Another Little Feature of Emerald

Despite Nicholaz creating the viewer that exploited the creation of '2nd wave' megaprims?

And in what sense are they "illegal"?

All "illegal" can mean, it seems to me, in this context is something like:

"I think that *if* Linden Labs were to decide to return all such prims, and *if* someone were to challenge their decision in a court of law, Linden Labs *might* pray in aid that the fact such prims were created with non-standard viewers, and the court *might* accept this."

Alternatively the court *might* take the view that this line of argument was undermined by the fact Linden Labs had allowed and even encouraged the experimental use of such viewers by publicizing them, and providing links to download them, in its blogs and wiki.

Who knows?

And, unless and until Linden Labs start the ball rolling by returning such prims, or trying to ban the use of such viewers, why should anyone particularly care?

They are illegal in the sense that they are not proper within the data structures that SL supports. For whatever reason, the Lindens didn't want them there, else they would have put them in the standard viewer.

I'm sorry, but having scripting/programming experience, it does get on my nerves when people complain about how unreliable SL is while, at the same time, mercilessly pushing on the engine and taking advantage of any little glitch they find (thus making it into a "feature" that must be preserved to avoid the pollitical difficulties of removing paid-for items). Imagine what it would be like for the Lindens to try to maintain a program under those conditions gives me nightmares.

Yumi: all the Emerald viewer has done is make prim torture (already possible in the standard viewer) a little easier. These aren't illegal, illicit, licentious, unethical, or even smelly.

Some of those shapes look like they could be smelly, I wouldn't be so quick to rule that one out.

Don't worry, everyone's first sculpty looks like that.

Do they only come in orange and have numbers on one side?

Maybe they lack passports / work visas?

I've stayed away from Emerald because at least once a week, there's a thread on "OMG WILL I GET BANNED FOR USING EMERALD?"
- And it just makes me wonder what's going on over there at the end of the yellow brick road...

I'd hate to get tossed into Southstairs or something.

i'm pretty sure i got an odd smell off at LEAST one... *goes to grab the smell-vision-virtual-ghetto-machine*


Emerald Rocks. Period. They have incorporated many features that are, in fact, found in the standard viewer. The difference? you don't have to hunt thru 4283642386 menu's and debug settings to use them, they are easy to find, easy to use, and much more convenient.

BTW.. No dissin on Nicholas.. he is the one that initially made the patch that fixed the *prims in the ass on TP* bug that plagued SL for ever. Matter of fact. a LOT of the major patches that have been ADDED to the SL main viewer, do, in fact come initially from 3rd party viewers... they write it, they test it, LL says.. OO thanks, and adds it in.

I'm JUST sayin...

~Brie

Do you say this applies to all features in non-standard viewers?

"For whatever reason, the Lindens didn't want" features like a worn tab in the inventory folder or to allow attach/detach on double click, "else they would have put them in the standard viewer," so it follows there's something undesirable (possibly "illegal" in the particular sense of the word you're using) about these features?

Strikes me that the "whatever reason" might well be they can only do so many things at once, and while they're busy -- for example -- implementing Adult Content filtering in search and access to regions, they can't be doing other things.

Boy am I glad I read this thread!

Emerald is the most ingenious viewer I've ever used, and I've
used many of them.

And I still use the Release Candidate and Release versions of SL.

I think a lot of the functionality that is built into Emerald is already
in the LL viewer under Debugging.

Things I like:

* Ability to turn off the opening graphic screen
* The draw distance slider next to Inventory
* Double click teleports
* The Asset Viewer
* The 13 skins in addition to the two standard ones
* The Emerald Preferences which include some nifty things like:
+ Shields
+ IM fuctions (like auto-respond to non-friends and many more)
+ Command line functions like teleport to a particular height or the ground,
or tp to an avatar etc etc...

I'll show some of the screens below.

As for it being against the TOS to mention other viewers, I'm not sure,
but that doesn't sound correct. Emerald is only possible because Linden
Lab was smart and awesome enough to release the source code long ago.
Emerald clearly states that 99.9% of the code is Linden Lab's, so the
Emerald viewer stands as a testimony to LL's openess and coolness.

Here's some screen caps:







- Infrared

And some more...









- Infrared

Only ones that interact with the server in non-standard ways.

For example, Emerald also allows you to alter the particle set used for your building indicator. Which sounds good, until you realise that it eliminates a potential graphics optimisation.

But, yes, it does annoy me when people gloat that they are using non-standard viewers and have all these handy features I don't.

your options are simple make or vote for the pjira to get it in the standard viewer or start using non standard viewers

Oh god, Yumi, does it bother you when people talk about features of programs and operating systems you don't use too?

I would also point out that Emerald uses an alternative implementation of RLV, called RLVa, which fixes many bugs and inconveniences found in the RLV. It seems to be superior in every way.

Hang on, you said previously, of some of Emerald's "illegal" features, By your reasoning, surely it must follow that, "for whatever reason, the Lindens didn't want" this "potential graphics optimisation", either, else they would have put it in the standard viewer, wouldn't they?

I ask because I don't know. What benefits would accrue were this graphics optimisation to be implemented? And why can't they implement it, if it's such a good idea? Surely the worst that would happen is that it would break Emerald's nifty particle beam.

Thanks for the tip, Lindal!

Yumi, you've argued your point. I respectifully disagree with your interpretation, as do most of us here (and as does LL, according to what they say). But, you're entitled to your opinion. However, our opinions on this are of little consequence. Concerning ToS, what's of consequence is LL's actions, and on this they are consistently inactive.

I've heard a lot about Emerald and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Thanks again, Lindal!

Nope, but sometimes things that people don't say bother me.

Yumi - is your favorite color 'clear'?

I am yet to find what prim can be created using emerald that can't be with the standard viewer.
Does anybody know? Or are shortcuts being confused with new prims? If there's a new type of prim, I don't want to miss out on the goodness (and I don't neccessarily equate "new" with "illegal".

Do we have a superclass of SLers with superhuman skills? Well, anyone can use emerald- just walk up and install a copy. It's free choice.

After you create a prim, you can go into the Building Block Type menu under the Object tab and find some extra selections that are omitted in the standard viewer (So really, Emerald doesn't even create these prims, it can modify existing prims to use additional shapes). It just exposes a more complete set of the flags that were already there.

If it is not enforced it counts even less.

Why does everything have to be an argument?

OK, just to make you happy, instead of gloating, I'll tell you about some of the features of Emerald that I don't like. The fancy selection beam for building is annoying and useless. The ability to encrypt IMs is a waste of time. Most of the additional skins make my eyes hurt. The notifications from the radar can overwhelm your screen if you turn them all on. My impression is that Emerald takes longer to load than the standard viewer. The non-standard options for transforming prims - the "illegal prims" you mentioned - are of very little use to me so far as I can see.

Having said that, I get slightly better fps, and the radar, double-click TP, and a few of the other features are worth having, so I just don't use the bits I don't like or need. I prefer Emerald to the current standard viewers, but if it was banned tomorrow, it wouldn't bother me much. It has useful features, for me it's slightly more stable (not that the standard viewer crashes very often), but it's nothing to gloat about, especially when anyone who wants it can just go and download it.

neener neerner... we gots all the cookies!! too bad its not an easy to google, easy to find, free to anyone that wants it, complete with all the bells and whistles AND nifty particle streams (that you can change to different shapes.. mine is an yin-yang, rainbow style!) 3rd party viewer that seems to be the biggest hit since... um.. a long assed time. Oh wait... it is.

Did someone not get their wheaties for breakfast?


~Brie