After a promising start, and with some great updates in release 3.2.6.7 (mesh deformer, Firestorm build floater, visuals and other elements from Exodus, etc.), Milkshake’s “public” development has ceased – which is a shame however you look at it.
I was in the middle of a review of the latest updates in 3.2.6.7, which included updates to Preferences as well as the inclusion of new code when word came in.I’d actually been discussing an issue with the release with Cinder when word came that, “Unfortunately, there will be no more public releases of milkshake, sad to say.”
I’m not privy to the exact reasons work has ceased on the public side of Milkshake and to pry into things to any great depth would not be fair on Cinder – she deserves her privacy as much as anyone else. But maintaining a Viewer *is* hard work – there are matters from getting time to develop / merge code options through to handling support and so on, all of which can take their toll. Cinder already has a busy in-world life, and it is clear that support issues were concerning her when the Milkshake User Support Policy was published. One cannot blame her for this; I seriously doubt that – even assuming I had the talent for Viewer coding – I’d want to pass over a large part of my in-world time to all the ancillary elements that go into maintaining a popular Viewer – not without a lot of help.
That said, there is no doubt I will miss the public Milkshake. It was shaping-up to be a handy Viewer with plenty of core features from other TPVs that strongly distinguished it from its core base of LL / Catznip. However, a little birdie tells me that it is not all sad news; the chances are, we may be seeing Cinder’s work adding flavour to Viewers elsewhere in the near future.
It’s getting to be hard work keeping up with Viewer releases!
Lance Corrimal has issued an update to Dolphin – 3.2.3 (22899), which he’s calling (a little tongue-in-cheek) the “Fellowship” edition in that, in quoting Tolkien, the development of this release is a “Tale that grew in the telling”!
Based on the latest release of RLV from Marine Kelley, and the official “Shining” 3.2.6 release from LL, the update brings Dolphin 3 bang up-to-date with the latest OpenGL fixes from the lab.
While conditions were not absolutely identical to my earlier “tests”, I made my usual Viewer UI and settings tweaks, and took the Viewer for a spin on my (now “standard”) “test” sims. The results were as follows:
High graphics, no deferred: averaged 46fps at 370m and 38fps at 22m
High with deferred ON: 21fps at 370m and 17fps at 22m
High with deferred and shadows ON (Sun + Moon + projectors): 12fps at both heights
On my home sim, and on my own, frame rates bounced around the 58-61fps mark while up at the house.
Updates
The core updates to the Viewer comprise:
Options to auto-accept / auto-open textures, photos and notecards (both via PREFERENCES->DOLPHIN VIEWER 3->INTERFACE)
Empty system folders (e.g. Objects, Notecards, etc) are hidden from your inventory list
The additional pop-up informing you that a landmark has been added to a folder can be suppressed (from Firestorm)
Firestorm’s inventory filtering options have been implemented in Dolphin, allowing inventory to be filtered by description, UUID, creator, name, etc; or can be filtered by combinations of words separated by “+”(e.g. Joe+Smith) (from Firestorm)
Debug level (verbosity) of log files can be configured (STORM-1790)
Default debug level has been changed to WARNING to make the logs less chatty
The ability to hide empty system folders is rather novel, and works automatically – once a system folder is empty, it is hidden (see right, and note there is no Landmarks or Notecards folder).
If you end up with an empty Body Parts, Clothing, Gestures, Notecards or Scripts folder, you can “unhide” it by creating a new item from the + button on at the bottom of the inventory panel – creating a new item will automatically un-hide the required system folder.
Similarly, creating a Landmark (or left-clicking on a Landmark in a notecard) will automatically unhide the Landmark folder, and so on.
Those who don’t use the system folders may find this capability useful to have and cuts down on the clutter in their inventory.
Selecting additional inventory search filters
In adopting the new Firestorm inventory filters, Dolphin appears to have adopted the accompanying issue that searching on creator, UUID, etc., isn’t particularly intuitive for the first-timer. To search by a specific additional criteria – UUID, creator, etc., – you must click on the gear button at the bottom of the Inventory panel and select the required option in SEARCH BY before you commence a search. It would be nice to see all the filters grouped into a single location in the future.
Lance notes a few other issues with the Viewer – so again, if you experience them, please don’t report them, as he’s liable to be already trying to sort things out where he can, or awaiting a fix from LL. He lists the known issues as:
“Textures with transparency have a grey background instead of the usual checkerboard pattern in any texture preview UI element (e.g. the preview window when you upload a texture, or when you open a texture from your inventory). Applied to prims, the textures will be fine. People, use the temp upload feature and check your new textures on a prim if you need to test something with transparency. This problem exists in all viewers that are based on the latest viewer-development code, even in the official Second Life viewer 3.2.4 from Linden Lab. There is already a JIRA for it: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-28037. Please go and watch and vote.
“The alignment handles in the Build Tool all point upwards instead of inwards. The alignment tool still works the same way, it just looks funky.
“The automatic opening of incoming notecards and pictures is highly dependent on lag.
“There is still no Flickr uploader.”
Rendering
This release puts Dolphin back up in the list of “fast fps” Viewers for my system, and rendering on the whole is good, and I’m now getting a similar “pop-out” for sculpts already loaded in local cache (i.e. my furniture at home) on logging-in / teleporting home I get with some of the other recent Viewer releases. Shadows render well, although I’m still taking a bit of an additional performance hit with shadows and occlusion both active.
Overall, a nice set of updates that should please Dolphin regulars.
When reviewing the Beta 6 release of Exodus, I missed an issue with Alpha textures. This was reported to the team, who immediately set to work on fixing the problem and taking care of a few other issues. The result is that there is now a new release 12.01.03.1 – Beta 7) available for download.
Specific fixes comprise:
Water no longer renders black (white under AMD hardware) under certain circumstances
Alpha blended fullbright objects no longer render white under certain circumstances
Eyelashe rendering correct so they no longer show as white under certain circumstances
Fullbright on rigged meshes now gamma correct in Gamma Correction
Fixed alphas on fullbright requiring gamma correction
Fixed projected textures not being gamma corrected
Fixed rigged meshes not being gamma corrected properly under most circumstances
Fixed cases when using forward slash in chat played typing animation.
Further, the team have made the following changes / additions:
Changed default inventory icon style to the original icons
Modifications in attempt to clean up the preferences window and remove old UI preferences
Changed maximum shadow quality to 4.0, as requested
Sun/Moon light color is now gamma corrected when gamma correction is enabled
Added “refresh texture” feature from Firestorm Viewer
Added option to see threat indicators in third person
Added more adjustable settings related to glow, ambient occlusion and shadows to the visuals window.
Exodus runs extremely well on my PC, and as there is a new release that fixes a few things, I gave it a quick spin photo-wise at Black Spot. I think you’ll agree, the results are impressive.
Shaders active, no deferred rendering or other effectsWith deferred rendering active – note the local lights from the ships and the quays reflected in the waterWith deferred rendering active, plus high precision options of gamma correction and tone mappingDeferred rendering, high precision actrive and vigette set to .870
Beta 7 ran at 38fps on High at Black Spot, dropping to 11 with deferred active; turning on the high precision options did not further impact performance. I’ll attempt to run my “comparison test” on the release tomorrow.
Last week, Pserendipity Daniels left a comment on comparing Viewer performances which got me thnking. As I said in my reply, coming up with an objective means of comparing the performance of various Viewers is a little difficult, as so much as client-side dependent (hardware) while some is also down to your network connection.
However, I decided to take those Viewers I’ve actively used over the last 12 months (as opposed to reviewed and put to one side), and see what I could come up with by way of a very basic and simple means of comparing Viewer performance that might address Pep’s question without me getting bogged down in anything complex (which would probably go right over my head anyway…).
So, the two tables below represent my findings based on Viewer frame rates – which I appreciate aren’t the only measure of a Viewer’s performance (but they are the one most looked at). There are further notes below the tables on how I set-up and ran my “tests”.
Jan 6th: Tables updated to reflect the fact that Niran’s Viewer has been using the 3.2.6 code base since release 1.01. Also, Nalates Urriah has carried out further analysis on these figures.
370m altitude – click to enlarge
Average ping rate for sim: 167ms (averaged across all eight Viewers)
22m altitude – click to enlarge
Average ping rate for sim: 174ms (averaged across all eight Viewers)
Key
“High” = graphics set to the SL “High” setting (Ultra in the case of Phoenix), shaders ON, all Deferred Rendering options for lighting & shadows and ambient occulsion (or equivs) OFF
Deferred = deferred render ON, but ambient occulsion / shadows OFF
Ambient = deferred render ON, ambient occulsion ON, shadows OFF
Shadows = deferred render ON, ambient occulsion OFF shadows ON
Ambient + Shadows = deferred render on, but ambient occulsion / shadows ON
Numbers in brackets refer to the official Viewer release I believe each TPV is based upon.
Test Environment
To try and give as level a playing field as possible for the tests, I attempted to create a “test environment”, namely:
Tests were run after a completely clean reinstall of the listed Viewers (original installation and all associated files / folders uninstalled / deleted)
All Viewers were configured alongside my nVidia Control Panel in accordance with this tutorial from the Shopping Cart Disco blog (with thanks to Innula Zenovka for pointing it out)
All other major graphics and network settings within the Viewers were set to the same criteria (e.g. Draw Distance set to 300m; network bandwidth set to 1500kbps, etc.)
Where possible (and with the exception of Firestorm and Phoenix) the UI was set-up the same: same buttons, same locations, and not other floaters / panels were open, and any group chat sessions active on logging-in were terminated
The same avatar with the same attachments was used with each test (with a Draw Weight of 112,986), with the same camera defaults
I used the same regions for all Viewers tested, each with 4 other avatars in the regions during the tests. One region was a skymall shopping area, the other a residential sim at ground level (which actually had the same 4 other avatars present in it for all tests!)
The same test was used for each case: Teleport to an arrival point; allow rez time, then walk a set route for around 3 minutes, monitoring fps rates
Recorded frame rates are based on a roughly-calculated average, rounded up or down to the nearest whole number, as appropriate.
Hardware and network connection
The hardware used for the tests comprise my usual PC and nework connection:
Windows 7 32-bit with SP1; Intel Q6600 CPU 2.4Ghz; 3Gb RAM; ASUS motherboard (no idea of the model); nVidia Ge9800GT with 1Gb on-board RAM (driver: 8.17.12.8562 15-10-2011); Viewers running on 320Gb SATA drive @ 7200rpm
Netgear DGN2200 (wireless between PC and router)
Internet connection averaging a ping of 43ms to the preferred test server, with a download speed of 9.55Mbps and 1.02Mbps upload (speedtest verified).
Notes
I don’t pretend that either the methodology or the results are particularly scientific, and underline that they are at best indicative – and even that’s strongly caveated
Frame rates varied somewhat from those recorded in my reviews (obtained using a basic alt avatar & on a variety of sims)
On my home sim, when alone, SL 3.2.6, Exodus and Milkshake all exceed 60fps in “High” mode at altitudes above 300m; on the ground all achieve rates in the high 40s
Niran’s Viewer has achieved higher rates in Beta then with release 1.03, which Niran notes as being a “test” release. Unfortunately, the 1.02 release will not run on my PC at all, so I’ve been unable to test it
SL 3.2.6, Exodus, Milkshake and Niran’s all demonstrate considerably faster sculptie rendering than the other Viewers on my PC (sculpties rarely initially rez as a sphere or disk, but simply “pop-out” fully formed a few seconds after other prims).
Obviously, there are other factors that weigh-in on Viewer choice, and it is actually possible to have a worthwhile in-world experience with what might be regarded as low frame rates (I’ve been running Firestorm with shadows enabled since before Christmas, with an average frame rate probably around 12fps (allowing for averages between locations) for example). In the case of Niran’s Viewer and Exodus, the graphics enhancements may well provide more of an incentive for use than straightforward frame rates. Certainly, the quality of rendering on Niran’s Viewer is signifcantly better when optimised than the majority of other Viewers (although it really hits my GPU hard!).
So, in conclusion, you’re free to interpret these results as you see fit; how much value they represent is questionable. As always, individual experences may vary wildly from my own (particularly those of you fortunate enough to run a higher-specfication CPU / GPU combination). However, as a finger-in-the-air reference point for my own reviews, the tables may have value, and I may maintain them…
Again, to be clear: I’m not claiming the test is designed to be either empirical or scientific – please do not take it as such.
Update 4th January 2012: Due to some issues with gamma correction, etc., the Exodus team have issues Beta 7. Core changes are listed here.
The New Year brings with it a new release of the Exodus Viewer. Version 12.01.02.1 (Exodus run a release number system based on the day/month/year of the release, so in this case the release is the first release made on the 2nd January 2012), also known as Beta 6, brings with it a host of new features. Among them:
New graphics functionality
The parametric deformer Alpha
Mesh upload
New FUI options and improved chat bar
V1-style chat console
Ability to save or load position and rotation information of a object into it’s description (something I’ve been wanting for years – so YAY, EXODUS!)
AZERTY keyboard support
The new V3.2 snapshot floater
A range of options imported from other TPVs
RLV/a
Bug fixes.
Exodus is available in Windows, Mac and Linux flavours – this review is based on the Windows release.
Installation
The installer weighs-in at 28Mb – the same size as the official V3.2.6 Viewer. Installation offered no surprises, with the installed Viewer taking-up around 108Mb of disk space – again, the same as the official 3.2.6 Viewer.
On start-up, the Viewer bucks the recent trend in using all, or part of the V3 log-in/splash screen, and instead opts for a clean design with links to the Grid at War Blog, the Exodus Twitter feed and the SL Grid Status page. I’d personally prefer more from the V3 log-in screen, but that’s purely a personal view.
Cool blue splash screen
Once logged-in the Viewer displays the familiar V3.2 Flexible User Interface (FUI), and as Cilla Black might say, there are a lorra, lorra buttons, particularly on the left side of the screen – which we’ll get to in a moment.
Other than the buttons, the UI offers little in the way of major surprises on first looks, presenting pretty much the standard Menu bar, Navigation / Favourites bars layout. Your region co-ordinates are included in the Navigation Bars – which is not to say things haven’t changed. Unlike recent Viewers using the 3.2 code, the Destination Guide isn’t opened by default in Exodus.
Menus
Popular menu options in yellow
The menus offer some nice nips-and-tucks: those options that are Exodus-specific / rated to combat use / are popular options are coloured yellow, immediately drawing the eye to them. Where these options are toggle on/off, toggling them on will cause both the familiar tick to appear alongside them and the item colour to revert to white, a nice touch to prevent visual distractions with items you don’t want to reset.
There are a couple of nice additional touches in the Advanced menu – double-click teleport is included as an option, and camera constraints are disabled by default.
The Me menu includes an additional option to access Exodus’ dedicated Preferences. In earlier releases, these could be found in a Sidebar panel (Exodus having been released just before Rodvik gave word of the coming new FUI), and are now displayed in a dedicated floater panel, accessed wither through Me or via CTRL-SHIFT-P.
The Build menu has a nice addition: you can select an object or linkset and use the BUILD->SCRIPTS->REMOVE SCRIPTS option to remove all scripts from the object / root prim of the object.
Buttons Galore
Exodus, being feature-rich even before the FUI appeared, has a lot of buttons in order to cater for the wide range of options / dedicated functions it contains. With this release, it becomes the Viewer with the most buttons displayed by default on starting-up. These are:
The Customise Toolbar floater reveals further options, including Exodus’ Mini-radar, Mini-statistics, Statistics, and Visuals buttons.
Button options
This is a very comprehensive set of buttons; however, some might find the similarity between some of the icons – the Map and Raid Advisor or the AO and Move, for example (when only using icons) to be initially a tad confusing, leaving them reliant on tool tips until familiarity kicks-in.
Button Placement and Labels
Exodus draws on Niran’s Viewer, in that buttons can be located to the left, right, bottom and top of the screen, and introduces additional display options (left). The FUI has been critique by people who don’t like icons, it’s been critique be people who like icons; it’s been critiqued by those that don’t like icons and text….
So Exodus now gives you the best of all worlds – display your buttons as icons only; reduce the size of the buttons if you find them too big; display your buttons with text and icons or with text labels only. However, note that with standard V3.2 FUI functionality, buttons placed on the left and right sides of the screen automatically default to icons only (regardless of setting), and so text options are limited to the buttons placed at the top / bottom of the screen.
AO Button
Among the buttons there are a couple worthy of additional mention. The first of these is the AO button. Initial solutions for including the AO in the FUI have been to provide two buttons – one for AO settings, one for turning them on / off. Exodus has a single button, with a smaller integral button in the top right corner. Click the main part of the button to access AO settings, click on the inset button to turn your AO on (inset button turns blue, as per the screen capture here), click it again to turn the AO off. Quite simply the most elegant solution to client-side AO integration into the FUI I’ve yet seen.
Redraw
Exodus does not have a texture refresh option, as is starting to appear in other TPVs, but it does have a Redraw button, which will temporarily drop your draw distance to zero, before resetting it to your default, forcing the Viewer to re-draw everything and re-render all that is in line-of-slight. This can actually be alarming when it first happens, as your in-world view can clear of all detail (see below) for a few seconds before everything re-renders.
Where did everything go? Redrawing your view
If this happens to you, don’t panic, everything will reappear. I can’t say how effective this is for sorting out unloaded / rendered textures, as Exodus has rendered everything so fast for me fast and perfectly.
NiranV has released two further updates to Niran’s Viewer for the New Year.
Version 1.02
Version 1.02 brings with it enhancements to shadow rendering – what NiranV calls multi-level shadowing, which sees alpha objects casting shadows (something I’ve actually recently noticed in V3.2.6 and specifically Milkshake, wherein the decorative glass panels I used a a house build now render shadows…).
The version also incorporates Nicky Dasmijn’s mesh uploader code, making Niran’s the second TPV to adopt her code.There are also a number of bugfixes and tweaks that address minor issues withing the Viewer.
Mesh uploads using Nicky Dasmijn’s code
Another noticable change is with the loading screens – gone is a snapshot of your last in-world view together with the MotD and progress bar. Instead, there’s a mandelbrot-esque design in the lower left corner, images from NiranV’s in-world explorations and assorted hints and tip displayed with the load progress bar. All-in-all a refreshing change.
Niran’s: new loading screens
Version 1.03
An experimental release, version 1.03 brings with it the parametric deformer alpha release, so those who wish to try-out the deformer (particularly clothing designers) can do so. Note that it might not work in all instances; a lot depends on how the mesh is weighted.
Given it is experimental, NiranV informaed me that the code would likely be removed from the next release of the Viewer (which currently does not have a time frame).
After a promising start, and with some great updates in release 3.2.6.7 (mesh deformer, Firestorm build floater, visuals and other elements from Exodus, etc.), Milkshake’s “public” development has ceased – which is a shame however you look at it.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 