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Windows installation HOWTO
http://sldev.free.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=80		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2009-06-02 18:23:31 ]
Post subject:  Windows installation HOWTO
Here are the installation steps (in this example, for v1.28.2.42):

  • First, download the viewer from the website. In our example, the installer is named: CoolVLViewer-1.28.2.42-Windows-Setup.exe.

  • Execute the installer. You will go through the following dialogs:

    Image Image
    Whatever the directory you choose to install the viewer into, it will be automatically remembered by the installer for future updates.
    NOTE: due to a bug in the installer program, when installing on a 64 bits system (which is now always the case for the provided official builds), it will suggest the "Program Files (x86)" folder. It does not really matter (the viewer will work fine, whatever the installation folder), but you would of course be well founded to point it instead to the right folder ("Programs Files" or "Programs"). EDIT: the default folder is now forced to \Program Files\).


    Image
    Nothing to say about this simple, progress dialog... Just watch and relax ! :)


    Image
    And we are done !...


NOTES:
  • If you have the "Program Compatibility Assistant" service ("PcaSvc") enabled, it may pop up a warning saying "This program might not have installed correctly" and propose you to "Reinstall using recommended settings": DO NOT "reinstall" anything (it would actually break everything !), and simply dismiss the dialog by choosing "This program installed correctly". (*)
    I would personally advise to disable the "compatibility assistant service" on your system: this thing is plain bogus (99.9% of the time, it will spew warnings about false positive compatibility issues) and totally useless anyway (you can switch yourself the compatibility modes from the Properties dialog for problematic program files), plus it can prove dangerous by applying "fixes" that break fully compatible programs.
  • The Cool VL Viewer makes use of the gstreamer libraries, CODECs and plugins to play streaming media (land media and "shared" media). You will need to install the 64 bits gstreamer runtimes if you wish to be able to view streaming media. Get them from here and perform a "Complete" installation.
  • Do not forget to tell the Windows firewall about the Cool VL Viewer and its auxiliary programs (SLPlugin and SLVoice), else the firewall might block them from accessing the network...
  • It is also highly recommended to white-list the viewer cache directory in your anti-virus; not doing so would cause the anti-virus to scan every file the viewer writes or updates in the cache, causing a massive slow down when many such files are created/updated, such as during rezzing. Starting with the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.29, you can get a full list of the viewer binaries and directories by clicking on the "Binaries and directories in use" link in the "About" floater and from the "Paths for anti-virus whitelisting..." entry in the "Advanced" menu (once logged in).

(*) For the techies among you, this warning is due to the fact that the installer program (InstallJammer) is an old one, which did not have the Windows Vista (and newer) compatibility keys built into its manifest. You can safely ignore and dismiss such bogus warnings (the installed program is fully compatible, even if the installer is "old" and doesn't advertise itself as newer-Windows-compatible: and yes, the installer itself is also actually fully compatible, even with Windows 11).
And no, you can't change the installer manifest with Visual Studio MT.exe, because InstallJammer is a TclKit program (a Tcl/Tk program with its own Tcl/Tk interpreter embedded), and MT does not know how to deal with such programs (it would totally break the installer by overwriting/corrupting the Tcl/Tk bundled app). Only a full re-compilation with an updated manifest file could solve the issue, but alas the current MinGW/CygWin bundles prove incapable of rebuilding that old (but totally gorgeous) InstallJammer installer... If anyone got an old MinGW (or CygWin) bundle available (2012-ish or older bundle), that might properly rebuild InstallJammer, please let me know...
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2009-08-01 21:40:53 ]
Post subject:  Where are the settings files and logs ?
Where the Hell does the viewer store its settings files and logs (chat logs, IMs and groups logs, technical logs) under Windows ?

The chat and IM logs path can be found in the Preference floater, "IM & Logs" tab, "Logging options" section, next to the "Change Path" button. In this directory you will find as many sub-folders as you have got avatars (and for avatars on OpenSim grids, the folder is named following the avatar_name@grid_name convention), each containing the logs associated with them.

For the technical logs, see this wiki page.

The user settings are in a user_settings sub-directory, in the same directory as the technical logs folder.

Starting with the Cool VL Viewer v1.32.2.29, you can get a full list of all viewer binaries and directories by clicking on the "Binaries and directories in use" link in the "About" floater.
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2011-11-12 18:41:24 ]
Post subject:  Windows uninstalling HOWTO
Uninstalling can be done by simply executing the "uninstall.exe" program present in the Cool VL Viewer installation directory (the "Uninstall Cool VL Viewer v1.26.X" menu entry may also be used to launch the corresponding "uninstall.exe" program).

"uninstall.exe" removes all the files part of the Cool VL Viewer installation, the menu entry and the registry entries. It won't uninstall any supplementary files that you would have added to the viewer installation directory.

Please note that you do not need to uninstall a release (e.g. v1.26.18.14) before updating to a newer release (e.g. v1.26.18.15): simply install the new release in the same directory as the old one if you don't want to keep the old release, or choose another destination directory to install the new release if you wish to keep the old release at hand.
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2011-11-12 19:03:23 ]
Post subject:  Windows static UI sounds installation HOWTO
The Cool VL Viewer is capable of using "static" UI sounds instead of UI sounds downloaded from the grid asset server. This has several advantages:
  • Static UI sounds play without delay (they do not require a first download, and they are pre-decoded).
  • Static UI sounds can play at the login screen (i.e. before the viewer connects to the grid).
  • Static UI sounds prevent the UI sounds mix encountered when you log in different grids (since non-static UI sounds are stored in the viewer asset cache and are different in SL and OpenSim grids but yet share the same UUID, you can get a mix of them when you log in various grids).
Alas, Linden Lab does not allow TPV developers to distribute SL's default UI sounds together with their viewer (this is pretty stupid, since they allow to distribute all the other UI components, such as the icons... but LL does a lot of stupid things, alas !).

So, to take benefit from the static UI sounds feature of the viewer, you will have to install them yourself via the following procedure...

Proceed as follow:
  • Log in and in the "Advanced" -> "Caches" menu, select the "Clear asset cache (after restart)" entry: this is only required to get rid of the sounds that have have been downloaded from other grids and have been saved in the assets cache.
  • Log off/close the viewer and launch it again/log into SL.
  • Make sure the master audio and UI audio are not muted and their level set so that UI sounds are audible (else they won't play at all and therefore won't get decoded).
  • Go to the "Advanced" -> "User Interface" menu, and choose "Decode all UI sounds". You should hear all the UI sounds playing in sequence.
  • Once all UI sounds have been heard (this may take a few seconds for the viewer to download them all), still in the "Advanced" -> "User Interface" menu, click the "Save decoded UI sounds" entry.

Done ! From now on, the Cool VL Viewer will use the (now static) decoded sound files present in the user_settings/ui_sounds/ directory instead of fetching them from the asset server of the grid you are connected to.
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2016-07-16 22:23:29 ]
Post subject:  Streaming media support
The Cool VL Viewer makes use of the gstreamer v1.0 libraries and CODECs to play media streams.

In order to see media streams playing with the Cool VL Viewer, you will need to download and install the corresponding 64 bits gstreamer package.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I have seen problems (some media types not playing reliably or at all) with gstreamer v1.12 and newer versions under Windows (no such problem under Linux) : better using the v1.10.5 release (or older) for now, which is what the former link is pointing at. You may also have some success with gstreamer-1.0-mingw-x86_64-1.16.3, which seems to be working ok. With all versions after v1.14, the mingw packages should be chosen over msvc ones (which have a much poorer media compatibility, from what I could see).

Please make sure to perform a "Complete" installation, or use the "Custom" installation option and install all the playback related CODECs, the libav wrapper and everything play-back related (you can skip the encoding CODECs, the DVD support and the devel tools).
If you have several Windows installations (in different partitions) on your computer, make sure to choose "Custom" and to check where the installer wants to install its files (it may choose another partition than C:, so you would have to change the install path manually to C:\gstreamer).
Author:  Henri Beauchamp [ 2023-12-07 11:03:59 ]
Post subject:  Graphics drivers settings
While the Cool VL Viewer normally does not need any specific drivers setting to work out of the box, using the right settings will make it much faster and smoother: one such setting with a major performances hit is "threaded optimizations". Most often and by default, this setting is on "Auto", but it might result in the drivers not enabling it while running the Cool VL Viewer, which would badly impact performances.

If you got a NVIDIA card (1), open the NVIDIA drivers control panel (right click on the desktop and pick the corresponding entry from the context menu to launch NVIDIA's configuration utility), then proceed as follow:
  • Click on "3D Settings" then on "Manage 3D settings".
  • Scroll down to the bottom of the list and locate the "Threaded Optimizations" parameter.
  • Change the value from "Auto" to "On".
  • Make sure "Triple buffering" is set to "On" (this prevents any tearing to happen, even when VSync is off).
  • Make sure "Vertical Sync" (or GSync) is "Off" or set to "Let application decide" (2), i.e. it must NOT be left "On" here.
  • Click "Apply" to save the changes.

All in all, here is what the NVIDIA 3D settings should look like (the UI is shown in French; sorry for non-French speakers).

AMD and Intel graphics drivers settings should be set the same way (threaded rendering on, VSync (or FreeSync) off, triple buffering on) for best performances, but not owning any such graphics cards, I cannot give you a step by step configuration procedure...

(1) Unlike some other viewers, the Cool VL Viewer does not setup a custom profile for itself with NVIDIA Windows drivers; this lets you, the user, in control of what settings you want applied or not, instead of imposing a choice that could potentially fail to work for your specific hardware or driver version.
(2) To limit frame rates in the Cool VL Viewer, always prefer using its own frame limiting smart algorithm (which uses "free time" to perform useful tasks such as rezzing faster, instead of just sleeping the CPU): see "Frame rate limit" is in the "Preferences" floater, "Cool features tab", "Misc.' sub-tab (do read the tool tip).
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