The new viewer - a well-oiled machine?
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 AM by: Pastrami Linden
So, since yesterday’s viewer release, we have gotten a flurry of responses- about half seem to want to give us their first born child: “thank you for making this such a wonderful lag free experience now!” “runs better than release” “Great work! Great product!” … and about half want to tear us limb from limb “<expletive deleted>” “<expletive deleted>” “<really expletive expletive deleted>” 
So, what *is* a resi to do?…Well, since a number of people are still having problems, we figured we’d provide some information and tips.
For starters, though we say it a lot, you want to make sure to be running the latest drivers. Here are the links to your vendor’s driver pages:
But assuming you are, and still want to go back to 1.19.0.5, Here are the links to the previous viewer:
You also might be wondering what we’re doing right now to make sure *everyone* will have a good experience with 1.19.1. Well, the summarized version is as follows:
Statistically, it *is* a much better viewer- several top crashes are squashed, average framerates are as good or better than the previous viewers, and stability as a whole has increased. This is why so many people are reporting improvements. The issues we *are* having are usually spikes for certain types of hardwares- i.e. GPU X crashes on startup. So they’re not even getting to the experience. We’re going to be looking very carefully at our logs for specific hardware and see where the problem areas exist. And, oh yeah, solve them.
We will not make this viewer mandatory until we can be certain that a vast majority of people are getting a better experience. You may ask yourself why a *release* viewer needs this type of work?- well, going from Release Candidate to Release grows our user base quite a bit and exposes the code to a wider (and oftentimes less up to date) hardware base. And so, even given our extensive First Look, RC, and internal testing periods, it’s now being exposed to a much wider swath of hardware.
It’s got about 10 months worth of work in it, which is why so many people are seeing such speedups and decrease in lag. We now just have to make sure everyone (or close to everyone) can have that experience.
PJIRA reporting helped us tremendously in FL and RC. We ask that you keep doing it! It may sometimes be arduous, but it does lead to us crushing the right stuff. Yes, some bugs do unfortunately get left by the wayside due to our limited team size, but as those of you in the FL and RC programs know, we do get to a lot of the high nails.
So, please use the Issue Tracker and be sure to set “Affects Version/s” to “1.19.1.4”, and we promise we’ll do everything we can to address these issues!
That’s it for now. The take-aways- we’re working for you, and many of you are tasting the fruits of our labor. But not all of you. And that has to change. We just need your help to do so. And, oh yeah, download the older viewer if you want it
Happy living and lighting,
Pastrami
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 AM
yep works fine! now lets fix the asset servers!
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 AM
The main reason the performance has increased is because the Lindens have added a behaviour in which the viewer will prematurely ‘clip’ rendering of objects that are within your draw distance until you zoom in on them, even if you are already facing them. This seems to prevent moving the camera back and viewing the world from a sky view, and is basically the performance equivalent of ’security through obscurity’.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 AM
Pastrami, I just hope that you guys dont revert or kill any features. I’ve been talking to many folks having problems with the viewer and almost *every time* they’re running absolutely -ancient- drivers.
Not saying that that’s the case for EVERYONE, but i think it plays a large part.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:41 AM
@2 That is not the main reason. Avatar Impostors, Vertex Buffer Object improvement, and a host of other optimizations are at cause. If you’re experiencing behavior you don’t like, please file a Jira!
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 AM
Good follow-up, Pastrami. I’m one of the fans, and love having WL as a main, but I do worry about some of my close friends who are still facing issues. Ironically, I updated a lot of mine and other close friends’ issues they had the other day, from their old “first look” status to the release client — I’ll have to re-update!
Also, great job to you an your team: I’ve found you guys (an Sidewinder & Co. on Havok 4) to be very responsive, even if not everythign has been able to be nailed down yet.
I hope all ya’ll will keep hammering at the buggies that remain, an I look forward to whatever is next. Especially if “next” includes Nimbus, PoRIM-GLOW implementation, moon phases (and other atmospheric/astronomical events), and better Linden trees.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 AM
swimming is very slow no since havok4
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 AM
Sounds good but will we be able to turn off windlight completely (got some friends who dont have those kinds of computers that run it)?
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 AM
<3 the new viewer! Cuz I’ve been running RC all along and it fixes *most* of the problems I was having on Macs. Wooooo! Still got some slowdowns on my Macbook Pro but running on my Mac Pro is silky smooth! *hugz*
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 AM
The current color “drag below to change” field doesnt work on the color palette, it drags the whole window.
Windlight looks BAD BAD BAD indoors. Great outdoors though. I spend most of my time inside buildings though so I have just been running at midday all the time. Viewer seems a little more stable than the previous 1.19.
Sorry I don’t use the JIRA, lost all faith in it after posting a critical bug that got many many votes and it has gone unassigned and untouched for well over 6 months now.
Anyway, the color pallette is a real irritation to builders when you cant save a color directly to the pallette. Would like to see that fixed, and would like to see something done to relegate inside lighting. Indoor walls just shouldnt be orange, and avas are black on the non sun side in many lights. I can run midday though till something is done.
Thnaks
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 AM
@7- turning off “Atmospheric Shaders” in the Graphics Preferences tab will disable WindLight rendering
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 AM
@5
Damn, I’d love to see Nimbus or volumetric clouds or more weather… I -hope- there’s more in store as I couldn’t see them telling the Windward Mark crew to just go home after this.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 AM
@11- it’s actually “Nimble”, and nope, we’re not going home.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 AM
What when all avatars are transparent now?. Only boots and belts are seen
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:52 AM
Some of the improvements are great, but I’m seeing increased “crashless crashes” where I can’t tell if it’s H4 or the client - where suddenly I’m not getting responses from anything, can’t move, I’ve really dropped off and I don’t know it, and the mini-map doesn’t turn pink/red right away. So I have to log off and back on. But telling me to file a Jira doesn’t really work because i’m a “free” member (oh, believe me I contribute to the economy, i just don’t pay the 10/month fee).
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 AM
would be nice if people that think facelights help would run the new viewer at midnight so they can see what sort of damage they are doing to everyone else’s experiences. Not to mention the limitations on local lighting and the fact that moving local lights are a major client lag generation device. if you don’t like the way windlight makes you look then you should be complaining in pjira about it. not eroding everyone else’s experience so you can look at yourself.i’m almost willing to bet facelight users will begin to find themselves told to remove them or be removed from parcels/sims. it really is that bad. in a comment made long ago we were effectively told that the programmers know more about what *we* should want and the entire topic related to the way the lighting plays off the avatar mesh was tossed off like a crumpled beer can. so you either like what your handed or you don’t have to log in i guess.
whats really interesting is how the old nVidea 6800 pro card seems to chug right along fine while a number of newer nVidea card owners report a lot of problems. Perhaps we can be told what video cards are in use by the windlight team so we can plan to upgrade accordingly to match their hardware. this is, of course, because the code works best on the platform it was programmed on.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 AM
@14- try the previous viewer. That should tell you where the problem lies.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Currently having problems with triangles appearing all over the screen.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:58 AM
The new viewer rocks with my sustem…as have all previous firstlook and RC’s. I’m a big windlight fan and I am absolutely tickled that it’s become mainstream! FYI I’m running as follows…..
Windows XP 2002
Dellxps410
Nvidia GeForce7600 current updates
2.00 GB RAM
Cable High Speed Internet.
I’ve never had any problems other than the occasional known bugs…and even those are rare and short lived for me.
*big grin*
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:59 AM
inventory search is incredibly slow
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 AM
It seemed like a really bad idea to release the new client viewer AND update the server engines simultaneously. Surely this will make troubleshooting more challenging for you as problems could relate to the viewer or the sim - and many residents won’t know how to tell the difference.
I have had mixed experiences with the pre-release version, but all in all the full release seems to have solved all those earlier performance issues.
Tell me Pastrami, given that this is such a significant release, with 10+ months of work gone into it, why isn’t this version 2.0 or at least 1.20? It seems like a new generation to me.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:02 AM
I still dont think any1 is addressing the real problem. Most people know how to adjust their setting, so repeating it over and over does nothing. The problem i see is that laptops with intregrated graphics have a hard time with this version. Whether they turn setting down or not. A vast majority of users use laptops with intregrated graphics. Others have posted, i use a laptop and mine runs fine. Yes with a graphics card. This is not the same. Lower end laptops are not upgradable. Every1 that when out and got a laptop in the last year cause of the serious price drop is just screwed now. I personally use a 5 year old desktop with a Nvidia 6500 card and a gig of ram, and everything runs quite well on it. Other than the constant crashes and losing connection for no reason. I also have a middle of the road Sony Vaio with an 128mb integrated graphics, which i love, because of the ease of use and i can go and do whatever want, plus the 17in monitor. Im not concerned for myself. I can also afford to go and get a new 1 if needed. More and more people that have come into sl are using laptops that are way below the specs on mine, do to the huge drop in laptop prices. These everyday people are the core of sl and if u screw them over, they will never come back. They are not in sl for nice skies or water. They are here for the social networking and fun. Most of the people i know in sl are these people. Please do something to help them.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 AM
I think people are bound to be a bit miffed when they find their display settings have to be set to low to cope with the new viewer. Yes it is a balance between progress and supporting legacy systems Blizzard manage it reasonably well and they’re not doing too badly
I don’t want to see people leaving over this. so I’m glad to see you’re not making it mandatory yet.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 AM
I’m running windlight since day 1 of the first look, and it always worked for me (some intermediate failures, but that’s what I expect from a first look viewer). Great work!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 AM
changing skin does not work - at least not after five minutes
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:04 AM
I had a fantastic run with RC4, but then again just changed computer too. have not been able to d/l new main viewer… because
off topic: what does it mean when the secondlife site ip, the address http://secondlife.com and the viewer all fail to connect while everything else works fine?
flushed hosts, checked that SSL and TLS are enabled in browser… nothing works. seen something of the sort in jira for last month?
i had just finished jumping for joy at megaprims working hollow a few hours earlier..
is there anything i can try?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 AM
What advice would you give to content creators now faced with optimizing their builds for visitors in the new client?
I imagine I will be going around blessing certain objects with “glow”, and adjusting opacity levels where needed… what other aspects should I consider?
In answering this, please advise on lag inducing-changes - does glow cause light-lag, for example?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:06 AM
changing clothes? I am waiting 2 minutes now to wear a hat - not yet appeared, ok I log off *winks*
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 AM
For those who haven’t been following the story of NVidia’s latest official XP drivers, NVidia Forceware 169.21 on XP are known to have issues. If you’re running Forceware 169.21 and experiencing issues, you may have better luck with the latest BETA Forceware driver, 169.44.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_169.44.html
I have switched to 169.44 after experiencing issues with 169.21.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 AM
@17: If you got triangles all over yer screen try changing the graphics preferences slider up or down one quality notch and then back again. That usually fixes it for me. xD
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:07 AM
@21 and 22- At Low, the system is doing what it did before- it’s not using WindLight, and it’s not putting extra strain on the machine.
If one or two features are turned off that people want, but can’t handle the full “Mid” settings, they can do so using Custom. Remember, the idea behind this viewer is- same as before, possibly faster, but with more features *if* your machine can handle them. And even if you don’t want them, you can turn them off.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 AM
So if what you say is true, why were *so* many bugs simply resolved as “need more information” when it went from “Firstlook” to RC?
Which of course means that a number of bugs first reported while it was in Firstlook still exist in the release…. Nothing was done about them.
(Lets not even get onto the fact that whoever updated them turned *off* the notification for the change, I only found out that nugget of info when I when to check on one, once it was released, wondering why nothing had been done…
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 AM
@21 Medhue Simoni: Please post the source where we can see the numbers of people using Laptops, so we can see, it’s the vast majority.
I can run SL on both my private laptop (64 MB integrated intel 945 chipset) and my office laptop (512 MB ATi FireGL 5200 integrated). On the former I need to disable most of the effects, the latter copes nicely with all effects on maximum.
So your experience might not be good, but telling us it’s a vast majority is not valid without hard numbers to back up this claim.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 AM
Why not add a full bright option for your avatar? I love the way the environment looks I hate the way it makes my skins and clothing looks.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 AM
I run on a laptop with ’so-so’ graphics most of the day… Yes I have to set my settings to low, but my framerate is much higher, with impostors, than it ever was with the old client.
I think there might be some psychological component of people having to set their settings to “low” though, even if with those settings performance is actually better than it used to be…
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Yes the triangles i have too, Pastrami, can you tell me what the problem is??
seeing triangles and other mathematical things, that are blocking my sight.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 AM
I ran the latest viewer last night with a bit of trepidation since the release notes seemed to indicate that the Macbook Pro didn’t run well with the new viewer.
I had been able to enjoy WindLight when it first came out as a beta viewer and had more problems with it as it progressed along until I had to just stop enjoying the WindLight experience.
I was pleasantly surprised last night by not crashing (I may be premature on this). I tried on several outfits and saw an odd thing in that the colors of the clothing and shoes I had been wearing seemed to persist long after I changed.
Before calling it a night I walked out onto my balcony and looked at the night sky so alive with stars. I turned and the moon, low in the east, cast it’s silver light over the ocean and I felt the enjoyment once more of the SL® world bathed in WIndLight.
I dearly pray that the new viewer and changes with the servers will give me back the SecondLife® experience I once had of enjoying the world filled with mystery and adventure, before it became one of frustration and fantasy crashing lag, freezes and shoes up the butt.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Pastrami, the point is that the settings don’t need to be low on the previous viewer, so people whose cards could cope with mid range settings on the previous viewer, are finding they need to set them low on the new viewer, which despite all the nice fixes will give them the impression that their experience is deteriorating.
There are a lot of nice fixes with this viewer so for those who aren’t so fussed about the detail in the world, it’s definitely an improvement.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Sorry, i am dutch, can’t express myself very clear…..
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 AM
DAmn.. Why Windlight..?… It looks bad on my screen… Drop it and give me my old warm orange sun back… Why all that stupidt psykodelic colors?? Go Out in real life and look.. The sun is one big brigth blinding spots.. I must wear sunglasss.. when I sit wihtn the screen, Im so sad this days.. but Windlights shut be a options…not a demand..
Bertram Merlin
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:21 AM
Oh yes, better Linden trees, please!
Trees are perhaps the weakest point in graphics realism right now.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 AM
@37 Ciaran —
That’s what i meant about a “psychological” issue, but there’s really no way to fix that…
In a way, time marches on, we have a higher high end now; and improved performance on the low end, but yes, it is labeled “low” now when maybe it used to be “mid”.
I don’t really know of any way that could be fixed as it’s totally a perception issue
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 AM
Any words about memory leak?
I am pretty happy with what is going on here. But there is still this old memory leak issue.
looking forward
GOOD WORK GUYS
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 AM
@The triangle problem…
First reported while Windlight was in Firstlook, still not fixed (like many others).
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 AM
So basically. We have to get new parts every year to keep up with LL’s features over fixes mentality? This is almost as bad as how lindens destroyed all protection from griefers all together.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 AM
I am happy to see many of the requested features now in a production viewer, although I think taking it from out of RC may have been a bit premature. I tried it out last night and was disappointed to see what appeared to be a new land texture bug (have to do a bit more testing to see the cause), and still: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5098 has not been fixed, even though it has had a DEV ID for quite a while (come on, it can’t be that hard to code a reset for a search query)
While all the new features are very nice, there still seems to be a greater stability issue, in this case it seems more on newer hardware which really is a drag for those who have spent the money to get SL to run better. I get more crashes and problems on all my higher end systems (and yes I have tried different driver - which fyi, the best are NOT always the newest ones - cough cough nVidia) Until some of these issues are addressed, I will stick with tried and true 1.18 (it crashes ocassionaly, doesn’t have all the new features, but everything that I need the most to work, works!)
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 AM
well please make sure the new version is not needed, because it makes my SL experience not worth being on SL anymore. All triangles and cubes are blocking my sight…… coming from avi’s or from things.
When this new viewer is needed, it is the end of SL for me…..
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 AM
@39 Bertram Merlin: But it *is* optional … Open your Preferences window (CTRL P) then go to “Graphics”, check on “Custom” and take out the checkmark at “Atmospheric Shaders”. There you go, no more Windlight.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:27 AM
@31 Michi, no you’re not quite following me. The low settings on the new viewer make the grass, for example, just looks blotchy with the new viewer. The low settings on the new viewer are pretty similar to low settings on the previous viewer, the issue is that people who didn’t need run low settings on the previous viewer, now do, so the world doesn’t look so pretty to them.
As I said, if you’re not fussed about such details then this viewer in terms of performance is an improvement, but in terms of graphics, some folks are going to be disappointed.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:29 AM
the new viewer is good just the pixel problem makes gun using in game a little lesser funny ! thx for the new lag less viewer and the browser in it is cute ! thx a lot !
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 AM
@48 Ciaran
Have you tried checking “custom” and doing adjustments in there?
Certain things can be opted in and out of in there; honestly I’m running with atmospheric shaders, and I think it looks a lot better than the non-WL viewer.
Setting everything to “low” but checking custom and setting Terrain to high, should get rid of the blotchy grass?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:32 AM
What’s with the stretched Prims all over the place that happens if you switch simulators or constantly move on a sim for over 20 minutes?
I’ve been hearing endless complaints about Script problems. Some no longer work, some need to be updated,.. then there are some that have decided to only work when their owner is on the same Simulator.
For some odd reason everything will be excellent,.. then a Sim will freeze and recover in a mix of lag and freezeing.
I’ve also had the experience someone mentioned where the Sim Crashes or my account does ( not my computer or the program SL) and I have no clue for several minutes ( 20 ay some point).
I think most of the issues may actually be from the Sim updates instead of the Client update if you have any way to distingush the two.
@15 You can adjust to cut that from your experience. You can’t get rid of Facelights because some Countries are devoted to them ( as they are not use to seeing stressed people in reality and built their skins and avatars around fantasy or reality for them). I honestly do not look good on the new system unless I change my settings and have a face light.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:32 AM
Great work guys…. Better, faster, and pretty too!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:34 AM
@40 - I agree. I know there was talk of Speed Tree on SL — I hope it happens an dun take as long as the move away from Havok 1!
@43 - I’ve seen it mentionedon the JIRA. Wasn’t it a graphic card problem? I know one close friend of mine has to deal with that with WL.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:37 AM
@50 Michi, I’ve got a new video card so it’s all running fine for me now. I needed a new card to run something else but I hadn’t got around to getting one, this just pushed me a bit harder to upgrade.
I did play around with the settings in the RC viewer to no avail but you’re right to point out that there are custom settings, it will help some cards and this viewer is much better in terms of performance, I was using it for my business needs already and only using the older viewer for socialising.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 AM
@46 Fairy:
Sounds like you might have show updates turned on? Are these triangles blue? CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-U toggles it. It’s also somewhere in the Client/Advanced menu.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 AM
This is great news I am glad to see the old viewer is still availible, I have a back up on my web-site if anyone needed it. Thank you linden lab for keeping the old version up! Keep up the great work, I although am loving the new viewer and wish to never go back to he old one
Thanks again!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:40 AM
YAY! Thank you. Working wonderful. Now if I could only pay for something and actually get it.
/me giggles
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 AM
Strangely enough, I’ve had great success with the windlight and rc viewers right up to the last version (now made the standard viewer, just my bloomin’ luck!) - which has an incredibly low frame rate for me.
I’m totally mystified why this should be the case! What change was made between RC3 and RC4 that made the difference between great and unusable?
I’d love to know if there’s anything I can do about it (and yes, have downloaded the latest graphic card drivers, and yes, have set preferences to lowest graphics, no anisotropic filtering etc, and manually cleared the cache and so on).
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 AM
WOW!!,This new SL suckz badly it is just lik windlight with all the lag and everything i know i shouldnt of downloaded the new sl i heard from everyone that it sucked ass and all i mean comeon LL you guys make ova a MILLION US$s a day u think you guys can buy some more servers and shit this is bull I know ur ant broke the least you can do is buy somemore show ur people ur love them and stop being cheap asses u cant do nothing with this new Sl now ither u need to fix it or buy some more servers or maybe even both cause this is BS!!!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Nevertheless, money transfer is not working AGAIN…
Each and every day, there are problems with the money transfer and I have already lost L$, never got it back.
What is going on? Why can’t this be fixed and why is it so difficult if not impossible to just report it to the support without having a professional knowledge of technical things and website stuff? I have tried it yesterday but could not find any possibility to contact the support besides calling - but I am not a US resident.
So WHEN will this problem be resolved, when will it stop that people loose money and have to wait and wait and wait every day?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 AM
I blogged about it: So Linden got the windlight viewer released as main viewer. I like windlight it looks awesome. This release however is …
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Congratulations on a difficult job done well.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 AM
“For starters, though we say it a lot, you want to make sure to be running the latest drivers.”
For older video cards trying to use the latest drivers can actually cause problems.
“Statistically, it *is* a much better viewer- several top crashes are squashed, average framerates are as good or better than the previous viewer”
That’s not at all surprising since you deliberately crippled a whole bunch of perfectly capable cards by marking them as class 0. Of course framerates go up for older cards when you completely disable shaders and ignore the fact that it results in an uglier looking world.
WindLight delivers a “better performance” at the expense of a worse experience (lower draw distance, lower details, disabling ripple water, etc). To get the same experience you had with the previous main viewer, WindLight usually performs poorly even with all the new fluff disabled.
Even with a perfectly capable card the land mesh shows ugly holes in WindLight or is just plain invisible at the outer edge of draw distance, making mainland sims look like they’re surrounded by void water. Occlusion is still badly broken. Detail has decreased on prims that are not all that far away to the point where some aren’t rendered at all although they’re visible as they should be on the non-WL viewer.
All of that and more *has* been brought up on JIRA repeatedly but closed with “don’t care” aka “Won’t Finish” or just plain ignored.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 AM
I must say I am very impressed with this new viewer. Yesterday I was at a friend’s house in real life upgrading her computer and reinstalling windows after she had a virus problem. I introduced her to Second Life and was very doubtful if her old P-4 would run this.
This old machine that is a 1.5 gig. Processor with 512mb of ram running a 128mb MSI video card ran this new viewer just fine. I was impressed.
It worked so well her neighbor became fascinated by what she saw and we went over to her house and installed Second Life on her computer. I do not know all the details on hers but this new viewer ran well there too.
Her boy friend then created an account and the two last I saw them were exploring the grid and decided to switch over from playing the Sims.
First impressions are the most last ones and these three new people are very happy with what they saw.
You did a great job with this new viewer. Keep up the good work.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 AM
Pastrami (on rye!):
Am not clear why MIME type has to be expressly set in media parcel.
Cant you figure out MIME in other ways, like a browser? Try playing
video when it is set to web…
Also.. any way to detect which client is being used in LSL? How
can I skip PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_TYPE for an older client?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Well really nice graphics, works faster than the old, but who needs that if now every day nothing works here. And some really nasty GUI things are still in it, also a big memory leak.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:50 AM
OK, for those who experience gigantic triangles (seemingly shooting out from the center of the screen) blocking their view, the fix is SIMPLE:
Open Preferences (CTRL-P). Go to the Graphics tab, then look at the bottom right for a button called “Hardware Options” and click it to open another small window.
Once there, *uncheck* “Enable OpenGL Vertex Buffer Objects,” then hit OK and again OK on the big preferences window.
Voila! Presto! All gone!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:52 AM
Will this make the failed for many weeks now Web page “Friends ON Line” work?
June
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 AM
No, i did not have show updates on and the triangles (and other mathematical things) are not blue, but they have all colours
….
Actually blocking my sight completely
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:54 AM
@47 Ty for the info but it doesn’t work, specialy if the “Atmospheric Shaders” isn’t changerable (all grey - not userable) ^^ Dang, since this viewer it’s lagging like hell. Well the grafics are great at times but I don’t like it that mush. If I try to run the older viewer without windlight, I can’t run it … DANG
Also tuns of friends are having problems with lag and grafics with this new viwer … and all got the newest updates for their graficcards.
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:55 AM
10 months of careful work turned out the first major (and I really mean major!) change in the renderer. It’s not just cosmetics — it’s a whole new experience.
Thank you all for making this version finally a “release”. The space is too short to describe all that’s good, shiny, and new on the WindLight renderer… which finally pushes SL away from that old, boring, 2002 look, which was simply too outdated to catch the attention — or reach the expectations — of new and old users of virtual worlds. Add dynamic shadows, a more detailed avatar mesh, and flexisculpties (for hair and clothes!), and Second Life will begin to look like present-generation 3D engines. It’s almost there!
Of course there is a cost. I was personally afraid that all my hardware had to be thrown away when the first versions of WindLight — 7 or 8 months ago! — came out. Suddenly, my less-than-a-year old iMac crawled to a halt — and from slowly getting used to have 30 FPS, I went back to 6 or 7 — far lower than my poor ancient PowerBook G4 managed in 2004.
Since then, I was slowly getting used to the idea that WindLight would render my “almost new” hardware — bought, at the time, with SL in mind — would simply be obsolete. It was very frustrating, specially when more recent cards clearly rendered at 50-60 FPS.
Well. Quite a lot has improved in the past few months. For once, even the “defaults” are now reasonable — without tweaking anything, this release gets me about 2/3 of the performance I had with the non-WindLight release. Which is not bad at all for a “default”! Better than that: the ancient PowerBook does run WindLight, and in some cases, it even renders at 15 FPS on relatively well-built areas (ie. cleverly designed with good texture work and enough occlusion). Not bad at all — about the same performance I had, as a maximum, back in 2004 with a much less feature-rich SL viewer! This was quite a pleasant surprise!
So, what is the main issue with the WIndLight renderer? It’s incredibly configurable. People not used to think of their computers as a highly flexible and configurable machine — but just something like a TV, you plug it in, and it simply works — will be disappointed. This version of the renderer requires a lot of tweaking, and I really mean a lot. You can get a low, underpowered laptop from 2003 or 2004 to get 20 FPS out of it, even if SL complains that the computer is “outdated” and “Not suitable for running SL”. You can get semi-supported cards (like the infamous Intel cards) to run as fast and as well as a professional low-end ATI or nVidea card (just turn off the atmospheric & water shaders). And you can get ultra-high quality photos like you could only dream about — or take hours with Photoshop to “enhance” them — on a medium-level machine: just turn everything to maximum and delight yourself with the view (you’ll be impressed with what your underpowered graphics card can actually render in SL — even if you just get 0.3 FPS on an old computer, but that’s ok for just taking a picture!
So, be prepared to tweak your computer a lot. With this fantastic new renderer, you should not think of your computer as a TV that just takes a remote controller to push a button to switch channels. Think of it as something incredibly flexible. It can do now what you wish out of it — if you spend time playing around with the Preferences of the SL viewer. Believe me, it takes a lot of patience, but it’s worth it. And even on slow, underpowered, unsupported computers you’ll be able to take fantastic pictures — or turn all settings down and enjoy reasonable frame rates. The choice, really, is yours — and you really don’t need to forfeit everything to enjoy the WindLight renderer and get excellent performance out of your computer. Just be patient and test all the settings, in different combinations, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you can do with it!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 AM
Does this fix the issues with the latest nvidia drivers?
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:56 AM
i dont understand your excitment, please tell me why , now ,when i clic on my music box i have no more music but all around my landscape trees etc become as many screens and i hava a movie playing all over coming from nowhere? HELP!
no i am not drunk ((((
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:57 AM
Hmmm . . . Me ponders the thought , should I or shouldn’t I . You know 3 years ago I came to sl with a 800mhz cpu ,64megs ram, 56k modem and a graphics card with 16 megs of ram and it worked just great . There would be 850 users on a packed friday night and no lag or crashes at all . Now , , , running at 4.5 ghz cpu , 2 gigs of ram , high speed cable and 512 megs of ram on a souped up video card and I just never know what to expect next . Since the days of old I truely can’t say it’s gotten better , if anything , worse . I really think before you come out with new veiwer toys you should concentrate your efforts on stability and thats what is really important to all us users here at sl , a trouble free experience where we all can work and play . . . . .
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:59 AM
@#68 Fairy
I had the exact same problem here, my whole screen was filled with weird objects all different colors, a big mess, only the UI was still fine.
All other graphic things were broken and I thought my graphic card was broken.
Hope this gets fixed
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 PM
Hi there,
very nice the new viewer…..
but several issuse….
-groups are slow
-bumpy walks
-payments go very slow
-group invites go slow or do not work
-rezzing fails sometimes
otherwise ist a nice experience
Thanks to the team, great work
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 PM
On #4, Pastrami, a jira repoert *WAS* filed on the islanding issue. Many people have complained about this. And what happened was that the JIRA report was *CLOSED* on a technicality that it applied to an RC no longer supported. Now that sucks. Your people should have widen the scope.
This islanding/clipping problerms is deadly serious impediment to boaters and flyers. I have reopened VWR-4714, which was reported orignally two months ago. Now please, attend to the massive flaw to inworld experience.
Thanks.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Anyone else seeing llTargetOmega things no longer spinning unless you’re at point-blank visual range?
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Congrats, this viewer had a long way to go and it was worth it. I am sure the current bugs will work out soon (like ending up at on sitting or unsitting in many cases).
I had many crashes (> 6) in the first 2 hours using it - a cache clear seemd to fix that. Quiet Stable since then.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 PM
I run SL on an Asus Eee PC (which is definately below the stated minimum requirements, and Windlight tells me so on launch), and I wasn’t looking forward to Windlight making it into release, because it seemed a lot slower…
but I’m actually getting twice the framerate I did before!
I don’t know whether it’s avatar imposters that makes the difference or something else, but I really hope it stays that way. I’m now revelling in a lag-free SL experience… on a computer that fits into my handbag.
I do miss the old skies though. The no-shaders ones in Windlight seem relatively featureless.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 PM
I’m with TaniTin (59): I care more about whether my transactions go through, whether I lose my L$ and receive the products I purchase than I do about having pretty graphics. It’s great if the viewer crashes less, but put it this way - I’d rather crash if my transactions are not going to go through; that way at least my L$ is safe and doesn’t disappear into the Black Hole of SL.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:07 PM
Ok, I finaly ot bakc to the old viewer and I will stay with it ^^
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 PM
Completly iuseless on my Imac 24″ ( 7300 Gt 128mo) i crash near every 5 to 10 mins, i desable near evething but without any good result.
so i back on the old viewer1.19.0.5 and now i can stay 4 hours or more without any crash, The memory leak is style here of course, so i use only 64 Mo of the video memory to fix this, so now after a year here i can say ” you can make it more worse for the mac user ” But thanks for giving back the Old viewer
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 PM
I have been using windlight and the RC since it was launched. It has improved performance and graphics no end. True, it takes a lot of getting used too…but so did DVD’s when they started replacing video tape. Pastrami, you and Torley have been so accessible throughout this 10 month process. I congratulate you all, and hope that folks give this new viewer the chance it deserves.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 PM
hmm. is it too late to take my previous comment back? That was based on RC4, which essentially should be about the same as the release, but since installing the latest release, Ive had three random crashes in an hour…. so 10 out of 10 for improvements, but 0 out of 10 for stability from me. You had it so right… what happened? If this keeps up, I’ll be back on RC4.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 PM
Those with triangles on their screens - do these look like “stretched out” bits of other scenery, or avatars? If so, it’s most likely an overheating problem on your Graphics card. My wife had that for a time, I took out her card, cleaned the fan, and added an additional case fan to improve airflow. Problem disappeared. At the same time, though, I also cleaned & remounted the CPU fan - fresh heat sink compound & all - so the system runs quite a bit cooler. Heat is the enemy of your PC, and dust will keep it from dissipating that heat as well. Keep your PC clean, and if you need to, have a professional do the cleaning. It will probably work wonders for you.
And yes, with good graphics cards now less than US$100, just upgrade the thing - you’ll have a much better experience, not just in SL, but in any game, and even out of games - if you can bump your screen refresh rate higher, it becomes much easier on the eyes.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 PM
BLUE TRIANGLES! I wish those with Blue Triangles had put their full names in this Blog! I had those recently and solved the problem thanks to a helpful Linden. Go to CLIENT - SHOW UPDATES - and make sure this is NOT ticked. If it is, untick it and problem solved. If it doesn’t solve problem, then sorry can’t help.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 PM
ok now we have Windlight yay… now we need shadows and ambient occlusion to make our indoor scenes better
… did I say I was _never_ satisfied
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:19 PM
@#86 Flaran Riggles
I don’t have that option turned on, but have the problem
and more people report it:
http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=250745
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 PM
I too have been using windlight since launch, and the brief taster before that too, and have consistently had much better performance from it than the previous release client, even with pretty much every graphics setting maxed out, sure there have been a few bugs on the way, but thats what RC’s are for
So Well Done Lindens, job well done.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 PM
Windlight is briljant
. It looking great and performs great. Only again asset server problems and inv. rez problems. clothing slow or not loading only after a few relogs. That is not good.
But the viewer is good
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 PM
#32 Zi
It really just a simple observation and talking with friends, and it is well known that laptops have surpassed desktops in total sales over that last year or so. People are mobile now not stuck to a wall. There is no point in arguing the point. All u need to do is watch how the number of people that log in, in the last 60 days. This will prove my point. It has been dropping consistantly since like november, and i expect to see it keep dropping now. Wake up sl is shrinking. The only way to reverse this trend is not to restrict more people from being able to access sl and make it more stable. Both of which have been seriously neglected.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 PM
I spent a lot of time and money on my AV making it look good..
What a waist on time and money.. this really suck
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:25 PM
yep it’s fast.
But it keeps freezing again n again.
And all the old probs gone with 1.19.0 and back again with newer clients are still there.
No difference if I play from germany with my NVidida Desktop
(7300/2GB RAM) or my friend from NC with her new Intel-based notebook.
I’d prefer killing basic mistakes and probs instead of accel. errors
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:26 PM
For the record, I’ve had OpenGL Vertex Buffers turned off since the day sculpties were introduced to the beta grid. I was forced to do this because I had the ‘triangle’ problem like other users are experiencing. Basically what happens is the viewer miscalculates the seams on the sculptmaps causing all points on the seam to merge at the center (HUD) attachment point. Moving the camera, trying to hide behind other objects, flying up in to the sky and back again do not help and the ’seams’ stay connected to center of the screen no matter what you do. For those of you experiencing this problem - Disable Open GL Vertex Buffers! Perhaps Linden could consider making this off by default?
I’m pretty happy about the updates, my sim has been running silky smooth and I don’t think I’ve lagged at all… not even when it is loading on startup. Everything that used physics still seems to work - some things better than they used to. My fireworks rockets no longer get stuck in random objects like the ground or nearby prims and they appear to retain their correct impulse force even when there’s several hundred rockets rezzing in succession (they used to lose force gradually and began to detonate at lower and lower altitudes the more rockets were in play). In addition, I am now able to run more rocket rezzers at once without any noticeable lag, either client or server side :L )
——————————————————
CPU: AMD (Unknown model) (1808 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (Build 3790)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: Sapphire RADEON X1600 PRO x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.6458 WinXP Release
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 PM
transactions definetly needs to be top priority now. Its failing everywhere, and not only did I lose 550L for an item but the maker said he never got the money so I’m out the money and no item cause the maker never recieved the cash.
Thanks alot SL.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:28 PM
All drivers up dated and all i do is crash so its back 1-19-0-5 for me
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 PM
ok so I havent downloaded the new version,im still on the main viewer because when I tried the first WL my computer was working too hard to run it,I hve a Dell WindowsXP home edition with an Intel(R) 82915G,Express Chipset.Im not sure what that means since ive never used my computer for games or anything like that,just email and the occacional internet search,I really dont want to get a new computer just to run WL mine is not even three years old.as you can see im clueless with computers so upgrading the drivers and changing settings is like asking me to perform surgery,guess ill have to give it a try and cross my fingers.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 PM
CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (3001 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GTS 512/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.14157 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.13_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 148/365230 (0.0%)
And rezzing/assets problems , but no graphical problems