Knowledge Base Article of the Week: WindLight Fever!
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 3:17 PM by: Jeremy LindenWelcome to episode 4 of Knowledge Base Article of the Week! Today’s WindLight First Look release boasts a dizzying array of new features, so this week’s post is dedicated to an entire folder full of up-to-date WindLight information.
When following the links below, remember that you will be directed to the Support Portal for your login information, and then redirected to your article of choice.
The WindLight First Look folder in the Knowledge Base contains the following articles:
- Introduction to WindLight
- The Environment Editor
- Advanced Sky Editor
- Day Cycle Editor
- Advanced Water Settings
- The new Graphics Preferences Layout
- Glow
- What are Avatar Impostors?
With the success of last week’s Documentation Office Hours, Jon and I will be holding another Q&A style Office Hours this Friday at 2 PM PST. Have you ever wanted to know more about the Knowledge Base? Stop by our surplus couch and deluxe information depot with your Documentation comments, questions, concerns and/or suggestions!
Happy WindLighting, everyone!
Jeremy Linden
November 14th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
Read ‘em and learn, good to be edumacated! Thanx for da docs, Jeremy! *big smile*
November 14th, 2007 at 3:57 PM
<3 Thank you <3
November 14th, 2007 at 4:04 PM
Will ask again here:
1. Has the earlier problem of Windlight turning bright and shiney textures to mud been addressed? If it hasn’t, we can kiss those bright metal swords, buildings and cars goodbye.
2. How much lag does windlight add to an already overtaxed system.
Both eyes open. Don’t be blinded by the glitter.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:14 PM
WHOOT! TY Torley!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:24 PM
oh maaan, I’ve been waitin for dis one.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:29 PM
#3: Man, are you pessimistic. If you’d read the other blog announcing the new WindLight First Look release, you’d know that the entire rendering engine has actually been refactored and improved to be faster than ever - you have new and more detailed graphics options in your Preferences to play with - you can fall back to the old weather system (which in itself has been improved separately) - not to mention there’s the new Avatar Impostor which I’m personally very excited about.
So go ahead and answer your own questions… try out the FL.
Gosh, I know I will! *hugs Torley and yips in excitement*
November 14th, 2007 at 4:32 PM
@3 Blinders, please keep in mind that there are two kinds of lag: client-side and server-side. WindLight is client-side, so it won’t impact the grid. If your computer is closer to the bare minimum requirements, you could be impacted. Not much more can be said without knowing your setup. That said, my iMac only has a 128MB Radeon X1600, and seemed to run the earlier WindLight viewer just fine.
Other than that.. OMGYAYBBQ!!!!!111!!!1!! Glad to see WindLight back!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:34 PM
Cool, I have a Radeon X1600 but it’s got 512MB. ^_^
November 14th, 2007 at 4:45 PM
There IS a way to toggle this on and off right?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:02 PM
does this mean I lose fluffy clouds? I like being up in the clouds..
November 14th, 2007 at 5:05 PM
@9 Redmoonblade:
In a way it is possible to toggle WindLight on and off- check out the options in the new graphics preferences panel, particularly the “Atmospheric Shaders” checkbox
November 14th, 2007 at 5:07 PM
@10 sigh:
You can keep Second Life’s classic clouds, either on top of the WindLight Clouds, or just as they always were! Check out the “Draw Classic Clouds” checkbox on the “Clouds” tab of the Advanced Sky Editor.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:18 PM
should you put an epileptic warning on the client?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:25 PM
Windlight is amazing! But! There are some rendering errors that i am experiencing. They seem to be tied with the way the engine handles the graphics cache, as i’m having prims disappear from right under me after 30 minutes of windlight use.
AMD 3700GT / 2GB RAM / 8600 XT 256 RAM / 1280×1024 / Max Setting & Draw distance
It happens regardless of draw distance, but does seem to pop up after playing with some of the preset windlight Sky settings
November 14th, 2007 at 5:33 PM
Wow its great that windlight can be turned on and off. Seeing how good it looks I will use windlight myself but I can remember the days when I still had a crappy videocard and when all extra features gave extra lag!
Great work! (choice is always good)
November 14th, 2007 at 5:33 PM
Jeremy Linden: “In a way it is possible to toggle WindLight on and off- check out the options in the new graphics preferences panel, particularly the “Atmospheric Shaders” checkbox”
Ah, thank God!!!
Thank YOU! Ahhh! It’s nice to be able to turn it off when you want to see exactly what the texture on say a piece of clothing looks like without interference from the light and colours. Whoho! *dances off into the sunset*
November 14th, 2007 at 5:43 PM
Hey Everyone. First of all I must say it…Windlight is amazing…fantastic…and also the new glow feature is incredible…BUT..I have a problem with colours… Everything seems to be setted like at 256 colors…I tried to change video card option but nothing…I setted everything to max details, both on sl and on video card settings but nothing changes…still 256 colors…
I run sl on a Intel Core2 Duo, video card Ati x1950xt avivo on windows XP… Could you please help me? It’s really a shame because Windlight is great. Thank you
November 14th, 2007 at 5:54 PM
Ok I have troubles with the shaders…If I enable them color are like reduced to 256, if I disable shaders everything looks normal…any Idea on how to fix it? I repeat my videocard is an Ati X1950XT avivo
Thank you and keep up the great job!
PS i just crashed enableing anisotropic filter…grrrrrr…
November 14th, 2007 at 6:02 PM
So… I love WindLight, the environments are beautiful but I really… really… REALLY hate what the lighting does to AVs. Beautiful AVs are made to look like weirdly shadowed aliens just because of how the light hits them. I guess new Face Lamps will need to be made, but what a shame.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:05 PM
I have to admit it really looks great. Tool me a moment to get the settings right, but did it make a vast improvement. Things are starting to look real. Great job. Thanks.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:11 PM
You’ve got to be kidding! Gold rod turned blue - don’t know why. Glowing green gem turned, well I don’t know what to name it but the light option no longer had any effect and the thing went dark. Light greys turned washed out white. Medium greys went near-black. Fine grain wood disppeared as if there was no texture applied at all. The particle system quit working on my lot, but functioned in the distance. I hung around for 10 minutes and my neighbors house (5 meters away) had yet to rez.
I guess I’ll wait untill you ram this thing down my throat and don’t give me the option to refuse it.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:33 PM
Please fix the XML-RPC server before bringing any new features live. Windlight does not fix existing content.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:41 PM
wow this was just amazeing, all the stuff you guys changed looked great. the water in surrounding sims shows up.. but.. and this is a BIG but, the water in the sim dissappeard! glow doesnt appear to work at all. and avys farther then 5 meters away from my camera become ‘imposters’. the stuff added is awsome, but you guys have a long way to go with this. please for the love of god DONT make this anything but a firstlook viewer untill ALL bugs are fixed in it! *going to try RC viewer*
November 14th, 2007 at 6:55 PM
i just wish i could actually log on to check it out- why is it that i have the best computer possible, running off of the strongest residential airport cable internet- and i have the most issues logging onto sl??
November 14th, 2007 at 6:59 PM
I have a texture that isn’t rendering:
GNU Water 6 (widely distributed.)
90754b33-56ac-da19-d57b-7d8da984877d
November 14th, 2007 at 7:11 PM
As noted in the WindLight announcement post, please be sure to post any bugs you discover to the Public Issue Tracker (https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Issue_tracker)
The Issue Tracker is our official channel for bugs and feature suggestions; make sure to include as much detail as possible in your reports!
Cheers.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:12 PM
Unable to login to JIRA
Just tried this windlight viewer and as soon as I edit my video preferences it crashes, doesn’t matter which checkbox or slider I touch, just one adjustment and crash. Oh well, back to the extremely buggy but crashing less frequently main release. Oh and I do have a high end gfx card with 2Gb of Ram and an intel dual core processor… sigh…
November 14th, 2007 at 7:13 PM
Everyone NEEDS to check out the tutorials to be able to fiddle with the settings-you can have both weird looking or perfectly normal environments. I have waited soooo long for it to come back and I love it. Even tho it kicked my frame rate in the nuts.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:20 PM
If I setup a real nice sim with Windlight red sky and lava like water.. am I the only one that sees it like that or does everyone coming to my sim see what I have created in it?
Is this ONLY client side or can we actually create something others can come and share?
November 14th, 2007 at 7:26 PM
JIRA Logins are broken as is ripple water still for the same bug I reported 6 months ago (supposedly fixed heh) for an Nvidia GeForce GO 7900. Andddd, since JIRA log-ins are borked again, can’t even reopen it.
So de-installed windlight because what’s the point if I can’t see the water ripples I can see perfectly in the main client?
November 14th, 2007 at 7:32 PM
@29 Garth FairChang:
Some snippets from the wiki:
“Bear in mind that WindLight is client-side only for now- that means nothing is changing on the servers or in any of the data- just what’s being shown on your screen… …More important, though, are our plans to make all of the sky settings, day cycle settings, and water settings tradeable assets (this is where the server-side part comes in), as well as giving you, the Residents, the ability to script and define these settings for your own estates.”
November 14th, 2007 at 7:45 PM
I have to say I was expecting to log and and hate it as much as the last Windlight with it’s flat painted sky that you actually flew up to and then through.
But I have to eat my words (or thoughts anyway). Settings are on High and it looks great, water is very nice. Been up to 5000m and still looks good, though I’m sure on the old viewer you did eventually go into the darkness of space.
10min and no crashes so far, going to see if I can break it now.
I’ll not mention shiny making all my cars look like they’re made from glass
November 14th, 2007 at 7:50 PM
WOW. A few snaps taken (as well as the obligatory sunsets and silhouettes
I know some people will moan that we get this and it seems like not enough is being done on stability/lost stuff/crashes etc. But well done LL
*hands out flak jackets to the dev team
http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/Default.aspx?Name=Norf+Lundquist
November 14th, 2007 at 7:52 PM
Thanks for letting me retexture my house when trying to drop a texture on someone’s name bubble…
November 14th, 2007 at 8:05 PM
Wao, that increible is so beautiful the new Windlight, AWESOME!!, some people here said this new system is not good, they dont know nothing about the second life evolution i play since 2003 i know Second life have some bugs and tell me what game in the market massive multiplayer is perfect?? that is not exist but now the look of the game have a wonderful change with extraordinary graphics, please dont quit The Windlight!! again!! thanks to Torley, Jeremy and programers and Linden labs again,
November 14th, 2007 at 8:19 PM
I hope we get to keep this. Back in 1.10, GLSL shaders ‘visited’ and were removed; it looked great while it lasted. Now, finally, we get this sort of upgrade and - from what I can tell, turning off Atmospheric Shaders brings the world back to what it was, if people don’t want it…
With low detail and avatar impostors I can even run the thing on my laptop at 30+ FPS in a crowd.
And on my desktop I can make it look just amazing.
I know that people are going to resist change on this. But please, I hope we do keep this - SL’s graphics haven’t moved forward significantly in four years.
We need this. Yes, there are bugs, but they can be fixed: I just hope they are not fixed by nuking features.
Please let us keep this, this time.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:21 PM
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! I am so happy windlight is back! Please don’t take it away again! Everything, and I mean everything looks better this way. Even the simple linden plants look better! I have my graphics on Ultra, granted I can’t move, but who cares! Everything is sooo beautiful! Thank you again LL!
November 14th, 2007 at 8:31 PM
this is amazing - didnt touch my frame rate - actually seems higher in most places, esp in crowds.. great job!! and the control over everything. the water reflections are mind blowing alone…and the ripples shimmering the sunlight.
foggy coastlines and forests at a click. this has made the experience of SL orders of magnitude better as far as I am concerned
And you kept the fluffy clouds. local light and shiny stuff looks great to me. Totally agree with Michi - this is a big step forward - please let us keep ittttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This makes up for all the issues Ive seen this summer.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:39 PM
None of the links actually work, they all end up at the standard https://secondlife.com/support/ page.
Linking to the KB seems to be as pointless as ever when it was moved from its sane location on the site to be dumped into the Support Portal instead, rendering it inaccessible.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:54 PM
Winlight destroys avaitars at noon setting…old sl was bad and face lamps helped..winlight now shows less face lamp effect than old software…the face shading at noon lighting is going to destroy skin desingers…someone will have to figure this out…avaitars look awful..at noon..more so than ever before
November 14th, 2007 at 8:58 PM
guys go back to the original windlight layout the new version is way to complex for newbies to grasp and taking out the performance graphs sorta leads to confusion when the program hangs…
lol and at least time it so the really high graphics are released with havok4…other than that its really good
November 14th, 2007 at 9:13 PM
Really cool, I like it, One thing I could not find. Some of the buttons didnt light up. Advanced Sky and Water. I didnt see anything on this in the knowledge base on how to get this to work. Maybe its time to upgrade the computer from this old 486 I have, lol Keep up the good work. Leave more cheese on the land for the lab rats.
Just a spontaneous thought, you should maybe hook up with Dell to sell a SL version computer with the best componants in it for SL. I would spend 3/4s of a million lindens for a system that run SL the best.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:36 PM
[...] a related post, Knowledge Base Article of the Week: WindLight Fever!, Jeremy Linden posted a bunch of info and links about Windlight, like Introduction to WindLight , [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 9:36 PM
To take advantage of all of WindLight’s features, make sure Atmospheric Shaders are turned on in your graphics preferences. Atmospheric Shaders are essential for WindLight’s skies, water and glow effects!
November 14th, 2007 at 9:38 PM
How many million narcissistic residents does SL have now? At least 50% of 10 million? How many zillion lindens have people spent making their avatars SL gorgeous? How much of the SL economy is built on vanity? And now you’ve made us ugly in the name of pretty, non-money making sunsets. I’ll go sit on the beach and meditate over that pristine water and those windswept clouds, calm my blood pressure, but I may never go out in public again.
November 14th, 2007 at 9:39 PM
LOVE,LOVE,LOVE….. the environmental settings. noon bleached out a few things and i tried the different settings, but then even with a face lamp my avatar looked off. but other than that, water is phenomenal. The only thing i’ve noticed is some of my things won’t rezz and appear to be missing. So definitly a few tweaks. oh and one last thing before i forget, i get the double negative thing with some of my objects that disappear near the window, with the new lighting. a few more adjustments and this should be on the new download!
November 14th, 2007 at 9:52 PM
I goto the ‘Client’ tab and disable the clouds & other random things every time i log in (for the sole purpose of having a smoother/less lagg-e_ experience).
I think if some randoms working of the project spent a fair few hours working on a normal/moderate/average computer, perhaps some new options would be added, maybe even re-thought.
Sure, on my high end system things are great, but this is used for work most often leaving me with good ole betsy ( 256mb graphics and 512mb ram 4yo) for sl… Plainly put, the majority have ‘ole betsy’ style computers, many thank me for giving tips on what to turn off to make things faster/smoother/better/more pleasant. Nice to see more things to turn off.. cant wait till work is done so i can have a real look.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:48 PM
Well after playing around with it, I love the clouds and sun let me tell you its amazing…
However I do not like the new shiney, my piercings look like liquid mercury on my face!
Also a big problem im haveing is my face lights wont work at all, I tried multiple ones and they wont work. Its really nice to have more options on the graphics tab though, and the clouds and sun are to die for.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:50 PM
My initial response is it looks great. Shadows may be a bit too dark. It looked basically fine out of the box, with no brainpower required, which is important to me. I like the new Graphics Tab; having all the basic settings on one dialog is much better than the old system. I flew up and into some clouds, so that’s good. Flying up higher, the horizon gets misshapened. Higher still and the view returned to looking ok.
This sort of thing might entice me to get a better graphics card so I can max everything and leave it like that.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:13 PM
Once again wow. Yawn.. now can we get back to things that need looking at and dealing with before adding to all the troubles with yet more troubles. Windlight is neat and all but it is just more 3rd party bling.
Search = google.
Windlight = windlight.
Voice = Vox
Verification = Aristotle
Sure looks that LindenLab can’t do it in house any more and has to go outside.
————-
It is now 2 months since in this very blog, Robin Linden said “OOO you residents want to know more about Verification and a other things. I will get right to it and post an entry.”
Feels like Rome. Bread and circuses to hide the troubles.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:36 PM
after all the bad stuff recently, this firstlook viewer more than makes up for it, it improves the SL experience so much.
thank you LL.
oh and the snapshots of the new water look nice, hopefully my ATI HD 2900XT can handle it.
November 14th, 2007 at 11:42 PM
Hiya all this sure looks great and the comment’s are nice on it to
But if it doesn’t work for me, how do i uninstall the windlight?….
Srry i might sound like a noob :/ but i would like to know hehe
Thnx in advance
See ya all inworld.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:16 AM
in the windows startmenu, find the firstlook folder, theres an uninstall in there.
shiny is ruined, it now acts as alpha. this really needs fixing.
my system is pretty hot stuff (core2 duo e6600,2 gig ram, hd2900xt)
i enable everything i see in the knowledgebase article, all the shaders etc are on but the water is flat. am i missing something?
November 15th, 2007 at 12:25 AM
windlight installed and operated - on an island with only two agents I got a fps of 7.5 - back to the release candidate - fps gets between 17 and 21 - needs some tweaking to do or is it a known ‘feature’ of windlight?
happy to see some progress on this project
thanks for making it public again!
November 15th, 2007 at 12:29 AM
For those thinking that this ruins SL… it actually makes it able to run on even lower hardware than before at decent speeds. Try turning it down to “low” settings and see just how the FPS goes up. I know it looks worse, but that’s the kind of tradeoff you get.
November 15th, 2007 at 12:33 AM
forgot to post, I have no low and system:
Second Life 1.18.5 (0) Nov 13 2007 10:25:05 (Second Life Release Candidate)
You are at 236508.1, 239814.4, 85.3 in Andrea Isle located at sim4977.agni.lindenlab.com (64.129.47.231:13004)
Second Life Server 1.18.5.73200
CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1828 MHz)
Memory: 2047 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce Go 7300/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.1
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
November 15th, 2007 at 12:45 AM
New Toys! And it’s not even Christmas yet! Woot!
November 15th, 2007 at 12:58 AM
/me gasps while staring at a sunrise sheering over the water, sighs deeply and pinks a tear from the side of his eye.
“So … beautiful… “
November 15th, 2007 at 1:05 AM
good move, at least it will make us forget that ugly brown fog we had some months ago.
November 15th, 2007 at 1:14 AM
Great!
Now our ugly avatars look out of place in this beautiful world…
November 15th, 2007 at 1:24 AM
Yeah, great, more lag, more bugs & more downtime!
You just have to be kidding! How can you bring this now, where everyone is still digesting last weeks, ah what am I saying, last months mess!
Stop windlight now! No one needs it! It´s not worth the pain of all residents to have a few 100 geeks happy.
Stop the nonsense now!
November 15th, 2007 at 1:48 AM
61 : you have no idea do you? the windlight team are a seperate team , brought into LL to create this. and it’s all done on your computer, not serverside. so it doesn’t add to lag.
as for the 100 geeks comment, i can assure you that theres far more than 100 people who like this.
yes SL has been a bit flakey recently, but this is firstlook, not a release viewer, you don’t want it you don’t download it. the point of this viewer is to test it *before* it gets to the main release, so any bugs in it are wiped out before the masses get it in thier camping i mean main viewer.
i like windlight, it actaully enhances SL a lot.
and since when was downtime mentioned exactly?
November 15th, 2007 at 2:46 AM
[...] at the the SecondLife blog its been anounced that the windlight viewer is back! I’m so going to setup my main rig [...]
November 15th, 2007 at 2:55 AM
I’ve had a look in the wiki but I cannot see any scripting functions/primitive parameters to read/write to the Glow property of a prim.
Does any exist? If so, what are they?
November 15th, 2007 at 2:56 AM
Be sure too keep your curtains closed. It’s a harsh cut in your eyes when you turn them from a windlighted sunny summerday to the snow flakes outside.
Incredible pictures. Great improvement, great experience thanks!
November 15th, 2007 at 3:02 AM
wooo hooo ty ll
November 15th, 2007 at 3:11 AM
@62,
no i have no idea apparently…
All I know is WHENEVER new features are introduced to sl, stuff breaks, products stop working and new bugs turn up, which ultimately result in more downtime to fix up the mess.
If my post has upset you, apologies, but i am upset by the original post…
After 2 weeks of grid salad, it´s the worst timing there is to come up with something like windlight…It´s neat yeah. But as one of the posters earlier said, it´s like in Rome. Circus to distract the people from the real problems, at least at this point in time
I want the basics to bloody work:
- no timing out of requests in general & especially if its about money transfers
- product deliveries with a failure rate <1%
- a tier & classified refund system for downtimes & practical downtimes
- a friendly, competent & proactive Customer Service Body within LL (not just for high wealth sl individuals)
- a communication department that remembers tomorrow that it made announcements & promises yesterday (What´s the status of IDV, oversize prims etc…)
- fair & equal prices as well as conditions for every one, independent from location. (no VAT scam, same server classes & quality for all sims)
If all of the above goes without saying, then yeah, gimme more new features
November 15th, 2007 at 3:14 AM
and also one could wonder where all the problems came from the past weeks….Couldn´t be lot´s of resources being taken up by LL running tests behind the scenes….?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:16 AM
It’s very pretty!
How long before the server side is done so we can actually *use* this? Also, will it be possible to someday change celestial bodies, e.g. replace the image of the moon with an image of Earth (for doing a lunar sim, say)?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:25 AM
No Skirts Allowed!!!
I guess the girls aren’t welcome in this one. Skirts are only being shown in appearance mode. What’s next, panties?
November 15th, 2007 at 3:47 AM
with a Mobile X1600 video card everything is rendered low quality like with 8bit depth, even if my graphic card is at max quality and screen depth is 32bit
November 15th, 2007 at 4:30 AM
Hi guys,
the slider in the graphics hardware is not okay, does not work and is situated out next to the sliders background.
Cheers,
Ami
iMac
Intel Core 2 Duo
Speed: 2.33 GHz
Processors: 1
Cores: 2
L2-cache: 4 MB
Ram: 3 GB
Busspeed: 667 MHz
November 15th, 2007 at 4:34 AM
I have been anxiously awaiting the re-release of Windlight….and WOW. The skies and water are beautiful…I’m very impressed. I have noticed however that in this version I am unable to click on people’s names to check their profile or initiate an IM with them. This is a very helpful ability especially in crowded areas. Could you return this ability to us, please???
November 15th, 2007 at 4:58 AM
Will there either be some sort for light occlusion or parcel based environment controls for land owners?
It’s a bit disconcerting to watch sunlight creep up the wall of a windowless room.
November 15th, 2007 at 5:14 AM
Good try but very far from even acceptable.
The reflection is not working at all. Steel objects look way too light, with very few shades, like if they were full bright, and with a fastidious blueish shade, very unrealistic and most of all very different from the (very good) way they look in the no windlight versions. As a builder of medieval armors I’m very concerned. This change would totally disrupt all my work.
Even at Mid settings, with the windlight supposedly off, the reflection doesn’t work. Object that are low reflection are as polished as mirrors and almost transparent looking. On the ATI Raden 550 that I have on this PC (latest drivers), when I set the High graphic option, windlight enabled then, all the reflective objects *are* actually transparent, as if they were made of blue glass. If I set their transparency to 1 then they show up with the right texture but still as semitransparent. Totally flawed…
I didn’t tested the clouds and the sky and all those nice features: if the basic things don’t work there is no advantage in having them
Sorry… the idea is nice but a lot must be done still to have an acceptable release.
November 15th, 2007 at 5:41 AM
Particles! Particles! Will there be an option to make particles glow? Under the debug menu “renderglow” setting, particles would glow like any other fullbright object. But, under Windlight, they do not glow at all.
Will this be fixed? I’d managed to create some particularly neat effects with glowing particles that now look dull and flat, quite the opposite I expected from Windlight.
I’m sure this is just an oversight that will be fixed very soon…right?
I hope.
Please.
Thank you!
November 15th, 2007 at 5:46 AM
Speaking of, I recall reading somewhere that Windlight settings would be available as inventory objects that could be handed out to visitors, and passed around. Is this still in the works?
Additionally, we’re going to see server side settings, right? For Estate Owners and such? So individual sims can have their own Windlight settings that people see automagically when they visit a sim?
November 15th, 2007 at 5:47 AM
Simply Brilliant !!!!
THANKS A MILLION!!!
Been waiting for this for AGES!
This is the first real positive (for myself) I have seen for a long time.
Yes, theres a few issues (shiny etc), and we need environment defaults, but its brilliant!
Whatever you do …. DON’T TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN !!!
Please always have the windlight option avail - even if buggy. Some of us just won’t go back again!
thx!!!
November 15th, 2007 at 5:56 AM
I added this in JIRA but here are my specs for a fairly high-end graphics set up that renders ripple water perfectly in the main client, yet still see flat and oddly colored water in windlight. This is a Nvidia GeForce Go 7900GS (with latest drivers), Windows XP and Intel Core Duo. Can’t get much more mainstream that this. It’s clearly the same driver issue as before (see JIRA https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-925) where on any Nvidia driver > 93.71 this is observed. It was supposedly “fixed” but I have reopened it because it’s not.
Drivers for XP and Nvidia ARE >93.71!
CPU: Intel Pentium Pro (Unknown model) (1728 MHz)
Memory: 2047 M
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce Go 7900 GS/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.1
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.10_0000000000)
Nvidia specific information:
Processor: GeForce GO 7900GS
Video BIOS: 5.71.22.16.13
IRQ: 16
Bus: PCI Express x16
Memory: 256mb
Forceware version: 84.69
TV encoder type: NVIDIA Integrated
November 15th, 2007 at 6:39 AM
All these new features are coming. We just have to accept them. Work around them or disable them if we don’t like them or want them.
But no where have I seen anything that addresses what many of us desperatley need. Please give us more than 25 groups? At least double it. 25 is not enough! Now that should be something very easy to implement.
November 15th, 2007 at 6:40 AM
i like this, i am sitting in my housecoat naked and the hair is a mess didnt brush teeth and, i look great in second life cant get much better than this !
November 15th, 2007 at 7:41 AM
I like the windlight-viewer. will use it on special places and at home.
Second Life 1.18.5 (73655) Nov 13 2007 12:57:54 (Second Life WindLight)
You are at 169289.4, 304509.1, 27.7 in Mesopotamia located at sim3483.agni.lindenlab.com (64.129.45.248:12035)
Second Life Server 1.18.5.73200
CPU: AMD (athlon 64) (2009 MHz)
Memory: 1024 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5600/AGP/SSE2/3DNOW!
OpenGL Version: 2.0.3
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 67/243155 (0.0%)
Viewer Digest: dadcde93-7357-bc40-b2b8-516d5239e365
November 15th, 2007 at 7:43 AM
The problems with Shiny stuff have been noted already. Check the comments on the previous blog post - it will be worked on.
November 15th, 2007 at 7:44 AM
OK, I’ve been really down on windlight, but this one is a big improvement. I actually like it. I like how you can independently turn the windlight clouds and the regular clouds on and off. I like the water. There’s also some improvement in land quality: the highest LoD for land keeps it as land for a much greater distance… I haven’t seen that announced and that’s a good thing.
A few things that need to be fixed: first, the default settings need to have ambient light turned up and the sun turned down… the difference between sunlight and shade is way too pronounced. Second, the water fog needs to have separate settings for when the camera’s above and below the surface. Third, the glow effect needs to be muted during the day, or increased during the night (add a multiplier for overall light levels, perhaps). Fourth, the unadorned windlight skybox is too stark to use as the backdrop for reflections, but the dynamic reflections don’t look right either… need to cons up a new reflection map… maybe just use the old skybox as a new reflection map?
But these are pretty minor compared to the massive list of problems I had from the first release.
Oh, and, could you post the water ripple normal maps Windlight is using somewhere (or even put them in the library)?
November 15th, 2007 at 7:58 AM
Awesome, except that I can’t reset the graphics settings without the thing crashing on me. I’d really like to see what Windlight can do, but that probably won’t happen, if I can’t keep it going.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:06 AM
I’ve never looked at WindLight before, but I tried it this time, and it’s impossible to use for me. It looks great as far as it goes, but many objects don’t show, and even individual prims from many objects don’t show. No matter how long I wait, they just don’t show. They are there because I walk over them, but they don’t display at all. I’d like to use WindLight now, but I can’t.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:26 AM
Meh.
Tested on a very low end Windows XP system, with a 64 MB VRAM Intel Integrated graphics card and only 512 MB RAM. Hardly any of the new effects are available, but at least it degrades fairly gracefully.
THANK YOU for retaining the particle clouds, as I can’t see the ones windlight paints at all.
Looks passible at 700M up, or whild flying upward to at least above the particle cloud layer. Horizon isn’t a bowl, and the sun isn’t a smear, as far as I can tell. Thanks for fixing that part.
Frame rate at minimum settings isn’t any worse than the normal client.
In short… Doesn’t matter where I set the few controls that I can change, it doesn’t buy me much at all over the old client. But at least this time it isn’t tremendously worse.
Oh, and the “Avatar spontaneously folds in half and places their head up their butt” bug has returned in this Windlight First Look client.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:40 AM
wow congrats, a lovley new viewer that crashes as soon as it loads on my laptob, yay. So how much in kickmacks are LL getting from all the mega costly vid cards all the cool stuff aparently requires?
November 15th, 2007 at 8:43 AM
wow looks great. Now we can concentrate on how your outsourcing the billing dept to the UK has caused U.S. banks to see SL as a gambling site and causes the bank to freeze your account when you are billed for your tier.
Thanks for the headache. Really liked the confusion of having my card declined at the grocery store over an error on your end.
So tip of the day. when your tier is about to be charged watch your bank account and make sure they dont cause it to freeze up. I had to contact my banks fraud control to use my debit card again anywhere.
November 15th, 2007 at 8:43 AM
I took a RL trip to the beach, WL eat your heart out…
November 15th, 2007 at 9:03 AM
Pathetic. Absolutely unacceptable. FIX WHAT IS BROKEN please!!!!!!!! Your putting me out of business…. oh, sorry, I’m not an esate owner and my in world initials aren’t “A.C.”. Didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll go back to my irrelevant place and be a good av. Ooooh, what PRETTY clouds!!!
/me suddently realizes after reading all his blog posts why my application to LL has not even been read XD
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!!!
November 15th, 2007 at 9:03 AM
https://secondlife.com/community/support.php?questionID=4766 (What are avatar impostors) doesn’t go anywhere?
November 15th, 2007 at 9:04 AM
This is just horrible for all content creators, it totaly destroys the ‘real’ looking light effects we have created textures and skins for.
Yes right, all your nifty colors on your broken horizon, wow! Wow, purple clouds in an orange sky above a mud looking world! Wow!
Well… no!
Please, log in some other virtual worlds so yo can see how it can be done
I hate you LL for doing this to me!
*cries*
November 15th, 2007 at 9:38 AM
From what I’m seeing — it increases framerate and looks great for MANY people, if not -most- people:
However - there are a lot of complaints of broken visual effects, and the ever-present buzzword of “LAG”.
I think that people don’t quite understand this… and unfortunately I’m almost positive that Linden Lab will respond by completely nerfing WindLight.
Most of the complaints I’ve seen have been from folks who have embedded video and still expect a lot ; folks with old cards like GeForce 5200’s that were never really that good even in their day, and of course the folks who claim they “can’t update their drivers” from the 2-year old versions for one reason or another.
SL has tried this several times: I remember Shaders/GLSL in 1.10, which was scrapped at the last minute because of too many complaints from people with low end systems. About two years have gone by since, and that hasnt changed: those same systems have simply become 2 more years out of date than they were at the time.
If history is any predictor, LL will listen to the ‘lowest common denominator’, and when WindLight launches, it’ll basically look like “the old SL with a prettier skybox”.
Fact is, most of this stuff can be turned off. If you don’t like it, really, *try* turning off Environmental Shaders and even Basic Shaders; but I know most folks won’t be bothered…. I ran into a guy with a SiS graphics chipset last night who was complaining because he was running a slideshow when the slider is pushed to “Ultra”.
In the past four years though, every time without fail, LL has listened to the “lowest common denominator”….
So, if you like Windlight, I wouldn’t get used to it. I hope this time is different, andI hate to say it but some folks running 3,4 or even 5 year old hardware may have to upgrade… There’s really good performing stuff at a very low price point even compared to 3 years ago these days.
As for skins/textures and graphics errors, I’m just not seeing many problems. I’m running a 7900GTX, and my graphics drivers actually are NOT completely up to date. Still, I dont really see any problems.
Really, SL’s graphics finally do need to advance. I hope they actually do this time around. After GLSL/Shaders were skipped, and Render 2.0 was skipped, and the first round of WindLight was delayed — let’s give it a chance this time…
November 15th, 2007 at 10:05 AM
@94: Bravo. *clap, clap, clap* More thoughtful posts like yours, please.
Now let me go back to sobbing quietly because my in-world photography is finally worthy of butting heads with Torley’s works. LOL
November 15th, 2007 at 10:09 AM
Nice skys
but when does the avatar improve?
real joints/
face shading
less plastic feel & look
personally I would have gone for that
buy wtf
November 15th, 2007 at 10:09 AM
Windlight is still gorgeous. Thank you. And I especially love the Quality slider. Now I can go to Class 4 sims and still be able to move without turning off render items such as Volume and Simple (or even Characters).
My first sunrise today brought a tear to my eye. I can hardly wait to see a (non-forced) sunset.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:22 AM
@94 : rest assured, this isn’t going anywhere!
Our main focus will be to set default settings to accommodate older cards. The beauty is that we’ve included ways to turn everything back to old school rendering. So one of our big tasks to come will be to tweak the defaults so that older cards don’t get obliterated in framerates. But the functionality? Going away? Nahhhhh….
November 15th, 2007 at 10:48 AM
Pastrami-
Excellent… From what I can tell initially, it seems that the range of performance variation with this release is actually going to get *greater*..
In other words, with the ability to turn these options off, AND the addition of avatar impostors, even lower end systems *should* see a performance increase if they so choose to go in that direction.
Running at lowest settings, sure it looked funkier, but I was getting 50 FPS in a crowded sim. VERY useful for large gatherings!
One more thing Pastrami: PLEASE don’t change the water!!! Or at least, make it optionable to what it is right now, *exactly* how it is right now!
We got a taste of that early on when LL tried new shaders with water, but then it went away. This is perfect, please keep it as it is!
Thanks for the response.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:49 AM
It’s called progress people. mid-grade 4-5 year old technology does not run newer technology.
Logging into Second Life is not like opening up a fresh copy of Duke Nukem or Quake with content that does not change over time.
Massive Multiplayer Online programs evolve and change over time… and if people expect the program to continue being fresh and up to date with newer better features all the time without having to possibly upgrade their computer hardware from time to time, they’re absolutely delusional.
Changes like this are exactly what Second Life needs to continue to evolve to the next level.
Keep Windlight and lets see this weather project hit the boards immediately afterward Windlight is pushed through. I want to walk 3-miles uphill both ways through a blizzard to buy objects for my avatar.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:59 AM
i tried this latest windlight and the various settings, it looks awesome yes until i went into the ocean to see the coral reef and fish down there.. didn’t matter which settings i used it was way too dark under the water to see anything.. might be just me.
November 15th, 2007 at 11:20 AM
Shiny is