First Look viewer: Are you using it?

I have been reading a little bit about this and most everyone seems to be RAVING about the vastly improved performance of SL with it. Are you using it? Please share your thoughts here.

Absolutely, I could not do without it. Your mileage may vary, since a lot of people have issues with it.

Since it installs on its own directory and it has its own preferences, you may want to try it. If it won't work for you, you can be back to the regular client, without any hassles.

and is it true your avatar can see their reflection on shiny surfaces in sl with it?

I prefer it over the regular viewer. I've noticed a slight improvement in frame rate, although I sacrificed some of that for the new reflective surfaces

I may be wrong, but I think the FL viewer is the work of one person/team, rather than scattered hither and yon, because it seems far more stable than the regular viewer.

It works a lot better for me, WAY faster!, but it crashes more often. Especially, it doesn't seem to like running more than one copy at a time and I have a Little avie and a Big avie and sometimes have both logged in and that doesn't work so well.

can the avies see themselves?

Ok, now I'm gonna sound like a terrible n00b...But what's the First Look Viewer? Sounds good to me!

Mandy C

Mandy, go to http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/31/first-look-render-pipeline-improvements-updated-for-1133/ and read all about it.

Alaister, the changes they've been implementing in the First Look viewer have been spectacular. Frame rates are dramatically improved, especially if you've got a multi-core CPU (however, even with the multi-core support, it still runs better with affinity set to just one processor for SL, which is weird).

It is very much a work in progress, though, and is chock full of bugs. You can't quite trust that anything you're seeing is real, as there are some rendering anomalies, and it's very prone to crashing. It's great to use when you need speed, but at this time don't rely on it while working on any projects, or while doing any activity you don't want to risk a high probability of crashing out of.

And no, you can't see reflections. Shine works the same in both viewers. Not sure where you heard that there are reflections in First Look.

For me the original First Look viewer crashed least, textures loaded much faster, and the FPS was about the same. More recent FL viewers have crashed more, but the regular viewer never gets all the textures to me, and leaves them fuzzy when they do come.

The reflections looked pretty but I couldn't really move...

Anyway, I haven't even installed the last three regular viewers!

(Chosen, reflections are in the Client menu of FL )

saw over on snapzilla....I'll see if I can find it. Avatar standing in front of a reflecting sphere, and she could see her reflection.

There's a few piccies like dat comin' up on Snapzilla. I'm sooooo gonna 'speriment with First Look.

Mari

Being newbie I asked about it earlier. The thing is I was told its for those who use beta and full of bugs.
I am sort of burned out right now after doing few years of beta bit ago even though its been years doing any beta.
Can someone tell us newbies more about what first look does and who needs it?
Thanks, FD

Oh wow! Thanks, Falcon. I completely overlooked that. Off to play.

EDIT: Okay, been playing with the reflections thing. The physics of the reflection are really weird. From what I can tell, the surface itself isn't actually reflecting anything. It seems more like it's mapping the video from a secondary camera onto the surface texture. The secondary camera seems to be positioned at some fractional distance between your regular camera and the reflective object, and the angle is some weird multiplication of your main camera's angle and the object/surface rotation.

Put you avatar or any other object directly in front of a reflective surface, and it won't be displayed in the reflection until you do some pretty crazy camera movement. Then, once you've found it, moving the camera back to normal position will keep it, but only until it feels like dropping it, which can happen at any time, and then you have to go find it again.

So, it seems like it's a good start toward something really cool, but for now, it's odd at best; unreliable or maybe even unpredictable are the best descriptives. Lindens, if you're reading, the secondary camera should be directly on the surface, and its angle should always be precisely opposite the main camera's angle. Then you'll have something really compelling. Until then, it's nothing but an interesting curiosity.

I guess my aching sinuses are fogging my brain tonight. Exactly where in the client menu is this reflection thingy?

First Look on a Mac is better than regular SL.
Thank you, Lindens!

I try to use the firstlook viewer often, ( Client -> Rendering -> Dynamic Reflections, for those that haven't found the option yet, still a little rough but still an amazingly cool feature! )

However I invariably drop back to the regular viewer, I get an annoying flicker/flash... and it seems to produce only a fraction of the number of particles that the regular viewer does.

(winxp & ati7800gtx)

I'm using it, and Now i won't go back to the original Viewer, i can actually move in SL like i did when i first started two years ago, and YES you Do have Fully Functional Mirrors now. I was messing about with them this morning. There is a Very slight lag in the Mirror reflecting your movements but it works VERY well.

Angel.

I found the reflection settings. First thing I did was create a 10mx10m wall. I could get static background objects in the reflection, but the avatar didn't appear. Oddly enough, I was looking at one of the cars parked in my carport, and I could see the av in the reflection. I could sort of see parts of my house reflected in the water of my pond. Its a nice effect, but it seems to be a performance killer with multiple surfaces.

Then you're a vampire

Anyway, the dynamic reflections feature it's still under development so quirks and oddities are normal. About performances, when the feature will be "mature" we'll likely have powerful enough PCs/GFX cards

*makes mental note*

"Download First Look Viewer tonight at home and try it!!!!!"

Morwen.

can you imagine what it will be like!!! I can't wait to try this first look viewer myself.

I guess I'm one of the few who aren't impressed with First Look; I just don't notice that much of a difference. I've seen the photos of dynamic reflections, and I'd love to be able to use that feature, but it doesn't really work for me. (I have a GeForce 6200 card, never had any graphics issues with the regular viewer.)

If I apply shiny to a prim and enable dynamic reflections, I see a shine on my avatar, but not on the prim. If I turn reflections off, I see the mirror effect briefly, and then it reverts to just shiny. I dunno, maybe I need some secret top-of-the-line graphics card or something.

So yeah, all the pics of mirrors on Snapzilla are great, but for the moment I'm sticking with the regular viewer; hopefully one of these days I'll be able to see reflections correctly. (Although, to be truthful, the neon glow it gives water strikes me as a bit creepy.)

Today, I put a Mirrored surface on a Torus, and Placed it Inside a Fairly complex "Primmy" build i'm doing. It Instantly located my Girl, and Myself, and the Curved Reflections looked Incredible. and the Complexity of the Reflection due to the shape of the Torus, and the Primmy Build was Awe Inspiring. I Have Noticed that smaller Mirrored prims "Pick up" your Avie a Little Faster than Large ones, but that is probably a Lg issue, and i expect it will only get better.
I find a Darkly coloured "Mirror" works a Little better than a Lightly coloured, or White one. I'm still experimenting but this is one of the best new features yet.

Angel.

I have a GeForce 6800XT graphics card, very middling by today's standards, and with First Look SL looked like I'd gotten a graphic upgrade. The change was subtle but somehow the colors were more vibrant, textures more detailed.

I'm really looking forward to following the progress on this viewer and just wished that I had more time to play with it. I'm in the middle of critical building projects, so I've stayed away from it recently because I don't quite trust what I'm seeing and can't afford unexpected crashes.