Whiteout!

I have a particular place I like to go, a pine forest with snow on the ground and it's snowing. When I first joined sl and using the default viewer everything was fine. When I tried to use the Windlight viewer, the snow was so bright that it washed out all other colors and pretty much you were left with a white screen and some distorted avitars and trees. So apparently, Windlight has been incorporated into the new viewer. If I go to this place, the snow is blinding bright and most of the colors are washed away. This was only happening at this one place but recently I have noticed in other sims certain items are blindingly bright (and white). Is there a graphics setting I can adjust to eliminate this? Please note, this is a rare event and everything looks just fine otherwise. Thanks.

Is it WindLight or glow - often people will add lots of glow to things when they can't see it themselves, then leave it on to burn out the brains of those who can see it.

Going to Prefs, Graphics, Custom and unchecking Atmospheric Shaders should help alleviate the 'whiteout' quite a lot. Unfortunately it also makes most of the Windlight enhancements disappear too...

Only unfortunate if you happen to like WL, which a lot of people don't.

Well......you can adjust the atmosphere with windlight to create all sorts of different lighting effects that would compliment this type of scenery.

I have encounted more people in-world recently who say they don't like windlight.....but they actually don't know anything about it and have no idea the control they have in the environment settings. If you're having a hard time with it.....or if you just want to learn more about windlight and what you can do (and how to eliminate these issues) I'd be happy to help. I've been doing windlight lessons all over the place..... so many folks are delighted when they finally 'learn' what it's all about.

You can know how it works and still dislike it.

I'd be curious to know if changing the level of ambient light helps.

Let me see if I can remember exactly where it is ...

World/Environment Settings/Environment Editor/Advanced Sky , I think.

There are 3 or 4 settings for ambient lilght level. Crank those down a bit and see what you get.
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I'll agree with this. When I was first playing at building things, I didn't have Windlight, as my computer was incapable of supporting it. Even when I got the newest RC, I had to turn Windlight off in order to be able to use it at all. Under such conditions, object features like "glow" and "shininess" are pretty meaningless, as they seemed to have no effect on my objects whatsover (that I could see). I selected them anyway, just sort of presupposing what the effects would look like. When I finally upgraded my computer stuff and was able to use Windlight, I took a look at those objects, and it was absolutely horrible. I un-glowed and un-shiny'd them right away.

I love Windlight - but my pink wallpaper turns WHITE and my bedroom is blinding when I enter it during the day time ... I don't want to get rid of the effects, just tone the light down a little ... I'd take a little direction if you are happy to dish that out too!

Thanks!

Recently, I got a new computer with a better graphics card; while I had only been able to use SL with the lowest graphics settings, I can use the 'ultra' settings now. When I tried this for the first time, I had the same issue with this blindingly white items washing out everything else in the vicinity. I believe it was related to shiny prims. I had to disable Atmospheric Shaders in the graphics settings as someone already suggested earlier in this thread.

Then I replaced the ATI Catalyst Driver (newest version) with the Omega ATI Driver, a third-party graphics driver based on the official Catalyst Driver but tweaked for best performance with games. And with this alternative driver the whiteout problem went away! I can now enable all shaders and set all graphics settings to the maximum without any glitches.

So it might help to try a newer version of the graphics driver for your particular card, or to use an alternative one. There are other than the Omega drivers (http://www.omegadrivers.net/) but this one is also available for Nvidia cards. It may be worth a try.

This is my biggest issue with Windlight - I don't want to have to spend all kinds of time fiddling with various settings to get something to look decent, then go to another location and have to do it all over again - not to mention just trying to remember where all those freakin settings are.

all i can say is that i am aware that whitewashed areas appear to be caused by personal facelights by a lot of residents that don't realise they are wearing them

Thanks everyone for the help.

Unchecking Atmospheric Shaders did not work. I am getting whiteout from the snow on the ground. However, unchecking Basic Shaders did work quite well. Unfortunately, it also eliminates a significant portion of the preferences you can select from. I will try the new drivers approach later and see if it works.

Back to an old question which may relate. I have for whatever reason a console window that opens when I start SL. It is constantly showing a message that reads: LLViewr image:: bind texture failed. LLImageGL::bind texture internal: Trying to bind a texture while GL is disabled.

Whatever that means!

I like Windlight too, the effects are neat. There's just some tricks to it.

Also, if you're having trouble with walls and stuff, trying checking or unchecking the "full bright" toggle; it seems to have some unintuitive effects.

Thanks for the Omega link. I did load them up but did not resolve the issue. No big deal, I can just change graphics settings when the problem arises, which is rare.

Not related to the OP's problem, but since it involves "whiteout" I'll ask here. I'm running the latest official version of the viewer, and if I go AFK, like for half an hour or so, and switch to a different window (IE, Gimp, etc), then go back to SL, the ENTIRE screen is blindingly white, and only my name appears, and that in yellow. I can't see anything except white white, with maybe some suggestions of shadows where I know objects to be. If I log out and log back in, all is fine. What is this?

[Edit: Nvidia 7600, 2G RAM]

Don't know what the messages mean, but that sounds like the debug console. You can turn it off permanently by unchecking "Console Window" on the Advanced menu.
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