Misc Info On Second Life Viewers

By Xah Lee. Date: .

Second life Viewer 2 is here: http://secondlife.com/beta-viewer/download.php. Very new! A complete redesign.

Second Life Viewer 2. A introduction. Very good.

Also, VerticalLife has a temp home page at: http://www.avatarsunited.com/groups/vl . (click on the link “[Vertical Life v1.5.8]”) VerticalLife is alternative viewer designed for Second Life combat. Created by Nexii Malthus. It isn't as feature rich as Emerald, but you might give it a try.

Vertical Life is a viewer designed for Second Life damage land combat, often used by people in Second Life military communities. It doesn't have a public download location anymore, but the author, Nexii Malthus, lets me post the current URL and notecard info here.

Download the latest version (v1.5.7) at

For info about this version, see: vertical_life.txt.

2010-01-03
Info about Vertical Life, written by Nexii Malthus.
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Mac 1.5.7:
http://www.filefront.com/15131939/VL1.5.7.OSX.ALPHA.compressed.dmg
Windows 1.5.7:
http://nexii.ordoimperialis.com/client/Vertical%20Life%20v1.5.7%20Setup.exe

( Following applies to windows version only I think )
Temporary fix for crash! [9:42PM GMT, 20th June]
There is a crash in this release. Caused by the client trying to make swirly-particles around talking scripted objects it doesn't know about. By coincidence I implemented a feature to disable swirly-particles, so for those feeling comfortable with messing with files.

Go into Vertical Life v1.5.7\app_settings\settings.xml

Change this area
Code: Select all
<key>MakeSwirlyParticles</key>
<map>
   <key>Comment</key>
      <string>Should the client create swirly particles for no reason on talking objects?</string>
   <key>Persist</key>
      <integer>1</integer>
   <key>Type</key>
      <string>Boolean</string>
   <key>Value</key>
      <integer>1</integer>
</map>

Change the Value to 0 and it should work fine. [Line:552]
Code: Select all
   <key>Value</key>
      <integer>0</integer>

Also, how to fix the (Away) constantly setting itself, look for AFKTimeout via Advanced > Debug Settings.. and set it to some high value or whatever your preference is.

If the fix fails, and 1.5.7 still crashes, you can resort to an earlier 'stable' version:
http://nexii.ordoimperialis.com/client/Vertical%20Life%20v1.5.5%20Setup.exe

Am downloading and trying the SnowGlobe viewer (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Snowglobe). Several friends say it is much faster, but i can't really confirm. However, it does not contain any extra features such as in http://modularsystems.sl/.

So, why is Linden Labs creating a new viewer? Apparently, it's a new generation of viewer geared toward LL's open sourcing initative. It's a very good thing. Partly, because a fresh viewer will probably get rid of the gook in the old official viewer. You can read about the why's of SnowGlobe here: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/technology/blog/2009/03/30/intensifying-open-source-efforts

Though, Snowglobe doesn't have any extra features in Emerald. I can't live without Emerald. In particular, features like sim wide radar, hide my show look at (extremely useful in combat), adjusting view distance without going into preference, several commands such as “gth” for tp to particular height, showing chat history, removal the tp black screen and annoying sound effect, button to cancel frozen tp, …, in fact, Emerald got so many important features that doing without it is now a major pain in the ass… (not to mention breast physics! LOL)