Reading Radar

Normally I’m not a big fan of removing posts from a blog. But my last one, I decided wasn’t productive, so I did. There was no name calling or anything… well, I did make a joke about a leper calling me stumpy, but that was in humor. And if you can’t laugh at lepers.. wait. SCRATCH THAT! Last thing I need is to reconsider yet another post. Ok, um. Start over.

Let’s see, what’s been happening with SL (this is my smoke and mirrors part where you forget that I posted anything and that I was ever born)? Umm. A new client version came out, the official 1.21 version (1.21.6.99587, if you really need to know). As always I’ve read a lot of talk from people afraid to switch, many of whom haven’t actually used any of the 1.21 series in RC form, but I found the RC’s very stable and a worthwhile upgrade myself. Again, I realize my situation may not be representative, and fear, loathing, and computer self-flogging might occur if you use it without being born with a silver spoon in your mouth as I was, apparently. I’m sure I’m the only person to run it with success and good performance.

That reminds me of a thread of comments on a blog post that was linked here, where someone claimed the ATI X1300 couldn’t run SL with higher than a few frames per second… um, my Mac Pro does it with high 20’s to low 50’s fps performance. Someone ELSE commented that they have an nvidia 8800 and can’t run it with greater than 5 - 7 fps, while I have an nivdia 8600M (that’s mobile) and the Macbook Pro and I get 20’s - high 30’s on that machine. What am I saying? It’s very.. well, variable. Assuming that because you’re having issues is all down to the graphics card solely may not be accurate. I think anyone with an open mind should be willing to admit that much.

A couple cool things about the 1.21 series: you can compile scripts in Mono and prim touch face and locations are sent from the client to the server, meaning in theory you can make huds, control panels, interactive billboards, etc, with much fewer prims because you can see where on the prim they click, eliminating the need for separate prims for each button. Just put it all on the texture and slap it on there. In REALITY, though, that’s a 1.21 and up feature, and 1.21 is optional. So frankly it’s useless as a lot of people will be running 1.20.whatever for a long time most likely. And I don’t even know if 1.19 is still able to log onto the grid or not.

What else? Eh, who cares. By now I’ve convinced you there’s nothing to read here, but there’s already people willing to evangelize that fact for me, and you’re ready to move on. Me too. Tomorrow will be a better day. Yay?