Updates for the week ending: Sunday, March 22nd, 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: 3.7.25.299021 February 24th – no change
CtrlAltStudio Alpha for Oculus Rift updated to version 1.2.3.42797 on March 18th – core updates: recommended alpha update for windows & crash fixes (release notes)
Kokua updated to version 3.7.26.35224 on March 16th – core updates: parity with LL 3.7.25 code base and RLV 2.9.6.8 (release notes)
Mobile Grid Client updated to version 1.22.1241 on March 20th – core updates: fix for chat/IM tab highlighting in Android 5; improved IM channel highlighting on new messages (release notes).
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.
On Monday, March 23rd, OnLive, the company providing the SL Go service, announced the release of Firestorm Mobile for SL Go, bringing Second Life’s most-used viewer to Android devices and the iPad.
Commenting on the launch to me, Dennis Harper, OnLive’s Product Manager for SL Go, said “Since the launch of Firestorm on SL Go in December 2014, one of the questions we’ve most frequently been asked has been, ‘when will Firestorm be available for mobile?’ With this release, OnLive is delighted to again fulfil a request from users and provide them with the service they desire.”
However, due to technical constraints, the launch does see a change to the mobile side of the service, where OnLive is only able to provision one viewer to users. Given the huge popularity Firestorm for SL Go has already achieved since its launch on the SL Go service, it will, for a time, be the only viewer available to those using the service on Android devices and the iPad. Hopefully, this will be a short-term situation, and OnLive will again be able to offer a choice of viewers to mobile users in the near future.
This will not affect SL Go users on PCs and Mac computers, to whom OnLive will continue to offer a choice of the Lab’s Second Life viewer or Firestorm when running the SL Go service.
OnnLive have released Firestorm for SL Go running on Android devices and iPads (note the SL Go screen overlay in the image) – and for the time being, it is the viewer for such devices
If you are already using SL Go on either an Android device or an iPad, you do not need to do anything. As soon as you log-in to SL Go, Firestorm will launch automatically.
New users can continue to join the service in one of two ways:
Via subscription, complete with a 7-day free trial of the service: simply visit the SL Go web page and sign-up (credit card or PayPal required)
By in-world payment (minimum of L$650 for one week) via the SL Go in-world payment service (no name and no credit card are required) – you can also read about this service here.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, March 15th, 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: 3.7.25.299021 February 24th – no change
Avatar Height Hover RC viewer version 3.7.26.299635 released on March 10 – Avatar Hover Height allows you to adjust the vertical position of your avatar within some preset limits. See the wiki page and my overview (download and release notes)
Experience Keys RC viewer updated to version 3.8.0.299338 on March 9 – provides support for viewing and managing Experiences and for contributing content for Experiences (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.1.9 on March 10th – core updates: rendering improvements to horizon, Godray / volumetric light (change log)
CtrlAltStudio Alpha for Oculus Rift updated to version 1.2.3.42796 on March 15th – core update – parity with Firestorm release 4.6.7 (download and release notes)
Restrained Love Viewer updated to version 2.9.6.8 on March 10th – core updates: ability to shift camera focus when blindfolded, allowing avatar to “feel” environment around them (release notes)
On Tuesday, March 10th, NiranV Dean released version 2.4.1.9 of his Black Dragon viewer, which includes his recent work on volumetric lighting for Second Life, which I reported on at the start of March.
The update also includes a number of other fixes to some long standing rendering issues that Niran has been attempting to fix. Taken together, they are part of a larger update Niran has been planning, but as he comments in the release notes, he wanted to get these particular changes out to show people, and will save the rest for his upcoming version 2.4.2 release.
Graphics Memory Changes
The first of the changes Niran has made relates to the way in which graphics memory is used with textures. Generally, the viewer has one slider for setting a limit on the amount of texture memory, which encompasses everything you see in the viewer, including all of the UI elements. The is generally set to 512 Mb by default.
Up until the 2.4.1.9 release, Black Dragon, like most viewers, offered a single slider for setting the amount of video memory which could be dedicated to texture processing by the viewer
With the 2.4.1.9 release of Black Dragon, Niran has split how graphics memory is used between “global” textures – which include all the UI elements, etc., and the graphics memory currently being used to render the current scene – what you are actually seeing in-world at any moment in time.
The idea here is to provide the scene textures with their own “pool” of graphics memory, so they are no longer competing for graphics memory with all the other textures obtained from the region and the viewer’s UI textures, and should thus result in fewer issues of visible textures being “thrashed” (e.g. constantly switching between blurry and clear as they are swapped into and out of memory due to lack of space).
With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 , Niran has attempted to “split” how video memory is used by the viewer into two adjustable “pools”, one for global textures (which include UI elements), and one just for just the current scene textures
As I’m not a graphics or viewer rendering expert, I can offer no opinion on this approach. However, do note Niran’s recommendation to set texture memory to 512 Mb (the default upper limit for SL viewers, set several years ago to avoid OpenGL issues which might occur when setting large memory allocations) and the scene memory to 256 Mb.
Horizon and Other Rendering Fixes
One of the visual irritants in Second Life when running the view with the Advanced Lighting Model option (which Niran still refers to by its more technical name of “deferred rendering”), those living at altitude in-world (or flying at a few hundred metres above sea level), is the way in which the line of the horizon between “sky” and “sea” forms a concave curve across the screen, rather than a flat line as one might expect.
The familiar concave horizon line between “sky” and “water” seen when running the viewer in “deferred” mode (ALM enabled) …
With Black Dragon 2.4.1.9, Niran has addressed this, and a few other horizon-related rendering issues so that – and again when running the viewer with Preferences > Display > Deferred Rendering (ALM) enabled, the horizon now appears as a horizontal line, as shown in the two images shown here, taken from Rebeca Bashly’s When Life Gives You Apples … Run.
Images of all the horizon rendering adjustments Niran has made can be found in his blog post on the release, linked to at the top and end of this article.
Niran’s revised horizon line between “sky” and “sea”, seen in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9 with deferred rendering (ALM) enabled
In the Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday March 3rd, 2015, Jessica gave a rapid-fire overview of performing a clean install. In trying to keep the video to around 5 minutes in length, the result, while informative, came across as rushed.
Given people did feel the first video did feel hurried, and that clean installs can be a necessary part of viewer life, the latest Tool Tip Tuesday video from Jessica might be referred to as “Clean installs: the Director’s Cut”.
With a running time a little under 13 minutes, the new video provides greater information and clearer instructions on:
Saving your chat and IM logs to a custom location on your PC
Using Firestorm’s backup capability to save and restore your viewer’s global and per-account settings
Performing a clean install.
The video both complements the original clean install video, and stands as an instructional guide in its own right, providing a lot more explanation and background. So, if you were confused by the speed of delivery in the original video, this revisit may well be for you!
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read this report.
OnLive, the company providing the SL Go service, announced on Monday, March 9th, that new users signing-up to the service can now pay for their use of the service with Linden dollars via a pilot scheme involving secure in-world payment booths offered through OnLive’s SL Go support island.
The news came via a statement from OnLive that reads in part:
You’ve probably heard of SL Go, the viewer that streams Second Life from the cloud in ultra-rich graphics, right to your tablet or low powered computer. You might have wanted to try it, but hate giving out your credit card info and personal information. Well, we now have a great solution for you!
If you sign up for SL Go with a NEW USER account you can buy weekly subscriptions in-world using Linden Dollars (L$). There is a private sign up booth where you can create your free SL Go account, and then pay for subscriptions using L$. Each week is only L$650, and you can buy up to 4 weeks at a time. Also, you can return and renew or extend your subscription in-world at any time.
Dennis Harper, OnLive’s Product Manager for SL Go contacted me to provide a few extra details. “This move will initially be for a limited number of new users,” he said. “The fact is, while payment in Linden Dollars has been frequently requested, we just don’t know how the community will use this new feature. Hopefully, given Linden Dollar payments have been so requested, this will be wildly popular. If so, we will take the cap off and offer it to all SL Go user and subscribers.”
Part of the problem here is that payment via L$ can only be made on a non-recurring basis; so there is a risk that people could end-up signing-up to use SL Go for a week, and then never renewing, which would not be particularly good for OnLive’s business model or for SL Go itself. Hence the pilot programme, which allows OnLive to test the water.
The new SL Go in-world payment centre – new users can use this to sign-up for an SL Go account, and renew their payments, with Dennis Harper (centre) and Jersey and Robby (to the right) from OnLive
However, if the pilot does prove successful – and Dennis and OnLive believe it will be – then paying for your subscription to SL Go via L$ will become a standard payment option provided by OnLive, and the company will implement a means by which existing SL Go users can transition to paying for their use of the service with Linden Dollars if they so wish.
Another reason for not offering L$ payments immediately to existing users is that of technical complexity; there’s a lot involved in providing the means for users to switch over to a L$-based payment plan. As such, it makes sense for the company to trial the system with new users first.
The SL Go in-world sign-up and payment centre provides up to three teleport discs to three secure sign-up areas (the number available may vary, depending on whether some / all of the sign-up areas are currently being used – they will accept only one avatar at a time)
“Solving the transition issue is difficult and will take some more time,” Dennis told me. “We need to figure out how to ‘stack’ payments via Linden Dollars upon an existing recurring subscription end-date, and implement a means by which their existing recurring can be cancelled, without it impacting their use of the service.”
He continued, “And then what happens if a user decides payment via L$ isn’t for them, and they’re happier using a recurring subscription? How do we facilitate switching them back, again without impacting on their use of the service or making them sign-up all over again? So it’s much more complex, both technically and from a user-experience angle, to provide Linden Dollar payments to existing users.
“But, if the pilot programme works out, it is something we’ll be working towards providing!”
Each of the sign-up areas provides instructions on how to sign-up for an OnLive account using the television, how and how to download the OnLive client (PC / Mac) and app (iOS / Android). A payment sphere is also provided for your initial payment (made to OnLiveBanks Resident), which is a minimum of L$650 for one week
In the meantime, those wanting to give SL Go a try, but who might have fought shy of the idea due to the need to supply credit card and personal information can now do so by visiting the in-world sign-up and payment centre at SL Go Island. Signage at the centre will walk you through the sign-up process (which you only have to complete once; after that, you can renew your use of SL Go via the payment orbs located on the ground level of payment centre).
Please note that, for obvious reasons – including the potential to game the system – users signing-up via the in-world payment method will not have the 7-day free trial period offered to them (it can, for example, be too easily gamed).
If you haven’t tried SL Go yet, and would prefer to pay via subscription, you can still sign-up via the SL Go website, which is still offered with the free 7-day trial period. Existing users can obviously sign-up for a new OnLive account using the in-world method if they wish, but will then be paying for two OnLive accounts until such time as they cancel one or the other.
Once you have created an account in this way, you can continue paying for the service via the payment globes at the ground level payment centre (payments made to OnLiveBanks Resident) – there is no need to teleport to the secure areas in order to make further payments
Remember, SL Go isn’t for everyone. But if you have a need to access Second Life while on the go from either an iPad or Android tablet (using the SL viewer only at present), or if you have a low-end computer on which you’d like to run Second Life in all its full richness (using either the SL viewer or Firestorm), then SL Go may well be for you.
Important note: The SL Go service is to be shut down on April 30th, 2015. For more information, please read 
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