Disclaimer

Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Black Dragon - Materials Beta 2.2.2 (3.6.2)

As always, be carefull what you do, clearing Cache and Settings will usually fix MOST problems. Try out Materials which is now officially out!

Time to break a sweat.

She is here, the ultimate graphical NUKE of fancyness.
Just joking.


Theres not much to say, the changes are listed below and the rest... well... just watch the ultimate Trailer of all Trailers:




and...im working on something but i wont say much about it yet, i will come back to it when it is on the best way to get done for real.



Screenshots:
















as always, enjoy,
Niran.

Changelog:

2.2.2 Materials Beta

Fixed Webmedia and Websites using a UI size dependant zoom
Fixed topbar showing its grey background after leaving Mouselook
Fixed random crashs on TP caused by Achievement code
Fixed Viewer/OS hanging/freezing due to total GPU overload caused by sculpt/prim crasher/spammers
Fixed sometimes bugging Web-Profile layouts
Removed the Environment Cube Map in Deferred shiny (restore shiny back to original)
Merged and fully integrated Materials support
Changed Permission icons to Nirans Viewer style
Changed Male/Female icons to Nirans Viewer style
Changed "Set Window Size" floater to Nirans Viewer style
Changed "World Map" floater to Nirans Viewer style
Changed "Shoe" icon to "Shoes" and make it use a "Shoes" icon instead of only one shoe
Changed several basic UI widgets to Nirans Viewer style (temporarly)
Changed floater textures
Changed FXAA's edge handling a bit
Changed Inventory's minimum size
Changed Loginscreen to Nirans Viewer style
Changed to self-build FmodEx package
Changed SSAO default settings to Nirans Viewer's defaults
Changed Shadow default settings to Nirans Viewer's defaults
Changed Shadow look and quality in shaders to Nirans Viewer style
Added Windlight transitions
Added "Refresh" button to UI Preview
Added left/right Shoulder View Camera preset
Added preloading of 3 random loadingscreen images
Added all Nirans Viewer loadingscreen images
Added FPS counter to topbar
Added Draw Distance slider to topbar
Added Show/Hide HUD Attachments option to main menu
Added Several some new options to main Graphics panel for Color Correction and Tone Mapping
Added Exodus's Post Process Stack minus Gamma Correction which is default due to Materials

29 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Wtf are you talking about? Do you even realise what you just said?

      You said:
      The previous version which was/is mostly an empty LL Viewer without any graphic tweaks or improvements looks better then this version which now got a significant SSAO, Shadow (projectors and sunshadows) aswell as Depth of Field overhaul, features Materials and even Color Correction and Tone Mapping again aswell as uses the original Deferred shiny.

      You said that the past few weeks i have been working trying to improve graphics everywhere was wasted and results in even worse graphics.

      Thanks. I guess im gonna keep Greyscale, Screen Space Reflections, High Precision and the other planned improvements and features for myself.

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  3. Tone mapping checked makes it look terrible!
    I unchecked tone mapping and all seem a bit better!

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    1. You forgot to enable Color Correction then.

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    2. All my pictures and videos are taken with Tone Mapping on. I can absolutely not share your opinion on that.

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    3. You know what's sad ZZ, I think there's a clear language barrier issue here, because it's clear to me that you fail to understand BASIC information being relayed to you. No one wants you to lie, but god damn at least go read up what a BETA means before you start to whine and complain. It's the ignorance of people like you that complain about something with no understanding of the topic at hand that annoy and aggravate developers. Please understand that one can only provide constructive feedback when they know what it is they are arguing about. Every point you have made thus far is solely based upon your opinions only. There is nothing wrong with the tone mapping, rather, in YOUR opinion YOU don't like the tone mapping. Don't make it sound like its a generalized statement about the viewer when its just your personal nitpicking. With that aside, Great Job as always Niran, I appreciate your work very much so :).

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  4. And yes i know is a work in progress and still on its initial stages but im not your or any ones beta tester, i just want o see Sl the best i can and right now, your Niran's is still the best viewer any can wish for!

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    1. Then this is definetly the wrong Viewer for you, my Viewers are experiments and that will never change. As far as SL goes, all Viewers will always internally stay Beta's forever, something like SL cannot be finished.

      Delete
    2. It is interesting ZZ that you download something that clearly states it's a BETA. You then state that your not anyone's beta tester. So why download it?,

      There was no claim by Niran that it was released viewer, not that anything was improved or in any way finished. So after reading what you have put, it was your own mistake, and having a go at Niran, who has worked mainly for free for what at least 2 years now, is pretty much bang out of order.

      Niran's original viewer yes is one of the best, and it still works fine, if you don't wish to have something new, beta or otherwise don't download it, certainly don't bitch about it not being as good when it's quite clear it's not even remotely finished.

      I don't wish to start any flaming since to be honest I don't want Niran to simply stop, because there isnt' another viewer as good as Niran's and Black Dragon is new and has potential, if it turns out as good as Niran's then WHOOPEE.

      So as put in a previous post as to why Niran was giving up on making a viewer for use by us then YOUR one of the folks that shows just why Niran doesn't wish to do it any more.

      It is strange isn't it, people's inability to read things and be so ungrateful for someone else's hard work. I will be sad when Niran's stops because it is likely that LL will screw it up AGAIN and we will be back to using lesser viewers with graphics that totally stink and other such things.

      So, with all due respect to those of you who want to lambast and berate Niran for not giving you a perfect viewer, maybe consider that you get Niran's for nothing, maybe just maybe think of saying "Thank you Niran for all your time and hard work" and if you don't want to have a beta viewer DONT DOWNLOAD IT, instead of replying on here bitching about it.

      Delete
  5. I had it impossible to run with Avast firewall popping out access request every 2 seconds. Does this happen to anyone else?

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    1. Wasnt Avast that damn thing that flagged my Viewer as Virus as soon as i packed it up?

      Delete
  6. Ok, i am going to test this. If i have a problem or a suggestion Niran, are you can to say something bad about me and cocks?

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  7. and where in world could i actually look at something made with materials present?

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    1. Hippo Hollow or its Neighbor SIM. Materials just released, it will take some time until it is really used in nearly everything.

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  8. So far there is only one viewer and i do tried all but LL and have the latest versions of firestorm, singularity, catnip, kristin's, kokua, exodus and imprudence installed and ready to be used!
    Yours last Niran's viewer release!
    Using any other is a downgrade of my immersion on SL!
    I'm in SL to enjoy it, not the other way around!
    I'll check, as i always did, your future releases as i do same with other tpv's
    I'll say what i do feel be from you or from others!
    And if you only wish constructive feeedback, make it worth, this new version of blakc dragon is not as good as i was expecting, rather the oposite, wnat mt to lie, fine, Its amazing, love it, wil use it always!





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    1. Again, it's a BETA ZZ

      Which part of this are you not getting. NO-ONE IS FORCING YOU TO DOWNLOAD OR USE IT.

      It explains in it that it's a beta, there is a massive blog post about it and you havent' given one piece of constructive feedback, also stating you are no-one's beta tester. So how about you keep using Niran's viewer and learn to read.

      Black Dragon is totally new, Niran is building it piece by piece, and so yes it's not as good as Niran's viewer, but Niran's viewer has been in beta and had X amount of releases, Black Dragon hasn't.

      So sorry you need to simply stop using Black Dragon till it says "release" instead of Beta, then maybe give constructive feedback instead of bitching about something that you so obviously don't grasp.

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    2. P.S - If you read the tool tip on Tone Mapping it even explains that it might make things look dull

      "Toggles if Tone Mapping shoule be used while Deferred Rendering is active, it might cause the whole to look more/less colorfull and increase/decrease the overall scene brightness difference making the scene look dull"

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    4. Wikipedia says:
      "Tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map one set of colors to another in order to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in a medium that has a more limited dynamic range."

      As far as i understand this means translated in common language:
      "Tone Mapping is a Post Process Effect that aims at 'equalizing' or 'normalising' colors to a good medium"

      You can notice this effect on the sky. The reason i always keep saying that Tone Mapping is supposed to be used with Color Correction and vise versa is that Color Correction how i configured it aims at adding contrast to the picture without destroying the original Tone Mapping effect which could be described as "smoothing" colors. Basically Color Correction adds back in the darkness and brightness but keeps the 'normalised' colors for them, as example you have a bright blue, a normal blue and a dark blue (a sky as example), Tone Mapping 'normalises' these colors by reducing the range between these colors, thus making the bright blue just a 'a bit brighter blue', the normal blue becomes a bit more colorfull and the dark blue becomes a 'a bit darker blue' that will result in a "duller" image but also in a smoother color transition which i think is very important for a nice picture, no one wants color banding, Color Correction will now find and correct other parts of the image like very dark colors (dark grey to black) and makes them "dark" , really dark compared to the overbrightened image without Color Correction, you will now have a combination of a smooth transition between colors and still maintain a "wide" range between colors in terms of having dark and bright stuff.

      Delete
  9. Wow. I'm actually enjoying Black Dragon so far! I'm no longer lagging so bad, except for the occasional frame rate drop, but that only lasts a couple of seconds, and I love the progress bar on the loading screen. I also like the scales and color in the background of the interface. The new chat interface is also neat.
    The random frame rate dropping seems to be caused by my camera trying to refocus and for some reason super blurring everything, even if I have depth of field off, which is a bit weird. It happens a lot when coming out of mouse look or opening the Dragon menu. It just suddenly freezes for about a second, then everything gets super blurred and frozen for another second, but then it goes back to normal. This is the only graphic bug I have seen so far, unless you didn't mean to make the ocean curve upwards while you're in the air.

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    1. A couple of other glitches I forgot to mention. There are two icons in the top right that still appear in mouse look. One is for the L$ display and the other is for the drawing distance slider.

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    2. I generally dont disable Depth of Field, its a default setting of my every-day SL visit but as far as i know Depth of Field is generally a little bit "broken" right now, it also blurs (or not blurs in some cases) alphas, e.g it interacts with invisible objects which shouldnt be the case, it will most likely be fixed in future releases of Materials (yes its a Mats bug)

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  10. I downloaded the new Dragon as soon as it was released this past thursday, after erasing/deleting everything from the previous version. Carfully tweeking almost to the letter the same as 'Nirans' viewer, I find the new version clean, fast and graphically brilliant. As forwarned and expected there are a few bugs, but nothing about this viewer would make me resort to using the other inferior viewers. I appreciate the time and effort you have given and feel thankful that you still choose to include all of us in the creation of your always evolving art...

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  11. This is getting nicer :-) Will it be possible to tweak the tone mapping as you have in Niran's Viewer? Flimic look, etc. & algorithm, etc. or does materials disable all that?

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    1. Nah it will all come back when i made a new graphics panel, this one is just a enhanced default one as temporarly solution.

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