Friday, July 1, 2016

RLV 2.9.18

Hi !

Here is the latest version of the RLV, to get up-to-date with the latest official SL viewer, with avatar rendering complexity and all, as well as a few bug fixes and improvements (in my opinion and experience). Plus, I notice this version is solid with outfits, I did not notice one outfit error at all in a week of testing ! No ghosted attachment upon TP, no missing attachment upon relog, let alone locked ones, and no "incorrect CoF version" message on the console either. It finally feels reliable (*).

I also added a debug setting named "RestrainedLoveAutoTempAttach" (menu "Advanced", "Show debug settings", type "RestrainedLoveAutoTempAttach" and change its value) to automatically allow a temporary attachment to attach, you can switch it to TRUE and FALSE at will without needing a relog, knowing that it won't let a "debit" permission (or any other) get through.


Here is the change list :

- added : Debug setting "RestrainedLoveAutoTempAttach" (default to FALSE) to automatically accept attachment permission requests coming from a temporary attachment. Please note that this does NOT allow a temporary attachment to automatically be granted any other permission, even if it is bundled into the same request, to protect against griefing and fraud.

- changed : Improved the way silhouettes are rendered (now faster and cleaner).

- changed : When forced into Mouselook and sitting on an object, moving the mouse wheel back resets the pitch of the view, like it does when standing.

- fixed : @attachallthis and its siblings did not seem to prevent attaching a wearable or body part.

- fixed : "Add to Current Outfit" wasn't working anymore.

- fixed : We couldn't Alt-right-click on an object to sit on it while in Mouselook, with a prim blocking the view (even a transparent one).


You can grab the RLV for Windows here :

www.erestraints.com/realrestraint

Direct download :
www.erestraints.com/realrestraint/RestrainedLoveSetup.exe

And the MD5 hash for the executable is :

a23a25b531daec17330cf9e1b3819d05



On a side note...

I want to talk about the new avatar rendering complexity (aka "jelly dolls") feature. It is a new-old one because it has been there for a while (we already knew it under the codename "ARC"), but now it is no longer just a score, it actually makes the viewer react to it by hiding the avatars around you that have a score higher than a threshold that you define. This is good when you are in a club, surrounded with many avatars and some of them wear a lot of stuff. I won't go into detail, it is all explained here, but I would like to point out that the formula used to calculate complexity is strongly biased against transparent surfaces, even fully transparent (invisible) ones. Like each transparent triangle counts for four.

Problem is, my products rely heavily on hiding and showing parts of restraint sets, especially the Deluxe Straps. Now before you ask, no the Deluxe Straps (or any other restraint I make) do not slow down your viewer or the viewers of the people looking at you. Well to be perfectly honest, I do go from 80 FPS down to 78 when wearing them (locked or not), so there is a rendering cost, but it is very small and to be expected.

But it doesn't matter, the formula says that transparent stuff must be punished, and punished it is. And I am not even talking about sculpties which are punished even more due to their high triangle count even for a 64x64 texture. So imagine an invisible scultpy ! Which means that I have to work on a solution to avoid making people think that my products are poorly designed. They're not, their complexity is perfectly acceptable when visible, because I took care of optimizing them when I designed them. It's just that the formula increases their rendering "score" when unlocked simply because they are invisible. As a result, you have a risk of being viewed as a "jelly doll" when wearing them unlocked, so I have to do something about it.

Such a "feature" may be detrimental to business, and not only to mine.

My idea at the moment is to "simply" allow the user to detach secondary items in a set that are not used by the current lock. For example the u-binder of the Vixen set when locked in "hands back", or the left leg straps of the Deluxe Straps when locked in "Tight". It isn't difficult and would allow you to spare some attachment slots even when locked, so it would definitely be an improvement and not just a defensive action on my part. It would however require you to get a replacement of the whole set you'd want to update, and to use only the new set (meaning you'd have to resize it again, either manually or with the copy/paste shape scripts).

I need to think long and hard before I even start working on it, because although allowing to detach what is not locked is rather easy, there is the problem of attaching a part after locking the set, if that part is supposed to be used by the current lock. It has to request all kinds of data from the main part (visibility, lock state, textures, leash...). So it is not as trivial as it looks, it may require significant changes to a number of scripts.

We're not there yet anyway so for now, if you really care about your own avatar complexity score and want to trim it down, simply don't wear the parts you won't need, before getting locked in your favorite restraints.

Or if you're like me, you won't care about it at all and will wear whatever you like when you're with your friends. You and your friends will likely decide to bump the slider all the way up to "No Limit" in the Graphics Preferences anyway and quickly forget about that "feature".


Have fun !

Marine


(*) Famous last words.