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.

Friday, March 16, 2018

Black Dragon Guide: Movement Controls

So. Two-hundred-and-sixteenth time. I've been counting how often people have asked the same question and it is obvious the FAQ is not sufficient anymore to explain this.

To clear a few misconceptions right from start.

No, this is NOT broken.
No, this is NOT bugged.
No, this is NOT weird.
No, your camera doesn't stay behind your back when you move left or right.
No, it's not like "in Firestorm", its ANY Viewer. Stop crediting them for things LL did.
Most importantly, no, this is not something camera related as literally everyone thinks.



What's the issue? You start the Viewer and hit A,D or Arrow Left or Right and your avatar moves to your left/right. This is not weird this is the industry standard since... 20 years? Pretty much since 3d games became a thing. It's called strafing, although compared to games it does not look like the usual strafing e.g looking forward while walking sideways, yea that's SL for ya. Strafing is set to replace the rotational movement by default, why? Because every game that isn't a complete pile of shit does this by now, just a few special snowflakes haven't catched up with something that has been established back in doom and quake times, namely Second Life for instance. Second Life as such classifies as game, more specifically as MMO, and even more specifically as Simulation and Sandbox. It's a Sandbox MMO and it offers what is quite standard for said MMO type, third and sometimes also first person camera, those are in 99% of all cases set up to have A/D for strafing rather than the long gone turning. But how do you turn then? You use your mouse of course. We didn't get this input device for nothing but clicking UI elements, its there offering extremely precise movement in 2 directions, enough for looking around in a 3d world such as Second Life. You can simply click and hold the left mouse button on your avatar to enable "Steering Mode" in which... you guessed it, steer your camera, dragging your avatar behind (yes your avatar behind, it follows your camera rotation not the other way around). You can also simply hold your right mouse button anywhere that is not the UI and drag your mouse around to do the same (this also works after alt-camming).

But this guide is for those who simply cannot use what is considered the most efficient, most convenient, fastest and most precise, industry standard way of controlling your third-person-viewed avatar/camera.

The secret reason i changed this is to teach you something. I do this all the time. Everywhere. I do the thing that seemingly no one else has the time to do today. (Guess why all the names of graphic features are labeled with their correct names, it's so you can google them and get some actual information on them: Wikipedia for instance. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT ADVANCED LIGHTING MODEL IS GODDAMNIT)

So what you want is, you want to turn around using (most likely) the arrow keys, rather than strafing to the left/right as it is by default. This is actually very easy and i don't know why this even needs explanation but...

In Preferences - Keybindings, you can find several lists filled with controls and actions. It looks like this.


Action tells you what it does, function is the internal name of the action, button is the currently set key that will trigger said action and modifiers are extra keys such as CTRL, ALT, SHIFT. In order to change the strafing back to turning you'll have to find and select the entry that reads "Turn Left" / "Turn Right" bound to Q and E and modify them by hitting the "Change Selected" button (or double clicking the entry). A new small window will pop up. This new window displays the old keybinding at the top and the new one below, all you need to do now is press your new desired key you wish to use to trigger turning either left or right, in this case either A/D or Arrow Left/Right. After pressing the correct key and having it show up below, hit "Bind" and repeat the process until you changed everything you wanted to change. In order to prevent you from strafing and turning at the same time now, you'll have to select the "Move Left" and "Move Right" entries that have your keys bound you want to use and delete them so your keys are not bound twice to two different actions. You can check if you did everything right by pressing your keys and if you did everything right your keys should now do these:



That's it actually. In case you REALLY need help, here's a the entire instruction in a 10 sec nutshell.



41 comments:

  1. Lovely viewer, and movement controls work well, bout time we had a viewer that utilized modern tech.

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  2. Your tone is inappropriate. It may be standard, but not everyone needs to like it.

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  3. your an arrogant SOB. ALL SO YOU CAN TEACH A LESSON, guessing you are 12yo+

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    1. You act like a twelve-year-old, so it's not much of a stretch that people assume you are that age.

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    2. My goodness some people are childish toward creators. You take the time to build a visually stunning SL viewer, and individuals who can't even bother to give you their SL name, or any other for that matter, try to call you out for getting annoyed by people wasting your time asking questions you already answered?

      You do you. Yes, your explanation sounds condescending, but given that you're answering questions that keep being asked in spite of you having the answers in your FAQ, I think you're rather entitled to imply that the people who need extra special explanations above and beyond what they've already been give are an extra special level of stupid.

      That said, thank you for the illuminating explanation. I'm not a tech person, so I don't know all the actual names of various functions. All I'm honestly concerned with is how to make them work so I can use the viewer to take beautiful pictures.

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    3. Oops. Put my comment in the wrong spot and can't delete.

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  4. People are way too sensitive in the comments. Someone just constructed all of this with their precious time and without being paid for it. They are far entitled to be a bit abrasive, especially with how entitled people come to the creator with their own attitudes which btw are far worse. You keep it up Niran <3..people out here butt hurt but can't take self responsibility for their own actions.

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  5. You sound pretty mean. You cant blame people for not liking it the way you have it. The reality is that everyone from old Gs to new people are used to the LL system of walking and moving. Think about this, lots of people just "play" SL and are not familiar with any other game mechanisms. And, also many of them are older people. Just keep the options opened. I know is your viewer and you do whatever the fuck you want with it. But after all this time people asking all the time for the movement set up how come you have not grown super tired of it and just add a toggle button for those options? Or whatever. Keep up the good job. You have truly taken SL graphics to a whole new level. xoxo

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  6. Ok Im not a tech person I heard this viewer was good so I thought Id try it.Im sad to say because im not in your generation and cant talk tech or only understand limited techy thingsI will have to go back to using something Im familiar with.For the generations that are being born they will have implanted knowelege from birth so they will understand this stuff from the time they shit their first nappy.Your great at what you do and this programe is way too advanced for the less computer literate people.If you think your attitude doesnt suck think again,take a course in humanity studies and then a buisness course and you'll succed at becoming a well like buisness man.Good luck for your future.

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    1. Generations? What are you talking about. I come from the early 90's. Even my parent's played games and even they would understand this (they don't need to because they played games themselves with the same controls). Today's generation is a big pile of shit. And what has all of this to do with being a business man? I'm not here to rake in money, i'm here to deliver a quality product, which is something business men don't care about. I'm talking from a user standpoint. Don't tell me it is too much to expect people to know at least some basics of the very thing they used for over a decade, at some point you just can't help people anymore. Controls, movement, camera, all the things you do every day in Second Life are not techy things at all, they are absolute basics, basics that you should have been aiming to learn from the very day you started in Second Life (like the tutorial actually wants you to but does only a mediocre job at best). I've seen people use the Viewer who can't even take a dump without a youtube video guide so that's not an excuse. It's a matter of mentality, you are not techy because you choose to be and that is solely your own fault when something expects you to have some basic knowledge (which anyone really should have, again given that some people have been using computers and SL for over a decade). My attitude is nowhere as bad as people make it out to be, i solely and simply expect basic knowledge and skills that anyone should have after 10+ years, there is simply no excuse for that. If you did your job for 10+ years and still don't know how to do it then i wonder how you managed to stay in your job for so long. People just need to grow the fuck up, grow some resistance to being told they lack knowledge and work on gaining said knowledge rather than pointing at the person telling them.

      Seriously, this is the very reason i'm so pissed, people acting stupid and when you tell them they point fingers and play the victim. Do you think i'm just randomly pissed at people? Have you ever considered that people are the reason i'm pissed at them? What am i supposed to do, ignore everything and just play dumb, like everyone else does? How will they ever learn, who is ever going to tell them, they will continue if no one dares to stop them and tell them.

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  7. Have you considered hiring a technical writer for the various parts of this site? You sound like you're quite an insufferable cunt. It's evident from the red warning at the top of each page, but it's especially bad in this post.

    Who the fuck cares what standard WASD movement is in video games? SL is like 15 years of bad decisions piled on top of each other, but every SL user is (rightfully) used to the behavior of viewers that aren't yours because that's what they've been experiencing for years. You're certainly entitled to change it to suit your vision. It's your viewer. My suggestion for you is to not throw public tantrums. Just make sure any point of contact for you is accompanied by the FAQ list to guide the user to what's probably their answer. Boom, any repeat question is the user's fault and you can junk it.

    I expect the "lol k" in response. That's fine. It will probably be at least a few years before you look back on this and realize how much growing up you have left to do. There's also no need to tell me not to use your software if I don't like you; I'm definitely not going to.

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  8. You probably don't hear this as much as you should but thanks for developing this viewer, I've been suffering really bad lag with the default viewer/firestorm and nothing I've tried fixed the micro stuttering except switching to black dragon.

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  9. ur annoying and also a furry so therefore u cant be condescending

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  10. Arrogant shitfits all over this sight. Try doing a FAQ without being a condescending asshat.

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  11. Why don't you all show a little respect and appreciation to the person that has devoted this much time and effort into improving our experiences? Who cares if you delicate people are offended by some of the language or attitude. You're here to see if this viewer works better than than the garbage out there. I've run real life businesses in VR for over 15 years now starting with SL and awarded by the Dept of Labor and spoke at the United Nations re how these "games" can improve people's lives and yes I am bragging as I'm proud of what I've accomplished and am thrilled to find other viewer options that can enhance performance. Give it a rest people and show some gratitude to someone putting in this much effort to improve our experiences. Who cares how they're coming across... you're here to try a free product.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. Someone help me everytime I use black dragon I spin out of control… without doing anything to the mouse or keyboard I just keep spinning #help!!!!

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  14. Here's an idea: Try not being such a condescending, know-nothing clown shoe. You really think any MMO actually relies on the A and D keys for strafing? NOBODY does this. Every MMO I've ever played online has the A and D keys being used to turn while walking or running. So either you're an imbecile or you're lying. I neither know nor care which.

    And why does your default camera setting wobble all the time? Again, NO MMO I've ever played does this. It's stupid and disorienting. Further, your camera follows avatars from behind and off to the side, which makes it as disorienting and difficult to maneuver as the rest of your bloody control default settings. Nobody would bother asking you how to fix what you broke if you'd simply left the controls well enough alone to begin with. Grow up and learn how to treat people. Don't like the truth? Tough.

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    1. I am aware that a lot of MMO's specifically between 2010 and 2020 (not just MMO's, a lot of games around that time in general) use A and D for rotating and all of them get a lot of shit for it because it is deriving from the norm which is strafing and up to that point always has been. A lot of the MMO's i played around that time (such as Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online) did it and it was always, every single time the first thing everyone i know and saw would change and complain about very loudly and the answer from devs was always "but you can change it" so in the tradition of doing that my answer is going to be "but you can change it" too.

      Just because some bad apples strayed from the established standard doesn't mean i'm lying.

      Also the camera by default does NOT wobble. That's "Use Cinematic Headtracking" and is disabled by default unless you are talking about something entirely different with "wobble".

      To see great examples of why "leaving things alone" is bad you only need to look at the very virtual world you are using, Second Life made this its design philosophy, its mantra and see what we've got from this. Almost 20 years and hardly changes worth mentioning, we are still fighting the same bugs from the beginnings of Second Life because they have now become an "expected" behavior. They are not changing things, let alone even thinking about changing them because "they work", yes they "work" but do they work good? optimally even? Could they be better? Just look at what Linden Labs did, it took them almost 10 years to implement an idea that i started. They added custom keybindings despite always saying that it was not necessary and here we are now, almost 20 years too late they add an essential feature every PC game must have nowadays or face being shat on. Complexity wasn't even considered bad or useless until i started changing it out of spite, disregarding Oz Linden's warnings to make a point that the things we have are not good and need changing and look at it now, they finally agree that Complexity is in a very bad shape and are changing it.

      Also you are replying to a guide that i wrote back in 2018, when i was a lot snarkier with how i wrote my guides and i have not yet updated it (why should i change it right, better leave it alone right?). I was going to write a new one at some point, with the new layout being shown and some more information than just "do this to get back to what you are used to". Back then i didn't come to accept yet that Second Life is full of people that don't know any basics, neither of the program they use nor games or applications in general, i was pissed at people needing a guide for something as simple as a keybinding system (which basically every game has, even a lot of professional office/industry tools do have something for that), some of the same people need a guide on how to chat after 13 years of using Second Life (spoiler its as simple as hitting "Enter"), there is really no excuse, not after using a Viewer that told you this in the chat bar itself and made it a very common thing... nowadays i don't care much anymore.

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    2. Spirit Guide/KdragOfNixThursday, June 23, 2022

      NiranV, I think your viewer is great and i like the movement and i like how you type, so what if it comes out assholish and trolly. you have a valid reason. seems like your getting a lot of hate but fuck them, fuck the hate.

      curious though, would you ever add profiles, like if i want to have settings for pictures and then other settings for no lag and maybe another setup for filter play and what not? it be nice to switch with a few clicks instead of screenshotting your settings and changing stuff and then having to un do it.

      would also be neat to have an auto mode that changes your settings based on the performance.

      anyway, keep up the great work, dun let people keep you down and if you ever need a spirit guide, reach out ^.^

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    3. Presets have been around for years already, you can save and load them in Preferences - Display as well as from the top statusbar (on the far right)

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  15. So I keep hearing how much better Black Dragon is for taking pictures..however..to make the controls so different than any other viewer out there (and MANY video games-none of the ones I play move their char this way)is really lowering your customer base.Many people only pop in and take a quick pic because the controls are so different. And to just go off on your "fanbase" like this? Doesn't help at all.

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  16. Firstly i think everyone here needs to calm down LOL. I can understand why he seems a bit testy - There's a generation gap in gamers nd yes as a developer it can get very stressful when dealing with the general public who don't know and dont care HOW things work (and can work best), - just that they do. 3D platforms can seem like magic to the average joe, hence why they're so enticing to people who arent use to much beyond facebook and using their phone for sexting.
    I would however like to make suggestion for movement controls. I have tried enabling the "left click to walk" in the prefs and it's not functioning for me the way I though it might. I had looked for a way to use mouseclicks for keybinds but there doesnt seem to be any such control. So i would love to use Black Dragon daily if there were an option to Left + Right Click on my AV to walk and steer. Strafing and pressing W is ok, but i would like to free up my left hand for other things (mind out of the gutter please.)
    Also, i know that RLV is supposedly broken... I am able to use the RLV functions for windlights, but changing sun color or any other color always turn all colors to blue. If there's anything i can do to help you solve this issue, please let me know. I feel like it's right at the cusp of working, but maybe the color needs to be translated to hex or something on the backend.

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    1. Left click to move is a LL default feature (supposedly called MMO style walking), its disabled by default because its simply bad and is essentially a worse single-click autopilot.
      Left+Right click walk should be possible with the new keybinding system given i get around to enable binding left and right click, it should be as easy as binding both to walking then.

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    2. Awesome! I look forward to seeing it come to fruition. I think you've done excellent work on this viewer. Creating access to things like screen space reflections, motion blur, lens flare, volumetric lighting, power ctrls for light, along with color correction makes SL what it should be! I also have to add, I've noticed my CPU runs about 10-20 degrees cooler with BD than it does with FS with everything but Dof turned on.... (DoF and AO on OpenGL are just a little bit much for the laptop so i have to use them sparingly). Thanks for your work. A+ job.

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    3. Love the way the physics work too...much more accurate than FS.

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  17. As much as I loved Black Dragon, the creator is a dick.

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    1. Right i'm the dick for spending 10 years of my life making a Viewer for others to use and waste hours to help people with their weird ass issues. I wanna see you being asked the same 30 questions every day multiple times a day, questions that are answered in the viewer, the download page and the FAQ, answered before people would even use the viewer yet completely and willfully ignore them despite being a requirement to read to gain access to the very discord server they use to ask these questions again and again and then have people call you a dick and a selfish asshole for not licking their boots and we'll see whether you fair any better.

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    2. ...no, man, he(?) called you a dick because you really are ACTING like one in this guide, not for your work. Your work is great but the tone in this guide is REALLY offputting.

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  18. Can somebody explain to me how an SL user can be advanced enough to find Black Dragon and actively choose to use it for the exclusive graphical and technical options it offers, yet also basic enough to not understand keybinds? Whether or not one chooses to be upset at the tone of a FAQ, I'm just confused how you get to that point in the first place.

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  19. My camara spining around and dont stop D:

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    1. Make sure you are on the latest release, that should greatly reduce the chance of that happening. If its still happening, you might want to configure the joystick/flycam controls and increase the deadzones, or turn off avatar movement (if you want to keep your controller for flycam mode) or turn off controllers completely.

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  20. thank you for creating this viewer. love taking pictures.

    They created this viewer the way second life should be viewed.
    You don't like it then don't use it.

    There explanation is condescending?
    You don't like it then don't use it.

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  21. My goodness some people are childish toward creators. You take the time to build a visually stunning SL viewer, and individuals who can't even bother to give you their SL name, or any other for that matter, try to call you out for getting annoyed by people wasting your time asking questions you already answered?

    You do you. Yes, your explanation sounds condescending, but given that you're answering questions that keep being asked in spite of you having the answers in your FAQ, I think you're rather entitled to imply that the people who need extra special explanations above and beyond what they've already been give are an extra special level of stupid.

    That said, thank you for the illuminating explanation. I'm not a tech person, so I don't know all the actual names of various functions. All I'm honestly concerned with is how to make them work so I can use the viewer to take beautiful pictures.

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  22. *COUGH, Bullshit, Cough* Industry strandard my ass, we aren't playing Resident Evil (wich is pretty much the only "3D" game that has this strafing type of movement. You'll never hop into a online MMO and find the movement like this. sorry but i call bullshit.

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    1. To give you a very quick estimate of how many games implement strafing or some form of strafing (aka 360 movement or 8 directional movement if on keyboard & mouse)

      MMOs in no particular order:
      World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 1/2, Tera Online, Champions Online, City of Heroes/Villians (both dead), Tabula Rasa (also dead), Mortal Online 1/2, Palia (unreleased), New World, Black Desert Online, Phantasy Star Online 2, Dual Universe, ArchAge, Riders of Icarus, Trove, Star Trek Online, Elder Scrolls Online...
      Just to name a few, most of which i personally played.

      Non-MMOs in no particular order:
      Practically every Shooter, every First Person game ever shortly after around Doom (or when mouse controls were implemented), most Third Person games, every Souls-like, practically all Top-Down games that aren't controlled with mouse (twin-stick shooters come to mind), lots of Space games.

      Concrete examples just out of my currently installed steam game list:
      7 Days to Die, Ark: Survival Evolved, Avorion, Bonelab, Conan Exiles, Core Keeper, Eco, Elden Ring, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Elite Dangerous, Factorio, Fallout 76, Gunfire Reborn, Hidden & Dangerous 2, Icarus, Interstellar Rift, Marauders, Mech Warrior 5, Mindustry, NeosVR, Phasmophobia, PlateUp, Project Zomboid, Resident Evil 5, Rides of Icarus, Satisfactory, Space Station 14, V Rising, Valheim, VRChat. That's like idk 80-90% of my currently installed games alone, the others are either tools or games that can't use strafing (strategy games, although they technically use strafing for the camera)

      More examples from my steam game list i currently do not have installed:
      Counter Strike: Source, Garrys Mod, Half Life 2, Left 4 Dead 1/2, Portal 1/2, ADR1FT, Alien Isolation, Alien Swarm, Americas Army, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, APB Reloaded, Arma 2, Astroneer, ATLAS, Back 4 Blood, Black Desert, Borderlands 1/2/3, Boundless, Brink, Call of Juarez, Call of Duty (every one of them), Century: Age of Ashes, ChilloutVR, Craftopia, Crucible, The Cycle, Dark Souls 1/2/3, DayZ, Dead By Daylight, Dead Island 1/2, Dear Esther, Depth, Destiny 2, Divinity: Dragon Commander... the list goes on and on and on.

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