I have been in communication with Dan Linden about EEP:
Hi Dan,
I am sending the texture that I used with Firestorm viewer (which was originally a 4096x4096 TGA). For my EEP trial I have reduced the file size to 1024x024 TGA to comply with what seems to be the latest viewer input limit, and I have substantially reduced the dynamic range to remove the brighter areas. The result in EEP requires a lot of tweaking to look any good, and I am unable to achieve anywhere near the results I can in Firestorm in terms of looking passably naturalistic, but some of that will be due to the reduced resolution compared to Firestorm for the cloud texture.
I note when adding a clouds texture locally with EEP in the Second Life LL viewer, that I can use a JPG file now. Previously it was only ever a TGA. I also note that when I add a texture file of greater than 2048x2048 it is rejected, but if I use 2048X2048 it is accepted, but that it shows in the viewer cloud selection dialog as being imported as 1024x1024?? Is it being converted to TGA and downscaled on the fly?
The sky is really the only area where anyone ever sees a texture zoomed in to the nth degree… A bit of creative thinking could enhance the user experience for everyone - have you tested the performance impact of being able to use a JPG texture of 4096x4096 72DPI in grayscale? In the Firestorm viewer with Windlight, using 4096x4096 TGA cloud textures, I saw no appreciable degradation in system performance compared to the inbuilt basic 512x512 cloud texture. Nothing compared to the impact of one single very complex avatar.
Here are two Youtube videos showing some of the Windlight and clouds settings in use in Firestorm. I made these videos yesterday and they show what sort of results I was able to achieve. Note how the clouds display depth and internal texture and the appearance of internal shadows. Far more like an amorphous white blob in EEP, with my limited testing. Please watch both these videos right through noting the way the clouds in all cases have texture and depth and look like real clouds (when the Windlight settings are set to be realistic). Each video is only using the one cloud texture, so such a huge range of possibilities exist for customisation with a quality cloud texture to work with. Windlight Custom Cloud Texture Demonstration 1 Windlight Custom Cloud Texture Demonstration 2
If you guys would like to play around with all my textures as available in SL, using the Firestorm viewer or older LL viewer with Windlight to see what I have achieved, here is my marketplace store: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/204498
I am very happy to work with you to come up with the best possible outcome here. I can see some good features in EEP, but it should be improving what used to exist, not stepping backwards. There is a huge possibility to have creative and beautiful and realistic skies inside Second Life to enhance everyone’s experience, especially if they are set up by the people who manage the location being visited, and those location owners need the building blocks of good cloud textures and an EEP that interacts well with the clouds. I am willing to design a few textures to be distributed inbuilt into your SL viewer if you like, once EEP is close to being optimised. I am happy to beta test EEP aspects of the SL viewer with you guys. I use a 27-inch 5K iMac running Mojave OS. I can run quite ok with all the graphics settings maxed out.
======================
On a separate note, there is also a bug in the current LL Second Life viewer app for Mac which I am sure you guys must be aware of when the view angle is zoomed out and the sun is in the right hand side of the view the top right of the sky appears washed out like some sort of weird lens flare effect; this does not happen when the sun is in the left hand side of the screen. I enclose some screen captures.
The file will be in a ZIP.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sent this email off a few minutes ago.