Category: SL Tech

You can’t keep a good viewer down – Kirsten’s S19

Posted on by Inara Pey

kirstensThe blog post says it all – “old school” – a simple message with a lot of meaning. Kirstenlee Cinquetti has been twiddling under the hood with the S19 (v1-style) version of Kirsten’s Viewer with the result that an updated version – code-named “Blackbird” (version S19.404 at the time of writing) was released via Google Code on Wednesday 24th April.

This is the second time there has been a surprise update to one of Kirstenlee’s viewers – in September 2012 a couple of updates were made to the v2-style S22 viewer. As with those updates, the new release of S19 does not mean that Kirstenlee is returning to the field of viewer development per se. Nor is this a complete update – although it does incorporate a lot of v3 code and is Server-side Baking ready.  As it stands, the release – as with the S22 releases in September 2012 – is offered “as is” and without support – and there is no time scale or firm commitment where further updates are concerned.

As readers, know, I’m not a fan of the v1-style interface, but I admit there is something pleasing about loading and running this release – quiet possibly because it is one of Kirstenlee’s builds, which, despite the odd hiccup between the viewer and my hardware, I’ve always felt pretty much at home with. Perhaps it’s the green :).

Some of the New Bits

I’m not proposing an in-depth review, but here are some of the main features in the update.

Server-side Baking / Appearance: as mentioned above, this update is “server-side baking / appearance ready – it will render avatars correctly on SSB/A-enabled regions and avatars using the viewer will render correctly to others. However, the new “hover” mode partial z-offset “fix” is not included in the Edit Appearance floater.

SSB/A-OK: O the left - S19 Blackbird rendering my Alt (on the SL SSB/A beta viewer) and I correctly on an SSB/A-enabled region; on the right - I render correctly in my Alt's view
SSB/A-OK: O the left – S19 Blackbird rendering my Alt (on the SL SSB/A beta viewer) and I correctly on an SSB/A-enabled region; on the right – I render correctly in my Alt’s view

Mesh Uploads: Nicky Dasmijn’s mesh uploader is included in this release of S19, again bringing it into line with other viewers and the age of mesh.

Anaglyph [3D] rendering: Kirsten’s first introduced 3D rendering in the S22 viewer. While still very experimental, with all the interest in Oculus Rift, its inclusion in S19 with this release is perhaps a little pertinent and timely as a means of generating a 3D view in a viewer.

If you have 3D glasses, Kirsten's latest S19 (404+) gives you a 3D world
If you have 3D glasses, Kirsten’s latest S19 (404+) gives you a 3D world

Restrained Love: RLV comes to Kirsten’s viewer with a dedicated preferences panel which includes the ability to set a “profile” against your RLV use – one of “BDSM Persona-Player”, “BDSM Role-player” and “Non-BDSM”. These define how many (and which) RLV controls can be blacklisted (i.e. prevented from operating), so that, for an example, someone using the “Non-BDSM” option can make use of options such as automatic chat redirection, shared folders for changing outfits and “forced” teleports which necessarily having to also have the more restrictive RLV options active.

RLV comes to Kirsten's Viewer - complete with a set of "profiles"
RLV comes to Kirsten’s Viewer – complete with a set of “profiles”

Pathfinding: Kirsten’s Viewer S19 also gains options to display pathfinding information on linksets and characters. These options are on the Tools menu. As S19 supports OpenSim, there is no navmesh visualisation as there is no Havok sub-licence agreement.

Comments

Overall, this is a sudden and interesting update to Kirsten’s original v1-style viewer, incorporating a lot of v3 code which more than makes it capable of running on today’s grid. On the whole I found it to be stable, and with performance levels I’ve tended to get from Klee’s builds (somewhat lower than with other builds for reasons I’ve never fully fathomed). I did encounter an odd issue – while I could run the viewer in deferred mode, when I enabled shadows, my in-world view turned black, and refused to come out of its sulk until I disabled shadows once more. Whether this was due to a problem with the viewer, or simply another of the hiccups which seem to occur between my hardware an Klee’s viewer builds at times, I couldn’t say.

There are a few bits missing from the update as well – no Depth of Field for photographers, for example, (although Dawny Daviau, Kirstenlee’s partner, tells me this might be coming). So don’t expect it to be fully up to S22 / v3 standards in terms of options, etc.

Again, this release is not a return of Kirsten’s viewer per se, although there is an open invitation for those who like the viewer or the v1-approach to give it a go. Just remember, support isn’t given – and it may be a while before a further update arrives.

In the meantime, some more 3D, this time courtesy of a video demonstration from Chantal Harvey, filmed back when the capability first appeared in Kirsten’s Viewer.

Related Links

With thanks to Dawny Daviau.

SL project reports week 17 (2): COF corruption and SSB/A

Posted on by Inara Pey

At the Open-source Dev meeting on Wednesday April 25th, Whirly Fizzle raised a concern on the status of JIRA SVC-7653, which relates to Current Outfit Folder (COF) corruptions leading to an avatar being unable to log-in to Second Life which may have an impact on the forthcoming Server-side Baking / Appearance switch-over.

The problem was first publicly reported by AngusGraham Ceawlin in February 2012, and at the time became of the focus of a campaign to Free Angus. After a total of some 63 days unable to log-in and with the (particular) support of Whirly herself and Nicky Dasmijn, Paspund Resident and Izzy Linden, Agnus was indeed freed. However the problem has become a matter of concern again because SVC-7653 remains marked as “unresolved”, and a workaround developed for it looks set to be “broken” when SSB/A goes live.

The "Free Angus campaign poster" produced by Sparkles Alchemi and used in a number of blog posts in early 2012 to highlight Angus' situation
The “Free Angus campaign poster” produced by Sparkles Alchemi and used in a number of blog posts in early 2012 to highlight Angus’ situation

The COF Corruption Issue

When this particular issue occurs, the user has no clear indication that there has been an inventory corruption specific to the Current Outfit Folder. There are only tell-tale clues, which Whirly Fizzle documented (on behalf of Kitty Barnett) as being:

  • Only one account is affected
  • A crash or timeout disconnect will occur at log-in, usually around “Downloading clothing…”
  • The affected account will crash/disconnect on any V3-based viewer or a viewer that uses COF
  • A clean install, cache clear, replacing outfit on a non-COF viewer will not fix the problem
  • The associated viewer logs will usually show:

INFO: newview/llappearancemgr.cpp(1998):LLAppearanceMgr::updateAppearanceFromCOF : starting

Generally (but not always) followed by numerous warnings:

WARNING: newview/llappearancemgr.cpp(2891) : WearablesOrderComparator::operator(): Warning # 0: either item1 or item2 is NULL

Followed by a crash or a timeout.

The Workaround

While LL’s support staff do have scripts to deal with various inventory corruptions and issues, under current rules, they will only run these scripts for Premium accounts. While it may be possible to get further assistance from the Lab if you’re not a Premium account holder, it is certainly going to take a good deal longer to gain assistance. As a result, Kitty Barnett developed a workaround for non-Premium members, which Whirly included in her comments on SVC-7653:

  • Use a viewer which does not have COF support and log-in to SL. Currently, Imprudence is possibly the most easily obtainable such viewer
  • Replace outfit with a Library avatar. Thus must be a complete outfit change (every layer / attachment)
  • Log out of the viewer
  • Launch a TPV which uses the VerifyInitialWearables debug setting (such as Catznip, Exodus, or Firestorm – note that the official viewer does not have this setting)
  • At the log-in splash screen:
    • Go to the top menu bar and select Me/Viewer > Preferences > Advanced and tick Show Advanced Menu
    • From the top menu bar, go to Debug > Debug settings > VerifyInitialWearables and set it to TRUE
  • Login to SL.

This should result in a message being sent to the server by the viewer using the VerifyInitialWearables which will result in the COF corruption being “fixed” and the avatar being able to log-in successfully to SL. A change of outfit should then verify that all is well.

The Workaround and SSB

Tests carried out by TPV developers have shown that the VerifyInitialWearables message sent by the viewer is ignored by the SSB/A servers. This has resulted in concern that unless the Lab have developed a resolution for this issue,  anyone encountering it once SSB/A is “live” will not be able to utilise the documented workaround, and they’ll effectively be unable to log-in to Second Life unless they are a Premium member (or upgrade).

The matter has apparently been brought to the attention of the SSB/A team (led by Nyx Linden), who have been engaged in a wide range of inventory updates and associated work, “More than they hoped would be needed,” as Oz linden put it at the Open-source Dev meeting. But whether or not their work extends to fixing this particular problem is unclear. SVC-7653 remains “unresolved” but inactive – so it is perhaps possible a fix has been developed internally by the Lab without SVC-7653 being updated. However, until greater clarification is given, this is likely to be a subject of note at User Group meetings which deal with SSB/A matters.

Related Links

SL projects update week 17 (1): Server releases, SSB/A, particles

Posted on by Inara Pey

Server Deployments – Week 17

SLS Main Channel

On Tuesday 23rd April, the SLS Main channel received the update package deployed to the three Release Candidate channels in week 16, primarily comprising the new server-side LSL Animation Override capabilities, complete with a fix for BUG 2164, wherein the new capabilities could conflict with built-in animation poses in chairs, etc., as discussed in my week 15 updates.  This deployment additionally includes the slight region performance improvement when there are no pathfinding characters present. Release notes are available.

Release Candidate Channels

On Wednesday 24th April, the RC channels should receive the following updates:

  • BlueSteel and LeTigre: should gain a new project which brings preliminary server-side support for experience permissions – release notes
  • Magnum: should gain a new server maintenance project.  This update brings some new minor features to LSL, and fixes some crash modes – release notes

So the long-awaited experience tools / advanced content creation tools permissioning system looks to be finally on its way, a little under a year since an exploit caused them to be withdrawn after their initial deployment.

Viewer Updates

Development Viewer Updates

The SL development viewer has been through a rapid series of updates over the last few days of week 16 and the start of week 17, with version 3.5.2.2744 released on Monday April 22nd. While release notes are not available, it is thought it includes (among other things), the fix for music stuttering every few seconds when using FMOD EX, as submitted to LL by Latif Khalifa  (see OPEN-173).

Particle Project Viewer Soon (?)

It appears a new particle project viewer may be on the horizon in the near future. If it does appear, it is likely to be primarily aimed at testing a new capability to help deal with griefing attacks which use particle emitters. Speaking at the Simulator User Group meeting, Simon Linden said:

We’re doing some testing and may get a project viewer out, which would allow you to test it and (I believe) let other viewers check out the source code. This is right-click on a particle, and it kills the generator … We’ve tossed around a few ideas about blocking particles in other ways but definitely want to get these first steps out the door.

This sparked further discussion on ways and means to help stop particle griefing, which has been on the increase across the Mainland of late. However, given that particles are a viewer-side effect, “stopping” them is actually easier said than done from a server-side perspective. One idea which gained some interest, if it is feasible, would be a block of any particle emitters belonging to an avatar banned from a region / parcel.

In the meantime there are means of stopping the viewer from rendering all particles – such as CTRL – Alt – Shift – +, or going to Preferences > Graphics > and dropping the Particle Count slider to zero. These again only work in your own world view, and while not always ideal, do present an option.

Asked if such a particle project viewer might include the new LSL particle capabilities already deployed server-side, Simon could only say, “Hopefully yes … I’ve been working on getting that chunk of code solid for the last few days. Unfortunately it’s pretty easy to crash at this point and so it’s not ready for consumption.”

The particle ribbon effect  is a particle which repeats the texture horizontally, and can follow the object creating them, which offers a lot of potential uses, as which forms a part of the new particle capabilities – soon to be seen within a project viewer? – Time will tell.

Server-side Baking / Appearance

The viewer-side code for SSB/A is starting to appear in more TPVs:

  • Cool Viewer has had SSB/A support in the “Experimental” branch for a while, and this moved to the “Stable” and “Legacy” versions on April 20th – see the Cool VL website and release notes
  • Singularity released version 1.8.0 with SSB/A support on April 21st, which I’ve reviewed
  • Firestorm released version 4.4.0 with SSB/A support on April 22nd, which I’ve reviewed
  • Kukua has had an experimental / development version since the start of April (version 3.5.1) which also incorporates SSB/A.

The status of the SL beta viewer with the SSB/A code will take place around the middle of week 17, when a decision taken as to whether to incorporate the code into the SL release viewer or run a further beta release. The expectation is that the code will move to the release channel unless a last-minute significant issue is found within the code which prompts a further run in beta.

Assuming the code does make it to the release channel, it is likely that a release viewer will appear early in week 18 rather than late week 17, due to the time required to test and QA a build.

SUN-72 – Fix Submitted

One issue which is known to exist within the current beta release of the SSB/A viewer code and which has caused considerable problems is SUN-72 – if you have inventory items with special characters (including the likes of asterisks) in their names, they will fail to load. Similarly the use of accented characters (e.g. such as René) in things like chat log path names, the logs are not saved.

Nicky Dasmijn of the Firestorm team developed a patch for this specific problem which is already incorporated into the recent Firestorm 4.4.0 release, and which has been contributed to, and accepted by, the Lab for integration into the SSB viewer code. Hopefully, it should be appearing in the next SSB viewer release, whether beta of SL release viewer.

Sun-38 – Avatar / z-offset

As noted in my last major update on SSB/A, the ability to offset an avatar’s height on-the-fly to accommodate various animations (e.g. kneeling), or to adjust an avatar’s height when sitting / walking of floors, etc., and which will effectively be “broken” as reported in  SUN-38, remains an issue for many.

While the Lab have produced an alternative approach which addresses some issues around avatar height offset using new appearance sliders, and which Nyx Linden and others have been continuing to tweak, there is no solution on the horizon for maintaining any form of on-the-fly adjustment; nor does the proposed solution work with no-mod shapes, as noted when I first  reported on the “fix”.

During the Content Creation User Group meeting on Monday, April 22nd, a request was made for the Lab to not shut-down the existing baking service until such time as  SUN-28 is “solved”, which prompted Nyx to comment:

SUN-38 is not currently considered a blocking issue for our initial release. It’s on our list to investigate, but we don’t have a patch or update immediately. There is a new hover parameter, which should work for attachments that affect your avatar, but the bug reported is also discussing the need to adjust the offset on the fly without changing wearables. Having both the new and the old system enabled is not an option … We are investigating options, but it is not a hard requirement for the initial release.

Continue reading “SL projects update week 17 (1): Server releases, SSB/A, particles” →

Firestorm 4.4.0 bake, backup and roll!

Posted on by Inara Pey

Updatefirestorm-logo April 29th: Don’t forget my additional piece on the new cloud options in Firestorm 4.4.0.

Firestorm 4.4.0.33720 made its formal debut on Monday 22nd April, although it has been well and truly put through its paces by both the Firestorm beta testers and the preview group for some time now, in order to ensure it is as ready for mainstream release as possible.  It includes a huge number of updates and revisions, both from the Firestorm team and their contributors and from Linden Lab.

Given the size of the release, this is not intended to be a review of absolutely everything within Firestorm 4.4.0 – please refer to the release change log for that. Instead, this review focuses on what I regard as the key updates / changes. As always, credits for the various updates and contributions to Firestorm which re mentioned here can be found in the release change log – again, please check them there.

Server-side Baking /Appearance Support

Note that this item is Second Life-specific.

This isn’t actually a visible change to the viewer in term of UI, etc., – but it is an important one.

Server-side Baking / Appearance is a major change within Second Life which is primarily aimed at reducing or eliminating issues of “bake fail” (when the avatar skin & clothing layers fail to render correctly and with remain blurred or show the avatar wearing the “wrong” outfit). This capability is being introduced in two parts: viewer-side support and server-side support.

Viewers which do not have the viewer-side support will not work with the Server-side Baking  / Appearance service once it starts being deployed on the grid – people using them will increasingly see grey avatars around them. Therefore, it is essential that Firestorm users update to Firestorm 4.4.0.

Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run Singularity without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you'll see them as grey); (r) when you're running Singularity with SSB support, you'll appear correctly to everyone else - and they will to you.
Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run a viewer without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you’ll see them as grey); (r) when you’re running a viewer with SSB support, you’ll appear correctly to everyone else – and they will to you.

For further information on Server-side Baking / Appearance, see the following blog posts:

Preferences Updates

This release sees a large number of Preferences updates, all of which are reported in the change log, and which include:

  • Chat:
    • General: new option to select display name format for IM tabs – a drop-down list of: Display Name, Username, Display Name (Username) and Username (Display name)
    • Notifications: a new option to Show group chat in chat console (useful if you opt to hide chiclets – see below); new drop-down option for IM receipt sounds: Play sound only if not in focus
  • Graphics:
    • General: the Quality and Speed slider incorporates additional settings (Low-Med, Med-High and High-Ultra); Lighting and Shadows is renamed Advance Lighting Model (as per the LL viewer); the Depth of Field check box is moved to the Depth of Field tab; the Windlight Sky Detail slider and the Avatar Physics slider swap positions
    • Rendering: Max number of concurrent HTTP GET requests slider removed; check box to Enable rendering of screen space reflections added
  • Sound and Media > General: uses radio buttons to show stream title notifications in chat, toasts or to be turned off
  • Move & View:
    • View: new check boxes to: disable the mouse wheel from controlling camera zoom; Show user interface in Mouselook; Enable context menus in Mouselook and Leave Mouselook after regaining focus
    • Firestorm: new check boxes to Reset camera position on avatar movement and Show the default camera controls mini-floater always as opaque
  • User Interface > General: new check boxes to open group profiles, teleport history, landmarks, place details, block / mute list in their own floaters; adds an option to show / hide the media control in the menu bar (useful when using a skin which includes the media controls elsewhere) and an option to hide IM and group chat chiclets completely (the notifications envelope and the number of IM’s will remain on the screen all the time whether or not chiclets are disabled)
    • New User Interface > General options
    New User Interface > General options
    • Skins: new colour option (Ectoplasma) for AnsaStorm
    • Firestorm:
      • Windlight: new capability to define cloud texture
      • Build: options to default prim settings, texture and permissions on creation – see the Firestorm Custom Prim Parameters video tutorial and the Firestorm wiki
    • Backup tab – see below.

    Custom Quick Preferences

    A popular feature with Firestorm is the Quick Preference floater which, as the name suggests, provides fast and easy access to some of the most frequently used options in the viewer without having to open the “full” Preferences floater.

    With release 4.4.0, the Quick Preferences floater has been made somewhat customisable – essentially allowing almost anything which is a debug setting to be added to the floater. However – be warned that this capability is considered to be for advanced users, and does require a willingness to delve deeper into the viewer than some users may be used to. Further, not every debug setting can be added to the floater.

    Cutomising Quick Preferences (click to enlarge)
    Cutomising Quick Preferences (click to enlarge)

    For those wishing to find out more, Firestorm have produced a tutorial video on using the Customise Quick Preferences option, and a Firestorm wiki page.

    Settings Back-up

    Often, when installing a new version of a viewer, the recommendation is that one performs a “clean install” – removing all cached and settings files. This can make any viewer installation labour-intensive, as settings all need to be restored after the installation is complete, and this can take time and effort.

    Firestorm 4.4.0 attempts to ease some of the pain by presenting users with a Preferences option which allows them to back-up many of their global and account settings to a local hard drive. Once done, the back-up can then be restored to an updated version of Firestorm following installation; so providing the back-up is kept up-to-date, restoring the majority of preferred settings is no longer a chore.

    The Preferences Backup tab and options
    The Preferences Backup tab and options

    The back-up option can be found in Preferences > Backup. To use it, simply select a folder on a local hard-drive as the back-up location, then select those options which are to be saved; you can then delete all files associated with Firestorm prior to performing a clean install.

    Continue reading “Firestorm 4.4.0 bake, backup and roll!” →

    Singularity prepares for SSB/A

    Posted on by Inara Pey

    singularityThe Singularity team released version 1.8.0.4114 of their v1-style viewer on Sunday April 21st. The chief update with this release is for server-side baking / appearance, which I’ve covered extensively in this blog.

    The following is a look at the principal updates in the 1.8.0 release. For information on contribution credits, please refer to the Singularity release notes.

    Server-side Baking /Appearance Support

    This isn’t actually a visible change to the viewer – but it is an important one.

    Server-side Baking / Appearance is a major change within Second Life which is primarily aimed at reducing or eliminating issues of “bake fail” (when the avatar skin & clothing layers fail to render correctly and with remain blurred or show the avatar wearing the “wrong” outfit). This capability is being introduced in two parts: viewer-side support and server-side support, with the former occurring first.

    Viewers which do not have the viewer-side support will not work with the Server-side Baking  / Appearance service once the server-side of the capability has been activated on the grid. People using them will increasingly see grey avatars around them. Therefore, it is essential that Singularity users update to Singularity 1.8.0.

    Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run Singularity without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you'll see them as grey); (r) when you're running Singularity with SSB support, you'll appear correctly to everyone else - and they will to you.
    Server-side baking and how others see you: (l) if you continue to run a viewer without SSB support when the new service goes live, others will see you as a cloud, (and, other than attachments, you’ll see them as grey); (r) when you’re running a viewer with SSB support, you’ll appear correctly to everyone else – and they will to you.

    For further information on Server-side Baking / Appearance, see the following blog posts:

    Pathfinding Updates

    Singularity 1.8.0 gains options to display pathfinding information on linksets and characters. These options are on the Tools menu > Pathfinding sub-menu, or by right-clicking on an object / character and selecting MORE > MORE > PATHFINDING from the pie menu.

    Singularity 1.8.0 adds Pathfinding Linkset and Character floater support
    Singularity 1.8.0 adds Pathfinding Linkset and Character floater support

    For those unfamiliar with working with pathfinding, I have two summary articles:

    Note this release of Singularity does not include navmesh support, so as to maintain compatibility with OpenSim.

    Mesh Upload

    Mesh upload capabilities also reach Singularity with the release of 1.8.0, with the incorporation of the non-Havok based uploader by Nicky Dasmijn.

    Mesh uploads with Singularity on Aditi
    Mesh uploads with Singularity on Aditi

     

    Script Info

    Script information can now be displayed for both your own avatar and for your current region in one of two ways:

    • Right-click on the ground and select ABOUT LAND from the pie menu and click on the Script Info button displayed in the General tab of the About Land floater
    • Right click on yourself and select TOOLS > SCRIPT INFO.

    Either option will display the Script Info floater, with tabs for region memory information or avatar script information.

    Continue reading “Singularity prepares for SSB/A” →

    Viewer release summary 2013: week 16

    Posted on by Inara Pey

    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 Viewer Round-up 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
    • By its nature, this summary will always be in arrears
    • The Viewer Round-up Page is updated as soon as I’m aware of any releases / changes to viewers & clients, and should be referred to for more up-to-date information as the week progresses
    • The Viewer Round-up Page also 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.  

    Updates for the week ending: April 21st, 2013

    Discontinued Viewers

    • Phoenix – Development and support officially ended December 31st, 2012
    • Zen – Development and support officially ended January 27th, 2013.

    Related Links