NiranV Dean

That's normal. Fullbright has always ignored windlight fog and only two Viewers have fixed this to my knowledge: Alchemy and Black Dragon.

On cluttered i agree, slower i can't compare but i don't care as long as it gives me what i want. When searching something i don't need speed, i need results and so far the websearch has proven to be quite reliable.

I dont want to be that guy but the reason its so bad is because you're not using the websearch. As you can see, i'm not joking. Never had any issues finding what i want with the websearch... don't understand why people hate it so much.

It's the only correct way of doing so and feasible too. You generally always want people on the latest version in an MMO. It would be stupid if balance changes would only be for those who updated.

I'm surprised we still don't have proper MMO-like launcher to update the client.

Laptop yes, this little memory no. I'm surprised you can even still run Windows with only 4gb. Fresh windows installs already use 1-2gb, you can hardly open Chrome before Windows starts smoking ... let alone run a SL client, they all use up 700-1000MB just starting up not even taking into account loading stuff. I'm at a point where 16gb is way too little... imagine, that's 4 times as much and i constantly max it out and yea i know i compile stuff but without compiling i easily get 8-10gb usage just every day usage.

I see more than just an old GPU driver. 4gb RAM is not going to keep you long in SL. Especially not with today's memory bloating standards. You're gonna have a bad time.

You have been long enough in Viewer development to know that this is how it works. You never get any feedback to things you want feedback for. Try reverse psychology! Say you don't want feedback. Boom. Problem solved. Don't know what to do about things breaking on live release tho.. maybe forever call it Beta?

*notes* another reason for me to dislike everything FS does. I should really start making a list of these... You got more of dem sweet things i should know FS does very bad? For... ehm... scientific reasons!

I had a good chuckle at that. Coming from the Viewer that has the most suspicious backstory out of them all. Then i realized, wait isn't Kitty technically on your Team as well? Does this mean you are distrusting your own members? But then wouldn't that be okay again since she's technically part of your team and thus suspicious like you? Is the Emerald story going to repeat soon? Will RLVa turn out to be a cryptominer? Does this make RLV a cryptominer too and why is a cryptominer based on another? So many questions.

Someone said it. SOMEONE SAID IT. My curse has been lifted! I can die now, piece! *poof*

Are you by chance running an antivirus program/bitdefender/windows defender that is deleting one or more files when unpacking? All you need to do is go to the download page, download the latest version (as of my writing 3.4.2) and the correct version for your CPU (AVX for 2011+ and the normal for older ones) and start the unpacker, select a folder and let it unpack. Unless any program is blocking or deleting files you should be fine, if in doubt, disable them while unpacking, start the viewer see if it works, then start all programs again and see if it deletes/breaks files again. Sorry it took so long to answer, i don't read these forums much. I'd also highly recommend not posting on these Forums, they are for Second Life and mainly for the official Viewer, hence why i read them rarely, if you need help with my Viewer your best bet would be simply contacting me, there's Discord, there's my blog and you can just IM me inworld too.

Yes LL wasn't going to support neither of my requests. 1. Direct control over others, even just locally. Is a no-go due to abuse potential. 2. Server side support (e.g seeing others pose in semi real-time) is something LL wasn't directly against but would rather avoid, just like any other server change. They don't like touching the servers. What LL instead proposed was a way to export and share the poses as inventory items such as animations, whether it is locally exporting them as .anim files or directly uploading them as such into SL. I was obviously against that since it was neither the plan nor was this ... indirect money-gated posing what i initially envisioned when i made the Poser. I wanted free posing any time, anywhere, with any animation, no limitations whatsoever, most useful to fix clipping/broken poses/animations. It was meant to be a on-the-fly-fix-it-yourself feature rather than what it is slowly becoming = a full fledged posing and animation editor and the first actual new inworld creation tool since a long time... how far plans can go wrong...

Last info i got was Second Life uses OpenGL 3.2. But really the thing is Second Life can use anything as long as it is available. Your GPU supports OpenGL up to 4.6. So in theory the Viewer could make use of all additions made until that version and would still run for you. Whether SL uses newer or older OpenGL is solely dependent on whether it actually uses newer available commands to do its stuff. Performance has sadly dropped over the past years and i'm sure i've done everything possible to not cause this myself with any of my changes, though that's where it ends already. SL is complex and going to a place with many avatars around is hard to analyse the performance of, while standing in a place with many avatars, many systems are running at the same time, doing a lot of work at the same time, many systems of which are slow if heavily used. Shadows for instance, in empty places shadows make hardly any difference in framerate, in heavy places it makes the difference between having single digit framerates and 40 fps in some cases. This could be due to many things, one being BD using a different shadow projection shader as well as a different smoothing algorythm, it could be fancier but slower and since shadows are also highly dependent on the complexity of the scene because shadows technically render the scene a second time in a super basic version with a transformation to create a shadow texture that tells the viewer where to shadow and where not to, imagine it like you're looking from the sun's angle down at the ground, now project a huge black/white texture over the entire viewable area, whenever you see an object you start drawing the shape of said object into the texture, lighter the further it is away, basically like a depth map. This texture now tells the Viewer which parts of the world are shadowed and it does this in such a way that the texture contains 3D info. (It's also used for volumetric lighting, essentially just brightening unshadowed parts). Now if said scene contains a lot of high poly avatars, these need to be rendered into the projection as well, so the higher their complexity the more impact they will have, this adds up if you have multiple avatars with 1+million polygons standing around. Ontop, there's also the resolution of shadows which can cause major framedrops too, the shadow resolution in BD is slightly higher by default (2048x2048 rather than your screen resolution, 1920x1058 in my case) which does have a small impact too (actually it improved framerate because only 2 of 4 shadow maps are 2048 while the other two are 1024x1024, though on a complex scene this might look completely different especially when the complex things are close to you where the 2048x2048 shadow maps are used). Personally i'm more concerned about the overall stability of your framerate though rather than the max performance. I've noticed a much more sensible framerate, it's much easier to get massive framedrops, especially when moving around. Sadly there is nothing i can do about that, the performance is only going to be worse unless content gets optimized in a large scale, throwing better hardware at it is not going to help much either anymore, we're at a peak point of single core performance, if you're using an Intel or Ryzen you're pretty much decked out on performance in SL.

And while we're at it. I'd like to point out that the Viewer is regularly updated and is only ever behind a month at max for regular updates (such as bugfixes) and never behind with major releases such as Fitted Mesh, Bento, Animesh and so on. The warning is solely a note from Oz that my Viewer uses an altered complexity calculation, he's neither saying that it is better or worse, just different.

Doesn't matter and doesn't change the fact that the normal procedure should be going through the official X's blog, always. Unless we're talking online platforms like Steam but Steam would automatically download all versions and/or give you a selection of multiple versions when attempting to launch. If you want to know something about something, a game, a program. Your first move is to go through its official website, where usually you should be able to find the latest download and maybe, just maybe some information on the download or the program itself. This is why i'm not a fan of direct links to a download website, be it from a friend, a forum or anything or anyone else. Not only are direct links suspicious, you also skip everything that you might have had to read.

In case this ever comes up again: The normal download procedure would be going through my blog, which will lead you to the pre-download page, giving you a few links to blogposts that should help clear a few questions up as well as give you a quick rundown on the difference between AVX and Non-AVX versions and when to use them. If you skip my blog and get straight to my bitbucket download page you obviously won't see this information, which might be a bit confusing but hardly anything i can change. It's the same as skipping a tutorial or not reading the manual, you'll be... ugh damn it no you won't be on your own. *facedesks* You'll either ask others or me sooner or later.

I know it's supposed to be a joke but... are you seriously trying to put a price tag on something that is virtually unpayable? But hey, i got a question for you, how much do you have to pay me to stop you from threatening your users to delay the update every time someone asks? If you just answered "nothing, i won't", then you answered your own question how much you have to pay me to stop. The only evidence is that a long release cycle didn't help Firestorm so far. Oh? Am i not putting enough energy into my own Viewer? Part of that energy goes to dealing with whatever ***** other Viewers are causing me trouble with. *ahem* LookAt Names for instance. How do you feel when another Viewer strokes users stalker fetishes and supports them with features to make it easier because "it doesn't matter anyway" and because they offer the counter option basically directly beneath it. I want to see you deal with your pissed and sometimes even scared users because some asshats have an incredibly easy time spitting on your own users and don't come with "you could offer hiding the lookat", yea what is this some sort of War where one Viewer launches a nuke and other has to build an anti missile silo? @Theresa Tennyson Read the marked comment again, specifically the second sentence. Thanks. This is not a backpedal but a statement aimed at Firestorm's situation. Firestorm is in a position where they have 3 allowed versions at any time which begs the question again why they don't try a faster release cycle, they can revert back up to three versions if they have to without ever moving a finger. I'm still for full forced updates with zero old-version tolerance, unless exceptions are needed of course. Firestorm on the other hand already has a 3 version system in place, why not use it to test it out? Also, what's the point of your last sentence? Regardless of whether i truly backpedal or not, your last sentence makes no sense, i already stated before that an exception to the rule is applied when an anomaly happens in a normal situation, or in other words, whenever a broken release comes you can solve it by offering an alternative. By now you're just taking my words and putting them into whatever meaning you see fit to make a point. But then again that's probably my fault because i didn't explain every single little detail that could possible ever come up, if i did this wouldn't be a discussion but rather a slaughtering, right now there is still the possibility that someone (not you obviously) comes up with a real reason that i cannot solve. Until this happens i will not stop.

Are we still doing this? Of course i come here because i think i that you cannot change my mind. That's the challenge isn't it? I wouldn't start a discussion if i weren't 99% sure i can win this and yet you have to bring me a real reason its bad, all you do is attacking my arguments because there is nothing better you can do, you probably know just as much that there is no real argument against it. Human mistakes are not an argument but an exception for which you can have a fallback plan (which you should anyway), its called damage control. Damage control is what i did when i removed RLV long ago, the thing that seems to rile you up so much. I'm not blizzard or any of the companies you must hold so high opinion of that you call them professionals just because professional is in their job name. They made mistakes and they made much bigger mistakes some of these companies might have learned from it, most probably didn't. Blizzard for instance seems not to, they are literally riding their asses into hell (huehue what a joke because Diablo.) rather than doing what any other company would probably do to stop people from rioting = damage control, rethink their strategy and maybe give people what they want, apologize and realize that they made a mistake and want to fix it. Your Catznip example is once again bad. Catznip is the very essence of being designed to be bug free and in perfect working condition at all times. Kitty puts a lot of effort into making sure whatever she does works, she basically can't afford to make big mistakes and she hasn't so far. Besides protocol changes, server side needed support and a few exceptions such as new major features, there is nothing that makes a perfectly fine working viewer suddenly become a broken buggy mess, which also means Firestorm was to begin with which would be all the more reason (and is also one of my reasons) they should try a faster release cycle as it clearly seems like that a long release cycle and long testing times do not noticeably improve the quality of their updates. This might also blow your mind but using the LL Viewer as base without any changes and only updating it every half a year produces a perfectly fine working Viewer too, so its rather a matter of keeping it that way than making it be like that in the first place but whatever. The rest of your nonsensical "Niran thinks he's a god" talk bull***** i'll just ignore for now, i know you're just trying to trigger me at this point. Neither do i think so nor is that how i am. I'm just extremely disappointed that some random guy can come out of nowhere (and it could by anyone, that's the point, since i'm not a special person) and make a perfectly fine Viewer, and apparently can do lots of other good things too which some "more professional" (at least that's what i'd think of anyone but me, no idea how professional the others really are) seemingly don't which makes me curious... and disappointed. Firestorm has stated multiple times that they can't try experimental stuff due to their larger userbase, i think that it doesn't matter. MMO's put out many patches a week for god knows how many people and they don't seem to mind, they are happy that their issues get fixed. Having three major versions is actually a big benefit and goes as good fallback plan in case something goes haywire... and it always does... it always does. LL's autoupdater didn't exactly make it easy to do such a thing, especially not "major versions", you'd have to be a bit... tricky with it. One way would be not updating the version numbers until you want a new mandatory version, but that would leave you with the issue that you'd lock out all previous versions, the other one would be having 3 versions (4 actually while LL is processing the transition) public for download and changing the mandatory to be the third last update.

That's the point. Besides, i showed one big example yes, are you saying now that they are bad because one single slip happened that didn't even involve breaking the Viewer but rather bewaring it from breaking? I have helped more than a few times already both indirectly as Viewer support and directly, particularly the snapshot floater comes to mind. I don't care about their team, i care about their release cycles which influences other parts of SL and thus indirectly me. Having the most used, most popular Viewer doesn't come without cost and they have been doing a decent job at keeping their influence as low as humanly possible, just not with their release cycles. Oh i'm sorry, i should have probably told them what they already know. It's not like this could be one of the reasons i started a discussion that is indirectly aimed at Firestorm to pull in the users and their opinions in an attempt to show them that users might want faster updates too. I mean in the end it affects you too. It seems like i hit some forbidden no-no zone caring a bit for stuff outside of my little humble bubble that i call my own problems, ohwhoopsie, there is still the problem that these things tend to slip into my tiny little bubble and become my problem when they start affecting stuff around me, i suppose i should just shrink the bubble so microscopically small that it is impossible for others to change or modify my experience in any way. Ah too bad SL is a shared experience i guess i have to live with some people spitting into my soup ohwait no i could possibly tell them not to, they will surely listen and stop spitting into my soup if i just ask them nicely enough, it worked so many times in the past (not a goddamn single time). But anyway, i'd like to continue talking about auto-updates and forcing them instead, it appears like i have started to rant again and i fear if i don't stop now i'll find myself still ranting till christmas about content creation.

The obsession to make Firestorm a better Viewer... wait... a... second. I hate Firestorm, i should not try to make it better. Sssssss*****. Okay back to "Why are forced auto-updates bad". Bring it on, i still have a few "bad developers" answers left or bring me a real reason, one that is an undeniably, unfixable reason why its bad.

No. They are simply stories of bad experiences you had and they don't say anything about this topic nor give they any valid reasons why auto updates or forced updates are bad. I guess i have to repeat myself here as expected: A feature is not bad because the devs don't know how to work with it. IT Professionals doesn't mean a damn thing, look at Blizzard and how professional they were in the past, then they announced Immortals and riled up their entire community against them. That's how professional professionals are. They aren't. No, i took your 12 month example and named you off the top of my head what would be missing, i didn't even include Bake-on-Mesh but thanks. But yes, i don't exactly keep track of Catznip's releases, nor do i of Singularity (although i know Singularity supports Bento) just as much as they don't keep track of my updates. Why would they, it's not important to their Viewer. I pulled RLVa because not with the release you used before but with the upcoming release which had major appearance changes merged in from LL, the entire RLVa system broke down so hard that i was unable to compile the Viewer without ripping out large parts of RLVa which in turn broke RLVa parts that were depending on it, having to remove those quickly turned into an endless tail-chase scenario where you end up having RLVa completely removed. If i didn't pull the plug back then i couldn't have offered support for Server Side Appearance and a few other things and we all know that SSA was a huge thing and it was mandatory. Since i don't have Kitty on a leash and can just pull her up real quick to fix my ***** for me i had to make a choice and i chose to remove RLVa temporarily. Judge me all you want for it, i made the right choice, i promised to bring it back and i did. And once again you're just taking my top blog warning and criticizing it, interpreting your own things into its meaning. If i didn't listen to you it had a damn good reason and seeing how *****-mode you engage here its not surprising because you're clearly not doing it with the background knowledge to understand what was really going on. You seem to think all i do is look up more ways to ***** up people, cause them more trouble and generally make using my Viewer as painful as possible to them because i took away your playtoy for a while. You know, the only one who openly complained in a meaningful matter to me back then was Penny, she made it clear that it made her impossible to use the Viewer and that's when i realized that i had made a mistake that i could have worked around. Every now and then i see people take my quote on the blog and read it as "i don't give a flying ***** about what you have to say" when it is the solar opposite, i've spend so much time going through these forums, going through SLU (and now VV), googling my ass off, finding people's blogs, reading reviews on Nalates's and Inara's blogs for valuable feedback i've always been implementing in some way or another and then comes someone of your likes and tells me what little i care for my users, that i'd ignore them. It sickens me hearing this every time this comes up. If it meant even remotely what you think it does i wouldn't be releasing fixes for bugs people keep reporting, i wouldn't be moving a damn finger if a release falls upside down and hell i wouldn't be spending most of my online time with bugging users, helping them find their option they couldn't find when it was right in front of them. I have been doing special fix releases for single individuals simply because they asked me for help, guided them through all steps to get them to work with me on the issue. Maybe, just maybe, rather than throwing a hissifit you could have offered a valid alternative which would not only have helped you but Penny as well. How about "what if you made a release free from auto-updates until this is sorted out?". I can see why some of the support staff on the FS team often blindly tosses a wiki/FAQ link, they are simply done with this *****. If i wasn't so incredibly patient with this i would have long given up doing support, the occasional happy face is not worth tanking the flak of ***** users and churning through a multi-hour marathon of live-support.

But... that's what i'm doing already. Did it change anything? No. Absolutely nothing has changed and it makes me sad. It makes me sad to see that development is constantly being hampered. SL works on a simple offer and demand system, less users with a particular feature means it gets less attention, less content, less improvements. This spirals down infinitely and could downright destroy a feature due to the lack of users. Look at how long Projectors and Materials took to become commonly used. Projectors were introduced ~2009 and it took roughly 5-6 years until many creators have adopted it because at the time almost no one used them. It it really that much to demand, making things better?

True. But here we already see that there is no upside of long drawn out release cycles. You put Henri's CoolVL Viewer in comparison with Firestorm, while Firestorm takes 6 months (down from 9+ before) Henri pushes out an update every week like a working clock, you can basically set your alarm when a new update comes out and his updates aren't short of changes, fixes, new additions and i haven't seen Henri's stuff explode spectacularly yet. I'm sure he could force every update blindly. Alright look, i have to confess i didn't want to say it directly but Firestorm's slow release cycles are the very reason i've come up with this discussion and i'm basically here to hear the complains and then shatter them with the impenetrable wall of "It's the developers incompetence" which so far i've seen no one come past. It's no secret that Firestorm's releases lately have been hit-or-miss (more miss than hit from what i can tell) and i believe that with much more frequent releases they could have much smaller updates that focus on certain parts not only to easier identify and track the issue but also to step in early enough if something is going wrong rather than (as people have to do right now) wait another 6 months for an update that HOPEFULLY fixes all the issues they introduced and reading their blog and hearing complains inworld gives me a rough idea what is going on and it doesn't sound all too nice. Firestorm's quality has declined over the past releases (according to users) and the only constant seems to be the crash statistics that seem to be pretty low. I'm literally trying to show them that a 6 month release cycle for A: the most used Viewer and B: the most important Viewer , is a giant pile of *****. It's bad for them, bad for the users and bad for the development of SL as a whole. I've seen them talk with LL about "delaying" bigger updates for SL for a bit so FS can prepare and then they still need weeks if not months to bring important content creation updates. Many people (and thats quite sad) wont see Animesh and thus many creators won't be creating them until FS has it, its artificially delaying development of the platform as a whole for no reason and to be honest if anything of what all these users keep saying is true then their so called 1 intensive testing program has made absolutely no difference in comparison to any other Viewer's releases.

Why is it not surprising to see you answer like this? I guess that could be because the entire discussion is basically a massive secret conspiracy theory to undermine Firestorm's slow development cycle. Aeh idk.