Sunday, November 7, 2010

Some viewer related thoughts

Viewer related scene looking strange for me last months, like competition between LL and TPV, which i'm not sure is a right thing, because there should be more partnership and support to platform developer, instead of whining about how bad V2 is.
New viewer generation was a big investment for LL and as platform developer and service provider they trying to make it working well for anyone, thats where 3rd party developers can help, but problem is, there not much of help as it could be and as platform developer expected. Clinging on old and dropped 1.x framework is futureless, development (platform and client) can't be stopped, just because if it stopped it dead.
Get used to 2.x, guys, it is time to do.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

will never use V2 viewer, it simply sucks, the UI is unintuitive as hell and LL just botched things like they allways do. whatever the only 2 good things on the V2 viewer, Outfits folder & regular multi-attach are coming to Phoenix it's in the sources and working already for thoses smart enough to compile a viewer from sources, other will just have to wait for the next release.

Hyang Zhao said...

multiattachments yes, multiwearables no, meshes also hardly, unless Henri port them

Hyang Zhao said...

don't fool yourself, please, there already is a point where backporting is too hard to do and better move on, no one left SL because of viewer.

Anonymous said...

I WILL, NO TO V2, the day V1 will not work my secondlife END! and no i'm not fooling myself... i'm OK for move on when a move is a good move, V2 never been one! and backport isn't a viable solution either, there plenty of mistake in what LL did so far in their dev, i can live with it to a point but for the sake of god that's not because something newer that is it is better.

mesh, i don't care till it's not live on maingrid, please be somewhat realist, LL push feats like hell, i did not need even the half of them, and they eat my computer resource, that sucks period. i won't buy a new computer every year just for go on SL, if you can afford that it's ok for you to follow the move, i can't LMFAO.

Hyang Zhao said...

LL is owner and developer of SecondLife, LL providing service for residents connecting to their grid, it their service, they invested in development and will not turn back. Also, i'm not considering V2 UI horrible, after using it, i'm actually considering V1 UI not as good as V1 zealots thinking.

Hyang Zhao said...

"i won't buy a new computer every year just for go on SL" fail argument, current 2.4 faster then 1.5 even on my computer from 2006

Anonymous said...

It's not only a UI question, that's more deep in all the unwanted features LL push forward to ppl, and some very insidiously hungry at your computer resources, backport of nice feat in old viewer is cool but not sweet when it mean backporting unwanted things aswell to get them running. For me so far the last good official version of the Viewer from LL was the 1.18 one, after that LL pushed more and more things eating your memory for not a so big deal. that's my point.

Phoenix run well, but i'm unhappy with it aswell as all the backporting make it eating as much memory and process as the V2 viewer do, the good point is i'm comfortable at using it what is not the case for V2, but if could just have a old 1.18 viewer i will use it happily.

oh right 1.18 will look ugly, no windlight, no http-texture, no flash, old mozlib as embeded browser, but i'll bet on my actuall hardware it would run incredibily fast compared to any recent viewer and leave me plenty of resource left for doing something else at same time.

but then people are so used to "BIG" new software eating more and more just to PUSH them buying new hardware they don't really need. (just look at how windows grows on every release for example. LOL)

as i said previously i won't buy a new computer every year just for SL

Anonymous said...

current 2.4 faster then 1.5 even on my computer from 2006

ABSOLUTLY NO WAY, proof it !

Hyang Zhao said...

2 avies in view, sculpties around, 24 fps fps on Cool VL, 26 fps on current 2.4

Anonymous said...

fps is only rendering SO far, only few part of Secondlife performance at all and very subjective mesurement considering the high variations that may occurs depending on what's going on. in fact there's no Reliable way to mesure SL performance globaly cause they too way to many interactive dependencies between too many things

and then there 2 frame per second on the render is a hell of gain LOL, what i know for sure is TPV viewer don't make my computer slow while multitasking as the V2 do

Just my 2 cents, and i will definitivly stop trolling about it cause this go nowhere no matter what.

Tonya Souther said...

Everybody knows Viewer 2 sucks. The problem is that it's not helpful to say "You should have started 8 months ago!" We're here now, and we have to deal with the world as it is, not as 20/20 hindsight wants it to be.

Whether V2's UI is as good as its cheerleaders like Kitty Barnett say is is, the simple fact is that the users are voting with their feet. Viewer 2's UI will not be accepted by the current userbase without major changes that free up screen real estate and restore some of the functionality lost to the dumbing-down that LL insisted on to try to appeal more to new users.

Phoenix will have all of the V2 features in it aside from mesh, and I think that mesh is dead on arrival anyway, at least until major TPVs have the ability to view and upload them.

Firestorm is coming, and we're going to start working on it as soon as the next release of Phoenix is out; we need to get thigns stable before we abandon the users and go odd to put our heads down and de-suck V2.

Mondy said...

Well my observations,which a real world (in the SL sense lol) observations.
Henri has just about gone as far as he can. Multi attatchments is backported but multiwearable probable not possible in the 1.2x codebase. Same with Mesh,definately not possible to backport that. Display names ? Possibly depending on how convulated the case is. Look at Henri's roadmap. He already made it clear there will be a point he will move onto V2 code. Phoenix are only just starting in that area with the firestorm peoject (btw..Tonya..you said "we.." Which phoenix dev or support memeber are you ? I don't see you listed on the support personal. Maybe a beta tester like me, but that doesn't mean I include myself as someone working on firestorm)
Latest beta from them includes multi attatchment,not multi wearables and also has shareable windlight settings.
A few months ago,using Emerald clubs and busy areas were a swathe of green tags. Phoenix took over after the ban and again far more phoenix users seen than V2 tags.
Last few weeks I see 50% average,depending on time of day V2 viewers outnumber 1.23 viewers. Remember Catznip and KL both show as V2 to those on phoenix. The UI is important but also tied closely to the code which is why some development can go no further on 1.2x series or with backporting. Phoenix recognise this,Henri as well. Yes V2 is the future. No getting away from it. 4 years ago as brand new user,I was using a linux offical beta from LL. Verry very ugly. If the ui has still been like that when I returned I wouldn't have bothered,but it has improved. Catznip and KL made big changes to UI of V2. I don't use official V2 viewer. TPV's have made sidebar optional,transparency on menus and windows,more floaters and cockable windows. Much much better and again,people are noticing,trying it out and switching from official V2. Maybe not switching from 1.2x tpv's but switching nonetheless. If I post a picture of my KL screen it looks nothing like stock V2,clean,lots of viewing area and MORE screen real estate then 1.2x (phoenix,imprudence) owing to no control bar above the chat bar. After a while you realise those map,fly,inventory buttons are huge compared to V2 controls. tip.search youtube for mondybristol and take a look at my "SL2 another look" video. And that was from build 37,now up to 41 and it's improved further.

Tonya Souther said...

Mondy, I'm the lead Mac developer for Phoenix.

Anonymous@10:48AM: You've heard of Moore's Law, right? ("Hardware speed doubles every 18 months", to a first approximation.) There's a corollary, Gates's Law: Software bloat doubles every 18 months. That's why we seem to keep standing still and nothing ever runs faster.

Anonymous said...

Gates's Law

“The speed of software halves every 18 months.” This oft-cited law is an ironic comment on the tendency of software bloat to outpace the every-18-month doubling in hardware capacity per dollar predicted by Moore's Law. The reference is to Bill Gates; Microsoft is widely considered among the worst if not the worst of the perpetrators of bloat.

There is no Microsoft software on my computer and i feeled a great speed improvement in speed on the last 2 system release for my OS. THANKS GODS

Angela Ragu said...

dear hyang, why did you stop compiling 1.23... (windlight rendering)? atm I'm using the last version of your 1.23. cause it seems to be more stable for me then snowglobe based versions.
Henri is delivering 1.23. based versions for windows and snowglobe based versions, what was the reason for you to stop?



Angel

Mondy said...

@Tonya. Apologies. You do great work on the mac port of phoenix.
I think just one more general comment from me.
Saying V2 sucks as a blancket statement is just a ninsense when Jeesica,Henri,Kirstens etc.and whomever agree that quite a few features are pretty good. The Gui is radically different but there are genuinelly people who love it.I'm a die hard Phoenix user (I wouldn't test it if I wasn't) but I use KL's build a lot for video and photography. Side by side comparison of KL 21 and phoenix using similar skins are on the LL forum. Notice I don't say stock V2. That sucks with the full lenght sidebar and black theme,overly dominant. But when we discuss TPV's. I'd like to see more credit given to the devs of those more maiking it useable,just as phoenix,cool & imprudence are better than normal 1.23 viewer.

Mondy said...

and,jeez. It's early for me,sorry about so many typos. You'd think a spell check might be an option. *smiles*

Hyang Zhao said...

Angela, 1.23 working terrible slow for me and i'm never running it myself ever since snowglobe was out. Feel free to build it yourself, it not a quantum physic.

Hyang Zhao said...

Besides, i'm already switched on snowstorm and mostly running Catznip and my own little fork of vanilla snowstorm with some patches i pulled here and there (mostly from catznip). Even CV 1.5 i'm hardly using currently.

Anonymous said...

just for fun, downloaded & ran old 1.18.5 (no windlight) with the --channel trick to test, here result on my system:

2.x => 20fps
phoenix => 23fps
1.18.5 => 43fps OMG !!! not even mentioning even without http-texture, things rez like instant LOL.

conclusion, windlight sucks LMAO

Hyang Zhao said...

You need checkout transparent water merge in snowstorm, it does like +10 +20 fps when you on the ground level and switching off transparent water checkbox.

Hyang Zhao said...

Speaking of 1.19 and 1.23, from Henri's forum >>

2010-10-29 Note that starting from today, the v1.19.2 branch of the Cool VL Viewer will not be maintained neither updated any more and will be retired on the 2010/12/31

2010-11-21 Note that starting from today, the v1.23.5 branch of the Cool VL Viewer will not be maintained neither updated any more and will be retired on the 2010/12/31

Anonymous said...

I could live with lots of things in the V2 viewer, and I'd agree with Hyang Zhao that the performance of V2 seems pretty OK, but in the end the UI of V2 is simply bad.

The backbreaker for me it the way V2 hides the privacy settings on your Friends. In the 1.n style ALL your friends are displayed on ONE panel with immediately-visible checkboxes to review or change for each of the settings. Easy! In V2 you have to drill down on each individual user separately, AND the setting is hidden away on a tab. Hard!

Mondy said...

If that's a dealbreaker you might be interested to know that the privacy controls are fixed in the lates version of Catznip. Currently beta,but very stable. All the control are back in the contact list,just click to set as in 1.xx
Also Multi profiles and a specially themed Starlight skin that makes the interface look more like 1.xx.
*huggs*
Mondy

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