For a time, there has been a Project Viewer ‘Render’. That has promoted to an RC level viewer, version 5.1.2.512751. You’ll find it in the Alternate Second Life™ Viewers.
The viewer is based on the Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer technology. It also changes how Jelly Dolls are rendered. One change is a Jelly Doll’s attachments, they now will render on LoD zero. This prevents the higher LoD (think more polygons) levels from loading. This saves memory, which means fewer crashes.
Luanes World – Romantic Sim / Magical Love & Romance
Also, the LoD calculation has changed. No word on how.
Plus, there are about a dozen bug fixes.
Install & Performance
This is one of the largest downloads I’ve seen, 104MB. It downloads quickly.
The install installs over the existing viewer. Settings and stuff are retained.
This viewer seems particularly sensitive to what is in your field of view. On my porch, I get 67 FPS. If I turn to the left adding my neighbor’s house it drops to 37 FPS. It doesn’t recover. It stays at 37 FPS even after I am sure everything has loaded. Use Ctrl-Shift-3 to open the Texture Console to see when textures finish loading. (There are some gotcha’s in the console now. Some of the download progress bars extend across the entire screen. The poof when the texture loads.)
Inside my house, with the trees out of sight, I get 75 FPS. The trees are the ‘LDPW large cypress 1 1’. I think they are sculpty trees. Changing views and flying around, it seems sculpty stuff has an impact on this viewer. Inside the house, with the trees visible through the windows (whole wall is a window) the FPS drops to mid 40’s.
Turning farther left, my home enters the field of view. Oddly even while textures are loading the FPS jumps up to 75 to 80. Maybe it is the trees in mine and my neighbor’s yards…
I’ve tried experimenting with sculpties I’ve made. They are nothing special. But, I can’t say for certain that is a sculpt thing that is slowing the viewer. I don’t see the slowdown. So, maybe it is the forest…
Going over to Nelsonia’s Safe Hub with 24 people the FPS drops to 18 to 29 while textures are loading and then levels out about 32 FPS.
In my green screen room at 1500m the FPS jumps up to 125. Whether textures are loading or not seems to make no difference. As I spin around the Texture Console fills up and the FPS barely changes. I guess if it doesn’t have to draw them, it isn’t a drag.
Opinion
The viewer didn’t crash in the couple of hours I used it. Jelly Dolls seems OK. I have mine set to kick in at 155k. Scenes rendered quickly and I didn’t have textures stalling. I did have a couple things disappear from the scene and I could get them back without leaving the region. No amount of left or right clicking forced their render…
My impression… the viewer is pleasant to use. But, there is no in-your-face visible change to rendering.