Cool VL Viewer forum

Hallo.

I'm trying out Cool Viewer and ran across this problem. I'm not sure if it's a LL bug or a Cool Viewer one (or if it is even a bug, for that matter), but I thought I should report it.

My system info:

Cool VL Viewer 1.26.1 (8) Sep 23 2011 16:03:22 (Cool VL Viewer)
Release Notes

Built with GCC version 40102

CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU E3400 @ 2.60GHz (2593.13 MHz)
Memory: 1877 MB
OS Version: Linux 2.6.38-11-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 12 21:17:25 UTC 2011 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
Graphics Card: Mesa DRI Intel(R) G41 GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2

and my SecondLife.log is attached.

Thanks.

PS: I love how you've rearranged the button on the bottom panel and the prospect of a Mesh enabled V1-type viewer

My guess is that either:

1. Your driver is buggy (not sure what "Tungsten Graphics" is as a brand, but it's certainly not among the supported GPUs...)
2. You are using the viewer in deferred render mode (shadows & lighting setting on in the Graphics tab of the Preferences floater) and are viewing the object in a light-less place: the new deferred renderer now uses actual lighting values for reflections on objects, so without a light (either the sun light or a spot light) to lite them, you will see no difference between a shiny and/or bump-mapped surface and a normal, flat surface. Make sure you view your object in the outdoors (with daylight on), or add a spot in your house/skybox.

In any case, this is not a viewer bug, and you should see the same happening with LL's v2.6 and newer viewers.

See also this JIRA issue and the Lindens' comments about it.

Henri, thank you for your reply!

Firstly, my graphics adaptor is an on-board Intel GMA, which of course isn't officially supported, but works like a charm with most V1-type viewers and Robin Cornelius' OMV2.

As for the exact appearance of the bug, please see here and here.

Now, a quick survey showed that:
• Cool+mesh: has the bug
• Cool: has the bug
• LL3: doesn't even start, crashes the moment it connects
• LL2: can't find it in their website :-S
• FS3: opens but crashes the moment I enable anything non-low
• FS2 (2.5.2.16922): has the bug.
On the other hand, Phoenix and Imprudence don't have it.

I'm afraid I'm no programmer, so all I understood from the JIRA report is that the Lindens are messing with Shiny, hence the bugs

Anyway, the point is that the bug indeed is LL's, so thank you for the reply

Gordon

From what I see in your screen shots, I can say it's a video driver bug. Your driver probably doesn't support some required OpenGL extensions. It is normal that Imprudence and Phoenix do not (yet) trigger this bug since they still use v1 shaders and rendering engine (but the mesh version of Phoenix will use the same rendering engine as the Cool VL Viewer v1.26.1).

In the preference panel, the "Bump Map and Shiny" option should not be disabled: it is in your case, and it means your driver doesn't support the corresponding OpenGL extension. Try disabling RenderObjectBump from the debug settings floater (CTRL ALT D to show the Advanced menu entry in the menu bar, then "Advanced" -> "Debug Settings") and see what happens...

Thank you, it worked perfectly! Here's the proof.

My driver is the standard MESA, and since I won't be buying a good graphics adaptor any time soon, I'll keep on disabling bumping.

Thank you again, and hope to meet you inworld

Today's releases (v1.26.0.21 and v1.26.1.9) should prevent such issues to happen again since I reworked the options selection logic of the Graphics preferences panel.

Thank you very much, Henri! It does work perfectly.