Viewer UI enhancements

[NiranV Dean]

You can't make undeform apply to everyone around you, unless we get a server message to tell the server which in turn triggers an automated reset skeleton for everyone around.

Edited May 8, 2021 by NiranV Dean

[Coffee Pancake]

It's one of those things that not easy to do in code (what does a broken avatar look like to a computer), but really easy for a human to spot.

It would also be better to find and fix the bug that causes the problem rather than make the band-aid better.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 5/4/2021 at 5:22 PM, Drake1 Nightfire said:

I have never understood how "Dark mode" came to be so popular. Books, newspapers, printer paper, all black text on white background. Dark mode makes my eyes hurt. It leaves after image on my vision for hours. 

Your books, newspapers, or printer paper isn't backlit (I hope).

Dark mode isn't just white-on-black either, more often it's white-on-grey, grey-on-grey or other low-contrast colors.

Either way, people's eyes are different. What works for one person might not work for others.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Ai Austin]

On 5/4/2021 at 5:19 AM, Lucia Nightfire said:

Why does landmarking a place put the landmark in the My Favorites folder instead of, idk, the Landmarks folder? 🤔

We don't really want landmarks created to appear by default in "Favorites" I would think. Its preselected and the landmark even appears in the Favourites bar until you manually select OFF that,.  A better default would be the TOP level "Landmarks" and then people can star of select Favorites if they wish.  Most would leave the default and would quickly end up with everything in Favorites otherwise.  Not good. 

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 5/4/2021 at 7:19 AM, Lucia Nightfire said:

Why does landmarking a place put the landmark in the My Favorites folder instead of, idk, the Landmarks folder? 🤔

As I recall, the "Favorites" folder is now meant for favorite locations.

Before, the Favorites folder could be used for anything. These days, you can't put anything besides landmarks into the Favorites folder itself, unless (as a workaround) you create a new regular folder within it. Any landmarks in the Favorites folder can be shown on a "Favorites Bar" near the top of your viewer.

Landmarks received in other ways still go in the Landmarks folder.

[Ai Austin]

Whoaaa.. I have just installed 6.4.20.560520 with the UI change... the removal of the ability to right click on your own avatar and see the Friends and Groups option is not helpful.  Its buried too deep. Even to select and activate a group now you have to have the menu showing, and know to go to the Communicate menu and bring up the Friends or Groups. Can this be discussed, and hopefully the options put back on the right click your own avatar menu? And perhaps for uniformity with right click on other avatars, return the View Profile (for your own profile).

I logged this "New Feature" suggestion as https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-230894 

Edited June 25, 2021 by Ai Austin

[Noelle Delaunay]

On 6/25/2021 at 2:59 PM, Ai Austin said:

Even to select and activate a group now you have to have the menu showing, and know to go to the Communicate menu and bring up the Friends or Groups.

Not sure if this helps you but bringing up the friends list is probably the most oftenly repeated action that I perform. Therefore I've mapped the shortcut for the friends list (CTRL+Shift+F) to the caps lock key with the help of autohotkey. Makes life so much easier.

[MoiraKathleen]

On 6/25/2021 at 5:59 AM, Ai Austin said:

Whoaaa.. I have just installed 6.4.20.560520 with the UI change... the removal of the ability to right click on your own avatar and see the Friends and Groups option is not helpful.  Its buried too deep. Even to select and activate a group now you have to have the menu showing, and know to go to the Communicate menu and bring up the Friends or Groups. Can this be discussed, and hopefully the options put back on the right click your own avatar menu? And perhaps for uniformity with right click on other avatars, return the View Profile (for your own profile).

I logged this "New Feature" suggestion as https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-230894 

 

6 minutes ago, Noelle Delaunay said:

Not sure if this helps you but bringing up the friends list is probably the most oftenly repeated action that I perform. Therefore I've mapped the shortcut for the friends list (CTRL+Shift+F) to the caps lock key with the help of autohotkey. Makes life so much easier.

Additionally, CTRL+Shift+G  brings up the "Group" list directly.    If you use toolbar buttons on the bottom of the screen, the "People" button brings up the pop-up window with the Nearby, Friends and Group list tabs, defaulting to whichever tab you were on when you last closed the People window pop-up.

Editted to add:

I didn't actually know about clicking on your own avatar to bring up the Friends or Group lists, so I had not realized that option was no longer there (as I had never used it).  This just goes to highlight how different users have different process flows of how they use the viewer, and the difficulty with making changes to the viewer UI without upsetting some subset of viewer users.

Edited June 26, 2021 by MoiraKathleen
added another thought

[Wulfie Reanimator]

20 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

I didn't actually know about clicking on your own avatar to bring up the Friends or Group lists, so I had not realized that option was no longer there (as I had never used it).  This just goes to highlight how different users have different process flows of how they use the viewer, and the difficulty with making changes to the viewer UI without upsetting some subset of viewer users.

This also highlights how much more the viewer could be streamlined.

[Andred Darwin]

I use quite often the SL official viewer, and I think these changes are quite welcomed, specially at the "Places window"... thank you for that!

If I could add something (although not really UI related), would be to implement the options available at the latest Firestorm viewer for "Dynamic Texture Memory" in Preferences, Graphics, Hardware Settings tab... its like night and day to be able to make use of more memory in systems/computers that would allow it,  (even on a Nvidia 1050 makes a huge difference), "texture blurring" on SL Viewer is quite irritating!

Edited June 27, 2021 by Andred Darwin
Already does! "A suggestion would be to prompt if you want to save to the Favorites tab or Landmarks folder (when using the "star" to create the landmark)."

[Shirley Marquez]

On 5/3/2021 at 7:58 PM, Fritigern Gothly said:

I am a Linux user and perhaps bringing back Linux support for the official LL viewer may help Linux users jump in quicker as well because as it is now, I can't even have a glance at the new stuffs.

Kokua tracks the official viewer closely so you shouldn't have too long a wait. This update will involve merging Kokua's UI changes with LL's changes (and possibly some thought into how the combination should look) so it may take a bit longer than some, and the upcoming holiday weekend in the US could interfere, but even given those things I wouldn't expect your wait to be more than a couple of weeks.

[Mollymews]

On 5/20/2021 at 2:15 AM, Ai Austin said:

We don't really want landmarks created to appear by default in "Favorites" I would think. Its preselected and the landmark even appears in the Favourites bar until you manually select OFF that,.  A better default would be the TOP level "Landmarks" and then people can star of select Favorites if they wish.  Most would leave the default and would quickly end up with everything in Favorites otherwise.  Not good. 

as I understand the idea behind the changes is to make the UI a little bit easier for new users.  The idea is that when a new person clicks menu: World \ Landmark This Place then the default placement is on the Favorites bar so that it is more visible to the new user. This comes at the expense of experienced users who have one more mouse click than they had before:

menu: World \ Landmark This Place. Then on dialog dropdown list: Landmark location: Landmarks. Press OK button. (Changing dropdown to Landmarks will remove the LM from Favorites bar, as will pressing Cancel button)

[Mollymews]

On 5/8/2021 at 1:33 PM, NiranV Dean said:

You can't make undeform apply to everyone around you, unless we get a server message to tell the server which in turn triggers an automated reset skeleton for everyone around.

how does/would it work when we select an animation from Inventory: Play Inworld

normally  an undeformer animation is the animation that resets the bones to the default settings for the avatar we are wearing. Could it be that this animation (somehow selected) is played/broadcast ?

 

[KjartanEno]

20 hours ago, Shirley Marquez said:

Kokua tracks the official viewer closely so you shouldn't have too long a wait. This update will involve merging Kokua's UI changes with LL's changes (and possibly some thought into how the combination should look) so it may take a bit longer than some, and the upcoming holiday weekend in the US could interfere, but even given those things I wouldn't expect your wait to be more than a couple of weeks.

Kokua has been updated to 6.4.20. Release notes here: https://kokua.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/KKA/pages/1692041217/Kokua+6.4.20+Release+Notes

I like Kokua a lot. It's updated more often than Firestorm and pretty stable. Reported bugs get squashed in a timely and professional manner. I use the Linux version.

Do not expect it to be a clone of the official viewer. Kokua has had its own UI and menu differences from other viewers, and the merge will be a work in progress. One advantage it has over the official viewer is the ability to use more than 512 MB of video RAM for textures. If you have a 2 GB video card, manually set the texture memory to 1552 MB per Marine Kelley's recommendation (Kokua uses Marine's RLV). Ironically, a higher setting than that causes texture thrashing.

[Adam01Time]

Simple stuff about land marks. The Star icon for favorites been around for ever. If you don't  want to use the star. Then your two clicks away from making a land mark.

You can find that in the knowledge base. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Adam01Time

[Adam01Time]

On 6/29/2021 at 3:03 PM, KjartanEno said:

a higher setting than that causes texture thrashing.

This is all do to math and how the video card renders.  I have 8 gigs  of  texture memory.  I find  1552 to at the limit but works well.

There are so many different gpu cards today. It is best to set your math around 1024 if you have 2 gigs or more. This will keep you from having a bottle neck .

 Not about how much texture memory  it is about how fast that memory is processed once it is in your cache.

This bottle neck has been around for years.  Certain gaming engines are built for certain on gpu rendering.

look at how many GPU's LL has to try to work with.  there are some great things up the road.

Such as GPU mesh rendering. That has nothing to do with LL mesh. And AMD  new FSR that can be implemented to

to optimize mesh bottle neck.

If you want to make your SL a better place  then use a SSD hard drive you will see  the bottle neck get smaller and super fast rezzez.

Remember the  texture is most of the time already in cache.  Unless going to a new place.

 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Adam01Time

[Hilary Querrien]

I find the 'find target' changes to be an absolute nightmare.
 

1. It runs incredibly slowly. It used to be nearly instant and now there's about a 5 second lag.
2. If your link is a link to a folder, the inventory window bounces around like a mad thing
3. It always opens the target in the first (main) inventory window. That is a TOTALLY NON INTUITIVE You really really don't expect doing something in window 2 to cause window 1 to change. The first time this happened I spent several minutes trying to open the link target because I was looking WHERE I WAS WORKING. That is incredibly bad user experience.

Please undo this change. It, not to put to fine a point on it, sucks and it ruins my ability to organise / reorganise my inventory.

[Gryphon Ronas]

I just became aware of this thread, but for those of us who have always used the "Inventory" tab in Places to search for Landmarks, this is quite a blow.

There has been no need to move landmarks from the folders, just hit the Inventory tab and search.

I really cannot understand how this could have possibly confused anybody....  Seriously.

From other things I read here, this "Updated" UI is pretty much going to suck.  File it with EEP I guess.