Black Dragon Viewer 64x - Update 5.5.0 "Volumetric Dragon"

So as promised on Discord here it is. 

5.5.0.

Meaning shit didn't explode (anymore than it did previously). So here we are 5.5.0. Coming with the latest LL Release code (1000+ changes), fixes and new features. One highlight that i personally noticed was the ability to favorite objects in your inventory... hence the name Favorite Dragon. There are of course more changes all of which i don't know but i've heard rumors that there might be an option somewhere to... uh turn off the lookAt animations.

Apart from that this is a bog standard update as any other, with some fixes of my own (mostly things that got broken with the merge) and some little cosmetic changes (such as shadowed fonts for dropdown buttons... finally) and one particular fix for the login screen video.

About that... sadly youtube has changed the way embedded youtube videos work, the browser now has to report in its header how the video was referred to so Youtube can accurately track where the clicks/views are coming from. CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) which the Viewer uses.. and funny enough is from... well Google... you know... the people who make Youtube... doesn't support this (yet, at least the version the Viewer uses and when using it to play embedded videos directly via the media plugin, LL is aware of this and might fix this in the future). For now this required going away from the login screen videos....and replace it with... well... ANOTHER VIDEO. You didn't honestly think i'd get rid of these now didn't you? Infact i turned it up to eleven, i used this chance to revamp the login screen a bit, tidy it up and render out an entirely new login screen video just for this occasion (I spent several days on this okay). Some might say its.... crass. But let me say this, it is. F.I.R.E. Does it go too hard? Maybe. Is it unnecessary? Probably. Is it good tho? ABSOLUTELY.

As with everything i do... i had much bigger plans. Initially a totally different music was used and i wanted to progressively build up the video as updates go on... add more stuff, make it more sophisticated... you know as a metaphorical way or something to show that the Viewer keeps evolving... but i through all that away and said fuck it i'ma complete the entire thing right away (i still have all the incomplete versions and could progressively change them as updates go on.... but nah). People probably watch it only once because its new, maybe a second time or so if they like the song and then they will probably never check it out again so i figured it should complete from the get go. Here are some renders of the old planned video... infact have the entire video.

 

For the new one you'll have to look into the Viewer of course, not gonna spoil it here. Also little fun fact about Black Dragon: The name is a lie. It is not a black Dragon, it is infact a purple Dragon. It just appears to be black due to the greyscale effect. It's funny to think about it that the idea of Black Dragon started out on a picture of a purple Dragon that was simply greyscaled and looked like it was a black Dragon. So in a sense, these videos go back to the roots of where Black Dragon came from! It all comes full circle.

Alright, with the update out of the way there's something more important to say. The Viewer is not going to die (yet). Thanks to the insane support of everyone coming together we shot way past the Patreon minimum and also made some extra to save up for bad times (to prolong the innevitable i suppose). Needless to say that the Viewer (if we continue like this) will probably go on for a couple more years.

THANKS TO YOU!

PS: I'm still planning on making a video...