Black Dragon Viewer: December 2011

Nirans Viewer 1.0 - The Viewer that dares to be different

Finally! 2 Months of continuesly working finally comes to an end, as some of you may already know (or not) , with this "Final Release" all Future updates will only be corrections , additional shinies or simply bugfixes , depending on how much stuff comes out and how important they are i will reduce or increase Releasing speed , meaning that it might be possible to get up to 2+ Releases a day. In future i will also think of a better System to announce those lots of bugfix releases , probably through a Forum. As of Nirans Viewer turning 1.0 officially , theres a lot of new stuff to explore and experiment with , but dont forget , this Viewer is based on Shining , Viewer-Development (not always recent as example the MultiCurl thingy was left out...because of you know...problems which i will check in future) , some Features of other Viewers like Firestorm , Kirstens , Catznip , and several secret (or not) Repositorys with nice (maybe some secret ones aswell) Projects i can find , all critically weighted good vs evil and decided if it fits my Viewer aswell as my Goals to create a Viewer with the probably best Graphics in Second Life. Well you might also noticed that my Builds are getting slower and slower by nearly each build i implement a cool new graphics feature or turn up graphics even more , logically thats normal , higher graphics mean less FPS on the same PC , even i have reached a point in which i feel.... old with my GTX 460 and AMD Quad Core again i mean , with all new shinies n stuff im getting about 20-40 FPS in average which is compared to Kirstens times not really less....even more but highest Values have fallen , so my times with 50-60 FPS are down to 40 MAX now... but you can also see the difference , it looks totally different as in ANY other Viewer. Why all this graphics , graphics and even more graphics? there are a few reasons , i think SL has come to a point in which it finally needs some change , SL graphics have been held back for faaaaar to long, now as i can decide how they should look and how far they can get , i say just MORE , theres so much SL still can do which NONE of us has yet discovered , and im striving to get to those limits without care about Performance , screw performance , we will gain it anyway , weither it is through upgrading our System , luck or optimisations i or LL or someone else does....

Anyway , lets come to the main thread again , the Release of Nirans Viewer 1.0 , theres a lot to say about it so lets start!

Graphics:
in Graphics i´ve a lot of stuff lately and the last few days , most noticable is that your FPS will again decrease (probably) because of the newly implemented Shadow rendering algorythm which gives way better quality , less pixelated mud and most importantly it extremly decreases the for long noticable pixelation when turning the camera around in a special position/angle , also shadows will reach a whole new level in resolution , i did a (unfair) comparison between them , i´ve set the old rendering to EXTREME (which caused my FPS to cripple to 50%) and the new one to High (which is default) , and guess what? on High in new rendering it looks very close to that of EXTREME in old rendering , you can see smaller shadows like from sticks , wooden fences , cables etc from way farther ahead in way higher quality because shadows doesnt pixelate that extreme anymore , making it a good replacement of the old rendering , in average you will probably loose 1-5 FPS (depending on how much you actually have) but as i said compared to what you would lose on way higher quality to archieve the same quality in old rendering its nothing, so YAY for that!

Old

New

Old

New

New (High)

Old (EXTREME)

, along this Major changes , there were some internal changes , and some extremly tiny minor changes to Depth of Field and SSAO again , i also made it possible for you to easily change the new SSAO back to the old style (seen in pics) aswell as the failish Shiny/Bumpmapping , you can switch between old and new to your liking but let yourself said , the new one is the Windlight one which has been posted as "fix" to SH-1912

IT IS NOT INTENDED TO BE USED IN DEFERRED! STOP COMPLAINING IN JIRA!

IM SICK OF SEEING PEOPLE RUINING SL GRAPHICS WITH THIS KIND OF SHIT CHANGES

Also have a look at the soon deriving Animated Trees feature , which will obviously stay in my Viewer , atlast until somethig bad happens ...or will be replaced

Skins:

With 1.0 "Darkness" has been officially finished and set as new Viewer Default! , you can find it in Preferences - Skins/Themes , select it there and relog to see the new Skin , i´ve put a lot of time into this skin to make it completly different from everything you´ve seen so far , it makes a lot usage of fading , black and yellow/white.

Also with 1.0 comes Miguaels skin called Ashen Blood which is basically a recolor of my Skin as it looks , it was available as additional skin in Kirstens aswell , like my Azure long ago , it makes huge use of Black and Dark Red , so be carefull not to lose your last few blobs of life juice in there =D

User Interface:

The User Interface is the core of every Viewer , without it most of you (me included) wouldnt be able to use a Viewer at all...atlast for non command liners... over the past 2 months i´ve put alot of time and work into my UI , making it different , changing nearly every aspect of the UI without breaking it too much , a lot of ideas and suggestions from you the Community has been added in some way , another main Goal of my Viewer is reached with my UI , it gives you extreme control of how your Interface can look , you can rearange all buttons along the top/left/right and bottom bar , you can set them to Text and Icon or Icon only , you can move every Window around , customise the Topbar , disable the quickbuttons or enable them... , you can hide the navbar , the favbar , the bank display , the draw distance slider and in Azure you can even set transparency by disabling one or more of the topbar-texture-layers , not to mention that you can enable pie menus and also customise them in an extreme way ... color of text , background , selected pie , pie lines aswell as transparency and fade out of the menu background , you will also see a live preview for the colors you set beside the pie menu options , which allows you to directly see what you change and how it would ~look without having to right click something all the time! in near future i will also add the ability to customise Camera Presets like its possible atm via Debug , just in Prefs meaning way easier to find and customise.

I will also update and change the UI in future updates , and maybe i will completly redo it someday so stay tuned

apart from that i redid the IM Panel again , when i tried to clean up in code i found code pieces for Voice-Volume , Mute and Block/Unblock which i added to the IM Panel now and required me to rethink it a bit , you can now click on the wrench icon to slide all controls out and slide in the new voice/block/unblock/mute controls , same goes vise versa ...have a look!

theres also the now fully functional Optimizer Panel which can be found in Preferences - Graphics (yea RIGHT , Graphics 2 is gone and Advanced graphics is now a seperate tab) besides Reset.

This window is designed to be kept on for a long time on screen without decreasing FPS and taking up too much space , making it easier to compare graphic settings/options , it can be slid out/in by clicking the menu buttons , which then will reveal new options. Graphics 1 also has been redone and simplified a lot , no changing labels anymore , a few more hover tips , and some corrected

Bugfixes:

As always there has been a lot of fixing going on , some of you may encounter less crashs , some a lot more , some none at all , we all know SL is a crashy and unstable piece of....you know , thats because so many different systems and system setups aswell as OS´s have to run on so many different clients setups in so many special situations in many different SL Server Versions etc etc , atm theres simply no way to ensure stability , so i just hope you are lucky and dont crash all the time , because that would be bad...

Ahern:

I´ve done some test runs on Ahern but there never were enough people to crash the Viewer , so i cannot say for sure if its fixed or not , but you can try if you want , would be interessted in knowing if it works there now , if now , tomorrow will follow a "Fix" which MIGHT fix it ...we will see

Features:

Since i started from Shining 3.2.1 with default LL UI , there has been added a lot of stuff , you could watch the huge Todo list getting longer and longer , but atlast the most important have been finished , those that were in Kirstens and some little additional things , but theres one thing i want to tell you , you may ask for features or suggest a good one , if its a graphic related feature , and available somewhere there will be a nearly 100% of adding it as long as it isnt a stupid idea like the SH-1912 thingy.... everything else will be critically weighted and i will most likely discuss a lot with you about how bad it can be used and what reasons i have why i implement it or why not , i know theres no way to ensure that people wont use a feature in a bad way , but i will definetly take care of my Features and also try to make them as harmless as possible , because i simply wouldnt like hearing that my Viewer is some sort of a crash/grief or whatever Viewer because it has X Y Z....well theres another thing about those Features.... are they worth implementing? i mean this is obviously a Machinima/Graphics Viewer for Photoshooting , taking Videos , or just seeing/enjoying Second Life´s beautiful side , so please dont tell me i need a huge radar with lots of extra features because you are an estate manager , like i said this is not a multi functional uber viewer , its just a graphics specialised viewer created in a way i (more or less) want it.... well and LL gives us enough griefing tools from stock , the worst one is scripting and building if you dont know how to use it right =D

Forum / Website & Third Party Viewer directory:

Forum? Forum. Forum?! Yes , im planning to go TPV with my Viewer , when this will finally happen...idk , but to accomplish this i have to fundamentally change a lot especially on Web side, thats why i created a Forum for you to use (link is on the right side) , to post news , feature request , bugs , tutorials etc etc, i will also have to make a note you will have to read before downloading my Viewer that tells you what data i collect and what uses i have for them (well technically seen im not collecting any data except what a LL Viewer would also do , im also not using them , and even if i would collect any other data , its 99.9% not "wanted" , i prefer asking people personally or in Forums , PM/IM or whatever , thats why im often saying you should comment or tell me inworld or something like that in other Forums...) , anyway i have to write that down somewhere , place the download under it so YOU have to read it , think your blabla about it and continue downloading it as it was before. My blog will sooner or later get an upgrade aswell , maybe it will be transformed into a normal Website , maybe not , im not yet sure about it

Tests/Previews:

If you are still not sure what you will get to see you can check out some Previews , just search for Nirans Viewer on Google , i´ve also searched the biggest and most complete one here which will get an update after this release , so check it out again soon!

Nirans Viewer Preview

Linux:

Yes there will most likely a Linux version finally , Miguael which also "worked" for/with Kirsten joined me a while ago and is also working on some things i dont have time or hardware for , like a Linux Release , i know im a backstabbing guy but , if there are ANY problems with Linux , I AM NOT YOUR SUPPORT! i cant and wont help you , instead i will redirect you to Miguael or tell him as i cannot do a thing for Linux (i dont have Linux) so instead go to him directly ok? i will post the link here when the Linux download is ready

LINUX DOWNLOAD

LINUX DOWNLOAD #2

Windows:

nothing really changed here except that my download is below all this massive amounts of text and that i will maybe try to fix the installer in future releases by doing a normal installer asides the WinRar executable :)

WINDOWS DOWNLOAD

Future:

a short reminder , like said at the top i will probably do more frequent releases now , the first will be 1.01 tomorrow and the second on new year called 1.02 , i dont wanna stop you anymore now so go ahead and download it , have a MERRY CHRISTMAS to you all!

Changelist:

for all of you that want to see the complete changelist for everything from Build 5a/b up to Release ,here it is

VWR-27832 L$ Transfer failures show alert as if successful

ER-1473: fix teleporting in sit mode. Viewer fix - reviewed by Callum

SH-2743 Fix for shader compiler error on some GL 3.x implementations.

SH-2735: LLCurl causes SL to freeze when logout

SH-2734 trade HSV effect matrix for a simple value scaler, since that's all it's been used for for years now.

SH-2726 FIX -- Texture Console and Debug Console inaccessable

SH-2694 Fix for FPS drop when mousing over flexi objects (don't use an octree for flexi raycast)

SH-2680 Bring back blurred edges on objects closer than the near focal plane.

SH-2671: sometimes other avatar textures don't load

SH-2668: "ocean" water is always 20m high instead of the Region Water Height

SH-2658: crash in LLPluginMessage::parse

SH-2652 Add timers to relevant areas, pause render pipeline while occlusion queries from previous frame are still pending and perform texture decode work.

SH-2651: [crashhunters] Crash after google translate failure

SH-2614 FIX, SH-2684 FIX - fixed buggy state management in onPhysicsUseLOD

SH-2602: [crashhunters] crash on exit in ~LLPumpIO()

SH-2601: [crashhunters] crash in LLBufferArray::countAfter()

SH-2560: Nearby avatar textures fail to load

SH-2526: Second Life client quickly allocates all available RAM and crashes

SH-2512: Some avatar textures in welcome area never load on first visit; By Bao Linden

SH-2084 Don't error out on framebuffer mismatch

SH-1427 Fix for redundantly applying light intensity to deferred lights.

EXP-1742 FIX -- Clicking IM notification or receiving multiple IM notifications in quick succession crashes to desktop

EXP-1674 FIXED Disabled chrome for profile windows; adjusted floater height accordingly.

EXP-1664 FIX Toolbars visible in mouselook view and when hide all controls selected

EXP-1657 FIXED Change success/failure message text on posting to profile feed.

EXP-1654 FIX fast timers does not show entire frame when Full bar = Max

EXP-1649 FIX +1 (client) Turn off web loading spinner until a more visually pleasing one can be defined

EXP-1639 WIP Cleaning up to improve readability; added more debugging messages.

EXP-1635 FIXED Made it clear that inventory snapshots are limited to 512x512 px.

EXP-1631 FIXED (Selecting Edit for more than one Pick from Profile floater, breaks the navigation history in Picks Floater)

EXP-1596 : Fetch system folders so we're sure they are empty if we need to hide them

EXP-1588 Floaters do not snap to edge

EXP-1577 FIX Made agent profile position and size persistent.

EXP-1576 FIXED (Remove old profile window from People panel)

EXP-1565 FIXED Fixed IRC-style emotes in chat.

EXP-1554 FIXED (Selecting More Info for more than one Classified section in Search floater, breaks the navigation history in Picks Floater)

EXP-1544 FIX Remove 'Edit Terrain' from About Land floater

EXP-1515 FIXED Web Preference radio button must be clicked twice to engage.

EXP-1506 FIXED starting the toast fade timer when a toast is overlapped by other floater like avatar inspector.

EXP-1504 : Allow opening of tab in tab containers when drag and dropping things.

EXP-1501 FIX Specified help topic for the IM floater.

EXP-1498 : Hide empty system folders. System folders can be specifically marked to be hidden if empty in the LLViewerFolderDictionary constructor.

EXP-1498, EXP-1595, EXP-1596 : Hide empty system folders in a dynamic way, turn the setting ON by default

EXP-1489 FIXED (Cannot build notifications not being shown when chat floater closed with chat log toggled open)

EXP-1476 FIXED (Moving speak button to empty toolbar while incoming/outgoing call dialog is open does not move the dialog as well)

EXP-1451 FIX -- I want to put my NEARBY CHAT window at the bottom left, but then it obscures chatted text.

LLSD-14: Bring over llsd.{h,cpp} enhancements from server-trunk.

STORM-1737 panel_edit_skin.xml uses confusing historical terminology

STORM-1731 Ad-hoc confererence block failing. Residents using it to start massive multi-sim conferences, used as a griefing tool.

STORM-1729: ensure that cpu id has no leading or trailing spaces for ease of comparison and formatting

STORM-1728 Name truncation in the Region/Estate floater -> Covenant tab

STORM-1723: fix character display when a lot of different characters are used

STORM-1719 notifications.xml has two instances where a button shows as "Ok" and Not "OK"

STORM-1717: fix avatar names in object details floater

STORM-1713: Mouse pointer flickers when hovering over any active/clickable UI item

STORM-1712 Do not sort recent speakers list if mouse is hovered over it

STORM-1653 Group notices sent by muted residents are still displayed

STORM-653 As a user i would like to be able to see the available number of attachments and remaining free slots.

STORM-591 As a music fan, I want audio to fade in gently so my immersion is increased , Co-written with Robin Cornelius

NIRV-10 Implemented Tofu´s new Shadow Algorythm , way more quality for a little FPS cost

NIRV-9 Deprecated Delete presets floater and made presets deletable via edit floater

NIRV-8 Added Name fade duration and start fading after x seconds options

NIRV-7 Chat now closes/hides on hitting enter with empty Chatbar

NIRV-6 Added abbility to Whisper via Shift again

NIRV-5 Added different Folder Icons and made NV use them

NIRV-4 Added Optimizer panel which allows quickly optimising graphics without having preferences open (FPS drop)

NIRV-3 fixed Hide L$ Balance Option

NIRV-2 removed overwrite ATI rendertargets Option

NIRV-1 Fixed Viewer tab which was a bit too short to display everything correctly

MISC-6 trivial: change a log info for memory failure for LLImageBase

MISC-5 trivial: update the memory pool log info to the latest.

MISC-4 made slplugin less spammy when it fails to launch

MISC-3 Update LLQtWebKit to fix EXP-1191 Update loading overlay graphic to resemble a typical Web loading... spinner

MISC-2 call LLViewerTexture::isMemoryForTextureLow() less often and only for ATI cards.

MISC-1 Point to improved loading overlay and turn it on always

get it while its hot!
Pre-Release weee!

DOWNLOAD

here a short list of Features:
we got lots of crashes
normal crashs
fast crashs
slow crashs
instant crashs
delicious crashs
awkward crashs
stinky crashs
ugly crashs
cool crashs
dark crashs
bright crashs
funny crashs
sad crashs
huge crashs
small crashs
freeze crashs
hard crashs
softie crashiieees
crashs before crashing
crashs while crashing
crashs for crashing while crashing
and the most important of all! an utterly and ugly designed UI to make the most out of your crashs, design them how YOU want them to crash, with cool sliders to adjust strenght of crashes , frequency and even the speed of crashs! all packed in a shity , stupid and totally useless nonesense WinRar Package in order to maximise uglyness all the way!

have a snapshot of the ugly UI for your crash-pleasures

grab your personal crash today and increase the amount of overall crashing on the grid!
awesome!

Note: today is not inverse-day or something like that im just having fun writing crash that often =D
seriously , no info sorry , i wanna do (like always) a huuge post about all the new stuff when Release hits SF on a special day...i also dont want to do a big announce over all this stuff when it might not work at all , this pre-release is there to have a look at whats coming in Release and probably my last chance to fix everything up to make the Release as good as possible

please reset your settings or if you dont want to , go to Debug Settings in Login Screen (activate by pressing CTRL + Alt + D and selecting Debug Settings in Debug menu) and disable CurlUseMultipleThreads , otherwise the above described funny joke will become true

About risks and side-effects read the package insert or ask your doc or apothecary

sorry ...german medicine info , but sounds funny anyway