WindLight Weather

Hi al, the new Windlight viewer is out
But, the original Windlight by Windwardmark also has build in weather like wind, snow and rain. When will we see real weather build in our Windlight? Anyone.

Take a look ath the demo video from Windmark here:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/static-secondlife-com/wl_videos/windlight/WindLight_Weather_512.avi

Cheers, Ami

Cool video..

I'm betting we won't see rain & such any time soon - at least until they figure out how to make it not go through everybody's houses...

hahaha, that's a good one, totally forgot

cheers,

Ami

absolutely, wouldn't that be just awful... But you know something, I wouldn't mind seeing a little bit of rain in SL.....and I can't believe I'm saying this but.....one can get a bit bored with the constant sunshine and good weather.

but wont that rain trough all the roofs because the engine knows no "inside" from "outside"?

Exactly the problem. Maybe around SL v3 they would have separated engine for Outdoor and Indoor, like games does? With outdoor constant weather changes and sun and all, and indoor with adjustable lightings, and no sun effect.

Not to mention really fast loading time indoor. It could be lovely.
But then...how could you have glass wall or windows in such a system....?

Not that hard to code I think. It shouls be easy to define the rain not falling through ojects?

Ami

What about transparent or partially-transparent prims?

They'd need new property I guess. To check which one can pas through...
But I'm not sure if that will make the client lag even more horrible...

If they can do it probably depends on if the Windlight effects stop at the ground. If so, they might be able to have a secondary heightmap (sorta like they have for terrain) that maps out where the effects should stop. The sim could adjust this based on what prims are on the ground, maybe even adjusting some for transparency to keep Meade happy. Of course, skyboxes might make things look a bit weird at ground level...

Surely the rain must originate from a height, right? So maybe the skybox can be moved up to above-cloud level, like the planes IRL does!

Very nice graphics! *laughs* and till now I thought the windlight rendering / technology was completely made by Linden for SL... that was silly of me to think congrats to whoever made the Windlight technology then, first of all.

Also... why in the world didnt Linden add that technology too then, when they made SL WL? Only because they cant keep it from raining when you are in the house and stuff? Really, the only thing they need to do is to stop the spawning or showing of rain / snow effects while the camera is positioned under a prim, unless they cannot find a better way like particles only being spawned around the prim only, and not under it.

Even if it would be like the same method in the GTA series to stop rain from showing (not displaying it when under a object) its way better then nothing, at least at first. Really, can someone talk with Linden and convince them to add this as a feature? At least an experimental one that we can just enable? Its just too good to waste it like this :/

Mm...show rain particles only when you're outside? And show nothing at all when you're inside? Well...that's still better than nothing I guess.

How does it know when you're inside? Don't forget about transparent prims - just because you have a prim above you doesn't mean you're outside...

Well...I think it's still better than nothing? I think it should work in most situation. Also, add it as an custom option that is Off by default, or perhaps even a Debug option in the Client menu. So newbies doesn't complain about it.

That would be more then easy; as long as your camera is positioned under a prim, calculated from a perfectly vertical axis (disregarding wind and such if its too much at first to calculate accordingly to that too), and your camera in on a radius as big as the prim / object and under its Z position, particles stop spawning in your FOV. As for a transparent prim... glass and plastic can be transparent too, and it doesn't rain through them. Don't see any type of prim that rain should go through... except Phantom ones and alpha ones, through perfectly clear spots.

One bad thing about this I realized now however; If someone makes a big platform somewhere hiiigh in the sky, probably even 750 meters or so, the person who walks at ground level suddenly realizes it stops raining when they walk in a certain stop, even if they see nothing above them. Though the particle stop-spawning could be calculated accordingly to your draw distance, and if a prim is not in your view, its ignored as a particle block.

Just one thing, but as long as we have some optional weather, I really wouldn't mind. Having a topic here about it won't get Linden to do much however. I say we talk with them and get this out to them, or make a jira and vote for it, so they see it and we convince them to add them. Its been long since SL had no weather, and after all this time I think this should be changed.

If the weather option were in the WindLight sky pane we could turn on snow or rain when we liked and turn it off when we wished it to be off. A big cave might have dripping water. Maybe snow and rain could be turned around and rise instead of fall.

I don't think the big problems like how to keep rain out of houses matter if the settings are controlled by individual users.

Besides, I might want rain in my house.