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.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Black Dragon 64x - Update 3.9.8 "Visualizing Dragon"

Fixes: *exist*

Me: I WANT YOU!

Bugs: *shaking in fear*



So many updates and so many fixes in such a short time, whats happening? I don't know but i'm in a damn good mood!


Fixes for starting on crashup when a controller is plugged in, fixes for crashing when editing linden grass/trees, fixes for snapshot tiling issues (both to disk and inventory, both color and depth shots), fixes for Deferred Rendering failing when SSR is on but everything else off, fixes for some fullbright objects being immune to haze, fixes for the Fixed Environment window becoming unusable when changing the windlight preset outside of the window while its open and fixes for the Viewer trying to start a conversation with that "None" group no one's talking to.

This update also sees some love to the Build window, people finally annoyed me enough to go about adding next/previous link/face/prim buttons, the grid options have all been moved into the Grid Options window which has now been renamed to Build Options and got a couple more build related options that are lesser used and buried in the menus. The main build/edit window has had the Only My Objects and Only Physical Objects options moved to Build Options too and instead has gotten Show Selection Outlines and and Snap to Grid option as checkbox now as replacement. Show Selection Outlines has also been added to Preferences - Viewer ... because apparently it was missing!

Also shhh: Quit Viewer shortcut has been removed for those that may or may not have accidentally quit the Viewer by hitting CTRL + Q (instead of Shift + Q for rolling the camera) with the "Do you want to quit" dialog disabled. No more accidentally yeeting the Viewer!


Also a big shoutout to Boston Blaisdale for making this incredibly good tutorial video about Black Dragon:


And another big shoutout to this video made by Phat Cat in Black Dragon with the help of the Poser/Animator:

I like this one, despite all the flaws and limitations SL has, this has quite something to show!



By Loverdag

By Loverdag

By Emelie Laks

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Black Dragon 64x - Update 3.9.7 "Visualizing Dragon"

 Fixed all the things, now its time to break them again!


Bringing the Viewer up on par with the very latest LL code.


These include a couple crashfixes, improvements in code and behavior around building, hover glow objects being functional again (you can find it in Dragon - Develop - Rendering), edit from inventory/worn/outfit (which i totally missed out on telling you about) and a couple extra changes from my side.


Note that from this update on, all textures on your objects will be counted, this means specular and normal maps will be included into complexity, they previously weren't (should tell you how broken LL's was), thanks for Flame Swenholt for finding that one!


By JILL

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Black Dragon 64x - Update 3.9.6 "Visualizing Dragon"

Yay for another update!


The focus once again being fixing all bugs that were reported after the big official code merge (and there were quite a few) as well as some old ones finally getting fixed. YEA!


Fixes include that you should no longer get banned from regions that ban people based on reported complexity, the Viewer now reports the official numbers, so no more getting banned when you deserve it, instead prepare to get banned when you wear optimized avatars, great! Don't worry though, the Viewer still uses the altered complexity formula for determining avatar complexity and will continue to do so... but i've used the chance to lower the complexity across the board by another 50%, this should further crunch down on huge numbers and will put some more emphasis on object features and textures.


Then, there has been an issue with water sparkle seemingly glowing through items at times, this is due to an issue in all Viewer where the shiny/glossiness reflection glows through fullbright objects. The reason water did this was because i allowed lights to be reflected on water again, which meant making water actually glossy (yes it actually wasn't), this in turn however meant the glossiness issue would appear on water as well. Sadly this isn't easy to fix (if at all) but i've added an option to switch between the original light reflections and the specularity reflections for those that want more accurate light reflections (they can be occluded by shadows) and lights reflecting on water or the original reflection which does not have this fullbright issue. Your choice!


While we are on the topic of environment, several EEP fixes from Drake that are coming officially have been ported over early, including better clouds, proper star positions, rainbows working without shadows, better sun gamma and several others. I'm sure with these EEP will look better than ever (or at least closer to windlight again)


And while we are at rendering, some users noticed that Deferred Rendering breaks when you turn off shadows and SSAO, this should no longer be the case and Deferred Rendering can once again be used without these (for whatever reason).


The rest of the fixes is mainly reported UI issues, like sliders/textboxes getting reverted/stuck when the UI refreshes them, high res depth snapshots not looking right, the posing status button not working, the teleport button in profiles not enabling, the Places window being completely hosed and Place Profiles not showing the correct information, the Media-on-a-prim UI being super broken and the Third Person Steering Mode and/or Right-Click drag not handling the rotate_left and rotate_right actions properly and replacing them with slide_left and slide_right (strafing instead of turning) like Left-Click dragging your avatar does.


There's also some great stuff to come in the near future too!


By Colorful

By Emely Laks

By Drago Silves



By Loverdag