General Discussion Forum

[Latch Castaignede Honored Resident]

When I see some the images people create in Second Life, it blows me away, But i was shocked to discover that a lot of these images are unedited in Photoshop but instead, actual in-game views.

It appears that a lot of us are missing out on viewing the world as it should be seen.

So... what PC Spec do you need to see the beautiful side of Second Life?

I have....

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU (Q8200) @ 2.33GHz [4 cores, 4 prosessors]
4GB RAM

Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT (512 MB RAM)

Windows Vista 32-bit system

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WHAT IS A GOOD SPEC TO HAVE AND CAN YOU SHOW EXAMPLE IMAGES OF HOW YOU SEE THE SECOND LIFE WORLD?

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[Bree Giffen Member]

Something to consider when looking at pictures is that people can turn up their graphics to the highest resoutions, with maximum settings on everything and have unplayable frame-rates. Playability doesn't matter when taking pictures.

[Kelli May Member]

CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X2 560 Processor (3315.11 MHz)
Memory: 4096 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 550 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

I usually run SL with very high settings: all the shaders set apart from depth of field, full reflections, full shadows, all the detail sliders right up, anisotropic filtering, and 2x anti-aliasing. Normally I use a 200m draw distance. I get from 20-40fps, depending on local conditions. If it drops below that, I turn off shadows.

As Bree points out, I use higher settings for photography. As I already have most features turned on, this only means increasing my anti-aliasing level and adding DoF. 

[Latch Castaignede Honored Resident]

Even with high settings I dont get a great view. Its always quite pixelated.

[Czari Zenovka]

I have a waaaaayyyyyyyyyy worse PC than you do; the MB is 10 years old and doesn't have SEE2 so I can't run the new viewers or see mesh. (New PC to arrive soon!)

I have to keep all settings at low and 64m draw distance if I want to move at all.  It takes about 10 minutes in crowded venues before everyone isn't gray.  However, as Bree said, I can turn up the settings and take some nice photos...as long as I don't want to move...lol.

[16]

is a wiki link here for taking photos with the viewer

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Photo_checklist

seems much of the settings on it been worked out by some of the top photographers in SL. people like Torley. Strawberry Singh also for example who does a lot of the SL website photos these days

[Parhelion Palou]

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16 wrote:

is a wiki link here for taking photos with the viewer

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Photo_checklist

seems much of the settings on it been worked out by some of the top photographers in SL. people like Torley. Strawberry Singh also for example who does a lot of the SL website photos these days

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Thanks for posting that link -- I didn't know about it. The DOF settings might be the most useful to me; I spend a lot of time tweaking it for a particular shot.

My computer's specs are:

Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (quad core with hyperthreading)
16GB RAM
240GB SSD/ 1TB hard disk
NVidia GTX 660 Ti graphics card

50 Mb down/10 Mb up Internet connection

I set graphics to ultra with a draw distance around 300 meters and most sliders set higher than ultra when possible. I don't generally use DOF because it annoys me when I'm walking around. All I do for photos is play with Windlight settings and occasionally DOF. Here's a shot I posted in another thread recently:

(No DOF on this one - I take all pictures to disk, then crop them as I wish and resize to something even.)

[Orca Flotta Member]

My PC isn't of any concern here, it was a midrange machine, i5/560 with 8 GB of 1333 RAM and a Zotac GTX260 card when I got it in 2010. It plays SL well enough, the real trouble is my slow connection.

Okay, my trick for better quality, non pixelated photos is the most easy and logical: I up the resolution to 6000 x 3thousandsomething. So even when I crop the photo kinda small I still have a resolution higher than my screen. Of course it makes the snapshooting process rather slow and clumsy but the end result is gorgeous. For  action shots I dial the res down to its initial 1920 x 1033.

Oh, and I never (never ever! Only sometimes) use midday light setting. If I don't have time to play with light settings I use at least the sunset setting, it beefs things up quite a bit.

[Sassy Romano Member]

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3930K CPU @ 3.20GHz (3200.05 MHz)
Memory: 24554 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

I run with graphics on Ultra with all lighting on and with shadows enabled

[Drake1 Nightfire Member]

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 645 Processor (3099.99 MHz)
Memory: 6144 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce 9800 GT/PCIe/SSE2

usualy i run on high..  if i am taking pictures i will set it to ultra.