Version Overview

Note (Bumping this overview up to the top of the blog): My SL viewers are vintage versions. They are still operational (in line with latest essential security and protocol changes), but based on 2007/2008 Linden viewers and they are probably only of interest to folks who run SL on underpowered computers or who dislike changes which LL made since mid 2008. Newer alternate viewers from other programmers can be found here (personally I recommend the CoolViewer).

If the variety of my versions are a bit confusing to you, here is an overview for starters.

My builds always require a specific original viewer from Teh Labratory installed. The following list outlines which viewer matches which and the individual release posts contain download links to the older versions from Teh Lab as well as download links for mine plus instructions.

• Eye Candy: 1.19.1.4 (good if your computer can handle atmospheric bliss, although in that case you'll probably want a more modern viewer like CoolViewer, see links at the right side of this blog).
  
• Bleeding Edge: 1.18.5.3 (good if your machine can't handle the fancy sky rendering or has problems with 1.19., it still gives you voice and the search all tab, this is my recommended version for older hardware)
• Old School: 1.18.0.6 (before voice and chatterbox, rock solid workhorse, good for very performance challenged machines and luddites :-)).
  

These are all for Windows. Barney has Mac OS X builds for some of these and Balp did some for Linux.

If you want to see other non-Nicholaz builds, here is a link to a complete list.

Hope that helps :-)


Nick

Accessing Adult Content with Older Viewers (Updated)

I'm currently trying to figure out how the new adult changes will affect users of older viewers like mine. Here are my findings so far, purely based on experimentation, so take them with a grain of salt. If you have other findings or better information, please post them in the comments here.

1) If you never logged in an avatar with a new V1.23 viewer, you seem to be able to teleport to the new adult continent without problem (e.g. go to the map, search for "Mosh" and just jump there).

2) If you have logged in with an V1.23 viewer at any time, the server seems to remember your setting from the General tab in preferences, even if you go back to an older viewer. So, when running/testing a V1.23 viewer make sure you choose "PG, Mature and Adult" in preferences, then click OK or Apply. After that you should be able to go to Adult parcels even if you switch back to an older viewer version.

3) I wasn't yet able to figure out how search is affected, because I could not find any parcels which appear in search and which are flagged as Adult yet. Does anyone know something which (when using the new V1.23 viewer) only appears when 'Adult' is checked in search? If so, I'd like to see how that appears in older versions.

Update:

3) Search doesn't seem to be an issue with older viewers. In older versions, if you check the 'Include mature content' option in search, the viewer always also includes content flagged as 'Adult'. Being able to teleport there will then depend on the above (as described under 1. and 2.).

Bottom Line: Unless the Lindens change something, with old viewers like mine (or anything based on 1.22 like the current CoolViewers) you should be able to access all content if you are

a) using account with 'Payment info used' or 'Adult verified' status (this remains a basic prerequisite) and
b1) either you never logged in with an V1.23 viewer at all
b2) or you logged in with an V1.23, go to Preferences and set access to PG/Mature/Adult


Nick

PS: Experiment on this yourself with searching for a parcel/island called "Yasemine". It's a private island available in search and flagged 'Adult'

Two New Old Patches for Builders

I had a bit of a flashback and ported two of my old patches forward for version 1.22 for the benefit of builders/coders of other viewers (my own stuff only goes forward only up to 1.19 where the old versions of the patches still work).

I've put the two patches for V1.22 into a folder on my server for others to use. They are just ported forward without much testing, but the porting was pretty straightforward (those places in the source which broke the patches only changed marginally), so they should work fine.

The patches are however both great examples of how the Lindens are not working with stuff.

The first is for VWR-779. I think this was the second patch which I ever made (May 2007). It's merely a minor cosmetic issue, cleaning up of visual clutter in the texture console (Ctrl+Shift+3) and back then when I posted it to the Lindens said this was due for being fixed internally anyway, but now two years later the window still looks the same in current viewers.

The second still irks me even after having given up active contribution to the JIRA. It is VWR-3878 from Dec. 2007. The viewer occasionally freezes for a few seconds and it's really no rocket science to figure out why, but ... oh well ... just read the comments there on the issue.

For good measure, I am also reposting a third (old old) patch for VWR-3877. It still goes in smoothly and without patch-rejects in it's original form. It used to fix some nasty random crashes which occurred when the grid was laggy (when asset storage transfers timed out). Not sure if it's still necessary, but even if the Lindens fixed this from anthoer angle, the patch sure won't make things worse. And if they didn't (which is more likely) it will help a lot if the asset servers are under stress. (Update: from looking through the source I'm now 80% sure that it is still valid and necessary.)

Direct Links:

• Patch VWR-779 (forward port)
  
• Patch VWR-3877 (original)
  
• Patch VWR-3878 (forward port)
  

Enjoy!