Cool VL Viewer forum

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Since many bugs have been fixed, updating to them is recommended.


Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.82 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in this release:

• Backported a work around for failing HTTP connections from LL's viewer-bear (AKA Release Maintenance). This should lower the number of failed and retried fetches for textures and the occurrences of failed mesh data fetching.
• Backported a crash bug fix in mesh models upload from LL's viewer-bear.
• Backported potential crash fixes to the texture cache from LL's viewer-bear.
• Backported a fix to group roles and group invites from LL's viewer-bear.
• Fixed the issue with the environment floaters menu entries (in the "World" -> "Environment Settings" menu) not bringing back open floaters to front when selected. Fix by Charles Clary.
• Implemented a new "Auto Reply" mode (toggle in World menu) that behaves like the Busy mode, but only for IMs (i.e. people get the auto-reply message when initiating an IM session with you while you are in "Auto Reply" mode, but unlike the Busy mode the chat messages are not suppressed from the console and the inventory/friendship/teleport offers are not declined). This is a code contribution from Charles Clary with some minor modifications from me.
• Improved the mute list handling for particles muting and fixed a bug in name-less objects muting.
• Implemented native keys code handling for media plugins (backport from LL's viewer 3): this should add some missing key events handling for the built-in web browser.
• Improved the audio streams starvation recovery algorithm, and added comprehensive log messages/diagnostic for it.
• Added the AudioLevelWind setting (defaults to 0.5 to match LL's viewer 3 wind audio volume: to get back to v1 viewers' volume, set it to 1.0).
• Improved the memory trimming algorithm.
• Added support for jemalloc for Linux. This is a compile-time option (the few among you who preferred to build the viewer with tcmalloc should try jemalloc and let me know: I expect it to be stabler and have less drawbacks than tcmalloc). Change the corresponding switch in indra/cmake/00-Common.cmake to enable it. It could also possibly be the solution to the memory problems under MacOS-X (but I can't provide a prebuilt library for jemalloc under MacOS-X for now).
• Fixed the unused-but-set-variable warning treated as error issue for gcc v4.6+ while building libopenjpeg. Note however that my attempts at building libopenjpeg with gcc v4.6.1 lead to a dysfunctional library (problems with some textures edges): let me know if it works fine or not with other gcc versions above v4.4 (I might have to provide a pre-built libopenjpeg for the buggy gcc versions ...). I'm also interested to know if anyone managed to make newer OpenJPEG versions (v1.5 or 2.0) work with any viewer...
• Various other minor fixes and some code cleanup.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.18 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

Same changes as in v1.26.4.82, plus:

• Fixed a segfault on exit bug (harmless, since everything was cleany saved before the bug occurred, but still a crash bug !).

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.18 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.18, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.
• Backported from LL's viewer-bear the particles picking and pie menu, with two mute options instead of just one: "Mute Owner" (which mutes the owner's particles in all their objects) and "Mute Object": note that the latter doesn't yet work well enough: when returning after a TP or logoff, the muted object got its particles rezzed again; I'm currently investigating this issue.
• Fixed a gcc 4.6+ compilation warning.

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Updating to these new releases is recommended since they got some SSB-related fixes and SSB is soon going to roll-out grid-wide in SL.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.83 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.19 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in these releases:

• In SL or when the "Use COF in OpenSIM grids" option (in "Preferences" -> "Cool features" -> "Inventory") is enabled for OpenSIM grids, the COF now always got inventory links created in it for attachments (this used to be an option but caused issues with some rigged mesh attachments: see this post for details).
• Improved the COF syncing and rebaking algorithm to minimize the number of rebake requests and to increase the likelihood of their success when the attachments rez slowly because of asset server lag.
• Prevented entirely the possibility to wear Library items (you will have first to copy them to one of your inventory folders), since this is now illegal in SSB-enabled sims.
• Added the possibility to view the IM conversation logs (by clicking on the "View Log..." button in the corresponding IM tab) via either the built-in browser or an external program (system browser or editor). The setting for which log viewer to use is in the "Preferences" floater, "IM & Logs" tab. Code by Charles Clary.
• Made it so that cached inventory file names now got the grid name appended to the UUID representation of the inventory owner: this prevents conflicts and corrupt inventory library caches when connecting to various grids (all library owners use same UUID on all grids, which caused the cached file to get corrupted at each connection to a new grid, and resulted in an unusable/empty Library).
• Enabled jemalloc as the memory manager for Linux builds: this should provide a more conservative and stabler memory management and reduce the occurrences of out of virtual space crashes in heavily textured and crowded sims. Let me know how it fares for you.
• FMOD Ex updated to v4.44.18.
• Various code cleanup.
• Some cleanup of the cmake and Python build scripts.
• Updated the grid parameters for the Speculoos grid.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.19 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.19, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials. Note: the latest updates to the shaders should have fixed Mac drivers bugs, but broke the alpha texture rendering (especially on skirt clothing items, but not only)... I still don't understand how LL could have adopted such a largely broken renderer as in their "release" viewer...

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Updating to these new releases is recommended since they got some SSB-related fixes and SSB is soon going to roll-out grid-wide in SL.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.84 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.20 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in these releases:

• Implemented the initial outfit restoration from the Current Outfit folder (COF) on login and use that as the default method: you may revert to the outfit.xml-based restoration algorithm by disabling the "Restore outfit from COF" option in the "Advanced" -> "Character" menu (doing so will present you with an alert dialog explaining what the outfit.xml-based restoration entails: please read it carefully !). Please, do read this post about why this change.
• Improved yet again the COF syncing and rebaking algorithm to minimize the number of rebake requests and to increase the likelihood of their success (now auto-rebakes when needed too): this solves the issue sometimes seen when closing the appearance floater with "OK".
• Disabled the face wrinkles support code in SL for legacy (non textured) skins, since the SL servers' SSB code can't deal with them.
• Removed the "Wrinkles" visual parameter for all clothing items in the "Appearance" floater, since these are not supported by any viewer (they are prehistoric parameters that had the corresponding rendering code removed ages ago).
• Backported a crash bug fix in the camera code from LL's viewer-bear branch.
• Backported a minor rendering fix from LL's viewer-development-materials.
• Added an "Away Action" setting to the "Preferences floater", "General" tab which allow to choose what action the viewer takes when the "Away Timeout" kicks in (either "Set Away", "Set Busy" or "Set Auto-reply Mode").
• Fixed the compilation warnings in libopenjpeg with gcc 4.6+.
• Fixed the download link for FMOD Ex in buildlinux.sh.
• Updated the licenses.txt file and the "Licenses & Copyrights" tab of the "About" floater.
• Code cleanup and minor optimizations.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.20 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.20, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials (the skirt and alpha texture issues seen in last release have been fixed).

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Updating to these new releases is recommended since important fixes went into them.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.85 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.21 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in these releases:

• Implemented a memory allocation failure detection algorithm and now react accordingly to urgently free memory (by reducing the draw distance to 64m and resetting the camera view) so to try and avoid a crash: this algorithm comes in excess of the "Memory Safety Checks" and, unlike the latter, is able to catch (some, not all, alas) fragmented virtual address space conditions that cause allocation failures even when some memory is still free. This should reduce significantly the number of virtual address space exhaustion/fragmentation related crashes.
• Improved yet again the SSB rebaking algorithm (especially when exiting the Appearance editing mode).
• Prevented changing the Avatar Z offset while in Appearance editing mode and properly reset that offset on login in SSB sims.
• In the Radar, now auto-select the line in the list corresponding to the avatar that gets focused onto via "Focus Next" or "Focus Previous".
• Various other minor fixes.
• Added the NVIDIA GTX 750 and 760 to the list of supported cards.
• Code cleanup and minor optimizations.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.21 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.21, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Not a lot of work done, this week (hey, I'm supposed to be on vacations !), but still some interesting stuff:

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.86 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.22 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in these releases:

• Fixed a bug that could cause meshes to fail to download and another bug that, on rigged mesh download failure, could cause a crash. See this thread for details.
• Extended the memory allocation failures detection to more code to prevent more "out of virtual address space" crash cases.
• Added some code to try and minimize virtual address space fragmentation (some permanent vectors are now allocated to the proper size at the viewer startup so to prevent them to grow later and get reallocated during the session). Also suppressed some wasteful and avoidable usages of temporary vectors in the render pipeline.
• FMOD Ex updated to v4.44.19.
• Some code cleanup and some minor optimizations.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.22 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.22, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Since important fixes and improvements went into these releases, updating to them is recommended.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.87 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in this release:

• Improved the private memory pools code (allowing to enable it at compilation time on a per-pool basis) and added a pool for volumes data. Re-enabled its compilation for vertex buffers and volumes data (but kept it off for textures since it's of no use for them and even causes troubles): the rationale is that segregating memory allocations per memory usage (here vertex buffers, volumes, and the rest which is dealt with by the standard memory allocator) helps limiting the memory fragmentation (at the cost of a memory usage overhead for data allocated in private pools). Note that private memory pools are on by default (which is the case for Windows builds) unless jemalloc is the main memory allocator (used in Linux builds); see below as to why. The private memory pools usage may be toggled via a setting in the "Advanced" -> "Memory Management" menu.
• Improved jemalloc allocation code to use different arenas for different memory usages (vertex buffers, volumes, textures and generic main thread data). This got the same effect as private memory pools segregation of data allocations, but without any drawback (no memory usage neither management code execution time overheads).
• Improved the SSB rebaking code, working around a server-side bug where the server wrongly replies with a 404 (not found) error to a request made with a nonetheless valid SSB rebake capability URI.
• "Hardened" the code some more against memory allocation failures (i.e. plugged a few "out of memory" crash cases). Allocation failures now also make the memory usage graph (visible in the upper right corner of the window as long as the "Advanced" -> "Memory Management" -> "Memory Safety Checks" are enabled) flash during a few seconds (in excess of the usual alert window, which now pops up again less often after the first alert).
• Removed the old (deprecated), curl-based HTTP texture fetching code (i.e. only the new llcorehttp-based code is now usable for HTTP texture fetches).
• Added a setting for muting sounds coming from objects rezzed in neighboring sims ("Preferences" -> "Audio & Media" -> "Neighbor sims sounds").
• Backported a couple of memory leak fixes from Firestorm (code by Nicky).
• Backported a fix to SSL/TLS HTTP connection negociations from Firestorm (code by Nicky).
• Code cleanup and minor speed optimizations.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.23 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

Same changes as in v1.26.4.87, plus:

• Fixed the bug introduced in v1.26.8.22 and that could cause failures to update changing faces in real time. See this thread for details.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.23 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.23, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.88 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.24 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.24 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

These emergency releases fix the nasty crash bug that was introduced in today's earlier releases...


Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Since important fixes went in them, updating to these releases is recommended.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.89 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.25 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.25 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

• Fixed an issue with the Z-offset not rendering the same in the Cool VL Viewer and LL's (and derived) viewers: the 'fix' consisted in backporting a bug (sic !) and introducing a (normally unneeded) factor for converting the Z offset into a Hover value. See this thread for details.
• Backported from LL's viewer-sunshine a (partial) fix to avatar skeleton deformations on removal of some rigged meshes (that contain joint offsets, such as tiny mesh avatars). Note that some joints (shoulder width, neck width, etc) are still not properly restored when both the shape changes and the rigged mesh is removed (which commonly happens on full outfit change).
• Removed from the "Cool features" preferences panel, Miscellaneous sub-tab, the avatar Depth and Width settings, since they don't work at all any more (at least until SUN-38 gets properly addressed: please keep voting for *and* watching it !) in SL after the grid-wide SSB roll out, and since they never worked in OpenSIM.
• Fixed an excessive memory usage in the texture caching code and "hardened" texture duplication code against out of memory errors (thus plugging a few more crash cases).
• A few more potential crash fixes in texture code backported from LL's viewer-development-materials.
• A couple of minor SSB fixes backported from LL's viewer-sunshine.
• FMOD Ex updated to v4.44.20.
• Lot's of code cleanup, removal of unused (server-side only or simply redundant) code, some speed optimizations and generalization of proper log class identification in all indra/ll* libraries (meaning a clearer log with exact identification of each log line origin for all the involved classes).

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Updating to these new releases is recommended since important memory management improvements went into them.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.90 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):
Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.26 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in these releases:

• Fixed two causes of heavy memory fragmentation due to textures down-sizing (one was related with the fast texture cache, the other with the rescaling algorithm itself).
• Backported the "teleport request" feature introduced this week in LL's Storm viewer new development branch. You can now request a teleport from another avatar (provided the owner of that avatar is also using a viewer implementing this feature; if it is not implemented, the request will never be displayed to them). The corresponding "Request TP" buttons have been added into the "IM" floater (as a drop-down option of the "Profile" button: an "Offer TP" option was also added there), the "Friends List" floater, the "Radar" floater and the "Profile" panels, as well as in the context menu for calling cards in the inventory.
• Improved the Radar floater (implemented proper button enabling/disabling depending on what lines are selected in the list) and added a persistent "marked avatars" list over sessions (i.e., when you "Mark" an avatar in the list, the mark (little blue cross) will reappear the next time that avatar gets listed in the radar). The corresponding "Remember marked avatars" check box and "Clear saved list" button have been added to the "Options" tab of the Radar floater.
• Plugged a few more potential crash cases on memory allocation failures.
• Fixed a couple minor UI glitches in the "Profile" panels and the "Area Search for objects" floater.
• Lot's of code cleanup, removal of deprecated code, some speed optimizations and generalization of proper log class identification to all classes defined in newview/ files.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.26 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.26, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.

Enjoy !

Here are three new releases of the Cool VL Viewer, available now from http://sldev.free.fr/:

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.4.91 (legacy stable branch with v2.6 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

New in this release:

• Fixed more crash-on-failure-to-allocate-memory bugs.
• Added to the "IM Received" button of the overlay bar a count of the number of IM sessions which got unread messages, and when there is a private session (private IM or friends conference IM sessions) among them, a star ("*") is appended to that number, telling you at the first glance if there are unread IMs directly geared at you.
• Added a new "Sun position at login" setting (to the "Preferences" floater, "Cool preferences" tab, "Miscellaneous" sub-tab), which allows to impose a fixed sun position (i.e. day time) at login, instead of using the sim time.
• Backported a few inventory-related improvements from viewer-sunshine.
• Backported various bug fixes and optimizations from viewer-bear.
• Backported from viewer-bear the "revoke animation permissions" and "reset animation overrides" features when using the "World" -> "Stop Animating my Avatar" feature, and made them configurable options (settings added in the "Preferences" floater, "Cool preferences" tab, "Miscellaneous" sub-tab).
• Backported from viewer-sunshine and viewer-bear the latest improvements and fixes to the LLCurl and llcorehttp code as well as the improvements to the texture fetcher which now uses the new HTTP retry policy (based on the retry-after delay sometimes returned by the servers on fetching errors). Note that this new retry policy is said (in LL's code comments) to be used only for server bakes for now, but since the latest RC servers release notes seem to hint for more, I added a new setting (on by default) in the "Advanced" -> "Network" menu which, when enabled, causes an attempt to fetch the retry delay from all texture fetching failure replies headers, regardless of the texture type; the impact of doing so (in terms of execution time and memory overheads) is pretty negligible anyway and the potential benefit in terms of rezzing speed may be very significant when the servers are overloaded (however, if you are only connecting to OpenSim grids, you may wish to turn it off to zero any overhead).
• Added the STATUS_BLOCK_GRAB_OBJECT and OBJECT_RENDER_WEIGHT LSL constants to the script editor highlights and tool tips.
• Fixed a memory leak in the "Advanced" -> "Rendering" -> "Info Display" -> "Physics Shapes" feature.
• Fixed a bug in the object exporter which failed when used from the pie menu with the threaded file picker (the object to export got deselected while the file picker was shown).
• Code cleanup and minor speed optimizations.
• Added the names of all the Lindens and contributors who wrote code for LL's v2/3 viewers to the "Authors & Credits" tab in the "About" floater (even if the code of all these authors may not have been backported to the Cool VL Viewer, it's impossible for me to track exactly who wrote what in LL's v2/3 viewers code that I backported to the Cool VL Viewer: better giving some undeserved credits than forgetting to credit someone...).

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.8.27 (current stable branch with v3.5 renderer and mesh deformer support in OpenSim):

Same changes as in v1.26.4.91, plus:

• Backported from viewer-development-materials a fix to a leak in the rendering pipeline.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.9.27 (experimental branch with the v3.6 renderer (materials support) and mesh deformer support in both OpenSim and SL):

Same changes as in v1.26.8.27, plus:

• Backported the latest materials-related fixes from viewer-development-materials.

Enjoy !