Snowglobe
What is Snowglobe?
Snowglobe was the first Second Life open source viewer project, and added many new features to those supported by the original Linden Lab viewer. Most of those features have now been incorporated by the Snowstorm Project into the official Second Life Viewer; the Snowglobe project is no longer active.
The Snowstorm Project is a newer project based on current viewer code with a more open license; contributions to Snowstorm are made directly into the official Second Life viewer. Features developed first in Snowglobe are being integrated into the official viewer through Snowstorm.
Downloads
Release Downloads
These are well tested versions, recommended for regular users.
Development Downloads
These are more recent versions and release candidates, but may be more buggy and less tested. Please report any issues you have with these downloads either to the JIRA, or to the OSDev mailing list.
[ Windows | Mac | Linux ]
Development Snapshots
Bleeding edge snapshots, automatically generated every commit. May fail to work at all. Please take extra care when running with your live account on the main (Agni) grid. Although we take every care to produce good quality builds, mistakes do happen. Please report any issues you have with these downloads either to the JIRA, or to the OSDev mailing list. Build announcements are sent on the sldev-commits mailing list.
License
Snowglobe source code is offered under the GPLv2 license with FLOSS exception.
Developers are encouraged to complete the Second Life Viewer Contributor Agreement. Submissions to Snowglobe cannot be included in the official Second Life Viewer without this agreement in place.
Get Source Code
The most recent source code for both Snowglobe and the SecondLife Viewer (viewer-external) is available through SVN. See Version control repository for information about where to checkout the source code from.
You can also download source packages for released versions from the source downloads page.
Build Instructions
The Get source and compile page gives general information about how to compile the source. For a quick step-by-step instruction for building on Linux, see Compiling the viewer (Linux).
Features
- Current Release Cycle - information on features and patches pending for the current release cycle,
- Main features in Snowglobe 1.2 that are not in the Second Life 1.23 viewer:
- Media Rendering Plugin System - Plugin architecture enabling media of all kinds to render in Snowglobe.
- Interop Viewer Open Grid Protocol - Documents how OGP (now VWRAP) is implemented in Snowglobe
- HTTP Texture - Project to transition from custom UDP-based protocol to HTTP for texture delivery.
- S3 based viewer map - Utilizing HTTP Texture for the in-viewer map.
Development
- Commit mail and build system notifications: sldev-commits mailing list.
- Developers discussion: opensource-dev mailing list.
- Snowglobe Committer List - List of people with direct commit access who are working to build this viewer
- Snowglobe Development Process - Development practices for everyone working on the Snowglobe viewer
- Snowglobe Quality Assurance - More details on the process we'll use to maintain high quality releases
- Open Source Meeting - Regular in-world meetings where residents and Lindens discuss Open Source development issues, mainly focusing on Snowglobe.
- Browse source: snowglobe branch in Trac - browse the source code we're working on
- Snowglobe 1.x Doxygen
- SnowGlobe 2.0 Doxygen
- Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - Instant communication with developers
For an introduction to the goals of the Snowglobe viewer, see Philip's blog post: "Intensifying Open Source Effort" which describes our new approach to open source. See Philip's mail to sldev for a little bit more about the name.