Tell Me Why I Need Windlight

I've run what claims to be the Windlight viewer but I have the normal sky, is that what you mean? Because if I can run it like that then I don't mind because I'm not that fussed how the sky looks and whether the water has fancy bits. All I ask is for a workable version without shiny bits so I can play with the intarwebs.

I have a somwhat different view of the whole Windlight issue.

LL needs more good software people. Buying an entire (small) company that provide a state of the art technology used by 3D virtual worlds sounds to me like a good quick way to do that.

The Windlight engine is clearly better in the long run than the engine it replaces. It will take more time to integrate it into SL and to tune it.

LL gets some very forward looking graphics engine wonks (from MIT, I believe, right?). Taht can only be good in the long run.

Sometimes the viewer crashes because the current engine is old a crufty. A total replacement (by Windlight) is the best way to fix this. This is true for Havok4, too. It is not an unecessary bell nor a whistle. It is a replacement for a part of SL tat causes a lot of crashes. The fact that it is also faster and has more features adds extra value. Also, it would be really hard to *hire* people to work on the old havok1 engine. Now that they have havok4.6, it will be easier to hire good people.

lee

You don't strictly need WindLight, save for this: the success of the platform overall relies on it not being stuck in 2003.

Ms Pennywhistle, I'd strongly suggest testing your wonderful animals with the new Mono beta release and Havok 4.6, though.

That way if there is anything wrong you can be aware of it, report it via jira, and have the Company fix the bugs before all your animals on the grid are potentially 'broken' in some way.

I'm very disappointed. Windlight will not run on my 8800. Why must LL keep giving us bells and whistles when I want a stable viewer I can fit on a 5.25 disk?

Be grateful that I am not about to kiss you, you deserve a kiss for that comment

AND and and LOL @ Deanna

IM me in world But, for the most part, reasonable computer graphics cards are getting cheaper and cheaper, and lightly used ones are around left over from those who really want to be bleeding edge.
In general, for those who want to work with the most stable versions, try only downloading even numbered versions, or better yet, wait until the upgrade is mandatory.
I only use windlight now, though I do have dsl, and a great compy, so there are a number of problems I miss that others get. However, I have one computer with an older CRT (the huge ones) styled moniter. If you want SL to look nice, keep in mind, your moniter still has to put out the image. If you have a great graphics card, a zoom zoom compy, but a crummy moniter, you'll still end up with washed out, or really low detail graphics.

That is, I believe, called "fallback mode," where you can have the blue sky and "old style" clouds. Runs pretty good on low-end machines an all dat. I use it on my PowerBook G4 even though it can run higher, and it is all I can run on the iMac "lamp" and old G4 tower.

Mari

The only issue I seem to have with Windlight is that at times,,, I can't log in with it. When this happens, I use the regular client and have no problem accessing SL.

I have the same issues regarding the occasional crash or TP hang up with either Windlight of the standard client. There's no difference in stability that I can detect!

I prefer to use Windlight and do so as much as possible.

Its funny. I keep hearing about these WL bugs. The only two I have seen are the invisible avatars with attachments at altiltude, and hair partially disappearing because of the background. The former being fixed.

Otherwise I use WL because it does not crash my laptop (Toshiba 2Gz single core, 2G ram, with Intel GM 900 graphics). Not very SL compliant. With the standard viewers, its not IF it will crash, but WHEN. And when it does, its a complete lockup. Only a cold start wil get it back.

To me, WL is a godsend.

I've actually spotted a lot of buggies, from one that caused the program to crash every time you logged out or took a snapshot, to the current issues with black on black or white on white text in some windows. The snapshot one did, for a time, drive me back to the official viewer.

The difference is that I've found the Windlight team to work pretty quickly at squashing them.

Mari

Sometimes I manage to hook up to an all-singing, all-dancing quad core computer instead of my usual 'Old Laggy'. Today the new 1.19 was downloaded on the new comp and it was just awesome. For the first time it gave proper water reflections.
The last bit of the equation to come, as far as I'm concerned, should be cast shadows, together with walls that block light. When we get those enhancements I will be mopping tears of joy from my eyes!

Yup, Chav. Next time you try it, go into preferences and disable atmospheric shaders (for skies and lighting) and basic shaders (for shiny water), and you should still be able to run it on older hardware. I actually do that a lot because I hate the way Windlight lights the avatar for certain things I am working on. It improves by FPS by at least 10 if not a lot more.

As for bugs, there are a lot of them but it's still very usable for most things and in fact, I am learning to love the new lighting in most cases.

Same, that is about it..

TO PEOPLE COMPLAINING ABOUT 'HAZE', Try turning UP the 'Fog Distance Ratio' under Advanced Graphics. I always set it to 4 to get rid of the haze.

Know what would make WL 100x better? (and sl in general) SHADOWS! OMG I WANT SHADOWS! Just adds another layer your brain would naturally expect to be there.

But then again, I ask for silly things like that because I don't have problems like people here seem to complain about.

Just noticed Conifer said: "The last bit of the equation to come, as far as I'm concerned, should be cast shadows, together with walls that block light. When we get those enhancements I will be mopping tears of joy from my eyes!"

And I totally agree!

Rich People? you can for well under 500 bucks buy all this :
22 INCH LCD Monitor,
Duel Core 64 AMD Computer with 1 gig ram
GeForce 7600 with 512Megs Ram.

Under 500 bucks for a computer that ROCKS second life hard core is NOT something only the 'RICH' can afford.





example build:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2430647&CatId=2775
22 inch lcd 209

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2.20GHz OEM, 1GB DDR2 PC4200, ATX Mid-Tower Case, 450 Watt Power Supply 99 bucks
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3584463&CatId=332

XFX GeForce 8500 GT Ultra Silent Cooling / 256MB DDR2 / SLI Ready / PCI Express / (Dual Link) DVI / VGA / HDTV / Video Card
65 bucks
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3244228&CatId=1560


total 373 dollars.

where is your RICH UNCLE now

That's still quite a bit of disposable income, you know...

you don't.

From what I've seen these aren't the only problems associated with Windlight.

I for one have never dowloaded it nor do I want to. I hope it doesn't become mandatory where you need to download it in order to enter sl.

Instead of new bells and whistles why not fix the place [sl] first then add scenery. Just doesn't make logical sense but then look who's doing it.

Yesterday I installed Windlight (after someone helped me to upgrade the drives of my graphics-card, as was adviced).

OMG, I love it. In the house I rent I had already had a very nice sea-view. Now it is just amazing! I can look at it for hours...

Morwen.

Hmm well, tell us why we should stay with a Commodore 64 quality rendered sky for the next 10 years?

I hear this argument every time something comes out that tries to make SL look nicer.

Fact is that the Windlight software is a major re-design of the client. It's supposed to be less laggy and less prone to crashing. I've been using it for a while and apart from one Graphics Card issue that I seem to be having (for which I have filed a JIRA) it seems to be MUCH more stable than the older one.

Like others have said, it's more than jes a pretty sky, but has a LOT under the hood that makes for a better client. Even as a "first look" the Windlight viewers is more stable than the official viewer for me.

I like having a nicer sky, one that actually looks a bit more "real" than the particle clouds and stuff. I like the lighting better than the murk we have in the official viewer -- but I also prefer more stability, and the Windlight viewer, by and large, has given me that.

As far as the bugs that are in it? Again, it's a First Look. Not ready for prime time, etc. Frankly, now *is* a good time to use it, and report every little big on the JIRA. It's clear from looking at the various Windlight viewer topics that the WL team takes their work pretty seriously -- so if ya have a problem, by all means let people know *now* before the viewer becomes the official one.

Mari

WindLight is definitely more that just a pretty sky for those with the power to view it, and it's "Requirement" seems to have dropped a fair bit between 1.18 and 1.19. It is also a far more efficient graphics engine then the old one used by the RC and Official viewers. When I was running my 128MB card I saw significant frame rate increases with WindLight. I think with Havok4 again another "Not just a new feature" upgrade it will make SL much more stable.

WindLight and Havok4 are two different ends to the same problems, WindLight is a client side improvement where Havok4 is a server side improvement.

A LOT, and I will not say all, but a lot of "SL Keeps Crashing!" complains is because users expect SL to use less resourced for their looks being used to Pre-rendered or Semi-Pre-rendered environments they see in popular PC games. SL takes a lot more because is has to render the environment on the fly with no pre-built bits to work from, so it takes much more power to run, there is no way around it other than to take away user creativity.

Mari, great advice! I discovered a bug with my graphics card - and another user has the same issue with almost the same card. Now is the time to get that addressed, while there is still a team working on it.

Likewise - an this was someting I jes learned from getting a new 'puter a couple weeks ago - a lot of lag an other things comes out of our own computers. If your 'puter is underpowered (an when I started I was on a well-below-SL-specs machine), you will have more trouble.



Oh ya. There have been issues that I've been able to get addressed, then fixed, though the JIRA. Heck, there's been some information I've gotten from the WL team's office hours that have helped me with stuff. With all of LL's faults at times, the WL team is a gem.

Mari

Yeah, wish I could go to some office hours. I rely on the blog, Wiki and JIRAs instead.