Main & Beta
The current main viewer for Second Life is version 3.2.1.244864. Of course, this version is available from the main Second Life download page. Also on that page is the Beta version of the viewer, which is now version 3.2.2.244666. And the link to the wiki page Linden Lab Official: Alternate Viewers with development, project, and alternate third party viewers is there.
Currently Second Life viewers are running slow. In my previous article I was researching how to get more speed out of my viewer. The information you need to diagnose your computer’s performance is there. How to get a Faster Second Life
Direct Delivery
The Direct Delivery Project Viewer is currently at version 3.0.2.239555. This viewer is currently for use on the ADITI grid where the servers are setup to test Direct Delivery.
Project viewers tend to come in two versions, the current Project Viewer and the Latest Build version. The latest build is similar to what many call a nightly build version. Today the Direct Delivery project’s Latest Viewer page is not loading.
Mesh
The Mesh Project Viewer is currently 245525, which is in progress and has been for about 24 hours, meaning the system is currently building it and it is NOT ready for download. Or that something has gone wrong. The current downloadable version is 244693.
You can see what is being done working in this branch by looking at the branch and checking the Commits. Second Life Mesh Development Branch. This branch is nearing the end of its useful life. You’ll see not too much is going on. The plan is to phase out this branch and merge everything into the main development branch. Download Second Life Mesh Project Viewer.
Shining-Fixes Development
This is a special branch for making the OpenGL fixes. The Repo is here. The downloads are here: Latest. It is currently at build 245880. This is not a viewer for everyday use. This version of the Dev Viewer crashes on close, at least for me. I see it spike to over 6,000 tasks as it closes. So, something is up with this version.
Development
The Second Life Development Viewer is currently at version 3.2.5.245937. This version was incremented from 3.2.4 to 3.2.5 about noon 11/30. This is the viewer that gets all the new code coming from fixes and new features prior to it going into the Beta Viewer. See the Snowstorm page for downloads for all platforms.
Also, it is not that fast a viewer. I get 5 to 15 FPS with the rate hovering around 10. In some regions it gets up to 20 fps. Lighting & Shadows, AO, and Sun & Moon (dynamic) shadows all work well without too much of a performance hit.
Summing It Up
The new viewers have lots of bug fixes and backend feature changes. The OpenGL fixes are starting to make it into these viewers. So, we should see some complex problems resolving. But, they seem to be slow.
I’m running with the nVidia driver 285.62 on a GTX 560 Ti and Duel Core2 6600. I see the viewer bottlenecked by the CPU. But even when the CPU frees up I’m getting a low FPS. Generally 5 to 15 that decreases the longer I run the viewer.
I am curious how well other systems are running. I opened a thread in the SL Forum to find out. See: How Fast is Your Viewer?
Add your information and ask others to add theirs. You can get your FPS rates by pressing Ctrl-Shift-1. It is the upper right of the panel that opens.
The Beta Viewer download is now at 3.2.4 (though it is really an early 3.2.5 build). I find that fine – but then again my old 8600GT GPU seems capable in most conditions as long as you don’t add in shadows which slows it down a fair bit. In fact it seems to be my slow mobile broadband that slows things down more.
It does seem that a lot of people with the newer Nvidia GPUs are having trouble recently. I will have to see how my Nvidia Ion netbook does with the new Beta Viewer – it was ok but hardly thrilling with the recent ones.