This viewer has a texture download fix that should greatly improve performance. If you even just barely pay attention to SL technology you have likely heard of HTTP Texture Get. What you likely have not heard is there was a bug in SL viewers 2.0, 2.1 and the 1.23 series that cause texture caching to fail. This meant every time you visited a place you’ve been before; all the textures had to download again. So even with a faster download, we were not getting as much performance gain as we should have. Now the textures should cache and greatly reduce rez time.
The problem has been fixed in 2.1.1 (207998) Aug 11 2010.
We can expect to see this fix propagate through the TPV’s in the next couple of weeks. So, we should all be seeing better performance. If you are using Emerald all version 2439 and earlier should have the HTTP Texture Get turned off to improve their performance. See other posts here to learn more.
This change to the viewer is part of LL’s overall plan to improve performance. The other two big improvements coming are SIM Crossings and Crash Rates. The 2.1.1 viewer is supposed to have a 50% lower crash rate. I have not used it enough to confirm that. Phillip, LL CEO, says at SLCC-2010 they will fix crash rates and reduce them further.
See F J Linden’s post: HTTP Assets Improve Grid Performance and Other Technology News