Unity-Based SL Viewer — Test Client Available in 2 Weeks!
Well this is exciting — the first video preview of Crystal Frost, the upcoming third party viewer for Second Life that runs in Unity. Created by SLer and longtime developer Berry Bunny (Kallisti#2038 on Discord), the frame rate is a bit slow, but the graphic enhancements are pretty clear. And yes, the wandering cube is the avatar.
“Rendering avatars requires decoding rigging data from meshes,” Kallisti tells me, “and I currently have not looked into how to do that just yet.”
She tells me a playable version will be available “in a couple of weeks tops”, first for people who are members of her Patreon.
“The first public test build will be in about a month.”
As for what you’re looking at in the preview, Bunny’s already working on fixing the issues:
“The memory leak issue that held up development for 6 months has been 100% absolutely and unequivocally fixed, and I’m now using less RAM than Firestorm does, while rendering everything at full 100% highest detail. However the framerate is much lower, but I know why and i’m working on a fix.”
Far as frame rate, it’s about 30 FPS now. “But I’m going to do some dynamic occlusion culling and implement level of detail like Linden Lab clients have So about a third of my frame rate with Firestorm. But Firestorm, like all Linden Lab-based viewers have occlusion culling. I don’t, at all. Once I do the frame rate should be ridiculously higher.”
Here’s another side-by-side demo with Firestorm, “demonstrating updating object positions, rotations, and scales, including for child prims.”
And yes, Crystal Frost will likely work on mobile “in the future, but at current there’s a lot of optimization that needs to be done to support mobile. in the future.”
Go here to join the Crystal Frost Discord for updates.
Have A Great Week From All Of Us At Zoha Islands/Fruit Islands