Official Second Life Client Expected To Get Dynamic Shadows As Debug Feature Soon

The ability to display the world of Second Life with dynamic lighting and shadows has been a long-requested feature by many Residents.  Machinima creators, artists, and real world architects want it to add vividness and realism to their projects, for example.  Many just want it because the world looks way cooler when it's enabled.  (If they have a powerful 3D graphics card, that is.)  Last year, Linden programmers created a "shadow branch" of the client which does just that, but for various reasons, the company has yet to integrate that feature into the official viewer that everyday Residents use. Consequently, brilliant hackers like Katharine Berry have compiled the feature into their own versions of the viewer.  Perhaps the most popular of these, Kirsten's Viewer by KirstenLee Cinquetti, has generated a cult following.  (Since then, however, Ms. Cinquetti apparently quit developing versions of the viewer last January.)

So where will Residents looking for dynamic lighting go?  According to Linden developer Qarl Linden, the Lindens themselves plan to implement the feature in the very near future.  "I've heard rumors it will appear (as a debugging option) in the next viewer," he wrote on my blog last week.  "So in the next couple weeks, perhaps?" I followed up with Qarl via email, and he offered more detail: "It will definitely appear in some future official viewer -- whether it appears in 1.23 will be based solely on technical issues (how much it conflicts with the existing trunk, how it fares in QA, etc.)"  So keep a close eye on the feature list when the official viewer is next updated, for a chance to finally switch on the shadows.

Image credit: Lainy Voom machinima test using Kirsten's Viewer.

Comments

[Yak]

Nice... but only after I upgrade my puter to one that probably needs two linked display cards.

What bothers me is that I'm still waiting for 'SLim' to be implemented (seems shelved?)

[Ann Otoole]

There goes another $500 to upgrade to the latest and buggiest video card.

With Second Life you have to upgrade your hardware annually I guess.

[Buckaroo Mu]

No, you don't /have/ to upgrade your hardware. If you want to use dynamic shadows, you might need to. I've used the *very* alpha versions with shadows on my nVidia 8600GTS, now quite an old card, and performance was moderate.

The important thing to remember here is that (sigh) unlike Windlight, as shadows are currently implemented, they are very definitely a "on or off" feature - meaning if you turn them off, there won't be any difference in how it runs. Of course, it could change by the time it's released. Either way, if you don't want to upgrade your graphics card, then don't - you just won't get shadows. No biggie.

[Marianne McCann]

I'm looking forward to this -- but I also know that dynamic shadows were never an option for my 1 year old computer or card under Kirsten's Viewer. Here's hoping that changes.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

What Buckaroo said... moreover, when it was first announced, it was said to be highly unoptimized; I hope that's been improved, and I doubt that it would appear in a release version of the client had it not been worked on in that regard.

[Opensource Obscure]

I compiled sources from Linden Lab "render-pipeline" code branch and now I have a viewer with nice shadows working.

Again, what Buckaroo said - Shadows are an optional feature.

And even if you want to enable shadows, there's no need at all to spend $500 to upgrade. My computer is 1.5 years old and the graphic card is a Nvidia GeForce 9600GT, that can be bought at eBay for 50-60$.

A couple of screenshots:

[ArianeB]

Good to hear. I have been using Kirsten's shadow viewer since I upgraded my video card. Shadows can make things slow and unreliable, and the viewer crashes a lot. Hence I only use it occasionally for screenshots on my blog.

Getting it in the SL main client would be a good thing, as it means the feature will be updated along with the client. I understand the need to put it in the debug menu as only a small minority of people have video cards capable of handling it, and it should lessen crash complaints.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Actually, I sat down at newegg.com (virtually speaking) and priced out a computer that I believe SL would run quite nicely on, assuming I already had monitor and keyboard and mouse, and aside from shipping, I think I did pretty well for $504. (Now, if I just had $504 that I could spend to check my work...)