Sunday, April 13, 2008

Stupid, Stupid New Viewer!

Written 10 April, 2008

Stupid, Stupid New Viewer

Damn, damn, damn!

My download of the new and required 1.19.1(4) viewer wiped out my 1.18.x.x viewer, and so consequently my Nicholaz Bleeding Edge-V front end will no longer work.

Bad news, that. And worse news: Nicholaz Beresford is disillusioned with Linden Lab for breaking so many of his patches and for removing tools that help to identify bugs, so there will be no more viewers from him.

Nicholaz says BE-V can be made to work with 1.19.1(4), but I’ve not been successful. Consequently, I’m stuck with the regular client. I hate it because it has no Friends button and because I can’t double click and wear items in inventory and for a dozen other reasons.

And all because it doesn’t run for shit on my dual-core machine and 256 mb nVidia 7600 video card.

When I started out with the new viewer, I was getting about 12 fps with all video settings to the max and 512 meters draw distance. Way cool. But suddenly the frame rate dropped to 1.5 or so and I was at a standstill. I was able to recover to about 7 fps, but only by dropping draw distance to 96 meters, cutting off options like reflections from water and basic shaders, and moving the sliders almost all the way to the left.

When I log in, I get 30 fps-- this when the card is being hit hardest, rezzing things in. Then, after about 3 minutes, it ramps down to 1 or so fps.

Damn it!

The first couple of times it happened a relog helped, but since them, no dice. I even downloaded the latest drivers for my video card. Nada.

I’m going to unplug my cable modem and plug in the DSL modem to be sure it’s not a bandwidth problem. Then, I guess, I’ll find my way to Fry’s and buy an even more kickass video card.

Because I refuse to be denied a quality Second Life experience.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chey - 1.18.5.3 is still available for download here:
http://download-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/Second_Life_1-18-5-3_Setup.exe

Latest news is that Nicholaz looked at the new source code and couldn't resist trying to patch the memory leaks, lol. So there will be a new improved Nicholaz viewer out soon. See the latest post on his blog :)

Tycho Beresford said...

Chey have you tried the beta drivers that NVIDIA released on March 27, version 174? They have helped me with video issues on my 8800GT. Of course they don't do anything for the newly-reintroduced crash on TP.