Windlight Questions

QFT
That is my biggest concern about Windlight so far. I appreciate that things already look different to different people because of their systems, settings and what have you, but under Windlight nothing will look even similar to different people unless they both have the exact same settings. That is just plain silly IMHO.

Yes, on the very highest settings. Though I keep draw distance at 160-200 for speedy rendering

I think that has been said, however the basics of windlight are usable on a lower end computer. Its only when you get into the fancy stuff that you need a better graphics card.



rEAD MY SECOND ANSWER. Oops caps

When Windlight is finished, the environmentsettings can be saved as files and shared to share what you see. Also, even right now, everyone has the same basic presets.

Besides, every computer will look at least slightly different based on their display already.

You know what? People should really try things, look at bug logs and get their facts straight. For most I am sure they will find the rendering code far superior to the old code, my laptop is anyway, and it only has a 32MB Radeon 7500. For those using Mac? I am sure it's a bug and if it has not been reported, REPORT IT! You have no right to complain about bugs if you are not willing to bring them to the proper people to fix.

I really don't meen to be terribly offensive, but a lot of the nay sayers like with Voice have no clue what they are talking about. They are simply complaining because it is something that will be changing. Windlight in and of it's self is a new rendering option, the graphics engine it's built on though is far superior and that is coming from some one that is using it.

I'll send you my video card and you can send me yours. I doubt you'd enjoy telling people they have no clue while SL stutters along in WindLight with WL turned *off* when it's more than acceptable in the current main viewer .

workd pritty well on my "old" machine at max settings everywhere










CPU: Intel Pentium 4 (Unknown model) (3215 MHz)
Memory: 2560 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 8800 GTS/PCI/SSE2

Ill trade you, and I'll get it to work, I'm about 98% sure....

WIndlight is also still essentially in beta however, so wait for the finished product!

A cute turn of a phrase there.

Deal! .

I already commented on the degraded performance for older cards: my sense was that Pastrami considered it to be acceptable just to give others pretty skies.

That worked really well ....

You gotta come here with your comp lol... I don't wanna lose the second most expensive part XD


It is though. If your card can only handle super basics of it.. then it's acceptable. Because those who can afford it, and those that LL really wants in SL (Cause theyll buyy islands and millions of L$) are the ones who can afford high end machines, and to stay right with the technology.

If you have a low quality card at the moment, SL doesn't look amazing in either viewer. I think the Windlight viewer is still capable of at least as good if not better than the old for older cards as well (I'm not sure.. i don't have a test machine here lol). Essentially... if you have something low quality, thats what you should expect.

Oki, the people buying the islands can afford the technology. The people USING the islands may not. Think, for example, of the CSI/NY venture, as well as I Am Legend.

An even more compelling example: think of the thousands of employees of corporations that may use an island network as an extension of their intranet. In general, even high tech corporations such as Intel, Nortel, etc. will equip the non-engineering portion of their employee base with laptops ONLY.

I knew there would be some catch .

I don't expect WindLight with the pretty new skies and water at the same FPS I'm getting now, I'm expecting WindLight with SL looking the same as the current main viewer and getting the same FPS. Right now I get half the FPS in WindLight with SL looking worse (had to drag the sliders and draw distance down from my normal values to be tolerable).

If 80% will either not benefit or be unable to even use it, then the primary focus should be on not making things worse.

I knowthe ones using cannot always.. thats what I mean. If you can't afford that, then you can't pay as much to LL... I was implying they want it pretty for the big bucks people.

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/20/windlight-update-2007-11-20/

I have already posted there pointing to this thread and the windlight skin thread as well, tho i am not in hopes that any Linden will follow those pointers!

You are aware I am talking about the aforementioned laptop in my previous post? The one that managed only 5 FPS on the old cliant and 10! on the WL? Not much chance of me being able to get the mine out and your to fit.

Maybe I should post screenshots of my Main Viewer and Windlight FPSes?

At any rate if it's not already reported as a bug, perhaps you should? I mean my video chip is at least 3 years old... At least! And I have noticed my FPS double. Now I really want to see what my 9800 Pro will do at home with the WL viewer!

I was just being silly . But if anyone really wants to send me a shiny new video card, I won't complain (and I actually wouldn't mind having a laptop either ).

I don't doubt that some people are seeing performance gains on WindLight compared to the old viewer . But some people are seeing very significant drops on WindLight as well and the base line really shouldn't be shifting that much.

Wow, lovely.

No I do agree with you that the baseline from card to card should not be so great, and thus would consider it a bug to be reported, if not already.

What about the Hannukuh Hamster?

I asked him for a PC last year and he gave me a stocking full of Pellets n' Corn.

1) Yes. For me, the latest Windlight client is easily one of the best SL clients released in the last two years. Its not perfect, but it works.

2) I dunno.

3) SL has always run best on high end machines. I find that many noobs are people who tried SL with slow machines at first. They create an account, can't get SL to run, so they give up until they get better machines and try again. Their profiles show them as months old, but they admit to just getting started.

I suspect there will be a few who will leave, but many will probably either upgrade or take time off from SL until they can afford better computers.

The windlight viewer works fine on my 3 year old machine. It does in fact run a bit smoother than normal SL, despite the very occasional graphical glitch. In addition, I was able to to install the windlight version on a much older machine that is unable to even support standard SL. While the old machine is not blazing in the FPS department, it can even still support the atmosphere and water shaders while plodding along.

I don't expect much economic ripple when it is eventually a required update. I doubt very much the sky will fall.

Wow. 8 posts since 2004. I've made more posts in the last 20 minutes. Thanks for chiming in.

1) More then just works, since I use the windlight client I haven't experienced one single crash!
Specs of laptop:
dual core centrino
2 gb memory
embedded Intel 945 chipset

After half an hour the laptop glows from the heat, but it keep on running, while in the past I had at least one BSOD each evening, more often a few. Throwing away cache and defrag would most of the time keep it running again for a bit. As said since windlight not a single crash though!
Though I am kinda jealous when I see the pics (I hardly see any windlight effects, due to the low-end graphics adapter) I am really glad I dont experience the problems some people do, but hey I had my share You must give SL credits though, for the fact people put up with the crashes just to be able to live their second lives

As far as mandatory, I bet you will not have a choice soon indeed, as they won't support multiple clients for sure.

However I don't see much impact from it being mandatory. Some people will benefit (like me!!) and some people will suffer, so in the end not much will change regarding number of users.
As for limitation for users with supporting graphic adapters that support it, I don think that will be a problem. My low-end card proves that SL can even run better on a non-supported card, so the specs seem not change that much. Of course new users who see the pretty pictures, and get a version without windlight effects, might be disappointed
So as a conclusion, no I don't see a huge economical impact when windlight becomes mandatory. Of course the final version should not be less stable then the first look one

Greetings, Marcel