Is SpeedTree for SL vaporware?

I think LL bought the license two years ago now and we've seen nothing. We're still using the redundant method of intersecting planes. December 2007 it was "very soon", "sooner than you think", "we want to get it done" etc...

It's 2008 - Windlight was a leap in the right direction but we're not there yet.

Don't get me started on prim shadows.

How long did the upgrade to Havok 2 take? =P

Guess that is a drawed on texture trick , isnt anything yet out in the work for this?

No nothing released, the pic was posted by a Linden as something he was experimenting with.

I was talking to Ben the one day and he mentioned that because of how badly WL has effected the 'Linden' Tree's that ST might happen sooner than later but I'm honestly not going to hold my breath tho i hope its soon

Hipihi has nice speed trees now.

Novoking has nice looking trees but they don't move.

I want trees in SL that don't appear to change size and species as you change your distance from them. That bugs me so much I turn the detail on trees down all the way so that while they look fairly rotten at least the are the same rotten all the time.

The newer viewers are slower on my system than the older viewers or I'd go the other route and adjust that tree detail in debug settings that gets the trees to be at high detail from far away. Can't afford the speed penalty.

Thats a fancy shadow placed on the floor and under the couple of skypod things. Look closer and you will see the shadows are incomplete. We spend many hours on some of our movie sets, placing shadows. Nice picture.

Nothing special about texture baking, it's still long winded. If we could texture bake a parcel using the client however, that'd be godly.

In my previous years of experience with VR platforms, they come in 2 genres.

One that is considered 'Predetermined' sets, these are all raytraced complete with shadows etc, some have the ability to use 'mirrors', but all DO NOT allow for user content creation. Light maps are pre-created and stored on the users system. Any interaction with the 'sets' is predetermined and therefore a light map would have been rendered in advance. 'A tree falls, and its shadows etc, are all precalculated and raytraced. Any refractions also calculated.

One that is not raytraced, are basically devoid of shadows other than those that are artifically created by the users, they DO allow for user content to be created. Which is in itself the 'limitation'. The reasoning is simple, to create raytracing on the fly, is at this stage of computer processing and internet network solutions, beyond current abilities.

Oneday perhaps, when the internet converges with nural implants and computers are as fast and dynamic as the human brain, we can see true VR.

Not in real time, that'd be silly.

Client side baking = create lightmap (few minutes wait) -> upload new textures

That'd be more in line with current level editors for 3D engines.

Surely 'Wait a few minutes' would be unacceptable, as it would happen evertime someone tp'd into the scene, or a new prim is dropped, a guesture is used, script fired, particle let off. Each having its effect on the refractions, reflections, shadows etc... What you describe would only be possible for someone 'setting a scene' maybe before shooting a 2d or movie, barring anyone/thing from the scene.

The limitations for SL would be the multicasting of the views, each viewers persepective of the view being different as the systems they use. Consider, very few systems are identical, some use 'warmer' or 'cooler' settings for their graphics. Also clouds, water movement, moving objects in the scene like say flags. What you could at best achieve would be a snapshot, not an active scene.

http://www.speedtree.com/press/PR_Second_Life_Chooses_SpeedTree_March_22_05.pdf


That was in 2005...they alreadyown the license so I suppose they are working on prioroties first then they'll jump into the fancies.

It can happen the same way the freeze function in snapshot work. The client can just freeze everything and stop rendering new changes while processing with the shadowing.

SL is always changing. With this you'd have freezes constantly, I'm sure it's an acceptable solution.

Nooooo. Not constantly of course. It would be in debug menu so builders can grab a fully baked shadowing texture and upload them for their own use!

Or do just the opposite. go into debug setting and crank the detail setting way up for trees. if you have a good computer with should effect performance very little. But it is anothe nice option. Think it is RenderTreeDetail or somthing like that.