Concerned about Windlight

Well, here are two that may be worth checking out and possibly voting on:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-5632 (Current priority: "Showstopper", description: "All around decrease in performance after updating"

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4164 (Current priority: "Critical", description: "Texture slow to load"

(About the latter: It may just be me, but texture-loading is the performance aspect of recent clients--and frankly, not just WindLight--that really most hurts the in-world experience for me.)

Does that help at all?

Whereas the new patch 2.4 of World of Warcraft runs fine on my PC. World of Warcraft looks better on my PC than a supposed "not a game, it's a business platform", there's something wrong with this logic.

Brilliant! Thanks Qie The first one isn't spot on but is close enough for me to vote on. If anyone's having the same issues please vote or raise a Jira (if unlike me you actually can work out how to raise one).

but WOW uses a limited set of preloaded meshes and textures. in SL every avatar and prim is unique.

Well, I'm kinda wrinkly and probably older than the average SLer. I did recently upgrade my PC but I had reasons other than SL to do it. Since I do enjoy SL, I bought a bit higher spec hardware than I really needed.

Would I purchase new hardware with ONLY Second Life as justification for it? No, that would be foolish.

But this doesn't get away from the fact that my viewing capability is decreased with the latest viewer whereas with WOW it isn't. WOW is a game, Second Life isn't.

Torley has a tutorial that addresses the Avatar Imposters settings, and there's a top-level description of the "Graphics Preferences Layout" and what the controls do; both are at https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/security.asp?folderID=161 -- I know the stoopid support portal will make you login to get that, and then it forgets what you wanted, but eventually you may be able to follow the link.

I'd love to see more detail than is available there, though.

Well, I'm a little wrinkly and I'm about to upgrade, but it's disappointing to think I'll only be treading water. I want to upgrade for smoother functionality, not necessarily prettier pictures. And if we must have prettier pictures, I vote for prettier avatars.

I need a new computer anyway, but if WL is going to put me right back into not being able to move after visiting a couple of places, what's the point for me? I've set aside a couple of thousand USD for a new computer. Do I need to double that? Ridiculous!

I've tried WL on my antique. It runs with about the same level as normal because my video card doesn't even try to render the clouds and water, etc. But if what I'm seeing is anything like it's supposed to look, it's a bit ugly. The colors are too intense. A lot of things go cartoon purple and bright orange. The shadows are just bizarre. And, yes, the light is unflattering to the avatars.

Maybe there needs to be two girds. One for people who want to ray trace their world in real time someday, and a functional 3d environment for the rest. Actually I'd visit both in that case.

Weston, I invested barely more than $1K USD in my new machine and I can run the new viewer on Ultra settings except in high traffic areas or stores with loads of textures. In those places I just drop my draw distance a bit and I'm fine.

If you are looking to spend a couple of K USD you should be able to get a machine that will handle windlight and more, easily.

But in order to compare the two, they need to be comparable.

Render detail and lag is a huge issue with the latest client. I won't deny it. However WOW has nothing to do with it and is an unfair comparison.

Thank you. That's good to know. Now if I can just make mysaelf shop for one. . .

Guys, if your system can't handle Windlight, just turn it off. Uncheck atmospheric shaders and water reflections, and the two most significant features of WL will be gone. The sky will look just like the same old boring SL sky you're used to. The water won't look quite the same, since the basic shader is different, but its most resource intensive part will have been shut down. You can turn off RenderGlow in the debug settings.

Underpowered graphics cards may also benefit from the disabling of vertex buffer objects. VBO's are intended to speed things up, of course, but if your card can't handle them, they can do more harm then good.

From there, tweak your other settings as you normally would.


If you're still having problems after that, well, I know it's not the answer you want to hear, but as others have already said, technology can't sit still forever. SL's been using the same flat, boring graphics engine for 5 years. You can't expect that it should stay that way until the end of time, just because some users happen to have underpowered hardware. I'm sorry it bothers you that you might need to spend money to keep your hardware up to date for cutting edge applications, but that is reality.




And, people, these comparisons with video game engines are severely misplaced. It's apples and oranges. It makes no sense to say "But I get mega FPS in WoW, so if I don't get that in SL too, it must mean SL is screwed up or badly written or something." No, the reason you get higher FPS in games than in SL is because no video game in history has ever had to do the things SL needs to do just to function. There are some very different principles involved.

You might as well be complaining that you're not getting mileage out of your horse shoes when you drive your car, or that you can't glide in a helicopter like you can in an airplane, or that you can't deep fry your donuts in your microwave oven. In each example, the two items in question both perform some similar functions to each other (horses and cars both take people places, helicopters and airplanes both fly, and fryers and microwaves both cook), but they obviously do them in very different ways. You can't expect to duplicate the experience you get from one with the other. It just doesn't work like that.

Also, always keep in mind that all content in all games is optimized by professionals, and it's all static. You're not gonna log into WoW tomorrow and find that goblins are sudeenly purple instead of green, or that the undead city has been replaced by a replica of Disney Land (at least not without you having to download a gigantic multi-hundred-megabyte patch first). And you'll certainly never find a scene full of hundreds of 1024x1024 textures, all slapped onto little 2-foot signs.

But that kind of thing happens in SL literally all the time. The world is ever-changing in SL, and 99% of it is done by amateurs who haven't the first clue about optimization. Even if SL were to incorporate the smoothest running, most hardware-friendly, graphics engine this planet has ever seen, it still wouldn't run as well as the average video game. There are just too many factors involved that are outside the graphics engine's control.


Look, we all wish SL would run better than it does. But rather than panic every time there's a change you think might be for the worse, take a step back, learn about the options and the reasons why, and then intelligently move forward.

I'm wondering if maybe it's LL's choice of rendering engines might be a big factor in many problems a lot of people experience. OpenGL vs DirectX. Sort of like HD-DVD vs Blu Ray.........Blu Ray won that battle which may or may not be the best standard but, at least, there is a standard that everyone can use and improve and the users can know what to consider when purchasing their players/recorders.

It's pretty obvious that DirectX is the most popular engine for games (for better or worse) so most machines and graphics cards are optimised to that standard........which means the games run better on those computers. Yes, by doing that there is the problem for the Mac users (and Linux, too), but, regardless of which is better, Windows based computers are the most used in the world. So to reach the most, it might be a good idea to target the most. I can see why LL chose OpenGL at first.......to not exclude a sizable minority of users. But, it seems OpenGL has hit a brick wall compared to DirectX because almost all online games are using Directx.........you can only swim upstream so long before you start to loose ground. I know DirectX is not a standard in the truest sense of the word, but it is the most used for graphics intensive programs. It could be time to consider a change in that direction.........if not at this moment, then sometime soon.

I think it is more based upon the computer than the viewer itself. A few releases back, with the RC client, I seemed to be crashing a lot, and I'm not yet sure if that is still an issue for me or not -- I use the old 1.18.5.3 with Nicholaz most of the time, so just need to spend more time in RC to see if it still crashes lots. However, when I do use the current RC, I usually have almost all of my settings high in order to really stress the performance and see what happens.

I usually keep draw distance down to 128-256 unless I'm specifically wanting things farther away to rez. I almost always have particles set very low because I hate them. I also keep Trees and Terrain at Mid level because I don't really care about those items most of the time. Other than those items, I have all of the rest of my settings set to the highest possible. Another note, on my Network tab, I use a cache of 650 mb most of the time and I keep my bandwidth at 1500. My computer does have 4 gb of memory and I'm using the GeForce 8800 GT card with 512 mb.

All of that said, I don't seem to have issues unless SL itself is acting slow or I'm in a sim that is slow for everyone, regardless of their veiwer version. I often use Phat's as a test because no matter what, that place just always rezzes slow for me. Truthfully, it doesn't seem any worse with the RC viewer than with any other version.

Well stated Chosen.

I agree 100%. I had this discussion with my friend recently who is a big gamer. He was in awe of SL for the very reasons you stated.....the fact that it's ever changing and runs at all! He explained a lot about game graphics to me and I think a lot of what stimulates complaints is simply lack of knowledge. This is no diss on anyone.....it's just fact. It really pays to educate yourself in terms of graphics and gaming and what is involved just to have a moving 3d image on your screen.

I had told another friend a while back about SL and he jumped right in without ever reading the system requirements and he was unable to do anything except log in and stand there. After some reading he was impressed and a bit overwhelmed by what SL actually 'is'. I'm guessing a lot of folks jump in because they are intrigued and anxious for the global social experience.....but SL is a lot more than that. Even some of the folks I know who are big computer buffs, have really no grasp of what SL is all about and have a hard time understanding why it should require so much just to run smoothly.

And as far as spending a lot to run SL....hogwash.... I've stated many times what our operating system is....and we got it at a steal from Dell.... refurbished ..... the most expensive part was our moniter (24" and that's only because my fiance wanted a big screen to play HIS games on. The computer was 500USD and it rocks. Do your homework....if you don't understand something....learn it.... this is true in any facet of life, not just computer gaming. Ignorence is most assuredly NOT bliss in the world of technology as these forums clearly demonstrate.

I don't remember writing this! *giggles*
Me too. Everything Rioko said except cable...but I do have an uber awesome DSL connection.

For those who are concerned about avatar lighting and washed-out textures in Windlight, please do know that this discussion raged for months, generated much concern and many tweaks, and the relevant Jira issue was closed in January by Torley, with essentially the message: We've done all we're going to do.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3125

Of course, the issue and discussion being closed means that the developer's eyes have drifted off of these issues, with the result that I think most recent defaults and rendering have gotten worse in these regards. But, people's points were heard by many, and some changes were made.

Philosopical moment:
I worry that, with all these compromises and many new Virtual World platforms emerging, SL will end up being right for NO markets. I look at Sun's new Wonderland platform for education ... it has terrific media capabilities and very crude avatars (of course they're working on it, but obviously shopping won't be the focus on these grids). People will, I'm sure, be using their RL names as a matter of course. The education industry is in SL bigtime, but some are porting content like mad to this new, custom-made world engine.
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yay for progress

Have you found a place to actually take a look at it or have you just read about it?

I went to a presentation on it two days ago, they showed both slides and video.

I believe you can try it at: http://virtualnorthstar.org

The MediaGrid folks say they're putting up seven sims for public access next month. Look for news on it at: www.ImmersiveEducation.org
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I don't suppose you could provide an url for the specific page?

There's no "Click to try out the Wonderland virtual world" link on that page that I can see, nor on the pages it has links to.

When I say try it out, I mean as an end user, not downloading the entire server software from Sun and intalling that to run a sim.

Qie, I couldn't get that link to work, but I found Torley's video in the KB..
.. and stole the YouTube hyperlink
http://www.youtube.com/v/pRpRvgp8a5E&rel=0&border=1

I think one of the things people might be referring to is the relatively poor legacy hardware support the new viewers have. While you can't directly compare SL graphics with those of other newer games, you CAN obviously see that a video card that struggles in SL WL can easily render 3x as much in other demanding games, and also render more in older viewers.

Take my setup for instance...
Athlon64 X2 5600+ dual core, dual 1MB cache
4GB Patriot DDR2-800 dual channel
DFI Infinity NF570-SLI motherboard
Dual MSI NX6800GT 256MB DDR3 PCI-E in SLI
Dual Western Digital Raptor 37GB 10,000rpm SATA hardrives in RAID 0
1000 watt power supply
Win XP pro

Despite the video cards and harddrives being older, this system is NOT slow!
Everything else is just over a month old.
The ONLY newer games that made me reduce my quality settings from max everything were FEAR and Crysis. OpenGL games like doom3 and quake 4 my FPS is measured in the hundreds.

If I can push that many polygons in a much more detailed environment, my video is not the problem.
If I can play SL with any 1.18.xx viewer or Nicolaz BE-V at MAX everthing and 224-256m draw distance, my system is not the problem.
If I use the Windlight viewer, even with the windlight features turned off, both the details and draw distance are cut by more than 50% to be playable. That tells me that windlight does not have the proper code path for my 2 year old video cards, and that windlight is the problem.

Did you register? Lower right of the page, I believe.
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Good points Chosen,I haven't thought of it like that.


/me spills wine on laptop and cries to DH about buying another one...:/

The comparison is that my machine can run WoW comfortably and it won't run the new SL client comfortably, it's a customer service issue.

The comparison is that I don't have big issues with the current SL client, I didn't have issues with the previous WoW client, I don't have issues with the new WoW client, I do have issues with the RC SL client.

The comparison is that I can run the most popular multi player game on the planet without a problem and I can't run a business platform without a problem.

The comparison is unfair on technical aspects, but on commercial aspects, the comparison is 100% sound.