‘Inside the Lab’ podcast with the WindLight Team!
Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 4:54 PM by: Pastrami Linden
The third edition of our ‘Inside the Lab’ podcast series is now available! The series started with Philip Linden’s vision for Second Life in 2008, and continued with Joe Miller’s insight into the engineering team at Linden. This time Melissa Linden sits down with the development team behind WindLight, the atmospheric rendering system in Second Life’s latest viewer. Melissa discusses a number of topics with us, including:
- What WindLight can really do for the resident experience (Hear our very own Torley Linden give a very spirited rundown of his favorite new features!!)
- How optimized the new viewer is for older graphics cards
- The extra features and stability enhancements in our latest code
- Our thoughts about the future of the viewer (especially graphics) in Second Life
We’re excited to bring you this informal look into the people, projects, and culture at Linden Lab. Enjoy!
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April 7th, 2008 at 4:58 PM
———–Quoted text————-
The extra features and stability enhancements in our latest code
————————————-
This will certainly generate more than a few comments! :^)
April 7th, 2008 at 5:00 PM
@1
Well, we *do* try to communicate that there are just as many, if not more, stability improvements as features in these viewers. An uphill battle? Perhaps 
April 7th, 2008 at 5:06 PM
Stability? If you call 45 crashes in 4 hours stability, then what do you call instability? 0.0…lets me not forget to mention transactions continue to fail, teleports only work have the time, attachments won’t attach, and now we have to deal with profiles and groups not loading properly for several hours each day. Windlight is pretty but so far I would rather have the old viewers back and everything working. People’s businesses are getting hit hard because of all of the crashing, down time, and transaction failures.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:12 PM
as far as im concerned the new client is a big improvement. again, the viewer team cant be made responsible for the messup of someone else.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:12 PM
@3 I understand your concerns. However, please realize that our team is not involved in that aspect of the product. Our work on WL in no way comes at the expense of other work- we’re viewer and engine developers, not backend. It is the responsibility of each team to push forward their piece of the pie. Server and network ops teams are experiencing unheard of challenges with our growing concurrency right now, and are making sure we can scale. We are blessed in that sense- we only deal with the pixels on *your* screen
However, with Havok4 and other improvements, everyone’s working as hard as possible to make the experience is a good one- from soup to nuts.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:12 PM
@3, to be fair, almost none of those problems are WindLight’s fault. Now, its ability to lock dead for a minute at a time if I move the camera after it’s been parked for a half hour? THAT I can put squarely on it, but frankly, that’s minor.
The transaction server failures have caused nothing but hell for my fishing game… my IMs cap out every single day from people requesting deliveries of undelivered items due to stale transactions.
Yay for the WindLight team! BIG FAT BOO for the software engineers and their unscaling system of doom that turns SL into a minefield for half the day, every day, for the last two weeks. I refuse to start any new projects until things stabilize — why should I bother giving myself more headaches and helping Linden Lab(tm) make money when they’re screwing up this badly?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:14 PM
Sweet distraction from the negativity posts, how about re-enabling the the profiles again for real and not just as a pretentious statement!
April 7th, 2008 at 5:15 PM
I was laughing about it being more stable too. I cant even log in to windlight anymore so I used the standard browser yesterday and today only to find that profiles, groups and transactions have been intermittent. Despite the post saying that at 4pm profiles were back online, everyone I have talked to still can’t seem to get them to load. I appreciate the hard work the Lindens do, and I truly looooove the windlight viewer. I just wish little things would work!
April 7th, 2008 at 5:22 PM
Stop blogging your praises and fix your infrastructure. If our company’s IT department ran things like this we’d have all been outsourced a long time ago.
Put down the new flashy client that nobody wants and fix your issues already! It can’t take *this* long to get new hardware in the door.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:28 PM
Well I just saw a bit reference in grapahics about skins. Skins still don’t look good and they can change a lot with ugly shadows depends wich configuration os the land or wich configuration u did. I don’t know why there isn’t an option to put a light (like in the SL of ever) that satures the avatar eliminating all the shadows.
Yes land scapes and buildings now looks amazing, glow is also amazing, but the avatars are loosing quality, and not mention all the designers that works hard in cloth and skin shadows to make them more realistic, now designers are loosing the power of control of their products and I think this is a big problem in terms of design and I mean design a program.
I should remember SL is social and lot of people is more interested in configure their avatars than see land scapes. Cos another big problem is that even u expend hours configuring a good set up, there are people that still uses the normal SL, and they use lights, this means that u see all the people burnt if u are using Windlight and others no.
And to finalize, I suppose Linden Lab knows that currently there are lot of cloth business that offers products, then how designers can assure their products will see like the ads they placed? If a person has a different setup with a very green light and u are selling a pale skin, the customer will see the skin green and then maybe will reclaim the designer that the product is not like the ad.
I see some big design problems, How linden will face this? Or they just don’t care?
I think WL should be optional or implement a system to make the avatars look like always, other way is just create lot of problems to lot of people.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:29 PM
Does windlight have to update the look of the sky so often? On my Mac it makes the client almost unusable. Could you add a feature that lets us change how often it refreshes the sky?
Nat.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:30 PM
maybe I missed it but is there a way to take advantage of the stability features of the new viewer while disabling Windlight. My opinion is the windlight looks terrible and I do have a excellent new graphics card. Can it be disabled or do I have to revert back to the old viewer?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:30 PM
This is off topic but since there are no open subjects to use you get it.
The selective turn off of certain items during peak hours is doing nothing but creating problems today it has forced gray profiles and the inability to communicate on IM. Product delivery has been interrupted and with out the ability to call a profile and hand drop merchandise you idiots are now shutting down the commerce. Please pass this word along to those responsible stop playing with the game leave it alone at least when you did not play like god it almost worked now it is a JOKE.
Oh and the new systems do seem to work better but all the diddling has now layered more BS into enjoyment
April 7th, 2008 at 5:33 PM
With regards to DB, I’ve worked in a number of IT shops, and have brought in tons of new hardware in the door. From initial loads, patches, initial backup’s, more patches, ad syncs, cluster load balancing, this all takes intense effort and concentration. Add to that the vision of the Lindens and you’ve got one very tough balancing act. Your either part of the problem (complaining of problems their well aware of ), or part of the solution (suggesting pratical solutions) to an ever expanding system. I for one commend the ALL the Linden teams for all the nights of no sleep while keeping a sense of humor. Bravo!
April 7th, 2008 at 5:34 PM
In all my time on SL i have never posted negitively on these blogs. Because, there have been issues in the past,but was nothing that i could not wait for to be fixed. That being said..THIS NEW VIEWER is driving me mad. If i stand still and max out my settigns it looks beautiful. However, when i reset them back to low and move around it reminds me of the days when i tried to run SL on intergrated graphics..Since this new viewer i have purchaced crossfire ati HD2600. I have 2 grapics cards into one screen. My FPS is 45 in mouse look and slighlty less out of mouse look. Bandwidth in empty sims reads 0. So can you tell me what the hell is up with the jerky movements? My system requirments far exceed the SL requirments. My cards are supported. so i am clueless as to what is going on here. Every few steps is screen freeze. And “Lag-o-Meter” reads green across the board..My Wife and I have 5 sims on SL, and we have both been so miseriable with the screen freeze issues, we cannot stand to play now.
To be honest i have no idea what i can buy to make this jerky/screen freeze go away.tried everything from setting card settings to preformance and settign SL to lowest settings, and the screen freeze presists. So if there is advice to us non techy people, please do tell. Oh yes scuplts not loading also.. that could be inventory sever idk, But is driving me mad..Please help..TY
April 7th, 2008 at 5:34 PM
Do you really have ANY idea what imposing 1.19 on EVERYone has done???
On top of all the crap that’s happened lately - I was ok with working around things and suffering the freezes and crashes…
But forcing me to use a viewer that does not work for me when I have outstanding Jira and support tickets detailing issues that go back to early December - has forced me to reconsider my presence in SL at all.
… and I’m not alone it seems
Turning off support for earlier viewers that were used by residents in order to accommodate platform and network issues was THE WORST IDEA YOU GUYS HAVE HAD IN YEARS.
This last weekend has proved to be the final straw for so many of the people I know.
And if it wasn’t for my friends, would have been for me too - and may still prove to be.
I agree with others who’ve spoken here - GET OUT OF YOUR OWN STUPID EGOS. Your inhouse slap-each-other-on-the-back, hippy attitude does not go down well with residents who are paying a lot of money to pay your wages so that you can play with pet projects.
Address some of the support tickets properly instead of closing them because they’re maybe a bit hard - admit when you make mistakes and let people know what you’re going to do to remedy them…talk to people.
This is a blog, turning off comments in critically borked times only gets people’s backs up. GEEZE when will you get this through the blinkered heads of LL staff and management.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:37 PM
Try disabling atmospheric shading for better av lighting. May not help how others see you, but you’ll like the look better. BTW, I’m on a Mac, so if that doesn’t also apply to the PC client, I apologize.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:46 PM
I have to agree. even allot of the peopel taht tested rc4 told you EXPLICITLY that 1.19.4 was NOT ready for widepsread release pastrami. my alt was one of them. my friend was a second. yes it is more stable for some, but half your suppsoedly supported graphics cards CANNOT run windlight. Ironically, my older, barely supported geforce4 integrated card does better then any othe others in my hosue. and duel and multi cores get damaged becuase your viewer wont support them correctly and causes them to spin up to 100% and stay that way. EVEN IF SL IS THE ONLY NON SYTEM PROCESS RUNNING.
furthermore, 1.19.4 does NOT fully disable windlight, as you claim. it only disables key features of windlight. (see variosu jira psotings.)
learn to lsiten to your people, and lsoe the attitude of: well people jsut need to update. we cant all afford it, and soem of us are tired of it.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:53 PM
ugh, go away Wind Light
April 7th, 2008 at 5:54 PM
One more thing…. I can’t afford to update my 18-month-old MacBook Pro - because It costs me 400USD a month to use SL - and I’m no longer getting sufficient income from my sims to get anywhere near meeting that cost…
So decision - pay LL for a faulty product - or upgrade my puter - or pull out of SL completely - and stay with my perfectly usable, quite powerful puter???
hmmmm?
April 7th, 2008 at 5:55 PM
@ 11 its probabaly your hard drive. if you have a slow hard drive. every time it gets a texture from the catch it will lock sl while it looks for it. try defragmenting.reformatting. or getting a new hard drive. it could also be that your using ATI. i had an ATI card and it tended to do that also.
i like windlight. they sky looks better. the water looks better. idk what you pepoel are talking about it messing up avatars, they look fine to me. go WL team
April 7th, 2008 at 6:01 PM
“And stuff now runs - I think there is still one issue with one of the latest Mac
Book Pros. But stuff runs on Apple pretty well now because they were
really good at talking to us.”
Oh, really? Please Pastrami, explain:
I have a 50% performance loss on MINIMUM (no shaders!) settings in 1.19.1 compared to the 1.18-v Ncholaz viewer on MAX settings.
I run a very average Mac model, one of the later IBM G5 double processor models, run MacOS Tiger 4.11, have an ATO Radeon 9800 and enough RAM for SL. My system does not EXACTLY match the recommended GPU specs, but an ATi 9800 should do at least fine, and it DOES with 1.18 nicholaz.
But it does not run fine. I am about to quit SL instead.
So. What did you talk about? The weather?
And one more serious question: Will a nvidia 7800 GS, flashed for an AGP MAC, revise my decision to leave SL as soon as the Nicholaz viewer breaks?
April 7th, 2008 at 6:03 PM
I cannot believe that Windlight was crammed down our throats, escpecially with them knowing that the backend couldn’t handle it.
Most people here do not have the high end alienware type computers, and windlight has decreased performance to a horrible level. Not everyone can afford the high end computers. With that said, you are alienating a large part of the SL population. Thus, losing money.
That’s just not smart. Any way you cut it. Windlight should be an option, not an enforced viewer.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:04 PM
What does it take to make a point here? People are paying tier for lands they cannot use. While myself and the other 4k people who could log in this weekend enjoyed playing with ourselves while no one else could log in this is not the point of a social network.
I can’t understand the attitude of, “that’s someone else’s problem.”
Everyday I go to work at a company where the IT department is something we depend on. If we had a problem where 45k users couldn’t access the systems, every data processing manager and tech would be here working. We wouldn’t have one group telling the world how their project was fine, when no one else could use the system.
I’m passed the point of being upset. Eventually someone (perhaps openspace) will get there system working and then what?
Let me make one more point.
IBM is a fine company but in the last 80s they insisted that microchannel architecture and OS/2 were the way to go. They alienated the market they helped to create (PCs) and they never recovered from that marketing error. Compaq and a slew of other companies took their “less pretty” architecture and put IBM out of the business. IBM despite it’s name is today primarily a software and consulting firm.
Linden Lab, those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.
I’m not quitting today. But I haven’t been willing to build for three weeks. That’s three weeks of spending money to do nothing. Many other people are in the same boat. Do you think they will continue to pay tier for being able to do nothing for long?
When your corporate sponsors come out from behind their firewalls they may find a world empty of the griefers they fear and the population they hoped to sell to.
On the other hand they may find a very hostile population that targets them out of frustration because they can’t reach you.
Food for thought.
ear hearty
April 7th, 2008 at 6:07 PM
All I ever want to know is what use this “feature mask” called CPUSlow is supposed to solve. Ever since I noticed that in the log filers after getting curious enough of why SL was killing my FPS yet only took up 5% CPU time whenever I pulled up a UI window, I’ve been asking around. Now I have a lonely little support ticket on this. It has sat there for a few days, so I suppose I am asking the wrong place if more than a week passes. And now, I am crashing every time I use any part of the UI that is a big window.
WL is freaking awesome, I was even able to use it on a constant basis for a while. Now? I can barely manage Basic Shaders. My choice is either get a better machine, or wait. Frankly, I don’t much like either option.
Apologies for the banter in what is likely a wrong venue to express such. But I just had to put it somewhere…
/rant
April 7th, 2008 at 6:12 PM
Whats wrong with avatars?, well whats wrong if that if u don’t expend hours making light set ups ur newbie skin will look exactly the same as ur new 2000L skin u bought, to not say that u can have a pale-gothic avatar, enter a sim with a strange light and see ur avatar black or any other color. Let’s say I wanna do a gothic portrait, I set up an aming red light with red clouds, whats the problem, my avatar is not white, is red.
April 7th, 2008 at 6:44 PM
“How soon” will we get a server side settings for these windlight environmental settings?
I want to create a beautiful tropical island! XD
April 7th, 2008 at 7:10 PM
I’m wondering why we should attempt the learning curve of Jira, if we’re to be ignored. Older cards, which are older because they can’t be upgraded, don’t support Windlight, and alternative viewers are becoming a new part of the SL economy. Windlight should be a selectable option, rather than deselectable, and would be quite popular in that fashion. Builders should even have a keystroke, to turn Windlight on and off, so as to see with the eyes of Those Other People.
Personally, I’d like an option, to down load textures only for chosen objects, but I don’t know whether my taste is overly exotic. Windlight was shoved through because of a corporate acquisition, and had to satisfy somebody’s vanity, rather than anybody thinking to make it optional. H4 was shoved through on the same week, because CSI was running a target event, and still suffers a bit of prematurity, and I recall it was about the time that the bottom fell out of the Servants of Aset.
When you come up with such new features, don’t just make them optional, as they need to be, charge extra, and they’ll be really popular. When Linden Labs gets the business manager it needs, he better be someone who likes to make enemies, and is able to charge extra for it.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
I could see water and use more advanced graphics settings before the Windlight release - now all water is black and any attempt to advance my graphics settings immediately crashes SL. Unfortunately, ATI does not provide updates for laptop video drivers, only through the manufacturer and ACER is not providing updated drivers - if indeed there are any to had (it is impossible to tell).
Also, why was this released before providing server-side settings?? While Windlight certainly has pretty skies and water, it light interiors of builds as though there were outside and plants that aren’t Linden plants (i.e. flexi-prim sprites) can have a shadow running up the middle of them that wasn’t there before. I always need to customize the settings to optimize and know that others won’t have this optimization.
As a sim-owner, I have lost control of lighting for my sim. At least before you could set the region default or at worst there was only 3 other lighting setting visitors might be on. Now, all visitors to my sim will see it in a light that does not show it as well as it could be shown.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:28 PM
I understand the Windlight have some extreme problems with a lighting, shadows, brightness i think Linden labs needed fix that but that is a slow process , the problems with lights in the avatar is they looks to jerky and the color are ugly. i love windlight and its imperative they need make a restructurability in all shadows and lightings and brightness are to high
April 7th, 2008 at 7:36 PM
Windlights Lighting is fine if you actually adjust the lighting settings. Some of the defaults are bad i admit but they are easily adjustable to a level that works well if you just have a fiddle. I have a sky setting i love that i made and would gladly share it with others :). Also while sim settings arnt there it will happen.
@28 you still can use most of the basic things there were there before you just need to do custom settings and have a fiddle….. Also lighting has always lit everything evenly this isnt even that much of an argument at some settings these are bound to be adversely off but if you play the lighting isnt a problem while having the sky look great!!! I have a lighting setup that is very close to the setup of how SL looked before and the sky is awesome. Feel free to ask me for pics in world…
Also if you listened to the podcast or read the transcript or went to certain windligjht office hours (i went to one and this was discussed there) the shadow concept. They plan to counter act that lighting with some shadowing at some point it may not happen right away as stability client side is their main focus atm but its quite possible!
April 7th, 2008 at 7:48 PM
Lina Pussycat Says:
April 7th, 2008 at 7:36 PM
Windlights Lighting is fine if you actually adjust the lighting settings. Some of the defaults are bad i admit but they are easily adjustable to a level that works well if you just have a fiddle. I have a sky setting i love that i made and would gladly share it with others :). Also while sim settings arnt there it will happen.
YOU’RE ARE WRONG GINA, Linden Labs needed fix the shadows and lightings and brigtness in DEFAULT MODE! Because all people see to yours and when yours make the modification in the default mode that is only for yours!
Changing the avatar is just for you and that is a deceive yourself . the other people don’t see yours fine settings , Linden labs need fix the horrible problems in DEFAULT
April 7th, 2008 at 7:52 PM
@30 Line the problem is that should set up, u should expend time and think about the new residents that are very lost alredy with the unintuitive design of Second Life.
I did set ups like the normal viwer, the problem is that I only see me and that is always a suny day, the other problem is that the people tdont use WL they have lights and I see them burnt and they also don’t see me well cos I haven’t light.
The problem is that linden lab seems that is forgetting that SL is social and people like see their avatar and the others nice and speak between them?
And whats the mening expending lindens in buying cloth if btw people wont see u like u see urself at the screen?
I think when a person buy cloth in RL is to have an style and to show the people, and there are a lot of this people in SL, now with WL hasnt lot of meaning.
April 7th, 2008 at 7:56 PM
@30 - fiddling with the settings crashes my ACER PC every time. I am stuck with black water and no clouds - believe me, i have tried. I have read the transcript - sure sunsets and skies and water look great but there is much more to SL than pretty pictures in Flickr. It is 2 steps forward and one step back - in some cases 3 steps back.
I know that lighting in the old client spreads light out evenly but now you get much more defined shadows on walls that were not noticeable before and which really impact the look of a room - especially when you are using textures with shadows baked into them. It can destroy a carefully designed look.
Given their track record re: rolling outserver-side settings, I am not overly confident of LL claims about the future pace of releases and, for a company that claims it is primarily a hosting business, am a disappointed hosting customer. (Although it is hard to imagine the fundamental issue preventing the storing of those values in a region-level database table(s))
April 7th, 2008 at 7:57 PM
I hope there will be always *TWO* clients. One is for Windlight client and other one is default SL client. I rather to use default sl client. I prefer that way, I LOVE it. I do not want to use Windlight client. Some people prefer to use WL client. Otherwise, if you force us to download Windlight client. Half of people will leave for good which I have heard that..their words are keep. Half of people’s business will be close and so on. Don’t take a risk. Give us a choice. Just two clients of choice, that’s all. I don’t want WL with default option. I tried. It looks very weird, I went back to default SL client. I love it, still do.
Good day
April 7th, 2008 at 8:00 PM
im still crashing about 20 seconds after logging in, It says the region has begun the log out process, but there is no indication that the location went down, AND my computer keeps telling me that SL is a virus that its trying to access my computer.
Everything was crash free for the most part with the prior version,
this has been ongoing since the update was made avalable.
its a known issue, Exactly HOW many crash loggers do you want so you can fix the problem anyway?
thank you
April 7th, 2008 at 8:02 PM
Just look at the Windlight picture posted at the top of this blog…sky is washed out, avatars are deeply shaded, grey and have to much contrast. Now tell me Windlight looks better……… and no, shutting off atmospheric shaders DOES NOT make it the same as the model used in the old client. It still suffers from the bad overall lighting and that orange sunset is just plain yucky.
Anyone who sells over the internet knows that the greatest challenge is to get colored photos of your products to look as consistent as possible across all platforms. This is how the client should work too. Everyone should have the same overall settings. Without it artists and designers are totally unable to predict how customers see their work. Do you wear color tinted glasses when you go into a clothing shop? How many of you want to see how something looks in daylight rather than fluorescent shop lighting?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:06 PM
@33
By flying the avatar sinks endless down.
To read uuid from primfaces is disabled, building needs much more time when i have to check at any prim which face is opposite to me. I use my camera for building since this downsinking is shure fixed! So i have to check at any prim whats i told about its faces. I work detailed and accurate, just copying of prims dont solve this bug.
Group profiles are still not readable, we have to make adjustments every day on some!
Loading of details needs a lot of time, how knows whats bug that is.
SL kicks me out any 5 minutes, seems it has some bugs in the software again.
My mind just told me that some people has to learn first how to solve problems and not to hide himself behind new “features”! I make troubleshooting in RL, but this isnt it definitely what LL does! Im not satisfied about the acutal quality of SL if we can tell them “quality”, and….
Lindens, think about different client versions for users outside the USA. Perhaps this will fix the endless troubles from SL that kicks us out periodically. Im not a software junkie, but good thinking can help avoid future problems. :X
April 7th, 2008 at 8:34 PM
Pastrami, all I can say is thanks for fixing part of the texture sorting and prioritizing effects of so called “invisi prims” and shiny
Now all that’s left is making the prims do LOD sorting on the effects so the “invisi prim” effect doesn;t affect alpha textures (like water and avatar skin) behind them
April 7th, 2008 at 8:54 PM
oh and windlight is nice. less lag, but the default orange sucks windowed dungeon.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:55 PM
I just payed 400 linden for my void sim will this mean if i had bought it two weeks later i had payed 250? ridiculous. The last two days the f*cking sim was down, and i pay 150 extra real life dollars for that. That sucks. Never thrust Linden Labs.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:16 PM
@34
the default viewr -is- now windlight. and it really blows. stability wise it is fine so long as you dont move the camera. move the camera on anything but a very small handful of cards it crashes. I was told flippantly “go get a better graphics card” by lindens. Well two of the ones i have are explicitly listed as supported by windlight, and yet… crash all the time, and thats WITH the most currant driver set.
if i dont crash from panning the camera i -still- freeze or get distorted graphics. the avitar imposters which are on by default lag my computer. The fact that the viewer STILL doesnt properly support duel and multicore machines has led to some of my friends having fried processors from the new client. And now they wnat to shove dazzle on us and make that required to.
HALT DAZZLE TILL YOU CNA GET THIS VERSION WORKING.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:04 PM
Well given that SL have instantly devalued my sims by 40% in the last hour - with no warning and no offer of compensation - and the myriad of issues I’ve had with the 1.19 viewer, and the serious faults with SL generally -
I’m selling up - as soon as I can get access to my About Land options.
So it’s gunna be goodbye to 5 O’Clock Somewhere folks…
/me walks away in tears again
April 7th, 2008 at 10:08 PM
You want to know what I find interesting. In that interview, the lady asking the questions asked how stability was going to be affected and it took her two times to get an answer out of the lindens.
Two times. And even then it was jumping back and forth over it. Oh were crossing our fingers it will help, no its not meant to help, its for frame rate.
Honestly unless the stability was going to be there, why release? They had to know it was going to cause an uproar…
April 7th, 2008 at 10:09 PM
My point was the settings are not hard to actually set just adjust the lighting sliders both sun/moon color wise and ambient wise to about and even level of .35 for sun/moon color and .28 for ambient… adjust to meet your needs… This will note overtly define to many shadows or make things look washed out.
Yes the defaults could be better but then whats the fun or point of even customizing options if the defaults are grand? Also for those not so technically inclined there are video tutorials on settings out there etc…Yes there should be easier ways to define stuff but using the argument that its casting shadows is a bit absurd unless you really wish the world to be as bland as it was?
You have these effects in real life and they happen and if you adjust the settings in SL you can still get something that looks close to the older client lighting wise… Could the defaults be better? Yeah but then everything could be better… I’ll concede things could be better
@41 all one needs to do is shut affinity properly. The odds of their processors flying from not utilizing multi-core technology is minimal if not 0% its absurd to even make that statement … Thats like saying if it didnt utilize 64 bit architectures it would fry it see the issue? With proper cooling and not trying to overclock or push it to far their cpu should of been fine.
Dazzle is in development by a different team as well and Windlight will still be worked on….
@40 this is unlikely as they didnt say prices were coming down on those regions
@33 I suppose this is a Laptop with a integrated Graphics Chipset…. I try to sway people away from using laptops for gaming for several reasons… 1. Airflow on laptops is horrid they usually have 1 poorly placed fan…. 2. Overheating caused by reason 1. 3. Poor graphics support (some higher end ones are ok) and 4. they simply arnt as powerful as a desktop is.
While i understand some people like to sit back and play games on a laptop they arnt the ideal solution for gaming or the like. LL lists supported video cards and unsupported some unsupported ones do work but when they dont anymore its not that big a shocker really is it?
Intel included no shaders up till some of their more recent integrated chipsets and some new ones look promising.
Whilst i agree that things could be better default setting wise people also need to try and play a little
Not everything can be handed to you or you never learn because you simply dont have to…
April 7th, 2008 at 10:21 PM
They moderate my posts because I speak the truth and they will most likely moderate this one as well even though I’m not saying very *much* bad about them.
I am leaving Second Life. It is the only way to let them truly know how I feel.
It is so sad I loved this place for years. I’m heart broken. They don’t listen to anyone so listen to this Linden Labs:
GOOD BYE
haha like they won’t moderate and keep this out.
I have REAL SKY IN REAL LIFE.
The mistakes they are making is incredible.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:39 PM
please continue the supply and support the non-windlight client as an alternative to the windlight based.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:08 PM
@46 you know how much extra development work that would actually cause?
April 7th, 2008 at 11:12 PM
Lina, give the option to set up things is nice, but anyone that studied RL design or any serious company knows that when they offer/launch a product, the product should be the most simple and usuable for the customer (and should work just nice), the customer shouldn’t have to see videos neither touch things to work propertly. It’s like if u buy a new car but u should manipulate the engine to run propertly, a customer shouldn’t have to manipulate the engine, then if u have passion and u like u can tuning the car and get better characteristics
April 7th, 2008 at 11:28 PM
Typical all the SERIOUS blogs prior to this have comments closed, and a light frothy happy one (this one) , people are allowed to comment on.
Shrugs, competiton is coming closer and a lot of Lindens will end up on the dole queues for their inability to grasp the concept of customer service and real communication.
We are thanked for our patience when we have no say or control over anything, I just hope none of those Lindens end up as waiters or at drive throughs, god help the customers then. On the bright side they will be exposed to their faults very quickly and succiently.
Why no blog on the F*UCKED up Asset Server that is impacting so many cutomers enjoyment of SL especially those trying to runa business and contribute to the economy and community of SL. Dead silence from Lindens, or if a hint is made, comments closed. Why are people being dnied the opportunity to question this?
For the Rememberance Day side distraction, can Lindens build a “Tomb for the Unknown Avie”, you know for all those millions of avies who slip out quietly never to return
April 7th, 2008 at 11:29 PM
Everybody I know is clawing their way back to the previous viewer, Windlight is far from ready…it makes everything look Walt Disney and sickly bright..the sun and water reflections are burning a hole in my screen. I set all at midday..but is that a solution?. Yes we can tweak the sliders, but if others see us looking awful whats the point. My 2000K piano is now white, my face detail ruined. Should you not go back to the drawing board and approach it from an avator and content angle? I am so depressed for SL now. Really sorry to be so negative..I know your trying to make things better for us, but if its like this, I’m going to be spending less time in SL now.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:38 PM
I agree with 44. It is simple. Most of the problems I have seen related to windlight is on nvidia cards. So if your Nvidia card is updated and you are still borked it is their fault not LLs.
I have Acer I bought in Jan because my dell was dying. This has integrated intel graphics and as well as dual core and my client runs fine.
People, 90% of your problem isn’t SL. It is the fact that system has trojans, worms, malware, adware, the damn Aero chewing up your cycles, and other junk.
If you are running Win XP, you should have NO MORE THAN 30 processes running period. Do not use Norton or Mcafee antivirus.
If you are running Vista, NO MORE THAN 70 of which 60 are system.
Turn off the aero interface, the sidebar, the useless glass and flip 3d i candy and the uAC for bhudda’s sake.
And you mac folks turn off all that extra crap you run in the background. You know what it is, all that i stuff.
SL is dynamic content that is constantly changing. This will tax even the best graphics cards.
Again, all other games (crysis, fall of liberty, Wow, Mass effect, gears of war, warhammer, halflife etc) have static content. Once its loaded, the other thing that changes is your position. So you can tweak your card. You can’t do that with SL.
Oh and Lindens, you did drop the ball so no back pat. It is time to change the minimum and recommended requirements. You haven’t changed them since 2005. Recommended becomes minimum and you create a new recommended.
Oh and enough of the backing of the bot herders.You won’t use the switch because of the bot herders. Bots are lazy code. I said it. They are lazy, dishonest code. And the people who do it know that the avatar has the biggest load and will still defend bots. So to you I say, you are no better than the ad farmers and the gold farmers of Wow and the PKers of UO and everquest.
So everyone who is having issues, check your computer. Get a decent antivirus (Kapersky, avg, avast, Nod32, comodo, Trend) quit paying to be reamed. thats a core reason why your system cant run SL. Norton and Mcaffee are eating your cycles.
Windows does rot you know. You should refresh at leat once a year.
I am done for the moment.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:51 PM
Desidelia Vella, I expect my customers to be intelligent adults. This means they have functional brains and can figure out the product. However, this has a steep learning curve. You have to learn how to interact. But so does programming, and graphic design, aircraft maintenence, practicing law or medicine, or piloting, or hell being a chef.
Videos are expected. ANYTHING Worth doing won’t be easy. Easy is lazy and valueless.
“the product should be the most simple and usuable for the customer” this statement assumes that the person is stupid. Everything has built in complexity. It is called learning. You aren’t supposed to stop under the day you exit this life.
So SL is hard. OK. It is demanding of the system. OK. I can name a hundred RL things that are too.
Personally, I see WL as a good thing.
Excluding what I mentioned in my earlier post, and the borked asset cluster, 90% of the bad experiences of WL are PEBKaC related. Yes, I said it. PEBKaC has poorly configured system. System fails. Sometimes it is epic fail. I bet if I went to Skygirls location, the piano would look fine to me. Why? Because my system isn’t afflicted with PEBKaC.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:53 PM
Since i downloaded the new version i cannot see avtars properly they look like skinned and fresh from hannibal lector, e.g. my avtar is wearing her head between her legs. I hope Linden will fix the problems, or maybe for older computers provide the older sl version.
Thank you for help.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:09 AM
I have never complained about SL, aside from in jest because of lag, buggy stuff. I have always had faith that the Grid was a work in progess.
This frankly stinks. The avatars are hideous looking. Even with the lovely facelights provided by BareRose, as a feeble attempt to make them look better, there is no photorealism. It looks alien and wrong. Certainly not what I paid for.
For the last day, since your lovely ‘upgrade’ to Havok4 and insisting on Windlight for the standard viewer, it has been NOTHING but chaos. I just bought a brand new SUPPORTED graphics card (exclusively for Secondlife) and upgraded my ram from 1 gig to 2 gigs. For everything else I do, the onboard graphics cards did the trick. Now my computer is being completely fuktarded. Completely. Hard crashes, my settings for my graphics card needing to be changed on a regular basis. I even rolled back to a previous driver version in an attempt to stay in SL for longer than a few minutes.
No my settings are not jacked all the way up. I have them on minimum and I still have these issues.
You are losing the average person’s support. Make Windlight an OPTIONAL viewer, one that can be used sorta like the first look and release candidates are now. Let US choose what our sky looks like, and our water, and OUR experience.
You keep ruining the good things we have instead of fixing what needs to be fixed. Not exactly wise.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:14 AM
And Thunderclap, not EVERYONE is a tech.
In fact most people aren’t. The AVERAGE person isn’t. The average person is who buys and spends Lindens. The average person just wants it to be plug and play.
Being in intellectual elitist might make you feel good on that side of the monitor, but that doesn’t help the percentage of average users who are going to give up and walk away, and it certainly doesn’t help LL.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:22 AM
Seems that all versions of windlight and the last viewer 1.19.1 (with windlight inside) makes 95% of users unhappy.(lights,shades,shiny,stability…..are a flop)
Why dont you simply mix skys and water (the only things we like of it) with the best viewer we remember 1.19.0
April 8th, 2008 at 12:43 AM
So Thunderclap (I.E. Noname Linden) returns.
You more than most miss the point. Microchannel, like Windlight was the superior product. Betamax was superior to VHS. Why are neither around anymore. Because while people were tauting the “superiority” of their super products, the less intelligent among us were buying the product that showed immediate benefits.
You have many valid points, as does Linden Lab. The problem is that most of the customers here are being killed by the superior product. Instead of mouthing your supercilious pompass attitude, perhaps you should consider making viable suggestions to help people get their stuff to work. Without us less intelligent adults your cost will soon skyrocket. Or perhaps you can create a perfect world where your wonder acer can run to it’s hearts content.
My system works just fine by the way. Except I can’t TP, can’t purchase L$, have stale transactions and about half the time I am the only one able to log onto the system. It’s great to have the ability to log in and play with myself.
As for laptop users. Again, you miss the point. Many of us less intelligent adults work for companies that have to travel on business (i.e. known as work). I have a hard time lugging my 50 pound desktop and 30″ monitor with me in business class. Most hotels that I travel with have a hard time providing me with a T1 line that I can use for play.
Second Life is a community. That is what it has been marketed as. That’s the purpose of all the advertising to get mom and pop away from the TV version of CSI. Mom and pop aren’t going to buy new acers to enjoy the experience. Since I’ve worked in technology for most of the last 30 years I have a difficult time explaining SL to my friends who ask about it. Yes, they want you to come and visit, but you can’t use your computer because it takes a dedicated computer to play this game. The look most people give you when you tell them that is facinating. As for 90% of the problem being in people’s computers perhaps you should read the posts from the Linden’s themselves about the ever growing lists of bugs. Are the tickets sitting for weeks and months on end the result of faulty home computers?
Your right about the steep learning curve. I was amazed when Benjamin Linden didn’t know what NCI or TUi was at a recent office visit. That may be part of the steep learning curve. Do we need to show our Mensa cards to play? This isn’t setup as a touring box, this is a game and social network.
I should not single you out. You are not the actual problem, but a symptom of the greater problem. This blog is the only outlet for people because most of the time they have no recourse to complain. The serious blogs are closed before a single comment can be made and the teams at Linden Lab that do a good job are quick to respond to problems. The problem is that if I make the best sports car in the world and the team that builds the wheels makes them square, you can tell me how fast it is, how pretty it is, and how great the gas mileage is….but it still won’t drive. You would tell me it was because I had the wrong radio station on and it was using up all the electricity so the motor didn’t turn over. I would point to the square wheels. Perhaps that is just one more unintelligent adults opinion.
By the way, Thunder, for what it’s worth, I am writing this on my IBM ThinkPad X60, with unsupported Intel Graphics card, set at much higher than the normal settings, using XP, with Microsoft OneCare for the virus protection…and funny thing, it worked fine, in default settings, using a wireless access point that is getting less than 5.5 mb here at the airport. How the hell did I do that on such an obsolete dumb system.
This exact same system will not load SL in Dallas with a much better connection. It will in Phoenix, it will not in Kansas City. Could it be, I dare say, an infrastructure problem in parts of the system that are screwing these people.
Since you’re so technically adept. Perhaps you should not bother hanging out with us common folks who use our real SL identity on the Blog. I would love to see what would happen if Linden Lab required us to use our SL identity to post here. Perhaps the era of the LL fan would die a quick death.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:50 AM
I hate to do a back to back but couldn’t resist. This blog is almost 12 hours old and it hasn’t filled up. I don’t think the number of people having problems has shrunk. They are giving up and not even bothering to post any more. Pretty soon it will be only the fanboys here and there will be no more nasty posts.
Putting on my rose colored glasses and reaching for another hit of Soma
April 8th, 2008 at 2:03 AM
Pastrami and Thunderclap are well up the creek with this one.
Perhaps they should look just a few blog entries ago, to when this crap 1.19 viewer was made mandatory. Mandatory for what, may I ask? To accommodate Windshite and Havoc (yes with a c, vehicles, rotations, falling and stumbling at the top of stairs and low objects). That’s really the limit of the physics I see and things are WORSE. As for WL, well won’t run on my ATI card system at above 0.7fps (down from 20+) which is a joke, so like about 50% of people we have it turned off anyway. How DARE you say it’s optimised for older graphics cards lmfao. Yes, in that blog post you admitted 50% raved and 50% swore at you and that was after just one day of release! So then you make it mandatory the next day! Then everything falls over on the asset servers. Then there are weekend problems you say were the ISP, but funny how every time the system falls over after a new unwanted shiny is introduced it gets blamed on someone else.
Well the WL team is responsible for the appalling lighting system and failure to properly survey users, just relying on your chums and ending up with stupid cartoony bright light colours that don’t match the previous viewer. You have just wrecked all the work of clothing designers and builders, and what happens with the people who can’t use it? You’ve not only not colour matched the lighting to the way it was before, so nothing in the future is matched, you have created a two tier society.
And you think everyone is going to rush out and buy a new graphics card or computer in the middle of a recession? lol. And hang on, up until last week everyone said ATi was crap, nVidia was the way to go, and now Thunderclap says it’s all nVidia cards with the problems? lmao. What should be all get next boys? Intel?
Well, I tell you what, just check out the Mac user group, for stories of graphics glitches, or the SLX forums for PC woes, even pics of semi invisible avatars. Disappearing prims while watching. Is that Windshite, the server code, or the borked comms systems since 1.15, or the huge asset server problems?
You guys just don’t have a clue do you? Should have listened to the Open Letter a whole year ago. We told you then. So now, you have two months where Active Users have dropped consecutively, which is why you haven’t dared announce the fact that the February Key Metrics are finally out, because they are very bad. People have already been leaving globally. In big time numbers. That’s why Cory got the boot. And actually Active Users and Premiums have been static for 10 months, not growing like Philip says, that’s your own Key Metrics boys, so that’s why Philip has to step down as CEO - the company is shrinking not growing.
And why is that? Because you insisted on forcing unwanted shinies on us (Voice is real popular huh? Where have all the Voice fan boys gone by the way?) when what we wanted is more stability and less borks, to actually FIX FIX FIX things, and stop reborking things you’ve already fixed with every new shiny based on old code base. But oh no, you know better, the Tao of Linden way. Ha ha. Coming home to roost now.
So having got this far, what is their bright idea? Let’s add on these new shinies with extra db load onto the already borked asset servers, and get a new continent ready, so we can add yet more load on them before we fix them.
And then the master stroke! Lower the land price. Make it so all those sucker landlords have lost so much money, they’ll have to stay, and we can get more sucker noobs to cough up. Well, they aren’t coming in any more are they? Euros have dropped off by a third or more, the Japs and Brazilians have gone, because you didn’t bother with language support, ability to buy Lindens, or do anything about time zone friendly hours. I mean you announce this the very day after the worst weekend ever on SL, with the longest outage since the December 2006 20K concurrency 13 hour downtime fiasco, even though the whole thing has been borked the rest of the weekend, and for the weeks since this server code was deployed, server code so that we could run… Windlight and Havok!!!!
So you ARE responsible for that too. Stop passing the buck. If there are any customers left after this, and my, LL’s PR skills have always been minimal, but this weekend will be mandatory in Marketing 101 about how NOT to do it, there may be enough to pay for your pink slips, because I sincerely hope the new CEO’s first action will be to fire the lot of you, and get some decent coders and network people in, support staff, and PR people. Probably everyone bar the cleaner needs to be fired.
Then there is a slim chance, a very slim chance, SL might still be around this time next year. Roll on Google…
The other option, which seems more tempting and realistic as time goes by, is that SL is just one big Ponzi, suckering noobs…
April 8th, 2008 at 2:15 AM
Oh, I forgot to mention, although you’ll probably see this first, since my main comments are in moderation, if you do, by some chance, stick around, you can use the old viewer.
Either download and use the OnRez one, from http://viewer.onrez.com as that is still 1.18.5.3 and has, incidentally a superior UI, these guys, unlike LL, seem to know what they are doing, like separate browser window, better menus, remembers last 8 tps and hosts of others, like old style functional and efficient comms windows.
Or you can simply put -channel windshite in your properties path argument and hey presto, you can still run the old viewer and avoid all the problems!
April 8th, 2008 at 2:25 AM
@57 If it’s not LL’s code, very likely to be infrastructure problem. Check out this BBC report. It’s all about corporate greed and how it has wrecked the US internet infrastructure:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7329992.stm
April 8th, 2008 at 5:02 AM
I read the Windlight transcript, studied the land price changes, lived through the last weekend (on my so inadequate was top-of-the-line iMac) and these are my thoughts:
LL needs a retreat at Pajaro to work out a concise focused business plan that involves the answers to these questions and issues:
Can your firm go public without mass market customer access?
Will you have mass market access with the **absolute need** for a home computer that is in excess of what 70-80 -99% of the home market because of the Windlight based client and other issues ? For the homes with these high end systems (Fortune 500 families etc.-what usage can be expected? What revenue stream? What loyalty factor? What value to your commercial product placers?)
For the creatives-which includes college design students etc.-how many will be able to access and function in current system-either because of the system needs or the down time. With a smaller steady client population because of the computer requirements, does it pan out for creatives to continue to produce for SL?
The land prices and increase in regions etc. What demands will that make on the servers? Sure revenue now-but long term– how does retention of customers suffer when they are spread out? SL is a social world for the majority of people. Population density decrease impacts ability to interact. Already seeing the chain stores pop up in new sims-fabulous products-but long term how will that fare? How will SL keep its creative edge-how to keep and get new fresh product?
Bottomline, is SL is place, a game, a world where almost anyone can come in on a reasonable computer-maybe with lousy default settings –cartoon skies etc and quickly easily learn and live and have a social life or creative life—or is SL to be for the high end computer user who is willing to , on occasion, survive delays and log offs and missed meetings with friends for some time on with great skies and state-of-the art features.
I love SL. I respect the creatives past and present . I KNOW the Linden teams bled into their mouses to make these HUGE changes so much and so fast. If there was a Nobel for what they have done on the cutting edge of graphics-they deserve it .
Hands down. ((hugs)).
But it is as if SL went Wright brothers to a G5 private jet–when the world needed a nice comfy 757. Room for all. And a pretty good movie system to get you there. Not cutting edge but pretty good.
It is binary- mass versus elite. Make a choice, convey it , execute it.
April 8th, 2008 at 5:21 AM
I wish people would STOP posting how it’s our computers or settings. The bare fact is SL is badly broken and all this raving about Windlight which causes 95 percent of users a big headache is making it so much worse.
WE DON’T WANT WINDLIGHT. We want the asset servers to work and TP’s to work and Group IM to work. And we sure as hell don’t want Windlight if it means all our laptop using friends are now locked out.
Six months ago I recommended to my school we look at opening a campus in SL. I am withdrawing that suggestion, as our students are all on laptops and LL has just told them, we don’t give a fuck about you.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:31 AM
And thunderclap is no matter of intelligence of people and to be honest an intelligent program is that is powerfull and simple, design exists for something, and design a program is not just making it more beauty, is making it accesible, simple, faster, usefull, intuitive, universal and definitive better.
“the product should be the most simple and usuable for the customer” this statement DON’T assumes that the person is stupid, u maybe thunderclap assumes that the persons are stupid.
The persons have the right to learn or not, but a program should’t obligate them. And can come a doctor, lawer, pilot, chef, etc and maybe the only thing they wanna do is sit in front the screen, connect SL and talk with people, and NO, they don’t wanna spend time neither learning X hours after maybe more than 10 hard hours of working plus all the time expend in the family.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:35 AM
@62. Great post Norma. “It is binary- mass versus elite. Make a choice, convey it, execute it.”
I think they have. Gotta be a geek, English speaking, US time zone, rich, and spend more time downloading, installing and troubleshooting the lastest shinies, gizmos, patches and versions than actually doing anything. Oh and pro open source and not actually pay for anything. Except to Linden for the privilege. And being able to arbitrarily close or ignore others’ JIRA entries is an added bonus too. We might as well leave them to their sad and lonely selves.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:46 AM
wl rocks! thanks guys! good work.
i have an ati card, and it doesnt run wl too good with all shaders, but i blame shitty ati drivers
now please give us a new avatar mesh! maybe 2 this time
and keep the old one so people dont need to whine 
April 8th, 2008 at 7:56 AM
@ Thunderclap
“And you mac folks turn off all that extra crap you run in the background. You know what it is, all that i stuff.”
Oh, very nice. And it still gives me a performance loss of 50% compared to 1.18. Nicholaz?
Hey. i wonder if you are aware that a lot of creatives and institutions use Macs, and not the very latest ones. There is a somewhat high percentage of Mac users into SL, because SL naturally attracts the creatives and the creative agencies by nature. This group is important for the wellness of SL.
Do you really expect them to run around SL on 5 fps with NO shaders enabled, unable to create anything senseful anymore, unable to even resize the application window and perform basic tasks? Why did the viewer work acceptable in 1.17, somehow a bit slower in 1.18 on Max Settings, while 1.19 completely refuses to operate on any AGP mac on Minimum settings - and slows down performance significally on every Intel mac? As well as it slows down any PC even high end ones? Why? What for?
Can you explain this? I cannot.
But i can see the results, and these will cause a major exodus of Mac users. Your statement tells me that your exclusive high tekkie view on things may be the reason for that desaster, cause it may be shared by some Lindens.
It is like someone mentioned before. IF linden lab wants a “metaverse”, they must provide ppl with an open platform, accessible for a wide range of social as well as professional groups and a computer platform ranging at least from lower middle class to upper midrange - and guarantee continuity.
The internet would NEVER have survived if only the high tekkies like you had been able to use it, you know. And it certainly would never been of interest for ANY business if it had restricted itself on a user base made of owners of high end pro gaming computers and tekkies.
And in case LL decides to proceed with raising harware demands (and costs for the potential average user) the way it carelessly did by introducing Windlight, this will become nothing more than another high end pro gamer platform, which will have to compete with other high end pro gamer platforms for attracting a very limited number of high end pro tekkies and gamers. But even Blizzard´s successful WoW beats SL by MILES if it comes to frame rates and overall performance on midrange systems.
So where is the sense? I CAN understand the tekkie view on things. But i do not think this is the direction LL should move to.
But obviously they do so.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:05 AM
@63 some macs have issues yes. Again macs in general arnt really built for gaming (resulting from apple pretty much completely controlling the mac hardware market) While this create less compatibility problems with apps that are out there (IE they only need to design for a hand full of configurations it does at times leave a lack in performance…. There is also the fact that Mac’s GLSL support is kinda off.
Hence if you read the transcript there are mac optimizations they had to do and they worked directly with Apple to do them. As far as what SL will run on. It will run on what is considered a low end graphics card these days…. An intel integrated or a legacy nvidia series wll not work all that well….. I’d say at minimum that people should be running at least a higher 5000 series…. 6800 GS if you can find it as AGP runs Windlight on high settings and i use it every day…
CPU: AMD K7 (Unknown model) (1669 MHz)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 6800 GS/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
OpenGL Version: 2.1.1
People whine about performance and stuff but my system isnt that good and runs windlight fine. You dont need a high end computer at all to run SL….. I have Windlight on high settings , with water reflections added in and a high sky mesh detail….. I get at least 15 FPS (unless im around a crowd) Previous i got at max 12 FPS in the same spot…. There are a good deal of reasons why SL might seem to run slower including newly downloaded software….. New updates, memory leaks in other applications etc, there can also be memory leaks in SL.
But this may not directly relate to the way SL looks. Frame Rates havent dropped for me at all so Im quite clueless what is going on there, Most companies do not adamantly support unsupported hardware like integrated graphics chips , or legacy graphics cards …..
This isnt really even a tekkie view on things its progression and while people may not like it directly things are going to need to progress at some point. Same with computers as someone said before Windows needs to be reinstalled every so often. People running vista need to turn some stuff off and it still has some intermediate problems with Vista.
You need to keep in mind not many companies support Linux , OSX and Windows…… So there are bound to be glitches along the way. Also wait for optimizations. This is still not a 100% require viewer and will run fantastic with only basic shahders on…. I’ve run Windlight for awhile and i can run it on my system prefectly fine…. The question is why arnt other people able to if their systems are “better”? As someone said it comes down to care and a ton of other variables.
A high end computer with