Updates for the week ending: Sunday, May 31st, 2015
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 3.7.29.301305, May 28 (formerly the Avatar Layer Limits RC viewer allows users to wear up to 60 wearable layers (jackets, shirts, tattoo, alpha, etc.) in any combination ) download page, release notes
Attachment fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird) updated to version 3.7.29.301943 on May 21 – core updates: a number of fixes for various attachment issues (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.2.6 on May 30th with a bug fix release 2.4.2.7 on June 1st – core updates: revised Build tools floater layouts (release notes)
UKanDo updated to version 3.7.29.28115 on May 31 – core updates: keeping pace with recent LL releases (layer limits), and RLV releases (release notes).
V1-style
Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.44, and the Experimental branch to version 1.26.13.13, both on May 30th (release notes).
Black Dragon 2.4.2.6 was released on Saturday, May 30th 2015, followed by a rapid-fire bug fix update with the release of 2.4.2.7 on Monday, June 1st.
Both updates focus on the Build tools floater and its associated tabs, which Niran has completely overhauled and realigned in an attempt to make it a lot less cluttered-looking and easier to read, as well as adding a degree of consistency of presentation between the tabs in the floater and the types of tool options (spinners and sliders) seen in the Build floater when compared to other tool floaters in the viewer.
My personal opinion on the changes is that is that he’s largely succeeded. There is a linear tidiness to the tabs in his revised Build floater that works naturally for those used to scanning left-to-right, and top down. everything is pretty much orderly placed, and the flow through the various tabs is logical and easy to follow.
The official viewer’s Build floater Object tab (l) and Niran’s revised layout in black Dragon (r) – click any image for full size
Buttons with the Black Dragon floater are more obvious / clearer – radio buttons, for example are better defined when selected, what might be slightly confusing buttons (such as the spanner for changing the group attributes) are now clearly labelled, and buttons for pop-out options like the Grid Options are also more in keeping with the style used elsewhere in the viewer.
The official viewer’s Build floater Features tab (l) and Niran’s revised layout in black Dragon (r)
Some of the changes are a lot more noticeable in this regard than others – as with the General and Features tabs – both of which are compared to their official viewer equivalents in the images above – and the Texture tab. The changes to the Content and Object tabs are more subtle in nature – but given they were relatively straightforward to understand, then this is in keeping with making balanced changes.
The Texture tab now has clearer map selection check boxes (outlined) and individual lock options for applying rotations, offsets, etc., via the spinners (arrowed)
In terms of the Texture tab, Niran has also revised the map selection indicator from a radio button to a check box – again adding consistency to the use of check boxes in the floater – and has also added an individual lock option to each of the three map types.
The check boxes actually do make it easier to see which of the three maps (diffuse, normal or specular) has been selected, while the three individual locks now allow greater flexibility in how changes to repeats, offsets and rotations are applied.
For example, if you want to have them applied across all three maps, regardless of which one you have selected, just click on the icons to lock them – any change make to the offsets, etc., on one map will automatically be applied to all three, regardless of which one you are working on. If you want to change the offsets to each map independently of the others, simply unlock them (the default) – any changes made the offset, etc., spinners will only apply to the selected map. And you can also obviously have one set of rotations applied to two out of the three maps and level the third to be independently set.
The Textures tab also now makes use of sliders as well as spinners for applying Glow, Transparency (Alpha %), Glossiness and Environment to faces / objects, making it easy to apply quick changes before fine-tuning them with the spinners. It was actually two of these sliders that prompted the 2.4.2.7 release. While testing the 2.4.2.6 release for this review, I noted the Glow and Alpha % sliders were not working as expected. A quick IM to Niran, and he dived in and fixed the issue. The updates to these two sliders mark the only changes between 2.4.2.6 and 2.4.2.7.
Snapshot Floater Preview Update
The other significant update in the 2.4.2.6/7 release lies with the Unified Snapshot floater. In the 2.4.2.5 updates (which I reviewed here), Niran introduced a separate, resizeable preview panel as an alternative to the preview pane built-in to the floater. He’s now further revised the snapshot floater so that the built-in preview pane displays a high-resolution preview image, as with the alternative preview panel.
The preview pane for the snapshot floater now displays high-resolution preview images
The new preview panel offers a much improved image, and further enhances an option a lot of people would like to see adopted by other viewers in some way.
Feedback
Overall, the core Build tools updates in these releases – to me – do much to enhance the Build floater. As noted, some of the changes are a little more subtle than others, but overall they all work to present a far tidier set of tabs within the floater, and offer a more-or-less consistent set of control options in terms of the use of spinners, sliders, etc. One might have a small niggle with the colour swatch panels for the diffuse and specular maps perhaps not being obvious, but it’s really hard to see how else they could be presented without losing the order and layout Niran has achieved within the Texture tab.
Towards the top of this post, I pointed to these releases marking the beginning of the end of Niran’s active development of the Black Dragon viewer He’s aiming to slow things down from release 2.4.5). Since releasing the 2.4.2.7 update he has explained some of his reasons for this.
The important point to note here are the word “active” – hence my emphasis above. He’s not given up on everything within the viewer; he’s allowing himself space to refocus on other things than need attention (like that irritating thing we call “real life”) and to refresh himself. He’ll still be poking and tweaking things in the viewer in the future; it just won’t be his primary focus. And after the amount of time and effort he has poured into his viewers, frankly, he should be respected for his decision, and offered kudos for all he has offered the community.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to look forward to seeing what future updates to Black Dragon bring.
The planned RC deployment scheduled for Wednesday, May 27th was rolled back as a result of a back-end issue. This currently leaves grid as a whole on the same server release.
Commenting on the roll-back at the Server Beta User Group (SBUG) meeting on Thursday, May 28th, Simon Linden said, “there was a minor issue but it was worth reverting; some internal tools weren’t running right and sending postcards was broken. [However] that code will likely be back next week, [as] I’ve already fixed the bug.”
These issues aren’t related to the region restart issues / caps failure people have noticed with some regions following a rolling restart, and as reported in my week 21/2 report, and which Simon indicates have yet to be looked into in-depth.
SL Viewer
Thursday, May 28th saw the Avatar Layer Limits viewer, version 3.7.29.301305, updated to the de facto release viewer. This viewer removed the limit of only being able to wear a maximum of 5 items per clothing layer (e.g. a maximum of 5 jackets and 5 shirts and 5 pants, etc), with a global limit of 60 layers which can be worn in any combination (e.g. you can wear 58 jacket layers, a tattoo layer and a pants layer if you wish).
This leaves two RCs in the release channel at present: the Avatar Attachment fixes RC (aka Project Big Bird and currently version 3.7.29.301943), and the Experience Keys viewer (currently version 3.8.0.300963, and which is awaiting the completion of back-end updates to the Experience Keys services). Both of these viewers will be updated to match the new release viewer, and it is anticipated that they will be joined by a new Snowstorm RC viewer in the near future (see below), which is currently awaiting some fixes prior to release.
General
Project news coming out of the Lab is a little light at the moment. This shouldn’t be taken to mean there isn’t a lot happening with Second Life. There are several projects that are in the pipeline – Viewer-Managed Marketplace and Experience Keys (/ Tools) being two that people are aware of.
The Lab don’t talk too much ahead of time as to what is going on, but it’s clear to see from Simon’s back-end work around avatar counts in regions, that there are various things which are being looked at. Again, we only recently had it confirmed that the Lab have, as a part of continuing work on improving the CDN services, shifted to another provider – and they are looking to move the delivery of more asset types to the CDN in the coming months.
In the meantime, we can expect to see more RC viewers appearing – notably the next Snowstorm RC viewer with Avatar Complexity, and which should include STORM-2082, the ability to save and load graphics settings to assist with viewer performance, depending on the environment you’re in.
Jonathan Yap is working on the ability to various graphics settings in the official viewer, allowing users to quickly change between saved settings depending on their performance needs – this should be appearing in an upcoming Snowstorm contributions viewer (note the finished panel may not resemble the one shown left, above)
Update, May 28th: a back-end issue with the RC deployment has meant that all three RC channels have been rolled-back to the their previous release, leaving the grid as a whole on the same server release.
A change logic on accessing group member lists for large groups
Internal server logging changes.
SL Viewer
Due to Monday being Memorial Day in the United States, the Lab was closed for normal office business, and there was no meeting to discuss potential RC viewer promotions. However, the most recent update to the Attachment Fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird, currently version 3.7.29.301943) is showing a must reduced crash rate compared to the previous release (and which prevented it from being promoted to the de facto release viewer).
The crash rate is still slightly high than for the current release viewer, but speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, May 26th, Oz Linden described it as “probably not a statistically significant difference”. Whether this means the viewer will be promoted to release status later in the week or not, remains to be seen.
Increasing the Number of Avatars Per Region
Simon Linden: looking at ways an means to make it easier for the simulator and a viewer to better handle large numbers of avatars
“There’s one change that I will follow up on … I added a way so I can adjust the ‘max avatars in a region’ setting. I’d like to do an experiment soon and see what falls apart if we can get over 100 people into a region,” Simon Linden said at the simulator UG when discussing the upcoming RC deployment.
“This is purely experimental and there are no plans for changing the SL limits,” he went on. “But sometimes regions hit 100 [and] it would be nice if the viewer and simulator handled that better.”
There is already an additional means en route to the viewer by which users can have greater control over how avatars around them in a region are rendered by the viewer, Avatar Complexity, when will draw avatars above a rendering limit set by the user as a solid colour (the so-called “Jelly Baby” avatars). The will work alongside the existing Avatar Imposters capability already in the viewer.
However, in terms of his experiment, Simon suggested that one way to improve things might be for the viewer to simply not draw everyone within a region; although how this would work, and the criteria used to determine what avatars are drawn and which aren’t, does require careful consideration. Simon suggested the viewer might simply skip drawing those avatars that are furthest away once a threshold number of avatars in the region has been reached. Another (suggest by a meeting attendee) would be for the control to be via the Max Number of Avatars settings within the viewer – so that once exceeded, avatars are again simply not rendered.
As noted, Simon’s work is purely experimental, and primarily aimed at helping the Lab understand what might be done to improve things where there are large gatherings of avatars, and to perhaps try out one or two ideas based on what they learn.
Simon’s Rendering Tricks
As a part of the discussion on avatar rendering, Simon handed out a note card of tips and trick for improving your performance when dealing with complex avatars. While this includes the debugs which will form a part of the new Avatar Complexity functionality, which will be appearing in a a Snowstorm RC viewer soon, as well as suggestions which may already be known, I’m including his suggestions in full here for reference:
From Advanced > Show Debug Settings, set:
RenderAutoHideSurfaceAreaLimit 0
RenderAutoMuteByteLimit 0
RenderAutoMuteFunctions 7
RenderAutoMuteLogging False
RenderAutoMuteRenderWeightLimit 350000
RenderAutoMuteSurfaceAreaLimit 150
In preferences / graphics, change “Max # of non-imposter avatars” to something like 8. Also try ctrl-alt-shift-4 to hide avatars, or ctrl-alt-shift-2 for alphas.
Note the two debugs shown in green are those related directly to Avatar Complexity and drawing avatars as “Jelly Babies”. Note that RenderAutoMuteFunctions must be set to 7 in order for this to work. Also note that the RenderAutoMuteRenderWeightLimit of 350,000 is purely an advisory starting point. The Lab estimate that this will reduce the very top 3% of very rendering-intensive avatars as solid colours. You may find you have to set the value somewhat lower in certain environments – such as night clubs and dance venues – in order for it to be effective. I’ve personally found that 150-200K tends to be required in very busy ballrooms, etc.
On Saturday, May 23rd, NiranV Dean released version 2.4.2.5 of his Black Dragon viewer, which brings with it three core updates:
Revisions to the Unified Snapshot floater
An experimental cinematic camera
A “lock” feature to synchronise map changes (diffuse, normal and specular) across all three channels simultaneously.
Unified Snapshot Floater Updates
The snapshot floater updates include:
An option to save the snapshot upload type
Automatic file format changes when switching to profile/inventory upload and back
Fixes for auto-refresh
Improved world freeze – the entire world is now frozen, and allows proper camming around.
However, what is likely to find favour with a lot of users (assuming it is adopted by other viewers, including LL’s) is the ability to now preview snapshots in a separate, resizeable texture panel.
The alternative snapshot preview panel can be accessed via the Preview button in the Unified Snapshot Floater
This is enabled by a new Preview button in the snapshot floater, as shown above. However, do note that this does not “tear off” the existing preview pane, but actually opens a separate panel, linked to the floater – the original preview pane will remain open as well, until such time as it is closed using the << button at the top of the snapshot floater. Also, as it is a separate panel, the resizeable preview panel must also be closed separately to the snapshot floater.
Once opened, the alternate preview panel can be resized by dragging from the sides, the top or bottom edge or from the corners to more readily suit your requirements. note also that in doing so, the image will retain the correct aspect ratio.
The additional preview panel can be resized via dragging from the top / bottom / sides / corners
I did encounter a slight problem with the updated snapshot floater – not with the new preview panel, but in the fact that the floater appears to be locked into saving images to disk in PNG format without my having changed any install defaults. On selecting either JPEG or BMP, the floater defaulted back to PNG.
Cinematic Camera
The Cinematic Camera is an experimental option, enabled through a debug setting, UseCinematicCamera. The camera will track head movements as you move – and is most effective if you’re using one of the Black Dragon over-the-shoulder third-person views. You’ll need to ensure your avatar’s head movement is free to follow the mouse as well.
If I’m honest, I didn’t have too much success playing with it – but that could easily be down to me doin’ it wrong. However, Niran has provided a video which may help to demonstrate things:
Texture Sync Lock
The “Lock” option on the Texture tab of the Build floater operates in a similar manner to the Synchronise option found in the official viewer. When set, it ensures that changes made to the spinners for repeats, offsets and rotation on a texture are applied across all three materials maps.
This allows the viewer to use a single set of spinners for adjusting offsets, etc., against a set of maps applied to a surface / object and ensures they are applied across all three maps correctly.
Niran also provides some advice when using the Lock capability:
Note that this might cause the spinners and/or faces to revert sometimes, this is NORMAL behaviour, it’s due to lag which was already present long before this change (sadly). Usually happens if you use the spinners via mouse repeatedly, to prevent it most of the time you should type in your desired values directly and press enter ONCE then wait a bit.
Feedback
An interesting set of updates, and the ability to use a resizeable preview panel for snapshots could fine some popular support given some people have found the default preview panel size in the Unified Snapshot floater to be overwhelming. As such, it’ll be interesting to see how the Lab and other TPVs option to implement this particular change or not (I understand Niran will be contributing the updates to LL, if he has not already done so, as he did with the original Unified Snapshot floater code).
Note also that as well as the features outlined above, this release includes a number of fixes, updates and changes – please refer to the release notes for details of these.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, May 24th, 2015
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Attachment fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird) updated to version 3.7.29.301943 on May 21 – core updates: a number of fixes for various attachment issues (download and release notes)
Black Dragon updated to version 2.4.2.5 on May 23rd – core updates: updates unified snapshot floater; experimental cinematic camera (release notes)
Restrained Love updated to version 2.9.10 on May 19th, and then to version 2.9.11 on May 25th – core updates: bug fixes (release notes: 2.9.10 and 2.9.11)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 