Good viewer mod here, try it

So far so good... actually, so far so GREAT!

Loving it. At least until SL decides it hates me again.

I want my new comp SOOO bad! ARGH!

Thank you, Nicholas

Tried it out last night. Ran fine. I didnt notice any BRIGHTER COLORS, IMPROVED FRAME RATES, LESS FILLING, TASTES GREAT things that would jump out at ya and make you go wooo. But there were occasions when it appeared that things were rezzing a tad quicker than usual. Cant rule out coincidence tho. Be that as it may, I didnt come across anything buggy either. Figure I will try it for awhile, then go back to the official version and see if I can get a better 'feel' for a comparison.

Not wishing to be patronising but, assuming you are using windows, do you know how to use Task Manager?
If so, and if as I said you are using windows, you will be able to see that using Nicholaz' new client, memory leak is significantly les. Forget claims of brighter colours and less lag - Nicholaz has never made these claims and so neither will I. But the reduction of memory leak is sufficient in itself to make thvis my preferred viewer from now on.

Then I guess I can see if this leakage has improved. However, Im not looking for things that require me to run a diagnostic protocol to tell the difference. Im looking for things that the casual user will notice simply by running the viewer and doing what they do everyday. If the game runs better because the ram allocation isnt being sucked out by some leak, then thats a woo woo factor. I just havent 'felt' it yet.

Ok before trying this, I'm just curious, is this something I have to patch or upgrade when LL releases new versions, or once I install this, I just dl LL patches and install as usual?

God Dammit this works so good , Nicholaz , you have done all by yourself what a whole team of programers can't . Buddy , you should be the manager of ll's programming department , this was a real upgrade , yep , the real deal , thanks so much for effecting repairs to the client . I can slam through sim borders like they don't exsist , i can go to the laggyist places in sl and no lag , I got more horse power and feel like I'm finally getting my money's worth . Linden Lab , stand up and take notice of what this man has done , hatz off to you Nicholaz .

Am I loony or am I really unable to suppress the UI in this viewer? I will try when I'm really awake, but has anyone else had a non-suppressable UI? Besides that (dealbreeaker for me) his is a nice thing! Thanks, Nicholaz.

Thank you

Just want to point something out and please do not take this wrong to the person who posted this. Let me be clear first... This does not mean that this is the case here its just something to think about...

I noticed after this was posted it seems alot of people rushed to try it out... That scares me a bit. Open source can be good in alot of ways however with all the scams and such going on in SL I think people need to think before jumping these days. I been waiting for the big account steeler to hit any day now with something just like this. Somebody says "hey check out this new viewer" or whatever and people having the big hearts that they do in SL run right over, download it and pump their info right into it. Little do they know they just transmited their user name password and god knows what else to a not so nice person.

Again let me be clear... THAT DOES NOT MEAN THIS IS THE CASE WITH THIS THREAD. It's just something to keep in mind.

I, for my part, have been using this for quite a while. It works fine. And Nicholaz is, as I said, in no way just some anonymous Open Source person-go check out JIRA and all the work he has done there...I would never download something from some completely anonymous site from someone wih no reputation.

I changed my password before and after trying it, but from a couple weeks ago...

http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/2007/05/release-day-nicholaz-edition-16d.html#comment-3200865212220137862



Everyone has already had Nicholaz's code in the official viewer already! (See what happens if you search for "Nicholaz" in the Jira...) Although this is new to us, others have been using his viewer for a while already.

For those who see little difference, let me assure you that with my laptop several viewers ago, textures stopped loading entirely, staying grey or never becoming sharp, Nicholaz has brought the joy of shopping back to me! Particles are apparent again. The memory leak didn't seem to affect me particularly, but this fix has been wonderful for other friends who would end up with their hard drive going crazy as everything slowed to a crawl or crash.

It's a good reminder. I'd already decided to use it, and had downloaded, but switched computers between then and now and had been busy. I had already thought long and hard last week, but this thread renewed my interest in trying it out. Nicholaz sounded like a decent man, from all I read.

So - yes, the warning to be careful is valid. But - I think less people were prompted to use it from reading the thread than it may appear.

WOOT! I downloaded this viewer and, while not miraculous for me, there was a discernable improvement in performance. I usually need my draw distance down to 64m anywhere except the quietest, emptiest places. But with Nicholaz 17b I've been to Sanctuary Rock with it set at 128m and lag not worse. Colours do seem brighter but that's probably because of greater draw distance. However, other avatars in busy places still stay grey for quite a while and I did see two people dressed in missing textures. Also I can report that I experienced more than one sim border crash.
Login is quicker and it's easier to arrange things in my inventory so all in all I rate Nicholaz 17b positively.

One point you missed with Open Source Software is the disclosue of the source is what protects you. If it does something else besides what the source posted says it does, then you or anybody can take legal action against it.

In that essence, a closed sourced program is more dangerous because you have no idea how it will work or how it is suppose to work.

I did my research on the guy before just jumping in there and potentially tossing my entire account access into some hackers lap. Mr Nichs reputation appeared valid and my risk factor in this case seemed nominal. While I am here, I will add an addendum to my previous posts in this thread. Using this viewer, I took a cross country hot air balloon ride. Was the first balloon ride in many months where a border didnt suck somebody out of the balloon. Once again, is this a coincidence, or do we have something here? LL needs to take a look at this thing, this guy may be on to something.

I'll toss my two cents in... I've recommended this to several people after using it myself... It used to be the memory leak in SL was so bad that after 2 hours I'd have to pray to not crash or have SL lockup due mostly to the memory leak. After switching I can go for up to 6 or so hours (I go nuts on Sundays as I have nothing to do RL) before other random bugs in the client or more minor memory leaks take me out...

Since I still do crash though, I've sent him dump files for all the crashes and he has gotten back to me promptly and been professional. I also did check his reputation out, my RL job is as a network admin and security is a big issue for me (It's also what I have done alot of extra learning in since I got my degree). I don't just randomly trust people even if I don't really have anything in SL to worry about, yet. While it's a good idea to suggest people not to trust random posters or unknown people, in this case it's not an issue.

I put it on both of my blonde systems and it has dramatically improved my life

What I cannot comprehend is how one person in his spare time can fix more critical bugs in the viewer than the 70% of LL's technical staff who are supposedly doing the same.

/seconded.

Because he cares? And isn't distracted by trying to make money?

I am going to give this a try tonight. Good suggstion to change passwords just in case.

His "love machine" must be broken

I asked him about that as well but he works on a PC (I don't think he owns a Mac) and therefore unfortunately a Mac version isn't possible

If the coder has submitted his code to LL for review, we have hopes of eventually seeing these improvements added to the authorized client. LL would be rather stupid to ignore a fix for their persistent memory leak issues. Until then, I'm on Mac, so I have no choice but to wait.

But even if he offered a Mac version, I still would have a hard time trusting any hacked SL client, no matter how good or noble the author is reputed to be. Just too much chance for something bad to be slipped in with all the shiny good things, and so I wouldn't use it, for the same reason I wouldn't used a hacked ATM to access my RL bank account.

This coder has offered his fixes to LL. Most of it is over my head, but from the discussions I have seen elsewhere, he is one of the most prolific bug fixers in JIRA. Some of his fixes have sat there for months with no action from LL. That makes very little sense to me.

If he can make SL work better, I'll buy him a new love machine