New World Notes

Fun Second Life User Tutorial by Top Gaming YouTuber Recommends Community-Made Firestorm & Black Dragon Viewers Over Official Software

Here's the latest video by Carmen King, a top gaming YouTuber and with nearly 1 million subscribers, easily the most popular SL Youtuber by far, and it's a handy one (along with having her trademark hilarious sass): A basic tutorial for using Second Life. Ms. King has far, far more viewers than Linden Lab's official YouTube channel (less than 40,000 subscribers), so I have to think anyone at Linden Lab who watches would wince at one of her first tips:

By the way I'm using Firestorm. Do not use the [official] Second Life viewer, nobody uses it. So pick between Firestorm or Black Dragon [which is ] mainly for picture taking and machinima if you want really HD stuff. But I use Firestorm for gameplay because I feel like it's less laggy and easier to use.

Yes: One of the first tips for using Second Life is to not use the software created by the actual company which publishes Second Life. And she's basically right: A Linden Lab developer once acknowledged, 25% or less of the userbase actually uses its software.

As for why Carmen is not using the official viewer herself, her answer to me is pretty simple:

Looking for Lumiya, the Android App for SL? It's Still Available on SlideME

Lumiya, the popular and impressive SL viewer for Android devices, was removed from Google Play last year, apparently due to a change in Google's policy around apps' use of SMS messages, but it's still available on SlideME, a curated market for Android apps. Since I haven't heard from Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette in many years (despite many attempts to reach her), I checked with SlideME that the app is still indeed available in their store. A rep with the company just confirmed with me that Lumiya is currently "active with downloads" on the platform.

You can buy it here, but as with any app, buyer beware. It was last updated in 2017 so that Lumiya supports Bento-based technology and its complex, highly articulated avatars for Second Life.

Official trailer below. And if you do know Alina, let her know that we'd love to hear from her, at least to know she's OK -- and to make sure she knows that she's still making money from her app on SlideMe.

Black Dragon SL Viewer Gets UI Upgrade, New Feature for Avatar Animations

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, has a new update that should improve its usability --  "Fancy new tooltips, some UI improvements," creator NiranV tells me -- and comes with a new feature with a lot of potential for screenshots and machinima:

Watch: Will Second Life's New AWS Cloud Deployment Improve Performance?

Linden Lab is starting to test a new deployment of Second Life running on the Amazon Web Services cloud, beginning with a copy of Blake Sea on the Second Life Preview Grid (known as Aditi)  -- and virtual world explorer Nodoka Hanamura just arrived from the sea with this video, putting the cloud through its paces in many vehicles. (Action starts at around 1:30 in.)

The most notable result? Near-seamless sim crossing, a much-desired but near-elusive goal. As you'll see in the video, there's a split-second pause when traveling from one sim to another, resembling what it looks like in many open world games -- as opposed to the several seconds or more rubber band-ing mess it's usually like in SL.

Frame rate, Nodoka tells me, what's fairly decent: 

Amazing Untouched Environmental Photos Shot in SL With Black Dragon

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

It’s been a while since Loverdag has been featured here. Because her work is so distinctive, I thought I must have already done a post about her. She is one of my favorite SL artists. But I so loved this unedited photo “Dream Village” that I decided to search to see if it’s been over a year, and tadah! I haven’t written about her at all. So what makes me love this? It’s probably not intentional but she captures the lighting before a hailstorm. The clouds are cirrus, the fair weather clouds, but the dark sky with the light so intense and slightly yellow is a sign of hail. With the high winds, the leaning telephone pole, and the precarious buildings that could be dismantled by high winds and it gave me that exhilarating feeling I would sometimes get right before a storm. I can almost smell the freshness of the air. 

More stunning landscapes below -- as with the one above, taken with the Black Dragon viewer without post-processing.

Readers Review the Alchemy Viewer for SL

Demo video by Pepe Kuno, who notes: "Finally smooth. Firestorm was killing me with the lag.

Last week's most socially shared post by far is this one on the third party SL viewer known as Alchemy, which suggests to me that many are looking for an alternative to the popular Firestorm viewer. Readers weigh in on the pros and cons:

I decided to give the Alchemy beta release a try-out after watching Luca's [demo] video. (I'm on a 2017 iMac 27".) It is definitely more responsive in large areas, as texture loading seems to be handled better compared to Firestorm. And my FPS have been higher in the areas I usually visit. While it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Firestorm - and is missing some Firestorm features like parcel-level WindLights and the built-in pose stand - overall I've had no problems using it as my primary viewer for Second Life. Sadly, there are fewer options for Mac users these days, with Kokua being the only other relatively up-to-date option besides Firestorm and the official SL Viewer. - Posted by: Spiffy Voxel 

Contrary to that, a reader named "Lemmy" reports: "I tried using my recent MacBook Pro, and I’m getting half the framerate I would using Firestorm." So apparently Mac mileage may vary.

Another reader has some tips on using Alchemy on a PC:

Alchemy Viewer Reportedly Improves SL Performance 2-3X Over Firestorm

I'm not too familiar with Alchemy, a third party SL viewer registered on the official Wiki, but YouTuber Luca says (and shows, above) how well it performs versus Firestorm (the most popular SL viewer) -- assuming you have a powerful GPU.

"I get about 2-3x the performance," Luca tells me. "But generally from people who reported that they got improvement from it, they usually got like 2x the performance! Some people said they didn't get any at all, though."

So the difference seems to vary widely from PC to PC. As Luca goes on:

The Problem With a 12,000 x 12,000 Second Life Display -- And With Asking for It From an Unpaid Third Party Viewer Developer (Comment of the Week)

Last week's most popular post by far is this one about how the Black Dragon viewer now has a setting to take 12,000 by 12,000 images of Second Life. So clearly many were interested in that option. However, this also provoked reader comments like "4K is generally good enough for screenshots" and, of course, "Why?" (The obvious answer to the latter being, of course, Why the hell not?)

Black Dragon creator NiranV posted a comment going deep into his own sense of Why:

I did it because people wanted it and it was literally a 10 second number change that doesn't impact the Viewer in any way and doesn't add any bloat and fits into what the Viewer is aimed at.

I told people that it's quite pointless but some peeps were like, "but more pixels!"

But what do you need to pixels for?

"More pixels!"

Yea well that's fine and all but what for, 4K + FXAA is perfectly fine.

"But i already run the Viewer at 4K natively, it looks like trash."

NiranV proceeds to unleash a hilarious rant that's also an insight into a day in the life of a third party viewer developer attempting to serve the needs of their user community

Black Dragon Viewer Now Lets You Take Second Life Screenshots in 12,000K -- If Your Hardware Can Handle It!

The Black Dragon viewer for Second Life is beloved for making the ancient and venerable virtual world look like a modern AAA game, but the latest update, "Enhancing Dragon" takes that to an entirely ridiculous level. As creator NiranV explains on his blog:

Finally because some people have been nagging about this i've raised the maximum snapshot resolution to 12K. Yes. 12K. 12000x12000. This is mostly for GTX 10XX cards and I doubt that you'll get too many shots in with lower cards before the Viewer decides to poop its render pants and explode in a giant mess. 

Click the pic on the post if you don't believe me. (Though clicking might also cause your browser to poop its pants.) 

Also, only try this if you have an excellent GPU. As NiranV warns:

Kirsten's Viewer, Which Displays Second Life in 3D, Gets Major Update

If you have the right kind of glasses and you want to experience Second Life in 3D, Kirstens' Viewer has a brand new update you can download here (for Windows). Though overshadowed by Firestorm and Black Dragon in recent years, Kirstenlee Cinquetti's third party client for Second Life has been among the very best of its kind, but it also hasn't been updated in quite awhile. But as Kirsten explained to me in an IM, the quarantine lockdown gave her time to do a major update as explained on her blog:

For those of you with red/cyan glasses the above screenshot will make perfect sense :)
The code for this has been completely re-written the reason for this is simple, the effect is the system now renders at native frame rates! Previously each eye had to render the entire scene and required viewer display having duplicate coding resulting in quite a performance hit. The system is now integrated much more elegantly and some selected components only render on alternate frames.

More info here. So that's one more positive outcome to this incredibly horrible pandemic.