DOCTOR WHO SERIES 6, SARAH JANE ADVENTURES SERIES 4
I was able to get hold of both seasons on DVD, and once I've gone through all episodes of SJA, I'll issue a review of the latter series.
I maintain my criticism of Moffat's tenure as head writer of the show as one fraught with inconsistency — on an overall storytelling basis, that is. Moffat does well in doing one-off stories, but trying to keep a longer term story arc running and maintaining story continuity are two tasks he can't seem to balance. We'll see how Sarah Jane Adventures' final season pans out. Considering it was the last complete series of the show before lead actress Elizabeth Sladen passed away, there's going to be a certain poignancy watching that is bound to color my review, but I'll try to do justice with an honest one.
DECISION TIME
Now, I've been thinking a while on the events of the past year or so. 2011 was, needless to say, horrible for me, and a fairly large chunk of the SL side of things was my own fault. Swiping prims from a copied Dalek avatar in a fit of impatience was pretty stupid, and that's going to haunt me for a long time to come, no matter that I paid back the guy whose builds were swiped and admitted what I did.
Since then I've passed the remains of Archangel Network over to others, and it now exists in the form of Sci-Fi Enterprises. Right now the only things it sells are unscripted TTC exteriors and freebies, and that's it. I haven't had the time or the inclination to package up my unscripted console builds, but I've been seriously thinking of changing that. I'm tired of having them sit in my inventory gathering pixel dust.
Of course, even if I were to do that, what then? Who'd buy an unscripted console? The whole point of having a TTC in Second Life is to have a grid-wide teleporter that serves triple duty as a skybox and role-playing scene. It kind of defeats the purpose if it doesn't actually do more than look pretty.
It doesn't help that two of my closest friends in SL are on indefinite hiatus from SL, and one of them was a scripter whose skills were slowly but steadily improving. I was hoping that my consoles would one day be sold with a functioning set of scripts again, and that is true of two of them, which are sold through Novatech. Those are the Steampunk and the Zero 3.0 console. But the rest languish in my inventory, and that's just a waste. I'd love to be able to script them myself, but I've had to accept that I'll never be able to find someone willing to teach me what I need to know.
So what are my options? I can try to convince my scripter friend to return to SL, hoping she'll script my consoles for me, or I can hire someone else to do them up and do a fifty-fifty split on sales. But then, given that the last scripter I had disrespected me, then stabbed me in the back by trying to take over my company, I've got obvious issues with the idea of letting someone else have that kind of advantage over me again. I've been burned too often by trusting all the wrong people. Never again. I can always submit my builds to other sellers, but most of the Whovian TTC sellers in SL are either severely backed up on submitted builds or not inclined to have anything to do with me.
I'll have to make a decision soon as to what I want to do with my builds, and more than that,what I really want to do in SL. I have goals I'd like to achieve, but never the means. And really, there just isn't any point to having those goals if I can't ever possess the resources to accomplish them. And then what's the point of even staying in SL?
Ya know what I'm sayin'?
"VIEWER 1" IS NOT "GOING AWAY"
There are certain people going around spreading lies about the fate of SL Viewer 1.23. They claim that because Linden Lab is no longer offering updates or support, this means that the viewers are going to go away any time now, so we had better get on the crappily designed, highly unstable, resource-hogging Viewer 2 and its clones — or we will be forced out of SL altogether. The truth is that Viewer 1, or more accurately, Third Party Viewers (TPVs) that use the Viewer 1 graphic user interface (GUI), are going to be around at least until their developers decide to quit the projects.
One person to expose the Big SL Viewer Lie for what it is is Henri Beauchamp, the programmer who brought us Cool VL Viewer. Henri's code work was incorporated into the latest Phoenix Viewer release, albeit grudgingly and still with the lies about Viewer 1 going the way of the dinosaurs.
Why is this claim a lie? For one thing, no one making it is able to give a definitive date for Viewer 1 GUI being shut off. This is because, according to witnesses, Rodvik Humble himself stated that Linden Labs "would NOT be turning off v1.x access - just that they would NOT be updating the 1.x viewer themselves, so their version would not be kept up with the new features - that would be the responsibility of the TPV coders."
What this means is that the CEO of Linden Lab himself is saying that there are no plans to turn off Viewer 1 access — no company is stupid enough to literally block access to its product for more than half its user base. They're simply not offering updates or support for it anymore. As long as TPV programmers are able to back-port features like mesh and other goodies, like Henri Beauchamp, Boy Lane, and the Singularity Viewer developers, SL Viewers that use the Viewer 1 GUI will stick around. As one member posted on Henri's forum, the liars are starting with the false assumption that a viewer's features are inextricably bound to its GUI, and then using that false assumption to create a false rationalization for why they want to force everyone else who uses SL onto the Viewer 2 GUI viewers, namely, theirs. But as was pointed out, "under-the-hood" features simply are not tied to the GUI. At this point the only real difference between the official Linden Lab viewers and the TPVs generated using the Viewer 1 GUI is only...the GUI.
It is highly dishonest for people who love Viewer 2 GUI viewers and their clones, and despise Viewer 1 GUI TPVs, to claim that those viewers with the Viewer 1 GUI are going away. They're not. Linden Lab isn't claiming that they are turning off access to Viewer 1. TPV developers who still like the GUI on Viewer 1 will continue to back-port Viewer 2 and Viewer 3 features into the Viewer 1 GUI until the only thing that is still "Viewer 1" about them is how the finished program looks on your screen; in fact, they're pretty much that way already. If you don't like the Viewer 2 or Viewer 3 GUI, or if you simply find that the Linden Lab-approved viewers are still too buggy and unstable, you do have alternatives, and you will continue to have them for a while.
For your downloading enjoyment:
http://www.singularityviewer.org
http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/rainbow-viewer
Cool VL Viewer - http://sldev.free.fr
http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/windows/Phoenix_Viewer-1.6.0.1600_RELEASE_SSE2.exe
http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Mac/Phoenix_Viewer_1.6.0.1600_Intel.dmg
http://downloads.phoenixviewer.com/Linux/PhoenixViewer-i686-1.6.0.1600.tar.bz2
Showing posts with label Rainbow Viewer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rainbow Viewer. Show all posts
Friday, January 20, 2012
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Thoughts On Mesh and Rebuilding
With mesh imports now becoming a reality in SL, I've been seeing blogs wherein the writers boast about revamping their regions with all new mesh builds, including buildings, vehicles, and the like. It's their regions and they can do what they want with them, but I have to admit I'm a little puzzled as to why so many people are being so quick to replace as much as they can with the mesh imports.
The fact is that a huge chunk of SL users will not be able to even see mesh imports (properly) because not all viewers support mesh. Sure, some third party viewers, like Firestorm, are cloning Viewer 2 in hopes of being able to adopt mesh, and I think someone told me that Kirsten's Viewer is mesh-compatible. But most people still seem to be using Viewer 1-based viewers, including Phoenix, Singularity, and Rainbow, which cannot yet support mesh (although the Singularity team is working on bringing mesh import-and-viewing capability into its viewer).
Then, of course, there is the prohibitive cost of importing mesh objects. See, sculpt maps cost only ten Linden Bucks to import, seeing as how they're actually texture-images you import like any other image. Mesh objects, on the other hand, are apparently priced according to the level of complexity, and they are said to come with a prim-cost. So the more complex and the larger the size of a mesh build, the more expensive it is to import it. Given this, why is it expected that anyone but people with surplus disposable income (a group the size of which gets smaller and smaller by the day) will even be able to afford a lot of mesh imports? While I don't begrudge the right of people who can afford to toss away money like that, it does puzzle me that anyone thinks that something so cost-prohibitive will catch on quickly, if at all. If anything, with the real-world economy causing people to tighten their belts, I don't expect nearly as rapid a switch to mesh from sculpted and reguler-prim builds as is being claimed in some circles.
I've made no secret about my opinion toward Viewer 2 and its clones, and the elitist attitudes of its proponents. But there is a practical aspect to this whole craze over mesh that some people may not care to recognize. Most of the grid can't and probably never will be able to see mesh imports, unless people switch to a viewer like Singularity once they are able to add mesh to theirs. So a lot of mesh-importers will probably begin to lose visitors to their regions once they start having to deal with people coming to their sims, seeing a bunch of blocks, spheres, and ovals instead of the supposedly super-awesomely-detailed mesh imports they ran right out and spent money bringing in; then the cost issue will begin to slow the growth of mesh importing. If region owners and moderators don't handle these two tricky issues correctly, they'll only turn people off and end up hurting their own traffic rankings, and in SL, losing traffic means losing a lot in donations and vendor sales.
Now, will mesh eventually become the standard of SL? Probably. I just don't see it catching on quite as fast as its proponents want to think. One thing Linden Labs can do to avoid that is to lower the cost, both in Linden Bucks and prim count, of mesh imports. Yes, it took a lot of time and labor to integrate it into the grid. But charge too much too soon for your nifty new toy, and don't expect a lot of sales. The second thing Linden Labs can do is to go back to the drawing board and bring back the Viewer 1 user interface for its current system, or something as close to it as possible. If nothing else, at least give users a choice instead of turning them off with the current cruddy viewer that seems designed only to frustrate people. Other grids, such as InWorldz, are catching up to SL in terms of stability, and they use viewers that are user-friendly and easy to learn. By lowering the cost of mesh imports and producing a better viewer than what is currently being pushed on us, I am confident Linden labs can avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
The fact is that a huge chunk of SL users will not be able to even see mesh imports (properly) because not all viewers support mesh. Sure, some third party viewers, like Firestorm, are cloning Viewer 2 in hopes of being able to adopt mesh, and I think someone told me that Kirsten's Viewer is mesh-compatible. But most people still seem to be using Viewer 1-based viewers, including Phoenix, Singularity, and Rainbow, which cannot yet support mesh (although the Singularity team is working on bringing mesh import-and-viewing capability into its viewer).
Then, of course, there is the prohibitive cost of importing mesh objects. See, sculpt maps cost only ten Linden Bucks to import, seeing as how they're actually texture-images you import like any other image. Mesh objects, on the other hand, are apparently priced according to the level of complexity, and they are said to come with a prim-cost. So the more complex and the larger the size of a mesh build, the more expensive it is to import it. Given this, why is it expected that anyone but people with surplus disposable income (a group the size of which gets smaller and smaller by the day) will even be able to afford a lot of mesh imports? While I don't begrudge the right of people who can afford to toss away money like that, it does puzzle me that anyone thinks that something so cost-prohibitive will catch on quickly, if at all. If anything, with the real-world economy causing people to tighten their belts, I don't expect nearly as rapid a switch to mesh from sculpted and reguler-prim builds as is being claimed in some circles.
I've made no secret about my opinion toward Viewer 2 and its clones, and the elitist attitudes of its proponents. But there is a practical aspect to this whole craze over mesh that some people may not care to recognize. Most of the grid can't and probably never will be able to see mesh imports, unless people switch to a viewer like Singularity once they are able to add mesh to theirs. So a lot of mesh-importers will probably begin to lose visitors to their regions once they start having to deal with people coming to their sims, seeing a bunch of blocks, spheres, and ovals instead of the supposedly super-awesomely-detailed mesh imports they ran right out and spent money bringing in; then the cost issue will begin to slow the growth of mesh importing. If region owners and moderators don't handle these two tricky issues correctly, they'll only turn people off and end up hurting their own traffic rankings, and in SL, losing traffic means losing a lot in donations and vendor sales.
Now, will mesh eventually become the standard of SL? Probably. I just don't see it catching on quite as fast as its proponents want to think. One thing Linden Labs can do to avoid that is to lower the cost, both in Linden Bucks and prim count, of mesh imports. Yes, it took a lot of time and labor to integrate it into the grid. But charge too much too soon for your nifty new toy, and don't expect a lot of sales. The second thing Linden Labs can do is to go back to the drawing board and bring back the Viewer 1 user interface for its current system, or something as close to it as possible. If nothing else, at least give users a choice instead of turning them off with the current cruddy viewer that seems designed only to frustrate people. Other grids, such as InWorldz, are catching up to SL in terms of stability, and they use viewers that are user-friendly and easy to learn. By lowering the cost of mesh imports and producing a better viewer than what is currently being pushed on us, I am confident Linden labs can avoid shooting itself in the proverbial foot.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Ooh, Rainbow Viewer is back...But for How Long?
While chatting in the Singularity Viewer group in Second Life, someone was kind enough to point out that Rainbow Viewer, based on the old SL Viewer 1.22, has gotten an update as of July 10th. You can read the newest entry here.
I used both Rainbow and Emerald viewers until Emerald went kaput last year for reasons explained in this blog entry. From the ashes of the Emerald Viewer arose Phoenix, which had most if not all of the functionality and user-friendliness of Emerald, and a great graphics engine. It has had its bugs, such as objects (both local and attached) suddenly de-rendering with right-clicking only working to re-render them sporadically, and conference and group chat windows not showing who else is participating, but overall the user interface was and always will be far superior to Linden Labs' Viewer 2 and several third party viewers based on it, like Kirstens. Of course, Linden labs is jealous of third party viewers that give users what they like and want, and they're determined to kill off all Viewer 1-based viewers by breaking the code that allows them to function.
For its part, the Phoenix team decided it was better to suck up to Linden Labs than it is to make users happy, so they've been working long and hard on a viewer that is in most aspects that I can see identical to Linden Labs' Viewer 2, which they've called Firestorm. The viewer is currently in public beta mode. If this weren't bad enough, the Phoenix team apparently thinks that it can dismiss legitimate concerns with the user unfriendliness of Firestorm by insulting its users.
In the meantime, I've installed the new Rainbow Viewer update and it is working splendidly so far. It is anyone's guess as to exactly how long it will remain functional, however. As I've written, Linden Labs is working diligently to break Viewer 1-based viewers for Second Life. Rainbow will probably end up joining Phoenix and all the other better viewers out there on the Viewer 1 trash heap. But until that happens, I'll enjoy it and Singularity until they are no more or until I am no more. I'll keep Firestorm around just in case its developers wise up, but chances are I won't be using it much, if at all.
UPDATE (10:09 PM EDT/7:10 PM SLT): Calisto Llewellin has brought it to my attention that Singularity is indeed based on Viewer 1. My apologies for giving the wrong information.
I used both Rainbow and Emerald viewers until Emerald went kaput last year for reasons explained in this blog entry. From the ashes of the Emerald Viewer arose Phoenix, which had most if not all of the functionality and user-friendliness of Emerald, and a great graphics engine. It has had its bugs, such as objects (both local and attached) suddenly de-rendering with right-clicking only working to re-render them sporadically, and conference and group chat windows not showing who else is participating, but overall the user interface was and always will be far superior to Linden Labs' Viewer 2 and several third party viewers based on it, like Kirstens. Of course, Linden labs is jealous of third party viewers that give users what they like and want, and they're determined to kill off all Viewer 1-based viewers by breaking the code that allows them to function.
For its part, the Phoenix team decided it was better to suck up to Linden Labs than it is to make users happy, so they've been working long and hard on a viewer that is in most aspects that I can see identical to Linden Labs' Viewer 2, which they've called Firestorm. The viewer is currently in public beta mode. If this weren't bad enough, the Phoenix team apparently thinks that it can dismiss legitimate concerns with the user unfriendliness of Firestorm by insulting its users.
I'm happy to say though that the unhappy folks are only a small minority, however they can be very vocal, loud and discouraging.Yeah, way to alienate your user base. Maybe if you didn't respond to user complaints with such snark as "Viewer 2 is coming, get used to it," you wouldn't be forcing harsher replies. Alas, some people never learn. Oh well. At any rate, with Linden labs forcing everyone to adopt its inferior Viewer 2 software and layout, it looks as though a lot of long term users will find themselves forced to leave Second Life for greener pastures. Fortunately, Singularity's development team has managed to do what the Phoenix development team apparently refuses to do, namely, make a Viewer 2-based viewer that actually has the superior Viewer 1 layout and controls. I heard through the user support group in-world that they are working on getting the mesh import feature, and that they are very close to succeeding in bringing it in. No date was given, which is understandable considering that anything can happen which might delay release of an updated viewer. But at least Singularity seems to be trying to make its users happy. And they do seem to listen to people's concerns with a much friendlier attitude.
In the meantime, I've installed the new Rainbow Viewer update and it is working splendidly so far. It is anyone's guess as to exactly how long it will remain functional, however. As I've written, Linden Labs is working diligently to break Viewer 1-based viewers for Second Life. Rainbow will probably end up joining Phoenix and all the other better viewers out there on the Viewer 1 trash heap. But until that happens, I'll enjoy it and Singularity until they are no more or until I am no more. I'll keep Firestorm around just in case its developers wise up, but chances are I won't be using it much, if at all.
UPDATE (10:09 PM EDT/7:10 PM SLT): Calisto Llewellin has brought it to my attention that Singularity is indeed based on Viewer 1. My apologies for giving the wrong information.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)