you are unfamiliar with InWorldz, it is very similar to many other virtual worlds. There is one major difference though, and that is an extremely strong sense of community. There is not a single day that goes by my inbox does not have an invitation to at least one community event of some sort or another. Usually a dance, or party. The initial log in page has lots of information telling you what is going on and  the current state of affairs.

 
     Upon arrival if his is your first time you will log into the coffee shop area, this seems to be the central gathering spot and it is usually occupied with at least a dozen people or so just hanging around. I regret that I have not been able to explore InWorldz more than I have. But there is only so much time in a day. And convincing my lovely fashionista partner Cathy to leave SL in favor of an alternate grid has fallen upon def ears so far. ( she can't bear the thought of leaving behind her huge wardrobe LOL )

    The viewer has just been upgraded to version 1.4.x and should be very familiar to most old time virtual world travelers. Nothing fancy here, just a nice easy to use straightforward design, along with some very nice improvements.

 


    So to co-founders Elenia Llewllyn and Tranquillity Dexter, Congratulations and Happy 3rd Birthday ! and a special thanks goes out to Scotsgraymouser Janus, founder of the Alchemy Labs group as well. *bigg huggs*
http://www.inworldz.com/

JayR Cela :_)