Kirsten Viewer S21(9) Released Review

A couple of days ago KirstenLee released a new version of the S21 Kirsten Viewer (KV). I’m just getting around to installing and testing it.

Download & Install

The file size for download is about 32mb. I’m late downloading so the download cue is  empty and the download is quick.

The install is the typical KV install. It removes the previous S21 install and then installs the new version. In some version updates the uninstall has not worked all that well. I start out trusting it will do everything correctly. I save the install file so that I can uninstall, wipe the folders and reinstall if necessary.

After several hours of use the install without a manual file cleaning seems to work.

Experience

The first things I notice on launching the viewer are the settings are remembered and a new Kirstens Viewer logo. It is now very clear this is an Advanced viewer.

The viewer still uses the Green skin.

A quick check of the release notes shows this viewer has added the mesh code needed for mesh on the main grid.

Next, my hair is on my butt. I look like I have a tail. No… I’m not putting that picture out. This having attachments in the wrong place at login is a problem that has been around for some time. I can literally walk away from my hair. It stays in one place. If I detach it by right click, the inventory status of the hair does not update. I can detach the previously right-click detached hair in My Outfits. Then when I wear it, it attaches in the correct place. So, it is a minor problem.

In Milk and Cream in Diesel I thought the viewer was slow (4 to 8 FPS). Everything was sluggish. When I looked the region Physics FPS was bouncing between 0.2 and 10. Lots of people teleporting into the region as Hamlet just wrote about the place. See: Behind the Scenes of SL’s Island of Milk & Cream. At the login point there is a Scripts Weight Meter. I was amazed to see people coming in with 800 to 900 attached scripts. zOMG! As I am dressed in the image above, I have 8 scripts.

So, the sluggish action of the viewer was mostly the region. Returning to my cottage, I get 25 to 30 FPS. In Celtic Myst once things have rezzed I get 19 to 23 FPS. For whatever reason I cannot get into the Sleek Beach Club. I’m told I do not have access to the region… :/ At Dance Island I am getting 8 to 16 FPS out by the landing point. In the club with lots of avatars I’m down to 3 to 8. I have Light & Shadows  along with Ambient Occlusion enabled. No Sun/Moon. Also no AA.

In laggy areas I see memory consumption climb and some freezes and occasionally the viewer goes Not Responding. A teleport drops the memory consumption. The climb in memory use is slow, so it probly is not going to hinder long sessions.

As always the render is gorgeous.

Inventory – There is a lag in inventory in recent viewers. That lag is still in the KV. It supposedly has something to do with the new Direct Delivery code. Once the servers are using DD then things are supposed to be better. In the Kirsten Forum there is a fix for those that compile their own viewers. For the rest of us we just have to live with the lag. It is only a couple of seconds… but that is on every inventory action.

The additional inventory windows and the main Inventory Panel work together in such a way that it is hard to do inventory arranging. I was trying to get my swim suits rearranged (summer is here). It is a much more tedious process than it needs to be. Way too much scrolling is required. Plus with a lag at the beginning of every attempt to scroll it gets extremely annoying. If each window would just remember where your last pick was and keep that in sight it would be much better.

I suppose the feature that allows one find something in the Recent tab and then have it still selected when you change back to the Inventory tab has something to do with how different inventory windows try to sync up. I think inventory needs some work. Unfortunately there are so many more important things that need doing this problem will likely be around for some time.

My WORN tab in the Inventory Panel remains empty. I’m NOT nude. I have to use My Outfits to see worn items.

Selecting items to wear can lock the entire viewer for a couple of seconds. I’ve even seen the viewer go into Not Responding after selecting wear. Sometimes the screen goes black or clear, showing windows or the desktop behind the viewer. 🙁

OSGrid & Mesh

I tried to use the viewer to visit regions on OSGrid. That did not work well. The custom shortcut I made works to get me logged in. But, the FPS was horrible. So, I tried restarting the computer and trying again. That helped. In one of my empty regions I’m averaging 35 FPS.

I tried a mesh upload using the new viewer. It worked very well. I did have problems getting my inventory to load so I could find it, but the mesh did upload. My Fusion Generator looks the same in SL and OSGrid, which is a good thing.

Meshes uploaded with previous versions render correctly too. Even my pre-MAD mesh renders correctly.

Also, my sculpties look good in this viewer.  But, the bounding boxes are messed up. I can’t tell if that is a viewer thing or an OSGrid thing. The bounding boxes that cause a collision are much bigger than previously. This makes for big problems in doors where I’ve used sculpty arches. I can no linger walk through the arches.

Oddities

In OSGrid I noticed that World -> Environment has no option to use the region default environment.  One must navigate through World -> Environment Editor -> Environment Settings -> Use region settings.

However the menu we are used to using for selecting region default environment does have a Post Process option. It contains the Night Vision and color filters. But, it doesn’t seem to work. I would like to see night vision return.

Summary

We didn’t get a lot of information about this viewer. It is still the top photographic viewer in my opinion. For those with hot new video cards this is the viewer to use.

2 thoughts on “Kirsten Viewer S21(9) Released Review

    • Thanks!!! I’m glad it is fixed. Kirsten will be happy that it was not a viewer problem.

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