Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 16th
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 5.0.6.326593, released on May 26th, promoted June 20th – formerly the AssetHTTP RC viewer – overview – download and release notes – No change
Updated July 7th: to include information on easy embedding in WordPress.
Linden Lab has recently made two updates to the 360-degree snapshot project viewer, which I’ve been meaning to review for the last couple of weeks.
On June 19th, version 5.1.0.506488 of the viewer was issued, which included image processing updates, and which included offering the viewer in both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows flavours. Then, on June 29th, the viewer was further updated to version 5.1.0.506743 (at the time of writing the current version), which largely saw the viewer brought up to parity with the current release viewer.
The core functional changes to the viewer in both of these updates is the removal of the need for manual post-processing via zip file download and a web back-end provided by the Lab (see my original hands-on of the initial release of the viewer for more). Instead, the viewer is intended to process the image and provide the necessary meta-date to allow automatic playback on most 360-degree image sharing sites.
I’ve so far tested the viewer on Flickr and a number of 360-degree photo sharing sites such as VRchive. The latter appear to work as expected, Flickr requires 360-images uploaded from the viewer to be manually tagged from within Flickr in order to work. This is a minor inconvenience – but would be smarter if the metadata allowed for auto-tagging of the images as equirectangular, as can be done with other 360-imaging tools. A JIRA has been raised on this.
In the meantime, here’s a look at taking photos with the viewer, and getting them working on Flickr.
The 360-degree photo option is fully integrated into the snapshot floater, and when selected will disable all other options and will only allow you to save images to your local hard drive. Note that if you set any other options (e.g. check the Interface option or setting a filter) prior to checking the 360-degree snapshot option, this will result either in the viewer reverting to taking a “normal” snapshot, or ignoring the filter when processing as a 360-degree image.
The 360-degree option enabled in the snapshot floater
Before taking a shot, you should do a little preparation first:
Position your avatar / camera at the centre point of the image you wish to capture (you can “hide” your avatar using a full body alpha or something like a “vanish” animation if you don’t want it appearing in the shot). Use ALT-cam or flycamming to position the camera if you want your avatar to appear in the image, but not at its centre.
Use Menu > World > Environment Editor >Sky Presets > Edit Presets to set your desired Windlight and use the Clouds tab to freeze the clouds. Avoid the use of Depth of Field.
Turn your camera / avatar slowly around in a circle to see everything in the snapshot field of view, allowing everything to render as you do so.
When you’re ready to take your shot, click on Save to Disk on the snapshot floater and set your preferred image size:
Small – 1024×512
Medium – 2048×1024
Large – 4096×2048
Save your snapshot to the location of your choice on your hard drive. You can now upload it to your preferred 360-degree image sharing website.
Displaying In Flickr
If you are uploading to Flickr, remember to manually set the equirectangular tag in the image page, and then refresh the page. The image should reload and display in 360-degree format.
To get snapshots to display as 360-degree images in Flickr, click the Add Tag option and enter “equirectangular” (without the quotes) and press ENTER. Refresh the page and the image should start to auto-scroll once the page has reloaded
Displaying in WordPress
WordPress has a beta 360 photo and video processor allowing users to embed 360-degree images into their posts. However, in the case of images, this requires the .JPG file extension to be used. Currently the snapshot viewer uses .JPEG. However, once the extension has been changed, images should work fine.
To embed a 360 image, upload it to your WordPress media library (or similar on-line storage – but not a photo sharing website), making sure it has the .JPG extension. Then within your blog post, add the following shortcode between square braces (i.e. [ and ]) in either the Visual or Text editor:
vr url=path-to-photo.jpg view=360
This should result in the image being displayed so that it can be clicked on an manually scrolled, as per the image below:
As noted, 360-degree snapshots should auto-play on any photo sharing sites such as VRchive which parse uploads to ensure they are in the required equirectangular ratio (information on using VRchive can be found in this blog here).
Whether or not the viewer can be set so that the metadata allows Flickr to auto-recognise the 360-degree images as such, and simply play them without manual tagging remains to be seen. But as noted, it’s not a major inconvenience of not (after all, who of us here doesn’t fiddle with images post upload to Flickr?). As it is, this is a definite step up for the viewer in managing 360-degree images, and I’d certainly be interested in hearing from anyone as to how it works with Facebook.
One other point to note as well is that at the moment, the 360-degree snapshot project viewer is not compatible with format used for 360-degree images on SL Places Pages. However, the latter will be revised to support displaying images captured by the viewer at some point in the future.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, July 2nd
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 5.0.6.326593, released on May 26th, promoted June 20th – formerly the AssetHTTP RC viewer – overview – download and release notes – No change
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 25th
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 5.0.6.326593, released on May 26th, promoted June 20th – formerly the AssetHTTP RC viewer – overview – download and release notes – NEW
On Tuesday, June 20th, the Firestorm team released Firestorm 5.0.7.52912.
This is something of a maintenance update than a major feature release, covering as it does the more recent updates from Linden Lab – the improved region and parcel access controls, updated Trash behaviour to try to help control risks of inventory loss, custom folders for uploads, the avatar complexity updates, and a host of smaller fixes and tweaks.
Most of these have been adopted directly from the Lab’s code, others – such as the avatar complexity updates – have been folded-in to existing capabilities in Firestorm. There are also numerous updates and improvements from the Firestorm team as well.
In keeping with my usual approach to Firestorm releases, what follows is not an in-depth review of everything new / updated in version 5.0.7.52912, but rather an overview, highlighting some of the more significant / interesting changes, updates and fixes, which I feel will be of most interest to users.
For details of all changes, and all due credits to contributors, etc., please refer to the official release notes.
The Before We Begin
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 5.0.7.
Major Lab Derived Updates
Firestorm 5.0.7 brings the viewer up to parity with the Lab’s 5.0.5 code base. So, as noted, this release supports the updated region and parcel access controls, the latest avatar rendering updates, custom upload folders, etc..
Updated Region / Parcel Access Controls
The updated region / parcel access controls, introduced by Linden Lab in May 2017 mean that when a region holder / manager explicitly sets a region for open access to visitors (via the Region / Estate floater), parcel holders on the region can no longer override the setting at the parcel level and create ban lines around their parcel (although they can still use the parcel ban list and scripted security systems if they wish and subject to any covenant).
These updates mean that both the Estate tab in the Region / Estate floater has been updated, and the behaviour of the Access tab in the About Land floater has changed.
In the case of the Estate tab in the Region / Estate floater, the check box Allow Public Access has been removed, and a new option, Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive, has been added (see below).
The new Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive option on the Region / Estate > Estate tab and its Apply button. Used to determine whether or not parcel owners can set parcel access restrictions through the About Land floater
By default, Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive is checked, which means that parcel owners should see no difference in behaviour for their parcels unless an estate holder / manager opts to make changes at the estate level.
Should the option be unchecked, the estate holder / manager making the change will receive a warning that they are about to make a change that could affect parcel settings in the estate:
The new warning estate holder / managers will see when changing the new access settings
To set the change, the region holder / manager must then clear the warning (OK) and click the Apply button on the Region / Estate floater – failure to do so will leave the option unchanged.
UNCHECKING the option will result in two things happening at the parcel level:
Parcel owners will receive a new system notification for every parcel in the region they hold which has been affected by the change:
The new system notification displayed to parcel holders for every parcel in the region they hold which has been affected by a change to the region’s access settings at Estate level
Any previously active banlines around affected parcel will be removed, and parcel owners will no longer be able to set parcel access restrictions via About Land > Access, as the options to do so will be greyed out:
When the Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive option is checked, the parcel-level access options in the About Land floater will be greyed out for parcel holders, preventing them from overriding the region-level access
If a region which previously allowed parcel holders to set their own access restrictions is set to public access (by unchecking Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive and clicking APPLY), and then is reverted again (by checking Parcel Owners Can Be More Restrictive and clicking APPLY), all parcels on the region will revert to the access settings applied to them before any changes to region access were made at the estate level.
Trash Behaviour Changes
To try to help with inventory losses through accidental deletion of objects which have mistakenly been moved to Trash, the Maintenance RC viewer has the following Trash related behaviour changes:
The prompt displayed when you have over 5K items in Trash is amended to show the trash folder when you’re ready to purge it, and before you can purge it.
Backspace will now only delete on Mac systems (as it’s the only option available), it will no longer delete on windows.
The purging Trash notification now gives a count of items in Trash.
The Trash purging warning now gives a count of the items about to be permanently deleted from the Trash folder – one of the new behaviours in the Maintenance RC viewer designed to help combat accidental inventory loss through Trash deletions
The “Are you sure you want to delete this thing” warning will be seen at least once per session.
Note: Firestorm have included a debug setting to disable the trash purging warning – FSDontNagWhenPurging. This is set to FALSE by default (the warning will be displayed). It is recommended you do not change this setting unless you have complete confidence that you are unlikely to accidentally purge wanted items from trash / you viewer is unlikely to incorrectly move folders to your Trash.
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates for the week ending Sunday, June 18th
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 5.0.5.326444, released on May 18, promoted May 23 – formerly the Maintenance RC viewer overview – download page, release notes – No change
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 