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@Perrie.

Are you using an ATI card? If so, try disabling VBO in Preferences > Graphics > Hardware. For some inexplicable reason, having this enabled with the latest few versions of LL's viewer causes a drop of 30 FPS and more for a few people. Besides me, I know a couple of others this affected and disabling VBO fixed the huge drop in FPS for them as well when I told them. Took me days to discover why I was only getting 5 FPS. Now V3 runs fine.  

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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Jean Horten wrote:

If it only had multiwearables...

Why?  You can't have 'em in any viewer anyway, since it interferes with the common experience.  Disembodied parts and accessories flying around because you're using something that only people using the same viewer can render right isn't a good thing.

All viewers can see both multiple attachments and multiple wearables (clothing layers) perfectly well.   Multiple clothing layers -- which is what people normally mean by "multiwearables" -- have been visible ever since LL introduced them in (I think) 2.1.

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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Jean Horten wrote:

If it only had multiwearables...

Why?  You can't have 'em in any viewer anyway, since it interferes with the common experience.

What are you saying?  Of course we can use multiwearables (prim clothing items) and also multiple items on a clothing layer, including tattoos layer and alpha layer.

Linden Lab viewer has those features, and so do many third party viewers.

Linden Lab and their viewer sets the standard for the "common experience". If somebody uses outdated viewer which does not support those features it's their own choice.  Those users are just breaking their own experience. Their choise of viewer does alter how the rest with updated viewers see the world.

Or are you suggesting perhaps that Linden Lab viewer and those third party viewers which are up to par with Linden Lab viewer should be downgraded to the level of some viewer which does not have those features?

That would be very odd indeed! :smileysurprised:

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:matte-motes-nerdy: As several have said there is no best viewer. It depends too much on your computer hardware and personal preferences.

I suspect Inara and I have used about every viewer there is. Inara does an excellent list of viewers with version info and they are grouped by user interface. So, if you like V2/3 UI or V1 UI, you can tell which is which. See: Viewer Round-up page. Inara and I both do reviews of viewers. I separate the reviews by brand. I do them as mood moves me. 

See: http://blog.nalates.net/ - In the menu is a VIEWER item with the viewers I frequently review. You can use search or category to find viewers not in the drop down.

Nirans Viewer is popular with a small core of fans. It is an experimental viewer. The User Interface is non-standard. You will have to learn where things are. Plus it changes as NiranV experiments with UI changes. It is a bleeding edge viewer. Any single release may be a crash disaster. The good thing about Nirans' is there will be a fix out in a few hours. It is some what a machinamists' and photographers' viewer.

Firestorm is the most used viewer in SL. They provide the most user support and debatablly the best. They also build Phoenix, but Phoenix is dying out and at some point they will stop upgrading it. Firestorm is a power user's viewer.

Dolphin 3 is a good viewer. It is very V3 like User Interface. I'll say it is a good round about general purpose viewer. It has some tweaks to make its Merchant's Outbox work better with the Market Place. Its Linux and Mac versions are said to have working Merchant Outboxes.

Cool VL is built by one of the renowned viewer dev's in the SL community. Henri does what many consider impossible. Cool is a V3 viewer with a V1 user interface. This viewer is for those that want to keep the V1 interface but run the new code.

Singularity is a popular viewer with a core group of fans. Inara nor I have looked at it in months. It is a V1 UI running on the Snowglobe 1.5 code, which I think I'll say is V2 code to keep it simple. But, it is a stable viewer and runs well on older hardware.

Exodus is intended to be a gamer's viewer. It too has some uncommon user interface differences. It is to be a performance oriented viewer with all the features needed by combat gamers. The development pace is a bit slow. I haven't seen many releases.

Zen I'll call a new kid on the block. It is a good viewer, but I found it incomplete. I haven't looked at it since January, so it had probably improved. Support is almost non-existent outside of SL. Reaching the dev in-world is the best bet. 

Kokua is in the Alpha/experimental stage. It is intended to be a cross grid compatible viewer and replacement for Imprudence. It too is currently an incomplete viewer.

RLV is a special purpose viewer. You will probably hear it is for the BDSM crowd. It is, but it is not JUST for them. This is a viewer will special abilities. Most of its features are added to all the other viewers. This is one of the few viewers I have only used a little bit. I consider it to be much more interactive with SL than other viewers without RLV. It allows scripts to control actions in the viewer, which allows for some imaginative creations.

The easiest viewer to use is Linden Lab's main viewer. It requires the least knowledge and is the only viewer the Lab's support people will help you with. 

I believe the current leading edge of SL tech can be found in the SL Dev Viewer, which is a pre-beta version used for testing new features and bug fixes. Its a poor choice for casual users. One needs to know what a viewer is SUPPOSED to do before using it, so you'll know when a version is broke.

Using Multiple Viewers

If you decide to try out more than one viewer, read: Second Life Clean Install. You do NOT necessarily need to do a clean install but it had the information you need to make your life with multiple viewers easier.

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

:matte-motes-nerdy: As several have said there is no best viewer. It depends too much on your computer hardware and personal preferences.


I really liked your thread "How Fast Is Your Viewer."

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Second-Life-Viewer/How-Fast-is-Your-Viewer/m-p/1265111#M10139

Would have been great if it had more participation.  Everyone's personal experience is so varied.

While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL, having the different choices available really is a great enhancement to Second Life.

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While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL, having the different choices available really is a great enhancement to Second Life.

Even worse ... or better. If LL hadn't open sourced SL most of us wouldn't be in SL anymore!

2.1 was a showstopper, period.

 

 

 


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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Jean Horten wrote:

If it only had multiwearables...

Why?  You can't have 'em in any viewer anyway, since it interferes with the common experience.  Disembodied parts and accessories flying around because you're using something that only people using the same viewer can render right isn't a good thing.

Maybe you had better AR LL then for including it in their viewers.

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I tried Catznip, but it could not see a mesh t-shirt. I relogged with Singularity and it rendered the t-shirt just fine. Dolphin is good. I like the draw distance control right at the top of the viewer where I can get to it quickly.

What do you think of Exodus? It seems to make the world look prettier.

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Perrie Juran wrote:

While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL


Not any credible sources have stated that.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true: Viewer development has rapidly accelerated and viewer stability and performance has substantially improved since they gained outside help.  If you need a rational basis for comparison, go find a copy of 1.16 and fire that up...

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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Perrie Juran wrote:

While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL


Not any credible sources have stated that.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true: Viewer development has rapidly accelerated and viewer stability and performance has substantially improved since they gained outside help.  If you need a rational basis for comparison, go find a copy of 1.16 and fire that up...

Oz Linden, in his conversation with Jessica Lyon on Treet.tv  at about 31:50 minutes in.    

Nalates accurately summarises the exchange in her blog as 


Q: Does Linden Lab regret going open source?

 

Oz thinks a lot of people in the Lab do regret it. It may not have been the most clever move for retaining control of one’s business. That is spilt milk. The Lab is not going to change that.

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Innula Zenovka wrote:


Baloo Uriza wrote:


Perrie Juran wrote:

While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL


Not any credible sources have stated that.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true: Viewer development has rapidly accelerated and viewer stability and performance has substantially improved since they gained outside help.  If you need a rational basis for comparison, go find a copy of 1.16 and fire that up...

Oz Linden, in his conversation with
  at about 31:50 minutes in.    

the exchange in her blog as 

Q: Does Linden Lab regret going open source?

 

Oz thinks a lot of people in the Lab do regret it. It may not have been the most clever move for retaining control of one’s business. That is spilt milk. The Lab is not going to change that.


I think that shows more that not all the Lindens "get" the corporate culture there than it does any regret on going open.

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Baloo Uriza wrote:


Innula Zenovka wrote:


Baloo Uriza wrote:


Perrie Juran wrote:

While I think it has been "unofficially" stated that LL wishes they hadn't open-sourced  SL


Not any credible sources have stated that.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true: Viewer development has rapidly accelerated and viewer stability and performance has substantially improved since they gained outside help.  If you need a rational basis for comparison, go find a copy of 1.16 and fire that up...

Oz Linden, in his conversation with
  at about 31:50 minutes in.    

the exchange in her blog as 

Q: Does Linden Lab regret going open source?

 

Oz thinks a lot of people in the Lab do regret it. It may not have been the most clever move for retaining control of one’s business. That is spilt milk. The Lab is not going to change that.


I think that shows more that not all the Lindens "get" the corporate culture there than it does any regret on going open.

I will rephrase my statement to, "There may be some (how many we have no idea)  at Linden Lab who may think going open source was a bad idea."

 

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"I was on Firestorm 27000 for about a week or so. Loved it for the tweakable FUI and Phoenix-ish appearance ... BUT I just can't get my head wrapped around the weird logic of the V2/3 communication stuff. Group notices and IMs showing as a small symbol in the upper right hand corner ... what were they thinking? Lately I have to wait for hours for reply by other users who are clearly shown as online. Sometimes I don't receive anything at all. Most of the time they tell me they just missed my message becase they didn't see it. I guess that's a showstopper. Communication is 99% of what we do in SL; everybody knows that but LL."

---------------------------------------------------------

This is my experience as well. I'm staying with Phoenix.

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Nobody answered me, so I'm just going to reply to myself. :smileymad: I've been using Nirans today, and that viewer is great. Rezzes stuff in very quickly. It's on par with Singularity for speed. Nirans also makes the world look very pretty. I think the top four viewers are:

1. Nirans

2. Exodus

3. Dolphin

4. Singularity

5. Firestorm

Firestorm would be ranked higher, but the world doesn't look as good with FS. Exodus and Dolphin are tied for two and three. Singularity would be ranked higher, but it doesn't permit jacket on jacket layers.

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Sorry I didn't reply.   I don't know why you had problems with seeing the mesh shirt in Catznip, since it uses (as far as I know) exactly the same mesh rendering code as do other TPVs based on LL's V3.    Certainly I have no difficulty seeing rigged mesh on myself or anyone else with Catznip, and whatever the problem was, I don't think it was to do with the viewer -- more likely your connection at the time or something else happening on the sim.

Exodus, I don't know particularly well; I've tried it a few times, but have never been able to get too excited about it.   I far prefer Niran's for the graphics (and Niran's is well maintained and updated).

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Deltango Vale wrote:

"I was on Firestorm 27000 for about a week or so. Loved it for the tweakable FUI and Phoenix-ish appearance ... BUT I just can't get my head wrapped around the weird logic of the V2/3 communication stuff. Group notices and IMs showing as a small symbol in the upper right hand corner ... what were they thinking? Lately I have to wait for hours for reply by other users who are clearly shown as online. Sometimes I don't receive anything at all. Most of the time they tell me they just missed my message becase they
didn't see
it. I guess that's a showstopper. Communication is 99% of what we do in SL; everybody knows that but LL."

---------------------------------------------------------

This is my experience as well. I'm staying with Phoenix.

I agree totally with you on what I believe LL refers to as 'toasts.'  In the Firestorm introductory video to FS4 with FUI, the toasts are moved to the lower right on one of the skins.  I don't now if that is just the default for that skin or if there is a way to move. 

Someone really does to get it through their head we need to be able to see that we have incoming messages without it being obnoxious.

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Perrie Juran wrote:


Deltango Vale wrote:

"I was on Firestorm 27000 for about a week or so. Loved it for the tweakable FUI and Phoenix-ish appearance ... BUT I just can't get my head wrapped around the weird logic of the V2/3 communication stuff. Group notices and IMs showing as a small symbol in the upper right hand corner ... what were they thinking? Lately I have to wait for hours for reply by other users who are clearly shown as online. Sometimes I don't receive anything at all. Most of the time they tell me they just missed my message becase they
didn't see
it. I guess that's a showstopper. Communication is 99% of what we do in SL; everybody knows that but LL."

---------------------------------------------------------

This is my experience as well. I'm staying with Phoenix.

I agree totally with you on what I believe LL refers to as 'toasts.'  In the Firestorm introductory video to FS4 with FUI, the toasts are moved to the lower right on one of the skins.  I don't now if that is just the default for that skin or if there is a way to move. 

Someone really does to get it through their head we need to be able to see that we have incoming messages without it being obnoxious.

It may well be that there's one skin that has this option set that way by default, but it can be set up to do that no matter what skin you use.  The setting to switch the notification area to the bottom right instead of the top right is under Preferences/User Interface/General... near the bottom left side of that window you'll see "Group Notices and chiclets in Top Right".  Just uncheck that and restart the viewer.

...Dres

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If I try one viewer that doesn't show a mesh item and immediately relog with another older viewer that does show it, logically I would conclude it's the viewer and not my connection or the sim.

As far as Niran's being well maintained, I had a lot of problems with it. First, it would not start. It was missing a file from a C++ redistributable package. I almost gave up on it. After I finally got it going, he had done something weird with the movement keys and had to edit an xml file to make it acceptable for my use.

Thanks for the reply.

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Randall Ahren wrote:

If I try one viewer that doesn't show a mesh item and immediately relog with another older viewer that does show it, logically I would conclude it's the viewer and not my connection or the sim.

Possibly you would, but since the code for mesh in Catznip is, as far as I know, identical to the mesh code in all other V3 viewers (including having the default MeshMaxConcurrentRequests set at the very low figure of 32, which makes mesh rendering very dependent on what else happens to be on the sim at the time) I think you might committing the falacy post hoc, ergo propter hoc.   

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Yes, I don't like his default movement setting either but you don't have to edit any xml files. It's easily set to normal using Preferences. Niran has explained how to do this in a video tutorial and on the SLU thread. This is how.

In Advanced > Camera you will an option Max Cam / Pelvis diff in º (standing). Niran's default is 240 so the camera rotates around you rather than you turning. Set this to 4 (or 2 if you wish, I prefer 4) and you will turn normally.

I don't like the default over the shoulder view either but that's simple to change using the View buttons.

Niran

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

It may well be that there's one skin that has this option set that way by default, but it can be set up to do that no matter what skin you use.  The setting to switch the notification area to the bottom right instead of the top right is under Preferences/User Interface/General... near the bottom left side of that window you'll see "Group Notices and chiclets in Top Right".  Just uncheck that and restart the viewer.

...Dres

Thanks for the information! I've looked past that setting several times while trying to get the notifications out of the top left.

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Parhelion Palou wrote:


Dresden Ceriano wrote:

It may well be that there's one skin that has this option set that way by default, but it can be set up to do that no matter what skin you use.  The setting to switch the notification area to the bottom right instead of the top right is under Preferences/User Interface/General... near the bottom left side of that window you'll see "Group Notices and chiclets in Top Right".  Just uncheck that and restart the viewer.

...Dres

Thanks for the information! I've looked past that setting several times while trying to get the notifications out of the top left.

Glad I could help.

...Dres

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Very helpful, I will try that. What windlight setting do you use for Nirans? With other viewers I use cawl because it seems to make avatars look the best. That windlight preset is missing from Nirans, so I've switched to Shadows (maybe Shadowsbright), which seems pretty good. The sky is a little darker though.

@Innula,we'll probably never know because I removed Catzip and it's not going back on absent a compelling reason. It must be fast, have some great feature, or be extra stable and almost never crash.

 

 

 

 

 

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Randall Ahren wrote:

Very helpful, I will try that. What windlight setting do you use for Nirans? With other viewers I use cawl because it seems to make avatars look the best. That windlight preset is missing from Nirans, so I've switched to Shadows (maybe Shadowsbright), which seems pretty good. The sky is a little darker though.

It's easy to put windlight settings from other viewers into the viewer you're using... just locate the windlight folder inside of the "app_settings" folder of the program file folder for the viewer that has the one you like and copy the contents into the "app_settings" folder in the program file folder of the viewer you want to use.

...Dres

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