Browsing Options Clear Filters
Top 5 Tags: slurl[10] musing[9] site features[7] aradia[4] patch comments[4]
Summarized 2 of 6 Categories:
· thearidians.org (11) newest: We\'re Back apollo 18th Feb @ 15:32 EST
· quicklinks (3) newest: Snowball Combat apollo 1st Jan @ 18:34 EST
August 2007
Re: The Almighty Voice Client
apollo [blog] Tue 7th @ 08:41 EDT
sl client, voice
I've avoided pontificating about the negative impact I suppose Voice - with a capital V - will have on the SL experience, mostly because I assume that those who are sane and rational will quickly discover the fundamental social shortcomings of the technology, while those who perceive this as a Good Thing will not be swayed by my quaint and outmoded textual arguments. That said, on reading Ordinal today, I couldn't help but chortle at this:
Those of you who wish to partake in the receiving of other-worldly voices - and coughs, and feedback, and the sounds of errant other-world children, and so on and so on ad nauseam - may do so widely, without even having to pay any sort of Pharmacist for this Altering of the Mind.
--Ordinal Malaprop, A Momentous Day (For Some)
Ms Malaprop also expounded at great length and with much aplomb, citing most of my various concerns and serving practical examples that directly correlate to my personal reasons for generally refusing to use the voice feature and I heartily recommend investing a few moments in reading both of her posts on the subject. For those seeking insight in 30 words or less, however, I refer you to the infinite wisdom of one John Gabriel, but please do mind the naughty language in that last link.
I suppose I should add, for the record, that I can imagine situations where the voice features would have some genuinely practical use, but mostly I cannot fathom the need to by default automatically enable voice across the entirety of the grid at large. This can only lead to the situations alluded to above.
January 2007
On Viewer Choices and Menu Options
apollo [blog] Sat 20th @ 19:48 EST
first look, sl client, viewer
By way of following up it's only fair to mention that a new First Look client has been posted and is ready for download. This new version of SL in general is something of an oddity given that the 1.13.2.11 real SL client was released with some Known Issues that were partially but optionally fixed a few days later. As this release had already been previously posponed, I can only assume that the new networking code is that fundamental to the future operation of SL that delaying this release for another week for additional feature polishing ended up not being an option.
Moving swiftly on to the 1.13.2.x First Look viewer I am noticing even more smoothness and even higher framerates under certain conditions. While I agree that chasing framerate purely for the sake of being able to show off a higher number is not necessarily all that productive, I honestly do not believe the LL developers are falling into this trap at all. What I see with the FL viewer is a genuine and wonderfully useful attempt to clean up the gross computer resource wastage of the "current real" SL client.
More efficient use of the available resources can only be a good thing, and it is certainly proving to be that way on my hardware at least. For reference, I run an [Intel] Core2Duo 6400 with 1GB system RAM and an [nVidia] GeForce 6800GT with 256MB of onboard RAM, which I consider to be a fairly decent middle-of-the-road system for this point in the endless cycle of hardware upgrades.
In terms of options to try in the FL client I have noticed in this new version that going into the "Client"* menu and enabling "Run Multiple Threads" under the "Rendering" options afforded me another performance gain in addition to enabling VBO and further increased the feel of creamy smoothness. Of course your mileage may vary, but I thought I would mention it regardless.
* If you can't find the Client menu in SL, press Ctrl+Alt+D or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D on the PC, and possibly Ctrl+Option+D on the Mac but don't quote me on that.