Windlight: good or bad for SL?

Under Edit / Preferences - Graphics tab, you'll have the performance slider. Check the custom box to make the options appear.

If "Basic Shaders" and/or "Atmospheric Shaders" are greyed out for you, your video card (or installed driver) may not support WindLight.

The easiest way for anyone to tell whether it's a video card issue or a driver issue would be for you to post what video card you have . (You can copy/paste from Help / About Second Life if you don't know, or aren't sure)

I'm not sure if there really is one across everyone, but I did notice some "I refuse to spend money on SL" posters who camp have an all-up-to-date puter, while some people who are in a (high) tier bracket have average to low puters.

(A handful of people doesn't mean anything either, just thought it was ironic at the time that some campers can throw a few thousand $ at their puter, but can't "afford" $10 to buy L$)

It's a matter of priorities.

I can afford to buy many many things IRL. Wii's, new computers, new clothes, trinkets for my house, new cars, an actual house. Instead of spending my cash on whatever strikes my fancy- I pick and choose the things that will make the most difference in my day to day living. Instead of a new pot to replace my slightly discolored (but still functional) pot at home- I get a set of new oven mitts to replace the ones my husband left in the oven and burned to a crisp. Instead of paying tier on land in SL that I rarely actually use- I downgraded to basic and picked up a subscription to Netflix. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on SL a month- I have a nice up to date computer.

After making the purchases that I find necessary to upkeep my standards of living (including a computer update every 3 years) I find I can't really "afford" to buy many lindens or a premium account. Could I? Sure. I could also buy that juicer that I saw today- it was red (my favorite color in the kitchen) and very very snazzy.... but I'd never use it enough to justify the expense.

=)

(Sorry in advance for the super long post. Once I got going on this one, it was hard to stop. This one's long even for me, hehehe. )



I would seriously question the judgment of whoever wrote that. Sure, broadcast television (in the US) operates at 30 FPS, but that doesn't mean 30 FPS automatically means "smooth".

First, the number 30 was not chosen for TV because it somehow magically equals visual smoothness. Visuals have nothing to do with it whatsoever, in fact. The ONLY reason TV operates at 30 FPS (in the US) is because our electricity operates at 60 Hz, and because TV's are interlaced, it takes two Hz for an analog TV to draw each full "frame". The laws of physics dictate that each scan pass has to happen simultaneously with each electricity cycle. At 60 cycles per second, you get 60 scans per second, and since each pass draws only half the scanlines, it takes two passes for each frame, yielding 30 frames in each second. That's it. Again, it's got nothing to do whatsoever with any visual concerns; it's just physics.

Second, FPS is only one part of the equation in determining "smoothness". There are other factors, not the least of which is motion blur. Because TV is filmed with a camera, anything that moves is automatically blurred in any single frame. The blurring then fools our eyes into "assuming the gaps" between the frames. In one frame, you've got a blurry train over here; the next frame it's over there. Our eyes then tell us we just watched a non-blurry train actually travel from here to there ("smoothly" when all we really saw was two blurry images.

So, Put all the (motion blurred) frames together, and you get what feeks like a scene full of very clearly filmed, very smoothly flowing, moving objects. But what you're actually looking at is anything but.

That sort of thing doesn't happen at all though with real time 3D renderings like what you see in SL. Every frame in SL looks like a clearly focused still photo, not like a motion blurred vidcap. It doesn't matter how many of them you cram into each second; without motion blur, it's going to look choppier than what you see on TV. When the frames go by quickly enough, the lack of blurring becomes less noticeable (but it's still always there), and that's one of the biggest reasons why high FPS is so important for video games and for other real time apps like SL.

In summary, there's simply no such thing as a magic number of frames per second that automatically makes things "smooth", and there can be no comparison whatsoever between the real FPS of SL and the interlaced, motion-blurred, pesudo-FPS of a television. It just doesn't work that way.



Kitty, have you actually used Windlight, or did you just read a few points on the feature list and call it a day?

What Windlight does goes far beyond clouds and occlusion culling. It's an entirely new way of rendering and processing light in SL. It is absulutely a "graphics update", no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Every single surface in SL looks quite different under the Windlight lighting engine than it does under the old engine we're all used to.

Sunlight behaves significantly more realistically in Windlight than in the old system. This is primarily what people are complaining about when they talk about not liking how their avatars look, and how you can see problems with buildings you couldn't see before. Because the light is bouncing off each and every surface in a much more realistic way than it was before, there's a lot less room for hiding flaws. This includes in no small way the flaws in the avatar mesh, and I'm hoping that it will serve as a wakeup call to the Lindens that the avatar model is LLLLLOOOONNNGGGG overdue for an overhaul.

Object based light behaves much better in Windlight as well. It is actually additive towards pure white now, whereas before it behaved as little more than a color overlay. Shine several lights on a surface, and you'll see you can actually wash the thing out, just like if you were shining a bunch of spotlights on the same spot in RL. That was never possible before.

Also, water is vastly improved. Not only does the water surface shader really look fantastic, easily as good as any real time ocean surface simulation I've EVER seen, but the underwater environment is pretty incredible now as well. You can actually see depth of field when you're underwater now. This has never happened in SL before.

The list goes on and on. Those are just the things that struck me the most. I could spend all day talking about more. So don't just read a few bullet points on a list and say, "Oh, fluffier clouds and better occlusion culling does not an update make." The differences between Windlight and the old setup are extreme to say the least.


Well said, Osprey. Windlight is absolutely a good thing. While I can sympathize with those whose systems can't handle it, the fact is progress must progress. You can't hold up development forever just because you might feel sorry for those who are unwilling to buy better hardware. If SL is important to you, make the investment to stay up to date with it.

Sorry if that sounds a little cold (I really do sympathize), but that's just the way the world works. You can't realistically expect to keep the same computer for more than a couple of years any more than you could realistically expect your kids never to grow up and move out or your car never to need a repair. Change, as they say, is the only constant in the universe. It happens; deal with it. SL is a cutting edge technology, and as such, it SHOULD push the boundaries of what hardware can do. (Of course, many parts of it should be written a bit better so that it's not pushing so much where it so clearly doesn't need to be, but that's another topic.)


Very well said, Capella. If 12 years in sales & marketing taught me anything, it was that "I can't afford it" is the biggest crock of you-know-what in the world. For anyone who has an income, it's really never a question of what they technically CAN afford; it's simply a question of whether or not any particular thing is important enough to them to justify spending X amount of money on it that could otherwise be spent on something else.

In my sales training classes, I used to put it to my students like this. Let's say a customer says they "I can't afford it" to your ______ price tag (let's make up a number here, say $500). You, as an honest person, assume people say what they mean, so you pack up your samples and you leave. Then, and hour later, their toilet breaks. They call a plumber, and he says "This thing is pretty screwed up. It's gonna be $500 to fix it." Do you really think they'd say "Well, just like we told the last guy who was here, we can't afford $500. So, we've all talked it over, and we've decided we're just not gonna crap anymore."

No, they'd get the thing fixed. If something is important enough, they'll find a way to come up with the money. They might finance it, or put it on a credit card, or smash that old piggy bank in the attic, or whatever, but they'll find a way. What people really mean when they say "I can't afford it", whether they realize it consciously or not, is "Can I afford it? Because I'd sure like to have this thing. So please show me both why it's worth making it a priority, and how I can afford it, and I'll get it."

Heck, I was just reading an article the other day about how Crysis (a new video game with insanely cool graphics, if anyone hasn't heard of it) has done more to sell new video cards than any other force in the last several years. That's just one game, whose players (most of them young males) will likely be bored with the thing in a few months, as happens with nearly ALL games, and it's driving hardware sales like there's no tomorrow. Surely if little Timmy can convince Mom & Dad to spend a few hundred dollars on computer hardware this Christmas so he can play a game for a little while, adults who spend years on end in SL can come up with that same amount.

Again, I realize that might sound a little cold, but it's reality. I make no judgments about it myself. It's simply the way it is.

As I said earlier, if SL's important to you, make the investment to stay up to date with it. If it's not, don't. Either way, don't call it "bad" just because it gets too sophisticated for older hardware from time to time. All software does that.

Here's an ocean simulation with 3D looking waves:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w2GcUZ8rK0

Yes, I just read a few points on the feature list and then go ahead and file a bug with a repro and help people adjust their settings on WindLight all without ever even using the client. I'm just clever like that .

WindLight just lights things differently, other than that it has all the exact same limitations we've always had which is what keeps it from being an update in my opinion. I'd even count directional lighting as a big upgrade to SL lighting, changing the way things are lit is nothing more than an adjustment to what we already had.

Bad.

I figured out how to get the clouds and finally I saw all the great features of Windlight. What can I say, I was impressed. I played with the Environmental Editor and made the sky red with red water and yellow clouds lol.

I wonder though, once they do introduce Windlight into the main viewer, are the sim owners only going to be allowed to control the environment?

From anyting I've read, no.

Mari

I think Windlight is great for sl. For me it enhances the experience very much and I don't see much decrease in FPS on my machine and settings.

Still worry a lot about the extremely high lighting contrast, which makes almost every direct sun lit texture too bright, though...

I worried about that too at first. Then when it was pointed out to me simply that this is so much closer to how sunlight actually works than the extremely unrealistic lighting model we've been used to, I was like "Oh duh!". As builders and texture artists, we'll simply have to adjust our techniques so that our work better suits this new degree of realism. Personally, I'm looking forward to making the changes.

(And as I said earlier, I'm really hoping the Lindens will feel the same way towards upgrading the avatar mesh.)

I have *many* concerns about WindLight.... problems with particles, camera anchoring, & the potential for 'glow' to become the new eye-sore. But for each of those concerns, I have hopes and cravings for what WindLight brings. I'll be switching back and forth until WindLight seems less clunky.

A bumpy road once in a while is to be expected when living in an evolving world. (This is not WoW after all, where 'an evolving world' means being charged extra for permission to access a few new maps and creatures every year or so.)

As far as WindLight causing problems content producers with low-end systems... we all owe it to our customers to test our products on both high-end and low-end systems. Recruit people to critique your work on other systems if you can't afford one of your own! =)

And... a very SL capable computer can be assembled for ~$500.

Google up "Budget Box" and "Arstechnica", the most recent issue is titled "Ho-Ho-Holiday System Guide: DIY for the holidays". The specs includes an ATI based graphics card.... I'd stick with NVIDIA for SL though.

Anyway: WindLight - yes, good, necessary, even if it is still rough at the moment.

That's a perfectly reasonable comparison to make. Personally I like apples better than Kumquats.

Oh and Second Life and World of Warcraft are both online video games, so comparing them is not unreasonable.

I posted this in another thread but figured I might stick it here:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3432

A general call for an avatar mesh upgrade in preparation for Windlight, to include other proposals listed in JIRA, like additional clothing layers and fixing the SL system skirt.

Actually it is NOT how sunlight works.

You see things with your eyes, the old lighting system was MUCH closer to how we percieve the world outside with our eyes which have an extremely high range of sensitivity and see into shadows and bright areas very well. When you look at someones face out in the daylight you do NOT see half of it super bright and the other half in dark shadow.

The current windlight settings are much more like how /film/ sees the universe. Very high contrast. I do NOT want to look at SL as if I am watching a movie, I want to see it as I see the real world with my eyes, and the current midday settings are NOT that at all

Not as bad as some games that put in lens flare for the sun or bright lights though, you can really go WAY to far with the camera effects

Not bloody likely. Anyone making software that requires the owner to change their hardware every couple of years is not going to be in business very long. I'm sorry but people simply don't have that sort of money to throw around willy nilly.

I buy computers by the boat load at work, they come with three year warranties, if they were not able to cope within two years we'd be in a lot of trouble financially, it's simply not the way the world works at all.

Maybe that's why Apple (iPod) and all the cell phone makers (Nokia et al) are all going out of business?

That may apply to most software, but it isn't smart when it comes to games. If a game developer released the same game over and over with no new features or eye candy, said developer will not be in business long.



You are buying those machines for people to work with. Productivity software isn't supposed to change much due to the fact that yearly upgrades of work machines gets costly. On top of the added hardware costs, having to learn new software every year consumes time and money.

Games are supposed to evolve, and the hardware also evolves. Console makers know this. I doubt that Sony would still be in the gaming business if they were still making first generation Playstation consoles. Gamers expect bigger, faster and better. If that wasn't the case, we would all still be playing Pong.

A mobile phone older than two years still happily works, I have one

Mine does too, I don't even have PICTURES on mine but a lot of people are convinced that "planned obsolescence" really does exist.

Which brings me back to Blizzard, you think world of warcraft doesn't work on computers over two years old? It works and it works well.



Evolve yes, be obsolete on two year old hardware no. I'm sorry, but it would be a recipe for disaster for LL to only be compatible with two year old hardware and it's simply not the case that LL is only compatible with two year old hardware. They'd be out of business in no time if that were the case or those with compatible hardware would be paying a shed load of money to keep it going.

My PC is over 3yrs old and is running Windlight fine. Actually it's running it much much better than the regular client. So yay Windlight

Hmm works fine for Sony and Nintendo to keep forcing owners to upgrade.
Desktop office machines and the graphics spec games machines for SL are 2 different breeds of the same animal. Your ploughhorse is going to keep pulling for 10 years but your racehorse is only good for 2.

Basically if you machine can just run SL now and can't handle windlight, it's near the end of it's cycle or it's underspec anyway, they are trialling windlight , meaning it may become standard viewer in 6 months, start planning. Or there's always Nikolaz viewer.

My 1 yo machine handles Windlight ok, but I expect it won't handle the next major upgrade after it and Havok4 in 12 months time, I believe they can improve SL's performance a lot more than they are losing by adding features by reducing texture downloads.

Why are we paying high speed internet costs to download the same textures we did yesterday?

WoW is pretty basic in graphics, it's 3-4years old too, it looks really good for how basic it is, doesn't even start my machines cooling fans, COH and other games can crank my graphics card so hard I can trip my UPS out.
Maybe Windlight defaults should be the lowest settings so lower spec machines have a chance to get in.

I am not going to discuss the differences between SL and World of Warcraft. Its been argued to death here. Its comparing apples to oranges.



I don't think compatibility is the issue. I just tested the Windlight client on my 3 year old HP laptop. The laptop barely meets the minimum requirements for SL, but the client does work. It can't do any of the Windlight stuff, but it does run at a reasonable framerate. Technically, the laptop is still compatible. If it was my only computer, I wouldn't be left out of SL.