Actual Lighting

Is there any way to actually light up a dark area? I don't mean with a texture, I talking about actually lighting up like a dark cave underwater away from the 'sun'

Cheers

Yes, there are lamps, that have light that illuminates. Maybe you can find it from some free stuff area or better ones from a shop. I do not yet know how to script them.

No scripting is necessary. Simply rez a prim, go to the Features tab on the editor., and you'll see a toggle to allow the object to cast light or not. The capacity to cast light is a feature of every prim. The variables on the tab are fairly self explanatory. You can adjust the color of the light, the falloff distance, etc.

There are a few limitations though. First, not everyone will be able to see the light. In order to see it, you need to have local lighting turned on in your SL preferences. Turning it on causes a performance hit, which not every computer can handle. If you've got a low end video card or CPU, you may be out of luck.

Second, you can only ever see the six closest lights to your avatar. You could have a hundred lights in a large room, but you'll only ever see six. The far reaches of the room will appear unlit until you walk over, and then the area you just left will dim.

Lighting in SL is still in its infancy, really. It'll improve over time, but they've got much bigger fish to fry first.

Actually, I think it's the eight closest local light sources that you'll see, and it's based on a per-linkset basis, not per prim. For example, I can set up 8 torches that each have a two-prim flame, both planes of which cast local light, and can see each torch casting light.

Local lighting is omnidirectional, and can't be blocked by other prims.

I believe you can simulate a 'beam' of light by using a beam-shaped phantom prim, activating local lighting with a very fast fall-off range (short radius of light effect).

OpenGL does allow up to eight lights in a scene, so in a sense you're right, Ceera, that the number is eight. However, in SL, there are always two global lights in place (the sun/moon and the backlight), leaving just six slots open for local lights.

For more info, here's the knowledgebase page on lighting: http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=069

Well I guess I'm screwed with that idea then, as I have local lighting turned on, as well as the entire floor 'under the sea' turn on with 'max light' and its still to dark to see anything not right in front of your face.
I have some 'lamp types' that 'light up' but its just texture light the moment you step away you cans see it isn't lighting an area.

I have a top of the line Geforce 7800 with shader 3.0 and DX 9 so I'm pretty sure thats up to snuff..

Prim 'spot lights' give the illusion of light but you cant walk threw it.

Thanks

I have an undersea studio, and I quickly rezzed some 1 x 10 x .1 prims for light, and they work fine.

I did notice that the hacked "huge prims" don't seem to emit light...I was hoping to have a giant 1-prim lightbox ceiling, but the ones I tried didn't work, i.e. I could check the Light box but didn't see any light.

Well I have the entire white-ish marble floor total light..Its fine where your standing but you cant see 2m in front of you , maybe I'll see whats its like when I get the machine in there.

This is an 'underwater' casino section with fish swimming around

Cheers

Probably the reason the giant prim didn't appear to emit light was that it probably was emitting light, you just couldn't see it.

There are several types of lights supported by OpenGL. However, SL supports only one: the point source light. This point source emits light from the object's center, not its surface, and all range calculations are as computed from the object's center. If you have a 20x20x0.5 giant prim ceiling and set it to emit light with a range of 10m, and you have an 8m high ceiling, the light will fall off so quickly that only the area exactly beneath the center of the giant prim will be lit at all, and that only dimly as it will be very likely at the edge of the falloff limit for the prim.

As a previous poster mentioned, it has nothing to do with whether the point sources are members of a linked set or not. All that counts is the number of slots for hardware lighting that OpenGL currently has open, and the sun and the moon are always on, leaving only six to do whatever it is you're going to do with it.

Yup, that's probably it. Thanks.

PS, your name slays me -- Superman Ghostbusters mash-up, whaa? My cultural gestalt is dislocated.

I used to have an underwater home in SL.. A little murkiness all round, but visibility was around 20 metres. Fullbright on surfaces helped before local lighting became workable, after that regular 0.5m spheres as lightsources with 10m distance were ok too. More than 2?? metres visibility for sure.