Help the First Look viewer Development team

You are familiar with the First Look Viewer, aren’t you? Just in case you aren’t, I will do a quick recap. First Look viewer is a beta-test browser that runs on the main grid. There have been sever rather nice improvements made in the way textures are rendered, including the order, and the amount of cache alloted to store textures and several technical advances which is hoped to make Second Life a little better and easier to get along with.

Well the First Look Viewer appears to be reaching the end of the testing phase and is getting close to becoming “The official Second Life viewer. I only tonight downloaded the latest version of First Look and headed over to First Look Island to put the viewer through a series of tests, which with the users help are monitored and Frame rate is recorded and submitted to the First Look team.

When one first reaches the island and clicks on the sign, they are given a note card with the following information.

Thank you for volunteering to test the next version of Second Life!

We want to know how Second Life performs on YOUR computer. This is a comparison test between your frame rate in the 1.13 version viewer and the First Look viewer. We will be making a notecard that looks something like this. <􀀁>

1) The first thing we want to do is reset the SecondLife settings to default, so that this is a fair test. If you want to set aside your settings and restore them later, follow the following steps. (If you don’t care about keeping your current settings, skip to step 2)

The easiest way to do this is to rename your SecondLife settings folder. This will allow you to restore your settings later.
On a PC:
* Open “C:\Documents and Settings\(yourusername)\Application Data\” and rename the SecondLife folder to SecondLife.backup. (NOTE: If you cannot see the files or folders, go to the Tools menu, choose Options, go to the View tab, and select Show Hidden Files and Folders. Then click OK.) Instructions for restoring your setting are at the end of this test.

On a Mac:
* Open the folder at “Home(usually your name)/Library/Application Support/” and rename the SecondLife folder to SecondLife.backup. Instructions for restoring your setting are at the end of this test.

2) Next, let’s uninstall SecondLife.
On a PC:
* Uninstall Second Life using the Add/Remove Programs tool in your Windows Control Panel.

On a Mac:
* Delete the Second Life Application from the Applications folder or the Desktop, or wherever you put it when you installed Second Life.

3) Visit http://secondlife.com/download to download and install the latest release.

4) Log in and teleport to “First Look” island

5) Create a new notecard in your inventory. Rename the notecard to your Avatar’s name.

6) Let’s put your system data in the notecard - open “About Second Life” from the Help menu, click inside the top half of the window, select all the text (ctrl-A), copy it (ctrl-C), and paste it into the notecard (ctrl-V).

7) If you know what resolution your desktop is running at, note that.

There are 4 test stations, so lets add numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 to the note card.

9) Open your “Statistics Bar” from the View menu so you can see your framerate (FPS). Close your minimap if it’s open.

10) Go stand on the red arrow in front of box “1″ and look in the direction the arrow is pointing.

11) Enter mouselook mode (View menu > Mouselook) and move your mouse to center your view on the red sphere.

12) Wait for your Bandwidth to drop below 30 kbps. When your framerate (FPS) <􀀀> becomes stable, note it on the line corresponding to this test.

13) Repeat steps 10 - 12 for the other 3 stations.

14) Click “SAVE” on your notecard.

15) Next, if you already have the First Look viewer installed, uninstall it by following step 2.

16) Install the “First Look” viewer. (http://secondlife.com/community/firstlook.php)

17) Log in and go to “First Look” island

18) Open the notecard again.

19) Paste your system data into the notecard again like we did in step 6. (it’s probably the same, but we want to make sure)

20) Do steps 7 - 14 to collect framerate data for the “First Look” viewer.

21) Drop the notecard on the box marked “4″ at the 4th station. The box will confirm that the notecard was accepted.

22) Restore your SecondLife settings. You only need to do this step if you renamed your SecondLife settings folder in step 1.
On PC:
* Delete the “C:\Documents and Settings\(yourusername)\Application Data\SecondLife” folder.
* Rename the “Secondlife.backup” folder at “C:\Documents and Settings\(yourusername)\Application Data\” to “SecondLife”

On Mac:
* Delete the “Home(usually your name)/Library/Application Support/SecondLife” folder.
* Rename the “Secondlife.backup” folder at “Home(usually your name)/Library/Application Support/” to “SecondLife”

Thank you for helping improve Second Life!

What is actually going on here is the First Look team is gathering information on how different computers function with First Look installed. They are trying to gather enough information to set default settings to be the most effective with the different types of Machines and Graphic cards etc.
I would hope many of you reading this will go to Download First Look pay close attention to the instructions above and run through the 4 stations on First Look Island (opens SL) once with the latest verson of the Second Life viewer fresh installed and again with the First Look viewer fresh installed. Record the requested information and drop it into the box at the 4th test station. This information will help the programmers set up the Viewer to to maximize setting for the variety of machines and cards in use.