Third Party Viewer Directory/CoolVLViewer

Cool VL Viewer

Links	Contacts
Home Page Privacy Policy Downloads Source Code	Support Email: sldev at free dot fr Second Life Contact: Real World: Support forum
Platforms: Linux x86_64, Linux aarch64, Windows x86_64, macOS

Description

This viewer was created and is maintained by Henri Beauchamp (this viewer was formerly known as the "Cool SL Viewer" and its first public release was v1.18.4.3, released on 2007-11-16).

It puts emphasis on high UI coherency from one version to the other (meaning no bad surprise for "old timers") while staying in sync with Linden Lab's official viewer features, high performances, high stability and reliability, and a high reactivity to new patches and bug fixes provided by the Open Source community.

While primarily designed for, and developed under Linux, the Cool VL Viewer is also available for Windows and macOS.

A "stable" branch is always available, fully maintained and updated, usually weekly, and when necessary, "experimental" and "legacy" branches may also be published and maintained for a while.

Extra features

In excess of most features present in other Third Party Viewers, the Cool VL Viewer provides extras features, the most notable among them being:

• Modernized v1 UI: it's all v1 but with many, many small and less small changes, when compared with the original v1 UI seen in old Linden Lab's viewers. The changes are geared towards usability and productivity, while preserving the 3D view screen estate.
• Exclusive: provides Lua scripting/automation support !
• Exclusive: implements a dual renderer; Extended Environment (ALM + forward modes) and Physically Based Rendering (PBR), with fallback diffuse textures rendering for PBR-only objects/terrains when using the ALM or forward rendering modes.
• Exclusive: Implements a much improved texture fetcher and texture bias algorithm, to prevent issues with VRAM exhaustion, "texture trashing" and seconds-long freezes when walking around.
• Exclusive: Implements a smart frame rate limiter, to avoid excessive GPU consumption due to ludicrously high frame rates and instead best use the CPU "free time" between frames to rez objects and textures faster.
• Implements the "RestrainedLove" API (switchable and disabled by default), forked from Marine Kelley's reference implementation (this is not RLVa).
• Still implements some old features that have been removed from all other SL viewers over time: optional low altitude "Classic Clouds" (their altitude was also made configurable), terrain-only map in the World Map in excess of the "normal" terrain+objects map, optional "animated trees" for Linden trees swaying with the wind.
• Legacy SL search and web-based search both supported. Legacy "Web" and "Interests" (includes spoken language(s) and skills) tabs still available in avatar profiles.
• Kept fully OpenSim-compatible (viewer-side baking, var regions, Lightshare, etc).
• Implements MFA login support.
• Implements support for the new group IMs server backlog feature.
• Implements support for inventory thumbnails and PBR materials previews.
• Linux ARM64 official builds !
• NEW: implements 2K textures support, plus a texture size limiting setting for users short of VRAM.
• NEW: implements PBR terrain support (and the PBR terrain base color map also renders in non-PBR ALM and forward rendering modes).
• NEW: implements high resolution probes, AKA mirrors.
• NEW: implements gLTF scenes and HDRI sky (EXR maps) previews (in PBR rendering mode only).
• NEW: implements WebRTC voice support.

Links

• Website (HTTP): The Cool VL Viewer homepage
• Backup website (HTTPS): The Cool VL Viewer homepage (bis)
• Support: Cool VL Viewer forum
• Linux viewer: see the download section on the Cool VL Viewer homepage for files and installation instructions.
• Windows viewer: see the download section on the Cool VL Viewer homepage for files and installation instructions.
• macOS viewer: see the macOS Announcement forum for files and instructions.
• Sources: see the Repository page.

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