New viewer and code, joys and flaws

I've been running the Windlight Release Candidate for a while. The regular viewer started cascade crashing, and the other options out there (read: fan made viewers) weren't working right (one had the same crashing, the other corrupted textures constantly). I had found it to be a far more rock solid uncrashing viewer than the regular, by far. It's...not as much anymore. It's still not horrid, but not as stable as it used to be.

I'm sure they merged the code branches less because they were actually ready, and more because they didn't want to be working on multiple code branches at once, so they could just apply everything to WL (especially with the big move to Havok 4). Shoving both out at once makes it harder to see what is causing which flaw though.

I don't think it was lost on anyone what a massive clusterfuck the launch of Havok 4 was. Some of it wasn't even their fault.

Something has gone rotten with the camera. I don't know which one started it- the RC WL wasn't doing it, and the beta grid running Havok 4 wasn't doing it. But the proper viewer...yeah. They "fixed" the camera in the 1.20 RC, and I had to switch to the regular viewer instead, because it was making me queasy. The camera was often moving with less constraints and more sensitivity, and, and this is the bad part for me, it isn't updating the location of the selected outline properly. It lags behind the camera rotating around, which is very disconcerting, and well, not a fan. I'm not sure what's up here, but it ain't good.

(As an aside, I wish they'd rework the camera in regards to focusing on objects. Most noticeable in larger prims, so it shows in builds, not in jewelry, the camera has serious issues with hollows and dimpled cube/cylinder/prism surfaces. It wants to focus on the "outside" that isn't there. This is mostly not a deal...except that they've now semi sanctioned megaprims so more people are going to be using them, and with the extremely limited number around, a lot of them are dimpled to mimic other sizes, and, worse, the interior of cylindrical buildings of any type just doesn't work well. It would also be a great primsaver with hollowing and cutting for right angle walls and such- which some people do, to the camera's detriment.

As another aside, I wish they would just go ahead and up the prim size limit legitimately. I would kill for 20m instead of 10. More would be nice, but that would be a great start.)

1.20 also has Jazz Hands (aka Dazzle), which is ugly as sin, and has a lot of really bad UI choices. I really hope people are already working on skinning this hideous thing so it doesn't have to look like crap when they do force it on us.

The SKIRT BUG. Motherfucking pudding, but I can't believe they let this thing go live with that. Obviously, from things they've said, they just plain don't care. They've also been trying to say WL isn't the problem...in which case, why is that the thing that makes them go away? I know, I know, it's a packet thing blah blah, but come _on_. If you never used WL, you never got the bug. Therefore, don't make people change, until the bug is gone. Is this so hard to grasp? I know, we don't think skirts matter. This is why you will never truly be a viable economic platform, and people will jump ship when something else comes along. Not because you didn't "keep up" and put in voice and awkward lighting effects. (God, voice. I still think my random laggy hangs have to do with that, since that's when they started.)

Memory leak! Yes, it's complex, yes, you have to track it down, yes, this should be your number one priority. I've heard, *cough*, that some of those 3rd party fanviewers do not have this problem. Maybe you should actually consider listening to these people who are fixing your viewers? Because it isn't as if they aren't trying to share this information with you.

I know, it's too much to ask for that friends going on/offline, group notices, and, in fact, being anywhere with more than 5 people not cause random lagspikes that freeze me entirely.

This new texture thing makes me cry. Ever so occasionally I'll get the useful thing back...briefly, and then it will break again. Matching offsets becomes so very much more of a headache. And it looks like it's yet another "oh, you use an Nvidia card. Well, too bad"- which was also apparently the source of my cascading crashes, from the information I could track down.