I’ve been out of it with pneumonia, 103+ fevers, and some really messed up dreams. Just as the Lab was releasing Alex Ivy, the project name for the 64-bit version of the Linden viewer, I was getting sick. So, I’m just getting around to trying the new project viewer.
Download
The download package is about 80MB. Firestorm releases are about 20MB larger.
You can download a copy here: Alternate Viewers.
Install
The projects viewers install in their own separate directory. So, there should be no conflict with your other viewers.
The install will change Windows’ idea of which viewer to use for SLURL’s. Depending on how you setup Windows and your browsers, it may or may not change. For information on how to control this behavior see: How to FIX SLURL’s. (2016)
The default install process works fine. There is nothing extra you need do.
If you run into install problems, some file not installing, restart your computer and try again. A problem can happen if a viewer crashes on exit. The install may see some parts of the viewer still running and refuse to write new files for the lingering process.
Running
When you launch the viewer a monitor window opens and remains open while the viewer is running. You can ignore it. It is a convince for the programmers working on the viewer. The information in the window is a bunch of stats.
In deserted regions, the FPS rates are great. In small crowds, they suck. Scenes render quickly, even complicated ones.
The viewer finds your settings from the main viewer install and loads those. So, no tedious viewer setup. Plus, it uses the same ‘saved graphics presets’ as the main version. Saving new settings adds them to that basic set. Any that you setup in Alex Ivy will be in the main viewer even if you uninstall Alex.
According to my Memory History tool the viewer is using 1.7GB of ram, which is low. The use is bouncing up and down about 10MB. No apparent memory leaks, a really good thing. The viewer should run for hours with no problem.
Firestorm 5.0.1 starts out using less memory but, slowly climbs. It never seems to level off. In an hour, it is using 1.7GB.
I am assuming the Linden viewer still has a lot of debug code in place, thus the higher starting memory consumption.
No 360-Camera. Projects features are separate things until they become RC versions. But, all the main viewer features seem to be there with the exception of a couple of Havok features. See the release notes below.
The only ‘known’ bug is the group members bug: BUG-10447. I think that is currently present in all viewers.
I expect to use this version as my Linden viewer.
Release Notes
This project rebuilds the viewer using 64bit address space. It is our hope that this will improve viewer stability, allow you to use more of the memory in your system (if you have more than 4GB), and possibly also improve performance.
This release has not yet been extensively tested; we are making it available somewhat earlier in the development cycle than usual so that you can help us find any subtle problems and measure the effect on viewer crashes.
There is no Linux viewer yet.
However, there are two Windows viewers, a 32-bit build and a 64-bit build. We expect the 32-bit Windows viewer to run more or less like the current release viewer. The 64-bit Windows viewer is more of an unknown quantity. We hope it will run like the current release viewer.
The Mac build has several known limitations:
- We do not yet have a Havok build for 64-bit Mac. (And with this viewer, we drop support for 32-bit Mac.)
- You will not be able to visualize pathfinding paths.
- You may not be able to upload mesh assets.
- Video media (QuickTime) does not play.
Note: Second Life 64bit viewer will not run on Win10 systems with Intel HD 2000/3000 GPUs and may not run on other systems that do not have GPUs explicitly supporting Win10.
Naturally we intend to address all these limitations before we ultimately release this viewer.
Glad to hear you are doing better 🙂 I do run the new viewer since it was released. It’s so far the fastest to run on my old MacBook Pro Late 2011 (and by far).
Thanks for saying…
I noticed in your green room shot what appears as missing textures. I have run into that also and filled https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-41228 . All of us are busy, but can you reproduce the missing texture and look at the debug log and see if it is reported as an over sized texture ? If that is true maybe an additional report would encourage the LL folks move BUG-41229 off a Minor priority.
There are no ‘textures’ used in my ‘green’ screen room. I set the prims to whitish-gray to make for easier separation of black hair. Otherwise, I would try to help.
Maybe you will run into missing textures as you use the viewer. If so, please keep the issue in mind.
Thanks
Nicky