Physically-correct outdoor light and photorealistic clouds in a few weeks?

Please please please, let this be true

3PointD writes to mention that LL has bought Windward Mark Interactive The story appears in this article in today's Boston Globe.

WMI's single product seems to be Windlight. Windlight is a "remarkably accurate rendering system that captures every nuance of outdoor terrain." "At the heart of WindLight is a physically-correct model of how light actually behaves in the outdoors."

WMI is (was?) also developing a second product called Nimble. Nimble is a 3D cloud system that "allows the user to fly up, over, and through multiple cloud layers with full density and vision occlusion."

The Boston Globe article states: "Lang said that he and his colleagues are already at work adding their software to the Second Life environment. He said users should see a major improvement in visual quality within several weeks."

WOW!!!! That's the fix I've been waiting for....better looking clouds!!! ROFL

Having lighting that doesn't go through a wall would be huge to me, actually. I like to use lights and all that but am limited because of how the system works in SL. I'd also like to see shadows!

This is a pretty cool setup, but I WANT TO FLOAT WEIGHTLESS IN SPACE!!! When do we get some space sims above the regular sims?? THAT would be revolutionary!!

Oh shush!

You'll be able to stick your head in them and all your problems will go away.

I really hate to burst your bubbles, but you really don't want to ge your hopes up. This is not a feature that's going to happen soon, if ever. I could give technical reasons, but the real reason I say this is LL's history. This is another havok/mono/SL renderer 2.0/etc., no question.

LOL

theres goes my lunch !!
haha

yeah, we need better clouds!!! woo hoo


:-/

not

Can we get better looking sand too?

Then we can all just stick our heads in it.

Do you have any actual info to back this up or is this just a guess?

I wonder if the current sun is somehow a puzzle-piece that will integrate better visually with Nimble.

I just hope the "more realisitc" stuff isnt along the lines of the "More realisitic" Sun

Yeah all these Eeyores complaining about the sun will feel pretty stupid if that ends up being the case!

Then they'll just complain that LL didn't call them at home to inform them the sun was changing and why...

Assuming this is not like all the other major implementations LL said would happen and never did, wouldn't this give the world a "Roger Rabbit" appearance? Crisp realistic world (if PCs can handle it) but cartoon people?

At least the outdated graphics match the avatar now.

Oh, really...more realistic clouds...so now, I can have a rainstorm if I want? That'd be great for those dark, gothic events...of course, I'd have to create an umbrella for it.

But how will it look if one sim is a beach party Mallorca place and the next over is some sorta stormy cyberpunk type place? That technology looks like it was made for flight sims with their almost unlimited view distance, how will that work in SL when you can see 200 meters at the most( I know it goes farther but I like to be able to do when I see.) How many have actually logged into the grid and said, oh I wish the clouds were prettier it would make my day as I pull my shoes from my arse and try to tp somewhere?

Joking aside, there are some nice local particle effects I've seen (Steelhead sim has one by the train depot)

I would love to fly about realistic clouds, though I fear my little laptop would not be up for the challenge. Well, shopping for a desktop PC now, maybe by the time I get it. Who knows, really? A few months is a long time in this world.

i am wondering how this will effect performance on my pc.

maybe LL are bying it to stop others form using it ?... Big fish swollows little fish that might one day be a big fish that would swollow the ..... and so on

As for lighting effect's ...IF its implemented it would be a good thing ...as long as its not broken every time we have an update !

Anything that makes SL look better ( and works ) is a good thing imo .

Let's also not forget SpeedTree... Did that ever show up?

But, who knows? Maybe LL has learned a thing or two from it's history

I would be glad to see 'realistic clouds' but only if I can still turn them off. And a new lighting system would be great!

Unfortunately, the latter, if it applies to sunlight and normal walls, would make most interior spaces in SL too dark. So, to avoid breaking existing content, they'd need some way to "opt in", such as a new object property "Blocks light" or "casts shadows". That could apply by default to avatars without much of an issue, I suspect.

Two words: Interior Lighting.

I have the walls, floor and ceiling in my workshop have the light feature so I can build without bothering with changing the daytime settings. It would add some realism to have to use lights in closed rooms. I would like shadows to be automatic.

They'd still have to have it so you could switch off the shadows and lighting, though.

FTW.

Raudf, other than possible performance, why would you want to turn improved clouds off?

I'll guess that this won't be something manageable on a per-parcel or per-sim basis. The current cloud system is sim-wide, is based on adjacent sims, and can't be changed by a sim owner. If the new cloud system retains the underlying weather simulation, but improves cloud and atmosphere rendering, that wouldn't necessarily change. Of course, its far too early to know, and a dark cloud hanging ominously like something from the Addams Family over an adjacent sim might look kinda cool -- at least at first.

As far as it stopping light at walls, the part that said, "At the heart of WindLight is a physically-correct model of how light actually behaves in the outdoors," seems to say this is about sun-moon effects, not local lighting. It seems that changing local lighting and handling shadows cast by local lighting is a bit of a different thing from what this new technology addresses. Yes, the sun and moon are two of the ten total lights OpenGL lets you have, but that has nothing to do with atmospheric effects, which is what it seems that this new rendering tech is all about.


[edited cuz I hit save too soon]

I was just thinking the other day that what SL really needs most is more snow falling through buildings.

Somebody only needs to implement client-side physics for the particle system, and we can have accurate rain and snow that stops at your roof. Last week I saw a post somewhere that someone was planning to work on that very thing. Maybe it was in the SL Wiki User space. I'd love to see accurate precipitation effects with particles. Just imagine particle-based waterfalls that tumbled down a rocky slope!

Of course not, I could be completely wrong and we could have it in the next few updates. Just sayin, history isn't on that side.

As for technical info, integrating something like that into the existing rendering engine is a non-trivial task. I can't tell you exactly why because I haven't tried to do it, but even so I've been a programmer in real life long enough to know a non-trivial task when i see it. If that sounds like bs to you so be it

They just posted on the blog about it. It's officially coming.