Tag Archives: DVw

“Tiling” snapshot fix (and more) now in the SL release viewer, Dolphin, Niran’s and RLV

Snapshot Tiling Fix

The snapshot tiling fix (MAINT-628) can now be found in the following viewers:

  • Dolphin viewer 3.4.6.26773+ (current release now 3.4.7.26856)
  • Niran’s Viewer 2.0.5+
  • Restrained Love 2.8.3.5+ (Windows)
  • SL release viewer 3.4.3.268262+ (released: 18th December).
Tiling test for Dolphin

Tiling test for Dolphin (3.4.6.26773+): image taken at 3500×2134 resolution using Dolphin 3.4.6.26773. Location: The Island of Armenelos (M) (click to enlarge) – fix also in the latest SL official viewer (3.4.3.28262), Niran’s Viewer (2.0.5+) and RLV (2.8.3.5+)

Graphics Preferences Updates for GPU Classes

The SL viewer, Dolphin and RLV all include the new Graphics Preferences settings related to the ongoing GPU table updates. These new options place additional “stops” on the Quality and Speed slider between the four original settings of Low, Mid, High and Ultra, which are intended to better represent the default SL capabilities of different GPU classes,

The new "intermediary" graphics settings intended to better represent the capabilities of different GPU classes

The new “intermediary” graphics settings intended to better represent the default SL capabilities of different GPU classes

SSAO Fix for Horizon Haze

Also included in the recent Dolphin and Niran’s Viewer releases, is Tofu Blizzard’s SSAO improvements for generating horizon haze over Linden Sea (“ambient  distance fog”). This helps overcome a long-standing bug within the viewer which has effectively broken / nerfed horizon haze over Linden Water for a considerable time.

SSAO haze effect - fix from Tofuu blizzard, available in deferred mode on Dolphin and Niran's viewers.

SSAO haze effect – fix from Tofu Blizzard, available in deferred mode on Dolphin and Niran’s viewers. (image courtesy of Niran V Dean) – click to enlarge

Space Reflections

Niran’s viewer also introduces an interesting / experimental viewer-side feature from Tofu Blizzard called “space reflections”, designed to create reflections on shiny surfaces when running in deferred mode and with the appropriate Graphics Preferences option enabled. It’s not perfect, but it can be used to produce some interesting effects, as shown below, if only for those running a viewer which can render the desired results.

Tofu blizzard's "space reflections": (l) a viewer running in deferred mode; (r) Niran's viewer running in deferred with "space reflections" active

Tofu Blizzard’s “space reflections”: (l) a viewer running in deferred mode; (r) Niran’s viewer running in deferred with “space reflections” active to produce reflections both on the floor and inside the large sphere (click to enlarge)

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Dolphin bids “adieu” to OpenSim, says “hello” to Mini-map

Lance Corrimal released Dolphin Viewer 3.2.24.24816 on November 1st.

The release comprises a small number of updates, of which perhaps the most significant is the inclusion of the revised Mini-map first seen in Catznip R7.

For the most part, I have to say that I’ve never really seen the point of the Mini-map. Certainly, it has its various uses at times – role-play, combat, etc., but for me, the big let-down with it has been the map itself, impaired by an exceptionally weak background texture and god-awful zooming.

Catznip R7 revised all this, as I recently reviewed, completely overhauling the Mini-map and making it an exceptionally useful tool – and one I have been hoping would be adopted elsewhere (such as the code being contributed to LL).

Dolphin now includes the revised Mini-map in this release, and to mark its arrival, Lance has called the release his “Sailor’s Mini-map Mark 2″. It’s well-named, as the new Mini-map is a complete godsend for those into sailing and flying – and will probably be really handy for those who engage in cross-region road races.

The code includes all of Kitty’s refinements and updates, and really does make flying and sailing a joy without needing to necessarily clutter-up the screen with a lot of HUDs and having to waste space with the World Map to confirm your overall location.

Red Alert: using the updated mini-map to avoid parcels with object entry turned off

Not only does it how you your overall direction, it displays upcoming region boundaries, allowing you to make adjustments to course and speed which may help smooth the crossing (very handy in avoiding the risk of trying to make the diagonal corner-crossing between regions, which so often finishes rather badly (at least for me).

The revised Mini-map also helps avoid those pesky parcels where object entry has been turned off, showing them in red in the display, allowing sailors and aviators to navigate around them without suddenly finding themselves bouncing up against something or having their craft vanish from under them.

Other Updates in the Release:

  • Reset graphics preferences to default button in status panel, next to draw distance slider, labeled “GReset”.
  • Z offset reset button relabeled to “Z” to get room for GReset button.
  • “Refresh texture” also refreshes sculpt maps (from Firestorm).
  • “Restore inworld” now also sets the proper land group if you have “Rez with land group” switched on and are a member of that group.

The new reset graphics button (GReset) and revised Z-offset buttons in Dolphin’s menu bar

The Last Dolphin Release Supporting OpenSim

Release 3.2.24.24816 marks the end of line for OpenSim support within the Dolphin Viewer; it will be removed from future releases. That Lance would no longer be supporting OpenSim was made in a Dolphin blog announcement back in August 2012. The reason for this is the new Havok sub-licence arrangement Linden Lab have entered into, and Lance feeling he is unable to support two flavours of Dolphin for SL and OpenSim access on his own – which is a fair and reasonable decision on his part.

Should anyone wish to continue development of Dolphin to specifically support OpenSim access, Lance has created a clone of the original Dolphin repository for anyone wishing to fork the viewer, and he is also leaving the 3.3.19 release installers available for download from the Dolphin website.

Performance

This release of Dolphin sees a slight upturn in FPS rates over recent viewer reviews for me, if again using my rough-and-ride technique. With my usual test defaults (see the Review Systems panel on the right of this blog’s home page), I subjected Dolphin on my Linden Home region with three other residents (including my Alt in the same parcel) with the following results:

  • Deferred off:
    • Ground: 38-39 fps
    • 370 metres: 43-44 fps
    • 2875 metres: 55-56 fps
  • Deferred on + lighting set to Sun/Moon + Projectors; ambient occlusion on, full reflections:
    • Ground: 11 fps
    • 370 metres:15 fps
    • 2875 metres: 17 fps

I did find that running in Deferred with both lighting & shadows and ambient occlusion active within my Linden Home parcel did result is a significant drop in fps (to 5-6). A quick test with Catznip produced the same result.

Overall, a small, tidy, and welcome update.

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The grid divide: Dolphin ceases OpenSim support

At the start of the month, Hypergrid Business reported on Linden Lab’s removal of support for the –loginURI parameter from versions of the SL Viewer.

This command is most commonly used to modify the command path used to launch the viewer, allowing it to connect to grids other than Second Life. It has already been removed from the latest development ad beta versions of the viewer, and as such will find its way to the release version in the near future.

For the majority of people who use the official viewer and only access Second Life, the announcement passed largely unnoticed. Even among those who do routinely bounce between Second Life and other grids using TPVs, the impact of the change was minimal – most viewers openly supporting access to both Second Life and OpenSim grids tend to do so through the use of a grid selector / grid manager option – which remained unaffected by the change.

The Shape of Things to Come

However, the removal of support for –loginURI was the tip of the iceberg.

In April of this year, Linden Lab announced a sub-licencing arrangement involving the Havok physics engine. While there is already some Havok functionality evident in the viewer as it is (used in conjunction with mesh uploads and pathfinding), the licence arrangement enables Linden Lab to develop a library of Havok functions for the viewer. In time, this may prove to have significant benefits for Second Life; however, there is a catch.

Once the new Havok libraries are in place and available for use, the terms of the sub-licence require that any viewer accessing them only connects to Second Life. Period. Ergo, no grid selector, no grid manager and no support of –loginURI or any other means of provisioning OpenSim log-in support for such viewers.

In other words, once the arrangement is up and running, those TPVs that currently support both Second Life and OpenSim access, and which are eligible to make use of the new LL Havok libraries, have to make a choice as to their future direction:

  • Do they sign-up to the new sub-licence agreement to gain access to the new libraries and completely forgo any OpenSim support they may have provided?
  • Do they fork their development to provide two flavours of their viewer – one configured to access SL only and make use of the new Havok libraries, the other specifically aimed at OpenSim and unable to access the Havok functions?
  • Do they abandon SL altogether and instead focus solely on OpenSim?
  • Do they perhaps opt to forgo the use of the new library functions and continue “as is”, ignoring any new capabilities provisioned via the Havok libraries?

The option to fork development between SL and OpenSim probably comes down to matters of bandwidth, maintenance and audience. Does a TPV have the bandwidth to develop two flavours of viewer? Does it enjoy a sufficiently largely audience in both SL and OpenSim to warrant the time and effort needed to do so?

The Firestorm team announced in June that they would continue to support both Second Life and OpenSim by forking the development of the Firestom viewer between the two in the near future (if this has not in fact already happened in the intervening time).

While one version of Firestorm will remain focused on Second Life, the second branch will be geared towards general support of the OpenSim platform and not incorporate code from Linden Lab that is ring-fenced by the new sub-licence arrangement.

In July, NiranV Dean confirmed Niran’s Viewer would not be supporting OpenSim – although the decision was possibly as much based on a personal preference as having anything to do with the upcoming Havok sub-licence situation.

Now, with the new sub-licence arrangement looming, Dolphin Viewer developer Lance Corrimal formally announced on August 18th that future versions of Dolphin will be solely focused on Second Life as he doesn’t have the bandwidth to maintain three flavours of his viewer across two environments (Second Life and OpenSim). He will, however, be providing a clone of the original repository should anyone wish to fork it and make an OpenSim specific version.

It remains to be seen if other TPVs will make formal announcements and which route they will opt to take.

Looking to the Future

Some commentators, on hearing the news regarding –loginURI, reacted negatively, with some citing the move as a further indication of the demise of SL. These reactions would appear unwarranted. It is unlikely that any split in how either Second Life and OpenSim are accessed is going to have a major impact on either the use of SL or its longevity.

Similarly, while some may be personally inconvenienced (having to move between two viewers depending on whether they are logging-in to SL or an OpenSim grid),  it is hard not to see this situation as anything but beneficial for OpenSim. If nothing else, it frees those viewer developers who wish to focus on OpenSim to develop functionality and capabilities  within the viewer that are specifically geared to the platform (e.g. much improved OSSL support) and unfettered from any constraints or worries about maintaining compatibility with SL (such as the 4,096-region teleport limit).

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Dolphin 3.3.5.23763: One for the machinimatographers

Lance Corrimal is keeping up a rapid series of releases to his Dolphin Viewer, averaging around one release a week of late. Most have contained nips and tucks or have been driven by SL requirements such as Direct Delivery. However, at the beginning of March he rolled out the “Fujiyama edition” (version 3.2.9.23177), aimed specifically at SL photographers.

With his latest release, 3.3.5.23763, issued on Saturday April 28th and code-named “Fellini”, Lance adds functionality to his Viewer that is specifically aimed at machinimatographers – the code-name clearly being a reference to the late Italian film director Federico Fellini

The functionality in question comes in the form of an adaptation of  Marx Catteneo’s machinima floater. In this the release is somewhat serendipitous for me, as I also linked to one of Marx Catteno’s marvellous videos on the 28th to highlight the architecture of this year’s Fantasy Faire.

In integrating the floater into Dolphin, Lance has modified it slightly so that information is tabbed for easier reference, especially when used on smaller screens, and while it may be aimed at the machinimatographer, it contains a lot of options that SL photographers are liable to find very useful.

The floater can be accessed in one of two ways:

  • via WORLD->MACHINIMA TOOLS in the menus
  • via a dedicated toolbar button called MACHINIMA TOOLS, which has a nice little movie camera icon (note that the button is not active by default, but must be dragged out of the Button Toolbox).
Using either option opens a compact panel, sized to display on laptop screen as well as larger monitors.

Machinima Toolbox with Graphic tab open

The toolbox essentially provides fast, single-point-of-access to a range of Preferences options as well as to a number of other panels and functions, allowing the machinimatographer / photographer to quickly and easily carry out a range of tasks such as enabling Windlight presets for the sky and / or water, adjusting their camera / flycam, enabling / disabling lighting and shadows, adding / adjusting depth-of-field, adjusting shadow and occlusion settings and much more besides.

Each of the tabs in the label is clearly laid out, and some benefit from having certain functions disabled (grayed out) until such time as their controlling option is enabled. In the Graphics tab, for example, the drop-down for selecting the required lighting types (None, Sun/Moon, Sun/Moon+Projectors), is disabled until the LIGHTING AND SHADOWS option is checked.

Rather than waste words describing each of the tab, here is a set of screen captures for the remaining tabs in the floater:

Camera settings

Shadows & Occlusion

Depth of Field

Glow

“Miscellaneous” – currently derendering options

The derendering options are liable to prove useful for eliminating bystander avatars who are having a detrimental impact on camera movements, etc., when trying to shoot a video, while the “Miscellaneous” tab as a whole leaves room for further options to be added, should they be required / possibly requested.

Other Updates

As well as the machinima options, the blog post for the release notes the following updates are also included:

  • Getting a worn attachment into edit by right-clicking it in your inventory and selecting “Edit”-
  • Opening a Landmark on the map from your inventory, similar to what you can do from within the Places window.

Performance

I’ve not been able to thoroughly test the release in my usual manner due to time constraints elsewhere. However, in the tests I did perform, using my home sim as usual (3 others present in the sim) and both PC and Viewer set to my usual defaults (see the panel on the right of this blog’s home page), I found this release of Dolphin performed as well as other recent Viewer releases from the majority of 3.2-based TPVs. Running with deferred rendering off (no shadows / lighting enabled), the Viewer comfortably ran with an FPS in the mid-30s at 390m, with this increasing to the low 50s at altitude on my build platform (2850m). At ground level, the rate dropped very slightly to average at around 30-21 FPS.

Enabling deferred rendering and setting the lighting option to Sun/Moon+Projectors saw my frame rates fall to around 19-21 FPS at 390m, and to the mid-teens when at ground level. This was again pretty much in keeping with recent releases from the likes of SL and Firestorm.

Overall, an interesting new addition to Dolphin which should prove to be of interest to those interested in both video and photography.

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