I got home late tonight, Wednesday. I see there is a new release of Firestorm Viewer out, version: 4.1.1 (28744). This viewer has been a work in progress for about four months. So, lots of new stuff.
You can read the official announcement on the FS/PH Blog: Major Firestorm Viewer Update! It has a list of the more interesting updates and new features. A full list of changes, fixes, and features is in the Firestorm 4.1.1 Release notes.
Inara Pey has a more detailed review on her site: Firestorm 4.1.1.28744. Her review hits some of what she sees as the import changes. One being this viewer is more stable than the previous version, which is good.
I am not a fan of Norton Anti-Virus. My opinion is that company is more about selling software than making an excellent product. Whatever the case, Lance has posted a new article on the Dolphin Viewer blog.
It seems Norton AV is detecting Dolphin Viewer 3’s slplugin.exe as a possible virus. Lance has explained what he has done to check that a virus has not snuck into any of his systems or the viewer files.
The latest Dolphin Viewer is not setting off my ESET/NOD32.
Niran is releasing a new version about each week. The coming 1.44 release is delayed white new code from Linden Lab™ is integrated and debugged. And the user interface is being redone.
Niran Viewer 1.43 Splash Screen
Version 1.43 is available for download. The news on http://niranv-sl.blogspot.com advises that the version is going to be buggy and crash prone. But, it does have new code and fixes coming out of the Lab.
NiranV 1.43 Download 32bit. A 64-bit version is available. The download is about 42mb and only takes a couple of minutes. Niran recommends clearing the settings and cache when installing new versions.
Dolphin Viewer 3 has had a number of quick releases recently. Most of these are for fixing bugs. Recently there was a problem with shadows. That has been fixed in this release.
The download is about 28mb and takes a couple of minutes.
The install is typical, nothing special.
The install saves all your settings. With Lighting & Shadows and Ambient Occlusion turned on with HIGH settings I get 20 to 25 FPS. Turning on Sun/Moon Shadows pulls me down to 16 to 18 FPS.
The shadows look pretty good.
One of the things I’m finding I enjoy is the feature in Preferences -> Dolphin 3 -> User Interface -> Allow Separate Search Terms on each Inventory Tab. Try it. You’ll like it.
If you haven’t run into viewer problems, you must be new. A couple of problems have come up recently. Readers have asked or sent me IM’s on them. So, I’ll mention them because they seem to be biting some people. Also, because when I started experimenting I started running into problems.
Second Life Viewer 3.3.3
In most day-to-day use you are not going to run into these problems. But, it is depressing when you do.
Groups
You probably already know large groups, over 5,000, can be a problem and over 10k are a problem. They can be slow to load and nearly, if not completely, impossible to edit and work with.
One of the problems that seems a bit worse is opening a large group can lock up the viewer for over a minute and reportedly in some cases 3 or 4 minutes. I saw my viewer locked up while opening the Phoenix/Firestorm Support group, the largest group of which I’m a member.
See VWR-29124– Severe performance issues on 3.3.2 (258114) Release and 3.3.3 (259197) Beta in “Add scroll list item.” Thanks to Stephan Gaudio for pointing it out.
You’ll notice we currently are past those versions. But, I’ve run into the problem with 3.3.3 (260300) Jun 21 2012.
Baker Linden has been working on the problem for a couple of weeks with some help from other Lindens. But the previous article on Chnages Coming to SL shows there is lots going on. So, I suppose some of of the changes, like fixing groups, are shooting at moving targets.
