Second Life’s Sun is too big, and has lousy effects

The sun in the skies of the Second Life virtual world is too big, way way way too big.

It looks to me like someone made a decimal point error in the programming that creates the sun.

I think maybe some “atmospheric” or “haze” effect has been rendered too large and too opaque, to the extent that the haze completely or almost completely blocks out the view of the sun itself, producing the appearance of a sun that’s at least TWENTY-FIVE TOO BIG!!!!!

It looks utterly terrible and stupid to me, and totally ruins the attempt to create a simulation of an earth like 2.5 D flatland.

This sun casts a yellow pall over the entire sky, and I think it may be distorting the color of objects and terrain as well, although this may be a psychological effect caused by the annoyance of having a display that used to please me turned into something so garish and childishly coloring book like and grossly inaccurate and out of place with its surroundings that I am driven to repeatedly using the Force Sun To Noon command to put the sun overhead and out of view.

I used to use the Force Sun to rise command (which was actually force sunset, but sunset was followed immediately by sunrise, so folks thought of it as force sunrise) to fend off the Second Life night, which I didn’t and still don’t care for too much most of the time.

I use to enjoy seeing the Second Life sun rise and set. Now I hate both the sunrise and the sunset, and if I’m not in the mood for setting the sun to noon, with the harsh shadows that produces, I’ve even set the night sky as bright as possible and set the sun to midnight, putting me in the dark that I still don’t like but which at least doesn’t look defective and amateurish like the current Second Life sun does.

...and what's the deal with the fog/haze?

Has it changed since the last 12 times you bitched about it?

Gee, I wonder who reported this thread.

I have to agree, I don't like the new sun either. I generally live in a skybox and the way the sun and clouds look was important to me.

Sorry to hear you don't like the new sun, but thanks for the support.

I don't recall any clamor for a bigger sun by Second Life users.

I wonder what makes them choose this or thing to change.

It would be nice to know if there's any method of altering the sun's appearance short of deciphering the viewer code and changing the relevant part of the rendering system. I don't know C++.

I guess I could offer a bounty for a successful accepted and implemented patch, but it would probably take a fair amount of money to induce someone to write such a thing, unless I lucked out and someone that can write C++ also would like to see a different sun than the current one.

What exactly do you mean?

There was a change to the rendering system a good while back, a year or more, I guess, that made it impossible to avoid seeing the horizon without hard straight-lined, square sim edges showing, unless you have the fog ratio set to make the fog close in and dense. I used to be able to have a nice view with the fog ratio set at 4, giving a clear, unblurred image as far as you could see, but the far horizon still blurred out enough and colored such as to obscure the straight lined, jagged edged, perspective distorted view of the region's square geometry.

If one could gather up all the fog and make it get in front of the sun and follow the sun's motion through the sky, always staying between the camera and the sun, that would be nice.

I suppose one could wear a hollow megaprim sphere and just block the view of the entire sky all the time.

Regrettably, it has not changed a bit. Pity.

Please don't stop bitching about it. I often used to sit on my land and watch the sun rise and set. Not anymore, the new sun is just ugly. And it does affect the look of things down on the ground.

I ahte the new sun almost more than bugs and lag. I understand why those happen, I can't imagine what fool thought the new sun was a good idea.

Those who'd like to show express their displeasure with the oversized garish sun could post in the threads I've started in

the stratics forum at:
http://boards.stratics.com/php-bin/sl/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=1485&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

the sluniverse forum at:
http://www.sluniverse.com/forums/FindPost17193.aspx

the sl-forums at:
http://sl-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=2079

at my blog:
http://suezannecbaskerville.wordpress.com/

or at slhomepage.com
http://forums.slhomepage.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=810

or start your own thread supporting allowing us to see the old style sun and if you do please drop back here and leave the url of your thread.

Ive been getting some really kool sunrises out of it here and there.

I'm glad I never look up. And I keep sl set to Noon. So I don't think i've ever seen the sun. And hopefully never will.

OK. Sue, looks like the Lindens finally bowed to your pressure and bought a company to make you happy.
Hmm, let me think of something really nice for your next conquest.

WindLight atmospheric rendering comes to Second Life!
WindLight “simulates the ways that sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere under different climatic conditions, such as fog or haze”. Long story short: killer skies and kickass environments.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/21/windlight-atmospheric-rendering-comes-to-second-life/

Secondlife is a small flat dwarf-planet that spins 6 times faster than earth.

Its orbit lies appoximately midway between Venus' and Earth's.
(which explains the larger sun)

It doesn't have much gravity, but fortunately there is a biomagnetic field
that keeps us from flying off into space and it shields our avatars from
the additional heat and radiation.

It's always on the far side of the sun, so we've never seen it in telescopes.

hahaha, awsome Rusty