I have no reflections in my water :(

Hi

after downloading the windlight update, i have noticed i dont have any reflections on my water.. it jsut looks blank liek the normal viewer...
but in my settings, it is set to have reflections..
before the update, i had reflections, i didnt chnage any settings, but now my water is flat..
anyone else got this.. or know how to get my pretty water back?

i would show a picture of my settings and view, but i dunno how to upload them here.. sorry..

i have done a complete uninstall and reinstalled a new download but it's still not working properly..

Help / About Second Life - copy and paste the bits about your graphics card and puter from there (click in the top part of the about window, Ctrl-A to select everything, Ctrl-C to copy, switch to the forums and Ctrl-V to paste here )

Several cards have different problems, so knowing which card you have will help people help you .

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Northwood (2000 MHz)
Memory: 1024 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: RADEON 9600 x86/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.5337 WinXP Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 18/14702 (0.1%)

Hi.. here are my details u mentioned i should post...

i had no problems before this last update though.. why would it chnage suddenly?
(sorry, don't know much about PCs)

i have also now noticed that windlight wont keep my settings, everytime i reboot i have to redo all my settings liek i have only jsut installed it....

apart from lag and crashing, i have hardly ever had problems liek this before, even when other people are posting about problems, windlight has been fine for me.. don;t understand why it's suddenly not working right for me..

have jsut uninstalled the main viewer and the windlight viewer... cleaned up my pc with some maintenance...
reinstalled main viewer.. all my settings were still there.. (i'm sure my settings are meant to be default after a clean install), reinstalled windlight.. settings weren't there, so i set them all and rebooted.. wooohoo.. my settings were saved...
rebooted again.. jsut to be sure... settings were back to default again.. and it still says clearing cache when it loads sl up...
sav ed settings... was testing to see if it only clears them when i clean cache.. i DEFINITELY DID NOT click the clear cache button this time, when i loaded this time, it still said clearing cache and my settings were AGAIN set to default...

think i should jsut give up and hope the next update is ok...

i have also tried to update my graphics card, apparently i have the latest version..

never been so annoyed with sl as i have been today

Maybe I am having a similar problem. Not only don't I have any reflections but changing to the preset water setups (Glassy, Murky, Pond, etc) does not change the water at all.

CPU: AMD K7 (Unknown model) (1350 MHz)
Memory: 1024 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ALL-IN-WONDER X800 Series
OpenGL Version: 2.1.7169 Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 5/133161 (0.0%)

I have no problem on my notebook with an ATI processor x1900

I've noticed water reflections have been forcibly tied to atmospheric shaders for Macs... so all i get now is the *old* default water if i have atmospheric shaders turned off (which I MUST do, since I have an older Mac). I've ALSO noticed there is absolutely NO water when i do turn atmospheric shaders for a few mins when i take product shots. At least with older versions having the water was a reasonable compromise to not being able to run the full sky effects... I don't know if this was intentional, but if it is, I find myself wondering what the point would be to offer Windlight to older computers would be at all.

CPU: PowerPC 7450 (1666 MHz)
Memory: 1536 MB
OS Version: Darwin 8.11.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9600 XT OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 1.5 ATI-1.4.18

There is a JIRA for this here: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-4078

CPU: 4 x i386 (Unknown) (2660 MHz) (December 2007 Mac Pro Tower, 4 cores)
Memory: 2048 MB
OS Version: Darwin 9.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.1.0: Wed Oct 31 17:46:22 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228.0.2~1/RELEASE_I386 i386
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon X1900 OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 2.0 ATI-1.5.18

Am on Leopard 10.5.1 and am getting reflections just fine, on any quality settings that should have them.

im more concerned about why it wont save my settings... reflections are nice, but i can live without them... not having my settings saved though is a different thing alltogether.. thats jsut a royal pain in the butt...

That card is marked as a class 0 card (no shaders, so you're probably not even seeing ripple water?)

Open gpu_table.txt (it's in the SL Windlight folder, there's one in the regular main viewer folder as well, so make sure you're in the right folder) and look for the line that says: You need to keep the formatting of the file as-is, so just go behind the 0, backspace and type 1 instead and close and save the file.

See if that makes any difference. Class 0 pretty much means that LL views your card as "obsolete" though.

---

Saving settings: are you referring to the SL viewer preferences or the custom WindLight sky/water settings?

That SHOULD do it, i did the same for my ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 a while ago, which was listed as 0 too, and changed it-it's working just fine.

Surely cards should be classed by what they CAN support not by how well someone at LL thinks it MIGHT work? Obviously they can't have every card at LL for testing, but it shouldn't be as hard for them to just figure out what features each option requires, and create a table of graphics cards based on which features they support? That way enabling an option becomes a case of just having a card with the right features, if it's worth doing is up to you.

I don't see why class 0 etc. should completely disable your card's ability to enable certain options.

I ma referring to my general settings... sound, audio, do i wanna have popups.. EVERYTHING that is in the 'edit preferences' section...
it's clearing cache EVERYTIME i reboot.. even though im not askign it to do so as well.

as for the graphics card... i had reflections etc before the latest update.. so why not now? the only thing i had trouble with was the sky settings, it made my sky all yello and the rest of the screen look like a kids oil painting... but the reflections etc were fine... but i will try what u suggested though...

There must be soemone out there that knows how to get it to save my preferences?

Kitty.. you are amazing... i could kiss you.. (but i wont) hehe

my reflections are working... ty sooo much....

well, thats one part of my problem solvced...
now i jsut need to get it to save the preferences.. any takers on that one?

Glad that solved it for you . You'll have to do the same thing over again for every new update of the WindLight viewer though .

---

For the saving settings problem I posted in the thread you started in RA .

Any clue as to how to do this on a Mac? That particular file is read-only and I cannot save a file to the contents folder within the application

Also, i'd like to echo Harravik's sentiment here... if the card CAN run reflections, who is LL to say that it cannot? Why not allow the user to make that decision?

I have asked in the past as to whether users of older machines will have to see themselves updating once WL is released and was given something akin to 'no, and there should be some visual improvements for them even if they can't run the bigger stuff' - if this is true, why are they phasing out older cards that are still perfectly capable of running certain features? In which case, why allow older computers to switch from low to medium to high or ultra at all?

No idea about Mac, sowwies . You could try posting it in the Mac-specific forum?

It's more than just reflections though, it's shaders in general (or at least it is for my card).

By default I don't even get ripple water even though I've been using it fine since I first joined SL, I just get the boring dark blue "default" water. Glow won't work/show on class 0 cards either.

My guess would be that the WindLight team is so hung up on wanting to show that WindLight will only improve performance rather than hurt it that on older cards they use the sneaky trick of disabling shaders altogether which results in a performance gain at the expense of a much worse visual experience.

That would allow them to on one side show that "see, our statistic shows that WindLight is faster!" while on the other side they'd tell people that it's their card's fault that things look so bad and most people wouldn't know any better.

Hmmm.... I just realized since the last update I don't have a reflection either. Everything else reflects just fine.....sept my avatar. LOL Weird.....I have all the right boxes checked and sliders adjusted accordingly. It doesn't bother me too much since everything else looks great.....perhaps I'm a vampire and just don't realize it yet. Doh!

I'm having the same problems with my HD2600 card. No water reflections at all...the gpu_table.txt didn't work for me. I was told by the Lindens it's an ATI problem, they were supposed to improve the situation with the 7.12 driver update. The 8.1 update has been released and there's still no improvement. This is getting beyond frustrating. Any ideas?

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 (Unknown model) (3192 MHz)
Memory: 2047 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO
OpenGL Version: 2.1.7275 Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 0/6679 (0.0%)
Viewer Digest: 684b85c5-46de-231a-53b3-eefae69ad0ea

Just been to the loo.......
Guess what?

I have no reflections in my water either!

You actually have three layered causes:

* the viewer doesn't even try (any card that's classifed as class 0 by LL)
* the video card just doesn't have the capability (not sure what happens here)
* the video card can do it just fine, but the drivers mess it up

Sara got it working cause LL was artifically preventing the viewer from even attempting to render reflections, so once that limitation was lifted it worked just fine for her.

In your case your card is listed as a class 2 by default so it's an entirely different cause.

I think some people were able to fix their ATI card by trying different versions of the official driver, or by going with an unofficial one. You'd have to peek through the WindLight forum (and Technical Issues) a bit to see if anyone had a solution that would work for you.

(This one has a suggestion for a specific driver version, although it's a different card than the one you have: "In XP i can get the water reflections with Cat 7.10 and previous, it does not work with Cat 7.11 or 7.12" - /333/84/234857/1.html#post1836543)

Use Catalyst 7.10, its the only catalyst thats worked in tests consistently so far

And for anyone curious, 8.1 didnt solve anything on xp or vista

I seem to be having the same problem...no water reflections or clouds. My details are below.

I've downloaded the latest graphics card patch from Intel (no luck),have been to the Intel/SL forums and have also tried to mess with the preference sliders, but no luck. I see under Preferences - Graphics - Shaders, there is a box to click to 'water reflections' but I don't have the option to check it (it is greyed out.) Appreciate any suggestions! Thanks in advance!



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Second Life 1.19.1 (1) Mar 11 2008 19:23:38 (Second Life Release Candidate)

CPU: Intel Core 2 Series Processor (1994 MHz)
Memory: 2040 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: Intel
Graphics Card: Intel 965/963 Graphics Media Accelerator
OpenGL Version: 1.5.0 - Build 6.14.10.4873
LLMozLib Version: [LLMediaImplLLMozLib] - 2.01.13706 (Mozilla GRE version 1.8.1.11_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 14/15513 (0.1%)
Viewer Digest: feb337e4-b7d6-1b6f-5737-641b3c689213

There is your answer... INTEL, unsupported GC, OpenGL 1.5