Progress Update to 2.4 (#2)

EDIT: Changed for some wording to hopefully add all missing words i missed except an "a" i missed somewhere which i can't find anymore...also moved the entire part regarding Firestorm  onto an extra page as "open" letter (here).

After merging all the latest changes from LL and fixing a nasty merge error that broke chatting with icons i have been slowly preparing to start the real work on fixing up all the broken stuff, redoing many UI parts and rechecking everything else for consistency and stuff.

As said in the previous post i will have a look at preferences again, changing tool tips, labels, reorganizing stuff a bit, checking options.. stuff like that. Also the machinima sidebar is in desperate need for some changes, it's still using old labels, tool tips and partly options that aren't even working anymore...

Chat will probably have a re-visit too, maybe a more V2 styled look overall with the CHUI core functionality (sadly), i'll be looking into the chat "panel" request too since it's something i wanted back since CHUI was introduced, i never managed to get it to work tho, new try with more knowledge than before, new luck i suppose.

I have also had a great live stream about my camera behaving funny and i might just like it enough to make it a more fleshed out feature, it ended up in making a superb snapshot that clearly shows the real power of my Viewer, you should really watch it and take the last part starting at 53:45 as a guide on how setting up a snapshot could work, it's depending on the scene of course but it's better than a 1000 words lengthy tutorial as it shows it in a real scene.

You can see the final snapshot here, crop'd to 1920x1058 for your viewing pleasure (and because Google doesn't allow going beyond 2048)

Now someone should say that my Viewer doesn't look totally different than other Viewers!... wait...a...second.

"Not allowing users to get the inkmarks off the borders is just stupid, egotistic even, considering your idiotic reasoning.

Not everyone uses the in-game snapshot function for screenshots, not everyone wants an unremovable overlay/border getting in the way of scrollboxes, HUD's or interface buttons. Not everyone LIKES some bullshit black mark/border around everything. If they did, they'd use a fucking vignette.

A minimalist design is good, but you're fucking it up by putting stupid shit where it isn't needed - the opposite of minimalism. Do you need a funky black border? No? Then don't add it.

Your viewer already adds hardly anything more than Firestorm, graphically there's hardly any difference and yet you are still missing a lot of features Firestorm has and you want to focus on shitting up your UI? If you really want to improve the UI? Make the chatbox better. Done.

Otherwise focus on graphics optimization and feature support.

Brought to you by someone who likes Black Dragon but isn't a psychophant who's going to blindly suck your dick no matter what decisions you make."

Ohboy... whoever that was, he or she sounds like me, hence i'm going to destroy this comment piece by piece and debunk these laughable rumors once and for all.

"Not allowing users to get the inkmarks off the borders is just stupid, egotistic even, considering your idiotic reasoning. 

So i guess the reason why game X chooses to have Y style interface because of immersion is also egoistic. Games without any interface at all are probably the most egoistic because they don't want to share information they are working with!

Dude. I chose to add these black inked corners for artistic and immersion reasons, they give the rendering a feeling as if it were painted on your monitor.

Not everyone uses the in-game snapshot function for screenshots, not everyone wants an unremovable overlay/border getting in the way of scrollboxes, HUD's or interface buttons. Not everyone LIKES some bullshit black mark/border around everything. If they did, they'd use a fucking vignette. 

1. If you don't use the "in-game" snapshot function which's primary function is to make snapshot, then that's your problem, the "in-game" snapshot function has all necessary options to make a proper snapshot, even more than pretty much every other "game" has.

2. Those black borders are not irremovable, they are hidden just like any UI part when using the hide UI shortcut.

3. Those black borders can't get in the way of your HUD because it's not mouse opaque, it will let mouse clicks pass through, it is also very small, there is hardly way those could get in the way of anything at all. Even if, i could still just move their layer below the UI which would just take some separation changes to the HUD, which would even add the ability to move the HUD around layers and put it on top of the whole UI.

3.1 Those black borders can't get in the way of your UI because it is already layered below the entire UI, every menu, every floater, every anything that is a part of the UI is added after those borders layering them on top of them.

4. If you don't like it, go ahead, remove it. If i really wanted to prevent anyone from removing it i would probably have to pack textures into a data package that no one can extract to prevent people from editing them. I'm not going to stop you, but i won't help you if you decide to go against my intentional design, change it and break something.

5. A vignette effect is usually nothing else than a black screen with a round hole in it, it's something entirely different than what i'm doing there, if i wanted to have a normal vignette effect i would have forced vignette on, which would have been easily reversible and wouldn't have worked in Forward Rendering.

A minimalist design is good, but you're fucking it up by putting stupid shit where it isn't needed - the opposite of minimalism. Do you need a funky black border? No? Then don't add it. 

Be careful here, just because i have a minimalistic approach doesn't mean i am trying to squeeze out every tiny pixel, which i already did several times already.

Your viewer already adds hardly anything more than Firestorm, graphically there's hardly any difference and yet you are still missing a lot of features Firestorm has and you want to focus on shitting up your UI? If you really want to improve the UI? Make the chatbox better. Done. 

Nothing but rumors, empty and unproven accusations.

1. My viewer is not meant to be another "Firestorm", i keep out pretty much all their features for reasons you will again just call "egoistic" and "stupid". My viewer is not designed to be a wanna-be-can-do-everything viewer which copy cats every tiny feature of other viewers that makes them special. Some viewers try to focus on something, Exodus is a nice example, it focuses a lot on combat but also on machinima/photography/rendering to make that combat look nice and crispy. My viewer is focused on rendering and a more gaming-like, immersive approach of showing Second Life. I always found Second Life lacking so many fundamentally basic things present in every game, very tiny things that would make Second Life more interesting and easier to learn for gaming oriented people or generally people who did at least a bit video gaming at some point.

2. Graphically both viewers hardly differ huh?

Both pictures were taken in stock settings, i went into both viewers, took the default UI, UI size, ticked all available options except Depth of Field because it was causing Firestorm to go all blurry when using the scripted camera position, my viewer didn't have any problems with focusing through a scripted object that took control over my camera.

Then i wanted to know it, once and for all, i went to Manor Garden and raised the settings to maximum, copied my glow weighting and settings over to Firestorm and ticked Depth of Field in both viewers, which i previously disabled due to Firestorm having issues with it, chose a windlight preset and applied it both with exactly the same settings.

Looks quite a bit different, doesn't it? I could have even gone so far and copy pasted every damn setting from my viewer to Firestorm, my SSAO defaults, my DoF defaults, Camera defaults, everything, what would it have changed? Nothing. Sure, DoF wouldn't have blurred my avatars and pretty much half the scene but the overall difference would have been still the same, missing Godrays, Lens Flare, Motion Blur, sharper shadows, better SSAO, no fog-ish grey look among other things. Not to mention that Firestorm's SSAO probably would have been broken if i carried over my SSAO settings because Firestorm uses a different SSAO style (if they haven't changed it by now).

3. I already tried changing CHUI, people didn't like it so i removed it. I secretly tried again several times, without any really achievement worth mentioning. I settled on fixing CHUI's alignments and look.

Brought to you by someone who likes Black Dragon but isn't a psychophant who's going to blindly suck your dick no matter what decisions you make.

Google's dictionary suggests psychopath, i guess that's what you meant. I don't want anyone to blindly suck my dick, actually it is very embarrassing every time a fan boy comes up reading from a list of cliche sentences like "THIS IS THE VERY BEST EVAH ITS SO GOOD I WILL NEVER EVER USE ANYTHING ELSE". I really dislike those kind of feedback comments as they do not contain any valuable information other than fanboyism. If you really liked my viewer you would have put some thoughts to what you were ranting about, all you were doing was criticize my plans long and broad with no real facts showing that my plans/ideas are bad.

@Anonymous

I've installed Firestorm just to show you how wrong you are and i didn't enjoy my stay at all, it was the most horrible derail to any other viewer i have ever had.