Shadows disappear

[Nya Jules]

Hello, I've got a problem that occurs to me in Viewer 2 and Viewer 2 Beta.

 

When I enable "Lightning and Shadows" or "Lightning and Shadows" and "Global Illumination" together, it works well, until I click either the options' OK-button again, or press the snapshot-button, or teleport. After this, everything turns a lil darker, the shadows are gone but the Depth of Field, for example, is still there.

When I cam very close onto myself, sometimes a kinda spotlight appears around myself and the shadows of myself are back.

I've got Antialiasing disalbed and am using a 580GTX.

 

Does anyone have an idea what could solve this problem?

[Torley Linden]

Nya, this is a known issue which I've experienced too on a 480 GTX. Do you also notice the Viewer window eventually turns black — and SL even crashes — if you keep toggling those preferences, or toggling the user interface?

For my own problems, Runitai Linden (who's been engineering these graphics features) mentioned this is due to OpenGL driver memory fragmentation, and the latest mesh-development build should "greatly mitigate" this issue, though you may still notice problems. I haven't tried that latest build yet but, if you're adventurous for 3rd-party viewers, I've had more stability in Kirstens Viewer for some reason. I continue to try these experiments out because I LOVE the enhanced visuals (the following is a raw snapshot, aside from a light cinematic-style grain pass):

[Nya Jules]

Hi Torley, thanks for your quick reply :matte-motes-smile:

Indeed I can confirm that Kirstens Viewer isn't affected by the problems that I experienced earlier. The shadows-option seems to be stable, not disappearing anymore when I click or teleport. I like it a lot, together with the Depth of Field (The Global Illumination still doesn't seem to work on any viewer for me, it's like either totally dark or milky, depending on ambient occlusion switched on or off.)

[Void Singer]

global illumination is also affect by every single prim in the region... whether in draw range or not.... which means that sky platforms that are out of draw range can leave some nasty shadows.