Cool VL Viewer forum

Henri, thanks for stepping up to do what needed to be done when it came to the Linden viewer.
After 5 years using SL, all I can say is that CSLV makes SL so much more enjoyable.
I would like to ask to consider including a handful of features seen in Windows viewers into Cool SL Viewer.

1) Meerkat's Avatar Scanner - as a region admin, this is insanely useful. It was pretty handy to see who was in the region, and have 1-2 clicks to see more about them, freeze, or ban them.

2) Meerkat's Backup - Right click, choose backup, and get an XML file with all my related textures from an object I've built inworld. I've been wrestling SecondInventory for a long time, and for large folder downloads I would still use that. But, the backup feature in Meerkat is nice when you've just finished a build and can click and save it off without loading a Windows image, running SI, etc.

3) GreenLife's MiniMap colors - More minimap dot colors, blue for lindens, grey for muted, and purple for friended lindens

4) VerticalLife's Space Mode and Defer Sky Rendering - remove atmosphere and replace with stars.

Sorry for not replying sooner, but I have been very busy lately, and could not find time to develop for the Cool SL Viewer till this week.

The original scanner is Emrald's. Meerkat is reusing it, and improved it a little, but from what I can see, there is still a lot of work to do on it to remove some Luskwood specific features, clean up the code, and make it less laggy... Not sure I will implement it, especially since there are good scripted scanners/trackers in-world (I'm not speaking about cheap sensors, of course) and also since with v1.23, you can get the name of the avatars in the sim you are in and the neighbouring sims with the mini-map (hovering the mouse pointer above the dots: and from there you can also view there profile, and therefore IM, freeze, etc...).

This one is nice, even if buggy in Meerkat. I debugged the code, improved it (on the UI aspect, with a proper floater), up-ported it to v1.23.4.0 (Meerkat code is still based on v1.21.6.0...), backported it to v1.19.0.5 and implemented it in the latest releases of the Cool SL Viewer I published today.

Questions:

• How often the average user crosses the path of a Linden on the grid ?... In almost three years now, I never crossed any on the grid, but during OpenSource and bug triage meetings where we are all gathered together anyway...
• How many people do you have on your muted list, and how often do you fall face to face with them ?... My mute list holds 4 avatars in all.
  

One of my principles is to avoid bloating the code with useless or seldom if ever used features. Bear in mind that in its current state, the minimap is redrawn at each frame (just like the rest of the UI, which is perfectly and completely insane and one of the reasons why the viewer is so slow when compared to other, much more elaborate 3D games).

I don't know VerticalLife and I'm afraid it would be too time consuming to fit the time I can devote to the Cool SL Viewer...

No worries, we appreciate the time you can put into SL Viewer Life Support.

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After I posted this request, I found another thread in the forums here where you mentioned the minimap tooltip.
I read release notes for the viewer and don't remember seeing that... once you mentioned it, I tried it out.
It does bridge the gap. I could live without the full floater, but having used both the tooltip and the floater version (from Dale Glass/Meerkat/Emerald) - for busy sims or multi-sim estates, the float is still nicer to have... the Meerkat version allows you to track avs well past normal viewer range, and that has been helpful. However, if its a giant pain to patch in, then support, I understand completely.
Anything I suggest is "nice to haves" .. and honestly, I didn't use it enough to merit switching from Cool SL Viewer to Meerkat anyway.
The tooltip is usable, especially with tracking "T" dots because they are larger and easier to "pick" with.

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I saw that... already downloaded and running. This is GREAT. Why am I not surprised you managed to clean it up some too.
Meerkat looks interesting, but the base version and some other things still seem pretty unfinished with it (the database tab? what?).
I looked at it when a friend suggested it for the backup piece... ran it for an hour... went back to Cool SL Viewer. I mostly use SecondInventory for bulk backups, and one feature in Meerkat wasn't enough to lose all the other features and fixes in CoolSLV. Plus, RLV is a must for me, and Meerkat and other GPL-strict viewers won't touch it.

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Maybe its just me - I use mute a lot (sim adminning, it happens) - and I run across Lindens pretty regularly visiting welcome areas, or "event" sites. I was lurking in Daden Space on the 20th (Happy Moon Landing Day!) and a whole gaggle of Lindens came by sight-seeing.
So, yeah, maybe it is just me. Again... just suggestions... in the weight of features vs. speed, I gladly defer to your judgement. I can't even hardly make my eyes read the LL$ code, so... you definitely know better than I do =)

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No worries, another feature that would only be of limited use for sci-fi roleplayers, anyway.
I live in a sci-fi sim and when I was reading the feature lists of many third-party viewers on the LL$ wiki, that was a feature that jumped out at me as useful for sci-fi sims. No harm in asking, right?

So far, I am *loving* 1.23 with the Cool SL Viewer patches.
Everyone around me seems to be crashing every few minutes from some network bugs that appeared as server 1.27 rolled out, but I keep rolling on happy as a clam - and I know who to thank for that... so, THANK YOU!
I need to visit a store again and find more stuff of yours to buy as a way to say thanks.
In fact, will do that now.
Thanks again for all your hard work!