Laptop or SL Environment?

[Kia Kiyori]

Quite suddenly today, every photo I take with water in the background has sort of white squares through it. Hoping it was just in my area, I went off to the SL Botanical Gardens to take a snap of the ocean there, but it they were still there, so clearly I've either mucked something up my end, or my lappy has instantly reached it's used-by date (graphics drivers are updated). Anyone know what might be causing this?  Edit: Using Firestorm Viewer

My area:

SL Botanical Gardens:

Edited October 15, 2017 by AnyaJurelle

[LittleMe Jewell]

Nevermind - I now see it

Edited October 15, 2017 by LittleMe Jewell

[Kia Kiyori]

Its like pillars underwater with a white sheet of glass - the one taken at the Botanical Gardens is a bit worse. Wish I knew what was causing it all of a sudden.

Edit: Just turned off water transparency and they've vanished. Mystery solved, I guess (looks up desktop stores).

Edited October 15, 2017 by AnyaJurelle

[cykarushb]

I can't remember what specific thing can do this, it has something to do with the way lighting and shading is rendered. I use to have it happen to me in a variety of games because of a really crappy Radeon 7770 that never knew how to handle any kind of complex lighting.

This mainly happens to older cards, so i don't know how old your laptops graphics chipset is but I don't think its that old if it runs SL.

 

[Kia Kiyori]

EEEK! - totally forgot to come back and check replies! *red face* I'm so sorry! Just assumed that my graphics card is too old for anyone to bother replying (didn't think it was, though, because I bought the machine brand new in February last year). 

The whojibotch tells me that it's got a NVIDIA GeForce 820M graphics card and the thingamajig is: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz

Ancient? Not so ancient? Something else, perhaps?

Please be gentle with me when replying...I really don't speak geekage very well - or at all, in fact.

 

[Drake1 Nightfire]

3 hours ago, AnyaJurelle said:

EEEK! - totally forgot to come back and check replies! *red face* I'm so sorry! Just assumed that my graphics card is too old for anyone to bother replying (didn't think it was, though, because I bought the machine brand new in February last year). 

The whojibotch tells me that it's got a NVIDIA GeForce 820M graphics card and the thingamajig is: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5500U CPU @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz

Ancient? Not so ancient? Something else, perhaps?

Please be gentle with me when replying...I really don't speak geekage very well - or at all, in fact.

 

February is hardly ancient.. I would ask in the Firestorm Help group inworld. they can give much more info than we can. It might be a simple setting that needs changing.

[Kia Kiyori]

Thank you, Drake - will do!

[Kia Kiyori]

*Update: It's not my graphics card, as it turns out - it's the Firestorm Viewer. 

I downloaded the SL viewer today just on a hunch and sure enough, water was back to normal, my avi moved freely, and - for the first time since the Oct 16th when this issue began - I was even able to have the graphics settings back up to smack bang in the middle between High and Ultra (in FS, it began struggling since Oct 16 if I go beyond the 'mid' setting).

I did join the FS Group, but they didn't know, so I didn't hang around - they have enough people to deal with.

Anyway, thought I'd update in here in case someone else comes across the same problem....try the SL viewer first before you're convinced you have to spend a fortune on a new graphics card - or worse - a new pc/laptop (which I almost did).