Linden Lab launched its version 2 viewer today. It will take some time to get used to and for me it's a tricky decision as to whether to use it in this week's class or not. Ultimately it will depend on whether it runs OK on the student hardware and whether the install is as straightforward as the old client, i.e. can be managed by yours truly.
Given that it is supposed to be easier for n00bs to use, there is every incentive to adopt it although I've had a few crashes and freezes (it is beta after all) and, of course, I don't have any documentation prepared. On the other hand this is a one-off 2-hour orientation, the perfect use case for the viewer.
For me the primary selling point thus far is the Shared Media system that allows you to play HTML (including forms, scrolling and JavaScript) on a prim as well as Flash. The big change is the loss of dependence on parcel media. The prim you see above is running STRING (with Flash), the PDB (although the Java molecular viewers don't work, naturally), YouTube and Google Wave. Not only do these all work (despite the odd error message), once configured you can take the prim into inventory, rerez it elsewhere and it still works though you may have to login to Wave again and pages can take a while to load.
Doubtless a list of functional apps will fast emerge. Naturally, single-user apps (as opposed to static pages) don't suddenly become multi-user/immersive (scrolling is also non-immersive apparently) but Etherpad, Solvr, Google Docs, and Google Wave should be OK. As the system is scriptable, I hope to link it up to the giant genome in due course. Many other uses will doubtless emerge.
3 comments:
The share media feature is certainly cool. I couldn't wait to get done teaching my face to face class to try it. This solves so many problems with using the web in SL and as you point out no worrys about paecel media.
For a beta release the viewer seems to work pretty well I was running at work on my Mac and had no problem with freezing. Now I am running it on my Windows laptop, no problem so far.
I haven't used it with any classes yet, my biggest concern so far is it seems like I have to log in two or three times before it lets me connect and I think that might be frustrating for a brand new user.
Also some concern that going from V2 back to V1 seems to create some issues with clothing layers loading properly for some and they come back in V1 _unclothed_ until they reload their outfit. ;)
@Fleep, I haven't personally had any problems logging in though intermittently there is significant lag once inworld. The show-stopper with the class, however, was that logging-in stalled at the ToS acceptance. Whether LL is blocking bulk edu use of the new viewer is one possibility, I guess, though it seems unlikely. It may just have been a glitch.
I have also encountered the clothing problem and I think the best strategy in such a one-off class is to make do with the default avatars. These particular students will not be using SL further so reversion to an earlier iteration of the client is not an issue.
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