Second Life as Seen Through the Black Dragon Viewer

I literally just used the official Second Life viewer to try and take a screenshot of something, and within five minutes, wanted to throw my Mac through the window. And then I stumbled on this video from a few months ago, and went "Whoa":

This is Black Dragon, an authorized third party viewer which aims, as lead creator NiranV Dean explains, "to enhance and refine the visuals of Second Life as well as having unique design approaches and features... starting by changing defaults, declining all sorts of bells and whistles no one needs, re-designing the User Interface and trying things other Viewers are too scared of."

Windows only, alas, but the recommended specs seem pretty doable for most gamer PCs:

• CPU: AMD Quad Core with 3.000 MHz or similar.
• GPU: NVidia Geforce GTX 460 or higher.
• RAM: 6 GB or more.
• OS: Windows 7 64 bit Edition

My old Alienware M11x can just about handle that, maybe. But before I take it out of storage, I'm asking for reader opinions -- who loves the Black Dragon? I'm particularly curious how well the user interface works. Firestorm is way too techie for my taste, and I've hated the default viewer for literally 13 years. Will I want to enter the Black Dragon?

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Comments

[Thumperstorm]

It sucks, is crashy, and the twelve year old who makes it is an a-hole.

[Ezra]

An achievement system is what would fix all this.

[Estelle Pienaar]

@Thumperstorm your comment makes you exactly the kind of person you are talking about. No, most 12 year olds have a better tone than you actually.

Niran is more an artist than he is a programmer. He might be very arrogant, but he has every right to be it, because his viewer is top notch.

However, you should try the Alchemy viewer, Hamlet. It is on Mac, it has a user interface similar to the LL viewer, but much cleaner. And the graphics are better than the LL viewer.

Black Dragon Viewer has a much more intuitive user interface than Firestorm, but you'd have to learn it from scratch anyway. All the whistles and bells of the Black Dragon viewer need high end grapbic cards. It might run with low specs, but it was not created with low specs in mind...

[Kindred Wanderer]

I love virtual photography, and I mainly use V3. I've tried Black Dragon, and it does have a lovely feature set for photography. However, my machine was at the low end of the min specs, and it was terribly laggy for me. I only ever used it for taking pics with the advanced graphics options, and it was really a labor of love.

As for my usual work flow in V3:
Under advanced settings, I enable the following:
"High-res snapshot"
"Quiet Snapshot to disk"

High-res snapshots captures the images at double your native resolution (this will cause a delay of a second or two when snapping), and quiet to disk makes it so others can't hear your camera's shutter audio (quite useful for a shutterbug).

Also, I hardly ever use the snapshot panel. I use the shortcut for the most part, Ctrl+~.

I then use Gimp to tweak colors and levels, etc.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

ALL Viewers use the same rendering code. They can ALL have the same quality of graphics. It all just depends on the settings. All these "pretty photography viewers" do is turn on some options that are not on by default, and change some default settings from the defaults that LL (and most other viewers) use One could do the same video/pictures with the LL viewer or Firestorm.

[Clara Seller]

I keep Black Dragon cranked to the max strictly for photography. I don't think it's the easiest viewer, but I seem to get the most satisfying results from it.

I fell in love with the old Niran's viewer. It was an incredibly graceful way to experience SL and the photos it produced were such a joy. Unfortunately, "Dragon" did feel like an appropriate name for it's replacement.

[Issa Heckroth]

"He might be very arrogant, but he has every right to be it, because his viewer is top notch."

What a horrible view of the world. So if you create something worthwhile you have the right to be a douche to everyone? What kind of logic is that?

[Issa Heckroth]

@Kindred Wanderer - I am in the advanced menu of V3 and I dont see any options for high rez snaps. All I see is the cache settings and the boxes to turn on advances and developers menu. Am I in the wrong place?

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

@Issa Yes, you are in the wrong place, it's in the Advanced Menu on the Menu bar, not in Preferences.

[zz bottom]

Im so in with clara. I used and loved the old Niran's viewer, so much i was accused of so many things. Then i could not get used to Dragon's feeling and was accused of others.
So i moved on and use Ukando.
The fact is that any can tweek LL viewer to give almost all the choices on graphics, but LL is adapting many of Niran's choices into the official viewer as well.
And that means that other Tpv«s like Kokua, Ukando, Alquimy and so on will also use them.
And let's be honest, His tweeks are far more important to me then most of firestorm ones.

[Mac]

@Issa Heckroth : I fully agree.

[Vanni]

I like Black Dragon a lot. The only issue I have with it is using the arrow keys. I'm an old time (ten year) SL Resident and like using the arrow keys to move. Using the right or left arrow key to move does not just spin your avi, it also moves it. Other than that small thing, I like the view, it does graphics well and runs very well on my desktop. I'd not use it on the lappy, though!

[Nalates]

Read the latest posts on the Black Dragon blog. For some time NiranV has been saying he would stop development. That time may be near. But, take whatever Niran says well salted.

The viewer has a couple of great unique features. But, the experimental UI makes it a challenge to learn and use and the small user base mean there isn't much support.

Recent versions have used a more consistent UI, meaning fewer drastic changes.

Firestorm has a UI that is 'similar to the Linden viewer. They have made many more of the viewer controls accessible and that makes it look WAY tech. But, it is the difference between never knowing of viewer features and having to dig to get to the settings when you learn about them AND being over whelmed with a flood of controls.

One of the great features is there is a SEARCH feature in Preference. Can't remember where a feature control is, type a name and a list of possible control come up and you can jump to the control. Great.

For controlling the render, use the Photo-Tools feature. It is just a panel with all the rendering and Windlight control in one panel. There is a button you can add to the basic UI (click on and to where you want it) to open and close Photo-Tools.

Then there is the 24x7 FS Support. They welcome 'Where is the control for...' type questions. There are times of day when a question will stump the online users. But, an hour or two later someone with an answer will be around. That will not happen with BD.

You are making your life harder than necessary by not having Firestorm as one of your viewers. The learning invested in FS is likely to last you far longer than the learning time you might invest in BD. FS is good about retaining their user interface, generally adding to it and changing little else. BD was but recently is less of an experiment in finding the best UI. That meant lots of UI changes. It is now a very different UI than Linden's. That is probably a good thing, but it requires learning the different UI.

Firestorm, Catznip, and Alchemy are the viewers I turn to when I want to use something other than the Linden viewer. I switch between all of them with nothing that I have to unlearn, just remember that FS has more stuff. For any imaging needs FS is the go-to-viewer.

Niran can do amazing things with BD. Others can to. But, you have to learn how it is done.

[Kyouko]

Nalates wrote: "You are making your life harder than necessary by not having Firestorm as one of your viewers."

This is nonsense. I never use a Firestorm viewer and my SLife is so easy as it can be.

[Nalates]

Kyouko, both are opinion. I think it just shows what you don't know.

[Kindred Wanderer]

@Issa Heckroth: You have to activate that menu from a stock install. You can do it from Preferences->Advanced, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D.

@Nalates: Viewer preference is just that, a preference. I find FS to have a confusing UI, and I have a hard time finding things I need quickly/easily. But, that is just my opinion. I've never understood why some people seem to think others are lacking knowledge simply because they have different preferences. Once again, my opinion.

Use what makes you happy :)

[Milly]

I've been looking for a new viewer to try. Every since the latest update on FS it's been usable for me. Everything is laggy, it takes almost a minute for things to detach or be attached. I have slower DSL (not my choice) so I was thinking it was internet connection...but I could run things like WoW fine.

I switched to CtlAltStudio and I saw a vast improvement. However there are a few quirks that make taking pictures.. frustrating. Like Quiet Snapshots won't stay on. So I have to check that.

I think I used BD in the past and I'll probably give it a try as well as some of the others.

I like FS and hopefully whatever is making it weird for me will be fixed.

[Eve Kazan]

I love it and i'm using it everyday, it's my main viewer. For my use of SL, it's perfect for photography :)

The interface is different from the other viewers, so for a first use it's difficult to figure out where are the options ^^

There is an option that i love, you can register graphic preferences, and change in one clic between them. Example, you are always in Super High, you go then in a laggy Meshy place, you can change the graphic by choosing an other preregistrered graphic set which is more light , the time to load all and after you can change to high if you want. ^^

And in final the good point is that the creator and his team does frequently updates.

[NiranV Dean]

Reading all these comments, i think there are some things to clean up here.

>> It sucks, is crashy, and the twelve year old who makes it is an a-hole. <<

A few quick facts.
- Dragons do not suck, they get blowjobs.
- I highly doubt it's even remotely close to "crashy"
- I'm not 12, but i am an asshole, to people who deserve it. People like you, who make uninformed posts about the personality of a person you have not even interacted with directly.

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>> An achievement system is what would fix all this. <<

I had one already in Nirans Viewer. Look it up!

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>> Niran is more an artist than he is a programmer. He might be very arrogant, but he has every right to be it, because his viewer is top notch. <<

I would prefer to be called an user, because that's what i am at the end of the day, right? But yes, i'm probably more of an artist than i am a programmer.

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>> ALL Viewers use the same rendering code. They can ALL have the same quality of graphics. It all just depends on the settings. All these "pretty photography viewers" do is turn on some options that are not on by default, and change some default settings from the defaults that LL (and most other viewers) use One could do the same video/pictures with the LL viewer or Firestorm. <<

Not completely true. While all Viewers except those made from scratch like the mobiles, use the same rendering code, some do have some extra rendering features that other Viewers do not have. Examples for my Viewer would be:

Screen Space Reflections
Volumetric Lighting (Godrays)
Motion Blur
Tone Mapping
Color Correction
Vignette

Also these are just completely new ones, on top of that there are also alterations of the rendering/shader code of several default features like Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Shadows, Depth of Field, all of them look slightly different or use different algorythms, therefor making other Viewers unable to produce the same exact image without implementing these changes as well.

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>> @Kindred Wanderer - I am in the advanced menu of V3 and I dont see any options for high rez snaps. All I see is the cache settings and the boxes to turn on advances and developers menu. Am I in the wrong place? <<

If you are on my Viewer, stop looking. My Viewer does not have the option as it is obsolete. You can just set the resolution of snapshots in the snapshot floater to anything between the minimum resolution and the maximum (6000x6000).

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>> Then there is the 24x7 FS Support. They welcome 'Where is the control for...' type questions. There are times of day when a question will stump the online users. But, an hour or two later someone with an answer will be around. That will not happen with BD. <<

There is no 24/7 BD Support, but you can IM me at any time and i will help you as soon as i see the IM either in my mails or immediately when i'm online. Optionally you can write on my blog or forum, but i suggest you just IM me as you will usually end up there anyway if it's something more persistent than just "where can i find X". One thing you will never see in the FS support is personal help. I often visit my users to help them personally. Lately i've spend a lot of time near some of the FS supports and there are quite a few people there that sometimes don't have any idea that they are telling people really bad stuff or just half of the truth. I would be really careful about implying that a 24/7 support is good. I would rather have a small very talented and informed team (if at all) than a large group of people who often only know half of everything. You might have to wait for me to come online to get my help, but i'm pretty sure that many can assure you that it's worth the wait. Sometimes i push updates for a single person with a problem.

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>> The learning invested in FS is likely to last you far longer than the learning time you might invest in BD. <<

I try to teach people the clean way. The old fashioned way if you will. There are so many hidden features or functions you can use to get the same or similar results. Some Viewers just make them easier accessible, or even a copy of it with a new UI. I think learning the "old fashioned" way is way more worth your time as you can use it anywhere in any Viewer since these are basic features and tricks. It makes you Viewer-change resistant. I could use any Viewer, no matter it's UI. I think that comes from people just approaching it wrong. In games you pretty much always get an entirely new UI, still you find pretty much everything almost immediately and you don't complain that everything is different.

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>> BD was but recently is less of an experiment in finding the best UI. That meant lots of UI changes. It is now a very different UI than Linden's. <<

It is not that very different as you may think. Funnily if you look exactly you will notice that most UI parts are still the same, they just have a slightly altered layout or skin. The topbar is still the same topbar is was before, it's just more compact. Preferences is still just preferences, it works the same, just with more options and a different layout/organization/grouping approach for options.... and so on. The biggest change in the UI is always just the skin. Trust me, if you put the LL skin on top of it, it will look really similar to the LL Viewer.

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[David Cartier]

There is this really weird aspect to SL. The people who make money selling stuff; they - many of them - get away with rude, even sociopathic behavior and crappy customer service. Those who create as a labor of love, the Firestorm team and this Black Dragon developer, they seem to get a mountain of abuse and hate, from people using their creations for free.

[etc]

Well done proving his point niran, you really are a douche