6.5

6.5

Build 1524

Release date	September 1, 2018
Developers	Chris
New features
Updated public SDK Updated public World Server Dropped Vista and XP for 3d client Game scripting features (PHP/COM) Direct3D 9 as standard render backend
Chronology
Previous 6.4	Next 6.6

A Milestone in Activeworlds' History

Welcome to Active Worlds 3D - Νεφελοκοκκυγία

Version 6.5 replaced the backend render system and uses recent development environment VS 2017, Windows 10 PDK, thereby drops support for Windows versions XP and Vista. The public versions of the world server and the AW SDK has been updated to the recent feature set.

AO,DOF,Bloom,Brighter Pixels

No Effects

Build 1599

19 May 2019

• Update CEF to 74.1.19 and Chromium to 74.0.3729.157.
• Applied a modification to CEF failing if locale and resource paths contained an Unicode character.
• Enable AW Browser running in Windows Tablet / App Mode.

Build 1598

17 April 2019

• Double data throughput for presentations.

Build 1596-1597

12 April 2019

• Server side slideshow (EDU): Fixed display of slide names after server query.
• Server side slideshow (EDU): Disable query by account# 0 (= tourist), leading to disabling subsequent queries.

Build 1594-1595

10 April 2019

• Don't increase visibility range while web displayed on the 3D viewport. The feature is commonly used in EDU universes, rarely in the public free universe.
• Disable user controlled sorting of telegrams. Always sort by reverse date, last in/out first and unread telegrams on top.
• Windows notifications for telegrams can not be disabled by the user any longer; telegram notifications within the chat remain unchanged.
• Already read and sent telegrams older than 3 months, will no longer display. Unread telegrams will continue been displayed over unlimited time, over the lifetime of the local telegram database.
• Added an option to the telegrams' popup menu for exporting all telegrams. The export includes all unread, read and sent telegrams, even older than 3 months and of all accounts you eventually used, from your local telegram database. After the export has been finished, you'll be asked to empty the local database, which will speed up subsequent loading of the local telegram database.

Build 1592-1593

30 March 2019

• Fixed a potential crashing issue (even it was unlikely to happen).
• "Attempt to keep framerate" now also attempts to keep at least half the user chosen fps for desired/fixed vis ranges.
• Ensure visual cells are first fully cleaned up before increasing the range eventually again.
• Update 7z to version 19.0.
• Add an action command skybox, that finally makes fake PE-driven pseudo skyboxes obsolete.

Build 1590-1591

18-20 March 2019

• Movers with objects linked no longer have to be built aligned to world axes.
• Fixed an issue on objects linked to movers when using object rotation and a rotate command on the particular linked object.
• Certain models, e.g. t_* models, known to use double material without intended purpose, drop the doubled hidden faces before loading the geometry.
• Fixed coronas not working right, since after increasing vis ranges.
• Movers with objects linked don't leave objects behind, as long they are within the mover's build range, at the time of building.

Build 1589

11 March 2019

• Fixed a potential crashing issue inside Chromium/CEF, that occurred on some web sites (back at previous Chromium/CEF until fixed).
• Fixed the maximized main window size and location when Windows system taskbar was set to show on left or top location of the screen.
• Public Free Universe: set local chat range to meet visual range at 400 meters.

Build 1588

10 March 2019

• Fixed an issue the media API, sporadically failing, not playing media files, after 40 to 50 minutes remaining at the same spot in a world when short media files, shorter than about 10 seconds, where played in a permanent loop.
• Fixed an issue with models rendered as particles, not been drawn in correct alpha-render-order.
• Improved particles in general, early clipping particles outside view frustum.

Build 1586-1587

6 March 2019

• Fixed an issue with live property update.
• Fixed an issue with PhysX not been applied on terrain beyond standard visibility range.
• Fixed an issue with Particle Emitters, respawning particles even the Zone Exclusive option was chosen.
• Fixed an issue with Zones, not blocking directional light if wanted, when entering a world inside a zone.
• Particles and Coronas will only spawn within standard visibility range, not beyond that range.
• Movers only update if a rider is attached in any range, otherwise only within standard visibility range.
• Public Free Universe: Pinning AWEntry world on top of the list.

Build 1585

4 March 2019

• Fixed an issue with self-destructing timers/triggers running in an endless loop.
• Fixed an issue with CAV Preview, failing to render an avatar on low frame rates.
• Fixed an issue with Movers, moving jerky as seen for other, on extreme low frame rates.
• Added a soft specular reflection shader on CAV, when it's visual color and intensity goes by the ambient light color and the material color of the CAV.

Build 1583-1584

2 March 2019

• Fixed an issue when models rendered as particle may cause slight flicker.
• Fixed a floating point inaccuracy causing fade-in/out time to fail on old particles.
• Validate and correct PE input values at time of building.
• Fixed an issue when the VLC media process did not stop.
• Update to CEF 3.3683.1913.gce7d9be / Chromium 73.0.3683.27 to fix various issues inside CEF and to add web touch-events.

Build 1582

22 February 2019

• Fixed an issue when high end dual graphic systems (e.g. SLI) under Windows 10 were considered as hybrid graphics, which also uses 2 graphic systems, incorrectly.
• Cosmetic adjustment on HUD-menu height when font scaling applied.
• Even lower-level gear will stream property off the world servers in the range of 1200 by 1200 meters now. Thus including preloading cells, even they are out of current view, for a faster fly-over.

Build 1581

20 February 2019

• Increased distance and reduced strength of Depth of Field shader.
• Floating visibility extends up to 400m view range on gears below recommended configurations.
• Added font scaling in general settings.

Build 1580

17 February 2019

• Streaming property from world server now loads cells ahead in moving direction.
• Visibility range grows ahead of the current avatar's position in viewing direction first.
• Floating visibility extends up to 500m view range on gears above recommended configurations.
• Adjust visibility range increase speed for new extended view range above 200m for all gears.
• Reduce load on name-referenced multiple animate and astart triggers within a scene addressing the same elements.
• Added configuration setting for never_background_upd_interval in section show to allow higher framerates even the application is not the foreground window.
• The current loading cell's visible range distance now only displays for caretakers as it has been, since it caused confusion before.
• An active property query is indicated by Property ... in the second column of the status line. When property is streamed, the amount of the data is been displayed as has been.
• AW master server updated to a later database server version for JSON capabilities.

Build 1578-1579

15 February 2019

• Extended property query from 400 by 400 meters to 1200 by 1200 meters from current position, allowing to retrieve property for an 9 times bigger area at once.
• Gears above recommendation can set vis range up to 400m in all directions.
• Fast update of idling movers.
• Minimum opacity of particles to 25%, max particle size to 80, other max durations to 1 min.
• Update to CEF / Chromium to 3.3626.1891.g52be333 / 72.0.3626.96.

Build 1577

14 February 2019

• Update to CEF / Chromium to 3.3626.1888.g2429af4 / 72.0.3626.96.
• Set Shader and Performance settings depending on user's gear at time of upgrade and installation.

Build 1576

30 January 2019

• Adjusted Windows Message handling for the recent Windows Platform SDK, including to re-enable Unlimited Framerate in Performance settings for all platforms. Finishing AW Browser version 6.5 cycle.

Build 1575

28 January 2019
--> Public Free Universe

• Fixed an issue on certain graphic systems, when CEF and 3D Render ran into a conflict in usage of subrender version. The symptom was named as "white screen"-issue by users.

In fact these were two totally different issues with a similar symptom, and that was why Gremot asked for your HW details, but with little response accurate enough to define further conditions. One occurred on low-end hybrid laptop systems, which was the more difficult cause to find, and the other easy to find issue occurred typically on mid-range and high-end desktop systems.

On hybrid graphic systems the render conflict ended up choosing different graphic backends, typically an Intel HD or an AMD integrated chip for CEF, and the secondary graphic, typically better render system, for the 3D render, which could not be solved by the system, not even after restarting the software.

Another side effect was, in particular showed up on mid-range and hi-end desktop systems, that the toolbar disappeared and/or the menubar was shown in classic mode, the fallback, when the render had a hard time to initialize during startup, but eventually succeeded. The aworld.log also indicated the problem, saying 'Camera not available' on device reset or resize.

The workaround for hybrid systems at that time would have been to simply set Web / CEF to 'Best GPU Support', so that Chromium would choose D3D11 or D3D9 and stayed away from any lauzy OpenGL driver.
The workaround for desktop systems at that time was simply to run upgrade.exe.

• Fixed a device scaling issue, due to changed behaviour of CEF/Chromium, adding offsets to top/left edge instead to the bottom/right edge of a page during front-end render. This typically occurred on laptop and tablets, but also on desktop monitors when running CEF/Chromium in full GPU support and choosing a DPI scaling above 100%.
• Added HW report on login. User's session specific HW info is now available to the system and for support purposes.
• Policy changed, now considering the HW report.

Many thanks to Gremot for finding the cause of the "white screen"-issue and the device scaling artefact

Build 1574

24 January 2019

• Update VLC to 3.0.6.
• Update to CEF / Chromium to 3.3578.1863.gbf8cff2 / 71.0.3578.98.
• Swapping windows between Web and 3D Render on viewport, since drawing child windows on top of the render surface is not supported on certain hardware and platforms, e.g. Wine on Mac-OSX.

Build 1573

18 January 2019

• Revert to CEF / Chromium 64 until a later version will be stable again.

Build 1572

12 January 2019

• Force explicit autoplay-policy that was introduced now for Chromium 71.0.3578.80.
• Force CEF cache deletion at update to fix a CEF cache incompatibility between previous Chromium 64 and the recent version.

Build 1571

10 January 2019

• Apply CEF 3.3578.1860.g36610bd and VLC 3.0.5 updates from December 22nd to all users of the public universe.

Build 1570

22 December 2018

• Fixed an issue with Wine for Linux and MacOS-X, eventually crashing on window resize.
• Updated CEF to 3.3578.1860.g36610bd | Chromium 71.0.3578.80 | JavaScript 7.1.302.28 for full installations.

Build 1569

17 December 2018

• Fixed matfx type=1, an old Renderware effect, failing to reset texture stage render states.

Build 1568

16 December 2018

• Forced update to ensure all universes get the same settings, in response to a facebook post.

Build 1566 to 1567

12 December 2018

• New Features:
• Added Depth of Field / DOF postprocess render effect.
• Added Glow / Bloom postprocess render effect.
• Added Brighter Pixels postprocess render effect.
• Changes:
• Enable Ambient Occlusion, Depth of Field and Brighter Pixels by default.
• Fixed an issue with some older business-level graphic cards for the depth of field effect.
• Fixed an issue when the brighter pixel effect went out of brightness range eventually.
• Fixed an issue on MacOSX and Linux Wine, if loading multiple effects at once.
• Balanced out intensity of the 3 new effects better, effects should not be dominant.

Many thanks to everyone for creative feedback, comments, testing and combining effects, on various hardware and platforms, in particular to Gremot, MeL, DearHeart, M i k e, TenYearsGone, and Delta SB.

Build 1565 beta

9 December 2018

• Added more postprocess render effects.

Build 1564

13 November 2018

• Update VLC's lua-script to follow Google's recent YouTube updates.

Build 1563

31 October 2018

• Fixed media playback eventually stuttering after some hours randomly for 30 seconds.
• Emptied picture filter for public universe.

Build 1562

21 October 2018

• Update VLC's lua-script to follow Google's recent YouTube updates.

Build 1561

11 October 2018

• New default settings include performance and graphic settings, as well as applying sign text color inversion, in cases when text- and background colors might be equal or almost the same.

Build 1560

5 October 2018

• Internationalization: addressed an issue when the local Windows Path (e.g. Windows User Name) included a none-ANSI character.

Build 1557 to 1559

3 to 6 September 2018

• Asynchronous / background loading of assets from the local cache directly into Direct3D 9, while frame updates continue.

Build 1556

3 September 2018

• Ambient Occlusion for all graphic cards, including ATI/AMD and Intel embedded, as well as embedded mobile versions of nVidia, AMD, that support at least shader model 3.

Build 1555

1 September 2018

• Public Release of version 6.5

Build 1547 to 1550 Preview

19 August 2018 to 31 August 2018

• AW Browser community preview program including Direct3D 9 and built-in Ambient Occlusion.
• Windows 10 PDK, VS2017.
• Dropped Windows Vista and Windows XP support.

Build 1530 to 1550 beta

20 May 2018 to 18 August 2018

• 6.5 Features, if applicable, went into 6.4 to keep installations on Vista and XP running.
• AW Browser community beta builds 1528 and later.

Build 1530 beta

20 May 2018

• AW-COM-SDK community build 125 tests in public free universe.
• AW-WorldServer community build 150 tests in public free universe for selected worlds.

Build 1524 to 1530 beta

1 April 2018 - 20 May 2018

• AW Browser community beta builds 1524 to 1530 to VS 2017
• AW WorldServer to VS 2017
• AW SDK to VS 2017
• AW-COM-SDK to VS 2017