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Linden Lab ramps up open source viewer program
Linden Lab founder and chairman, Philip Rosedale, yesterday announced changes to the open-source Second Life viewer program that would enable the fast-tracking of user-contributions to the code-base. The viewer source-code was originally released just a little over two years ago on 8 January 2007, and spurred an immediate surge of development, spurring developments of a variety of software including third-party server opensim. The procedure for actually submitting patches to the codebase however was clunky, and some contributors abandoned their development efforts after contributed code (some which corrected egregious problems) was left to languish for many months without approval. The new scheme seems set to fast-track user-contributions and eliminate that particular problem.
Lab rearranges viewer development. Adults-only content trumps other work
Over the next week or so, we've been expecting a new Second Life viewer release-candidate (1.23), with the usual slew of bug-fixes, and stabilization enhancements (1.22 yielded a 20% drop in overall viewer crash rates), and very likely the first real release of the dynamic shadows code. Now, it seems that that is not to be. 1.23 is being pushed out to (probably) June, and the focus for this next release-candidate series will be code-support for the new Adults-Only content category. We're not sure how much of the regular fare will make it into 1.23, as just the AO-content support promises to be quite a substantive code-drop, and it's something that needs to 'just work'.
Second Life viewer 1.22 goes final
The 1.22 series of Second Life viewer release candidates has at last come to an end and has "gone gold" as they say. The 1.22 viewer today replaces the 1.21 viewer as the official Second Life viewer after a series of release candidates stretching back to last November. There are an enormous number of fixes in this viewer release, though there's some known problems with advanced water presets and isolated reports of voice issues on all platforms. There's also a ton of localization work gone into this release, adding Polish, Hungarian and Danish support, and reworking some of the existing translations. Check after the fold for the full release notes.
Imprudence 1.1.0 RC2 available
The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC2 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of improvements and fixes over RC1. This release candidate has a new storage allocator for Windows which improves frame-rates, reduces memory-usage and is all-around more efficient. Several crash-bugs have been fixed, and support has been improved for Linux systems that use the PulseAudio sound server. A few UI tweaks and inconveniences have also been tidied up. Unfortunately there is still no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Full release notes are after the jump.
Second Life 1.22 (RC10) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC10 is the eleventh release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). It seems like the 1.22 series has been going on for ages, doesn't it? RC0 was in November. Fixes this time around fix saving textures that were embedded in notecards to disk, and some problems relating to voice crashing the viewer or getting generally hung. There's also another minor fix to Japanese text localization and a voice behavioral change. There still seem to be some lingering issues with raycasting.
Second Life 1.22 (RC9) now available
And around we go again. Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC9 is the tenth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release-candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now we have some major changes, which by all rights should mean quite a few more release-candidates before becoming an official release. If you got your hands on RC8, you may have noticed problems with voice, crashing, more raycasting issues and problems with sculpties loading. Well, the good news is that three out of four of those seem to be fixed. Voice seems to have quite a road to apotheosis in 1.22.
Second Life 1.22 (RC8) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC8 is the ninth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release-candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now we have some major changes, which by all rights should mean quite a few more release-candidates before becoming an official release. OpenAL and gstreamer support are the big surprises. We're wondering if Quicktime has been given the flick entirely. This mirrors the work being done with the Imprudence Release Candidate, though the Imprudence Project does not appear to have the same difficulties with sound under Linux. That's a huge change for a release-candidate, especially so late in the series, and we'd be surprised if they released a new official viewer anytime soon on that basis alone.
Imprudence 1.1.0 RC1 available
The Imprudence Project has a release new candidate viewer for Second Life available. Imprudence 1.1 RC1 (unlike Linden Lab, the Imprudence Project counts starting from one, not from zero) features a number of substantial improvements over 1.0, including openAL and Gstreamer support for general sound, as well as audio and video streaming. This release candidate also features updates to the user-interface, arithmetic expressions in the build floater's texture and object tabs, quick-filtering for the inventory and more. Unfortunately there is no version for the Mac as the Imprudence Project is starving for a Mac developer to handle that side of the code. Due to licensing issues, Imprudence cannot ship with voice components, but you can add them yourself very easily. Full release notes are after the jump.
Second Life 1.22 (RC7) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC7 is the eighth release candidate in the unexpectedly elongated 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues prompted the release of RC6, and now RC7. Someone over at the Lab is obviously doing something right. It isn't all that long ago that the bugs that were fixed in this release-candidate either would not have been found or would have been passed over on the way to release. There aren't many of them, but particularly the crash in the texture decoder would have made some people sad.
Second Life 1.22 (RC6) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC6 is the seventh release candidate in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). RC5 was supposed to have been the last release candidate in this series, but unfortunately a number of serious issues cropped up. There are six crash fixes, texture performance was severely degraded, and there were a number of 'raycasting' problems (raycasting maps the position of your mouse pointer to objects in the virtual environment. Problems with this process cause the system to think you're clicking somewhere other than where you actually are). Additional code is included to track driver-based crashes, and there's the usual localization fixes. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.
Linden Lab and Torch Mobile: Replacing the Second Life Web-browser
In development discussions surrounding the Second Life viewer's Web-support and internal Web-browser, WebKit has been a frequent discussion item. WebKit was originally derived (by Apple) from the Konqueror browser's KHTML software library and now functions as the core of Apple's Safari Web-browser. A number of companies have extended and adapted WebKit over time. A primary sticking point with adoption into the Second Life viewer, however, involved the terms of WebKit's software license. Now that the licensing barrier has been overcome, work on integrating QtWebKit into the viewer is proceeding apace, as Linden Lab works in conjunction with Torch Mobile (makers of the Iris Browser) to finalize the integration, and sort out a few lingering issues.
Second Life 1.22 (RC5) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC5 is the sixth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). Barring any showstoppers, this appears to be the last version in the series before the release of 1.22 as the official Second Life viewer. This edition has four more crash fixes, fixups to the wonky selection algorithms, localization fixes, and and fixes up some defective UI behavior.Full release notes for this version are after the jump.
Second Life 1.22 (RC4) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC4 is the fifth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). Mostly this version seems to be about final polish. This edition has two more crash fixes, assorted tune-ups to defective UI elements, a small bundle of localization fixes and some almost completely impenetrable alterations to the thread watchdog (however it does now default to being off). We're not expecting an RC5 before this goes live - unless something outstandingly broken crops up. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.
Imprudence 1.0 released for Second Life
The Imprudence project has reached the end of the first release cycle for their Second Life viewer. Imprudence is now in official release, and will soon show the first of their 1.1 series of viewers, sporting sound and more extensive modifications. As is proper, there's very little difference between the release version and the release candidate. Pretty much just a couple fixes for memory leaks, and some minor tweaking. OpenJPEG 1.3 removes issues with transparent skirts. Aside from the temporary lack of audio, this seems to be the smoothest and most reliable viewer presently available based from the 1.21 code-base.
Second Life 1.22 (RC3) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC3 is the fourth release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). As usual, we have a bunch of assorted fixes and crash fixes in this edition. This edition has five more crash fixes, some tweaks to the watchdog code (because it wasn't crashing when it should) and assorted tweaks. The Planning tab has been removed from Group Information, because it basically just never worked properly. This looks like it might be the last release before 1.22 becomes the official viewer, unless something is reported that stops the show. Full release notes for this version are after the jump.
Imprudence 1.0.0 RC2 available
The Imprudence project now has its second release candidate viewer for Second Life available. Building on the feedback from RC1, Jacek Antonelli, McCabe Maxsted and team have churned out a whole slew of bug-fixes for the already tasty RC1. Crashes when clicking on some hyperlinks have been fixed (the problem was traced to the Linden build system pulling in the wrong library), the debug console window has been hidden away (as it should be), the search interface no longer clears results between invocations, a prospective fix for issues with palletized textures (which could be related to a lot of minor issues) and more. The transparent skirt issue will be fixed in the next (and likely final) release, but you can fix it yourself now with a fresh library. Full release notes after the jump.
Second Life 1.22 (RC2) now available
Linden Lab have made a new Second Life viewer release-candidate available. RC2 is the third release in the 1.22 series (Linden Lab starts counting from RC0). As usual, we have a bunch of assorted fixes and crash fixes in this edition. This edition has five crash fixes, additional debugging to isolate the causes of graphics driver crashes, some fixes for PPC systems, and some more attempts to get object selection/cursor positioning right for edge-cases. More details after the jump.
Face and head tracking for Second Life avatars
For those of you who are keen on hands-free avatar expressiveness in the virtual environment of Second Life comes a surprise third-party viewer from vr-wear.com. This beta viewer for Windows or Mac OSX uses a camera to track your head and expressions, and convey that to your avatar. At present, it is all a little rudimentary, and there isn't any back-end support for sending much in the way of ad-hoc avatar motion through the Second Life servers, so the system is limited to what can be supported. At present, that appears to be lip-sync, nodding and head-shaking, surprise and smiling, and head-tilting to the left or right.
Second Life 1.22 (RC0) now available
The Second Life viewer dev team has been working furiously away for some time now, and you may be forgiven for wondering where the fruits of that labor are. It has, after all, been some time since we've seen a new viewer other than emergency security fixes. There are lots of little things in this viewer, mostly bug-fixes. What is particularly peculiar is that whispering seems to be back. Whisper was a short-range chat option that was discarded from the Second Life viewer back in 2005 due to it being confusing both conceptually and in the user-interface. Whispering has a 10 metre range and while it has been a deprecated script function for years is still available to scripted objects.
Imprudence 1.0.0 RC1 available
The Imprudence project now has its first release candidate viewer for Second Life available, and far sooner than we expected. It's impressive work for a first release candidate as well. We've not had such a fast and smooth viewer experience since Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's series of Second Life viewers. Indeed, many of Beresford's patches are also a part of the Imprudence project. Imprudence necessarily replaces proprietary fonts with Liberation Sans and Bitstream Vera Mono, which look a little peculiar the first couple of times out, but score high on improved readability. There's no audio either, yet, as the proprietary FMOD audio system has yet to be replaced with OpenAL, but that is coming soon, we understand. As for the change from Kakadu/KDU to OpenJPEG -- this is supposed to be fractionally slower, but honestly, the whole experience was so smooth we never noticed.