A new release of the Exodus Viewer came out. The previous release was back in August 2012. This release is primarily to catch the Exodus Viewer up to Linden Lab releases. The label is 13.07.09.1. This comes in Windows, Mac, and Linux flavors.

New features I n the viewer are few, but they are the important ones that will extend this viewer’s life.

• SSA – Server Side Appearance (Baking).
• CHUI – Chat Hub with vertical tabs.
• Mac Full Screen on Lion OS.
• Mac Retina Display for Retina MacBook Pros.
• Mac support goes from Carbon to Cocoa.
• RLVa gets removed.

Katharine Berry, the current lead developer for Exodus, writes that RLVa is just too much for the small team to integrate with changes coming from the Lab. A decision was made to drop RLVa to simplify the task of keeping the viewer up to date with the Linden viewer.

It is sad to see RLVa dropped. For some it will be a serious downer. RLVa is quite fun and about more than just BDSM. 

Download

Get your copy here: Exodus Viewer Download.

Install

I had removed Exodus Viewer as I was not sure they would have a release out before SSA came online. That makes this install a clean install for Exodus Viewer.

But, somehow the viewer remembered my password and at the end of the install and logged me in… It also remembered most of my settings. I am thinking I missed something in the uninstall. Whatever…

It installs and sets up its own cache folders.

Using

The Exodus Viewer still has its Me->Exodus Preferences. If you haven’t been through these, check them out.

In World->Visual Settings are the render controls. These too are extensive and a huge advantage for SL photographers. This feature opens a panel that reveals most of the visual render controls you need to adjust the image you see.

In sort of typical places I am getting 15 to 40 FPS. The rez speed is good, but some textures in some regions are very slow to render fully. I have yet to figure out what is up with that. I don’t see this delay in the SL Viewer. But, other areas Exodus and SL Viewers were fast rezzing and rendering things and textures. For now I guess it is a region thing and not a viewer thing.

I used the viewer for an hour plus. Memory use was around 1 mb, increasing and decreasing. That suggests there are ot serious memory leaks for casual use, like shopping. I did get frustrated that textures were slow rendering fully.

There is a mostly pink screen on exit. This is a problem I see in the Firestorm viewer too. I’m using nVidia driver 320.48. So, I’m not sure what’s with the odd pink texture on exit.

Summary

I am happy to see the Exodus Viewer update and gain SSA support. It looks like we will see SSA being enabled on the Le Tigre RC channel this week. That is about 10% of the grid. If this holds up to expectations, we may see it hitting the entire grid.

It seems more people are waking up to the SSA rollout and starting to complain and ask WTH? I’m curious whether we will get any stats on how many people find SSA a total surprise when it becomes full implemented.

Whatever, make sure you are running on a recently updated viewer version as soon as possible. Avoid the problems that come with being part of the rush. As I write this 96,000+ people have downloaded Exodus Beta 9.

Get your friends to update their viewers.