Comments on: WindLight Comparison Project

By: Eddy Ofarrel

Eddy Ofarrel — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:57:02 +0000

Is anything happening with this?

I’d be happy to help too, if you’re still looking for more volunteers. I am currently on a laptop with a GeForce 8400M GS, with ForceWare driver version 101.28, and all the nVidia settings left at the defaults (or at least, I haven’t changed them anyway).

A bit confused about why you need XML files for noon, evening, etc though… Couldn’t we just use the defaults? Or would the files be for the WindLight graphics settings in preferences too?

On another note, everything got a lot more jagged for me too back when they implemented the rendering pipeline changes a while ago. No idea if it’s still that way now or not though, as I’m on a different computer and graphics card now anyway, and it was ages ago so I can’t remember what it looked like before :)

By: Smiley Barry

Smiley Barry — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:22:17 +0000

@Timothy: Don’t count on it — tests I did resulted in a performance drop from beta 1 and beta 2 :-S AKA: WindLight worked better before! X.X

By: Timothy Lilliehook

Timothy Lilliehook — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:05:02 +0000

Not sure if you are still looking for volunteers, but I could offer the following system, which runs the standard viewer pretty well. Still have to install the new windlight viewer, but it did work with the beta version they had a couple of months ago.

Pentium IV 2.66 GHz (768 MB RAM), nVidia GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB RAM and latest drivers, Windows XP SP2

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:27:02 +0000

*goes to quickly check her drivers setting* *anti-aliasing on* *ow, so I guess where I am now is the best I’ll ever be with this graphics card*

Torley, eager to see how quickly + effectively it can happen. So am I. You guys have Lindens that could code an automated submission system for the photographs. I do not. I don’t even own a sweatshop to let others do it. *sobs*

As for the settings, yes, of course there will be minor differences, but I’m not hunting for bugs. I’m just ‘darned’ curious about how others see what I now think of as my world. PS. I know of blue eggs and blue ketchup? :D

*will watch the JIRA closely for updates*

Ow wait, it does not have an RSS feed?!!

By: Balp Allen

Balp Allen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 23:24:22 +0000

@Torley: You have any clue on when the missing files in the windlight source will appear? Love to get that compiles and some useful UI patches so i can use it all the time, even when needing to chat and work with groups.

By: Torley (aye, that one)

Torley (aye, that one) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:27:36 +0000

@Vint: Being a “Chinese volunteer” doesn’t sound too prestigious haha, but that’s okay, I’ll do my grunt work! ;) (I’m also going to look up the term and learn more…)

And, wanted to let you know WindLight Team gives our big smile to this and they’re eager to see how quickly + effectively it can happen. Resident-run collaboration excites us (and me personally) so much. I’ll of course gladly participate once things get rolling.

We had an internal meeting where we brought this WindLight Comparison Project up, and: minor variances across GPUs are to be affected due to all the many visual settings involved, but if there’s *significant* differences (I believe Steve Linden used the analogy of a “red” apple on one screen looking “blue” on another ;) ), then those are likely bugs which we need to fix… and hopefully these tests can help us uncover them.

On a related note, I’ve also started this:

Meta-Issue: WindLight: Subjective aesthetic issues
» http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3463

I’ll be watching the comments here! =)

By: loki

loki — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:51:39 +0000

Driver settings can make a big difference Vint. After installing a new driver for my graphics card a while ago the jagged edges I got were horrible untill I turned antialiasing on in the driver settings. Seems most games do that themselves … not so SL, it leaves it up to the card’s settings.

By: Yrrek Gran

Yrrek Gran — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:35:35 +0000

I have a low end pc, probably the lowest, hehe, and am running WindLight just fine with a PCI (not PCIe) graphics card, ATI x1550 with the following specs. I would love to give it a try.

Specs:
Second Life 1.18.5 (74061) Nov 19 2007 10:10:17 (Second Life WindLight)

You are at 283617.0, 260768.0, 44.3 in Tipaskan located at sim3924.agni.lindenlab.com (63.210.156.82:12035)
Second Life Server 1.18.5.73200

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 Northwood (2392 MHz)
Memory: 760 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Graphics Card: VisionTek Radeon X1550 Series x86/SSE2
OpenGL Version: 2.0.7058 WinXP Release
LLMozLib Version: 1.1.0 (Mozilla GRE:1.8.0.12_0000000000)
Packets Lost: 44/53987 (0.1%)

By: Vint Falken

Vint Falken — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:21:51 +0000

You never heard of Chinese Volunteers?!! Maybe it’s a Flemish or Dutch terminology, I’m not sure… Chinese Volunteers are volunteers appointed by the government or whomever is running the place. Most frequent Chinese Volunteer jobs: playing ’secretary’ at a meeting, cleaning the toilets on a scouts camp, etc. =d

The preferences should be consistent by using the XML files for Windlight settings and buy advising graphic preferences settings. (If a certain card can not pull those, it’s inherent to the video card and thus relative to the comparison.)

You are right about the card’s own preferences though, I must admit I did not consider those. :( But I mainly want to have an idea how others ’see’ WindLight, so using their defaults will be ok? It’s somewhat like how our humans see the world. We can describe it, but can never be sure that what I call red is what you call red. For instance, I see detail in black where my mother just sees black. (I assume our brains calibrated the eyes differently? =)

I’ve got my fixed camera chair, so I’m ready to set up the XML files & the inworld location. I think. :p *goes to read her checklist again*

By: Torley

Torley — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:48:56 +0000

Thanx for the email, Vint. Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve heard the term, “Chinese volunteer”. :)

I’ve forwarded this to the whole WindLight Team to ask for further insights. It occurs to me that in some cases, “differences” might be not by design and due to bugs, and in other cases, Preferences settings may be varied too — so I would at least suggest making sure those are consistent. Furthermore, there are a number of finer graphics settings which can be found in NVIDIA and ATI driver control panels (like antialiasing) which do make a visual difference…

I think it’s pretty cool you’re doing this initiative, and not to complicate things *too* much, but additional points to consider! =^_^=