lighting is different

Anyone else think the lighting since we were allowed back on is kind of strange now? My skin looks really orangey and dark in many lightings and the sunset and sunrise times of day .

Elinah

Unless you've changed your viewer, that's not really possible. Lighting is generated client side, not server side.

I just downloaded the new sl .

Elinah

That would do it. If you downloaded the latest viewer, you now have Windlight. If you were using a non-Windlight viewer before, then things will look quite different to you now.

Take a little time to get used to Windlight. It does look different, but once you get past the shock reaction from having been torn away from what you've always known, you'll find that Windlight looks about a thousand times better than the old, flat lighting model we've had for the past couple of years. Some people complain that their avatar looks different, that noon is too contrasty, or that sunsets and sunrises are too red. But that's all due to the fact that light actually behaves a lot more realistically in Windlight than it did in the old system. It's something that takes a little adjustment to get used to is all.

Ahhh, you are now seeing the wonderful world of Windlight.. Pretty skies, pretty water, ugly Avatars

One of two things will happen to address that issue. Either LL will finally get around to fixing the avatar model so that it's not so misshapen, or skin makers will find clever new ways to compensate with texturing.

The problem is not Windlight itself, but the fact that the avatar mesh is quite bad. It always has been. We just couldn't see the full extent of it before because the old lighting model wasn't accurate enough to expose some of the flaws. Now that light actually reflects the way it's supposed to, the problems with the mesh are much easier to see.

The avatar hasn't been upgraded in over 4 years. It's long overdue for a rebuild. Hopefully this new exposure of more of its flaws will spark some action.

I dont think its windlight its the new sl viewer new release that was shown on screen last night 1.19.1 (4) they recommended I download it so I did. I couldnt get back on until now. I notice changes in the colors. I wonder if they changed my settings somehow? Or if they changed things themselves, but the colors are way different now.

Elinah

Or not.


Or not.

coco

Yes, this IS the new Windlight. LL has incorporated Windlight into the new everyday client. It's the big new thing, after ages and ages of testing.

Oh, and to vote for a remake of the avatar mesh:

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3432

Whereas before we had Ugly Skies, Ugly Water and Ugly Avatars.............

Coco, if you're definition of "realistic lighting behavior" is "that which looks most like a computer simulation from the late 90's", then I guess there's nothing I can say to change your mind. For those whose definition is "that which looks most like the real world", which is what mine is, then I can't imagine how you'd think the old system looks more realistic than Windlight does.

Now, with that in mind, what is it about the world (besides aforementioned flaws in the avatar mesh) that doesn't look so hot with Windlight? I'll tell you exactly what it is. For years now, all texture artists in SL have been designing their textures specifically to compensate for the unrealism of the old lighting model. It's something a great many artists have gotten very adept at. But now that the lighting model has changed to behave more normally, those old techniques are all of a sudden out of place. That doesn't mean the new lighting model is bad; it just means artists need time to adjust.

Think of it kind of like driving a car that is in need of a front end alignment. If you're used to driving that particular car, you will have developed your driving style around it, and you'll be able to make it go in a perfectly straight line. That doesn't mean your car is working well; it's got a big problem. But you've found a way to work around one aspect of the problem, so it works for you. Now, fix the car, and it will feel all kinds of wrong. Technically, it's working much better than it did before, but you haven't yet adapted your technique (and your attitude) toward driving it in its corrected state. So your interpretation is it's now screwed up, even though it's not. It was screwed up before; now it's fixed.

It's no different with Windlight. Everything we all were doing before was to work around the fact that SL's lighting was "misaligned". Now that it works more properly, we need to change our approach to it.

As I said in another recent thread on this subject, rather than complain about progress, the healthy attitude is to embrace it. I don't care what I had to do yesterday to make my stuff look as good as it could in a worse looking world. I care about what I can do today and tomorrow to make my stuff look even better now that there are so many new possibilities. I'd encourage you to do the same.

I'll bet you any amount of money you can think of that a year from now, once newer Windlight-friendly textures have had a chance to populate and flourish across the grid, you'll cringe when you look at old screenshots, and you see what you used to think actually looked good. If you think photos of yourself from the 80's are embarrassing 20 years later, wait 'til you see photos of your builds from 'the ancient pre-Windlight era'.

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Thanks for the link, Oryx. Voted and commented.

If you think Windlight lighting looks realistic, you need to go outside far more often.

And by the same token, I could say if your idea of realistic is the Sahara Desert at high noon after the ozone layer has been depleted, then it is more realistic. And there is nothing I can do to change your mind about what I consider a rather odd-looking environment.

Not everyone is going to think it is more realistic. One just has to accept that different people have different aesthetic ideas.

And I'm not comparing it to computer systems in the 90's, I'm comparing it to what is outside my front door.


No, I don't think so. A texture that is one color stays that color, or it does not stay that color. A texture makes small changes with the sun, or it makes major, intense changes that render it far afield from whatever its original color was, both inside and outside builds.

I realize we are stuck with having insides of even windowless builds act as if the sun were hitting their surfaces, but Windlight offers no compromise for that, as the old system did.

Yellow is yellow. Mauve is mauve. Or should be, with small changes at different times of day. And then there's orange. Now we have just a whole LOT of orange, whether we intended it at all. So orange that the original color is sometimes unrecognizable.

Tell me a way to make a hue that turns to orange at certain times of the day somehow magically not turn orange, and I'll be glad to adjust for it. But there isn't a way.

I don't think it's a matter of me being used to something horrible and you explaining to me that I've been overcompensating for it all this time. I haven't been overcompensating at all. As I said earlier, yellow is yellow, blue is blue, etc. I hate to see color options essentially bite the dust.

Maybe you aren't as sensitive to color as I am.


I disagree.


Well, that's all very fine and good when you consider a change to be progress. If you don't, you'd be a fool to embrace it, wouldn't you?

I consider Windlight far too intense to be realistic, and so intense that the striking panoramic landscape photos are the main value of having it, to the detriment of other things in the world.


I'm sure I'll get used to it.

coco

Here's my question about the 'reality' thing: the sky seems always overlit. For example, I just logged in. default environment settings, unzoomed, and see this Maxfield Parrish sunset.

It's lovely, but it's technicolor, and it has dragged on looking like this for some minutes. In real life, the sun would glare very briefly when this low on the horizon ... and it would not take up nearly so much of the sky. This looks like a supernova. Is part of the problem that, when we look at something in SL, it's as if we were wearing binoculars in RL - the field of view is restricted and there is no peripheral vision? I would humbly submit that one might want to change the defaults to be a little less overwhelming in this "binocular" camera view.

At times of day when there's daylight in the sky, it glares. OK, so I can play with settings and make the sun smaller and take down the gamma (with the result that the ground-level rendering becomes dark). But right out of the box, without a lot of play, it looks to me like the world is overlit above and underlit on the ground.

Perhaps that IS the game version of reality - I'm not in the profession. I think, Chosen, that in addition ot texture professionals like Coco, you have a bunch of real graphics noobs like me who find the claims that this is 'reality' puzzling. Do I want to go back to how it was? Not really. I just feel, tho, that this is another version of "unreal".

(oh and don't ask me about the funky rectangle in the water. I think there's a bug about that.)

thats the sims edge in the water..

myself i thought it was midnight when i first logged into the windlight viewer..i then went to world and tried all the other settings and couldn't get a decent lighting from sunset ,sunrise or any of them..it was nice when we had a choice to use either instead of being forced to embrace this attempt at real world lighting..i sure hope in a year it gets better lol

I'd guess the answer is probably "very", but how likely is it that a (meaningful/necessary) change in the avatar model/mesh results in making all current skins/clothing "obsolete"/incompatible?

Nika, correction - I'm not a texture professional, except in the application of them! I use mostly textures I have bought from others.

coco

P.S. About water and sims - I also preferred it when Rosieri was land in a land-locked area. Not a place surrounded magically on all sides by water.

Really? Thanks. It's mainland, I guess as an island-dweller I have an unrealistic expectation that mainland sims will appear more contiguous when they're edge-to-edge!
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hmm interesting.

In real life, except at certain angles, colors are not stained yellow, red and orange by the sun.

Late in the day at sunset, yes

Most of the time, no.

Sunlight is normally considered "white light" at least so I was taught.

Maybe the windlight is overcompensating ..

Nice but why were we tricked into downloading windlight ...what if we didnt want to change over due to the problems it still has sometimes? IDK just asking...what are ur thoughts?

really i don't know why they would not keep the two viewers instead of losing people that can't do the upgrades on their computers..
not everyone comes to sl to take pictures..

You can still go back to the previous viewer, 1.19.0.5. Look at this blog posting, about halfway through it there are links to that viewer:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/03/the-new-viewer-a-well-oiled-machine/

Also, if you prefer a codebase that is completely pre-windlight, you can use a third-party viewer such as Nicholaz:
http://nicholaz-beresford.blogspot.com/2007/12/release-bleeding-edge-be-v.html
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Thank you.....

Never mind the lighting. Never mind the colors. Never mind the ridiculous water. Never mind the white sparklies all over the place.

NOW WE CAN NO LONGER WEAR SKIRTS? Now I am getting mad!

coco