Previously, in “What the bloody hell are they doing to the graphics“, I asked Ok what have they done to the graphics?, followed by Some Information On What They’ve Done To The Graphics! Basically, for those who missed the enthralling first two episodes of this series, I discovered that the beta viewer had moved my graphics preferences from High to Ultra but that performance still seemed whizzier.
I was somewhat perturbed about my graphics card being overworked, in episode three of this series I can reveal that the latest beta viewer has by default turned my graphics down a few notches, but has also introduced new notches to the default graphics slider.
So now, rather than being ultra, my graphics preferences are now at the new default notch point of between Medium and High. Now you may think this is a bad thing, but to be honest, I’m not noticing much of a difference … actually I’m not noticing any difference but then again my eye for artistry is not exactly top of the range.
Now this does signify a change, there are extra notches between the settings, these weren’t there before and if you use the official viewer, rather than the beta viewer, you will see this under graphics preferences:
Note how there are only four choices here, as opposed to seven in the beta viewer. So what exactly does this all mean? I have no bloody idea but performance still feels better with the beta viewer, there are potential issues with the beta viewer, hence why it’s a beta viewer, you can read the release notes here. There’s a whole host of resolved issues as well as some known issues and whereas it’s good to know what the resolved issues are, you should probably pay attention to the known issues:
- MAINT-1931 – Viewer crashes on Mac when devices (e.g. USB headset or a second monitor) are plugged in or unplugged
- MAINT-809 – Setting 16x antialiasing crashes Viewer in Ubuntu 11.10 with GeForce 6600
- MAINT-1056 – Microsoft SkyDrive is not compatible with Second Life
- WEB-4659 – Direct Delivery Outbox fails in Linux build
- SVC-7598 – Error fetching server release notes URL.
- VWR-29226 – Multiple Teleports Causing Errors
- BUG-1006 – Viewer freezes while taking snapshot on OS X 10.6.8
- SH-3331 – LLCore::HttpOpRequest::readCallback warning in secondlife.log after ViewerAssetMetrics sent
I’ve included the links to the Jira discussions on the known faults but I myself can only access three of them, WEB-4579, SVC-7598 and VWR-29226, your mileage may vary, I get a permissions violations on the other issues. Also, I should point out that the list of resolved issues far outweigh the known issues, but as it’s the known issues that may ruin your experience with the beta viewer, I felt it was a good idea to include them.
I’m liking the beta viewer, although I do wonder if there’s some sort of placebo effect going on and that I just think it’s better, but it does seem to feel better. The extra notches on the graphics settings should come in useful for default experiences, adding more notches helps people like me who just like to click a graphics setting and stick with it. The more advanced users still have options galore to play with.
I’d definitely suggest taking a look at the beta viewer, to download it go to the main downloads page, here. The beta viewer download is just below the official release download.