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.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Decoding texture fails causing crashes

UPDATE: I think i found the bug and temporarly fixed it for now , i ´ve added the download link for the Hotfix below!
sorry for any inconvenience that might have caused. :(

Im aware of this crashing issue , im working on it right now , i will post download links to the new version here as soon as i managed to fix this issue... sorry for that , as said there will most likely be bugs like that , havnt had much time to test out


Monday, June 25, 2012

Release 1.43 (1480)

NOTE: You might want to delete cache and settings and do a CLEAN MANUAL reinstall , meaning that you should completely delete the Viewer folder and install the new one into it , do not just overwrite , this might fix some UI bugs some where having especially with graphic panel , non scrollable panels and other weird things like vanishing trees etc

Recent Status:

As it stands now the Viewer is pretty much and absolutely up to date with Linden Release again which was a struggle of 15 pages of which 5 have been worked on the the past few updates and the last 10 have been merged into this Release , that means you can expect lots of bugs , extreme instability (hey i crashed due to openjpeg decoding failure weee) , time & space paradox´s and other black hole weirdos


under the hood , lots of stuff has been changed , comparable to ripping its core out , splitting it up and putting it back into different areas and adding some additional stuff


Shining:

Shining came around the corner with LOTS of fixes , which i already got 3-4 months ago , so only a few single fixes were added , mostly small things but also some texture fetching changes , in my short test cycle i experience one crash due to 2 failed decoded images , so it might be possible that this new code is still a bit buggy , just to warn you :)


User Interface:

It is way more than way too much to explain everything here so i will shorten everything a bit
expect a lot of UI bugs beeing gone now , lots of tweakage to many aspects of the UI and its behaviors and also some new Features like the ability to color the new minilocation bar via UI Colors tab


For those of you that arnt quick enough to go through the menus in under 10 seconds (before the topbar automatically hides) , i got an option for you! you can now set the amount of time after which the topbar will automatically hide! uuuh =D

Theres also this...thing called World Map , remember it? yea yea this strange thing some use to search or browse SIMs in Secondlife... you know what happened to it? it has been remade! World Map 2.0! less ugly , more fun , more sliding muahahahah but dont slide out of the world!













Fast timers are now scrollable to view everything , thanks to Liny Odell!


I also fixed a LOT of menus and functions , like show icons or permissions in avatarlists , aswell as show the minimap in people , yay!

You can now.... ZOOM on Avatars! just right click on someone in nearby people and select "Zoom in" , this only works on people in your draw distance!

Chatbar has been tweaked a bit , the fix button has been removed and instead theres a grip field now on which you can click to move the chatbar around easier than before

Toolbar buttons previously were disabled due to RLVa or Land restrictions , but you were still able to click them , not anymore! its fixed now and buttons arnt clickable anymore if they are disabled

When you activated only friends and groups can call or IM me your text and that of non friends was hidden from your view , other people could see it , that behavior has been fixed now

I removed the Darkness Default skin completely due to its nature of breaking shit extremly , i would also suggest NOT to use any other skin than Darkness at the moment because other skins may not be updated and cause "mixed" (old and new) UI parts

Rendering:
I played again a bit with the FXAA shaders and i think even if it doesnt look much like a change it still looks a bit different somehow , hopefully better (smoother) for everyone

FXAA example , depending on scene and lighting we dont need superior picture resolutions or an even more superior Antialiasing like MSAA which would only eat up performance like old Antialiasing´s did in the past , this picture looks simply smooth as it is

RenderUnloadedAvatars has been set to true by default to prevent clouding after changing clothes or attachments , meaning clouding is completely disabled by now

I´ve also changed the Ultra Graphics preset a bit, hopefully to the better

Misc:

I´ve finally put in the new webkit again , which i took out long ago due to a bug that caused the webpages to "zoom" depending on your ui scale , now that i fixed that bug and know where the problem was i could even do a complete "zoom" feature =D , but havnt yet , maybe in next release

I made some code cleanups in a few files to reduce bloat and unnecessary code and bam my application lost about 700kb! (for adding over a few thousand lines of code) , yea it got smaller when i added more code O.รด but hey its smaller and i think i gained 1-3 FPS aswell

Snapshots:


secret message of this Release -> "Boobs"
"wild boobs always appear in a group"
hah got it ;)?




enjoy,
Niran

Changelog:

Release 1.43


STORM-1890: Enabling "Only friends and groups can call or IM me" mutes your own chat in all groups and mutes all group chat from non friends
VWR-29094: Blocking an avatar does not derender worn lights
MAINT-1144: Defend against NULL LLPluginProcessParent::mProcess.
MAINT-1142 use VBO pooling on OSX
MAINT-1092 Fix for broken avatar bakes on some AMD graphics cards.
MAINT-938 FIXED (Make debit-permissions dialog give a stronger warning)
MAINT-845 FIXED Inventory items auto selection is disabled during filtering, unless a search string is being typed in.
MAINT-784 FIXED the inventory filter to be restarted when switching from 'Since Logoff' to 'Hours Ago' or 'Days Ago'.
MAINT-758: [PUBLIC]texture discard level is inconsistent between sessions
MAINT-405 FIXED ([PUBLIC]Ctrl W does not properly close IM tabs using tabbed IM in 2.x/3.x)
MAINT-180 FIXED Reject group and ad-hoc chat messages from lindens when we are busy.
IQA-463: fix Linux wrapper.sh (aka secondlife) gridargs.dat handling.
CHOP-900: Use new apr_procattr_constrain_handle_set() extension.
DRTVWR-151: Today's APR build should run on Windows XP again.
SEC-905, SEC-1025: Show Texture Info Allows People To See and Use Textures And Override Permissions System
SH-3132 - reduce max concurrent http requests to same level as in release
SH-3128 FIX - log message cleanup for avatar rezzing
SH-3124 : Fix crash on exit on Mac
SH-3121: collect time of reloading all textures from cache and through HTTP when all objects loading are done.
SH-3104 : Implemented HTTP bulk fetch for texture debug console
SH-3097: introducing texel pixel ration adjustment
SH-3118, SH-3112, SH-3110, SH-3106, SH-3091,
SH-3086: As a viewer architect, I would like to understand how fast each of the components of the texture pipeline can run in isolation
SH-3081 : Implement TextureCameraMotion settings as well as faster loading when the camera is still
SH-3080 : Implement the TextureReverseByteRange setting so we can play with that parameter
SH-3075 : Fix encoding for reversible images and small textures
SH-3074: clear ghost and stale texture fetching requests in time
SH-3072: do not pause texture fetching when FPS is low.
SH-3071: Increase HTTP concurrency to improve texture fetching performance
SH-3060 : Preliminary implementamtion of the new byte range computation, implement setting to turn it on or off
SH-3050 : Parse an input codestream without decompressing it to find discard levels boundaries
SH-3047 : Tweak of the performance compression data gathering code
SH-3044 - tag avatar log messages LL_INFOS(Avatar)
SH-3041 FIX use server-sent baked texture IDs while waiting for avatar to load
SH-3040 FIX Inventory caching issues
SH-3039 WIP - trying to close phases where needed
SH-2970 FIX - per-region logging of basic avatar stats
fixed show minimap in people options
fixed copy group SLURL and Name translations
fixed sliding behavior of minimap in people
fixed enabled controls for shadow blur size and distance factor sliders
fixed nearby people right click copy name translation
fixed broken translation of inspect self gear menu
fixed copy name in inspect other avatars gear menu
fixed ignore/mute buttons in script dialogs
fixed vanishing trees due to RenderAnimateTrees debug still available
fixed toolbar buttons not getting correctly disabled via RLVa or Land permissions
fixed permissions do not show when an avatarlistitem was drawn already and perms were disabled
fixed picks translation
fixed people panel avatar lists didnt resize with the floater
fixed some "Making dummy class X" log errors
fixed some missing Inventory folder strings
fixed group info tab translations
fixed quick prefs volume sliders
fixed new webkit causing webpages to scale with ui scale
fixed non clickable land info button in minilocation bar
fixed "Me" menu in Login panel...
fixed some sliders in UI Customisation
added ability to hide profile icons and buttons in avatarlistitems
added ability to "Zoom in" on people , per suggestion
added new webkit
added ability to scroll fast timers legend , thanks to Liny Odell
added ability to set the amount of time to pass before the topbar will automatically hide
removed Darkness Default skin completely
removed lots of unnecessary code from navbar , we got XML!
redone world map completely
translated double click world map and chat range ring menu entries
translated world map 2.0
tweaked ultra graphic preset
tweaked RenderUnloadedAvatar , set to yes as default
tweaked chatbar floater appearance
tweaked avatarlistitems completely...again
tweaked some CAPITALIZED translations to be less CAPITALIZED
tweaked some login tips
tweaked LSL commented line color to greenish
tweaked selection rectangle in people avatar lists getting cut
tweaked FXAA shaders
tweaked minilocation bar for a slightly better appearance , per suggestion
tweaked buy L$ button , u big? now u small!
tweaked Navbar widget sliding behavior a bit
updated contributions.txt
updated special thanks page
merged up to 3.3.3 Linden Release with all its bits and bytes (DANGER ALERT!)
moved chat range ring option around
moved saving account settings to start of shutdown sequence to ensure they get saved if we crash on logout

Monday, June 18, 2012

Release 1.42 (1381)

Yay for Monday!

*nerdy* i´ve effectively reduced the Viewer application size by 228kb! thats nearly like taking the main rendering pipeline code out (about 260kb , has aprox 8000 big lines of code) , the texture folder also has been cleaned up heavily and has been reduced by about 5mb for me!*nerdmode off*

This week is a little experimenting week will explain that in a special part of this post later!
now to the changes

User Interface:

The biggest change here in the UI happend internally in my code , recently someone came to me and told me that Speakers and Nearby aswell as Friendlist (if they are nearby) doesnt show the Speaking Indicator , so i´ve traveled around the world to find out whats causing this , i was very shocked when i found out. It was the biggest part of the avatar list item´s (which show icon , name , distance , permission etc) code. I had to remove huge amounts of code to make it show again but that caused the layout to completely break , so i removed even more and more code to make that avatar list item completely uncoded in terms of positioning, i moved that stuff completely into XML (i think less code and more XML is always better because its easier to modify and more dynamic) , from now on permissions will initially slide in and the voice speaking indicator is shown below the name behind the distance label. Basically from what you see its not a big change, so i hope you like it
and dont forget to greet the alligator!
I´ve enabled URL parsing in loading screen tips and special thanks page , that means i that i can now add cool SIMs or Places to loading screen for you to visit!

The toolsfloater was completely broken in Spanish UI , which i now fixed thanks to Mechatoy who told me

I´ve added a toggle checkbox to my Machinima Sidebar for switching between Region default and Custom Windlight quickly , this was a suggestion by Maddy Gynoid who´s also writing a blog.
But beware its German , so English only people probably wont understand much there
Echt Virtuell

Texture Category and Size Consoles have been completely removed from the UI now as they werent working/showing up anyway

Translation:

I´ve fixed some translations in my UI including the Favbar and the new sound quickpref button aswell as the media button which wasnt translated , the login label "Different." is now translated to German

Rendering:

I´ve fixed that eww white squary thingy appearing when you click on "select face" in tools floater but dont select a particular face , this also fixed the bug that the selected face highlight wasnt shown weee!

Full Res Textures has been removed out of all menus and panels , Audit Textures has been completely removed out of the code because it was just buggy and/or not working

Sponsoring:

Recently Mechatoy Mekanic came to me , telling me that she really likes my Viewer *sniffy mode on* - who doesnt? - *sniffy mode off* , and wants to "support" me by "sponsoring" my Viewer , i told her that would be ok as long as it doesnt come to annoying ads like we had in Kirstens Viewer with those Meeros on login - aaahhhhrrg ... So this week will be a test week for you , me and Mechatoy , i´ve placed some small links and things here and there that lead to her shop or webpage. And i want to know if its ok for you as it is or if its still too annoying or bad in some other way.
Those things include:

  1. -Login sponsored by Label and Icon (which leads to webpage when clicking on it)
  2. -Special thanks entry with links to inworld shop and webpage
  3. -Menu entry in NV - Webbrowser to her webpage
  4. -Loading screen tip telling you that this Viewer is sponsored by her (i should really change that to is "supported" ... not sponsored , that sounds like i NEED that...) with a link to her inworld shop

If we find out in this week that this whole "sponsoring" thingy isnt good , i will remove it again

And please keep in mind that "sponsoring" or any support isnt a guarantee for that i will continue , the Viewer is a fun and learning project and "could" theoretically be closed done every day because of something that happened , so please make sure you dont try to "help" , "support" or even "sponsor" me because you want to make sure that i continue. However enough of this crap , continue reading and enjoying my Viewer as if it were the last day .... long as it exists :) you never know when something suddenly changes

Bugfixes:

GetMediaParcelURLFilter spamming and potential crashes have been fixed (hopefully) , those were caused by oooooooooollld code that was still in the viewer asking the server for those informations which doesnt respond to it

The "Open Webbrowser" button in Navbar was previously leading to google.de... i changed that to google.com , however it wasnt that bad anyway because Google automatically detects your language anyway :)

Snapshots:






Enjoy,
Niran

Changelist:

1.42


SH-2689 - move first_fully_visible static into avatar class, bake-related logging
SH-2968 - simplified and consolidated DebugAvatarRezTime logging
shrinked Viewer executable size by 228kb!
shrinked textures folder by about 5mb and over 150 textures!
added ability to toggle regio/windlight via debug everywhere
added Mechatoy to Special thanks page and included links
added a new random tip that this viewer is sponsored by Mech Toys
added Sponsored by label and icon to login page , clickable leading to her webpage
added toggle to Machinima Sidebar to switch between Regio/Windlight - per suggestion
added Version and Channel display to login page
added ability to display clickable links in special thanks and loading screen
changed open webbrowser URL from google.de to google.com by default
changed webbrowser menu entry into a submenu containing different websites
changed layout of Avatarlistitems and made them initially slide in permissions
redone Avatarlistitems in XML rendering lots of code obselete
removed extreme amounts of Avatarlistitems code due to XML changes
removed and cleaned up topbar code
removed lots of old Parcel code
removed Texture Size Console and Texture Category Console from menu
removed Full Res Textures and Audit Textures from menu and graphics panel
removed lots of obselete , old and unneeded textures in textures.xml
removed all non needed textures out of all skins
removed participant icon disabling for now , will return later via UI
removed some login code parts
removed login help (F1) button
translated login page "different." label
fixed new favbar not beeing translated
fixed Media and Soundbutton not beeing translated
fixed Speaking indicator not shown in Nearby/Speakers Avatarlistitems
fixed Spanish tools floater totally broken
fixed white squares appearing while selecting faces
fixed white select face highlight not beeing shown
fixed GetMediaParcelURLFilterCap errors in log

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

About "the Linux guy" called Miguael

as said in my previous post , Miguael will probably explain the situation , heres the link to his Blog and his explanation , which has been (as i think) understood a bit wrong , i´ve posted a comment to hopefully make that a bit clearer

http://tarnix.info/2012/06/artvi/

Monday, June 11, 2012

Release 1.41 (Build 1332)

Uhhh Ahhhh Yea...


User Interface:

The funny part in this Viewer , this time i didnt do that much noticable , just the hover volume pulldown has been removed (when hovering over the sound icon at the top right) and has been replaced with a full sound quick sound & media control panel , which can be slid out by just clicking the sound icon , dont worry , it wont mute your Second Life!

Bugfixes:

I´ve potentially fixed a crashed caused when the Viewer gets an Invalid Texture Index

Aswell as potentially fixed an RLVa issue not working on the Minimap in People floater

The Viewer also should recognize its set Window Size now when you drag-resize the Viewer window instead of using the Set Window Size floater, thanks to MyBrains for telling me

Windlight:

As it was already seeable on SLUniverse Forums , i´ve completely redone the Realistic 6PM Sky Preset and i think it looks WAY better now , have a look!
AFTER
BEFORE













Linden Default with Tone Mapping as diff

THATS a difference , isnt it? Well this wouldnt be Nirans Viewer if it wouldnt be different eh?

I´ve also added my Crazy Night Water and Sky Preset which are watchable in action in Login screen and on this pic!

Translations:

Well just the usual translations everywhere i´ve found something important not beeing translated , that includes some right click menus , the new quick sound & media control panel aswell as some preferences

Linux:

Im not sure whats going on with Mig , he seems very pissed that i stated my opinion about that i dont care about other OS´s than the one im using on my own. As it looks for me he threw the towel and left me once more , now doing his own Viewer called "Artvi". I guess he will say something on his own about that on my or his own blog later on. Patience is asked now

Snapshots:

Because they are always cool!





PS: check out this song
"i find it kind of funny , i find it kind of sad"
"Maaaaaaad Woooooooorrlld"

Enjoy,
Niran

Changelog:

1.41


fixed Window size not getting saved when resizing via drag
fixed (potential) Invalid Texture Index crash
fixed (potential) RLVa not restraining Minimap in people
added quick sound & media control panel
added Crazy Night Water and Sky preset
tweaked default preset
removed volume pulldown
redone Realistic 6PM Sky Preset
renamed Buttons to Interface
translated quick sound & media control panel
translated alerts/notifications panel
translated active speaker menu
translated some missing right click menu entries
translated Merchant outbox toolbar button
translated Scripts toolbar button
cleaned up Settings.xml a bit

Monday, June 4, 2012

Release 1.40 (1307)

And there we are, at 1.40
one of my "Niran was lazy" versions again , i´ve strictly tried to not work much and decline as much work as possible except that what i promised and i still ended up doing way more than planned.... ugh lol

so lets see what changed this time....

User Interface:

I tweaked the star brightness slider to allow up to a value of 50! , you can use this to make extreme bright skies at night , at day it might just cause some weird looking starts ...

The ability to color text and disabled text is now yours... aswell as the ability to color the Voice dot and the visualization waves , just like in this pic :)

btw , what do you think about my new mesh harness? =D

I´ve added Picks and Places to NV - Edit menu in suggestion because it wasnt available without the toolbox buttons otherwise



I´ve added some experience tools script functions so they will be highlighted like any other LSL function =3

Login has now a new background video again , my newest Video , which i also made a pic of , the video itself is forced to play in Full HD if your bandwidth allows it else it might load or stutter , you can watch it completely here aswell











Machinima Sidebar:

Has been changed to an overlay behavior like promised last week , it will now slide OVER the User Interface instead of pushing stuff aside , however , i missed that behavior instantly ... so i made a switch to toggle between pushing and overlaying Sidebar via Preferences - User Interface - Customisation - Experimental section

Now has a Machinima Sidebar button , by default its at the left hand toolbar , it will open whatever Machinima Sidebar version you´ve activated at that moment , the Sidebar will also switch dynamicaly when you switch its behavior :)

Bugfixes:

Mig has ported a potential fix for editing objects crash , we will see , since i´ve implemented it i´ve been freezing a lot of times when editing a mesh object....


Snapshots:

and again some snapshots to enjoy :)










Changelog:

1.40


added ability to color Legacy Names (suggestion)
added Picks and Places to Viewer - Edit submenu
added ability to color Textlabels and disabled Textlabels (suggestion)
added ability to color Voice Dot and Visualization
added Machinima Sidebar button to toolbars
added ability to switch Machinima Sidebar between pushing and overlay (default)
added Experience Tools script functions to library
fixed an edit objects crash
fixed an SSL issue (Linux)
fixed AGENT_BY_LEGACY_NAME LSL constant highlighting
merged some Linden commits , need to get up to date now
updated Special Thanks page with Katharine Berry
tweaked star brighness to allow values up to 50 (!)
tweaked snap to grid translation
translated Restore to last position
translated Enable Java Bridge checkbox
changed login page background video to newest one