The Nicholaz Viewer

I think this person is doing a hell of a better job trying to fix thing then llabs these days. Also Able viewer. So if you must insult these parties LLAbs viewer is a hell of alot worse!

I don't think anyones insulting them.

I used both viewer, the last being able viewer. I just hate going back to the same old crapp llabs viewer each time.

I agree and understand. Linden Lab has screwed up the basic SL client to a point where i barely find it usable anymore. It freezes up constantly, has random crashes, inventory problems, gesture loading issues, problems with group IM sessions that are out of typed order, lots and lots of lag, some people have acidic looking textures due to incompatibility with thier video cards, and lots of other things.

At least with Nicholaz's client we have a chance for a change. Hes working hard to fix the broken windows that linden lab took a baseball to. Metaphorically speaking. And every time they roll out a update, he has to do it all over again. I don't blame him if he gives up, but if he does i hope he passes on his source code and knowledge to someone who can continue it. Hes doing a good thing, and i like using his client.

I hope that now since LL has essentially abandonded the no voice viewer and the voice viewer is unuseable to say the least Nicholaz can be persuaded to add new features to his viewer after he's done the important fixes like perfecting and implementing object muting.

Yes. Thats something i noticed about nich's viewer. Instead of adding new features hes fixing bugs. This is what as lot of people wish linden lab would do. LL is so eager to improve what SL is capable of doing that they neglect to perfect it first. Adding Able's and Dale's features to this client would be a wonderful idea but it should wait till the bugs are fixed. XD

the nice thing about the new update protocols is that in theory any non voice/communication components that are updated should be able to be directly ported to the old version (in theory remember) so when LL updates the code can be easily copied over to the old viewer, the bad side to that is that updates by LL create more bugs and since they have for now at least abandoned any non voice viewer Nicholaz's viewer is/will become less of a build with patches that LL hasn't/has yet to implement yet and become it's own fork.

/me nods "And as nich said the bugs aren't from the voice chat feature". Which is very sad. I mean what else did they do to the viewer that we weren't told about? lol Which makes me think, if they still supported non voice viewers, they would be just as bad.

God only knows, only a few people/groups that I know of do full code comparisons each time LL updates since it's a painstaking process even with change highlighting and code comparison which many compilers have nowadays, not to mention that LL makes (probably unintentionally) their code quite hard to follow and read.

id be willing to make the tedium worth his while by paying $ to keep his viewer alive.

I crash out everytime, sad to say

Having some familiarity with the types of people who will clean up the SL code for free, there are some jobs so morally odious that being paid to do it makes it even worse. Having your fixes re-unfixed is the sort of demotivation that pushes talent away from this task.

Sadly after a serveral failed attemps with Nicholaz viewer. I had the same problems as the LLAbs viewer. I was alittle more happy with ABLES viewer but for some reason it cause all sorts of viewer and network confects. Seems like the codes that LLAbs is based on is the root of the problems. Sooner or later people will get those codes right..

Yep, the 18xf is a huge improvement on the official viewer.

nicholaz need to make it more obvious that there are two clients; voice and non voice.

Oh so would I, but that's a difficult issue. I haven't looked at the nature of his patches, but since the original codebase is open source he may be forbidden by the license to sell his derivative work. It depends on exactly how his patches work.

Also be aware that if LL hired him as a contractor to do this work AS THEY SHOULD if possible, they would be paying him somewhere between 40-100 USD/hour. Depending on his background and overall skillset.

I think he must have been doing it for the love of the game, and if that goes ... we are all out of luck.

who cares about his background, his skillset is obviously light-years ahead of 70% of the linden coders.

Possibly so, Nina. I think they should hire him, outbidding his current employer if any, to do exactly what he is now doing ... on his separate codebase just as is, best effort with just the testing he does now, and have him feed them bug fixes as he now does.

They should not attempt to move him into the LL hive. It will kill his productivity.

I know that if Nicholaz's viewer is no longer available, and the LL product remains as is, I personally will get a premium account and scream at LL like a banshee.

Because - if nothing else - Project Open Letter showed just how much screaming customers affect LL.
(Hint: not the least little bit)

http://www.projectopenletter.com/

i noticed an effect. the town hall meeting was a bit of hot air, but i did see a slight improvement in at least attempting to maintain a façade of communication. voice and windlight also got moved to the back burner.

I noticed an effect too. Shortly thereafter, they did a set of viewer updates that were just for bug fixes. They set up more office hours too. And they actually let a couple of Wednesdays go by without any maintenance.

And they are desperate to get to the point where they can do beta testing in areas of the main grid. This may increase the low-level perturbance level, but should make major upgrades less painful.

Screaming has an effect. Small but it piles up.

Perhaps we should move up to baseball bats? *smirks*

Back on topic: Many thanks to Nicholaz for the hard work in this viewer.

LL ~should~ hire Nicholaz (or offer a contracting bid), but I have the fear that LL would then say "Well since we pay you, we want you to do it this, this and that way instead." which is why the LL viewer is so borked anyway. LL has great minds at work, but they have no freaking clue how SL actually works

Let's leave the viewer in Nicholaz's capable hands

~Jessy

lol more than happy to leave the viewer in Nicholaz' hands, Jessy, but read post 24. Or his blog ....

Well, working for LL would only compound that frustration, imo.

Hopefully a good break from it will help, and I would gladly offer any assistance I could. Problem is I don't have much to offer. My coding skills are near non-existant, and money wise I can spare a few L$ but nothing great.

It honestly looks to me like Nicholaz needs a coding staff to help him, but under his direction. Maybe a few of the other Resident coders working with open source could help.

Either way, I'm very grateful for the work that was done. If this is the last from Nicholaz, then peace out, and thank you.

~Jessy

where can i find the Nicholas Viewer that can handle VOICE?. I have looked at his website and i don't see this "x" version anywhere!