New World Notes

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:

Can a Multiple Texture Upload Feature Improve Second Life Performance?

Here's a new feature request on the Second Life JIRA worth following, submitted by Firestorm developer Beq Janus, who explains her reasoning for it in a New World Notes comment:

As was raised in the past in this blog, one of the problems we face in Second Life is inefficient content design, and a move that encourages the creation of high resolution (1024) textures as part of a default workflow is going to lead to a worsening of this situation. To this end I have proposed an amendment to the viewer (and server) that would allow for the simplified creation of multiple resolutions in a single transaction. Ultimately I would like to see this generate a range of resolutions from a single (high resolution) source image, for a single upload fee. I think the feature has value without the single fee change, but the take up would be far lower. The hope is that with such a feature, artists and creators can work with high-resolution images and the viewer will produce multiple resolution uploads allowing the creators to test the appearance and make better decisions about when a 1024x1024 image is really needed.

The UI mock-up pictured here is part of Beq's proposal in the JIRA, a way to subtly encourage mesh creators to avoid uploading unnecessarily resource-heavy, poorly optimized textures which are now choking SL 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:

How to Make Second Life Look Like It's Cel Shaded à la Borderlands

Because so many readers loved that hack for making Second Life look like a line drawing (someone is already using that to make a "Take on Me" machinima, right?), here's another set of tweaks to make Second Life look like it's cel shaded, as above -- you know, like in the popular Borderlands games. This hack, unsurprisingly, comes from SL graphics master NiranV, creator of the Black Dragon SL viewer. All you have to do, he explains, is adjust SL's screen space ambient occlusion settings: "Set SSAO max scale very low, scale super high, its factor super high and strength super low and viola, you get cel shading via SSAO. For a better effect turn off light softening."

If that's a bit over your head like mine, don't worry -- here's the settings to play with in the Black Dragon viewer, and some tips for doing it in the official viewer:

Watch: How to Make Second Life Look Like an Animated Line Drawing

This is a fantastic visual effect for Second Life created by Kitsune Shan, simply through adjusting settings in the Firestorm viewer: Rendering the virtual world into what looks like an animated line drawing. It screams out for being used in machinima and music videos -- or as Sasy Scarborough put it to me, when she sent this video my way, "Turn name tags off, it would be an amazing short film." Yes.

How to create this effect? Watch the video until the very end, where you see the setting levels she used in the UI. Kitsune figured this out through trial and error noodling:

Black Dragon Update: Control Multiple Animated Avatars at the Same Time

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans (developer NiranV estimates about 3000+ downloads), has a new version available for download: "Animating Dragon".

As that suggests, the latest updates enables this: "The ability to use poses to animate not just yourself but also Animesh now. Previously I added posing for Animesh but you could still only animate either you or them [Animesh-based NPCs) and only one at a time," as he explains to me. "Now you can animate everyone independently and/or at the same time."

So basically, this is a major boon for machinima makers and fashionistas who want to take supermodel shots where they want to control the supermodel too. (Just for starters.)

Video of Animating Dragon in action below. More about it on NiranV's blog (where you can also get the download link). 

Niran, by the way, has a Patreon for developing Black Dragon, and donations sure seem well-deserved. I mean, just look at what he's doing all by himself on his viewer:

Black Dragon Comes With Highly Detailed In-Viewer Poser for SL Avatars

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, has a relatively unknown feature with a lot of potential uses: In-viewer avatar poser, editing poses with an extremely high and subtle detail, available in the menu via Dragon > My Useful Features > Poser.

"It all started with people wanting a way to synchronize animations like in Firestorm," lead developer NiranV tells me. "I didn't want to implement this as a separate feature. Instead, I made it part of my previous plan of adding a whole animation manipulation suite, which was inspired by my previous 'adjustable slow motion' animation feature."

Niran, by the way, has a Patreon for developing Black Dragon, and donations sure seem well-deserved. I mean, just look at what he's doing in his viewer:

Animesh Update Reportedly Hurts Performance of All SL Viewers, Including Firestorm -- Linden Lab Investigating

The title to last week's post, "Linden Lab Update Borked Black Dragon's Viewer Frame Rate In Second Life", is not quite accurate, because as Black Dragon creator NiranV writes in Comments, the JIRA bug report he filed, "Animesh: Massive performance loss since animesh update", relates to any viewer which incorporates that update. That includes Firestorm, the most popular viewer among the SL userbase by far. Niran argues it will take awhile for Firestorm users and developers to realize that problem, or implement a fix:

Worst case (as it is right now) no one will notice, since no one hasn't noticed yet even with the huge amount of testing of animesh. Then it will go to Firestorm, Firestorm will be blamed for their shitty stuff once again, and boom everyone got a smack in their face because one single tiny thing slipped through testing.

It might get fixed someday or it might not. Problem is Lindens often don't use the Viewer they are developing enough to make such concrete observations, they are way busy with other stuff like getting this stuff to work in the first place. So it's up to testers to see this stuff.

Problem is because most people use Firestorm they will disregard the possibly lower framerate as it simply being "Linden Lab's Viewer", besides most people testing the Viewer for what it was made = animesh, rather than normal usage.

This causes no one to notice until it hits their own Viewer, which in case of Firestorm, with its extremely long release cycles, could be a problem. Even if they were to notice it shortly after release, you most likely wouldn't see another update until another half a year. Most users will assume that it's simply Firestorm's fault and their usual degradation of quality and performance over several updates -- which if you followed Firestorm's development, you'd think is "normal", meaning you start ignoring the issue, no one might investigate and this thing, will have sneaked into all Viewers, reducing everyone's framerate for no reason.

And this is how fast shit can hit the fan.

Fortunately, Linden Lab has acknowledged the bug report on Jira, and is investigating, and calling for further feedback:

Linden Lab Update Borked Black Dragon's Viewer Frame Rate in Second Life -- Here's Why, And the JIRA to Upvote

Go to this JIRA bug report (BUG-225584) and consider upvoting if you're a fan of Black Dragon, the SL viewer with a cult following for its ability to make Second Life look like a AAA game. Because as you can see from the above video, shot be lead creator NiranV, a recent SL viewer codebase update will utterly kill Black Dragon's frame rate when displaying the viewers' new animesh features.

"I imagine chaos and mass panic when this goes live and everyone is having complete shit framerates," as Niran bluntly puts it." 

The problem? That's pretty technical (definitely for me) so let me just quote him:

Black Dragon Second Life Viewer Adds Full Animesh Support With Custom Animation Control - Great Tool for Machinima, Group Shots

Black Dragon, the third party Second Life viewer with a cult following among hardcore graphics fans, has a new update that will likely make it a favorite among machinima makers and screenshot photogrpahers who want to create group shots: Full support for animated mesh avatars, i.e. animesh. Being the brainchild of NiranV, Black Dragon's version of animesh is unique among other SL viewers -- direct control of animesh via a control UI he's created:

"Any viewer with animesh can do it via scripts," as Niran tells me, "but Black Dragon can also simply copy all animations playing on yourself to any animesh." This is viewable only via the user's perceptive, but that's all you need when shooting machinima or screenshots. "I'm planning to use this for music videos," he adds. "Who needs other people if you can just do it with yourself, a few times making copies of myself is possible now kinda."

More about the Animation Control from Niranv's blog, and future update plans:

Yes you can stop, freeze, slow-down, speed-up and copy and paste animations from and onto them. Since they are just objects I see no reason LL would not allow me to allow you to do whatever the heck you want with them.

The poser however does not support animated mesh YET. This is the next thing I'm going to work on in addition to some nice extra features for animated mesh, such as copying your shape and attachments to them.

Animated mesh as it is right now does not support neither, they won't have attachments and their shape cannot be changed, I plan on changing that. 

Here's a video of what this looks like in action, featuring Niran dancing with a copy of himself: