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Windlight rendering in various viewers


Livio Korobase
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I don't know if is a know bug, but i noticed a annoying problem with windlight rendering in different viewers: the sim loose info about windlight, and each viewer show different scenario.

I have put some photos here:

1. Singularity https://www.flickr.com/photos/liviokorobase/20621247876/in/datetaken-public/

2. Firestorm https://www.flickr.com/photos/liviokorobase/20024955334/in/datetaken-public/

3. Linden Viewer https://www.flickr.com/photos/liviokorobase/20647539065/in/datetaken-public/

4. the real WL fresh loaded from region tools: https://www.flickr.com/photos/liviokorobase/20024990254/in/datetaken-public/

All the images are in Ultra, same region same time.

Region is LEA19

 

?

Livio

 

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Livio Korobase wrote:

is not a answer, sorry.

I know, it was a bit too short. ;)


Livio Korobase wrote:

I think most people use, because is region setting.

I doubt it. Recent versions of the official SL viewer automatically reset to region windlight every time you log on but most people in SL use a different viewer and there are so many reasons why they might want to use some other windlight.


Livio Korobase wrote:

In anycase, is not this the problem.

I'm looking at the place right now using Firestorm on a MacBook Pro, region windlight and graphics set to ultra. This is how it looks to me:

Lea19_001.png

That looks pretty much like the Real Setting picture os obviously there'a something in your Firestorm graphics settings that keeps it from rendering the sky properly and I guess there's a similar reason why your Singularity doesn't render the water. I can't say exactly which setting it is though. There are so many graphics parameters in the SL viewers, they're not the same in all viewers and not all of them are affected by the low, mid, high and ultra presets.

Maybe somebody else can offer a better explanation.

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Yes, i just reloaded the WL in region and this is the regular setting. Return at sim in one day or two, and the WL change. Is a XML file, how is possible? I created a new user thinking maybe is something cached, and installed Singularity just for take the picture because a friend that use this viewer told me "too much yellow". Now i understand why :)

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Livio Korobase wrote:

I don't know if is a know bug, but i noticed a annoying problem with windlight rendering in different viewers: the sim loose info about windlight, and each viewer show different scenario.

I have put some photos here:

1. Singularity

2. Firestorm

3. Linden Viewer

4. the real WL fresh loaded from region tools:

All the images are in Ultra, same region same time.

Region is LEA19

 

?

Livio

 

"Ultra" is meaningless - it's just a shortcut to a bundle of individual settings and some viewers may set each individual setting differently as part of their "ultra" setting. You might find the problem by looking at the individual settings each viewer uses at that level.

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Is was i thought at start, but the problem is recurring. The WL result change in different manner in different viewers after some time (24 hours or so) starting from the reload on region settings. I hope to be more clear. If i load the WL in region, all is ok for some time, then start this differences.

I am starting think that is a server related problem: visitor come and load windlight, next visit server don't send the complete information and WL seem messed up.

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Livio Korobase wrote:

All the viewers, for this i think is server side problem or of this particular sim

Why do you think this?

Windlight is entirely client-side. 100%.

Compare individual settings and performance points for your hardware, not presets, and this problem will prove illusionary (as said a few times above). The water in the Singularity pic - for example - is caused by a graphical glitch. and has nothing to do with Windlight settings being parsed from About Land.

 

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What setting?

Rendering is all done client-side. Windlight is all client-side. There's no need for telepathy. It's just a few numbers - for example, the sun position and whether it's fixed or dynamic. The client handles absolutely everything else based on the parameters written in About Land (for custom Windlight skies).

It's not clear what you think is going wrong, but I am fairly sure that things don't work in the way that you imagine they do.

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From where you think that the client read values about WL and all the other settings about land? Where they are stored? In mind of sim owner? Absolutely what? You are sure of something really difficult to understand.
What i think is can be that when the client read the data about the land from server, the section related to WL is not sent completely.
I don't know if this is related to this particular land or at server release, but for sure this data are sent from server to client.
I can't imagine where you think they are stored different than the server. If you think different, tell me where they are stored, i am very curious. You seem absolutely sure of something other for me incomprehensible.

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Windlight settings are not sent to the viewer. Only the name of the WL setting is sent. That means the viewer has to have it installed.

The viewer does not switch WL. It only does when set up to do so.

If you are talking of the Linden version of WL. A custom parcel setting is no server thing. Only you can see it. If you make a custom setting for the whole sim. That is a server thing and others can see it. If they have active to use the default setting.

Besides of that. The same WL setting can look completely different with different graphics settings.

And an example: I never switch any setting automatic. I only see the default setting if it comes to my mind that it's worth to try.

 

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Sorry, I wrote a detailed reply here (it took me about 90 minutes to write) and had it removed for no stated reason. Unfortunately this is your loss, as I didn't keep a copy before it was pulled and don't see the value in explaining this concept twice. Remember to thank your local moderator.

Found it thanks to a helpful post by KarenMichelle. Unfortunately I've chosen to remove links, to try and preserve this post.

---

There's a few places that Windlight settings can be stored. Only one requires any kind of transfer, and all it sends is an XML file containing floating point numbers. It wouldn't be responsible for the effects you document above, as it's in a deliberately standard format and uses standard terminology.

Local settings and presets
In Windows Vista/7/8 (the only environment I have access to right now) they're stored in your user accounts AppData\Roaming (you may need help in accessing AppData), and then inside the operating folder for your viewer of choice (e.g., 'Second Life', 'Catznip'). Within this they can be found inside either the user_settings or app_settings, each having a subfolder called 'windlight'.

In total, on a generic install, that will mean the relative path for the standard SL Viewer will be:-

Appdata\Roaming\Second Life\user_settings\windlight

or

...\Second Life\app_settings\windlight

You can review the contents of these folders for yourself, but there is a brief explanation in the Bonus Round comment below.


RLV settings
In addition, Windlight settings can also be set individually using the RLV command setenv.

Parcelwl
I'm also fairly certain that specific settings can be inserted directly into the About Land floater as text. I'm not sure if this feature is still read by modern viewers, however.

Environment Settings for Regions
This might be the method that you're referring to, since you're focussing on what looks like Bryn Oh's LEA sim?

On an estate level, it's possible to set presets and settings for regions. Once transmitted, these are translated entirely on the client-side - and rely on successful interpretation. There's no reason to assume any reading of this data would be partial, unless it's not supported by the viewer you're using (in which case, this is a viewer issue).

Bonus Round: Why must Environment Settings for Regions be working completely in order to work at all
All official use of Windlight skies and settings (that is, not Parcelwl and SetEnv) rely on XML files. XML is a tree-structured language with opening and closing tags (e.g. <key>content</key>). In order for successful parsing of this data, the top-level tags of Windlight XML files (llsd, map) must be transmitted at the start and end. If they're not, then the XML never 'closes' and execution does not begin, since the file is clearly not complete.

Each element inside llsd,map is preceded by a key tag, which contains the internally-used setting name. In some cases these match those found in the viewer (e.g. haze_density).

Therefore:-

With a full understanding of XML, it is possible to set the region to specific, saved settings which can also be locally viewed in their pure XML form. Comparison can then be made with the region's interpretation of the settings that are sent to clients. If a saved preset looks identical to a downloaded-region preset (within the same viewer, same computer) then the server is clearly transmitting the Windlight data successfully.

I have never gotten this method to diverge from the saved preset. The servers interpretation of Windlight settings always matches the saved preset. If you can provide evidence that this method of proving consistancy isn't 100% for the same viewer, same computer then this would be very interesting to see.

However, currently, given that different viewers are giving different answers to the same sent data, the viewers must be at fault. This is scientific method.

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Livio Korobase wrote:

Return at sim in one day or two, and the WL change.

Yep!

Old bug. Well, theres a few old bugs with region windlight (they don't affect parcel windlight).

Does that Windlight sky have Cloud Coverage > 0.27?

If so, the cloud coverage will keep resetting itself to 0.27 and this can make the nice clouds you spent a long time tweaking to look just right pretty much disappear.

Different people will see different things and this affects all viewers which support region windlight. What you see depends on what the cloud coverage was on the last region you were on, whether you logged in directly to that region or not and if you previously were using parcel windlight or a custom windlight with a cloud density > 0.27.  You can "fix" the problem locally by resetting the region windlight or loading that windlight locally as a custom override & then switching back to region windlight.

That particular bug is filed here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-1098

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This is what I see on Firestorm: https://d3li5r2routkf1.cloudfront.net/users/4d28942b0a04511681001171/snapshots/original_55d3a974128cc91b45000001.png

Note that I'd TP'd in from a region using a region WL sky set to 0.68 cloud coverage, so, thats the value I see because of that bug, the viewer doesn't pick up the correct cloud coverage value from the region.

 

This is what I see on the LL viewer: https://d3li5r2routkf1.cloudfront.net/users/4d28942b0a04511681001171/snapshots/original_55d3ad30a73e212945000001.png

I'd logged in directly to that region & cloud coverage was stuck on 0.27 & there are no visible clouds.

Once Id reset the clouds to display correctly, both viewers showed the same results.

Nice region by the way!

 

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Glad to help, sorry I didn't get the right answer but I've definitely made a note of the useful information here. :) It does make sense that it's a viewer interpretation issue, not a transit issue.

Thanks to Whirly for (as ever) all-encompassing knowledge and evidence of the problem.

G'luck waiting on the fix!

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