Cool VL Viewer forum

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Today sees the promotion of the v1.32.1 experimental branch to the new v1.32.2 stable branch, which also deprecates the former v1.32.0 stable branch. The new stable branch implements LL's latest release viewer (v7.1.8) features, i.e. PBR terrain (that I also made visible in EE rendering modes), PBR mirrors, 2K textures (with my added knob to allow limiting the fetched/rendered textures resolution), GLTF scenes preview and HDRI sky (EXR maps) preview. It also implements WebRTC voice support (i.e. LL's webrtc-voice project viewer features).


Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.0 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed a crash bug in the local textures update code. See this thread for details.
• Fixed potential mismatches in bound GL textures memory accounting.
• Fixed the bad camera axis (should be X axis and not Z !) for the "facing" mirror face detection, which caused mirror updates failures or slow down with many camera angles.
• Reduced the number of high resolution probes (mirrors) to keep in VRAM to just one (instead of two), due to the massive amount of memory they consume, and to the fact mirrors cannot reflect in each others anyway. Added a new "RenderHeroProbesMaxCount" debug setting to control this number (1, which is the default, or 2 probes).
• Relaxed the "RenderHeroProbeCutoff" setting value to 1.8 times the mirror probe distance (this controls my workaround for excessive GPU load when mirrors are present and yet far way).
• Removed the "High resolution probes (mirrors)" toggle from the "Advanced"/"Rendering"/"Deferred rendering" menu and replaced it with a combo box for mirrors in the "Preferences" floater, "Graphics" tab, "Renderer settings" sub-tab; this both allows to turn off mirrors (default setting) and to choose between three resolutions for them when enabled (512x512, 1024x1024 and 2048x2048); do read the tool tip for this setting ! Note that when the three reflection combos are replaced with a "Disabled (read tool tip)" text, this is likely because you need to turn on the core GL profile mode (here again, read the tool tip for this text).
• Linux only: raised the build requirements to full-fledged C17/C++17 compilers (i.e. gcc v8.1, clang v7.0).
• Linux only: modified Dullahan to make it compatible with CEF 125, and recompiled it against the latest release of the latter.
• Code cleanup.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

This is a bug fix release and a recommended update.


Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.1 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed a crash bug in the auto-fallback code to the EE renderer seen happening when failing to compile a PBR shader after trying to enable PBR.
• Worked around an issue with the PBR terrain shader using too many texture units (17) to render everything on systems with an OpenGL driver not providing more than 16 or 8 texture units; the PBR terrain detail setting is now automatically clamped down appropriately.
• Changed how the number of indexed texture channels are clamped (now only relies on the "RenderMaxTextureIndex" debug setting, defaulting to 16).
• Fixed the bug, introduced with gLTF scenes preview, and which was causing lasso-selected objects in Edit mode to be immovable.
• Fixed the issue, introduced with 2K textures support, which caused 1K textures to fail to be uploaded with the "Bulk upload" feature. Please note that 2K textures bulk upload is for now not yet supported.
• Backported from LL's maintenance viewer a "fix for objects disappearing and not reappearing until LoD switch"; this "fix" is actually more a workaround and consists in disabling the automatic eviction of objects no more in the FOV. It may improve experience when spinning around with your avatar, but may also incur a higher memory consumption... I therefore added an "Evict objects based on visibility" toggle in the "Advanced" -> "Caches" menu, to allow re-enabling this feature (off by default) if needed.
• Removed my workaround code for the (now fixed) "flying at login" server bug in SL.
• Backported from Firestorm (Beq Janus' code) the automatic eviction from hero probe candidates of the mirrors for which the camera is behind the mirror probe. This alleviates the load on the GPU, when the mirror is in FOV but cannot be seen reflecting anything.
• Relaxed the "RenderHeroProbeCutoff" setting value to 2.5 times the mirror probe distance (this controls my workaround for excessive GPU load when mirrors are present and yet far way).
• Recompiled llwebrtc against LL's latest webrtc-sdk (with a voice plugin crash fix).
• Some code cleanup.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

This is a recommended update.


Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.2 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Backported from LL's viewer-webrtc a fix for the microphone gain not being properly setup.
• Backported from LL's viewer-webrtc "make the webrtc viewer work for vivox adhoc/group calls".
• Fixed a bad interpolation of the reflection probe ambiance environment setting parameter when interpolating with/against a legacy (pre-PBR) setting which does not have this value.
• Implemented 2K textures bulk-upload support.
• Added a new "Automatic exposure" setting for the PBR rendering mode and exposed the RenderSkySunlightScale setting values as several menu entries/toggles (in the "World" -> "Environment settings" -> "Sun brightness" sub-menu), so to allow an easy adjustment of all the silly (and totally over-exposed, at least for a non-HDR monitor) PBR settings that are starting to spread over the grid (the auto-exposure especially "shines" for taming SL21B's public parcels settings). Made this automatic exposure the default mode (the viewer was previously using a 1.5 factor for "RenderSkySunlightScale" to "fix" the missing shadows with PBR on and legacy settings, but 150% Sun brightness worsens the over-exposure for "PBR-aware" settings).
• Backported from Firestorm the default Bento animation feature. Added the corresponding check box in the "Preferences" floater, "Cool features" tab, "Animations" sub-tab (do read its tool tip for full explanation).
• Improved the "Refresh objects visibility" feature for PBR, to try and work around the missing objects sometimes happening in this rendering mode; while this change lessens the occurrences, it sadly does not prevent this bug to happen (still searching where is comes from, but all PBR viewers have it)...
• Now do take into account the "PBRTerrainEnabled" simulator feature flag for enabling the PBR terrain radio-button selection in the Region/Estate floater (mainly useful for OpenSim grids, until PBR terrains get implemented on them all).
• Shaved off 15 useless (!), screen-sized render targets (i.e. 120MB worth of VRAM for a full HD screen) from the PBR renderer.
• Added a "Voice enabled" toggle and a "Restart voice" feature to the "Advanced" -> "Media" sub-menu.
• Updated tinygltf to v2.9.0.
• Updated llwebrtc to match LL's latest version.
• Linux only: modified Dullahan to make it compatible with CEF 126, and recompiled it against the latest release of the latter.
• Some code cleanup and minor optimizations.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:


Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.3 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed a rare crash bug, that could occur in PBR rendering mode, when getting NULL Moon textures. See this thread for details.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop the removal of the dependency on the antediluvian and unmaintained xmlrpc-epi library.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop "properly reload local images when uploading a mesh model".
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a new algorithm for GL images deletion on the GPU side, which delays this deletion by 4 render frames to try and address synchronization issues with some GPUs. Since I did not see any noticeable improvement on my own hardware, and even perhaps some drawback (more fps stutters ?), I made this feature switchable and for now defaulting to OFF. The corresponding "Delay GL textures deletion" toggle can be found in the "Advanced" -> "Rendering" -> "Textures" sub-menu: I am interested to know how it fares for your own hardware.
• Implemented a setting to allow or forbid 2K textures bulk-upload, when the latter are costlier than "normal" textures for the account you are logged in with (this is a per-account setting). The new "Allow 2K textures bulk-upload" toggle is in the "File" -> "Upload" sub-menu (it is greyed out when you are not impacted for your account).
• Reduced the "RenderSkySunlightBrightness" setting default value from 1.5 to 1.4, for better Sun brightness "Automatic exposure" adjustments.
• Improved the regularity in the agent updates messages frequency, by taking into account the last frame render time to anticipate a possible late next update at low frame rates.
• Updated the Lua library to v5.4.7.
• Updated the meshoptimizer library to v0.21.
• Updated tinygltf to v2.9.2.
• Linux x86_64 only: updated jemalloc to the latest git version.
• Some code cleanup and minor optimizations.

Enjoy !

EDIT:
WARNING: a couple users encountered systematic crashes on login with the new XMLRPC code. It seems it could affect accounts with a large inventory list (that list is transmitted on login).
Investigation in progress. Expect a new release soon.

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

This is an emergency bug fix release: all users of v1.32.2.3 shall update to it.


Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.4 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed the bug, introduced with the backport in v1.32.2.3 of LL's new XMLRPC code and which caused a stack overflow crash on login for users with large inventories.
• Minor code cleanup.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

This is a recommended update.

Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.5 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed the broken occlusion culling that was seen happening with the PBR renderer, each time the vertex buffers were reset, causing missing objects. See this thread for details.
• Fixed a potential crash bug introduced in v1.32.2.4, in case of corrupted XMLRPC reply.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a fix for a rare crash bug, that could occur during the mesh optimization process.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a fix for "PBR texture stretches when 'stretch textures' is unchecked in Edit floater".
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a fix for "viewer tries to detach attachments in inventory on shutdown".
• Changed my algorithm for auto-refresh of objects visibility to use three different delays after login, sim border crossings, and far TPs (the respective settings are "VisibilityAutoRefreshLogin", "VisibilityAutoRefreshBorder" and "VisibilityAutoRefreshFarTP").
• Added a "Reset vertex buffers at login" option in the "Advanced" -> "Rendering" sub-menu, which, when activated, resets the vertex buffers after the login visibility auto-refresh; this may perhaps solve the slower fps rate some of you encounter just after login.
• Removed the useless "Attach object" sub-menu in the "Edit" menu (objects are attached from the inventory, or from the pie menu for in-world objects, and this old sub-menu always had all its entries greyed out).
• Linux only: rebuilt Dullahan against the latest CEF 126 release.
• Updated the OpenSim default grids list, based on a contribution by Vincent Sylvester.
• Some code cleanup and removal of dead code.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.6 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Implemented a new status bar indicator telling you what type of materials exist in the rendered scene and whether or not you are seeing them rendered properly. See this FAQ topic for details.
• Changed how often resolution probes (mirrors) are rendered: their render rate is now implemented as a maximum frame rate (set at 20fps by default, and adjustable via the new "RenderHeroProbeMaxFPS" setting) and as a minimum frame count interval (set at 3 by default, and adjustable via the new "RenderHeroProbeMinFrameInterval" setting), instead as a fixed "every N frames" rate (N was 3 by default in the Cool VL Viewer), which leads to a much lower burden when the rendered scenes frame rates are otherwise higher than 60fps (for the default settings) while not impacting lower frame rates.
• Implemented 2K snapshot upload support.
• Implemented a new eval() directive for the code pre-processor, to allow evaluating maths expressions in #define and #if clauses. See this post for details.
• Implemented proper disk file write failure alert to the user with an explanatory notification (could be a full drive/partition or a hardware failure), and directions for potential remediation.
• Changed the Marketplace code so that it does not try any more to connect when logged in the SL beta grid (Aditi), since it would now always fail (apparently, LL removed the beta Marketplace backend).
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop the removal of the useless LLEventTrackable class and its pointless inheritance by LLEventPump.
• Linux only: rebuilt Dullahan against the latest CEF 126 release.
• Some code cleanup.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.7 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed a bug in the object export feature which failed to notice that faces were bearing a PBR material when the latter did not have an override.
• Added reflection probes (and mirrors) support to the object backup feature.
• Added support for math formulas in the "Position", "Size" and "Rotation" spinners input boxes of the "Object" tab of the Build/Edit floater; it means you can enter formulas, using the same math operations and functions as what the pre-processor supports instead of just plain numbers.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop "use thread pool to create plugin processes to reduce the number of created/destroyed threads".
• Cleaned up the shutdown code of LLThreadPool and LLThread.
• Properly report the actual maximum sound clip duration (instead of the old and deprecated 10s limit) in the upload failure alert box, when trying to upload too long a sound.
• Added identification data/awareness for the Zen 5 CPU family.
• Added awareness for AVX-512* compiler-generated maths when tuning the compiler options for the build computer (merely just a change in what is reported in the About floater since intrinsics were already properly generated in this case).
• Implemented Kathrine Jansma's AVX2 optimizations for mesh skinning code (only of use for custom builds done with AVX2 enabled, since official builds are limited to SSE2 for compatibility reasons).
• Updated FMOD Studio to v2.03.02.
• Updated Tracy to v0.11.0.
• Updated the ca-bundle.crt security certificates file to LL's latest version.
• Code cleanup.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

This is a recommended update.

Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.8 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed a copy/paste bug in the inventory dictionary where the PBR materials inventory item type was wrongly associated with the environment settings asset type. Curiously and all this time (over one year now), this did not seem to cause any visible bug...
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop "destroy stream process when stopping audio stream" (Rye Mutt's contribution).
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a fix for "rapidly triggering gestures can make them get stuck" (Ansariel's contribution).
• Implemented preliminary code support for gLTF assets (no user-visible change).
• Implemented support for a new OpenSim-specific capability allowing to select which type of terrain is sent to the viewer by the simulators (legacy or PBR terrain). Added a new "OSAdvertizePBRTerrain" debug setting allowing to switch between legacy terrain only, PBR terrain in 256x256m (i.e. non-mega) regions or everywhere (default). Note that, regardless (and in either SL or OpenSim), when PBR terrain materials are sent to the viewer, the latter will always render at the minimum their base color texture, whatever the current rendering mode.
• Linux only: rebuilt Dullahan against the latest CEF 127 release.
• Code cleanup and minor optimizations.

Enjoy !

Here is a new release of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.9 (stable branch):

New in this release:

• Fixed the failure to detect some PBR objects while in EE rendering modes (which caused a misleading "ALM" only status bar indicator).
• Added a new "gLTF" status for the status bar indicator, used when there are gLTF assets in the rendered scenes (such assets can only be seen while in PBR rendering mode). See the updated FAQ about it.
• Backported from LL's viewer "Atlasaurus" the new code to render, load and save (from and to files) gLTF scenes (asset data upload for now not yet backported, but asset data download is there too). Changed the in-world objects pie menu to use (at its last sub-pie level) a new "gLTF asset >" sub-pie, with currently "Load gLTF", "Clear gLTF" and "Save gLTF" entries. Please note that, for now, gLTF assets can only be seen and used locally and for the duration of current viewer session.
• Backported from LL's viewer "Atlasaurus" support for rendering PBR terrain overrides (used for custom terrain repeats/scaling). Note that for now the UI allowing to set overrides for region PBR terrains has not yet been backported.
• Resynced PBR shaders with LL's viewer "Atlasaurus", and the change to make use of a fixed amount of texture indices (4) in shaders to solve issues with low texture channels count drivers.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop a "fix upload losing face data" when uploading meshes.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop (and extended this fix to two other similar issues) a fix to environment settings being set asynchronously from a coroutine and causing race condtions.
• Backported from LL's viewer-develop the update of the Emoji font for a version with a few more emojis.
• Updated tinygltf to v2.9.3.
• Linux only: libSDL updated to v2.30.6 and libndofdev recompiled against it.
• Linux only: rebuilt Dullahan against the latest CEF 127 release.
• Some code cleanup.

Enjoy !

EDIT: I just noticed that the proper spelling should be "glTF" and not "gLTF" (and not "GLTF" either)... This will be fixed in the next viewer release.