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Region Environment Settings ... feedback on upcoming viewer feature


Oz Linden
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You can now download a Project Viewer that allows you to set the Environment Settings for your regions, and any user entering the region will see the settings you set (for now, only if they are also running the project viewer).
We've revamped the interface for editing environment settings as part of this feature, and are looking for your feedback on it here.

See http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Land/This-Project-Viewer-Lets-Landowners-Control-Environment-Settings/ba-p/925883
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This has to be one of my favourite viewer upgrades. Been using it for a week, it works extremely well.

Estate owners can set single windlight settings or full custom day cycles for their sims.

Yes, you can override this in your own viewer. In fact, not only can you override estate settings, but you can do so with either a single windlight preset, or a full day cycle of your own. Plus, your override is persistent! Meaning you don't have to change your windlight settings every time you log in.

Not only that, but after nearly a decade, LL has finally fixed the broken day cycle editing interface, or rather replaced it and fixed the features that had been broken in the old. You can now save and load from multiple day cycle presets. This will be a HUGE visual improvement for SL, especially when windlight as inventory finally arrives.

 

 

 

 

My advice  to LL at this point would be to take this opportunity to provide improved windlight settings for the default day cycle, and include the old day cycle as a "classic" preset.

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Techwolf Lupindo wrote:

While this was something that LL should have done years ago, this is welcomed progress. :-)

Both phoenix and firestorm viewers will still support parcel windlight sence I have heard of no parcel windlight in LL roadmaps anywhere.

Much moreso than parcel level windlight I would love to see windlight, as well as other visual effects, as scriptable visual properties. I added a Jira about the concept here.

With this we could carve out 3D areas of space with unique windlight settings, such as a building where every room has its own windlight settings.  Every floor could have it's own unique settings despite being on top of other floors with their own settings.

 Windlight changes could be triggered by in-world occurences. Throwing a switch in one room might turn off the lights (and alter the windlight settings) in another.

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Sadly... nothing scriptable, nothing that we can really sell the settings, nothing that i would be able to share with other ones over my mainland parcel... That seems a bad answer to the "duck tape" feature of Phoenix... well don't be suprise to see a foggy morning in SL... that will be for sure a full foggy day, if the region owner has decided to. ;-)

But at least.. this is better than now ;-)

 

 

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Techwolf, from all that I've seen/experienced, doing windlight at a parcel level actually takes away from immersion rather than enhancing it IMO.  Sure, there could be some artistic use-cases for having gradual changes occur as you walk through parceled woods or explore an art installation, the reality is more likely vastly jarring settings changes a dozen or more times as you walk across a single region (even more jarring if you're traveling faster via land/sea/air vehicle).

 

That said, proper estate-level WL shouldn't interfere with the method Phoenix/Firestorm uses, unless they decide to give priority to the grid-wide estate settings at some point.

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Zeja, with luck down the road we'll see WL as an asset (inventory item) that can be very easily shared or sold.  There is, in my opinion, a huge opportunity here for those who are interested in investing the time to really get to know the controls and build some really compelling 'day cycle sets' (a day cycle can have up to 20 different saved windlight presets throughout the SL day).  I like some of the preset day cycles quite a bit, and have been having fun playing with the settings and working on something to use at our place, but as a resident and a consumer, I'd still be interested in buying WL preset packs when I'm able to.

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Yes.. but what is the point if you can't use it with your friends over your own parcel, or at list have a scpit that request permission to show you it, as it is for animations... then would be nice to be able to sell it, but the region owner is not the same size as market, espacially if theyhave to change the settying manually on their region.

I'M a bit decept but this integration that feel a lack of long term vision.
This is not an evolution, it's just a wart... ;-) (i'm probably a bit frustrated too ;-) )

 

 

 

 


 

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Yeah, the blog post probably shouldn't have said "landowners" because the vast majority of landowners actually can't use Estate environment settings.  And one doesn't need to be a landowner to merely see the effect of the settings on Estate sims.

I do not agree that permitting per-parcel environment settings would interfere with immersion on the Mainland.  I think I understand the argument, but it's not as if denying this feature to Mainland owners is going to magically make Mainland an immersive experience.  What's more, travellers who want consistent environment settings across parcels (and sims) can readily set them local to the viewer (to the Mainland default, if desired), which overrides any land-specific settings later encountered.

That said, I wouldn't want to add significant lag to parcel-crossing.  It would not be at all important that the viewer immediately reflect a parcel's environment settings, so this might mitigate any lag effects (server- and viewer-side) if environment updates from parcels were "lazy" -- possibly omitted entirely for parcels passed through quickly.

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Qie Niangao wrote:

Yeah, the blog post probably shouldn't have said "landowners" because the vast majority of landowners actually can't use Estate environment settings. 

Ill second that. I got excited for a sec. Then realised the truth and got disappointed.

 

 

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Oh - didn't realize only estate owners get this. My bad.

Does this work only with Version 2 viewer, btw?

I would be disqualified on both counts. :)

PS, ITA with Qie about this not affecting immersion (especially if this is for Estate, since doesn't one have to teleport from one to the other - can't connect full estate sims by road or water. Only the Lindens can.) After all, right now, totally different themes can and do exist next to each other all across the grid.

If we can walk from a scene straight from Mars into a 1950s diner, what does windlight matter?

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  • Lindens

I'm delighted that Oz & team have revived WindLight Region Settings and have made it a reality — and not just a virtual one, haha. Some of you veteran Residents may recall the running joke of bugging me every few weeks/months to ask "When's server-side WindLight coming out?" after the then-team made the declaration that 2008 would be the year. And being the keen believer in followup that I am, I made the promise of sharing forth when it came true. YES. NOW. While we haven't faced the marathon o' endurance that, Duke Nukem Forever has had, a la Poltergeist, I'll say: "WE'RE HERE."

@Penny Yes, the "easy override" is another specific feature that's be very useful for photographers and machinimatographers. Especially if you crash or need to relog, and are sick of having to reset your WL settings each time. I've been there lots. 

Also note the side benefits in cleaning up the REGION/ESTATE window so Environment could live on its own tab.

What would you like to see in an improved default day cycle? I recall having to tone down the current one during its inception, as many Residents weren't yet accustomed to such dynamic range. Plus, we tested on different monitors with varying gamma settings and what appeared "rich" on one screen was "washed-out" on another. So it feels a little "flat" given the many other WL settings, including Resi-created ones, I've been using. Naturally, lighting and shadows further changes the dynamics, and as more people can experience those, that gives stronger reason to have them on when creating WL settings.

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We can go crazy by crossing different region too...

Maybe a permission could be add at the region level, to allow or not the parcel windlight contextualization.

I think that with a decent transition... that could be not so bad....

anyway... it will take another 3 years to see any other change about this...
visibly some people don't see the potential to have this as an asset, manageable by script  and/or applyed on the parcel or by asked permission.

It seems that it was not all entering in one sprint...  really... that dev methodologie can make things to tend to its minimum... even when it was exactly the goal in a such virtual universe, to make it better. Guys.. this is infrastrcture for a virtual world.. not just a viewer feature... really...

(now .. prove me that i have just written wrong things...and i will be the first to be very happy to heard that it's not the case...)

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Luc Starsider wrote:

lol. Imagine if you drive through a region which has been split into small, 512m parcels, and every parcel used its own windlight settings.
:D

Yeah, but we generally don't drive through parcels, at least not intentionally.

It would have a greater impact for folks who fly cross-country, higher than the 50m Above Ground Level whitelist ban ceiling, but I think they're generally trainable to use the (already conveniently provided) viewer-specific settings to ignore whatever's set on the parcels they skim over -- for those few who would actually care.

Of course the same viewer-local setting would work for those with very delicate sensibilities, to override the much less frequent transitions that occur when walking from parcel to parcel.

I can imagine that the developers would hate it if lots of people used that local override, defeating the whole purpose of the feature.  Somehow I don't think that would really happen, though.

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