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What is up with this 1.10.1 lighting "fix" ?
Michi Lumin
Sharp and Pointy
Join date: 14 Oct 2003
Posts: 1,793
05-31-2006 17:15
In 1.10.0.34, lighting on attachments looked ok.

Notes: Avatar vertex is on. "Nearby local lights".

Now, in 1.10.1, attachments look flourescent. And the av mesh looks dark.

It's almost like attachments are being lit *in reverse* or something.
Some prims are lit one way, other prims are lit completely differently.



My entire avatar is basically cartoonish 'fullbright' now whenever there's any sort of light nearby.



At night, the skin is pitch dark.... But the attachments of course aren't!



It's hard to even describe what a cacophony this is - it's both the fact that things go fullbright in the day, full "dark" at night, shading is just completely off...

I'm sorry to be so curt about this, but knowing how hard it is to get a change like this even acknowledged, forget reversed, is extremely pull-out-your-hair frustrating.

From what I can tell, the two drawing passes (Avatar Vertex vs Objects/Attachments) are not getting the same treatment.




I'm not the only one who's noticed this, and it doesnt only seem to be related to avatars I'll bug report it, but ...

This is like the old avatar lighting bug, but multiplied by several orders of magnitude. So I guess it's time to run "sun and moon only", for now on... which makes me wonder why it NEEDED SO BADLY to be changed from 1.10.0.

Can we at least get an explanation as to what was changed, and why?
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McWheelie Baldwin
Registered User
Join date: 9 Apr 2004
Posts: 154
Ligting "Fix"???
05-31-2006 17:33
I've also noticed differences in the lighting since the update this morning. They are very inconsistent to say the least. Not just the avatar lighting either. I spent a good part of my time since the update to 1.10.0 creating lighting for our house, and now they are all rendering rather oddly. Sometimes the lighting effect shows up, sometimes it doesn't, and it's not based on distance from the lighting. If I edit a lit prim, the light will render immediately, if I turn my back and turn around again, it will appear to be unlit. Also the colored light cast on nearby prims is hit or miss since this morning's update. I have to say I'm rather disappointed with this "fix". We've waited an awful long time for any improvement in lighting, which we finally took a step in the right direction with 1.10.0. 1.10.1 seems to be two steps backwards in my opinion. And yes, I know what they say about opinions, but I'm rather disappointed by this so called fix, that has basically made all the work I've done on lighting completely useless since it's so inconsistent. :(

Just my 2L,
McW
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Hydra Shaftoe
Grade A Luskwood Beef
Join date: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 7
Er ok what gives with this lighting?
05-31-2006 18:55
I wear a prim/skin avatar. the lights are making the skin all dark but the prim parts stay bright and shiny as i move away from a light source. It's real darned ugly too. It looked great a few days ago but this is definately non-sexy now.
Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
06-01-2006 14:37
Thanx Michi, McWheelie, and Hydra--especially Michi for taking the time to send in those detailed snapshots. Pictures are, of course, an effective way to communicate a visual problem.

I've merged the threads for easy visibility.

Please let me ask about this and see what we can find out...
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Torley Linden
Enlightenment!
Join date: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 16,530
06-02-2006 16:37
I HAVE GOOD NEWS!

STEVE LINDEN HAS POSTED:

From: Steve Linden
OK folks, first let me reassure you that we have identified the problem and are working on a fix. It should be available in the next week or two.

In the meantime, you can turn off "Avatar Vertex Program" in "Preferences -> Graphics Detail" and the lighting should match. This should only have a minor performance impact and only in areas with many avatars.

Here's the problem in a nutshell (kind of technical):

When we created the new lighting model, we wanted to limit the range of local lights for a number of reasons, primarly to reduce the artifacts when only a limited number of lights are being used. In order to do this, we had to put the lighting in GLSL shaders (the OpenGL lighting model uses a 'realistic' but very long falloff). Unfortunately, due to driver issues we decided to postpone introducing GLSL shaders for object rendering. We did include them for avatar rendering, but neglected to modify the lighting to match the default OpenGL lighting. Thus the descrepency.

We did do a shader update in 1.10.1 which fixed a different shader lighting bug which was generating some harsh lighting effects on avatar faces. Apparantly this fix exaggerated the discrepency. This was not in any way deliberate, it is just that the attachment discrepency hadn't hit our radar yet (remember, at any given time there are dozens of issues like this in the forums, and hundreds of other little things on our plates, not to mention the big things).

Now, some of you might be asking "won't the lighting change again when you introduce GLSL for objects?" The answer is "yes", however, the discrepency between avatar lighting and object lighting is what is noticable here, and we will make sure that when you enable GLSL it will affect both objects and avatars, and the lighting will match.

Thank you for your patience,
-Steve


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