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Release 1.8.7

· 9 min read
Shyotl Kuhr
Liru Færs

Release 1.8.7​

posted Jun 16, 2016, 4:14 AM by Shyotl K [ updated Jun 20, 2016, 1:57 AM by Liru Færs ]​

This past year has been a tumultuous one for our team, one of our developers passed away, another one left to pursue other interests, we were hampered in our ability to update and test the viewer by a lack of infrastructure and hardware issues. It was not all bad, as we recently gained a new developer, miKa-Pyon, most of our hardware issues were resolved, and we’re working on improvements with renewed vigor.

Nevertheless, Singularity is constantly evolving, and as we move on to new technologies, we cannot retain support for older platforms. Our toolchain has been updated, we now use modern programming language features which require recent GCC and Microsoft Visual Studio™ 2015. Unfortunately, as part of this required toolchain update, some older platforms have become too burdensome if not impossible to support. On the upside, thanks to these newer language features we can write better code and get better performance for the viewer. Not only can we use modern C++, we are also able to share code and prebuilt libraries with our sister project, Alchemy Viewer, this is highly beneficial as the development workload is now halved between our two projects. Due to these updates, those compiling our project will find that we now make use of autobuild. While making 32-bit linux builds is very high on our agenda, it requires a large effort and did not make this deadline. We are currently in need of a Mac developer to help us get Singularity for macOS back on track and building again.

Now, on to the other changes (There are a lot of them):

Skin Changes:

  • ‘Gemini’ now included as part of standard release. The default skin is still ‘Dark’, but this skin is a nice dark-themed alternative.
  • We’ve recreated the skins package.
    • It now has Dark Green skin by SLB Wirefly.
    • Skin files have been cleaned up, resulting in a substantially smaller on-disk size. (Shyotl)

Translation Changes:

  • As usual, the French and Spanish translations were heavily updated as we evolved (Nomade Zhao, Damian Zhaoying)
  • The German translation is now being upkept by miKa!

Grid Compatibility Changes:

  • Latest inventory protocol (AISv3) support has been merged in to maintain future compatibility with the SecondLife grid. (Shyotl)
  • QtWebkit browser has been replaced with a Chromium variant.
  • SSL library has been updated and includes TLS 1.2 support.
  • SLVoice (vivox) has been updated to latest version
  • Serverside baking (sunshine) baking implementation has been updated. (Shyotl)
  • Avatar render info is now reported to the sim.

General New Features:

  • Added Mouselook IFF feature. Displays name under crosshair matching coloration of avatar on minimap (Input Prefs) (Alchemy)
  • Mouselook can now show position and health, if damage is on. (Input Prefs) (Alchemy)
  • Added the Region Tracker which allows monitoring of multiple regions in a single floater (Alchemy)
  • Hover height slider added to Quick Settings Panel popup (bottom right corner)
  • /hover command has been added. Supports values -2.0 through 2.0.
  • Folder links now support drag-and drop operations, as well as pasting.
  • Teleport and Look options have been added to Area Search.
  • Antispam supports filtering receipt of landmarks. (Adv. Chat->Antispam)
  • You can now edit descriptions and names of multiple objects selected in bulk. (Liru Færs)
  • A Cloud Setting option has been added to the Windlight Floater (Alchemy)
  • Edit Linked Parts display of impact has been improved.
  • You can now pan in and out with alt-shift + pgup/pgdn/e/c (ctrl-shift + pgup/pgdn/e/c in Linux)
  • You can now hide your own lookat beacon (System->Security & Privacy) (Alchemy)

Local Gesture Preview Feature:

  • Adds a dropdown option to gesture preview button to preview locally.
  • Chat done in gestures will be local, along with sounds and animations being played locally
    • Note that any chat commands in gestures will still work as they normally would.

General Interface Changes:

  • Drop Targets, like the ones in the autoresponse preferences now have a clear button. (Liru Færs)
  • Double-Click Autopilot is now offered in System Prefs->General.
  • Made the snapshot floater shorter by changing that radio group to a combo box~
  • Search All tab now behaves similar to modern Web search, as the original Search All page is no longer maintained * by Linden Lab and no longer behaves properly.

Available Toolbar Button Changes:

  • Added Quit, Region Tracker
  • Autoreplace button now comes with a toggle to turn it on and off

Menu changes:

  • Help->Grid Status
  • Fake Away, Busy, and Away are now in World->Status
  • Option to sit on away added to World->Status (Alchemy)
  • World->Status->Autoresponse
  • Singularity->Resync Animations (alternative to /resync command)

New list right-click menu options:

  • Multiple avatars can be selected to invite to group.
  • Share, which lets you easily send an inventory item directly from your inventory to someone else or to a group of people.
  • Chat History (opens your chat log, if you have one with the selected person)

Radar is now more functional and optimized (Liru Færs, Mika Pyon)

  • You can now see avatar distance in alerts about their range (right click the radar, Alerts->"Include distance in alerts")
  • Fixed the rare spam of enter/leave messages
  • No more rate control, updates happen instantly as we get the messages.
  • Title now updates more appropriately
  • No longer spams chat on teleport (Sim Federal of Alchemy)

Improvements to friends list:

  • Search should now work right
  • Online Count should be more accurate.
  • When changing friend rights, only the checkboxes are locked, no longer the entire list.

Avatar Profile Changes:

  • Mute button now displays mute status
  • Added buttons:
    • Copy SLURL (Part of Copy Key flyout)
    • Log

Chat UI Changes:

  • New options in IM Flyout menu
    • Focus (Shows up while avatar is in the sim)
    • Find on Map (Shows up when/if map rights are given)
  • IM Tabs can now be configured to show names in different formats (Adv. Chat->Chat UI)
  • Autoresponse Changes:
    • New UI setup in preferences
    • Autoresponse to muted changes
    • No longer unmutes by sending items
    • Can be shown when sent (displays in local chat)
    • Option to send autoresponse only if away
    • Can now change autoresponse settings from World->Status->autoresponse
  • Add the option to block conferences from nonfriends exclusively (Communication prefs)
  • We fixed a long standing issue where some objects chatting would not get linked because we didn’t see them in the world for whatever reason.
  • Clicking a “[Friend] is Online” notification will now open an IM with them (Liru Færs)

RLVa updates (Liru Færs)

  • Don't filter parts of words out just because they match a name under restraint
  • Escape potentially dirty strings before using them as regex in replace_all_regex
  • @shownametags support
    • Radar no longer hides when @shownames restricted, it just hides names
    • Radar will alert when @shownames restricted, but not when @shownametags restricted
    • Radar will not offer menu when @shownames or @shownametags restricted, and the IM and Profile buttons will disable.
  • When @shownames restricted, allow offering calling cards now.
  • Support RLV 2.9 features: @camunlock, @camavdist, @camzoommax, @camzoommin, @camdistmax, @camdistmin (Liru Færs)
  • IFF respects RLVa @adjustheight now supports hover height instead of being deprecated (Kitty Barnett)

Performance, Stability, and Maintenance:

  • FMOD Ex has been updated to FMOD Studio. (Shyotl, Drake)
  • Build infrastructure has been migrated to autobuild. (Shyotl, Drake)
  • Numerous leak and crash fixes have been merged in from Alchemy.
  • FastTimer (Performance profiler) CPU impact has been lessened (Siana)
  • Alt-enter on login screen will no longer cause full screen on login.
  • Once again possible to view land impact of individual linked prims.
  • GPU Table has been updated to include broader range of newer hardware.
  • Select improvements from viewer-stare have been merged. (Cinder Roxley)
  • File Picker responsiveness has been improved. (Shyotl)
  • Updated mesh implementation and fixed a few render-related bugs. (Shyotl)
  • Physics Shapes debug render has been fixed~ (miKa Pyon)

Opensim features and fixes:

  • Support GridName (Liru Færs)
  • Fix name lookup fails when a grid does not have NameLookupURL
  • Server Release Notes won’t show in about floater if the region lacks the capability.
  • SL menu items will now hide themselves on opensim grids.
  • We now allow longer login URIs in the login screen’s input box.
  • Name resolution code has been improved
  • World Map Textures on Minimap in variable size regions has been fixed (Liru Færs, Shyotl)
  • Property lines on minimap are now drawn properly for variable size regions
  • In pay floaters, the proper currency symbol will now be displayed
  • We now respect login response with "classified_fee" (otherwise 0 is assumed)
  • Suitcase Folder icon and type support (Cinder Roxley)
  • Added hack for opensim’s broken folder types (Drake Arconis)

Other resolved JIRAs: FIRE-15189 (Liru Færs, Ansariel Hiller), STORM-1949 (Cinder), SV-1234, SV-1539, SV-1548, SV-1653, SV-1654, SV-1670, SV-1690, SV-1696, SV-1755, SV-1761, SV-1791, SV-1827, SV-1849, SV-1850, SV-1897 (Text Chat->"Letter keys start typing into local chat"), SV-1925, SV-1930, SV-1931, SV-1932 (Group member count now shown), SV-1945, SV-1946, SV-1954, SV-1957, SV-1978, SV-1979, SV-2005, SV-2028 (Adeon Writer), SV-2042, SV-2054, SV-2056, SV-2065 MAINT-3562 FIXED Viewer crashes when updating local textures using Substance Designer : add code for control input buffer size (Vir Linden)

Special thanks goes out to Adeon Writer, Cale Flanagan, Damian Zhaoying, Deltek Minotaur, Diva Canto, Eva Darkwyr, Fritigern Gothly, Gamer Expert, Melissa, MiVo, Nomade Zhao, Pure Bluestar, Router Gray, Shamara Henley, Tazy Scientist, YanewS, and all our other testers and bug reporters, and everyone who sends in crash reports, and you, yes you, you took the time to read through this, so thank you for caring!

Lastly, we’d like to dedicate this release in memory of Latif Khalifa (lkalif), who has contributed so much to this and other viewers and opensource metaverse projects, like his own Radegast viewer, libomv, and OpenSim. His contributions to the metaverse have been invaluable and are too numerous to mention. Suffice to say that without him, the metaverse would not have been what it is today.