Emerald Viewer 1.5.0.2587 Beta Released

Emerald Viewer

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Emerald has a new beta version of their viewer out. There are some interesting items on the opening page of this version. Today the four News & Announcements links contains a item asking for those interested in being an Emerald developer to make contact Jessica Lyon and get involved. There is also a link to a post about the interview by Phaylen Fairchild on Rezzed.tv. See Emerald Viewer Scandal Continues for my take on the interview and links to the 115 minute video. Plus the link to the new code base repository.

You can download the new Emerald Beta Viewer here: Download Link to newest Beta for Windows? They have yet to get the blog moved to the new domain. They are not going to use WordPress for the blog so that slows the move. This means the links are hidden in the forum. 🙁

This version is not supposed to include the infamous emkdu.dll file. But miraculously it somehow sucks the file from the Windows temporary files and installs it… The file installed is identical to the file in the main Emerald install (2573). There is a post that explains how to remove the file, A few various things... One basically opens the folder one installed the beta version in and deletes the file. The instructions provided on the blog are for removing all copies of the file wherever they are in your computer.

Installing

Before installing the Emerald Viewer Beta you may want to rename your Emerald Viewer Icon from Emerald Viewer to something else, I named mine Emerald Viewer Main.

I chose to install the Emerald Viewer Beta in its own folder. It tries to install over the main Emerald viewer by default. It also replaces the Desktop icon for the main viewer with its own icon. So, one has to make a new shortcut to the main viewer, unless they rename it before the install.

Before logging in start the viewer and open Preferences (Ctrl-P) -> [Network] tab and check the cache location settings.

You will find the Emerald Viewer Beta tries to use the Emerald cache folders for its caches. In my case:

C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Emerald

C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Emerald Sound

Since I started using separate caches for all my viewers and each version of a viewer I’ve had almost no problems. So, I changed my caches to:

C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Emerald Beta

C:\Users\[user_name]\AppData\Local\Emerald Beta Sound

When making the change the new Emerald Beta folder name failed to appear in the dialog. Instead of Emerald Beta I got New Folder. I had to re-select the folder to get the folder name I made. Not a big thing but don’t overlook it.

When I selected a new sound files cache I noticed that when naming the new folder the new name did not make it into ‘name field’ of the folder section dialog. I clicked to another folder and back to my new folder and the name updated. Again, make sure you get the name for the new folder to show in the dialog.

The Emerald Viewer Beta is known to have some problems on start up, like it crashes, something to do with the initial start up. Mine did not. But, I had started mine, changed the cache, closed and restarted it. So, that might have got me past the crash.

On the first login my FPS was about 0.8 to 2 FPS for the first few minutes. After that my Dual Core2 w/8800 GTS was getting about 25 to 40 FPS and that is without the emkdu.dll. I didn’t see a noticeable difference in area render time.

I don’t see new features. I suspect this is just bug fixes and changes to meet the Linden requirements to get back on the TPV List.

I ran the viewer for a couple of hours and had no problems.

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