With Server-side Baking / Appearance starting to be enabled on the grid, the only two maintained viewers not to be SSB/A enabled are Dolphin and Imprudence.
I recently covered the state-of-play with Imprudence, and the fact that the team plan to ramp-up the viewer to support all of the new SL capabilities and viewer changes, including CHUI, materials and SSB/A, but it is liable to be some time before they actually get there.
Now Lance Corrimal, the man behind Dolphin, has provided an update on the status of that viewer. The main part of his blog post reads:
I’m sure there are one or two people wondering what is going on with the Dolphin Viewer lately.
To put it simply, my life has been quite hectic the last few months, and it still is. I have a new job that demands a lot of my time and attention. I’ve moved to a different province because of the job, and when I am actually home (the new job involves a lot of travelling), I’m just too damned tired to spend time on working on the viewer.
That being said, there will be a new version, that will have all the new shinies from the Lab. The CHUI interface, SSA, Materials, you name it.
Just … please do not ask me when. “When it is finished” is all I can say right now.
So – SSB/A and more will all be coming to Dolphin – soon. Just give Lance a little room to breathe as the dust of a busy real life settles around him.
He also notes that Dolphin users seeing the advisory warning users of a mandatory viewer update which is displayed on the splash should be aware that clicking on the link will download the official SL viewer, not an updated version of Dolphin.
The splash screen advisory comes from LL (along with the rest of the splash screen), and will download the official viewer, not an updated version of Dolphin
With Server-side Baking / Appearance due to be enabled on the LeTigre Release Candidate Channel on Wednesday July 10th (from which it will gradually roll across the grid), the Exodus team have issued a new version of the popular Exodus viewer. Classified a beta release, the new viewer update has the version number 13.7.9.1, and includes the latest code updates from the Lab.
This means that with this release, Exodus is:
Server-side Baking / Appearance ready
Includes the Lab’s Communications Hub User Interface (CHUI)
However, the release:
Does not include materials processing support
RemovesRLVa support.
CHUI and SSB/A
VHUI now a part of the Exodus viewer
There is not actually much to report here per se, other than both work entirely as expected. CHUI sees the LL integrated chat / IM conversations floater working in Exodus.
Simlarly, SSB/A works exactly as expected on SSB/A-enabled regions, with other avatars rendering correctly in Exodus, and your own avatar rendering correctly to others.
Exodus SSB/A: (l) my avatar on Exodus and my CTA on the SL viewer – both render correctly in Exodus on the Aditi SSB/A test regions. (r) The same agin, but this time my avatar (foreground) on Exodus, as rendering in the SSB/A-capable SL viewer.
That both SSB/A and CHUI do work flawlessly tends to hide the amount of work the Exodus team have put-in getting both ready to go prior to SSB/A being enabled server-side.
Why No Materials and RLVa?
Materials
Both the integration of CHUI and SSB/A capabilities into a v3-based viewer are very large amounts of work (CHUI has something like over 1200 change sets of its own). They therefore require time and effort to implement – and have likely been keeping the Exodus team more than a little busy (on top of some of them being actively engaged in developing the materials capabilities in SL as well as working on other items such as the Mac Cocoa project).
There’s also the fact that while materials doesn’t use CHUI itself, both the materials code and the CHUI code touch on other areas of the viewer code. Therefore, it makes sense for the Exodus team to focus on implementing CHUI first and then merging and cleaning the materials changes sets (which is exactly the order in which the Lab did things), rather than racing to implement materials, only to find those updates impacted at a later date by required CHUI updates.
So for all those hoping to see materials in Exodus – it will doubtless be coming, you’ll just need to wait a little longer.
RLVa Removal
The blog post for the release explains the reasoning behind the removal of RLVa support from Exodus thus:
By its nature and by necessity, RLVa is an extremely invasive patch. We do not have the resources to maintain this code, and it is the primary reason for our lack of updates recently. We hope that this removal enables us to produce more frequent updates going forward and apologise for the inconvenience.
While the loss of RLVa is perhaps to be regretted, how much it is likely to be missed obviously comes down to the number of Exodus users who make use of it, obviously – and it is worth pointing out that RLVa was something of a late arrival to Exodus in the first place, so it may not be that greatly missed.
Other Updates
This release also sees Exodus:
Using Cocoa instead of Carbon on Mac computers
Gain full screen support on Lion
Fain Retina support for the Retina MacBook Pros.
Feedback
This is not an in-depth test of the latest Exodus beta, but a quick spin around the Aditi block. Everything works, as notes, as expected, and the rendering enhancement which have been part and parcel of Exodus for a long time certainly make their presence felt even in a default rough & ready snapshot such as the one grabbed above for the SSB/A comparison.
I didn’t do any performance tests this time around, as I was on Aditi – I’ll save that for another time :). That said, I’ve always found Exodus to be a solid performer on my current hardware, where it has tended to be my “reserve” viewer (along with Dolphin).
This is a very tidy and timely update to Exodus which brings it back to a par with other popular v3 viewers, and perhaps even a little ahead with the Cocoa support. Kudos to the team!
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 Viewer Round-up 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
By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
The Viewer Round-up Page also 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.
I’ve been meaning to run a catch-up on Imprudence since mid-April; my apologies to Onefang Rejected and crew for not doing so sooner.
My last report on Imprudence, back at the end of February, made mention of the fact that Onefang, who had been working on the Meta-Impy viewer (itself forked from Imprudence 1.4.0), had come forward with a stated goal of continuing Imprudence’s development and joined the Kokua / Imprudence team. After that, things went quiet as far as the rest of the world was concerned. However, this didn’t mean nothing was being done.
Recent Updates
In April 2013, the team released first experimental version of Imprudence 1.4, referred to as 1.4.0.3 exp 0, the first major release of the 1.4.0 code which had been in beta status for a very long time.
The update included a lot of under-the-hood work with many bug fixes from numerous contributors, improvements to the build processes, code clean-ups, the removal of the Google translate option, updates to the grid list, port of inventory category capability from Cool VL viewer, addition of a MOAP radar, and security improvements to the storage of users’ passwords.
This was followed almost exactly a month later, in May 2013, by a further release – referred to as 1.4.0.3 experimental 1, and which included further fixes and updates which built on the work released in 1.4.0.3 experimental 0.
With both releases, Onefang took time out to address a range of questions on Imprudence, and roughly outline what the team hope to achieve. His comments were caveated by noting two important points:
There is a fair amount of catching-up to do, and it will take time for the team to get there, so people shouldn’t expect everything to be done at once
The team is small, and all of them volunteer to do the work. As such, it has to be slotted-in between real life obligations, etc. Therefore, progress may be subject to interruption, and users were (and are) asked to bear this in mind.
Looking Ahead
In terms of bringing Imprudence in-line with some of the major updates other viewers have / are seeing, Onefang had the following to say (as noted in his replies to comments following the 1.4.0.3 exp 0 release – scroll down to read all of his replies in full). There are no time scales attached to any of the following because, again, the team are working on a volunteer basis and are subject to RL interruptions and obligations which may impact progress in one or more areas.
MOAP (Media on a Prim)
Robin Cornelius provided the team with the MOAP radar functionality, and subsequently with a working patch which includes most of what is required to get MOAP working in Imprudence, so the team hope to have this working “soon”.
Mesh Rendering
Currently, imprudence uses the “old” rendering code which cannot render mesh objects (boxes, cylinders and weird shapes result). Replacing this code is a major task and will take time to complete. As such, the aim for the time being is to catch-up on other code elements and come back and address the issue of render code update / replacement for a later date.
However, Onefang has been experimenting with code that bypasses the bulk of the old render code for meshes, and steps in at the last moment to add the mesh after the rest of the render is done. This approach has worked well as a proof-of-concept, and he hopes that if it can be shown to work “for real”, it will offer a possible interim capability for Imprudence to render mesh until such time as the rendering code can be properly overhauled / replaced.
Imprudence doesn’t currently support mesh rendering, as shown above with the LAQ mesh cottage (see inset for how it should look). BUT, while it may take a while for comprehensive mesh rendering support to be implemented, Onefang Rejected is looking at an interim solution which may allow Imprudence users to correctly view mesh objects in-world
Second Life Server-side Baking / Appearance
The team plan to make Imprudence SSB/A compatible in the future. This will not happen prior to SSB/A going live across the SL main grid (Agni), nor is it likely to happen any time immediately after LL have deployed SSB/A. However, Imprudence will be looking to support it as and when they can.
Grey people will be the order of the day for Imprudence users on Second Life once SSB/A is deployed – at least until the Imprudence team get SSB/A support implement, which they are looking to do in the future
Materials Processing
Again, earmarked for inclusion in Imprudence, but not necessarily on the immediate horizon.
Other Things on the List
Obviously, the above is not the extent of the team’s plans, but tends to represent the items they are most asked about. Overall, the “to do” list includes a lot of work and covers things such a multiple attachment support, pathfinding support (NPC support for OpenSim), avatar physics, parcel privacy support, scripting additions, RLV/a updates, HTTP updates, and more.
Imprudence remains a popular viewer, and runs well on OpenSim. That OneFang and the team are committed to keeping the viewer going and bring it up-to-par with other viewers and both with OpenSim and Second Life is to be highly commended. It may take a while for some of the updates to reach the light of day, so some patience may be in order for those who’d like to continue / resume using it with SL in particular.
Update July 2nd: version 4.4.2 has been released by the Firestorm team, and Firestorm 4.4.1 has been blocked from accessing Second Life. If you have previously installed Firestorm 4.4.1, you can install 4.4.2 without needing a clean install. If you are updating from Firestorm 4.4.0 or earlier, a clean install is strongly recommended. The downloads can be found on the Firstorm website.
Firestorm 4.4.1 was release on June 27th. However, it will shortly be superseded with Firestorm 4.4.2.
The reason for this is explained in a new Firestorm blog post, but the short version is that due to a slight mishap, some additional logging capabilities which had been enabled during the beta release of 4.4.1 and which were intended to help Linden Lab gather information for the forthcoming release of Server-side Baking / Appearance were not removed from the viewer when it moved to release status.
As a result, the system the Lab uses to gether data on viewers is now being completely overwhelmed by the amount of data Firestorm 4.4.1 is sending to it. Although it has taken a few days for the problem to be identified and the Firestorm tem notified, the result is that they are now taking some emergency corrective action:
With immeidate effect, version 4.4.1.34164 of Firestorm has been removed from the Firrestorm download page
A new version for Firestorm is being prepared for release. This version – 4.4.2 – will be no different to 4.4.1 other than the removal of the additional statistics logging code
When the new version is released, and to ensure the LL service is no longer inundated with excess data, Firestorm release 4.4.1.34164 will be blocked from accessing Second Life.
It is therefore essential for everyone who has updated to Firestorm 4.4.1 keep an eye on the Firestorm blog an update to Firestorm 4.4.2 when it becomes available. This should not require a clean install (as was the case with 4.4.1) – but please double-check with any associated blog post which is forthcoming when the release is made.
Again, it is essential that all users of Firestorm 4.4.1 update to Firestorm 4.4.2 as soon as it becomes available.
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 Viewer Round-up 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
By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information
The Viewer Round-up Page also 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.
With Server-side Baking / Appearance starting to be enabled on the grid, the only two maintained viewers not to be SSB/A enabled are Dolphin and Imprudence.
