On the Effects tab of LDView's preferences dialog there is a Transparency box, and in this box is Sort check box (which is enabled by default). If you uncheck the check box, LDView will exhibit similar behavior to that described above, although in LDView all transparent shapes are always drawn last, so they can never occlude opaque geometry, only other transparent geometry.
The Sort check box causes all transparent geometry in the entire model to be put into one huge list of triangles (as the last step of the file load). Then, each frame, these triangles are sorted (mosty) back to front. (I say mostly, because doing a really good job of sorting them takes more time, and usually doesn't produce a very visible difference in quality. Additionally, since triangles are free to intersect, it's not actually possible to fully sort them unless intersecting triangles are first chopped up.) There are other more advanced ways to draw transparent geometry that don't require all the transparent triangles to be sorted every frame, but they're much more high-tech.
The Sort check box causes all transparent geometry in the entire model to be put into one huge list of triangles (as the last step of the file load). Then, each frame, these triangles are sorted (mosty) back to front. (I say mostly, because doing a really good job of sorting them takes more time, and usually doesn't produce a very visible difference in quality. Additionally, since triangles are free to intersect, it's not actually possible to fully sort them unless intersecting triangles are first chopped up.) There are other more advanced ways to draw transparent geometry that don't require all the transparent triangles to be sorted every frame, but they're much more high-tech.