Exodus Viewer Review Initial Release

There is a new kid on the block… The Exodus Viewer has just been released as a beta version. I got a download. \o/ Seems there was a minor goof. If you downloaded in the first couple of hours, you need to get a new download. Something about the settings not saving.

The viewer is based on SLV 3.0.6 code.

A New Viewer

FAQ

There is a FAQ page up on the Exodus site. It provides developer names, SL names. None tie to RL names. So, I’m curious if anyone knows the developers?

The FAQ says this about the viewer:

Exodus has been designed to enhance your Second Life combat experience. Whether its Linden damage combat or meter based combat, Exodus will give you the edge.

That will make it popular in lots of combat regions. I like that.

They answer some other questions in FAQ’s.

Possible

One of the blog posts talks about making this a viewer for the machinimist and photographers. It will be interesting to see if the speed and quality of the render match Kirsten’s Viewer.

See the HDR post. I suppose that is high definition render…

Forum

There is a Google Groups Forum. I think of it as more of a mailing list type thing. It is a pain to join. It wants to use your Google identity, which will be a problem for those that have not made an identity for their avatar.

Changes to the Sidebar

Download & Install

The download file is about 28mb. The download was fast. The second download to get the newer patched version was a bit slower. Maybe more people are downloading.

The install is simple with only a couple of questions. The viewer installs in its own folder as most TPV’s do.

The login is SLV 3 style. Once logged in it is obvious this is a V3 style viewer.

Settings

The settings are very much V3 style panels.

The Automatic Update is turned on by default. With TPV’s this could be considered a security risk. One has to decide if they trust the developers.

Nothing really new in the panels.

In the bottom menu has a built in Animation Override.

Experience

Combat Settings in Sidebar

The rendered image is nice. In regions of moderate complexity I get 25 FPS.

Very quickly I realized this is not a SLV3 clone. Lots of similarities but some significant differences. The Exodus team has dome some interesting things with the sidebar. As one looks through the sidebar it becomes obvious this will be a combat viewer.

I get a load of notices people entered and exited region when I teleport.

The navigation and favorites bars are off by default. Right-click the top menu to enable or disable them. I suppose they are off to give one more visibility for combat.

Black Screen

Resizing the viewer window gives me a black screen. It doesn’t seem to recover on its own. Pressing Ctrl-P to open preferences snaps it out of the black window.

Render

I went over to Dance Island. I find the render is grabbing distant and near stuff. While things are downloading I’m down to 5 FPS. There are 28 people there. The region lags. But, I never got better than 7 FPS.

Jumping over to Celtic Myst I get 16 FPS after the area renders. After I’m there foe a time that climbs to 27 FPS.

Talking about user interface render time in the Open Development group today I looked to see what the UI render time is in this viewer. Would you believe 1ms?

Another interesting thing is the Fast Timers (Ctrl-Shift-9 toggle) window is re-sizable. Neat! Also the Fast Timers controls are listed at the top and there is a pause button. I think this suggests they are seriously working on render speed.

Update: DoH! Fast Timers was upgraded in SLV3.0.? I just use the dev viewers from LL. I don’t check for new features. I guess I should.

Summing Up

This is a fast SLV3 style viewer. For a beta it is very interesting. Exciting. The viewer side of things has been getting a bit boring. This gives us some new blood and excitement.

3 thoughts on “Exodus Viewer Review Initial Release

  1. I tried Viewer 3 but it kept crashing my pc and had several inworld issues, especially with voice. I currently use Firestorm Beta which has a couple of issues but is very customisable and good for combat.
    If Exodus looks like a combat orientated viewer then I will give it a go but if the FPS stays low, combat veterans will reject it. Hopefully it has the same or more user adjustable options as Firestorm. SL Viewer 3 is a crock – sorry but it is, the last update caused serious voice issues and whenever I use it – I end up blue screening my pc. My pc has recently been updated, which has cost me close to $3000AUD so any Viewer 3 users – don’t blame my PC for V3’s issues. Firestorm take a little while longer to render then most other viewers but for combat, it’s not bad. Lets see what happens with Exodus..
    And if anyone wants to talk with me or have a look at SL combat, ya can contact me inworld at the BSM Sim ( type it into search just like that) or come over to my place at “The Green Zone..”

    • There are problems with the SLV3 and OpenGL and the GPU tables in the viewer. Lots of fixes are rolling into the SLV development viewer from these problems. So, it is not surprising you had problems. Leading edge computers have the best performance and the most problems as games catch up.

      There are numerous fixes and issues that I have covered in this blog.

    • Blue screens? It’s likely you’re suffering from the nVidia 460 bug, assuming you have that graphics card, Linden Lab’s is working on it and has fixed it in a development version.

      See here for more information on that.

      Also, Nalates, thank you so much for the post. 🙂

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