A better viewer than the recent Firestorm? (March21)

[Mollymews]

1 hour ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

But with the TPV devs, they can get it for free?

 

(This is the second dangerously sarky post in uder 5 minutes, I think I'm over-tired)

is all good

before Linden can include TPV code then it has to be formally submitted.  But the TPV doesn't have to submit it if they don't want too

like Linden suggested recently at a User Group meeting that they would welcome Firestorm submitting their LSL preprocessor

Firestorm doesn't have to do this for free. Firestorm could  ask Linden to make a financial contribution to their fund for this code. And if this was to happen then a future of paid submits could eventuate

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

17 hours ago, Mollymews said:

And if this was to happen then a future of paid submits could eventuate

I wonder if the GPL-series of licences accommodate this?

It does sound like a feasible way forwards.

[NiranV Dean]

20 hours ago, Mollymews said:

Firestorm doesn't have to do this for free. Firestorm could  ask Linden to make a financial contribution to their fund for this code. And if this was to happen then a future of paid submits could eventuate

And this would be the end of all good.

This could lead into everyone hoarding their stuff (more than we already do) and only giving it out for money which i highly doubt LL is willing to pay eventually leading to complete stagnation in open source development and the death thereof.

Look what Bethesda got for making mods paid. They got a massive ****storm, deserved.

[Mollymews]

4 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

I wonder if the GPL-series of licences accommodate this?

It does sound like a feasible way forwards.

 

1 hour ago, NiranV Dean said:

And this would be the end of all good.

This could lead into everyone hoarding their stuff (more than we already do) and only giving it out for money which i highly doubt LL is willing to pay eventually leading to complete stagnation in open source development and the death thereof.

provided that the official Linden source code base remains LGPL then people can still make their own viewers and they still have to abide by the LGPL license

the Linden code submit process doesn't have to change the license. Getting paid for submits that Linden ask for, only changes the submit process

a way it could be done is that Linden publicly publish all code submitted to them in a easy to browse format.  And from this list Linden could pick the ones they want ( and pay something for them).  Everybody else could pull the bits they want from the list  and stick it in their viewer, knowing that they are still bound by the license

[Beq Janus]

2 hours ago, NiranV Dean said:

And this would be the end of all good.

This could lead into everyone hoarding their stuff (more than we already do) and only giving it out for money which i highly doubt LL is willing to pay eventually leading to complete stagnation in open source development and the death thereof.

Look what Bethesda got for making mods paid. They got a massive ****storm, deserved.

It is undoubtedly a very tricky road to go down. It would be a very tricky and, I suspect ultimately destructive path as you say. As soon as payments get involved things get complicated people have expectations and demands (not that some people don't already treat TPVs as if we owe them something lol) and a proper commerical relationship between a TPV and LL would change the entire working relationship. 

23 hours ago, Mollymews said:

Firestorm doesn't have to do this for free. Firestorm could  ask Linden to make a financial contribution to their fund for this code. And if this was to happen then a future of paid submits could eventuate

I don;t think yo meant it explicitly, but just to be clear as it is raised from time to time; there is no "firestorm fund" per se.  As a registered non-profit that line is very carefully trodden or things become extremely complex. We've had occasional fundraisers in the past, these typically involve a short term sale of some item of merchandise in order to raise very specific targeted funds and those are to cover out of pocket expenses such as the web servers and certain commercial software licenses that we otherwise have to fund ourselves. Not one penny passes to any individual in the FS team.

This is a central tenet of how FS operates, it avoids complicated taxation (consider that the team is international, but the non-profit has to exist in some legal regime - for FS it is as a US non-profit) which then means accountants a host of legal issues and perhaps most importantly "entitlement". We'll have all seen posts in group chats or here or elsewhere, from time to time, from users that clearly feel entitled to some bug fix or other, if any payments are ever involved then people start to feel that they have rights that they simply do not and as an entirely volunteer organisation we (and many other TPVs) could never meet. @NiranV Deanquite famously makes it clear on his website that his viewer is exactly that "his viewer" and nobody but he gets to call the shots. When payments get involved that independence is increasingly hard to maintain and as such it is avoided.

Having said that, in general, when LL ask for a contribution the TPV will do so if it is possible to do so and simple enough to be worth the extra effort. However, as I have discovered, this "extra effort" can be far more demanding than writing a given feature in the first place, and in some cases due to inter-dependencies on another developers code it can prove impossible to give the lab what they need in a legally acceptable way. 

There are some TPV devs that refuse to sign a contribution agreement (which is an entirely valid position - it does require you to give over personal details and technically allows the lab to approach your RL employer, which may not end well). There are ,of course, former TPV devs that are no longer contactable for all kinds of reasons.

And yes with the viewer code being open source you'd think that it was just free to pick and choose, and for other TPVs this is to some extent true. We TPV devs and TPV projects in the wider sense have personal codes of conduct and generally agreements where we don't typically use another TPV's features without them having publicly released it or granted explicit permission. It is only fair after all that they should get the credit for their innovation, and we ours. Most (but not all) TPVs follow this. It is of course also important that attribution is given, you will often see on commits from myself, Ansa etc. on FS, credits for code coming from Rye (Alchemy) or Niran etc. and they likewise include us in either their comments or commit messages or both. (We also credit the lab of course, every FS release note has an extensive section that details those fixes and features that come from the upstream source).

For the lab though, as a commerical entity, it is different, they should never lift code directly from the open source domain, it is risky and the lawyers would be severely displeased. There are many issues with them doing this but mostly it ties their hands should they ever want/need to change the licensing terms or sell the rights to the code only to find that someone asserts ownership of some key component and blocks them. The lab are not alone in this by any means. In my RL I have worked for large international corporations that have similar policies and thus struggles (I have had to have team members stay away from the office when due to HR mess ups where their contract renewals have not properly overlapped) every line of code that enters a corporate code base has to be accounted for if they are ever to be able to assert ownership. when we as TPV devs sign the contribution agreements we have to give up all rights to the code we contribute and demonstrate that we are in a position to do so (hence the note above about potentially contacting your RL employer). 

Anyhow, that was a very long way of saying, I agree with Niran and that the paid for contribution path is a minefield. There are ways through that minefield but it almost certainly involves employing a dev directly and that may not be feasible for many different reasons. It would also remove that person from the TPV for a period, and given that there are remarkably few of us, that may not be in the best interests of things.

 

[Mollymews]

@Beq Janus

thanks for your thoughtful post. I think that you have stated the Firestorm position quite well

you are right that paid for submits could change the nature of TPV development, and may have some impact on developer availability to work on TPVs should a developer choose to start making code submits directly to Linden on the chance that they might get paid for their work

but I am not sure that paid for submits would change the rules that Linden currently abide by in accepting code submits. Whether Linden pay or not doesn't change the rules of copyright or patent

nor does it mean that a person or team couldn't make a submit for free should they choose too. As not every developer wants to get paid for doing this kind of work.  They make enough money doing other things to sustain their RL and only do it because is interesting to them

 

 

Edited September 19, 2021 by Mollymews
verb

[RicDelMoro]

I'm using KOKUA VIEWER in the version without RLV ( yes, they have this option ) and I can say this viewer is MUCH faster than Firestorm. Not only in places with more avatars, but much faster to rezz things like parked cars in a big store ( test it please at places like "VIX MOTORS" or even at "SHOP n HOP" and you'll see ).The viewer is more simple than FS but also has a bult in AO.I recomend for who wants to feel the old pleasure to play without sad worries.

https://kokua.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KKA/pages/15237201/Downloads 

I insist that you try this viewer not because it's better ( in fact it's poorer in tools than F.S. ), but because it's perfectly playable and we're in a sort of "F.S. emergency", they screwed up the F.S. viewer and while they don't fix the mischiefs, Kokua is an option that makes we smile again.

Edited October 21, 2021 by RicDelMoro

[Ansariel Hiller]

10 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

I insist that you try this viewer not because it's better ( in fact it's poorer in tools than F.S. ), but because it's perfectly playable and we're in a sort of "F.S. emergency", they screwed up the F.S. viewer and while they don't fix the mischiefs, Kokua is an option that makes we smile again.

You insist? 🤣

[Solar Legion]

Except ..... they didn't "screw up" Firestorm.

[RicDelMoro]

Let's pretend everything is fine and the Firestorm is not a big fat motorhome with a Formula 1 steering wheel...😈

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by RicDelMoro

[Lyssa Greymoon]

The current version runs great for me. Better than any previous version I can recall.

 

[Aishagain]

FS 6.4.21 is by far a better viewer than many, it is far superior to 6.4.12 and 6.4.13, thanks to render pathway improvements, in a large part thanks to LL.  Perhaps the caching improvements that LL are pushing will find their way into the next FS and things will improve still further.

The biggest performance hit that EVERYONE has suffered is due to the new render pathway that LL pushed us down in creating EEP. 

Eventually that Edsel will perform, but right now every EEP viewer is a bag of nails compared to its Windlight predecessor.

[MarissaOrloff]

16 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

The viewer is more simple than FS but also has a bult in AO.I recomend for who wants to feel the old pleasure to play without sad worries.

I insist that you try this viewer not because it's better ( in fact it's poorer in tools than F.S. ), but because it's perfectly playable and we're in a sort of "F.S. emergency", they screwed up the F.S. viewer and while they don't fix the mischiefs, Kokua is an option that makes we smile again.

Firestorm is not "screwed up" in any way. It performs beautifully. 

If you want that old school look to give you that "old pleasure" try Henri's "Cool VL Viewer". It's like taking a trip back to 2010 and before with a V1 interface. Great performance on that viewer as well.

[RicDelMoro]

As I said in the F.S. release page :"I’m training to use EEP with the Linden Viewer and KOKUA for some time ago(before F.S. EEPs).So it’s not a problem for me.But the Firestorm EEP version is very slower than the Kokua or Linden viewers.Ex : if I go to a place with more than 10 people,I can use Kokua with avatars complexity as 70 k well.But with Firestorm even setting it as minimun complexity and lowing all settings,I see my PC almost freezing…terrible.My logical conclusion : the Firestorm EEP version has something wrong.You can’t blame EEP because It already had in the others viewers."
MarissaOrloff said:"If you want that old school look to give you that "old pleasure" ....."The old pleasure I referred to is the pleasure of seeing avatars rezzing well not "stealing" by sliding the complexity control down or even hitting the "just friends" button...it's not about viewer layout.

My concern when I started this topic is to help the average user ( my self included ) to enjoy playing and not abandon SL, sorry if some people here have an almost religious frenzy for some TPV viewers.

Those ones are satisfied with their viewers obviously don't need to change or try anything, my advice  is for the unhappy ones.

I know a viewer like Kokua is not good enough for builders, but it's good to go to complex and crowded places, so my hint it's " just try it".

Edited October 22, 2021 by RicDelMoro

[Ardy Lay]

7 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

some people here have an almost religious frenzy for some TPV viewers

Indeed

[Drake1 Nightfire]

8 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

As I said in the F.S. release page :"I’m training to use EEP with the Linden Viewer and KOKUA for some time ago(before F.S. EEPs).So it’s not a problem for me.But the Firestorm EEP version is very slower than the Kokua or Linden viewers.Ex : if I go to a place with more than 10 people,I can use Kokua with avatars complexity as 70 k well.But with Firestorm even setting it as minimun complexity and lowing all settings,I see my PC almost freezing…terrible.My logical conclusion : the Firestorm EEP version has something wrong.You can’t blame EEP because It already had in the others viewers."
MarissaOrloff said:"If you want that old school look to give you that "old pleasure" ....."The old pleasure I referred to is the pleasure of seeing avatars rezzing well not "stealing" by sliding the complexity control down or even hitting the "just friends" button...it's not about viewer layout.

My concern when I started this topic is to help the average user ( my self included ) to enjoy playing and not abandon SL, sorry if some people here have an almost religious frenzy for some TPV viewers.

Those ones are satisfied with their viewers obviously don't need to change or try anything, my advice  is for the unhappy ones.

I know a viewer like Kokua is not good enough for builders, but it's good to go to complex and crowded places, so my hint it's " just try it".

i have a dinosaur of a processor and still get good FPS on FS in crowded sims. Its entirely dependent on your PC and your FS settings.. 

Firestorm 6.4.21 (64531) Jul 21 2021 21:00:53 (64bit / SSE2) (Firestorm-Releasex64) with Havok support
Release Notes

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 645 Processor (3100.02 MHz)
Memory: 20480 MB
Concurrency: 4
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 19043.1288)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2
Graphics Card Memory: 4096 MB

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 30.0.14.9613
OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 496.13

RestrainedLove API: (disabled)
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.8 nghttp2/1.40.0
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v8.1
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.01.09
Dullahan: 1.8.0.202011211324
  CEF: 81.3.10+gb223419+chromium-81.0.4044.138
  Chromium: 81.0.4044.138
LibVLC Version: 2.2.8
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.10.0000.32327

Settings mode: Phoenix
Viewer Skin: Latency (beta) (Extra Plain)
Window size: 1360x705 px
Font Used: Deja Vu (96 dpi)
Font Size Adjustment: 0 pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 96 m
Bandwidth: 1250 kbit/s
LOD factor: 2.5
Render quality: High-Ultra (6/7)
Advanced Lighting Model: Yes
Texture memory: Dynamic (2192 MB min / 10% Cache / 10% VRAM)
Disk cache: Max size 2048.0 MB (100.0% used)
Built with MSVC version 1916
Packets Lost: 9/2,100 (0.4%)
October 22 2021 05:20:11 SLT

 

BTW you can insist all you want, I am not using it. 

[Lyssa Greymoon]

12 hours ago, RicDelMoro said:

My concern when I started this topic is to help the average user ( my self included ) to enjoy playing and not abandon SL, sorry if some people here have an almost religious frenzy for some TPV viewers.

Not having the same experience as you is not a religious frenzy. I've found Firestorm to be reliable and perform as well as or better than the Linden viewer. Including in extremely crowded venues. I'm happy to give other viewers a spin. So far I haven't found any compelling reasons to switch from FS as my daily driver viewer.

The one thing I see much better on my PC than yours that may be making a difference is the memory. I have more than 8GB in the PCs I run SL on, which may explain why our respective experiences in crowded places are very different.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Lyssa Greymoon

[RicDelMoro]

I think some people didn't understand that I'm giving a feedback about the beginning of the topic : I asked for help,people mentioned some viewers ( thanks guys ), I tested many and I found one quite light and suitable for those who are having problems with F.S..
It's obvious that whoever is happy with their viewer doesn't need to spend time testing others.
I'm not spamming and I'm not even a software salesman...LOL... 🤣

[KjartanEno]

I think Kokua is a great viewer. It offers a couple nice features not found on other viewers. For example:

1. Kokua still renders invisiprims in advanced lighting mode, which is good for owners of some yachts where the water would otherwise appear inside the hull. Firestorm only renders invisiprims when advanced lighting is off, which isn't quite as nice to look at, assuming one has a good enough computer to handle shadows and reflective water, and one doesn't want to sail a waterlogged boat. 

2. Kokua will hide mesh attached above the neck while in first person view. This is nice when seated in a boat or other vehicle and looking around in first person view. You won't see your mesh ears, hair, or tongue, for example, if they're using attachment points above the neck (might include the neck attachment point but I'm not logged in right now to verify that).

However, as long as one is using the EXACT SAME graphics settings, there is hardly any difference in performance between Firestorm and Kokua. There was a time before the last Firestorm release in which Kokua had the "opaque water" option but Firestorm did not. When you don't need to see pretty water, that setting alone can make a big difference in framerate. Again, Kokua is a great viewer, but there's not enough of a difference between it and Firestorm right now to claim that either is a better viewer for performance, in my opinion.

Edited October 22, 2021 by KjartanEno
clarification

[Lyssa Greymoon]

19 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

1. Kokua still renders invisiprims in advanced lighting mode, which is good for owners of some yachts where the water would otherwise appear inside the hull. Firestorm only renders invisiprims when advanced lighting is off, which isn't quite as nice to look at, assuming one has a good enough computer to handle shadows and reflective water, and one doesn't want to sail a waterlogged boat. 

Is there a setting for this? It doesn't look like invisiprims are being rendered with ALM on in the Mac version.

[KjartanEno]

13 minutes ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Is there a setting for this? It doesn't look like invisiprims are being rendered with ALM on in the Mac version.

I logged in and performed a quick test. I use the Linux version with RLV. I don't know of any specific setting. It just works. Are you sure you're using an invisiprim? They show as green when viewed using CTRL+ALT+T (or Mac equivalent).

[Lyssa Greymoon]

14 minutes ago, KjartanEno said:

I logged in and performed a quick test. I use the Linux version with RLV. I don't know of any specific setting. It just works. Are you sure you're using an invisiprim? They show as green when viewed using CTRL+ALT+T (or Mac equivalent).

Kinda sure. I went to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nautilus - Shalim/253/201/23 to check it out and the invisiprims in the drydock acted exactly the same in Kokua (non-RLV) and Firestorm.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Lyssa Greymoon

[KjartanEno]

Just now, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Kinda sure. I went to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nautilus - Shalim/253/201/23 to check it out and the invisiprims in the drydock acted exactly the same in Kokua and Firestorm.

Well, this is most odd. I'll have to look into the advanced and developer menus to see if there is a specific setting when I get a chance. Also, try the Mac version of Cool VL Viewer since it has the same capability to 'show' invisiprims  in ALM too, at least on the Linux version.

[KjartanEno]

@Lyssa Greymoon

Open Debug Settings and  check to see if "RenderDeferredShowInvisiprims: Render invisiprims (prims that hide the avatar) when "Lighting and Shadows" is selected. Only works if your graphics card supports OpenGl v3." is set to TRUE.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

1 hour ago, KjartanEno said:

@Lyssa Greymoon

Open Debug Settings and  check to see if "RenderDeferredShowInvisiprims: Render invisiprims (prims that hide the avatar) when "Lighting and Shadows" is selected. Only works if your graphics card supports OpenGl v3." is set to TRUE.

It’s a Mac thing then, despite supporting OpenGL 4.1, the viewer is stuck on 2.1. That debug option isn’t available.