render tests

Remember the cool screenies of the new rendering engine? Here's one I saved.


Hey, Lindens, how's the progress on the new render code? How bout some more shots. We haven't seen any in ages.

Wowwy! I never knew there was that much "stuff" in the sky. Do I have to buy another video card so I can get my draw distance up to that which looks like 5,012.

That certainly LOOKS neato.

"My God, it's full of sexx0r boxes."

If the marketing guys were in charge, this rendering engine would be top priority. What a sales pitch !

I can see my house from here!

Actually yeah that would be way cool - specially zooming along on TranSit/ROAM/Transporter of choice and watching all the stuff flying past!

Siggy.

Stock up on skydiving equipment! Finally, that sport will be more interesting without staring at solid cyan nothingness 95% of the way down.

And yeah, ROAM would be hardcore watching that go by.

I too would love to see the progress! I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to see it!

I heard rumors on the internets of a video at siggraph or whatever... but could have been incorrect.

I'd toast and play "Across the Universe" to that!

Well, the new map looks exactly like someone flew up in the air and took a screenshot, maybe they're actually using something from the new rendering engine?

Just look to the fall of There if you want to see the horrors of marketing running a tech company.

I must say, though, that you're right about the persuasiveness of the new engine. It's a staggeringly impressive view.

Here is Ben's original thread for your delectation:

/3/82/40805/1.html

All I have to say is wow! My poor system is gonna puke the CPU out through the floppy drive when that hits.... Need upgrade.....More power.....

Not sure about marketing, but if I were personally given the choice, I'd pick the new rendering engine over Havok 2.

Jess

Please note that these screenshots were made taken on an unloaded test grid with probably few AVs and an unknown amount of time to be loaded.

Unless there have been corresponding, fundamental changes in the design of the asset server, I don't expect that anyone will ever see a view like this. This is not to say that LL hasn't made amazing strides in the amount of content that can be rendered, just that recent experience has shown that the asset server seems to be throttled down to a pitiful rate.

Over the past week or so, even in very off-peak times, I've noticed the asset server spending minutes to get around to sending data (yes, I measured). This is on the same system that I've always played SL on, no packet loss, no firewalls, 100ms ping times, etc. Indeed, the asset server doesn't even appear to be even trying to send data as I can be in front of a 8 prim build, only partially rezzed, draw distance down to 64m and nothing else in view and no bandwith being used. However, my AV can succesfully collide with these invisible objects so at least the geometry is being sent. Is this just texture assets then? If so, I'd settle for plywood or "blank" rather than nothing.

If I could make any sense of the Ctrl-Alt-2 graph-of-confusion I might be able to add more data.

The screen shots are of the real grid, however they are still renders and not a frame taken from 'normal' motion.

Also you'll notice there is no texturing on any of the objects, just block colouring. However as a starting point it is still impressive.

I can see texturing on some i think, 1,2 and 4 seems to be showing some level of texture, but perhaps at that distance the quality wont be that good or just a very early version as he said.

I liked the last picture too you can see av's in the bottom right i think. Not to mention the sheer amount of rubbish in the sky lol

It's interesting how our limited draw distance has caused us to build either at ground level or up at privacy height, with a lot of empty space in between. Clearly, a longer draw distance will negate the privacy advantage of building high, but you can also see how builders will be tempted to fill the space, currently mostly ignored, above their plots with attractive structures.

I wonder how it will affect aircraft when people really start building seriously at all heights? If we're lucky, SL performance will improve enough that we'll start getting that "Fifth Element" city traffic feel.

I keep my draw distance pretty low when I'm hanging around my own land, which is most of the time. I have a sky-box at about 300 I use for privacy when I'm making clothes and taking the pics for box covers. Once people are able to more easily see up that high, I'll remove it. It's just a 20x10 open-topped square with a teleport, so it really will be an eyesore, and I try to be a considerate neighbor.

Just a FYI:

The collisions are done server side, so that's no indication that you've got any geometry data. It looks to me like prims that have been recieved but are waiting for their texture to arrive are displayed with a translucent grey foggy texture.

On side note, many textures do seem to be incredibly slow loading at the moment.

Amazing what longsight can do to change your perspective of the world. Funny it is how if you're myopic and close to the ground, SL looks more "realistic" but skyboxes, by their very antigrav nature, sure add these crazy scifi vibes.



I like the sound of this a lot.

Hi all!

I know you guys are drooling over the screenshots - I am and I'm one of the coders working on it. Here are my comments:

Eggy Lippmann is correct, the 1.7 world map is generated using the new renderer, but without textures or special effects. Very perceptive.

Introvert Petunia: There is a lot more Level of Detail work going into the new renderer, and yes there will be fundamental changes in the way assets are handled that will enable long-distance views on hardware which is capable. In principle, once you've flown near a sim, the objects you download will persist on your disk (just without updates). It would be nice to be able to see landmarks off in the distance, or fly by sims at a high speed without downloading all the minutia.

Jessica Qin: There are different dev teams working on Havok 2 and rendering. Since the new renderer involves major architecture changes, it'll take a lot longer.

Don't be expecting too many screen shots in the near future, because we're mostly in the R&D phase and the look is changing constantly.

YEDWAB YOUR FIRST POST D00D

Good to hear...

Now, I'm going to read it. ^_^



That sounds like Bruce Lee, the best style is no style!

Thanks so much Yedwab, that is the most heartening, and open, news I've heard in a long time. I *very* much appreciate the response.

At that point what will people do for privacy? Aside from private islands, people will have very little recourse except for third party security scripts, which I imagine will become super-annoying in a future where builds are more evenly distributed throughout the sky; it's like Cubey Terra's worst nightmare. Hopefully LL has some kind of privacy solution (i.e. better land tools) in the works which preserves some semblance of airborne travel across the grid.