Shadows now in an official build!

I downloaded the latest RC, turned Render FB0 on and Render deferred on, but everything goes colourful and flat (no textures)

this is on my AMD Phenom X4 955 8GB DDR3 - GeForce 9800 GX2 system.

fail.

yes?

Note to Chaos:....I think RC 1.23 download has been withdrawn and replaced by an RC without shadows. I did have the shadow viewer - and, as I said, it was amazing, but with glitches.

I then updated my download and got the 1.22 which gives very funny effects if you set the debug settings for shadows - like a 100% black sky and ground with all prims a sort of pinky greeny glow and no avatar mesh visible. That sounds like what you have. Best to wait for the next shadow RC, it shouldn't be long, I'd guess.

For anyone who hasn't seen what SL looks like with proper shadows, there's a Flickr group called 'Second Life Shadows' with 221 pictures. Some of the pictures are wonderful and they show just how much the visual experience can be transformed.

I know that the RC 1.23 wouldn't do shadow snapshots, so these pictures must have been taken on outside independent viewers.

Whatever the problems with shadows and how they might affect frame rate etc., they will be great for snapshots when that becomes possible.

Google this

Boy, does it make the "floating avatar" problem really obvious.

WOW.

It looks like a REAL GAME. I can't wait till LL gets this working well.

On the shadow viewer my feet touch the ground, so no floating avatar problem. However, because the RC 1.23 was buggy, after about 30 seconds the avatar shadow deteriorates and gets holes in it.

What is noticeable though is when objects like walls or pillars are not touching the ground - with shadows it's obvious they're hovering!

In the video, you see the avatar floating when he breaks.

I saw he was floating when he was on his head and a bit with the footwork but I think that's within the bounds of acceptability at the moment.

Oh yeh, until we get physical avatars there's no way you can get an animation like that working right unless you make it custom for your shape.

Speaking of which... when are we going to get physical avatars, scripted animations, and inverse kinematics?

As soon as the unpaid intern working on the shadow code gets that out the door, he'll be right on it.

Well, that burst of enthusiasm didn't last long.

Using an Nvidia 9800 GTX (512mb). Turning on real time shadows crushes FPS from 70 to about 15. Anyone having the same experiance?

Use Kirstenlee's build for shadows with minimal performance loss.