Category: SL Viewer

Tom (Hale) Linden bullishly pushes through Viewer 2.0 as the new default Viewer for Second Life today. In a post about an improved New User Experience, Hale lets slip that Viewer 2.0 is now released, stating that the new  viewer is now a part of the default download for new users when they create a new account. Viewer 2 is now out of beta and joins Viewer 1.23 and other approved third-party viewers as an option for all Residents.

While this move isn’t entirely unexpected – the Lab did state back when the released of Viewer 2.0 into open Beta was being announced that they planned to make it “official” “by the end of Q1” (which is today), the “announcement” that this is now the case is nevertheless liable to cause much outrage and upset – especially for those heavily engaged in new user orientation and who a) have been given next to no time in which to re-generate their notecards and other information to reflect the new Viewer and b) haven’t even been given the luxury of a formal open announcement that Viewer 2.0 is now “out of Beta”.

One might also point out that those still attempting to Beta Viewer 2.0 have probably been taken by surprise by this announcement.

So… here it is – and note that official support for Viewer 1.22 now ends, and support for Viewer 1.23 will terminate at the end of June 2010.

New Release

LL have released an update to Viewer 2.0. It incorporates some positive actions, but still leaves a lot of issues uncommented on. LL are at least still taking feedback, but I’d venture to suggest that they’ll stick with Tom Hale’s put-down made back on the 23rd Feb that what we’re seeing is pretty much *it* and that large-scale changes (even those that make sense) aren’t going to happen.

Nevertheless, the improvements are somewhat welcome and we’ll hopefully see more tweaks as time goes on.

Of Polls and Surveys

A new survey on Viewer 2.0 has also been released. After the outstanding joke of the original “poll”, as put up by Amanda Linden, this one at least has the appearance of seeking feedback from residents.

The original poll is, sadly, still available on the front page of the Viewer 2.0 forum, where it appears to make glowing reading – 67% of those asked apparently love the new Viewer! It is only when the actual poll itself is viewed that one gets the full measure of the spin involved:

• Only three responses were obtained before the poll was locked
• The three options that followed the question, Do you like Viewer 2.0 were utterly skewed towards favouring a “positive” outcome, given they were:
  • “I love it!”  – i.e. overwhelmingly “in favour”
  • “I like most of it” – i.e. still “in favour”
  • “I’m indifferent” – i.e. can be counted as “in favour” as it doesn’t actually say “dislike”
  • “I don’t like it” – i.e. only giving a 25% chance of wholly negative feedback

Many of us took Amanda to task over the poll when published, and this may have influenced the shut-down.

I’m curious as to the new poll on four counts:

1. Whether the results will be made public – I’ve yet to find a link allowing me to view results.
2. What degree of spin will be employed on the results should they prove negative (remember, Hamlet Au over at the Herald managed to turn one poll that had a 66% negative feedback into a positive, simply by only mentioning that 33% of those polled were “in favour”  – making it sound as if this was the largest portion of votes received).
3. How the poll compares to this one, which does include the ability to view the results
4. Whether LL will even publish the results or simply push them to one side if the feedback tips strongly towards the negative.

Security Worries

One of the new features in Viewer 2.0 that has caused much commentary is shared media. However, the commentary hasn’t been entirely positive, raising issues over security and privacy. So much so that it prompted Samuel Linden to post on the subject.  It was supposed to smooth over the concerns and calm residents.

It didn’t. While it is reassuring to know – as posted in response to the thread – that LL are “working on” the specific issues vis-a-vis potential exploits provided by shared media, which really weren’t addressed in Samuel’s blog post, it is still somewhat worrying that LL were seemingly aware of the risk that resident’s computers may be exploited through the unscrupulous use of shared media and still opted to set Viewer 2.0 to a default of auto accepting shared media.

It’s also worrying that while most web browsers – which seem to be the paradigm for the new Viewer – give the option to turn off things like Javascript support, etc. (or rather, turn them on) – LL’s wisdom was to have them turned on by default, with no option currently included – or originally going to be included – in the Viewer to turn them off.

Samuel states LL will now be providing this functionality in the next Beta release, albeit it somewhat grudgingly:  Obviously disabling JavaScript will severely limit the functionality of websites, and turning off plugins will render Flash inoperable, but these are features that were requested, and we are providing them in the next Beta release.

It is comforting to see that LL are listening and responding to user concerns relating to security around shared media – but it is also worrying that they opted to take such a cavalier attitude towards security in the first place. If nothing else, this again points to the fact that Viewer 2.0 is – primarily – viewed by LL as “business tool” aimed for those whole will (in theory) be using it alongside their SLE product, nice and safe behind a corporate firewall, where fears flash and other tools being hacked are pretty much eliminated.

The First of the Third Party V2.0-based Viewers

Elsewhere, the first of the third-party iterations of Viewer 2.0 has popped up. KristenLee Cinquetti has always had a reputation for producing really top-notch Viewers which incorporate a lot of very useful features. Of all the Viewers out there, hers has always been my favourite simply because of the fact that her custom graphic pipe means that things like dynamic shadows actually work, and her graphics settings allow a whole new level of realism. Sadly, she does not embrace RLV functionality, which means I stick with Emerald – which, admitedlly, is almost there with the shadows.

Her first attempt at a “Viewer 2.0” compliant KLee Viewer incorporates elements that have found their way into the latest Beta update – so some may wonder at the fuss. That her mods were slightly preempted by LL is a shame – but they at least show how things can be done.

The major changes made are:

• The Sidebar no longer shunts the world view to the left when opening (now in the latest official relase)
• The Camera controls have been tweaked to something like the old system – both move and rotate are on the same toasty (pop-up). Admittedly, they still vanish if you click elsewhere – which is annoying and the control itself is still overly large, but at least there is no need for painful toggling
• About Land is back on the top bar as standard – an XML tweak has previously been provided by Alexandrea Fride for Viewer 2.0, and its inclusion here is very welcome and makes the Viewer land management friendly once more
• Some attempt has been made at making pop-ups, etc., transparent when the focus is moved from them but – frankly –  the interface really doesn’t lend itself to this. While this is hardly Kirsten’s fault, it still renders the effort on her part as almost wasted (transparency has also been somewhat introduced to the official Viewer)
• Preferences -> Graphics includes an additional tab that allows the more “advanced” user an even greater degree of control over how their SL experience looks and feels – and this is very welcome
• The Map and Mini Map button have been returned to the bottom toolbar. While both are very welcome additions, the former is huggable, as it means the bloody Sidebar can be totally avoided when trying to use the map!
• Inventory is also back on the toolbar – so **HUGS** again as the Sidebar can be avoided!
• Speed – as with all Kirsten’s Viewers, the average fps (for me) is around the 30 mark – considerably faster (and smoother) than the official viewers.

There are some things that are currently missing – but this could be down to the fact that the interface doesn’t (if Tom Hale is to be believed) make for significant changes. The Sidebar, for example, does not turn transparent when left open and the focus moved from it. Again, it may be entirely possible that making it so wouldn’t so much to change the impact it has on the immersive experience but there is a lot of black in the Sidebar, and it would be nice to see some of it “vanish” when forced to keep the bloody thing open. But then, like the official Beta, this is just a first stab at V 2.0.

Overall, I have to say that Kirstenlee’s approach is a major step forward in developing a Viewer that actually addresses two somewhat disparate audiences – the “old” and the “new”. What is more to the point, it goes a long way to ensuring that Viewer 2.0 doesn’t become increasingly annoying to “new” users as they gain grater familiarity with the Viewer and the platform and simply want to enjoy their in-world experience as a 3D experience rather than a 3D background to a clunky interface.

For those still struggl persevering with Viewer 2.0, a further set of tweaks (from Kitty Barnett – thanks, Kitty!) can be found in the official forums.

I have to say that for now, I’ve stopped using Viewer 2.0. This is simply because for much of what I do in-world, I need Viewer 1.X – and I’m a little bit fed up with Viewer 2.0 screwing my appearance up each time I load it up (it forces me Avatar to “roll back” to whatever I was wearing the last time I was logged into V 2.0 – regardless of subseqent outfit changes in V 1.X. Most irritating).

If I come across any other V 2.0 goodies, I will of course post them here. In the meantime hints and tweaks continue to be logged in Alexandrea Fride’s thread.

Yesterday, Linden Lab threw a series of surprises at us; among them was an announcement that the much-touted / derided / hot topic Viewer 2.0 is now available – at least in Beta.

Already there is much being said about the Viewer both on the official blogrum and elsewhere. This is my personal perspective.

Appearance

On first looks, not that bad. True the default skin colour is not the greatest – but then skin options aren’t probably top of the features stack at this point (assuming skins will feature in the full release).

Linden Lab have themselves initiated the means to smooth the transition to the new Viewer – clearly hoping it will become the new defacto standard sooner rather than later. As such, a breakdown of the Viewer’s appearance can be found on their wiki, which is pictorially very good – if a little light on details.

Menu Bar

The top menu bar is substantially different to anything previously encountered in SL, while also managing to retain some familiar items – for example, the menu options are still there, even if the actual drop-downs have been simplified in terms of content, and a couple have both new names and content (ME and COMMUNICATE). ADVANCED can still be called up (CTRL-ALT-D), although ADMIN appears to have gone.  This section of the screen retains your account balance (and option to buy L$) and the SL clock. BUILD has also found its way up to this menu bar as well – of which more anon.

Two of the most striking omissions from this part of the screen are your current location co-ordinates and access to ABOUT LAND. Both are already causing much gnashing of teeth.

Accessing ABOUT LAND is now a matter of doing one of three things:

• Physically clicking on the land itself (as with Viewer 1.X) and then bring up ABOUT LAND in the new CONTEXT menus (again, more anon)
• Going to WORLD- > PLACE PROFILE and selecting ABOUT LAND
• Clicking on the “Information” symbol to the left of your location’s name in the FAVOURITES BAR – this will bring up the land details in PLACES within the SIDEBAR, which also includes an ABOUT LAND button which will bring up the familiar pop-up menu for land.

Once in the About Land pop-up, nothing really (other than the layout) has been changed.

Menus in the menu bar, have, as stated, been significantly changed. The emphasis for doing this appears to have been driven by a desire for overall simplification of the interface (never a bad thing in moderation) and to make what are regarded as the most commonly used features available from a variety of locations within the Viewer itself. Hence, in the menu bar we now have ME  – a menu that pulls up options to view your in-world profile, edit your appearance, access your inventory, etc.

This menu also allows you to buy L$ and – importantly – is now the place to go to when you want to change your Viewer preferences. Finally – as a part of their new “web integration” policy – ME includes a link to your “Dashboard” that is displayed when you are logged into the Second Life website.

COMMUNICATE also groups together the core communications options, which (like inventory, appearance editing, etc., in ME) can be accessed from numerous other points in the Viewer.

WORLD offers a simplified WORLD menu carried over from Viewer 1.X – but which places access to the Region / Estate settings under a submenu (PLACE PROFILE). While this has caused much gnashing of teeth elsewhere, speaking as a land owner / sim operator, I actually don’t have a problem with it; the majority of users don’t need access to Estate controls, so dropping them onto a submenu really isn’t that much of an issue. Giving the menu option a more meaningful name (“Place Profile” seems a tad bland and easy to overlook) perhaps is perhaps more important than relocating the actual menu options.

BUILD pretty much does what it says on the box, and incorporates a few “new” options from other menus, while HELP and ADVANCED offer reduced menus when compared to Viewer 1.X (decreasing the amount of screen space taken up by them), retaining again what are considered to be the most “useful” options for users.

Task Panel Bar

The task panel bar is potentially the area of the Viewer that is going to cause the second largest number of complaints from established users. Gone is the double bar of Viewer 1.X with it’s option Chat bar, and the media controls (the latter moved up to the menu bar, and relocated next to the SL clock).

Instead we have one catch-all bar with a (greatly reduced) chat bar, plus buttons controlling Voice, gestures, movement, camera controls and snapshots, plus a taskbar area that gradually fills with icons as you set about doing things. Two icons appear here by default – a chat balloon, which relates to ongoing conversations that are minimised and an e-mail icon, that relates to incoming Group (and other) Notifications.

This latter seems a good idea: while Notices still pop-up on-screen, then can either be read and deleted, or moved to the notifications queue for reading later – this icon keeps count of the number of waiting Notices, and clicking on it opens a list from which you can open individual Notices & read / delete them.

Within this area, the MOVE and VIEW buttons are liable to cause the most consternation. GONE is the option to have nice, small camera and movement controls on-screen. Instead, users are restricted to and EITHER / OR situation. What’s more, both the pop-ups that are displayed are huge – bigger, I would suggest, than is necessary even for those with accessibility issues. A further inconvenience here is that while Viewer 1.X presents the camera movement & camera rotation options side-by-side (with zoom in between), the Viewer 2.0 camera controls can only be toggled between the two: either you are moving the camera, or you are rotating it. As a builder who is constantly switching between the two, I can see this change alone causing complaints – let alone the inability to have both camera and movement controls on-screen at the same time.

Beyond this, the VIEW pop-up includes options to go to Mouselook, to change the camera’s position when looking at yourself and an option to move the camera independently of the control using the cursor keys. For people like myself, who use a Trackball rather than a mouse, it is nice to see that ZOOM finally works simply by rolling the trackball, rather than using awkward button combinations or the ZOOM slider, as is the case with Viewer 1.X.

Sidebar

This is the most obvious new feature in the Viewer. Described by Linden Lab as “a multi-functional display that contains many useful tools for customizing your avatar, exploring the world, and learning about your surroundings”, it is also the one that has – and will – generate the most consternation among established users – and very probably among many new users.

In essence, it is a gathering-together of diverse options from Viewer 1.X, together with a few new features. Six buttons are available on the sidebar:

• HOME: which contains links to your appearance, the world map, your secondlife.com “Dashboard” – and anything else Linden Lab (emphasis intentional) wish to put in front of you.
• MY PROFILE which takes you (unsurprisingly) to your in-world profile information, presented in an entirely new format that is already confusing established users (admittedly, given the comments I’ve seen, because they simply haven’t looked)
• PEOPLE which captures the old Friends and Groups lists and adds a couple of features
• INVENTORY which is self-explanatory
• PLACES which is a break-out of the LANDMARKS folder in your inventory, and which also provides a tab to a genuine teleport history list.
• MY APPEARANCE which ostensibly takes you to a break-out of the new “My Outfits” folder found in your inventory, as well as the old WORN tab from the Viewer 1.X Inventory pop-up.

Sounds fine on the surface; however there are several fundamental issues with the Sidebar that need addressing outside of any other concerns / feedback on the Viewer as a whole.

1. The sidebar, however you look at it, is intrusive. While it can be scrolled back off-screen when not needed, when visible it takes up (on a 19-inch monitor) around a 1/4 of the screen. On a 12-inch laptop screen, and due to the icons used in the HOME button – it takes up even more and makes using Second Life next to impossible if you want to – say – have your inventory visible when building.
2. When open, the Sidebar overlays the HUD attach points to the right of the screen, making any tools located there inaccessible, while at the same time shunting the HUD attach points to the left of the screen completely off-screen, thus making them inaccessible. So again, it is impossible to have inventory access and retain HUD access. For HUDs that can contain objects copied from inventory via drag-and-drop (i.e. building HUDs like JexTone) this could be a major issue.
3. My Outfits doesn’t seem to work. While it happily lists the default clothing items pre-listed under MY OUTFITS in your inventory (and as supplied by Linden Lab), I have yet to make any outfit folder I drag from CLOTHING into the MY OUTFITS folder visible in the My Outfits list. Simply doesn’t happen.
4. The PROFILE layout is a mess. Given the amount of VERTICAL space available in the sidebar, cramming a profile picture AND the associated text side-by-side is a complete mistake. Not only doe it make formatting your profile text into something readable next to impossible, it also requires the use of a MORE link to display anything more than the first 4 lines of a profile (no scroll bar).
5. WORLD MAP (from the HOME button) is almost useless – all it does is open up a static picture of a section of the world map (not even your current location….), together with a load of advertising waffle users don’t need, ergo: “Second Life is a vast world with thousands of unique regions created by residents…..See where people are hanging out now! Explore the depth and breadth of Second Life”. A further button is then required to actually open the World Map. Why not simply retain the World Map button down in the task area at the bottom of the screen?

Usability

Actually using the new Viewer is not that bad for the experienced user – all it requires is a little patience; which to be honest, in reviewing many comments in the Viewer 2.0 forum, is something many people seem to leave checked at the door on entering SL through the new Viewer.

Movement

Remains pretty much as standard, even allowing for the issues with the on-screen movement and camera controls mentioned above. You can still walk around via the cursor keys, jump by tapping PAGE UP, fly up by pressing & holding PAGE UP, and flying down by initially pressing and holding PAGE DOWN.

Moving the camera DOES require activating the VIEW button at the bottom of the screen, which is a nuisance, but at least if you press the button with the camera icon on it, you can reduce the movement controls to a minimised set of buttons and move the camera around without losing a chunk of your in-world view. And, as mentioned, having zoom finally tied-in to a trackball is a nice-to-have for people like myself.

Building

Contrary to mischief-making commentaries made by people who should know better as follow-up to other people’s blogs, the building tools have not been removed from Viewer 2.0. Nope, they are right-up, front-and-centre. All three means of commencing a building session remain, even if one has changed a little.

• By right-clicking on an object and selecting EDIT from the CONTEXT menu
• By clicking on the BUILD button on the menu bar
• By leaving the mouse pointer in-world and pressing CTRL-B.

All three display the Editing Palette; and, admittedly, none of them replaces the old CREATE option from the 1.X pie menu. This means that that in all 3 cases you have to select the CREATE option from the Editing palette in order to generate a new prim. However, this is again more a pedantic irritant for experienced builders, rather than a show-stopper.

The Editing palette itself remains largely unchanged (other than for media options – see later), with all the familiar (and needed) tabs and options.

HOWEVER, in playing with editing objects, I did come across an annoyance: the inability to de-select an object or prim. On Viewer 1.X, closing the Edit palette would de-select the object. Not in Viewer 2.0; close the object, and it remains selected (highlighted by the coloured wireframe). Left-clicking elsewhere doesn’t de-select it either. So far the only way I’ve found to de-select is to right-click on my avatar – which changes the CONTEXT menu (removing the EDIT option), and performs a de-selction as a result. This may be a functional error peculiar to the Beta version – but it is bloody irritating.

On-screen Pop-ups, Windows and Palettes

Allowing for the fact that this Viewer is beta, a further problem is the fact that all on-screen pop-ups, palettes and windows remain solid throughout the time they are on display. This means that if you have the sidebar open and (for example) open up ABOUT LAND – the sidebar remains open and solid, blocking your view of the right side of the window. If you already have the Editing palette open at the time, this also remains solid even when the focus is on ABOUT LAND….thus, with just s few options open on-screen, you quickly lose the ability to see / do anything. If this Viewer is to find a use among experienced users, the ability to have those pop-up elements that are not focused on turn semi-transparent is a must.

Context Menus

The pie menu is dead! All hail the CONTEXT menus!

The idea is simple: click on objects, get a small menu with the options you’ll most use when manipulating objects (Edit, Zoom, Touch, Sit on, Take, etc.); click on your avatar, and get the menu options you’ll use with your avatar – Edit Appearance, etc; click on another avatar, get a menu with options to view their profile (via the Sidebar – ugh!) or communicate with them, and so on.

It’s cute and intuitive. Whether people like them is another matter. I’m neutral about them myself.

Continue reading “Viewer 2.0 – Initial impressions” →

Tateru Nino over at Massively got a sneak peek at the new SL Viewer that is due to be heading our way later this year. This Viewer is apparently the baby of 80/20 Studio (a company that has a depressingly bland and uninformative website considering their goal is to “conceptualise, research, design, develop and deploy solutions that set new standards in user experience”) based on initial work apparently undertaken by Big Spaceship (hired amongst much ballyhoo last November).

Designing a new Viewer cannot be easy. One of the appeals of SL is that it is used by many people in many different ways, and the Viewer needs to accommodate all of them – casual users, gamers, builders, educators, etc., etc. So trying to develop something that is going to please everyone is clearly going to cause upset somewhere.

Then there is the fact that the Viewer as it stands, with one or two tweaks, is remarkable similar to the Viewer that was around 5 years ago. Oh sure, some menu options have moved; the rendering is better, it is less prone to crash on you as soon as you look at it, and so on; but none of these changes (well, apart from the arrival of the God-awful Communicate catch-up pop-up) have fundamentally altered the way we use the Viewer.

And let’s face it, it is and old and trusted friend; we know where everything is, we know what menu is going to pop up when we right-click something; we like our pie menus…

So again, it’s going to be hard for anyone to make substantial changes to the Viewer without causing mass upset and confusion among established users. I don’t envy anyone the task: it has got to be akin to dousing yourself in petrol and then juggling with lit matches.

Even so, the response to the new Viewer has been less than stellar – which is probably why Howard Linden stuck his head above the parapet within hours of Tateru’s blog post appearing to utter words of reassurance on the matter – even going so far as to suggest what Tateru reveals is so “early” in the development cycle as to be meaningless (“We’ll share a sneak peek of the “real” Viewer 2009 later in the year”).

Even so, his platitudes have failed to quell the growing concerns of users – again as evidenced by the comments posted alongside his blog. In part, this is unsurprising. Whenever a senior Linden gives assurances that there will be  “plenty of time to receive and incorporate feedback” eyes do indeed roll and hackles do rise. Let’s face it, Linden Lab’s track record on listening  to user feedback and “incorporating” it is well, abyssmal.

But, even if this sneak peek isn’t anything like the “real” version that will ship later in the year (in which case, why leak it to Tateru?) – one has to question some of the changes evidenced in the build as seen. In fact more than one has questioned the changes, particularly like the loss of the pie menus.

Others are also asking why the Viewer, some 8 months down the development road, is still lacking features that are now available in other grids, such as an in-built AO (ironically, OpenLifeGrid introduced a built-in walk animation that does away with the Linden Waddle around the time this project started) – and why these features don’t appear to be anywhere on the roadmap.

To be sure, there are some apparently nice features: the new nested Friends option looks particularly useful. The question at the moment is, just how much of user feedback will Linden Lab actually address?

An outsourced Viewer development is obviously not going to be cheap. Despite Howard’s assurances, by the time it gets to RC status and is available as a First Look, one does rather suspect that the only user issues that will be considered and altered will be those of a cosmetic, rather than functional, concern.