Tips and Tricks

I don't fiddle much with what the world looks like. I change the sun settings when building because it's difficult to build with the midnight setting.

Overall, I find it a bit irritating imagining that everyone uses different settings. How can one talk about a beautiful sunset when everyone uses different settings? I would prefer a solution where the sim-owner can use a setting that is the standard setting for everyone visiting his sim.

Villain Baroque

The only time I turn classic clouds off is when I am building a large-scale project, and I need to look at it from within or above the cloud layer's normal altitude.

I like the classic clouds. They are actually 3D. You can fly through them, or above them.

The Windlight clouds are only on the skydome, are only 2D, and you can't fly through or above them.

Good to know...

Is there a way to turn off the 1000 meter smog layer?

I turn them off by default.  Mostly I don't care for the way they look in snapshots of landscapes.  I also have some land where ground level is 165M, so they float through my house if I have them turned on.

I almost always want them off, but there are times I like to have them on.

I wish they were off and remained off by default. In fact, given how 1999 they look, LL should remove the code. After all that is what windlight is for.

I mean come on... a square of particles over the region and no rain? One of the weather makers makes a good storm cloud with rain. Lightning is still kind of hmmm since there is no electrical arcing like in games from 2004. But it is better than nothing. Maybe ray casting or whatever that new bullet system is being worked on can be morphed into lightning. "Rain" leaves a lot to be desired as well. Oh look it is raining gray rectangles!

But the worst aspect is how the LL client refuses to keep those clouds shut off sometimes. And reverts the chat to showing those nasty icons that hog up screen real estate.

 

Give us meandering thunderstorms over the mainland lol. Like weather fronts. And in the winter they change to snow.

"I wish they were off and remained off by default. In fact, given how 1999 they look, LL should remove the code. After all that is what windlight is for."

I agree, trash the old clouds, the Windlight clouds look fine w/o them.

"But the worst aspect is how the LL client refuses to keep those clouds shut off sometimes. And reverts the chat to showing those nasty icons that hog up screen real estate."

I also agree . . . please fix that, LL.

"Give us meandering thunderstorms over the mainland lol. Like weather fronts. And in the winter they change to snow."

LOL, yeah, and hurricanes and tornadoes as well.

Was that a griefer cage that appeared in the background around 1:13? :3

 

Also good tip. Having two kinds of clouds showing at the same time, Windlight and Particle clouds looks fairly odd.

There are people who run SL without WindLight, and they need the clouds.  Besides that Classic Clouds are fun when one is flying.  I find them useful sometimes - let's not all start hating on 'em.

I don't change many settings, so I have whatever the cloud default is... but I was thinking, since you asked (once upon a time) what tutorials we'd like to see...

When I saw this post of yours, I thought of a pair of tutorials:

(1) For high-end users and people who want to maximize their visual experience, what are the settings to push up,

(2) For those of us who want to save bandwidth and have better performance (at the expense of bells and whistles), what are the settings to turn down or off?

Classic clouds don't have a purpose with windlight, they look phony compared to the Windlight cloud layer and get in the way of high builds.

How can you get the experience of flying above the clouds, with Windlight clouds? You can't. It's impossible to even approach them properly.

Windlight clouds may look beautiful while you are standing firmly on the ground, and taking 2D pictures.

But they are not at all 3D, and they look worse the higher you fly. The only 3D cloud effect in SL is the Classic Clouds. They may be funky, but they do have a 3D aspect to them that Windlight's clouds can't touch.

I will agree however that some of the scripted particle-based "weather generators" make far better low-level clouds. Unfortunately, add to the script load in a sim, and the "rain" from them still falls through roof prims.

'Off by Default' (ObD) is what would be nice, as it would be nice if the viewer could please remember some more presets we do.

And the winner for this is ...

... 'Foot Shadow'!

It should be also ObD.

But on both i would prefer if they still remain in the viewer. There are rare situations where at least the classic clouds could act like a second layer of clouds. Timo did some nice examples of this like this one

or that

and dont forget this here

It's neat-o to see huge airships slowly appear out of the clouds.  We just need smooth region crossings and better flying ability.

Off most of the time.  Don't really like how they look with windlight clouds.

I love classic clouds! The Windlight clouds are nice as background, but SL without classic clouds would look...sickly.

For those using the 'classic' viewer, one can turn classic clouds on or off via:

Advanced-Rendering-Types-Clouds

Yes Footshadows OFF. That's another major annoyance, in fact, not saving ALL the preferences between sessions is pretty bizzare behavior for any piece of software.

I leave them on most of the time. They do not look right when you are within them near land or objects so I turn them off then, and sometimes when I am cameraing around my sim they are in the way. Overall they are a nice visual effect, especially at sunset/sunrise.

Sometimes they give an added feeling of distance, look at my thumbnail pic.

I created a jira proposing we turn off classic clouds by default to improve viewer rendering performance. Please comment here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-23398

Under this proposal, the feature would remain, but would be defaulted to 'off' unless changed by the user.

This is beloved cultural discussion.

@Gooden "1000 meter smog layer?" Picture please?

@Ariu Oh, weird! Funny things randomly appear on Here region sometimes. If my own region was trying to cage me, that'd be cause for concern.

@Seven

1. Start with "Quality and speed" = Ultra, click Advanced to show all options. Crank more things up as desired, some people may care more about "Draw distance" than "Objects" detail. Further settings can be increased beyond these sliders via Advanced menu > Debug Settings.
2. Three things that cumulatively make a BIG difference are "Water reflections" OFF, "Avatar impostors" ON, and "Draw Distance" LOW (like 64 m).

@Dil I've been wanting those damn foot shadows gone since 2005! I have proof! http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/AlbumView.aspx?id=286 Opsrey (yes, the same one above) also once distributed FootShadow B-Gon.

@Erica AW YEAH THANX AWESOMELY

I love the classic clouds.  My land is up high enough that sometimes they roll in and make my parcel foggy... reminds me of when I lived in the San Francisco area.

@Dil I've been wanting those damn foot shadows gone since 2005! I have proof! http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/AlbumView.aspx?id=286 Opsrey (yes, the same one above) also once distributed FootShadow B-Gon.

 

I still do!  My cave in Bodega (home of my Havok shrine, too) has free FootShadow B-Gon!  I also have Zomb-Off and Vamp-X-Pire, too, for those nasty undead infestations.

^ TIMELESS, I TELL YOU!