Cool VL Viewer forum

Hello Henri.

I'm afraid something is wrong with this week's installer (Linux 64). Firstly, it doesn't find the snowglobe archive neither on the Net not locally, although I am pointing it to it. Secondly, though it allegedly installs the binary (and warns about the features (The Cool VL Viewer will therefore not have all its features enabled.), it doesn't create any directory in the desired location. I tried silent, console and graphical mode. I also downloaded the installer executable twice in case the download was corrupted. And yes, I have write access. I also tried with (last week's) 1.26.4.22 which installs fine.

Could you take a look at it please?

Thanks.

EDIT: Example:

The installer works just fine. You probably don't run it under the right user and don't have the read/write permissions for the directories you point it to... Or pehaps is it an unicode issue (seeing the "τεστ2" directory name in the path): just use plain ASCII directory names in that case (which you should *really* always be doing anyway... very few programs can deal properly with unicode in file names...).

My original thoughts, but then I tried 1.26.4.22 too and it worked fine. I have to insist.

With CoolVLViewer-1.26.5.1-Linux-x86-Setup installer I obtain this:
"Missing components!
Some proprietary component could not be installed.The Cool VL Viewer therefore not have all its features enabled. You might be unable to use Voice, and the texture decoding might be much slower than what it should be..."
Subsequent pop-up from installer confirms a successful installation but I have nothing in the interested directory.
The precedent installer v1.26.5.0 worked well, viewer ran faster than 1.26.4 only (15 percent more as fps) only with problem in opening directory for saving snapshots (crash).
I use the 1.25.5.X series only with open source graphic drivers.
OS: Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle), Kernel: 3.5.0-1.fc17.i686 (i686), Desktop: KDE 4.8.4, Display Server: X Server 1.12.2, Display Driver: radeon 6.99.99, OpenGL: 2.1 Mesa 8.1-devel (git-5d5af7d) Gallium 0.4, Compiler: GCC 4.7.0 20120507 + LLVM 3.

Errata corrige:
I use the "1.26.5.X" series only with open source graphic drivers.
(This new evolution would be a good occasion for changing the number version with something more adherent...)

OK, I found an issue with the installer for Linux when doing a clean install (i.e. when not updating from v1.26.5.0).

I just uploaded a new installer that solves this issue (CoolVLViewer-1.26.5.1-Linux-x86-Setup2).

Ah, wonderful! Thank you, Henri.



Ah, you are just the one I was looking for! I am thinking of buying an ATI card. How is the open source driver working for you? My current Intel card also gives OpenGL 2.1 (with latest Mesa), but with renderer 2.6 I only have basic and atmospheric shaders (no bump mapping and shiny nor water reflection), while with renderer 3.3 I have none. How does this work with ATI's open source drivers? Because I'd rather not use proprietary ones, for philosophical reasons.

Do NOT buy ATI for Linux !!! ATI doesn't support their own old graphics card and after only a few years (3 to 5, when you are lucky), you will be left with old drivers that won't install/compile with newer Linux kernel and/or newer Xorg. I had this problem with a notebook (that got a Mobility Radeon 9700 and that is now stuck with old catalyst drivers that will never be updated by ATI and that can't run on anything newer than a 2009 distro). As for Open Source drivers, just forget about them ! They are waaaaaaaay too sloooooooooowwww to run the viewer properly.

My advice (more like a very strong recommendation): buy NVIDIA ! Granted, the graphics drivers are closed sources and proprietary, but they rock and are continuously updated (at least one update a month), and *all* old NVIDIA hardware is still supported today (with old drivers updated each time it is needed to run them with newer Linux kernels or newer Xorg servers).

I will also add that ATI's OpenGL implementation sucks big time (the number of hacks in the viewer sources that are meant to make it compatible with ATI can testify for this).

The close source is what concerns me (I don't even use flash any more for the same reason), plus the constant reports I read here about buggy releases from Nvidia and Linus' rant about it, but I get your point. Thanks for the advice.

Closed sources is not an issue as long as decent support is provided and since the drivers and their support is also "free" (or included in the hardware price that you pay for only once)...

There have been some buggy releases, or more exactly releases that didn't work properly on some among the myriad of graphics card models, but with NVIDIA, when there's a bug, you just report it and they *do* work on it to get it fixed (ATI *never* worked around the hardware bug in Mobility 9600/9700/9800 cards that makes Linus freeze solid each time the mouse pointer changes shape while both the CPU and GPU are loaded at 100%... Even after I pointed them to the fix that existed in the open source drivers for their own card !).... Plus, with NVIDIA, there are always at least one current release driver and one current beta driver, and I never saw a case where neither would work for my system...

Linus is not a god... Like anyone, he can and may express his opinions, but I think he went over the top with an undue rant with this one.