RLVa is here.

Penny PattonTuesday, December 13, 2016  

Except the new version doesn't have RLV support yet, which is a complete dealbreaker. I use it too extensively to make up for LL being so bad at their jobs. 

I get wanting people to use the latest version but you've locked me out of the last version of BD I could use. Not cool.

What you say now huh? :<

Ya r8 m8 dat's wat u get 4 complainin'.

EDIT: This will soon be the next minimum version, until then automated update downloads will be broken.

Game Over Old Versions

You will not be missed.

Rest in pepperonis.

No seriously, you may have noticed (or not) that if you use a version prior to 2.5.6, the Viewer will automatically download (although not telling you, just indicating it via the slowly filling loading screen loading bar) the most recent version and force you to install that version (which you can of course close if you want but you wont be able to login with the old version anymore). So finally, after 4 years, all old versions will be done for, once and for all. This was not a one time thing, knowing that it works (and works even better than expected, the working install wasn't actually planned) means that in future i'll continue to block off older versions.

I told you all many times that at some point i'll do this if i ever get my hands on a working way to do it because it's really annoying dealing with old versions, not just for me but also for SL in general.

Well, f*ck you old versions.

I've also changed a few blog options. Most importantly i removed comment moderation, i used it to get a notification on comments because they are really easy to miss otherwise, instead i enabled sending emails whenever someone comments on any post. I'm sorry for all those comments i missed, Google changed the blogger main page several times and removed the "there are comments awaiting moderation" notification which is why i didn't see them. Things should be better now.

Emergency Release 2.5.6

I didn't expect to make a release this early and in this stage but the situation requires it, its highly likely that Bento will go full release tomorrow so i had to push this update as quick as possible. It contains all the latest stuff i was working on in its current state. Read the patch notes on the blog or login screen for further information as to what changed. The release should be coming up in a few minutes.

EDIT: Shit they already did while i was busy compiling.

Monthly Write-Up: November

The next issue of my monthly write-up. This time with lots of bad news for the entire family, everyone loves some family fun!

Interface

Last month i pushed an update that fixed the an issue that prevented local chat from popping up when the local chat was not a separate floater and the conversation floater it was nested in was closed/hidden. I changed the Appearance floater to open with the "My Outfits" tab selected instead of the new "Outfit Gallery", limited the memory sliders between 128mb and 1992mb and made the chat tags [Moderator]/[Developer]/[Mod][Dev] finally reliable.

Graphics

Graphics wise not much has changed, i disabled Object Object Occlusion by default as it should net you some performance gain unless you are using an AMD card in which case you might want to re-enable it.

Code

I fixed a bunch of crashes that could occur when you toggled Deferred Rendering options while Deferred Rendering wasn't even enabled, yes i know you should have Deferred Rendering enabled anyway, why should i care, because reasons... and edge cases. While at fixing those crashes i cleaned up the code and overhauled some parts a bit, making it more reliable and preventing more issues as well as making it able to return values which someday i might actually use.

Bento was merged again, a few new changes came with it, nothing too fancy, just a few fixes for things we probably didn't even see.

RLVa

It's still planned to come. Really it is, i just haven't started on it, it's the very last thing i'll do, when everything else is done.

Upcoming

I'm working on a few things, namely UI finetuning, fixing the appearance floater panels, cleanup all over the place, fixing one or two reported issues and adding some new stuff for you to play with. It's not particularly exciting to talk about it, really. I can show you a picture of what's coming.

It's still WIP but i'm getting there. It's shape edit btw, no more pictures, just plain sliders, all of them have the same size, boring isn't it?

Snapshots

Videos

Monthly Write-Up: October

As hinted in my last post a month ago i might do monthly change writeups, so today i'll write up and explain the changes that came with the last 3 updates during October and the one coming with this blogpost.

Interface

I removed the background on teleport and replaced the progress bar with a more fitting texture, this should give you a better view on the now improved teleport transition.

Preferences had some slight improvements too, i added a bar that shows you your total GPU memory usage (not just SL), custom memory was removed and made the baseline, no more linked texture memory sliders, you'll have to set both manually now. The maximum of both sliders will automatically scale off of your available GPU memory to prevent you from accidentally setting it to stupidly high values.

With the above changes i also made some changes to the texture console to give more detailed information on the used GPU memory, i relabeled Gl tot and texture to System and Scene to make it more clear which ones are hitting the limit and might need an increase in your settings. The total memory usage bar at the very top also now displays different colors for different usages: non-SL (grey), FBO (red), system (yellow) and scene (cyan).

Then there's the pie menu. In the past i've been changing things, trying to improve on the simple pie menu up to completely redoing the entire placement of all options, this time i just made it funnier to look at it by adding a new popup animation and some options to control its speed or toggle it off completely.

Since i'm not going to actively write any more update posts i've added a changelog list to the login screen... some of you might have noticed it already. It's there to remind you of all the changes and obviously also to be able to read them without going onto the changelog page that might be a bit slower to update.

Lastly i dropped the ball on the machinima sidebar and added vector3 and vector4 controls to it, meaning you can now change vignette and shadow resolutions. I also moved the volumetric lighting toggle below shadows to make it clearer that it's a sub-feature and not a separate feature that can work on its own.

Graphics

I changed the SSAO defaults a bit to make SSAO accumulation with multiple overlapping SSAO areas less extreme. (Mostly noticeable on plain, detail less single color surfaces)

Camera

For a long time (all the way back to Nirans Viewer) the camera was overly stiff and direct which was not intended, a change i made quite some time ago made the camera transition between teleports which was completely unnoticeable unless you changed the camera smoothness, i corrected the default smoothness value and the Camera should now act smoother when moving it, not annoyingly smooth but also not as aggressively direct like it did before, the result is that from now on you should see the camera move between teleport locations which is a nice unintended transition effect.

https://gfycat.com/WarpedImpressionableArchaeocete

Viewer Code

As always the Viewer has been brought up on par with all the latest changes from LL, this includes the VLC Media replacement as well as the latest Bento changes of that time. Soon i'll follow up another Bento merge with a few more changes and fixes.

I made some improvements to the Alpha/DeAlpha code allowing it to alpha/dealpha all separate faces instead of the whole object only. Selective face alpha-ing wooooo!

RLVa

It's coming soon™ - even the Kaprosuchus thinks its cool.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 "Ending Dragon"

Ending Dragon,
Ender Dragon,
End Dragon,
Dying Dragon,
Omega Dragon,
Resting Dragon,
Sleeping Dragon.

There are many names for this update i liked but "Ending Dragon" is probably the best for this update as it contains "end", signalling "the end" that i announced almost 3.5 years ago and at the same time describing what is going to happen.

Lets turn back time for a second. May 17th 2013, almost 3.5 years ago when i announced Black Dragon i kinda announced it's "death date", saying that i will end active development with the version 2.5 which, back then, i thought would take roughly 30 more updates, with one update coming each week. So... i expected Black Dragon to go silent a bit over half a year later, possibly a year max with smaller updates in between. Turns out this is not how it works. I pushed out 2.5 further and further and if you want ... 2.5 years later ... funny isn't it? The amount of time i would delay it's end was in it's final's update name all along. So was it planned all along? Who knows ... i guess this means Half Life 3 IS in fact confirmed after all.

Back to nowadays, i'm struggling to keep myself interested in continuing the Viewer, i feel bored an empty, worse i feel like i'm wasting my time more than when sitting around wasting time. It doesn't help me to get further in life either and before anyone says anything overly enthusiastic, the answer is no. You can hardly call this coding, this is like modding a game, just because someone can mod a game, no matter how good, doesn't make him a game developer, writing stuff from scratch is something entirely different than modding existing content, i can't even set up a simple 3D view of a cube. I'm surprised i have even gotten this far.

So what's going to happen now? I'll be updating the Viewer with the latest code and features as well as fix bugs whenever i see fit but i won't be writing anymore update notes, i'll release updates whenever i think i've done something, they'll be silent updates so you'll have to check for them yourself. I might do a monthly or quartely quick write up of big changes that have been happening since last update but that's pretty much it. I'll do one last push to get as many of my changes into the official Viewer but don't expect anything, LL is very specific about what they want and how and i'm even more specific on how i want LL to want these things.

Oh well, i guess you expected a blog post about the last release instead of some suicidal "goodbye" talk, so let's use the last bit of leftover enthusiasm to cover that instead.

User Interface

I added some not-so-fancy but informative [Moderator] and [Developer] tags to the IM window, so from now on you should be able to identify people who have moderator rights in a group chat, the developer tag is basically just for me for fun so you know when you're talking to me, that should stop the question "are you the developer of black dragon?", yes, yes i am. If both is true (only in my group chat) you will see [Mod][Dev], all of these tags have different colors.

While going through the old localization files for the preferences floater i fixed a bunch of changed labels and fixed pretty much all german preferences tabs, they should be working now but don't expect them to be complete, it's just a re-enabled versions of the previous localization before i've redone preferences and stopped updating the german localization.

The Visual Outfit Browser has been implemented and (of course been) changed to make it less ugly and more fitting for the appearance floater it is in, also i changed a few things around so it should work fine with the smallest width possible for the appearance floater without needing to scroll horizontally ugh.

I also made the inspect avatar toast a lot less ugly, that light grey was sticking out like a Christmas tree in a pitch black night. It has more space for the description too!

I also added an option to the snapshot floater called "autoscale rendering" that will automatically scale Depth of Field, Shadow Blur and SSAO higher as counter to high resolution snapshots which tend to make these effects less visible or weaker, this is not a bug, it's simple logic. If you put a square with 200x200 dimensions on a 512x512 picture it will cover almost half of the picture but if you put the same square on a 2048x2048 picture it will only be a tenth of that picture, that is essentially what is happening here and this autoscale feature simply multiplies the strength and size of SSAO, Shadow Blur and Depth of Field internally to match the desired output resolution, note that this is not perfect or in any way a super complex calculation, it's a simple multiplier that goes up/down with the resolution of your snapshot compared to the resolution your window currently has.

Rendering

I've made some changes to the way some shaders are loaded, i've separated them from the big main pile and made them separately loadable, this allows me to load them whenever necessary without incurring a massive recompile of all shaders just for a tiny change. This change drastically affects the framerate hitch you may see when toggling any of the main features such as shadows, ssao, ssr and so on, almost all of them are now instantaneously just like changing shadow resolution.

I added the old Depth of Field back into the Viewer, it's a toggle in both the display preferences as well as the sidebar, it's slower, causes massive framerate loss if turned all the way up to SUPER BLUR but looks all the better to make up for it, the new one in comparison is highly inaccurate and causes haloing around focused objects or avatars. See the difference in the pictures below.

new Depth of Field

old Depth of Field

Viewer

I cleaned up, optimized and simplified and tagged another a bit of my code and fixed a few warnings all over the place. Changes to make future merges easier as well as allow other people to easier identify my changes if they want to take them.

I fixed a few issues such as guns not working in mouselook, butchered a few statistics that are being send to LL and merged Marine's fix to prevent 100% transparent objects from rendering.

RLVa is sadly completely off the table, when i started merging the differences in i came across the whole appearance and HTTP stuff and it dawned me that this will most likely sabotage RLVa so i kept it out once and for all. I'm sorry folks, RLVa is not going to be added back into the Viewer unless i get a version of it that is up to date with the very latest stuff and is not blown apart by changes that are made half a week later by LL that refactors the entire viewer-server communication again. I'm sorry but i'm sick seeing it happen over and over again.

Here are some random facts:

1. I made 9 updates in 2013, 24 updates in 2014, 32 updates in 2015 and 17 updates (including this one) in 2016. Clearly i've been the most productive in 2015. 2016 is by far the lowest if we take into account that 2013 started at October. That makes a total of 82 updates, 52 more than originally planned.
2. The new snapshot floater in the LL Viewer was my fault.
3. I did not know C++ in any way when i started developing Nirans Viewer. I still don't know the basic basics.
4. Black Dragon was active for 40 months, Nirans Viewer was active for 20 months making a total of 60 months i developed both Viewers together, 5 years.
5. I spend most of the time on the UI unless you count an iterative process as continuous process without pauses in that case i spend most of the time on finetuning settings.
6. The Viewer never had more than 2500 users according to the statistics i got. I'm currently estimating them at roughly 2000.
7. I like transparency and i love changelogs/patchnotes. I hate it when people say over generalized things like "we changed stuff" it's a clear indicator that they either don't care about documenting changes or are incapable of doing so due to managerial reasons for example.
8. Most of the main Third Party Viewers (including mine) are developed by or at least with the help of one or more Furry. Exodus, Firestorm, Black Dragon, Alchemy, Singularity. You might want to think about that next time you insult one. I didn't know either until i started attending more opensource developer meetings.

Changelog

2.5 - Ending Dragon (you can see the complete list of 2.5 changes since 2.4.9.9 on the changelogs site)


Added: Ability to switch between the old style high quality Depth of Field and the new faster but less precise one.
Added: High Quality Depth of Field option to preferences.
Added: High Quality Depth of Field option to Machinima Sidebar.
Added: A few more german translations, mainly the main shader toggles.
Added: Chat moderator and developer tag.
Added: Simple automatic SSAO/Shadow/DoF scaling option to scale these up/down for higher-than-window resolutions.
Changed: Layout of the picks floater and the picks info panel.
Changed: Made rendering only reload shaders where necessary, eliminating freezes when toggling shaders.
Changed: Made changes to how shadowmaps are allocated.
Changed: Overhauled the layout of the appearance floater.
Changed: Reduced outfits per row to 2.
Changed: Reduced outfit item size to fit into the minimum floater width.
Changed: Colors of visual outfit browser to match the rest of the appearance floater.
Changed: Decapitalized german outfit tabs.
Changed: Inspect avatar toast layout, made available description space much bigger.
Changed: Disabled the collection of a few statistics that seem completely unnecessary and old.
Changed: Search bar is uncomfortably close to the clock in the english UI.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Ending Dragon. Marking the end of the active development cycle.
Fixed: Guns not working in mouselook with mouselook grab disabled.
Fixed: XML parsing errors in floater_picks.
Fixed: XML parsing errors in panel_pick_list_item.xml
Fixed: Almost all compiling errors, still doesn't compile.
Fixed: Compile once and for all.
Fixed: Line Endings.
Fixed: Invalid token warning in panel_snapshot_postcard.xml.
Fixed: German translation for general preferences tab.
Fixed: German translation for display preferences tab.
Fixed: Don't render 100% transparent objects. Fixed by Marine.
Fixed: German translation for chat preferences tab.
Fixed: German translation for IM preferences tab.
Fixed: German translation for privacy preferences tab.
Fixed: Display tab clipping Vignette options.
Fixed: Chat scroll panel having the wrong name.
Fixed: Blackness when turning off Blur Light after turning off SSR/SSAO and Shadows.
Misc: Line endings fix.
Misc: Cleanup in snapshot floater code.
Misc: More tagging in llviewershadermgr.cpp.
Misc: Cleanup and tagging in llfloatersnapshot.cpp/h and pipeline.cpp/h.
Misc: Cleanup and optimization in llviewershadermgr.cpp.
Merge with Bento
Merge with Release

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Delta 3 "Teleporting Dragon"

I swear this is the last goddamn update. No more deltas, epsilons or whatever.


This update should fix the last known "critical" issue, teleport offers/requests not working. It also makes Depth of Field less ugly, less halo'ing on the edges, have a look!

NICE. I really wanted to fix this long ago, it's about damn time.

Also, snapshot to inventory is fixed too! Wohoooooo (seriously who uses it... save it to disk and upload it, its higher resolution and is better for showing stuff than this pixelated piece of shit you upload directly)

Changelog

Changed: Disable the texture filtering in Depth of Field, lessens halo'ing drastically and increases the quality.
Changed: Added disabled toggle for future option to enable/disable local chat toasts with bubble chat enabled.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Delta 3.
Fixed: Teleport Offer/Request rarely working.
Fixed: Warning due to broken tag in menu_people_nearby every time we right click someone in the People floater.
Fixed: Disabled Pie Menu sounds, some of them are corrupted, causing a short freeze on spawn.
Fixed: Warning about missing avatar_icon in every online notification.
Fixed: Snapshot to Inventory saving to Local instead.
Misc: Cleaned up some previous experiments in llviewermenu.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Delta 2 "Visible Dragon"

RAPID-SUCCESSION-UPDATE


Just fixing really critical borderless window error and adding a few more things, mainly improving alpha/dealpha and derender.

You can now alpha/dealpha/derender multiple linked prims and objects, yup... multiderender, select all the things and derender them!

Ontop of that, you can now select rigged meshes with left click, that should ease the task of selecting multiple links and derendering/alpha/dealpha-ing them.

Also i'm sorry for the bitbucket thing, this update should be on bitbucket once again.

Upcoming

LL has some interesting changes coming which i will have implemented for either the next update (small one) or the final 2.5 release depending on which comes first.

Changes are negative chat channels (yup), the ability to see temporary attachments in your outfit/appearance floater/menus, a control to set the delay of render complexity warnings, as well as render complexity warnings for HUDs and finally, mesh level of detail will be size dependent on top of being just object quality dependent.

Changelog

Changed: Allow selecting worn rigged meshes via left-click.
Changed: Disabled Avatar turning around to face the object or attachment you are selecting.
Changed: Made derender able to derender multiple selected linked prims or objects.
Changed: Made realpha/dealpha able to realpha/dealpha multiple selected linked prims or objects.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Delta 2.
Fixed: Borderless Window Mode crashing on activating it.
Misc: Corrected spelling a error.


Geändert: Erlaube das selektieren von getragenen geriggten Meshes per Linksklick.
Geändert: Die Avatar Neuausrichtung zum selektierten Objekt wurde deaktiviert.
Geändert: Derender kann nun mehrere verlinkte Prims oder Objekte gleichzeitig derendern.
Geändert: ReAlpha/DeAlpha können nun mehrere verlinkte Prims oder Objekte gleichzeitig alpha'n/dealpha'n.
Geändert: Version ist nun 2.5 Delta 2.
Behoben: Vollbildfenstermodus verursachte einen crash wenn man es aktivierte.
Verschiedenes: Schreibfehler behoben.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Delta "Invisible Dragon"

*snips*

Hello there previously non existent users that i just made appear out of nowhere. It's time for a new update, one that will blow your mind with how less new stuff there is.

Bugfixes

Today's update introduces a bunch of fixes for unknown issues (that's what i'm going to call issues you didn't report now), there's the Voice "listen from" control that was functioning inversed, also some blackscreens that seem to appear randomly (for me), Fast Cache Fetch reverting in preferences and being set to on by default and some bugs introduced with the latest Bento merge.

New Features

So let's get straight to the new stuff.

I added a feature that allows you to kill all alpha objects and surfaces and turn them fully opaque, on top of that i added two menu options in "Dragon - Useful Features - Shortcuts" to kill alpha on the currently selected object or prim (via edit) as well as alpha it again, note that it does not restore the original alpha value it just simply makes it 100% transparent, good to invisible all your problems.

"Invisible Dragon" Update - Invisibles your problems

Derender got the same treatment, you can now derender a single prim by selecting the object, enabling "select only linked prims" and then going through the links via the tools menu. I might add these features to the build floater... somehow.

Isn't that great! You can now alpha someone's stupid face and show a different state instead....or.... hide his normal face state and show the stupid one, don't forget to make a picture of it, it's only have as fun if you don't share the fun.

I'm sure you'll find some fun things to do with this.

RLVa

RLVa has been removed, i will add it back with the next update unless that one is incompatible with the current LL code (like it basically is all the time, until it gets updated... just to be broken a week before that actual update comes out). I'm sorry i had to remove it but it was practically unusable anyway, it has been broken for many months (i think a year even if not longer)

Snapshots

Changelog

English


Added: Kill Alpha debug feature, to unalpha alphas while unalpha'ing alpha'd alphas.
Added: Derender menu entry, workaround to enable linked prims to be derendered.
Added: Ability to selectively alpha/unalpha objects or prims via the Dragon menu.
Added: Eject option to Pie Menus.
Added: Freeze option to Pie Menus.
Added: Dump XML option to Pie Menus.
Added: Debug Textures option to Pie Menus.
Changed: Dropped kill fullbright LLInfos to LLDebugs.
Changed: Disable Fast Cache Fetch in code as well.
Changed: Disabled RLVa preferences tab.
Changed: Disabled RLVa menu in Dragon main menu.
Changed: Pie Menu layouts. Moved often used options into the first pie and often used extras into the 4 main directions.
Fixed:(POTENTIAL) One very rare right click crash with pie menus.
Fixed: Fast Cache Fetch option keeps enabling/disabling itself on preferences close.
Fixed: Compile.
Fixed: Fullscreen Window Mode.
Fixed: Attachment slots arrangement in Pie Menu with Bento attachment slots.
Fixed: Pie Menu not working on other avatars and attachments as well as on land.
Fixed: Crash when teleport.
Fixed: Crash while resetting the skeleton.
Fixed: "listen voice from" being inverted.
Fixed: (Potential) Random blackscreens, sometimes after clicking back into SL, causes invalid control error too.
Removed: A potential crash fix. Didn't work.
Removed: All other language files to prevent the Viewer from ever loading them via system default.
Misc: Properly close our files in llviewerkeyboard.
Misc: Cleanup, misc merges and probably stuff that gets removed in the next big cleanup.
Misc: more misc stuff that might be removed.
Misc: Massive RLVa code removal and some Linden/Bento merging. (Part 1)
Misc: Removed last bits of RLVa. (Part 2)
Misc: Removed a few more stray RLVa bits.
Misc: Merge cleanup.
Misc: Added more code commenting/tagging.
Misc: More merge cleanups.
Merge with Linden Release
Merge with Bento

German

Hinzugefügt: "Alphas deaktivieren" Debug Funktion um Alphas zu ent-alpha'n wärend man ge-alpha'te Alphas ent-alpha't.
Hinzugefügt: Derender Menüeintrag als Workaround um verknüpfte Prims zu derendern.
Hinzugefügt: Möglichkeit per Dragon Menü selektiv Objekte und Prims transparent/sichtbar zu machen.
Hinzugefügt: "Hinauswerfen" Option im Aktionsrad.
Hinzugefügt: "Einfrieren" Option im Aktionsrad.
Hinzugefügt: "Avatar Aussehen als XML speichern" Option im Aktionsrad.
Hinzugefügt: "Fehler in Texturen beseitigen" Option im Aktionsrad.
Geändert: Fullbright deaktivieren logging von LLInfos auf LLDebugs reduziert.
Geändert: Fast Cache Fetch auch im code deaktiviert.
Geändert: RLVa Einstellungsreiter deaktiviert.
Geändert: RLVa Untermenü deaktiviert.
Geändert: Aktionsrad belegungen. Oft genutzte ins erste Rad bewegt, weitere oft genutzte auf die vier Hauptachsen bewegt.
Behoben: (Potentiell) Einen sehr seltenen Rechtsklick Crash mit dem Aktionsrad.
Behoben: Fast Cache Fetch Option hat sich automatisch immer ein/ausgeschaltet beim schließen der Einstellungen.
Behoben: Kompile.
Behoben: Vollbild Fenster Modus.
Behoben: Bento Anhange positionen im Aktionsrad.
Behoben: Aktionsrad funktioniert nicht bei anderen Avataren und Land.
Behoben: Crash beim teleportieren.
Behoben: Crash beim zurücksetzen des Skeletts.
Behoben: Voice "hören von" Optionen waren vertauscht.
Behoben: (Potentiell) Zufälliger schwarzer Bildschirm beim reinklicken ins SL Fenster, verursachte auch einen invalid control error.
Entfernt: Einen potentiellen crashfix, er funktionierte nicht.
Entfernt: Alle anderen Sprachdateien um den Viewer daran zu hindern diese bei der Spracheinstellung "Systemstandard" zu laden.
Verschiedenes: llviewerkeyboard sollte die Datei nach dem Abschluss schließen.
Verschiedenes: Aufräumungen, verschiedene Zusammenführungen und ein paar Sachen die eventuell später entfernt werden.
Verschiedenes: Noch mehr verschiedene Sachen die eventuell entfernt werden.
Verschiedenes: Große RLVa code Entfernung überall im Code und weitere Bento/Linden zusammenführungen. (Teil 1)
Verschiedenes: Letzten Reste von RLVa entfernt. (Teil 2)
Verschiedenes: Noch ein paar letzte RLVa codefetzen entfernt.
Verschiedenes: Aufräumarbeiten nach der Zusammenführung.
Verschiedenes: Noch mehr Kommentare und Codeschnitzel markiert.
Verschiedenes: Noch mehr Aufräumarbeiten nach der Zusammenführung.
Aufnahme und Zusammenführung von Linden Änderungen in den Viewer Code.

Aufnahme und Zusammenführung von Bento Änderungen in den Viewer Code.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Gamma "Radiated Dragon"

Here we go with another round of bug fixes and tweaks.


I would like to say again that its very important that you give me feedback on the changes, fixes and broken features. If you are scared of me ripping off your head, here are 2 tips how to avoid it:

1. IM me directly, don't write on the blog, forum or anywhere else, especially not on your own blog, IMs directly to me, that's a sure way to get them to me and maybe get your stuff fixed properly.
2. Repeat #1, DO IT. If you are too scared of me ripping off your head when you report feedback, you shouldn't be, you should rather be scared because i will rip your head off if you don't give me feedback.

Good, i think we got that cleared up too. Remember broken shit is usually only broken because i don't know its broken.


Next up, some changes all over the place, the outfit replace issue should be fixed, the Viewer should properly replace your entire outfit now. Bento was updated a tiny bit and i made some changes to enhance overall peformance a bit. All reported issues should be fixed that includes spellchecker. Yes spellchecker is "working" again but only as far as the official one does, importing dictionaries is still a mess and doesn't work in 99% of all cases, same on Linden Viewer, the dictionaries are simply incompatible with the importer but can be added easily if you know how. I didn't just "fix" it but also included a few more dictionaries for you to use, on top of the default English ones there is now a German, Portuguese and 2 French ones too. Thank me later for this. This change is not listed because i cannot commit the change, it's not part of the Viewer but i will make sure this is not going to break again in future updates at some point.

Also, the reported issue with alpha color swatches, mouselook grab option and internal/external browser option should be fixed as well.

SSAO has been updated too, make sure you default your SSAO settings to get the new settings, they are better, trust me.

Changelog:

2.5 Gamma


Added: Labels to separators in preferences - displays.
Added: Ability to disable transparency preview in color swatches.
Added: Fast Cache Fetch option to viewer preferences.
Changed: Always toggle floaters instead of bringing them to front first.
Changed: Large scale RLVa and KB Patch removal, might remove it entirely until RLVa is updated.
Changed: SSAO Defaults, slightly stronger on distance, a lot softer, less pixelation on plain surfaces.
Changed: Tweaked non-opague appearance of color swatches for better visibility.
Changed: Tweaked checkerboard texture for better visibility in color swatches.
Changed: Replaced old External Browser option with new Browser Behavior option.
Changed: Slight display preferences separator line layout tweaks.
Changed: Tone Mapping slider range tweaks.
Changed: Disable Fast Cache Fetching by default, should improve stuttering when stuff is loading.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Gamma.
Fixed: Reset Skeleton still greyed out on our own attachment pie menu.
Fixed: Compile.
Fixed: Allow Mouselook Grab option not working.
Fixed: Edit Sky Preset color swatches being almost completely transparent.
Fixed: Tools floater color swatches being almost completely transparent.
Fixed: Merge errors.
Fixed: Internal Browser Behavior option.
Misc: Toybox commands cleanup.
Misc: Small cleanups in viewer preferences.
Merge with Bento
Merge with RLVa

(German - for Maddy)

Hinzugefügt: Labels für die Trennstriche in Einstellungen - Anzeige.
Hinzugefügt: Möglichkeit Transparenz in der Farbauswahl Vorschau auszuschalten.
Hinzugefügt: Fast Cache Fetch Option in Viewer Einstellungen.
Geändert: Fenster immer umschalten anstatt sie erst in den Vordergrund zu holen.
Geändert: Großangelegte Entfernung von RLVa und KB Patches, eventuell entferne ich alles bis RLVa geupdated ist.
Geändert: Umgebungsverdeckungs Standardeinstellungen, etwas stärker auf Distanz, viel weicher, weniger Verpixelung auf einfachen Oberflächen.
Geändert: Aussehen der Farbauswahl mit transparenter Farbe angepasst für bessere Sichtbarkeit der Transparenz und Farbe.
Geändert: Aussehen der Karo Hintergrundtexture in der Farbauswahl angepasst für bessere Sichtbarkeit der Transparenz.
Geändert: Alte Externe Browser Option mit der neuen Browser Verhalten Option ersetzt. 
Geändert: Kleine Layout Änderungen an den Anzeige Einstellungen Trennstrichen.
Geändert: Tone Mapping Schieberegler Reichweiten angepasst.
Geändert: Fast Cache Fetch Standartmäßig deaktiviert, das sollte das ruckeln lindern wärend Dinge geladen werden.
Geändert: Version ist nun 2.5 Gamma.
Behoben: Reset Skeleton war in dem Selbst-Attachment Aktionsrad immernoch ausgegraut.
Behoben: Den Compile.
Behoben: Packen/Ziehen/Drücken erlauben Option funktionierte nicht.
Behoben: Die Farbauswähler in Himmelsvoreinstellung bearbeiten waren fast komplett transparent.
Behoben: Die Farbauswähler im Baufenster waren fast komplett transparent.
Behoben: Fehler nach vorherigen Zusammenführungen.
Behoben: Interne Browser Verhalten Option.
Verschiedenes: Verfügbare Werkzeugleisten Aktionen aufgeräumt.
Verschiedenes: Kleinere Aufräumungen in den Viewer Einstellungen.
Aufnahme und Zusammenführung von Bento in den Viewer Code.
Aufnahme und Zusammenführung von RLVa in den Viewer Code.

Update "Reset Dragon"

Reset Dragon was reset.

Which is why you have to redownload the latest version (should upload shortly), it fixes insta crashes with Motion Blur in combination with Bento avatars and increases the maximum draw distance to 1024. I tested 2048, the SIM doesn't allow requesting that much SIMs that far away sadly :/ only up to 1024 makes sense.

The red beam, that's where i am at.


Changed: Increased internal draw distance limit to 1024.
Changed: Max value of Draw Distance sliders increased to 1024.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Beta 2B.
Fixed: (Potential) Rare crash on logout due to destroyed Settings:: singleton being called.
Fixed: Motion Blur causing insta crashes with Bento avatars.
Fixed: Reset Skeleton still greyed out on our own attachment pie menu.
Misc: Code line ending cleanup.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Beta 2 "Reset Dragon"

Sorry this took so long, did lots of spring/summer cleanup in the code.




This update contains lots of fixes and mostly just fixes, nothing really new and fancy, here's a short rundown.

'Reset Skeleton' works now in pie menus, 'Extended Skeleton' menu in detach pie menu is not missing anymore, Group Ban tab is not missing anymore, Tree Quality can be set, Shadow Map 4 works properly now, shorter login and teleport screens and some other fixes here and there.


Did i tell you already that i want feedback? I'm getting WAY too less feedback. My IM window should be hot all day, my IMs capped and my group chat burning, instead i'm just getting an occasional "hey i like ur stuff". More. MORE. MORE FEEDBACK. BUG REPORTS. Don't be shy, i won't rip your head off, except you don't GIVE ME FEEDBACK AND BUG REPORTS!

Snapshots (NSFW):

Thought you might like some more NSFW, you're always crying for it. It's not my avatar, i just made the picture for a user who couldn't do it herself. (Potato PC)

Changelog:

Added: Missing Name_Rect.png.
Added: Print proper VRAM info together with the GPU Name and Vendor.
Added: Tree Quality option to preferences.
Added: Default flag for Normalmap Scale.
Changed: Put left hand and right hand attachment slots into the "Hands" menu group.
Changed: Made Borderless Window Mode globally toggeable.
Changed: Layout of the "Banned Residents" subtab to match the other group tabs.
Changed: Show empty checkboxes on unselected graphic presets and checked checkboxes on selected ones.
Changed: Bulk ban layout slightly to fix clipping and consistency.
Changed: Don't print VRAM info on app startup start, that info is wrong.
Changed: Shorten precaching delay on login, roughly 5 seconds faster login.
Changed: Eliminate teleport arrival delay, 2 seconds faster teleport.
Changed: Reduced default shadow resolutions to 2048/2048/1024/512.
Changed: Reduced default shadow render distance to 64m.
Changed: Increased SSAO Factor precision to 3 decimal digits.
Changed: Increased max SSAO Blur Size to 1.0.
Changed: Increased max Linear White value to 50.
Changed: Increased max SSAO Factor value to 10.
Changed: Increased max range of SSAO Effect to -5 to 5.
Changed: Don't allow decimal digits for Windlight Transition Time until i fix the issues with it.
Changed: Fixed SSAO Factor Slider length.
Fixed: Borderless Window Mode not toggling properly when using the graphic preset pulldown.
Fixed: Tabs not properly toggling when using the graphic preset pulldown.
Fixed: "Reset Skeleton" always being greyed out in all pie menus.
Fixed: "Extended Skeleton" submenu missing from the detach self pie menu.
Fixed: Missing "Banned Residents" subtab in group roles tab.
Fixed: Group roles subtab titles too long to fit in without scrolling.
Fixed: Vector 4 [VW] not causing a control change signal. This fixes Shadowmap 4 slider not working properly.
Fixed: Deferred being greyed out when the unused Debug 'RenderGlow' is off from previous versions.
Fixed: Erroneous merges and compiling issues.
Removed: PresetGraphicActive Debug double.
Misc: Pie Menu code cleanup.
Misc: Shadow Allocation code cleanup.
Misc: Rough major code sync to Bento.
Misc: Additional mini code sync to Bento.
Misc: Major self-code cleanup, added lots of missing comment tags. Part 1.
Misc: Major self-code cleanup, added lots of missing comment tags. Part 2.
Misc: Major self-code cleanup, added lots of missing comment tags. Part 3.
Misc: Major self-code cleanup, added lots of missing comment tags. Last Part.
Merge with Bento

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Beta "Attached Dragon"

Bento is LIVE.... since 2 days. I missed it, sorry.



This update merges Bento support and again comes with a few changes and bug fixes that were more or less reported.... or not.


Oz you will probably hate me for adopting Bento. Do whatever you have to do, i probably deserve it anyway.


So without further ado, lets get into the changes!

Bento

With this release you will be able to see all Bento Avatars properly, you can also use the new attachments slots that come with Bento, to make Bento work with the pie menu i had to create another submenu for the attachment slots Left/Right Hand, that means you'll now find them in the "Hands" submenu. A new "Extended Skeleton" submenu will house all the new Bento attachment slots. With Bento also comes a new handy feature called "Reset Skeleton", this option can be found on right clicking either yourself (or your attachments) or someone else (or their attachments), the option can be found in the submenu "Manage" in the pie menu for now, i will have to reorganize the self pie menu a bit. It's all just a quick fix for now, but don't worry pie menu users you won't be forgotten.

User Interface

A small bunch of UI warnings were fixed, the search bar was re-added (was part of fixing warnings) to the navigationbar, the marketplace folders will now always up in your inventory and most noticeably the Texture Console has been revamped, it had to happen, the Texture Console was a horrible super nerdy, techy pile of weird letters all thrown together that made no sense and made it hard to read useful information. I added VRAM info there and some bars to easier visualize how full your VRAM/System/Scene memory is and how bad that is for you.

Also, the new improvements to the snapshot floater (which will soon go into the official Viewer) are also included already, the snapshot floater preview will now crop itself properly depending on your chosen snapshot resolution, no more stretched snapshots!

Rendering

Just one big change here, you can now change the shadow resolutions without it having a huge framerate impact on every single slider tick, instead only really huge resolutions will now decrease your framerate a bit and only if you pull the slider around like a madman, which you can do now, choosing your shadow resolution was never easier and faster and more efficient at the same time!

Misc

For this update i made a major Viewer package cleanup this means the new updates should be quite a bit smaller since the webkit dll's aren't included anymore for example. I know i know... we are living in a time where 100mbit bandwidth is normal but you know... it has to be done at some point.

Changelog

Added: Searchbar back to navigationbar.
Added: VRAM and system/scene memory usage information and bars.
Added: Reset Skeleton pie menu entry to all self and other people pie menus.
Added: Extended Skeleton submenu to Attach and Detach pie menus
Changed: Disable RLVa by default. Especially now that its broken.
Changed: Make changing shadowmap resolutions fast and almost completely lag free.
Changed: Added additional snapshot floater improvements from STORM-2118.
Changed: Show marketplace listings and inbox folders regardless of settings.
Changed: First pass major overhaul of the texture console for readability and organization.
Changed: Moved Left Hand and Right Hand into their own submenu.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Beta.
Fixed: Library folder being almost unreadable.
Fixed: Warnings about wrong settings type for RenderAutoMuteSurfaceAreaLimit debug.
Fixed: Warnings about wrong settings type for RenderAutoHideSurfaceAreaLimit debug.
Fixed: Auto derender ARC limit is set to LL's defaults.
Fixed: Warnings about missing textures.
Fixed: Warnings in camera floater.
Fixed: Warnings in movement floater.
Fixed: Warnings in notification console.
Fixed: Warnings in search floater.
Fixed: Warnings in active object row items.
Fixed: Warnings in preferences floater.
Fixed: Warnings in controls tab in preferences.
Fixed: Warnings in viewer tab in preferences.
Fixed: Loading presets caused the display tab to go all crazy if tabs were changed after logging in.
Fixed: Copy/Move to marketplace listings notification doesn't take input.
Fixed: Pie Menu causing login crashes with Bento attachment slots.
Merge with Bento

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Alpha 3 "Roaring Dragon"

Today, is the day, my birthday.

I thought it would be a good thing to make an update today, right?

So i took the last 2 days off of playing Stellaris and merged all the way up to the very latest Linden Release and broke the Viewer twice in the process. Seriously, it's broken this time. I swear.

As always i need feedback what's broken. Also, did you see the pitiful try of LL to explain the new jellydoll feature? It's finally official! Soon we shall all be single color low res sprites. Except me of course, my render complexity is always too damn low.

This update also contains some changes i did before i started getting occupied with Stellaris, including an updated object profile window...

the ability to control the alpha value in colors via the color picker... (only works with UI colors and only those who actually use it)

completely revamped pie menus...

and a bunch of other things i sadly don't have pictures of, such as my old SSFUI returning (partially).

Have fun.



Changelog:


Added: Ability to change alpha/transparency of a color in the internal Color Picker.
Added: Ability to use multi line in the pie menu to prevent clipping.
Added: Option to ignore "Choose Sex" selection on login.
Changed: Pie Menu color, transparency, highlight and fading transparency.
Changed: Reworked all pie menus, removed old features, added new, reordered everything.
Changed: "Copy UUID" to "Copy Avatar UUID"
Changed: All necessary pie menu slices to use multi line.
Changed: Added an outer ring with a highlight indicating the slice is a menu.
Changed: Overhauled Pie Menu look, made it look more like an action wheel.
Changed: Applied tools floater layout to the inventory object profile panel.
Changed: Applied tools floater layout to the inworld object profile panel.
Changed: Don't waste time rendering an empty label in the pie menu.
Changed: (SSFUI) Use SLURL's for creator/owner and group name in the Object Profile.
Changed: (SSFUI) Use SLURL's for IM/Group messsage headers.
Changed: (SSFUI) Use SLURL's for online notifications.
Changed: Replaced Avatar Render Complexity debug options.
Changed: Seperated money notification into spend and receive options.
Changed: Don't halt startup progress because of "Choose Sex" dialog as our Avatar might actually appear regardless.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Alpha 3.
Fixed: Dragon main menu becoming invisible on certain aspect ratios.
Fixed: Spelling error.
Fixed: Viewer not able to show the notification it just received error.
Fixed: Absolutely devastated compile. Need to manually fix every, single, file, soon.
Fixed: Project cannot be setup because keys.xml is missing.
Fixed: Compile, again. RLVa and Graphic Presets broken, possibly more.
Fixed: About Viewer showing old unused info.
Fixed: Cannot save presets.
Removed: Greater/Smaller than symbols as they are no longer used as indicator for a menu.
Removed: Pie Menu separator lines.
Removed: Spammy debugging code for pie menus.
Removed: Derender Avatars over byte limit option.
Merge with Release 4.0.5 (~620 changes)
Merge with Release 4.0.6 (~300 changes)