Meerkat Second Life Viewer

Just discovered the Meerkat Second Life viewer brought to us by the Open Metaverse Foundation, another open source viewer but it has some nice features and layout for the standard viewer features. The reason I like it so much is that it runs very smoothly on my Eee PC, and crucially you can change the draw distance by a simple text command. E.g. typing “dd 16” into open chat will instantly reduce your draw distance to 16m.. perfect for boosting the frame rate to work on projects when more distant objects are extra to requirements. There seem to be problems with streaming sound currently, but the many improvments on the official viewer outweigh that minor inconvenience. The latest release is July 20th 2009 and can be downloaded from the project’s main page at http://www.meerkatviewer.org/.

Latest release notes from the Meerkat viewer wiki:

Latest Version

As of June 2009, we are pleased to bring you regularly updated Meerkat binaries. Releases will be more frequent in the beginning, while we quickly fix minor bugs introduced during the closed development cycle of Meerkat.

0.1.4 (July 20, 2009) change log:

• Added new remote for quick graphics options. Located right next to the volume sliders on the main screen.
• Improved avatar radar.
• Import/export works for full permission objects.
• Fixed audio sliders.
• IM encryption.
• Double click inventory items to wear.
• “Worn items” tab in Inventory.
• “Web login key” allows login to certain grids by clicking a link to get a temporary anonymous login.
• Phantom avatar and sit anywhere functionality.
• “Command line chatbar” option allows you to do some neat things by typing a command in chat.
• Always fly mode.
• Disable logout/login/teleport screens.
• Show avatar look at beacons.
• Added an option for “Allow concurrent viewers” to the Meerkat preferences panel.
• “View Avatar Joints” option in the “Meerkat” menu shows beacons for the joints of the avatar skeleton for precision alignment of attachments.
• Fixed megaprim creation via manual size entry.
• Added a “>10m prims” option to the main build tool (ctrl-3) for toggling Linden grid constraints (for building Linden grid compatible content in opensim).
• Increased precision of size and rotation controls.
• Added Torley’s 240 windlight presets.
• Added an option to change windlight preset from the main UI.
• Edit Avatar mode shows avatar height.
• the usual various bug fixes not worth describing.
• Windows version runs faster due to some compiler optmizations.

0.1.3 change log:

• Added double click teleport
• Added a preference panel (only the toggle for double click TP currently works)
• Fixed individual volume sliders
• Restored -loginuri functionality
• Added support for web_login_key and a grid parameter
• Fixed a few minor grid manager bugs/crashes
• Automatic download of proper Vivox codec for voice support
• Fixed broken avatar texture and dialog spam after grid teleport
• Added Avatar appearance import/export