Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Alpha 2 "Beyond"

This update focuses on the very scarce feedback i've gotten so far.

It should fix quite some enormous log spam, errors, wrong debug options, some debugs possibly not saving, as well as some people's problem not being able to enable Deferred with mid-range GPU's.

See the changelog for all the changes and tell me if your issue was fixed.


Lastly i made some quick comparison shots too, so i can remind you of the basic graphical differences.

Note: I tried using the same camera position and rotation, using scripted camera on the first 2 shots and manual positioning on the last 2 ones. I've also used exactly the same sky preset and used max graphics on both Viewers (except the last shot where Volumetric Light makes little sense). Both Viewers use different camera settings and the world rendering screen in the LL Viewer is slightly smaller in height which changes the field of view outside of your own field of view setting making it impossible to get the exact same shot, but they should suffice i suppose. Also clouds, freaking impossible to sync up in both viewers... ugh.

Changelog

2.5 Alpha 2


Changed: Set Window Size floater layout and style to match the new stylings in Preferences.
Changed: Increment steps of SSAO Factor slider to 0.01 for greater precision.
Changed: Applied SSAO Factor increment changes to Machinima Sidebar slider too.
Changed: Display preferences layout for better readability.
Changed: Joystick floater (Flycam Setup) layout and title colors to comfort the style used in preferences.
Changed: Made feathering sliders spinners for easier and more precise control.
Changed: Camera, Keybinds and Sound preferences layout slightly for visibility.
Changed: Applied the new preferences layout to UI Colors preferences tab.
Changed: Trigger threshold for texture memory warning raised to 1024mb total.
Changed: Make SSR stronger.
Changed: Disallow Third Person Steering mode in Mouselook.
Changed: Toggle Third Person Steering Mode off when switching to Mouselook.
Changed: Version to 2.5 - Alpha 2.
Fixed: Warning in floater_window_size.
Fixed: Warning in preferences floater.
Fixed: Several warnings about missing fonts used for languages we don't even support anymore.
Fixed: Set Window Size resolution buttons not working.
Fixed: Compile error in render pipeline.
Fixed: Wireframe mode in Deferred.
Fixed: Almost everything being invisible in non-Deferred.
Fixed: High UI/Find Widget frame spikes and errors of wrong control types.
Fixed: Right-Click touch being greyed out at all times.
Fixed: Bottom buttons in Places floater not clickable.
Fixed: (Potential) Some people not being able to turn on Deferred due to incompatibility with forced advanced shader level 2. Keep forcing shader level 2 as option.
Fixed: bindTexture and enableTexture spamming into the millions.
Fixed: Loading presets causes the display to go all crazy and breaking the display panel.
Removed: 800x600 Resolution from Set Window Size floater.
Removed: Shadow Occlusion.
Removed: First shadow split offset. (Seems to fix the ugly double-shadow on some windlight presets)
Removed: RenderShadowType control call.
Misc: Some Vector4 implementation cleanups. VW still not triggering a callback.
Misc: Viewer care and feeding, cleanup and unbreaking more tiny stuff that will never make a difference.

Aaaand i'm done.

After the gathering comes the scattering.

The past week was hell on earth for me. Not because the job or my boss was shit but because it was simply too much for me, so much that even my boss told me that i should stop and that i'm going to risk going into hospital if i continue. So there i am, jobless, again.


You all got your lovely, bitchy Niran back.

Bad News.

I was secretly expecting to get a job soon and sadly (for you) yesterday i got this super random call if i want a job, because there's one i could get pretty much right now, all i had to do was work for 2 days and see if everything is fine. So after these 2 days now, everything seems fine, payment seems good, no over hour bullshit and if, i do get paid immediately, also my boss seems really nice, so are my new fellow workers. Boss already told me that i'm in, which now means i'll do the usual 40 hour week + optional Saturday 3-hour-bonus cash day. And it's not an easy job, i'm working as car mechanic, which honestly was pretty much the last thing i would have ever looked for (working with cars was never my thing, i know i'm weird). So for now i'll pretty much have  very few hours a day where i can actually do what i want and that massively cuts into the already really limited time i used to put into the Viewer lately. I totally expected this to happen in 1-2 months maybe when i finished the last official release. Well, that's life i guess. I will still always be there (offline mails or online) for support so don't worry about that. It just might take longer to get unplanned stuff and additional stuff (non merging with Linden) done now, don't worry, i will still maintain the Viewer to stay compatible as quick as possible, after this release.

Black Dragon Viewer - Update 2.5 - Alpha "Omega"

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO RESET YOUR GRAPHIC SETTINGS!

Viewer

So, this is it mh? The "final" update is just around the corner. As announced long ago, back then i said i'm going to do about 50 more updates (until 2.5) and here we are now. This is 2.5... well, the Alpha of it. Why Alpha? I have made extreme changes to how Deferred is handled and this might totally blow fish out of the water and i want to know before i release the actual real 2.5 update and call it the last official update.


This update contains a tremendous amounts of changes all over the place, most noticeably the Interface and Deferred Rendering, i won't go into detail for any of these, it will all be done in the actual 2.5 update post that will be coming someday when Bento is released. Bento is also the only thing that is holding back 2.5 now. What i need is a metric fuckton of feedback about the UI changes and how well the Deferred Rendering still works. There's only ONE on and off toggle now, no more Vertex Shader, Atmospheric Shader etc, nothing. Just Deferred on or Deferred off or "super duper hyper broken do not ever use again mode" how i call it. Please, whatever you do, do NOT toggle Deferred off, i left the Deferred toggle in so you can enable it, in case you didn't or in case the Viewer set it lower than that. This Viewer is made for Deferred and ONLY for Deferred. Any potato PC can run Deferred nowadays, just disable shadows and the other stuff and you are good to go.


Note there's still quite some stuff missing such as the "Tutorial", many helpful pages, the manuals page on my blog which has been unfinished for many months and there are still quite a few features and UI overhauls i want to do. Appearance/Edit Shape for example.

Changes

2.5 Alpha


Added: Ability for Viewer to handle Vector4 control types.
Added: Ability to control every shadowmap size seperately and independently.
Added: Ability for preferences floater to utilize each of a Vector4's values.
Added: Ability to clear derender list without switching SIMs.
Added: Warnings for several options that may cause problems.
Added: Readded negative blur passes.
Added: Ability to control SSAO passes.
Added: Options to Preferences - Display to control the amount of samples for Shadow and SSAO blur.
Added: Light Softening option to Display Preferences.
Added: Light Softening option to Sidebar.
Added: Separators to display prefs to better separate groups of options.
Added: Separator image.
Added: Slider track backgrounds.
Added: Ability to define a second Slider Track background (from thumb to end).
Added: Second Slider track background for the track from thumb to end.
Added: Texture.xml reference for the Preferences separator.
Added: Debug to toggle between fast and slow customizable version of Light Blur.
Added: Basic play day cycle in 5 minute steps, no smooth transitions yet.
Added: Option and Code to toggle between fast and slow customizable version of Light Blur. Can be found in Display Preferences.
Changed: Motion Blur trigger threshold for alphas to the same of solid objects.
Changed: Shadow Resolution controls to use the new Vector4 controls.
Changed: Upped Shadow Resolution controls max limit to 6k
Changed: Shadow Resolution controls to have one slider for both width and height.
Changed: Allow Motion blur in Freeze Frame mode.
Changed: More consistency changes and code cleanup in Motion Blur.
Changed: Make the Fullbright toggle actually kill Fullbrights immediately. Added preparations for restoring them.
Changed: Made bind buttons display the currently bound key and masks.
Changed: Keybindings layout to make space for long labels.
Changed: Shadowmap resolutions, 2k for close, 4k for mid, 2k for far, 512 for very far.
Changed: Rigged all warnings to settings and made them display when certain criteria are met to inform the player about possibly negative performance impacts and problems.
Changed: Drastically increased SSAO strength now that it is much smoother again.
Changed: Default Shadow and SSAO Blur Samples to 8 (up from 4)
Changed: Split SSAO from Ambient Occlusion, making both toggeable invidually.
Changed: (Sideeffect) SSR now works without Ambient Occlusion or Shadows.
Changed: Make RenderDeferredBlurLight toggle AO now that SSAO is seperate.
Changed: sunLightSSAO shader to allow toggling of SSAO.
Changed: Renamed Ambient Occlusion setting to Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.
Changed: Moved Screen Space Reflections (SSR) to Deferred Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Blur Slider to Light Softening.
Changed: Renamed and moved SSAO/Shadow Blur Quality to Light Softening.
Changed: Moved Extended Shadow Distance to the top shadow options.
Changed: Moved Depth of Field options tab below the SSAO options tab.
Changed: Renamed Ambient Occlusion to Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.
Changed: Moved Screen Space Reflections to indicate that SSAO is no longer needed.
Changed: Light Softening tooltip in Preferences to match that of the Sidebar.
Changed: Made Deferred Rendering toggle everything at once.
Changed: Machinima Sidebar layout.
Changed: Moved Water Reflection options in Sidebar to the Deferred options.
Changed: Reorganized and moved Display Preferences.
Changed: Renamed Level of Detail tab to Quality.
Changed: Renamed Performance tab to Rendering.
Changed: Moved Avatar Physics option to Quality tab.
Changed: Moved Anisotropic Filtering option to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved OpenGL Texture Compression option to Viewer tab.
Changed: Moved Enable Fullbright option to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Render Unloaded Avatars option to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Render Attached Lights option to Deferred Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Render Attached Particles option to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Draw Distance slider to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Particle Amount slider to Rendering tab.
Changed: Moved Terrain Texture Quality option to Quality tab.
Changed: Moved Sky Quality option to Quality tab.
Changed: Moved Reflection Amount option to Quality tab.
Changed: Moved Reflection Quality option to Quality tab.
Changed: Moved Post Process Quality option to Quality tab.
Changed: SSAO defaults.
Changed: Tone Exposure Red/Green/Blue defaults.
Changed: Moved and cleaned up preferences code slightly.
Changed: Make sliders use a background for the track from for left to the thumb position.
Changed: Nicer slider textures to go along with the new track backgrounds.
Changed: Layout of Edit Shape panel, cleaner and bigger.
Changed: Made some slight adjustments to Slider textures.
Changed: Use the correct reference to the Preferences separator image.
Changed: Visual separation and readability changes to Camera Preferences.
Changed: Visual separation and readability changes to Keybindings Preferences.
Changed: Visual separation and readability changes to Sound Preferences.
Changed: (Experimental) Enabled Materials rendering in reflections.
Changed: Make the agent recorder record 10 times faster, making it less of a camera/avatar jerk.
Changed: Version to 2.5 Alpha.
Fixed: Motion Blur not working on rigged meshes.
Fixed: Crash when rendering fitted mesh avatars with Motion Blur.
Fixed: Shadows on Alphas being broken/off.
Fixed: More shadowing on Alphas being broken/off.
Fixed: Motion Blur on alpha masked objects.
Fixed: Motion Blur on alpha masked rigged meshes.
Fixed: Motion Blur breaking on fitted mesh, fixed once and for all.
Fixed: A few more bind buttons being linked to the wrong slots.
Fixed: Freeze World always enabled when first opening the snapshot floater.
Fixed: Volumetric Lighting being broken/off since the shadow resolution changes were introduced.
Fixed: "Volumetric Lighting" being falsely written as "Volumtric Lighting".
Fixed: Shadows and lighting being broken when SSAO is off but shadows are on.
Fixed: Lighting being off when shadows are off but SSAO on.
Fixed: Shader level 1 soften light, alpha and material.
Fixed: Projector Shadow height not properly working.
Fixed: Underwater overworld image too bright. Taken from Alchemy.
Fixed: Fullbrights ignoring atmospheric haze. Taken from Alchemy.
Fixed: Description text box reaching outside of the script preview window.
Fixed: Right Shoulder Camera Preset sliders not working.
Fixed: Crash when defaulting the Right Shoulder Camera Preset.
Fixed: Differing lighting without SSAO/Shadows by forcing deferred shader level 2.
Fixed: Some layout inconsistencies in Machinima Sidebar.
Fixed: Alphas being broken on distance.
Removed: Unnecessary Motion Blur code.
Removed: Shadow Resolution Multiplier.
Removed: Experimental Code that slipped into the commit.
Removed: Commented out obselete, spammy keybinding debug information.
Removed: Shadow Distance blur (again), overblurs projectors way too much.
Removed: Ability to toggle anything below Deferred Rendering. Deferred on or off only now.
Removed: Ability to toggle Bumpmaps.
Removed: Ability to toggle Hardware Skinning.
Removed: Ability to toggle Post Process Glow.
Removed: Ability to toggle Vertex Shaders.
Removed: Ability to toggle Atmospheric Shaders.
Removed: Transparent Water option from Sidebar.
Removed: Vertex Shaders option from Sidebar.
Removed: Atmospheric Shaders option from Sidebar.
Removed: Hardware Skinning option from Sidebar.
Removed: Bumpmap option from Sidebar.
Removed: Post Process Glow option from Sidebar.
Removed: Basic Light Amount options.
Removed: Basic Options tab.
Removed: Basic display tab code.
Misc: Cleaned up sunLightSSAOF shader a bit.
Misc: Doing some cleanup in Viewer Shader Manager.
Misc: Doing some cleanup in the Render Pipeline.
Misc: Cleaned up softenLight shader a bit.