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How to enable ALM + misc. 
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Joined: 2021-07-25 22:25:33
Posts: 4
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So I've just started playing around with Cool VL, and I'm finding there are a lot of things to like, although I'm having a couple issues/ perhaps not finding some features.

1. In gfx settings ALM is constantly greyed out no matter what other options I check to try and get it to appear clickable. toggling the slider from 'High' to 'Ultra' seems to effectively turn on ALM, but the checkbox remains unticked and closing the prefferences window always turns off ALM even if I click 'apply' or 'ok'.

2. A bit of a minor thing, but is there an easy way to teleport in the z direction? unlike other viewers I can't edit the url at the top to specify a z height.

3. it seems that pressing 'esc' doesn't reset the camera. What's the easiest way to do that?


2021-07-26 00:26:16
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Joined: 2011-10-07 10:39:20
Posts: 181
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1. In gfx settings ALM is constantly greyed out no matter what other options I check to try and get it to appear clickable. toggling the slider from 'High' to 'Ultra' seems to effectively turn on ALM, but the checkbox remains unticked and closing the prefferences window always turns off ALM even if I click 'apply' or 'ok'.


AFAIK it only needs the Athmospheric Shaders checkbox too, otherwise disabled. And a graphics card that is supported/good enough. So what kind of machine/driver does it run on, you can copy the contents of Help->About to provide the information (use the "copy to clipboard" button and just put it here in the thread).

Quote:
3. it seems that pressing 'esc' doesn't reset the camera. What's the easiest way to do that?


Try Shift + Esc instead.


2021-07-26 08:13:22
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
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Quistess wrote:
In gfx settings ALM is constantly greyed out no matter what other options I check to try and get it to appear clickable. toggling the slider from 'High' to 'Ultra' seems to effectively turn on ALM, but the checkbox remains unticked and closing the prefferences window always turns off ALM even if I click 'apply' or 'ok'.
Available graphics settings depend on your GPU and graphics driver. Not knowing what they are, I cannot help... But the ALM setting is always disabled by default in my viewer, even with "Ultra" graphics preset, since it is totally dispensable (never using it myself). With modern GPUs, you should however always be able to enable it, after the other shaders ("Bump mapping and shiny", "Atmospheric shaders" and "Rigged mesh skinning shader") have been enabled. If you cannot, the viewer log will tell you what is missing on your system (post the log if you want me to diagnose your issue). Be aware also that the "Extended environment shaders" are more demanding than Windlight's ones, and when they are enabled, they might cause the ALM option to become unavailable on some old hardware/GPUs...

Finally, be sure to close the Preferences floater with OK, else (i.e. when closing the floater with "Cancel" or the "x" button), any change done to your settings would get reverted... This is the wanted behaviour.

Quote:
A bit of a minor thing, but is there an easy way to teleport in the z direction? unlike other viewers I can't edit the url at the top to specify a z height.
I don't know what "other viewers" you are referring to, but this is definitely a non-standard feature; the status bar is "normally" (i.e. in the official viewer) not editable. You may TP vertically (or otherwise) via the "World map" floater: in the location line (on the bottom right), change the third number (the altitude), then press TAB (or select another field with the mouse) so that the "Teleport" button gets enabled, and finally press the latter. There is also the "World" -> "TP to ground level" option when such is your need.

The Cool VL Viewer is also Lua-scriptable. You could easily implement a "chat command line" to TP in the Z direction, or even (with more complication) implement a full floater to add more TPing features of your own brew... Examples are given in the Lua scripting and viewer automation feature thread and its PDF manual version.

Quote:
it seems that pressing 'esc' doesn't reset the camera. What's the easiest way to do that?
ESC got unwanted side effects (such as closing some floaters or the chat input line), thus why I changed the camera reset shortcut to SHIFT ESC (IIRC that was like the first or second patch I made to LL's code, back in 2007... and the Cool SL Viewer was born !).

Please see the Cool VL Viewer features shortcuts.


2021-07-26 08:32:05
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Joined: 2021-07-25 22:25:33
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Yeah, My integrated gfx is not "good enough" to use ALM, but It's not that big of a deal if draw distance is low (I usually keep it between 32 and 128) and stupid things (shadows) are off.
Quote:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz (2460.18 MHz)
Memory: 7835MB
OS version: Linux-x86_64 v5.11.8-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun, 21 Mar 2021 01:55:51 +0000
Memory manager: jemalloc v5.2.1-20210625
Graphics card vendor: Intel
Graphics card: Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (SKL GT2)
OpenGL version: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 21.1.0
Detected VRAM: 0MB
J2C decoder: OpenJPEG: 1.4.0.635f
Audio driver: FMOD Studio v2.02.01 (PulseAudio)
Networking backend: libcurl/7.47.0 OpenSSL/1.0.2u zlib/1.2.11
Embedded browser: Dullahan 1.12.2/CEF 91.1.22/Chromium 91.0.4472.164
Packets lost: 10/40392 (0.0%)


also, while I'm posting info, my terminal keeps getting spammed with:
Quote:
2021-07-26 22:18:45Z WARNING: LLVoiceClient::stateMachine: Using the deprecated Linux SLVoice binary. Expect voice to be flaky...
/home/****/SOURCE/Second_Life/CoolViewer/1.28.2.33 install/bin/SLVoice: error while loading shared libraries: libidn.so.11: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
2021-07-26 22:18:46Z WARNING: ll_apr_warn_status: APR: Connection refused
2021-07-26 22:18:46Z WARNING: LLVoiceClient::stateMachine: Using the deprecated Linux SLVoice binary. Expect voice to be flaky...
/home/****/SOURCE/Second_Life/CoolViewer/1.28.2.33 install/bin/SLVoice: error while loading shared libraries: libidn.so.11: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

(even when I try to turn voice off; I never use it.) which makes it a bit hard to find useful stuff in the log.

I can turn on Extended environment shaders, and cloth shaders, but "Bump mapping and shiny" (which is what I really want), ALM, and Water reflections all remain grey no matter what other boxes I tick.
there's also a line that says ("no shadows, no materials") with no box next to it.

Being able to TP acurately through the map floater Is quite nice :D and shift-escape is a nice addition now that I think about it.
The shortcut list is quite useful; might be nice to have it in the help dropdown (I see the lua scripting guide is already there ;) )

Quote:
CTRL SHIFT A: toggles the objects "Area search" floater; the corresponding menu entry is in the "View" menu.

I'm not seeing it in the view menu, but the shortcut works :)

Thanks!


2021-07-26 22:41:42
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
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Quistess wrote:
Yeah, My integrated gfx is not "good enough" to use ALM
.../...
I can turn on Extended environment shaders, and cloth shaders, but "Bump mapping and shiny" (which is what I really want), ALM, and Water reflections all remain grey no matter what other boxes I tick.
there's also a line that says ("no shadows, no materials") with no box next to it.
Indeed.. Intel iGPUs of this generation are not good enough. EDIT: see my next post...

Quote:
also, while I'm posting info, my terminal keeps getting spammed with:
.../...

RTFM !... Your system simply lacks the 32 bits libraries for the (deprecated) Linux client. Install Wine instead, and use the provided install-wine-SLVoice.sh script...

Quote:
Quote:
CTRL SHIFT A: toggles the objects "Area search" floater; the corresponding menu entry is in the "View" menu.

I'm not seeing it in the view menu, but the shortcut works :)
The entry moved (a long time ago) from the "View" to the "World" menu... Fixed in the FAQ.


2021-07-26 23:49:56
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
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In fact, with regards to bump & shiny shaders, it appears that an old (and no more needed) work-around for an Intel HD graphics driver crash bug under Linux prevents them to be enabled...

I removed that old work around for next release, and you can do the same thing with current release by simply removing:
Code:
RenderCubeMap            0   0
line 332 of the app_settings/featuretable.txt file in the viewer installation directory...

I also added:
Code:
Intel UHD Graphics            .*Intel.*UHD Graphics.*            3      1
line 318 (i.e. before the first "Intel HD Graphics" line) of the app_settings/gpu_table.txt file, meaning UHD graphics are considered "class 3" GPUs, since modern Intel iGPUs are now capable to render everything, albeit at a slow frame rate... This modification merely changes the recommended presets (as set via the "Low" to "Ultra" slider), but won't change what features are available or not.


2021-07-27 09:16:09
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Joined: 2021-07-25 22:25:33
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Thanks!


2021-07-27 17:01:25
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