User Experience Interest Group/Transcripts/2009-10-22

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Topic

User Experience Interest Group Discussion for October 22, 2009.

Topic: Machinima Bugs & Features (Continued).

Summary

We continued our discussion from last week about machinima. The discussion this week focused mostly on bugs and issues that affect machinimists. Most of them would be fairly simple to fix, and would help all users, not just machinimists.

  • When the UI is hidden, "particle swirls" (such as from objects chatting) never dissipate (VWR-4232). This is a major pain point for machinimists.
    • VWR-8726 has a patch to allow the particle swirls to be disabled, which would help address this issue, as well as being a useful ability in its own right.
  • When the UI is hidden, modal dialogs (alerts / confirmation dialogs) are hidden, but still intercept all input, including the key combination used to unhide the UI. This can disrupt and confuse the user, making it look like the viewer controls have frozen up for no reason.
    • The most simple solution is for modal dialogs to make the UI automatically un-hide. This would allow the user to deal with the dialog and then resume their activity.
    • Having the UI reappear can "ruin a shot", but not nearly as much as having the controls apparently freeze up. Even so, if an adequate solution can be found that doesn't require the UI to reappear, that would be good.
    • One possible solution is for modal dialogs not to intercept input when the UI is hidden. This would be a less disruptive option than making the UI reappear.
    • In general, there are far too many modal dialogs in the viewer. Many of the dialogs are for things that should not block the rest of the UI, and some don't need to be dialogs at all, but rather should be simple notices.
  • Sometimes, scene lights pop on and off, as if the viewer couldn't decide which 6 lights to show. This seems to happen most often when the camera is far away from the avatar.
    • One possible solution would be to (optionally) force the light priority algorithm to favor lights near the avatar's position. This would at least improve the consistency and reduce flickering.
    • Another possible partial solution would be have lights fade in and out instead of abruptly turning on/off. This would address the visually jarring flicker effect.
    • Additionally, it would be very useful to allow users to increase the number of lights shown.
  • When recording machinima, it's often desirable for voice chat to remain a consistent volume and direction, even as the camera and/or actors move around the scene. It would be beneficial to allow users to have non-spatialized voice chat.
    • Private calls are sometimes useful for this, but then you don't have avatar lip sync, plus other people in the area (e.g. the audience at a show being recorded) can't hear it.
    • But, if avatar lip sync could be enabled for private calls, that would help in some situations.
    • Ideally, there would be a server-side parcel flag to disable spatialized voice chat for everyone. But this would require Linden Lab to cooperate.
    • Another possible solution is for the viewer to tell the SLVoice application that your avatar is at a different location than it actually is. In theory, this would allow you to set a specific listening/chatting position in-world, which would not move along with your camera or avatar.
  • The alpha sorting issue (objects using textures with alpha channels sometimes appear in front of objects they are not) are another bane of machinimists, as well as photographers, builders, and just about everyone else in SL who cares how things look.
    • The issue can be solved by subdividing intersecting polygons. That would be more computationally expensive than the current rendering method, but the expense can be limited by applying heuristics to subdivide only objects that take up a significant portion of the screen.
    • To keep the expense down, small objects (in terms of screen space), flexi objects, physical objects, attachments, and other objects that move would not be subdivided. Stationary (or mostly-stationary) objects would require calculation only the first time they are seen, or whenever they move (or an object intersecting them moves).

The machinimists present at the discussion agreed that the issues mentioned above should be prioritized above new features. Those issues are serious pain points for machinima.

Thoughts on rendering / video capture:

  • It would be useful to be able to create a second render window, without the UI. This could be put off to another monitor to be recorded while the user interacts with the main window.
  • Alternatively, it would be useful to export video from the viewer of the rendered scene without the UI. In other words, a video capture feature that ignores the UI. It would need to be fast to be done in real-time.

Miscellaneous other issues/ideas:

  • Ability to make chatting default to shout (to make it easier to communicate with actors across longer distances).
  • Ability to turn off sounds emitted from bystanders, e.g. audio mute of everyone except specifically selected avatars or members of a certain group.
  • If you zoom out very far with the flycam's Direct Zoom feature, the field of view locks at 180°, but the zoom counter keeps going, so in order to zoom back in you may have to zoom in for many seconds before it comes back below 180°.
  • It would be useful to be able to save various flycam settings as presets and cycle through them with a hotkey. E.g. you could have a preset for dolly in/out only, or left/right only, zoom in/out only, etc.

Links

  • VWR-4232 - Some particles don't disappear when UI is hidden
  • VWR-8726 - Turn off swirling lights for scripted objects
  • VWR-15876 - Machinima Improvement Issues (meta-issue)

Transcript

[15:15] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, well, let's get started anyway.
[15:15] Geneko Nemeth: It's certainly not as populated as last week,...
[15:16] Jacek Antonelli: Indeed, not. I was hoping for more people to return. Although McCabe says he's having trouble logging in, so maybe there are grid problems.
[15:16] Geneko Nemeth: He's always having trouble logging in.
[15:17] Jacek Antonelli: Anyway, today we're continuing the discussion from last week about new features to help machinima makers.
[15:17] Mm Alder: Where do you want to start?
[15:18] McCabe Maxsted: ahoy!
[15:18] Jacek Antonelli: Last week we talked about the idea of having a timeline and keyframes to control things like camera movement and avatars, improved facial expression control, and a bunch of other stuff.
[15:18] Vector Hastings: That would be awesome!
[15:19] Vector Hastings: (timeline)
[15:19] Geneko Nemeth: Yes, it was something everyone liked.
[15:19] Vector Hastings: And an option to save it?
[15:19] Geneko Nemeth: Of course, what use is it if it can't be saved?
[15:19] Vector Hastings: I like your thinking.
[15:20] Mm Alder: We didn't really talk about what would be on the timeline and how it would be edited
[15:20] Geneko Nemeth: Heh thanks.
[15:21] Geneko Nemeth: Well, IMO the camera is the first thing to put on the timeline.
[15:21] Jacek Antonelli: That's a good place to start. I'd also like to talk about the collaborative aspect involved, and whether that would need to be integrated into the tools. But first let's talk about the timeline.
[15:22] Vector Hastings: I agree. But to really make that work for filming, what you mentioned with avatar control is also key: otherwise you can't really zoom in on a character's surprise, because you'll get her hair instead.
[15:22] Vector Hastings: But that's going to be tricky, I imagine, so what about controlling gestures per avi on the timeline.
[15:23] Vector Hastings: Or broadcasting something in-world that could be picked up by LSL?
[15:23] Mm Alder: You can record avatar movement now, but it's pretty crude. It might work better if it could be edited
[15:23] Vector Hastings: Sort of location cue marks to match the camera motions.
[15:23] Morgaine Dinova: Hi all, seem to have overslept :-(
[15:23] Jacek Antonelli: Hi Morgaine and Aimee, welcome
[15:23] CodeWarrior Carling: it's useless the way it is now.. you record something.. and when you play it.. the avatar will go into fly mode almost certainly\
[15:24] Geneko Nemeth: I see that as a bug of autopilot in general.
[15:24] CodeWarrior Carling: if there is a mosquito blocking the path.. the av will fly over it and stay in fly mode
[15:24] CodeWarrior Carling: right.. and there are a lot of 'bugs' that would probably be more bang for the buck than any new feature
[15:25] Jacek Antonelli: Heh, yeah. The motion recorder would need an overhaul. I'm sure they didn't design it for anything except simple debugging
[15:25] Mm Alder: Maybe it's worth talking about "bugs"
[15:25] CodeWarrior Carling: when the UI is hidden.. particle swirls never stop drawing themselves and build up more and more.. so you have to periodically come out of hide UI mode.. and that means you have to edit it out later
[15:25] Jacek Antonelli: Sure. What are some of the bugs?
[15:25] Dimitrio Lewis: The particles are a major issue
[15:26] CodeWarrior Carling: yes.. I would start with a discussion of all the bugs that are too low priority for the lindesn to fix
[15:26] Mm Alder: There's the particle permanence when the UI is turned off.
[15:26] Vector Hastings: (I have a patch for the swirls on JIRA)
[15:26] Vector Hastings: (but only for the ones when scripts communicate, not tp lights)
[15:26] Jacek Antonelli: Is that bug for just the swirls when an object chats, or all particle systems?
[15:26] Geneko Nemeth thinks of making TP lights epic, but that's another story
[15:27] Morgaine Dinova: lol
[15:27] Vector Hastings: there's 2 cases on the swirl lights, I found it for object chats, but not for TP. Should be nearby.
[15:27] CodeWarrior Carling: there are a couple of other bugs when UI is hidden as well.. modal dialogs don't unhide the UI
[15:27] Geneko Nemeth has found a nice camera position to view today's discussion! <g>
[15:28] Mm Alder: Vector, is your patch on JIRA?
[15:28] Vector Hastings: yes, it's not pretty, sets a new switch. I'll find it.
[15:28] CodeWarrior Carling: but they eat the unhide UI keystorke.. so if a modal dialog like that one associated with the group chat bug happens.. you can't unhide your UI uynless you're savvfy enough to guess that a modal dialog is up and hit enter first
[15:28] Jacek Antonelli: Ouch
[15:28] Geneko Nemeth: Ow!
[15:29] CodeWarrior Carling: so modal dialogs should unhide the UI for one thing
[15:29] Vector Hastings: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8726
[15:29] Jacek Antonelli: Hrm. Wouldn't that ruin some shots? If the UI popped up all of a sudden?
[15:30] CodeWarrior Carling: yes it would
[15:30] CodeWarrior Carling: but modal dialogs shouldn't exist anyway
[15:30] Geneko Nemeth: Are there any model dialogs that don't respond to user input and aren't for unrecoverable cases (e.g. disconnection)?
[15:30] CodeWarrior Carling: but if they are going to exist.. then fine.. ruin my shot if you must
[15:30] Geneko Nemeth: Yes! Why is "your cache will be cleared until next restart" and "you can't teleport here" modal anyway?
[15:31] Jacek Antonelli: Okay. I'm trying to think of a way to solve the dialog problem without ruining shots.
[15:31] CodeWarrior Carling: when a modal is upo.. your keystrokes aren't going to work.. none of your keys.. nor hud clicks and stuff.. so basically.. you are already dead in the water and they don't tell you
[15:31] CodeWarrior Carling: don't have them :-)
[15:31] Morgaine Dinova: [Off-topic] Jacek, if McCabe didn't pass it on to you, I thought your post on the blog was brilliant, really highlighted LL's total lack of thinking.
[15:32] Jacek Antonelli: Thanks, Morg
[15:32] Jacek Antonelli: Okay, so. Modal dialogs are bad, especially when doing machinima.
[15:32] Geneko Nemeth needs an alt :<
[15:32] CodeWarrior Carling: especially with the UIO hidden
[15:33] Jacek Antonelli: I wonder if a dedicated "machinima mode" would be useful. Give it some alternative behavior, like how it handles dialogs and notices
[15:33] Vector Hastings: I kinda agree with Code that trying to keep filming through a modal message isn't the point as much as thinking you're frozen and not knowing why. Whatever you do to interrupt with a message like that will 'ruin' a shot.
[15:33] Vector Hastings: tho, I suppose a sound effect might work, since mostly we don't use inworld sound.
[15:33] Mm Alder: I guess the basic problem is that hidden UI elements shouldn't capture any events.
[15:33] CodeWarrior Carling: a sound cue won't work.. 3either our sound is off anyway.. or the cue will ruin the audio if we're grabbing it
[15:33] Vector Hastings: (but as soon as I say that, someone will scream it does matter)
[15:34] Morgaine Dinova: Let's try that for size. If there were a new mode for machinima, what would it do?
[15:34] Jacek Antonelli: When you're recording machinima, do you usually record the whole SL window/screen, or just part of it?
[15:34] Mm Alder: I'll bet the hude UI is just being done with rendering rather than through the UI code.
[15:34] Vector Hastings: as much as possible
[15:34] Jacek Antonelli: I.e. could there be UI parts around the edges that wouldn't ruin things?
[15:34] CodeWarrior Carling: ok.. but just to back up.. the modal dialogs stealing focus when UI is hidden isn't a machinima thing... it's just a plain old bug that is bad for all
[15:35] Morgaine Dinova: CW++
[15:35] Vector Hastings: there could be a sliver bar somewhere that could easily be cropped out in post. But Code
[15:35] Vector Hastings: s right about it just being irksome as wrong.
[15:35] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Garn
[15:35] Geneko Nemeth: 422 alertmodals in notifications.xml
[15:35] CodeWarrior Carling: I would opt to unhdie UI on modal dialogs.. and then if we want to define a special machinima mode later.. we could do that
[15:36] Mm Alder: Why would you want to unhide?
[15:36] Geneko Nemeth: Including the first one, "Your version of Snowglobe does not know how to display the alert message it just received."
[15:36] CodeWarrior Carling: the same goes for swirling particvles.. that's not a fix that should only be done for a special machinima mode.. but tuirning off the swirling completely would be
[15:36] CodeWarrior Carling: because if you don't unjhide,... how does the user unhide mm?
[15:36] Jacek Antonelli: Okay. Yeah, modal dialogs unhiding the UI would be a quick fix. Making them not steal input when the UI is hidden would be another quick (but not quite as quick) fix
[15:36] Vector Hastings: On using a general machinima mode, I've done that in my experiments. Works for me.
[15:37] CodeWarrior Carling: their keystorkes are bein eaten by the modal dialog.. the unhide keystorke no longer works.. and they have no menu to go turn the ui back on
[15:37] Mm Alder: CW, I didn't know whether you had another reason.
[15:37] CodeWarrior Carling: so the average user is going to close the browser
[15:37] CodeWarrior Carling: well
[15:37] Mm Alder: Is there a JIRA on that?
[15:38] CodeWarrior Carling: I am also assuming that the Lindens consider modal dialogs extremely important notices.. so it makes some sense to me that if there are going to be modal dialogs.. they should unhide the UI
[15:38] CodeWarrior Carling: and the fact that they use modal dialogs to tell me that they can't establ;ish a group chat when I don't cazre is just an instance of using them innapropriately
[15:39] Jacek Antonelli: Indeed
[15:39] Geneko Nemeth: Extremely important... yeah...
[15:39] Geneko Nemeth: Sometimes you only need to freeze one floater instead of the whole application.
[15:39] CodeWarrior Carling: in any case.. that one doesn't happen as often as the particle swirls.. that one is a constant frustration for all machinimists
[15:40] CodeWarrior Carling: turning it off completely would be the best thing
[15:40] Dimitrio Lewis: Torley first drew attention to the particles way back in 2007 I think
[15:40] Geneko Nemeth: There are 422 model alerts but only 32 normal alerts?!
[15:40] CodeWarrior Carling: although again.. there is also a bug componenet to that one whereing with the UI hidden.. they never stop
[15:40] Geneko Nemeth: One of the alerts that are not modal is: "Do you REALLY want to kick all users off the grid?"
[15:40] Morgaine Dinova: It would be a mistake to think that Lindens allocated modality on the basis of thinking about it.
[15:41] Saijanai Kuhn: hey all sorry I'm a tad late...
[15:41] Vector Hastings: I would agree to triage the modal dialog down the list for machimation, since most of those modal messages mean your shot is screwed anyway. "You are about to be logged off for inactivity."
[15:41] Morgaine Dinova: Hi Sai :-)
[15:41] Jacek Antonelli: Hahaha Geneko. That's a good one.
[15:41] Saijanai Kuhn: can anyone bring me up to speed via notecard?
[15:42] Morgaine Dinova: I missed half of it too Sai. But feeling nicely rested :-)
[15:42] CodeWarrior Carling: well if you were up to speed last week.. we're really just talking about existing bugs that should be adressed as opposed to new featrurtes
[15:42] CodeWarrior Carling: there are some bugs that are probably low hanging fruit.. and constantly cost us time and hassle when making machinima
[15:42] Jacek Antonelli: So it sounds like these bugs with the particle swirls and the modal dialogs would be good to fix anyway, for general use as well as machinima.
[15:43] Vector Hastings: swirling lights way ahead of modal dialog, imho.
[15:43] Jacek Antonelli: Reducing the number of modal dialogs, too
[15:43] Jacek Antonelli: Ok
[15:43] Jacek Antonelli: Any other nasty bugs that haven't been mentioned yet?
[15:44] Geneko Nemeth: We haven't even started yet!
[15:44] CodeWarrior Carling: light popping
[15:44] Mm Alder: ?
[15:44] Morgaine Dinova: I suggest removing all modal dialogs that aren't model by necessity --- protecting something that would crash the viewer. Importance doesn't come into choice of modality.
[15:44] Geneko Nemeth: Sigh, only 6 lights...
[15:44] Saijanai Kuhn: Thanks Vektor
[15:44] Geneko Nemeth: Blame OpenGL. :<
[15:44] CodeWarrior Carling: it's hard to pin that one down .. but it seems under some conditions the lights get confused about which six should be rendered
[15:45] Vector Hastings: The shadow bugs (alpha sorting) aren't as nasty, but prevent use of shadows in the official viewers.
[15:45] Jacek Antonelli: It seems like with these fancy new windlight shaders, it should be possible to render more lights
[15:45] Geneko Nemeth: But they are damn slow.
[15:45] CodeWarrior Carling: it seems to happen more when the camera is farther from the avatar.. like it's doing half the stuff based on closest lights to avatar.. and then doing other stuff based on closest to camera
[15:45] Vector Hastings: (my pleasure Saij)
[15:45] Geneko Nemeth: And is it even necessary to render all those lights?
[15:45] Mm Alder: Didn't I hear somewhere that you could enable some of the shaders in the shadow code without enabling them all
[15:46] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm, if you give me a way to turn SSAO that would be nice.
[15:46] Geneko Nemeth: But all I have found to date is turning shadow off in deferred rendering.
[15:46] Geneko Nemeth: *turn SSAO off
[15:46] Mm Alder: what is SSAO?
[15:46] CodeWarrior Carling: I thought SSAO came with the shadows
[15:47] Geneko Nemeth: Screen-space ambient occulsion.
[15:47] CodeWarrior Carling: screen space ambient occlusion
[15:47] CodeWarrior Carling: it proijects a shadow wherever there is an edge between one thing and another
[15:47] Geneko Nemeth: Err?
[15:47] Geneko Nemeth: It's called "screen-space" because the effect is faked.
[15:48] CodeWarrior Carling: if you put a flat rectangle against a wall.. and you look at the wall from in front of the rectangle.. the edges around the rectangle are darkened near it on the wall
[15:48] CodeWarrior Carling: I am using the phrase 'projects a shadow' very loosely
[15:48] CodeWarrior Carling: it 'dims' pixels near edges between things that aren't the same distance away
[15:49] Jacek Antonelli: Ah
[15:49] Geneko Nemeth: That is what ambient occulsion is. Put a rectangle there, even if it is not in the shadow volume, because there are less light in the place of the rectangle, there will be less light on the wall.
[15:49] Jacek Antonelli: Let's get back to bugs
[15:49] CodeWarrior Carling: right
[15:49] Geneko Nemeth: Yeah. Six lights.
[15:49] CodeWarrior Carling: alpha sorting issues
[15:50] Jacek Antonelli: So there's something strange about the algorithm for calculating which six lights to use. And on top of that, it would be nice to have more than 6.
[15:50] CodeWarrior Carling: there are lots of heuritstics for reducing alpha sorting problems without going to the point of worrying about flexi hair etc
[15:50] Dimitrio Lewis: Could lights be intelligently consolidated in some cases?
[15:50] Geneko Nemeth: Maybe if the viewer doesn't merely turn off the lights based on distance? Maybe if it hestitates a bit and fades lights in and out?
[15:50] CodeWarrior Carling: well one .. hack sort of thhing
[15:51] CodeWarrior Carling: would be if there were a way to force the six lights to be the ones near the av.. then you can park your av somewhere.. and at least know that the lights will not pop in and out as you cam aroundc
[15:51] CodeWarrior Carling: but that leads to the next 'bug' .. the lack of a switch to turn off sound spatialization
[15:51] Geneko Nemeth: But then someone with 6 facelights teleport in.
[15:52] Jacek Antonelli: heh
[15:52] CodeWarrior Carling: there is a debug setting to turn off attached lights
[15:52] Geneko Nemeth: Why turn off sound spatialization?
[15:52] CodeWarrior Carling: although that means you can;'t use them on your own actors
[15:52] Jacek Antonelli: What's the issue with sound spatialization?
[15:52] CodeWarrior Carling: so that the audio level of voice chat is constant when the cam moves.. and the actors move
[15:52] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm.
[15:52] CodeWarrior Carling: without having to go into a private conference and lose the lip synch
[15:52] McCabe Maxsted wonders if the ability to selectively turn on/off lights would help
[15:53] Geneko Nemeth: Yeah. Voice chat can be too loud when the camera is just next to the avatar speaking...
[15:53] CodeWarrior Carling: not only that.. ask anyone who does live performance in here.. they would really love to turn off spaticl chat.. or think of it more like this..
[15:53] Geneko Nemeth: But I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about it. AFAIK, voice chat spartialization is done at Vivox' side.
[15:53] Jacek Antonelli: Hrm. What's a solution for that? Defining a set point to "listen" from?
[15:53] CodeWarrior Carling: they want to be able to have a public address system in here.. which is basically the same as turning off spatialization
[15:53] Geneko Nemeth: Clip max volume?
[15:53] Mm Alder: There used to be settings for the voice chat spatial falloff. I wonder if they still work?
[15:54] CodeWarrior Carling: and no.. vivox can do private conferences without spatialization.. so it's not something that's impossible
[15:54] Geneko Nemeth: Impossible on viewer developer's side.
[15:54] CodeWarrior Carling: ahh.. well.. fair enough
[15:54] Geneko Nemeth: And you know how hard it is to get Linden Lab to do stuff for residents these days...
[15:54] Geneko Nemeth: It's not liek we still have town hall meetings.
[15:54] CodeWarrior Carling: although.. could you on the viewer.. hook up private chat conference to lip synch?
[15:54] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm... Definitely!
[15:55] CodeWarrior Carling: so there.. that would work for machinimists
[15:55] Mm Alder: Lip sync gets its info from teh Vivox process--SLVoice
[15:55] CodeWarrior Carling: and the other thousands and thousands of audience members who go to live events where voice chat is used can just continue to get really bad audio :-(
[15:56] Morgaine Dinova: On the Vivox spatialization, does the sim report your position to Vivox? Or doesthe client, so that it can be spoofed to them?
[15:56] CodeWarrior Carling: must be the client
[15:56] Mm Alder: It comes from the client
[15:56] CodeWarrior Carling: cause you can hear from the3 cam or from the av
[15:57] Geneko Nemeth: But the best way to handle this is probably supporting offline, phenome-based lip sync.
[15:57] CodeWarrior Carling: so give another option./. hear from 0,0,0
[15:57] CodeWarrior Carling: hmm.. and speak from 0,0,0
[15:57] Mm Alder: but how do you locate that position?
[15:57] Geneko Nemeth: DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR!
[15:57] Jacek Antonelli: heh
[15:58] CodeWarrior Carling: hehe.. ok.. 1,1,1
[15:58] CodeWarrior Carling: it doesn';t matter.. it can be anywhere I think
[15:58] Geneko Nemeth: Doesn't work. (1,1,1)-(1,1,1)=(0,0,0)
[15:58] CodeWarrior Carling: as long as it's the same for all
[15:58] Morgaine Dinova: So add a "Voice position" setting for reporting to Vivox (click on position you want reported), or even better, separate Speak and Listen positions.
[15:58] CodeWarrior Carling: yeah
[15:59] Jacek Antonelli: It seems feasible to be able to fool the SLVoice program into thinking you're somewhere you aren't.
[15:59] CodeWarrior Carling: and ability to toggle always shout.. when you are director.. you want your text shouted usually.. although we can esily make gizmos to do that
[15:59] Geneko Nemeth: Maybe make a voice client proxy that dumps the voices for postproc?
[15:59] Mm Alder: How about a freeze listening position?
[15:59] CodeWarrior Carling: but don't tell Prok about it
[15:59] Jacek Antonelli: heh
[15:59] Geneko Nemeth: Haha!
[16:00] Mm Alder: There's no way at getting to the audio from SLVoice
[16:00] Mm Alder: it talks to teh OS
[16:00] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm... true. At least on Windows.
[16:00] Jacek Antonelli: Yeah, voice audio doesn't get routed through the viewer
[16:01] Jacek Antonelli: So the best we can do, I think, is to lie to SLVoice and say that the speakers and the listeners are all at the same position
[16:01] CodeWarrior Carling: well ideally .. it should be a parcel optiob
[16:01] Morgaine Dinova: So the viewer's audio mixer control does what then, if the audio isn't routed back into the viewer?
[16:01] CodeWarrior Carling: don't spatialize
[16:01] Geneko Nemeth: Sends volume info to voice client.
[16:01] Morgaine Dinova: Cripes
[16:01] Jacek Antonelli: "O hai volume is 0.3 now"
[16:02] Morgaine Dinova: lol
[16:02] Geneko Nemeth: Making it confusing is that halfway = 100%... more leads to clipping.
[16:02] CodeWarrior Carling: hmm
[16:03] Jacek Antonelli: Any other bugs/issues?
[16:03] CodeWarrior Carling: well this is getting beyond bugs.. but it would be handy to identify whop the actors are.. or what group they are.. and have the client auto set all the volumes on anyone else to zero
[16:03] CodeWarrior Carling: \alph sorting bugs hehehe
[16:03] Jacek Antonelli: For just voice, or also gestures and such?
[16:04] Vector Hastings: alpha sort bugs, if people want heavy lifting.
[16:05] Vector Hastings: but high-payoff
[16:05] CodeWarrior Carling: two stages.. first.. get a draw pass in that can subdivide polygons and draw them correctlky.. phase two.. add heuristics and other ways to add things to the list that gets drawn using the expensive algorithm
[16:05] Jacek Antonelli: Hrm. Okay. Anything particular to say about alpha sort bugs? Or just the usual ones that we all know?
[16:05] CodeWarrior Carling: well.. yes..
[16:05] Jacek Antonelli: Go ahead
[16:05] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm, would it be possible to make a histogram of the alpha channel of the texture, and decide to do masking or blending?
[16:05] CodeWarrior Carling: if a polygon occupies 80% of the pixels on my screen.. it's a no brainer that it's worth subdividing it
[16:05] CodeWarrior Carling: I see stuff drawing wrong that is shameful
[16:06] Jacek Antonelli: indeed
[16:06] CodeWarrior Carling: i.e. there are two polygons ion the entire universe.. and they will draw wrong
[16:06] CodeWarrior Carling: so all the arguments about it lagging out the client are BS
[16:06] Geneko Nemeth: It's not BS.
[16:06] CodeWarrior Carling: if we have to.. we can mark thing.. like walls that have alpha windows.. as being worth sorting and subdividing
[16:07] Jacek Antonelli: And on the flip side, it's not worth it to subdivide a 255-alpha-prim earring that takes up 2 pixels on your screen
[16:07] CodeWarrior Carling: it's BS that they will *ALWAYS* lag out the client.. I agree that it's not BS that they *might* lag out the client.. but when I hear people say it's not worth fixing .. it's usually with a strong assertion that it *WILL* lag out the client
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: exactly Jacek
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: or flexi hair.. flexi anything
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: maybe attached anything.. it moves too much
[16:08] Geneko Nemeth: Well, it's also because it might be too much work.
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: or physiucal anything
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: yes.. it *might be*
[16:08] Geneko Nemeth: Or just about anything. The way Second Life is currently built, there's no telling when a particular object might change.
[16:08] CodeWarrior Carling: unless you mean it might be too much programming for the lindens to do
[16:09] Jacek Antonelli: It seems feasible. Unfortunately I'm not a graphics programming guru. :(
[16:09] CodeWarrior Carling: well .. as the guy building the world IO want to film.. yes.. I can tell you exactlyl... that nothing in the scene is going to change
[16:09] Geneko Nemeth: A prim tree that have been there for three years might be broken down the next frame.
[16:09] Geneko Nemeth: Both too much time to calculate and too much effort to program.
[16:10] CodeWarrior Carling: I don't care if some avatars flexi hair doesnt draw correctly.. but I care that you can't make a wall.. or a fence.. with alpha in it.. and be assured that the flowers in front of it won't draw behind it
[16:10] CodeWarrior Carling: even though the stuff is all static and never moves
[16:10] Jacek Antonelli: If something in the scene moves, it can be recalculated. Or flagged as not worth calculating until it stops moving so much.
[16:10] CodeWarrior Carling: it's not too much effort to program.. the algorithm is in a book called Graphics Gems.. it's a very well understood computer problem in graphics domain
[16:11] CodeWarrior Carling: Active Worlds solved this problem by allowing the content creator to mark things as requiring a Z sort
[16:11] CodeWarrior Carling: for example.. flowers made of multiuple plaes with alpha.. it's only neccessary to subdivide such a thing once on upload
[16:12] CodeWarrior Carling: basically. doing what BSP algorithms do to make game levels
[16:12] Morgaine Dinova: I wish all the graphics gurus in SL would get together, factor out LL's graphics engine, fix it, and make it pluggable into any viewer. (I also want a pony.) It's not impossible though.
[16:13] CodeWarrior Carling: don't BS us Morgain.. we all know you really want a Unicorn
[16:13] Morgaine Dinova: Neither actually. :-) But I'd like the 3D engine pluggable :P
[16:13] Jacek Antonelli: hehehe
[16:14] CodeWarrior Carling: thing is.. it's ludicrous to continue to say that this would take up too much horspeower.. and then go ahead and put shadows into the client.. that's kind of absurd
[16:14] Geneko Nemeth: True.
[16:14] Jacek Antonelli: Yeah
[16:15] CodeWarrior Carling: those are the main bugs I see as really getting in our faces as machinimists all the time
[16:15] Jacek Antonelli nods. Thank you for describing them
[16:16] McCabe Maxsted checks the time. I have to go run and fetch morgaine's pony :)
[16:16] Jacek Antonelli: haha. Bye, McCabe. Don't step in anything.
[16:16] CodeWarrior Carling: well I hope I didn't sidetrack the meeting too much.. but I know from talking to some of the attendees from last week.. they urged me to come and talk about the bugs
[16:16] Vector Hastings: Thanks to you all for looking at these issues for us.
[16:16] Morgaine Dinova: How about listing those in the Jira? Is there a Meta-Jira for machinima bugs?
[16:17] Geneko Nemeth: Not really, I'm sidetracking the discussion more than you're doing.
[16:17] Jacek Antonelli: To be honest, this week's discussion was probably 10x as productive for actually improving the state of machinima in the near-term future
[16:17] CodeWarrior Carling: I should add that I read a transcript from last week.. and I agree with a lot of what was said about the kinds of features that would be good
[16:17] Jacek Antonelli: As fun as it is to talk about pie-in-the-sky features ;)
[16:18] Morgaine Dinova: Haha McCabe, tc :-)
[16:18] CodeWarrior Carling: well the swirtly particle thing... hehehe.. hours and hours are wasted editing that stuff out.. that would be a huge win
[16:19] Vector Hastings: I also concur that I would personally triage the bugs here (swirling lights, alpha sort, light pop) ahead of new features.
[16:19] CodeWarrior Carling: the alpha bug thing.. well.. that just means we avoid thing and can't do what we want to do. or get a shot we would like
[16:19] Jacek Antonelli: I wish we had more manpower to implement big features. *sighs a bit* But most of those bugs could be solved pretty quickly
[16:19] CodeWarrior Carling: yes.. and many of them.. all of them i think.. would benefit everyone and not just machinmimists
[16:19] Jacek Antonelli: Especially the particles and modal dialogs. That stuff could be fixed in an afternoon. Just have to sit down and do it.
[16:19] CodeWarrior Carling: photographers certanly
[16:20] CodeWarrior Carling: but even your average SL user has seen most of them and just been a biut annoyed
[16:20] Vector Hastings: What's a timeline for alpha sort issues (the ones you know about)?
[16:20] CodeWarrior Carling: the akpha bug on the other hand.. almost all buildfersa have run into those
[16:20] Jacek Antonelli goes to file reminders to fix the easy stuff for Imprudence 1.3.
[16:23] Mm Alder: Did we run out of ideas or out of time?
[16:23] Geneko Nemeth: Bugs.
[16:23] Geneko Nemeth: We ran out of bugs.
[16:23] Jacek Antonelli: We're sort of out of time, but we can keep talking if there's more to say
[16:24] Vector Hastings: Was someone going to make a meta-jira? I can volunteer, but I'm not part of this group, who should I tell?
[16:24] CodeWarrior Carling: well we could probably talk for many hours more about actual features, but it seems like a good place to leave off if there were another discussion down the road
[16:25] Geneko Nemeth: Well, I'm hungry too.
[16:25] Morgaine Dinova: CW's probably got a Jira or 50 in there, could we piggyback off one of those?
[16:26] CodeWarrior Carling: some comments about last weeks stuff... talking about UI features for a mcahinima maker is a bit weird.. because we do so much of our stuff with the UI turned off
[16:26] Morgaine Dinova: Although it's cleaner if a new Jira is made and expressly labelled as a Meta, otherwise Lindens will close it as a dupe
[16:26] Geneko Nemeth: That's probably why Sai talked about VJ Mode.
[16:27] CodeWarrior Carling: there was talk last week about undocking windows.. but for machinima.. it's almost a matter of just being able to undock the actual graphics instead of all the other stuff
[16:27] CodeWarrior Carling: it is probably a major deal to go into all the code for all the child windows and fix them to undock.. but it might be very easy to just redirect the actual graphics window and leave all the choild windows where they are
[16:28] Morgaine Dinova: How about doing that? Duplicate the graphics context into an unadorned window?
[16:28] CodeWarrior Carling: exactly
[16:28] Jacek Antonelli: I wonder if it would be feasible to record the graphics -- without the UI -- to disk. So you could use the viewer with UI on, but it would be recorded to disk without the UI.
[16:28] CodeWarrior Carling: then we point FRAPS at the other window.. most of us have dual monitors
[16:28] CodeWarrior Carling: yes.. that is what
[16:28] CodeWarrior Carling: i am getting at
[16:29] CodeWarrior Carling: you do need to see the world.. you need to frame shots etc
[16:29] Jacek Antonelli thinks. It would have to be fast, though, to do it in real time. Whatever file format is easiest to dump.
[16:29] Morgaine Dinova: Jacket, to disk in what format? Something that viewable as a videostream? Or low level 3D?
[16:29] CodeWarrior Carling: FRAPS dumnps raw AVI files.. they are very big
[16:30] Morgaine Dinova: s/Jacket/Jacek/ .... lol :-)
[16:30] Jacek Antonelli: Morgaine: At the moment, I'm just thinking of a video stream
[16:30] CodeWarrior Carling: one of the other apps has a special codec that compresses and encodes on the fly but very fast
[16:30] Morgaine Dinova: kk
[16:30] Jacek Antonelli: Hehe, that's not the first time I've been called Jacket. Nor the last
[16:30] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm, undocking floaters... probably needs restructuring llWindows and llUI... with not much on the actual floater side.
[16:30] Morgaine Dinova: My first time though :-) Hope it doesn't stick in the brain/fingers
[16:31] CodeWarrior Carling: livestream encodes on the fly and streams to the internet.. so all of those would need to still work.. all we really need is a way to 'undock' the main graphics window
[16:31] CodeWarrior Carling: tyhen we can shrink the other one down to a small window.. and it could even refgeesh a lot less often
[16:31] Jacek Antonelli: Indeed
[16:32] CodeWarrior Carling: there might eb a fram rate increase too.. the window clipping might be costing and that cost could be removed possibly
[16:32] CodeWarrior Carling: ahh.. anothe oddball 'bug' kind of request
[16:32] CodeWarrior Carling: there is a .. cone in the mini map that show your vie frustrum
[16:33] Geneko Nemeth: Not odd at all.
[16:33] CodeWarrior Carling: I want that to be a nice bright red or something.. it's very very hard to see iit
[16:33] Geneko Nemeth: Well, I think the transparent white works well.
[16:33] CodeWarrior Carling: and I use my motion controller to dynamically zoom all the time.. and I can't see it very well
[16:33] CodeWarrior Carling: sometimes I can.. but quite often I can't
[16:33] Geneko Nemeth: But, when you're looking down vertically, the triangle-extending-draw-distance-metres doesn't represent the actual view frustrum very well.
[16:34] CodeWarrior Carling: true.. but ,mainly what I want to know is how wide my viewing angle is.. oh.. that's because of another bug
[16:34] CodeWarrior Carling: in the flycam mode.. you can hook up direct zoom to the motion contoller
[16:34] Geneko Nemeth: FOV? The current minimap got you handeld.
[16:35] CodeWarrior Carling: when you do that.. there is a hard limit on how far in or out you can zoom.. you can only zoom oout to like a FOV of 180
[16:35] Geneko Nemeth: Yes. If you go over 180, it gets all weirded out.
[16:35] CodeWarrior Carling: and you can only go in to say one degree.. but with the flycam.. it keeps changing something and remembers it
[16:35] Geneko Nemeth: ??
[16:36] CodeWarrior Carling: hard to describve.. if you zoom out past 180.. the screen locks at 180.. but the counter keeps going.. so in order to zoom back in.. you may have to zoom in for manyt seconds till it comes back below 180
[16:36] Geneko Nemeth: Eep.
[16:36] CodeWarrior Carling: it's easy to get 'lost'
[16:36] Jacek Antonelli: Ah
[16:36] CodeWarrior Carling: which is why it's important to see the view cone
[16:36] Geneko Nemeth: Although, if it's over 180, there is no cone to speak of.
[16:37] CodeWarrior Carling: so the view cone visibility would be nice. .but better would be to just lock at 180 and not keep going
[16:37] CodeWarrior Carling: flycam direct cam should hard lock when the view hard locks in other words
[16:38] CodeWarrior Carling: that one is pretty obscure.. not a lot of machinimatographers use the direct zoom feature
[16:39] Jacek Antonelli: ok
[16:39] Vector Hastings: it's very squirrly
[16:39] CodeWarrior Carling: I don;t think they can fix it anyway.. I think that's what 'direct zoom
[16:39] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm... not only zooming out over 180, but zooming in below 5 too.
[16:39] CodeWarrior Carling: ' means
[16:39] CodeWarrior Carling: they are just rewading trhe absolute value from the dewvice
[16:39] CodeWarrior Carling: so it's my device that keeps going up and up
[16:40] Geneko Nemeth: I think "direct zoom" is supposed to be used for non-NDOF devices.
[16:40] CodeWarrior Carling: well zoom doesn't work the other way.. if it's not set to direct zoom.. it doesn't seem to control the zoom
[16:40] Geneko Nemeth: It does!
[16:41] CodeWarrior Carling: hmmm
[16:41] Geneko Nemeth: Well, again, on a non-NDOF device...
[16:41] CodeWarrior Carling: well I could try it again.. but I'd prefer to just be able to use it the other way.. thing is.. by default
[16:41] CodeWarrior Carling: auto level is turned on.. effectively.. that means that the roll axis is not being used really
[16:42] CodeWarrior Carling: so what I do is just use that axis to control direct zoom
[16:42] Geneko Nemeth: No, I don't think that's what "Auto Level" means!
[16:42] Geneko Nemeth: I think it means that joysticks are automatically scaled to 0.0-1.0, but it seems to have no effect whatsoever.
[16:42] CodeWarrior Carling: well nevertheless.. when auto level is turned on.. the roll axis is not needed
[16:42] Geneko Nemeth: Hmm~
[16:43] CodeWarrior Carling: this is on a space pilot
[16:43] Saijanai Kuhn loves trying to upload images to wiki
[16:43] Geneko Nemeth: Yesh, the whole joystick config is confusing.
[16:43] Jacek Antonelli: Auto Level automatically "corrects" the roll of the camera
[16:43] Aimee Trescothick: CW is right about auto-level
[16:43] CodeWarrior Carling: auto level with a sopace pilot keeps the horizon level from left to right
[16:44] Geneko Nemeth: Which doesn't need any auto-leveling if the camera is moved with respect to the world and not to itself!
[16:44] Jacek Antonelli: So you have to turn it off if you want a nice dutch tilt, hehe
[16:44] CodeWarrior Carling: so you don't really need the roll axis.. I use it for zoom.. that might be a sensible default setup for flycxam mode.. as long as the zooming is very toned down and less touchy
[16:44] CodeWarrior Carling: yes
[16:44] Geneko Nemeth: It's completely different from how the camera is handled in other places of the viewer.
[16:45] Aimee Trescothick: one of my many some day maybe projects is to split that setup window into normal and advanced stuff, and add a config wizard
[16:45] Jacek Antonelli: Well, flycam is inherently pretty different from how the camera is handled elsewhere
[16:45] CodeWarrior Carling: and what would be grat.. is a key to toghgle between those two modes.. so I could keystroke to one mode.. roll the camera.. and then keystroke back so the roll now controls zooming
[16:45] CodeWarrior Carling: Aimee.. it would be nice to be able to load presets for flycam in with a key
[16:45] Geneko Nemeth: Just flycam presets?
[16:45] CodeWarrior Carling: so you can lock it down to be a dolly cam.. or a rail cam.. etc.,
[16:45] Aimee Trescothick: totally agree, yes
[16:46] CodeWarrior Carling: locking down the axes on teh flycam in cvaroius ways.. even provide names preset for those
[16:46] CodeWarrior Carling: in/out only.. left right only.. up down only
[16:46] CodeWarrior Carling: zoom only
[16:46] Aimee Trescothick: I'd like a flycam scaling slider too generally, when I'm building how fast I want it to move depends how big the thing is I'm working on
[16:47] Geneko Nemeth: I'm thinking of having many modes of movement/flycam modes you can switch. But having a Movement move + a set of flycam presets seems to be more managable.
[16:47] Geneko Nemeth: *movement mode
[16:47] Geneko Nemeth: Maybe a set of movement presets too.
[16:47] CodeWarrior Carling: in fact.. talking about low hanging fruit.. so much cam stuff could be done just with special additions to the flycam menu/panel
[16:47] Vector Hastings: I set up a meta jira and added some of the issues already jira'd and discussed earlier: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-15876
[16:47] Morgaine Dinova: Named presets is a generic mechanism for everything in UIs, and beyond. We've discussed it many times. I vote for named presets, as usual.
[16:47] Jacek Antonelli: Thanks, Vector
[16:48] Aimee Trescothick: I'd be hesitant to add anything to that panel without sorting out what's there first
[16:48] Aimee Trescothick: it's crazy complicated right now
[16:48] Vector Hastings: (my pleasure)
[16:48] CodeWarrior Carling: true Aimee
[16:48] Morgaine Dinova: Good meta, thanks Vector
[16:50] Vector Hastings: yw
[16:50] Aimee Trescothick: I think the first thing to do in there is reduce movement, and flycam to having a single overall scale factor, and only expose the individual axes if you choose to view the "advanced" stuff
[16:51] Geneko Nemeth: Also, "Roll"? "Yaw"? "Y axis"? There are confusing.
[16:51] Aimee Trescothick: that would reduce most of that to 3 numbers
[16:51] CodeWarrior Carling: yeah.. well.. call them all by the same friendly name
[16:51] Saijanai Kuhn: trying to add this to wiki. Not working terribly well: https://wiki.secondlife.com/w/images/5/51/Prelim_plugin_diagram.jpg
[16:51] Geneko Nemeth: You can't explain them without using these figurines... >_>
[16:52] CodeWarrior Carling: sure you can
[16:52] CodeWarrior Carling: in and out.. side to side.. up and down
[16:52] Geneko Nemeth: Well, that works for camera but for movement...
[16:54] Aimee Trescothick: the axis mapping is where the wizard would come in
[16:54] Aimee Trescothick: "move the joystick in the direction you wish to make you walk forwad now"
[16:54] Aimee Trescothick: etc.
[16:55] CodeWarrior Carling: there you go Aimee
[16:55] CodeWarrior Carling: she's a national treasure she is
[16:55] Aimee Trescothick: lol
[16:55] CodeWarrior Carling: move to Canada!
[16:55] CodeWarrior Carling: I'll buiy you coffrees
[16:55] Geneko Nemeth: Why not build "move the axis to set function" into the config?
[16:55] Aimee Trescothick: heheh :)
[16:55] Morgaine Dinova: Andrew's OH in 5 mins
[16:55] Aimee Trescothick: that's basically the idea
[16:56] CodeWarrior Carling: Painter has this feature where they let you scribble on a liuttle scratchpad with your pressure sensitive stylus
[16:56] Geneko Nemeth: Yeah but if we borrow from many game's interface there's no need for such a wizard.
[16:56] CodeWarrior Carling: that would be a good f4eatrure to adjust the sensitivity of the 3DX
[16:57] Aimee Trescothick: yeah, it's a bit like calibrating touch screens etc., where they ask you to touch each corner in turn
[16:57] Geneko Nemeth: Ah, so initial setup...
[16:57] CodeWarrior Carling: has a flashback and shudders
[16:57] CodeWarrior Carling: elotouch.. carrol.. wacom
[16:57] Aimee Trescothick: ;)
[16:57] Jacek Antonelli: lol
[16:58] Aimee Trescothick: eek
[16:58] Aimee Trescothick used to have nightmares about elotouch
[16:58] Saijanai Kuhn: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/File:Diagram2-1.jpg
[16:58] CodeWarrior Carling: well I am so glad to have been invitied to this therapy group.. now I have finally gotten all of these things of my chest so even if nothing ever comes out of it.. I feel a lot better now
[16:58] Jacek Antonelli: We'd better wrap it up so people can head to Andrew's office hours
[16:58] Aimee Trescothick: granted that was after the assembly people fitted a batch of touch screens in the monitors upside down
[16:58] Jacek Antonelli: hehe, glad to have you, CodeW
[16:59] Mm Alder: bye all
[16:59] CodeWarrior Carling: later all
[16:59] Jacek Antonelli: Take care all, thanks for coming!