Shadows and lighting update

I have to ask:

How was performance comparitively? Was the shadowed version a ton slower for you or anything?

It was as if someone had taken the 8600GT in my new puter and exchanged it with the FX5200 I used to have in my old puter... literally .

I'm still used to 6-12fps so it doesn't really bother me that much, but usually I get 40-60fps in SL so it is quite a bit slower.

Since it's a work-in-progress it's probably not optimized at all though, and likely full of debug checks so it should improve . I can hear the drama already though, some things look bad/sort of break (not sure that's LL's fault, but rather the creator's decision to do it like that).

WOW!

That looks awesome, Kitty!

But yeah, sure does seem to cost a lot in performance. Early days yet though...

But just out of curiousity, I may try disabling shadows in Crysis just to see how much they cost there. I sure hope it aint 50 fps!.

I am so trying it out, to see if I get more than a frame a second XD

Holy Mackeral what a difference. Now..... try runing that in stereo?

No, I fully expected SL to advance into the 21st century eventually

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Yes but a $83 card is only going to run SL for 1/3 the longetivity as the $162 card, you keep going minimum specs you go nowhere unless you want to play Active Worlds, I hear they got 8 bit color last year. The lost half their Commodore 64 user base.

Yep they are old cards, you can still buy the 6000 series? My games machine I retired 2 years ago still has a 7600 in it sitting in the cupboard incase of emergency, my 8800 is the latest 2yo technology on offer too.

I want to make this my regular viewer . I can see the trees cast shadows on me as I walk under them, I can see my own shadow as I walk/fly... I went all silly when I could see the shadow of my hand on my leg when sitting down .

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I tried to find someplace where lights would make a big difference, but the only place I found was the Naughty sim... everywhere else was completely dark, or way too overlit. I guess that will take a lot of adjusting (except for those who won't be able to use it and will be at a disadvantage).

Midnight, 52 lights
Regular:
Shadows:

Midnight, 92 lights
Regular:
Shadows:

Midnight (doesn't mean it has to be dark inside), 97 lights
Regular:
Shadows:

Oh that is excellent, be interesting to see how it copes with moving light sources I guess, though maybe that might be best left for next year, anyone upload a Video?

I would if I knew how to make one . And then I probably wouldn't know what to show either most likely .

Only the sun casts shadows so lights won't do much about that (although they can be bright enough to remove shadows) and I haven't seen any problems with moving lights.

Since a lot of places are too dark at midnight, every avie with a facelight attached looks like a searchlight .

Ah that's what I meany, do light sources erase it, I guess a dullerversion for moonlight too.

I so want to try this shadow code out. Is there already an alpha viewer coded or what?

If so - link please?

OK. So I downloaded Visual C++ express and everything else the wiki says to download to compile and all that, and can follow those directions I believe.

However, the linked to directory for this thingy isn't too helpful..what exactly do I download? All of that? Some of it? I need a bit more direction, if I may ask?

Or someone could maybe upload a compiled version somewhere and y'know..link to that?

Either way.. I wanna tryyyy!

Holy .... uh... smokes. I knew shadows and more light sources would make a difference, but my god - this is /almost/ enough to make me go through the torturous process of building a viewer myself. Please post a binary? Pretty please?

The reason the performance hit again, is so hard, is that this shadowing method is fucking overkill. Carmack reverse / Shadow volumes would be so, so much cheaper.

Per pixel soft shadows? *rolls eyes* This isn't crysis.

It's developmental, still. But hot damn, that Nvidia 8800 GT got here just in time!! I think the ATI x1300 would have started performing like the way SL does on my Intel 945 on my laptop...

It looks gorgeous. And I'll never see it. It's not in this form available for Macs at all.

Mari
(No, the proper response to this is not "well, get a real computer."

You do have an nVidia 8xxx or 9xxx? Otherwise it's just wasted time cause it will just crash running it on anything else.

SVN (source repository) is a bit different from the source drops.

You'll have to something like http://rapidsvn.tigris.org/ to check-out (aka grab a copy) of all the files and then go from there.

Make sure you get Visual Studio 2005 and not the latest 2008, LL is still working with VS2003 and the latest one will be too much headaches. I'm not sure how well the free Express versions work with it either .

The biggest problem with that is that it doesn't look like this is a "drop-in" replacement for the current RC and offering a full viewer with all the support files for download runs into licensing issues . You probably could mix and match from the artwork and libraries download files I guess.

I'm also not sure if I want responsibility in case anything goes wrong . I logged in with my main after testing my alt first and it looks fine, but I still wouldn't trust it for inventory management or something important.

Anyway run-down of the bugs:
* biggest one: invisiprims are broken... no decent looking shoes!
* particles don't really work... they look odd
* search doesn't work and clicking teleport on SLURLs/secondlife crashes me
* log-in needs lots of nudging to actually go through
* somewhat crash-prone (I think I crashed 3 times in 5 hours, I generally don't crash)
* it looks like it's based on a post-RC6, pre-RC7 (with all the bugs that one had)

Yeppers. 8600 GT

Got 2005, and the wiki about the blahblah actually mentions express, so I'm hoping it's fine.

ohhh...yeah, makes sense.

Particles would need a revamp to look good in a shaded environment.. as it is I expect they look like..mm..cardboard or something. Unless they've got shadows and such too o.o

Anywho, thank you, again ^_^

ETA::

OK.. I think I'm giving up. Still no idea how to do anything to get something runnable up and running ^_^

Suppose I can wait till LL releases an actual viewer for it... maybe a few months >.> blargh

Basically without step-by-step instructions I'm lost, having never done this and I can't seem to find that. So this is one area of computer nerdism (The good kind) that I'm going to have to pass on, I think.

heh, i see this has boiled out of control already.

It's an experimental build, way far off from release.

It is 100% optional, it doesn't degrade anything if your card doesn't support it.

You have to have GForce8 card or above to use it, as the older hardware doesn't have the necessary support for the techniques used.

It's cutting edge technology, it needs cutting edge hardware, end of story.

WindLight was "optional" too. When people pointed out that it performed noticeably worse without atmospheric shaders turned on compared to the old viewer it was swept under the rug with "you just don't know how to use the graphics sliders" and "that's just not possible".

Even now they're still sticking to the story that WL is faster, but at least they're more open that that means turning down everything and putting up with the fact that SL will look a whole lot worse than it did.

And yes, turning it off returns the viewer to the regular FPS right now, but the mentality of "throw away your puter and buy a new one as soon as there's something new or you're using outdated hardware and be grateful we even bother supporting it" is just not going to do anyone any good.

It won't hurt anything if people point it out when their perspective doesn't quite match reality.

could someone please upload a compiled version, i am tearing my hair out with fustration because i cannot get the blasted thing working

cheers

And the next person who uses that tired Commodore 64/ActiveWorld analogy is going to get a beating.

Just read the mailing list archive and it is truly amazing that they do not understand that many people have to sacrifice the quality of visuals just to return to pre-WL framerates. Water rippling is the big one, but the other is avatar impostors! My goodness, it looks like you're playing something in ATARI, not Second Life. I will use them just to gain a bit of performance but plenty of people hate them.

Didn't they tell them this when WL was being tested? I remember people saying that performance still decreased with WL at low before it became mandatory.