S24(6) - Beta 2

 

Well hello there! The next Beta build is now available and continues the steady rollout of new features. As always, some things made the cut, others aren’t quite ready or in a state where I can drop them into a production client. The workflow is simple: I can focus on a particular area of interest and keep features locked behind a compiler flag. If something looks solid and isn’t causing trouble, I remove the flag — effectively switching that feature on.

What’s New?

Menus now have icons, which some people may find handy. I know this from bitter experience: as a child I struggled with simple maths at school, and it wasn’t until much later in my academic life that it was realised I had a form of dyslexia. The way I work out basic arithmetic relies heavily on visual cues. Geometry, spatial awareness, higher concepts — all fine. Binary and hex? No surprise there. But everyday sums? Horrendous.

So yes, I’ve added neat little icons to major menu items, because sometimes a picture really does paint a thousand words. And if you prefer text‑only, it’s fully togglable in Settings.

Audio Engine & EQ

The audio engines can now be selected, and ticking off a long‑requested feature for a long‑term user, I’ve added stream metadata. I’ve also included a 3‑band EQ in the system, because I do love a bit of bass.

Camera & UI Refinements

As with earlier iterations of the S‑Series, I’ve started to unlock more advanced camera controls and refine the menus.

Rendering Tweaks

There are more enhancements to shadow cascades, dynamic interest‑based lighting, and some tweaks to GLTF and particles.

Develop Menu & Code Cleanup

Finally, for those who enjoy digging deeper, the Develop menu tools have been overhauled. This change alone removed over 700 no‑ops from the client code. One major bugbear has always been the sheer amount of INFOs and WARNINGs that fire in a production build — some of which call other functions or do string handling, yet serve no purpose to the end user. They’re only really useful to Linden internally during testing.

I know the compiler is smart enough to ignore a lot of this cruft, but once a feature is tested, I really wish the final step was to tidy up afterwards. Readability becomes a pain when you stumble across the occasional comedy gold: a function whose only purpose is to nest a loop and spit out three or four console messages that are meaningless to the user and can’t be acted upon anyway.

I’m rambling.

Enjoy Beta 2.

Much Love,
KL