shadow texture layer

Shadow mapping information can still be staticly diven, not everything is dymanic Eep which can help while we wait for computers and the most connection speeds to catch up to the point where dymanic lighting and shadow is possible. Kyrah did correct herself and so should I lightmaps and shadow maps are different things but! shadowmap data isn't restricted to dymanic passes so run out and grab 3d studio, every piece of lighting depth reflection/refraction, shadow, spec, lighting, and diffuse information can be baked out and set aside for later compositing thats allll this is scary isn't it? in SL compositing and some basic layer effects.

And what happens when someone walks in with a lit attachment on? Oops. Drive through.

You continue to forget (or are just so obviously clueless to) the fact that THOSE GAMES USE PRE-RENDERED LIGHTMAPS! SL ain't pre-rendered. Duh-freakin'-uh.

Note:"lighting"

Seems your terms aren't the only thing that needs correction:

Psst, "baking" still takes time and ain't real-time. Again, look at avatars and how long skin/clothing texture redownloads take due to "baking" (stupid term, incidentally--never liked it).

Um, just because the SERVER can run on Linux doesn't mean the CLIENT has to. Active Worlds does exactly this but its server ALSO runs on Windows. Imagine that! Linux isn't the end-all be-all for running servers, you know!

LL should've designed SL better in the first place, then. <shrug> Rewrite it CORRECTLY this time.

I doubt it. Macs barely even have like 5% of the computer market. Linux MIGHT have more but it's just servers mostly (i.e. web servers) and not for NORMAL user use ("PCs". Linux is still far too user-UNfriendly for most people. Macs are just TOO friendly (i.e. a stupid pet trick for brainless artsy fartsy snobs who have money to burn on a closed, propietary system). I'll stick to Windows--thanks.

Never have I said this.

2 words: Open DirectX. It's already free; what's the problem?

"Um...yea." (Lumberg, Office Space). Punctuation CAN work if used correctly...please improve yours before continuing to converse with me further. Regardless of your lacking textual communication skills, you too forget the fact that SL is a REAL-TIME-RENDERED environment.

Because the whole point to Direct X was to kill OpenGL, because Microsoft didn't control OpenGL. Expecting Microsoft to pull the stick out and support OpenGL properly is like expecting them to support Wine or Samba or Mono directly.

You are dead to me.

Microsoft's not going to have much of a choice if more and more developers choose OpenGL over Direct3D. The only thing left to do is either give in to OpenGL (and help make it THE API) or make Direct3D completely free like OpenGL is (which I always thought it was but apparently not according to another poster in this thread).

But, again, why can't OpenGL 2 simply be installed like DirectX is? Surely an opengl32.dll 2.0 can be plopped in SL's directory like GLIntercept's is (which, incidentally, uses OpenGL 2.0 for "GLSL and other logging interfaces".

could you avoid hijacking this tread that is here to discuss about usermade lightmapping in sl and not opengl versus direct3D,

create your own thread for that

Um, no thread hijacking is occuring, Kyrah. Whether you know it or not, the 3D API is related to shadows and every other visual effect you see rendered onscreen. A discussion about OpenGL vs. Direct3D is indeed QUITE relevant and I see no reason to continue the discussion in a new thread. Perhaps you should learn more about involved technologies before posting in the future and having your suggestion ripped apart by the community. Welcome to the real world.

Looking at it active layers would be a wonderful addition instead of baking it down, being able to actively place additional texture with various transparencies or alpha masks atop of each other. This is how people do it anyway now, I've got a few pieces of furniture that pull off this effect nicely but it takes 3 extra prims to do it.

But knowing how SL currently is this would most likely end up getting baked out anyway at some point or another. I've only seen a few systems that support active texture placement and that was on nurbs surfaces which aren’t really used in game environments.

My guess is that something like this will happen at some point but it will most likely be in the next version of the SL render engine, the current one really hasn’t change render wise since I started over three years ago. New features keep getting added but none of the fundamental aspects have changed, with the expectation of partials I think, there was a big change on those back in I’d like to say it was 2004. Please correct me on these points if I’m wrong.

On the OpenGL side, I'll try to explain this as best I can, DirectX and OpenGL are hardwired into the Windows Kernel, the upper libraries aren't but the low level communication ones are. So we're stuck with it for now, on various *nix based OS this is done through a module, such as the X11 subsystem. A good number of these are open source and can be changed to accept new code, on Windows and the basic display module for OS X this is not the case, the user has access to nothing, they use what Microsoft provides, or they use nothing at all. Why this is who knows I'd guess they never thought anyone would feel the need to develop their own graphical interface, or perhaps they don't want people to build things that compete against direct3d. Anyway this means that any code implemented at a higher level is converted down into 1.5 function calls. The library being spoken of is just there to help applications use it for the opengl api, it's really just a wrapper and extends opengl somewhat a bit using higher level functions, GLintercept is just something that sits between it all and dumps it to physical files. I hope that makes sense, I had several people explain this to me and I still don't quite get all of it, anyway for further information check out OpenGL.org or go on a Google hunt, those are always fun.

KDE passed the user friendliness and abilities of windows xp ages ago.
Package management availible on linux passed Windows's installation software quirks and abilities ages ago.

If you're going to bash the console abilities on Linux, windows has nothing compared to it unless you install 3rd party software like cygwin or WFU. The default console applications on windows systems are barely usable. Infact Windows Vista is said to have a new CLI comming because it's been lacking a decent one since windows first started.

If you're going to bash the fact that Linux requires you to configure things in the console, please come to 2006. There are plenty of graphical, easy to use GUI systems for setting up things (Yast, Drakconf etc.)

Development tends to be friendlier on Linux, with the exception that Microsoft's latest IDE has a... SPELL CHECKER! So lawyers can make sure they type "sharesource" licenses with propper grammar in comments!


One has a rapidly changing language, that after 2-3 version, the software that uses it is no longer properly hardware accelerated and only supported on one series of operating systems.

The other is slightly slower.

this discussion is irrelevant since LL is not gonna drop mac users or linux users, thus opengl is what we have and only what we will have

Um, at least TRY to reply correctly to quoted text, Kyrah. Nowhere in my quoted text did it mention LL dropping Mac/Linux users. The OpenGL/DirectX discussion relates to SHADOWMAPS mainly.

Stop thinking every little mention of something else BESIDES your beloved shadowmaps is grounds for irrelevant discussion. Learn to think relatively and get a clue.

[Intro] I put this little disclaimer here to warn you that thsi is a rant, and it may not be suitable for elitist standards. By reading ahead, you release me of all responsibility over your lost time. And if this turns out to be a waste of space too, I will gladly give up the L$1 of effort it took for the servers to keep this post here.
You have been warned [/Intro]


I seem to remember reading (just now, as i went from start to finish of this topic) that Eep, a while back, said that Half-Life, original Half-Life, was a bad example for light maps because its lighting overall sucked.

But let me point something out, and I swear it just MIGHT blow your mind and put a lot more in perspective so you better brace yourself.

You ready?

Are you sure?

Okay.

SECONDLIFE'S LIGHTING SUCKS MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!!!!

FORGET trying to strive for oblivion, doom3, or even HL2-level lighting when we can't even do the kind of crap that's been done everywhere else since TEN YEARS AGO! One step at a TIME, people!! Even if something SUCKED, if it sucked LESS than SL, emulating that facet of it is still an improvement, and if we can do it easily, we'd better damned well do it quickly!

And it BETTER be easy--ten years for chrissakes--Here's another heaping spoonful of perspective for you. Thrice that ammount of time ago, my Texas Instruments TI-86 Graphing Calculator would've made the computer labs at NASA #@%! themselves with its AWESOME CALCULATING POWER. Remember the univac? Took up an entire room? cost thusands and thousands of dollars? weighed in at TONS and consumed Las Vegas' breakfast worth of power? Well today, we sell its equivalent in drugstores and checkout queues at supermarkets for 3 about bucks a pop, they weigh scarcely over an ounce, and don't even need freakin' BATTERIES (solar).

Is SL Slow because we're supposed to believe that its lofty rendering functions are 'higher quality' or some bull#@%&? Well I don't SEE -That- -Much- quality here, NOT EVEN AS A SLIDESHOW!

No, I don't think lightmaps can possibly be processing-heavy unless we MAKE them that way. If we just went for the throat on this, to get that and JUST that, no bells and whistles of anything else to muddy the water and screw it up trying to make it more than we want ti to be, i'll run just FINE and not cost a ball of lint. maybe all that was required was a little change of outlook. Go for as much simplicity and trueness to form as you can.

let me remind you we aren't in the "general" section we are in the "feature suggestions" section, where peoples propose features and discuss it, not where they derivate from one topic to another.

btw we talk about LIGHTMAPS not shadowmaps

i smell a troll nearby and it's not me

If this were 1998 I think we could have a really great discussion about that, but then Microsoft broke OpenGL for multiple video cards, so people writing flight simulators and the like were forced to go with DirectX.

But everywhere else used the assistance of prerendering, however, you can jump back to 1998 and use the techniques people used todo certain 'prerendering' features when the engine didn't support that actual prerendering natively, and build the features yourself in SL, which is possible right now (you can't use modern prerendering techniques,[built into the game engine] on SL, it's a dynamic enviroment, comparing it to a doom map where nothing changes is pointless).

It's also valuable to note, that while people may not specify where shadows/light sources are etc. in some modern map editors for games, the map editors do have features (usually a default setting) to generate the map with lighting information etc. If you've ever worked in such map editors, you'll notice it takes forever for them to save because of this (a few minutes on a athlon64 system I'v expirenced). And you're telling me that SL should do this perfectly in real time?

If you want to compare SL to HL2, go ahead, HL2's engine can't handle open spaces well at all (so you have to make maps in boxes), it can't handle the amount of static items that are in Sims on SL as static object. It can do pretty drop shadows though, although it'll probably be at 1fps on a modern system. Many games have the same limitations HL2 do and nevermind the fact that probably cannot handle dynamic objects etc.



It wasn't even possible todo real time lighting effects on objects several years ago without the need of a farm of powerful computers, and even then, it probably had a low FPS.



No it wouldn't. You do know they still use 70,80,90s technology there, because it's reliable and never had issues, right? NASA don't really care about computing power as much as tested reliability, which takes years.



No, SL is slow because the hardware is slow at doing real time work without any prerendering help.



I suggest you submit new specifications to hardware manufactoers and software developers on exactly how one can do this.

One question? Why do we even NEED the most high-tech lighting systems available? I'm perfectly happy using different shades of grey in the colour option to make shadow effects in a room. Being able to add shadow maps as extra layers to apply a more precise shading to a surface (note not lighting, shading, the shadow map causes some pixels to darken and others to not do so). That would be more than enough detail for me.

While I'm all for graphical improvements, I think the main thing for SL is simplicity and speed, for the world to be as interactive as possible (which is the key to SL) then it needs to run at a good speed without requiring the latest hardware to run.

You can have your pretty graphics in Doom 3 (though you won't ever be able to see them because it's so dark), the gameplay in 99% of the new 'next-gen graphics' games is terrible. I'm much happier playing Duke Nukem 3D for its gameplay, or SL without any lighting than I am playing Doom 3, Half Life 2 or whatever the latest thing is (new Tomb Raider)?

So I'd much rather that local lighting be stripped out entirely and be replaced with something like this suggestion (shadow maps), as I suspect the majority of users play with it swithed off anyway.

As a last note; whoever suggested that LL should dump support for Linux/Mac OS, kindly never speak again

lightmaps have nothing close of "cutting edge" it's a simple trick used by even the most basic 3D game that proved to greatly enhance the look and feel of a 3D environement at little cost