First Look goes live this Monday!

Okay, I was a bit surprised that no one else has mentioned this in the forum, since it's going to affect everyone in the game.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/03/23/1140-update-monday-preview-available-for-download/

If you haven't tried First Look, now would be a good time to download and find out how well it works for your particular computer configuration.

The LL consensus is that the SL bugs that it fixes are greater than the bugs it has introduced, so there's no point in waiting any longer. Also, once released to the general population, more obscure bugs can be discovered.

As a matter of (probably futile) advice, I recommend that anyone who discovers bugs (and many will) to report it AND provide complete system configuration information. Don't just bitch about how borked your game has become: provide the means to fix it.

So far seems to be running great for me.

I'm not too thrilled, truth be. Major problem for me is that I cannot save a notecard IN an object. I have to use yet another workaround... they should definitely not be in any hurry to rush this one out.

I can see why they want to release the new viewer as soon as posible since the regular viewer has more than it's fair share of bugs and problems. But, my question is still about the same as the questions I had when they were releasing "updates" to the regular viewer: Why put new features in it until you get all the bugs out first? The new viewer is loaded with "new festures" and a few bugs that are known already!! Geeze, why can't they get those known bugs out before releasing it as a regular viewer?

Maybe it's better............I don't know since they both work about the same as far as I can tell. But LL admits there are a few bugs in it yet. Makes no sense to me.

Oh lordie lordie lordie. All my house boxes are borked then - they have notecards in them.

P.S. What's your workaround?

That particular bug was a high priority and is supposedly fixed. Have you tried the very latest version? LL has released several versions of the last day or so.

ive been usinf firstlook and it crashes every 2 hours
SL has so many bugs now who will notice a few more?
-LW

Can someone please fill me in on what first look is and why it is better?

I dont know very much about this, but i know that i only really experience problems wtih SL at its peak times ( over 35k) or at the peak times for internet usage in my country (5-8pm ish) which has very low quality broadband.

I am just using the version of SL i had to download last time they made me (about a month agio i think), am i already using first look?

And we are all going to have fix after fix after fix............This viewer is not ready.If you think 1.6 and 1.7 releases were nightmares 1.14 is going to be worse.lets hope steve and company can pull off a great release! I with you steve until the very end! Why can`t LLabs keep running test say 2 more weeks atleast befor the release this great viewer! I can see the blg and forums totally unhappy with unhappy users. But lets hope i am wrong and steve does his magic

Good Luck Steve Linden We are with you


Usagi

The only issue I am currently experiencing is the particle emitters seem to die either over time or after teleporting to other regions. But I have noticed this problem for awhile now with the FL clients.

I'm getting 'tie-dye discoworld'... The shine/bump layers on textures getting so screwed up, they display a rainbow of colors, THROUGH the standard ones... really hard to describe. Hit me up in-world for some examples.

First Look is a beta version of the viewer you fired up to enter SL. It's been in development for awhile and a dedicated band of SL residents have been downloading each version and providing feedback on bugs. The greater the pool of testers, the better the documentation of errors than can (hopefully) be fixed.

You have to download First Look from a specific site, so if you're unfamiliar with it, you probably do not have it. But it will be available for download as the main viewer starting Monday.

Some of the beta testers are thrilled with SL -- better graphics detail, faster frame rate, an improved overall experience, especially for some marginal systems that barely meet specs.

But given the immense variability of computer systems, inevitably there wll be another block of residents that are having serious problems with First Look. How many of these issues can be cleared up by Monday remains to be seen.

I'm several versions behind, so I'm going to try to find time to download the latest beta release tonight and give it whirl. Rather get any nasty surprises over with now than later. But I dont' really anticipate any major problems since my comptuer is comfortably within the SL requirements and I've already weeded out the conflicts due to software and hardware installation.

Good luck everyone!

I've asked inworld and searched for the answer here and in Blogs .....
There is no mention of downtime and for how long, does this mean we won't be having one just a straight forward upgrade of viewer?

I'm still no further forward as to what exactly "First Look" is i.e. is it simply a fix to help graphics/frame rate etc or will it actually affect the way I "view" the world through my AVI? I mean at the moment if I roll my mouse wheel I can pan back and forward from 1st person etc, will this be affected? The title makes me wonder........help please! LOL

I stopped using the FL client and even to this day my friends and my partner are all complaining about it. LL do i need to take off my belt again? c.c

I've seen too that there is a problem with Thinc books not working with the new client. Does anyone know if the issue affects only the publishing process, or does it also affect existing books?

(Since books are the only thing I sell, this is going to be a major problem for me....)

If someone is having a rather non-obvious problem, I'll generally suggest they give First Look a try, if only because it starts fresh with clean settings, where a reinstall keeps the old ones. A large portion of those end up putting in another request later on, stating that First Look just crashes for them the moment they open it.

They wanted to push First Look a month ago already, and a blog comment justified it because "less than 10% of our testers are experiencing crashes". For myself, every one I've tried has always been noticably worse than the main viewer: lower fps, slower rezzing of prims, painfully slow to no rezzing of textures, and frequent crashing when panning around with the camera.

Well being a tester for over 6 weeks about. I say this startup crashes are rare for me.BUT! crash will likey happen within a period of time in the game........


Oh yea my rabbit tail! what BS that is many they BS a "0" and it should 100%



Unreal crashed blue screens textures etc..........If they want us to use a 3000.00 or high system then ave ones HELL YES then MAYBE we crash less. But really i highly doubt this

I updated to the newest version and it's still borked for me. I'm not happy with it, since it means using the workaround or swapping back to the main viewer, both are time consuming because this is vendors we're talking about.

Coco, the work around is to copy the note card into your inventory, delete it from the object, edit the one in the inventory and put it in the object. For me, there is no editing directly from the object in FL. I usually just swap back to the main viewer.. which is the other workaround. Hopefully they'll get this fixed.

Hmm, if I may, which "newest" version Raudf? (Since two were released yesterday, unfortunately from the same blog post, where they said the notecard fix was server side...)

1-13-4-59668 just let me edit a notecard in an object without problem!

Separately but related, there are some comments in this thread about problems in older FL versions that have been fixed, without saying which of the over 20 first look releases being referred to!

my L$.02

First Look viewer rocks! Much better performance on my machine - better smother framerate, quicker rezzing, better texture cache performance. When I log on at my home parcel it is just there, no loading time needed. I can even tear down a road at top speed in my roadster and the road and scenery actually rez before I get there.

A few glitches with particles and once in a while it'll freeze for like 20 seconds (garbage collection? or texture file swapping on my drive. I suspect). I have been using them every day since they were released, and overall I have been very happy with these First Look viewers.

it doesn't break notecards.
if you want to edit one, just pull it out of the object, edit it, then put it back.

There are two different types of SL updates, and only one of them involves down time.

1) Server side updates

When code changes are made to the Second Life application residing on the servers, the entire system has to be shut down. LL is working at ways to change this approach so that server side changes dont' require a system shutdown. This would shorten down times to purely maintenance chores.

Server side updates are like a web site having to shut down for changes. Nothing involves you except that you can't connect to the site because it's been shutdown.

2) Client side updates

The other type of update involves the viewer, which is what you download to your computer. When there is a change to this "client" software, SL stays up but you have to download the new version before you can connect. (This is like downloading a new browser version.)

Since First Look is a client viewer, you are responsible for installing it and no downtime for the game itself is involved.

Assuming you don't have an incompatibility with First Look, you won't notice many differences between FL and the standard viewer now in use. A few items in the toolbar have been shifted around, and some are gone (like getting Account History inworld), but the basic "window" into SL remains the same.

The hope is that using First Look will reduce some forms of lag and improve your game experience in other subtle ways, such as rendering detail.

I've noticed a slightly heightened detail in graphic rendering when using FL, although some textures still take longer to rezz than they do with the main viewer. Movement seems a bit smoother, but it's so hard to judge when SL has been so erratic in performance on weekends.

Behind the scenes, FL is supposed to handle graphics in a different way that will pave the way for continued improvements. It's a building platform for more ways to scale SL to the explosive growth in residents.

So for all those people who have been screaming for LL to "fix" the game, this is exactly that: the first phase in new scalability measures. Given that this is more than just a tweak of the old stuff, this veiwer is going to come with its own set of bugs and problems. They aren't additional borks on top of an existing system; they are a brand new set of squeaky clean borks just born into the world.

Treat them gently.