Category: SL Viewer

In June 2019, Linden Lab released the Legacy Profiles Project viewer, the first step in moving user Profiles back into a viewer floater that does not utilise the web-based profiles that have been in place for the last decade(ish) – see SL Legacy Profiles project viewer.

At the time, it was hoped that the project to move profiles back “into” the official viewer would be relatively easy. However, three years have passed, and it is only now that the work has moved forward.

There are multiple reasons for this being the case: pressure of work elsewhere, the need for back-end updates that were interrupted by the migration to AWS, and so on. So, there was probably an enormous sense of relief at the lab when, on July 21st, 2022, the Profiles Release Candidate (RC) Viewer could finally be issued for users to take a look at ahead of it moving forward to de facto release status.

As with in-viewer profile floaters, this one presents a panel with a series of tabs:

• Bio – for the user’s / avatar’s biography.
• Feed – providing a view of the user’s web-based Profile Feed.
• Picks: the familiar selection of 10 favourite places / other information the user wants to display in their profile.
• Classifieds: for any classified ads the user has created.
• Real Life: a further tab the profile owner can use to provide any additional information they wish (it actually does not have to be “real life” related, which is why I whish the Lab would follow the lead of others and call this “Additional Info”, or something, and let users decide how they want to use it.
• My Notes: a section in which notes can be written about a profile and which can only be seen by the person writing the notes.

Of these tabs, it is very likely that Bio is going to be the most jarring to anyone familiar with viewer-based legacy profiles, as it presents a very different layout compared to other profile floaters – and also includes some useful extras.

The basic info on the profile owner – picture, partner status and age are rather untidily squished into the top left corner of the tab. This is to allow more room for users to write something about themselves / their avatars. While this is welcome – the “traditional” legacy profile always seemed a tad limiting for expression. However, depending on whether or not this layout is adopted verbatim aby TPVs, I do have a small niggle.

People tend to spend considerable effort in getting their bio info laid out in their Profile, and such is the nature of this floater, such work tends to be lost. For example, in Firestorm, Cool VL, etc., my own bio is relatively centred within the provided window – but here, as shown in the image above right, it appears oddly ranged to the left.

This may sound like nit-picking, but it could actually carry some weight: people put great store by what they see in a profile almost as much as in what they read, and what may come over as a slapdash, hard-to read layout on account of different floater window sizes (again, assuming TPV don’t simply integrate this profile floater design into their offerings, rather than continue with their own) might lead to unfair judgements.

On the positive side, this tab includes up to three handy drop-downs:

• Show / Hide: (visible to the profile owner only) – sets whether or not the profile is listed in Search, and is tidier than the old check-box.
• Actions: a context-sensitive menu available to both the profile owner and those viewing a profile, with the menu options (shown left and right in the image above) dependent on who is viewing the viewing the menu.
• Tools drop-down (person viewing a profile only): provides access to “action” options the person viewing the profile may wish to take in reference to the owner of the profile, as shown below:

The remainder of the tabs in the floater are really straightforward and require no real expansion here. As per current legacy profiles, when editing your own, editable fields are show in white for text entry.

What one thinks of the overall layout / appearance is subjective; outside of my little niggle on how information is displayed between different styles of profile floater (again, assuming some TPVs keep to the more “traditional” profile floater design rather than adopting this layout), I’ve no issue with this approach. And like I noted above, the additional drop-down options presented through it are handy to have.

Related Links

• Second life Alternate Viewer page (look for Profiles Viewer)

The Performance Improvements Viewer has been the default release viewer from the Lab for the last couple of weeks, and the code is starting to find its way to TPVs. This is a viewer specifically designed by LL to provide a smoother user experience in terms of things like rezzing / rendering times, better FPS.

The viewer represents a lot of work on the part of the Graphics team to improve data handling (including moving various data elements between threads, removing low update processes to their own threads rather than having them stall the main rendering threads, etc., all of which is intended to make the viewer feed more responsive as you move / teleport around SL.

As such, I decided to try a series of basic comparative tests between the Performance Improvements viewer, a version of the official viewer without the code updates and Firestorm (as my TPV of choice at the moment), just to gain a rough indication of how the changes made to the viewer perform. These tests comprised:

1. Logging-in to my Home location with empty caches, recording the time from clicking the log-in button through to everything loading in my field of view.
2. Logging-in to my Home location with it locally cached on my hard drive.
3. Completing a walk around my Home location, recording FPS at the same 9 locations, three times each with Shadows OFF and Shadows ON, and taking an average of all the FPS times recorded.
4. Teleporting to a busy region (15+ avatars) that is not pre-cached locally (but should be cached at my nearest CDN node(s), given it is a place I visit daily).
5. Re-teleporting to the same location, now locally cached.
6. Completing the same walk around the selected location, recording FPS at the same 5 locations, three times each with Shadows OFF and Shadows ON, and taking an average of all the FPS times recorded.

The table below summarises my findings:

Obviously, there is always going to be a lot of subjectivity in such tests like these, which are dependent upon factors such as the specs of the system running the viewer(s), what else is running at the same time, Internet connectivity with the SL services and to the nearest CDN node, etc. However, in carrying out the comparisons above, I attempted to achieve something of a common basis by:

• Using the same settings across the three viewers (e.g. camera and graphics pre-sets; the same RenderVolumeLOD factor; the same attached EEP settings for a consistent environment; the same complexity setting & max no. of non-imposters, etc.) – with the acknowledged caveat that the Performance Improvements viewer would automatically default to Shadows ON for me, based on my system’s capabilities, so needed some adjustment during some tests.
• Ensuring all tests were carried out back-to-back to minimise extensive changes due to avatars of different complexity coming  / going / moving around.
• Closing all other apps I had been running on my PC to maximise the available resources available to all of the tests.

In addition, and for completeness (and as requested by Lance in the comments) – here are my system specifications – which are also available in the link on the right column of this blog.

But even while subjective, I think the results tend to speak for themselves, and there is no denying the qualitative frame speed increase with the Performance Improvements viewer, particularly with shadows enabled.

How quickly these updates are adopted by TPVs is down to their release schedules; but for the official viewer, this marks the first major release of updates intended to improve performance that is currently in flight, with the Performance Improvements Floater viewer (which includes the Lab’s take on auto-FPS function functionality similar to that found in Firestorm) currently at product viewer status.

The Performance Improvements viewer can be downloaded via the Viewer Download page, and the release notes are here.

On Friday, September 3rd Linden Lab issued the latest update to the 360º Snapshot viewer – now called the Project 360 Capture viewer – with the release of version 6.4.23.563579. It represents the most significant update to this viewer we’ve seen, and it comes after a significant pause in its development.

As the name of the viewer suggests, it is designed to take 360º degree panoramic images of the environment around the camera. It does this by simultaneously taking six images around the current camera position – one each at the four cardinal points, plus one directly overhead, and one directly looking down. These are then “stitched” into an equirectangular projection image (e.g. one that can be projected as a sphere), which can then viewed through a suitable medium – such as Flickr (other mediums are available!).

The first iteration of this viewer appeared almost five years ago, in October 2016, and came with a certain amount of complexity involved – including the need to install a local environment for previewing captured images. Later iterations of the viewer improved on this, but the viewer continued to be hit by conflicts with the Interest List.

In simple terms, the Interest List lightens the load – objects, textures and updates to active objects, etc., – the viewer has to process when rendering. It does this by ignoring things that are not in the camera’s direct field of view. This is why, for example, when you turn your camera away from the direction you are looking, it can take time for objects and their textures to render. However, for a 360º-degree image, everything needs to be properly rendered in the viewer – whether in the current field of view or not. Overcoming this problem has proven difficult – and it (admittedly with other factors also coming into play) caused work on the viewer to be halted for an extended period.

This version of the viewer overcomes most of these issues, and makes the creation of 360º snapshots straightforward through the use of a new 360 Snapshot floater that is independent of the “standard” snapshot floater, and the use of some additional back-end code to overcome the Interest List. This new floater can be accessed from within the Project 360 Capture viewer in one of four ways:

• Via World 360 Snapshot.
• By pressing CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-S.
• By enabling the 360° snapshot toolbar button in one of the toolbar areas.
• By expanding the standard snapshot floater to show the full preview and clicking the Take 360 Snapshot link in the lower right corner of the preview panel.

The floater itself comprises several elements:

• The image Quality radio buttons and selection button (labelled Create 360 Image).
  • The quality buttons appear to utilise the viewer’s screen buffer to render the different image types, so Preview appears to use the 128 vertical buffer, while Medium and High use the 512 and 1024 buffers respectively, and Maximum the 2048 buffer (i.e. the full 4096×2048 resolution).
  • When you have selected your preferred quality, click the Create 360 button to generate a preview.
  • If you alter the image quality at any time, you’ll need to click on the Create 360 button again to update the preview / take a fresh image at the new image quality.
• A checkbox to disable avatar rendering during the image capture process.
• The preview panel. This will show a rotating image from the current camera position until refreshed, and this image can be manually rotated / panned up and down by clicking on it and dragging the mouse around.
• The Save As… button that actually saves the image to your hard drive.

To take an image:

1. Position your camera.
2. Select the image quality – for finished images you’ll need to set High or Maximum quality using the radio buttons.
3. Click the Create 360 Image button to generate a preview in the floater’s preview panel.
4. Click on the preview image and drag it around to ensure what you’re seeing is what you want / that things like textures have actually rendered correctly.
5. Check the Hide All Avatars option, if required – this will cause the process to include all avatars present (it will not alter their in-world rendering).
6. When you are satisfied with the preview, click Save As… to save it to your hard drive, renaming it if / as required.

Remember, if you change the image quality, you must also click Create 360 button to update the preview AND image capture process to the new image quality, before click Save As… again.

Once captured – again as noted – images can be uploaded to a suitable display platform such as Flickr – the images contain the necessary metadata that should automatically trigger the 360-degree viewing process (just click on an image in flicker to manually pan around up / down).

General Observations

• An easy-to-use iteration of the 360º snapshot viewer that brings good quality and ease-of-use to the process.
• The ability to avoid rendering avatars not only helps avoid issues of rendering / motion blurring when taking a 360º image, it enables the easy capture of landscape images. It also, obviously, allows for the capture of posed avatars if required.
• There are still some issues in rendering out-of-view (relative to the visible field of view for the camera) items and textures at High and (particularly) Maximum quality images – note the blurring of the vessel name in the first 360 image above.
• The lowest quality Preview option is simply too blurred to be of real value – perhaps using 256 rather than 128 might improve this (if only slightly)?

Viewer Links

• Second Life Project 360 Capture viewer (note this link will expire with the next iteration of this viewer)
• Alternate Viewers page

Among their stated goals, Linden Lab is working to improve the user experience with Second Life with a number of projects. One of these is in making the viewer UI and viewer controls more accessible, and as a part of this work, the Performance Floater viewer (version 6.4.23.562625 at the time of writing) was issued as a project viewer with the intention of gaining feedback from users on the changes / options it incorporates and how they are presented.

As the name implies, the Performance Viewer is focused on bringing together various options and controls than can help improve viewer performance, and presenting them through a single new floater called (in difference to the viewer’s name) the Improve Graphics Speed floater.

This new floater can be accessed in one of two ways: via World menu → Improve Graphics Speed or by enabling the Graphics Speed button within a toolbar area. It comprises four button options, together with the viewer’s current FPS provided in large, friendly numbers at the top of the floater.

The four buttons open dedicated panels within the floater, each focused on a specific group of settings:

• Graphics Settings: pulling together the most commonly-used Graphics options from Preferences → Graphics and the Advanced Graphics Preferences floater:
  • Quality and Speed.
  • Draw Distance.
  • Toggles for enabling / Disabling atmospheric shaders and Advanced Lighting Model, together with a drop-down for setting Shadows.
  • A toggle for disabling / enabling water transparency and a drop-down for setting the quality of water reflections.
  • A “Photography” option that most of us will recognise as being the RenderVolumeLODFactor debug setting.
  • A button to open the Advanced Graphics Preferences floater, should further adjustments be required.
• Avatars Nearby: a set of options related to rendering the avatars around you or in general:
  • The Maximum Complexity slider (from Advanced Graphics Preferences), with the value rounded down to the nearest whole thousand.
  • The option to Always Render Friends (from Preferences → Graphics).
  • A new checkbox for de-rendering all avatars in a scene (toggles Advanced → Rendering Types → Avatars (CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-4) off / on).
  • The radio buttons for showing / hiding avatar name tags (from Preferences → General).
  • A list of nearby avatars, with indicators giving their rendering complexity, colour-coded to denote fiends.
    • Running the mouse over a name in the list will highlight it, and offer an Information icon to open their profile.
    • Right-clicking on a name will bring up options to render them fully or as a “jellydoll” (neutral grey avatar) or remove them from your Exceptions list (exceptions being those set to never / always render, no matter what your Maximum complexity setting).
  • A button directly under the avatar list to open your Exceptions list, where you can again right-click on names and alter their render behaviour.
• Your Avatar Complexity: a list of worn attachments on your avatar with a guidance on their relative rendering cost, and an option to right-click and on any of them and remove them.
• Your Active HUDs: a list of worn HUDs, again with a relative rendering complexity indicator and the option to highlight and remove any of the listed HUDs.

Prior to the release of this viewer, concerns were expressed at a number of the Content Creation User Group meetings that doing so before the re-working of the Avatar Complexity values through the ARCTan project would lessen the impact of those changes when they are eventually deployed. I’m not sure such arguments hold that much weight, simply because a) a lot of people have already made up their minds about avatar complexity and Maximum complexity, so are unlikely to be swayed by any change in how the values are calculated; and b) those who already take note of avatar complexity and the options for managing them, no matter how the values are calculated.

That said, playing with the viewer did raise a number of niggles / ideas with me:

• Consistency of terminology: we’re all used to terms like “Quality and Speed” and “Draw Distance” in relation to graphics settings – so seeing these arbitrarily renamed to (the contextually meaningless) “Shortcuts” and “Visibility Distance” is a little disconcerting. I hope that labelling overall – whichever terms are used going forward are made consistent across the viewer.
• That said, the use of numbers to denote quality settings rather than the “mid” to “ultra” labels, is an improvement, and I certainly hope that it is fed back into Preferences → Graphics.
• The use of the word “hide” in reference to the Maximum Complexity slider is misleading – avatars are not “hidden” when using this slider, but are still rendered, if only as simplified grey humanoid shapes.
• It would be useful to have Max No. of Non-Imposter avatars added to the Avatars Nearby panel, as for some this is a preferred method of reducing avatar impact on their system over seeing “jellydolled” (or “greyed” as it should perhaps now be) avatars.
• The Avatars Nearby panel could perhaps also benefit from some additional explanatory text, such as a more rounded note on Maximum Complexity to help encourage people to use it.

As noted, this is the first iteration of the viewer and floater in order for it to gain some exposure and generate feedback from those interested in trying it. Those who do want to offer feedback on it should do so via the Jira as either bug reports or feature requests, depending on the nature of the feedback.

Links

• Performance Floater project viewer version 6.4.23.562625 (link will expire with the next iteration)
• Alternate Viewers list