Windlight HERE?

I'm hearing about an update around the bend to include Windlight. What is that??? People are making it sound revolutionary, but I have no idea what it will do in SL. You all must know.

Also: anyone know what the updates to Havok 4 include?

WindLight makes SL look really good. It provides atmospheric rendering and lighting. Also does water too. WindLight can improve even the crappiest builds.

Havok 4 will stabilize the physics engine and change the link distance rules as well as make vehicles act differently. It's a good thing.

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/WindLight
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Havok_4_Beta_Home

will any of this change the use rules of stuff like mega-prims? I don't personally use any, but i'm curious. Those mega-spheres mess with the physics. Will this end that issue or will mega-shpheres be disallowed?

Oh and will they EVER fix the horizon issue??? It sucks so bad. That trick--pressing all your option buttons and 8 -- or -- whtever -- does very little other than blur the top line a bit. it still looks a lot less like a realistic horizon than it did a few versions ago.

K, I'll be the first to say it... can we PLEASE just fix the broken stuff (I.E. stipends and those pesky daily "in-world" issues)?????

And when someone leaves over this, can I have their stuff?

And yes, whomever posts it, you are right - the sky is falling and LL will close over this!

Did I get it all?

Yeah... IF you have a graphics card that can support it.

If you do NOT have a graphics card that supports it, WindLight actually makes SL look horrible... MUCH worse than the current look.

Progress does have it's costs.

But WindLight makes me "nya"

Oh dear goodness, I hope they bring Windlight back. It made me want to lick my LCD panels when I had it up and running on my system when it was in the test client so long ago. It is a scrupdilliumptious graphics/rendering technology second to none to its' sister product...what was it called now? But it's job was to render terrain. Windlight plus active terrain rendering....Havok-4 physics.... I'll sign up for it! Where's the line? *giggle*

Even on my three year old laptop WindLight looked like I wanted to eat those clouds...and while my avi looks like she's dead in the current noon setting, WL let you change the colours to warmer shades and made everything look really gorgeous.

if windlight makes it look bad your gpx card should have retired a long time ago, it even looks good on the 6 month old intel 950 in my lap top! the sky rocks the lighting looks fantastic! the water is amazing check the blog for Torleys post and pics with it and on a nice machine!!! yeah where is the line to sign... darn best go get some lcd screen cleaner again

I have pixel shader dark-ages...I don't think Windlight will benefit me--in fact, if you are right Ava...I may be unhappy when I'm forced to utilize it. Will I be forced? Can I toggle it off, and will it look normal if I do?

It's time for me to upgrade. I'm still on a P3 (at least it's a duelie P3).

I tested this and it messed up lighting on all attached prims. Did they ever fix that?

They aren't going to release it again until they have most of the big bugs worked out. Like memory leaks. I'm betting thats on the list.

You mean...nobody will Match any more? Oh, the horror!

Actually -- from what little I've seen -- theyu've been working on a fairly decent "low end" default for Windlight.

Windlight and Havok4 will be the end of SL!

(As we know it)

Mari

People who build for avatars in SL will not be able to match prim textures to the texture maps of skin & clothing. It's not a subtle difference. My jacket was gray and the prim coat tails were orange.

I know the hate for avatar designers is strong, but I don't want to be limited to drawing on a template LL provides, when I can create so much more combining that with prim attachments.

I wasn't aware of this myself--I think that is a HUGE mistake to not fix that. Clothing is a massive market, and screwing with the attachments is a gargantuan boo-boo. How can they justify? I would go as far as saying that clothing is more important that better graphics...at least for now.

Can't they make windlight affect textures and skins as well as attachments?

Is windlight going to fix the inventory bug? Still loosing stuff to the "object is missing from database" regularly. You can throw sparkles in my eyes all you want, the only improvement SL needs right now are bug fix, not new useless glitter.

I hate to break it to you, but nobody really matches now. If you are trying to get a prim attachment (it doesn't have to be male parts - any attachment) to match the shade of the skin you're wearing, you can get it close for a lot of situations, but it won't match in a lot of other ones. The skin I always wear has a pretty normal skin tone, and if I wear an attachment I want to match that tone, it will look normal outside and slightly orangish inside or vice versa. In certain lighting conditions, it can be WAY off. We joke around a lot about guys running around with their junk hanging out, but there are legitimate implications for avatar designers as mentioned above. If someone is designing a non-human avatar, or just a semi-human one that has a shape which can't be achieved with the sliders, then getting the attachments to match up in all lighting conditions is nearly impossible, and if Windlight makes it worse, then that's going to require some pretty creative solutions.

That said, anything that improves the graphics of Sl is a benefit. They aren't terrible for what they are, but I was unable to log on the other night and decided to replay some of my favorite levels of HL2, and the graphics are so much better that it's painful, and that's a game that's a couple years old now. They'll never be able to do with SL what they do with bleeding edge graphics for FPS' because the demands on the systems are totally different, but any improvement would be a good one (although better system stability would be appreciated first).

Windlight made my skin look horrible. I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it, although Torley takes nice pictures with it.

Windlight is a shiny but a damn big shiny. This one is worth it.

As for fixing the bugs, Havok 4 is the answer to many of the "fix the grid first" wailing.

If that is true, then they are going to have a huge big crowd of content creators getting very unhappy, not to mention the customers of those creators. I seriously hope they fix that one!

Hate for avatar designers? Hmn... I hear a lot of praise for most of them, particularl Flea, Psyra, Noramyr, Wynx, etc.

Bear in mind, too, dat we're discussing our experiences with a very rushed trogether FirstLook of several months ago. A LOT has changed inthe client, judging from what little I've seen, including fixing a lot of the things people were complaining about.



It's true, especially for lighter colors. I have one outfit I love dat is a perfect match betwen clothes an prim, but some lighting... forget it.



I had dat orangy look with it, an the glowy eyes. It looks like a lot of that has changed in the months since the FirstLook.



Definitely worth it, IMO. Both of 'em.

Mari

Windlight needs a LOT of baking before it'll be ready.

In /extreme/ cases of lighting it was pretty cool, but I think most of the people are just going to want the nice clear lightly colored days and nights and with that Windlight was horrible. I spent hours trying to get the 50 parameters to mimic the current lighting model and it could not be done. Everything was always tinted and light areas on textures blown out and colored.

Local lighting was prety much made innefective.

As others have said the diference in lighting between your skin/cloths and your prims which is not subtle now was gastly under windlight.

This was on an 8800 GTX and the problems are real and across the board, not video card dependant.

So while it looked "bitchen" for a few minutes or int specially crafted photos or maybe even for a few hours when you first saw it, it really became clear after a while that the subtlties of the lighting in SL as it is today were compeltely destroyed. It actually became very tiring after a few days of looking at it as the entire scene was always off hue.

It needed WORK before I think most people would be happy with it in the long run.

Reminds me of a great Seinfeld episode.