Shadows are coming

i had a look at the RC viewer source code, and found that there is some code relating to the Shadow Draft client in the viewer, so i think soon we will have shadows and per pixel lighting

For a second I thought you were talking Babylon 5.

Signs and Portents...

I tried the shadow viewer. Skyboxes blot out the sun with it in most populated areas. How are they going to deal with that?

Cool!

Wait - does this mean I have to buy a new system with 400 terabytes of RAM, Windows 2060 Ultimate Excess Edition, Intersystemnet Explorer 21.2 with 128Tb streaming MnemonEmotion wetware plugin enabled?

Sigh . . .

No. Or rather, you do, but you won't be able to use it until they fix http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7957

I watched YouTube video of SL with dtnamic shadows. There is a viewer, called Kirsten viewer, I think, which you can enable shadows if you alter one or two things.
But I think it only works with one type of graphics card - I tried it on a good modern comp and they did not appear.

Anyway, yes, shadows are obviously intended for SL and they totally transform the visual experience. Probably you'll be able to adjust shadow strength, like with the weather at present, so that distant objects don't cast shadows.

Roll on shadows, I say, we need them to complete the picture, as it were.

they`re better off adding presets to the frigging estate tools first...

Yeah, I can't upgrade to the latest drivers because of that one. (T_T)

As for shadows. I've gotten 2 versions of the client to run relatively well, just slow, in my 8800GT cards. (^_^)y

There has been a stub in the source code for the shadow rendering for a while now. It's even in the Mac version of the standard client. But it only *works* on Win XP systems with a specific Nvidia 8000-series video card (8800?). And even then, it slaughters the frame rate, from what I hear. Interesting experimentation, but the base level of video card power and computing power will need to get a lot higher before 99% of us will be able to see these shadows.

Yeah... I've run it on my 8800GT card and Torley did on an 8900. He had a MUCH better frame rate than I did. And the second build I tried had what looked like repaint issues because certain layers were being left behind when I moved around. (>_<

Still... I'd like to see something come out as a First Look so that the community can try it out on a broad set of hardware and we can start weeding down the code that needs to be fixed and find the cards that will run it best. (^_^)

For now, I'm holding off upgrading my graphics cards until that happens and a community based compatibility/performance chart is made. (^_^)y

Wonder if its the Havok engine that sucks at shadows..

Lineage 2 which uses the Unreal 2 engine has had shadows since 2004 ... I used to play with no lag from shadows on a and AMD Barton 2500+ and a 6600GT back then... but when Everquest tried to introduce them (they use thier own custom engine) it draged framerate down to almost zero on the same system.

I see the title of this thread and the only thing I can think of is....
be sure to count the shadows

(now I got to go utube dr who and watch some episodes (I HATE that it is gone for 2 years!)
GRRR


beware Vashta Nerada are in the shadows

I am having this problem in a huge way since I had to update my drivers. And I can't revert because I was crashing repeatedly with the old drivers. All my pants and many of my shirts are virtually unusable. Guess I'll stay in dog mode for a while . . . Grrrr!

(I don't mean to derail this thread though.)

Havok deals with physics on the sim side and nothing else.

The performance difference comes from creating shadows for arbitrary geometry with arbitrary lighting and creating shadows for fixed (and preprocessed) geometry with controlled lighting.

Havok is only concerned with physics, it's not a general game rendering engine. So it doesn't have anything to do with shadows. Also it only runs on the server, not in the viewer.

Windlight seems on the face of it to be closer to what you're talking about, but doesn't actually deal with shadows either; from the Windlight web site:
Shadows (or the lack of them) are part of the base world-rendering code built into the viewer by Linden Lab. They're a bigger problem for SL than for games because games are mostly about pre-compiled environments (thus precompiled shadow maps) and SL is about everything being dynamic and changing per the whims of thousands of builders.


edit: drat, Kitty beat me to it, and was more concise and clear in the process

Never hurts to have the same thing explained in different ways .

ahh that makes sense that the dynamic content would strain the system. Also when I think about it L2 was built from scratch with shadows in mind, im sure its much more difficult to tack on Shadows to a system that was not originaly designed to use them.

Does Havok have anything to do with shadows here? (O.o)

I thought it was the physics engine. (o.o)

I ran Kirsten's SD viewer on my own system. Sadly it seems that I'm finally going to be left in the dust. No shadows for my Radeon X1300. -sighs-

I doan need no steenkin shadows while my fingers look like little sausages and my ankles like someone stomped on them.

What's the point of adding more "reality" for people with the fastest of systems and the best cards while even the most basic graphic elements look like a Saturday morning cartoon?

Up until some recent discussions here, the lack of shadows hadn't even dawned on me. *shrugs* But then again, I'm happy with pre windlight graphics, so what do I know?

I got that problem too when use the latest nvidia driver. Kristens works for my 8800 and my friend's 8600. But she feel more lag.

I also notice there is a problem with Kristens viewer. Some avatar dun 'sit' correctly

Well, Windlight's nice, and shadows would be nice too, if they can do it without too much of a performance hit.

But I agree, Brannie...HEY, LL! UPDATE THE FREAKING AVATAR MESH ALREADY!!

As we've discussed in other threads, it will probably mean having to re-do every stitch of clothing. But shadows will most likely have the same effect, so it would seem logical to do both of them together.

Guess it depends on which side of the street your from. To me the models in SL are Fantastic, but I came from a game (everquest) where you had one basic body, 5 different faces, no option to change hair and no sliders at all. On top of that you only had 5 "outfits" Base / Robe / Leather / Chain / Plate .... in later years you could custom tint your armour but everyone pretty well looked the same otherwise.

Sure the models are not prefect, but I have not seen any other on line game out there with better and more customizable ones.