Not able to see shadows when I turn them on

[Bee Hazelnut]

I am posting this on behave of a friend, she is unable to see shadows when she turns them on, her computer/laptop can use shadows coz the option is not greyed out.

She has turned on hardware skinning, change shadow settings to sun/moon + projectors, turned graphics 2 ultra and disabled anti-aliasing (like I told her 2) but still don't work.

Any clue why its not working for her?

[Ceera Murakami]

Depending on what viewer you try with, some will present you with Shadows options that are not grayed out, even though shadows can't work on that hardware. For example, if I use Firestorm on my Win XP PC that has an older (yet fairly powerful) graphics card, Firestorm acts like I can select the options for Shadows. But the options do nothing at all. With the current LL 2.x Viewer, the shadows options remain grayed out.

Only a small subset of graphics cards and operating systems can see the new Shadows. Your friend is probably out of luck until they do a major upgrade of at least their video card.

[Charolotte Caxton]

Sounds like you got it all right, have her look over this to make sure she is not overlooking something. I had to make sure hardware skinning  was checked and I had to go to hardware, disable antialiasing, then set it back to 16x to make shadows work, both things you already said she did.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Lighting_and_shadows#Depth_of_field

[Chic Aeon]

It would probably help to know which viewer isn't working for her of if she tried several. While I can see shadows on most viewers, I could not see them (or at least only a tiny bit of tree shadow that was barely evident) in the Linden Labs Viewer 2 (a build or so ago). So trying another viewer may be helpful.

Also, even with shadows enabled and WORKING, the sun needs to be at certain angles for them to be noticeable. In some situations, they could be "working" fine, but the Windlight settings need to be adjusted. So that is a second possible cause. Just like in the real world, a gray day or with the sun directly overhead will give no or few shadows.