Advanced light model is not showing up when I have to download a new viewer to log in.

[jasons805]

I just want my viewer to work like my old one, but the option is gone or I can't find it to turn it on. any ideas?

[Wulfie Reanimator]

It has been removed from the official viewer. These changes are related to performance improvements and PBR.

If you need a viewer without ALM, you could try third party viewers like Cool VL Viewer.

[jasons805]

So is there a way to get my lighting settings to look similer or will it look off?  this Cool VL Viewer it will let me turn on ALM and AS?

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 hour ago, jasons805 said:

So is there a way to get my lighting settings to look similer or will it look off?  this Cool VL Viewer it will let me turn on ALM and AS?

The Cool VL Viewer currently can render in all three Extended Environment (EE) forward (legacy) mode, EE Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) deferred mode, and Physically Based Rendering (PBR) mode.

You can switch instantly between the three rendering modes (CTRL ALT P to toggle PBR on/off, CTRL ALT D to toggle Deferred/ALM on/off when not in PBR mode) and use the one that suits you for your current activity: forward is by far the best for sailing, flying and outdoor scenes in main land, ALM is best for legacy contents rendering with materials, such as clubs with lots of shinnies and venues with lots of avatars using legacy material on their meshes that would otherwise appear blueish with PBR, and PBR is required to properly render new shinnies using it (even though, the Cool VL Viewer also offers a hack to allow rendering a coarse approximation of PBR-only contents in legacy modes: see the ”Advanced” -> ”Rendering” -> ”Deferred rendering” menu and the explanatory post on the support forum).

As for EE settings, it defaults, in PBR mode, to NOT auto-adjust legacy settings to HDR tone mapping: the toggle for the latter setting is in the ”World” -> ”Environment settings” menu. It also uses fixed ”Midday” settings with clouds that do look as they used to in WL viewers (i.e. with a proper clouds scale) and do properly scroll with the wind, instead of staying still like in LL's bogus viewer (I reported that bug to LL countless times, but they never fixed the typo in their code and the consequently wrong setting value in their Midday EE settings in their inventory database 🙄 ).

Edited February 13 by Henri Beauchamp

[Flea Yatsenko]

The default environment settings are not good. But you will find the PBR version should use your graphics card a lot better (you should see better FPS if you have a good CPU and graphics card, it's not guaranteed). Nothing wrong with going back to the old way but I suggest you try playing with some settings with your viewer lighting and seeing if you can get something you like.

[jasons805]

Thanks for the help, so anyone using the newer SL viewer will find these settings gone it's not just me?   So it's more likely that I just need to adjust my settings, because it felt to bright and contrasty.

[Wulfie Reanimator]

20 minutes ago, jasons805 said:

Thanks for the help, so anyone using the newer SL viewer will find these settings gone it's not just me?   So it's more likely that I just need to adjust my settings, because it felt to bright and contrasty.

That's right, everybody is affected and it's an intentional change.

[Flea Yatsenko]

21 hours ago, jasons805 said:

Thanks for the help, so anyone using the newer SL viewer will find these settings gone it's not just me?   So it's more likely that I just need to adjust my settings, because it felt to bright and contrasty.

Yes, the setting you're looking for is "Brightness (exposure)." It's in the graphics settings. It's a pretty common problem. If you have too much blue in the environment, that can be fixed with the sky settings.

[Henri Beauchamp]

3 hours ago, Flea Yatsenko said:

If you have too much blue in the environment, that can be fixed with the sky settings.

By basically destroying the said settings, yes... E.g. you currently need to turn the ”blue horizon” one into a... pink horizon !

The problem is that the current shaders are totally bogus and account way too much for blue horizon/blue haze, and anything shiny and not shielded from the sky by a reflection probe will render blue (which is totally unrealistic: I never ever saw this happening in RL, even under a cloud less sky at midday !).

LL needs to fix this, but the time they take to fix it, there will be plenty of ”workarounds” in use in SL, among which hacked/destroyed EE settings that will need to be changed again once the fix is implemented !

LL really messed it up BIG TIME by pushing PBR to release while it was not even of beta quality and still full of render ”glitches” (to say the least), such as non-working water reflections, ugly and toonish blue-sky water bodies, broken semi-transparent legacy faces, etc, etc... 🙀

Edited February 14 by Henri Beauchamp

[NiranV Dean]

Guys guys guys, you are completely missing the point of this post and no one seems to have answered the actual question/problem.

Advanced Lighting Model is gone.

Answer:
Yes. That is intended. ALM is no longer an option, it is now the defacto default and always on, there is no more forward or windlight renderer. ALM has finally become the standard after 15 years as "unstable".

[Nalates Urriah]

On 2/16/2024 at 9:33 PM, NiranV Dean said:

Guys guys guys, you are completely missing the point of this post and no one seems to have answered the actual question/problem.

Advanced Lighting Model is gone.

Answer:
Yes. That is intended. ALM is no longer an option, it is now the defacto default and always on, there is no more forward or windlight renderer. ALM has finally become the standard after 15 years as "unstable".

I think you mean the setting to enable/disable ALM is gone. ALM is permanently ON.

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

I think you mean the setting to enable/disable ALM is gone. ALM is permanently ON.

That's what i said.

On 2/17/2024 at 6:33 AM, NiranV Dean said:

Guys guys guys, you are completely missing the point of this post and no one seems to have answered the actual question/problem.

Advanced Lighting Model is gone.

Answer:
Yes. That is intended. ALM is no longer an option, it is now the defacto default and always on, there is no more forward or windlight renderer. ALM has finally become the standard after 15 years as "unstable".

 

[Nalates Urriah]

On 2/16/2024 at 9:33 PM, NiranV Dean said:

Guys guys guys, you are completely missing the point of this post and no one seems to have answered the actual question/problem.

Advanced Lighting Model is gone.

Answer:
Yes. That is intended. ALM is no longer an option, it is now the defacto default and always on, there is no more forward or windlight renderer. ALM has finally become the standard after 15 years as "unstable".

 

[NiranV Dean]

Yea thats the summary of OP's post. My actual answer is below.