8.1

8.1

Build 1818 - 1892

Release date	August 2022
Developers	Chris
New features
Chronology
Previous 8.0	Next 8.2

Purpose

Version 8.1 added Vulkan, Metal, D3D11, D3D12, for a fallback OpenGL and OpenGLES, hardware render using BGFX since build 1835. Also see Render Backend.

This implied additional programmable shaders and 3D asset file formats.
Total rewrite of all renderables.

Features

New features include additional 3D formats and modern shader-only render, to be made available during the v8 cycle.

AW::Browser 1818

2021 December 28th

• Initial Release
• Replaced Microsoft's WinInet API

AW::Browser 1819

2021 December 29th

• Fixed an issue your own CAV eventually not showing, when initially entering a world.

AW::Browser 1820

2022 January 5th

• Copyright to 2022.
• Cleanup unused animation sequences during runtime.
• More concurrent and faster http(s) downloads from OP.
• Accordingly, more concurrent assets-items loaded.
• Unlock up to 1000fps.

AW::Browser 1821

2022 January 15th

• Keep the 3 last animation sequences in memory for each avatar.
• Ensure render to texture to none-multisampling surface.

AW::Browser 1822

2022 January 17th

• Replace Microsoft's DirectSound for sound and noise action commands.

AW::Browser 1823

2022 January 21th

• Reduce count of threads spawned by sound and noise playback.
• Play audio of media by the audio module built-in the VLC SDK.
• Upsample all audio to at least 48000 / second, 2 channels, 16 bit.

AW::Browser 1824

2022 January 25th

• Reimplement traditional software shadows for static models.

AW::Browser 1825

2022 February 2nd

• Run longer sound and noise audio in a separate engine.
• Gracefully close the application, even if user cancels the shutdown process (not when killed).
• Use common HOR+ FOV instead of previous VER- FOV.

AW::Browser 1826

2022 February 12th

• Fixed an issue with mouse focus detection on objects.
• Adjust HUD text render on D3D9, requiring accurate half-texel offset.
• Adjust avatar's auto-walk to high fps.
• Removed obsolete "Render balloons on top" in chat settings.
• Lit scene by up to 32 concurrent light sources.

AW::Browser 1827-1828

2022 February 14th/18th

• Latest VLC script for streaming YouTube.
• Fine tuning of light shaders.
• Flat and single-textured terrain is no longer optimized, as long as no hardware limits encountered, in an area up to 32 by 32 cells in order for light sources finding reflective surfaces.
• Light sources not affecting the current field of view are ignored.
• Number of light sources are no longer reduced on low-end graphics.
• Delay grid sector loading, only occurring in worlds bigger than P-100, in order to have physics finishing it's tasks to reduce drag when crossing world sector borders - a grid sector layout of 200 by 200 cells with its origin at 0n 0w.

AW::Browser 1829

2022 February 25th

• Increase potential terrain triangles taking traditional shadow render.
• SSE-matrix computations optimization.

AW::Browser 1830

2022 March 3rd

• Clamp total light intensity preventing over-lighting of existing/older scenes.
• Re-add support for pre-historic RWX files missing later attributes (i.e. DAAP, z-galaxy).
• Fixed an issue with the opacity action command eventually making an object invisible unintended.
• Increase minimum world visibility range to up to 400 meters in each direction.

AW::Browser 1831

2022 March 8th

• Re-enable dynamic color-changes and switch-off (color=0 or brightness=0) of individual spot- and point-light sources.
• Permit opacity command within a range of 0.02 to 1.0 unconditionally.

AW::Browser 1832

2022 April 11th

• CEF Update to 100.0.4896.75.

AW::Browser 1833-1834

2022 May 22nd

• General maintenance release.
• Fixed an issue when texture states might not be set correctly.
• Improved detection of failing downloads for external pictures, sounds, and midi.
• Last build available for 32-bit Windows.

AW::Browser 1835

2022 August 2nd

• Final release introducing modern shader render, last version using a Windows UI.
• Replaced RW by BGFX backends.
• D3D11 feature level 11_0 as minimal hardware requirement.
• Dropped D3D9 not capable of modern shader render.
• All major maths getting advantage of SSE / AVX and NEON / SIMD.
• All display / render driven by hardware accelerated shaders.
• Introduced Sub- and Super- Sampling.
• New Ambient Occlusion, Ocean Water and Shadow render.
• Up to 32 simultaneous light sources even for low-end devices.
• Sharing disk cache across all render backends; local disk cache upper limit increased from 10GB to 24GB.
• Multi-threading render.
• Framerates on dedicated graphic hardware doubled compared to previous D3D9-only build with Vulkan backend.
• Overall smoother experience, even on low-end devices with at least 4 cores.

AW::Browser 1836

2022 August 4th

• Drop workarounds for a particular historic 3rd-party CAV set constantly breaking CAV standards.

AW::Browser 1837

2022 August 8th

• Fixed an issue when the texture address was not applied correctly always.
• Set minimum OpenGL version to 4.1.
• Keep CEF from stealing keyboard input focus on launch.

AW::Browser 1838

2022 August 9th

• Fixed an issue with ocean and reflection render on D3D12 on some drivers.
• Fixed an issue with MSAA on D3D11 on some Intel drivers.
• Unlocked visibility range for all low-end devices.
• Enabled reflections for all low-end devices.
• Use Vulkan, if available, as the default renderer on Windows 10 and later for all devices.

AW::Browser 1839-1840

2022 August 10th

• Fixed an issue with CEF eventually interfering with render backend loaders.
• On Windows 10 and later set a Graphics Performance entry for mid-range and hi-end graphics.

AW::Browser 1841-1845

2022 August 17th-22th

• General maintenance.
• Display primary graphic device name next to current renderer.
• Update Chromium Embedded Framework, CEF, to recent version 104.

AW::Browser 1846-1847

2022 September 1st-3rd

• Addressed an issue when emulating pixel formats not available by graphics hardware.
• Fixed a crashing issue when it failed to fall back to Windows default render backend when OpenGL 4.1 was selected but not available on that device.
• Enable sandbox whenever possible.
• Cleanup former workarounds for Crossover/Wine Emulations of Windows.

AW::Browser 1848-1850

2022 September 6th-8th

• Ensure all users received the latest full package.
• AMD high-end graphics, typically the RX 5000/6000 series, now also default to Vulkan render backend (user might have to ensure of recent AMD drivers! - see forums)
• Work around an issue with Intel drivers not supporting MSAA and MRT for Direct3D 11/12 at the same time - default for Intel Graphics remains Vulkan, supporting it all.
• Apply audio background-muting also when minimizing the app.
• Addressed an issue with 64-bit timestamps, i.e. universe-time and the sync option.
• Updated a script for vlc playing youtube.

AW::Browser 1851

2022 September 19th

• Cleanup and cumulative update
• Direct3D 11 using Direct Access Resources for Unified Memory Access (UMA) enabled devices
• Indirect Draw for Direct3D 12 and Vulkan renderers
• Lowest version of OpenGL to 3.2

AW::Browser 1852

2022 October 2nd

• Updated YouMe3D::collab to this version build.
• Excluded AMD Graphics from running Vulkan by default.
• Enabled all render features for entry-level devices by default.

AW::Browser 1853

2022 October 7th

• Updated to C++ 17 for all components.
• Updated curl and bgfx to their latest versions.
• Fixed Pano considering world backdrop images in correct depths.
• Set frame render latency to zero - disabled pre-rendered frames.

AW::Browser 1854

2022 October 8th

• Don't cache CAV settings locally.

AW::Browser 1855-1858

2022 October 12th to November 1st

• Cleanup: Remove obsolete option-settings from aw::classic-ui.
• Move Sound settings to Audio tab.
• Updated backends for color-compressed texture formats.
• Minor UI corrections in settings.

AW::Browser 1859

2022 November 28th

• VLC Media Player SDK: Update youtube media handler fixing Google's scripts.

AW::Browser 1860

2022 December 2nd

• Separate render layers for particle emitters under and above water level.

AW::Browser 1861

2022 December 23rd

• Some more UI adjustment to 4K monitors / desktop resolutions / UHD / high DPI scaling.
• Adding a Green Screen material effect.

AW::Browser 1862

2022 December 29th

• Annual major update 2023.
• CEF - Chromium Embedded Framework update to 108.0.5359.125.
• YouMe3D::Collab update to 0.96 1862 for Android, MacOS and Windows.

AW::Browser 1863

2023 January 4th

• Use SSE 4.2.
• Avatar name to render single line.
• Avoid implicit texture format conversions.

AW::Browser 1864

2023 January 9th

• AMD's Vulkan drivers are still wonky. Use D3D for AMD graphics by default.

AW::Browser 1865-1866

2023 January 13th

• Update CEF to 109.0.5414.87 (108 had minor glitches with Off Screen Render) fixing focus and context position issues with OSR views.

AW::Browser 1867-1869

2023 January 23rd

• Improved loading assets from OP via HTTP/2. Best performance from world-OP, when no external (pictures, sounds), or only very few, assets in use.
• Addressed an issue when a web server replied with HTML verbally expressing a reply to a conditional request.

AW::Browser 1870

2023 February 6th

• Preload visible geometry full range 360° into the render backend.

AW::Browser 1871-1872

2023 February 17th

• Maintenance and version patches.
• Show minimal build info on object selection even when building is disabled.

AW::Browser 1873-1874

2023 February 22nd

• Addressed a transparency issue with ground models.

AW::Browser 1874-1892

2023 March - April

• Update details are available for enterprise versions/builds on request.