Back for Display Names!

I've been able to spend more time in Second Life again, though if I have 30 minutes to spare with nothing to do I'll probably head to Lego Universe (Web). But I'm back just in time for Display Names (Web). So far I rather like it and have actually found several long time supporters of the Viewer Formerly Known As Emerald using it. I'm simply Uccie in my tag, but if you check the right boxes in Preferences, my tag will also uccello.poultry and my active group tag (off by default). My alt is one of the many Spartacus-taggers in-world (see pic). Of course, Profiles always show the name.name User Name, the moniker under which someone created their account.

Have you spotted folks with the last name Resident yet since the change? I've seen a few. Lots of Noobies have been coming to Lesbos lately. According to Tateru Nino on her blog (Web), new registrants are automatically assigned that last name. No more scrolling through lists or hitting refresh again and again until you see a last name you like. On a similar note, if you see avies named something like 39873 Guest, then you've found someone trying the Web portal Beta (Web). I gave it a whirl today and it worked very well. I'll have to try it on my iPad soon.

With Display Names, though, I learned that if you set a name and don't like it you are not stuck with it for two weeks, as the various Second Life official Web sites indicate, but if you hit the Reset button on the name change pop-up your User Name is restored as the name everyone sees right away.

Addendum: I've seen some prize givers of late that use initials of last names as well as first names (the latter style invented by Shep Korvin of Lucky Designs). I wonder how the standard last name change is going affect those. Or how names will now appear on Contest Boards at events. I might have to make an alt to find out.

Riding a Phoenix & Viewer Development

After updating my Seawolf dragons (Web) I found that one of the sculpted prims wasn't rendering correctly and after consulting other dragons at the sales site I decided to try another viewer. Lo and behold, logging in with the Imprudence viewer (Web) showed that the problem was likely with the official 2.x viewer (Web), but to confirm it, I needed to try another viewer not based on the v2.x system and that meant skipping over Kirsten's viewer (Web). With limited choices I decided to try the Phoenix viewer (Web) despite misgivings about security and safety from being unwittingly duped into illegal activities. And I found it's actually rather nice in many ways.

There are features of v2.x that I miss, like the sidebar, the address bar, and the Favorites bar, but the UI skin makes it nearly as clear to use (and thus easy on my eyes) as my preferred viewer. With all the advanced features, however, I was greatly surprised to not find the ability to use preset window sizes, a very valuable feature that helps reduce viewer-side lag (the larger the window, the harder your graphics processor has to work) and one that helps create consistent snaps in-world.

This picture was originally taken full-screen (2560x1305) with Phoenix while I was experimenting with the Windlight controls near the Chat bar. They are nearly as useful and as easy to use as those in Imprudence giving all but the most advanced tools in one, neat little pop-up window. The image is a HDR-like* composite of three different snaps taken with different Windlight presets.

But back to the Phoenix viewer. I found it faster in all respects than my sessions with the now defunct Emerald viewer. Much faster, actually. I wonder if that can be credited to less bloatware than the latter or improved texture handling. Looking through the menus and preferences there are still an unbelievable number of functions I either don't want, need, or understand. Like I get two notification windows when someone logs on or off, one being the traditional "blue note" and the other is generated by Phoenix elsewhere on the screen. Why do I need both and can one be turned off? At least it is better than the near lack of notification given by the v2.x viewers and it is nice to see a record of same in local Chat History.

Differences like this are why The Lab needs to encourage third party viewer development, regulated for user safety, and then learn from the features that prove popular. This might improve Resident retention, provide a better experience for new Residents, and generally foster time spent in-world. It's pretty clear that while quite a few things were done well, the v2.x viewer was developed in Shrödinger's box with seemingly little regard for the community. I hope that going forward the process of viewer development is more interactive with all parties cooperating one what is best for all.

*Read more about High Dynamic Range imagery here. Click the image above for a larger version.

More Emerald Viewer Security Issues

In my post from Tuesday, August 17 (a few days ago) I mentioned that security concerns keep me from using the Emerald viewer to access Second Life. It wasn't the place to go into details, nor is this post, but in summary, I stopped making frequent use of the Emerald viewer some time ago after one of the developers that I know told me about a major inventory loss that they traced back to the viewer itself.

Now, it appears that the viewer has been used for a Denial of Service attack. Read more about it here. A few people I know are uninstalling the viewer and switching to various others. Including me.