Stevie Davros

I can't understand why you cannot get a dark sky. Here is one with almost no ambient light and artificial lighting and a faint starlight is all there is, made in Firestorm EEP Beta. I have not explored day cycles as of yet however...

I have now had a lot more time to experiment with (and struggle with to some extent) the new EEP settings. My increased understanding of the substantially different settings necessary to achieve the same effects as my previous windlight files has eased my woes. In particular, settings for Haze Horizon, Haze Density, Sun Glow, Distance Multiplier and Cloud Density have had to be considerably altered to achieve the same appearance in the sky for my desired appearances. For example, one of my sky files used for a sunset appearance for use with one of my cloud textures: Setting EEP WL Haze Horizon 4.34 0.21 Haze Density 0.03 0.70 Distance Multiplier 0.08 15.7 Cloud Density D 0.57 0.37 Sun Glow Size 1.99 1.75 These settings all make the sky look quite different with subtle changes, so you can see that the large changes I needed would throw anyone inexperienced with the new way the settings work off their stride. Using the above EEP settings was necessary specifically to light up the clouds in a natural looking way at sunset, and the result in EEP is reasonably close to the old WL. I have a feeling that a lot of other people are also experiencing issues with EEP due to having their old favourite WL files imported and then struggling to achieve the same look due to the differences required in many of the atmosphere settings. I see a lot of people saying everything looks very dark and drab, maybe this is why? Attached is a table with a comparison of all settings I used.

Thanks for the reply, yeah I have figured that might be the case. My textures held only by me but referenced in my sky files are confirmed as No Transfer and I have not figured any way that could be circumvented at least. The sky files I sell and their saved-as alterations remain No Transfer. With some effort on the part of the purchaser, they can put in all their sky settings manually and change the sky I supply to have the look they want. It would have been way easier for them to be able to slap in the graphic, such is life.

You need to go into Atmosphere & Lighting and change a bunch of the settings there to get the result you seek, but they would need manual tweaking for each slight change in the sun position. There does not seem to be any linking between the settings in Atmosphere & Lighting and Sun & Moon. Of course in RL everything is closely interlinked.

I have discovered another issue with the new graphics possibilities of EEP. Part of the promotion about EEP from LL has been the ability to create custom graphics to replace the sun and moon for selling in Marketplace, there is really no limit to one's imagination here. I had though to create a pack of graphics people could buy to add to their existing favourite sky settings files. All well and good you might think. If I put a pack into Marketplace with a collection of graphics textures set to No Transfer and embed them in sky files to demonstrate them, all set to No Transfer all seems ok. The problem is that anyone can them make their own sky file, or use an existing one, add in the No Transfer sun or moon graphic, and then transfer that sky file with anyone they like. So it becomes impossible to provide a texture graphic for mix-n-match use as the No Transfer capability is so easily circumvented. The only work around I see is to only provide No Transfer sky files with the sun and moon graphics already embedded, and not allow people to use the graphics in their own sky files, but instead ask them to amend the provided sky file to the way they want it to look. Your thoughts?

All the settings in the sky interact with each other. It can be tricky to get the sky to look the way you want. The best bet is to start with a good sky someone else made and amend it to suit your desires. I agree that they need to sort out the Sun issue. The Sun glow does not show in the entire sky as it does in reality - especially at sunrise or sunset. If you make the Sun Glow negative, the clouds on the other side of the sky look as they do in RL at sunset, but the sun and clouds near it are plunged into an unnatural darkness. If you leave the Sun Glow where the sun is with positive values, the sun is washed out when you set the slider to give the far side of the sky some light...

I agree Anne, I also have noticed when you set the Glow Focus to negative to provide sky backlighting away from the Sun, then the position of the Sun goes unnaturally dark, which in real life does not happen. The Sun glow should decrease so that there in no discernible disk showing, but not darken beyond that. I shall post a bug report on this. It has major impacts on the sky lighting affecting way more than just the clouds.

I agree with you. The day cycle slider was a very useful feature to have.

The Sun is still below the horizon. Try clicking the E and N arrows until it just peeps above the horizon and the little yellow sun light up bright, like the moon is on the right side. If you are after a pre-dawn glow, you need to move the Glow Focus slider across to the left into negative territory and reduce the Glow Size to about 1.80.

I agree that would be marvellous, but it would require implementation of something like Stellarium app into SL. Here I added a Milky Way graphic into Firestorm EEP Beta at the maximum allowed size of 1024x1024 onto the Sun and sized it just to fit the screen dimensions for a snap. It is fuzzy and not practical, unless you use SL on a smartphone. To add in a heap more tiles to cover the entire sky as graphic files would require even at this fuzzy resolution maybe 50 or more tiles. I shrank it to a smaller size and it looks more reasonable, but then to cover the sky you would need hundreds of tiles... So the only way they could implement it would be using code to emulate it, rather than image graphics. Even Stellarium app makes the Milky Way look somewhat fuzzy, because they use a graphic for the Milky Way and rendered stars... Given all the other issues they are trying to resolve I would would give this zero chance of being considered. Maybe this gives a hint: http://www.ianww.com/blog/2014/02/17/making-a-skydome-in-three-dot-js/

Highly unlikely. I have been making texture files for clouds for a while now for Firestorm with Windlight. When they were locally hosted graphics files, the size I was using was 4096x4096 pixels which provided good detail when stretched across the entire sky dome. Now with EEP the upload file size limit is 1024x1024 pixels. 1 megapixel when stretched across the entire sky is very low resolution. Clouds are acceptable looking at a pinch with the right settings, but stars would just look like fuzzy blobs if you tried to use a starscape image. The current new stars are quite nice IMO, but they are procedurally generated and not a graphic, which is why they are sharp little dots. I have been making some eclectic things to place in the sky with EEP, check out what I have been up to here: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/204498 My latest is figuring a way to use the new variance setting to show a pseudo aurora in the night sky...

I have thought this through a bit more and looking at the Firestorm Beta (also the same in LL EEP Viewer), all you have to do is click Personal Lighting open, and drag the sun position ball around to put the sun and shadows anywhere you like, and change sky colours. Once you are used to it, it takes a few seconds to achieve the same as the old slider.

I agree. Perhaps this needs to be submitted as an enhancement request officially, if it has not already.

Using Firestorm EEP Beta, I have imported one of my custom cloud texture files and a selection of Windlight files and they seem to be working a lot better than when I tried 5 weeks ago. I am now finding my imported windlights to look quite similar to how they appear back in standard Firestorm. There are still some issues, but I am less concerned than I was. I have noticed one very odd thing, as I pan left and right in mouse look the sea can suddenly change from quite dark to very light. This seems to be in relationship with the sun position and seems more obvious when the sun is close to the horizon. Has anyone else experienced this issue? A few quick screen caps of my cloud tests:

I just filed a bug report re white-out flare in top right of the sky when a wide FOV is being used. I could not find this bug as previously reported, which seems odd as it is so obvious and easily reproducible... This affects both SL Viewer and Firestorm Beta. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-229183

Yes I have noticed even in the past few weeks a change in the way variance works, it creates some very effective swirly mist now with the right settings.

I have been busy testing out the new EEP using the Beta Firestorm with EEP, and also the Second Life Viewer with EEP. I have specifically been in the past few days looking at replacement astronomical graphics for the Sun and Moon to create a range of alternative looks. I have tested making new sky files, importing PNG alpha masked color graphic files of the recommended dimensions, applying the imported graphics to sky files, switching between sky files and checking out the appearance between viewer apps. And finally I have uploaded some replacement Sun and Moon graphics and sky files to Marketplace for others to check out. The entire process went quite smoothly and I did not encounter any issues. I do realise, of course that this is a minor aspect of the EEP implementation. Next I shall be moving into cloud textures and emulating as close as possible my old Windlight files inside EEP. This is where I know things will start to get interesting... The files I have worked on so far are here, if you are interested to have a look: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/204498 As an aside, in the major Second Life groups on Facebook I have noticed a very low level of knowledge about and understanding of EEP.

I'm not sure what you mean, can you add a screen cap of the old Firestorm window that has the settings parameters you refer to, here are the old Firestorm Windlight and new Beta EEP settings windows that I have been using. Phototools and other Firestorm popup windows look the same to me.

Is it not easy to take any sky file and change all the parameters to create a new look? Apart from the different way they look in the viewer (which is up to LL to address), all the sliders and options are still there?

Is the EEP Firestorm pic with the closest you can make EEP match to Windlight, or with the same setting copied over?

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-229170

Thanks, I knew of bug tracking, but as this was not a bug it baffled me

There is a balancing act between all the sliders to get clouds showing well in your imported Windlights. You need to go to inventory and double click on the sky file to open the full editor pop up with all the controls.

Hi all, does anyone know how I would ask Linden Labs to add a new category in Marketplace for EEP content? There is nowhere at present that fits so "Everything Else" is the default. LL says that one of their motivations for changing from Windlight to EEP was to bring all the content such as Windlight settings and replacement Sun, Moon and cloud textures within inventory, yet they have not added a category to Marketplace so this content can be shared, searched for and found more easily.

Gee, I would have thought some sort of script automated process could sort that out. Don't they do that sort of thing for their updates already?