New World Notes

How to Run the VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm With a Pretty Great Frame Rate (If You Got a Great PC)

Just got a cool little update to Tuesday's post about installing and running Peter Kappler's VR version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life from Austin Tate: In response to my suggestion that the frame rate might be too low for this to be usable, Austin did some test runs and some tweaks.

"I tried the Drune IV area on the Second Life Ravine region you mentioned. One other user there (or maybe it was an NPC).

"On Ultra quality and 256m view distance it was a bit too low frame rate and was a bit choppy, but it worked fine at 'High' quality settings and 128m draw distance. On my rig I was getting 40 frames per second in VR mode.  Images attached for 
you." (See above.) 

So those look like the settings for optimal results. To be sure, he got them thanks in great part to very good hardware (see his specs below), but the bottom line is this VR viewer is more or less WYSIWYG compared to the PC-based Firestorm:

How to Use the VR Version Of Second Life For Firestorm & Steam VR

Austin Tate has a very useful, in-depth tutorial for installing and running Peter Kappler's VR version of the Firestorm viewer for Second Life (which I blogged earlier this year), with bonus points for a how-to on installing an XBox One/360 controller to run with the Oculus Rift installation.

While Second Life isn't social VR per se, it remains the largest, content rich social virtual world space with (relatively) high end graphics that can be explored in a VR rig.

As you might expect, Austin tells me/warns me that graphics performance does take a hit in virtual reality:

Lumiya, Popular SL Viewer Recently Removed from Google Play, Still Available on SlideME Android Marketplace

While Lumiya, the popular SL viewer for Android devices, was recently removed for unknown reasons from Google Play, it's still currently available on SlideME, a curated market for Android apps. I'm not too familiar with SlideME but it's recommended by some Android news outlets as a popular alternative to Google Play. More key, Lumiya creator Alina Lyvette herself recommends SlideME as a Google Play alternative, especially for people who to want to purchase a copy from her using PayPal. Some SLers have pointed to alternate sources for Lumiya which might be unauthorized/ripped copies, and of course, it's far better that Alina get the sales: Go here to buy it on SlideME.

Lumiya, Popular Android Viewer for Second Life, Gone from Google Play -- But Still Works (For Now)

Update, May 6: Lumiya still seems to be available on SlideME Android Marketplace

Frustrating and possibly bad news: Lumiya, the popular SL viewer for Android devices -- over 100,000 copies have been bought at $2.99 each -- is no longer in Google Play. This about a year after word that Lumiya, created by SLer Alina Lyvette, was removed from the official Third Party Viewer Directory.

The good news is it still works: I just logged into Second Life with my Samsung tablet, and the SL replica of Notre Dame Cathedral faithfully started to display. (And impressively well, for an Android client!)

I've reached out to both Linden Lab and Alina for clarity, and hope to update this story soon. I haven't received any message from Alina since 2014, when we talked about her real life as an LGBTQ person in Putin's oppressive Russia. But no reason as yet to assume anything -- it may just be a simple technical issue.

Does This Open Source VR Viewer for Second Life Make the Virtual World Look Better Than VRChat?

There's a new update to Firestorm VR, a Second Life viewer for virtual reality headsets, from developer Peter Kappler (links available here on his YouTube page). It includes some fixes and improvements to the open source project from since I first blogged about it last month; specifically new mouse and keyboard controls (as you'll see in the video above) plus better performance: "Stereo should look smoother now", Peter tells me.

And while Second Life is over 15 years old, he believes the VR experience his viewer offers is better than what you'd get in leading social VR platforms:

"Honestly if you go to other VR worlds you will find out that the worlds and avatars are not so complicated," as he puts it to me. "I bet if you build a sim properly and use proper avatars you can make SL look like VRChat -- even better. I saw some avatars that were looking pretty realistic in Second Life which I've never seen in VRChat."

How accurate that is, I leave up to brave early adopters who want to give Firestorm VR a try -- here's some instruction tips and advice from Peter:

Firestorm QA: Yes, It's Possible to Use Debug Settings to Get Super-High Quality Second Life Images -- Here's How

Last week's post on improving SL image quality via a workaround from SLer Frenchbloke Vanmoer caused a lot of skepticism, mostly due to some poor technical wording on my part. (My bad and mea culpa!) However, Firestorm support and QA volunteer Whirly Fizzle came by Comments, and confirmed that this does, indeed, apparently work:

When I first read this blog post I thought it was a load of cobblers. But Frenchbloke is actually correct! The blog post just explains it badly. [Sorry! - ed]

This will also work just as well on the Linden Lab viewer & probably every other viewer. Those debug settings are from the Linden Lab viewer, they are not Firestorm specific.

It's easy enough to test for yourself. Get hold of a super high quality 8192 image with lots of fine detail & make sure it's saved in a lossless format - I used PNG in my test.

Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y to 8192.
Upload your 8192x8192 image.
This image will upload and the uploader will resize the image to the maximum allowed size of 1024x1024 - this limit is enforced server side, there is no way around it.

Now open your 8192 PNG in Photoshop & reduce the image size to 12.5% using the Bicubic Sharpen (best for reduction) & save this image.
Set the debugs max_texture_dimension_X and max_texture_dimension_Y back to default & upload your image.

More from Mr. Fizzle, including a sample comparison images they took:

How to Display Extremely High-Res Textures In SL's Firestorm Viewer

Click to embiggen: Catwa head texture displayed in normal, 1024K, and 8K (pics via M. Vanmoer)

UPDATE, 2/13: In Comments, some readers have pointed out that this hack might not necessarily work as described, or could cause performance problems for users -- so caveat SLer. (Then again, the top avatar mesh bodies sold in Second Life already have major performance issues.)  Also be sure to read Vanmoer's responses in Comments.

SLer "Frenchbloke Vanmoer" recently told me about a cool Debug setting in the Firestorm viewer that enables extremely high resolution textures to be displayed, with far more detail than is seen by default. (As seen above, and after the break.)

"It's not a bug as far as I know," he tells me, "just that it's hidden away in the Debug settings -- nobody looks in there properly... Some [creators] I have talked to were unaware it existed and were making all their textures for upload from up to 8K sources as 1K uploads."

He says making the change doesn't cause much viewer-side lag: "They are just the usual 1024 x 1024 textures as far as your inventory and viewer is concerned. The main difference is that it looks a lot nicer. It's the same principle as photo resizing as well as audio for broadcast -- the better the quality in, the better it will be when compressed. It's one of the first things you learn when using images -- best to start big and then scale down, than the other way around. I'm curious to see what mesh creators can do with this on uvmapped mesh."

As with any debug adjustment, user beware! Here's the Debug setting Vanmoer is talking about:

Coming Soon to Black Dragon SL Viewer: Full Camera Animation Editor With Keyframing (I.E. Major Feature Machinima)

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans (Discord channel here) has an upcoming features that's ideal for YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and machinima makers: Full camera animation editor with keyframing.

"It will allow you to record, edit, delete, move camera animation keyframes," Black Dragon creator NiranV tells me. "The controls will immediately preview what you are doing as shown in the [video above]. They can also be abused to precisely control position and rotation at any time for a snapshot. Later i'll also add field of view. All if which will be animated from keyframe to keyframe."

This is designed to be far superior to the existing recording options in the official Second Life viewer -- and the biggest update to Black Dragon in awhile:

Open Source VR for Second Life Gets Up to 100 FPS, Reports Developer, Who's Seeking Vive & Oculus Users to Help Optimize for Those Headsets

Quick update from Peter Kappler, a dev who quietly created code to run Second Life in VR via Firestorm and Steam VR, and then posted the source code online. First off, he tells me, it can get quite good performance running in Second Life with great hardware: "On GTX 1080, non-stereo, around 60 to 120 frames per second; with stereo, half of that," he tells me. 60 FPS would still be pretty impressive, at least by Second Life standards, especially as the virtual world has a massive amount of content and social activity already built in.

And Peter thinks he can greatly improve that performance:

Text-Based Viewer for Second Life & OpenSim? There's an App for That

Linden Lab may be finally ready to release an iOS "companion" app for Second Life, but reader "Saga" points out there's already a third party SL app in the App Store: "There is another app for SL chat/inventory for iOS. I use it now and then, it’s called MetaChat!" And so there is:

MetaChat is a text-only viewer for all Virtual Worlds based on the OpenSimulator software for 3D worlds.

iOS apps CANNOT RUN IN THE BACKGROUND !

There is no 3D view, this is a text-only viewer.

Add accounts from different worlds with different start locations.,
See your friendlist, read messages or write
Chat with groups, see group infos or write group notices
Chat in open world 
Move around a mini-map, teleport to landmarks
See your inventory/worn, preview textures or pictures, send items
Attach/Wear/Detach/TakeOff Clothes
Enter/leave groups
Add friends/invite/pay/remove

So about the same feature list as the late-lamented Pocket Metaverse, but updated more often (check the developer blog here). But caveat emptor, my dude: MetaChat's user reviewers are pretty middling. However, even most of the critical reviews still suggest it's worth considering as a purchase: