How many of you use Advanced Lighting / Materials settings?

[Violaine Villota]

Just curious how many people out there use the Advanced Lighting Model with Bump Mapping and Shiny settings turned on versus how many don't?
Now that I am able to run it I have it on most of the time and prefer to create things that will take advantage of it, but are there still a lot of people who don't? I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who is into being a fantasy avatar and more specifically, fairies.

[Whirly Fizzle]

I always have ALM enabled these days, now I have a system that can handle it.

[cykarushb]

Always, if i didnt mind the game looking mediocre id just play something that looks god awful by default like IMVU.

I usually play with everything but depth of field on. Athlon 5350, 750ti, 16gb of DDR3, Windows 8.1, 1080p monitor.

[Rhonda Huntress]

I have them turned on. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

I have it turned on all the time unless I attend a super laggy event and then I'll start turning some things down.

[Talligurl]

I turn it on as much as i can, but often my computer wont handle it well.

[Klytyna]

I've had ALM enabled ever since they announced that we could use 'materials' some years back, despite having a crappy old steam powered stone age pc.

 

[Coby Foden]

I have ALM always on because everything looks much better as you can see the materials effects. ALM has almost no effect to fps on my system.
When doing something outside I turn shadows on too, that really makes big difference how things look.

Using:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600K CPU @ 3.40GHz (3411.14 MHz)
Memory: 8169 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 10 64-bit (Build 15063)
Graphics Card: NVidia GeForce GTX 970/PCIe/SSE2

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

I turn it on and off depending on what I'm doing. When I'm making something, I try as many different settings as I can think of. When I'm shopping though, I tend to have settings reduced to speed up loading so I pretty much always look at demos and rezzes without the fancy stuff first. Sometimes I remember to turn it on before I buy.

Every day use, it will probably be off though cause it makes the computer run hotter, and the fan louder.

[Chic Aeon]

Always.

[Callum Meriman]

Always turned on, and recently I stopped dual lighting in my club, lighting is now ALM only.

 

Edit: Adding to this; I also notice my spending habits lean towards items with materials. Non-material items - especially clothes and houses - look a bit like the old 2006 pre-windlight skies now. Light Ambient Occlusion is ok, but I avoid items with full on pre-baked shadows.

Edited October 2, 2017 by Callum Meriman

[bigmoe Whitfield]

it's always on.

[ChinRey]

I used to have it on always but there's no way I'm going to spend money upgrading my hardware to match the ever increasing load of SL. So for the last year or so I've only switched ALM on for short time periods when I've had some special reason for it.

Most of the time I don't miss ALM at all although sometimes I wish I could have specular maps.

[Parhelion Palou]

I have ALM on always along with everything but DoF. System is Win10, Intel i7-6700K @ 4GHz, 32GB RAM, GTX 1060 w/ 6GB, 512GB M.2 SSD, 500GB SATA SSD. I only turn ALM off to see what things I build look like without it. Sometimes some lighting adjustment is needed.

[Claireschen Hesten]

I almost never have it on unless i'm somewhere really quiet like at home and i want to spend a short amount of time seeing what the materials effect looks like on something materials enabled. if i had a super whizzy top of the range system that could really handle it i'd probably have it on all the time as it is i don't miss not having ALM on always

[Violaine Villota]

1 hour ago, Parhelion Palou said:

I have ALM on always along with everything but DoF. System is Win10, Intel i7-6700K @ 4GHz, 32GB RAM, GTX 1060 w/ 6GB, 512GB M.2 SSD, 500GB SATA SSD. I only turn ALM off to see what things I build look like without it. Sometimes some lighting adjustment is needed.

Ah yes, I really love the effect of DoF but it does slow things down so that will probably just get turned on for photos if anything or in a low lag place.

Thanks everyone for your input! I really appreciate it. I've been away for some time and wasn't sure if having ALM or Bump/Shiny on was the norm by now or not.
I don't want to turn it off myself, now that iridescence is possible it's a whole new SL world to me!

[Pamela Galli]

I did a survey in this forum a few years ago and discovered that the majority at that point and ALM on all or most of the time.

[ChinRey]

3 hours ago, Pamela Galli said:

I did a survey in this forum a few years ago and discovered that the majority at that point and ALM on all or most of the time.

I don't think a casual survey on this forum really tells us anything for two reasons. One is that you can expect the people who are active on the forums are a little bit more passionate about SL and more willing to spend money on it than the average user. The other reason is that many SL users will be reluctant to admit they don't have the latest and strongest game/graphics computer in the world.

I once did a large project with another - very talented - builder who was really passionate about normal and specular maps. We had a lot of great discussions about how to use them properly (and about many other things) and eventually became good friends. We had known each other for months before she dared to tell me she couldn't actually see those maps herself. Her computer wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to handle ALM.

Recently I've been wondering how many Lindens use ALM. About a month or two ago somebody at the What is Sansara group asked Soft Linden when the Mac client for Sansar would be available. When he replied, Soft mentioned that many Lindens only have Powerbooks so they can't access Sansar yet. Of course, that also means they can't use ALM in Second Life. (Well, they can but a Powerbook is really, really not up to the task. I use one myself as a backup so I can check my IMs when I'm away from home so I know.)

At a meeting recently, one Linden mentioned that he had to set his "Jellybean filter" cutoff so low everybody except he and the other Linden at the meeting were render as jellybeans. (Ironically, his own low ARC avatar was one of the laggiest in the scene for my computer.)

Most of the the sims around my place are filled up with the private SL homes of various Lindens and they are never ever there. I used to think they were all tired of SL but maybe it is because they don't have the hardware for it anymore?

[Conifer Dada]

My computer isn't up to using advanced lighting all the time.  I do enable it for snapshots and sometimes for exploring beautiful landscapes - for this I have to put the viewer in a narrower window (about half my screen width) to get a decent frame rate.  Also I set avatar complexity at about 100,000, so in clubs a lot of people appear as jelly dolls - but that's their problem, not mine!  

Next year I hope to get a new computer - I already have a good internet connection.  I've made some custom Windlight settings that work best with advanced lighting in readiness.  What makes me hesitant about getting a new computer, apart from just the cost, is the stories I see on these forums about people who have got top spec computers and still can't get SL to work properly.

Edited October 3, 2017 by Conifer Dada

[Qie Niangao]

1 hour ago, ChinRey said:

I don't think a casual survey on this forum really tells us anything for two reasons. One is that you can expect the people who are active on the forums are a little bit more passionate about SL and more willing to spend money on it than the average user. The other reason is that many SL users will be reluctant to admit they don't have the latest and strongest game/graphics computer in the world.

The sample of folks who read the forums is already unrepresentative, and those who'll read and reply to this particular topic is even more selective.

So I wonder, don't viewers report their settings to the Lab? Don't they collect statistics on this? And is there any reason they wouldn't share them?

To the question: I always have ALM on. I'll jellybean everybody in sight before I'll turn off ALM. My graphics card is generations old now, so my frame rate is dreadful, but shadows, materials and per-pixel lighting are just too good to give up. (I usually run a very short draw distance, though, with no DoF nor anti-aliasing, for whatever those buy me.)

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

I'll jellybean everybody in sight before I'll turn off ALM.

I simply stay away from places with lots of avatars. When I bought my computer - specially for SL - I was stupid enough to believe LL's ridiculous claim that SL is Radeon compatible. The result is that my graphics card can't handle more than two or three mesh avatars without ALM and with ALM the frame rate drops down below 20 and even below 10 fast. As for the jellybeans, if my choices are to be alone or to be surrounded by jelly beans, alone wins hands down every single time. If I come to a place and see jellybean avatars (not counting my own low lag ones) I leave right away.

Edited October 3, 2017 by ChinRey

[Teagan Tobias]

I don't make changes to my settings a lot so I had to log on to see what my settings are, and apparently I keep ALM on all the time, but without DoF.

CPU: AMD FX(tm)-6100 Six-Core Processor              (3311.17 MHz)
Memory: 8139 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 1060 3G

 

[Callum Meriman]

4 hours ago, Qie Niangao said:

So I wonder, don't viewers report their settings to the Lab? Don't they collect statistics on this? And is there any reason they wouldn't share them?

I wish they would. Even if it's a percentage. Knowing this would help so many people who create.

[Love Zhaoying]

6 hours ago, ChinRey said:

At a meeting recently, one Linden mentioned that he had to set his "Jellybean filter" cutoff so low everybody except he and the other Linden at the meeting were render as jellybeans. (Ironically, his own low ARC avatar was one of the laggiest in the scene for my computer.)

Most of the the sims around my place are filled up with the private SL homes of various Lindens and they are never ever there. I used to think they were all tired of SL but maybe it is because they don't have the hardware for it anymore?

Very sad.

[LuxRugani]

It is always on.