Anti - Anti Windlight Thread

I believe that you have nailed the situation Ricardo.

Me too. If I want to actually do something constructive, I use the Nic viewer. If I'm attending an outdoor event of some kind I use the current version. I'm lucky that I don't have too many problems with it - I just don't always need all the bells and whistles and whatnot.

I really hope Nic does an update before his version becomes un-usable. That would suck.

I haven't tried the Dazzle yet - I just can't muster up enough interest to be honest.

If you do, wear sun glasses.

That's it exactly Ric.

A high end setup doesn't necessarily mean a perfect SL experience. The key would be for LL to come up with a way for SL to work well for the majority of residents a majority of the time.


*sigh* But I guess that concept is too simplistic considering the current state of things.

In 6 months everyone still here will be running the sleek bot viewer anyway...........
Dazzle seems to be ok, the name isn't as dazzly as it sounds, so if you need viewer 18.XX, it's the one for you I guess/

It's already in the works (from what I heard)
I made the recomendation to create 2...one male, one female, to cure us of ruthing once and for all.

True, but I doubt we will ever ever ever EVER see a stable grid.

I can't think of many applications/programs that allows several terabytes of data to be streamed to multiple users.

SL will probably suffer from this forever till we all have T1 or T3 Connections. And by then we'll be glutting the pathways with even more crap.

Just like when people used to think "I dont need more than 512 MB of RAM or more than 80 megabytes of Hard Drive Space"

Well if you'd tried Windows ME which came in between those releases I doubt you'd have liked that, a steaming pile of pants.

How about running 1.19.0, how's that working out? They really should have given people an easy choice on which version to upgrade to.

OH DEAR GAWD NO!!!

My fiancee had it. When it worked, it was OK. Which wasnt often.

Even when I interviewed for various PC Technician jobs, WinME was laughed at, if it was even mentioned.

I can't see how anyone can think anything other than WindLight looking much better than the old viewer. I know there might be problems still to iron out but in general it's vastly superior. Some times of day give nicer lighting than others, but that's the same in RL.

If I have to find a downside to WindLight, it's just that a lot of my older pre-WindLight outdoor snapshots now look very bland by comparison......but that's progress.

I'm just looking forward to when we get proper shadows and light doesn't pass through opaque objects.

ummm boobs that jiggle would be nice....

Got the message last night when logging on that I had to upgrade, did the necessary, and promptly got told that my roughly 18 month old laptop, which I had just upgraded to 2gb RAM for the very purpose of running SL with less crashes, didn't meet the minimum graphics spec for the new programe!!

Guess who's somewhat irate!

Fortunately managed to d/l 1-19-0-5 and happy that that version sunctions.
A new pc's out of the question - upping the memory is all I can stretch to financially and I really didn't expect to be told that a machine less than 2 yrs old wasn't adequate - what happened to backwards compatibility?

My two cents:

Yes, people invested money in Second Life. Yes it must be annoying to see how their current PC can't run SL well enough anymore.

BUT

Second Life was always an evolving world. It was known for ages that there would be graphical improvements to make sure Second Life didn't start to look too outdated. Sculpted prims were a start, but really, it was to be expected that this would be needed.

I know it sucks for those with older PCs but to be fair, what about us with powerful PCs? Should we have to be stuck with outdated low-res graphics because others can't afford to buy better hardware? And it's not realistic to support two different viewers.

In the end, for developers it's a good thing too that there will be only one viewer because it'd drive me insane, having to gear all my products towards two viewers which make quite a bit of difference.

I personally like the new Windlight viewer. I can easily run it at maxed details. The water is gorgeous, and even the stars reflect. The only thing I don't like, is how bright lights are during day time. The old viewer pretty much cancelled lights out, but the new viewer adds brightness.

Oh, and PLEASE, stop using facelights! The same people who use them are now moaning about performance issues, but guess what uses so much power? Yes, moving light sources! Not to mention that people with facelights RUIN any carefully set up environment. Either they add brightness, or they just make the lights dissapear! This because there can only be a small number of light sources in view. Vanity or not, it's cheap and annoying.

It is a pasttime when you first start sl, you invest a lot and tweak a lot to get your look, But after that its always just been minor changes for most of us. i probably took a week just to find the perfect skin and now that skin looks like crap. lol
I would expect you as a skin designer are pretty excited about the possibilities of making a whole new skin line that looks great in WL because you stand to make tons more money.

Just for the record, i have a brand new PC, with a high end nvidia graphics card. a gaming system and WL still looks bad here.

I do love the water, thats about all . It was put there to trick us into thinking all the grahics are good now and they so arent. i have severe ligthing problems, a white glow on my avatar that i cant make go away. the other colors are all glowy too and i can barely stand to look at my avatar. I dont recognize her anymore.

It was different when the wL viewer was optional. I would go on sometimes enjoy the scenery, then go back to the normal viewer.

A big Question for ev1. Just putting this out there. You used to KNOW when you made something that looked good. Now with so many options and everyone using different settings , how will you KNOW your stuff looks good to everyone ? i see this alone as a nightmare . COuld it affect sales becasue most people see something you think it beautiful as horrid ? lol I mean chances are with so many setting options no one will see things the same anymore.

It depends upon how many people you're leaving behind. The implications are quite serious, if a sizeable amount of people stop spending money inworld then funky PC or not, there's going to be a knock on effect of people leaving whose hardware more than meets the requirements.

The way I see it, people who can't run SL at a playable level now, couldn't run SL on more than low detail before. Those people couldn't even SEE the nice detail of textures, prims, etc. so I doubt they would buy that many things if they can't enjoy it to the full extent.

Hell, if I turn Anisotropic filtering off, I already find that the textures look bland. SL on low looks like a 1996 game!

Maybe if the avatar lighting wasn't so bad with windlight, they wouldn't need to.

Thats simply not true.

There are people who could run SL at higher settings than I can on the old viewer who are suffering badly under windlight, while I am about the same as I was before.

Yes but some people who could run SL on mid settings before, find they need to run it on low now if they download the default viewer. To them, that's a big change and not for the better.

instead of crying ppl should learn how to set up the new viewer's setting! You dont like the sky effect's, the sunrise, sunset? TURN IT OFF! You dont like the lightning? TURN IT OFF! or better... set the quality and performance to "low" but im sure many ppl will cry about the low quality but high performance... so.... look and find out what settings you like and you prefer.

I love Windlight. It has so many possible settings and adjustments so everybody should find what he/she wants and his/her PC can handle.

People won't do that. Plenty of people don't like fiddling around with adjustments, it's a basic customer service issue. Hence why programs install with default settings to default locations and often have an advanced button for those who want to do it. If something isn't simple to operate, it puts people off and no amount of moaning that they should learn to do it will change that fact.

If they dont like it they shouldnt cry and life with the default settings and stare on a screen they dont like but some software and ofc hardware aswell need some adjustment and a bit fiddling to make it running smooth on the operating system.

Like you said, its just default and who has a default system on a default PC?

I do see this as a problem. It always kinda was, what with people being able to turn off bumpmap and shiny, particles, local lighting, etc. So it was always kinda a crap-shoot what people would actually see. The bumpmap and shiny stuff was always so brain-damaged that most builders just didn't use it, but the local lighting thing was always an annoyance.

At some point, there was talk of sims (and maybe parcels?) being able to specify the whole WindLight lighting experience for everybody present. This couldn't really include the graphics settings themselves, I guess, since there's no way of knowing whether the visitor's machine can handle any particular setting. Not being an estate owner myself, I'm not sure if any of that made it into the current release--but I kinda doubt it (and I understand that visitor viewers used to automatically "revert to region defaults" upon entering a sim, and don't anymore, so even the sim's day/night control isn't as effective as before).

On an earlier topic: I *think* I may understand, finally, what the deal is about skins not looking as good in Windlight; if I've got it right, then thanks, Colette, for the explanation. Here's what I think I understand: The avatar mesh is crude at best; some skins went to extraordinary measures to look smooth and sensibly shaped even despite the mesh limitations. Now, those special effects don't look right, and/or aren't as effective, when the mesh is lit by Windlight. If this is right, at least now I'll know what to look for. (I'm a little puzzled about the mechanics, though: if this worked before, it must have been very sensitive to time-of-day, even in the old viewers, didn't it? To be honest, in the old viewers I don't think I ever saw a skin that didn't look ghastly at "Noon", so... dunno. Anyway, I'll try to see if I can see what folks are talking about, now that I think I understand where to look.)

It's not only some people who have an older/mid-range puter while most have a powerful one, it's most people have an older/mid-range puter while only some have a powerful one.

SL isn't a video game that can target the high-end and tell the rest "buy a new puter or you're out of luck", it has to target mid-range first and low-end next and care about the high-end as an afterthought.

Supporting two different viewers is a pain I'm sure, but they've been doing it for 10 months already, there's no reason not to keep it up for another year or until whenever the low-range catches up to the minimum requirements for WindLight.