Secondlife Windlight Weather

This video is an example of how Windlight from Windwardmark Interactive includes the options for Weather effects rendered to screen space for blisteringly fast weather in 3D engines.

The reason this is important is because Linden Lab (Second Life) uses Windlight in their viewer since 2007, but strangely enough does not include the native weather effects that are built in. Instead, only third party in-world solutions are available and all are sub-par and cause lag on the simulator when in use.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Windlight
• Weather
• Windwardmark
• SecondLife
• Linden
• Lab

[RaddSpencer]

I remember this from 2006 or 2007 when LL promised it as a part of the Windlight update.

Come to think of it, I really don't believe I can think of a single feature LL has fully delivered on or completed. Windlight is missing a tonne of promised features. Sculpties were supposed to have flixibility features you could set using the alpha channel. Avatar puppeteering was dropped entirely. Shadows have been on the backburner for years. Reflections were dropped entirely. Speed Tree was abandoned.

[darianknight]

@RaddSpencer Shadows are available in Kirstens and a few other TPVs, as well as Depth of Field. The rest though, yeah... just selective amnesia.

[darianknight]

Technically weather already is in SecondLife, it's part of the Windlight package which they acquired in 2007 but never actually used. The same can be said for Dynamic Reflectivity (Mirrors). It's in the system but not enabled... none of that makes sense though why they wouldn't have used the powerful resources they have at their disposal.

[RaddSpencer]

@darianknight yeah, shadows have been available as an unsupported debug menu feature for years now. TPVs have added Preferences options to make them easier to turn on and off, and adjust, but they're still an unofficial, unsupported feature as far as LL is concerned. They're also still fairly buggy.

OpenSim under RealXtend had shadows and mesh running at much higher framerates than SL's shadows in 2007-2008.

[LLOLLz1]

First time seeing this...this is awesome..this should have been included or at least by now..

[MirceaKitsune]

One of the many things Linden Lab was too lazy to add. Hope this will be in SL someday... looks very good and realistic.