This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 4.0.0.309247, December 17th – no change
Black Dragon, the v3-style viewer by NiranV Dean updated to version 2.4.4.6 (aka version 4.0.1.36965) on Tuesday, December 29th.
The update primarily comprises a re-working of the viewer’s preferences floater, with Niran noting, “while the display preferences tab has gotten quite some upgrades and consistency changes, all the other panels were left out… until now.”
The most noticeable change is that several more of the tabs now have a slider to the right, the result of options which had previously been presented in two columns now appearing in a single column. As well as this, some options have been moved around to present a more logical top-down flow, as has previously been seen in the Display option tab, and with radio buttons replaced by combo boxes.
Niran has been re-working the Black Dragon Preferences floater, offering an approach to the tabs which matches the top-down flow seen within the Display options tab (click to enlarge)
The result is a more logical flow, but currently comes at a cost – the aforementioned increase in sliders on the right of some of the tabs. However, and here’s where an assumption on my part comes in – I do wonder if this might only be an interim thing, and whether Niran will be adding expanding sub-tabs, again in the same style as the Display tab – as possibly evidenced by the inclusion of one such sub-tab in the Sound and Media tab.
The Sound and Media tab includes a sub-tab expansion option – a sign that expansion capabilities are to be added to the Preferences tab
Niran also notes that this release was to have contained the Project Bento avatar skeleton updates, but these have been left out. This is probably a wise decision; Bento is still in formative beta testing, and could be subject to changes throughout the next few months, as such the viewer code (and server-side support) could undergo change. As it is, Bento support is best witnessed on Aditi.
This is clearly a tidying-up, rather than a major update. however, it continues Niran’s work in offering a consistent presentation of the UI within his viewer. Also, given that the Lab prefers TPVs do not make significant releases over the holiday period, keeping the updates to UI clean-up is probably no bad thing.
And it certainly makes a nice little Christmas present for Black Dragon users.
Update #3, January 9th, 2016: The testimonials on the landing pages have now been updated with genuine comments and images from Second Life users.
Update #2: I’ve further been informed that the testimonials are intended to the express the sentiments of SL users and are based upon feedback. expressed by SL users. Similarly, the images are in fact stock Internet images. A footnote to the effect that “The consumers above are not actual consumers of the advertised product.” has now been added to each of the landing pages.
Update #1: I’ve been informed by various third parties that the testimonials on the landing pages may not in fact be genuine. I’ve therefore revised this post until I hear further on this matter.
On Monday, December 28th, Friestorm announced the arrival of their Gateway landing pages, and asked Firestom users for their assistance in helping to spread the word about Second Life.
The Landing pages are an integral part of the Firestorm Gateway, which itself forms a part of the upcoming trail Gateways Programme I previewed back in September, and which hopefully will be officially announced as up and running by the Lab in the near future.
In all, six landing pages have been produced, each one of which is intended to showcase a specific aspect of using Second Life, and encourage those new to Second Life to sign-up and log in to the platform. To help with this, Firestorm is asking SL users to share those pages they feel their non-SL friends and contacts would find to be of the most interest and thus sign-up. The six pages have the following topic descriptions:
While one might quibble over the subject titles (role-play and exploring might seem to exhibit a high degree of cross-over, for example), the pages themselves offer a crisp, clean approach to present Second Life, including endorsements from (and photos of) actual SL users.
Each of the pages includes a series of sign-up buttons which carry those interested to the initial phase of sign-up: creating an account – providing a user name, etc.
The sign-up form using the Lab’s API
It’s probably worth pointing out here, and before the conspiracy theorists reach for their tin-foil hats, that this sign-up process uses an API supplied by Linden Lab. This means that, just like all third-party TPVs, none of the gateways in the programme – Firestorm or anyone else – is storing or accessing the sign-up information a new user provides. The information is strictly between the user and the Lab. The only part of the sign-up information which can be accessed is the e-mail address: and that only for as long as it takes for an automated welcoming e-mail to be sent.
Providing the fields are correctly filled-out – error messages will be displayed at the foot of the input fields, although you may have to use the vertical slider to bring them into view thanks to the API – clicking Get Started will move you on to the next page, intended to step the user through downloading, installing and launching the viewer.
The Firestorm instructions page
To me, this page presents some issues which perhaps need to be dealt with if it is to be as effective as might be hoped – I’ll come back to this a little later.
One thing established SL users are bound to note is that nowhere is there any opportunity for the new user to select an avatar.
This isn’t an oversight on the part of the Firestorm team – it is a result of having to use the “old” user sign-up API, which doesn’t have any hooks into the Avatar Picker seen on the Lab’s own sign-up pages. Thus, the first opportunity new users get to picker the gender of their avatar is after they have logged-in – and even then, they only initially get either the male or female default Character Test avatars which (a long while ago) replaced the infamous “Ruth”.
As the gateway has to use the “old” SL registration API, users do not get to select the gender of their avatar until after they log-in (left), and are then defaulted to either the female or male Character Test avatar (click to enlarge, if required)
Obviously, this is far from ideal. First impressions count, and many people seeing their avatar for the first time and comparing it to the glossy images on the landing pages could end up feeling a tad bit aggrieved or disappointed and might even simply log off.
This issue has already been raised with the Lab, so hopefully, something can be done about it, either by providing the updated API with the avatar picker to those involved in the gateway programme, or by the Lab finding the means to present new users coming into SL via these gateways with at least one of the new “Classic” avatars instead of the Character Test versions.
Once they have selected their gender and have seen their avatar appear, the new user will find they’re starting at the start of the Firestorm’s orientation island, where they can start learning to use the viewer, before progressing on to finding out more about Second life in general through the various activities and events operating within the Firestorm gateway regions.
Given that new users are confronted with the Character Test avatars on first logging in (and allowing for the fact this will hopefully be changing), I did find myself wondering if a short lesson couldn’t be provided showing the new user how to access the Avatar Picker and quickly create an alternative look, just to reassure them that avatars in SL really don’t all look like they first see themselves.
Once new users have progressed through the Firestorm landing / sign-up pages and have installed the viewer and logged-in with it, they’ll be delivered to the orientation island in the Firestorm gateway regions
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 4.0.0.309247, December 17th – no change
On Tuesday, December 22nd, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance project previously deployed to the three RC channels. This comprises crash and internal simulator fixes; LSL HTTP requests accessing data sources that require non-text Accept headers (such as the Destination Guide); and updates to group member counts to help deal with recent group database issues.
SL Viewer
With the no change window now in effect, no updates are anticipated with any of the current crop of official viewers until after Monday, January 4th, 2016. These are:
Release viewer, version: 4.0.0.309247, dated December 17th – formerly the Chromium Embedded Framework RC viewer – release notes
Project Azumarill (HTTP updates) RC viewer, version 3.8.7.308134 dated November 25th – release notes
Vivox (voice fixes) RC viewer, version 3.8.7.307744, dated November 17th – release notes
Quick Graphics (Avatar Complexity and graphics presets) RC viewer, version 3.8.7.306758, dated November 12th – release notes
Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.8.7.308556, dated December 3rd – release notes
Project Bento (avatar skeleton enhancement) viewer, version 5.0.0.309171, dated December 17th – release notes
Oculus Rift project viewer, version 3.7.18.295296, dated October 13th – release notes
Obsolete platform viewer (for users of Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7), version 3.7.28.300847 dated May 8th – release notes
It is anticipated the HTTP RC viewer and the Vivox RC viewer will be released as a single RC viewer very early in 2016.
Project Bento
Abramelin Wolfe of Abranimations fame has issued a viewer demonstrating the enhanced Project Bento skeleton using mocap finger data – watch the avatar’s fingers!
Commenting on the video at the last Simulator User Group meeting for 2015, Simon Linden said, “that video is cool :)”!
Bone Translation and Rotation
As reported in my week 51 project updates, I reported how the Lab was asking for more detailed feedback on specific requirements animators and creators felt they might need with the Bento skeleton. The comment, made by Oz Linden, came after Vir Linden responded to feedback relating to bone translation through animations, rather than relying purely on rotation with the facial bones (as is currently the case).
These comments have led to more comprehensive feedback through the Bento discussion forum thread, including two videos by Raz Welles, and animated GIF examples from others, demonstrating the need for translation as well as rotation to achieve various results with facial expressions. However, the Lab would still prefer specific examples to be reported in detail (e.g. on the JIRA), with the appropriate files supplied, as Oz Linden again notes on the forum. He goes on to point out as well, that it isn’t just “new stuff” the Lab is looking to offer through Bento:
I’ve seen a number of posts here that include some variation on “we have always had to do XYZ this way because of the SOMETHING bug, and so we can’t do SO-AND-SO” (for example, joint offsets not loading correctly). If there are existing issues that are directly related to Bento (like joint offsets not loading correctly), we’d like to get them fixed so that we can get some of these obstacles out of the way. So, if you’ve got one, please describe it (see previous paragraph – concrete examples we can experiment with) by filing a BUG in JIRA (put [Bento] in the Summary). References to long-standing issues are ok; we’re not only trying to do new things, we’re trying fix at least some old ones too.
Some attending the Simulator User Group meetings have expressed a hope that Bento might offer (or pave the way for) animated objects which could use the skeleton. This would provide a means to provide NPCs and creatures which are not necessarily reliant on bots (see SH-2642 as a rough example of this kind of suggestion as well). responding to this at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, December 22nd, Oz said:
Skeletons for non-avatar objects are out of scope for this round. It’s an obvious improvement that would be good to do someday; whether and when is not currently knowable.
Asked if filing a feature request would be appropriate, he added, “I’m pretty sure we’ve got several variations on that request, but one more certainly won’t hurt.”
Overall the Bento discussion is healthy, although how it all translates into actionable items with regards to the new avatar skeleton extensions remains to be seen. As the Lab has indicated, hopefully there will still be plenty of opportunity to put forward and test further ideas, examples and suggestions during the first part of the New Year to help improve what is currently being offered.
Object_Rezzer_Key
Object_Rezzer_Key is a new parameter which is to be added to llGetObjectDetails() early in the New Year. It will allow a rezzed object to find the key of its parent rezzer, then use llRegionSayTo() to chat back to that parent. It’s an option which has come up for discussion at User Group meetings a number of times, and at the meeting on Tuesday, December 22nd, Simon Linden indicated that it is something he is currently working on.
The parameter will only work with new objects within a region (existing objects will return a null_key when queried), but it should work after restarts and region crossings (incl. teleports), and with objects which are initially attached and then dropped. Full details will be available when the parameter is officially added to llGetObjectDetails() – Simon offered this news at the User Group meeting by way of being a small gift to those who have been requesting it.
Further Scripting Options for Experiences?
Another set of requests frequently put forward is for further scripted capabilities to be added to Experiences – such as more permissions, camera function additions / fixes further attach / detach / switch object options and an increase in memory for compiling Experience scripts. On these, Simon would only say that he has been looking into increasing script memory for Experience, “and ran into a really sticky problem … how to deal with it when the object goes outside the experience… how it should behave when you go outside the experience area.”
Oz Linden also stated, “Without trying to guess which changes we might make (because I have no idea yet), it has been noted that Experiences gives us some more latitude to provide script capabilities we would not have before because of griefing potential.”
So, it will be interesting to see what might lie in store for Experiences once the Lab are willing to reveal more about what they have planned, and what actually made it into those plans.
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 4.0.0.309247, December 17th – formerly the Chromium Embedded Framework RC viewer download page, release notes
Project Bento viewer version 5.0.0.309171 released on December 17 – introduces extensions to the standard SL Avatar Skeleton with support for dozens of new bones for both rigging and animation, and accompanying new attachment points (download and release notes).
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 