Virtual Paradise 0.4.1-alpha.11

New

  • Lock command (activate and bump triggers only)
  • Fog support in Direct3D 11 renderer
  • Use a forward clustered shading approach for all objects:
    • Support more than 32 lights for transparent objects
    • Get rid of rendering differences between 0.3.x and 0.4.1 alpha versions that were introduced with the deferred shading approach
    • Multisample anti-alias is supported again

Fixed

  • Fix incorrect Y coordinate in teleport dialog (value was offset by 0.175)
  • Fix exp2 fog mode for OpenGL 1.x renderer (exp was used instead of exp2)
  • Fix names and chat above avatars not visible
  • Fix web command and web overlay not working

Known Issues

  • New lighting approach only available in Direct3D 11 mode
  • UPDATE October 12, 2019: In some cases all objects might render completely black. This is due to a bug in the new fog code. To work around it, enter a world with fog enabled (e.g. VP-Build or test4), then go back to the world you intended to visit.

If you find any other issues, please let me know!

Download

Download for 64-bit Windows
Download for 32-bit Windows

What happened to Dotsoul?

The first time I used Dotsoul was probably some time in 2006. At that time it was quite busy. Dotsoul was (as far as I know) the first public virtual universe using ActiveWorlds version 4.1 to allow building. Many users of the main ActiveWorlds universe wanted to try all the new features before 4.1 was released to the main universe, which didn’t happen until much later.

Dotsoul was a great place to hang out and I met quite a few new friends there. I was sad to see that the world went offline some months ago and now the website is gone as well. All there is on the website is a login screen.

When I first tried to find out what happened to Dotsoul I was told that it would be back soon, but I guess it never happened. Does anyone know what happened to Dotsoul?

Group picture with some friends in Dotsoul. August 23 2006.

Commenting on this blog

All posts from this blog can now be commented on from the Virtual Paradise forums. Each post will automatically get a new topic on the forum.

The forum for this blog can be found here: Forum for Edwin’s Blog

Edit (May 4 2010): I decided to change the comment system to IntenseDebate anyway, it seems to work better.
Edit (May 5 2010): Since IntenseDebate was making pages load incredibly slow I moved to Disqus now, let’s see how this works.

What’s going on with Virtual Paradise?

Some of you may have been wondering what is going on with Virtual Paradise, it has been a while since the last release on the 29th of December. The reason it is taking this long for a new version to be released is because I am working on some bigger changes under the hood. These changes are necessary to make it possible for Virtual Paradise to work better on more PCs.

Missing OpenGL drivers can be a problem for some Windows users when using VP. For example, the graphics drivers included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not include OpenGL drivers, only Direct3D. No driver usually means Microsoft’s OpenGL software rasterizer will be used, this slows down rendering so much that it is not really usable for any modern 3D application. VP will run at a frame rate of probably less than 5 frames per second, depending on the world contents and window size. While in most cases this can easily be fixed by installing a new driver, it is not something I want to require of everyone who wants to use VP. For this reason the next version of Virtual Paradise will have a Direct3D 9 renderer in addition to a OpenGL renderer.

In previous releases OpenGL was directly called from lots of places in the code. For Virtual Paradise to use multiple renderers, the code using OpenGL has to be abstracted from the rest of the code. This is not too hard to do, it’s just a lot of work. While doing this, I am also trying to clean up other parts of the code.

Right now, the Direct3D renderer is already just as functional as the OpenGL renderer but not all parts of the 0.2.x versions are implemented yet. Maybe I will upload a preview version later so you can see the progress.

See ya,

Edwin. 😀

New Blog

Hey everyone and welcome to my new blog. Here I will keep you up to date on Virtual Paradise development and whatever else I feel like writing here :-).

Bye,

Edwin