viewers for Sim-on-a-Stick at i live in science land

if you use, or have read about, Sim-on-a-Stick then you know i favour Imprudence 1.3.2 as a good viewer

my perspective is heavily influenced by my main focus in OpenSim – building stuff. OpenSim over the last two years for me has been 95% building, 4% Sim-on-a-Stick, and a recent 1% on freebies. these numbers aren’t really that precise (i may be OCD, but not that crazy) – you understand what i am illustrating regarding my narrow use – OpenSim = building

however, Imprudence is a first generation viewer and lacks some of the features later implemented such as depth-of-field and great shadows. you can do shadows in Imprudence 1.3.2 but they take a big CPU toll on your machine (on mine anyway, i get like under 10 frames per second)

for visually focused efforts, like photos, i like the Zen Viewer. it runs smoothly and seems to be kind to my hardware (i get 20+ frames per second with max quality settings, reflections for everything and shadows from the sun and projectors, and all of that with 2x anti-alias)

a super nice plus for the Zen Viewer is that Zena Juran has listed Sim-on-a-Stick and its unique port 9100 requirement in the grid manager list! =)

for Sim-on-a-Stick prim building, Ener recommends Imprudence 1.3.2

for all other use, Soas and otherwsie, Ener recommends Zen! w00t! =D

beautiful rendering via the Zen viewer

written by Ener Hax

August 4th, 2012 at 6:56 pm

posted in OpenSim,sim-on-a-stick

tagged with viewers

I hate to say it but Zen has been the most troublesome viewer for me. I never see splash screens for a start and it only works for Windows. Teapot works best in my experience and I use it most of the time now. I still use Imprudence some and Radegast for particular reasons. I tried Firestorm/Phoenix too and was not impressed with their so-called support of Opensim (not yet anyway). Phoenix locks you into a Second Life promo screen which is annoying to say the least – even when you add other grids. You can login to other grids but you never see their splash screen – Second Life takes priority – which is both unfair on the grid in particular and unhelpful to Opensim in general. Hopefully, this will change now ArminW is on the Firestorm team. I hope so because, after the recent stab in the neck by Linden Labs Opensim sorely needs it’s own viewer.

Gaga

5 Aug 12 at 5:02 am

I think Zen is a good choice for OpenSim educators although it would be better still if it worked with the Kitely plugin and search did not default to SL.

Graham Mills

5 Aug 12 at 1:00 pm

good to know Gaga – my use is so limited to just our server and then Sim-on-a-Stick. i’m not sure but i think i was going to try Teapot but it won’t work on XP?

Zen is very stable for me – the other day i was logged in to SoaS for over 12 hours (lol, i went to lunch and never came back while it was running)

when my new box is built, i’ll try Teapot because if you like it, it must be a nice one to use =)

good point Graham, i did not know it would not work with Kitely and it would be good to not allow search of SL for school kids

Ener Hax

5 Aug 12 at 6:49 pm

Teapot is real gpod but it lacks a feature that i can’t forgive not being used, RLV!
Hope sooner it will have it, as OS Grid works pretty well with RLV!

ZZ Bottom

6 Aug 12 at 8:34 am

And wish my SL viewer, Niran’s, could be used on Open sims, cause its graphics and its performance on Windows 7 64b is amazing!
Even if the creator stated He will never release any Open sims version, nor one for other then windows, hope Teapot can get its graphics quality (With DR, Shadows and tone mapping!)

6 Aug 12 at 8:38 am

Ener, do try Teapot. I have an XP machine and tested it working perfectly fine. Armin is putting all his effort into support of Opensim both with Teapot and his contribution to Firestorm/Phoenix – so I am given to understand in the later case.

6 Aug 12 at 9:49 am

ZZ, It took 2 years for me to get anyone to do something about the grid list and finally Armin, the developer of Teapot, took it up and improved the function with what we have now. If you want RLV added you have to pester the developers. They do listen eventually – some do anyway but they do kind of have their own ideas about what they want in a viewer.

6 Aug 12 at 10:51 am

I have been jumping between Imprudence and Firestorm depending on my needs. Firestorm doesn’t seem to have an import/export funtion but Inprudence doesn’t seem to support Mesh. The result is I get to flip flip based on if I want to play with Mesh or if I want to import/export prims.