Coming Soon to Second Life (Maybe): Depth of Field

This is not an outtake from Fallout: New Vegas, but Second Life, as seen in the Mesh Development Viewer (found here), which includes an experimental feature that's often used in next generation videogames, and ably demonstrated here by OpenSource Obscure: Depth of field. Since it replicates the way movie cameras capture the world, it'll also be a great tool for machinima makers. While the footage is totally unprocessed, Ms. Obscure tweaked some of the viewer's debug settings: "I set CameraCoC to 0.010 while I let CameraFNumber and CameraFocalLength to their default values. I also changed another already-existing debug setting, CameraPositionSmoothing, setting it to 32 (that makes the bouncing camera effect.)" More info at the YouTube link.

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

It's an absolutely wonderful effect, I've been using it since it's release. As Obsucre said, the current defaults are a tad too blury for every-day use, but regardless of the settings you choose you'll get a realistic render based on the lens you defined. It's nice.

The only side effect is antialsing support was dropped in order to add this. Would be really nice to be able to use both.

[Rober1236 Jua]

Dales unofficial client already gives you 3D Second Life so what is the need for a cinema technique to be introduced. Though through using Dales I have come to understand that mosts views 2D is confusing to the brain, and one of the main reasons people don't keep with SL.

[Psistorm Ikura]

I do like the effect, but Ill say as much. I do severely hope we see massive performance improvements on the new renderer, else noone will be really able to use it. On a near top-end rig (3ghz i7, hd 5970, 8 gigs of ram), I get extremely poor performance (usually below the 10 fps mark in everyday use, 30fps with an empty sim and 2-3 avatars on screen).

If the issue of performance is tackled in a good way though, im looking forward to a much more amazing looking SL.

[Alvi Halderman]

Yeah, we're 31 Days away from the due date of Philip Linden's promises to kinda fix SL and I don't feel a lot of improvement since he said it and we're getting more eye-candy when we're diabetic of it... It's sweet stuff, I'm not going to deny it, but we need fixes and not improvements

[DMC Zsigmond]

Where are the settings for:

CameraCoC
CameraFNumber
CameraFocalLength

In the project viewer:

Second_Life_2-4-0-215383_ProjectViewer-Mesh_Setup

I can see these settings in Kirstens Viewer S20 (42) in the GUI, but can't find them in the SL Project Viewer above in *Debug Settings*.

Any help would be sincerely appreciated.

DMC

[Adeon Writer]

DMC, They are there for me with this build (oddly, one revision behind yours):

http://automated-builds-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/hg/repo/mesh-development/rev/215482/index.html

[Adeon Writer]

My bad, the revision I posted is newer. That's why, it should work.

[Ancient1 Aeon]

I am confused. I occassionally read these blogs and I see that folks with really good systems get these slow performances. I did not do anything special when I built my newest PC, i7, GTX470, 12GB, with a good MB, and I have 15Mbps internet and I rarely, with lots of custom clothes on and prim hair and shoes, drop below 50FPS. Even when I land at the Hoorenbeeks main store or a big mall the FPS bounces right up to 60+FPS in a couple seconds after the textures start to rez throughout the store. When I am on a empty sim (lots of buildings, no avatars) with my draw set to 512 I'm usually at the 80-90FPS rate. How is what I am doing any different than anyone else. I sure would like to understand where the bottleneck that I somehow or other bypassed is.

[Adeon Writer]

@Ancient1: That'd be the GTX470 talking. To say you didn't do anything special when putting that baby in is a pretty big understatement. ;)

[Dimitrio Lewis]

It looks like an awesome effect and a very exciting start. I've been wishing for DoF for many years and here it is! Machinima and photography could benefit significantly.

Apparently this was yet another unprompted feature coded by a developer in his spare time, just as shadows and sculpted prims were. All the best stuff in Second Life is born of unbridled creativity and this is no exception. Linden Lab should take the hint and give its staff more freedom to realize the full potential of their imaginations instead of treating them like fast food workers on a production line.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Yay! Can we hope for bokeh someday? :)

(Yeah, I've become the stereotypical user. "Now if you could make just one more change...")

[qarl]

@Dimitrio

could NOT have said it better myself.

[Toxic Menges]

I can't wait to get home (I'm on my hols in the US at present) and try this out on my GTX480 rig :D

[DMC Zsigmond]

Thanks Adeon,

Got that, all good now :)

Cheers,

DMC ;)

==========================================

DMC, They are there for me with this build (oddly, one revision behind yours):

http://automated-builds-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/hg/repo/mesh-development/rev/215482/index.html

Posted by: Adeon Writer | Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 02:38 PM

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Depth of field is a critical aspect of visual processing, but one so integral to sight that we don't notice it.

Implemented well, this should be a subtle touch that somehow makes the whole virtual world feel more real.

Implemented poorly, this will be yet another set of sliders that makes average users feel like they need to get a degree in computer graphics to really enjoy Second Life.

[Adeon Writer]

@Arcadia: Until it's possible to eyetrack and focus on whatever you happen to be glancing on at the screen, this feature seems like something purely for filmmakers and picture takers - it can be kind of headache-inducing to actually use SL like this, since your mouse isn't always hovering over what you want to look at.