Category: SL Tech

Over the Rainbow

Posted on by Inara Pey
Rainbow Viewer

One of my first experiences with V1 TPVs was via the Windows Cool Viewer compiled by Boy Lane, and which became the Rainbow Viewer. For a long time, this was simply my Viewer of choice. I was therefore intrigued to see that after over a year, Rainbow has been overhauled and made available once again.

Based on the 1.22 release of Viewer 1, Rainbow has a core of die-hard fans, and the new release does much to bring it up to par with the likes of Phoenix and Imprudence 1.3/1.4, given it now includes:

  • Client-side AO
  • Media filtering
  • TP history
  • Display Names
  • Multiple attachments (but like other V1 TPVs, no multiple wear for the same layer of clothing)
  • Tattoo and Alpha layers
  • Outfits creation
  • Prim alignment tool
  • Multiple grid support

Using Rainbow is like a blast from the past. At installation, you’re informed that you need to obtain several files from either the “official” Viewer 1 or from Snowglobe. This is something I haven’t had to do in ages, and while I can understand why Boy has gone this route (better performance where the Kakadu system is concerned), I nevertheless wonder as to how vulnerable this leaves Rainbow: Viewer 1 is no longer available and there is no guarantee LL might not at some point simply remove snowglobe access, given it is now a dead project.

Once in the Viewer – and my use of Firestorm of late notwithstanding – there was something nostalgic in using Rainbow; the interface, the Preferences options – all hark back to the “good old days” in many respects when things were indeed, “fast, fun and easy”. However, the nostalgia is actually very short-lived. There is much that Rainbow lacks that I find hard to do without: there is no vertical tabbing for IM windows, for example, and no Quick Preferences option (although granted, both may come). Even the inclusion of avatar physics is – to be honest – now dated. The Viewer 2 system (already adopted by Firestorm) is far superior for those willing to give it a go.

Where Rainbow is likely to score is in being aimed at other OS Grids. I tested it with InWorldz and Avination, both with few issues other than getting the “you have been logged out” message, complete with options to review chat / IMs each time I logged out of InWorldz, rather than getting s “clean” exit. Other than that, performance was easily as smooth at Imprudence 1.3, and a lot better than the likes of Phoenix. As such, it is a welcome addition to the list of Viewers that can access other grids.

In terms of SL, however, I do wonder about the Viewer’s longevity. As I’ve already commented, the reality is that V1-based TPVs for Second Life are likely coming to their End of Days, what with the Search issues, mesh, and so on.

One of the problems facing Rainbow: Mesh as seen in the V2 Mesh Viewer (left) and in Viewer 1 (right) – with thanks to Linden Lab

To be fair to Boy Lane, the Viewer has been released with a clear statement of intent:

“Rainbow does not intend to be a competitor of viewer 2 or any other of the 3rd party viewers around. All of them are based on either V2 or Snowglobe code. Rainbow is based on 1.22, and playing in a league of it’s own. To support legacy hardware, and to support all my friends in Opensims.”

The last part of this statement is a worthy goal in itself – and again, full kudos to Boy for providing OS grid users with a greater choice. However, where Second Life is concerned, and even with a loyal following, given all that is coming down the road in the next few weeks and months, it’s hard to see this latest Rainbow release as having a decent shelf life.

Viewer 1: adieu!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Some may count this post as premature, but given we’re now into July, and what is coming down the road, I’m getting my goodbyes in early.

Viewer 1 has been with us since Second Life opened its doors. Over the years, it has seen features added, tools moved around, the capability for API elements to be introduced (perhaps the most widely-used being Marine Kelley’s Restrained Love Viewer); the code has been open-sourced, allowing a raft of famous (and not a few infamous) Viewers to come into use: the OnRez Viewer, Cool Viewer, Rainbow Viewer, Meerkat, Imprudence, Phoenix and of course the “Devil incarnate” itself: Emerald (and that’s without mentioning the various “blackhat” Viewers).

Many changes to the Viewer were welcome (remember the introduction of the first skin option? of Windlight?), many were being decried and striking fear in the hearts of some even before they rolled out (remember the hoo-haw in some camps over the arrival of Voice?); others were met with much facepalming and LL’s apparent failure to grasp how people used their viewer (remember the consternation when the chat windows all changed and “communicate” turned up?). Some of the criticism aimed at the Viewer and LL was justified; a lot of it wasn’t. But through it all, Viewer 1.x, in all its many guises has remained a perennial favourite among Second Life users. Not even the demise of the official 1.x series of Viewer did much to put a dent in this: people simply switched over to V1-based TPVs in preference to going over the Viewer 2.

Viewer 1.18 at the Windlight launch (with thanks to Eckhard Jager)

Now all of that is about to change. In truth, the writing has been on the wall for V1-based Viewers for the last 12 months or so: ever since Linden Lab depreciated all versions of their Viewer prior to 1.23.5 and then turned off Snowglobe work in favour of Snowstorm for Viewer 2.x.

Snowglobe showing the silver skin (thanks to SamanthaS Nightfire)

From this month, however, even those using V1 TPVs are going to have to consider where they are going to move to next. As LL remind us (via retweets of this announcement, at least through @SecondLife), mesh commences its roll-out this month, starting with, I understand, the Blue Steel Release Channel prior to the remaining Release Channels & the rest of the main grid being mesh-enabled by the end of August.

The key issue here is that V1-based TPVs apparently will not be able to render mesh objects in-world, nor will they be able to upload mesh imports even if they follow LL’s “registration” requirements.

Ergo, if people want to see mesh objects, they are going to have to move to a V2-based viewer. What’s more, unless the TPV developers have persuaded LL otherwise, it is possible those wanting to upload mesh imports will be forced to use Viewer 2 for this purpose, given LL were looking to ring-fence this capability (whether this is still the case is unclear – like much else around mesh).

Mesh: heralding the end of the road for Viewer 1 TPVs (model by Timmi Allen)

Nor does the bad news for Viewer 1 end there; Oz Linden is on record as saying that developers of such Viewers are facing an uphill battle: “[A]ny Viewer that isn’t being actively maintained is going to start having fairly serious problems over the next months. We’re making a lot of changes… if viewers don’t keep up, things will break.” 

The fact is, it will become harder and harder for TPV devs to try and maintain Viewer 1 code. Kirstenlee Cinquetti saw the writing on the wall over a year ago, and has moved over entirely to the development of the outstanding S21 Viewer. Announcements made at the end of last year concerning the future of the Viewer 1 Search prompted Phoenix and Imprudence to start down the road to developing a V2-based Viewer each. While Imprudence are still putting effort into their V1-based 1.4 Viewer, it is evident that their longer-term aim is not merge this work into their V2 Kokua Viewer, while Phoenix already have the outstanding Firestorm available. Individual TPV developers are also transitioning: Lance Corrimal hasn’t done anything significant with his V1-based Viewer since the end of April, while his V2-based Viewer comes on in leaps and bounds.

It is going to take a while for mesh to really make its presence felt – assuming, again, that the roll-out goes smoothly and without any major updates; it’s also possible that some TPV developers will look to try and backport the Search 2 functionality into their offerings in the hope of keeping things alive. So it’s possible that some may try to cling to Viewer 1 for a little longer; but while it may be seen as an unpopular statement in some quarters, the era of Viewer 1 really is now drawing to a close.

I don’t say that with any sense of superiority (I am an unabashed V2-based Viewer convert – Firestorm and Kirstenlee’s S21); I started out with Viewer 1 (version 1.14 or 1.15), and personally have no problems with it. But, sad to say, we all come to a time where, for better or worse (depending on one’s own feelings), we must move with the tide.

And the tide is now assuredly flowing to Viewer 2’s shore.

New Firestorm Beta

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoFirestorm today released a second public beta version of the viewer. The 2.5.2.16922 release came somewhat unexpectedly and added a slew of new features and bug fixes which do much to move the viewer very much closer to a prime-time release status.

Note: the following comments apply to the Windows version of Firestorm. Other OS versions may differ.

Build Tools

Chief among the new features is a full port of the Phoenix build tools, so that Firestorm now includes:

  • Clickable group name on build floater
  • Object highlight toggle on build floater
  • Pivot point controls
  • Default size and material controls
  • Link number of build floater (with same bugs as Phoenix)
  • Build options pref panel Prefs> Firestorm> Build
  • Copy/paste object position, size, rotation, parameters and textures
  • Alt, control and shift keys modify increment on spinners (Alt: x10. Control: x1/10. Shift: x1/100)
  • Higher precision on position, size and rotation (4 decimal places)
  • Phoenix’s additional path profiles and transforms types
  • Added button for copy keys (UUID) to clipboard
  • Added requirement to confirm before setting object for sale (prevents sale sniping)
  • Expand/Collapse button
  • Added always show last owner.

Other notable changes include:

Quick Preferences Button

Quick Preferences options

The inclusion of “Quick Preferences button” in the bottom tool bar that provides quick and convenient access to a host of options that can often require frequent adjustment (see right), including the ability to rapidly step through windlight sky and water defaults or select them from a drop-down menu in much the same way as can be found within Phoenix via the arrow option at the extreme right-hand end of the tool bar.

Group Pop-up Window

New Group pop-up window

It’s pretty well known that I’m not a fan of the Sidebar, which tends to be little more than a disruptive waste of space where I’m concerned – so anything that Firestorm adds that prevents me having to be tossed around the Viewer and into the Sidebar is going to get a big thumbs up from me.

So it’ll come as no surprise that the new Group pop-up window is a big hit with me. As with Viewer 1.x, it allows you to pull-up information on a Group and peruse it quickly and conveniently in a simply pop-up.

It even includes a couple of new buttons – although one of them could perhaps do with a clearer title. CHAT opens up a Group Chat window – very handy when you want to make an announcement; GROUP CALL also opens up a Group Chat window, although the function of the button is actually to initiate a VOICE call between group members. As such, the latter button might be better off labelled “Voice Call”.

Movement Controls

I’ve rarely used them, but many do like Viewer 1’s movement controls. Until now, these haven’t been offered within Firestorm as a discrete option.

This latest Beta changes that by presenting them with a toolbar button of their own, and the palette fully repositionable. This will doubtless be seen as a very welcome addition by those who prefer to use the palette.

Land Details

Another small, but to me significant, improvement is that with this release, the land name displayed at the very top of the Viewer window is once again clickable and will bring up the ABOUT LAND window. This has been one of my hang-ups with Viewer 2.x; despite having the LAND button sitting in the navigation bar (which I rarely turn off), I must admit that I’ve been unable to break the habit of pointing to the land name and clicking on it, a-la Viewer 1.x, in order to bring up ABOUT LAND. Kudos to the Firestorm team for rescuing me from the need to consciously break myself out of this habit!

Bits of the rest

Other changes I particularly like with this release are:

  • “Restore to last position” added to inventory right click menu
  • Contacts tab in Conversations is now closable
  • World map search results are now alphabetical
  • Copy outfit your wearing to text option in the worn tab on appearance panel. From gear menu, copy to clipboard.

Performance-wise, this represents, on my hardware at least, the best results to date with Firestorm. When on a sim with one or two others and draw set to 360m, I can achieve 60-65fps, easily putting Firestorm on a par with Viewer 2.6. On more crowded sims, this falls to between 45-50fps, which is still superior to the last release. What really stuns me however, is that on a sim with 5 other people and with shadows enabled, Firestom can manage 20-25fps on my machine, making it easily the best when it comes to rendering shadows for me.

Opinion

Firestom simply goes from strength to strength and this release potentially marks it as ready to move to a “final” release status.

If you’ve held-off downloading Firestorm or making the move to a Viewer 2.x-based TPV, now is really the time to start re-thinking your position, especially with Viewer 1.x search about to lose effectiveness in some areas and mesh due to be rolled out over the next 6-7 weeks. And if you’re not impressed with Viewer 2 either from direct experience or through the reports of others, Firestorm is liable to suit you right down to the ground.

Livin’ the 3D Sec’ Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Klee 3D

Kirstenlee’s Viewer has always been bleeding edge; it is the Viewer for the serious SL photographer and Machinimaist.

At the end of May, the Viewer took another leap forward as it went…3D!

I hadn’t been able to test it myself, due to a lack of any appropriate glasses. However, a trip to the local cinema solved that problem, so this afternoon I got to have a paddle with it.

The first thing I will say is that my PC is not top-of-the-line, nor is my graphics system. That said, it handles shadows reasonably OK, if with something of a performance hit, so I was pretty sure 3D would work – and it did! I’ll be honest, there was a performance hit (GeForce 9800 card with 1 Gb, btw, running with a Q6600 2.63 Mhz processor & Win 7 32), but it was nowhere near as massive as when enabling shadows. My normal 40-50fps tumbled to around 25-28. The glasses I have from the cinema perhaps weren’t the greatest (after all, your supposed to be sitting tens of feet from a big screen when wearing them, not sitting a dozen nose lengths away from a table-top screen), but with some jiggling of the sliders, I got a reasonably impressive result and spent 20 minutes bimbling around my sky platform.

Given my GPU / CPU, I didn’t hold out too much hope of running shadows and 3D effects – and I was right. While both enabled, I was left with a frame rate of 1 fps. Erp, as the spokesperson once said, but not surprising.

The only real problem I had lay with the fact that while the in-world view was 3D, my HUDs weren’t – and the colour separation on them was appreciable to the point of making text illegible.

The 3D controllers can be found in the PREFERENCES -> VIEWER -> MISC tab, and comprise a check box to enable and a couple of slider controls – adjust with care. If you try it, be aware that the Build 8 Viewer is experimental and may do Unpredictable Things.

As photos don’t really do the 3D justice, here’s a video made by Chantal Harvey showing off the results:

S21 Build 8 is currently only available in for Windows; Mac and Penguin versions to follow.

Test drive: Firestorm Beta

Posted on by Inara Pey

Yesterday I gave a rapid overview of Firestorm Beta. I’ve now had more of a chance to take it for a spin, so here’s a more detailed look.

Installation

First off, make sure you completely remove any previous versions of Firestorm prior to install – in the case of Windows, probably best to restart your PC after doing so and prior to installing the Beta. The Widows installer comes in at around the same size as the official Viewer 2 installer (25 Mb) and runs a seamless install, and places 151 Mb of data onto your hard drive.

The first thing you may notice on logging in – assuming you do not rez directly – is that Firestorm has borrowed from Imprudence  / Kokua, and while a cloud you are now an orange cloud, rather than the default grey mist.

Pie Anyone?

Pie or Context – you decide

The next two things you’re liable to notice is that there is now an AO button on the bottom toolbar, and if you click on anything, you get…a pie menu! Viewer 1 lovers, your prayers are answered.

I’m going to commit sacrilege here and say that, after using Firestorm and Viewer 2 and S20 / S21 for a while – and despite Phoenix still being my primary Viewer – I actually think the pie menu is vastly overrated (particularly given it varies so widely as to where anything is, depending upon which Viewer you use; one person’s Detach is another’s More, so to speak). I’ve found the Viewer 2 context menus to be far more consistent in options faster to learn and easier to use.

This being the case, I went straight to AVATAR -> PREFERENCES and pulled up the UI Extras. Much work has been done here to bring together some great UI customisation options on the Viewer – including a check option to toggle between the pie and context menus. I’m not going to run through the options – they are all pretty self-explanatory, and to be honest, most have been available in the earlier Preview options.

Updated Preferences tabs – new options

Other tabs within Preferences have also been massively improved. The Firestorm tab now includes pretty much everything those familiar with Phoenix would expect to see – with a lot of rationalisation and simplification of tabs and options. A nice touch here is that under FIRSTORM -> GENERAL you now get a greater choice in how names and display names are seen, and you can toggle between the Viewer 2 search and the “improved Viewer 2 beta” search (currently on the Search Project Viewer) – those who wish to compare and contrast and identify improvements can now have a field day playing with both! Within this sub-tab is one of my personal favourite new additions: TURN AVATAR AROUND WHEN WALKING BACKWARDS. This is something HUDdles has long had and I’ve really missed it when relying on built-in AOs.

A new element to the FIRESTORM tab is the VIEW sub-tab, which brings together several camera-related functions previously scattered around the place, if available at all. Along side it, the CHAT sub-tab has been massively expanded over earlier releases – and now includes a set of options related to … radar!

I See You!

Radar tabbed

Radar is one of the biggest bones of contention in Second Life. People either love it or loathe it – with those loathing it frequently loudly and persistently screaming here, there and everywhere about it being an “invasion of privacy” and a “tool for drama” (and in the latter case, totally missing the irony in the fact that they tend to be the ones creating the drama).

If I’m honest here, almost any tool in the Viewer can be used properly or to create mischief and the radar is no exception – it is how you choose to use it, and I think it fair to say that most people use it responsibly. Those screaming on…and on…and on… about it representing an invasion of privacy would do well to remember that privacy can be invaded simply by removing camera constraints, pushing up draw distance and camming-in remotely (all possible on the “official” Viewer).

As far as I’m concerned, radar is a HUGE boon. As a former estate manager, it enabled me to identify problem people / areas quickly, get directly to them and deal with matters / provide assistance. Combined with other tools, it enabled me to deal with trouble remotely and confirm the required action had been taken. Even today I find it very useful at times – and it is one of the reasons I’ve stuck it out with Phoenix for so long. Well, no more. I’m in love with the improved Firestorm radar.

Aswith the Preview, Radar forms a part of the PEOPLE tab on the Sidebar – but is much improved. For a start there is an optional minimap display; you can also adjust the scan range for the radar and alter the way avatar and adisplay names are displayed.

If you want a more Phoenix-like radar display, simply go to the tab PREFERENCES (shown in the image), uncheck the show minimap option, and then undock the PEOPLE tab from the sidebar and resize accordingly; however, be aware that doing so can make scrolling through your friend list a tad more tiresome. As with Phoenix, the radar also includes a right-click option when highlighting specific names, allowing you to IM people, etc.

Continue reading “Test drive: Firestorm Beta” →

Firestorm Beta

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoSecond Life Viewers are making the news this week. As Linden Lab roll-out the Windlight Project Viewer and Viewer 2.7.1 with “real time” shadows, Jessica and the team over at Phoenix Firestorm roll out a Beta version of their offering.

Firestorm has been around in a couple of pre-release versions for a while, both of which I’ve looked at here in the past. I have to say that overall, it’s been a magnificent addition to TPVs even while still a work-in-progress; currently my only complaint is that it isn’t as faster, fps-wise as either Kirstenlee’s S21 and LL’s own viewer 2.

The Beta release moves Firestorm closer to prime time, and includes many features users have been requesting, making it something of a true hybrid – Viewer 2 functionality with the capability to use Viewer 1 facilities such as pie menus. Here’s a bullet-point outline of some of what to expect with it:

  • The option to switch between Viewer 1 pie menus (default) and Viewer 2 context menus
  • A resizable chat bar in the bottom toolbar area
  • Radar (still embedded in the People tab of the Sidebar by default) gets:
    • A minimap option
    • Most of the features of the Phoenix radar
    • Additional options
    • The ability to undock it from the People tab and have in displayed in its own window
  • Client-side AO with improved functionality
  • Massively-improved Bridge capabilities and security
  • Keyword alerts
  • Shared Windlight settings
  • Everything currently in the pre-releases.

You can download the Beta from here.

A video has also been produced, featuring Jessica herself, to support the release: