The price of a pretty sky

WindLight “simulates the ways that sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere under different climatic conditions, such as fog or haze”. Long story short: killer skies and kickass environments.

Read more here:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/21/windlight-atmospheric-rendering-comes-to-second-life/

The pics are impressive, indeed.

But is this such an important feature that warranted the purchase of a company and development time? Does SL need another layer of complexity to deal with?

I wish they had invested their money and time in getting providing decent tools for their refer-a-friend program: reporting, conversion rates, etc...

No doubt there are many more crucial developments SL needs desperately.

But we'll have pretty skies.

i got one word for you on this subject........


LAG

You're wrong. Everyone will stop and look at sunsets and do nothing. Lag will be a thing of the past.

I have four machines that run SL, two of which are now really laggy since 1.6. This sky thing will kill them for sure. I agree that the investment should have gone another way.

Today's my last day at work and will have to hand back my work laptop, which I have been using to access SL. My own laptop is a bit old and SL is bearly usable. I'm worried that the pretty sky will make it impossible to use. Perhaps there will be an option to turn the feature off?

If I buy a PC it will come with Vista, which is no good for SL.

I could buy a second hand PC just for SL, but it seems like a bit of a waste of money.

cue groups of avatars standing still generating 'oooh's and 'ahhh's ..... on Voice of course!

Hi Lhorentso, there are still XP installs about I see .. and besides, second sticky has lots of fixes for Vista if necessary .. seems mainly limited to ATI laptops

Do we know whether this will be client or server side processing yet?

Broccoli

How much did LL pay for the Windmark acquisition?

You can make the exact same case for voice which is licensed technology, and which actually has a recurring monthly cost for the servers which aren't hosted by LL.

Maybe we should vote to have LL work on new features and then they can outsource actual bug fixing .

SL bought the company because the new sky is basically a finished product. In other words, they don't have to use resources to develop it because it's done. In order to remain competitive, SL has to make continuous improvements like this. Do you want SL to remain a pretty cartoon while other virtual worlds develop photorealistic effects? I concede that there may be more lag and all this may drive me to make a computer purchase a year earlier than scheduled.

The vast majority of it would *have* to be client side. There might be changes to the lighting system to accomodate the type of "input" it would need from the sun and moon, but it's a rendering system, so it'd be mostly on the client. Apparently it's extremely efficient, but the processing costs will of course remain to be seen.

This might not be such a bad idea.

I guess I'm gonna have to upgrade my 1.2ghz processor sooner than I really wanted

Broccoli

Go on ... stick it on Jira!

Not true, just make sure you do not get an ATI graphics card with it.

I have a Dell XPS desktop that came with vista and it runs SL just fine.

However i paid about 200$ more for the better graphics card and was very disappointed, the only difference I could see (as apposed to my old old ati graphics card in my laptop) was there were ripples in the waves.

The product is complete but LL still need to implement it. At times integrating a third party product ain't as straightforward as one hopes.

I doubt very much that a more realistic sky is going to give SL a competitive edge over a competition that, at this point, doesn't really exist (ie where users are able to build /script content, where there is an economy).

Thanks for pointing this out - I must have read a post by someone as ignorant on the matter as myself.

I pointed this out in post 7 ... <pout>

Nothing terribly wrong with establishing that competitive edge BEFORE the competition arrives on scene however. By the way, along with the technology properties Linden Lab acquired, came the 5 brainiacs who developed them. Lastly, this is much, much more than just a pretty, realistic sky - this will touch -everything- we see in Second Life. It's one of the smartest moves Linden Lab has made to date.

Maybe not a good idea improving the aesthetics BEFORE solving many other more important issues?

As far as implementation is concerned, in my experience it's never as straight forward as one thinks it is. LL don't have a perfect track record with their upgrades either.

Ah, I read 'XP' and ignored everything else... sorry!

While they are at it, maybe they should outsource support too? Kinda keeping the problem solving in one place? I mean, we have to report bugs and they'd have to fix them anyways...

Oh, my comp hates particles right now. Loathes them. It can handle small amounts, but too much and it starts whimpering. So... I will be looking at a new graphics card soon, I think, just to enjoy a pretty sky.

FYI - You can still buy a new PC without Vista - PCmall.com - you can configure your new computers - also - you can buy a MacPro - runs SL very well.

On the other hand, since one has absolutely nothing to do with the other, perhaps it IS a good idea. Most of those other "more important" issues have to do with infrastructure and data storage/access.. stuff that is being *heavily* re-worked, in some cases from the ground up. When it's ready to deploy, they'll deploy it, and it's just silly to think that all progress needs to cease until they've done so. There's nothing wrong with upgrading the headlights while the engine and transmission are being rebuilt.