1.7.4(5) Feedback

Well, I downloaded the 1.7.4(5) client on my lunch hour, and gave it a spin. Mostly just ran around in the area very close to and inside of my home, which has a lot of highly textured surfaces.

So far, it looks like a good improvement!

I am on a nearly min-spec Mac system, a Mac Mini. Textures were loading much better. Movement was pretty responsive, though I did, on occasion, for no apparent reason, pause for half a second or so. During those pauses I couldn't move or change my mouselook view. None lasted very long, and before and after the pauses, my speed of movement seemed fine. Didn't try to bring up the statistics bar and check FPS rates, but it seemed better.

The new default 'unrezzed' texture looks pretty good. The harder edges do make it easier to maneuver through a built-up area that hasn't rezzed in all the way yet.

I'll do more extensive testing tonight, but so far, I would have to say this seems the best release yet.

Strange, when everyone else was getting hammered by 1.7 bugs, I was escaping their direst consequences. Now when people are starting to see textures load quicker, my texture loading slows to a crawl and particle and collision particle textures never load.

Karmic retribution?

Still the same for me on my ibook. Textures will blur after while. But it has improved a little bit for me, at least the landscape stays rezzed a little while longer before turning to soup.

Interesting...

I popped back in-world and checked frame rates. My worst was about 3 FPS, Average was between 8 and 15, which was a good improvement over my previous 3 to 5 FPS average, and I actually had some points as high as 22! And that was indoors, in a texture-rich environment.

I noticed one interesting fact, however. I live right on the 'North' edge of a sim. The 'beach' that is at the back edge of my back yard faces a vast, as yet un-developed sea, with no sims in that direction at all. To the South there's at least 4 or 5 connected sims in a row. If I stand inside my home, and look in the direction of that undeveloped sea, I get frame rates up around 20 or so, even though there are many things inside my home in that direction with lots of textures to load. If I turn to the South, my fps drops off as I face more populated/developed areas. Even though I can't 'see' those areas at all.

So it seems that the system is still attempting to calculate data for stuff that is well beyond where you can see?

The overall FPS rate has definitely improved for me. Prior to the update, looking out at the open sky or sea on that same beach, with nothing between me and the edge of the sim, I could only get 12 FPS at best. So my fps performance has apparently doubled. Texture retention seems to have vastly improved, but I haven't stayed in-world long enough to be certain as to how well it is fixed.

I have cache and bandwidth maxed, and virtually all the optional settings that are said to slow you down are off or at minimum levels.