WindLight First Look is back!!!
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 3:12 PM by: Pastrami Linden
(…and be sure to uninstall any earlier WindLight viewers first!)
Hey everyone- this is Pastrami Linden- project leader of the WindLight team here at Linden Lab. Well, you’ve waited for it, you’ve asked about it… and here it finally is! The re-release of the WindLight First Look! As many of you first experienced in May, WindLight is a beautiful, physics-based sky and cloud rendering system which makes Second Life much more visually compelling. We rolled out a very early First Look earlier this year, and have been hard at work since then improving the visual quality, stability, and feature set available.
First, the goods… This viewer includes five major new enhancements we’re excited about. They are:
1. WindLight (obviously!)
Not only is WindLight back, there are a slew of enhancements and changes along with it, including:
- Classic Clouds are back!
- The moon is back!
- Fallback (aka non-shader) WindLight is now much faster and of higher quality, which ensures those with older hardware still get fast, beautiful new skies.
- UI improvements to the Sky Editor dialog and a new Basic Environment Editor dialog:
2. New photorealistic water
For those with powerful-enough graphics cards (see Recommended Systems), we now offer an amazing, much more physically-accurate water model. We think the results speak for themselves:
The water features accurate reflections, refractions, and sun/moon glow…
…and a full slew of user-tweakable/saveable settings, just like WindLight:
You can even change the texture used for the wave patterns!
3. Glow
All objects can now have a glow attribute assigned to them:
We can’t wait to see what lightscapes and fantasy worlds you make with this one!
4. Avatar Impostors
We’re really excited about this one. As many of you know, crowded scenes- and avatar rendering in general -can be very taxing on many systems. To address this issue, we’ve developed an impostor system which greatly minimizes the processing power needed for avatar rendering, especially at great distances and in crowded scenes:
The result? Up to 40% fps increase in crowded scenes. It really is amazing- give it a shot!
5. Vastly Improved Graphics Preferences tab
We’ve put a lot of work into simplifying and re-organizing the graphics preferences options in the viewer. You’ll find there is now just one elegant tab, with all of the relevant options contained therein. More importantly, you’ll find that we’ve included a simple, easy to use Performance/Quality slider that enables you to shift between high-end visual quality and fast performance at the click of a mouse- all the underlying features are changed automatically. But, for those who want to go in and tweak individual features, we give that option with the “Custom” checkbox. You can even see how the default settings change each of the features in realtime, and decide exactly what configuration works for you! This is very similar to how many high-end games handle their graphics options, and we think you’ll find it’s much more intuitive and easy to use- especially with all the new features available in this viewer.
In addition to the new features, our team has also been using the integration of WindLight as an opportunity to clean up and refactor the core Second Life rendering engine. We realize that one of your primary concerns in Second Life is the stability of the system, and we’ve been focusing on many of the underlying issues during development of this release. In addition to the features above, the release features many performance and stability enhancements. See the Release Notes for details.
Most importantly, since this is a First Look, we are relying on you, the Residents, to help us fix, enhance, debug, and optimize it before it makes its way into Release. When you find issues, please be sure to report them in the Issue Tracker. Include step-by-step repros and your system info, and please make sure to set “Affects Version” to “WindLight”. Here’s an example: VWR-960.
Also, be sure to attend our WindLight office hours at:
- Brampton Linden Stage: 106/166/25
- Tuesdays 8:00am - 9:00am PDT (ongoing)
- Thursdays 1:00pm- 2:00pm PDT (ongoing)
There is more exciting work planned for WindLight, including estate controls for custom skies/water and making skies/water available as tradeable inventory items. Stay tuned for more info.
Also, there are several known issues we’re working on. You can find a complete list in the Release Notes. Some of the notable ones are:
- Behavior in Leopard on Macs can be overly slow, and textures may be misplaced.
- Shiny doesn’t look the same as before. We’re working to get it very close, if not better.
- NVIDIA beta drivers 169.04 currently do not support shaders.
- Some of your colors and textures might appear overexposed or washed out with the new lighting framework.
For important info, please see:
We hope you enjoy this great new release and we wish all of you happy and beautiful world-building!
- Pastrami and the WindLight Team
November 14th, 2007 at 3:17 PM
Finally! I will now get on SL more often. Thanks LL!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:17 PM
[...] « WindLight First Look is back!!! [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 3:18 PM
Oh! This is such great news!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:18 PM
YAHHHH!!!!! JUMPS UP AN DOWN IN HAPPINESS. RUNS AND DOES SUMMERSAULTS ..OUCH.. FELL ON HEAD! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANKS YOU A 1,000,000 TIMES !!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:20 PM
OMG OMG OMG OMG
November 14th, 2007 at 3:22 PM
HELL YES!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:24 PM
Oh Hell YES!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:26 PM
Fow what it’s worth the URL for system requirements is borked. A clickthrough on my name goes to the correct address.
So, what really happened to SL this morning? The Second Life Herald is saying that Linden Labs servers were compromised and being used for DDOS attacks on other sites.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:28 PM
“Some of your colors and textures might appear overexposed or washed out with the new lighting framework.”
Thanks.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:28 PM
[...] meu viewer preferido do SL está de volta, como podem ler no blog oficial. O download do WindLight poderá ser efectuado aqui. No entanto, aquando da versão anterior [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 3:29 PM
Wow! Now the big question is… install the Beta Havok 4… or the Release Candidate with the awesome Search engine… or the new WindLight?! Oh my! I can’t choose among so many great options! It feels like Christmas has come earlier, and I’m a little girl again, spoiled with too many gifts and not knowing what to open first!
Thanks for the great work. I missed WindLight
Now if you only would integrate SpeedTree® and a shadow model in it, this would make us all instantly happy
November 14th, 2007 at 3:29 PM
One question: does this new WindLight viewer include the revamped Search released a while ago?
November 14th, 2007 at 3:31 PM
OMG its here <3 installing and running its straight away!!
thank you LL!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:31 PM
Great stuff, but the recommended system link seems to be broken!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:31 PM
Windlight is back!!! Finally, now we’ll have the best environment for photography.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:32 PM
Attention all - WindLight First Look includes all the new Search functionality!! (and the Sys Req. link now works. Thanks!)
November 14th, 2007 at 3:37 PM
Yippieeeeeee been waiting for this!!!!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:40 PM
Yes, First Look: WindLight includes the previously-announced 1.18.5 RC goodies, so go ahead and lay it on… play enthusiastically and let us know about bugs so we can make things bettah.
Also of interest: join the “First Look” group inworld, I’ll be checking in regularly.
Thanx for your passion, it’s an incredibly positive motivator. =^_^=
November 14th, 2007 at 3:41 PM
Torley took the words from my mouth!
OMG! OMG! OMG!
Lol. Great work. You have a great team of devs. =)
November 14th, 2007 at 3:42 PM
YAY!! TY!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:44 PM
Yes Yes Yes! Pleasure Overload!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:44 PM
Wooot!!! THANKS for all the hard work, you brilliant graphics team you!
*goes to enjoy doubleplusgood realism*
November 14th, 2007 at 3:45 PM
i Just Do not Get it… earlier today at work i was thinking of the windlight thing and all of a sudden i see it out again (0.o… i tell ya .. i must be seing things in the future like my dreams >.>…
November 14th, 2007 at 3:45 PM
My God!!! the SL earth is so beautiful now me wants to cry!! And not even a hit in FPS … GLORY BE… PRAISE THE LORD!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:46 PM
OMG OMG OMG OMG YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOT WOOT Did I say OMG?
/me hugs all the ((((LINDENS))))
November 14th, 2007 at 3:48 PM
Very interested to see what is possible with glow, reflected light ability is so, so important.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:49 PM
Let’s all chant … Eye candy! … Eye candy….
Come on…. repeat after me :))
November 14th, 2007 at 3:50 PM
This doesn’t like nvidia 169.09 either. Shiny objects are transparent, the sea reflection doesn’t work and you can’t use hardware skinning or avatar cloth.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:54 PM
WOW!
This is the best news i read since months. I love this WindLight mmmmm!
Thank You windlight-team
*cheers*
November 14th, 2007 at 3:55 PM
WOOOOOO YEAH WINDLIGHT!!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:59 PM
water looks great but first thing i noticed is that avatars look like aliens with sunrise/sunset time wich used to make it look perfect no matter how many flaws u have
facing the sun now at any time makes it look like a construction light is shining at u and in the back as dark as night
this goes for any avatar u see, maybe it`s *realy* time to update the avatars as rendering them got less, - + - doesn`t make it a +
low shine looks like full shine on the normal build to a point i can hardly make out the texture underneath
custom settings will be something not many will use, i like the day/night cycle like many and won`t bother tweaking that besides a snapshot perhaps but that`s it
u kept the particle clouds (wich are anything but tastefull) and removing them makes the WL clouds dissapear aswell
note on the performance settings, anything but custom is pointles, had all settings at max except draw distance, would recommend ripping draw distance out of it as it has nothing to do with performance (lags enough on the mainland with 64draw, 256 u crash)
sunrise and everything looks red but the sun is allready abouve that point and shines brightly
first glimps of it again and i`ll have to say _never_, the lighting is soooo0000 bad it isn`t worth the pritty water and some stupid animated clouds, unable to remove those stupid particle clouds (who ever wanted those back should be shot) and avatars look 100 times worse then the normal client
don`t think any feedback will have this fixed as it has been month since the previous and the lighting only went worse and i`m even on max with all settings
November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 PM
OK this LOOKS impressive thus far. The Av Impostor feature might be a real bonus to lag issues, since avs are about the #1 client-side lag causer on the block
Two questions pop immediately to mind however:
1. What about the earlier problem of Windlight turning bright and shiney objects to mud and stone?
2. How much lag does windlight itself add to an already lag-overtaxed system.
Blinders off. Always look through the keyhole before letting the wolf in the door.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 PM
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:02 PM
Shiny objects are transparent, reflections don’t work, and glow doesn’t do anything.
Good job.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:05 PM
@Blinders:
1. The difference between the old viewer and new, in terms of bugs and behavior, is like that between Noah’s Ark and the Queen Mary :). It’s tough for me to know which you’re talking abou t- I’d say just play, and if you find anything is up, use the Issue Tracker.
2. Depends on your graphics card and system setup. On top of the line machines the footprint is negligible. But, even on the oldest machines, usage of the Graphics Preferences tab should ensure that you can scale back as far as necessary to get good performance with all of the features your machine can handle.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:05 PM
It’s so pretty!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:08 PM
At first glance the graphics are awesome so I hit Communicate to tell my friends about it and all I see is:
(waiting)
(waiting)
(waiting)
Still unusable.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:09 PM
here`s some shots to make my point
http://www.aosl.net/wl/wl1.jpg
-vs-
http://www.aosl.net/wl/sl1.jpg
http://www.aosl.net/wl/wl2.jpg
-vs-
http://www.aosl.net/wl/sl2.jpg
all low shine and no matter what time of the day, it stays like this
November 14th, 2007 at 4:10 PM
I get to see firstlook for the first time that’s great I can see it getting even better.:)
November 14th, 2007 at 4:11 PM
Hey, log-ins went to zero this morning. Lets get real on what matters.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:13 PM
/me quivers in anticipation and contemplates calling in sick for the rest of the week.
The new sky will be great and everything, but I’m about ready to pop over the addition of the glow property. I have been playing with RenderGlow in the old clients and love the effect… to be able to control it in my builds will be wonderful.
Thank you!
[And silly me... I just dropped the First Look group from my list... now I'll have to add it back in again. :-)]
November 14th, 2007 at 4:16 PM
Well it’s a 50/50 crap shoot.
SOme things like the new water effects are undeniably awsome.
Others like Shiney being like completely destroyed are not.
A LOT of people used shiney on things so make them have like a gloss varnish look, that’s the way it worked before. Shiney now REFLECTS everything. EVERYTHING marked shiney at any level looks like is is made of chrome.
Please change to:
Low - make look like like before, 98% show through with just the hint of a reflection.
Med - Like Low is now or between low and med.
High - ok…
The “low” setting for shiney has to reflect MUCH LESS than it does now, Please, this ruins thousands of pieces of furnature, jewlery, body parts, .. everything.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:18 PM
And I’ve already crashed three times within 5-10 minutes of using it. Maybe work on the game basics, not the features, please?
November 14th, 2007 at 4:18 PM
@Farallon:
Rest assured, it’s a problem we know about and will be addressing!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:20 PM
this is the first time I’ve seen it in person and I must agree.. OMG OMG OMG is right on the money..it’s gorgeous!!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:20 PM
I crash as soon as I try to load this…
November 14th, 2007 at 4:24 PM
[...] Lange haben wir drauf gewartet und immer nur die schönen Bilder von Torley sehen dürfen, aber nun gibt’s ihn endlich wieder: Den Second Life Windlight Viewer! [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 4:26 PM
To quote a well known watermelophile:
OMG OMG OMG OMG !!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:26 PM
LOVE IT!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Running default settings for Windlight on a MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, ATI Radeon X1600 more than halves my framerate from what I am used to, down to less than 8FPS in a quiet sandbox, dropping to 3-4 with a couple of avatars on screen.
Dropping the quality/performance slider to “Mid” barely pushes it back up in 2 digits, and gives me a very visibly pixelated look in the “Imposter” system, as well as a very bad flicker in the water beyond the (short) draw distance cutoff.
Even dropping it to “Low” doesn’t give me much more performance.
So while I hate to be a nay-sayer, and the light does look awesome, this is falling below useable performance on a machine which previously ran SL decently.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:32 PM
Oh no!
My graphics card isn’t up to snuff.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/trident/2024456517/
November 14th, 2007 at 4:33 PM
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:34 PM
Well done, Torley. I guess you’re no longer a WindLight Tease! (Nice pics of Oyster Bay, btw!)
November 14th, 2007 at 4:37 PM
O
M
G
The water is beeeeeeutiful!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 PM
I seem to be having trouble seeing parts of my build. Walls just randomly disappear from view when using this viewer.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 PM
@43
Heh, WHEW!
My poor nose and claws
Hmm, actually I see now, at noon it’s chrome, late sunset its good and at night it’s completely off.
So Sky and water == Awsome.
Texture and land lighting == Hmm… glarey at times, over contrasty at noon. I’d have to give that a thumbs down, ok at evening and night.
Blowouts on the avatar body are gone, that is teh win.
I think if the shiney is fixed and the contrast of the default settings are toned down a bit, noon is as harsh to look at as actually being not he beach without any sunglasses, kind of hard to look at. And THAT amount of realism is not necessarily “good”
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 PM
“It’s so beautiful. They should have sent a poet.”
>)
Great work guys, hope we don’t have to do without this again.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:41 PM
- Windlight
- Havok 4
- New Search beta test
You work on soo many things a the same time… can you handle this?
And why aren’t you working on the lag (too)?
I mean, I see grey things… now grey windlight?
November 14th, 2007 at 4:45 PM
oi
November 14th, 2007 at 4:45 PM
@ Talia, if you’re running Leopard, select the next lowest video card memory in the prefs box. You may be able to then bump some other sliders back higher. I was having serious frame rate issues under Leopard, and that fixed it. Looks like some changes in Leopard’s graphics system are conflicting with SL — texture memory or something, which OS X uses extensively for, well, almost everything in the GUI. I think there are some more technical details in the forums.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:46 PM
Thank you for bringing WindLight Back! ,,,=^_^=,,,
Looking forward to putting it to work!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:47 PM
Windows Vista coupled with ATI right now still isn’t looking very good in Second Life. I still can’t see reflective water (which looks to be the best part of Windlight), and objects with Shiny enabled are dull and transparent for some reason.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:50 PM
Okay… um… Why did the graphic control panel change, an why can’t I get the nice sky anymore?
November 14th, 2007 at 4:50 PM
#55
just had the same thing happen, great for working heh
November 14th, 2007 at 4:53 PM
I think the water light reflections look HORRIBLE! They are just white splotches of, well, WHITE, everywhere all over the water. There’s no shading to the reflections, so it’s just WHITE everywhere on the surface of the water, and we’re talking solid white that doesn’t even have a transparency. tsk tsk, I thought after 6 months you’d have something better than white splotches to make it look like reflections of light. The other reflections on the water, look excellent, trees and clouds, etc. AWESOME. But the natural light reflections need serious work.
I agree with Alicia that avatars look like someone bumped the brightness control all the way up on accident. Facial features are lost, clothing looks washed out.
Frame rate is a little worse than the regular viewer… which is impressive since the last windlight release, but still needs work.
The hardware settings Texture Memory slider doesn’t work. When I came into it it said 256MB, which is what this card has, but there was no slider indicator. So, I clicked it, and it set it to zero. Now there’s nothing else I can set it to.
More to come. I like the new look
November 14th, 2007 at 4:54 PM
Well, as long as the real Problems are solved first, I guess I can live with another feature I have no use for.
(instant crash when enabling vertex shaders, simply because I don’t have any)
November 14th, 2007 at 4:55 PM
OMG, you removed the “Teleport to landmark” option from the sub menu in inventory? WOW, just when I think you guys can’t remove any more useful features. I mean, I use that option EVERY SINGLE DAY, LIKE 20 FREAKING TIMES A DAY.
Just like taking away the ctrl+alt+c shortcut for camera constraints…
UGH!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:56 PM
I take my previous statement back…. Except that’s a pretty big change not mentioned anywhere….
November 14th, 2007 at 4:58 PM
O-M-G!!
THANK YOU!!!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:04 PM
The glow setting as opposed to being automatic is great.
Is there any chance of getting shiney on transparent textures?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:07 PM
boy shiny is really shiny now. jury still out on whether thats good or bad lol.
did something and half the prims around me went invisi mode. if i get a repro i’ll report it. relog fixed.
as for the rest…
its like… a handful of orange barrel!
try sheer surreality sky and glassy water with all graphics maxed!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:08 PM
Ooops, I was wrong in my response to Talia, since it seems that graphics card memory settings is gone in WL. Sorry, and I’ll shut up from hogging comments now.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:09 PM
Very nice - even at max visual quality, my performance is still acceptable on my lower-mid-range HW. Stability seems good too so far (1 hour in world, building).
Shiny is way TOO shiny at the low end.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:10 PM
Looks impressive but its still not realistic environmental/ambient lighting or shading and in all honesty I couldn’t give the slightest damn if the sky looked photorealistic what about…
-All of the login issues,
-Inventory items vanishing,
-L$ vanishing (not just not showing in corner actually going)
-The group IM issues,
-Group notice issues,
-Search down time,
-Constant asset server issues leaving some objects unable to delete for upto 24hrs among many other things,
-The increase in griefers due to free accounts (not that free accounts are all bad)
-The constant “old” bugs that keep arising that were supposed to have been fixed three whole years ago,
-The ever increasing issues with missing images,
-Textures remaining blurry for hours sometimes even if theyve already loaded they then go blurry,
-Recieving less than dial up speed when you have a 20MB connection and £5000 gaming PC yet still get lag in empty sims and only get 2kbs connection (I monitor my connection so dont tell me otherwise)
-The constant complaints about packet loss,
-The theft of textures that Linden Labs refuses to address and is even dumb enough to leave a function within SL itself to steal all textures,
-The complete lack of OWNER AND CREATOR (residents) and Server admins (Linden labs) communication I know its hard with so many different residents from around the world but ever think of doing a simple vote on things maybe? You know like all the times you remove/add functions without asking the actual users and creators in SL what they think? a simple “Would you like this yes/no” tick poll would be nice considering all you do essentially is maintain the servers we pay for and create SL it would be nothing without the residents,
The list could literally go on for pages and the sad fact is it should be beyond 3 or 4 issues before thinking of adding more stuff.
P.S. Was nice to see Lindens actually leave comments in the blogs for once…… shame it was only because people previously had praise to give and only left comments such as “It’s so pretty!” the real shocker will be when I get flamed for speaking the truth and even more shocking when a Linden leaves a comment after this one (note this is sarcasm).
November 14th, 2007 at 5:16 PM
[...] thrilled to announce that today SL released a new First Look viewer for WindLight! Want some pretty clouds? How bout a proper moon, unlike the not quite right moon I have in my [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 5:19 PM
@Oro:
It’s a big beast, this project of ours. If you’ll see the Release Notes, you’ll find that many graphics bugs have been fixed and performance enhancements, such as Impostors, have been introduced.
While I understand your concerns (I really do!) WindLight is addressing the visual end of the experience. With each RC and First Look, we’re nailing more and more of the known issues. Owing to the massiveness of keeping this virtual world (created entirely by you!) running, this can be slow going at times. Hang in there- we’re working to make it better every day!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:19 PM
Oh, bummer on the Nvidia drivers, rolling back to a previous driver to get Windlight to work means getting the constant nvlddmkm errors that plagued previous versions under Vista
November 14th, 2007 at 5:20 PM
This is bare nonsense as long it slows down the performance of an average machine as it does now. SL residents usually are no millionaires who run all the latest machines and graphic boards, nor some freaky action gamers. They want a solid platform and decent frame rates, not (dulled) shiny features which doom them to static existance and flickering caused headaches.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:22 PM
*actually drops from shock in RL*
Erm a Linden just read and commented after I complained…….. are you new Pastrami?
And yeah I understand the challenge and size of this project being a graphic nut myself and I have tested it and am impressed with some changes but there are still a huge amount of problems that predate even the conception of Wind Light, and while I am pleased with any additions and fixes for the future of SL I really think other issues should have higher priorities is all.
Anyways thanks for replying its certaintly a nice refreshing change and best of luck with this, Just please consider some of the other older issues =P
November 14th, 2007 at 5:24 PM
…well, that was a waste of a download.
Would have been nice to know that those of us who can’t see ripple water, wouldn’t be able to see ANY of the ‘new features’.
..and to think I got all excited. ..quite a letdown.
I’m sure it looks lovely–those of you that can actually SEE it.
Sure, you guys said I wouldn’t be able to see the improved water ahead of time, but it would have been nice to, y’know, know I wouldn’t be able to see ANY of the new stuff?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:24 PM
Downloading now…
November 14th, 2007 at 5:26 PM
@77 - dulled shiny? i have super shiny. so shiny its like headlights.
my 3 year old system with it’s nVidea 6800 pros is getting a solid 20 fps with everything maxed and water set to glassy and sky set to sheer surreality. apparently you don’t need the latest and greatest. just need a solid graphics card on XP and never use vista.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:28 PM
Totally agree about the shiny fx - it’s WAY TOO SHINY!! I use the ‘low’ setting on many of my objects and now the textures i spent days creating are obliterated! There’s virtually no difference between low and high. Please change this back, it looks truly awful!
Glow looks pretty awful too, more like a visual artefact on a bad grfx card than a feature.
Everything else (apart from some major bugs) is AMAZING looking - but SUPER-SHINY-SHINY-SHINY has to go…pleeeeze….
November 14th, 2007 at 5:29 PM
for those who are unable to load WL
http://www.aosl.net/wl/home.jpg
pic a friend took and was uploaded as 512×512 and resized back into porpotions with PS so the details are abit lower then normal
November 14th, 2007 at 5:30 PM
From a reliable 15 FPS in non-crowded scenes and 10 FPS in crowded scenes down to 3-5 FPS with SL running at *lower* settings than I used to.
I don’t care about not seeing the new shinies, but there’s no reason to gut the low-end performance and turn SL into a slideshow when WindLight isn’t even activated.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:32 PM
Suggestion for the Windlight team re: Shiny: On the lower settings, it might look more effective if you add a bit of blur to the reflection. The way it is now the reflected horizon line is very stark and well defined - a softer look would be more consistant with a reduced specularity. The high shiny settings look fine to me.
I do have top-end hardware now and I swear I’m seeing framerate *increases* in some areas - looking at a scene of empty land+sky+water with everything turned up averages 70FPS with peaks around 90! (a more “normal”, prim-heavy scene has a consistant 40-ish).
November 14th, 2007 at 5:33 PM
About time, we’ve been waiting for a LONG time for this viewer. Actually, waiting a long time for the full release viewer with Windlight. Come on guys, it’s “good enough”, get it into the main viewer!! It’s great! Other than having to redo a lot of prim objects due to odd reflection issues, but hey, there’s going to be some adjustments to make…
November 14th, 2007 at 5:36 PM
So will the advanced sky tab be available soon??
Cause I don’t really see much benefit if I can’t customize my skies!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:38 PM
Sounds great. Can’t wait to give it a try.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:43 PM
ew ew ew. It hurst my eyes >.> and the colors spectrum is so off.. like theres a really bad bend in the gamma or somehin. i dunno how to explain it but its just… really bad. And its nice because i cannt evenn adjust gamma under prefrennces anymore. >.>
November 14th, 2007 at 5:45 PM
when can we expect better looking avatars with properly configured uv maps?
November 14th, 2007 at 5:45 PM
Are you atleast this time look at bug reports before assuming its broken? The last time wind light was out all kinds of people sent in incorrect and unsupposed bugs. Claiming that the UI was incorrect on their computer.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:48 PM
@81 At some times of the day like around7-8pm the shiney is indedd “Dul” In fact a dull shiney is something I’ve wanted for a LONG time, it just needs to be completely controllable.
For shiney options they really should be
Off
Dull - like windlight in early evening
Glossy - Like “Low” or “Med” shiney iin main viewer, or maby two levels of this to emulate the main viewer settings for opbjects that have already been created.
Shiney - Like windlight “Low”
Chrome - like windlight “High”
November 14th, 2007 at 5:54 PM
One other note: Turning down the intensity setting of the default light mode by about 10 notches helps the washed out texture thing a bit.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:58 PM
This is cool! It’ll give my newer machine a good workout!
November 14th, 2007 at 5:58 PM
uhuuuuuuuuu!
way to go guys :))
November 14th, 2007 at 6:07 PM
Ripple water STILL doesn’t show up on Nvidia GeForce GO 7900GS, Windows XP even though the JIRA I filed in May says it was fixed. The card can handle this EASILY.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:10 PM
ahhhhh! ahhhhhhh! *screams* I HEART YOU GUYZ
November 14th, 2007 at 6:11 PM
[...] this is not Photoshopped, or edited in any way. It was simply taken from Second Life using the new Windlight First Look viewer (which I hope does not get taken away like last time!) The improvements in the past few days are [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 6:14 PM
I’m glad that Windlight is back. All is well for me, except I crash a bit more often. On the other hand, I can go anywhere with draw set to 512, and SL is still playable.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:14 PM
oh my god. this is just amazing. I can’t believe SL looks that way now. just wow. (yes, I turned it to “ultra” :DD)
November 14th, 2007 at 6:15 PM
Since JIRA is also broken, here’s the info on my system which renders RIPPLE WATER PERFECTLY in main client.
Second Life 1.18.5 (73655) Nov 13 2007 12:57:54 (Second Life WindLight)
You are at 278281.6, 234868.2, 21.7 in Aquilae located at sim1045.agni.lindenlab.com (72.5.12.195:12035)
Second Life Server 1.18.5.73200
CPU: Intel Core Series Processor (1728 MHz)
Memory: 2047 MB
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:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 0/20381 (0.0%)
November 14th, 2007 at 6:16 PM
[...] the goods… Read the rest of this entry » Related reading… It looks like YELLOW BRICK [...]
November 14th, 2007 at 6:18 PM
what sort of estate tools are going to be implemented with Windlight? how can I assure that my visitors see my sim as a murky film noir night, ot the crystal blackness of deep space, instead of a watermeoln coloured acid trip?
November 14th, 2007 at 6:21 PM
THANK YOU! Not just for the windlight goodies, but for the added goodies for those of us with struggling graphics cards. I can’t wait to test this out.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:23 PM
Is there an option to make particles glow? Particles that used to glow under the old renderglow debug setting no longer…well, glow.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:25 PM
Well, I downloaded it.
It crashes when I try to start it
boo =/
looked neat
November 14th, 2007 at 6:26 PM
ummm, im sorry, what am i supposed to think of this? im using a relatively new ATI card but i see absolutely no glow (andyes i did try an object with the proper setting).
the setting used to crash my client and i read that it would be fixed with this version. it seems this “fix” was taking it out altogether…
November 14th, 2007 at 6:34 PM
Love it, love it, love it. All my cretions have taken on a new beauty and I am just blown away - thanks for making it real this time.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:39 PM
Will someone please fix JIRA logins so I can reopen the same issue that was “fixed” lol 6 months ago. Thanks!
November 14th, 2007 at 6:49 PM
thank you soooooo much! now i can take the pictures i have been wanting for the last 5 months.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:59 PM
@Oro
E-X-A-C-T-L-Y. I couldn’t say it more eloquently then you put it.
@Pastrami, I can almost say, for every bug that LL bandages, it creates two more to deal with, and then in about a month, the bandage falls off, and everyone is left with three bugs, rather then fixing the original problem. Oro has listed several of the CONSISTENT and RECURRING problems with SL. You guys have created this ‘big beast’ and the grave its digging, you may want to tame it, before feeding it with more bells and whistles.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:05 PM
Damned Windlight… everything looks gorgeous, and it’s (I STILL don’t believe this) faster on my non-supported graphics chipset (!!) but the rendering is SO good I can see all the flaws in my prim paws. Now I have to rework them to look better in this new environment.
Curse you, Lindens!