And boom. Vertex shaders and shadows are gone.

Ah ok, gotcha.

this seems not to work. (the file posted.)

I deleted my original post because it was based on an error on my part.

Might as well take the opportunity to wonder why the delete post option is missing in this thread but available when I edit post I made in other threads.

Really there should be only 3 options for video configuration

1. Uber Low End Computer (all off but shiny)
2. Even lower (all off)
3. Realtime World Enviroment Simulator capable (some bumping and reflex)

That's probably more accurate than you realize. In order: normal mortal's home computer, normal mortal's work computer, LEET GAMER RIG. These ARE the three classes of computer. :3

I disagree. Some people might want special avatar rendering on but shiny off (perhaps a builder used WAY too much shiny and you are about to go blind heh). Or vice versa. A certain setting won't work for everyone as everyone has different preferences and circumstances.

-DB

Agreed. If my system simply can't do something outright, it can't do it, but otherwise I'd rather decide on my own what an acceptable tradeoff between framerate and appearance is, and which features look good. I prefer the default avatar rendering, for instance, I like shiny, I don't like bumpiness, and I'll take a substantial framerate hit in the name of ripple water because I hatehatehate the default water. (The perfect elliptical sun and moon reflections are just. So. Ugly.) I'd much rather be able to pick and choose as I like, rather than it being all or nothing. (Or, given that LL likes to gray out options and my system isn't very good, getting stuck with nothing.)

Looks like they limited the lighting options to two modes, either Sun and Moon only or just 6 nearby lights + sun and moon. Well I guess that cuts down on lag for people with low end machines.

That's just a side-effect of Vertex Shaders being removed, since the other two options required them. Now the remaining two options are just equivilent to 1.9.0-without-local-lighting and 1.9.0-with-improved-local-lighting.

(Side note: I haven't met anyone yet for whom the new local-lighting was noticably slower than the sun-and-moon option. I'd be interested to hear what class of hardware sun-and-moon is preferable for, aesthetics aside - it has to be worse than my first-gen-athlon-700-ish with fx5200, poor buggers.)

Actually it knocked my FPS down about 8 points and I noticed some lag (depending on the area) with it on. I left it on Sun and Moon only. Wasn't worth it.

-DB

Related as it's come up a few times, Michi asked:

CONTEXT

Runitai Linden replied:

8 out of 9 or 8 out of 800?
Having 8fps in the first place seems like a rare luxury to me.

Hmn. This seems like a core issue. I'm not necessarily looking for "awesomeness." I'm looking for it to work.

Mari

All very interesting. But with a fairly high end system (FX57/7900 GTX 512) I found all sorts of problems with preview.

Standing fps in the empty Preview sim was only 50-75% of the same sim on the main grid with AVs present.

More worrying, turning off all the shaders didn't produce any noticeable improvement

OC was causing a 50% fps hit on moving.

With the latest version of Preview, shaders disabled, OC still produces an unacceptable fps hit on moving, though there isn't such a marked fps hit when standing still.

My thoughts are:

Having shaders available in conjunction with OC was really bad news

OC is a really neat concept - if you don't mind a stationary SL!

I'm really glad that LL decided to hold off on releasing 1.9.1 as it was, because I could see it being a disaster. Fortunately someone realised this and is doing the sensible thing and at least trying to get it working somewhere near right before going for main grid release.

Doc, I think it's just your system because I didn't have similar problems with 1.9.1 preview on my Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz), 2GB 4200 (533MHz) dual-channel DDR2 RAM, GeForce 6600GT 128MB (ForceWare 84.21) system. Could be your dual-core Athlon FX CPU (they seem to have a lot of problems in 3D apps) and/or video drivers.

I'd rather have the option of enabling vertex shaders on in the debug menu than to not have it at all because, for me, it makes SL look MUCH better and doesn't give me a noticeable framerate hit or cause the sorts of problems you had with them.

That's a bummer. I hope shaders come back real soon. SL looked a lot nicer with them on. 9.0 looks dull in comparison.

For the record, I didn't have any trouble with the shaders. I have a pretty high-end system. (4200+ dual-core, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7800GT.)

There's really no reason to mostly remove shaders just because a few users with crappy hardware can't see them correctly or causes SL to be too slow. Simply disable them by default and leave them enable for those who have decent enough systems to handle them.

Ah, but the FX57 is a single core cpu Eep. The dual core FX is the FX60. So I doubt it's down to my cpu.
I'm using the latest official nVidia drivers througout too (the DFI Lanparty UT NF4 SLI-DR Expert is an nVidia nForce4 SLI motherboard), not those supplied with the hardware.

Anyway, the system runs other 3D software at awesome speeds. Oblivion, which is possibly one of the most demanding games available, even though it didn't recognise my 7900 GTX 512, runs perfectly with all settings maxed, beautifully smooth movement, no glitches regardless of the action level, incredibly subtle and complex lighting and, what looks very much like SpeedTree... It's simply an amazing experience, though not with SL's interactivity.

The situation with the 'old' preview reminds me very much of the initial release of 1.7 where friends with much lower spec machines than I had then (3.2Ghz P4E and a 6800GT) were saying 'what's the problem, this is great' when I, and others with even higher spec systems, were suffering serious issues.
While I agree that LL should, indeed it is essential that they do, make SL useable for older and lower spec machines, it's also essential that those of us who have invested in top end technology shouldn't be penalised by compromised graphics performance - after all, without graphics and movement SL is nothing more than the world's most expensive chatroom.

I am so horriably dissapointed, I want a Linden response and I want it now. They let down everyone and they should hear what we have to say. If they wanted beta testers so they can tweak settings, make new optional ones, that would be fine, if they needed more time until the finalization of 1.91 that would be ok, but dont yank the plug on your promises.

Ahem... This is what Preview testing SHOULD be all about.

A feature has been dropped (possibly only short term) because it wasn't working properly.

For once LL haven't blindly forged ahead with something that wasn't working out. OK, some testers were happy with it, but a significant number weren't, plus, just possibly, LL's own QA were on the job and didn't like the way things were developing.

This is a FAR better outcome than the 1.7 debacle when an upgrade was released that really shouldn't have been, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth and a fair number to take their toys and play elsewhere.

If 1.9.1 was working for you, great. And I can understand the frustration. But it really wasn't working for quite a few of us. So it's on the back burner for now. I'm not happy about it, but I'm a lot happier than I would have been if it had been released.

I don't believe anyone has broken any promises, indeed if you have any faith in LL 'promises' (and I've never known them actually promise anything...) you must be some sort of insane optimist considering the list of 'mentioned' (generally by Phil) vapourware features... SpeedTree, Havok2, HTML on a prim - to mention just three.

ya and my framerate was much better with the shaders. this sucks. i want shaders back.

Edit: Of course I am probably one of the few who the shaders helped. Without them my framerate is cut in half. Having a low framerate makes me a saaaaaaaaaaad kitty.

Hear, hear.

The shaders didnt work right with my ATi Radeon Mobility 7500 (its unsupported so I didnt expect it to handle them well). But yeah for the most part everytihing was beautiful, but this is definately a wise idea to pull it for now. Usually people interested in previewing have somewhat decent machines. I've heard that there is alot of people running on unsupported hardware like integrated gpu's and other low end hardware. I assume that the decision came down will there be more ticked off low end people who are unable to run things well with the shaders, or more ticked off people that the shadres were shelved. It was a cool feature, but I don't think people should be critical of the developers. They have done a great job of making the game run well on a HUGE range of hardware. I'm sure they are also bummed about shelving something that was so close to done, but there are still alot of cool stuff comming out this release and I think the developers need a high five.

To be fair, HTML on a prim is waiting for flash support in the uBrowser still, amonst other things. It's open for user development, and SOMEONE did a fix (very quickly as I recall), but I haven't heard much out of its development since then. Incase people are wondering where it is again, you can find it here, including a link to download the source for the thing.

SpeedTree and Havok 2, well, that's another matter. But maybe they'll make those open source too. ^.^;