Most viewer reviews are written for those using Second Life®. However, more grids are opening. For the people using alternate grids there is another blog looking at viewers: Excelsior Station. The author, Sarge Misfit, does a Second Life® style VIEWERS COMPARISON. SL users will gain some benefit from the comparison,
The most recent comparison is dated May 3, 2012.
Viewer Comparisons
The comparison is a cross between a viewer list and a feature comparison. One of the valuable points in the comparison is whether the viewer is multi-grid ready, does it have a grid manager, handy comparison point.
A new release of the Dolphin Viewer is out: 3.3.5.23763 “Fellini.” This release gets a new graphics floater panel. The idea is it can be used by photographers and machinamists.
The Dolphin Viewer also gets the ability to click a worn item in inventory to edit it. This will be way handy for moving those belly, lip, and nose rings that rez inside the avatar.
A feature to allow clicking a land mark in inventory to open on the world map has been added.
The Mesh Deformer control could previously be found in Preferences -> Dolphin Viewer 3 -> UI. The control is gone, so I assume the deformer did not make it into this version. It seems there are some problems with the Deformer code causing crashes. Also, there is a Linden factor in that Oz says the Mesh Deformer is a TPV Policy 2.k item. This means developers can’t put out their standard public release of a viewer that includes the Mesh Deformer. It can only appear in test viewers.
Download & Install
The download is standard and quick. The install is typical. I did not need to clear the cache or settings before installing. It seems to work just fine without those steps.
The Third Party Viewer Directory is updated from time to time. Oz Linden changed the TPV List 4/16.
The viewers with enough users to generate reliable stats and that participate in crash reporting are listed in the first section of the list in the order of stability, least crashes. In this update Catznip is in the first position as the most stable.
The Imprudence Viewer is second, Singularity, Phoenix, Firestorm, and RLV follow.
A new release of the Dolphin 3 Viewer is out: 3.3.3 (23731). This one seems to be mostly small bug fixes. The announcement on the release lists these:
The avatar offset reset button in the status panel is now properly hidden in mouse look.
A new setting in Preferences -> Dolphin Viewer 3 -> UI that controls what the Dolphin does when a scripted object sends you several menu popups at the same time.
A new reset button in the extended build options floater, which resets the pivot offset options so that the coordinate origin is back in the center of the object again. My wife is happy about this one.
A fix for how fading music in and out behaves when you teleport within the same parcel.
A fix for the bug that prohibits the mouse cursor from switching back to the normal arrow shape when hovering over certain UI elements.
Download and Experience
All seems very typical and nothing out of the ordinary.
I find the viewer gives me about the same performance as the Linden Lab® Development Viewer, 10 to 15 FPS in my Core2 Quad w/ASUS GTX560Ti.
The Viewer’s Fast Timers show it is spending 62ms rendering a frame. My CPU cores are run about 25% and the 560 about 15 to 45% load. There are almost no page faults. So, I don’t see a hardware bottle neck. Viewers using the latest Linden Lab® code are just slow. Finding a fix is like questing for the BIG ‘O’.
Dolphin has another release out. Lance says this one come quickly after the 27000 version because 27000 was a rush release to get a working Merchant Outbox out. This release includes features and fixes from the planned 27000 release that were skipped to get out Merchant Outbox.
Mesh Upload
This version has the Kokua Mesh Uploader. I have yet to try Kokua’s and Dolphin’s uploaders. I don’t know if they have the ability to create the convex hull when asked to create the physics layer. In Linden Viewers the task is handled by a feature in the Havok physics engine, a proprietary package. On my next trip to ADITI I may try out Dolphin’s and see.
I tend to make my own physics layers to minimize Land Impact. So, whether it does or doesn’t have the ability to do convex hulls isn’t an issue for me.
