Preparations for going TPV. Again.

As some of you may have heard already, i'll be adding Black Dragon to the Third Party Viewer Directory, this will have the following upsides: Nothing. Right! You get a bag full of nothing new! Nothing will change. Not even the likelihood of my Viewer being an evil copy-bot h@x0r Viewer. Let's clear some things up...

First of all, what is the Third Party Viewer Directory? It is a list of officially approved Viewers. Viewers which have undergone a very simple check if they go along with some rules. It is a simple check, so simple that theoretically any idiot (such as me) can apply his Viewer for the Third Party Viewer Directory and then use that new found "trust" you gained to make you believe that my Viewer is a happy sunshine Viewer with flowers before i steal your passwords and account names. What i'm saying is, all you less informed beings out there, thinking that being included in the Third Party Viewer Directory means that the Viewer is a Viewer that can be trusted is absolutely wrong thinking. You are wrong, totally wrong. Firestorm could turn out to be THE next Emerald any day...any moment...any second. My Viewer could turn out to be THE next "mini" Emerald. So why am i even applying for TPVD if you (and me) don't gain anything from it besides... nothing. There are multiple reasons for that:

1. I like seeing how all these fuck-faces who said "Shit leik dis will neva b in TPV" are going to be so wrong. It makes me feel encouraged to continue.
2. It will advertise the Viewer. Not that i would actually want to advertise it, since more users would mean more possibly incompetent idiots spamming me with messages and/or comments like: "DIS IS SO BULLSHIET, TEH SHITIEST VIEWUR I HUV EVUR C!!!!1111!!11!1!!"
3. I MIGHT want to use the Havok License stuff someday, enabling Mesh Upload and Nav-Mesh Support.
4. It makes those people who still believe that a Viewer must be in TPV in order to be trustworthy feel better.

Now that we hopefully cleared that up, let's move on to what i'm doing....or well...more like what i did:

• I removed all old downloads of Black Dragon.
• I removed and shut down all repositories regarding Black Dragon except the current one.
• I updated the Privacy Policy for Black Dragon and updated the Link on the right.
• I removed the "Download Old Versions" button from the right Link menu.
• I removed all downloads of Nirans Viewer.
• I closed down the Sourceforge Project of Nirans Viewer.
• I hid the Sourcecode for Nirans Viewer (it's private now in case it is needed for something).
• I have changed the Blog main look a bit as you may noticed before already.
• I will talk to Oz to get the auto-updater to work and force you to update to the 1. April version.
• I will talk to Oz (again) to hopefully ban Nirans Viewer this time once and for all.
• I did some changes to the Forum.
• I don't support Nirans Viewer in any way anymore, come to me mentioning Nirans Viewer and you will feel my backhand.

Good. I think that's all. Tia Linden is currently reviewing the Viewer application and i think it might go TPV just in time for the 1. April update. If not... not my problem.

BTW

TTTTEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Anyway, stay safe and make sure not to teleport into a screen shaking SIM restart. Until 1th April!

A little reminder about stability.

EDIT: Redid my picture. Check it out.

I felt the need to go back to Blue Galaxy and make a new awesome snapshot one that just explodes of pure unedited, graphical power.

What i did:

1. Teleported to Blue Galaxy SIM.
2. Positioned my camera like on the picture.
3. Turned up Draw Distance to see the whole SIM.
4. Selected my Blue Galaxy Sky Preset i made months ago (not in the Viewer).
5. Modified the Sun Position slightly, reduced the ambient brightness for darker shadows and added a few clouds.
6. Turned Vignette Amount to 0.8 (absolutely optional).
7. Hit CTRL + Shift + S (Snapshot)
8. Selected "Save to my computer" and set 4096 as Snapshot width (height will automatically set itself correctly if you turned on keep aspect ratio) and pressed refresh.
9. Hit save.
10. Done.

I didn't change any setting regarding Shadows, SSAO, Depth of Field, Tone Mapping or Color Correction. I used what i consider "default" because these settings come with the Viewer. You obviously have to enable all the fancies yourself of course.

I used:

• Deferred Rendering
• Shadows and Projector Shadows
• Ambient Occlusion
• Depth of Field
• Screen Space Reflections
• Tone Mapping
• Color Correction
• (Optional)Vignette

Technical Info:
Original Size: 4096 x 2257 (down sampled to 1920 x 1058 because of Google Picasa)
Texture Memory: 1,4 Gigabyte Textures loaded. That's twice the max according to texture console.
Memory Bound: 1,0 Gigabyte of Memory bound for that scene. That's 3 times the max according to texture console.

What i'm saying is, this is "overkill" mode and i was still fine doing a 4k snapshot, no crash and i'm still online as i'm writing this. If you got any stability issues, it's most likely your hardware. It's also the reason you rarely see me doing crash fixes. We all know Second Life is not the best optimized software but it's simply a fact that it should run totally fine under all normal circumstances and even when crazily overdoing it like i did for this picture.

Maintainance Update 2.3.9.5 + 2.3.9.6

Please Download 2.3.9.6, it addresses some small issues that i quick fixed after they were noticed.

You got problems with nasty crashes when right-clicking? You get motion sickness because the graphics are still not good enough? You got nasty Firestorm fanboys annoying you? Your wife just divorced from you and left you to die?

I got a solution for all your problems! This update.

It fixes a really evil crash when right-clicking while zooming/panning around, which might also be THE crash-fix for your strange non reproducible but sometimes reported crashes.

Graphics:

Thanks to Tofu Buzzard's continuing work on all sorts of experiments, shadow blurring has been "upgraded" with a custom made shadow softening kernel for handcrafted smoothness, have a look at these comparison snapshots. Please don't report me that projected shadows are way too blurry now, i'm aware of this and will fix it in the next update either myself or get a fix from Tofu depending on who's going to do it first.

old style shadow blur                    ||||                    new style shadow blur

With this new shadow blur kernel it became necessary to change the default shadow blur size to 1.0, shouldn't 1.0 be set in your Viewer, please do so by manually changing RenderShadowBlurSize to 1.0.

Which brings me to my next change, RenderShadowBlurSize is no longer used in the interface, "Blur Size" now controls RenderShadowGaussian X value. There's now also a new slider for SSAO blur which controls RenderShadowGaussian Y. This simply means that you can now change SSAO and Shadow blurring desperately without screwing the other one.

Last important change in rendering is the shadow map resolution which has been increased to 2048 x 2048 by default, that's twice as high as before and is somewhat a slightly higher resolution than you would have had with a 1080p screen resolution before i introduced my shadow map changes a few updates ago. It should make shadows a lot less pixely without killing off too much performance, you can still set the shadow map multiplicator to 2.0 if you want twice as sharp shadows, just like i do have by default.

Interface:

The interface had some facelifting here and there and also some additions worth mentioning, such as the implementation of the "Land Info" button as well as re-enabling the show/hide L$ balance option.

The chat deselect/hide options have been fixed, slow-motion now updates instantly, you no longer have to disable slow motion and re-enable it to make your new animation play speed work.

All loading screen tips have been redone with better wording and a lot of grammar fixes.

Last but not least worthy change is a force enable for "show chat history" (hopefully) everywhere including radar, friend list and IM tabs. Please keep in mind that it is force enabled and might still not work, in that case you need to have your partner's IM chat opened at least once. Previously it was often not possible to open chat history at all for no apparent reason, now you can open your partner's chat history even if it's empty, just make sure you opened a chat session with your partner at least once as said before.

DOWNLOAD

Changelog:

2.3.9.6

Fixed: Cutting off some LoD options in Machinima Sidebar at the bottom.
Fixed: Machinima Sidebar button not working.
Fixed: Missed including the font folder resulting in a broken font.


2.3.9.5


Added: New Shadow Blur and SSAO Blur sliders to Machinima Sidebar (non functional right now).
Added: Refresh for the new Shadow Blur options in Preferences.
Added: Show Last Conversations option to Chat panel.
Added: Land Info quickbutton to Navigationbar.
Added: ShowBalance Debug and all its functionality to show/hide the L$ Balance panel.
Added: ShowQuickAboutLandButton Debug for hiding the Land Info button.
Added: Legacy Windlight Debugs for usage in Sky Preset Editor. Needs checking if they are really needed.
Changed: ShowAdminOptions to stay over sessions.
Changed: Refresh SlowMotionTimeFactor as soon as we change it so we don't need to re-enable SlowMotionAnimations all the time.
Changed: Enabled Right Arm Motion option. Fixed truncation of "Megabytes" in German UI.
Changed: Tweaks to resizing of progressbar, hoping to fix rare resize fails.
Changed: Disabled PlayChattingAnim, AutohideChatBar and CloseChatOnReturn UI widgets until they are working again.
Changed: Simplified Shadow Blur, from Tofu's SSIL branch.
Changed: Enabled Show Quick Land Info button in Interface panel now that it is functional again.
Changed: Force-enable all Chat History menu entries everywhere. They still don't work if an IM Session wasn't started with that person at some point but atleast it doesn't completely lock out Chat History anymore for no reason.
Changed: Loadingscren tip #7, this Viewer is now based on 3.7 not on 3.6 anymore.
Changed: Redo all loadingscreen tips, better wording and grammar.
Changed: Disabled Shadow Blur Size and Shadow Blur Distance in Machinima Sidebar.
Changed: Default Shadow Blur Size to 1.0.
Changed: Upped shadowmap width/height to 2048x2048 by default.
Changed: Added Tofu's new custom shadow softening kernel. Mhh.
Changed: Enable Mip-maps when Vertex Shader is ticked.
Fixed: Fmodex causing compile issues.
Fixed: Play chatting animation when sending chat option.
Fixed: Autohide Chat on focus loss, deselect or hide Chat after sending a message.
Fixed: Water Mip-map option becoming invisible.
Fixed: Machinima Sidebar height.
Fixed: Shadow Resolution sliders disabling with SSAO and Tone Mapping sliders not disabling at all.
Fixed: Youtube background in Login screen. Should play in 1080p now.
Fixed: Particle emitting from left hand even with Right Arm Motion active.
Fixed: Edit Sky Preset spinners for certain sky options are not beeing refreshed initially.
Fixed: Crash when right-clicking in any sort of camera movement mask other than ALT only which i fixed previously already.
Removed: Duplicates of Admin options in main menu.
Merged with RLVa
Merged with Linden Release
RLVa-> Incremented version number to RLVa-1.4.10
    -> Incremented API version number to 2.8.0
    -> fixed : attachments can no longer be detached on release builds
    -> fixed : GCC specific change
    -> fixed : RenderResolutionDivisor is non-functional
    -> fixed : double-click teleport is initiated when left-clicking to give focus back to the viewer
    -> fixed : viewer clips mouse to its rectangle when switching into mouselook while it's not the active application
    -> fixed : region name and global coordinates are shown on the About floater when @showloc restricted
    -> fixed : @getstatus and @getstatusall should specify an (optional) separator
    -> fixed : the 'accepted_in_rlv' notification reports on the accepted folder's parent rather than the accepted folder itself
    -> changed : llRegionSayTo messages are no longer subject to @recvchat(from) or @recvemote(from)
    -> changed : "Give to #RLV" agent-to-agent offers can contain subfolders
    -> added support for both @getstatus:tp;|=123 and @getstatus:;|=123
    -> internal : quick and dirty hack fix for RlvUtil::filterNames() but there's no time to do a proper backport from RLVa-1.5
    -> internal : re-add an improved version of starting a conference from calling cards that got lost in the CHUI merge
    -> internal : remove hack for legacy viewers without multi-attachment support
    -> internal : boolean (custom) debug settings should have a boolean type
    -> internal : added supporting code for "Detach Folder" RLVa lock checks

Update coming on 1st of April.

Due to uhm... unforeseen "threatening" of Oz to stop sending out crash statistics to non-TPVD included Viewers starting in April. I'll have to make a release, no matter its status or quality. If it's totally broken and won't even start up...well then it simply won't.

So what exactly does that mean? Let me get all information together in one place.

• New update on 1st. of April.
• It will be the first update being included in the Third-Party-Viewer Directory.
• It will include all the latest stuff from Linden.
• It might not be THE 2.4 update.
• It will be a mandatory update, it's absolutely required.
• It will probably introduce the auto-updater system forcing you to update from previous versions to this one.
• It will include lots of Niran.
• It won't be an April Fools joke, most likely.
• It will feature laser turrets, laser turrets, even more laser turrets and laser turrets for your laser turrets, so you can vaporize stuff while vaporizing the vaporized.
• It won't be necessarily the next update. More updates might come in between, but this one is for sure.
• Due to high demand, those laser turrets will be shaped like dog dicks with the cock-pit (get it?) sitting in the knot.
• Due to high demand, additional nuclear vagina shaped rocket silos and laser blocking energy shield nipples and a nuclear reactor boob to place the energy shield nipple on will be available as well. They will most likely be featured in an all-new trashy video, made by me.

Have a picture before you go.

Still here? Start hyping already.

PS: Did you notice every word was correctly written? I switched my Personal-Grammar-Nazi to English. Heh.