ShrugDangle

Lord posted a link to this on the TPV thread but I wanted to open a thread here to discuss it.

The new Zen Viewer has been added to the Lab's TPV list.

I downloaded it and tried it out. Looks pretty good aside from my pet peeve of them not having ctrl+T mapped to "Conversations" and the fact I couldn't turn proper shadows on. >.<

Regarding the latter I did see something about "Graded Shadow Support" but I didn't really see anything resembling shadows when I was running it.

Does anyone have any more information on this viewer?

Adeon Writer

Gradient shadows are one of the Linden's pet projects to have partial shadows for transparent gradient textures rather than the binary+blur that we have now.

I haven't yet gotten my hands on a viewer that has it, though.

NiranV Dean

uhm you had....
Old SSAO Mode = no Graded Shadows and no Tofu SSAO
New SSAO Mode (default) = Graded Shadows and Tofu´s SSAO

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Adeon Writer

Dang it I asked you how to turn those on!

NiranV Dean

they were turned on by default....
and your question probably didnt make it to me as im having IM lag of days/weeks lately

ShrugDangle

Well I had to go into the Develop (under rendering) to turn shadows on. I think they probably just have a bug in their interface XML.

Inhandra

Spent a short amount of time running the viewer on an alt. It appears to have most anything one could want, which is neat, save for the asset blacklist. However much I want an Area Object Search, what was presented isn't enough to make me want to switch from Exodus full time. I think I prefer Exodus' implementation of the AO FUI button, and it's hard to give up the quick access to the graphic tweaks and HDR panel.

Can't wait to see what else they wind up doing though. It's going on my watch list, and I think I may wind up keeping it around explicitly for that area search, when I need it. :>

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Nebula

love it

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ShrugDangle

I like it too. It's very smooth and it can do invisiprims with deferred which should make a lot of people happy.

There's a new version out and it looks like one of the fixes was to correct the shadows doohikey in the graphics preferences panel:

https://bitbucket.org/Zena_Juran/zen...t/d5eca18964ee

Chalice Yao

Added it to my client list thread, and I pointed Zena Juran at this one :> So hopefully she will pipe in!

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Zena Juran

Thanks for the info Chalice... will adjust accordingly.

It's been a whiles since I've logged to SLU... need to redo my profile again.

It really is fast paced keeping up with the Snowstorm, Shiny, and Shader repositories and maintaining the few patches I have already included in the Zen Viewer. So do expect releases to be often. Fortunately, any new version of the Zen Viewer can be installed directly over any existing installation without any loss of saved logs and data.

I mostly just build and script when I'm in-world these days and thought it would be nice to have a v3 viewer (which is the best performer on my PC) with some added/enhanced content creation functions. I personally don't use most of the features found in other TPVs such as radar, anti-spam, and RLV.

I'm trying not to load the Zen Viewer up with too many non-LL features but there are a few more still to come.

I will monitor (lurk) the blogs and forums for posts on feedback, bugs, and ideas and suggestions. If there is something I'm really missing that should be a staple feature in the Zen Viewer, please let me know.

Cheers :-)

Lord

I had also added a thread just for the Zen Viewer under Alternative Viewers on 1.21.12........oh well, I'll see if there is a way to delete my earlier dated thread for your newer one.

Here is what was posted on the earlier 'Zen Viewer' thread:
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vv
Zen Viewer
The new Zen Viewer is now available here: https://bitbucket.org/Zena_Juran/zen-viewer/downloads

A review of the Zen Viewer can be found here:
https://modemworld.wordpress.com/201...f-second-life/

Summary: The Zen Viewer is a SLV 3.2.7 based Third Party Viewer developed mostly for Builders in Second Life (extended build tool set) without fancy add-ons/ins associated with other modes of the Second Life. They have applied to be included in the TPVD.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Now there is a second review available:
http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2012...iewer-updated/

Inhandra

The Area Search doesn't trigger a "follow me" beacon. Unhappy.

Nebula

I think it would be nice to have the viewer use radar keys on the phoenix or fire storm channels, this would encourage more people to use it as tons of people use stuff like zscan.

Zena Juran

I'm in the process of modifying the Area Search for the next release.

Buttons for "Show Beacon" and "Look At" will be added along with a possibility of a "Particle Beam Follower" tied in with the built-in Particle Editor.

:-)


I almost forgot... a new column showing location (in the standard <X, Y, Z>) format is also being added.

Cheers :-)

Zena Juran

I did a brief run-through of what it would take to add a decent radar system to the Zen viewer a whiles back. It is a major project but not too bad. I'll look into it again after I clean up my "to do" list a bit.

:-)

Ace

The mesh deformer screws up rigged meshes for me (same as any viewer with it enabled) except I have it disabled in Zen. I have to enable it and then re-disable it each time I log in to fix the problem. (the opposite of turning it off and on again!)

Zena Juran

I am going to turn the Mesh Deformer to "off" by default in the next release but in the mean time you can set it "off" by default by...

1. Logging off and closing the Zen Viewer.
1. Navigating to the Zen Viewer installation folder on your PC.
2. Locating the "app_settings" folder.
3. Opening the "settings" xml file with wordpad, notepad, or some other similar text editor.
4. Scrolling down inside the settings.xml until you find "MeshDeformer".
5. Changing the "1" to a "0".
6. Saving the settings.xml file.

I hope this helps!

:-)

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Kitty Barnett

Looking over the feature list a lot of things jump out as being other people's work (the skinning code in Zen is certainly mine, as well as the top/bottom notifications switching) and quite a lot of Firestorm dev features are present as well, but without any credit given per feature either on the wiki, or the TPV list page.

Additionally credit markers from the borrowed code have been deliberately removed so it would seem hard to make a case for it being a simple oversight.

Kadah Coba

I noticed this with some of my stuff too *sadface*

Lord

According to the article Inara wrote, contributor names were included in the About Zen floater in the viewer, and there is also a Special Thanks section on the homepage for it...which does mention Kitty Barnett, but alas, I see no Kadah Coba there.

Trinity Dejavu

If a viewers main claim to fame seems to be an ability to collate code from other projects it might be worthwhile being a little more specific when giving credit. It's all open source and sharing is caring. But stolen thunder just makes for an ass shaped hat.

To say that the differential in work involved between creating new features from scratch and adding a completed feature from another source is significant would be an understatement (applies to both TPV and the Lab's unreleased side projects).

In a bullet point list of features Qarl does alright with Qarl's alignment tool and Qarl's parametric deformer, but where is the mention of Zi's Client Side AO, the Lab's gradiated shadows or Ima Mechinique's script loading & saving to name just a couple of items. You see if you name one person's patches and none of the rest, the implication rubs the wrong way.

This isn't to unduly single Zen out, to those who actually do the actual development and on going maintenance of new features it is simply one more in a growing trend of new "shake'n'bake" viewers that manage to open their doors on day one with a full suite of bells and whistles.

To add, this all simply confuses any innovation that might be present.

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Ace

Thanks for that. What's wierd though, is that I switched it off in the Zen menu, and I don't mind having to switch things off. But every time I log in again, it seems to be on, even though it is still checked off in the menu. So it's as much a menu-function inconsistency as a default preference thing.

Adeon Writer

In the same config file, a few lines lower, change the value for "persist"
from 0 to 1. that will make it keep the setting after a relog.

Ace

Thanks again, but aside from my own preferences I'm trying also to highlight what seems to be a bug in the UI.