Promblems using lighting prims in WL

I only recently started using WL frequently, but since i do a lot of photo work, i'm finding some issues with WL and lighting effects. In normal SL i use prim lights to cast colors and shadows on AV's or Landscapes. Generally, in normal SL, I can set up as many as i like to achieve the effects i want. However, when i do the same in WL it seems it will only allow a certain number to work AND I'm never sure which ones which it will allow to cast light. Its been very fustrating to set up a scene and then only to have some of the lights go out when i get my camera position setup (a problem i never have in normal SL). Note, this is not an issue with distance, i generally am shooting very tight scenes, less than 10m between light prims.

Anyone know if i just have some settings set improperly or have seen this happen?

Thanks in advance for you help

Senna

OpenGL has a limit of 8 lights in a scene. In SL, two of those are always in use, the sun/moon, and the ambient light. That leaves six lights usable as local lights (prim lights). If you put more than six in a scene, only the six closest to the camera will appear lit.

There's simply no way in the other viewers you were having more than six local lights function. That would be 100% impossible. What's likely is that only six were indeed working for you before, but you just didn't notice, since the lighting model in the standard viewer is so poor and unrealistic. Since lighting in Windlight behaves so much better, you're now seeing the effects of the light much more dramatically, allowing you more easily to spot which lights are "on" and "off".

For an experiment, try this. Put 20 or so lights, evenly spaced, in a row, and stand on one end of the line. Turn to face the row as if you were going to walk along its length. You'll see that the six closest to you are lit, and all the others are not. Now, walk slowly along the row, and watch what happens. As you walk from light number one toward light number twenty, you'll see a change happen as soon as you get far enough away from number one. Number seven will appear to switch on. Turn around at that point, and you'll see number one has turned off. Turn back around continue walking. Number eight will switch on precisely as number two switches off. Nine will turn on right as Three turns off. And so one. When you get all the way to 20, turn around, and you'll see One through Fourteen are all off; only Fifteen through Twenty are on.

Six local lights is all that will ever work at any one time. That's it.

Also keep in mind that WindLight does change the way local lights work: the same light will cast more light at midnight than it does at noon.

You'll need to change the light properties depending on the current time of day to achieve the same result you'd see in the normal viewer.

Chosen and Kitty thanks for responding and for clearing that up for me. I'll do some tests and see what i get.

Thanks again to you both.

Edit - here's the resolution (i believe) to my issue: "turn off Basic Shaders". After reading through the graphics info online, I just started turning on and off some selections and by turning off the basic shaders all the lights (6 lights only) seem to present the glow and cast that i intended them to show. Thus, giving me the control i want. If I turn Basic shaders "on" I start to see the issue of indiscriminate "on/off" of lighted prims.

I appreciate your input guys!

It seems to me that Windlight can only display 2 lights at any time when you have Basic Shaders enabled in preferences. It makes walking around a house with lights a farce.

The only option is to turn Shaders off, like you realised, but this defeats the beauty of using Local Lights and of the Windlight viewer itself. The sky and water go back to the basic viewer standard.

There's no real difference between "atmospheric shader" water and "basic shader" water.

If "basic shaded" water looks like "Linden default" water to you (basic featureless dark-ish blue water that looks like a texture animation) to you then WL is probably treating your video card as "class 0" (no shaders, even if you have basic shaders checked in Preferences).

Still having issues with local lights shutting down while shooting photos
Even witht the above settings turned off
i cannot seem to consistantly keep 6 glow prims "on"...i'll be shooting and one of them will decide to shut down, and i cannot figure out why. I shoot photo almost exclusively with glow prims (local lights) so this is a real issue. properties next to mine effect this? face lamps? attachements of any sort?

Another issue i see too in WL which is different than the older version is that when i edit a prim (glow prim) to adjust the color in windlight...it excludes the others or dims them...which is exactly what i don't want since i'm trying to blend colors. Again, perhaps i've got a setting set up to do this but i haven't found it on the simplied graphics tab.

Make sure that you - or the subject if you're doing portraits - aren't wearing any facelight(s) (including ones that might be embedded into things like hair).

You could turn on "Show light radius for selection" (from memory, so could be phrased differently) and go through everything that's rezzed there (or something on another plot if it happens to be a small on) to make sure something you didn't expect has an embedded light that's taking up a "slot". If it does you'll see a sphere surrounding an object you have selected ("editing", which makes looking for lights relatively easy.

gonna have to see if something in the studio is using up these slots..i'm down to 3 lights now...
thanks

With atmospheric shaders on in WL, the reflective light on the water will count towards to available lights, also bear in mind the Light Feature setting Falloff, this is the area around the light that it will not cover, reduce that to 0. Increase the radius so that each light falls within your view from where you are standing.