Disclaimer

Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Release 2.0.6

NOTE: The "FUCK U FULLBRIGHT" Feature needs revisiting of that SIM you´re on (or going to 2000m and coming back down) or relog

gdjasgagdag fasjgperfmöe ... fuahgfo *enables translator*
Hai.

I hopy dopy you had a wonderfull christmas , cuz i DIDNT , i got like super duper sick , not just sick in my brain as usual , also physically sick...anyway

I planned a beta release but i made a full release out of it because it would have been counted as one anyway so here we go.

Yea uhm... Login has been fixed , menu has been removed , voice toggle added and all that stuff... you know... more important is that theres this... feature ... which allows you to disable Fullbrights... WOOOOOOW WAIT , Fullbrights? Yes you can disable them but it will need you to relog OR revisit the SIM or Place you are at (sorry for that but havnt found an effective way to do it yet)

Ever seen a fullbrightless world? no? here it is!





this is probably the best of all , you can do stuff like night and add some cool projected lights without those stupid fullbrights shining like "HEY IM HERE RUINING YOUR GODDAMN PICTURE"


Can you imagine that stuff can look good without fullbright? no? k , look at this


Oh and i forgot about that pesky bug faking motion blurrrrrrryyyyy blur... here...


go to preferences , make sure you got everything up to Deferred enabled , now enable Screen Space Reflections and keep Shadows and Ambient Occlusion DISABLED! everything else doesnt matter , motion should now start appearing a few times , just like a super simple motion blur and the lower your FPS go the easier it becomes to see it



Tofus also updated his Screen Space Reflection code and optimized SSAO aswell as DoF a bit , DoF should be ALOT faster now even with maximum resolution and SSR... well...look at it now



new Minimap FTW


please see the changelog for more information on those other changes that arnt THAT important...


Changelog:


2.0.6

fixed Login disalignment
fixed some error messages and non existant stuff that threw warnings
fixed minimap prim size not clickable
fixed the Viewer using Second Life´s default cache folder
fixed crash (potential) when bad number of texture components occours
added Enable Voice option to login
added Experimental Fullbright on/off toggle
added Tofu´s better SSAO , DoF and SSR
added a slighty transparent background to the minimap , looks better now
added ability to derender Fullbright , Fullbright Shinies and Alphas to Render Types menu
changed Tone Mapping defaults a bit for MOAR COLORS!
cleaned login code a bit up
moved the Settings preset feature to main Preferences
removed Gamma option from preferences
removed Login menu
removed last bits of HighRes Snapshot (obselete)
renamed Friends to Aquaintances (Freunde zu Bekannte)

Monday, December 24, 2012

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you all!
I hope you have/had fun and enjoy/enjoyed your Christmas this year.

I might upload a snapshot build tomorrow ...today... idk..we´ll see...

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Release 2.0.5 (2346)

NOTE: You have to REDO your settings to see my new SSAO , DoF , Shadow and Glow settings BUT only if you changed them which you MOST LIKELY did!

oh yesh its the time again... i mean basically its twice the time because last week i didnt do a release...
i was busy with playing Dark Souls and too lazy to release =D
anyway...


Code:


Beta and alot of lost or missed stuff has been merged/remerged , the Viewer should be pretty up to date again with CoreHTTP (Project HTTP) , Firestorms crashfix collection , and generally some other stuff that i dont remember anymore (its still alot!)

ATTENTION: German users only , please report ANY floater , panel , menu , screen etc which you found has turned to english , this is a "bug" that came from the new LL code changing something in the skinning system which seems to alter the way those translation xmls are loaded , i´ll investigate that and try to fix it!
In meantime please make a list of everything you found and tell me or give it to me via NC!

User Interface:


Not much change here , the differences are hidden in details , like an additional color picker to select the object selection rectangle color (which is by default yellow/orange/brown) and some hidden work on the Login screen which can now also login by pressing Enter key (only if you´ve selected the password entry)

Rendering:


The biggest changes have been done here =D , we all missed the super duper mega ultra better SSAO of Tofu which was so much smoother and finer and i brought it back into my Viewer! Thats not all yet , i also asked him for his SSR (Screen Space Reflections) feature which i also implemented for you to test, BUT , WORDS OF ADVISE , this feature is by FAR not done and is 5 times as ineffective as necessary (like Tofu said) so expect extreme performance drops! ... AND he also made a fix for the Atmospheric Haze not working in Deferred (it didnt for years now)

(Left is Atmospheric Haze in Deferred not working || right has working Atmospheric Haze)




Screen Space Reflectins produce a nice look , they ONLY work in Deferred!






I´ve also implemented the tiling/seams fix of Runatai for high res snapshots , but please be carefull with it , it will make you unable to make super snapshots. Your video card will render as much as it can and save it into a picture so if your video card cant handle a 6000x3306 pictures like i often did before , it will just render what it can and the rest will be black , in this case you will have to go down with the resolution until you hit one that your video card can handle , but now that you can use all graphic settings + antialiasing without having seams or tiling issues , you wont need to go up that much anymore anyway.

taken in 3840x2116



Overall i´ve redone the SSAO , Depth of Field , Glow and Shadow settings for a better default and nicer look , next time i´ll also include the new Tone Mapping defaults which will make the picture a bit more colorfull than the previous defaults did. Note to those that say "Tone Mapping looks dull" , ALL , without exception , ALL my pictures you see here are done with Tone Mapping active. Clouds as example have an extra volumetric look


Performance:


Not sure about Performance , it should have decreased a whole bunch due to better SSAO and my new Shadow settings and additional rendering due to wroking Atmospheric Haze now but as you can see Image quality has been drastically increased!

Snapshots:







Things of interest:


My Viewer parcel where you can test Screen Space Reflections
SLUniverse Topic about unreasonable users and TPV devs

Changelog:


2.0.5

merged Beta Code
added ability to color Object highlights (needs restart)
added new Boost libs
added Tofu´s Better SSAO shaders
added Tofu´s Screen Space Reflections
added Option to toggle SSR
added CoreHTTP (HTTP Project) (Beta merge)
added a secret login screen (not yet done)
added right click 'copy SLURL' option to landmarks
fixed On Off On Off achievement only triggering with attached light option
fixed High Res seams/tiling issue
fixed some shaders and the pipeline a bit
fixed lots of Crash (Beta merge)
fixed german translation in some areas
tweaked Shadow and Shadow Blur settings
tweaked SSAO settings massively
tweaked Depth of Field settings minimaly
tweaked Glow settings minimaly
increased Curl handles to 386 to counter curl fails for a while
toned down water reflection glow massively
renamed some windlight presets for more consistency
updated Special Thanks page

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Release 2.0.4 (2321)

NOTE: See instructions below for solutions on reverting settings!
UPDATE: Added Mig´s Linux version , please read the "Linux" part of this Blog down below


hai hai :|
lots of changes due to 2 weeks without update


Fixing reverting/non saving Settings:


First of all , this is mostly my fault. The Viewer you unpack is a local copy of the freshly and most up-to-date version (at the moment of packing) you can get , its the version i am/was using , that means you will basically get everything packed up i do have aswell and when i packed the Viewer i forgot to delete my presets with which i tested the save/load preset functions. This function will save ALL your (and mine) settings into a file , one of these settings is a string (a text) that resembles the name of your video card , this string is used to determite what video card you use and therefor what features you can use and which you cant use. Everytime this string changes , you will get a notification on startup that the video card has been changed and therefor graphic settings have been reverted to a default that should be fine for that new card. This is an intended feature and existed for a very long time in ANY Viewer.

Heres the problem: 

If YOU load any of my presets , this "GTX 460" string will be set in your current settings. When you´re finished building your settings on top of that preset you will most likely save it again , you will also save that "GTX 460" string into those settings. If you relog now , the Viewer will notice that your video card changed from GTX 460 to X (whatever you got) and will revert your settings , usually you will want your settings back , so you´ll just load them again , causing GTX 460 to be set as your video card AGAIN , reverting your graphic settings on next start AGAIN.

Solution:

To break this semi-endless revert issue you will have to delete all my presets (and yours just to be safe). You can find them in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nirans Viewer\app_settings\graphic_presets
in this folder you´ll have to delete ALL files (DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDER!!!).
now go to:
C:\Users\Niran\AppData\Roaming\Nirans Viewer
delete the "user_settings" folder. This will completely terminate all your settings and clean everything that could still cause any issue like this.
start the Viewer again , set everything you as you want it to be and then save it as a new preset. Loading this preset should not cause any issues anymore.

Heres problem #2 (not saving settings):

You as the User need write permissions for the graphic_preset folder located in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Nirans Viewer\app_settings\graphic_presets
otherwise the Viewer will not be able to save its presets in there.

Solution #1:

Log in to Windows with your Administration User (Administrator) , not your normal User (if you created one)

Solution #2 (Not confirmed): 

Right-click the Viewer exe and select Preferences , select the "Compatibility" tab at the top and tick the option "Run as Administrator" , select "Apply" and then "Ok" (if you got the rights to do this)

Solution #3:

Log in to Windows with your Administration User (Administrator). Right-click the graphic_presets folder and select Properties , select the "Security" tab , in the first list , select your current user and tick "Full Control" on the left side ("allowed" column) and make sure theres a tickbox in every right especially "Edit" , now click "Apply" and then "Ok"

Please correct me or tell me any other possible way how this issue can be fixed (if you find any other way) ,
also take a look at:
SLU Forum , reverting settings issue
My SecondLife , reverting settings issue
for more help , please keep in mind that im using a German Windows , some names or tabs above might be labeled slightly or completely different! Please tell me if so.


User Interface:

Changes here , changes there , changes everywhere =D starting with chiclets now beeing able to go from far right to far left (see picture)


ESC will now close Preferences as proposed and requested. Only works when Preferences is open , otherwise it will reset your camera.

I fixed the hide/always hide/deselect options which enabled/disabled each other making some strange combinations hard or impossible to achieve.

Preset saving and loading has been upgraded a bit , it will now save all your settings weither they are default or not and it will overwrite an existing file instead of always adding ".nv" to its name.

A bug that was reported causing the "Set Voice Key" dialog not detecting your pressed keys has been fixed and should now work correctly again.

The Inbox panel in your Inventory when opened became extremly small and was hardly usable , i made it bigger and user resizable.

Inspectors have been revamped because they looked broken and ugly , they should look much cleaner and visually more appealing now!






Misc:


Lots of code and comments has been removed and or cleaned up aswell as alot of Debug Settings that werent used anymore were removed.

A bug that was reintroduced with Beta merge causing the inability to move an object more than once into the same container was fixed (was also reported by a few people)

Translation and Socks 5 both have been removed from preferences and out of my Viewer code as both seem to be absolutely unusable and/or obselete.

For the other tiny changes please see the changelog at the bottom...


Linux:


Miguael gave me a link to his Linux version compiled from the source 7 days ago , that means that it is missing some fixes/features , those fixes/features are:

tweaked SSAO shaders and settings for a slighty smoother and less grainy look
enabled Quiet Snapshot to Disk by default
fixed save presets adding ".nv" on already existing presets and made it save all settings
fixed hide/deselect chat options logic
fixed Sidebar appearing on Left side instead of right
fixed IM chiclets not beeing able to move to far left of your UI
removed FPSCounterAsText debug

PLEASE DO NOT REPORT THOSE! THEY ARE FIXED IN WINDOWS
You can find it below the usual Windows Download.



Rendering:


Heavily tweaked shadow detail and appearance, they should now look like if you´ve set resolution to something like 2.0 , without hitting on performance , blurring also has been reduced a bit and projected lights will now throw much better shadows that dont go all jerky and pixelated that fast anymore.



















Snapshots:






enjoy,
Niran


2.0.4

added missing texture refresh option in right click dropdown on objects
added ability to close Preferences panel via ESC if its open
disabled TCMalloc
disabled Private Memory Pool by default
enabled VSync again for this release
enabled Quiet Snapshot to Disk by default
redone all inspectors including Avatars , Groups , Objects and remote Objects
moved Preferences panel on top of everything else
fixed IM chiclets not beeing able to move to far left of your UI
fixed hide/deselect chat options logic
fixed Voice "set key" dialog doesnt detect pressed keys
fixed inbox panel in Inventory becoming tiny and unresizable
fixed scripted objects not moving correctly
fixed flexis beeing broken and appearing as disks sometimes
fixed slight shadow acne on some camera angles
fixed a bug causing an object not beeing placable into a container more than once
fixed save presets adding ".nv" on already existing presets and made it save all settings
fixed (potential) öäüßè and other labels becoming unreadable crap in german translation
tweaked quick Soundprefs to slide in horizontally instead of vertically
tweaked RLVa Avatar Z Offset feature to allow up to 3 decimal numbers
tweaked some german translations with a more fitting label
tweaked shadows and projected light shadows extremly for a higher detailed look especially on distance
tweaked Preferences panel background opacity slider to allow up to 90% opacity
tweaked SSAO shaders and settings for a slighty smoother and less grainy look
removed obselete FPS bar
removed lots of unused code and comments scattered around the viewer
removed all Translation debugs
removed FPSCounterAsText debug
removed RotateRight debug again
removed RegInClient debug
removed PostFirstLoginIntroViewed debug
removed PostFirstLoginIntroURL debug
removed all Socks5 proxy debugs
removed LastPrefTab debug
removed LocalFileSystemBrowsingEnabled debug
removed LeftCLickShowMenu debug
removed RenderAnimateRes due to non functionality
removed unused old graphic preferences floater
removed Socks5 Proxy and all its features
removed Translator and all its features

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Some Questions...

Before i can release, there are a few "things" im not yet sure what to do, so i figured i could ask you what you think about it. Write your answers into a comment like this:

#1. blablabla bla blabla bla

#2. blabla blabla bla blablabla

#3. ...

NOTE: This post might be updated with new questions... so check back sometimes

Updated: I added the overall summary in which my own opinion is also included and what it means for you , no obviously means that it wont be done.



Login & First Use:


#1

Would you like to see a "how do you want your Viewer" screen on first start that will ask you lots of questions and set the Viewer depending on what you set as answer?

No.

#2

Should i rename/relabel "Login to SecondLife(tm)" to just "Login" (is that a more obvious login button for you)?

No, instead make user aware of it beeing a button and not a title.



Code:


#3

Should i merge up all the latest development code (earlier than beta), which contains lots of Firestorm Crashfixes, the new HTTP Project (which i had in 1.49), some UI optimizations and other stuff?
(Warning this might make the Viewer again extremly unstable, no guarantee here)

Has to be done, but not yet, will wait until next or next-next Release.



User Interface , Widgets & Labels


#4

Should i re-check all options for better labeling and missing tooltips?

I should re-check them when i come by and someday start a systematic overall check.

#5

Are you happy with the new Preferences Panel or is there something that could be done better (i thought about centering the panels on the right so they dont start at the top and enabling Escape Key to close it)?

Yes, pretty much everyone seems to be happy, ESC close has been implemented and the Preferences Panel is beeing investigated if theres something that could be finetuned.

#6

Do you want Floaters (windows) to fade out on close (or fade in on opening) like toasts (system messages , IMs and chat) do?

Probably not, maybe some day...

#7

Would you like to see a re-design of the main UI (Navigationbar , Favoritesbar , Menubar , IM chiclets , Local chat , Toolbars etc) and what do you think could it look like (more MMO-ish? something completely new?)?

No.

#8

Do you think the FPS bar (not text , at the top right) is useless and could be replaced/forced to text style all the time?

Yes, its useless and has been removed.

#9

Do you like the default skin or could there be something way simplier (like LL style grey as example)?

The default seems pretty ok, will delay any plans on doing a new skin infinitely until theres a reason to do a new one.

#10

Does the Viewer have enough options to set your preferred graphics or do you know anything else thats missing or could be added?

Yes.



Blog:


#11

Do you like the new layout and look of the Blog or was the old one better?

The old one seems alot better to most people, however i liked the old one more because it was different. New one will remain however.

#12

Should i shorten my blog posts (release posts)? Should i lengthen them (explain more)?

No.



Misc:


#13

Did my shader fix help you enabling Vertex Shader and/or Deferred , Shadows and that stuff that didnt want to activate previously?

Fixed for those that had problems enabling certain options, did not alter the experience for everyone else. Perfect.

#14

What do you think about this song? could it be used for a new video? maybe for login?

#15

What do you think about the whole "No @ 98% of Firestorm/Phoenix features" philosophy?

Its fine. It makes the Viewer what it is and i would have never even thought about changing this philosophy.

#16

Did you ever try the new scripting editor with all its new colors and layout? Is it good (i had no problems when scripting with it)?

Those who script seem to like it, the rest cant tell.

#17

Should there be less updates? Should they stay on a regular base or more on a "when its done" one?

Regular is good but "when its done" is also good, meaning that nothing will change...

#18

Should i implement some sort of Live Chat for helping as example?

By GOD are you crazy , NO!

#19

Do i really have to implement a Viewer doomsday feature that disables the Viewer as soon as an update is online to make you update regulary?

Those who read my blog obviously answer no, those that dont read it... are those at which this question was directed, making this decision hard, but probably... no.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Release 2.0.3 (2262)

WARNING: My Viewer uses a Depth of Field Resolution of 1.0 by default! this can cause serious FPS drops (if you zoom so close that your camera would start mirroring itself) up to a freeze at which your drivers will "freeze" and Windows will automatically start the driver recovery (black screen for a few seconds), this can either be prevented by disabling driver recovery or by pulling Depth of Field Resolution to a lower value, it can also be "prevented" by lengthening the amount of time (2 seconds by default) after which the driver recovery should kick in, this will give you alot more time to just turn the camera around/zoom out or generally clear Depth of Field again without the drivers crashing and therefor your Viewer crashing (however this needs some registry hacks, please see a tutorial on how to do these and please only do them if you know what you are doing!)

NOTE: To all you people having problems with always re-baking avatars and objects, THIS IS NOT ONLY MY VIEWERS FAULT! It happens in all other Viewers aswell, so far users on Singularity, Catznip, Linden Viewer, Phoenix and Firestorm confirmed its happening to them aswell! Not sure tho if its a widely spread Viewer issue or Server issue.


Sourcecode:


The Viewer again has undergone some heavy changes internally, i rebased my code on Linden Lab´s latest Beta again so it contains all its shinies and also not so shiny things (if there are any) , those shinies so far include a fix for rezzing friendlists/grouplists causing extreme FPS drops, reducing memory usage, some pathfinding changes and fixes, group handling code for groups with 10k people, localization of server messages and other stuff i havnt yet noticed...

User Interface:


A few fixes here, a few fixes there, add some salt everywhere...

I fixed those pesky green ad-hoc conversation icons that plopped up behind avatar icons when having IM/Group toasts active.

Also the invisible login button of connection overlapping the "close viewer" button is also gone now...well its not gone its just shortened more so even with opened preferences you should be able to click it normally.

Pressing ESC with opened "Set Voice Key" floater will now close it, in next update i will also make ESC close Preferences without you having to click cccept or its menu entry (or shortcut).

I changed the Script Editor´s color theme completely, inspired by Microsoft Visual Studio 2012´s color theme, have a look! it looks really nice


Graphics:


Graphics havnt been touched, just "fixed" the anti shadow acne. Here are 2 examples of what i mean...

















I MIGHT have fixed an compatibility issue with Exodus´s Post Shaders (i should tell Geenz about that fix if it works) that caused some video cards with older OpenGL especially ATI and OpenGL 4.0 to be unable to enable Vertex Shader and all its options, the same fix might also fix the issue for some other people that cant enable Deferred Rendering or Shadows and so on.

Performance:


Performance should have been drastically increased in terms of its longlivity, before, in Deferred my Viewer went into "crawl" mode really quick due to 1-2 avatars already occupying all its memory, now that the memory usage has been reduced drastically to a point where i can go into a club with 35 people and still only use 1.0gb memory, it will take ALOT longer for the Viewer to break down into crawl mode. "Crawl" mode will also usually only engaged in Deferred Rendering and higher so for all windlighters theres nothing to fear, nothing should have changed for you anyway.

BTW:


Oh and... i got bored again so i recorded a super smooth 30 FPS video with active Deferred and Tone Mapping =D



Snapshots:


















Changelog:




2.0.3

fixed refresh snapshot label getting truncated
fixed "set voice key" and "set middle mouse" button had inverted functions
fixed anti shadow "acne" (small shadows vanishing on distance)
fixed (potential) some people not beeing able to enable Vertex Shader or above due to Exodus´s post shaders
fixed green ad-hoc conversation icon
fixed Login to Second Life button overlapping the close button when prefs were opened
fixed mostly all rendering related breakdowns , a few are still there :/
fixed groupslist/friendlist loading causing extreme performance drop or freezes up to disconnects
rebased code completely on Linden Labs latest beta , that includes alot of changes/fixes
reduced memory usage and memory usage buildup extremly
merged alot of translations especially for all non supported languages
cleaned up some code and XML files everywhere
changed ESC button to close voice key floater (will do same for prefs in next update)
changed "dublicate" label to duplicate
changed Script floater color theme to a MS Visual Studio 2012 inspired color theme
changed snapshot floater refresh label background a bit
changed german "save to computer" label to match the panel button
tweaked default glow strength a bit
removed some unused and not working achievements

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Release 2.0.2 (2225)

ERROR: Error while loading Error.
WARNING: The Error is still loading.
NOTE: Dont forget Cache clear and Settings reset if nothing else helps!
NOTE #2: You can do a settings preset before changing to the new version, it might come in handy to just load your settings in again.

Yea we´re getting back into that weekly update routine and i encourage you to update , all previous versions werent listed for some reason...

User Interface:

I remade the loginscreen as the Group and SLU users may have seen already , i´ve also made a new Video for it to go with the new loginscreen , watch it here! well...or on Youtube... you know...



the whole new thing pretty much looks like this in the Viewer...


and comes with a basic preference panel to revert core options if you broke something inworld and it somehow got saved , causing you to freeze/crash to death... clicking "Settings" will open it. For those that asked about the small one-way-in street sign (xD) to the left of those preferences ... well thats the unnecessary "Close Viewer" button you basically wont need because you can just click the X , however if you should come across Space Magic and the menu should vanish and the X button of Windows not work anymore then you can click that little X button over there haha... also the Version information at the lower left corner is now the "About" button , just click on it and the About Nirans Viewer floater will pop up. As you may have noticed , without the preferences opened it looks alot more basic than before , only revealing very important stuff like the huge LOGIN TO SECONDLIFE button which is actually the login button you have to press in order to login (Captain obvious Renamon just stated the obvious again).

I fixed a missing code line that prevented the "set group button" (wrench icon) in tools floater from becoming enabled asswel as corrected a little "mistake" i made somewhere in SLURL code preventing the "none" label from appearing when no group was selected.

All Privacy and Personal related options like "send IM to my E-mail when im offline" , "only friends and groups know if im online" , "show me in search" and all that stuff didnt work until now because the internal message delivering your personal information that are needed to pin those options to your account wasnt coming through to my preferences panel. They should be fixed now.

I made a dangerous change in my Featuretable´s that will "hopefully" allow everyone to enable all high end graphic options even tho they are not supported or may result in complete breakage of the Viewer, crashing your drivers or even damage your OS. Please be FUCKING carefull with that, i think i´ll find a way to display you some more informations about what your video card can do in "About" in later updates, so you can see what your video card can do. You can then decide easier if it might be dangerous for you to enable certain options.

Some minor things again most of you wont notice, i updated the tips n tricks shown in the loadingscreen tips floater and translated them, aswell as the local texture selection panel and the navigation bar Pathfinding tooltips when hovering over those Pathfinding icons

About Users , the Blog , my opinion and stuff:

A fact is that im really pissed, pissed because of alot of things, not just that it looks like some/one/all TPV dev/s seem to see me as the new Kirsten asshole. No! , im also pissed that some people seem to boycot updates which makes me start building up rage. As if that wouldnt be enough theres also those kind of users that dont even have the balls to read atlast the blogpost of the version they are downloading, its sad and it makes me angry. In meantime while the viewer is unpacking/downloading you could have easily read half up to a complete post. This would ensure that you atlast know whats new in this version and whats going on, especially if theres bad stuff known like bugs , crashes or things in general you should know, but alltogether this is by far not the worst. Some people dont understand what im doing here, im literally doing a whole Viewer on my own with all kind of side projects, like support, people that think im an evil person because sometimes im going in INSANE MODE on my blog are the worst... you have to understand that im trying to support all my users even tho i basically dont care about them WHILE caring about them. Its paradox, i know and thats why i will try to explain it. You leave = i dont give a fuck. You give constructive feedback where i want it = i care. This is "my" Viewer, if i would be in mood, i could just stop it, right here, right now, right out of the sudden and for no reason. So if all users whould run away now, i wouldnt care because, hey, no users = no people having problems and i would just go private with the Viewer, taking it off the TPV list and im fine. The reason im not doing that is because i am enjoying more or less happy users, also people would beg me and ask me for a download link if i would teaser them with my stuff all the time. Thing is, im really pissed and when i am pissed, i will tell you, beeing a dev behind a Viewer doesnt prophibit me to act like i want, remember im not restrained in any way, in that case im just a normal user just like you, i have the rights to use my mouth to tell you when you´re pissing me off and i will do, thats for sure.

Rendering:

Just a tiny change, that involved changing 2 debug settings (basically disabling them) which should prevent shadows from dissapearing with certain sky presets at certain camera angles (like Maroon or Burn)

Blog:

*sarcasm* most of you wont even notice but.... i did a radical change to the overall blog layout and style...just btw *sarcasm end*

Download

enjoy,
Niran

Changelist:

2.0.2

added missing changes for allowing ALL cards to enable high end graphics
redone login screen panel and added mini preferences to it
fixed preferences backgrounds sometimes not loading
fixed shadows vanishing on some sky presets in certain angles
fixed "set group button" always beeing disabled
fixed group name in tools floater not showing "none" when no group is selected
fixed personal info never coming into preferences , resulting in all privacy options to not work
tranlsated missing Deferred lights option
translated Pathfinding navigationbar tooltips
translated Local Browser texture selection
translated tips n tricks floater
updated all tips to the most recent version as they are shown on teleporting
changed channel to Nirans Viewer - Reboot (Nirans Viewer 2.0 Reboot before)
cleaned up texture selection floater

Monday, October 29, 2012

Release 2.0.1 (2212)

NOTE #2: When i do a blogpost and the Download link is still pointing to a previous version , just select the "Files" tab at Sourceforge and select the new version manually , sometimes i forget to set the new file as default!
NOTE: Crash = Clear your settings and cache!

A week focused on fixing your bugs and following most of your feedback.

SO, i managed to fix pretty much everything you threw at my head.

User Interface:

Biggest change here is that i´ve been working (the last few hours) on a fading system for chat and IMs aswell as system messages and group messages , i made a video here to show you how it looks , how long they fade is dependant from your fading time settings. They can be found in Chat/IM settings.



The other things are mostly fixes that were feedback posted on other blogs or directly IMed to me. Those include that you wished for tooltips for those Inventory sorting filters , seperate icons for Pathfinding toolbar buttons , some translation errors and some floaters not correctly redarkening the Preferences panel.

Other things include that i remade the Spellcheck and Translation floater and moved the Joystick button down below the actual control options instead of beeing on the far right.


Lookat:

With 2.0 i released a forced hack not everyone liked that much , it was a temporarly fix to prevent your Lookat Axis from beeing broadcasted to other Viewers, however my simple hack also made your Avatar not follow your Alt-Zoom anymore which was sadly the trade-off. I removed that hack and replaced it with the hide lookat feature from Firestorm and modded it to be forced on all the time , no way to disable it , but you will not need to disable it anyway...

Plugin:

I made an experimental and probably very dangerous change , the plugin (browser , webmedia etc) has been tweaked so it fires its sleep_time call 10 times shorter and faster , meaning that Youtube videos as example that take alot of ressources to render smoothly will now render alot smoother than before , however a bit of lagging will always be there but if that change causes extreme lag or FPS drop tell me , im planning to reduce it to 5 times anyway ...or make it changable...

Fixes:

A little fix that Drake IMed me a few hours ago was implemented last minute that should prevent a crash in llworld.cpp (no idea when that should happen but anyway...).

I also implemented the fix for Sea level not rendering correctly on private islands which was suggested in SLU Forums.

Did you know?:

My Viewer was placed as second most stable up-to-date Third Party Viewer this week!


as always,
enjoy,
Niran

Changelog:


2.0.1

added a Nearby Chat / Toast fading system
added Tooltips for Inventory sort filters
added 2 different Pathfinding Icons for characters and linksets
added Firestorm´s current hide lookat and modded it to be forced on
removed my hide lookat hack and fixing the avatar head issue
fixed People floater not redarkening preferences when opened via block list
fixed Joystick floater now redarkening preferences when clicking ok/apply
fixed Blur Background Option translation not working
fixed some German labels and wrong written words
fixed Plain Text Chat History beeing always disabled
fixed ParcelMediaURLFilter message always reappearing in message.xml
fixed a crash in llworld.cpp
fixed torn off menu floaters becoming too dark
fixed (potentially) issues with some options becoming unavailable on some cards
updated contributions.txt
changed some CAPITALIZED titles and words
changed Land options labeling
changed the maximum amount of CPU ressources a plugin can use by 10 times
changed the joystick button layout
tweaked Spellcheck floater layout and size
tweaked Translation floater layout and size
tweaked Notification and Chat life time and fading times
MAINT-1161: non standard sea level not correctly rendered around private islands.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Nirans Viewer 2.0 - Reboot (2185)

WARNING: I might read your blog and what you´ve got to say about my Viewer , i will make a shitstorm rain uppon your head if i read complains about something that has been explicitely explained here and you just dont get it because you´re either too stupid or too lazy to read my blog posts. Seriously *starts poo-ing enough crap to make it rain uppon someone*.
WARNING #2: CLEAN YOUR CACHE & SETTINGS , THEN PRAISE TO GOD!
NOTE: A crash on startup CAN happen rarely , just try it again.

Rated [A] for Adult

Extreme voilent and dangerous words ahead!

Pointlessly reboot your PC and you will embrace the greatness of this Viewer! something like that...

anyway lets get to the today´s Topic.

It has taken alot of time and effort to get this Viewer so far, since 2011 when i started this Viewer for the first time it has undergone changes , some more extreme than others , some completely different from everything you´ve seen in any other Viewer and i think thats exactly what makes this Viewer so special and fun to use , everytime you start it up , it surprises you with another (crash) new thing you havnt yet seen yet , like a magic box full of great randomness! Since 1.49 i´ve worked 2 months more or less in secret to create 1.5 which at that time should have been the last and final release , due to this decision i´ve not released it in the next week , instead i´ve taken all the time i needed to make this very last version the (hopefully) best version ever. This action took so long and included so many changes that i changed the version to 2.0 and named it "Reboot" because basically that describes what it does. It tries to "reboot" the whole experience by completely restarting from 0 internally and working up all the way back to the top where it belongs. I´ve also changed my mind about this version beeing the last one , i will continue maintaining this Viewer for quite some more time (otherwise i wouldnt have a Viewer to use hehe) , no matter what other "wanna-be" cool and professional Viewer devs say. This is my work , im doing it like i want it to do and it works this way , fuck off if everything you can do about my work is just shaking your head because you think its pathetic what i do , remember that you started down there aswell.

So , over 2 months in making , you can expect ALOT of changes , i´ve hammered and finetuned things here , there and everywhere , cleaned up alot of spaces , translated lots of text lines and completely reworked alot of general stuff like layout , look , feeling etc. When coming from 1.49 or earlier version you will probably be nuked , those that tried my Beta´s have had a taste of what has been changed , fixed , added and removed.

One last thing. CLEAN YOUR GODDAMN SETTINGS & CACHE!


User Interface:


My favorite part because its the part in which most changes happen hehehe....muahahahahaha

The biggest change here is the new Preferences panel , i´ve gotten lots of good and bad feedback , i tried to fix as much bugs and non working functions as possible and implemented some features to make this new Preferences panel , which now replaces the Preferences floater completely , as easy to use as possible , however if you still got feedback , lemme know. From now on all buttons and key combinations will lead to the new Preferences panel which will open with a blurred and darkened background by default , the blurring can be disabled if you wish and the background darkening level can be set via a slider. It will also automatically hide the background if you open any of its floaters and redarken the background when you close those again. Lets go some steps back , im talking about this panel and maybe you dont even know what it is ...ok here we go , its a fullscreen replacement for what you´ve known as the Preferences window , it scales over your whole SL screen to allow much more space to be used , effectively reducing the amount of scrollbars and tabs/subpanels needed to display all functions.

Your Inventory has been changed a bit , i´ve had some reports that those filters wont check , so you never know which one was active and which werent. I couldnt fix that issue in that Filter menu so i pulled those Filters out and made buttons for them. Now you can just tick them at all times , always seeing which Filter is active at the moment. Take a look at the picture below (Sort objects by name , Sort objects by date , Sort folders by name and put System folders always to top , in that order)

When you start chatting or when you get IMs weither those are Group , Private or Ad-hoc ones , you will most likely notice that they look different , alot different , i changed their background image , realigned them a bit and made them look like small cards which i think looks really cool and is also extremly readable.

I´ve also added 3 new loadingscreen pictures for your viewing pleasure , so it never gets boring! take a look at them here (i´ve put them at first so you will be able to see them for sure)



Note that these pictures were taken with a 6000x3306 resolution , shadows set to 2,5 times their resolution and Depth of Field pulled to the max and disabled FXAA , then downsampled to my ordinary 1920x1055 resolution, resulting in extreme image quality. None of those pictures have been edited except that they were downsampled , what you see is the pure graphical quality of Second Life´s rendering pipeline.

There were some little complains (from me also) that the Preferences panel was a bit too slow to use especially those buttons that show/hide , widget by widget , which takes some time , so i reduced the amount of time each widget needs drastically resulting in a far quicker show/hide animation.

The Environment Editor was really bugged , at first Regiolight didnt work , fixing that caused Day Cycles to break both resulted in quite some redoing of the whole panel and the new layout now is alot smaller and hopefully still easy to understand. Please tell me if theres something i could do here.


And because its not worth mentioning that this feature was ported from Exodus and originally came from Firestorm , i wont , because im the "asshole" who steals stuff anyway , no matter how often i tell people that I DIDNT DO IT , GAWD FUCKING DAMNIT! - i just fixed the cloud transitions which (no matter what Ansariel says) WERENT FIXED in their Firestorm code GAWDFUCKINGDAMNIT. I merged all fixes from Ansariel for Windlight animations and cloud density and position didnt animate correctly , they were forced at the end causing them to jump into their correct values.

I also found it way over the top to code every color picker seperatly to work for my new Preferences panel , so i created a floater (as seen in the previous picture already) that collects all color oriented options in one big window , easy to access via the Preferences panel.

The ugly Autoreplace floater also has been overhauled basically , nothing too special , just took out that ugly borders and aligned everything again , will clean up this one and Translation aswell as Spellchecker in later releases.

The Topbar (combination of Navigationbar , Statusbar and Favoritebar at the top) has also been altered a bit , you will notice white "template" buttons , border lines that split some parts and a white "template" sound icon to fit the look of the new Topbar. All in one it looks slightly cleaner and while i where mocking around up there i fixed the settings button in that Media settings mini floater which didnt open the Preferences panel.

Dont let us forget about the new Login panel background video which can also be watched here in full quality and smooth experience!


and alot more... (read the changelog for more not so important stuff on what has been changed)

Rendering:

Rendering has been minimally changed , i recalibrated (like Garrus) some defaults , i also disabled Color Correction by default to prevent darkness in non Deferred + Tone Mapping. That means if you want to see Tone Mapping as i intended it to be seen , enable Deferred , Ambient Occlusion , High Precision Rendering , Tone Mapping and leave Gamma Correction OFF! , then go to High Precision panel and set Color Correction (its a dropdown) to Linear and you´re done. Tone Mapping has been tweaked with alot of feedback , also mentioned in previous posts that it looked too dull , now it should look pretty ok and IF you want it more colorfull....well enable Gamma Correction BUT also tick re-initialize the shaders when you do , because when you switch it on/off , alphas remain shaded as they were before , they need to be re-rendered which only happens if you tick one of those many shader features like Deferred , Cloth Simulation etc. meaning you will have to tick and then untick them again.













Aimee Arcana in my group send me a nice water map which i included as default in the Viewer now , it looks really cool and high quality , you can also manually set the coresponding water preset called "High Definition".


Performance:

Performance should have slightly increased from any previous releases (1.49 and downwards) due to over 200+ warnings and initialization errors that have been fixed internally yay!

Translations:

This was and still is a bitch and will always remain one , all stuff i do has to be translated sooner or later and in this Release i´ve looked through alot of floaters and panels (especially Preferences) and translated them all or atlast fixed their translations if they were available already. If you find something untranslated , please let me know!

Fixes:

Other fixes include that if you´ve set my Viewer as default Viewer to open whenever you click a SLURL in your browser , it didnt recognize my Viewer anymore , opening another instance of it , this shouldnt happen anymore now , if it still does , let me know

When starting out with fresh settings you often ended up having glow max alpha set to 0.001 due to my fading progressscreen , i think i fixed that issue , check your glow max alpha setting if its set to 0.225 as it should , otherwise you might not see glow where it should!

I´ve included an uninstaller.bat file which you can start to easily remove the cache , settings and or viewer folder if you´re not too fond of browsing in hidden folders , you can also use this to do a quick clean manual cache clear. It will ask you what you want to delete , just type in Y for yes and N for no and press enter to accept.

Did you know?:

My Viewer´s crashrates dropped extremly this week , it went around Singularity , Catznip and Exodus and nearly even Phoenix!

Lookat is GONE! you will never ever hear complains about your lookat beeing at someone, im sick of hearing it "we want a feature to turn it off" i turned it off forcefully, thats it!

Snapshots:



















still havnt got enough yet? check out my newest video...


Thank you and enjoy,
Niran

Download:

oh and before i forget , 64bit doesnt mean the Viewer is optimized for 64bit , it means it utilizes the ability to use more memory than a 32bit executable can.

Changelist:


2.0 Reboot

added a new High Definition water preset , thanks to Aimee Arcana

added a background transparency slider to Preferences panel
added Martin RJ´s go-to line function for script editor and redone it to not use a seperate floater
added RLVa Tab to Preferences Panel
added Gistya Eusebio´s potential memory leak fix
added Armin´s fix for image decoding fails beeing handled not that good
added Hardware Skinning to Machinima Panel as suggested
added ability to disable preferences background blur
added Marketplace toolbar button
added Windlight transition animation on changing presets/regiolight or daycycle
added a little dancing Niran as loadingindicator to loading screen
added a Map Camera preset (not yet in use)
added auto-fade function to Preferences background when a floater is opened from there
added auto-defade function to Preferences background when those floaters are closed again
added a seperate floater for all color related options
added 3 new loadingscreen pictures
tweaked default Tone Mapping settings
tweaked default Depth of Field settings to a somewhat "real" camera preset
tweaked Stats floater alignment
tweaked Debug settings floater alignment and layout
tweaked Toolbar button floater to fit all buttons in again
tweaked default floater transparency
tweaked default Near me range and max Object size on minimap
tweaked Chat and IM toast floater position a bit
tweaked Navigation bar to have a Chrome-like look
tweaked Local Chat text and avatar icon alignment
tweaked Sys-well floater look a bit
tweaked open/closing time for Preferences panel buttons
tweaked readability of some half transparent tip labels
tweaked avatar list panel layouts a little bit
tweaked open/closing time for IM control panels
tweaked edit shape panel for better space usage
fixed Progressscreen reverting your glow/camera angle settings every teleport
fixed Tools floater getting refreshed all the time with color picker open causing lag
fixed crash when image decoding happens
fixed default indicators not showing the correct default value (3x)
fixed Viewer overblurring underwater causing freezes
fixed broken Login translations
fixed logpath line editor not getting disabled correctly
fixed some miswritings in german UI (Standard not Standart)
fixed angular retations for objects that got broken with Pathfinding
fixed Auto-login option not beeing persistant over logins
fixed over 200 warnings about missing widgets , debug settings etc etc
fixed underwater distortion not allowing more than 30 in Machinima Panel
fixed IM Control panel for P2P chats
fixed Regiolight not working/not selectable
fixed some Preferences panel blurring logic
fixed Mechatoy sponsored logo appearing grey on first start
fixed some Shader errors for some video cards
fixed world going totally black when disabling Ambient Occlusion
fixed crash on startup when no settings files where created yet
fixed L$ balance positioning (hopefully)
fixed some options having different starting values than their debug settings
fixed close buttons for toasts not correctly aligned
fixed Local Chatbar title coming through Chatbar on lower transparency levels
fixed IMs with 5 or more lines causing resizing issues
fixed Viewer preferences panel having a scrollbar when it shouldnt
fixed Channel and Version name at login beeing to short and going into a second line
fixed phantom shadows appearing at 140m and upwards
fixed beeing unable to switch to day cycle and change day cycle presets
fixed scripts getting cut off at line 12 and beyond
fixed windlight buttons in navigation bar not showing their floaters when pressed
fixed Camera Preset editors not working in Preferences panel
fixed Mini-map chat range rings not showing
fixed place profile showing uninitialized tabs when coming from search
fixed Prim type not showing in Tools floater
fixed Viewer not recognized by Browser resulting in opening another instance
fixed UI Invidualisation scrollbar
fixed lots of widgets having same names resulting in not beeing able to be translated
fixed Alpha´s beeing lit differently than normal mesh (mostly hairs were affected)
fixed Media control settings button not opening new Preferences
fixed Inventory filters not correctly ticking by redoing them completely as buttons
fixed take-off menu in self inspector not opening
fixed IM control panel button not triggering correctly when clicked the first time
changed Depth of Field default Resolution to 1.0
changed some Loadingscreen tips and retranslated some others for better understanding
changed some Menu entry labels for better understanding
changed Loadingscreen tips to show the path to new Preferences panel
changed Windlight editor translations for better understanding
changed alot of major graphic feature tooltips to explain better what they do
changed some Toolbar button label and tooltips in german UI
changed Preferences background to allow clicking through it
cleaned up some XML files
changed some Sky Preset names
changed some labels in german and english UI invidualisation panel
changed Chat/IM/Group and some Floater backgrounds for a cleaner and cooler look
changed Topdown and default Shoulder view labels
changed some strings in english/german for the shape panel
removed Shining Project from codebase
removed pre-materials experiments with bumpmapping dropdown
removed double search menu entry in main menu
removed CoreHTTP project
removed some unused Toolbar buttons (from pathfinding)
removed MapShowTelehubs debug
removed Windlight floater functions to revert your settings automatically on close
removed Preferences floater everywhere from my Viewer, goodbye
removed my rotation degree feature due to LL implementing a default one
removed UI Size slider and readded it as dropdown to give 3 size presets , for better support
removed backup graphic preset
removed all color pickers and color options from Preferences panel
removed the sliding effect of my login panel on start
removed Preferences panel menu entry in login main menu
removed the floater resizing corner texture (looked bad)
removed lots of unused files
merged up with Linden Labs beta
disabled Nav Mesh upload due to not having the havok license
disabled Preferences button in login
disabled Lookat for zoom completely (RAAAAAGE)
moved agent recorder translations in main menu to work correctly again
translated some main menu entries that werent translated yet
translated the Preferences panel
translated Place profile
translated Machinima Sidebar (again)
translated all Preferences subpanels
translated all new Loadingscreen tips
translated Pathfinding status buttons
translated Windlight settings floater
translated IM control panels
translated new Snapshot floater
translated Inventory sorting
translated some edit wearable panels in "my Appearance" floater