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When Viewer 2.8 comes out you will be happy again!


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I would be happy if it came with an assurance that QA had been tightened up to prevent releases like 2.7.4 from being released again. So far as I can see it has been shipped with a load of known bugs that are fixed in later releases simply to satisfy some kind of release schedule. I'm delighted that all is well in 2.8 but is it really sensible to have the beta release more stable and functional than the official one? Or do the developers simply not understand code branching?

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From my observation they really seem to have some problem merging code streams as old bugs often appear in the xml code (I only track that so do not know if this happens in the C++ code but suspect it does).

And there are some bugs in Viewer 2.8.0 - and many from Viewer 2.7 have still to be solved.  The developers/QA team are rushing towards various deadlines, and whenever that happens quality suffers.  My concern is the balance between providing new features and fixing existing bugs i.e. I don't beleive they prioritise correctly - in fact I've seen how they do it and their processes are poor.

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Hitomi Tiponi wrote:

From my observation they really seem to have some problem merging code streams as old bugs often appear in the xml code (I only track that so do not know if this happens in the C++ code but suspect it does).

And there are some bugs in Viewer 2.8.0 - and many from Viewer 2.7 have still to be solved.  The developers/QA team are rushing towards various deadlines, and whenever that happens quality suffers.  My concern is the balance between providing new features and fixing existing bugs i.e. I don't beleive they prioritise correctly - in fact I've seen how they do it and their processes are poor.

My question is why do they continue to repeat the same mistakes as when v2 was originally introduced? Didn't they learn from that fiasco? To continue to release half-done, buggy software will only turn people off regardless of the fact that it may ship on time. Any insights since you work closely with the devs Hitomi? I'm genuinely curious having seen this happen time and again.

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Wow! I have been taking the beta out fora spin and Keli is right. The graphics so far look amazing. The aliasing on my avi is almost non-existant. Colors are rich and crisp. I am not tech savy enough to know what, but it is noticable. I am getting 30-35 fps on "hihgh" on my  five year old computer, which is pretty good for me. Shadows actually work. This is always nice.

The last "officia" release was a total disaster for me, with lots of rendering problems and lag issues.. i find it odda beta would work so much better than what was released for public use only days ago.

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Karma Avedon wrote:

Wow! I have been taking the beta out fora spin and Keli is right. The graphics so far look amazing. The aliasing on my avi is almost non-existant. Colors are rich and crisp. I am not tech savy enough to know what, but it is noticable. I am getting 30-35 fps on "hihgh" on my  five year old computer, which is pretty good for me. Shadows actually work. This is always nice.

The last "officia" release was a total disaster for me, with lots of rendering problems and lag issues.. i find it odda beta would work so much better than what was released for public use only days ago.

It is way better isn't it? That is why I posted this. I am happy it is working well for you. :)

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

My question is why do they continue to repeat the same mistakes as when v2 was originally introduced? Didn't they learn from that fiasco? To continue to release half-done, buggy software will only turn people off regardless of the fact that it may ship on time. Any insights since you work closely with the devs Hitomi? I'm genuinely curious having seen this happen time and again.


I don't work closely with the LL devs but I do observe what they produce.  LL has many processes - and like any company some work better than others - and nearly all of them are under-resourced.  They seem to work on the 90% principle - on the basis that the last 10% (e.g. proper testing) does not produce sufficient returns.  This often works well if the people are all the best in the industry, as then they have the instinct to know what can be missed out - LL's staff are, like most places, variable in quality.  Second Life is not like the software for a medical scanner - and some mistakes are regarded as acceptable - not good for us, but regarded as good for LL.

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Old bugs reappearing is a symptom of bad version control.  Basically everyone working has a local copy of XYZ, complete with bugs.  Bugs get squashed in XYZ2.0.  Product ships with XYZ2.0 code in it.  But then down the road, some job needs to be done quickly and the coder reaches into his own local locker of code and uses XYZ instead of XYZ2.0.  Why?  Because he has it in his possession and he doesn't know if his is the fixed version or not.

 

The fix to this is to have all the code for all the coders on a central server, and to have weekly sniff/wipe sessions (where senior team members delete any and all local copys of code off their teammate's desks).  Make it a firing offense to keep any local copy of code on the PC instead of using the main repository on the server, no matter how you sneak it in.  We once had a serious problem with the same fault reappearing all the time -- we had to end the practice of code caverns on personal computers to solve it.  "If the source code isn't all from the server, the results cannot go to the server." 

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Hi Keli.

I saw your post so installed Second Life 2.8.0 (235292) today and you're right, the graphics are stunning. Textures rez fast and FPS seems better than before especially with Lighting and Shadows enabled. I was playing around with Lighting and Shadows and some environment settings to take these shots of Hogwarts.

.

Hogwarts 2a.jpg

Hogwarts 1a.jpg

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Well it works better than 2.7.4 which seemed to have went downhill when the version prior was awesome.

 

However the renderanimatetrees to make the Linden Trees sway does not appear to be working.  I'm not sure if this is just my viewer or not.  I've had those things swinging for way over a year now, I don't like them still.

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2.8 doesn't work well AT ALL on my computer. In fact, it's worse than 2.7.4. At least I can somewhat run 2.7.4, even though it's not that great. But 2.8 stresses out my computer and the graphics do not look as beautiful as they do on you guys' computers. 

I have a Mac. That may be why it's not good on mine. SL hasn't really been good to Macs it seems.

A few years ago, when I had a PC, SL sucked on that, so I deleted it. I thought it was because my computer wasn't powerful enough. Now that I have a more powerful computer, SL still doesn't work as well because it doesn't even like Macs! WTF?! I can never win. lol *sigh* It really does become frustrating though. I just wanna play.

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Not sure yet. It has a different environment editor than before and works a totally new way. So don't know how to set my old windlight settings to work. =( But on the upside, I could once again crank my settings back up. With the 2.7.4, I couldn't turn on lights and shadow, because my scene would go total black! I was able to use ultra settings with lights and shadows with previous versions of Viewer 2. Now I could run those settings again with the beta viewer! Just need to figure out how to use the new environment dodad.

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Tried it because 2.7.4 always crashes on logon telling me some kind of nvidia driver error and the same with 2.7.5.

 

Installed a TPV 1.23 type and it runs ok of course and they are always the backup.

 

2.8.0 at least does not crash. I can't comment about the graphics. I always run nearly max details (GTX 460 in the system). Looks about the same but DOES NOT crash.

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I just downloaded 2.8 today and found it doesn't work on my one year old iMac at all. I can barely move! At least on 2.7.4 and 2.7.5 I can still run. Both Viewers 2.7.x and 2.8 give me very blurry textures unless I move the camera close to the objects, which is very annoying. When I switch to Firestorm, everything is back to normal.

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*sigh*

I have a GTX 460 and I've been running SL on Ultra, with shadows and depth of field, all this time without any problems.

Ever since 2.7.4 was released, and with every viewer released after it, I crash immediately upon activating shadows.

The only viewer that allows me to have shadows is now the old Project Viewer for Search, and that does not have depth of field on it.

I'm really annoyed, things have been working fine for me up until these releases.

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Melanie774 Kidd wrote:

*sigh*

I have a GTX 460 and I've been running SL on Ultra, with shadows and depth of field, all this time without any problems.

Ever since 2.7.4 was released, and with every viewer released after it, I crash immediately upon activating shadows.

The only viewer that allows me to have shadows is now the old Project Viewer for Search, and that does not have depth of field on it.

I'm really annoyed, things have been working fine for me up until these releases.

That may be the recent bug that causes shadows to crash when antialiasing is enabled - it seems you can only have one or the other now.

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Machess Lemton wrote:

I just downloaded 2.8 today and found it doesn't work on my one year old iMac at all. I can barely move! At least on 2.7.4 and 2.7.5 I can still run. Both Viewers 2.7.x and 2.8 give me very blurry textures unless I move the camera close to the objects, which is very annoying. When I switch to Firestorm, everything is back to normal.

I've had the same experience on my machine, with a GTX460, Windows 7 x64, 6GB RAM, blah blah. Downloaded this, got about 4fps or something hilarious like that, and numerous crashes. I was able to run 2.7.x and the newest Firestorm both before that and after that with no unusual issues. Textures rezzed, I could move at will and smoothly, etc.

For those it works for, congrats. I'll wait for the release version however :matte-motes-impatient:

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