First Look: WindLight update - beauty & bugs!
Friday, June 1st, 2007 at 3:32 PM by: TorleyFriendly greetings! Torley Linden here — I’m product managing our WindLight project, so I’m responsible for handling public communication on this journey. I’m teamed up with Bridie Linden, who’s coordinating internal communication within LL, and our fab WindLight team has been continuing to work like heck… so you can have a more lovely Second Life.
If you don’t know what WindLight is, please see our previous posts to get up to speed. And the best way to understand is by trying, so download the First Look: WindLight for yourself and read the disclaimer, because this is a test viewer. For how-to-use, see WindLight instructions!
Before I proceed to questions & answers, I wanted to show off some of many glorious WindLight snapshots I’ve seen from our Residents.
Photos via Snapzilla and the Second Life Flickr Group. Click-through to view at larger sizes and see photographer credits.
(Isn’t combining WindLight + sculpties sweeeet?)
Remember, the Sky Settings presets are starting points to get you inspired — clearly, if these are any indication to go by, there’s no shortage of creativity! (And this is just the beginning.)
Now then…
Are you guys watching stuff in the Issue Tracker?
Absolutely.
As of this writing, 92 WindLight issues have been reported, with 57 currently open. If you’re familiar with the Issue Tracker’s history, that’s quite a spurt!
The closed issues are mainly of the “Fixed Internally” variety, or are duplicates (save yourself time by searching before filing a redundant issue). I’ve personally triaged many of those issues, adding comments to get more info for our devs so we can diagnose problems. I’ll be doing more in the days ahead, so see you there!
I can’t emphasize this enough either: like Second Life itself, our Issue Tracker is community-centered, so you can actively participate in resolving issues. Your fellow Residents will thank you, and so will we. 
If you’re new to this and want to help — we openly appreciate it! — please see the Issue Tracker instructions and be sure when filing a WindLight-related issue, to set “Affects Version/s = First Look: WindLight” so we can find it.
What severe bugs are you aware of and working on?
After much triage, you can see “First Look: WindLight - open issues by # of votes“, updated live.
To summarize, we’re hot on the trail of:
VWR-896- Editing land crashes (just fixed internally!)- VWR-900 - Toggling VBO crashes
- VWR-928 - Crashes with vertex shaders on
- VWR-921 - Slower-than-expected performance
- VWR-924 - Local lighting not working right
- VWR-923 - Various other rendering issues
… and more. Statuses will continue to be updated as they get fixed.
We’ve even got a meta-issue, VWR-923, where SignpostMarv kindly posted a video showing several problems. Video bug reports rule!
What’s already been fixed and otherwise closed?
See “First Look: WindLight - Resolved“.
Thanx again to those who reported, shared info, and helped resolve!
Will we be able to fly through clouds again? I miss them.
Completely understood.
You’ll want to vote for VWR-960 if you care about this.
Longer-term, we’re hoping to integrate Nimble, advanced 3D clouds, into Second Life. In the present, let’s see if we can make WindLight and the “classic clouds” coexist as an option. This is still open-ended, the sky’s the limit… stay tuned! 
Where’s the moon? I miss the moon too!
Another great and popular question we heard a lot of recently. We want to add features that’ll allow you to add not just one moon, or one sun for that matter, but multiple celestial bodies. If you have a specific design idea, please put it in the Issue Tracker as a new feature, and set “Affects Version/s = First Look: WindLight”. Thank-you.
I noticed I can change the texture of the sky by swapping a JPG file! Can you make this easier to do from within SL? And what about trading skies like any other inventory? Also, I notice that only I see Sky Settings changes that I make. Is this going to be server-side so other people can see? Etc.
Ah, so many enthusiastic imaginations! You guys rock. Fundamentally, we have a whole lotta things we wanna do after making this initial round stable and fit for release, which is our first priority.
Yes, seeing as how WindLight will replace the current sky + atmosphere system, there’ll be server-side controls transitioning from present functionality, so if you run an estate, you can determine what visitors will experience. (This was covered before but is a popular question, we know!) Sharing sky settings easily comes up a lot; we want to do it down the road, yup, and clarify specifics as work is done. And naturally, we’ll consider further ideas. Help us prioritize ‘em with your feedback, use the Issue Tracker. 
Editing presets is hard. Can you make it easier?
We will, because the current user interface is intended to be temporary en route to revamped controls; we’ve already fixed several bugs like VWR-934 internally.
I tried to use WindLight and I’m not seeing the pretty skies. What’s up with that?
Awe. 
Does your computer meet our System Recommendations?
If no, chances are you likely can’t see them. Why? Because WindLight requires shader 2.0 hardware support.
If yes and you don’t see them, make sure:
- You’ve updated to the newest stable drivers for your graphics card.
- In Preferences > Graphics Detail tab, check “Enable Vertex Shaders”. (This will be grayed out if your graphics card doesn’t support it.)
And if you’ve verified you have capable hardware but aren’t seeing the benefits of WindLight, this may be due to a bug. We’re investigating several possibly related ones, like VWR-925. Have a closer look and please fill in your details.
I heard there’s an inworld group I can join to chat about WindLight?
Sure is!
It’s called “First Look”. Find it by going to Search > Groups tab and search for “exchanging”. It’s the big one with 300+ members. (There’s a bug, MISC-157, that prevents searching for “first” from working.)
When’s the next WindLight version coming out?
Tentatively next week. Don’t set that in stone.
I promise to announce it on this blog when it’s released.
Thanks graciously to each and every one of you who’ve taken time from your first and Second Lives to participate in First Look: WindLight!
June 1st, 2007 at 3:36 PM
I suppose I should crow “first”…
I do like the fact that the first look viewer makes the sea a LOT more blue on my system, but once you get above about 400m the view divides into three. Groovy sky, plain bit and distant ground
Is this a bug or is it supposed to do that?
June 1st, 2007 at 3:39 PM
Rubber banding - Not fixed
Friends list - Not fixed
Inventory loss due to underpowered database - Ignored
Fancy fun new lighting system - A TOTAL priority.
Yeah, this is a mature, responsible company. They know exactly what the term ‘due diligence’ means, and avoid it at all costs.
June 1st, 2007 at 3:53 PM
I have vortex enabled on my pref and all I see is that the ground and land and items Rendering very strangely and oddly, and rather slow, I don’t see any pretty sky’s i Hope there will be a option to turn this stuff off if you plan on implementing it , would hate for my Rendering to go weird like that ………
June 1st, 2007 at 3:57 PM
Okay i like the changes, but still, i spent alot of time working on textures for my land, and now with the sun it complete ruins the building
i wish there was a way to not have the sun shine on avatars or buildings.
I messed with the options, if i mess with gamma, and turns black….
i like how the sky is, i just hate how it turns me orange if the sun is orange
Anyways my buildings look nothing like they were ment to with the textures.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:01 PM
I also get a black void in the upper half of my screen when I’m up around 600 or 700 meters.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:01 PM
The first things I have noticed with the the new viewer is my normally blond hair is gery. The coloring on all objects has taken on a strong orange shade of color. Your issue tracker would be greati if you provided a link on the log-in page or even in the viewer itself. I think if you did that you would get more people reporting bugs more often and with more accuracy to the issue. I do appreciate your efforts to make us a better looking environment. But, Taras does have a point…can you please… at least communicate the exact status and anticipated date of resolution. I known some things might be hard to pin a date on, but at least communicate progress. Thank you.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:03 PM
Very nice!. I don’t know anything about exchanging sky jpg’s, but the presets look good. I particularly enjoy the one named “Purple.” I always wondered why we never have much weather in SL. This may be a good solution. I am seeing familiar places in a new light - literally. Thanks.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:04 PM
The “Read the rest of this entry” on the blog’s main page breaks the Bold tag, showing the rest of the blog in Bold too.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:07 PM
I spent about 30 mins with the default first viewer, played with forcing the sun.
Garish. Sometimes neat but overall, garish. The speed of the clouds coursing across the sky make me think of Dave passing the obelisk in 2001.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:10 PM
Okay so… New skies are cool and all, but losing scripts that I tore my hair out for weeks is not. I was working on a very intense project, and the main script (counted at over 700 lines of code) is completely missing from the database. I find that all previous versions codes are missing, except the very beginning 200 lines of code.
It’s obvious that no one is paying attention to the real issues, they all have their heads in the clouds.
Please. OPEN LETTER PROJECT. Read it, understand it, know that THE MAJORITY of the community DOES NOT AGREE WITH YOUR PRIORITIES. Thank you for not listening (again)
June 1st, 2007 at 4:10 PM
All the screen shots of WindLight remind me of a comic from VG Cats. Seems LL is trying to be “more real”, and it shows LOL.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=224
June 1st, 2007 at 4:19 PM
The new sky stuff is pretty (kudos), but right now a large part of the community is in a confused uproar and left hanging by the “Keeping SL Safe” blog post.
Torley, I know this isn’t your department, but could you maybe put a buzz in someone’s ear that a lot of us out here don’t give a hoot about upgrades, downtime, etc. until we get some clarification on that HUGE bomb that was dropped on us.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:29 PM
OK, I totally get that all the cool new stuff on SL will be great, eventually. But piling on a whole lot of new features (sound, sculpties, wind/sky), in such a short time is just thoughtless. And the remarks on updating drivers are insulting. After bad graphics on downloading the new viewer, and finding out that instead of a simple bug report, I have to navigate the confusing Jira (why should your customers do your research for you?). I did uninstall my drivers, and got the new ones from ATI. SL not only crashed with the updated drivers, but will only run at all if I uninstall the new viewer AND disable Vertex Shaders. And this website looks even worse.
It’s kind of like the difference between good jazz and bad jazz. Good jazz is the stupendous creativity of improv, over carefully crafted structure and tradition. Bad jazz throws a lot of emo notes out there in the hopes that listeners won’t know the difference.
Do your homework. Please.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:31 PM
I rarely find ample reason to reply to these posts but this particular post about WindLight really hit a nerve with me. Not that hitting a nerve with me is a bad thing , many peeps know some of my nerves need to be rattled ever so often. To the point… WTH are you Linden Lab peeps thinking??? I wanna know WHO decided SL had to have a sky that ‘beautiful’? I would like to ask them politely… ‘Please, will you go in to work in the morning and start shouting “Forget the WindLight project!! It will only be a long time headache! Come together my fellow workers and lets brain storm on how to solve the current problems in SL.” then explain to them how unimportant the sky is to MOST paying residents at this point. Explain how the resources used to create a ‘beautiful sky’ would be better used for creating or expanding a bug fixing system.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:34 PM
[...] you guys watching stuff in the Issue Tracker? (more…) [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 4:41 PM
SOME POINTS I PERSONALLY WOULD LIKE TO SEE DEALT WITH:
If they are not being dealt with already.
SEA: had no reflection, was a deep blue, not as real as it is in the current version of SL. I use that beautiful reflective sunlight on the water in many machinimas, would hate to lose that.
CLOUDS: Move too fast in most settings which doesn’t look very real can we control their x and y speed just like we can control the scaling?
LAND: While the sky lighting shows up on prims, the land on my client was bright no matter what sky setting I had, and shown through any haze like it wasn’t there. Looks really odd, certainly lamer than what we have now. Will the lighting make land textures look off color to how they look in our current ambient lighting? That would be a step backwards graphically, at least offer a default that closely simulates the current lighting environment in SL.
SUN: I see a hazy spot that’s really bright, I can make it dominate the sky, but I see no disk. When I stare at the sun in RL I see a disk, even has Martin Luther King’s face in it sometimes, but in the firstlook I just saw a bright, blocky corona and no round sun.
MOON: ? well I read earlier you were giving thought to phases and such, right on. Here is an idea . . . under certain weather conditions rings form around the moon ( and the sun for that matter) might be cool, could be lame too, just an idea.
HORIZON: REALLY SUCKS. If I adjust the sky settings so that the horizon matches the fakey cobalt blue sea, well either the lighting is too dark or the light is too blue, doesn’t look good. Most of the time in almost every preset I see a bright band beneath the clouds and above the sea/horizon, it’s a sharp line, no soft edge and kills the realism of the clouds. It also accentuates the cornered, angular shape of the sim, killing any realistic horizon effect. At 200 meters high I look down and see a blue block of sea with a sharp corner where the horizon should be, need some fading there to make it look like the horizon of a round earth versus a flat earth made of cubes.
It’s really cool that you are enhancing SL this way, and I am glad I got a chance to comment on what I felt needed improving. The sky dominates everything, so I hope you are careful to get a large buy in from the public before making it our default environment. It’s really beautiful, though I will miss the particle clouds, and flying above them . .. can you release the formula for that so we can make them above our parcels? You are to be commended for this innovation, and I hope it proves to be a really awesome final product. I know you have teams working on these graphic enhancements, and teams working on fixing all the other errors, and malfunctions happening throughout the system. Perhaps those other teams should engage the public more frequently,
1. to let them whine, and blow off steam,
2. To give frequent feedback about exactly which bothersome problems are currently on the front burner.
None of us like being met with silence about critical functions of SL, when we have so much time and resource invested. Advertise your battles with the glitches like you are advertising this new sky. Keep feeding us, we are all hungry for change. Good job.
June 1st, 2007 at 4:55 PM
I’m all for a beautiful sky and all that, but what good is it if you can’t fly above the clouds or parachute realistically?
Some of us would like to see a regular viewer upgrade with bug fixes - any idea when?
June 1st, 2007 at 4:57 PM
Torley: thanks for the issue tracker links (that was a huge help), thanks for your endless enthousiasm, thanks for being the best communicator of the team. Since I’m sure you are as aware as all of us of the many and exhausting sl problems, here and now I just want to express my full support to the gradual development of the WindLight project and congratulate you for being the way you are.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:01 PM
I had to hard reboot my computer this evening while checking out first look for the 2nd time. I haven’t had to hard root since beta. Just thought you should know.
Cat
June 1st, 2007 at 5:02 PM
it looks cool from the ground and I like that. I did notice the extra brightness gave me a eye strain headache after using it for an hour.
Didnt like how I was flying against a ceiling at about 700m so it appeared in my aircraft that looked like a board with a sky texture.
Maybe there are some adjustments that can be made. Still a new feature.
Looked cool from the ground Ill say that.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:05 PM
As for the WindLight itself atm, I agree with each and every point made by @11, Insky Jedburgh. And I would add the lack of shadows… no matter the setting chosen, everything is illuminated in such a plain uniform way from the same indistinct source above.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:16 PM
Are you going to fix the issue where avatars and prims are lit an unnatural orange during sunset and purple during sunrise, etc? Yes presets can be changed, but by default everyone is affected, and even creating your own settings truly does not fix these problems.
It greatly affects avatars, prim clothing, bright rooms (they get really dark, what will stores do? full bright wont work because avatars stand out really orange, etc).
June 1st, 2007 at 5:17 PM
As a designer i have worked with ‘light objects’ in all my builds, adjusted texturing to that etc. With this we get a beautiful sky but all the rest is screwed. Light isnt working anymore, so is shiny. I am sure because you bought this company you gonna shove it through our throats liking it or not, just like your so important Voice thing. You simply destroy all my work of the last 6-12 months. Including the ones i did for rl companies.
I am so dissapointed and i feel so cheated on by LL it has no name. You guys have no clue about common courtesy towards your customerbase. If this goes Life and it cant be disabled they spit again on the ones who made their world to what it is today. Kudos LL.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:23 PM
I have more to share later — but because tracking and helping resolve critical bugs is also part of my job focus… we have a page that shows “Resolved bugs in last 3 months by # of votes“. This isn’t a complete list, just what appeared on the Issue Tracker, public and wide open for everyone to see. Bookmark it at your will.
A number of bugs reported in these comments (not just WindLight) are already on the Issue Tracker too, and destined to be fixed. Please, search for them. I’ll be updating more statuses rabidly next week. I can’t emphasize that enough because I’m passionate about seeing you guys have a good time living your Second Lives.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:29 PM
VWR-896 - Editing land crashes (just fixed internally!)
good how fast will a release for that be available?
June 1st, 2007 at 5:43 PM
I agree with the other responders concerning the lighting effects on prims on avs, buildings, etc. since it completely messes up the coloring. It might be wise to add an option to disable lighting effects on anything other than the sky and maybe the ground/water.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:02 PM
torley you should clone youreeself and get the rest of the team fired…
i understand that you lindemans want to go on expanding Sl and making it have more option and such…
but all i can see is that in the passed updates the more got added the more trouble we have.
and then all this mess about age vertificationa dn whatever you guys are planning ther emakes me feel like linden these days is only good at ONE thing… pissing of there residents.
Hello LL isn’t sl a game where WE create OUR world?
the way i see it going now is LL creating it FOR us
if this is what you plan to put in rules and to decide what we can and not can create THEN ATLEAST MAKE IT STABILE !
June 1st, 2007 at 6:09 PM
Windlight holds a great deal of promise, but current settings (and I played with them all) are exceedingly garish.
In general, the light model is off and needs a lot of work to tune colors back to something closer to SL normal….sea color for instance.
Lighting on the AVs is even harsher than in the current light model….AVs would be better off simply lit by ambient.
Anyway, I’m sure we will see significant updates in the near future. Please do not release this until the lighting model approaches something much closer to current SL.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:10 PM
I really do think this has potential to make SL much more vibrant. I have enjoyed playing with it. Some of the effects that look great at noon don’t look so hot when the sun goes down, so playing with it certainly is needed to get a nice overall sky. Seems to really effect things that are shiny too.
I can not use it as my main viewer though because of the edit issues. Building is what I do and until I can reliably work in it, it will have to be an off time only item.
Thanks
DRD
June 1st, 2007 at 6:14 PM
Pretty clouds and voice…
While yet I still rezz objects into nothingness losing money every time it happens. Still having database errors being reported that some of my scripts do not exist in the database. You are borking it all up and disgracefully repeat your views of a “Better SL for it’s residents”. As mentioned above, the residents pay for the service. The residents would appreciate it if you would re-read the open letter and participate in what the residents are wanting to see.
The continuation of poor judgment on your part is apparent, with a new write up the other day at Reuters stating that Linden Labs needs professional help. While I tend to agree with the article, I also am wondering if Linden needs help with hearing as well.
Please listen to what people are saying. This continued effort in ruining peoples work in-world is the doing of Linden Labs and no one else. You cannot expect people to continue to purchase products in world and have them last until the next upgrade. You cannot expect the in-world businesses to re-work their products either. The lack of communication, poor judgment, and continued push in your own direction is not in the best interests of those that you claim “own” their worlds and work.
Any and all of these so called improvements need an off switch. Seriously. Instead of forcing your will on the residents, you need to provide alternatives being you will not listen.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:15 PM
OK, to everybody griping about things.
This is a new feature, still in beta. Things are broken here that will be fixed by the time it goes live. If you were in the last FirstLook program, things were tweaked and fixed on a near daily basis. Relax. This isn’t a finished feature yet.
And to the people complaining about off-topic bugs… get over it. As was answered, they already have 70% of developers working on existing bugs and stability issues. It’s not realistic to expect anything more than that amount of attention. Meanwhile, the world can’t go stagnant while that happens.
And to the people complaining about off-topic Age Verification and Terms Of Service stuff… discuss it somewhere else and stop polluting this post.
And to Torley… keep up the good work! Windlight, while a bit rough around the edges, is a great improvement.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:33 PM
I’ve been mostly using the First Look, and have just been blown away. The Apollo sim + WindLight almost made me cry. Seriously, go there and set the sky to Desert Sunset, set time of day to 0.998, set draw distance to 512m, find a good vantage point, then stand there and be awestruck. Kudos to the new WindLight Lindens, and to Torley for keeping us updated.
@13 Lila. I agree with you whole-heartedly. This blog makes me realize that sometimes it must be really hard to be a Linden. Kudos also to the other Lindens not working on glamorous new stuff — the other 70% who are working on stability and bug fixes. And, while I’m at it, the Open Source contributors — residents who are fixing bugs themselves — deserve a huge pat on the back too.
@11 Insky: I think some of your issues are already in JIRA. Feel free to IM me inworld if you’d like help locating them and commenting/voting (at the risk of being deluged with IMs, that invitation is open to anyone).
One thing in particular, though, is your comment about the sun missing the the MLK face or the Conversation Hearts at Valentines: I’ve been thinking of creating a group called “Avatars Against Realistic Skies” to boycott WindLight for this reason alone! Seriously though, I wish there was a setting that had a more disk-like appearance, which would be great for certain effects like a very hazy summer late afternoon where the sky is gray and the sun is a pink disk — know what mean? Your idea for rings around the moon is awesome too. I wonder if WindLight could one day do rainbows, and by extension, moon-bows. Maybe that’s a job for Nimble.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:38 PM
I truly love the new look and i am trying not to be to cynical here The new views and look to Second life with windlight is stunning this will bring a whole new aspect to Sl for the individual user. I state individual user for a purpose here and don’t get me wrong here I truly love the new look and i am trying not to be to cynical but with windlight ever single person In SL will have there own customized personalized look to second life. No one person will ever see Sl as any one else does. its also noteworthy that if some one spends alot of time setting up there region so it looks just right and it has just the right sky and lighting and the textures are made to match the lighting. and every thing looks perfect with the fog rolling in say in maybe a London setting. Its all perfect except for one thing no one will ever see it as the creator has made it look because every one will have there own personalized view of the world and very few will set there lighting to the region default. because the region default on the main land is really not very good as it stands now.
I also like to add textures no longer look as they are supposed to and some are so off from what they had looked like that they seem broken.
I think windlight is a great step forward and it makes the sky look awesome but i think you need to tweak it alot more before introducing it as a required down load.
June 1st, 2007 at 6:45 PM
So far it seems okay, not a hard hit on performance, but the unnaturally bright reflections from the “ground” (or the ground direction) seem to cause problems, especially with any shiny objects. Flight aside, the way the sky box reflection is handled seems buggy and I have submitted a report. I welcome any graphic improvements to SL, however an artistic eye is needed to judge the e results of these new effects, and no amount of physics and light scattering modeling will substitute for what “looks right” to the eye. especially here.
Karl
June 1st, 2007 at 6:53 PM
I used it, got tired of the poor performance and dropped it. Performance issues on this should be a priority… Overall, I can do without the pretty skies if it means that I can move around normally. Sabe?
June 1st, 2007 at 7:12 PM
It’s pretty, but it made my skin look horrible and I had to increase the detail in rendering to look normal. So basically I have to slow my system down to make it look really good.
It’s just more bugs to fix… on top of borked communication, presence issues with the friends list, inventory search not working and making build tools unreliable…. priorities! You have 72% of your coding staff working on stability… don’t add more bugs to distract from those issues.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:14 PM
REQUIRED UPGRADE!!!!!
I tried it I hate it. Slow, more buggy, very fake looking and stark. I pay for 2 sims every month, and I never have any idea what I will have on a given day. Do you buy things in the “hopes” that they will be usable? This week will be another big loser for all those that derive income from SL.
You are losing more face in the press on a daily basis, and you are bringing it on yourselves by never listening to your customers. The next phase beyond “Open Letter” may be “Class Action”, and guess what guys, you won’t be able to ignore it.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:25 PM
As a designer, I find that the most magical visuals in SL come often from the transparency possibilities, the shiny effect, and the local lighting effects.
So while I lust for the WindLight skies, I also would be devastated if the shiny and local lighting effects were impaired.
And right now I have a skyhouse office just above the classic clouds, and it’s specacular watching those clouds roll by just below the house. It’s Magic - PLEASE don’t lose that. And I love the sense of flying up, in and around the clouds. I really hope there is some way we can have Wind Light AND Classic clouds.
But above all, I particularly agree with Crucial Armitage: I think it is incredibly important that other avatars see what you are seeing. This is key both for designers like myself, and for the sense of “presentness” and shared experience when others are seeing the same thing as you. I want my beloved friend next to me what I am seeing, and vice versa, not us both seeing different things. Less control to the viewer, more preset by the region.
June 1st, 2007 at 7:44 PM
I love the new sky. I know a lot of people are complaining about LL focusing on the wrong things, but my understanding is they brought someone in specifically to do this, so it’s not like they’re taking a huge amount of time and resources to do this project(which is, frankly, making my Second Life much more enjoyable, which I can hardly complain about).
I’ve had a lot of fun playing with the sky, and I’ve enjoyed the atmosphere it gives at different times of the day. Me and friends have taken loads of pictures that never would have been possible before. There’s bugs to be worked out of it, but I’m confident it’ll all come together nicely.
People, they have resources on the problems you’re concerned with. Do you really think that the problems would get fixed faster if they didn’t work on Windlight? I am pretty sure that the guy they brought in to do this isn’t really the sort to go fixing database code. I dislike the notion that everything should be put on hold until a ransom list of things is fixed; not all of LL’s resources are suited to fixing bugs. They can’t just fire the people who aren’t bug fixers or send them on a vacation. And why should they? They are doing good work while the bugs are worked on. Like Windlight, and sculpted prims. Both of these things have made and will directly influence the aesthetic of Second Life forever. That is no small feature, even if you don’t think it’s such a big deal for you.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:12 PM
I haven’t tried Windlook myself yet, but seeing it looks like Torley is taking this project by the horns and managing it well, I wish we were kept informed like this on fixes, current issues and future stuff in this way by other Lindens
June 1st, 2007 at 8:58 PM
The new sky is a great improvement (well done LL) and also gets rid of my pet hate - the grey bar on the horizon. (yes I know you can turn it off.)
I gather the test day in the first look is a bit crowded with different stuff on purpose to try and show some of the options.
Personally if I was giving constructive criticism it would be I found things generally a bit over bright in the middays and afternoons (but maybe my monitor is not NATO standard) and a bit too hazy or foggy in the night bits.
I liked Midday3 way better than Midday1 and already played with making a bright blue / yellow Australian midday and a clear crisp night to appreciate all those stars.
Nice one LL.
PS - Also again good work on SL being less buggy than it was earlier in the year, keep it up. The grid seems to be coping better with the larger number of concurrents and stuff than a few months ago.
Cheers,
Pix
June 1st, 2007 at 9:07 PM
Jacques @ 24: Hear, hear!
Torley, this new WindLight is a HUGE leap forward in graphics and is a welcome addition IMO. Kudos to you all for the hard (and often thankless) work you do at LL.
I LOVE MY SECOND LIFE! (flaws and all)
June 1st, 2007 at 10:14 PM
I worry that no one will be looking at the same thing again.
And that the things I build may no longer look right, and that I won’t be able to tell if they do look right, given the infinite combinations people can select from, if I’m understanding it correctly.
Right now I check each one in all phases of the day. Light makes a GREAT deal of difference on builds.
coco
June 1st, 2007 at 11:02 PM
@34- Cocoanut - Great comment. I’ve noticed that myself… lots of inconsistency in there. But then, to be inconsistent is to be consistent… right?
June 1st, 2007 at 11:51 PM
Why was this WINDLIGHT stuff reposted? It’s no new archive for download, everything still looks dull when you do not have time set to NOON.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:05 AM
Torley,
My first look at Windlight like most… Wow! I appreciate you being the cheerleader here, makes it difficult to get really upset, lol.
That being said, I have to voice serious reservations at the rather vague approach Linden Lab is taking with something that will fundamentally change the whole look and feel of SL for a huge majority of residents. Your list of items doesn’t say anything about what Linden Lab actually intends to do about any of the listed issues. Suggesting we vote, comments like “lots of things we want to do,” etc…, all fine and good, but Linden Lab has an awful track record of releasing items into the production grid and making us become your bug tracker monkeys by conscription. And history suggests we might expect a “stable release” that will fundamentally break all of the wonderful and unique ways that our content creators have come up with to make some mighty impressive builds with lighting as it exists currently. Additionally, the comments about no clouds, no moon, the 750m line of death (where the sky “ends”), etc… make me think we would be going back to a more flat, 2 dimensional feeling. Also, without an assurance that estate owners will definitely control visiting residents view of the sky assures virtually everyone that no build will look as the creator intended. Imagine Baron Grayson’s Sanctum Sanctorum at default noon, Dane Zander’s Apollo in a winter blizzard sky, or Leyla Firefly’s tropical Mystique Isles with a Funky, Funky, Funky sky setting. Not a pretty thought is it? And imagine the scores of other designers builds affected in similar ways making for many unhappy personal and corporate residents.
I love the look of Windlight, but currently it is only useful for pretty landscape pictures, so please, please, please, take the time on this and fix all these problems in the firstlook program, move it to the beta grid, and let the content creators have access to their sims in the beta grid to help work through the issues so it can be released to everyone’s excitement and not another rush to launch disappointment.
Don’t misunderstand my comments as a bash on Linden Lab, I applaud the constant search to make the SL world a better place for everyone and Windlight done right will be a huuuuge hit, but this particular initiative goes well beyond some annoying “features” we may have to deal with for a few revs. Time to do the right thing for the content creators this time around. My $5.4l thoughts
Respectfully,
Luna Cartier
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:08 AM
i think windlight is great, some of the presets are amazing (barcelona and coastal sunset) if people have problems with it then they’re obviously doing something wrong/too dumb to work out how to change presets or create new ones.
the windlight team is a completely seperate team working on this, i beleive their company was bought by LL so it would be really dumb to try and have them fix stuff which they don’t know about.
and another thing, all the windlight rendering is done server side so theres no lag to worry about. if your system can’t handle it then ditch the pentium 3 and gforce 4.
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:17 AM
Beautiful still shots there - but does anyone consider what such extreme settings do to the general environmental lighting?
Thought not - it’s ‘oooh - shiny’ and over saturated and unrealistic lighting all the way from now on, isn’t it?
Ah well, I guess it’s all part of the ongoing ‘Disneyfication’ of Second Life.
Now, how about some settings that don’t produce glowing radioactive water under low light (and daylight for that matter) conditions 90% of the time? I don’t mean presets here - I mean either a software tweak, parameter modification, or modification of those horribly touchy control inputs.
Oh, and could we have the ‘Light’ (emitting - NOT fullbright) prim function back please? I’ve already had customer complaints that built in lighting on a prefab no longer works after dark in WindLight (wasn’t preserving existing content supposed to be a core philosophy within LL? Or is WindLight going to be a ’special case’?
Oh, and reflections are buggered - but then they have been since the WindLight sun appeared, haven’t they? So you KNOW about that. right? So how about fixing it?
And…
Yes, MORE!
You do know that Alpha, under certain circumstances, doesn’t function correctly with WindLight, don’t you? It’s complex to describe, look me up inworld and I’ll show you. Suffice it to say it looks awful.
An Estate tools function where owners can set an ‘Estate WindLight override’ on all local clients is also needed - if only for the protection of Estate owners business interests! We DON’T need visitors arriving with their own ‘watermelon’ preset and seeing visual chaos - we want them to see what we’ve worked long and hard to achieve!
If that’s not possible - just an Estate ‘opt out’ - a ‘WindLight OFF’ estate tools button will do nicely.
Depending on residents, especially newer ones, setting World > Force Sun > Revert to Region Default will NOT be sufficient!
Remember - Estate owners are supposed to be largely autonomous these days, so please allow us control of the appearance of our estate.
Oh, last request for what it’s worth. A process where a Preset, or Day Cycle AND required Presets, can be exported is required. As is a method whereby the exported settings can be exchanged inworld (preferably as an inventory item).
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:30 AM
The view of the ground from skyboxes is terrible-fishbowl.
Local lighting acually worked BETTER for me than ever before.
Fixed cashing on edit land yet? If so i’ll install it again and try some more…
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:47 AM
Yeah IT WOULD BE NICE if i could log in upon the first attempt.
June 2nd, 2007 at 5:59 AM
Masuyo..
If a user is “too dumb to work out how to” then the feature is flawed
The user is not dumb.
The interface is complicated.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:01 AM
I love the way the sky looks…. and the desert sunset makes my ocean around my island bluer than blue…. reminds me of Jamaica. BUT… I have a HUGE issue with the sky as seen from altitudes above 450m. On my land I rent skyboxes…. most of them are above 400m with my own home at 750. What happens to the windlight engine at those heights is I get a black space like skyy over the top half of my screen and the bottom half looks like someone took blue water texture, set it to shiny and carpeted the bottom half of the screen…. It looks awful! At least with the old sky I could still see sunrise and sunsets. Please please please put a fix in. I even tried changing altitude setting to 3000m to see if that helps… no dice.
Also local lighting is not working AT ALL… My gorgeous tiki bar with its flames and torches at night looks like it’s been possessed by one of the 10 plagues of Egypt.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:02 AM
Masuyo
isnt the windlight rendering client side…not server side? how could it be server side? anyone can make a change to what they see…which makes it client side, no? have you made a mistake?
i love this addition of windlight btw, and understand its only at firstlook, so we are priviliged to see it…i do think that overall, while adding in some reality-enhancing things..it mostly seems to make things more cartoon like and badly lit. most things to me look almost too sugary-sweet if that makes any sense? maybe its my lack of finesse with the settings right now, which im sure will improve…
im loving the haze and the blown out suns, the fast clouds are quite dramatic…but im very much feeling that this is an addition that needs a hell of a lot of work on it to be great - which surprises me seeing as a company has been bought specifically to do this addition - id expect them to come in pretty much nailing it first time…
my main downer with this is the way it affects current builds..i think its going to drastically change the way things are lit..making a lot of existing builds look very ugly - thats a Hell of A Lot of images that are gonna need re-uploading..ok so its change, and change is good…but its all those little 10L uploads that are gonna add up nicely for someone huh?!
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:14 AM
how start game??????help me!!!please
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:20 AM
Yay! Glad to hear of the planned improvements, as WindLight needed alot of tweaking when i first saw it on FirstLook. If done right this could be a wonderful & exciting change for Second Life!
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:34 AM
your website sucks i made my god dawm acount 4 times and donlowded it and it still dosn’t fucking work
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:44 AM
Sweeet!
Now All I Need To Do Is Buy a £1000 Computer So I Can See For
Myself!
O.o
P.S. I Hear Ripple Looks Kewl Also ^^
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:59 AM
@24: I for one, wish exactly for that - a stagnant (I call it stable) Second Life, with all the bugs fixed, dependable as the real world, to always be there, and always work in the same way.
I don’t want and need Windlight -I hope there will be a way to hack it out of the open source client, if so, that is just what I will do.
I also don’t want or need voice, or any other new features.
I need my hair to stay on my head - I spend more time fixing my appearance than I do updating vendors, when I make my rounds around my stores!
And, I am not knocking something I haven’t seen - I have downloaded the Windlight preview - horrible colors at best, totally weird at worst - even high noon doesn’t look like high noon anymore.
Lindens, hear your paying residents - stop making upgrades, get things STABLE!
I know that you have bought Windlight - but the money would have been better spent on more core developers to fix the bugs!
Creating a bug, then calling it a feature is not the way - just remembering the way you broke editable configuration notecards in no-mod objects!
IMHO, well tested, quarterly functionality upgrades, with ONLY bug fixes in between would be a better way!
@38: The audacity of that statement! Not everyone can, or would want to, change hardware, just for a pretty sky!
I don’t! I use my computer to make money - if I upgrade the hardware and something goes wrong, I lose money!
My computers are upgraded only once every 3-4 years. That is enough for me! I don’t need this! And I don’t need such statements about what I should or should not do!
Fire up your Firstlook, enjoy your preddy skies - but beware of the crashes!
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 AM
Editing terrain still crashes WL first look. Mac and Windows.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:33 AM
Despite the problems with the how Windlight interacts with textures and transparencies it is beautiful and a welcome addition in my mind. I would be helpful to know how Windlight handles coloring and transparency for those of us working with textures.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 AM
released next week!! good thing you hedged your bets and said it’s not set in stone..
please, just once, do the right thing and wait until you have something stable and usable.. this is still at prototype stage.. and i don’t really think you guys are good enough at agile development to deliver your normal level of sub standard product within the timeframes you’ve set yourself.
I’m now at the stage that i hope we do have a horrible release, just so you get terrible press coverage - how did it ever come to this?
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:03 AM
I would like to… em… ya know… why bother… it’s not like LL listens to it’s users anyway.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:10 AM
While I’ve seldom had anything positive to say on the blog, lately, this is going to be a change of pace for me, although I’m going to get the negative stuff out of the way, first.
My first look at the new First Look was a total disaster. Yes, I checked to make sure I had the latest, greatest drivers for my video card. My computer has ample horsepower. It logged on just fine to a breath-taking cloud display and then it was awhile before I realized I had suffered what I call a “crash in-place” — you know, one of those crashes where you don’t realize you’ve crashed until you notice that nothing is happening around you and then you try to move and discover you can only spin around. LL has simply *got* to build a warning into the viewer so that it can alert the user when it’s lost connection to the servers. This seems so much a no-brainer to me. I couldn’t log out, and the viewer wouldn’t close normally. I had to terminate it with Task Manager, which took nearly five minutes to load up, and then Task Manager crashed, along with the rest of the computer which simply locked up. I had to hit the “off” button, even with the disk drive churning, and hoped for the best.
I tried again, but this time First Look wouldn’t even load without crashing. Oh, did I mention that Crash Logger also crashed? Very funny, that. I finally decided that First Look was simply not going to be stable on my system, so I tried to log in using the main viewer, only to discover that everything looked … weird. Perspective was totally screwed up, so things in the distance looked bigger than they should, making it seem like my avatar had shrunk, until I walked up next to an object. And the colors were all off, and everything was dark, even though I had set the time of day to “noon”. I logged off, cleared my cache (it seems that First Look uses the same cache as the main viewer by default — not a good idea in my opinion), and tried again, only to experience repeated crashes and other glitchiness. I eventually, out of desperation, re-installed the stable viewer and everything worked fine. Second Life strangeness.
Well, today I tried again, only to experience crashes upon loading. I disabled VBO and things went smoothly, even though I’m on a flaky Internet connection at the moment. The default sky settings are terrible, but I played with some of the other key frame presets and found some that were very nice and some that were just … weird. I’m now looking down on the world from an altitude of 700 meters and liking what I see … mostly. I can see the outline of the entire sim I’m above, though — as a big blue square surrounded by a greyish-blue area on out to the horizon. That needs to be fixed. It should look the same all the way. Except for this minor quibble, I’m pleased with this new feature. Yes, it’s eye-candy. It adds no functionality to Second Life, but it makes things much nicer to look at.
Torley, thanks for being on top of this project. Your comments are quite helpful, and people really do need to read them, as well as other things that have been written about WindLight before they start complaining. For those people with issues about how things look. And, of course, there are those folks saying Lindens should be fixing bugs instead of introducing eye candy. They don’t read things, either, it would seem, or they’d realize just how innane such griping is. For the umpteeth time, people, WindLight is not a Linden Lab creation. It was programmed by a different group of people, completely, and Lindens are not being pulled from important bug-fixing jobs to work on this. Lighting issues are a problem, but you get the same thing in Real Life, you know. When the sun is low on the horizon and looks like a big orange ball, colors are off. Now, *inside*, where there’s a roof over our heads, perhaps things could default to “normal”. I can see how shop owners and builders are upset about this, but that should be workable.
I can’t add much else to the suggestions that other people have already made. What I would like to see most is the ability to revert to non-WindLight effects with the click of a button, the ability to share presets easily, the ability for landowners to override user settings, the ability for an entire sim to override user settings, and the addition of cloud types (cumulus, alto-cumulus, stratus, cirrus, etc. — if we’re going to do this, we might as well go all the way and do it right). I’d also like to see multiple suns and moons — I mean, really *see* them … as hard disks and not as fuzzy outlines hidden behind clouds and haze.
I know this is still in beta, and probably will be for some time. Yes, there are problems, but this is still very much a Work-in-Progress. If people don’t like it they don’t have to use it, but it’s important for users to report what they do and don’t like about WindLight.
Oh, and it might just be me, but I think text entry boxes are broken. I was trying to type in values, like for rezzing distance, and I got random values instead of what I was typing. I had to use the increment/decrement buttons to get the values I wanted.
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:04 PM
Love the new viewer only problem with it the midnight sun is way to dark other then that its great
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:34 PM
[...] no blog oficial um post sobre o First Look WindLight e assim que vi algumas imagens fiz o download para experimentar. O meu SL passou a ter nuvens reais [...]
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:18 PM
I have one problem with this, my computer is only 6 months old, costs over 2,000$…and i get as far as the loading screen before i crash. However, this is a GREAT idea Lindens. Bravo Zulu!
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 PM
Before releasing Windlight PLEASE DO SOMETHING SIMILAR FOR THE GROUND.
TOP PRIORITY: the ground mesh loses detail WAY faster than prims, so if you do a build that looks right close up it’s floating or embedded in thr ground at even moderate distances. I looked at the source code for the ground mesh in the viewer and it looks like there’s a lot of “magic constants” in there… surely there’s someone at Linden Labs can clean that up and make the ground stop turning to jello after a hundred meters.
LONG TIME REQUEST: let parcel owners set ground textures. Even if you can’t see them outside the parcel, it would be a HUGE improvement.
Land editing: PLEASE give us the ability to drag the actual control points for the land instead of having to guess at them.
Land editing: UNDO! PLEASE!
I can’t believe you’re psending all this time on the sky when the ground has been a sore point for so long.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:30 PM
Well…….. I hate to be one to complain…. probably the more experienced people out there are really excited about the sky… Me, I would just like to have my megadeath t-shirt back, which disappeared into sl oblivion along with other treasured items. Actually I would really like to tp from one place to another without arriving with my hair, shoes and other accessories swinging from my bottom! That would be really cool. As for the crashes… I just learned to cope… and try not to get frustrated when the crash logger crashes as well! I live in hope that one day…. and who knows it could happen. That one day I actually get through an entire session without crashing.
As for clouds that you can’t fly through. Ow! I enjoyed that so much!
PLEEEEEEEAASE concentrate on some of these issues. Or is it that the sky is the limit.. Really the limit!
June 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 PM
I think the new Windlight rocks
I had upgraded my ATI drivers a while ago (they kept crashing everything whenever I used SL - April is still their latest update) and I have had NO problems using Windlight at all. Yeah the default colours suck, it runs way slow, and I hate the horizon especially from up high… but overall this is a brilliant improvement and with a little tweaking the colours come out good and with a little patience things load eventually. So far no inventory loss, touch wood.
Keep up the hard work and use the whiners’ complaints to keep improving. If people really don’t like it they can use the regular client.
Guys, don’t risk your valuable inventory in a test environment.
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:00 PM
@40: “Local lighting acually worked BETTER for me than ever before.”?
For me it is working NOT AT ALL with this SL version anymore. I am back to the regular version.
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:27 PM
I keep crashing everytime i go to edit terrain with the sky client
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:31 PM
All the screen shots of WindLight remind me of a comic from VG Cats. Seems LL is trying to be “more real”, and it shows LOL.
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=224
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:05 PM
1. Yes, clouds please.
I enjoy flying through the clouds upward and downward. I like looking down at clouds too.
2. Altitude of clouds.
2 strata of clouds (a lower one for the thin streaky kinds and a higher one for the puffy kinds) like you see when you take a plane in rea