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Two questions about reset view and high resolution snapshots 
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
Posts: 186
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Hello Henri, hello all.

I just had two questions about 2 features I'm using all the time:
  • When I reset my view by using Shift+Escape, my avatar ends up turning to face the last thing I was looking at. This is a bit bugging me for two reasons: first, what I'm looking at is nobody's business; second, I often get a bit lost when I have cammed around a lot and can't really figure out which way I'm turned after the view reset. As far as I know, most SL viewers now prefer to keep the av as it was when you started to cam around, and I'd really like to have that possibility too. Would it be possible to have an option for this behaviour?
  • The second question is probably a bigger one: while there wasn't any up to date Cool VL Viewer version available for the Mac, I've been using Singularity, and it seems it has more or less solved a very annoying issue with high-resolution snapshots. Today, with Cool VL Viewer, what happens when you take a high resolution snapshot is shown here: http://erikathorkveld.tumblr.com/post/83699106546/issues-with-cool-vl-viewer-when-doing-high - I've used 1.6 times the size of my window there (3200x2000). As you can see, there's a seam appearing almost right in the middle of the snapshot, and even worse, the lighting is slightly different on both sides of the seam. This makes Cool VL Viewer really hard to use for some decent photography, which is really too bad… I have no idea how they solved it in Singularity, or if the fix can be back-ported to Cool VL Viewer easily or not, but I'd really love to be able to do high resolution snapshots with having to bother about that…

Thanks!
- Erika -


2014-04-24 06:55:31
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
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ErikaThorkveld wrote:
Hello Henri, hello all.

I just had two questions about 2 features I'm using all the time:
  • When I reset my view by using Shift+Escape, my avatar ends up turning to face the last thing I was looking at. This is a bit bugging me for two reasons: first, what I'm looking at is nobody's business; second, I often get a bit lost when I have cammed around a lot and can't really figure out which way I'm turned after the view reset. As far as I know, most SL viewers now prefer to keep the av as it was when you started to cam around, and I'd really like to have that possibility too. Would it be possible to have an option for this behaviour?
Well, if you can point me to a viewer that successfully and consistently prevents this behaviour, and to the corresponding setting in the said viewer, I'll gladly backport the feature, because yes, it's a little annoying.

Quote:
  • The second question is probably a bigger one: while there wasn't any up to date Cool VL Viewer version available for the Mac, I've been using Singularity, and it seems it has more or less solved a very annoying issue with high-resolution snapshots. Today, with Cool VL Viewer, what happens when you take a high resolution snapshot is shown here: http://erikathorkveld.tumblr.com/post/83699106546/issues-with-cool-vl-viewer-when-doing-high - I've used 1.6 times the size of my window there (3200x2000). As you can see, there's a seam appearing almost right in the middle of the snapshot, and even worse, the lighting is slightly different on both sides of the seam. This makes Cool VL Viewer really hard to use for some decent photography, which is really too bad… I have no idea how they solved it in Singularity, or if the fix can be back-ported to Cool VL Viewer easily or not, but I'd really love to be able to do high resolution snapshots with having to bother about that…
The "fix" for this issue introduces other (non-trivial) problems, which is the reason why that "fix" didn't yet get backported to the Cool VL Viewer. I'll have a look again at it to see if those problems have now been solved, but I can't make any promise about when the backport will be done (obviously, it won't be done if the problems are still there).


2014-04-24 07:38:26
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
Posts: 186
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Henri Beauchamp wrote:
Well, if you can point me to a viewer that successfully and consistently prevents this behaviour, and to the corresponding setting in the said viewer, I'll gladly backport the feature, because yes, it's a little annoying.

Singularity does it, but it's not an option: it's just how it does, all the time. I didn't have any issue with how they did it during the time I used it, but I can't say if it always works…

Quote:
The "fix" for this issue introduces other (non-trivial) problems, which is the reason why that "fix" didn't yet get backported to the Cool VL Viewer. I'll have a look again at it to see if those problems have now been solved, but I can't make any promise about when the backport will be done (obviously, it won't be done if the problems are still there).

Ha, ha! Why am I not surprised? ;) To be honest, I've had issues with photos in Singularity too. The seams and lighting differences were gone, but that doesn't help a lot when the image they save for your photo is all black. :twisted: Not sure it is due to this "fix" though, but I wouldn't be surprised… Thanks a lot anyway for what you can do. :)


2014-04-24 08:35:33
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
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ErikaThorkveld wrote:
Henri Beauchamp wrote:
Well, if you can point me to a viewer that successfully and consistently prevents this behaviour, and to the corresponding setting in the said viewer, I'll gladly backport the feature, because yes, it's a little annoying.

Singularity does it, but it's not an option: it's just how it does, all the time. I didn't have any issue with how they did it during the time I used it, but I can't say if it always works…
I don't think it does... The problem is that the camera focus point is transmitted to the server, and when it changes in a way that would cause the avatar to turn around to face the new focus point, the server just turns the avatar around... Of course, you may prevent the viewer to send the camera info to the server, but then you face other (much worst) problems (such as FOV issues with objects not being properly flagged as in the FOV by the server that fails to refresh their data as a consequence)...

Quote:
Quote:
The "fix" for this issue introduces other (non-trivial) problems, which is the reason why that "fix" didn't yet get backported to the Cool VL Viewer. I'll have a look again at it to see if those problems have now been solved, but I can't make any promise about when the backport will be done (obviously, it won't be done if the problems are still there).

Ha, ha! Why am I not surprised? ;) To be honest, I've had issues with photos in Singularity too. The seams and lighting differences were gone, but that doesn't help a lot when the image they save for your photo is all black. :twisted: Not sure it is due to this "fix" though, but I wouldn't be surprised…
Yes, that's one of the problems, along potential crashes due to virtual address space exhaustion when reallocating a huge amount of memory to take the huge seamless snapshot (instead of taking the snapshot in several tiles)...


2014-04-24 08:44:20
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
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Henri Beauchamp wrote:
I don't think it does... The problem is that the camera focus point is transmitted to the server, and when it changes in a way that would cause the avatar to turn around to face the new focus point, the server just turns the avatar around... Of course, you may prevent the viewer to send the camera info to the server, but then you face other (much worst) problems (such as FOV issues with objects not being properly flagged as in the FOV by the server that fails to refresh their data as a consequence)...

Darn… Really? Very strange, I could have sworn I had first seen the 'no turning round' behaviour in the official V2 viewer… They certainly wouldn't do a hack like this… Or would they? ;) I'll check if I'm not mistaken when I have time.
Quote:
Yes, that's one of the problems, along potential crashes due to virtual address space exhaustion when reallocating a huge amount of memory to take the huge seamless snapshot (instead of taking the snapshot in several tiles)...

Yeah, I've had issues that were apparently memory-related while taking photos, like textures suddenly appearing at totally wrong places, then a freeze or a crash. That looked like a memory corruption to me, and might indeed have been caused by this "fix" then… Darn… Too bad… When will there be a 64 bits version on the Mac then? ;)


2014-04-24 09:01:01
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
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Oh. Question: what is the criterion to start tiling snapshots? Is this just a factor that is greater than 1 in the snapshot window? In other words, if I take a snapshot at screen size with the SL window maximized on my huge 27" 2560x1440 screen, will it tile? That could be a solution for me if it doesn't, 2560x1440 is high-resolution enough, I guess… ;)

Edit: I just tested, and it seems it doesn't tile indeed, yay! Would be nice to have a confirmation though…


2014-04-24 10:35:47
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
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I did check the view reset behaviour in the latest version of the official SL viewer and I confirm: it does not turn the avatar when resetting the view. I was facing a wall, I locked my cam and zoomed on another wall that was completely behind me, I reset my view, and I was still facing the first wall, my av hadn't turned round…


2014-04-24 11:56:20
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Joined: 2009-03-17 18:42:51
Posts: 5523
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ErikaThorkveld wrote:
I did check the view reset behaviour in the latest version of the official SL viewer and I confirm: it does not turn the avatar when resetting the view. I was facing a wall, I locked my cam and zoomed on another wall that was completely behind me, I reset my view, and I was still facing the first wall, my av hadn't turned round…
Yes, and oddly enough, that behaviour in v2 viewers seems to be due to a race condition in the camera and avatar updates routines... In setFocusOnAvatar(), in both v1 and v2/3 code, the avatar is turned around to face the current camera's axis; in v2/3, that axis simply happens to be the avatar's one when the function is called, rather than the camera's one (in v1)... Anyway, the proper "fix" for this issue is to keep the avatar's current axis in setFocusOnAvatar(), which is the wanted behaviour anyway... I changed that for next releases, so that the Cool VL Viewer behaves the same as current v2/3 viewers (but without relying on a race condition...).


2014-04-24 17:29:30
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Joined: 2011-12-13 14:11:38
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Woohoo! Thank you! :D Now, I'll just have to wait for a month or two to get a Mac build… ;)


2014-04-24 18:37:37
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Joined: 2011-02-12 04:08:52
Posts: 46
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The reset view "fix" here has been driving me insane. I had a feeling it was intentional, and have been trying to learn to live with it, but it is persistently getting in the way of how I'm used to interacting with SL. I want the old behavior, where you can easily move your camera around to the position you want to get to, then hit shift-esc and be conveniently facing in that direction... rather than being treated to a sudden vertigo-inducing perspective rotation, followed by having to rotate yourself again manually.

Having just found and read this thread, I understand and appreciate that others may prefer the new behavior, but I would be exceedingly grateful if there were at least an option available (whether a checkbox or something hidden in the debug settings) allowing me to get the old behavior back.


2014-05-21 18:21:02
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