Simulating midnight

Not sure if this should be here or in the scripting tips forum but I'll start here.

I'd like to either simulate midnight or set the users sun to midnight for them. I have a particle effect that looks much better in the dark. I have tried surrounding the build with a giant sphere, 90% transparent on the outside (looks like a cloud) and I control the inside texture's opacity with a script so that on command it slowly becomes 100% opaque (and black). However even though I'm now inside a giant black ball, it is still pretty bright and if I force my sun to midnight it becomes well, like midnight .

Is there a way to simulate midnight other than just forcing sun to midnight? If not, can you script that process (after requesting permission)?

Thanks,

Doug

Perhaps making ALL the textures in the entire area a darker opacity? This should simulate an overall dark ambient setting...

This is just one method.

Hi Michael,

I have tried this. Even when I am the only thing entirely inside the black bubble my avatar looks entirely different when having the sun set at noon vs midnight.

I can certainly make it "darker" using the black sphere, but it is still a lot different than midnight.

Apparently the sun even shines though 100% opaque textures .

Doug

Yeah, prims can't block light. So the only thing your black sphere will do in daylight is put a black background behind an otherwise brightly lit scene, as you've discovered.

I take it you're not on a private island, or else you'd be able to lock the sun. Other than that, I can't think of any good way to do what you want. Unfortunately SL's lighting engine is not that sophisticated.

So you know, one somewhat common trick to faux-darken a room is to fill it with layered planes, each with a translucent dark color on them. Objects further away then appear much darker than objects that are closer, since you have to look through more of the planes to see them. This can make for some spooky "haunted hallway" type effects, but it probably wouldn't work for what you're trying to do, unfortunately. It would darken the particles too, which is not what you want. Plus, it hinders camera control.

The best answer I can come up with is just to put up a sign, instructing people to force midnight in the client for best viewing of the particles. Sorry there's not a better solution.

While visiting various displays in the recent Burning Life event, I saw that a significant amount of them put up signs saying 'Set sun to midnight!' to optimize appearance, and telling how to do so manually. Nothing ever offered an automatic way of doing so, and I don't think there is one yet. Well, with the exception of changing the day/night cycle of whole regions at a time.

HOWEVER, someday after WindLight is implemented, it seems the Lindens hope to implement better control over these sky effects. So sometime later on you may want to ask Torley Linden about where they're headed with this.

This gentleman did a fine job making things hazy...perhaps ask him his methods:

/327/c5/222302/1.html

Also the Transformers sim did a great job making a room and all the objects within look dark...

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Sector%207/147/76/163

Tint every object a very dark blue (almost black) and it will look like nighttime. Only problem is avatars wandering around there will look very out of place.

I really wish there was some mainland sims available that were set to night 24/7. Most people aren't simowners, and having to retort to measures like this really sucks. It's far from a perfect solution.

I would perfer a more normal daylight/night cycle.

Assuming I own the sim (which I do not but eventually this build will be on my own island), is it possible to control the entire sim day/night via a script?

Thanks,

Doug

As I understand it, no. As an estate manager, you can manually set the sun to any position you want on an island, but I don't think there's any script function that will do that all by itself. You can have a script respond to the sun's position, but you can't go the other way around. The sun cannot respond to a script.

If I'm wrong about this, someone please say so, but I'd be really surprised if I am.




What do you mean, Thunderclap? Are you saying, you want a 24 hour cycle? I think that would be pretty annoying, actually. I certainly don't want to have to deal with 12 hours of darkness in SL every day, or 3 hours of near-noon lighting, or two hours of dusk/dawn type lighting.

The only time lighting actually looks relatively normal is in the mid morning and mid afternoon hours. At noon and near-noon sun positions, everything looks unrealistically bright (even washed out for people with low contrast monitors). At dusk/dawn, red light floods over everything. With the current cycle, noon, dusk, and dawn times are very short, and the mid-morning/mid-afternoon times are relatively expanded so that normal looking lighting is what you see most of the time. With a full 24 hour cycle, the screwball lighting schemes would last way too long.

That said, everyone's entitled to their own preferences, so it would be nice if estate managers were able to control the day/night cycle any way they want, rather than just turning it on or off.

No. If you own the sim (or are Estate Manager), you can lock the sun at a specific position in the sky, or follow the default day/night cycle. No other options possible.

I found back something interesting Torley once said. Check
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/Project_updates#.5B2007-08-27.5D_Ripple_water_custom_settings:

Also, what we will have soon, which handles if, for example,

are Day Cycle Settings like these—


allowing individual users in Firstlook (and after the full release, region owners) to set their day cycles to any length and any behavior. See http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Windlight for more on settings windows like this.