Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, January 6th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5th, promoted December 13th. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – No change.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, December 23rd
This summary is generally 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.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5th, promoted December 13th. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
The last version of Kokua I looked at in these pages was version 6.0.0, which primarily added Animesh functionality to Kokua.
Since that time, there have been a number of further updates, up to and including 6.0.1.44454 (RLV), and this article is intended to catch up to the current releases. In short, the intervening updates have been:
6.0.0.44291 (RLV), November 29th, 2018: focused on parity with Marine Kelley’s RLV 2.9.24.
6.0.0.44301 (RLV for Windows), December 8th, containing RLV bug fixes and four new RLV information panels.
6.0.1.44374 (RLV) and 6.0.1.44375 (No RLV) for Windows, Mac and Linux, released on December 13th.
6.0.1.44454 (RLV), December 17th, 2018 for Windows, Mac and Linux – essentially a bug fix release for a issue with the 6.0.1.44374 (RLV) release.
In addition, the 6.0.1.44374/44375 updates saw Kokua merged to parity with the (at the time of writing) current SL viewer release, version 6.0.1.522263, formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer, promoted by the Lab of December 13th, 2018 (release notes here).
It is the the 6.0.1.44375 and 6.0.1.44454 (RLV) updates that I am focusing on in this update, together with an overview of the new RLV panels introduced with 6.0.0.44301.
Menu Restructuring
The major visible change to both 6.0.1.44375 and 44454 is a revised menu structure. Up until now, Kokua has used the legacy (going back as far as v1 viewers) initial menu structure of File, Edit and View, as opposed to the Me, Communicate and World options found in the official viewer and followed by (for the most part) most other v5/v6 viewers.
To help Kokua users gain familiarity with the new menu structure, the Kokua team have produced a document outlining how and where options have been moved between menus in converting them from the old format of File, Edit and View to the more standard Me, Communicate and World.
Advanced menu > Classic Kokua Menus allows users to toggle between the “legacy” (File, Edit, View) and “current” (Me, Communicate, World) menu titles. A restart is required for each change to take effect
By default, the new menu structure is OFF, to avoid the risk of confusion for users not expecting the change. For those wishing to to use the new menu system, it can be enabled via Advanced menu > unchecking Classic Kokua Menus. The viewer must be restarted to apply the change. This option can also be used to switch back to using File, Edit, View, if desired (again with a viewer restart required).
RLV Updates
Kokua 6.0.1.44301 implemented a new set of RLV diagnostic panels designed to assist RLV users, as these were initially only available in the Windows version of the viewer, I’m covering them here, as they are now available on all OS flavours of Kokua.
The new panels are a combination of code from the Script Error window found in the standard viewer, and some code from the RLVa implementation within Firestorm. They’ve been designed by Chorazin Allen of the Kokua team, who gives full credit for the base code used, although as he notes, the operation of the panels based on Firestorm’s RLVa implementation have been substantially modified to work with RLV and his own design preferences.
The new panels are all accessed via the RLV menu, which includes a new section for the panels, shown on the top right in the image below. Chorazin also provides a comprehensive guide to their use, and I refer RLV users to that document for further information.
The new RLV windows – click for full size, and also refer to New RLV Information Windows on the Kokua viewer blog. Console, Status and Attached / Worn panel images via the Kokua website
From 6.0.1.44374 (RLV) to 6.0.1.44454 (RLV)
Version 6.0.1.44374 (RLV) and 6.0.1.44454 (RLV) are functionally identical to one another with the exception of the Out Of Character (OOC) functionality – that is, the use of “((” and “))” in text during role-play to indicate comments / messages that should not be considered part of the on-going role-play exchanges.
In short, a change was implemented in RLV 2.9.24.1 that affected how OOC chat is handled when a user is under certain RLV restrictions. However, the change broke the OOC chat processing logic. While not a problem for the dedicated RLV third-party viewer, it has caused problems for Kokua users (see OOC chat with (( )) not working with Kokua RLV 6.0.1.44374).
6.0.1.44454 fixes the issue through the provision of two new options in Preferences > Kokua > General:
Allow OOC chat using (()) (requires restart): enabled by default, this must be checked in order for OOC chat to work at all. If it is disabled, all OOC will appear as “…” in local chat. So, only disable this option if you do not want to see OOC in local chat at all (as the option notes, you will have to restart Kokua when enabling / disabling this option).
Send OOC chat to redirected chat rather than local chat – enabled by default. This has two functions:
When enabled and applicable RLV restrictions are in operation, all OOC chat goes to redirected chat handlers and it will not appear in local chat.
When disabled, the expected OOC behaviour applies, and OOC chat will appear in local chat in the usual (( and )) parentheses.
This option can be set independently to the first, and does not require a viewer restart.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, December 16th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.1.522263, dated December 5th, promoted December 13th. Formerly the Spotykach Maintenance RC viewer – NEW.
On Sunday December 16th, 2018, the Firestorm team issued Firestorm 6.0.1, which includes Animesh support.
Note that this update is being classified as a “public beta”, because further Firestorm-specific Animesh optimisations are being planned. This means there will be a further “full release” is being planned for January 2019.
However, while Firestorm 6.0.1.56538 may be classed as a”beta”, it should be considered as stable and as bug-free as any previous release.
In keeping with my usual approach to Firestorm releases, what follows is an overview of the release, highlighting some of the more significant changes I feel will be of most interest to users.
Please use the table of contents on the right to jump to any specific topic of interest. Full details of all changes, and contributor credits can be found in the official release notes.
There is no need to perform a clean install with this release if you do not wish to.
Do, however, make sure you back-up all your settings safely so you can restore them after installing 6.0.1.
Note that as a beta release, Firestorm 6.0.1.56538 will not overwrite any existing release version of Firestorm you may have installed, but will be installed into a separate folder / location. However, note that swapping back and forth between this beta and another version of Firestorm will wipe your cache each time.
Lab Derived Updates
Core Updates
This version brings Firestorm up to parity with Linden Lab release viewers through to version 6.0.0.520636 (Animesh), including the recent Rakomelo, Quinquina and Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil Maintenance viewers, and incorporates Vivox Version 4.9.0002.30313 (Mac and Windows).
Animesh
For those who may be unaware of it (!), Animesh allows the avatar skeleton to be applied to any suitable rigged mesh object. This, together with suitable animations and scripts placed within the contents of the object, allow it to be animated in much the same way as the Second Life avatar. This opens up a whole range of opportunities for content creators and animators to provide things like independently moveable pets / creatures, and animated scenery features.
While Animesh is likely to primarily be used by content creators, it has been designed so that any suitable rigged mesh can be converted to Animesh directly from the Build / Edit floater (see below, left). Do be aware, however that simply converting an object will not cause it to start animating – you’ll need suitable animations and a script to run them.
Like any other object utilising animation, this is done by adding the animations and scripts via the Edit > Contents tab for your converted object.
Left: any suitable rigged mesh object can be converted into Animesh by adding animation scripts and toggling the Animesh check-box in the viewer. Right: one possible outcome of Animesh is that over time, it might discourage the use of alpha-flipping to simulate animation. This involves creating multiple versions of something like an animal (or parts of an animal) and then using a script to reveal them in turn, while keeping the other hidden with alpha masks. While it results in simulated animation (such as a squirrel climbing a bird feeder), alpha flipping is very performance / rendering intensive (r)
How To Get Started With Animesh
The best way to get started with Animesh is to use the available resources. These include:
Derender Animesh: Despite the hoped-for performance improvements Animesh might allow when compared to alpha flipping, these will be the potential for performance impacts in regions / parcels with a large number of Animesh objects moving around.
To help mitigate this, Firestorm 6.0.1 includes an option to derender all Animesh in a scene (Developer menu > Rendering > Derender All Animesh).
Note: Derendered Animesh will reappear after a teleport or re-logging.
Also, Firestorm includes a number of other Animesh tweaks:
Auto-scaling amortisation of the new Animesh dynamic bounding box calculations. This fix limits the overhead of the new dynamic bounding box calculations to AvatarExtentRefreshMaxPerBatch per AvatarExtentRefreshPeriodBatch frames. The default is 5 avatars per 4 frames, so in a busy region, 25 avatars would take 20 frames to refresh the bounding boxes.
Performance tweaks by reducing Matrix operations per render pass.
More JointMatrix Palette caching tweaks:
The cache has been moved to drawable for more benefit (reduces CPU overhead when rendering shadows and materials by caching the jointmatrixpallette).
Sacrifices some potential cache locality but savings seem to outweigh this.
Other Lab-Derived Updates
Additional Lab updates worth noting are:
BUG-216339 – Add a Click to: action to the Build / Edit floater to disable clicking objects that can be set per-object in a linkset – see Left-Click None Option, below, for more.
BUG-216416 – Add a transparency indicator for invisiprims. When “Highlight Transparent” (CTRL+ALT+T) is used, invisiprims will now be highlighted in green.
BUG-225670 – Include the full Windows 10 build number in Help > About Second Life and logs
TextureLoadFullRes setting no longer persistent, to avoid issues with accidentally setting it on systems which cannot handle the memory load.
The CTRL key must be held when dragging inventory folders into in-world objects. This change was primarily made to address accidental inventory “loss” by dragging a folder of no copy items into an in-world object.
Fix for your avatar not standing up after pressing Shift+Alt+S keyboard short-cut.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, December 9th
This summary is generally 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.
Note that test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version 6.0.0.520636, dated October 18th, promoted November 14th. Formerly the Animesh RC viewer – No Change.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 