flexible attachments and hardware lighting in 1.9.1?
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Eep Quirk
Absolutely Relative
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 1,211
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04-06-2006 02:09
From: Feynt Mistral I don't think this is a particularily good idea picking an arbitrary testing number. You're assuming that we residents are reasonable human beings and won't go overboard on light sources for things we create. What about all the low rider cars that MUST have running board lights? That's at least six lights there (two headlights, two tail lights, and two to x(?) under carrage lights). I believe the amount of lights that are hardware rendered should be a user definable choice in preferences. So if we only want to have hardware render three lights, we can, and if we want to see what our bleeding edge cards can do we can set it to fifty. 6 isn't an arbitrary number but the amount hardware is limited to. I don't know the specifics, but I know OpenGL (and Direct3D) can only render up to 8 (the world light source is 1, leaving 7 so dunno where the other one is going in SL--maybe the moon, but that's silly to use it and the sun's light source simultaneously) lights in hardware (GPU) before going to software (CPU). I don't know why OpenGL can't support more than 8, but I think it's a hardware limitation (and I don't know why 3D cards aren't being improved enough to support more lights--though I believe high-end/workstation/CAD cards do). From: Feynt Mistral Sadly that rules out large area lights, like miniature suns or large glowing space ships that would require a larger than 20m distance. But I can understand that choice. Perhaps you can let users choose a distance up to 127m away and then give a choice in the client preferences to limit how far a light source can project light locally? That way you can allow people to make their mini suns or spotlights and no one who wants to see a light go farther than 20m, 30m, or even 60m is happy.? I agree: a light distance client setting is the way to go. |
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Panther Farber
The rainbow colored furry
Join date: 11 Mar 2004
Posts: 119
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04-06-2006 02:27
From: Doc Nielsen Yup - but on the plus side, your floppy bits will now flop authentically!  OMG praise (insert name of whatever diety you worship here)
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Mulch Ennui
15 Minutes are Over
Join date: 22 May 2005
Posts: 2,607
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04-06-2006 05:05
From: SuezanneC Baskerville Not much point to that; SL vehicles don't handle too well and fly apart at sim borders and such. sure wish they would fix that good thing we have big brothers at the laboratory to address this
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-06-2006 06:53
From: Feynt Mistral I don't think this is a particularily good idea picking an arbitrary testing number. Yeh, I'd like to have client side options for the number and range of lights. If my card has problems with 6 lights and 20 meters (hey, it could happen), then I'd rather try turning this down than turning it off... and if I have a G-Force XYZ-9000 Turbo Overclocked SLI AGP PCIE hypercache with 2G RAM why shouldn't I be able to turn these up to 300 hardware lights up to 512 meters? From: someone Multitool: Feynt Mistral has offered to give you a kiss.
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FlipperPA Peregrine
Magically Delicious!
Join date: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 3,703
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04-06-2006 07:28
I'm really psyched that I'm finally going to be able to turn lighting back on! SL looks so pretty at night with good lighting effects. Regards, -Flip
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Burke Prefect
Cafe Owner, Superhero
Join date: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 2,785
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04-06-2006 08:20
Yay. Now I can light my basement and patio!
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AJ DaSilva
woz ere
Join date: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 1,993
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04-06-2006 10:58
In case it's possible I'd like to put in a vote for a configurable number of lights (and distances and anything else that's possible - options are good) too.
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paulie Femto
Into the dark
Join date: 13 Sep 2003
Posts: 1,098
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visibility culling, hw lights and ambient lighting
04-06-2006 13:23
Will any visibility culling (occlusion) be done? If a light is behind a wall, but within the 20 meter radius for HW lights, will the light shine through the wall? That would look strange and would waste one of our slots for hardware lights. On the number of hardware lights, do I understand correctly that this number is hard-wired into our graphics cards and out of LL control? Top of the line graphics cards are built to handle about 8 HW lights at a time, nowadays. The GameCube did 8. The Geforce 7800 does 8. Why are we stopping at 6? Will the other two be used for ambient light or other fun stuff? I imagine that SL's hardware lighting will be per vertex and not per pixel. Per pixel lighting would look better but would take more GPU cycles. Will we be able to use arbitrary bump maps, normal maps or even (gasp) parallax maps to take advantage of our new lighting? background: http://www.wave-report.com/tutorials/quadro.htmHow will ambient light be calculated? How about this: HW accelerate the closest 6 lights. Then sum together the distant lights, divide by two and render that in SW as ambient light. Can we ever expect occluded ambient light? Instead of a single ambient value for an entire sim, could we finally have "dark" rooms where the sun doesnt shine through walls as ambient light? Light is so exciting! Woohoo!
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Kelly Linden
Linden Developer
Join date: 29 Mar 2004
Posts: 896
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04-06-2006 15:53
1 of the other 8 available lights is the sun, I'm not sure what the 8th is.
The new Lights are an enabling technology. I don't think much, if any, of what you suggest Paulie will happen when Lights is first released. However almost all of it is impossible with our current (broken) lighting, and is possible, in the future at least, with the new lighting.
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Adam Zaius
Deus
Join date: 9 Jan 2004
Posts: 1,483
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04-06-2006 15:56
From: Kelly Linden 1 of the other 8 available lights is the sun, I'm not sure what the 8th is.
The new Lights are an enabling technology. I don't think much, if any, of what you suggest Paulie will happen when Lights is first released. However almost all of it is impossible with our current (broken) lighting, and is possible, in the future at least, with the new lighting. Probably: 1. Directional (sun) 2. Ambient (generic) With 6-8 usable by users. |
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Eep Quirk
Absolutely Relative
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 1,211
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04-06-2006 19:53
From: Adam Zaius Probably:
1. Directional (sun)
2. Ambient (generic)
With 6-8 usable by users. Actually, ambient is supposed to be a material property of the prim/model, not a separate light source, so that SHOULD leave 7 hardware lights, not 6. |
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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04-06-2006 19:56
^ I think the 8th is the moon. Not sure of that, but it seemed so fairytale-ish. Thank you graciously to everyone who watched the video I made and commented. I've read, and I smile. The story goes as follows: I've been inspired, for quite some time now, how some Lindens, notably Ben, really put flair into demo'ing what Second Life can do. Ben encouraged me awhile back to do movies in SL ("machinima" if you will, or "SLinema" as I like to call it), and I said no consciously for too long. Then, the other day as the sun started to rise, I just quickly... spontaneously... recorded (FRAPS) and edited (Windows Movie Maker, hehe) the "Watermelon Glow Grow Flex-Ability". Why? Well, I already detailed one reason, but another is because I felt very alone in the 1.9.1 Preview Grid. I wanted to share what I did. While a video isn't interactive, it is more dynamic than pictures. Another reason is because I have a big dream, that someday I'll help demo SL live. (I camscan quickly, and this provides a view into "how I experience SL".) It's on that tidbit I grin, and add: parts of the video were sped up, 2x not 3x. However, parts of it were not. Some parts are actually slowed down. I'll leave it to the observant eye-in-hand to figure out which is which. I did no fancy tricks with framerate, no special optimizations. Raw. Rawr! Part of why it looks so smooth at points is occlusion culling--also new in 1.9.1. Kelly's having such a lovely go at the technical questions here *claps*; I don't know a lot of those answers, I just know what I enjoy! I'm "enduser Linden" here, hehe. I know Local Lighting was broken for a long time. What a gripe, what a sheer frustration, and it will just be a relief to have this released so each and every Resident of Second Life can enjoy the glow, along with the other new features--which are still having the kinks worked out of, but definitely useable. This is why I wanted to share my joy, because I know it's not some pie-in-the-sky theory out of reach. It's simple to experience, it's compelling to anticipate, and hopefully it will be coming soon for public consumption. The flex objects are wonderful, because SL was previously too rigid (my personal opinion). This moves towards a world which is more elastic and conductive to ease of really showing who you are through your avatar. And it's one step of more to come. I joked with Kelly the other day; maybe I'll finally get the amoeba avatar I've been dreaming about for so long. One of the nicest things I did, not shown in the video, but I did this afterwards, was to make a big watermelony lantern hat, and turn Nighttime Brightness all the way to the left, and walk around and bump into walls. The fun of that reminds me of wandering around Thai temples in the dark as a kid. BTW, changing current Light material objects ---> Full Bright is something that's been followed up on after hearing community suggestions about it from months and months ago. I remember Flip's post here... and there are many others. No, I haven't forgotten this thread either. This does matter. |
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AJ DaSilva
woz ere
Join date: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 1,993
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04-06-2006 20:13
Cool, I did hear Philip right, occlusion culling's in 1.9.1!  Any idea when we get to play in preview ourselves? |
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Feynt Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-07-2006 05:33
From: Sheila Plunkett It'd also help if lights would just stop on parcel borders, so the neighborhood club won't "pollute" my house with it's lights ^.^
Eh, I could see it in the main land of course, but this really isn't so much of a problem out in quarter, half, or whole sim areas which follow a unified theme. Even neighbours in much of Anshe's sims are reasonable enough to not need this kind of restriction. But for the main land, sure. From: Sheila Plunkett
But yes, in the end we really need the ability to have objects block lights, cause shadows, have directional spotlights instead of just omni lights and the like. Graphics-wise SL is a good step behind the current possibilities of modern gfx cards, but I know it's hard to also keep the players that don't own high-end cards and that due to the world's dynamic nature you can't do tricks like other games do.. namely, shadow maps and such.
Definantly agree. Especially on spotlights. Imagine all the dance clubs which would change from crappy prim spotlights to ACTUAL spotlights. It'd improve the atmosphere immensely (and lag me even further, but I digress). From: Sheila Plunkett
Still, to give us a really good visual experience we'd need:
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- Ability to cut out intersecting prims to create new forms (intersect a sphere with a cube to get a sphere with a cube-shaped hole in it, the like).
- procedural blobs (procedural only to limit data traffic and server storage)
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Prim subration and intersection is part of CSG, so show your support for it! ^.^ Procedural blobs sound like metaballs to me. I'd love those too, they make organic builds so much more realistic. From: Sheila Plunkett
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Sheila!
Mew! >3 That's interesting knowledge about the 8 HW lights thing in OpenGL. I was not aware of that fact, and assumed it was limited only by available graphics processing power. So 6 doesn't seem so arbitrary after all, but I'd still like more. I find it hard to believe that even today's video cards with their seperate internal heat sinks and fans, sometimes external power supply connections (o.O  , and increased need for heat management are just hotter and hungrier because they're newer. They've got to be doing SOMETHING with that power that causes so much heat. >/ Perhaps the lights could be passed in sequenced sets based on distance to the video card, with closer lights remaining a static texture until the next pass. Or perhaps dedicate three or four of the six slots to rendering the closest light sources with each pass, while the others are used to generate static light maps out farther and farther from the avatar. From: AJ DaSilva Cool, I did hear Philip right, occlusion culling's in 1.9.1! Any idea when we get to play in preview ourselves? I want to see the occlusion culling too! The community doesn't care about the present bugs, numerous as they might be, it's as good as alpha. We wanna see it now. >D |
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AJ DaSilva
woz ere
Join date: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 1,993
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04-07-2006 05:38
Just had a thought: presumably if a light object is culled by occlusion so will the light source, should work kinda a bit like objects blocking light. Is that right Kelly?
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Feynt Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-07-2006 05:45
From: AJ DaSilva Just had a thought: presumably if a light object is culled by occlusion so will the light source, should work kinda a bit like objects blocking light. Is that right Kelly? In a way, that would be good if it worked like that. In another way, I really hope it doesn't work like that. |
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-07-2006 06:07
From: Torley Linden I felt very alone in the 1.9.1 Preview Grid. Open the door, I'll come visit! I'll bring Hologram Argent as well! |
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-07-2006 06:11
From: Feynt Mistral In a way, that would be good if it worked like that. In another way, I really hope it doesn't work like that. It would be good if they had radiosity or raytracing, or even secondary raycasting. Without that - if the ambient light is low - you'll get "Lunar" shadows with hard edges. Perhaps the ambient light could be scaled based on the lighting, so even without radiosity or raytracing you'd get some "indirect light" effect. |
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Yiffy Yaffle
Purple SpiritWolf Mystic
Join date: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 2,802
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04-07-2006 11:32
From: Torley Linden I think the 8th is the moon. Nah it will be a giant watermelon with apples orbiting around it. |
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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04-07-2006 14:45
From: Yiffy Yaffle Nah it will be a giant watermelon with apples orbiting around it. LOLEX, that's even better! (Little-known trivia, my 2nd-favorite fruit is strawberry, 3rd is maybe oranges, or specifically, pomelo.) I LOVE THIS THREAD! |
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Feynt Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-07-2006 14:59
From: Torley Linden I LOVE THIS THREAD! Then love its spirit, get them to let us play in the alpha quality preview grid so we can see your HW lighting watermelons and streamers. ^.^ |
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
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04-07-2006 15:00
From: Feynt Mistral Then love its spirit, get them to let us play in the alpha quality preview grid so we can see your HW lighting watermelons and streamers. ^.^ I am certainly cheering my fellow Lindens on so that Preview 1.9.1 will come out and we can all party together!!! |
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Feynt Mistral
Registered User
Join date: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 551
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04-07-2006 15:02
We don't care about stability (in preview). We're perfectly happy dinking around with a client that's still in development. Especially the linux users. >D |
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Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid
Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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04-07-2006 16:17
I think they should always have an Alpha and Beta preview grid up.
Look at Firefox. They have test releases as well as nightly builds, just whatever is currently in the tree. It might not even be runnable, but you can try it at your own risk.
Even if you have to apply for access to Alpha and it doesn't have any resident content, it would be useful to get more testers in there.
And any new version should spend some time in Beta before it's rolled out.
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Vektor Linden
Test Troll
Join date: 15 Dec 2004
Posts: 53
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I am leading most of the preview projects currently in testing.
04-07-2006 17:00
Another very good way to start getting information about Preview 1.9.1 is to join the "Secondlife Preview" group. I will be announcing a meeting for this group soon, and I will be discussing with the group the upcoming features in 1.9.1 I hope to see you there! Vek P.S. Sorry, *alpha* versions of SL won't be open to the public for the forseeable future. Our betas always open in a timely manner. Remember, objects made in preview, and money spent in preview, stay in preview. |
