The speed of updates to various viewers is overwhelming. If I reviewed every release, I would never have time to do much else. Fortunately several of the viewers do a good job of blogging what’s changed in their viewer. The problem with those updates is they tend to only tell one the good stuff, which makes sense if you think about it. If they find a problem, they tell the development team so it can be fixed. So, the problems they know about have been fixed.
Give a viewer to a regular user and we’ll do something odd with it that the developers haven’t tried. That is why users always find bugs. As good as the developers and testers are, they can’t think of or do everything that can be done by a user.
So, reviewers always have things they can find. The problem is finding it all.
Version 1.23.5 of Nirans is out and has a load of fixes and additions. As usual the interface has changes. Some you’ll like and some not so much. But we learn from experimenting.
Downloads
Niran’s now has both 32 and 64 bit versions of the viewer for Windows. The 1.23.5 was released in the 64 bit version about 10 AM today. Nirans Viewer download page.
This ups the recommended system requirements to:
- CPU: Quad Core (3.000 mhz upwards)
- GPU: NVidia Geforce GTX 460 and higher
- RAM: 6GB
- OS: Windows 7 64bit Edition
I downloaded and ran Nirans Viewer 3.3.1 (14) Feb 14 2012 17:36:20 (1.23.5). The repository has this listed as a 64 bit version. As soon as it got to the point it needed to start rendering the viewer poofed. So, it may be a 64-bit only version. Some software detects which OS it is in, 32 or 64, and adjusts, but not many programs bother.
The Niran 1.22 is designated 32-64, so I hoped it detected the OS ability. But, a little reading reveals that the file contains a 64-bit version, Nirans Viewer.exe, and a 32-bit version, Nirans Viewer(32).exe. Both files unpack to the same folder. So, I am stuck on using 1.22 as are other 32-bit users.
I suppose I should upgrade my OS to 64-bit and buy more memory. I’ll have either find a good printing press or plan my next heist.
According to the blog and release notes the following changes are part of 1.23.5.
Changes
The Preferences panels have been revamped.
The top menu bar has an auto-hide feature.
Avatar rotation controls have been added. These allow you to change how your avatar reacts to being rotated. There is a video on Niran’s blog page, 5th image down. If you do machinima, you’ll probably like this.
The ANIM uploader I wrote about in #SL Animation Changes is included in 1.23.5.
Camera views get some changes. Niran changed the front viewer to a top view… I thought there already was a top view… See: Preferences –> Advanced.
Rendering gets a shadow thing that may be used for cloud shadows in the future. Whatever, there are now controls so one can play with them. See: Preferences -> Advanced Graphics -> Lighting and Shadows.
Another building feature has been added. Clicking the stretch buttons for X Y and Z on a prim you are sizing can be difficult depending on the prims dimensions. You can now hold down X while in edit to hide the edge stretch cubes (white) to make it easier to click the colored ones.
There is a long list of bug fixes on the blog.
Summary
This viewer gets lots of what I think are whimsical features. They are like, Oh Cute! I’ll use that once… But, I suspect that if you are making machinima many of them will be handy often used. For instance: a control to change the speed of animations. Not something I need to do every day. But, I can see where it might be handy.
There is a bug fix version out 1.24
http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/2012/02/124-quick-fix.html
im sorry for that poofing at start , disable Vertex Array Objects in Preferences – Advanced Graphics – Performance
but before you should completly clean your settings and cache and fix this option if necessenary , this will hopefully fix your login crash according to the SLU Forum
…are you telling me the 64-bit version will run on my 32-bit Windows?
lol … and again a other version 1.25 with the new Mesh Deformer Update 0.2
http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com/2012/02/125.html