Monday, February 16, 2015

The Singularity Viewer : A Lightweight Viewer for Second Life


By Wesley Regenbogen

A while back I wrote about the Firestorm Viewer that I tried out as a replacement for the standard Linden Lab viewer. After using it for a while now, I've began to have issues with it the last few times that I used it. My avatar wasn’t loading and clearing the cache of the viewer didn’t work either, so, I decided to search for another viewer to install.
After consulting "Uncle Google" ( no family relation), I tried a few viewers, like Catznip and a few others, but I had the same issue. Then I came across Singularity Viewer and I installed it. And … thank God! It worked like a beauty. So far I haven’t had any issues with it.
In the beginning there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s not that high. So if you want to try out this viewer, don’t be afraid, it will work fine. I chose the 64 bit version of the software, because I have a 64 bit Windows 8.1 running and I have a 64 bit processor in my desktop as well. It didn’t let me down yet and I hope it stays that way.
Although it’s based on an older version of the original Second Life Viewer, the look and feel is almost the same, but it has added a few cool features. One of them is “Streaming Audio Display” which serves as a “widget” which will be added to the HUD of your viewer. It will tell you the title and the artists of the songs that are currently playing when you are somewhere, if audio is streamed, of course. The toolbar buttons can be changed to the user preference, so it’s possible to change toolbar buttons at the bottom of the viewer.
Too bad there isn’t a “Landmarks” toolbar button, that would be much more handy than going to the “Inventory” toolbar button and then going to the “Landmarks” folder and get a listing of the landmarks that you have collected.
When you go to a parcel where there is audio streaming playing, the Singularity Viewer will ask you if it’s allowed to play or not. So when you push the “play” button on the media buttons on the lower right corner side. You have the option to either “blacklist” or “whitelist” a streaming audio on a parcel. So, this allows you to control whether or not you like to let the music play or not.
As far as I’m using this viewer, I’m satisfied with it. I hope it stays that way, and I will keep on using it indefinitately. 
More information about Singularity Viewer can be found at :

Wesley Regenbogen


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