Phoenix with Mesh?

Today I’m seeing Plurks and Tweets about the Phoenix Viewer getting mesh. Looking at the Phoenix Viewer site, I find they are adding mesh support to Phoenix. Interesting.

Henri Beauchamp, of Cool VL Viewer fame, has back ported the render engine from SL Viewer 3. He is allowing third party viewer developers to use his work. One of the Firestorm-Phoenix team made the conversion to Phoenix, Ansariel Hiller.

A new release of Phoenix is coming soon. You can read the details on the Phoenix blog (link above).

So, it seems series 1 viewers will be getting the ability to render the new free style models we call ‘mesh’.  Jessica explains this viewer version will probably be more crash prone. Also, that Phoenix is on its last legs. She makes a point that the ‘team’ did not make this addition. A couple of team members made it as a personal project. Now it is being added into the Phoenix Viewer project.

Stats

There are some interesting numbers in New World Notes regarding the percentages of people using and not using ‘mesh’ capable viewers. See: SL Survey: Do Use a Mesh Viewer? Buy Mesh Content? Take the survey.

Future

Jessica points out in the announcement that the team will prolong the life of the Phoenix Viewer as long as they can. But, V1 Viewers are going to fall farther and farther behind and the team’s focus is on Firestorm.

She also points out that the FS/PH team was able to add mesh to Firestorm in 2 weeks. It has taken something like 9 months to add it to Viewer 1.

This should make it clear that V1 Viewers will always be behind the curve and out dated.

Also, computers without SSE2 or better capabilities are being left behind. We first saw SSE2 in Pentium 4 processors in 2001. Computers made prior to that do not have SSE2 support. Computers made after have SSE2 or better support. We are talking more than 10 year old technology, which is way old for a computer.

You can use CPU-Z to test your CPU for SSE support. It is free.

2 thoughts on “Phoenix with Mesh?

  1. Nalates, maybe in your knowledge you’re confusing something, actually we’re still on SSE2 and SSE3, but backward compatibility is only SSE2, even you’ve a I7 quad or seventh. Never forget by yourself that world isn’t made of MS computer, another slice is made of linux/gnu and max os x….

    • I may have misunderstood. Is it true that any computer without at least SSE2 is not going to be able to run Phoenix w/mesh?

      You are right, there is a Mac and Linux contingent. I very seldom use Linux. I never use Mac. Nothing against them, I just have my preferences. So, I don’t write for those people because I have little to no knowledge that applies. If you know blogs that cover Linux and SL or ones covering Mac and SL, let me know. I’ll be glad link to them.

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