Shadow Viewer 1.23

Crashes at "initializing world".

CPU: Intel Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon (0.25 micron process) with external L2 cache (2494 MHz)
Memory: 3070 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Build 6001)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8400M GS/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.1

Everybody with crashes, please update to the latest drivers. That is for ATI Catalyst 9.3 and for Nvidia 182.50. Also please disable any settings other that default in your Windows graphics control panel. If you use Vista disable Aero.

Other than that I can only wish you good luck. For some it works, for others not. And please keep posting results incl. hardware and configurations here.

So I better wait until the official client is being released. SL is known to get borked after driver updates. Never change a running system. I wouldn't even know how to rollback the driver so I better not touch anything.

Where you from? Any chance that you locale settings are using the "," to represent the decimal numbers instead of (USA) "." (dot)? If so, change it to use the "." instead, and try again.

Hmmm...thats an interesting hypothesis...ok all you none english folks out there, get rid of that comma and try again. I need feedback on this!

How can that be related?

My language specs are the following: English version of Vista, SL viewer is set to English, Windows default input language however is not set to English but does indeed use a "," as the decimal seperator. What do you want me to do? To set the Windows default input language to English? (I hope the next viewer release won't require me to do that o.O)

EDIT: Set it to English and the viewer is running (WHY??). If I enable shadows in "hardware options" nothing happens though. No shadows.

EDIT#2: I am able to run Kirsten's viewer and I do see shadows there.

EDIT#3: Restarted a few times and now something changed. I see a black cutout shape all over my screen, the same bug Kirsten's viewer also has. Does that mean I won't be able to see shadows at all?

This is what I see when I enable shadows.

http://photos.slbuzz.com/monalisa-robbiani/2009/04/07/6652

You don't really need to investigate, that's related to how the SL client manage the parsing of xml file. It loads the file "as is" expecting the value rapresented in a certain way (because they are not converted emself) and it fails if the decimal separator doesn't match with the one expect. Examinating the log your would have an error like this (i've posted that on your forum as well):

-
ERROR: LLVOAvatar::initClass: Error parsing skeleton XML file: C:\Games\SLShadowViewer\character\avatar_skeleton.xml
-

The "skeleton.xml" does have coordinates with decimal values separated by a "dot", while the client (because of your locale) is expecting a comma (that's *IF* your locale is using a comma indeed.. in Italy it IS).

That's an old bug happening even on linux based clients (and OSX indeed), LL addressed the problem with a tweak: they reverts the decimal separator to "." while loading the config and then set it back to what it was.
I'm not sure why the current branch doesn't work as the official client... but anyway the problem will be addressed when the client will be (official beta) out.

Well.. u talked about a "crash", i assumed you weren't able to load the client at all.



Possibily yes.. if you have antialias on, turn it off... but it's likely that your gfx board isn't supported.

That is too bad. I though the Nvidia GeForce series was one of the most popular brands. So only a chosen few will be able to see the shadows? Sounds like a waste of developing resources and time to me.

The developer of the shadow code at Linden Labs doesn't think they need to support "video cards old enough to be in pre-school".

I believe any video card that supports the DirectX 10 shader model should theoretically support shadows.

Remember, this is very early code. If you have an Nvidia 8xxx or 9xxx series video card, the problem is more likely buggy code than your card not being supported.

Hardly the case of my specs. I got this notebook a few months ago. (

Does that mean you need to be running Vista?

No, just that the card supports the features. Shadows work under XP, too.

Ya, I will be out of it. My Less than a year old top of the line Mac running an ATI Radeon HD 2600 is, apparently, too old.

The ATI HD2600 should be capable of supporting it, as well.

I guess they let video cards into pre-school pretty early.

Thanks Vittorio, I know this skeleton bug, it was in 1.19. Suddenly it reappeared now in the render-pipeline branch. So we have some hint on what this code is based on .

Regarding the graphics card, I could not find anything "official" about requirements, the only info comes from trial and error and that is a minimum requirement of Nvidia 8xxx and ATI HD3xxx.

Now running the shadow viewer. It runs awesome! Why haven't they made this an option in the RC? Its crazy to have to find some 3rd party hack for an effect this great.

Using a GTX280 and everything runs pretty much as smooth as before.

I do notice shadows & lighting fail/flicker after a certain height.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (2327 MHz)
Memory: 3327 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 9800 GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.1.2

I opened the latest SL official client and the new Shadow Viewer simultaneously on my matching Dell monitors with all settings set to match (except the deferred rendering of course), and took these snapshots at about the same time:




Very nice! Thanks Boy!

Both of those snapshots are so dark I can't hardly see nothing.

Ah...they look okay on my screen, but they ARE moonlit! Here are some day shots:

Great pics. Wow! I can't wait to get a hold of this!

Installed okay under XP, but the shortcut appears to do nothing. Here's the shortcut target:

"C:\Program Files\ShadowViewer\ShadowViewer.exe" --channel "Cool Viewer" --settings settings_1.23.xml --set SystemLanguage en-us

Any ideas? It's a GeForce 9800, and runs normal SL fine.