Bento Not Yet Building Much Interest in Official Second Life Viewer (Far as I Can See)

When news broke that the official Second Life viewer now boasted the new Bento technology for enhanced avatar skeletons, I speculated that SLers would finally show some interest in downloading Linden Lab's viewer. (Instead of Firestorm or another third party viewer, which are much more popular with them, almost all of which still haven't integrated Bento.) In fact, I added a giant link to the official viewer download, because I was curious how many readers would rush to get it.

So far, not so many:

Just over 50 of you clicked. (See above.) In contrast, when I wrote about the new virtual world space, over 500 of you clicked to the official site. The NWN post about Bento itself has easily been read many thousands of times. So if that data point is broadly applicable, SLers are showing lots of interest in Bento the technology... but far as getting the underlying client needed to use and view them, not so much. (At least so far.)

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Comments

[Estelle.Pienaar]

It has happened so many times before with new inventions. I am really wondering why you are only realising this now. Take for example rigged mesh clothing. It has taken Firestorm MONTHS to implement mesh. So avatars wearing mesh clothing appeared nude to FS users. Instead of changing the viewer, user ignore innovatiin. New tecgnologies are simply delayed until the FS team gets their act together. Sometimes faster (AFAIK this will be the case with BENTO), sometimes really slooooow...

[Gaea Oakleaf]

There is actually a Firestorm Beta Bento viewer out right now.

[Amanda Dallin]

People who are early adopters of SL innovations are already using viewers with Bento. There are more viewers out there than the LL offical that use Bento. I'm on Catznip's beta now. The official Catznip with Bento will be released in a few days. She planned to release it yesterday but found a few non Bento issues that she wanted to test a few days in beta.

[joxer]

We all can't wait to create more stuff using our own money so LL can use it without renumeration.

How Trumpish.

[Avatar Headline Generator]

Just wait until the advanced dickage hits the grid.

[spirit Wingtips]

This does not surprise me one bit. With Firestorm feature Rich and easy customizable interface as well as the minimal 'bento' offerings out at the moment. us FS users will wait and see. what offerings content creators release and also for the FS viewer to release with Bento code in in.

[Gino Woodget]

Jessica Lyon committed to a Firestorm Bento release 1 week after the SL viewer Bento release... Second Life: Third Party Viewer meeting (02 December 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw8g8upGjeE

Firestorm also likes to release on Sunday afternoon (evening) so it could be as early as Dec. 11 or perhaps a day or 2 later.

Of course, being hopelessly addicted to the Firestorm viewer, I will wait until then.

[sirhc deSantis]

Err I did install it, like I often do with new featured versions, just not via here. Sorry :(

(And yeah also tend to try out the various TPVs)

[melponeme_k]

I don't use alternate viewers only the official.

Got into Bento pre-view and installed the new official version as soon as it came out.

I Love it. Hopefully there will be more advanced body mesh that is more malleable.

[Mondy]

Estelle is talking rubbish, FS has had mesh capability since what ? 2012 when mesh came out ?
The alpha viewer has been available to anyone in the Firestorm preview group for a number of weeks and is pretty popular and stable and is now in beta.
As for lack of interest, in most of the groups that deal with content like mesh heads, shopping, fashion etc, people are/were just waiting for it to go live so they can buy new content like Bento updated heads and hands.
And despite going live on the grid and LL viewer, many still want to wait for an 'official' release from Firestorm or other TPV's

[Pussycat Catnap]

I want to use the official viewer, I really do.

But its no longer stable on Macs. I crash anytime there are more than a small handful of avatars around (as in, 5-6 or so, and I might crash).

So I had to migrate to Firestorm.

Once I did, I started to really like the built in AO because it cut 2.5mbs off of my script time and I can put BOTH an AO and a series of dance collections into it (so its a personal dance HUD for me).

Yes Firestorm lags behind the official viewer...

By as much as 4 to 8 months update depending...

But it isn't crashing...

[Rin]

There is not enough Bento-items out yet to justify switching viewers and while the mesh-heads looks nice, those that I have seen are way overpriced and not enough of an improvement over my current look.
And I like FS and happily wait for the official release when it comes.

And yes, mesh was in FS from the start on and the 'seeing naked people'-thing seem to have been only in peoples heads since I think I never actually met anyone who had this problem or seen it myself on my travels. And if I remember correctly it was something usually mentioned by people who then went on how they still use viewers from 2006 and refuse to update anything (while still expecting everything to run on ultra super settings with 10000 fps ;P ... there are always some of those around).

[Madeline blackbart]

The seeing people naked thing was because a large group of people were very vocally antimesh for a very long time and refused to update there viewers. I don't remember when firestorm updated per say but you can't blame people's stubbornness on firestorm either way.

[Madeline blackbart]

As far as price akeruka heads are like 2k for bento which is on par for price with dates heads. Mesh addicts mentions a head soon to release for 1k. And a few heads for bento listed on omega website were also similar price I believe. If you look at the gates head yeah it's pricey. Look outside cares different story.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

What is strange is that LL put out a Linux version of the Bento viewer! Yes, really. A couple of years back they basically stopped working on the Linux viewer and there was a serious bug that caused their Linux 3.8.x+ versions to crash on 64-bit linuxes thus requiring use of their "obsolete OS viewer" on 64 bit Linuxes. Grid knows why their build system is still 32 bit in 2016, really LL, 64 bit is a must! Besides, it would make SL a LOT easier to get running on 64-bit Linux systems. Running a 32 bit viewer on 64 bit Linux is a PITA.

The Bento Linux release still has the same "tools upgrade" issue. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-9115

So I'm sticking with Firestorm for x86_64.

[Adeon Writer]

I'm very hype for bento, but I won't be touching it until Firestorm supports it.

If for some reason one finds that surprising, I'd ask you to consider if you
would code your blog with a HTML feature that only works on Internet Explorer, but not Firefox or Chrome, even if you personally used only IE and would see it fine?