Cool VL Viewer forum

This was probably a bad idea... I'm investigating further, but it seems to increase the memory usage in a large proportion for a disputable benefit (seeing no difference with meshes, here). Since the mesh viewers are already memory-hungry and can hit the 2.5Gb limit imposed on 32bits applications (thus causing crashes), I'd recommend to anyone using v1.26.2.0 to lower the RenderMaxNodeSize setting back to its former value (8192).

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


Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.23 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Fixed the issue (coming from a change done in a former v1.26.0 release) that made a change to a parcel description in the About Land floater not propagating to the server (see this thread for details).
• Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when clicking on an orphaned attachment (in some rare cases, those can still render while they should not). Fix adapted from code by Shyotl Kuhr, borrowed from Singularity viewer.
• Fixed a crash bug that could occur on next login after having shortened the list of OpenSim grids (grids.xml).
• Fixed a bug that could cause IMs to be logged in two different files for new residents (example: "JohnDoe Resident.txt" (correct) and "JohnDoe.txt" (incorrect)) and that caused IM sessions initiated by such residents have "Resident" appearing as their last name while the "Never display 'Resident' as the last name in legacy names" setting was active.
• Changed the name list code to use the new avatar name fetching capability when available to prevent slow loading of avatar names on SL in many lists (and especially group members lists): it looks like the SL servers are now much slower to reply to legacy names fetching queries, even though those are still in use in viewer 3... It would be ironic to see LL shutting down or degrading dramatically a legacy capability while their own newest viewer still needs it...
• Backport from v3 viewer of a fix to a possible hanging issue in the texture fetch queue on some MacOS-X systems.
• Prevent crashes on out of (virtual) memory condition when loading textures. Fix by Shyotl Kuhr, borrowed from Singularity viewer, with a couple more fixes by me.
• UI change: Enable the stripes even for one column scroll lists (stripes drawing are now only controlled by the XML definitions, via the draw_stripes parameter).
• Updated the OpenSim grids list (added Island Oasis and removed 7 dead grids).
• Added a new PrivateLookAtLimit setting (see this thread for details). This setting can be changed from the Preferences floater, "Cool features" tab, "Miscellaneous" sub-tab.
• Some speed optimizations in Windlight settings floaters, by Shyotl Kuhr, borrowed from Singularity viewer.
• Added tooltips to the more obscure settings of the "Cool features" tab in the Preferences floater.
• Minor code cleanup by me and a couple of minor fixes backported from LL's v3 viewer.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.1 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.1.23 (see above), plus:

• Reverted a render pipeline optimization that was backported from LL's v3 viewer to v1.26.1.9 and that caused crashes on some video card/driver combinations.
• Backported the Model Preview floater from LL's v3 mesh branch in preparation for mesh upload support (still disabled for now, by lack of an Open Source convex decomposition library: HACD looks promising but is still way too crashy to be of any practical use for now).
• A few rendering fixes backported from viewer 3.
• RenderMaxNodeSize default setting reverted back to its former value since the increased value didn't change anything to Mesh rendering but caused a larger memory usage.
• The info display appearing while rezzing mesh objects has been made into a debug setting (in "Advanced" -> "HUD Info" -> "Show Mesh Queue"), which is now off by default.
• Some dead code, related to the deprecated "render for select" debug feature has been removed. Patch by Shyotl Kuhr, borrowed from Singularity viewer.

Enjoy !

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


Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.24 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Implemented a grid manager tab in the Preferences panel. The Cool VL Viewer always provided a grid selection combo on the login screen, but adding grids or updating their parameters was non-trivial (it involved editing manually the app_settings/grids.xml file). With the grid manager, you can now complement the grids list and update existing grids parameters through the UI. It also allows to auto-retrieve the parameters for the grids implementing this feature (i.e. most OpenSim grids). The updated/added grids are stored in the user_settings directory and are therefore not affected when updating the viewer. While this grid manager resembles Hippo's/Imprudence's one it is yet a full rewrite by me and got improved features (such as non-blocking parameters retrieval, proper enabling/disabling of the UI elements depending on what can be done, and transparent management of two lists: the default/reference one, and the custom one).
• As a result the above change, the various links (register and lost password links on the login screen, website and support links in some UI elements, etc) are now properly changed to match the grid you connect to.
• Default grids list updated.
• Added a "Use the new SL login screen (requires a restart)" setting to the UI sub-tab of the "Cool features" tab in the Preferences panel, to allow loading the new SL login page that was put in place for viewer 3.
• Minor code cleanup.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.2 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.1.24 (see above), plus:

• Added the missing callback for drag and drop events on the Projection texture for the Light settings in the Features tab of the Build tool. See this message for details.
• Updated the GLOD library to the latest version, and paved the way for using HACD as a vertex decomposition library (not used for now) instead of the stub library.
• Fixes and improvements to the Model Preview floater in preparation for mesh upload support (still disabled for now).

Enjoy !

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

These are polishing/bugfix releases.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.25 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Added support for the newly implemented LSL function and constants (llManageEstateAccess(), ESTATE_ACCESS_ALLOWED_AGENT/GOUP_ADD/REMOVE, ESTATE_ACCESS_BANNED_AGENT_ADD/REMOVE, OBJECT_PRIM_EQUIVALENCE, OBJECT_SERVER_COST, OBJECT_STREAMING_COST, OBJECT_PHYSICS_COST).
• Implemented a new setting (in "Preferences" -> "Input & Camera") allowing to automatically switch the camera to the front view when your avatar sits down on an object and reverting it back to the normal view when it stands back up.
• Fixed a few minor glitches in how the grid names and buttons get selected and enabled/disabled in the grids list editor preference panel.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the "Sit Here"/"Stand Up" item to work in the avatar pie menu.
• Fixed a crash bug that could sometimes occur when force-reloading textures of a selected object (CTRL SHIFT U).
• Fixed a potential crash bug in LLVOAvatar::getRenderPosition().
• RestrainedLove updated to v2.07.03.06 with a couple of minor bugs (see this thread) and a new feature implemented (gestures activated/deactivated when part of a force-worn/removed #RLV sub-folder). See the RestrainedLove Readme for full details.
• Added new menu entries to the "World" -> "Environment Settings" sub-menu to open directly the Windlight, Water, Day Cycle editors (see this thread for details).

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.3 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.0.25 (see above), plus:

• Fixed a crash bug that occurred while in deferred rendering mode when switching the wire frame mode off (see this thread for details).

Enjoy !

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

Important, distribution change: I finally found an easy to use, powerful, multi-platform installer software (InstallJammer). This lead me to provide the Cool VL Viewer as a stand-alone package instead as of an overlay to Snowglobe v1.4.2. Note that the latter is still downloaded during the installation process so to extract from it the few proprietary files (the KDU image decoder and the Vivox voice system) whenever needed (i.e. when making an installation from scratch: updates do not trigger a Snowglobe download).
For this reason and since the executable files are now branded following the Cool VL Viewer name instead of Snowglobe's, you will need to uninstall completely any fomer v1.26 version of the Cool VL Viewer, and to reinstall v1.26.0.26 and/or v1.26.2.4 (both can be installed on the same system if needed/wished).
There is a small drawback to this new installation method: since the Cool VL Viewer menus are not translated, the UI is now English only; the "overlay" installation method allowed to use the old Snowglobe translations, but these were so very deprecated that they could cause more troubles (and even crashes) than anything else: if you still want to use the Snowglobe translations, just copy the corresponding directory manually into skins/default/xui/, but do make sure to remove the notifications.xml file from the translations (else, you will get crashes) !

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.26 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Added full support for the new "Neck" and "Avatar Center" attachment points, but issue a warning the first time you use them and show a notify tip the next times, since they are incompatible with older viewers (objects attached to these points would appear in weird places when rendered in viewers not supporting them).
• Changed the "Make New Outfit" modal dialog for a full fledged, non-modal floater, that can be opened as well from the File menu of the Inventory floater (without having to enter the Edit Appearance mode), and that auto-refreshes when clothes and attachments are added/removed to/from your avatar.
• Fixed the problem with the notifications using "save_option" (such as when replacing a worn attachment by another), that never remembered when you asked them not to show again.
• Added a "Disable selected popup" button to the Notifications tab of the Preferences floater.
• Fixed a bug in the teleport history loading code that could mess up histories from different avatars/grids when you changed the grid in the login screen. Also added sanity checks to reject bad history entries (old format entries, or history file from another, non-compatible viewer).
• Fixed a Linux specific bug that was causing the viewer to write cookies, browser cache and some other XML files in the installation folder instead of inside ~/secondlife when started for the first time on the system (or when no grid login info is saved).
• Fixed a bug that caused rejected inventory offers to be improperly notified to the inventory listeners. This is a backport from viewer 2/3 by Shyotl Khur, borrowed from Singularity.
• Added the new LSL function and constants (llSetKeyframedMotion(), KFM_COMMAND, KFM_MODE, KFM_DATA, KFM_FORWARD, KFM_LOOP, KFM_PING_PONG, KFM_REVERSE, KFM_ROTATION, KFM_TRANSLATION, KFM_CMD_PLAY, KFM_CMD_STOP, KFM_CMD_PAUSE) that appeared in this week's RC Magnum server release in SL.
• Made it so that objects causing bad octree insertions issue warnings in the log, but in a non-spamming fashion (maxed out the warnings to one every 10 seconds instead of dozens per second).
• Moved the mime_types*.xml files from the default skin folder to the app_settings folder, where they should always have belonged.
• Added a "Prefer retrieved login URI" check box to the Grids tab of the Preferences floater and improved the layout of the latter (also added a couple of tool-tips).
• Fixed the problem in the login panel with the saved logins combo that showed duplicate entries each time the grid list was changed from the Preferences/Grids floater.
• OpenSim grids list updated.
• Added the maturity rating (PG/M/A) after the region names in the map floater.
• Made it so that, if you got a UI sounds directory installed (see this message for how to do this), then the UI sounds play at the login screen as well.
• Full branding of the viewer, including for executable names.
• Brand new, full fledged installer.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.4 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.0.26 (see above), plus:

• Now making use of the HACD library instead of the convex decomposition stub. Note that although the viewer implements the necessary UI and code to upload meshes, this feature is not yet functional because of missing features in HACD (the physics decomposition steps are incomplete). Under Linux, you can now test the Model Upload floater by setting the MeshUploadEnable variable to TRUE (but you will most probably not be able to upload anything).
• Made the model preview floater code 64bits compatible.

Enjoy !

New installers have been posted on the website. No change in the viewer code, just a new panel to allow using an already downloaded Snowglobe archive. See the Linux Howto for the screenshots and directions.

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

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.27 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Fixed the bug (introduced in a former v1.26.0 release) that prevented the "Show 'Typing' in the name bubble when avatar type" feature to work properly.
• All texture controls now stay "clickable" even when disabled (i.e. when you can't change the corresponding texture) so that they open a texture preview floater on click, allowing to see the texture at full size and with any aspect ratio. Of course, the textures previewed in this way can't be saved to disk and protected textures that don't show in the texture controls can't be previewed at all either. Consequently removed the "View" buttons in the avatar info floater (SL and RL tabs), since you can now just click on the pictures to enlarge them.
• Made it so that when opening the "Teleport History" and "Area Search" floaters, they are brought on top of the floaters stack and take focus instead of staying behind.
• Improved the "Area Search" floater by highlighting in bold text the tracked object line in the list and by displaying its coordinates in the floater status line (objects tracking is still triggered by double-clicking on their line in the list).
• Changed the separate (but exclusive from each other) DoubleClickAutoPilot and DoubleClickTeleport settings for a DoubleClickAction one, and improved the logic for both, also adding a DoubleClickScriptedObject setting to allow/disallow teleporting/auto-piloting to scripted objects on double-click. Removed the annoying spurious (and thus meaningless) "Autopilot canceled" tooltip. Moved the double-click teleport and double-click autopilot settings from the "Advanced" -> "UI" menu and "Cool features" -> "Miscellaneous" tab to the "Input & Camera" tab of the Preferences floater (and reworked the latter for a better and clearer layout).
• Double-clicks on Mini-Map now always open the "World Map" floater (used to TP you when DoubleClickTeleport was active, and to open the world map when DoubleClickTeleport was inactive), and CTRL-double-click on the Mini-Map now always TP you. Mini-map tooltip changed to reflect this, and made more explicit/complete. "Rotate Mini-map" menu entry (in Advanced -> UI) removed since there is already one such entry in the Mini-map context menu.
• Added a FadeMouselookExitTip setting (corresponding spinner in Preferences -> Cool features -> "User Interface") to allow auto-fading out the "Press SHIFT ESC to leave Mouselook" tip a configurable number of seconds after entering mouselook mode. Adapted from code by Shyotl Khur, borrowed from Singularity.
• Fixed a memory leak in OpenAL audio engine. Fix by Nicky Dasmijn, borrowed from Phoenix.
• A few minor code improvements.
• Improved installer which now remembers where you store the Snowglobe archive for later reuse when needed.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.5 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.0.27 (see above), plus:

• Removed the deprecated and broken llviewerjointmesh SSE/SSE2/vectorized code that is now replaced by a further optimized SSE2 version. This is a backport from viewer 3 ("davep/shining-fixes" branch).
• Finished the backport of the Mesh Upload feature (now working under Linux !). As a result, mesh upload is always enabled for Linux (i.e. the "MeshUploadEnable" setting is only taken into account for non-Linux releases). Also enabled the non-blocking threaded file-picker for mesh uploads and added a "BlockingFilePicker" setting, in case it would cause problems on your system (works fine here, but some old GTK versions could dislike it... viewer 3 got the non-blocking file picker disabled for Linux builds: let me know if it crashes for you). Note that the mesh upload feature relies on Nicky Dasmijn's port/adaptation of the HACD convex decomposition library (many thanks must go to Nicky !) which is much simpler than LL's Havoc-based convex decomposition library, meaning that less options/optimizations are available at the Physics decomposition steps (only step 1 is active with HACD)... But it does work !

Enjoy !

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

IMPORTANT NOTE: v1.26.0 is now feature-frozen and will only be updated from times to times with bug fixes before it is dropped sometimes in early 2012. Users of v1.26.0 are encouraged to upgrade to v1.26.2 !

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.28 (non-Mesh, legacy Windlight renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Implemented a black-listing feature for RestrainedLove commands. Made a separate sub-tab for RestrainedLove settings in the "Cool features" tab of the "Preferences" floater, and added a "User Profile" setting (with a default (empty blacklist), "BDSM Persona-Player" profile, a "BDSM Role-Player" profile and a "Non-BDSM" profile) and a "Cutsom" profile button that opens a new "RestrainedLove Black List" floater (in which you can blacklist individual groups of commands, by category). Also added a RestrainedLoveUntruncatedEmotes setting, reworked the "Advanced" -> "RestrainedLove" sub-menu, and added a @getcommand command. See this thread and the release notes section in the RestrainedLoveReadme.txt file for details.
• Removed deprecated code and improved the Advanced menu accordingly. Also made it so that non-Lindens cannot try and use Linden-reserved Admin options in SL (the said options won't work anyway, but could cause trouble to the unsuspecting user, for such attempts are logged...).
• LLMuteList::isLinden() now always returns FALSE when logged-in on OpenSim grids since "Linden" is not the admin name on them (and there is no way to know what the admins' last name is on an OpenSim grid) and since it would prevent muting people registering with "Linden" as a last name on an OpenSim grid.
• Fixed a bug due to a race condition that could cause a spurious overwriting of the "My notes" data in the Avatar profiles with the "Loading..." text.
• Backported a texture cache clearing bug from v3 viewer.
• Fixed a potential crash bug that could occur when disconnected during a TP. Fix by Techwolf Lupindo, borrowed from Phoenix viewer.
• Increased the maximum number of characters in string debug settings to 2048.
• Some code cleanup.
• Updated the credits in the About floater.
• Improved the installer (added a --snowglobe option for silent installs, etc). See this message for details.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.6 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release: same changes as for v1.26.0.28 (see above), plus:

• Enabled Mesh upload for Darwin builds (note that the BlockingFilePicker setting is ignored for Darwin builds and considered as always TRUE, since the non-blocking file picker code path causes crashes on Macs).

Enjoy !

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

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.7 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch)

New in this release:

• Fixed the non-blocking mesh upload file picker crash bug under Linux and implemented non-blocking file and directory pickers for Linux and Windows builds for all other file/directory picking operations (MacOS-X builds don't have it activated since the current code would crash them: any person knowledgeable about MacOS-X coding is welcome to contribute !). This feature is disabled by default and can be enabled via the "Advanced" -> "UI" -> "Use a non-blocking file picker" setting.
• Added "Save To File" and "Load From File" features to both the script and notecard editors.
• Fixed a crash bug in the media plugin code.
• Made it so that the "Fly" button in the movement controls floater is properly disabled when you can't fly.
• Improved the Object Backup exporter, making it load exported textures more aggressively to avoid having to wait forever for them to load and be saved.
• Made it so that the "Advanced" -> "Compress Images to JPEG2000" feature works for any type of image, and not just TGA ones.
• Made it so that the "Advanced" -> "Character" -> "Character Tests" -> "Appearance to XML" feature asks you where to save the file instead of saving it into the viewer installation directory.
• Optimized and speeded up the per-frame refreshing code for the status bar, the toolbar, the chat bar, the overlay bar and the chat history.
• Added code in a couple of places to prevent log spam that could cause slow downs in some rare conditions.
• Backported the system fonts loading caping from v3 viewer (prevents loading more than 40 system fonts under Linux, and thus saves memory on systems with loads of fonts installed).
• Backported form v3 viewer the change in the About Land floater that now displays "Loading..." for the traffic (instead of "0") while that info is retrieved from the server.
• Backported from v3 a fix to the mesh upload feature, dealing with model materials parsing.
• Removed the useless (because both unused by TPVs and deprecated for SL viewers) auto-updater code in Windows and MacOS-X builds.
• Removed the pointless and deprecated "floatertest" code.
• Various minor bug fixes backported from v3 viewers (development and davep/shining branches).
• Installer improved so that --destination and --snowglobe command line options override any previous installation' saved directory paths.

Enjoy !

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

They are mainly bug fix releases, fixing serious bugs: all users are encouraged to update.


Cool VL Viewer v1.26.2.8 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch):

New in this release:

• Backported from v3 a fix to the "Multi-threaded Curl" crash bug encountered on some Windows and MacOS-X systems.
• Fixed a Linux specific dead lock bug (revealed by v1.26.2.7 as a result of the multi-threading of the file picker) that made the view hang forever when passing it a SLURL from another instance (such as when following a SLURL in your web browser while the viewer is running).
• Fixed a mesh queue download stalling bug that could sometimes lead to non-rezzing rigged meshes. Fix by Nicky Dasmijn.
• Updated RestrainedLove to v2.08.01 (see the release notes chapter in the RestrainedLoveReadme.txt file for details).
• Updated the boost libraries from v1.39 to v1.45 (same as v3 viewers).
• Updated the HACD convex decomposition library.
• Implemented grass and tree types selection in the build tools (code by an unknown author, borrowed from the Imprudence viewer).
• Improved the About floater and made it fecth the proper server release notes URL in SL to prevent the bad certificates error on following it (backport from v3 viewer).
• Removed the now deprecated Google translation code (and since Google is too greedy to provide a free translation API, I'm not going to support their new paying API, so don't ask for it !).
• Further optimized the chat bar, the chat console, the IM panel, the HUD, the media and music remote controls and the mini-map to make their per-frame rendering code faster.
• Fixed the tracker arrow flickering that could sometimes happen when tracking immobile avatars with the radar.
• Fixed the "OK" button misplacement in the Friends floater on the first use of the viewer.

Cool VL Viewer v1.26.0.29 (Mesh enabled, new Shadow renderer, stable branch):

Please note that this release will most probably be the last release of the v1.26.0 viewer: consider upgrading to v1.26.2 (and if you don't have a SSE2-capable CPU to run v1.26.2 on your computer, it's just about time to write a nice letter to Santa... ).

I will not bother listing the changes here (if you wish, you can infer them from the corresponding diff file): basically, they are a catch-up with all the bug fixes and a few of the improvements that went into v1.26.2.7 and 1.26.2.8, plus an update to RestrainedLove v2.08.01. But there is no new feature per see.


Enjoy !