It’s been a little over two weeks since the Imprudence/Kokua team announced they’d be moving towards focusing on Kokua for future development, but work is progressing. On the 16th, ZATZAI (sean Greyhound) from the team put out a “small update” on progress, which reads in part:
Work continues on the new Kokua viewer. We’re moving forward using the v3.2 Linden viewer as a base, we feel this version of the viewer is stable enough and has solved enough of the UI problems from v2 that our users will be happy with it. It’s also what many of you recommended in previous blog comments and at our meetings. We’re currently focusing on releasing a stable viewer on at least three platforms, Linux 32bit, Linux 64bit and Windows 32bit. You can follow our progress by trying our experimental viewers if you’d like, but buyer beware, these are alpha viewers and you should read the warning label carefully before use. You’ll find the link to our experimental viewers page on our wiki below…
There follows a link to the Kokua wiki and links to the Windows and Linux release 3.0.0 downloads. However, before you get too excited, it should be pointed out that while the blog post refers to V3.2, the release available on the wiki, and the one immediately prior to it (0.1.1) are not based on the current V3.2 code, but rather on V3.0 code. Those installing and running either experimental will notice, for example, that the log-in splash screen still has the BASIC / ADVANCED mode toggle button.
Kokua *will* be moving to V3.2, but for now it is still based on V3.
I raised this point with ZATZAI, who was able to confirm after checking that, “The current Experimentals are indeed based on v3 … future ones (I don’t know how soon) will be based on 3.2+.” A clarification on the releases has since been posted on the blog entry itself.
So for those wishing to see a release of Kokua based on V3.2 code will have to wait just a little longer – and should keep an eye on both the blog and the wiki page!
How to Get Involved
For those who are further interested in the Viewer’s development, the team hold a weekly meeting every Wednesday at 20:00GMT on the Hoagie Sim in the 3rd Rock Grid. The meetings are for Dev and Project Contributor discussion and open to the public – although the meetings are not intended to deal with support issues. Transcripts of recent and past meetings cane be found on the wiki.
People can also join the Developer Mailing List (again: please note that this is not intended to deal with support issues).
NrianV Dean has been putting in a lot of work on Niran’s Viewer over the past couple of months, with new versions rolling-out fairly regularly. Many of these have experimental functions added to them – so much so that NiranV has taken to jokingly referring to the development work as coming from Niran’s Lab. He’s been keeping me appraised of updates and changed almost daily, but in-world projects and real life concerns of late have meant that I’ve not really been able to take Niran’s Viewer for a proper spin since release 1.13.
Releases 1.24 (Feb 14th) and 1.25 (Feb 15th – gives you some idea of the speed of updates!), have given me cause to play a little bit of catch-up. Release 1.24 was itself essentially a series of fixes and tweaks to the 1.23.5 release (also made on the 14th February), while version 1.25 adds version 0.2 of Qarl’s Parametric Deformer to the Viewer and includes some graphics related tweaks. You can therefore take this review as more-or-less a n outline of the key elements from all three of these releases (1.23.5 through 1.25).
If you’ve previously installed Niran’s Viewer – particularly 1.23.5, it’s probably best that you opt for a completely clean install of either 1.24 or 1.25, although I do comment on a couple of pre-1.23.5 updates as well.
There are two flavours of the Viewer EXE on offer – dedicated 32- and 64-bit variants. As Niran’s is compiled Large Array Aware, I’m not entirely clear on the difference, but I gather the 32-bit version of the EXE was a special request.
On start-up, there are no overt changed to the Viewer’s UI: as is common for Niran’s, the buttons are split between the left and right sides of the screen, the Navigation / Favourites bars are on, and the Destination Guide initially opens by default, as is common for most V3.2-based Viewers.Which is not to say the changes aren’t there.
Navigation Bar: Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
For those that both like to use the Navigation / Favourites Bar but at the same time find it slightly intrusive on their world view, Niran’s now includes a nifty auto-hide function. Enabled through PREFERENCES->VIEWER->UI SETTINGS, this will automatically hide the Navigation / Favourites Bar when the mouse isn’t positioned over it, and replace it with the Mini-location Bar. hovering the mouse at the top of the screen automatically displays the Navigation / Favourites Bar once more. Neat!
“Are you lookin’ (down) at me….?” – Camera Updates
On the subject of views, the Camera options have been altered. NiranV is keen to introduce more game-like elements to the Viewer – we’ve seen it with the experimental “Main Menu” (F1 – of which more below). Now with the camera, he’s replaced the traditional Front view with an overhead view. As a slight aside: does anyone actually use the Front View? I always tend to find myself orbiting the camera around myself.
Looking down on oneself
To me, the initial view is somewhat high, so many using the option are liable to find themselves using the Camera View Angle slider (PREFERENCES->ADVANCED-> CAMERA) to close the distance between themselves and their avatar.
Staying with the Camera and Preferences, 1.24 introduces something I’ve been waiting for in Viewers for a goodly while: the ability to alter camera offsets without the need to twiddle about with Debug options. As many know, I’m a firm convert to Penny Patton’s Camera Offsets for SL (if you haven’t tried them, you should), so it’s great to see a Viewer that includes the ability to change offsets on-the-fly through Preferences. Kudos, NiranV!
Camera offsets within Preferences
Staying with Preferences
Regular Niran’s users will noticed as well that the entire Advanced tab has been revamped in this release, with Camera, Movement and Mouselook options separated into their own button-activated sub-tabs. This also marks a departure from the more usual “sliding panel” approach seen to date within Niran’s Viewer with regards to sub-tabs (and which can still be seen within the Viewer tab, for example. Referring to this re-vamp in his blog, NiranV states the new button approach may be added to the Viewer and Advanced Graphics tabs should it prove popular with users.
Also new to the Viewer (from version 1.22 onwards), and found in the Advanced Graphics tab are control from the new Visual Auto-mute function, complete with colour-codes guides to possible settings.
Visual Auto-mute controls
Avatar Animations
Work has been done around avatar animations with this release. Most notably for those developing animations, release 1.24 of Niran’s provides full support for uploading .ANIM files, as supplied by Jonathan Yap (see STORM-1803). Niran also adds his own touches in the form of options to control how your avatar reacts when being rotated. NiranV has included a couple of videos to demonstrate the functions, and I’ve taken the liberty of embedding one of them here.
Build, People and Rendering
Having just completed a vast amount of work on an obsession of mine, which involved working with some relatively small cross-section prims, I found myself constantly annoyed at the way in which the white stretch anchors repeatedly blocked access to the red, green and blue X, Y, Z stretch points on a prim. NiranV offers a solution to this problem: providing WASD is set to movement (rather than starting chat), you can press and hold the X key to eliminate the white “corner” anchors to ease access to the X, Y ands Z stretch points.
NiranV has also revised the People floater with this release, replacing the FRIENDS tab with an ACQUAINTANCES tab, his argument being most people we have on our lists are more like acquaintances than true friends, and one cannot fault his logic on this in many respects. Also with this release, the Acquaintances List will show the full set of permissions you’ve set for friends (ability to map you, etc.).
Finally, and also coming out of Niran’s Viewer Labs, is a new rendering option that may have potential use in the future. NiranV explains it thus on his blog: “One thing big has been done here except Tofu´s new project which has been merged, it’s called worldspace semi-random macro-dappling, which creates random big darkness spots on a SIM and your Avatar depending on the sun position. Later this could be combined with the cloud X and Y movement to create a good but faked cloud shadow effect!” At present only the depth / darkness of the effect can be altered – but it will be interesting to see where this goes.
The Main Menu
Finally, Niran has been working on his Main Menu idea for the last few releases. I first covered this in my review of release 1.13. Back then I commented on the fact that using ESC to invoke the menu wasn’t perhaps the best choice, given that key is traditionally associated with the Camera. NiranV took this on-board, and the menu has, for the last few releases, been accessed by pressing F1. The style of the menu has also been changed, as shown below.
Main Menu – “compass”
The look is apparently borrowed from a popular video game. I’ll be honest and stay that while I have no idea how well it has gone down with regular Niran’s users, I actually find it jarring and incongruous compared to the rest of the Viewer, factors that tend to make me shy away from using it.
Performance
Niran’s Viewer is intended for high-end machines and continues to get tweaked in that direct and further releases come out. As such, it’s a little unfair of me to comment on performance in some respects, because my hardware is well below the recommended hardware specifications for the Viewer (the closest I get to meeting them is that I’m running a quad-core CPU). My graphics card in particular now struggles mightily with Niran’s if I attempt to use deferred rendering & shadows, a factor that has, sadly, prevented me from using the Viewer quite as much as I might otherwise like.
That said, I’ve put the Viewer to several hours of reasonable use, bouncing around the grid, trying different environments, playing with the settings (as some of the screen caps here will show!) and generally poking and prodding, and the Viewer has taken it all in its stride (albeit without deferred rendering). The changes NiranV is introducing to the Viewer are both novel and leading-edge. There are some that are very practical – for me, the camera offsets in Preferences are a great addition, and those wishing to make use of the Visual Auto-mute option will find the inclusion of both that as a set of sliders and the annotation for settings that goes with it as being of benefit. Other additions – such as the top-down camera view are potentially more specialised, and it’ll be interesting to see how popular these prove to be for a wider audience of user.
In his December 2011 address, Rodvik touched on some of the work Linden Lab would be continuing through the early part of 2012 – such as performance and stability – and outlined some of the new features we can expect to start seeing in 2012. Of the latter, he particularly highlighted pathfinding, by saying, “For creators our first new feature for 2012 will be pathfinding. Because worlds feel most vibrant when they are full of life, one of our next focuses for Second Life is the ability to make high-quality “life” within it. So in 2012, we will be rolling out more advanced features that will allow the creation of artificial life and artificial people to be much smoother. For starters, in Q1, we’ll unveil a new, robust pathfinding system that will allow objects to intelligently navigate around the world while avoiding obstacles.”
NPCs: Alpha testing on Aditi soon?
Details of this new capability, aimed towards what are popularly referred to as Non-player Characters or NPCs, is now beginning to emerge.
Rand Linden has updated the pathfinding overview page on the SL wiki to provide initial information, together with an outline pathfinding API page. There is also a set of alpha release notes which suggest that people will be able to start testing the new capabilities on the Beta grid and include a bullet list of currently known issues.
The API and overview pages give insight into the LSL commands that are to be associated with pathfinding – most notably llCreateCharacter, described as, “Convert the current linkset to an AI character. By default, the character’s shape will be an upright capsule approximately the size of the linkset, adjustable via the options list. The linkset must use mesh accounting”, as well as associated commands intended to assist in various modes of movement (and evasion).
The overview page is interesting in that it gives more information on the fact that pathfinding will not itself animate an NPC:
Pathfinding is not an animation system. It does not provide a way to animate a biped or quadruped in conjunction with the new movement functionality. You must use existing methods to animate characters. Nevertheless, pathfinding enables more dynamic movement and provides a better system for controlling character movement than was previously possible. For more information on creating animations, see Animation.
The alpha release notes provide a list of the Aditi test regions however, at the time of writing none appear to be open to public use as yet – I was unable to access any of them earlier today, either via the World Map or via the use of the Address Bar within the Navigation Bar of the Viewer. The four regions in question are (SLurls):
Given they are on the Beta grid, the most obvious way of accessing them is to log-in to Aditi and use the World Map to locate them prior to teleporting.
According to the alpha release notes, the pathfinding commands will only be available on these regions, which appear to include various obstacles and courses NPCs using the functions can attempt to negotiate.
Pathfinding regions
A pathfinding tutorial is also in the offing, although the page for it is currently little more than a placeholder at present – again, expect more updates as they become available.There is also a wiki index page for a category of pathfinding, which should be of assistance in quickly locating the broader information on the subject as well as details of specific dedicated or associated LSL commands.
From this, it would appear that LL are pretty much keeping to the schedule outlined by Rodvik at the end of last year and that by the time you read this, the pathfinding test regions on Aditi may well already be open to public access. For those who are keen to get involved in the project, the updated wiki pages are worth keeping an eye on in lieu of more direct information coming through other channels, such as the blog or technology forum.
This is intended to be a weekly round-up of current public SL viewers (of which I’m aware). Links to my most recent reviews of said viewers will be included, but may not reflect the current release. As few Viewers are static, and releases are made according to individual development cycles, further versions of any given Viewer may well be released between these updates, and as such the information here may become out-of-date as the week progresses. Please check with the relevant download pages.
Changes since the last round-up shown in green.
SL Official Viewers
Available for: Windows, Linux, Mac
Current Release version: 3.2.6.248086 (download page)
Beta version: 3.2.9.248932 (released: Feb 6th) (download page)
Development version: 3.3.0.248913 (released: Feb 6th) (wiki page)
Simplified Inventory Project version 3.2.8.248008 (wiki page)
Catznip R5 (3.2.1), available for Windows and Linux is released today with some rather smart features.This was apparently intended to be a maintenance release, but things grew as work progressed to the point where it became a release in it own right. It’s based on the V3.2.7 code base (“ish”, as the Catznip blog puts it), and so should include some of the latest Shining fixes from LL to reach the Viewer code repositories.
Installation
The Windows installer weighs-in at just a touch over 26Mb – par for the course for most V3.2-based Viewers nowadays, and installation is pretty much as expected as well. no unpleasant surprises, just accept the licence and away you go. As usual, I opted for a completely clean install, including the manual deletion of all user-related folders, although this isn’t listed as an explicit requirement for the release.
Mini (Location Bar) Moves
On start-up, everything appears pretty much as usual: the familiar V3.2 FUI, buttons ranged to the left and along the bottom of the screen, the mini-Destination Guide open by default. Nothing special here, it would seem. However, as we all know, looks can be deceptive.
That the Navigation Bar can be switched with the Mini-location Bar is common knowledge among V3 users. Usually when this is done, the Mini-Location bar replaces the Navigation Bar, occupying the same space beneath the Menu Bar, but shunted to the left of the screen, hence earning the name “mini”. However, Catznip offers-up more screen real-estate to users by placing the Mini-location Bar within the Menu bar and the top of the screen. Additionally, users have the options to hide either or both of the BUY L$ and the Marketplace SHOP buttons.
Navigation & Mini-location Bars in V3.2 and most V3 TPVs (top) and the Catznip approach (bottom), using the Menu Bar and with the Marketplace button hidden
Both the move of the Mini-location Bar (which will dynamically resize as the Viewer Window is resized) and the ability to hide the buttons are well-considered. The former gives a modest increase in screen real estate while the latter are likely to be appreciated by those who either don’t buy their Linden Dollars through the Viewer, or who prefer to access the Marketplace directly through a Browser bookmark. Moving the maturity rating to a clearly visible icon within the Mini-location Bar is also a smart move.
Chat and Spell
This release brings some nice additional options to Nearby Chat. Right-clicking on the Chat Bar itself reveals new menu items: the ability to switch between a single-line and multi-line chat bar and to change the displayed font size in Nearby Chat on-the-fly, together with the ability to reveal blocked chat (from muted avatars). Both the single/multi-line Chat Bar and the font size options will update the options in the relevant Preferences tabs (Catznip->Chat and Chat respectively).
New Nearby Chat options.
Alongside of these, although it is not at all obvious from using the Viewer, is a completely re-written in-line Spell Check. For those that aren’t aware, Kitty volunteered her services in order to bring the Spell Check to the official Viewer, and the re-write present in this release of Catznip represents part of this ongoing work. The core changes to the in-line checker comprise:
added : ‘Second Life glossary’ dictionary (enabled by default)
fixed : overwriting existing text won’t trigger a new spell check
fixed : opening an existing modifiable notecard doesn’t always show existing misspellings
fixed : scrolling through a notecard can hide all misspellings
fixed : squiggly lines aren’t centered on the misspelled word (fixed for LLTextEditor)
(from the Catznip blog)
Preferences Updates
This release brings with it a tidy-up of the General settings tab in Preferences, and sees the Notifications options moved to their own sub-tab under Catznip, together with additional items, but little in the way of other major changes in layout.
New Notifications sub-tab
A lack of widespread updates to Preferences shouldn’t be seen as a sign that Viewer isn’t still growing a developing – as the next section shows, Catznip is being constantly enhanced. A stable Preferences floater is more a sign that the Viewer is maturing in a stable, smooth manner.
Script Recovery
The major new addition to Catznip is the Script Recovery feature. To quote from the Catznip blog:
“Ever crash or get logged out while editing a script and then lose all your work?
“Following a crash or forced disconnect you’re now presented with a dialog offering to recover the scripts you had open.
“This works for all scripts, everywhere, and as we found out while trying to take the screenshot for this release, is very robust and persistent. It won’t go away till you either recover or dismiss it .. even if you crash.”
Catznip Script Recovery floater (with thanks to the Catznip team)
Script Recovery works by locally auto-saving open scripts every 60 seconds. Should the Viewer crash, scripts are presented to the user via the floater shown above, and optionally recovered to lost & found folder. Further:
The backup copy is only saved when the editor isn’t pristine
The backup copy is removed when the script has been successfully uploaded, or when the floater is closed.
Once would anticipate this finding favour among scripters, and is liable to be picked up by other TPVs down the line. However, full kudos and credit to Kitty and the Catznip team from bringing it into being.
Other Nips and Tucks
RLVa is overhauled with this release, with a number of FUI-induced bugs being eliminated. Specific updates include:
changed : flipped “RLVaEnableSharedWear” on by default
fixed : disabling a toolbar button doesn’t block the button’s commit signal
fixed : LLFloaterReg::toggleInstanceOrBringToFront() bypasses the blocked folder list and the validation signal
fixed : region “alerts” aren’t show location or show names filtered
fixed : various issues and enhancements relating to @showloc
fixed : the RLV API renames “Avatar Center” to “Root”
(from the Catznip blog)
Group Moderation gets a Catznip boost – with this release it is possible to directly remove someone from a Group by opening the Group Participants list and right-clicking against an individual name – the eject option will appear in the context menu.
There are a number of other nips and tucks to the Viewer which can be seen listed in the official blog post on the release.
Performance and Opinion
Based on 3.2.7 (or thereabouts), this release of Catznip runs extremely well on my standard PC; in fact, Catznip, as with Exodus, has tended to run somewhat better than other TPVs as a rule anyway; I’ve no idea why – it simply seems to like my PC. This release tends to continue the trend, and puts Catznip, tested against the current 3.2.6.248086 V3.2 release on the same sim with the same avatar load (albeit with different screen layouts, yadda, yadda), gave a pretty good run for itself in default mode – averaging some 32-33fps on the ground with 5 other avatars on the same sim while about 8-10fps faster at 390m. Enabling deferred and shadows easily halved these figures – with ground rates only just managing to stay in double figures.
Overall, another release that solidly builds on Catznip’s reputation, and which includes another series of smartly convenient extras that make the UI even more convenient to use in terms of direct access to functions and options. Not being a hard-core scripter, I have no idea how often crashes feature in terms of lost work, but as stated above, those that script from directly within the Viewer are liable to appreciate the Script Recovery function should they find their Viewer vanishing on them unexpectedly.
Tuesday February 7th saw the resumption of The Phoenix Hour broadcasts via Metamix TV. Given the sim was full and the stream hit a capacity limit, I’m guessing the show was somewhat eagerly awaited. As I couldn’t get either into the sim or onto the stream, feedback on the show will have to wait until it is available on the Metamix channel and I’ve had a chance to watch it.
In the meantime, and coinciding with the show, a Maintenance Release of Firestorm was made – 3.3.0.24880. Here’s a quick overview of the elements that caught my attention.
Points of Note
There is an impressive list of additions, changes and fixes for the release, as well as a number of known issues. You are advised to read-up on the latter prior to installing
It is recommended that you do a completely clean install of the release
This release does not include the V3.2 FUI from LL – that’s coming down the road (see below) so far as I can tell, the parametric deformer also isn’t a part of the release.
Particle Editor and Other Highlights
While I’m not going to launch into a full review – I’m saving that for when the FUI version of Firestorm arrives – this release includes a number of cool bits worth mentioning. Most notably among them is Zi Ree’s client-side particle editor, which has been the cause of some angst having been released ahead of Firestorm (for which it was specifically being developed) within the Zen Viewer.
There is a comprehensive guide to using the particle editor on the Firestorm wiki, so I’m not going to delve massively deeply into it here. All I will say is, full kudos to Zi for making it so ridiculously easy, even I can understand it and play with particles…
New particle editor
Another nifty addition from Zi that builders are likely to find handy is the BUILD->DUPLICATE option (CTRL-D). This allows builders to immediately duplicate any prim or linkset they’ve created – hand on repetitive builds.
Inventory gains the ability to search by creator, UUID, description and ALL and filter options to display Links, hide Links or hide everything else but Links to the inventory gear menu.
Estate owners / managers also get some useful updates with this release by way of Ansariel Hiller:
ALT-R will now open the Region / Estate floater
The TOP OBJECTS floater (from the DEBUG tab of the Region / Estate floater) now includes a button allowing Estate owners / managers to teleport to offending objects
Camera smoothing is also now in the Move / View tab of Preferences, as is the ability to adjust the transition time for shifting focus, while the camera View Angle is updated to allow the entry of numerical values – all options machinimatographers should find useful. The transition time option is something I first encountered in Niran’s Viewer, and really like, especially when exploring SL and appreciating the sights I find – so it’s good to see it in Firestorm. I also particularly like the options to disable some of the more annoying notifications thrown out by the Viewer during routine operations.
There are even a couple of new skin options: Firestorm High Contrast and also Vintage – the latter of which harks back to V1 in terms of button colours and presentation.
And all this just scratches the surface of a lot of effort by many within the team to add features and enhance the Viewer’s overall capabilities – kudos to all.
Performance
Given this is a maintenance release, I wasn’t expecting to see the kind of dramatic improvements I’ve been fortunate to experience with other Viewers, Shining Fixes notwithstanding – and that’s pretty much the case. Overall, through nigh-on three hours of playing with the Viewer and leaping around the place, banging prims together and generally poking my nose in and seeing what happens, performance has been pretty much on a par with the 3.2.2 release, with the occasional boost in fps when shadows are enabled. Shadows themselves also seem to render more crisply with this release, although that could simply be a trick of my eyes.
Crash-wise, outside of the issues listed by the team, I did initially have some problems running with shadows active in that clicking the PEOPLE button with deferred & shadows active initially caused me to crash several times. As the problem later went away, I’m assuming it may have been either issues within my PC, or possible issues with the sim I was on at the time.
Overall, this is a worthwhile update to Firestorm – although a read-through of the known issues is well advised.
It’s been a little over two weeks since the Imprudence/Kokua team announced they’d be moving towards focusing on Kokua for future development, but work is progressing. On the 16th, ZATZAI (sean Greyhound) from the team put out a “small update” on progress, which reads in part:
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 