The cost of Ripple Water

Finally got to see the RW effect. The cost on my box is 3.6 fps.

The effect works, though it's quite low-grade by today's standards. The thing is that RW without shore effects is pointless...It adds nothing in the way of a heightened sense of 3D-world immersion.

"Minor feature" indeed.

I think it great and adds a lot to the world. To each his own I guess.

Several things come to mind for me regarding this.

Firstly, I wish I could turn ripple water on, to begin with. I can't, because I think my graphics card is too old, so I've had to look at photos on the SL Forums and those sent to me inworld.

Second, even if it was taxing on my FPS, I would still like to turn it on for still photos—of course, this leads me back to my first, and I can't even turn it on.

Third, just like how the skyline and shiny have improved, this is another incremental progression. It looks gorgeous from the stills, I really wish I could see it in action to make a fuller decision.

All in all, at least I would have a choice to turn it off.

If you were to activate water ripple in 1.7 your fps loss would be the same as if you had the sexy shiny bling bling 1.8 water ripple....

While I do agree that putting a shiny skin on a seldom used feature is a fluff update.... I'm also sure that people at LL are working on all sorts of 'stuff' for updates, I imagine it gets released when the 'stuff' is ready. Right now, the water is ready.

But I still think it looks really neat, it still adds to the SL experience even if only cosmetic.

(I'll keep sending you snaps of water Torley, you can live vicariously through my video card)

I shall... but we shall P@P ROX TOGETHER!!!

This is yet another piece of the puzzle. Awhile ago, I pined away for more pixelshaders usage in SL. This is proof!

In the water, there could be lotus pads to leap off of.

I personally love it, Runitai has done a great job not just rippling on the surface but also showing ripples on the objects in the water, and the reflections in the water of the sunlight/moon look so much more realy than that old sun/moon graphics that used to float on the water.

He was even generous enough to tell you how it was written what files you need to play with and have a go at hacking around with it yourself if you want your own water (although did include a disclaimer not to blame him if it broke lol)

Fell free to have a go /108/c2/76042/2.html#post789856

Hmm, I think it's better than nothing, and you can turn it off if you don't like it. I'm more "uprooted" and taken out of my immersive experience by the fact that as AV's or vehicles or anything collides it doesn't cause ripples, than I am by the fact that the shore appears to have no effect on the water.

Thanxies for the header, Nathan... I missed that.

I really need to keep more of an eye on informative Linden posts!

What id like to know what happend to wrapping water around land -.- its was pretty, tho it was kinda oilslicky look, but now it just flows straight trough it wich look very flat.

Guess its lighter to just render though then to detect mass and wrap around?

before
http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=33784&stc=1
after
http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=34174&stc=1

Least its a option so you can disable the water if you dont like it tho, but eh most avoid landmass as a plague since builds and other prims around tend to kill fps , wonder if this ripple effect could be used on prims , would make nice glass effects among some

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The cost of ripple water for everyone (LL says "thats how its supposed to look"

Mmm seems to happen on black clothes too, perhaps its using some kind of mask to apply the feature, i've bug reported it.

No you don't understand, this has been bug reported, and the response from LL was that it is not a bug and is "as intended."

In the response to my bug report of ^^^ the reply was:



Which I took to mean as "this is how the ripple shader works [and we can't change/fix it.]"

The Linden Labs way. Don't get me wrong, I love SL, I'm a total addict...but I so hate the way LL handles their biz...
I keep hoping it will get better...and I keep my eye on the competition. Yes there is competition...but SL is still my favorite, just not LL.

I miss the wrap-around a bit, too - but I was struck by how much the new water looks like the lake outside my windows.

The wrap around totally had to go. It was looking like plasma/oily goo and making really funky nasty circles in shallow water. What happens now is you get "big" slow moving waves in deep water and just the small noisy waves in shallow water, so deep water looks like ocean and shallow water looks like lake. I have some ideas for coolness along beaches, but it's probably going to take a back seat while More Important Things (tm) get done.

Thanks for all the good feedback. I do greatly appreciate it (ESPECIALLY the constructive criticism).

I'm hopping up and down in excitement about the ripples, in part because I spend so much time sailing. I think it's going to look excellent in Bodega Bay. We keep inching up -- multiple-select in inventory, ripples, nicer foot-shadows. I know things aren't perfect -- I will faint when Havok2 and Speed tree get here -- but it's exciting.

Feel free to worship at my shrine to Havok2 in the cave. Get the mass thought thing going.

Excellent description of what's wrong with the effect. I had that same thought about glass...the ripple shader is impressive. The new water looks fairly realistic from far away.

Up close, it doesn't resemble water because the effect has no physical depth. It looks like exactly what it is...a flat, animated texture with spectral highlights. It just cries out for particle effects along the edges.

When shine and bump-mapping were first introduced on the Preview grid (October, 2003), I created a crude experimental version of ripple water. Unfortunately, the only screenshot I have of that was taken before the shine was added. But it's a great illustration of how unnatural non-wrapping looks.

Since then, of course, I've learned to make highly realistic water like lots of people do for hot tubs and such. Problem is, it takes multiple animated layers as well as texture lighting and particle systems to do it, so it would never be practical on a large scale.

You find that more disturbing than those occasional moments when your Avatar's leg shoots straight up through it's head when standing on uneven ground???

Anyway, I wasn't saying that the new ripple water 'lessens' my feeling of immersion in SL, since I have no feeling of immersion to begin with. Hopefully 2.0 will change that.

The skyline and shine haven't changed. It just looks that way because you're seeing screenshots from video cards that are better than yours.

To enable ripple water I think requires a card with hardware support for DirectX 9 and pixel shaders. I'm using a GeForce FX 5500, which I believe is the lowest model that does. With the latest Nvidia driver, it's running OpenGL 2.0.1.

They currently sell for $43 on eBay (less if you luck into one through auction).

I hope it doesn't require support for DirectX 9, because when I upgrade to a G5 I'm hoping to still be able to run SL.

Shine changed in 1.7.

^ What Os said.

The skyline has changed in 1.7 too.

(It was one of the first things I noticed in Preview 1.7.)

Both of these can be confirmed by asking Runitai Linden.

I want a better skyline! It looks really naff the way there's this big dividing line in the sky. There's already fog there to make it merge smoothly but it still gets cruedly cut in two.

It's a beautiful box, but...have you ever heard of something called a 'PC'?

Hope springs eternal. Good luck...hope it works!

As far as the hw requirements: well, when the defunct original version of Ripple Water was first added I wasn't able to ever see it. Los Lindens said it required hardware support for DirectX 9, and my video card back then was a Radeon 9200, which ain't got it.

When I upgraded earlier this year to a GeForce 5500, which does support DX 9, I still couldn't see that version of Ripple. Los Lindens said it required hardware support for a more advanced version of Pixel Shader than what my card supports (can't remember version numbers).

Now, I can see the new 1.8 Ripple fine on the test grid...but three and a half fps would be a hard hit to take on the main grid, since I get less than five in most sims, even with rendering options turned down to nearly nothing. Granted, it's amazing I can even run the client on this oudated PIII-S box. Of course, because of that lag I've given up the main grid until SL 2 is released, or until I get a new 'puter. So Ripple is a moot point.