Grebo Fright

The last 2014 version of the project viewer was 90% there, it was coming together really nicely. Great UI, reasonable resolution. Really the main issue with it was some framerate issues and objects sometimes failing to render. Since the last project viewer in 2014, the Oculus runtime itself has improved tremendously, making it significantly easier to squeeze performance out of older software (especially with Asynchronous Time Warp). AMD and NVidia have also put a lot of effort into updating their drivers for VR performance using newer Oculus runtime features, as well as for Vive, etc. Seems at the minimum the last 2014 project viewer simply needed to be updated to use the newer runtimes.

I'd recommend CV1 owners hold off and see if we will get any fixes. SL can be fantastic in VR but not in this version of the viewer. It seems to me that very little has been done with this in the last 20 months. Though at least it lets us know what is up. Does not give much confidence for Sansar, that's for sure. Actually, curse Sansar, the Sansar thing was when the Rift viewer got abandonded. What do you want from us LL, how can we get this going? What would it take to get resources on to this? Maybe you could reach out to Oculus/HTC/Razer etc for some assistance, either technical or financial? I don't like to complain (as I do love Linden Lab very much) and I believe there's only one person left working on this viewer in their spare time and I am thankful for even that. But I have to go back to 0.8, DK2 and CtrlAltStudio viewer for now. Shame because it is a major nuisance to switch between normal Oculus runtimes to run everything else. I may just set up a dedicated machine for that as I am losing all hope that we will get proper VR support in SL and that set up is probably the best there ever will be for it.

I don't know where you get your information but what you are describing is simply no longer the case, it is no longer 2013, time has passed and there have been a lot of advancements on the hardware and the software side. Really the only thing VR is badly missing has been content such as Second Life, and waiting for the hardware prices to become more accessible to more people - which is also beginning to happen. I wish LL wasn't lagging behind on keeping the viewers up to date, I get that they are working on Sansar and that's nice and all but it will be many many years before any other virtual world can come close to the vast amount of content in SL Really troubling that LL isn't dedicating more resources to getting the viewer up to speed.

The 0.6 Wrapper is out today but sadly I have been unable to get it to run with the CtrlAltStudio viewer. Could just be me/my stsrtem though so somebody else should still give it a try, but back to runtime 0.8 for me for the time being.

The list you are looking for is called gpu_table.txt, you can find it in your main viewer directory. Might take a little while to work out how to format the model name for your specific card, there are other threads about it here, I had to patch mine when I got my 970. You can also try an alternate viewer such as Firestorm. Also, a person on reddit has released wrappers on github to run Oculus 0.8 and 0.7 applications on CV1/1.3. They seem to work fine so far for a lot of applications. Same dev is working on one for runtime 0.6 which is what the last CtrlAltStudio Rift viewer is complied on. If it gets released and if it works with the viewer, I will be posting about it here for sure.

In the new Draxfiles podcast interview with Ebbe, Ebbe seems to make it sound as if Facebook will be used to verify Sansar users. Can we get a clarification on whether Facebook accounts will be required to access Sansar?

How soon can we expect the Rift Project viewer to be updated to Oculus 1.3 runtime, and is OpenVR (Vive/SteamVR) and OSVR support also in the works?

Second Life is THE best VR application! Getting to explore SL in my Rift DK2 has been wonderful, despite all the performance limitations in the "early" software. Right now the only viewers available use the pre-consumer Oculus runtimes, which won't work on CV1. I'm not expecting the Cntrl Alt Studio viewer to get an update either. We're at the mercy of Linden Lab, and hopefully they are also thinking about Vive/OpenVR support as well.

The Oculus 0.7 SDK/run time is now out - which makes Second Life Rift Project viewer officially incompatible with the current Oculus Rift software. Extended mode is no longer supported by the SDK, which is required for the Rift viewer as it uses a very ancient SDK. This is messed up for several reasons, not the least of which is the Rift depicted on the front of SecondLife.com for quite some time now. The team at LL was doing a fantastic job with the Rift Project viewer up until last October, though it has since been seemingly abandoned. The Project viewer for example, still doesn't even recognize the year-old 900 series Nvidia cards. Keeping up with the Oculus SDKs cannot be THAT difficult, a single person voluntarily on their own time has been able to incorporate the newer Oculus SDK's (at least up to 0.5) into their third party viewer. It is of course missing the fantastic official UI though which really makes SL use-able in VR beyond just taking a token look around. Perhaps, at the very least, the code for the Rift project viewer UI could be released so that third party viewers can make use of it. I'm as excited for Project Sansar as much as anyone possibly could be, and I am sure it will be much better equipped from the beginning to handle all the new kinds of hardware that are just around the corner. But despite all the resources in the tech community focusing on several upcoming VR worlds, it will be a very very long time before Sansar, or any of the other new social VR experiences in the works will ever be able to come close to the enormity of what all the users have created inside Second Life over the years. The sheer wealth of fantastic places, things, and communities is something that no amount of venture capital could ever buy, only the time and effort of many dedicated creators and residents over many years. SL needs to remain VR accessible! The newer Oculus SDKs since the last project viewer have introduced features that could drastically improve VR performance for SL. Please update to the newer Oculus SDK's soon, or at least for SDK 1.0, due in November. Once 1.0 is out, compatibility with past SDK's will not be broken, and SL will be forever reachable to Oculus users in the future. (Then there's also the HTC Vive.) Or, if LL is really that short-handed these days, release the project viewer code for the third party viewer community! At least give residents some kind of news on what is going on!

I tried numerous ways but the only solution I have found is to switch back and forth between HMD and regular mode to update the display. I hope this gets fixed soon as it is tedious to deal with. For anyone needing a GPU_table.txt, here's one that works on my GTX 970: http://pastebin.com/LL5mqsPx

pi Mip wrote: How would I do that? Thanks in advance. Go to viewer directory, open gpu_table.txt, add the following line at the end: NVIDIA GTX 980 .*NVIDIA .*GTX *98.* 3 1 The viewer should then properly detect the card and enable the required shaders.

Much thanks to the folks at Linden Lab for making this possible! I'm having great fun with the latest Rift viewer in DK2 but still experiencing a few issues. Objects doen't always render without toggling HMD mode in DK2. This makes it difficult to walk around and explore without constant switching in/out of HMD mode. The fantastic and very usable UI is problematic in that the 3D mouse cursor is locked within its borders. Increasing the UI size helps but then top/bottom/sides become hidden behind objects/floors/walls. It can be impossible to select/touch many objects without creative acrobatics. Less pressing issues: Lots of crossover between the general VR community and ownership of new 900 series cards means having to explain to DK2 owners lured to SL for the first time by the project viewer, how to patch the gpu_table.txt. SpaceNavigator flycam does not work correctly in HMD mode. To be fair, a problem that likely affects only a very tiny amount of people and would be low on a list of priorities for obvious reasons, but I would realy love to see it work as SpaceNavigator flycam is awesome to use in SL.

That picture appears is described to be in Firestorm, not either of the DK2 viewers. In 2D mode the 970 runs perfect on any viewer I have with ultra graphics settings, even running two copies at the same time I can get decent performance. The fps issues were with Rift in the stereo project viewer. SL does give my five cores a workout, I'm sure when I add two more it can only help. Last week's (and today's) automated build of the project viewer for DK2 seems to give me major fps increase over previous versions. I can actually now maintain a solid 75fps in some places with buttery smooth, judder-free head turning in the DK2 with just some minor reductions in graphics settings. Heavy load regions is another story, but it is a relief to see improvements are possible and I am very happy. I see that Ebbe tweeted earlier today that the viewer should officially release early next week and that is great news as well.

pajuelo, I've just been testing things out on a brand new GTX 970, it's not quite as powerful as the 780ti but pretty decent. I did get a moderately improved experience in SL in the Rift (after patching the card into the gpu_table.txt as the viewers weren't updated yet to include the new cards). The frame rate was still not there, though on occasion when I can get over 60fps it begins to "lock in" it is an immense improvement although still juddery. I'm starting to think there would still need to be some major surgery and magic performed on the viewer code to get the fps up to a stable 75 (difficult enough in 2D in SL) and I'd be surprised if throwing any more hardware at it right now would make much more of a difference. In comparison my hardware jump from a 660 to 970 gave me massive improvements in most other DK2 software, which is nice, but it is SL that I want to be able to use properly most of all. The LL UI is awesome, may be the best UI I have seen in any Rift application, but the fps is what is lacking. Other than building/coding/text chat (need to see the keyboard), it is easy to navigate, use inventory, interact with objects/vehicles, voice chat - it is great to have a conversation with other avatars in VR. I sure hope LL can pull this off, it would be a sort of tragedy if they couldn't, because SL has pretty much everything else otherwise to make up the social VR "killer app" and while there are obviously newer and better software platforms in the works, it will literally take years before any other virtual world, no matter how good, could begin to catch up to the sheer amount of content and community that is already in SL.

The project viewer that is available out there is fantastic, the UI on DK2 is awesome. LL is doing a great job on this! I look forward to the official release. I thoroughly recommend Rift users try the Voice Attack program which maps keyboard controls to voice commands, it makes it super easy to switch the display onto the Rift, enable/disable HMD mode. I also found it useful to set up commands to turn on/off UI and HUDs, bring up and hide chat and map windows, etc. But now that the Nvidia 9xx series are coming out, it looks like SLI is now going to be on the table for VR use as Nvidia have changed up how SLI works to remove the previous VR latency issue. Problem is SL doesn't support SLI as it is AFAIK. (despite still being listed on the Nvidia SLI directory with an ancient laughable scary looking old SL screen shot) Maybe we could finally see SLI support too?