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Mirrors


Ceera Murakami
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One of the Firestorm dev's is playing with the code to create mirrors. Whirly made the 15 mirror experiment.

All is looking good for this to be a third party addon feature. The next huddle is to get the feature working with the Advanced Lighting Model (ALM), which has shadows, ambient occlusion,  and depth of field.

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The SL engine can not display a mirror reflection. What you can do is: run additional render engines with the viewport of the mirror. This ones can have lower resolution and can be more simple than the main renderer.

Fast computers will surely be able to run a few mirrors like that.

This tests are without advanced lighting and shadows - so it looks to me - but I think that project isnt finished.

Putting that into a TPV would violate the Linden directive for shared experience so if that ever is going to happen it will be in the LL viewer as well.

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  • 6 years later...

I'm bumping this topic, because it's 2021 and there are numerous applications of similar complexity to SL (from the GTA and Forza Horizon and Forza Motorsport series to just about every other MMORPG you can name) that include both mirrors and immensely better global illumination (path tracing instead of ambient occlusion, with SL's implementation of ambient occlusion giving results that look more like direct lighting than actual global illumination). So, I'd like to second Whirly's suggestion; please get on board and watch that issue. I'll also get back to attending the Open Development User Group meetings and hopefully I can encourage LL's devs to look in that direction.

On 8/9/2014 at 3:59 AM, Whirly Fizzle said:

The JIRA issue for this mirror feature is at: STORM-2055

Add a watch to that issue to be kept informaed of updates.

 

Edited by Mona Eberhardt
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Moe doesn't like the smell of zombies.

I have had COVID-19 so everything smells like burnt cantaloupe to me right now anyway.

I don't NEED mirrors in SL but they are such a ubiquitous item in RL that them missing from SL seems weird.

Do those programs that render mirrors use OpenGL?  I gather OpenGL is kinda antiquated, as computer software goes.  What do I know?  I still use C and assembly language while the Cool Kidz use RUBY and WTNTIC.  Maybe if Linden Lab has to quit using OpenGL they can give SL mirrors in whatever comes next?

/me sets zombies on fire and waves @bigmoe Whitfield.

Edited by Ardy Lay
-small +smell
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8 hours ago, Mona Eberhardt said:

Why make a new thread for the same subject?

 

I'm old, it's considered forum edict in the old days of forums, to not push a post back up top more than a year or 2 old, when a new topic is perfectly fine,  I still run a car forum that's been around since 2002,  we auto lock threads older than 2 years old now,   so it's kinda my style too since I've been administrating it so long and we've got a funky database that's iffy with old topics from era gone by that get knocked back up.

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10 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

Necro a thread when a new topic would of been better.

When it is a topic about something that is still just as relevant as when it was made, I think it's much better to bump the original one. This way people that haven't known about the entire thing can learn something new and join the discussion as well. Who knows how longer it would have taken for me to find out about those videos and that feature request, if ever, if it wasn't for seeing "Mirrors" here now?

I'm not here for such a long time yet, so as I haven't been around when this suggestion might have been a thing, it isn't actually easy to come across things like this if you're not directly searching for it. Not searching for something doesn't mean you wouldn't appreciate accidentally coming across it, though.

In my first few months I didn't even find out about water reflections "on everything", so I had it on "Minimal", I think. When I once realized it and was like "hey, why don't I have this set to "everything", and did it, it was a great graphical experience boost to SL, bringing it closer to games with pretty high graphics features. I could never go out to the sea in SL again without that. And since that point, I am wondering why the same reflectiveness wasn't implemented for objects.

So this topic, the comments on that Jira, and the videos themselves are a great source to learn and think more about this, to have an idea of what it would take to implement it, what risks it could bring with itself, etc. It would be definitely a major aesthetical improvement, even if it wouldn't be able to reflect all shadows and occlusions properly or at all. The fact that you can have a working mirror is a huge step from not having any mirrors at all. It would allow for anything from a bathroom mirror to huge hallways with wall-sized mirrors, rear-view mirrors for vehicles, and so on. It is really a valid point that it could be used for griefing or trolling as well. Seriously though, what hasn't been used for griefing or trolling in SL yet? Every single kind of object, animated texture, particle, sound, animation and script function has been tried as a use against others (sadly), with more or less success. You can't create anything that someone wouldn't try to use for griefing, it isn't really a good excuse for rather not creating it for that reason. Especially since it should be possible to prevent "cross-mirroring" (reflecting a mirrored image on another mirror) after a few iterations, or at all, like limiting the maximum amount of reflective surfaces in a scene in the viewer, etc.

The way I have imagined this feature while playing with textures and reflective surfaces, it would make the most sense if it was implemented in the Shininess (specular) texture's environment factor. The more the input, the more sharp and detailed the mirror would be (where 0 would be no reflection at all, and 255 the clear mirror). Between the none and full reflection endpoints, the reflection could be gradually clearer, so it could be easily used to make reflective glass and metallic materials. (The same way as it is now, just with realistic reflections instead of just the sun.) The most important thing in it would be that it doesn't have to be perfect, it is enough if it works reliably and doesn't break other features in the process. It has to be faced that improvements in graphics and rendering require better computers, so if we don't want SL to be a 20-year-old, outdated platform with serious lack of features compared to contemporary platforms, certain improvements have to be made from time to time even if it means the overall hardware requirements will raise. And then being able to turn off the reflection feature at all like other features of ALM could be still an option as well.

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2 hours ago, bigmoe Whitfield said:

I'm old, it's considered forum edict in the old days of forums, to not push a post back up top more than a year or 2 old, when a new topic is perfectly fine,  I still run a car forum that's been around since 2002,  we auto lock threads older than 2 years old now,   so it's kinda my style too since I've been administrating it so long and we've got a funky database that's iffy with old topics from era gone by that get knocked back up.

 

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Was too long didn't read all the old posts, but if a TPV developer wanted mirrors couldn't they just define a special texture to be a mirror texture? and iirc Black Dragon or whatever it's called already does some reflectivity on shiny surfaces.

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1 hour ago, Quistessa said:

Was too long didn't read all the old posts, but if a TPV developer wanted mirrors couldn't they just define a special texture to be a mirror texture? and iirc Black Dragon or whatever it's called already does some reflectivity on shiny surfaces.

They could. It would put that viewer at odds with Linden Lab.

https://secondlife.com/corporate/tpv.php#priv2

Quote

You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

 

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3 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

You must not provide any feature that alters the shared experience of the virtual world in any way not provided by or accessible to users of the latest released Linden Lab viewer.

And how do other viewer features like *caugh* RLV *caugh* not violate that clause?

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1 minute ago, Quistessa said:

And how do other viewer features like *caugh* RLV *caugh* not violate that clause?

If you're looking for a written list of what's allowed and what isn't, you wont find one. The spirit and intent of the rule is clear and LL reserve the right to interpret it anyway they need. If a feature idea is in any doubt then it's time to make and present your case to Linden Lab. If that thought process only gets as far as "can I do _______" the answer is typically no.

In the case of RLVa & RLV, it was initially deemed to fall foul of the rules and took significant effort and lobbying to be permitted. We are very grateful for the efforts made both inside and outside the Lab to allow it's continuation.

It is worth noting that LL can break all RLVa & RLV functionality with a trivial server side change, at any time, without notice and no RLVa / RLV viewer would be immune, All scripts would continue to run having lost the ability to communicate instructions to the viewer, and that would be the end of that.

 

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7 hours ago, AlettaMondragon said:

In my first few months I didn't even find out about water reflections "on everything", so I had it on "Minimal", I think. When I once realized it and was like "hey, why don't I have this set to "everything", and did it, it was a great graphical experience boost to SL, bringing it closer to games with pretty high graphics features. I could never go out to the sea in SL again without that. And since that point, I am wondering why the same reflectiveness wasn't implemented for objects.

This is an interesting point. How are water reflections implemented in SL? I'd guess an additional renderer but I'm too lazy to go check.

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