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.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

How To Fix: the Viewer and its common problems.

I'm bored so today i'll be going over a bunch of startup problems quite a few people seem to have when first using the Viewer.



HELP: X or Y is white and stuff looks broken.


The Problem:


In the course of Black Dragon's development i made a really significant change to the minimum graphic settings of Black Dragon. You see, all other Viewers offer all options from legacy rendering, to 'Basic Shaders' (Vertex Shaders or commonly known as Windlight), Post Process Glow and finally 'Advanced Lighting Model' (previously Lighting and Shadows, correct would be Deferred Rendering), allowing a wide range of PC's starting from the minimum requirements to the uber gaming PC to utilize the Viewer and set whatever graphics people want. In my Viewer however, there are no options prior to Deferred Rendering anymore. That essentially means the minimum graphics level you get is Deferred Rendering (if you don't count the ability to disable it for personal crash prevention and fail safe reasons). If your hardware does not support Deferred Rendering (Intel Graphics Cards usually) or any of its needed components (such as the now included Vertex Shaders and Post Process Glow) or is incompatible to the changes i did to the shaders (AMD Graphics Cards sometimes have this issue) it will simply bail out and fail to enable Deferred Rendering, essentially locking you out of seeing everything normal. Sometimes the Viewer will simply disable Deferred Rendering because your stock settings were in the range between no Deferred Rendering and Deferred Rendering enabled. In all cases you will see the world broken, some prims or meshes missing, some body parts will be white, meshes especially.

In Short:


Looks like this:












whereas it should look like this ^

The problem happens when:

  • using Intel Graphic Cards.
  • using AMD Graphic Cards.
  • randomly depending on your initial starting settings.


The Fix:



  • If you are using a laptop you are almost guaranteed to use an Intel Graphics Cards, but most today's laptops have a dedicated NVidia Graphics Cards, if you know it does you will have to go into your Windows Start Menu - System Control Panel - NVidia System Control Panel - 3D Settings - Manage 3D Settings - Global Settings and set the preferred graphics processor to 'High Performance NVidia Graphics Processor'. After you've done that you'll have to restart the Viewer and go to Preferences - Display and toggle Deferred Rendering there. Your problem should be fixed.
  • If you are using a desktop PC with an Intel Graphics Cards you are out of luck, this Viewer does not support Intel Graphics Cards. Go and use a different Viewer.
  • If you are using an AMD Graphics Cards, try enabling Deferred Rendering first, if that doesn't work please report your problem to me directly so i can work on a fix.
  • If you are using a NVidia Graphics Cards, try enabling Deferred Rendering first, if that for some reason doesn't work please report your problem to me directly too. 



HELP: My camera doesn't stay behind my avatar.


The Problem:


First off a clarification, your camera never stays behind your avatar, it doesn't in my Viewer and it doesn't in any other Viewer. Your problem is a different one, you just don't know how to properly explain it because you don't know what is happening. Your avatar is strafing left or right instead of what you are used by default from other Viewers, rotating left or right. Although strafing seems to be the wrong wording here, that is what it's actually called, your Avatar moves directly to your left or right relative to the current camera direction. It's yet another change that goes all the way back to Nirans Viewer, one that should have been in Second Life from the very beginning but Second Life is not the only 'game' doing it wrong, most games use strafing, some (presumably created by people like you who were getting used to something different) games use rotate by default, big mistake, you got an input device that we commonly know as 'Mouse' and this 'Mouse' fulfills the role of being a second, separate input device to split up and spread different tasks, such as moving and looking around to all your available resources or what you commonly refer to as your 'Hands'. One hand moves you around, including crouching, jumping, running or flying while the other enables you to look around completely independent of your movement. Over are the times in which you moved with arrow keys and looked up/down/left/right with your numpad in a really jerky and unprecise way.

In Short:


I changed the actions rotate left and right to strafe left and right and you are not used to it, as was i when i first changed it and was used to rotating for years (in Second Life).

The Fix:


  • You can change the keybindings back to what you are used to by going into Preferences - Keybindings and clicking the trash icon left of the 'strafe left' and 'strafe right' action keybinds (which will display A and D and Left and Right a bit further to the right, then clicking the keybind buttons for the actions 'rotate left' and 'rotate right' (they will display Q and E) and pressing whatever button (presumably Arrow Left or Arrow Right) you want them to be, hit 'Bind' when you are done. Really easy and simple.
  • You can also just deal with it and get used to it. Seriously, if you used the mouse to look around (drag your avatar) you won't notice this change most of the time anyway because by default 'rotate left' and 'rotate right' changes to 'strafe left' and 'strafe right' while dragging your avatar.

34 comments:

  1. Hi am a new Black Dragon viewer user. I love the amazing grphics. But im having a problem. i have a ROG gaming laptop with a 4g nvidea card, 12gb of ram an pretty much everythig i thougt i needed to work it. but i get these errors. I am sure it is something i did wrong... so if anyone can help me i will be very grateful this is what i see... https://gyazo.com/9bf19a67f8d49c01a65195577f4f63e5?token=07f5135ff0fc33a689cf1ed38792c39c

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have you tried hovering over them? They are warnings that tell you which settings you enabled or set too high that might be causing issues (if you are experiencing issues that is). They are just a help to find out what might be causing issues.

      Delete
  2. Since you updated the Outfits panel where the "Worn Outfits" tab displays "Wearables" and "Temporary attachments" it hasn't worked. Both are almost always empty.

    Sometimes if I wait a minute or so the "Wearables" category will fill up with my worn items, but not always.

    Also, for about as long as the above issue, people now need to be within 32 metres of my avatar before they appear in the Radar. I cannot find an option to increase this distance. The settings button on the Radar tab is greyed out.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Strange, the NearMeRange debug must have been changed... i'll look into it.

      Delete
    2. I looked into the attachment tab, it appears like that is intended behavior, i haven't quite 100% down when they show up but it seems like to refresh when you open your inventory, make it load and make sure your outfit is valid and loaded (you might have to switch outfits incase your COF is broken), after that they should fill.

      Delete
    3. Hello all !

      Me and my GF have the same issue on 3 different computer with black dragon. we really love this Viewer for a lot of reason but, when we close the viewer , our Graphic Memory Mhz still running at his full everytime, increasing the temp +10 degres also when we don't run anything.

      To fix the issue we have to reset Windows and clean the C: Disk.

      there is anything to resolve this issue without reinstal windows ?

      Delete
    4. Whawhawhat?! That doesn't like an issue with the Viewer, i'd recommend googling for this issue. This sounds like something is borked in your Windows or BIOS.

      Delete
  3. Hi, i did what you said above with the nvidia graphics but it still isn't reading it

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Then i can't help you, sorry

      Delete
    2. Ok well you said report my problem to you but, noted thanks anyway.

      Delete
    3. How about having my black dragon viewer with a blue tint making everything in my screen lookin like negative films and idk how to fix it

      Delete
    4. According to my google search this has been an issue in the past, around 2017 and is related to new NVIDIA GPU drivers, either you updated them recently and might want to downgrade again or you might want to update them to newer versions (not necessarily the latest which can easily cause issues in SL). A workaround from what i've read is turning off Deferred Rendering, then turning quality down to low and back up, quality does not exist in Black Dragon and you'll have to turn all non-Deferred options manually down and back up again. I'd start with the Quality Options, specifically Glow Quality which is the only option left that is changeable aside from draw distance and avatar count which i doubt are the reason for this.

      Delete
  4. my black dragon viewer is all blue and idk how to fix it

    ReplyDelete
  5. Everything is blue i am using AMD graphics on a 64 bit desktop defered rendering is on here is a picture of what i'm seeing https://gyazo.com/54993a77146ca01cfdb81aa157080ad6

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello i been searching for help about black dragon recently my black dragon viewer is dark and when I try to use my wind light to light it up it works but goes back dark in seconds my quality not good anymore when I take one the picture is stretched need help fixing this problem

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That sounds like you are not running Deferred Rendering, make sure its enabled and actually working (if you have an Intel GPU it won't and will warn you at the bottom of preferences too), the stretched images is a result of Deferred not running (unless you are taking pictures in lower resolution than your screen, that's a known bug and will be fixed in the next update)

      Delete
  7. I cannot get started on the viewer, it gets stuck at detecting hardware and won't load. I have an updated gaming pc and I run firestorm in ultra with no problems. What can I do? I installed the latest viewer

    ReplyDelete
  8. I can’t save my pictures to my computer. I’ve been trying for 2 days. Even firestorm is giving me the same problem. What do I do?

    ReplyDelete
  9. my black dragon viewer wont let me in crash every time .. my laptop is gaming laptop its alienware very strong one but i wonder why black dragon crash every time thats make me feel bad can anyone help and explain

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. im having the same problem and its driving me crazy idk what to do hope someone can help us.

      Delete
    2. On login? Reset your depth of field settings (or turn it off until you are logged in)

      Delete
  10. my camera controls arent working correctly. rear views, shoulder views, they all just go to rear view or dont do anything.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Make sure you reset them and none of your attachments overwrite or take controls of your camera (often certain bodies or body HUDs do this, they have an option to turn it off)

      Delete
    2. how do you turn them off

      Delete
    3. That depends on your HUD but there is probably a button somewhere on those HUDs (i do not own any of them so idk how they look or where they are)

      Delete
  11. I have a single prim photo platform on my SIM and when I log into Black Dragon to take photos I can't see it or any of the objects (like backdrops and pose stands). I have to log into an alt account on firestorm and click edit for these objects to show up for me in my black dragon viewer. What might be causing this? When i click on them in edit mode on the alt in firestorm they immediately come into view for me on BD... so confused. Help?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a known recent issue that has been haunting SL as a whole, its Viewer independent and seems to only happen on the second (or third) Viewer you are using, teleporting away and back should bring these objects back for now, there is no known cause or real fix for this.

      Delete
    2. Thank you so much! Teleporting did seem to work. I appreciate the help! Much easier than having to log in an alt account to have to make all the objects appear for me lol!

      Delete
  12. I very much like Black Dragon for photography, but I have a weird thing. In Firestorm I have no problems flying, but in Black Dragon I can't fly at all. Even on land which allows flying and where I am a manager. Have I accidentally grounded myself?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You might have removed the Fly keybinding from your controls, its the only way you could possibly "ground" yourself (other than RLVa blocking you)

      Delete
  13. I am a long time Firestrom user that wants to try Black Dragon -- I have downloaded it and every time I attempt to run it - it shuts down just as it is initializing texture cache. I am attempting to run it on a a Parallels Virtual Machine running WIN 11. I am running it on a MacStudio M1 Ultra. Can you tell me if I am wasting my time as it is simply not compatible with my environment or if there is something I need to do in order to get past where it is failing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hard to tell, VMs are kina wonky and limited, you should use Wine anyway to run it natively on Mac. Either way i will need your settings file and log file to see if i can reproduce it. Make sure you are using 5.0.3 too as it fixed several startup crashes

      Delete