Propper darkness.

I apollogise if this has been asked before.I have searched the whole forum for"true dark"/"real dark"/propper darkness"..etc..
Is there anyway to make somewhere black dark..i.e. pitch black without any ambient light.
I have buillt a box around me and a freind..capped it both ends and coloured it black inside and out but still we can see each other.
Any assistance much apreciated.TIA.
Regards.Racs.

I don't think you can get to pitch black (I've never tried, so I don't really know) but you can adjust the darkness settings in your preferences - Adv. Graphics >>Nighttime Brightness.

I just tried, not total black, but pretty damn dark. Make sure you have your "sun" set to "Midnight" when you play with the settings....

I tried that..it works for me only..I would need to own a whole sim to make it perm midnight for all.

Story behind the request..
I bought several 512 parcels a while back that were on a mountainside..after using prims to give me a flat "land" surface I relaised it was a terrible waste of space..so took up mining )
My home now is totally underground known locally as "The Bat Cave" lol..and without ambient light should be dark however that is not the case..I have gone half grey colour behind the textures and this does darken it somewhat but still not what I would expect..( If I go full black colour behind the textures they don't show at all ).

Maybe this is just me, but it seems rather odd to want your home to be pitch black. If I lived in a cave, I'd put some torches in it or something.

Yes John..thats the idea to use my own light sources to emphasise the best elements of the building.I really hope this is possible and that I have missed something simple somewhere though I have tried everything before asking here.

Ahhh. To my knowledge, there isn't any way to do what you want short of owning an island sim. The closest you can get would be to put in a visitor counter and have all vistors get a message that your parcel is best viewed with sun set to Midnight.

you can do this on a private island only

thanks all for your replies and time.I accept this and will live with it.Maybe some day in the future it will be possible.Thanks all again.Sincere regards.

Not a great way of doing things, but you could fill the cave with big, translucent, black particles (or prims if you so wish). At least then you'll only be able see things nearby and stuff will fade out into the distance.

Scripting is way beyond me so particles are ruled out straight away.I will however try the prims aproach..In the past hour I have done some research on ray tracing and realised that using that would be impossible on the massive scale of SL so some sort of ambeient lighting is a necessity..I will however continue to experiment and try any suggestions though I am now understanding that this is not yet possible.Thanks again to all who replied.Regards.Racs.

Particles aren't really scripting - it's just a long list of variables, like on the object tab of the edit window. Don't have any to drop you myself, but if you ask around there are scripts formatted to make changing particles easy and editing systems that let you do it all with buttons.

can i come and check out your cave?

If yes, dan i get an Slurl peases


thanks

Make a big black phantom prim and fill the inside of your house with it.

Ok, you won't be able to see anything else, but you can't in pitch darkness, right?

Save on prim usage - attach it to your HUD.

use a partly transparent black HUd prim and it would actually function like darkness

hard to click on anything tho

lol Yumi..that was'nt the whole idea..I wanted darkness as you would when you closed the blinds and switched off the lamp at bedtime,I can only see scripting as away to do this so as everyone who entered below ground would experiance the effect and as such is out of my grasp..to Rocketman..I have sent you an IM with LM inworld..please feel free to visit and check it out..sorry I don't know how to make SLURLS.

There is a blindfold for sale inworld that makes everything TOTALLY black when the wearer is wearing it. Might be an easier option if the others look too complicated.

Rock

Just a thought...... have you tried turning off your screen? That would be very effective in not being able to see anyone or anything?

Seriously (again) try turning down your brightness/contrast on your screen if you really really want things to get dark(er).

I don't believe this can be done by scripting, I'm afraid.

Apparantly there was, a looong while back, a beta version of SL that supported casting shadows. But it was taken out, apparantly because of video card compatibility problems, and also probably because of the potential problems associated with idiots building 100 metre high shadow-casting monoliths on their 16m of land.

Also....

In your preferences you have in one tabs (I thought it was "Advanced graphics" an option for midnight darkness. By default this option is on 1.00. Change this to 0.00. Then with the force sun to midnight, it will be already a lot more dark.

Morwen.

Nothing blocks light in SL. There are no directional light sources and no way to prevent sunlight from shining brightly inside the most tightly sealed enclosure.

Even if you buy your own sim and set the sun to be locked at midnight, every individual who visits the sim still has the option to change the daylight settings for themselves, or to adjust how dark "midnight" gets for their experience. You can't force it on people.

Filling a space with phantom prims kind of achieves 'darkness', but it's a very poor immitation of how it should work.

Building your house underwater will make it darker inside (and possibly add a bluish tint?)
If they cannot see the water above them due to a roof, this may give the illusion you want.

I built a three-story house under water once. Deleted it before it was even finished.

For one thing, my avatar's A/O kept switching to "fly" mode and trying to make me swim, and she didn't want to walk on the floors. For another, yes, *everything* had a blue tint to it that got darker with distance. To me, it looked terrible. 30M away it was about 50% darker than up close. But even then, it would be a very poor simulation of actual darkness.

I had no problems with walking underwater, but I wasn't wearing a "swimmer" or whatever.

Visibility goes to obviously fogged and dark at around more than 20 metres though. It was a cool place, and I enjoyed having it as a home, but there were limits to what you could do and not have too much gloom.

Cut out a rectangular piece of black construction paper and tape to your screen. That should do it.