Best simple AO?

[Anna Nova]

I'm moving from Firestorm to Cool VL Viewer.  I won't go into the reasons, mostly they are driven by my Linux needs.  This means that I need an AO,  I have been using the built-in since before the flood, and my inventory only contains a very ancient ZHAO II AO.  Amazingly this still works really well, but I wonder if there is something hugely better out there.  I do not need to buy any animations, I have a good selection that works for me.   What does the team suggest?

[Ceka Cianci]

23 minutes ago, Anna Nova said:

I'm moving from Firestorm to Cool VL Viewer.  I won't go into the reasons, mostly they are driven by my Linux needs.  This means that I need an AO,  I have been using the built-in since before the flood, and my inventory only contains a very ancient ZHAO II AO.  Amazingly this still works really well, but I wonder if there is something hugely better out there.  I do not need to buy any animations, I have a good selection that works for me.   What does the team suggest?

That's all I use is the ZHAO ll anymore.. I was using the onboard firestorm viewer AO, but switch just last year to the ZHAOll.. I like mine because it pivots to where only a tiny blue dot shows on my screen..

The nice thing about the ZHAO ll's are there are so many less scripts..mine I think only has four

If anything you could look for a more recent one with updated scripts or less scripts than the one you have or something.. But really if you are going to build your own with your own animations, in my opinion they are the best..

I switched from the Firestorm AO because the ZHAO ll loads to everyone else faster..it's something to do with the ZHAO ll only having to load from the server to everyone else. Where the Firestorm AO has to load to the server and then load to everyone else..

[Love Zhaoying]

The nice thing about the old ZHAO systems is, they came with the source code! 

I added on to it / interfaced with it years ago for a poseball system.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

I could share the AO I made for personal use, it works with notecards similar to ZHAO but uses modern LSL functions rather than (last I checked) repeatedly checking avatar state.

(I'll send out copies whenever I get home.)

Edited April 21, 2023 by Wulfie Reanimator

[JeromFranzic]

I'm a ZHAO 2 fan as well. It's what I use most of the time in FB and Cool VL.

@Anna Nova, I have been using VL lately over FB as it very rarely crashes for me in Linux and Windows 11.

@Wulfie Reanimator yeah, if you can share your AO, I'd love to try it.

ETA, if you find me in world, I'm Jerralyn Franzic with the OsGrid.org Member group tag.

Edited April 21, 2023 by JeromFranzic
Adding display name and group tag info

[Ceka Cianci]

34 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I could share the AO I made for personal use, it works with notecards similar to ZHAO but uses modern LSL functions rather than (last I checked) repeatedly checking avatar state.

I would love to try yours if you don't mind.

[Anna Nova]

Well, this is extremely interesting.  I'm a great believer in the 'if it ain't broke, slap anyone who tries to change it' philosophy.

@Wulfie Reanimator I'd love to try your AO, please.  I am Anna Nova in-world too.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

I could share the AO I made for personal use, it works with notecards similar to ZHAO but uses modern LSL functions rather than (last I checked) repeatedly checking avatar state.

(I'll send out copies whenever I get home.)

Yeah, most of the Zhao code can be replaced with a single call to llSetAnimationOverride().

It is a complete coincidence that my last name starts with "Zhao", I picked it before I know about ZHAO AO's.

Edited April 21, 2023 by Love Zhaoying

[Nalates Urriah]

I tried a bunch of AO's. The old ZHAO II does not use the new functions available to replace default system animations and uses polling instead to override the system animations. This means it generates more traffic than the newer AOs.

Comparing the script load of the newer AOs to the ZHAO II shows the newer ones are WAY script heavy. I decided to go with polling and a lighter script load.

I think the Firestorm AO uses the newer functions to replace default animations and avoid polling. But the code is running in the viewer rather than in a script running on the region server.

I use the FS built-in AO. For all other viewers, I use the ZHAO II.

[Quistess Alpha]

19 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

The old ZHAO II does not use the new functions available to replace default system animations and uses polling instead to override the system animations. This means it generates more traffic than the newer AOs

Not true. ZHAO II (ETA- a version of ZHAO dating from around 2013) uses llSetAnimationOverride, but ZHAO I did not https://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freescripts.plx?ID=1016

Edited April 22, 2023 by Quistess Alpha

[Love Zhaoying]

52 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Not true. ZHAO II uses llSetAnimationOverride, but ZHAO I did not https://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freescripts.plx?ID=1016

Don't tempt me to login and check my very very old copies of the scripts! 😹

[Love Zhaoying]

7 hours ago, Quistess Alpha said:

Not true. ZHAO II uses llSetAnimationOverride, but ZHAO I did not https://www.outworldz.com/cgi/freescripts.plx?ID=1016

Ok, this was bugging me so I checked. I interfaced with:

1. // ZHAO-II-core - Ziggy Puff, 07/07

and its interface: 2. // ZHAO-II-interface - Ziggy Puff, 06/07

#1 has a function checkandoverride() which calls llGetAnimationList().

#2 is the interface for #1 and does not call either llGetAnimationList() or llSetAnimationOverride(). 

Neither have llSetAnimationOverride!() 

Maybe only newer versions of ZHAO-II use llSetAnimationOverride()..?

 

[Livi Evergarden]

i agree that ZHAO II stilll is amazingly good. Akiyo is good as well if you want more options like loading different sets etc. 

There is also Alchemy viewer if you want one with a built-in AO and that TPV also supports Linux. 

[Quistess Alpha]

25 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Maybe only newer versions of ZHAO-II use llSetAnimationOverride()..?

Yeah looking more closely at the comments, the llSAO version was not by ziggy, it was an edit by Chloe in 2013. Maybe she shoulda called it ZHAO III

Edited April 22, 2023 by Quistess Alpha

[Love Zhaoying]

18 minutes ago, Quistess Alpha said:

43 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Maybe only newer versions of ZHAO-II use llSetAnimationOverride()..?

Yeah looking more closely at the comments, the llSAO version was not by ziggy, it was an edit by Chloe in 2013. Maybe she shoulda called it ZHAO III

Plus, you can sure bet it is newer than 2007! (llSAO came along years later IIRC)

[Rowan Amore]

6 hours ago, Livi Pixelbottom said:

i agree that ZHAO II stilll is amazingly good. Akiyo is good as well if you want more options like loading different sets etc. 

There is also Alchemy viewer if you want one with a built-in AO and that TPV also supports Linux. 

I like Akeyo because it's drop and done, no notecard edit needed.  I'm lazy like that!

[Aethelwine]

Niran does a free Server Side AO I have used in the past when using something other than Firestorm for my viewer. It seemed to work well.

Edited April 28, 2023 by Aethelwine