Rainbow Viewers for Virtual Worlds

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Cool Viewer for ATi (Windows) with OpenGL fixes - some more testers needed!

Saturday, March 28, 2009 12:16:00 PM

[Updated to 1.22.11.0 R3e, this one is now really SSE, made a mistake earlier smile]
You may have seen that I published a new version of the Cool Viewer that includes fixes for OpenGL - that's the system that renders your graphics - incorporating the patch and changes from VWR-12540. Thanks a lot to Luricos for providing these.

After some initial issues I think this viewer is pretty usable now and it pushes graphics performance up reportedly by 40...100% compared to the normal viewer.

Some benchmarks with this one on different hardware:
Intel Core 2 U7700, 1.33 GHz, Intel 945GM, OpenGL 1.4, 14.5 FPS
Intel Pentium M 1.86GHz, Intel 915GM, OpenGL 1.4, 23.6 FPS
AMD Athlon XP 1700+, 1.94GHz, Radeon 8500, OpenGL 1.3.1072, 31.5 FPS
AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 2.1 GHz, Nvidia 8600GT, OpenGL 2.1.2, 70.0 FPS
Intel Core 2 T7500, 2.2GHz, Nvidia FX570m, OpenGL 2.1.2, 93.5 FPS
AMD Phenom II 720 #4, 3.4, Nvidia GTX 260, OpenGL 3.0.0 160.0 FPS

Dynamic test results (60s train ride in Koh Kut, measured with fraps):
R3: Standard Viewer, R3c OpenGL fix, SSE2, R3e, OpenGL fix, SSE, Shadow just for comparison)
ATi (HD4830, 1400x900, Thanks TrasheVyper!)
R3) 1785 Frames, 19 min, 44 max, 29.750 Avg
R3c) 2178 Frames, 25 min, 46 max, 36.300 Avg
R3e) 2224 Frames, 21 min, 54 max, 37.067 Avg

SL 1.22) 1554 Frames, 12 min, 39 max, 25.900 Avg

Nvidia (GTX260, 1680x1050):
R3) 3924 Frames, 42 min, 86 max, 65.400 Avg
R3c) 4617 Frames, 64 min, 91 max, 76.950 Avg
R3e) 4463 Frames, 63 min, 89 max, 74.383 Avg

Shadow) 2615 Frames, 36 min, 53 max, 43.583 Avg
SL 1.22) 3436 Frames, 42 min, 85 max, 57.267 Avg

This means there is a measurable performance gain of about 25% for both, ATi and Nvidia cards. And compared to the official SecondLife 1.22.11.0 viewer it is 35% faster. Reported results in crowded places are even higher (40...100%, but that's impossible to reproduce with always changing traffic).


I'd ask all of you out there running on ATi graphics cards to give this a try and please report your findings back. Nothing to lose, only to win. You can install it in a different directory in parallel to your normal viewer.

Please see the details here, and also please leave your comments there. The version to try is 1.22.11.0 R3e.
http://my.opera.com/boylane/blog/cool-viewer-1-22-11-0-r3a-test-build-with-opengl-fixes-ati-users-please-try

Thankies smile

Cool Viewer 1.22.11.0 R3e Test Build with OpenGL fixes (ATI users please try!)Shadow Viewer 1.23 (Windows and Linux)

Comments

Anonymous Saturday, March 28, 2009 8:37:49 PM

Carl Omlet writes: Not sure what the deal is. Stops responding near the end of the login process. XP SP3, Catalyst 9.2 (AGP Hotfix), Sapphire ATI Radeon HD2600XT 512MB 8x AGP.

Anonymous Saturday, March 28, 2009 9:26:32 PM

Carl Omlet writes: (Update) Upgrading to Catalyst 9.3 fixed the problem.

Anonymous Saturday, March 28, 2009 11:36:04 PM

Vanessa Hunt writes: Wow. I posted saying I didn't see a lot of improvement in this viewer in the SL forum Boy linked to in a previous post, but after the sim was nice and loaded I got some amazingly smooth camming. I even cranked up the detail levels to their maximum and added Anistropic filtering and Antialiasing x4, just to try it. It was a little lumpy, but probably as lumpy as SL was before attempting this test. Less so since there didn't seem to be a progressive degradation in performance. A huge performance boost, though I don't have any hard numbers. Thank you so much for all of the work and effort you've put into your viewer, Boy! It's people like you who make SL so much better. :)

Anonymous Sunday, March 29, 2009 1:18:02 AM

Anonymous writes: Just did some tests with this 3a, 3b and 3c versions and an older ATI system: ATI 9800Pro 128MB, 2GB DDR-RAM, Athlon XP 2GHz (32 bit single core), clean installed WinXP Sp2, Catalyst 9.3: Coolviewer.exe does not even want to start...though other software (DirectX and OpenGL) works. Reminds me of an SSE2-Optimization problem one coolviewer version used to have with older CPUs. 1.22.11_0_R2 is fine, except for some strange damaged fonts in the menues with that newer drivers... (This is #VWR-4397... and still not fixed). So back to Catalyst 7.11 and 1.22.11_0_R2

TrasheVyper Sunday, March 29, 2009 1:19:14 AM

@carl this was happening to me if the steaming audio and video was on before i login ...so when i was loging i was keeping em disabled and inside the game i was activating em...at least this is how i was "curing?" the problem
or anyway a fast solution

@anonymous
well try the dna drivers maybie the 8.12 or 8.7 version just google dna drivers and you will find the site they are making custom drivers with 7.11 opengl files wink

Anonymous Sunday, March 29, 2009 1:58:24 AM

TigroSpottystripes Katsu writes: would the changes have any effect for someone using an NVIDIA card?

TrasheVyper Sunday, March 29, 2009 2:36:02 AM

i think not that mutch but still adds support for new opengl features and thats good wink

Boy Laneboylane Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:01:23 AM

What it does is basically update the OpenGL headers and optimize detection of your driver features. Nvidia never had problems with that earlier, so there may not be a significant improvement. However ATi drivers somewhat broke OpenGL since Catalyst 7.11. That's reported in tons of Jira tickets and there is no real fix till today with Catalyst 9.3.

There are a couple of other issues too here, depending on settings and overlapping with other problems. It should not matter if you have audio enabled for the OpenGL part, but perhaps that's related to some ATi features again as newer cards include an audio component. I can not test it as I don't have an ATi card anymore so I really have to trust your reports smile

Boy Laneboylane Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:28:46 AM

@Anonymous

Yes, the 3c is indeed a SSE2 version. If you have an older PC you will likely not be affected by the ATi issues as the older driver works, only everything newer than Catalyst 7.11 has the broken OpenGL implementation and newer cards like the 4800 series are not supported by older working drivers.

Anyway, I've made a SSE only R3d version:
http://files.myopera.com/boylane/files/SL/CoolViewer_i686_1_22_11_0_R3d_Installer_%28extract_and_run%29.zip
http://files.myopera.com/boylane/files/SL/CoolViewer_i686_1_22_11_0_Release_3d_exe_xml_only.zip

(This one even seems to be a bit faster than the SSE2 build but that's on Nvidia)

Anonymous Sunday, March 29, 2009 7:09:24 PM

Anonymous writes: Sorry, but I just installed this version and it ruined by SL: it crashes at login. How can I fix this? I have Vista. Everything previous version worked fine.

Boy Laneboylane Monday, March 30, 2009 3:12:14 AM

@Anonymous

Make sure you start it with the included Cool Viewer.lnk shortcut, not the existing SecondLife one.

Anonymous Tuesday, March 31, 2009 3:49:26 PM

Imagin writes: This is my first time using a non-SL viewer and I'm really glad I did. My system: Two ATI Radeon 3870 cards 8 GIG RAM 32 bit Windows Vista Catalyst 9.3 Crossfire enabled What I've noticed with this viewer so far: - Ever since I've had this machine I've had to have anti-aliasing turned off in catalyst or the SL viewer would crash when loading SL. Now with the Cool Viewer I can turn it on 4X with temporal anti-aliasing (in Catalyst) and I do see the results in SL. This alone is worth it, no more jaggies! - Turning on water reflections still doesn't work for me. I can do it but performance is so bad I can hardly move. I do think this is related to my video cards, as I can use water reflections on my laptop with nVidia no problem. I would really, really like to be able to have water reflections. Overview: The subtle changes in the viewer interface that I've noticed so far are all good. Building is a little awkward because the viewer allows prims to be oversized - go beyond the 10m limit - but then they just snap down again.

Boy Laneboylane Tuesday, March 31, 2009 4:21:10 PM

@Imagin

Thanks smile. There are still a lot of issues with ATi's OpenGL implementation. It worked in Catalyst 7.11 and earlier. But these older cards also had other problems with SL. Nvidia on the other hand worked almost flawlessly since the beginning. Not much one can do, but I'm happy you can see an improvement for your card. I was lucky enough to be able to return a new 4870 in exchange for Nvidia GTX260 and I do not recommend to buy ATi for SL.

The UI is the older, cleaner one from 1.18 and earlier, it gives you more logical access to functions and it gives you more space on the screen. It's simply more user and builder friendly, and I never understood why LL forced the current UI at users without listening, but history is likely due to repeat itself when you look at the latest SL blog postings about "Viewer 2009".

Your last point, you can use CV with other grids, not only SL. And they allow to create larger prims than the current SL limit. Hopefully SL will change that too again in the future.

Anonymous Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:02:51 PM

Candy writes: ATI 4870 with the 9.1 drivers. With anti-aliasing and anisotropic disabled this version was slightly faster. When I enabled anti-aliasing and anisotropic my framerates went up? As odd as it sounds at least it worked, and I gain about 10-15 FPS using this version than with any other. It is still not as fast as I think it should be, but this is OpenGL and AMD/ATI (I have problems with other openGL software too) so just getting everything to work and running greater than 20FPS is amazing! Thank you!

Anonymous Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:36:52 PM

Damona writes: I'm using the standard Settings for antaliasing in the viewer settings, but turned on in CCP (i have had the same settings for the official viewer too). Now i have round about 30% more FPS as with the official one. It's really cool, a optimized viewer and RLV plugin together in one... GOOD JOB! Damona

Anonymous Tuesday, March 31, 2009 5:51:55 PM

Cheshyr Pontchartrain writes: Works great for me, though I honestly can't say if it's an improvement. I run my PC so far beyond spec it's really impossible to tell if lag is Second Life or the AGP bus. For what it's worth, your new client crashed several times a day under Catalyst 8.12, but once I updated all was well. XP SP3, Catalyst 9.3 (AGP Hotfix), Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3850 512MB 8x AGP

Anonymous Wednesday, April 1, 2009 5:31:59 AM

Anonymous writes: "Imagin writes: .... 8 GIG RAM 32 bit Windows Vista ...." I assume there's a 64bit OS in there to use all the RAM? I tried this viewer out and every time it locks the computer up as it's Loading World, have to do a hard reboot. Using the Coolview Link Intel Q6600 6GB RAM Vista 64bit 3870 with Cat9.3

Boy Laneboylane Wednesday, April 1, 2009 5:39:25 AM

Did you delete all old settings.xml files in your user_settings folder?

I've tested it in WinXP as well as Vista 64 and it works just fine.

Anonymous Wednesday, April 1, 2009 10:54:57 AM

Anonymous writes: I tested that SSE-only Version with and it just gets about 2% to 5% more FPS than the SSE2-Version on my 3GHz Intel E6850 Core 2 Duo Machine with a Nvidia 9600GT and WinXP SP3. Put in a ATI HD3850 and still got about 2% more FPS or such, so the SSE2-Optimization seems a little bit ineffective. Uhm and with that new versions I get about 25% to 30% more FPS than with that bugged previous versions Thaaank you Boy

Boy Laneboylane Wednesday, April 1, 2009 11:07:22 AM

/me smiles

Yeah, that's similar what I saw. SSE and SSE2 do not make a difference. And SSE I felt was a bit faster. I tried it as there was some new detection routine for SSE2 but it doesn't do any good. So back to SSE for all smile.

The main improvements with this patch you will see with 4xxx cards, not with the bit older ones that work with older drivers. ATi in the meantime confirmed issues with their driver that hopefully should be resolved in Catalyst 9.4 to come. Stay tuned smile

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-12139
"Zen Linden added a comment - 20/Mar/09 10:22 AM
Talked to ATI. Looks like it was a problem in the driver of confusing accessing compressed textures vs. uncompressed textures and has been fixed internally by ATI, but probably will not go out by 9.3. 9.4 will most likely clear it up."

Boy Laneboylane Thursday, April 2, 2009 4:44:49 AM

Sorry, I made a mistake, the supposed to be SSE version 3d still had partly SSE2 code and doesn't work on older machines. I tried it on my old laptop and was thinking it would, however this lil sucker has SSE2 smile. New build to come soon.

Anonymous Thursday, April 2, 2009 5:43:41 AM

Valkin writes: It crashes just as it is connecting, every time. If I go to edit, before trying to connect, it crashes. Bootcamp, XP Pro, ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro. I upgraded to 9.3 drivers, and no sl client will start.

Boy Laneboylane Thursday, April 2, 2009 6:12:03 AM

@Valkin
Please download and install the latest R3e version, delete the settings xml files in C:\Documents and Settings\<you>\Application Data\SecondLife\user_settings. Then start the viewer with the included Cool Viewer.lnk shortcut.

Anonymous Thursday, April 2, 2009 6:47:40 AM

Valkin writes: Still does same thing. Dies while initializing multimedia. Went back to 8.43 driver, same results.

Boy Laneboylane Thursday, April 2, 2009 8:35:24 AM

Sorry to hear that Valkin. I tested it on quite a number of machines with different configurations including WinXP and Vista. It's working on all of them. So I assume something is wrong with your particular setup.

You write no SL client at all is working? Please have a look at the "Solid Gold" posting here on the blog, it explains in detail how to do a clean installation. Please follow these steps and install an official viewer from scratch and make sure that you can use it. Afterwards install CV on top of it. Hopefully that fixes it.

Boy Laneboylane Thursday, April 9, 2009 11:09:51 AM

ATI just released new Catalyst 9.4 drivers. Would be great if someone could give them a try and report if they do anything to improve performance and/or fix the rendering issues. Thanks!

TrasheVyper Thursday, April 9, 2009 9:41:55 PM

the speed looks the same not diference i can notice the fonts still broken
VBO still causing the triangle broken graphs but now on some objects for 1 sec then they disapear ...well better than restarting the system but still recomended to keep vbo closed and with fbo render True still aa and af not working

Anonymous Friday, April 10, 2009 10:35:42 AM

Candy writes: I am so sick of ATI I am just going back to Nvidia... Using Catalyst 9.4 the triangles of rainbow doom with VBO enabled flicker and stop, which is an improvement, but still unplayable. RenderUseFBO still turns off AA and AF (so no post processing, which also affects City of Heroes and other OpenGL applications). AMD's continued 'commitement' to OpenGL is just too much corporate lying for me to stomach anymore. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~130913,00.html For all their faults, at least Nvidia's drivers actually work.

Anonymous Friday, April 10, 2009 6:43:15 PM

Sirius Hartshon writes: Not sure if this is helpful, but I've been running this viewer on a NVIDIA 9400 for hours with no problem at all.

Anonymous Saturday, April 11, 2009 9:46:17 PM

Mike Fairport writes: I am stuck with an old ATI Radeon 9600 which uses AGP slot so I can't upgrade the card and the new drivers (9.4 onward) are not valid. I have installed the Catalyst 9.3 software and the display is fine generally but SL crashed within minutes of login. I have now installed the Cool Viewer (thank you, Boy Lane). Initially all I saw was the kaleidoscope display but once I turned off the VBO thing this disappeared. So far (and not very far yet) SL is stable and smooth, even if everyone looks ghostly grey until they come into range. So I would say this was worth trying if you are in a similar situation. [Copied across from SL Forum]

Boy Laneboylane Sunday, April 12, 2009 6:07:11 AM

@Mike

As you have an older card you could try Catalyst 7.11 which should be the last version with properly working OpenGL implementation. There are also 3rd party drivers that backport to OpenGL from 7.11. Look for DNA drivers.

Newer Catalysts are PITA.

Anonymous Tuesday, April 14, 2009 6:51:52 AM

Mike Fairport writes: Update - I tried the Catalyst 7.11. It was better than the 9.3 but still tended to crash. I have continued with 9.3 and Cool Viewer and so far it still works. I even managed to run with graphics on Medium instead of Low, although it was a bit sticky. Will look around for the 3rd party drivers you mention.

Anonymous Sunday, April 19, 2009 2:03:00 PM

Mike Fairport writes: Update - just to say extensive use now and almost no crashes if I keep graphics setting low. I think somehow the official viewer causes the card to overheat in a way that the CoolViewer doesn't - also see comment in Mac Technical Feedback in SL support that seems to support this.

Anonymous Thursday, May 28, 2009 4:24:40 PM

JeanRicard writes: Q1: Is this still an issue or have the latest ATI drivers fixed it? I run a very old ATI card, the X300 with 128meg, and I slug around always in the red, way less then 10 fps. If you think Your patches & viewer are still a good move I would be pleased to give it a shot and do some testing.... Q2: That same card flakes badly with the realXtend viewer. Have you ever looked at that code? I know time to spend a few hundred dollars, but I am stubbron. Thanks, BTW, great work, on all your product, scripts etc. JR http://jeanricardbroek-architect.blogspot.com/

Boy Laneboylane Friday, May 29, 2009 1:57:51 AM

@JR
1) ATI screwed up OpenGL with Catalyst 7.12 and all releases since. Not sure if this indeed affects your older card but there may potentially be a better performance with an OpenGL fixed viewer. If you look at the latest CV versions there is the full installer which comes with SSE and the normal OpenGL as in the official viewer. There is also a SSE2/fixed OpenGL executable. You can try and compare both directly if your machine supports SSE2 (i.e. older AthlonXP do not have SSE2).

2) AFAIK RealXtend renders things differently using OGRE. That's different from SL. I have only tried it once a long time ago and can't really comment on it. Doing a quick search people reported performance problems in OGRE mode.

Anonymous Thursday, September 17, 2009 3:59:08 AM

Talisien writes: Does anyone have a link to the 7.11 drivers? My wife currently uses an older gateway laptop. Windows Vista Home Premium (build 6000) 1.60 gigahertz Intel Core Duo 1 gig of ram ATI RADEON XPRESS 200M Series I know it's not up to official specs, but it should run sl with reduced functionality. From what I can tell, it's the ati card that's keeping it from running. every version of sl and 3rd party viewers crashes on startup after the first time. first run dies when i click the "you don't meet our specs" message on startup. any ideas?

Boy Laneboylane Thursday, September 17, 2009 10:06:07 AM

@Talisien
I would have said try the DNA 8.12 drivers, they backport to OpenGL from 7.11 but are otherwise more up to date. But the official website seems to be down and can't find a mirror (www.donotargue.com).

Normal ATI 7.11 drivers are here: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1786

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