Any News on the Graphics Bugs?

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

The Mesh Viewer was released with some significant graphics bugs (and seems to have acquired a memory leak since then).

I would have thought that, with it being the Viewer used by new customers, there would have been something done to fix those problems by now.

There is a third-party Mesh Viewer which doesn't have these problems, but you still need to use the Linden Viewer to upload a Mesh. And the news of the bugs went public around five weeks ago. I do know about QA on code changes, and I know what QA professionals, in their cups, will say about the Developers.

I'm beginning to wonder if Linden Lab can deliver. 

[Tormented Twilight]

It was my understanding that memory leaks are included as a standard feature.

[leliel Mirihi]

Several of the bugs have been fixed, they just haven't been pushed out to a release yet. Unlike many TPVs LL runs the viewer through a lengthy QA process before releasing. Laugh at that all you want, and I'll even agree with you to some extent, but keep in mind that the TPVs aren't developed independently, they're working off of LL's code. They only fix bugs that LL missed[*] so of course they will be "better".

 

* Except for bugs they introduced with their own features obviously.

[Hitomi Tiponi]

At least they now seem to have hired a QA Manager at last, after the job being vacant for several months - hopefully this will improve the standard of QA as some of the bugs that were getting through, and the lack of adherance to their own coding standards suggested there was plenty of room for improvement.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Is it or is it not a bug?  So many complaints of bugs in the SL viewers over the years actually turn out to not be a bug at all.  Some actually do turn out to be bugs.  However, I don't believe any of us who don't have access to the source code (or maybe we do have access since the viewer code is open source but we don't have the expertise to know what we are even looking at when we view it) are qualified to accurately state the SL viewers are full of bugs.  The "memory leak" bug that crops up every so often is an example.  I've read and heard numerous accusations of memory leaks to the viewers that LL has produced and released over the years.......yet, I've never experienced even one problem with memory leaks while using SL (and since late 2005 I've used every viewer SL has released except the most current V-3 that is available.........simply because I learned years ago to wait for a viewer to become mandatory before upgrading).  The one time I did get symptoms of a memory with slow downs after a length of time I took a look at my memory usage and saw no abnormal memory being collected by anything running at the time.  That indicated that the cause was something else.  I looked up memory leaks on the Internet and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

What sparked my decision to look at my cache size was something mentioned in the Wiki article about graphics caches causing problems similar to memory leaks.........I had increased my texture cache size thinking it would make textures load faster for me a few weeks before I began seeing the "memory leak" problem.  I reduced the cache size after clearing it to the default 512 megs.............I never saw that slow down over time again.  What I was seeing as a memory leak was no such thing.....it was my increasing my cache size.  It was not a bug at all.  Bugs are defined here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug

 

It's generally a good idea to look up things before you go off making accessments of someone else's work.  Saying that LL coders are "not up to the task" when the platform they've developed has not be successfully replicated by anyone else.  The only "replicated" SL type platform is the Open Sims...........and that was reverse engineered.  It's also about 5 years behind LL's platform today.  Careful what you say about LL's coders.....it can make you look pretty silly.

 

 

[Deej Kasshiki]

Sorry but, all the current JIRAs say otherwise. How do you explain a major screwup that knocks out most of the current generation Nvidia graphics cards, for example? That's no esoteric or limited case issue. At the very least it points to very poor QA.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

I'll note that they did release a new Viewer version, as default download. I heard about it through in-world gossip. Anyone see a formal announcement?

It's got it's own problems, and the Lindens exoect us to go burrowing into the JIRA system to find out what they've done.

Oh, and we seem to have a new way of counting prims. When are we going to get a stable environment for Mesh object creation?

[Cerise1488303085]

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Deej Kasshiki wrote:

Sorry but, all the current JIRAs say otherwise. How do you explain a major screwup that knocks out most of the current generation Nvidia graphics cards, for example? That's no esoteric or limited case issue. At the very least it points to very poor QA.

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Hi, that particular bug turned out to be Nvidia's, but LL will be adding a lower limit to work around it.

The latest update for the OpenGL modernization project says that it is being sent to QA, so that should be hitting a regular viewer soon too.