Category: SL Tech

Radegast updates to 2.18

Posted on by Inara Pey

Radegast is a third-party Second Life / OpenSim client which has proven to be especially popular with those on low-end systems over the years, and gained a solid level of support from the visually impaired, who found the client a lot easier to use than a full viewer – so much so that a special accessibility guide was produced, and special classes held in using the client.

Sadly, ongoing health issues impacting Latif Khalifa, Radegast’s creator, reached a point where, in November 2014, he had to signal that he was unable to continue maintaining the client, although he ensured the source code remained available for anyone who wanted to do so on behalf of the community.

Well, the good news is that on Thursday, July 9th, Radegast was updated to version 2.18. The even better news is that the person making the update was – Latif Khalifa!

The new update brings a number of improvements to the client, which the release notes list as:

  •  Support for Group Bans (RAD-471)
  • Double click on inventory item to wear/attach (RAD-472)
  • RLV support for @acceptpermission (RAD-500)
  • New Automatically Accept Dialogue Function (RAD-490)
  • A fix to allow the main window to minimize to the system tray correctly (RAD-497)
  • Add log-in support for SirinHGpole-Grid to the grid manager (RAD-503).

The Group Ban functionality in Radegast operates the same way as for any viewer:

  • Avatars can be banned from a group by either selecting them in the group members list if they are already a member and using the Ban button (below left), or by using the Group Ban Picker to ban one or more avatars pro-actively from joining the group by using the Ban … button in the Banned Residents tab (below right)
  • Group Ban capabilities can be be awarded to any role in the group by enabling the GroupBanAccess option in the  Allowed Abilities section of the Roles sub-tab.
The Radegast 2.18 update adds Group Bans to the client
The Radegast 2.18 update adds Group Bans to the client use the Ban button in the Members and Roles list to eject and ban a person in the group; use the Banned Residents tab to track those previously banned or to pro-actively ban users from joining the group.

For those unfamiliar with Radegast, it is a full feature but lightweight client able to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It provides pretty much all of the capabilities found in a full viewer, including full inventory management, mesh upload capabilities, voice support, etc.. In addition, it has a few options of its own such as an API for plug-ins, speech recognition and an AI capability (ALICE).

For those who may be without their viewer for some reason, but would prefer to see what is going on in-world, the Windows and Linux versions of Radegast provide a 3D scene renderer in which you can see the world and move around in it, chat with others and – via the Objects option – interact with the things you see around you.

Radegast's in-world view option (the Scene Viewer)
Radegast’s in-world view option (the Scene Viewer) – note this does not support windlight, etc.

All of this has made Radegast a flexible, usable and popular client, and if you’d like to know more about it, please refer to my Radegast coverage in this blog.

Given Latif is still recovering from illness, this update may not signal his full return to supporting Radegast; when I did ask him about this update, he replied, “there were several updates, such as group bans that were done, but unreleased. So why not get them out ;-).” As to the future, we’ll have to see what comes along; but certainly, seeing Latif back in the saddle with this release is great.

Related Links

Lab issues notifications project viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

secondlifeOn  Wednesday, July 8th, the Lab issued their notifications project viewer, which sees an overhaul of the way in which notifications – system, group, transaction, etc., are presented through the viewer.

The viewer has been in the works for a while, and is the direct request of a feature request put to the Lab by Aki Shichiroji back in 2012 (see BUG-8000), and which has more recently been working its way through the Lab’s work list to appear in project form on July 8th.

The release of the project viewer, version 3.8.1.303211, was accompanied by an official blog post on the subject, which reads in part:

The Notifications Project Viewer is an improvement for sorting your notifications. This new feature is based on your feedback: a notifications floater with four tabs sorting your incoming notifications into System, Transactions, Invitations, and Groups and allowing better interaction with them as well.  Those who deal with high volumes of money transactions, group notices, group invites, or inventory transfers now have a better way to review their messages and identify which notices need immediate attention.

The images below show the floater and its four tabs:

The new Notifications floater - see below for explanatory notes
The new Notifications floater – see below for explanatory notes

Multiple notifications within a tab are initially shown compressed (above left). Clicking on the down pointing arrow button for a specific notification (highlighted in red, above left) will expand that particular notification within the floater (above right), with scroll bars allowing you to scroll down through an individual notification or through the notifications within that tab.  Clicking the up point arrow button (highlighted in blue, above right) will compress an expanded notification.

As with the current notification system within the release viewer, individual notifications can be deleted from any tab by clicking the X button. There are also additional buttons within the panel for collapsing all expended notifications or deleting all notifications within the currently displayed tab (i.e. clicking Delete All with the System notifications tab will delete all notifications in that tab but not all of your notifications in general).

A further improvement to the way notifications are displayed is that a time stamp for when a notification was sent / received is now clearly visible, both in the collapsed and expanded views for all notifications. The presence of any attachment is also indicated by the use of a paper clip symbol.

Given this is a project viewer, the Lab is requesting feedback and bug reports via the Second Life JIRA.

A couple of issues have been filed already. One of these – BUG-9625 – points out that the notification floater currently fails to include any means of accepting a group invitation; the only way of accepting an invitation in the project viewer at present, is to click on the button displayed in the initial pop-up (which will still be displayed as usual).  Expect this to be created in due course as the project viewer is updated.

Also, do keep in mind this is a project viewer, and currently not intended for prime time use.

Related Links

Second Life project updates 28/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey

Umbral Photography, Hydra Isles; Inara Pey, July 2015, on FlickrUmbral Photography, July 2015 (Flickr) – blog post

Server Deployments

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest updates / news.

On Tuesday, July 7th, the Main (SLS) channel received the same server maintenance package deployed to the three RC channels in week #27.

As noted in my project update for week #27, BUG-197 referred to in the package release notes relates to an issue whereby a user can’t see any of their local chat on a region or parcel, and nor can anyone else, due to a scripted object which is spamming chat so badly, the chat throttle kicks in, but no warning would be provided to inform the user this was the case. with the deployed change, the user will now get a message about the chat throttle being hit, but unfortunately, the system will not identify the spammy object (so it might be removed / returned, if possible).

There will be no RC deployments to the RC channels on Wednesday, July 8th, leaving all of the main grid on the same release. A new RC deployment, described as a “minor update” is in preparation for deployment to the RC channels in week #29.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, July 7th, The Maintenance RC viewer was updated to version 3.8.1.303166, bringing it into line with the attachments RC viewer updated in week #27, and just leaving the Viewer Managed Marketplace viewer to be updated in the release channel, which will likely happen later this week.

Chromium Embedded Framework

At the Monday Open source Developer’ meeting, Oz Linden indicated that an anticipated project viewer,  the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) viewer which will provide media support via HMTL 5, should be appearing “Pretty Soon”™.  While Quicktime and Flash  may work on this viewer for some users, given the age / status of both, the Lab does not plan to support either going forward, and recommends media creators migrate to HTML 5.

It had been hoped that this viewer would have been out by now; however there appear to be one or two issues still to be resolved. “I heard the developer working on it today say he was deep in the middle of keyboard issues,” Simon Linden said during the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, July 7th. “Getting frameworks like that to cooperate with OS events like keyboard, mouse and screen is always tough.”

Experience Keys / Tools

Simon is continuing to work on tweaks to the Experience Keys / Tools code, and in doing so passed an interesting comment at the Simulator User Group meeting.

“I’ve been working on updating the KVP code that runs on our server,” he said, “and had the most frustrating time integrating the newest version into our code … The code we have is dated and we should have better performance and stability with their latest.”

Quite what the difference is between “our” and “their” code might be isn’t entirely clear at this point in time – although the question was asked during the meeting, and may well be asked again in the future.

Simon also hopes to put some work into getting KVP access moved onto a separate thread to ordinary asset handling. As previously mentioned in these updates, that KVP access is currently on the same thread as asset handling can, at times, cause issues, as noted in BUG-8946.

Group Chat

The recent improvements made to group chat continue to make themselves felt, with many reporting that the old issues of lag with the chat on large groups has largely dissipated. Such are the improvements that Whirly Fizzle has suggested that http://isslgroupchatstillbroken.com/ should be updated. Even so, despite all the the improvements, Simon has indicated that there are still “a few things” he’d like to tweak a little more.

2015 viewer release summaries: week 27

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday, July 5th, 2015

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: 3.8.0.302622, June 30 – formerly the Experience RC viewer providing support for viewing and managing Experiences and for contributing content for Experiences download page, release notes
  • Release channel cohorts (See my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself):
    • Attachment fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird) updated to version 3.8.1.303130 on July 2nd – core updates: a number of fixes for various attachment issues (download and release notes)
  • Project viewers:
    • No updates.

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.49, and the Experimental branch to version 1.26.13.18, both on July 4th (release notes).

Mobile / Other Clients

  • No updates.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

 

UKanDo and Black Dragon get Experience Tools

Posted on by Inara Pey

Both UKanDo and Black Dragon have recently incorporated the Lab’s Experience tools, following their were promotion to release status in the official viewer on June 30th, 2015.

UKanDo arrived with Experience Tools on Thursday, July 2nd, with the release of version 3.8.0.28122. As with the official viewer, this adds the Experiences floater access to the ME menu, and also has the Region / Estate and About Land panel also updated with their respective Experiences tabs.

The Experiences floater and an Experience Profile as they appear in UKanDo with the default skin. The viewer also includes the Region / Estate and the About Land Experience Tools updates as well
The Experiences floater and an Experience Profile as they appear in UKanDo with the default skin. The viewer also includes the Region / Estate and the About Land Experience Tools updates as well

In addition, as a part of this release, UKanDo updates to RLV 2.9.12, with the NaCl / Marine Kelley avatar shadow rendering updates for rigged mesh – see my article of RLV 2.9.12, available here.

UKanDo 3.8.0 also includes Marine Kelley's RLV 2.9.12 update, with the avatar shadow rendering debug setting to help with rendering performance when running with shadows enabled and surrounded by avatars using mesh bodies & other rigged mesh attachments
UKanDo 3.8.0 also includes Marine Kelley’s RLV 2.9.12 update, with the avatar shadow rendering debug setting to help with rendering performance when running with shadows enabled and surrounded by avatars using mesh bodies & other rigged mesh attachments

Black Dragon release 2.4.3.5 sees the Experiences floater added to Dragon > Edit menu. As with UKanDo, it also adds the Experiences tabs to the Region / Estate and About Land Floaters.

This release, which arrived on July 4th after a couple of hiccups with versions 2.4.3.3 and 2.4.3.4, also includes Niran’s July 3rd update, which focused on a complete RLVa update, as per the release notes for that version.

I’ve not had an opportunity to extensively drive either of these viewers; my time is a little squeezed at the moment, and I’m struggling to clear a backlog of work and bits. So, consider this more a heads-up than any attempt at a review.

Related Links

Dolphin viewer bows out of Second Life, Adams style

Posted on by Inara Pey

dolphin-logoSometimes it takes us humans quite some time to admit something to ourselves that we don’t want to admit, but eventually there’s no more putting it off.

It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce the end. It’s over. No more new Dolphin Viewer.

Thus opens a blog post dated June 22nd, from Lance Corrimal, which I am ashamed to admit I missed when it appeared.   It serves as an introduction to Lance officially announcing the end of all Dolphin viewer development / maintenance work at his end of things.

He goes on:

With my current RL job and all the travelling that I’m doing there are more exciting things to do with the little time I have to spend on SL and other hobbies, than maintaining a third-party viewer… especially when most of the “maintenance” involves fixing stuff that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.

I have been porting a few of the things that used to be in Dolphin Viewer 3 to Firestorm in the last few weeks …  I invite the FS team to grab anything from there that they like.

TheDolphin Machinima Toolbox was one of the last additions to Dolphin to be release (in beta form), and held a lot of promise
The Dolphin Machinima Toolbox was one of the last additions to Dolphin to be release (in beta form), and held a lot of promise

This is sad news; over the years Lance had built the Dolphin viewer into an excellent offering (it was my second viewer of choice of a good while). But time has conspired against him, even though he did attempt to get the viewer back on track (and in doing so started implementing some nice additions, such as the Machinima Toolbox, seen on the right).

But the viewer is very much a living, evolving things, and playing catch-up, even with the best will in the world, can become increasingly hard (and probably more than a little demotivating when the “to do” list constantly remains longer than the “done” list). This being the case, we can hardly blame Lance for wanting to spend what free time he has to devote to SL in enjoying things in-world that he finds fun and relaxing; I know if I were in his shoes, I’d have given up a long time ago.

Lance closes his blog post with a paraphrase of a Douglas Adams quote, saying, “Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!”

I’ll add a small response of my own, “thanks, Lance, for all of your work over the years. May the wind be always be at your back!”

With thanks for the pointer to Nalates Urriah