More examples of shadows in SL:
http://photos.slbuzz.com/monalisa-robbiani/2008/09/03/5832
http://photos.slbuzz.com/monalisa-robbiani/2008/09/03/5833
http://photos.slbuzz.com/monalisa-robbiani/2008/09/04/5838
IMHO shadows are much more important than clouds and shiny water. They make a sunny day look like the sun is actually shining. The rendering suddenly looks high quality. What a huge difference shadows make.
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The importence of SL Shadows (screenies inside) |
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Monalisa Robbiani
Registered User
Join date: 9 Jul 2007
Posts: 861
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10-17-2008 05:24
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Void Singer
Int vSelf = Sing(void);
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,973
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10-17-2008 05:55
of course all those people that play with the settings without getting much effect out of them will suddenly find their higher end carded friends going... WTF did you do that for.... kinda like the shiny walls in op's example =X
I say bring on the shadows though, it'll teach people not to over darken (or overlight) a scene, and heavens know that couldn't hurt the quality of work being done... I do forsee one problem, the ranges for daylight/dark already vary more widely than they should, and it seems like any color tuned monitor has to bump up the gamma for nighttime viewing.... could make the problem worse PS: gorgeous examples mona PPS: EVGA lists GTX280's as low as $450US ... and better deals can be had elswhere (~470-490)... less if you know someone in the biz _____________________
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Ciera Spyker
Queen of SL
Join date: 25 Mar 2008
Posts: 424
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10-17-2008 06:57
I know Ill be labled for this but i dont like the shadow pics. eeeewwww
 Evenif I COULD i wouldnt use it if thats the example given. (NOTE-Im not attacking the picture taker or avatar. Im telling you i dont like the comparisons.)So, I need to be better impressed than that before i drop any more coin on a already once updated computer that still cant get more than 3-4 FPS at low settings. my ISP delivery sucks in the woods where i live plain and simple. Ive considered installing a good dish, but... even then, its still carried by the same company. The only place I get 8FPS or above is in the city at work and thats on a substandard work unit. (Im not USA and dont have choices) edit, the pier pictures are day and night different than those first. Still. its going to further cut down on SL user base i bet. ........................................................................................................ Wait.... <quote>So all the shadows for static objects can be pre-rendered, to display a specific time of day. In many cases, you might only see a given scene at one specific time of day. </quote> Pre rendered? how about basic scenery just staying in my cache from tp out to tp back in under 30 seconds. Why must i re-render everything all over agian everytime I decide to move 100 meters away and come back? |
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Jackson Racer
Mhm I gotta SL Blog
Join date: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 130
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10-17-2008 07:11
Does this mean that all that furniture with shadows under them and behind them will no longer be needed?
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Imnotgoing Sideways
Can't outlaw cute! =^-^=
Join date: 17 Nov 2007
Posts: 4,694
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10-17-2008 07:39
Does this mean that all that furniture with shadows under them and behind them will no longer be needed? _____________________
Somewhere in this world; there is someone having some good clean fun doing the one thing you hate the most. (^_^)y
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Sae Luan
Hardcore 4the Headstrong
Join date: 6 Feb 2006
Posts: 841
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10-17-2008 09:25
I tried it and was able to see the shadows..which was cool at first then as I started walking around I noticed that I had a black overlay of the first scene I looked at once I turned the shadows on. I walked around for quite a few minutes, but the overlay never went away!
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Monalisa Robbiani
Registered User
Join date: 9 Jul 2007
Posts: 861
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10-17-2008 10:27
I noticed that I had a black overlay of the first scene I looked at once I turned the shadows on. I walked around for quite a few minutes, but the overlay never went away! Apparantly that is a bug of that specific viewer. I get that too. You might get rid of it by turning on shadows while you point your camera to empty soil so no prims are being rendered at that moment. _____________________
Dances, animations, furniture for Loco Pocos Tiny Avatars. Group dances, circle dances. Sculpted neko furniture. Prefabs, mediterranean styled beach houses. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Inochi%20Island/201/225/21 |
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Sae Luan
Hardcore 4the Headstrong
Join date: 6 Feb 2006
Posts: 841
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10-17-2008 10:29
Oooh...ok thanks I will try that.
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Monalisa Robbiani
Registered User
Join date: 9 Jul 2007
Posts: 861
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10-17-2008 10:32
my ISP delivery sucks The shadows are being rendered locally so your internet speed has absolutely nothing to do with the fps you get. its going to further cut down on SL user base i bet. If you are on an old machine just uncheck all the eyecandy and you will still get reasonable fps. _____________________
Dances, animations, furniture for Loco Pocos Tiny Avatars. Group dances, circle dances. Sculpted neko furniture. Prefabs, mediterranean styled beach houses. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Inochi%20Island/201/225/21 |
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Coco McCullough
»-©o©o-«
Join date: 14 May 2008
Posts: 102
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10-17-2008 11:06
I cannot be without shadows
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Naiman Broome
Registered User
Join date: 4 Aug 2007
Posts: 246
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11-04-2008 08:14
Is the client available for the latest releases?
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Milla Janick
Empress Of The Universe
Join date: 2 Jan 2008
Posts: 3,075
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11-04-2008 10:02
Is the client available for the latest releases? http://kirstenleecinquetti.blogspot.com/ Kirsten's latest Shadowdraft 3 R1 client appears to be. The previous one, 2 R7 works better for me, but it's based on the 1.21 RC viewer. |
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Johan Durant
Registered User
Join date: 7 Aug 2006
Posts: 1,657
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11-04-2008 14:16
I only have a minimal knowledge of the technical details of how 3D graphics work. However, I do know that some play-by-internet games have done 3D graphics shadows pretty well for several years, running on less-than-top of the line graphics cards. So I wonder what the technical reason is that shadows in Second Life would require something significantly advanced. Long story short, it comes down to the fact that structures in SL are arbitrary builds by random users and can change on a whim. If all the graphics in your game were carefully constructed by professional 3D artists and never change then sure shadows aren't such a big deal, but that is not how SL works. The reason for this has to do with how much calculation is involved in drawing the shadows accurately. To put it simply, a lot of calculation is involved in drawing shadows accurately. When the graphics are all created ahead of time and never change, these calculations can be done ahead of time, before the game is ever released, and the shadows drawn by these calculations are simply distributed to players as part of the game. With SL however the shadows would have to be calculated on the fly while people are using SL, and so beefy video hardware is required in order to handle that. Ultimately, shadows are just one of the more obvious examples of a constraint that affects a lot of things in SL; the fact that the everything in the entire world is arbitrary and dynamic puts some significant constraints on what graphics features can be supported. _____________________
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Tegg Bode
FrootLoop Roo Overlord
Join date: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 5,707
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11-05-2008 02:22
Just installed the latest Shadowdraft and it seems to work fine on my 2.2 dualcore 9600, except no shadows, do I need to turn them on somewhere?
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Felix Oxide
Registered User
Join date: 6 Oct 2006
Posts: 655
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11-05-2008 02:28
After having a good long play with the new Shadow Draft R5 viewer and lighting i found a few other hidden goodies that will enhance SL ALOT!! check this screenshot out... http://img359.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot001ro6.jpg the top 2 images are the standard viewer (1.20) & the bottom 2 are the new Shadow Draft R5 viewer Both viewers all settings were set to Ultra, other than that nothing has been changed, the sky presets used are the default force midnight/daytime ones NO textures have been used, its all the default bumpmap textures (found under the bumpmapping section in the texture tab) Why do the walls look like plastic rather than stone in the shadow picture? |
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Qie Niangao
Coin-operated
Join date: 24 May 2006
Posts: 7,138
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11-05-2008 03:29
Is it fair to assume that objects outside the draw distance don't cast shadows? I mean, if I have a skybox at 3000m, it's not gonna block out the sun on my parcel at midday--nor some poor schmuck on a distant sim at some other time. Right?
Even so (as I've mentioned elsewhere), I think shadows could end up being a huge problem, especially on the Mainland, because of the neighbor-shading potential. Realistic shadows cast by totally unrealistic structures ain't necessarily a win. _____________________
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Conifer Dada
Hiya m'dooks!
Join date: 6 Oct 2006
Posts: 3,716
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11-05-2008 04:07
Even with the problems like big walls casting shadows, SL will look a whole lot better with them. I just can't wait.
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Opensource Obscure
Hide UI
Join date: 5 Jun 2008
Posts: 115
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11-05-2008 06:41
So i guess to run this viewer with a good fps and AA you better shop for a GTX280 SLI or a ATI4870 Crossfire - thats around 800 to 1200 US$ for the graphicards alone and needless to say you need a big powersupply for this babies luckily, your guess is wrong! you can probably buy the whole computer with those money. my computer has a super-fast hard disk, 4 GB of RAM and a Nvidia 9600GT video card. that's more than enough to run the shadow viewer, and I spent less than 800 euro to buy the whole system. there are no reason to suggest those super-high-end graphic card models for Second Life. all you need in order to enable shadows is a good 8xxx or 9xxx Nvidia graphic card - that can be bought for something around 100 US$ (I paid 140 Euro my 9600 GT, and I'm not sure I made a big deal  also, please don't suggest anyone to buy ATI cards if they want to run this viewer. Nvidia will be a better choice. I read this on the SLDEV mailing list, so you can search in the archives for more details. however, Kirsten (that built the unofficial shadow viewer) told me that right now Antialiasing is a no-no - I mean that currently enabling Antialiasing makes the shadow client even crashier. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future. HTH (Hope This Helps) |
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Katryna Jie
Registered User
Join date: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 187
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12-03-2008 07:13
oops I didn't realise I had to download a special viewer.. so I tried the settings in the current RC viewer... and everything ended up looking like the texures were all sculptymaps.
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Katryna Jie
Registered User
Join date: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 187
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12-03-2008 07:31
ok installed SD4 r1
FPS dropped by 10-12 on the same settings except for shadows turned on... and am having issues with some prims turning invisible with other prims inside or behind them |
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Monalisa Robbiani
Registered User
Join date: 9 Jul 2007
Posts: 861
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12-03-2008 07:55
Is it fair to assume that objects outside the draw distance don't cast shadows? I mean, if I have a skybox at 3000m, it's not gonna block out the sun on my parcel at midday--nor some poor schmuck on a distant sim at some other time. Right? There are skyboxes over the sim where I live and they don't cast any shadows. Even so (as I've mentioned elsewhere), I think shadows could end up being a huge problem, especially on the Mainland, because of the neighbor-shading potential. Shadows would be optional anyway I'd guess. _____________________
Dances, animations, furniture for Loco Pocos Tiny Avatars. Group dances, circle dances. Sculpted neko furniture. Prefabs, mediterranean styled beach houses. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Inochi%20Island/201/225/21 |
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Rocky Rutabaga
isn't wearing underwear™
Join date: 14 Apr 2006
Posts: 291
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Shadows Schmadows
12-03-2008 09:03
Yes, the new viewer can render shadows. Yes, another viewer brought us amazing water with ripples and reflections and clouds that drift by like bunnies.
But why? To create more "realness"? For what? Again, LL builds more cool bells and whistles but hasn't figured out why we would want to blow or ring them. Or even if it's important to SL users. Too many people come into SL, buy a plot of land, rez a house, add furniture, a little dance area and sex bed, and wait for "the game"/anything to begin. Then after 2 weeks, they never return. This doesn't solve the problem LL has: To get more than 10% of the people who sample SL to become engaged with SL. As cool as they are, shadows don't engage anyone. _____________________
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Charlotte Bartlett
Registered User
Join date: 21 Sep 2006
Posts: 97
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12-03-2008 09:59
After having a good long play with the new Shadow Draft R5 viewer and lighting i found a few other hidden goodies that will enhance SL ALOT!! check this screenshot out...  the top 2 images are the standard viewer (1.20) & the bottom 2 are the new Shadow Draft R5 viewer Both viewers all settings were set to Ultra, other than that nothing has been changed, the sky presets used are the default force midnight/daytime ones NO textures have been used, its all the default bumpmap textures (found under the bumpmapping section in the texture tab) Features of the Shadow Draft R4 & R5 Viewers *Shadows (obviously!) *Shadows do work with transparent textures, adding great tree shadows and sky window shadows (The shadows are cast when the object is more than 75% opacity, or the areas on the transparent texture that have more than 75% opacity) *Lighting inside will give the very edges/corners of the room u r lighting a slight shading effect, for more depth *True Bumpmapping (reacts to light sources and the sun/moon) *Specular Highlights (Make a surface shiny and place a light near it, and it will reflect and yes even the colour) *Per-pixel & sharper Light (infinite lights on screen, u would be suprised at how much better it looks) *Shiny + Bumpmapping makes the surface look more scattered, for a more realistic effect *The shiny effect with the sun on the water (the white glowy bits) now gets blocked out by shadows (so if u are inside eg a sewer the sun no longer reflects in the water giving an unrealistic effect) Hope this helps a few people out, most notibly people making next-gen items etc The viewer can be aquired from http://www.armyof4.com/Kirstenlee/Kirstens%20SD2-R5.exe Instructions on activating shadows... # Boot the client, set your graphics settings to max. # Press ctrl+alt+d to enabled the ‘Advanced’ menu. # In the ‘Advanced’ menu go to ‘Debug Settings’. # Find ‘RenderDeffered’ and make sure it is set to ‘FALSE’. # Find ‘RenderUseFBO’ and set that one to ‘TRUE’. # Go back to ‘RenderDeffered’ and set that to ‘TRUE’ also. Either you will get awsome lighting and shadows, or there will be no change. Post your shadow screenies here I can't wait - but can't test on the core side yet due to needing to switch from our current Macs into PCs - which we are doing anyway for another project. |
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Maklin Deckard
Disillusioned
Join date: 9 Apr 2005
Posts: 459
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12-03-2008 11:17
ok installed SD4 r1 FPS dropped by 10-12 on the same settings except for shadows turned on... and am having issues with some prims turning invisible with other prims inside or behind them Man, that's a deal-breaker right there. already took a 5-7 frame hit from Windsuck (even with it off, Its still 3-5 slower than the pre-windlight client viewing the same scene). 10-12 more? In some busy areas or really detailed builds (where you might WANT shadows), I'd be a 1 FPS! I'd much prefer to move in a non-flipbook manner on the hardware I have (4gb Ram, P4 3.2GHz, 8800GT/512 Video) than have shadows and other eye candy the X-box generation seems to love over usability. |
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Maklin Deckard
Disillusioned
Join date: 9 Apr 2005
Posts: 459
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12-03-2008 11:29
If you are on an old machine just uncheck all the eyecandy and you will still get reasonable fps. That's the same line of BS that the Windlight team fed us, courtesy of Pastrami....'just turn it off and it will be like the old viewer'. It wasn't, there is still an FPS hit even with WL off. I expect another hit with shadows off as well...all explained as imagination by smiling Pastrami and fanboi chorus of folks like the OP (just like it was with WL). I personally hope they fork the client if they decide to bring this into the main client. I don't want the FPS hit and frankly, none of the posted images were in the slightest way eye catching to me. I preferred the no-shadow look over dull, murky and shadowed. |