01-29-2007 13:10
The new First Look viewer is great! There are some bugs though, which don't appear in the regular client, and I wanted to know if we are expected to report bugs we find in it- and if so, what is the proper method. In-game bug reporting? Here are my thoughts after spending a weekend with the new viewer. Overall, the benefits are worth the current hiccups. Here's my summary (from a post I made at another forum):
From: Wildefire Walcott
It's not perfect, and some friends I talked into trying it either were not able to run it, or had too many problems to make it worthwhile, but I ran it on my two notebooks and I was very pleased with the improved speed and responsiveness.

The good:
  1. Significantly improved FPS, even with draw distance cranked all the way up
  2. Handles better, possibly a result of the faster frame rate. Walking, flying, etc, just seem more responsive and fluid than before.
  3. Scripts that generate a lot of text are much faster. I have a visitor counter at the island that takes about 10-15 seconds to list all the visitor names it has in memory; on the first look client the names ZIP by in an instant. I always thought the previous slowness was just network or LSL-based, but apparently most of it was in how the client rendered the text!
  4. Did we always have shadows under our feet? If so, this weekend was the first time I noticed them.
  5. It actually allows me to reliably run multiple instances of SL on my dual-core notebook, something I'd not been able to do with the old client without the use of a shareware processor affinity tool.
  6. It installs in a separate folder so you can easily switch back to the old one if you have trouble.


The bad:
  1. Different people see different results and problems.
  2. I can't reposition HUD attachments without crashing. I don't mean SL elements like the minimap, but rather attachments like AO controllers and avatar scanners. I can change their attach points, but crash upon repositioning.
  3. If you or another avatar sits on a moving prim, the avatar will assume the appropriate pose, but will not appear to move on the screens of anyone running the first look client. People using the normal client will see the avatar moving along with the prim. I have an operating table that can move from a horizontal to vertical position. If I lay down on the table, then try to raise it, I see my body still laying flat with the table sticking thru my stomach, but others around me using the old viewer see me standing upright, along with the table.

Overall though, I'm very happy with the results.
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