Hi All!
Please don't worry about the 1.19 becoming mandatory. The Nicholaz Editions are using their own channel (the word/phrase you see in the lower right corner on the login screen) since 1.18..0.6 so unless the Lindens do something entirely unexpected, BE-v will continue to run nicely.
Besides, I tried to make an 1.19 with my patches but I'm pretty dissatisfied with the results. Some GUI patches broke (does someone has a standalone patch to fudge the menu/status bar back to old style?), it still crashes in one function and I don't have the time to redo or investigate these issues.
With these issues, that version currently falls short of BE-v in important areas, so that I don't want to release it ... not as long as BE-v is still good (very good in fact from what I hear). At the moment, the Nicholaz-1.19 would be a compromise, which I'll only make if absolutely necessary.
Speaking more generally, trying to compile an 1.19 was an opportunity to look at the SL viewer again (I haven't seen any new viewers since my last Windlight build). It is somewhat interesting to watch this project from a distance. I had always thought that the Lindens were driving me nuts because I was too involved with the viewer and because did not have enough patience. But even the way it is now, being involved in my own projects, seeing the patch list on the JIRA grow or reading some of the blurp on their blog still sets my teeth on edge (I guess my comments occasionally does the same for some Lindens, but that's par for the course :-)). But that's why I'll have to do that new stuff in small doses ...
Anyway, bottom line is that Nicholaz 1.19 will have to wait and what I have is probably obsolete already with the 1.19.1 RC, which ironically (from what I've been told) isn't even worth bothering with anyway. (Maybe it is okay as a beta, but it's certainly not the stuff Release-Candidates are made of). BE-v should continue to run after Wednesday.
Last but not least, from what I see on JIRA and what I saw when trying the 1.19, some of my best patches are still not there, so I can almost guarantee that BE-v will still give you superior stability, even if the latest bells and whistles may be missing.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
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42 comments:
Thank you, Nicholaz, for all that you continue to do for us, even after you said you had to pull back due to time constraints. You are still there to explain things to us, like that fact that the "mandatory" upgrade can still be avoided when running Bleeding Edge-v.
I will stick with BE-v, as it is indeed the most stable and "tried and true" product. I am just disappointed that just as I finally made the big decision to try WindLight, and downloaded the First Look View for it, after only about three days, it is gone as a First Look Viewer, and can only be used if you go with SL's new Release Candidate. Argh.
Princess Ivory
Will the EC version work too?
Hey Nicholaz,
I'll still be eagerly awaiting your next edition with baited breath. I've been forced to move up to the 1.19 branch despite my utter love of your BE-v. (I've had full SL experiences without even breaking 500MB of RAM used with it!)
The reason that I've had to move to 1.19 is because of graphics issues. I recently had to get a new video card, and discovered too late (didn't check for SL issues) that my new card doesn't work properly with 1.18 and earlier. I'm running a GeForce 8800 GT, which doesn't handle something with the shaders properly, so I lose ripple water, Avatar ???, and bump mapping.
Also, from the blog entry re the mandatory update, one item jumps out at me and that is:
"Voice support – eliminate problems with mixing voice from older and newer viewer versions"
When they roll this requirement, are they going to be shutting down voice access to the 1.18 branch? I don't know how it all interoperates but with all thats happening, it may be possible to lose functionality in sticking on the old core versions. Before anyone says something, I'm not saying that it will happen, I'm asking can it happen?
Just don't turn into LL and push out an "Unready" client just to get it out, I'll suffer with 1.19.1(RC) until yours is up to standard.
OMG.
I just want to change and beg for some work to be done.
I have been using 1.19.1 for a few hours, and I just had to restart because it had consumed all of my RAM. Frigging memory leaks. It had consumed 1.7GB of RAM running, even though according to the process information it was still around 700K of VM Space. As soon as I shut down SL, my page file size reduced 1.7GB. Is that memory leaks, or just major Windows problems?
I'm seriously missing my Nicholaz Edition.
What are the JIRA numbers for folding in these changes? We should be promoting them as much as is possible and then going to bug triage to argue for them.
Greetings, Nicholaz !
To reply your question, I do have a standalone patch for the status/menu bar of v1.19.0 (see on my website at http://sldev.free.fr/ ).
I did also manage to produce a "stable" version of v1.19.0.5, although I find it a bit more leaky (memory-wise) than what the patched v1.18.5.3 used to be.
As for v1.19.1.0RC, it's a catastrophic release candidate (not even worth an alpha !), with many bugs which are pretty much show-stoppers (such as the attachments bug). Plus, it will involve rewriting a large part of my UI patch for v1.19, because the media controls changed a lot. So, the Windlight version of the Cool SL Viewer will probably stick to 1.19.0.80044 for now...
My worry is that I got the feeling that LL is trying to push Windlight very hard to make it the standard viewer, not even caring about how much slower (about 20% with atmospheric and water reflection shaders off, i.e with an equivalent rendering quality than the standard viewer) it is for "lower" end computers (read: single core systems).
Henri.
I just uploaded one updated version 1.19.0.80799 (with RL 1.10.4) of the very last windlight sources before it went into the 1.19.1 RC. This will be the last Windlight build.
I amd _very_ glad to hear that BE-v will continue to work. I have been trying the 1.19.1RC and it is miserable. It crashed on me three times almost immediately and I've hit the attachment bug several times. I often run with two or more viewers open at once; BE-v works fime with at least four at once on my machine, while the RC is basically unusable with two. Besides, after spending so much time getting the "ass-hair" bug fixed, I'm not willing to give up the ability to _fly_ across sim boundaries without completely falling apart. That fix is a must have for me.
Whichway Janus, a.k.a. Ollipeist Balogh
Is there any kind of work around solution to be able to run the WindLight First Look viewer, before they took it away and made it part of the newest Release Candidate (which I do not want to run!). I'm currently usuing BE-v.
Thanks,
Princess
See how much LL cares about our feelings regarding the UI
Henri,
Based on their track record, you didn't really expect anything else from LL.
The crappy, forever changing UI is one of the reasons that I use Nicholaz's viewer. Of course, there are many other reasons. If not for his viewer I would have left SL long ago.
When LL does make their next disaster mandatory, and if Nicholaz's viewer ceases to work and he has not the time nor the inclination to work his magic, then I believe that it will be time to divest mmyself of my SL holdings and find someplace else to play and spend my entertainment dollars.
It still boggles the mind that one person in his spare time can do what a company, of what 200 or more people, can't seem to do working full time.
IMHO, As long as LL continues think and operate like a small research company, in the probably not too distant future, SL will be come a backwater virtual world, taking a backseat to some competitor who gets it.
Vive Le Nicholaz.
Tomas
Nicholaz, you will be happy to hear that I asked Robin in her last Office hours just WHY most of your Patches still are not included in the LL viewer, to which she responded, as she always does when questioned, "I'll have to get back to you".
Since Robin's never got back to me with answers to questions I've asked before, I can't promise anything good will come from this, but at least were still trying!
Nicho, can you email me at jeanricard.broek@yahoo.com. Sorry to bother you this way but I deleted MP from the Hippo group by mistake.
While I am not looking forward to using the official client again, I fear none of us will have much choice. One of the big changes to 1.19 was for artist security. Specifically, 1.19 does not casually hand off texture keys with the old "admin mode" hack.
Since Nicholaz BE-v still allows this, Linden Labs will have no choice but to break compatibility with hacked clients that continue to exploit this old bug.
@anonymous
Security by opacity is a delusion.
There are much more efficient ways for a pirate to steel textures (by decoding the cache, for example, or by patching the viewer).
At least, this feature that LL removed from v1.19 (and no, this is not the major change in v1.19) was allowing you to check that someone did not steal your texture via its key id.
Note also that key ids are present in the texture cache, so it's really easy, even for someone with minimal scripting knowledge to find which key corresponds to which texture, meaning they don't even need this feature to find it out while -you- are now helpless at checking that their object uses your texture key...
For this reason, I produced a patch which brings back this feature into the Cool SL Viewer v1.19, and I encourage anyone with a true sense of what true security is to do the same.
This is Cheshyr Pontchartrain. I don't want to post anonymous, but blogger.com gives me no choice. I will not sign up for their service just to post a comment.
My point is that if Linden Labs is going to implement real security, which includes protecting creator's investments, then they will have to disable any third-party client which does not implement the same security standards.
Theft for any reason is wrong, and content protection is key to Linden Labs' business. They cannot succeed unless they can convince businesses that their assets are secure.
That aside, I personally have no choice but to switch to 1.19.x until Nicholaz's viewer is updated. Nicholaz's browser has always been great, but the 1.18 line does not work with modern ATI drivers.
And more importantly to me as a scripter, BE-v does not handle Mono, or the new function being added to support Windlight's glow feature.
Kooky,
I've had a similar problem with 1.19.1; running SL for a few hours between a few sims netted me an out of memory error; SL was taking up about 1.5 GB of RAM out of my 2GB total.
I've started a JIRA for the issue: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5743
However the main reason I mention it here is that I hope Nicholaz can apply his expertise on the subject. >.>
I have a problem with the Mac version of BE-V. It doesn't let me rez certain objects onto my avatar (i.e. "wear" them): e.g. a combat sword and also a NoteCard giver. These are both scripted items. (rezing to ground seems fine). Switching to LL v 19 these things rez fine. Don't know (obviously) if this is exclusive to Macs, but can't use BE-V without this broken :(
Martin
The Cool SL Viewer v1.19.0.5 release 4 (stable) and v1.19.1.3 release 1 (release candidate) are available for download from [url]http://sldev.free.fr/[/url]
And yes, the good old look and feel of the pre-voice UI is also available in v1.19.1.3 !
Enjoy !
Henri.
The latest Cool Viewer for Windows is ready *smile*, release candidate 1.19.1.4. Thanks Henri for the hard work!
Luv,
Boy
Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're our only hope. ...
1.19.1 - formerly RC4 - has now "gone gold".
Same with Havoc4 server.
Unfortunately, I've heard comments that some people are experiencing extra lag with BE-u and BE-v now that Havoc4 is rolled out, so it's possible that your version has some....erm...miscommunication possibilities? with the new server code.
In my own direct experience, I get an FPS of about 5 with Be-v, and an FPS of 15 with RC4. It's not crashing...but it's like watching "claymation". :(
Hope your workload eases up soon. :)
Nick, thanks for all the great work! I'd like to back up Alexandra's comment about lag on H4; my avie 'stutters' while walking, and I don't see it with the new client :(
/me throws a tactical nuclear grenade at Nick's workplace so he has lots of free time. J/K!!!! I KID!!!
Nika, DON'T! I don't live THAT far away! ;-)
I can add to this, though-same problem here. Seems to be some sort of communications slowdown between viewer and server?
i peeked at the nicholaz.log file and noticed a fair number of timeouts and 404s...
Odd. I'm on BE-v still, and I don't have any 404 or timeouts.. Did it change that much from BE-v to BE-s?
just to inform people, I have been using Be-r for a LONG time (since it came out), it survived through all the official viewer updates since it came out but as of today it doesn't work anymore I get a dialog asking to download the newer official viewer version, I will now download the newest nicholaz viewer and see what happens. by the way thanks for this great SL viewer, way beter than the official one
ACK I'm using 1.18.5 and BE-v and its saying I have to upgrade ggrrr
After Windlight came in effect, I crash no matter what version i use. 18.5.3, 19.0.5, Nicholaz, etc. It doesnt really matter. Screen goes black emmediately after login.
@yosho
Try adding " -channel Nicholaz" in your shortcut to the viewer. It should work just fine.
Hello there. I want to ask you a huge favor. Could you include this patch in your version of SL?
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2516
Someone aplied in the 1.18.3.5 and I was using for machinima, but since this version are not longer working, I'm stuck. If you could do it it would great, or if you could point me to someone that might help, I'll also appreciate
Thanks for all you hard work!
Patricia
patclaro [at] gmail [dot] com
One problem with the Nicholaz viewer that's been bugging me for months... why can't I download it from your server? Every time I try to download it - the resulting .zip is corrupt and won't unpack - it doesn't matter in which browser I download it from, or on which of my computers either. The downloaded zip is always corrupt. :(
Well Old School version is dead, as of today April 5th Says you must update-_- Well I will give BE-v a try don't want to have to use LL's Edition of SL its too full of bugs and mem leaks. I'll post if BE-v works for me, I've been a happy Nicholaz Edition user sence april of 07 never want to go back^__^ Thanks Nicholaz for all the hard work you've done a great job, Better then the Clowns at Linden Labs. Some days I think Linden dosen't want SL to work, If they did they would get it to work and stop making it worse.
update on my last comment: I dowloaded BE-v and the official viewer 1.18.5.3, I can log in and everything works great! keep up the good work. p.s. Katja Armitage: .zip files always worked ok for me, maybe try a download manager like getright... good luck
I really don't get it - and I'm at my wit's end. I've tried downloading with opera, firefox, MSIE... I've tried wget from both my computers and my shell account - and even brought up one of my linux VMs to try to download the archive - and every single time I do, the nicholaz.exe file is corrupt, I'm really at a loss.. :(
Katja,
Which zip are you trying to download? Maybe it will work if I email you the zip? If you don't want to post your email publically here, send it to me as an IM inworld, and tell me which zip file, and I can try to send it to you. I'm currently using BE-v, but I have a few other zips saved as well.
Princess Ivory
While I truly love Nicholaz and I was thrilled to read that BE-v apparently should still work with 1.19, so far I have been unable to use it with the new deteriorated (I categorically refuse to call it "improved") 1.19 viewer. Whenever I try I get the following error message:
"Alert: incompatible SecondLife installation detected! (releasenotes.txt)
Second Life 1.19.1(4) April 2nd, 2008
This version of the Nicholaz viewer is intended to run with the Linden viewer 1.18.5(3) (voice) only.
Please either install Second Life 1.18.5(3) or use one of the Nicholaz viewers suitable for the version which you are using."
This is nothing short of disastrous for me, as Linden support now simply categorically refuse to help me with ongoing issues on the excuse that they do not support 1.18 anymore :(
I have tried Henri's suggestion to add the -channel flag and it has not made any difference, I get exactly the same error message :(
HEEEEELLLLPPP!!!
Hi,
I just tried with the 1.18.5.3 version of the Cool Viewer and the following commandline: "C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe" -channel "Cool SL Viewer". It works for me without any error message. And without the mandatory forced update. Seems you have mixed some things up, I'd suggest a fresh installation of the 1.18 viewer.
Hope that helps,
Boy
Dear all, I have just updated the older 1.19.0.5 viewer with the latest patches. This and the 1.19.1.4 version of the Cool Viewer are now in my blog.
http://my.opera.com/boylane
Enjoy!
Boy
Boy Lane, how is your product similar to the Nicholaz Viewer? What is different?
I am intrigued by you post, and curious to try it, but atm clinging to BE-v like a woman lost a sea with one small floating board.
Is is WindLight friendly? Does it run the latest SL viewer?
Thanks, Princess Ivory
@Princess
It is the Windows version of Henri Beachamps Cool Viewer for Linux. I have 2 versions, one based on the previous 1.19.0.5 sources without Windlight (a bit faster) and one based on 1.19.1.4 with Windlight. They both include a lot of patches from Nicholaz and others, feature the old UI, many new features and as I was told run rock stable *smile*. You can install them in a separate directory independent from the Nicholaz viewer without damaging anything. Unortunately my blog seems to be down in the moment...
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