Black Dragon Viewer Update 2.3.9.3

Niran has an ‘emergency’ release of Black Dragon out. Niran announced it a couple of days ago, I’m just now getting around to mentioning it. The announcement is here: Emergency Update 2.3.9.3.

 

This viewer has changes to the UI and how one controls their avatar. The video does not really explain what is happening. I have Niran’s explanation that appears in the blog after the video.


I think there’s not much to explain how it works, you hold down your right mouse button and drag your mouse around and kazam, your camera/avatar rotates/turns around, something pretty much every MMO has and which SL is lacking very badly. One big upside of it is you can hold down right mouse and drag around to move your camera around after you zoomed on something, without having to old ALT or CTRL or Shift or any other of these pesky keys and it looks and works much smoother than moving your cam with keyboard. Yes. Right-click menus still work. Don’t panic…they just work slightly different now, instead of opening as soon as you press down your right mouse button, they will open when you release it and only if you didn’t move your mouse over a certain radius from your initial click position. Wonderful magic.

I take Niran’s point that this feature is common in other 3D software and should be available in the SL Viewers as valid. But, I haven’t been involved in the Lab’s usability testing. So, while it would help those that play in other virtual worlds, I don’t know what it would do for those new to VR/VW.

I  consider all of Niran’s viewers to be user interface experiments. The experiments iterate quickly, so it is hard for me to keep up with what is where or how what works. I find that frustrating. However, there are LOTS of nice things in the viewer and some interesting panels to allow photographers and machinamists more control over the render.

5 thoughts on “Black Dragon Viewer Update 2.3.9.3

  1. Those who are new to SL and MMO’s/Games in general won’t even notice it. Most likely. I used a fair threshold which should provide a good failsafe to prevent accidentally turning your camera/avatar around.

    This right click lookaround method is very common in pretty much every MMORPG and alot RPG’s in atleast a similar way but for that \similar\ way there is the Third-Person-Steering Mode which does basically the same just without having to hold any key or mouse button.

    A seemingly small request of a Firestorm User in the FS Jira which got declined got me hooked up on this one, it made me really mad to see this feature beeing declined especially by a Viewer like Firestorm that strives to \enhance\ everything… i asked myself: If not a full team of coders more professional than me arn’t doing it, who does?

  2. That’s a really great idea and i love it but i’ve an AZERTY keyboard…
    Could you please do something so that i can change the keys ? or give us a choice cuz it’s really difficult for me to use w to go forward i use Z usually…

    Well if you can’t or won’t it’s still ok i’m used to the old way anyway^^ it’s just a thought.

  3. I feel like this viewer has potential however it absolutely sucks monkey balls when it comes too mesh. I mean literately I found the graphics to be amazing and the handling smooth but I am fairly upset that I cannot use it.

  4. witch is the best black dragon to download for secondlife I use to using firestorm but it wont let me re install it so ima try black dragon but I need to know what the best way to install black dragon

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