I’m confused about what ‘prerelease’ means. Whatever, another version of the NiranV Viewer is out. This is a short review of it. The download is only 33mb, but the download took 10 minutes. Testing my connection I find it has slowed down. My download speed has dropped from 31mb/sec to 2mb/sec. :/ I’ll have to sort that out.
Download and Install
Other than being slow there is nothing special about the download. You’ll find it here: Source Forge Nirans Viewer Download.
The install panel has a Change Log window that shows all the changes for the version being installed. I can’t copy the text. Seems a bunch of fixes have made it in.
WARNING: Niran says that multithreaded cURL does not work well and will cause the viewer to crash. If you’re doing a clean install of NiranV it’s not a problem. If you are installing over the top of a previous install, you need to disable the Debug Setting: CurlUseMultipleThreads.
One cannot easily reach the Debug Settings until after they login. The new splash and login screen doesn’t provide an intuitive way to reach Debug Settings, most viewers don’t. You can however press Ctrl-Alt-D to reveal a DEBUG item in the top menu prior to login. Within it is an item to open the Debug Settings panel.
I was able to log into SL and change the settings post login without a problem.
Experience
The interface is a blur color I love…
The inventory is nicer to use, but it is not a major change.
Otherwise it is pretty much like the previous version.
The viewer is faster than the SL Viewer versions I’m using. With High settings I get 10 to 15 FPS.
Summary
If you don’t know, Niran’s Viewer is a modified Kirsten S21(9). Since it looks like Kirsten’s viewer is gone, this is its successor. Niran’s lacks the photographers’ menu. It has RLVa abilities. It has mesh render and upload.
Many of the Kirsten features for photography and machinima are missing. So, it is not a perfect replacement. It does render well.
The user interface is different from V1 and V3, so it takes some learning. Not only is the top menu hidden (far left under NV) it is somewhat rearranged. Preference panels have been rearranged. So, it takes some getting used to and some things are just hard to find.
It is a nice viewer and faster than SL Viewers. I’m not sure that is enough to warrant learning a somewhat different user interface.
UPDATE: There is already a second ‘prerelease’ released… In this one you can enable: CurlUseMultipleThreads.