Nikcy Perian has announced that Kokua is to fork development between Second Life and OpenSim.

While both versions of the viewer will operate on either OpenSim or Second Life for the immediate future, due to an increasing numbers of issues the viewer has been experiencing in connecting to OpenSim-based grids as a result of recent SL-specific updates, the two will diverge over time, each focusing on fixes and updates specific to the gird type to which they are intended to connect.

Commenting on the move in a blog post accompanying the release of version 3.7.8.35024, Nicky states:

The release of Kokua.3.7.12 exposed some vulnerabilities of having one viewer handle both environments. The problem with Kokua-3.7.12 was that it could log on and perform well on some OpenSim grids but, would hang and then crash on others. Particularly troublesome was that it would crash on a standalone instance built from opensim git Master , OpenSim's development track. Also, as reported by Inara Pey LindenLab is moving to content delivery network (CDN) for Meshes and Textures and plans drop UDP portocol once CDN is adopted. I suspect there will be a delay while the OpenSim core developers determine how best to approach those changes.

The comment relating to the Lab's plans to introduce a CDN solution for texture and mesh fetching (and possibly more in the future), is interesting, as it also applies to those other TPVs which span both OpenSim and Second Life in terms of how they handle the changes as the progress (will they attempt to retain the UDP legacy code once the Lab start to remove it from their core code base? Will they also opt to fork?). As Nicky points out; there is also the question as to how the OpenSim core developers respond to the Lab's move, and whether CDN capabilities will be added as an option for those grids as can afford it, or whether grids themselves might opt to add supporting code, depending on their needs and the perceived benefits.

Kokua 3.7.8.35024

In the meantime, and alongside the announcement, Kokua have released version 3.7.8.35024 for OpenSim. The version number reflects the fact that the more recent code releases from the Lab (3.7.9 AIS v3 updates; 3.7.10 – SL Share 2; 3.7.11 – Snowstorm contributions: and 3.7.12 – Maintenance release quick fixes) have all been removed from the viewer, leaving it based on the 3.7.7 (interest list updates) and the 3.7.8 (Maintenance fixes) Linden code.

To assist those using Kokua on both OpenSim and Second Life, the OpenSim version of Kokua will (under Windows) install separately to the SL version – I assume the same is possible with the Mac and Linux versions, allowing for the differences in how software is installed on those platforms. This means that once the differences between the two versions of Kokua become more apparent, users will be able to move between them when logging between SL and OpenSim with relative ease.

In addition, the OpenSim release includes the following updates (please refer to the release notes for full attributions):

The chat text entry bar has tinted background based of the type of conversation. Nearby chat remains as white. The rest of the chat types are: IM sessions are tinted red Group chat sessions are tinted green Conference sessions are tinted blue

Added the following to the avatar context menu: Remove friend Grant or revoke permissions granted to a friend (see when you're online, map you, etc) – only visible when clicking on a friend


Added the grant/revoke friend permissions sub-menu to the People floater right-click context menu (only visible when clicking on a friend's name)

Added localhost Win Grid Proxy 127.0.0.1:8080 and localhost Local Grid 127.0.0.1:8002 to the default drop down list; also added Tangle Grid to the default grid selection.

Kokua 3.7.12.34831

Released on July 15th (and which I thought I'd written about at the time – my sincere apologies to Nicky) includes the changes noted above, and the additional LL code base updates (3.7.9-3.7.12) as listed above. Additional highlights for the release include (please refer to the release blog post for proper accreditation):

New Preferences option to display your avatar name and grid display in the program title bar (Preferences > Kokua – note these changes should only be set after logging-in; if set from the log-in splash screen, they will crash the viewer)

Received Items folder now displays as a system folder in Inventory