Esbee Linden posts about the forthcoming Viewer 2.1, and makes something of a ballyhoo over it. 400,000 downloads is a surprising figure. Emerald has been around a while and yet people question the Modular Systems’ claim that in excess of 70,000 have downloaded it. Given Viewer 2 has been with us less than three months, 400K is a very surprising figure. Nevertheless I expect at least one fanboi will be looking through Hubble and praising the figure for all its worth and using it as further “proof” that there is nothing wrong with Viewer 2.0….
Beyond the hype, however, there are some telling statements from Esbee. Most interesting is her list of forthcoming attractions, namely:
- Adding individual volume controls for Shared Media objects.
- Customization of the bottom bar, so that you can quickly access the features and functionality that you use most often.
- Updates to the camera and movement controls, so we can allow you to pan and orbit your view of Second Life at the same time.
- Adding the ‘Build’ option back to the right-click context menu.
- Fixing the bug where CTL-ALT-F1 does not hide all the Viewer UI as it should. This fix should solve a lot of problems for our machinimists and photographers.
- Adding a preference that allows users to control whether the Side Bar opening resizes the world or slides over it.
Frankly, while it is good news that the above are all being added to Viewer 2.0 – the fact remains that they should have been there from Day One. Period. While Viewer 2.0 is primarily aimed at new users who, granted, come into SL with a raft of different expectations than the rest of us, the fact remains that Viewer 2.0 also has to service those of us who have been here a while – and things like the irritating camera controls, restricted build functionality, lack of cohesive access to functions via the taskbar, etc., simply fail to consider, much less address the needs of the experienced user.
Similarly fundamental bugs such as the Sidebar jarring the in-world view to the left, the failure of CTRL-ALT-F1 should have been picked up and addressed long before the Viewer went to public Beta (and I have it on good authority that both of these issues were repeatedly raised during the closed beta testing, so absolutely no excuses here).
Performance issues are something I’m not going to comment on – they’re an accepted pitfall in an environment as dynamic as SL, and something somewhere is likely going to cause issues and problems along the way; as long as LL stay on top of them, that’s all that matters.
The Avatar customisation is also interesting, although potentially it will push Viewer 2.0 further from those wishing to stay with a 1.2x code base for their Viewer and put more of a load on TPV developers as they try to maintain and fix establish 1.2x code and integrate / back-engineer the newer code into their products. Even so, a greater flexibility for clothing layer use is to be welcomed.
Now, if they really could get the new search tool sorted out, then we might be approaching a waypoint to celebrate; but I’ll let Ciaran Laval give you the low-down on the situation there.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 