Sometimes it takes us humans quite some time to admit something to ourselves that we don’t want to admit, but eventually there’s no more putting it off.
It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce the end. It’s over. No more new Dolphin Viewer.
Thus opens a blog post dated June 22nd, from Lance Corrimal, which I am ashamed to admit I missed when it appeared. It serves as an introduction to Lance officially announcing the end of all Dolphin viewer development / maintenance work at his end of things.
He goes on:
With my current RL job and all the travelling that I’m doing there are more exciting things to do with the little time I have to spend on SL and other hobbies, than maintaining a third-party viewer… especially when most of the “maintenance” involves fixing stuff that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place.
I have been porting a few of the things that used to be in Dolphin Viewer 3 to Firestorm in the last few weeks … I invite the FS team to grab anything from there that they like.
The Dolphin Machinima Toolbox was one of the last additions to Dolphin to be release (in beta form), and held a lot of promise
This is sad news; over the years Lance had built the Dolphin viewer into an excellent offering (it was my second viewer of choice of a good while). But time has conspired against him, even though he did attempt to get the viewer back on track (and in doing so started implementing some nice additions, such as the Machinima Toolbox, seen on the right).
But the viewer is very much a living, evolving things, and playing catch-up, even with the best will in the world, can become increasingly hard (and probably more than a little demotivating when the “to do” list constantly remains longer than the “done” list). This being the case, we can hardly blame Lance for wanting to spend what free time he has to devote to SL in enjoying things in-world that he finds fun and relaxing; I know if I were in his shoes, I’d have given up a long time ago.
Lance closes his blog post with a paraphrase of a Douglas Adams quote, saying, “Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!”
I’ll add a small response of my own, “thanks, Lance, for all of your work over the years. May the wind be always be at your back!”
Avatar shadows as see using the debug, top left; rigged mesh avatar body seen in default avatar shadow rendering (debug setting 3); Top right: as seen with the debug set to 2 (Chalice Yao’s adjustments; bottom left: as seen with the debug set to 1, showing the system avatar shadow, rather than the rigged mesh body shadow; bottom right: the setting reduced to 0, only unrigged attachment shadows are rendered – see below for details (images via Marine Kelley)
The latest version of RLV appeared on Friday, June 26th. Version 2.9.12 brings with it an attempt by Marine Kelley to lighten the load placed on your GPU when rendering complex rigged meshes (such as avatar bodies) when running with shadows enabled in the viewer.
In her notes accompanying the release, Marine states:
I have become a mesh body user not long ago, and like every mesh body user, I quickly found out that having dynamic shadows activated while wearing a complex mesh body (Maitreya which is my choice, but also Eve, Belleza, Slink, Abar, TMP…) totally kills the FPS (Frames Per Second, the measure of rendering speed). Like, it divides them by half. It was so bad that I had to turn the shadows off, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I knew it was due to the avatar shadows, simply by looking at the Fast Timers in-world (press Ctrl-Shift-9 to show them). A little digging in it and you see “Avatar Shadows” in plain letters as the FPS hog. In fact, this was due specifically to complex rigged mesh rendering, the FPS slowdown wasn’t due to unrigged attachments or anything like that. And since mesh bodies are among the most complex rigged mesh around, they kind of made that issue more obvious. And over time, more and more people switch to mesh bodies, so something had to be done.
Regular readers here know that something is being done at the Lab’s end of things, with the forthcoming introduction of Avatar Complexity. This has the advantage that it takes into account other elements within avatars that can push up rendering complexity and thus reduce performance, such as over-use of very high resolution textures, etc. This disadvantage is that people will have to get used to having Jelly Baby avatars around themselves, which may not be to everyone’s liking.
As noted, Marine’s aim is to allow those people who have previously been able to run the viewer with shadows enabled, but who are finding it impossible to do so when in locations with a number of complex avatars present due to the performance hit they’re taking, to be able to do so again by reducing the hit taken by their system.
As she acknowledges in her release notes, the original idea actually came from Chalice Yao, who has been poking at things with her NaCl viewer. With RLV 2.9.12, Marine adds what she believes to be further refinements to Chalice’s work, which in turn may feed back in to NaCl.
The RestrainedLoveAvatarShadows debug setting in RLV 2.9.12
Essentially, Marine has added a debug setting to RLV, RestrainedLoveAvatarShadows, accessed via the Debug settings floater (under the Advanced menu).
The debug offers four settings (3 down to 0) which offer different levels of rendering avatar shadows, thus:
3- the default (what Marine calls “legacy”) rendering of avatar shadows commonly seen in viewers: an exact rendering of avatar shadows with rigged and unrigged attachments, and which recognises alpha masks
2- Chalice Yao’s initial adjustments to avatar shadow rendering. Said to simplify the shadow rendering to offer noticeable performance improvements when running in locations with a number of complex avatars
1 – render simplified avatar shadows. The first of Marine’s additions to Chalice’s code, this ignores any alpha masking of the system avatar shape, causing its shadow to be rendered, along with the shadows of unrigged attachments. All shadows associated with rigged attachments (e.g. mesh bodies, etc.), are ignored
0 – don’t render avatar shadows. This will leave avatars with no shadow at all, with the exception of unrigged attachments, therefore offering the biggest potential boost in performance.
Marine offers a series of images demonstrating the resultant shadows, as shown at the top of this article, together with the FPS boosts she sees. The latter may be too small to read in the image collection produced here, so I recommend reading Marine’s blog post for full details.
As I don’t have anything other than a demo fitted mesh avatar body, and also have a fairly high-spec system which includes a GTx 970 with 4GB of memory which handles most situations pretty well, I’ve not been able to practically test how all of this plays out.
However, given this solution is aimed at reducing performance hits when shadows are enabled in the viewer, it’s perhaps not going to suit everyone. If your system already struggles with handling shadow rendering regardless of the complexity of any avatars around you, for example, you may not gain much from using the debug settings. But if you are an TLV user who finds Marine’s situation as quoted towards the top of this article to be familiar, this update a go could well help you. Either way, the one way to find out is to download RLV 2.9.12 and give it a go.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, June 28th, 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.
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, June 21st, 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.
Viewer-managed Marketplace RC viewer version 3.7.31.302677 released on June 18 – allows Merchants to manage inventory associated with Marketplace Listings from within the viewer + sale of items which Merchants do not have the right copy will now be supported with the Direct Delivery purchase mechanism (download and release notes)
Attachment fixes RC viewer (Project Big Bird) updated to version 3.7.31.302640 on June 16 – core updates: a number of fixes for various attachment issues (download and release notes)
Experience RC viewer updated to version 3.8.0.302622 on June 16 – provides support for viewing and managing Experiences and for contributing content for Experiences (download and release notes)
Alchemy updated to version Alchemy version 3.8.0.35816 Beta on June 16th – core updates: parity with LL 3.7.30 code; bug fixes and improvements (release notes)
CtrlAltStudio updated to 1.2.4.43384 Alpha on June 20th (Windows) – core updates: parity with Firestorm 4.6.9 release + Rift SDK 0.5.0.1 (release notes)
V1-style
Cool VL Viewer Stable branch updated to version 1.26.12.47, and the Experimental branch to version 1.26.13.16, both on June 20th (release notes).
Update:Drake Arconis has pointed-out an inaccuracy in the original version of this review in relation top the Avatar Hover Height slider and spinner. I’ve now corrected the article to reflect his feedback.
Alchemy released their latest beta viewer on Tuesday, June 16th. Version 3.8.0.35816 is described as “another step in the road to Alchemy’s first major release and includes hundreds of new fixes and improvements over it’s predecessors.”
Quite what all the fixes and improvements are is a little hard to tell without pouring over this and the last release, as the release notes are light on details – assuming the “hundreds” in the description for the release is not hyperbole. Ergo, this review is more a set of highlights for the release.
What we do know is that this beta brings Alchemy right up to date with the Lab’s most recent 3.7.30 code base, and includes the Experience Tools updates (which, as they are at RC status in the official viewer, and there are no known issues with them, are ripe for incorporation in RPVs).
Installation
The viewer comes in Windows 32/64-bit, a Mac universal 32/64 bit and Linux 64-bit flavours via the download page, However, some Windows users may see the following message when trying to run the viewer:
The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b)
As per the Alchemy release notes, should this happen, please download and install one of the following two files from Microsoft:
If you are using the 32-bit version of Alchemy: vcredist_x86.exe
(The above links will take you to the respective download pages at Microsoft, where you can review the file details prior to downloading.)
Experiences
Alchemy 3.8.0 supports the Lab’s new Experience Keys / Tools. This means that when you visit a location using the Experience Keys capabilities, you will receive complete information on the Experience and the permissions it requires you to give in order to join it, as opposed to the brief summary which is displayed by viewers that do not currently have the Experience Keys code included in them.
In addition, it also means you can review the details of the experiences you have joined, and those to which you may have contributed, through the Experience floaters, accessed via Me > Experiences.
Alchemy now includes support for Experience Keys, allowing users to see full details of an experience and the permissions it is requesting (l), use the permissions floater to search for experiences and review the details of those they’ve joined / to which they have contributed or those they own (c) and review the details of individual Experiences they’ve joined (r)
For details on Second Life experiences, please read my early review of the official experiences release candidate viewer (note a more updated review of Experience Keys will be produced when the capability has been formally rolled-out).
Avatar Hover Height
The Avatar Hover Height slider / spinner can be found in Alchemy’s Quick Preferences
Alchemy 3.8.0 includes the on-the-fly Avatar Hover Height capability from the Lab. However, rather than being a slider / spinner control accessed from the avatar right-click context menu, it has been implemented as a chat command: “/hover”, followed by the amount by which you wish to adjust your avatar’s apparent height. For example, “/hover 0.1” will raise your avatar’s apparent height by 0.1 metres, and “/hover -0.1” will decrease you avatar’s apparent height by the same amount.
Update: As noted in the comment from Drake Arconis, the slider for Avatar Hover Height can be found on the Alchemy Quick Preferences (use the cog at the top right of the screen to display – see above right right or the floater itself).
Updates for the week ending: Sunday, June 14th, 2015
This summary is published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Official LL Viewers
Current Release version: 3.7.30.302599, June 12 – hotfix update with MSVCP100.DLL and MSVCR100.DLL files missing form recent Windows releases of the viewer (download page, release notes)
Obsolete platform viewer version 3.7.28.300847 dated May 8 – provided for users on Windows XP and OS X versions below 10.7. This viewer will remain available for as long as reasonable, but will not be updated with new features or bug fixes and will not be promoted to release status (download and release notes)
Sometimes it takes us humans quite some time to admit something to ourselves that we don’t want to admit, but eventually there’s no more putting it off.
