Radegast updates to 2.18

Radegast is a third-party Second Life / OpenSim client which has proven to be especially popular with those on low-end systems over the years, and gained a solid level of support from the visually impaired, who found the client a lot easier to use than a full viewer – so much so that a special accessibility guide was produced, and special classes held in using the client.

Sadly, ongoing health issues impacting Latif Khalifa, Radegast’s creator, reached a point where, in November 2014, he had to signal that he was unable to continue maintaining the client, although he ensured the source code remained available for anyone who wanted to do so on behalf of the community.

Well, the good news is that on Thursday, July 9th, Radegast was updated to version 2.18. The even better news is that the person making the update was – Latif Khalifa!

The new update brings a number of improvements to the client, which the release notes list as:

•  Support for Group Bans (RAD-471)
• Double click on inventory item to wear/attach (RAD-472)
• RLV support for @acceptpermission (RAD-500)
• New Automatically Accept Dialogue Function (RAD-490)
• A fix to allow the main window to minimize to the system tray correctly (RAD-497)
• Add log-in support for SirinHGpole-Grid to the grid manager (RAD-503).

The Group Ban functionality in Radegast operates the same way as for any viewer:

• Avatars can be banned from a group by either selecting them in the group members list if they are already a member and using the Ban button (below left), or by using the Group Ban Picker to ban one or more avatars pro-actively from joining the group by using the Ban … button in the Banned Residents tab (below right)
• Group Ban capabilities can be be awarded to any role in the group by enabling the GroupBanAccess option in the  Allowed Abilities section of the Roles sub-tab.

The Radegast 2.18 update adds Group Bans to the client use the Ban button in the Members and Roles list to eject and ban a person in the group; use the Banned Residents tab to track those previously banned or to pro-actively ban users from joining the group.

For those unfamiliar with Radegast, it is a full feature but lightweight client able to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It provides pretty much all of the capabilities found in a full viewer, including full inventory management, mesh upload capabilities, voice support, etc.. In addition, it has a few options of its own such as an API for plug-ins, speech recognition and an AI capability (ALICE).

For those who may be without their viewer for some reason, but would prefer to see what is going on in-world, the Windows and Linux versions of Radegast provide a 3D scene renderer in which you can see the world and move around in it, chat with others and – via the Objects option – interact with the things you see around you.

Radegast’s in-world view option (the Scene Viewer) – note this does not support windlight, etc.

All of this has made Radegast a flexible, usable and popular client, and if you’d like to know more about it, please refer to my Radegast coverage in this blog.

Given Latif is still recovering from illness, this update may not signal his full return to supporting Radegast; when I did ask him about this update, he replied, “there were several updates, such as group bans that were done, but unreleased. So why not get them out ;-).” As to the future, we’ll have to see what comes along; but certainly, seeing Latif back in the saddle with this release is great.

Related Links

• Radegast website
• Radegast in this blog