Second Life Development Viewer 3.4.6 Released

A new version of the Development Viewer came out yesterday: 3.4.6 (269073) Jan 15 2013. I figured this would be a good viewer to use for testing the Interest List improvements running in Blue Steel and Le Tigre RC channels. It is an interesting change.

To try the Interest List you need to find a shop in an RC region (Second Life RC LeTigre 13.01.04.268719). I tried:

  • Farstone – Prim build shop.
  • Mayfair – An all Mesh build region with mesh clothes shops.

Then I compared to a standard region in the main channel without the Interest List improvements.

  • Heels – The N-core shop – A prim build.

I find it interesting that this viewer is running at 15 to 75 FPS and probably averaging in the 30 to 40 FPS range. It did that in all three regions. I’m running one setting under ULTRA with Draw Distance at 128m.

There is a difference in area rez speed in the RC channels with Interest List improvements. The new Interest List regions are faster. They do rez what you are looking at faster. More stuff behind you remains un-rezzed. So, when you turn around things have to rez.

Distance from the avatar/camera seems to have more influence. As I walked things in front of me were always rezzing. I tried changing viewer draw distance and that didn’t change much, if anything.

Textures seem to get past the blurry stage much faster.

Problems

I haven’t seen any problems with the Interest List. I have had a few problems with the Dev Viewer. Of course this is to be expected. It is a pre-beta viewer. Initially I had some crashes and all my buttons disappeared. So, I recommend clearing out the viewer settings if this is NOT your first install of the Dev Viewer.

Delete file: C:\Users\[Win_login_ID] \AppData \Roaming \SecondLife\user_settings \settings_development.xml

Summary

Using the Development Viewer is a look ahead at what is coming… plus some odd bugs. I am impressed with the viewer’s speed. But, I find the viewer jerky. As new textures and mesh load to be rendered the FPS rate spikes up and down.

Some of that jerkiness is probably the region. I notice that Time Dilation and Physics FPS are spiking down.

Whatever the cause, I hate the jerky turns and mini-freeze like pauses when I walk.

4 thoughts on “Second Life Development Viewer 3.4.6 Released

    • You are right. I did not make it clear. As I wrote I was anticipating the rollout completing on time. I often write an article and ‘schedule’ its publication. This time it didn’t work so well.

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