I am excited about this version of the viewer. I have been playing with it. You may notice when I write about mesh bodies and/or clothes that I am including Render Complexity Information. it comes from this version of the viewer.
I think this version has the possibility to change Second Life and enhance performance more than any other recent improvement has. It provides information to users, designers and consumers. Both will be able to see what design decisions are reducing or contributing to lag. Consumers will be able to make informed decisions.
I have Outfits that use the classic body, hands, and sculpty feet-shoes with Complexity Ratings in 100 thousand plus range. I am wearing more mesh body, hands, feet, shoes, hair and ALL are below 100,000. Most in the 30k to 50k range. There are mesh outfits with 200k and 300k PLUS Complexity ratings. With this viewer we will know what we are wearing.
Release Times – These project viewers are in QA. There is no way to know when a specific project will complete QA and move to RC status. Think of QA as a shop with a number of people working and a number of projects on different work benches. One project may need paint, the painter paints it and people work on other projects while it is painted and drying. At times everyone may concentrate on a single high priority project. Other times they spread among several.
There is no way to predict what bugs, problems, or user interface difficulties they may find.
But, Oz is expecting all of the these project viewers to make it to RC status in the next 3 weeks, 40 to 21 – Sept 27 to Oct 10. If problems are found, it will take longer. But, these have all had project time and are looking pretty clean.
Project Oculus Rift Viewer version 3.7.18.295296 – This is the sad black sheep of viewers. The Lab hasn’t lost interest. It is just has more pressing things that are pressing and this project falls behind.
The Lab hasn’t given out any information on how many people are using this version. I suspect basically none. It is way out of date and few have VR Headsets. I also suspect those that are playing with VR are using the Firestorm/CtrlAltStudio viewer, as we usually hear about an update shortly after Firestorm updates.
Summary
October should be a good month for viewer releases.
Oh dear. I took my eye off the ball on this one. Of the problems I reported in BUG-9015, the worst effect (splitting object unpredictably across a single material) seems to be corrected, at least in the test case. The problem where a material with >21844 tris in only the high LOD causes a cryptic material to be generated, which isn’t matched in the lower LODs, still causes upload failure despite all LOD files being correct. So everyone should still be advised just to avoid materials with >21844 tris. Why they don’t simply make that an explicit error, I don’t know.
Personally I don’t like what they did here at all, and I don’t understand the motivation. If you allow the uploader to decide how to split your mesh into separate objects, you lose control over the sizes of the split objects and therefore of their LOD switching. There is nothing difficult in splitting up a mesh (and/or materials) youself, retaining complete control. The only people who can possibly benefit from this change are those who are uploading other peoples’ meshes not specifically made for SL, with excessive geometry and/or textures, who don’t know how to optimise them for SL. Facilitating that can only make things worse than they already are. Can anyone suggest a more sensible reason?
We often never understand why Lindens do what they do.
I prefer having control.
Pingback: Second Life’s Limits | Nalates' Things & StuffNalates' Things & Stuff