HDR in Secondlife?

Hey guys, have you seen Torley's latest pictures?

It looks like she's using a client with HDR or bloom or custom shaders? Anyone know?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/sets/72157594252851295/

http://torley.com/

example :

Looks more like it's just Photoshopping. I'd quite like to see some HDR as it really helps stopping things looking flat.

lol/lulz/lolio/roflcopter/lollerskates.

No, really. Beyond the gooning, I doubt we'll see HDR or shaders in SL for a long, long time.

Shaders really were tried in early 1.10 (or was it 1.9?) preview, but too many people with computers from 1998 threw a fit.

Looked great, worked fine on pretty much anything semi-modern, but wasn't able to be completely turned off for those folks with PIII-866's and GeForce MX200's out there.

I think that's just the effects Torley does himself. HDR isn't going to happen foreva.

It'll happen right after SpeedTree.

Were they really in the 1.10 preview at some time Michi? I never saw them but didn't try each version of the preview. 1.9 was already in place when I joined.

While I'm sure it was tough for them to develop a Preferences system to completely cover the additions, it could havebeen achieved. In the end, though, Linden Lab is going to have to make up its mind: is this a 3D platform or Legos (more like Tinker Toys)?

The PIII and MX crowds should just be ignored. Sorry if you're too poor to pick up a system with DirectX 9 support (I mean, c'mon, they cost like $300 at Best Buy, how could we ever afford that?), but this lowest-common-denominator cow-towing is a better explanation for the limited behind-the-hood changes I've asked about than anything I've heard before. That is truly sad.

If your computer is less powerful than an Xbox (basically a six-year-old PC with even less RAM) you shouldn't be running 3D anything. HDR, true bump-mapping, normal-mapping, multiple types of shaders (even more since the Xbox 360 model and the accompanying DirectX 10 changes) and more should not be held back because of a vocal minority of people who don't truly own hardware capable of creating modern 3D environments.

These features have been implemented in simulators and games for over three years, before Second Life's public release. We're not talking big bucks here, we're talking about capabilities in every machine for the last few years. I truly hope we're not all suffering to support a few people who don't realize that MX graphics cards were designed for 2D.

What I want to know is why his client has that nifty "Start Location" drop down box and ours doesn't?

You can turn on the Start Location drop down box in the preferences.

My guess is Photoshopping. I like to do this myself, too.

For example, here's an image from Second Life that I spiced up using a simulated bloom shader and fade DOF (depth of field). Oh, and a blob-shadow.

It wasn't as much issue of good enough hardware, but compatibility. Xbox is one hardware and driver configuration, if you get it working as developer, it'll work for 10 of your customers. Meanwhile, 10 PCs is highly likely to mean entirely 10 different graphics cards and drivers, each implementing suggested standard in its own way.

LL couldn't get the shaders to work across wide enough range of hardware, so in what seems to be typical fashion the idea entirely was dropped entirely and shelved until one of programmers feels like tackling it again (and likely gives up again after few days or hours)

I've been saying this since Day 1 when I got here.

It's like expecting Microsoft to still support your computer running Windows 3.1

They were. I was mistaken though, it was in 1.9. For a little while, in preview (I believe it was up until 1.9.0.24 preview), we had things like shiny-on-transparent, shadows on the ground from the trees/sun, very realistic looking shiny, specularity based on the sun, and all sorts of good stuff.

I remember someone complaining that the 'preferences were too complicated' and that the shaders wouldn't run on their G4 1.2ghz with Radeon 9000.

The night before the release, it all went away.

The official line was that the new shaders weren't ready for primetime yet. From what I saw, they nearly were. (Even on such cards as a GF6200 i tested on, I believe you can get those for $21 from Newegg.)

There was a lot of this in the forums and in world, "But a new graphics card costs $40! / I can't afford $40". I guess you have to respect everyone's individual situation, but also, SL has to advance some. Really. And it was looking *SO* good.

Unfortunately, GLSL/enhanced shaders are probably up on that shelf with HDR, SpeedTree, and physics enhancements.

What sucks is, we actually got to see some of it for a moment. Then it was taken away.

I still have screenshots if anyone's interested.

oh. And speaking of running SL on old machines...

So I wasn't dreaming.

It was possible to mix shiny/transparency in the 1.10 (when it was still 1.9.something) preview grid...

Screw the "$40 too much!" folks, I got a nice gaming rig here. LL should give us these shaders back!

Of course, I'd be happy also to get more than 13 FPS out of this system too... (Back when 1.10 first came out, I was getting 50+ FPS in areas where now I get around the low-teens.)

I'd like to see those screenshots.

Something weird about the FPS. I've noticed that most of the time when I first connect, I'm getting 50-60 FPS, even after everything I can see has completely loaded, textures and all. It's glorious walking around for like 1-2 minutes and then the FPS crashes by half for no discernable reason and never goes up again.

ROFLSKATEZ I used that photo at the bottom to weed out those who follow the links and those who unintelligently would reply to yet another thread.

I did HDRish SL like games last year when ATI actually had smart shader as part of their driver package. Also did cartoon and 50's OGL. But for some unknown and maybe marketing reason? ATI has pulled this feature a few drivers back. So no HDR for me in OGL games that don't support it.

I do not think Torley has any ultrapowerful hardware that would apply that glowing, saturation and vignetting effect in the picture or a thirdparty software to run online.
However once you save an SS you can edit in Photoshop, if I remember there is a tool called Kai Power tools that applies a "Dream filter"

Also there is a free software released by Google called Picasa that allows you to edit like this (in less than 15 seconds):



I picked up michi´s screenshot since it is already posted in the thread and you can compare the results.

Actually she does have an Opteron.



And smartshaders used to do this 2-3 years ago. Yeah when Doom 3 came we added HDR using that.

It's true that the Xbox is a closed platform, but it still runs basically as a PC.

The old hardware compatibility arguments went out of style quite a number of years ago. Pick any 3D app off the shelf and try to find how many people can't make their modern ATI or NVidia cards work with it. For those who do have problems, watch how quickly the companies resolve them through driver patches. It's one thing if you are doing all the code yourself, but if you're using an API you can use whatever feedback comes in as result of incompatibilities to find common root errors and either fix them or find out what's breaking in the driver.



After I joined I tried searching and chatting and heard about Haok, Renderer 2.0 and other projects. I always assumed that since they were in development long before I joined they'd be "right around the corner". I'm glad this thread has taught me there are reasons other than "they don't want to do it" for delays.


I guess I'm not respecting everyone's situation. Given the "System Requirments" post to Second Life Answers a while back, the Lindens are obviously expecting users to have high-end hardware.

Like Karsten I'd love to see those screenshots. I'm hoping that if more people understand the changes things like SpeedTree and Physics would make there would be more demand for that work as opposed to endless UI updates.

The way i see it, if SL can run on old machines like that then SL isn't all that advanced. For pete sake my mothers old compaq can run it using a intel extreme video chip and 256MB ram... Thats pretty sad. LL it's time to upgrade LOL. This is the reason furcadia still looks the same way it did 10 years ago. people refuse to get with the times and the gaming companies try to be nice to them... I know the time will come when my geforce 256MB 6200 will no longer be able to get me into SL. When that day comes i'l log into yahoo messenger and tell my friends l'm upgrading and will be back after. believe me a new video card is worth spending money on if it keeps me happy.

Random comment from the peanut gallery: this is quite accurate. I happen to use my Xbox as a home server, proxy, mail daemon, and IRC gateway. Generic x86 (read: standard PC) programs work perfectly on it. So, yes. It literally is a PC, sans the software to start.

Heck, you can even run Blender on it.


Carry on.

aye xbox = intel p3 @700mhz and a geforce3 TI, i got one for basicly next to nothing as a linux based mame machine/media pc, bout the only thing non standard (as far as hardware design) is the bios and some bus things on the video card

btw it was released 1 year before sl with pixelshaders

anywho theres a ton of 3d entertainment applications that run with or without full dx9 support, altho in this day and age your going to be hard pressed to find one, so i hope LL pushes forward in this department

that is after most aicent bugs are actually fixed

I just looked at torleys blog about the linux SL client CD ISO download. It's basicly a suped up Knoppix. I tested this and it has much better FPS then the windows client. XD Whoever worked on this client needs to be put in charge of the others afterwords. Yea it has crashes and bugs but they can be fixed. One bug thats definatly noticable is group tags show up twice hehe. I can just see this working. Free everything! XD

Linux > Winbloat.

Ps who ever made the cd plz make one with ATI drivers too <3