I lost my graphic settings and my water is not good

I'm on a Mac and when I recently upgraded to the latest SL viewer, it ate my preferences. I don't recall that happening in other upgrades.

Anyway, I've been tinkering and trying to get things back the way I like them. But the water isn't right. I sometimes fire up Kirsten's Viewer and if there's an upgrade, I haven't upgraded that one in awhile. It's just a secondary viewer I keep on hand to bring in an alt for testing things. And all of a sudden its water is not that great either.

I don't really know how to explain this, except my old water (SL water, oceans and things) had sparkly on top and some nice reflections of light. You also couldn't see through it to see how the land underneath was terraformed.

Now it's a much darker blue and it's kind of transparent. I can see the hills underneath, and can see the bottoms of rocks and things that are in the water, but under the water line. I don't want to see that. And my sparkle is gone.

I've tinkered around with water settings, but can't figure it out...I've never messed with water before other than to play with reflection settings.

Has SL done something to water, and how do I get my sparkly nice water back?

I'm not on a mac, and haven't used Kristen's viewer but try
Edit=>Preferences=>Graphics

Check the custom box and then check the boxes for the shaders. You also want to check the box for everything for reflections. What you described the water looking like is more a matter of graphics on low settings than anything else.

Thanks, Melodie. I've tried setting my graphics with shaders and everything. I can't remember how I had things set before, but nothing seems to be changing the water. I've gone in and tinkered with environment settings too, but that just confused me.

AHHH so Im not the only one with this new problem!
Seems around April or so this happened, the water looks like dark blue ink, clear like its made of plexiglass. I discovered the preference menu where it has check boxes for bump map and shiney, and reflection detail, only the top boxes are checked, ane only the bump map and shiney can be checked or unchecked, the rest are GREYED OUT, including the one for water reflections.

I tried changing all the sliders and settings, and even emerald is the same way.
I just tried uninstalling all of the SL viewer and files, settigns and prefs off my drive just to reinstall a new copy fresh, and its the same way in the SL viewer AND emerald.
SO I have to assume this change is not in the viewer itself but on the SL server end of things.

Drop me an IM asking for the screen shots, I have of my menu showing these settings are unavailable/greyed out, and what the water looks like as a result. A friend sent me a screen shot just now from his PC, water is nice and sparkly, shiny and looks right.

I have this problem....and this fixed it


Graphics/max/custom....


un-click atmospheric shaders.


See if that helps


~brie

Play around with the Environmental settings. Those are lost with viewer upgrades. The preferrences should remain.

Expect to have more trouble with your water once you hit 45.

Oh, wait...

I hope my water never breaks!

That's the problem. She can't.

The graphics preferences that control water are the shaders. You need to have at least Basic and Atmospheric shaders on, water reflections helps.

The Debug setting EnableRippleWater should be set to True. That can mess up your water if it gets set to False. The Debug command is under the Advanced menu. If you don't see it next to the Help menu in SL, enable it by pressing Command-Option-Shift-D.

What Mac are you using, what version of the MacOS and what graphics adapter does it have?

Nope, its already unchecked, its GREYED OUT and cant be checked or unchecked, please read where i mentioned that part of the menu.
I DID however learn what the cause is for my problem and the other person's problem, it has to do with your video card. I leaned my Radeon pro 9000 card is now below the minimum in SL which requires at least a Radeon 9200

So that is the reason.
Other than the water the rest of SL is fine.

Get rid of your Mac and buy a PC.

Pep (Or stop complaining.)