Finally Kirsten’s Viewer is Leaving but Another Viewer is comming!

I should posted this before on the blog but I was a little busy with somethings in RL, sorry for being late!, anwyway here are my thinkings about what happened to Kirstein’s Viewer:

This is something a little bit sad but anyway, RL is calling and Kirstein will not have free time to focus on the viewer and also crowfounded didn’t reach the foundation targeret, you can read in here:

“AND FINALLY …..

Alas the crowdfunder did not reach it’s target, it is perhaps unfortunate that the funding pitch came at a time where I have limited internet and could not make more of a song and dance about it… But should I need too? I had a review of previous downloads and stats over the last year from the site it had 280 thousand unique visitors, 30 million page views and consumed 3256 gigabytes of data.
The downloads of the clients varied of course but on average between 6000 to 8000 downloads were made per version.

Last week sourceforge registered 217 downloads of an older client! Looking at actual unique login statistics provided by the Lab itself we find a good 3 to 4 thousand people used the viewer on a very regular basis.”

I don’t doubt about this, but at as I said before, I have my own opinion about OpenSource software and what I said  about it philosophy (read my post about Opensource Software in this blog), if Kirstein could reach the fund then the development of Kirstein’s Viewer could be continuous until the next year but as it was not possible then the project have to be finished. But there’s more on kirstien webpage:

“Looking at the positive side we did have a small but VERY generous bunch of funders and all things considered 28% of the target was none too shoddy, to those people I thank you Crowdfunder should be in contact with you with refunding info as I write this.
I do wonder if the 217 people who downloaded the old client last week from sourceforge ever decided to fund.. we will never know.”

I would like to congratulate all of those people who could support kirstein (sorry I couldn’t :(), because better than the money it was the good intention to get alive the project. Even kirstein viewer was not so popular like Phoenix or any other viewer it has some original things that make it quite diferent for the other sl viewers and even I think that kirstein viewer was  the first one viewers outside Lindens Lab viewer that supported Mesh (I hope, I am not wrong).  Here a part of the post that I would like to give an opinion:

“Anyway perhaps the biggest shame is what I consider the missed opportunity, many times groups or organisations have contacted me with requests for customised clients to suit specific needs this funding pitch would have been perfect for such an endeavour.
Or groups with a common interest or goal could have got together and collectively funded the project with the goal of adding specific features.”

For those who were asking for “customised clients for  to suit specific needs”, why they didn’t fund to the project ?, even some organizations or groups did contact Kirstein asking for “customised clients”, I mean if they wanted something then if they funded to the project then they could get what they want. But not as some people may think “It is opensource and it is free, then I don’t have to pay”, as I said this is totally wrong. Does an Opensource developer don’t have the same rights than a pay developer ?, yes it have the same rights as I said, they work is so valuable than a pay developer.  An here is the end of the article:

“Enough rambling, lets tie up the loose ends and finish this.

Many many Thanks to Everyone who has supported this viewer you know who you are. The website forums will be closed, and the site will close at the end of December.”

Bye bye for Kirstein’s Viewer! but I wish the best for Kirstein new job and  Good Luck in your new task!

This was the lastest message that Kirstein left on his webpage which will be closed soon. To you and to your partner, I will wish you the best but also to have a good luck in your new task!.

Now, that Kirstein’s Viewer is going out of SL soon, but there’s someone who is forking the source code of this viewer into a new one that is still on development. This new viewer is developed by another resident called Niran’s and  I am going to speak about it near the future.

Is Phoenix 1.60 with mesh a mess ?

I don’t know if I am really prepared for the next step in SL and this means about Mesh. I have installed Phoenix lastest version that have support with mesh and even there are some improvements in the interface.

The addition of Mesh in SL and in the metaverse would mean many improvements in user’s looks, objects and other stuff (like terrain). But how different could be from Scuplts Prims and Mesh?, even would the mesh look better in FireStorm (This is V3 with mesh support) than Phoneix 1.60 ?.

What about running a test of the performance on both viewers?, this is one of the things that I want to do and it means to run the two programs and to see the difference of each one. But before to do that, I have better to “buy” or to get some Mesh freebies (even demos)  and to see how they look like on both SL Viewers.  To test the performance of the mesh in both viewers (as I added some screenshots how the mesh objects looks like on a non-mesh viewer), three mesh objects which are: a turkey, a chainsaw and a furniture. Here is the screenshot how the objects looks like on a non-mesh viewer (the only object who rezzed fine was the furniter, may be this is an sculpt mesh and not a mesh object):

This is how The Turkey, The Chainsaw and the Furniture looks like on a non-mesh viewer as you can see the only object that load very well was The Furniture but I presume this is a sculpt mesh.

Ok, now let’s see what happened when I log on SL with Phoenix Viewer with Mesh support to see how the mesh objects would look like:

Now The Turkey and The Chainsaw have a better look than using a non-mesh viewer but also The Furniture looks equal in Phoenix Viewer 1.60.

I would say that the mesh objects looks so much better than a sculpt mesh and even the turkey looks like a real one, even it looks like  it was taking out of the oven!, here is the screesnshot with the firestorm viewer:

There is not difference between how the mesh objects looks like in Phoenix or Firestorm, they look like the same!.

Comparing Phoenix Viewer 1.60 and Firestorm 3.2 I don’t see a big different when they load mesh objects but also the look also the same, but as an observation whn I logging to SL with Phoenix was faster than Firestorm and also some of my sculpt prims didn’t load or rezz very well on this V3 viewer (even my mask was looking so bad). I will stay on Phoenix until there is not support anymore then I move to a V3 viewer but I will need to check which one fits my needs. I could say that Phoenix with Mesh isn’t a mess, it was great job and I congratulate all the developers who put their efforts to bring mesh on this viewer (even they are working so hard on FireStorm).