Category: SL Tech

2015 viewer release summaries: week 9

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updates for the week ending: Sunday, March 1st, 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

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V3-style

  • No updates.

V1-style

  • Cool VL Viewer – Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.33, and Experimental branch to 1.26.13.1, both on February 28th (release notes for both).
  • Singularity release a supplemental update, version 1.8.6.6157 on February 27th – core updates: a fix for AMD users wishing to use the latest AMD Catalyst drivers (release notes)

Mobile / Other Clients

  • LittleSight for Android updated to version 1.6.1.0 on February 22nd – core update: changing the default log-in to a user’s home location to avoid log-in failures.

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Volumetric lighting: soon for SL?

Posted on by Inara Pey

Blackdragon logoUpdate, March 11th: The capabilities described below are now available in Black Dragon 2.4.1.9, which I’ve overviewed here.

Update, March 4th: Niran is continuing to experiment with shaders, and has posted an interesting snapshot taken under water.

NiranV Dean has always enjoyed a reputation for pushing the limits of the the viewer, first within his Niran’s Viewer, and more recently with his Black Dragon viewer.

A lot of the work he does builds on code developed by Tofu Buzzard – such as with his implementation of screen space reflections and, more recently, Godrays. This work, coupled with his own, has enabled him to earn a reputation for producing a viewer with rich graphical capabilities.

Now Niran is pushing the limits again, using both his one code and elements such a Tofu’s Godrays to bring something to Sl people have long wanted to see: volumetric lighting effects.

On Sunday, March 1st, he released a stunning video showing the work to date. When watching it, be aware that while the camera is moving, everything else is static, other than the grating in the ceiling of the room. When you’ve got that, note how the grating not only casts shadows on the floor, it actually breaks up the light falling through it, just as would happen in real life where light rays hit a solid object and are broken up by it.

“The original Godrays are from tofu,” Niran says of the work. “The problem was, they only worked on objects and terrain; they got cut off on the sky. So I’ve worked on that, and added some code to my viewer, which was really the first iteration of things we saw on my viewer [the updates with Godrays from 2014].

“Since then, I’ve been working on improved resolution and smoother Godrays, moving things to another shader, which brought it’s own problems. Most recently I’ve been moving to another shader for depth of field and improved shadows.”

Interest in the work Niran has been doing has been expressed by the Lab, and he will be offering it as a code contribution for them to consider, although he still has some further work to do.

The first of this is to introduce a global fading effect on the Godrays such that they appear to fade away as an observer looks away from the sun. The basic code is already there, but is disabled in the video, as Niran is still working on things. He hopes to be able to offer the fading effect as a toggle on / off option once the work has been completed.

“The other work still to be done is with particles,” he told me. “Since these Godrays are in the final depth of field shader, they also share the same problems. So, if I can move it into a separate shader on top of everything else, it should resolve the remaining issues, and everything should be good to go.

Of course, contributing code to the Lab doesn’t always mean adoption by the Lab; there can be many intervening factors that prevent the latter. However, Niran is quietly confident his work will be adopted. But if not, “well, there’s always my viewer with it!” he tells me with a wink and a smile.

SL project updates week 9/2: TPV meeting, SL roadmap notes

Posted on by Inara Pey

Less Than Three, Special One; Inara Pey, February 2015, on Flickr Less Than Three, Special One (Flickr) – blog post

The following notes are primarily taken from the TPV Developer meeting held on Friday, February 27th,  a video of which is included at the end of the article (my thanks as always to North for recording it and providing it for embedding), and any time stamps contained within the following text refer to it.

Server Deployments Week 9 Re-cap

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 24th
  • On Wednesday, February 25th, all three RC channels received the same server maintenance package, which comprises:
    • A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
    • Improvement to server logging.

SL Viewer

Viewer-Managed Marketplace Project Viewer

[0:35] As noted at the last TPV Developer meeting, the VMM functionality still has some issues that are being worked on. some of these appear to be on the back-end of things, rather than within the viewer itself. As such, it is unlikely that there will be further updates to the viewer in the near future while these are being addressed.

Experience Tools Viewer

[0:50] The Lab is also continuing to work on the back-end of things for Experience Tools / Keys. This work is apparently focused on overall robustness of the service prior to fully deploying it to the grid. As no viewer-side changes are anticipated as a result of this work, the viewer itself should be ready for promotion to the de facto release viewer once the Lab is ready to go with things.

Avatar Hover Height Project Viewer

[4:21]  Vir Linden is continuing to work on a couple of the bugs uncovered during testing. One of these is related to leg position issues, which can see an avatar’s leg “buckle” if the position is adjusted downwards such that the feet sink into the ground, becoming more and more pronounced the lower the avatar is set. Currently, there is no ETA on providing a fix for this.

Mesh Importer Viewer

[5:47 – via chat]  It is anticipated that the Mesh Importer project viewer (currently version ) will receive an update in week #10.

Tools Update Viewer

[6:56] A line has been drawn under the current set of changes to the viewer-side build tools, so the aim is now to get the viewer in the release channel.

However, there are further changes already being queued behind the current set of updates, many of them contributed by open-source developers, which the Lab believe will further improve the viewer build process. As such, it is likely that there will be further updates to the viewer in relation to the build tools, most likely in the form of a “build clean-up” viewer, which will likely include all of the agreed updates which didn’t make it into the current version of the build tools viewer code.

The hope is that, moving forward, all viewers – LL’s own and TPVs  – can, as far as possible, be built using the same tool set the only difference being whether or not a TPV sets a build switch to use proprietary libraries (e.g. Havok) or not.

Group Chat

[2:10] The Lab continues to roll-out updates as a result of this work, and updates focused on the issue of group chat servers themselves stalling, and they are confident that progress is being made. This is supported by anecdotal evidence from moderators of large groups with active chat, who are indicating the instances of visible server slow-down / stalling have been decreasing over the past week or so. Commenting on this during the TPVD meeting, Oz Linden said, “we haven’t declared victory in this yet, but it’s looking a lot more stable.”

In the meantime, some groups are reporting performance issues whereby for short periods – measured in terms of 2-3 minutes, where group chat messages won’t go through at all, and no time-out message is being displayed by the viewer, while other messages are being delayed, but then getting through, but without the massive roll of delayed messages. These may be related to previous changes made to improve the overall performance of group chat, and news of the problems is being taken back to the Lab for investigation.

Attachment Reliability

[4:39] As I most recently reported in week 8, there are on-going issues related to attachments. Vir Linden has also been investigating these, and there is a project viewer in development which includes fixes for those issues the Lab has been able to consistently reproduce. Unfortunately, the infamous BUG-6925 is not among these, but Vir hopes that the updates he’s been making will address it to some degree.

There is currently no ETA for the project viewer, but the Lab hopes that when it does appear, they’ll get some clear and constructive feedback on what it does and does not seem to address.

Continue reading “SL project updates week 9/2: TPV meeting, SL roadmap notes” →

Singularity provides update to address AMD Catalyst driver issues

Posted on by Inara Pey

singularityUpdate, March 21st: AMD have release a new set of Catalyst™ drivers, version 15.3 beta, which include a potential fix for the rigged mesh issues – see my notes here.

As I’ve previously reported in this blog, recent AMD Catalyst™ driver updates have resulted in numerous issues for SL users running AMD graphics cards and attempting to use the latest driver updates. These started with the 14.9.1 drivers, but which became particularly pronounced with the  14.9.2 drivers failing to render rigged mesh unless hardware skinning is disabled (see: BUG-7653), problems which increased with AMD switched yo automatic updates with the release of their 14.12 drivers.

In December 2014, Yoho Waco offered a workaround for the problems affecting more recent drivers (e.g. 14.12) using the 14.9 DLL files to overcome some of the issues presented by those drivers, and which should work for most viewers. With Yoho permission, I offered his workaround as an article in its own right, and DMC Jurassic reported the same approach could be used with 1.4.4 driver DLL files to resolve issues caused by both the more recent driver updates and those cause by the 14.9.2 driver update.

Recent AMD Catalyst™ drivers (1.4.9.2 onwards) have been problematic for Sl users, presenting a series of mesh rendering problems as a result of changing openGL support within the drivers (image courtesy of Maestro Linden, click for full-size)
Recent AMD Catalyst™ drivers (1.4.9.2 onwards) have been problematic for Sl users, presenting a series of mesh rendering problems as a result of changing openGL support within the drivers (image courtesy of Maestro Linden, click for full-size)

Now the Singularity team have stepped up, offering their users who use AMD graphics cards and who have particularly been affected by the rigged mesh issues found when using the more recent Catalyst™ drivers.

Version 1.8.6.6157 of the viewer, released on February 27th, 2015, is labelled as a “supplemental” update to the viewer because, as the release notes state, it only provides a fix for this particular set of problems, and offers no additional updates to the viewer as a whole.

Therefore, if you are not affected by the Catalyst™ driver problems, there is no need for you to update. However, if you have been affected by the problems, then this update could well be for you.

Related Links

With thanks to Maya Rosenstar for the pointer.

SL project updates week 9/1: server, viewer

Posted on by Inara Pey
China Grove - blog post
China Grove – blog post

Server Deployments, Week 9

As always, please refer to the server deployment thread for the latest news and updates.

  • There was no deployment to the Main (SLS) channel on Tuesday, February 24th
  • On Wednesday, February 25th, all three RC channels will receive the same server maintenance package, which comprises:
    • A server-side fix for BUG-8297, “Unable to teleport anywhere using SLGO”
    • Improvement to server logging.

The SL Go teleport issue only affected users running the SL Viewer (SLV) supplied by OnLive, who run the SL Go service (it did not affect those using Firestorm on SL Go), and was the result of a recent server-side code clean-up which meant that OnLive’s SLV was essentially using an invalid channel name when instigating teleports, causing them to fail.

OnLive implemented a workaround for the issue on their side of things on February 3rd, however, the update included in the RC package noted above provides a fix on LL’s side of the connection as well.

SL Viewer

On Tuesday, February 24th, the Maintenance RC viewer, version 3.7.25.299021, was promoted to the de facto release viewer.  This release includes a large number of improvements and fixes to the viewer, as listed in the release notes.

This currently leaves just the new log-in viewer RC (version 3.7.25.298971 released on February 17th) and the Experience Tools RC (version 3.8.0.298001 last updated on January 15th) in the release channel for the time being.

Experience Keys / Tools

The initial release of Experience Keys / Tools is still awaiting various back-end updates to clear the Lab’s QA department, with the viewer remaining at RC status until that happens (see above). As previously noted in my Experience Keys reports, the initial release of the functionality will not support grid-wide experiences, although are likely to be on the roadmap for future enhancements.

Once released, the current iteration of the functionality is liable to be allowed to run for a number of months before the Lab starts making  (or releasing) updates, with Oz Linden commenting at the Simulator User Group meeting on Tuesday, February 24th, “there will be another round of improvements to Experiences at some point, but we’re going to give the first round some time to be adopted before we go too far with those.”

Group Chat

Group chat work is continuing, with the recent changes to handling server lock-ups reducing the number of reported freezes.

Simon Linden is also continuing to look at the code side of things, and specifically issues with group chat visibly “stalling” which switching between chat tabs and / or as a result of moving between regions. This work has been the subject of a series of “mini-tests” during the Server Beta User Group meetings held on Thursdays, and resulted in some recent code updates. Commenting on this at the SUG meeting, Simon said, “The new code also showed me details about one way the system fails, so I hope to make that better at recovering,” so further updates can likely be expected, although this may not be as broadly visible to many users as the initial group chat improvements.

Firestorm TTT: command line shortcuts

Posted on by Inara Pey

firestorm-logoThe Firestorm Tool Tip Tuesday video for Tuesday, February 24th offers insight into using local chat as a quick means of using a number of viewer-related and other command options.

This is achieved by using what Firestorm calls the “command line options”, which can also be found in some third-party viewers (Singularity being another which uses the capability). There are essentially pre-configured shortcuts which allow you to do a number of things; for example, you can quickly step your draw distance down / up, or teleport to a specific region or height within a region, rez a platform, and so on.

Firestorm is one of several TPVs offering "command line" shortcuts which can be typed into local chat to achieve a number of things - the the full list of options via Preferences
Firestorm is one of several TPVs offering “command line” shortcuts which can be typed into local chat to achieve a number of things – the the full list of options via Preferences

In the video, Jessica takes viewers through several of the more popular command line options as well as looking at some of the commands people might not be so familiar with, such as the calculator, turning your Firestorm AO off / on, clearing-down your local chat history display, and so on. She also touches upon customising the command names to make them easier to remember and use, if you need to.

So, if you’ve never looked into using chat command via the command line option, this is the video for you!