Pool: Good looking avatars or sunsets?

Everyone who's tried WindLight knows how it will butcher your avi. Dark, ugly patches all over the face.

It's easily fixable by adjusting the enviromental settings, but the default settings will be what most people use (and see you with). And by the time WindLight goes live, the enviromental settings will probably be available to estate owners only.

The problem seems to be easy: change the default settings. But the same tweaks that fixes the avatars also kills most of the "basking in light" -effect that made the sunsets look so good.

What's your priority? Good looking avatars or sunsets?

It's not about looking sexy, but predictable. Ie. As designed.

Unfortunately it's very difficult to design avatars (or certain types of build actually) when so many variables are at stake.

From the perspective of a skin designer, there is no way to make anything look good with the current default settings, taking variables into account or not. It will all look like crap... period.

I'm not quite sure where it is you spend your time, but I'm pretty sure it may not be Second Life. Have you noted how much time and energy (not to mention lindens) is spent by SL officianados to look better than a sunset? In case that seems rhetorical, it is not! A great deal of all resources are spent making an avatar suit what you want in this secondary existance!

I love a good sunset. I really don't know many who don't. Even a vampire is happy when the sun goes down. But in my months of custom photography, including commercial work....I've not yet had someone say "Hey, I just wish the sunsets were more fetching, then my SL life would be complete"!

It's not about making something with more whistles and bells, is the actual issue here, in my opinion. It's about making the existing world more functional. Sound. I would prefer much less makeup on the huge body of SL, and more programming that works where it has never properly functioned before. SL has never been about anything inanimate...It's quite the opposite. It's about who we are, what we create and dreams. It's also about (now) networking, competing and surviving in a business setting. I'm not sure that any of the endeavors ever paid mindful attention to the sun setting in the east with any degree of disdain.

Please don’t make me give up me sexy!

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/20/windlight-update-2007-11-20/

(my post is # 7, points to a couple of other forum threads. It did get a reaction from Pastrami, to whom the question of avatar looks was so important that altho he knew about it, he forgot it in his summary of issues.)