July 16th marked a new Singularity release with a number of updates and new features, namely:

Support for multiple clothing layers

Region Windlight support

New build preferences

A new audio display floater

Mouselook aiming

RLVa 1.4 update

Shift-C crouch toggle

LSL editor update, including external editor support

Radar now indicates gesture/sound/particle/animation spam

Sound bugs fixed.

The following is an overview of the key changes to the viewer, and is not intended as an in-depth review.

Download and Install

The Windows installer is some 23.8Mb in size; it is recommended that any prior versions of Singularity are removed prior to installing 1.7.0. The viewer installed smoothly, and did not throw any false-flag anti-virus warnings for me (I use AVG anti-virus)..

Once logged in, inventory download was fast in comparison to V3-based viewers.Granted, I keep my inventory fairly tight and tidy (anything not in regular use gets packed away – particularly COPY items), but by the time I’d rezzed (itself only a handful of seconds), my inventory had loaded; this seemed a lot faster than with other viewers of late.

Multi-wear

The ability to wear multiple items on the same layer of system clothing is now pretty much a staple part of most viewers. However, Singularity stands apart from the rest in it’s offering by not only being compatible with the LL multi-wear code, but in also providing a very useful enhancement.

In most viewers providing multi-wear capabilities, adding an item of clothing to the same layer as an item already being worn will currently see the additional item appear to be worn “over” the existing item (i.e. if you are wearing a shirt layer item, any shirt layer item added to your outfit will appear to be worn “over” the item already being worn).

Singularity, however, provides two additional inventory menu options: Move Forward and Move Back, which allow you to change the order in which clothing items worn in the same layer are “stacked”, allowing them to appear to be worn under / over one another, as shown in the images below.

Notes:

The menu options are context sensitive and will only be available for clothing items worn on the same layer

Which of the options is available for use depends on a clothing item’s position in the “stack” (e.g. if the item is the last item added to a layer, the Move Back option only will initially be enabled, but not the Move Forward option)

The options can be used with any number of items worn on a single layer (up to the standard maximum of 5 items per layer)

Any changes you make to the order of clothing items in the same layer will be correctly rendered in other viewers.

This should provide a very flexible way of additionally creating “mix’n’match” outfits. Kudos!

Along side of multi wear, Singularity 1.7.0 also provide full support of the Current Outfit folder as well.

Audio Display Floater

Accessed via the Singularity menu (Singularity->Streaming Audio Display), this displays a floater listing the artist and track name for any active media.

Mouselook Aim / Zoom and Shift-C Crouch

Those into combat are likely to appreciate these additions – although they are not exclusively for such environments.

Mouselook aim / zoom: when in Mouselook, depressing the right mouse button and using the scroll wheel on a mouse, can zoom in / out of the direction you are looking

Pressing SHIFT-C will now toggle your avatar into a crouch until such time as you press SHIFT-C again, allowing you to move and do other things without having to hold down the C key yourself.

Build Preferences

The Build tab in PREFERENCES->SYSTEM has been extensively updated, as per the images below, offering users the ability to set global defaults on prims as they are rezzed and used (i.e. default texture type, permissions set against them, etc).

Performance

Running Singularity on my home platform (370m) with lighting and shadows off, Singularity rolled along at an average of 39-40 fps. With lighting & shadows active and sun/moon + projectors enabled, this dropped to 12-13 fps. On the ground on my home sim, these rates dropped to 7-8 fps with lighting and shadows, etc., on and around 17-18 fps with them off. Again, and while totally arbitrary, the tests were carried out on my usual system and with all other settings as defined in the panel on the right of this blog’s home page. Overall, the performance wasn’t far behind what I’ve seen on the new home sim with recent V3.2 viewers.

Opinion

As with the last release of Singularity (1.6.0), this is a long-awaited and tidy update. Feature changes may appear small – but they are by not means trivial. Much has been done to “future-proof” the viewer, although the Merchant Outbox functionality is still currently lacking.

What I particularly like in this release is the way in which multi-layer system clothing support has been implemented. The ability to alter the order of the clothing on a specific layer is very neat and a step ahead of other viewers – and is something that could prove very popular among users. It will be interesting to see if it appears in other TPVs moving forward.

For credits on the various elements and additions to this release of Singularity, please refer to the release notes (link below).

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