Monthly Archives: April 2011

Dolphin Viewer 2 2.5.6.15005, or the “Steamed crow” edition

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It just goes to show you that I’d better keep my mouth shut.

DolphinViewer 2 2.5.6 is now available after all.

Since the port toward 2.6.x will take at least a few weeks, and the fact that 2.6.0 has some bugs while 2.6.3 has a new feature that people will be begging for (enhanced avatar physics layers), I decided that I should really put out a 2.5.6 in the meantime, especially since my “work in progress” version has several important bugfixes and nice addons since the last release.

Here’s the list of new stuff:

  • Security fix: Domain substring matching is gone from media filters, since it allowed circumvention of the filter.
  • Fixed: VWR-25269 – Error message about unknown notification when setting scripts to “not running”.
  • Fixed: ECC-49 – The “Tight pants” syndrome, where flared system pants appear to be skintight even when they should not.
  • Fixed: Replacing outfits would not take off un-needed attachments when RLV was disabled.
  • Fixed: Flickr uploads would contain the in-world location even when the RLV “Can’t see location” restriction was active.
  • Added: Direct shortcut buttons to the Windlight sky and Windlight water settings in the navigation bar (right next to “About Land”).
  • Changed: “About Land” button shortened to “Land” to make a bit of room for the Windlight buttons.
  • Removed: Duplicate “Allow multiple logins” checkbox.

Media Filter changes:

  1. Fixed: Requests now get properly queued to prevent mishandling.
  2. Improved: Popups now appear with other notices (bottom right of window), and do not interfere with other actions. However, media does not start until you act on it.
  3. Improved: Popups are more clear about the meaning of white- and blacklisting.
  4. Improved: Can add url, and whole domains.
  5. Added: Filter now also acts upon media on a prim.

Download links are on the download page, as usual.

 

Dolphin Viewer 1 might be dead soon, after all

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It seems that my little April Fool’s joke was actually partially prophetic.

After the latest huge changes to the Second Life Viewer 2 source code in http://hg.secondlife.com/viewer-development, the SL2 source now uses autobuild to build binaries.

Without going further into technical details that anyone interested can read up about on the wiki, let me put it this way:

  • Autobuild, and therefore any viewer based on the latest SL2 source code, requires Visual Studio 2010 Express, or better, to build on Windows. That means, as soon as that system gets used for viewer-release, I’ll have to have Visual Studio 2010 on my laptop, or I won’t be able to build Windows packages.
  • The old Snowglobe 1 code, which is what Dolphin Viewer 1 is based upon, requires Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008, and does not build with Visual Studio 2010.

So, unless it is actually possible to have both 2005 and 2010 installed on the same machine … one of the two flavors of the Dolphin Viewer is going to go the way of the dodo.

And frankly, every day there are more and more improvements coming into the official Second Life Viewer 2 that I simply do not have the time and skills to backport to Snowglobe code, so I think it will be the Dolphin Viewer 1 that ceases to be developed.

I will of course keep the binaries of whatever the last version will be around until such day that Linden Lab decides to actively block 1.x-based viewers from connecting to their servers.

Dolphin Viewer 1.5.51.3627

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Lots of new stuff in this release – it’s a long list, so grab a fresh coffee.

New patches:

  • New MoreMutingChoicesInObjectInfo patch:
    • Allows muting by object UUID and by object name from the Object IM Info floater.
    • Normally, you can only mute objects by name. This patch allows you to block some of the more cleverly scripted spam-distributing objects.
  • New SoundPreviewCrashFix patch:
    • Fixes a crash bug which occurs when trying to preview a sound item in the reloading contents of a prim.
  • New getGeometryVolumeCrashFix patch:
    • Fixes a crash that may occur randomly in the “LLFace::getGeometryVolume()” function during rezzing.

Backports from the official Second Life Viewer version 2:

  • New DeadObjectsFixes patch:
    • Fixes how dead objects are dealt with.
    • A dead object is an object where the server and your client disagree if the object is there or not.
  • New setParameterEntryInUsePotentialCrashFix patch:
    • Fix for a potential crash bug in the “LLViewerObject::setParameterEntryInUse()” function.
  • New UnavailableVBOcrashFix patch:
    • Fix for a crash bug that can occur when trying to reset to the default graphic settings on cards without VBO support.
  • New CorruptedChunkSizeInUploadedWavCrashFix patch:
    • Fix to an infinite loop bug that occurred when uploading a .wav file with corrupted chunk size.
  • New GroupCreationDuringGroupUpdateCrashFix patch:
    • Fix for a crash bug that could occur while creating a new group while the members list for another group was loading.
  • New resetViewPotentialCrashFix patch:
    • Fix for a rare crash bug that could occur while resetting the camera view.

Updated Patches:

  • Updated MuteBlueDialogs patch:
    • This new version improves the muting decision based on either object UUID or object name, in line with the new MoreMutingChoicesInObjectInfo patch mentioned above.
  • Updated FloaterGroupTitles patch:
    • Adds a “Refresh” button to the floater (useful if some group moderator just added a new group role/title for you in their group).
    • Preserves the scrolling position in the group titles list on activation of a new title (used to be reset to top of list), and auto-updates should the floater stay open while you change your group by another mean (for example via the Groups floater, or by joining a new group).
  • Updated DisplayNamesSupport patch:
    • This new version fixes the broken active speaker list when Display Names are disabled, and prevents “Resident” to be displayed in chat, IMs, active speakers list and profile while the “Never display “Resident” in legacy names” setting is on.
    • Note that “Resident” is still displayed for new residents in some floaters regardless of this setting, for example in the Inspect floater or Build floater (not a bug, since this setting is only aimed at IM, chat and related floaters/lists).
  • Updated Radar patch:
    • This new version omits “Resident” as the last name when Display Names are disabled and the “Never display “Resident” in legacy names” setting is on.
  • Updated BlurryAndGreyTextures patch:
    • This new version fixes a bug introduced in 1.5.49.3627.
    • It moves the “Get HTTP Textures” setting from the Advanced/Rendering menu to the Network tab of the Preferences floater also adding a new setting allowing to change the maximum number of simultaneous HTTP requests during fetches.
    • Cures the high memory consumption issue that was observed in all previous versions, thanks to an adaptive algorithm and a smarter virtual size calculation for textures on attachments.
    • Anew “Advanced” -> “Rendering” -> “Reload selected textures” action which allows to manually force-reload textures of any selected object.
  • Updated PreDecodedUIsounds patch:
    • This new version ensures that UI sounds are preloaded instead of attempting to play UI sounds at an inaudible level on log in (which failed, since the audio engine purposely doesn’t decode/play inaudible sounds).
    • It also adds an Advanced setting (“Advanced” -> “UI” -> “Decode all UI sounds”), allowing to force-decode the sounds and playing them at normal level.
  • Updated SLPluginAndMediaFixes patch:
    • No change in functionality, just makes sure that the mime_*.xml files are properly bundled at build time.
  • Updated RestrainedLove patch:
    • Brings RestrainedLove features on par with Marine Kelley’s RestrainedLove v2.05.00.01.
  • Updated FloaterGroupTitles patch:
    • Adds support for the new @setgroup RestrainedLove command.
  • Updated DisplayNamesSupport patch:
    • Fixes a crash bug that could occur when closing an avatar profile floater immediately after opening it while that avatar’s Display Name was still being fetched.
  • Updated StutteringLagAndBugsInAudioEngine patch:
    • This new version adds another crash fix.

The downloads are on the download page as usual.

More details about the future of the Dolphin Viewer and the Dolphin Viewer 2

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…today is April Fool’s so I simply could not resist.

gomen. my bad.

The next versions will be:

  • Dolphin Viewer 1.5.51.3627: I decided to skip 1.5.50 because just when I was ready to release that version, Henri published another big batch of important patches for his Cool Viewer which absolutely have to go into the next version.
  • Dolphin Viewer 2.6.0, which is waiting for a bugfixed version of Marine Kelley’s RLV 2.5.0.x, and there’s still a lot to be done in porting my own patches to the 2.6.x codebase. From the looks of it I might just skip the 2.6.0 code and go directly for something based on 2.6.2.