A big jump in Viewer speed

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Most SL viewers have frequent updates, with maybe not much obvious difference between one version and the next. The official SL viewer also doesn't get changes well-publicised. Where do you find the version number of the current download? It isn't obvious.

So I was pleasantly surprised by the new version of Firestorm that was just released. One example: the old version, as a lot of otther views did, could give a hugely reduced frame rate when particles were on. It dragged down the number of triangles drawn per second, as well as the particles needing to be drawn. That seems to have stopped happening.

So, I reckon, something got fixed in a recent version of the official viewer, and if you haven't downloaded a current Viewer version, and Viewer, maybe you should.

Make it a Christmas present to yourself.

[161488303349]

yes. linden have done a lot of work on fixing the core viewer. still lots of things to fix yet but they going pretty good

+

probably the best thing tho is that now that emerald is a distant memory linden got a good working relationship now with the TPV makers and everyone now cooperating together much more

linden also got over not being the most super duper of all. just concentrate on the core. so is really good i think

[NealCrz]

I use the official viewer full time now and find people are not aware of how good its gotten.  It absolutely outperforms any other viewer in speed in my testing of busy sims.   Just the latest latest update has been crashing on MAC when it was'nt before.

Even with that it does'nt melt my MAC Pro like other viewers to from constant fan and the custom button locations etc really declutter my screen.

nice work.

 

[Ciaran Laval]

The latest official beta viewer contained some improvements to the graphics subsytem which certainly seemed to improve the performance of my viewer, maybe they've implemented that.

[Pussycat Catnap]

People are still making judgements about the official viewer we had in 2009 as if it was relevant to the one we have now. That's what you see when you see many of those complaints about it. Not all, but a good number end with "I tried viewer 2 back during the reign of Emporer Nero..."

Much as I am a fan of V3 though, this latest speed boost seems to have skipped over my version of iMac (late 2011 model - the one that was current until just a week or so ago, on OSX 10.8). I see no changes in speed on the official nor the beta.

The official viewer speed boosts, for those who get them, seem to be in the beta and not release. Firestorm might therefore have based its new update on the beta.

I -have- seen odd behavoir with textures refusing to ever render (having to disable HTTP Textures), and compress textures on by default. And it took several tries to get it to remember my setting for rendervolumeLODfactor. At the default setting both sculpty -AND- mesh look bad as little as 2m's cammed back...

Make sure to also boost up:

MeshMaxConcurrentRequests to 100, not the default 35...

http://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/getting-started-in-second-life/#Preferences

- scroll down to "RenderVolumeLOD"