Shadows and lighting update

Yeah but it wouldn't react anywhere near as good as a dedicated system, you probably could get it up to late 20th century arcade effects

But now it HAPPENED. GTA will never run on a PC or Mac. And you know what? It is a success. And because it is, any other major developer will follow this path from now on. Consoles are WAY cheaper than any High End PC system, they are widespread enough now and they not only will become, but ARE the forthcoming replacement of the PC platform for ANY game developer with a sense for business. The advantage is obvious: Consoles are way cheaper than High End PCs (300 - 500 $ for consoles vs. 1000 and more for a PC system), no OS and driver troubles and so on.



SL can NEVER use the "latest" technology, because the paying mainstream customership of SL does not use the latest technology, and is not interested in the "latest" technology at all. I would agree if the "latest" technology developed for SL would result in better performance and better building tools as well as more stability, better communication tools and a user friendly interface developed for MAINSTREAM systems. But the latest "progress" only resulted in the opposite, and this is "cutting edge" STUPIDITY.



It always will look comparable clunky and out-dated (GTA) if LL wants to keep the mainstream customer and expand. SL only can survive because of the mainstream customer, IN SPITE of the few muttering and demanding "latest technology" supporters. You simply cannot have both, either you go for high end gaming (but then the console will be the unavoidable way to go), or you go for the social network idea and the mainstream and low end user creativity.



IF Linden Labs prefers to throw more "progress" which is in fact an obvious downgrade for the average SL customer on the community, this will simply go nowhere anymore pretty soon. A company that successfully targets the average mainstream PC user which releases software updates which do not match the capabilities of mainstream PC systems has deserved to drown for sheer stupidity.

Yup, just like GTA San Andreas was never brought from previous console generation to PCs before, and games like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed weren't brought from present generation to these same PCs. Oh, wait. They were.

Incidentally, release of PC version of GTA 4 is rumoured to be fall this year. Guess that's when the "never" is.

SL will never compete against high end games, but damn it would be nice if we could drive a car across a sim crossing or have combat movement as smooth as Doom 1.
If its a multiplatform then it needs improving, otherwise it's doomed to be just a Barbie posing world for skirt, boot sales & chat.

Thankoo f'r the piccies last night, Kitty! Maaaan, I so wish I could have shadows, too!

Likewise PC games with many possible keyboard commands, macros, extra game pads and multiple button mouse, would be seriously watered down, if ported to a console.

I just bought an 8-core Macintosh with an Invidia 8800 graphics card (for nearly $3,000 US) and frankly, SL sucks on it. I am mostly a photographer in SL and I can NO LONGER take hi-rez snapshots with my new "high end" mac. The computer freezes up entirely for five minutes per shot and returns to a "spin in place avi but nothing else works" crash that requires a full reboot.

I have had to resort to taking photos on my 2-year old iBook.

Has anyone else experienced this with a new Mac? And did you ever find a solution?

Well it's got to be the Mac bit, because 8800's on PC's have been running SL fine for 2 years now.

Okay, this is odd, but it solved the Mac hi-rez snapshot screen freeze for me (your experiences may vary).

Use the normal snapshot window, rather than CTRL + (tilde). In the "what image size do you need?" section, go to Custom, then type in the dimensions you want (e.g. if your SL window is 1,667 x 1,002, like mine is on a 21" monitor, double that to 3,334 x 2,004 -- remember to double both dimensions or you'll get a distorted image.) THEN -- AND THIS IS THE REALLY, REALLY, IMPORTANT PART -- Un-check "constrain proportions."

If your experience is like mine, when you hit Refresh, your screen image will hop around five or six times almost as if it's sampling the various quadrants of the image, then settle back to your original crop. Hitting save will then save to disk without a hitch.

The hopping around thing is a bit weird, but non-damaging a far as I can tell and the save to disk takes less than a second (so maybe the hopping saves time, who knows?).

All I know is that now I can take hi-rez pics without crashing. /happy sigh

(this solution was provided by Andrew at Linden Lab support, thank you Andrew!)

Some addendum:

You need to install ActivePython too, or the pre-build batch file cannot execute (latest 2.5.2.2 is fine):

http://www.activestate.com/store/download.aspx?prdGUID=b08b04e0-6872-4d9d-a722-7a0c2dea2758



When installing Cygwin *MAKE SURE* you install this additional components (change "skip" into the installer to install), expand "devel" and check:

bison
flex
patchutils

**** VERY IMPORTANT STEP ****: after wthe cygwin installation, you need to delete (better to rename) the provided link.exe or it would overrides the previous paths. So go to: "C:\cygwin\bin\" (if you used the default installation folder), find the file "link.exe" and rename it to: "link-cygwin.exe".



About the "lib" folder for DirectX SDK, you need actually (latest version) to chose a subfolder there, so it is "lib/x86". This is *only* for the DirectX SDK.



...and add to the excutable files path, Python as well: (ie: "c:\Python25" if installed the latest version in the default location)



Going deep into this (from the wiki):

Download & extract fmod 3.75 api for win32 **** >>>> later versions, like FMOD Ex, are incompatible <<<< so download exactly version 3.75!

http://www.fmod.org/index.php/release/version/fmodapi375win.zip

("SL-Shadows" is the folder name where u chosen to check out the project, so eventually change it with the name you used)

Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod.h" to "SL-Shadows\libraries\include"
Copy "fmodapi375win\api\inc\fmod_errors.h" to "SL-Shadows\libraries\include"
Copy "fmodapi375win\api\lib\fmodvc.lib" to "SL-Shadows\libraries\i686-win32\lib_release" and to "linden\libraries\i686-win32\lib_debug"
Copy "fmodapi375win\api\fmod.dll" to "SL-Shadows\indra\newview"



Since someone asked to me: it does require "some time" to be built (tenth minutes on very fast pc)... so take a coffee (or 2.. or 3..).



...where "win_crash_logger.exe" is from: "SL-Shadows\indra\win_crash_logger\"

*** AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST *** U NEED TO ACTIVATE EM!

Open your "new" client and:

- Make sure atmospheric shaders and avatar hardware skinning are enabled (Graphic Options).
- SET the debug setting (Advanced > Debug Settings...) RenderDeferred to FALSE
- Set RenderUseFBO to TRUE
- Set back the RenderDeferred to TRUE


The guide by Kitty (tnx alot for your time!) is pretty accurate, it means that it actually works (just include this addendum), so if something goes wrong, go back and read it again, because it must be your fail.

You can skip the pre-build Python batch file actually .

If Cygwin's link is conflicting with VC's link then you didn't add the path to cygwin at the bottom .

I did miss that one .

Vittorio Beerbaum could u possibly compile and upload (or send me) the shadow draft viewer

ill give u some L$ if u do, i really want 2 test it but its not compiling my end (proberly my shitty pc)

L$? i don't need it. ...i can upload the .exe, im not sure about the whole rest, i'm going to ask a Linden if i may upload the whole pack somewhere so anyway may download it.

Ask them if they'll let you upload it to LL's blog. You'll probably need to be Lindenized in the process and have to read 150 comments on why you suck so hard. But what the heck..

ahahahaha.. i won't go for that option sry.

In the meantime:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBWGywh690g&ftm18

Ooooh! I sure do like a bit of Muse!!

The shadows looked great too!. I can't help but wonder if LL will give us an option to have the Windlight clouds also cast shadows. It'll be just like England in the summer!.

"Oh no, another bloody miserable cloudy day again!.. Put kettle on, love."

http://secondlifegrid.net/programs/licensing/viewerlicensing
Asking any random Linden who likely won't be involved with licensing isn't going to get you a definitive answer and could do more harm than good if they don't realize the full extent of it.

It would be safest to stick to the "here's the .exe and combine everything the same way as you would after a build" method which seems to work for all custom viewers (which leaves the question on whether using the SL icon for the .exe is legitimate use of their trademark or not so you're probably better of using your own there as well).

Ok i've managed to arrange a pack without touching the third party libs, you can actually use a RC9 and drop this into it:

http://www.megafileupload.com/en/file/68953/SecondLifeShadows-zip.html
alternate download link: http://ifile.it/jrpxm9l

Notice: it seems there must a problem with the sets (prolly i've left something behind...) it's a pain to figure what's really changes by the RC9, anyway it actually works (problems appears when u go far with the cam)... the second option is to compile it yourself, since i can't redistribute the whole pack!

hey thanx v much, this will save allot of people allot of fustration (and keyboards)

and more importently IT WORKS!!!! no probs, and performs gr8

infact the normal RC doesnt work on my PC, but your exe works fine

FYI if it looks like its hung at log in just leave it for a short while and it will correct itself

pps: dont forget the debug settings!

After carefull analysis and a couple of tests with alpha textures and lights/transparencies

Bugs:

*Shadow just cuts off in the distance (shadow draw distance), why not make it fade as it gets further away?

*light -still- shines thru stuff

*Shadows could be a bit more prominant during day/night cycles (like in the preset midday4)

*Maybe hard edged shadows might look more acurate and have a speed increase

*Shadows can trip out a bit sometimes in some areas (i am running a GeForce 8800GTS)

*Its slow in busy built up areas, optimize the code

other than that they have got it right for once

It seems, this has been introduced during MY "packing", and it's the problem i said above (if you read carefull), they actually works if you compile a genuine client. I don't have time to invest to prep a genuine pack, especially if this is going to don't work in the nearly future. So live with it.



This is the reason why they didn't released a official (beta) client. It's because the code is not even in beta, as the name says: it is an experimenti in its early stage, it's simply doesn't exists for the "mass". So you don't have to blame.

Hello,

I've tried to build shadow-draft on my Mac and for that I have downloaded besides svn shadow-draft branch the last version of tha Mac build. The compile went fine, but I don't see special shadows even after applying the debug settings. My Mac is a MacBook pro with Ati Radeon X1600. Is there a way to do something ? Perhaps download newer libs than the ones of RC10 ? but where ?

Thank you

You have an ATI card and are on a Mac so it sounds like you're out of luck on both counts .

Macs and ATI cards are not supported by it at all.

Mari

sniff sniff