Cool VL Viewer forum

View unanswered posts | View active topics It is currently 2024-03-28 11:03:48



Reply to topic  [ 15 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next
native AMD64 bit version? 
Author Message

Joined: 2009-03-30 05:55:31
Posts: 1
Reply with quote
Henri,

I've been using your Cool Viewer for months now and it's been completely great. Damned shame that the Lindens apparently are ignoring the third party stability patches yourself and others produce to keep the client side stable. But I wonder if you will eventually move to create an x86_64 native version (ignoring the issues with Linden Lab's idiotic decision to use binary only libraries for sound) for us that don't really care so much about sound (nor voice) but would like a native version that doesn't require us to install 32bit compat libs (which can be hit or miss depending on the distribution as to it working or not).

I've only run across binary versions 64bit native that are directly based on the Linden's code itself, and they were NOT stable at all. Would you be willing to put that together yourself, or would you want someone else willing to work at that? I guess since I'm asking, I could help work at it, but it's been ages since I worked on code and i'm not in the least familiar with the SL build system.

If you are interested, give me a yell in SL (Stormcrow Echegaray) and we can talk directly. I don't want to duplicate work someone else is already producing either so would be happy to talk.

System specs:

AMD X2 5200+
4 gb ram
Sapphire ATI 4830 w/ 512mb
Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64

Stormcrow


2009-03-30 06:10:43
Profile

Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
Reply with quote
It is not my intention to provide 64 bits binaries for the Cool SL Viewer.

The reasons are:
  • There is no speed gain at all over a 32 bits binary.
  • Some things (such as sound and streaming) do not work properly with a 64 bits viewer.
  • Linden Lab does not support 64 bits builds, meaning there are probably a quite few things to sort out in the code in order to get a stable 64 bits build, and I have no time to invest in this.
  • The 32 bits builds of the viewer run just fine on 64 bits systems, provided the proper compatibility 32 bits libraries are installed.
  • I myself renounced to use 64 bits Linux, given the number of software pieces which are still not working properly on such a system and the very disputable benefits of 64 bits systems over 32 bits ones (for example, some processors, such as Intel's Core2 quads, can be even slower in 64 bits mode, in certain conditions).

This said, you are of course most welcome to work on and provide 64 bits builds of the Cool SL Viewer. :D

As for sound, you might be able to compile a 64 bits build of the v1.22 viewer with OpenAL...


2009-03-30 08:07:26
Profile WWW

Joined: 2009-03-18 00:38:02
Posts: 37
Reply with quote
I've got some ArchLinux 64 up and running on my new machine now, still some blurry fonts in KDE that seem nasty and difficult to change to sharp ones, but otherwise working fine. I was going to use this as VM host, but have to do some testing. Main reason is that it can properly handle the 8GB in the box now compared to 3GB+ only in a 32bit OS.

If I have time I'll give OMV a try, that is the only viewer so far that I know is actively worked on for a 64bit version. It's Debian focussed so should work with Ubuntu. Perhaps you want to give that a try. I haven't tried it yet and I have no idea about working features and stability, but it is pretty close to the official viewer minus proprietary components with the addition of a small number of patches.

More info is here: http://omvviewer.byteme.org.uk


2009-03-30 08:30:37
Profile YIM WWW

Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
Reply with quote
Boy Lane wrote:
I've got some ArchLinux 64 up and running on my new machine now, still some blurry fonts in KDE that seem nasty and difficult to change to sharp ones
Some distros (I don't know about ArchLinux, but it's the case for Mandriva) force anti-aliased fonts over the standard, X core fonts (Adobe Helvetica, Times, Courrier...). Alas, those fonts ("Liberation" fonts and/or URW fonts) are far from good. You may restore support for (proportional but not anti-aliased) X core fonts by removing the corresponding overriding configuration file in /etc/fonts/
In Mandriva, I removed /etc/fonts/conf/30-mdv-urwfonts.conf and /etc/fonts/conf/30-urw-aliases.conf, which allows me to use again the Adobe Helvetica font (which looks extra sharp and is very readable: see the screen shot below). Beware: you might also need to switch to a non-UTF8 locale (using ISO-8859-15 here), which by the way will also speed up things significantly (UTF-8 sucks as it involves complicate library functions to count the actual number of characters in a string, to split a string, to search occurrences of a string in another, etc...).

There is also the problem of the freetype library which got a non-open licensed high quality renderer that many distro chose not to compile in to keep it 100% Open Source license. You can recompile freetype (libfreetype6) so that this option is enabled on your system, thus providing much better anti-aliased fonts rendering. For Mandriva, it's just a matter of installing the PLF package of freetype over the Mandriva one.

Boy Lane wrote:
Main reason is that it can properly handle the 8GB in the box now compared to 3GB+ only in a 32bit OS.
I have 4Gb here, and more (up to 64Gb) is possible with 32 bits kernels... Just make sure the kernel is compiled with the HIGHMEM64G option enabled.


Attachments:
Example.png
Example.png [ 62.42 KiB | Viewed 5017 times ]
2009-03-30 11:37:16
Profile WWW

Joined: 2009-03-18 00:38:02
Posts: 37
Reply with quote
Thanks Henri, that are great tips, I tried a lot of these "sharpfont" things you can find in Google, messing around with some xml's but no proper explanation. I got it just working nicely in Ubuntu but that I have running inside Virtualbox on WinXP and I don't really want to use Gnome.

Arch is pretty nice, very similar to BSD from the configuration options. Requires a bit of hands on work in textmode, but the big advantage of this is no bloated garbage and it's very fast. If I get this looking "sharp" I perhaps switch over and keep Windows in a VM. The ugly blur fonts that one can not change completely back like in XP are one of the main things why I really really hate Vista :).


2009-03-30 13:21:12
Profile YIM WWW

Joined: 2009-06-08 16:33:20
Posts: 26
Reply with quote
Has anybody ever been able to view streaming video with the viewer on a 64-Bit platform?

Sound works perfect, and the 32-Bit viewer is stable in the 64-bit compatibility environment of linux
(Ubuntu 9.04 64-Bit on a intel-core2 CPU)

But as soon is i try to watch a streaming video within SL, the viewer crashes...

Is there a known solution?


2009-06-08 16:36:39
Profile

Joined: 2009-10-01 04:21:18
Posts: 3
Reply with quote
I use 64 bit sabayon linux and can watch most vid streams and listen to audio streams. however I mostly use the greenlife emerald viewer and compile my own stand-alone version. An ebuild is provided by the techwolf overlay (which also has ebuilds for other viewers) if you are interested.


2009-10-01 04:39:48
Profile

Joined: 2009-08-09 02:56:43
Posts: 46
Reply with quote
Unless you already did it and I didn't see it :)

Always wanted to try 64-bit viewer.


2011-06-25 04:09:31
Profile

Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
Reply with quote
mooreted wrote:
Unless you already did it and I didn't see it :)

Always wanted to try 64-bit viewer.
I moved your message to the existing topic (please, search the forum for existing related topics before creating a new one). Your answer is given in the message above. I'll add that most of the pre-built 64bits libraries provided by LL to build the viewer are not even up to date (which means you would probably fail to build a 64bits versions out of LL's viewer sources), and that LL never provided any "support" for 64bits Windows and Darwin builds (so only Linux builds could possibly be provided, if I was to bother with them at all, which will not be the case in the foreseeable future).


2011-06-25 09:33:28
Profile WWW

Joined: 2009-06-08 16:33:20
Posts: 26
Reply with quote
Also some news from my side,

since a while i compile my own 64Bit standalone Cool VL Viewer using a ubuntu10.04 System with some libs and stuff i forced into the system... ugly i know, but its only a build VM, only for compiling Cool VL where i dont care much for clean packets installed (i do on my main system!)

This works almost out of the box now, i fetch the Cool sources, fire the compile and 30min later i have a rock stable native 64Bit standalone version :)

So now recently i wanted to try the same with the 1.26.1 branch. After getting some more libraries (mainly colladadom and glod) i managed to build a 64 Bit binary. When i fire up this viewer it works, i see meshes but i get rainbow like colors everywhere and it crashes after 1-2 minutes.

While the 1.26.0 tree seems to be 64Bit clean now there are still some issues with the 1.26.1 tree.

Anybody knowing of any other 64Bit compiled viewer for linux that already can render meshes? Or any hints what can cause this strange color-rendering? The code compiles, but the math and rendering stuff inside is not 64Bit ready i think.


2011-09-26 10:01:55
Profile
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Reply to topic   [ 15 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 26 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Designed by ST Software.