New Features in 5.1

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5.1
Build 1217 - 2008
Release date

Sept 29, 2023

Developers

AWI Chrispeg

New features
Chronology
Previous
5.0
Next
5.2

Added Features (excerpt)

Build 2008

29 September 2023 release

  • Changes to terrain management, smoother curves and higher resolution when editing terrain.
  • Changed texture resolution limit to 2048x2048.
  • Changed ui elements to be more up to date and compatible with Windows 11.
  • Updated object path management system to support SSL
  • Updated universe CAV system
  • Changes to rendering system to increase performance dramatically no longer on DirectX 8.

Build 2007

10 April 2023 release

  • No longer teleports player to terrain when terrain is changed. [0x0011FF84]
  • Fixed the sky being glitchy/flashing on modern hardware.
  • Fixed dialog box issues with tourist login.
  • Max Vis increased to 500 meters (dworld.ini edit needed)
  • Support for HTTPS - WorldServer/Object Paths

Build 1217

27 October 2011 release

  • Fixed Prof-UIS interfering with embedded IE 9 on Windows Vista and later.

Build 1216

June 2011 internal
27 June 2011 beta
6 July 2011 release

  • Added optional reminder for citizen password changes.
  • Addressed an issue with the GrabFrame Addon, reporting some input error in another language.
  • Fixed issue with cascading at triggers, if the last trigger command is invalid.


Build 1215

27 April 2011 internal
23 May 2011 beta
1 June 2011 release

  • Added option to mirror textures on fabric type cloth objects.
  • Updated nVidia PhysX to version 2.8.4.5.
  • Fixed issue with Internet Explorer failing with some of the web commands.


Build 1214

22 April 2011 internal
26 April 2011 beta
2 May 2011 release

  • Attach and Detach any mover by name, using "aworld:?click <name> mover on|off" web command.
  • Explicitely open a webpage on top of the 3D viewport, using "aworld:?open http://somedomain.com" web command - the counterpart to the "aworld:?close" web command.
  • Fixed chat/console log failing after inserting more than 32k of text.


Build 1213

18 April 2011 internal

  • Fixed media commands causing the browser crashing over time.


Build 1212

1 April 2011 beta

  • Added web-command "aworld:?click objAV seq swave.seq" to apply sequences on objects from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click obj2 move 0 2 0 smooth time=3" to apply a move action command on objects from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click obj2 rotate 0 10 0 time=6 reset" to apply a rotate action command on objects from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click obj2 scale 0 3 0 time=2" to apply a scale action command on objects from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click camera location=front" to switch the self-avatars camera view (target option not available, location can be front, chase, locked or first_person) from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click teleport AWGate" to teleport to a certain world/location from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click warp 0n 0w 1a" to warp to a certain location from within http code of the embedded webbrowser.
  • Added the keyword [HIDDEN] (including the brackets) as name for a gesture, to hide it from the gesture bar, but still make it available through web-commands or the SDK.


Build 1211

28 March 2011 beta

  • Added action command avseq <num> to trigger gestures for the self-avatar.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click avseq <num>" to trigger gestures for the self-avatar.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?click <name> tag on | off" to switch particle emitters on and off.
  • Added web-command "aworld:?close" used from the embedded webbrowser to close webpages shown in the 3D viewport. The same command can be used from within a webpage shown in the 3D viewport to close itsself.
  • Fixed Grabframe addon resizing the viewport properly.
  • Fixed a crashing issue that could occur when opening the CAV dialog, or loading a CAV preset.


Build 1210

3 March 2011 release

  • The previously released patch to build 1209 was missing the Internet Explorer plugin.


Build 1208/1209

1 March 2011 beta
3 March 2011 release

  • Finished new Windows Media module, now supporting loop and volume options, and variable video updates adjusted to the framerate. Made the new WM module the default interface for WMV and MP3.
  • Readded DirectShow considering 3rd party interfaces(fddshow was dropped to 1207), and rendering its video output inworld.
  • Added / improved rendering the 3D viewport in an external window.
  • Finished tuning the browser to run on Wine/Mac in hardware accelerated mode under OpenGL.
  • OpenGL: applying nearest texture filter to terrain texture, by keeping bilinear filters for mipmap, to work around texture clamping issues in WGL.
  • Made an application bundle for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, older version of OS X may run though untested.
  • Flickerless resizing and reposition of the embedded webbrowser (WebKit).
  • Draw camera in idle while resizing, update camera on idle when bars are moved.
  • Mipmapping uses another texture filter than before, in particular improves mipmapping (less fuzzy) if no additional anistropic and texture antialias filters are applied through the GPU driver.
  • Fixed the world list displaying incorrect order. This issue also lead to other incorrect displays in worst case.
  • Fixed a possible creashing issue caused by simulatious activation/deactivation of media streams in global mode triggered by multiple users concurrently.
  • Fixed a possible crashing issue caused by malformated avatar animations in text-seq format, when all rotation axis were set to zero.
  • Plus, lots of tweaking to get it running better on Wine/Mac, a very poor emulation software.


Remaining known issues in OpenGL / WGL:

Renderware OpenGL uses Microsoft's Windows GL libraries, which behave differently than DirectX when it comes to full transparency rendering. DirectX omits rendering faces with zero opacity when WGL does not. Even not if alpharef is supposed to cull these faces. This may lead to different appearance of fully transparent objects when running the OpenGL renderer in a few observed cases (e.g. Max' dance movers). Fixing this implies breaking the browser's capability to click 'invisible' objects.



Build 1207

15th Feb 2011 beta
16th Feb 2011 release

  • Addressed a sporadically occurring crashing issue when teleporting to another world while the previous world still loaded textures from cache.
  • Known issues: media command does not support loop and volume options.


Build 1206

8th Feb 2011 beta
14th Feb 2011 release

  • Custom avatar is the default avatar for citizens when entering a world the first time, and the world is not cached, unless the citizen account has a PAV assigned or the world does not allow Universe CAVs.
  • Added low level Windows Media support.
  • Fixed a potentional crashing issue when rebuilding custom avatars.
  • Fixed an issue when filmstrips stopped animating on some avatars.


Build 1205

31st Jan 2011

  • Fixed a crashing issue sporadically occurring on PEs if no assets were given.


Build 1204

30th Jan 2011

  • NVIDIA PhysX caused internal errors in HW accelerated mode. HW simulation is no longer available.
  • In case PhysX reports and internal error, the browser will shutdown PhysX until restarted.
  • Transparency of GIF and PNG images will only be applied if it is explicitly defined as transpant in its file definition headers.
  • NVIDIA 64 bit driver on Windows 7 and Vista lost color information of the background when resizing the camera viewport.


Build 1203

25th Jan 2011 beta
26th Jan 2011 release

  • Further customizing the alternative Qt WebKit browser and added aworld.ini settings.
  • Fixed flickering of plugins, in particular noticeable with Flash, used by Qt when showing in embedded window.
  • Fixed scrollbar issues for webviews when embedded into the side bar of the browser.
  • Fixed an issue with settings for cookies within Qt.
  • Added more settings to privacy options within Qt.
  • Fixed crashing issues caused by Qt WebKit.
  • Enabling Web Inspector for the time being.


Build 1202

20th Jan 2011 beta

  • Added Qt WebKit web browser plugin. Will be an option to IE, but is the only option during the beta for this build.


Build 1201

17th Jan 2011 internal

  • Internal build for optional web browser plugins.


Build 1200

12th Jan 2011 beta
13th Jan 2011 release

  • Attempt to limit acquired memory resources by lowering visibility in worst case to avoid overloading the Windows system with arbitrary content, mostly textures and models not designed for realtime rendering. Thus continuing the thouhgts in Stacee's recent classes.


Build 1199

10th Jan 2011 beta
11th Jan 2011 release

  • Fixed issue with fabric anchored to center. After releasing build mode, fabric that was meant to anchor at its center, no longer was anchored at the right spot.
  • Fixed crashing issue that occurred sporadically (very rare) with sound / noise effects.
  • Terrain and ground are considered muting exclusively for physics simualtion now. Terrain and ground objects didn't work well together in some circumstances for pyhsics simulations.
  • Reduced energy sleep threshold for phyiscs joints. This will cause joints to swing longer, and eventually find back to their rest position without defining a spring (3rd value of the limit option) for it.


Build 1198

7th Jan 2011

  • Fixed an issue that kept the browser from running on CPUs (reported were a few AMD CPUs), that would not support SSE, nor the alternative !3DNow instruction sets and/or the Windows kernel would not determine the presence of these processor extension correctly always.
  • Enabled Save to Group on multiple-object selections, even if no build rights are granted (that you can save setups from worlds like AWFX or AWPhysics).


Build 1197

5th Jan 2011

  • Limited models that can be used for cloth-objects with no more than 2 clumps. A warning will appear, if object errors display is enabled, to tell the user the model name that has been rejected.


Build 1196

3rd Jan 2011 beta

  • Fixed a sporadic crashing issue that occurred when reloading textures from cache and the target model would become out of view already at the time (i.e. next frame) the texture would be ready.
  • Keep PhysX from locking up the browser, if an invalid geometry was used for cloth objects. (caused by a bug within the PhysX engine)
  • Considering world sector changes for cloth' valid bounds.
  • Dropped lowest mipmap setting of 64 by 64 pixels.
  • Picture urls use mipmapping by default.
  • Model instancing, caching master-models in memory.
  • Added various media extenstions to known extensions for chat-links.


Build 1195

30th Dec 2010 beta

  • Performance boost, running all cached texture IO in a separate thread (a similar method was applied to pictures some months ago).
  • Using SSE processor instructions for floating point operations whenever applicable throughout the application including the renderer.
  • Detecting named references and executing them in later order when more neighbor cells are loaded already.
  • Detecting create animate bombs and executing them in later order for better load balancing.


Build 1194

27th Dec 2010 beta
29th Dec 2010 release

  • Stress and unit tests were done on various Windows systems for best possibly stability.
  • Public release using the PhysX engine, offering the new physics experience to everyone.


Build 1193

1193: 23rd Dec 2010 beta

  • Ensure stability for public release.
  • Finished the step of integrating nVidia PhysX physics engine.
  • Added online documentation for Cloth in the Wiki, and updated the Physics page.
  • Fixed a crashing issue within PhysXCore.dll that occurred sprodically when releasing a selected object, or when leaving build mode.


Build 1192

22nd Dec 2010 beta

  • Added support to rotate cloth easily during building. Previously only the attachment position could have been set, but no facing.
  • Adjusted limits and default settings for cloth objects.
  • Added browser objects to enable/disable physics and to switich between HW and SW mode of PhysX, if a supported PPU is available on the system.
  • Added switches on the Options/Settings/Advanced tab to enable/disable the physics engine and if available, to enable/disable hardware support.
  • Adjusted some default settings.
  • Implemented 'static time period', which works along with the static switch to set an object to static after a timeout.
  • Mirrored textures on the backside of fabric, that text could be read on either side.
  • Disabled cloth name and anchor name, as it is not yet implemented.
  • Improved cloth update rates, smoother moves of cloth.
  • Improved speed in SW mode, less CPU usage when tearing, and smoother overall performance in SW mode.
  • Fixed the anchor positions of fabric for global and object anchors (center, top, left, etc.).
  • Fixed crashing issue with forcefields/zones.
  • ... and more


Build 1191

20th Dec 2010 beta

  • Added Cloth Object Type (not all features enabled yet, see beta forums).
  • Removed collider cloth and fabric action commands.
  • Fixed crashing issue, when model name was missing in the object property dialog.


Build 1190

16th Dec 2010 beta

  • Added zone and underwater gravity support to physics using force fields.
  • Fixed freezing issue that occurred on XP when running certain older CPUs.
  • Fixed issue with chat-scrollback-identification not showing since previous beta build.


Build 1188 | 1189

13th Dec 2010 beta

  • Fine tuning PhysX, in particular for software mode when the simulations run on the CPU.
  • Fixed a crashing issue that occurred in worlds with no terrain but one ground object.
  • Fixed a sporadic crashing issue with signs.
  • VRD disabled in SW mode.
  • New stat display in designer mode.
  • Removed strong dependency to PhysX DLLs. If PhysX DLLs are removed, the browser still runs, just with physics disabled.


Build 1187

10th Dec 2010 beta

  • Added fabric command, generating a regular pattern for cloth.
  • Fixed PhysX simulation freezing if some models are used for cloth.
  • Allowing VRD to run on localhost, and made connections non-blocking in case VDR is not present.

The cloth and fabric features are experimental at this time. The currently used action commands may change later. We first have to see if PhysX runs well on all machines, and how cloth comes out in genernal. This build should keep up over the weekend, for us all to gather experience with it and to find suitable parameters we wanted to add to all PhysX and all the new features it offers.

Build 1186

9th Dec 2010 beta

  • Integrated PhysX by nVidia and cloth simulation. PhysX will require some more fine tuning.


Build 1185

2nd Dec 2010 beta
3rd Dec 2010 release

  • Fixed rotate applied in world axes insteed of local space, if object was not linked to a mover.


Build 1184

30th Nov 2010 beta

  • Implemented rotate for objects linked to movers. Rotations of linked objects did always use the current angles defined with the rotate command, not considering the mover's orientation in world.
  • Fixed terrain multi threading issue with physics, that could have lead to crashes.
  • Fixed an issue with 64 bit timers, which are also, but not only, used for physics.
  • Fixed terrain not always rendering cell elevation when getting closer.
  • Use a fixed time step for Newton physics updates insteed of variable time steps to improve frame rate independency and solver accuracy, which further leads to a slight performance improvement, allows higher speeds of objects and more stable stacks of objects.


Build 1183

23rd Nov 2010 beta
28th Nov 2010 release

  • Objects loaded through a group file from local disk, will be selected as soon loading has finished.
  • Loading objects from disk has improved by 6 times in speed, and the loading progress is displayed in the chat log.


Build 1182

22nd Nov 2010 beta
24th Nov 2010 release

  • Lowered default contrast on models. The contrast fix will go into all objects from AW's public OPs directly at a later time, insteed of applying the fix by the browser for all models. Note, reloading the cache is needed, if you want to see low contrast on objects immediately. The default contrast can be still overridden in the ini file.


Build 1181

22nd Nov 2010 beta

  • Improved performance quiet noticeable by rendering text to texture of signs in a parallel thread.
  • Updated Newton SDK and further improved parallel computation of physics.
  • Ensure elements are available after executing an activate teleport or warp command, before checking for examine triggers.
  • Ensure matfx projection angles never turn to parallel planes or parallel lines, if the view angle turns to zero.


Build 1180

16th Nov 2010 beta
18th Nov 2010 release

  • Fixed linked particle emitters rendering at wrong positions after revisiting initial position.
  • Fixed particle emitter rotation was not applied to volume settings.
  • Fixed renderstates for models used as particles. "Bright" and "Glow" is not applicable to models, only to textures.
  • Fixed physics update thread-locking issue with the terrain update thread.


Build 1179

12th Nov 2010

  • Fixed a bug with objects disappearing, if action command contained the word lock.
  • OpenGL: improvement for texture wrap mode on terrain textures on some graphic cards.


Build 1178

9th Nov 2010 beta
11th Nov 2010 release

  • Added world option to enable/disable wireframe view (World Server build 121, Admin tool build 62, SDK build 92).
  • Fixed an opacity glitch for model-based particles when the browser option "fade-in models" was enabled.
  • Fixed an issue with the lock command, not working with the create trigger.


Build 1177

5th Nov 2010 beta
9th Nov 2010 release

  • Warps across world grid limits didn't work as expected.
  • Considering a glitch in rendering matfx during building if the underlaying texture used the olde method with masked textures to achieve opacity, not showing transparency correctly after deselection.
  • Fixed parental access. A random password was set, once the General Options page was changed.
  • Fixed an issue with filmstrips and animated gifs, that could eventually have lead to engine errors not finding textures.


Build 1176

3rd Nov 2010 beta

  • Omit dialog to ask for subsequential upgrade patches. If more patches are to be downloaded, the browser will only ask once to accept them.
  • Enabled translations for all bones/limbs for DX Animations. An update to the Blender exporter, v0.92 is also available.
  • Fixed visibility dropped eventually to 11m after teleport on slow PCs.
  • Fixed a crashing issue caused by unreferenced models.


Build 1175

1st Nov 2010

  • The chat log display is reverted back to what it was in 5.0, cause of compaitibility issues in between version of Windows.


Build 1174

1st Nov 2010 beta

  • Added support for rotation of particle emitters, allowing to emit particles into any direction while the emitter is rotating about its own local axes.
  • Boosting performance for the physics engine and the renderer. The physics engine now runs its update loop in a separate independend thread, no longer in the render update thread. This means that the framerate can keep up even when the physics are stressed out, at least on CPU's with more than one core.
  • Added a toggle to switch on and off wireframe rendering mode in the video settings.
  • When the mouse wheel was used to scroll the chat log down to the bottom, the chat wasn't updated until a new chatline received.
  • Fixed a crashing issue with physics, that sprodically occurred when physics objects where destroyed, e.g. got out of visible range.
  • Fixed an issue with shadows z-buffering over cell grid.

SDK build 91 and COM SDK build 91

  • Added a flag to zones to block audio.
  • Added a flag to particle emitters to apply rotation.
  • Fixed an issue with the SDK that the login callback was not recognized, if an invalid password and citizen number was provided. This lead to early kicking the connection.


Build 1173

29 October 2010 beta

  • Added more options to the DX animation file format.
  • Added a shear action command, shearing an object by angles for given axis.
  • Fixed an issue with CAVs not recognizing the min shape setting in the template.


Build 1172

25 October 2010 beta

  • Added a 'global' option to the timer action command.
  • Added a character animation format, in addition to the binary SEQ and to Hamfon's AWSQ text format.
  • Added a skew action command, skewing the object by angles for the given axis.
  • Changed object selection axis colors to R G B (red green blue) for the X Y Z axis accordingly.


Build 1170 | 1171

21 October 2010

  • 1170: Added an option to zones to block audio.
  • 1171: Fixed a crashing issue with Newton Dynamics physics engine, when running on a 16 core CPU.


Build 1168 | 1169

19 October 2010

  • Added support for model based particles, getting use of the emitter's dynamic color and opacity settings.
  • Added support to RWX 3d format files to use bumpmaps (Texture <texture> bump <bumpmap>).
  • Improved quality of material effects.
  • Fixed in build 1169, was introduced in 1168: model instancing failed when fade-in-models was enabled in the performance settings.


Build 1167

18 October 2010

  • Added tint option to the color command, allowing to tint images.
  • Scaling object selection axis down up to 1/100th of the original size when getting close.
  • Recalc visibility range after teleporting.
  • Particles: limited particle opacity minimum setting to 0.07 (not the texture itsself). Limited particle release time minimum to 0.025 seconds.
  • Fixed avatar positioning artifacts, when attempting to move outside 32764 coordinates in a world.
  • Fixed facers not rotating if not cached.
  • Fixed chat window not scrolling automatically some times.
  • Fixed loading icons and error icons not always facing to the viewer.


Build 1166

15 October 2010

  • Fixed an issue on models containing more than 255 nested clumps. A message will report the error, if error display is enabled in the advanced settings.


Build 1165

14 October 2010

  • Fixed inaccuracy of synced rotations, which increased over the years as the value for the unix-timestamp counting in seconds gets higher.
  • Fixed filmstrips used for terrain textures.
  • Fixed an issue with matfx failing, when the object was built exactly at zero X or at zero Z coordinates.
  • Object selection axis are scaled by the size of the model's bounding box, and by distance to the observer.
  • Explicitly remove an object from phyiscs, if it has an animation sequence applied.


Build 1164

12 October 2010

  • Added new object selection axis, axis are 3D geometry, semi transparent, prelit and colored, including inworld compass and supporters for fine adjusting positions of models.
  • Added support for timers and at-triggers, allowing multiple occurrences of the timer command and at-triggers on the same object.
  • Enhanced matfx to take the viewer's distance to the object into account.
  • Moving in build mode is less accelerated for more preciece adjusting of your own view, in particular when dealing with small objects.
  • Updated Newton Game Dynamics engine to the latest version 2.25.
  • Fixed CAV deformation again, missed a part in previous beta build.
  • Fixed a crashing issue that sporadically occurred with property dialogs, as the building dialog or the CAV dialog.
  • Fixed a crashing issue that occurred when removing objects from memory when they went out of view.


Build 1163

8 October 2010 beta

  • Completed timers, timed events and schedules events to the proposed functionality.
  • Added reset and stop options to timers.
  • Fixed VRT offset with scheduled timers.


Build 1162

7 October 2010 beta

  • Added timers, timed events and scheduled events.
  • Fixed ecamera icon not showing at world grid offset coordinantes.
  • Fixed CAV deformation might have failed under certain circumstances, if not loaded from local cache.


Build 1161

5 October 2010

  • Added: physics are now supported in worlds without terrain, but ground a flat object, also.
  • Added: a tag option to the opacity action command.
  • Fixed: physics objects using tree or hull colliders did not work on more complex geometries in any earlier build. They resulted in odd behavior and also affecting other nearby colliders behaving unexpected.
  • Fixed: when Enable fading models was checkmarked in the browser settings, several issues occurred on colored objects, and on objects using the envi command. The geometry setting for modulate material color was enabled when applying opacity, when it was not required nor wanted.
  • Fixed: if Enable fading models was on, the render order of objects using a texture command with masks (alpha render order), was not always correct after downloading and rendering the object the first time.
  • Fixed: wireframe rendering, if it was specified within the geometry, was broken in 1157 or 1158.
  • Fixed: allowing an arbitrary order in action commands was broken since the previous build.
  • Fixed: eventually cells were not displayed when walking/flying over an aerea, in particular, but not only, noticeable if parts of the extended visual range were not yet loaded.
  • Fixed: capital letters for action command triggers are allowed again. As Bach Zaah pointed out earlier, disabling Create commands using upper case letters would break old builds in particular historic builds in Alpha World.


Build 1159, 1160

4 October 2010 - beta only

  • Allowing max view range up to 500 meters.
  • Fixed a crashing issue caused by models fading feature, when switching from 1st person to 3rd person avatar and back.
  • Fixed a crashing issued related with plugin data to render engine.
  • Fixed head-bob (an option to move camera in 1st person view up and down while walking) was moving far to heavy giving the impression of a 7.5 earthquake.


Build 1158

1 October 2010 beta

  • Added feature (listed under performance settings) to enable models to fade in when they appear in a scene, default is disabled.
  • Added alpharef action command, to allow cutting out geometry using masked texture (used for windows).
  • Added opacity action command, allow to change the opacity of any object.
  • Fixed an issue with action commands not been disabled by a number in front of the command (e.g. "1move" was accepted as "move").


Build 1157

30 September 2010

  • Corrected the text displayed in the status bar to "Loading" instead of "Download", what caused confusion in the past.
  • Updated the console message window to use the latest version if avaialable on the system, and fixed the beeping that occurred in rare cases when the chat was scrolling, which was also related to the version.
  • Added to read picture images from local cache in a separate thread, so that the rendering experience is less affected by this task.
  • Render flat geometry during download again, yet not when loading from local cache.
  • Fixed an issue from build 1156, that chat lines were logged twice (duplicated).
  • Fixed avatar and camera track jittering at high coordinates in world (2nd and final step of this fix).
  • Fixed a crashing issue that eventually occurred when unreferenced textures were removed from memory.
  • Fixed a camera update issue that occurred on nVidea GTX 260 series cards (was reported twice, both use this particular card).


Build 1156

23 September 2010

  • Fixed an annoying crashing issue ocrruing while teleporting.
  • Fixed the "visble no"-bug, that was when more than one commands were given in an action command, only the first worked and all subsequent were ignored.
  • Fixed garbage management to free memory more efficient and some fine tuning.
  • Fixed the flickering of the own avatar, when crossing world grid offset borders.
  • Fixed an issue that could lead to falling through the terrain at grid offset borders.
  • Allow 60 Hz frame rate also at higher coordinates in a world.
  • Removed the HUD saying to wait until stuff is done; the same is represented in the download/processing indicator of the status bar.


Build 1155

22 September 2010

  • Step two of the performance improvents, adding a garbage collector and managing the renderer's internal freelists better.
  • Adding a garbage collector to free system resources more efficient.
  • Got rid of loading a "flat", untextured representation of each individual model before textures get available for efficiency.
  • Fixed pictures won't render at initial download, if not following the advice to wait until loading has finished (bouncing to another world and back solves it).
  • Fixed CAV won't render with directional light applied, and matfx was broken; both related with seamless normals calculation within the renderware plugins.


Build 1154

20 September 2010

  • Fixing zone's world grid offset and other minor issues.


Build 1153

20 September 2010 beta

  • More defined task management. The processes to download and loading items from cache, have been split up in smaller tasks, leading to a smoother overall experience.
  • Minimizing the sizes for queues and internal tables to reduce lookup time, this to manage the diversity of items in a world better, a huge amount of different/unique objects and images in a world.
  • Setting the default maximum frame rate to 60 fps and unleashed frame rates by choosing the highest value of 100. Thus to see and experience the advantage the more defined task management. You'll see the power of the renderer in default settings, without having to change them.
  • Improved flicker free shadow rendering by setting a z-bias to rendered shadows.
  • Adjusted standard avatar collision at high world coordinates by applying grid offset to the entire calculation and passing the resulting offset position directly to the render engine, without converting to world coordinates once.
  • Fixed an issue with linked objects attached to movers. Linked objects became visible as a duplicate of the original object.
  • Fixed an issue with object groups causing crashes while unloading the group from the visual scene.
  • When a disconnect occurred, the browser might have offered an upgrade that didn't actually exists.


Build 1152

14 September 2010

  • Fixed an issue while rotating an object in build mode.
  • Fixed an issue with various action commands, including visible, texture and color, which were most obvious not reflecting further commands on the rendered object.


Build 1150/1151

13 September 2010

  • Build 1150 is public release version.
  • Mass scaling is supported. When an object is scaled, the scaling is always applied to the physics body's mass and inertia accordingly. Lesser volume means less mass and a lower inertia, and vice verse. Card-houses may break by heavy weight based on small/slim objects - makes walls thick enough, or set individual mass values. Still, most card houses I've seen so far, won't break under their own weight. The default mass for an avtar is now also reduced, according to object mass calculation based on its volume.
  • Inertia of a physics body is now more realistic to its mass. A slightly lower intertia was used before to compensate problems with objects with zero thickness.
  • Dynamic physics body the engine put in autosleep mode, are now forced to wake up when leaving build mode.
  • Applied forces and velocities onto a physics body are no longer delayed when activating them right after they were created.
  • Hinges do not over-react on strong forces anymore.
  • The collider command got two more options to set linear and angular damping factors.
  • Adjusted alpha clipping to 1/5 semi tranparency for textures, pictures and geomtry opacity.
  • Addressed sporadically occurring issues with streaming full cells, in particular noticeable when using the ultra cell limit in a world.
  • Addressed issues caused by invalid formated command actions (e.g. animate with no name given).


Build 1127 beta RC2

7 September 2010 beta

  • Queued action commands to be executed while creating an object in world (see below).
  • Added display of the actual visual range to the status bar. Before only the desired view range was displayed, but not the current visual range in work, which may differ while flying through a world.
  • Allow velocity, addforce and addtorque to be used with the create action command. Due to an issue of the underlaying physics engine, applying speed or force vectors to an object before several physics updates after creation leads to uncertain results.
  • Added hinge and ball & socket joints.
  • Modified methods how scales are applied onto physics objects, to address issues caused by the engine's auto-sleep state that occurred with dynamically resizing objects over time.
  • Ensure coronas can be applied to physics objects, even the model might be treated as non-solid for ray casting temporary.
  • Ensure physics objects can not get linked to movers, cause movers take the control of the model over, not the physics engine.


Build 1126 beta RC1

1 September 2010 beta

  • Fixed an issue that occurred in build 1125, breaking action commands, in particular noticeable with the activate trigger.


Build 1125 beta RC1

1 September 2010 beta

  • Added velocity action command to control speed in m/s.
  • Added options to addforce, addtorque and velocity to apply angle forces, momentum and rotation speed in object local coordinate space (ltm - local transform matrix) instead of in global coordinate space.
  • Added collision event triggers to action commands. All action commands can be used with this trigger, as long it is not disabled in world or by the user, as usually.
  • Added colltag action command for assiging collision tags to physics objects.
  • Modified the units passed to addforce and addtorque action commands, from m/s to N.
  • Fixed repositioning unmodified objects after deselecting them within the same frame and invalidating the physics engine's cache also when leaving building mode.


Build 1124 beta

30 August 2010 beta

  • Avatars interacting with physics. Avatars act as special box type colliders for a simple integration of avatars into the physics environment. On collision with dynamic colliders, except other avatars, avatars will generate a force on the hit point of the dynamic collider's geometry into the direction the avatar is facing to. The speed of an avatar is a paramenter to the generated force.
  • Reduced jitter effects for stacked colliders by increasing AABB size of colliders by 2.5 millimenters or 0.00025 render units.
  • Dynamicly adjusting solver model by frame rate, leads to performance improvements and higher collision definition when strong forces occur.
  • Considered holes in the terrain with physics. Dynamic colliders will fly through terrain holes.
  • Improved experienced performance and speed a good deal, in particular noticeable while hovering over dense property, by smart multithreading collision management.
  • Fixed sporadic crashes while loading terrain data into physics. While walking or flying through a world the terrain physics are reloaded every 100 meters. Terrain colliders are reloaded in grid blocks of 100 by 100 meters in a total grid size of 300 by 300 meters, covering 61 by 61 cells / 3721 cells and made of up to 7442 triangles or 22326 vertices for physics.


Build 1123 beta

27 August 2010 beta

  • Added addtorque action command.
  • Added avatars interaction: an avatar colliding with collider object triggers a force in the direction the avatar moves, depending on the avatar's speed. Collider objects collide with avatars also.
  • Applied world friction to phyiscs simualation.
  • Improved terrain collision precision. Inaccuracy was noticeable in physics behavior, e.g. of a rolling ball, when 3 points of a terrain cell had the same level, but the 4th point was lower (triangulation).
  • Rebuild phyiscs colliders for terrain, if a terrain cell has been changed.
  • Fixed initial position and rotaion of convex hull and tree colliders, as well when duplicating any object and rotating a group of multiple selections without deselecting the new created duplicate.


Build 1122 beta

24 August 2010 beta

  • Added simple physics behavior to objects.
  • Added PPT support to presentation system.
  • Added support for server stored presentations.
  • Fixed terrain loading sporadic issue.


Schedule


The 5.1 Beta cycle is scheduled to start in August 2010.
First release of version 5.1 is scheduled in September 2010.
During the following 5.1 development cycle more physics features will be added.