There is currently a shift in mesh development. To understand the shift you need to understand how viewer versions are made. You probably know programmers write a program that becomes the viewer. The nuance in that process is the language programmers write in is not the language computers speak. So, at some point a translation has to happen. That ‘translation’ is called a compile. The compiler tool being targeted for use is Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010. Much of the last week’s work and probably this week’s and next week’s will be toward getting the new mesh-viewer code compiling using VS2010.

What you may not realize is why the change to VS2010 is important for the Mesh Project. The main SL Viewer has been worked over to get it to compile in VS2010. See: Second Life 2.6.3-225584 VS2010 Review This moves the code and the viewer abilities to a new level of optimization for newer computer hardware. If you follow KirstenLee’s viewer development, you know it too has moved to VS2010. So, most viewers on the SL grid are going to be optimized to a 2010 era, at least for those on Windows systems.

